The Loop

We had encountered our first real snag in the investigation, and it was kind of a big one. The guy we were after, Ahmed, had already been picked up for his crimes, and it wasn’t the cops who got him.

“So who are these guys again?” Harper asked, looking between the New York team and me, not sure who was better equipped to answer.

“I don’t remember much about them,” I confessed. “They must have been pretty small-time players.”

“The guy is called ‘Brigadier’, and the woman with him is ‘Mother of Exiles’,” said Cerebro. “Not sure if they have an official team name yet.”

“Cool names,” said Christine. I expected to sense some sarcasm in her, but she was being genuine. What I did feel was a small amount of jealousy. At their names, their costumes, the fact that they were, apparently, engaging in the sort of vigilantism she felt we should be.

“‘Mother of Exiles’ is a bit wordy though. Do you think she’d mind if we just called her ‘Moe’?” said Harper, earning a laugh from the kid, Flare. I knew his real name, of course—I knew all their names—but we were playing by different rules now, and we all had to pretend we were meeting for the first time.

“And what’s their deal exactly?” I asked.

“They’re kind of … showy,” said Quintain. “Badass, military looking uniforms. Tough on crime approach. Inflated egos. All that.”

“They’re one of the first teams to announce they'd be operating in the public eye in New York City,” said Cerebro. “They have a PR team and everything. Half their shtick is that they’re doing the job the police can’t do, but the irony is that they’re playing ball with the local government and the authorities more than anyone else.”

I was reminded of the fact that soon enough plenty of teams across the nation would have government endorsement, and plenty of would-be heroes would be joining the military. It was an anxiety-inducing thought, but it was far from the scariest thing in our future.

We stood near the shore, looking out at the far end of the docks, where a woman—‘Moe’ really was an easier name—was floating above the thirty foot yacht where our mark had been hiding out. Her partner had gone onboard the boat half an hour ago, just when we were about to make our move. They’d flown in right in front of us, and though I could tell they’d seen our group standing in costume, and they must have made the connection that we were there for Ahmed as well, neither of them had made any attempt to approach or communicate with us.

“They’re part of the establishment, in other words,” said Ingress. “And if they’re interviewing our guy, you can bet it won’t be long before they hand him over to the police. I studied law, but nothing I studied is going to even come close to covering the kind of jurisdictional, constitutional clusterfuck that this thing is going to become. The Supreme Court is going to have a busy few years, I think. If Rick— if Cerebro and Quintain wanted to be a little bit more like them, we could use that connection with the police to get in there, but …”

Cerebro just shook his head. I understood why the two of them were hesitant to let their Hype identities and their detective identities become entwined. Compartmentalization had been an important tool to me—to all of us—last time around.

It was getting late, and I was acutely aware that if I didn’t get home soon, my parents would start to worry. Ever since the thing with Shannon—the version of events that they knew, anyway—they’d been more concerned with knowing where I was at all times. It didn’t help that Angie had a friend who’d died. It didn’t help that the world was turning to shit in ways that no one had ever predicted.

Angie, I thought with a start. If we didn’t wrap this up soon, I’d miss out on her birthday cake. It wasn’t so much the cake I cared about as it was just making an appearance. Being there for her for once. If I missed her fifteenth birthday, I wasn’t sure she’d ever forgive me.

I’d been texting her all day, but in the middle of the afternoon she’d stopped replying completely. It was no great loss, since even at the best of times lately all I’d gotten from her were curt, one or two word replies. But to go off the grid and become completely unreachable was unlike her, and I didn’t like it.

“I say we just approach the flying chick and tell her that we need to talk to this guy before they turn him over to the police,” said Lincoln. “What possible reason would she have to say no? They’re heroes—ostensibly—and so are we. We’re on the same side.”

“She doesn’t know us at all. For all she knows, we’re here to break Ahmed out and get him to safety,” said Cerebro.

“Ahmed wouldn’t trust a bunch of Hypes to get him out of a bind,” said Linc. “He hates Hypes. Him posting that public manifesto is probably the reason they showed up here in the first place.”

“Well, that and the fact that he’s wanted by the police ever since those guns were found in his work locker,” said Quintain. “Finding him wasn’t that hard, obviously, if these guys were able to track him down and get here even quicker than we did. Which means that, even if Brigadier doesn’t call in the police to take him into custody, they’ll probably track him down themselves before long. We have to get in there and find out if the Priest has made contact with him yet.”

The truth was, we’d gotten lucky in looking for him. Ever since the day before the averted incident at Grand Central, when Cerebro’s team had searched the place and found the guns in the locker, the police had been trying to find Ahmed. It was his own stupidity in posting a manifesto online that had allowed Lincoln to use his power and track him here, to his rich daddy’s yacht docked at North Cove Marina.

I could tell that Lincoln was upset at the assertion that finding him hadn’t been difficult.

I thought again about Angie, and looked anxiously at the time on my phone.

“I agree with Lincoln,” I said. “We should just go up there and ask her if we can talk to him.”

Our plan had remained largely unchanged. We knew, because of my knowledge of the future—or a future, anyway—that Gethsemane and Ahmed were bound to wind up crossing paths. And we suspected that Adversary would be targeting Gethsemane, and any other local Hypes who had been significant in past timelines, before moving outward in his quest to ensure that the apocalypse happened as planned.

So Ahmed remained our best, albeit indirect, link to Adversary, and our best hope of finding and stopping him.

“That does not seem like the sort of plan you’d approve of,” said Christine, eyeing me curiously. I saw the surface of her mind light up with genuine surprise. It annoyed me, somehow.

She thinks she knows you, said a voice in my head. Her perception is clouded by her arrogance, her pompousness.

I was surprised at my own anger, at the assessments I was making, at the voice in my head that didn't seem quite like my own.

“Yeah, well, I guess you don’t know me as well as you think you do, Chris.”

She was about to reply, a flash of something between hurt and anger flashing across the surface of her consciousness, but she was cut short by Flare pointing up at the sky.

“Look,” he said.

In the distance, we could just make out two helicopters making their way toward us across the bay. The whine of their propellers could be heard clearly.

“We don’t have long,” I said. “Forget talking to her. Ingress, can you get me in there?”

“I don’t know what it looks like inside the boat, but I can wing it,” she replied. I felt in her a certain eagerness. To prove herself? Yes, that was part of it. But there was something else: she was having fun. She liked doing Hype stuff.

“Are we sure that’s the best play?” asked Cerebro, but it was too late, as Ingress had already reached her hand out and popped a small doorway into existence in front of us. Through it, we saw the back of a caped man in military fatigues as he stood facing a brown-skinned man who was tied to a chair and gagged. The man’s eyes widened in surprise as he saw the doorway appear out of thin air. There was a small popping noise as the air pressurized on both sides of the portal, and that was enough to cause the man, Brigadier, to start to turn around.

“I don’t really want to tangle with this guy,” said Christine.

“Neither do I,” I said, reaching out with my mind and attempting to grab hold of Ahmed to pull him through the portal. A curious thing happened; I realized my power couldn’t work through Ingress’s portals.

“Well, shit,” I muttered, stepping through before the others could stop me.

Brigadier was turned all the way around now, and he stared at me in astonishment, our eyes locking for a brief moment before I took a step to the left, in an attempt to get around him, and he engaged his power, causing two explosives made of pure light to appear in his hands.

“Who the fu—” he began, but before he could finish, I pushed out with my power and shoved him sideways into the bulkhead separating the galley from the small lounge area where he’d been interrogating Ahmed.

“You’re coming with me,” I said to the seated man, whose eyes were wide with terror. I grabbed him with my power and dragged him toward me, intending to throw him, chair and all, with enough force that he’d cross through the portal even if my power didn’t work on the other side of it.

My plan was a success, but I’d failed to account for the fact that I had to get back through as well. In the time I’d taken to get Ahmed through the portal, Brigadier had gained his feet and his senses. He lobbed one of his light grenades, not at me, but at the portal. Ingress shut it before the explosive went through. Instead, it hit the bulkhead behind where the portal had been a moment before, and detonated with a deafening boom.

A small hole in the hull to the left of the galley was torn open, and water started rushing in.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” I shouted.

“Why the fuck did you help that criminal escape?”

“We need to question him and we don't have much time.”

But I could tell he wasn't really listening to me. He held another energy explosive in his hand and prepared to lob it. The first had glowed a burning white. This one had a red tint to it. The water was up to our ankles now.

I tried to use my telekinesis on the sphere of light, to grab it and throw it out through the hole his first grenade had created, but it was made of pure energy and I couldn't even sense it with my power, much less move it.

There were other options, good ones even, but something dark overcame my consciousness, and I found myself unable to think clearly through the dull, blinding rage that was filling my mind.

I shouted incoherently and rushed him as he threw the grenade at the spot where I'd been a moment before. I caught him by surprise and nearly tackled him to the ground, but he regained his composure and shot small two blasts of energy out of his hands, detonating them before they had time to form into spheres. The effect launched him backward, just out of my grasp.

His second grenade exploded, but rather than destroying more of the boat, it had the opposite effect, coating the areas that his first explosive had destroyed in a ghostly red glow. I chanced a look behind me and saw translucent red light, made almost but not quite solid, filling in the gaps in the bulkhead, a part of a sofa, and the galley counter. It was as if the destroyed portions of those objects had been replaced by some insubstantial material that nevertheless kept the sofa upright and the bulkhead from letting in more water.

“Cool trick,” I said. “Here's one for you.”

I launched my consciousness at him, imagining my mind as a spear and his mind as soft flesh, yielding easily to the attack. I latched onto and attacked thoughts and feelings indiscriminately. My telepathy could have been a scalpel, but I wielded it in the moment like a battle-axe.

He shrank back, groaning in pain and grasping his head in his hands. The longer the fight went on, the less conscious I became of the world around me, of my own actions. It was like my vision and hearing, even my thoughts, were muffled by a blanket of darkness, of shadow.

“Don't push me,” I heard myself saying. Brigadier only whimpered. I felt my rage increase, as if his whimper were a protest, a provocation.

He lay before me, his body convulsing in some sort of sick paroxysm.

“Fight me at your own peril.” The words I was saying didn't even make any sense. He wasn't fighting back.

I heard the telltale whoosh of air as a portal opened behind me.

“What the hell are you doing to him?” I heard an unfamiliar woman's voice say. My telepathy told me two things: she loved this man, and at this moment, she hated me. Her hands shoved me roughly aside, but I didn't stop my mental onslaught. She knelt down next to her partner and then glared back at me.

“Adam!” Christine's voice was alarmed, and it shifted something in my mind. It was like being startled awake, shocked out of a nightmare.

I looked down at my hands and saw a thin, dark, pitch black oily film covering my skin.

I stepped backward, as if to get away from myself, and I felt the film recede, slink back along my arms and legs, up my chest, up my neck, into my nostrils and mouth and eyes.

I collapsed and only just managed to stay conscious.

My mind finally pulled back from Brigadier’s.

“What the hell just happened?” I asked, but no one was even looking at me.

Mother of Exiles was seated, rocking back and forth with Brigadier's head in her lap. She stroked his hair, told him things would be okay.

My team and Cerebro’s were all aboard the yacht now, and half of them were around the two other heroes, trying to comfort them, while the other half—Christine included—stood around and looked anywhere but at me.

The only exception was Lincoln, who eyed me with a mix of curiosity and suspicion. He approached me and spoke quietly.

“We should talk,” he said. He helped me to my feet and supported me with a hand behind my back while we made our way back out through the newest portal that Ingress had opened.

We found ourselves back on the docks, near the shore. The man we'd come here for, Ahmed, was tied with ropes to a concrete pillar that had an arc sodium light sticking out of it. He was still gagged, but I could hear his defiance in his mind. He wouldn't talk, wouldn't deal with us. He'd rather die.

For a moment, I felt myself drawn to him, wanting to punch, to pummel, to pound and punish.

I pushed the intrusive thoughts away, starting for the first time to feel real fear at the things happening inside my mind.

“What the fuck is happening to me, Linc?” I asked. And my mind and my voice held the weight of everything that had happened between us. And in that moment all I wanted was for this man, once my best friend, to comfort and reassure me like he would have before everything went wrong.

“I have a theory, Adam. It's going to sound crazy “

“What doesn't, these days?”

“Fair point. I think that—”

The others started emerging from the boat, interrupting us. I was relieved to see Brigadier moving under his own power.

We explained things as well as we could, Christine thought, and I knew it was directed at me. But Moe is still seething. We tried to play it off as a heat of the moment thing, but Adam … You went way too far.

I transmitted her thoughts to the rest of my team, looping them in because I didn't trust myself to have a one-on-one. I didn't trust my own perceptions.

It would be good if you got some distance. We'll try to clean things up here, said Jaleel.

Harper and Shannon didn't say anything, nor direct any thoughts my way. They wouldn't even meet my eyes.

Adam, Lincoln thought, letting me into his mind without resistance for the first time in a while. You should go home, let us handle this investigation. The next part of his thought was only for me, so I kept it from the others. I think Pitch left a piece of himself inside your mind. Don't trust your power. Don't do anything rash. I promise you we'll keep you in the loop, and we'll figure this thing out together.

There was a sincerity to his thoughts that left me taken aback. I was so shocked by his gentleness that I almost didn't process what he'd said. Pitch, I thought, only to myself. How is that possible?

“Ingress,” I said quietly, motioning her over. She approached me warily, her thoughts swirling with uncertainty, with doubt about me and about herself for enabling my behavior. I felt a greater shame at that than I did at what I'd done.

Can you make me a door back to Texas?” I asked her. “I don't think my presence here is helping things anymore.”

Wordlessly, she obeyed.

I gave my friends a quick mental goodbye and stepped toward the portal.

Seriously, man, I felt Linc’s thoughts reaching out toward me again. Don't do anything until we talk again.

——————

“Mom?” I shouted, entering the front door of my house. “Dad? Ange?”

I could hear my parents talking in low voices in the kitchen at the end of the hall.

“We're in here!” My dad's voice was terse.

I approached cautiously. My parents' minds were too turbulent to read without focusing, but Lincoln had warned me not to trust my power, so I didn't even bother trying.

“What's going on?” I asked them, coming into the room to their accusatory, worried looks. My sister's birthday cake, vanilla with chocolate frosting—her favorite—sat on the counter, ready to be eaten and utterly forgotten.

“Where the hell have you been?” my mother asked.

“Have you heard from your sister at all?” my father asked at the same time.

I looked at my phone and saw over two dozen missed calls and text messages. Most were from my parents, but a few, curiously, were from Angie's friends, Chloe and Emma.

My parents’ angry questioning continued in the background, but I was barely aware of it.

One text message from Angie's friend Krista stuck out to me: “Angie needs your help ASAP. She's stuck in a bad place. Please answer.”

How did I miss all these? I thought. I looked at the times on the missed calls and the text messages and saw that most had happened while I'd been busy trying to destroy a man's mind for the simple sin of getting in my way.

I felt then the crushing shame and self-hatred I'd been holding back until that point.

There was a knock at the door and my parents stared at me, as if they thought I knew who it would be.

And I did.

I walked quickly, not stopping to give any answer or explanation to my mother and father. I opened the door and there stood my sister's three best friends.

“Thank God you're here,” said Chloe.

“Do you ever answer your phone?” asked Emma.

“We don't have time to fuck around,” said Krista. “Angie said to find you and get you, so let's get going. She needs your help and it might already be too late.”

I looked into each of their minds briefly and reeled back at the story presented.

“I think I've got the gist of it,” I said. “Where are we heading?”

My parents were standing behind me by then, exchanging confused glances and looking between me and the three girls.

“Adam,” said my mom. “What the hell is this all about? What’s going on?”

“I need to go help Angie,” I said. “I wish I could explain the situation to you, but honestly, you wouldn't believe it. Just please trust me.”

I wanted desperately to use my power on them, to ease their minds, to make them forget their troubled thoughts. I refrained, and not just because it was the right thing to do.

Lincoln's words kept playing back to me in my mind.

“Adam!” they shouted as I followed the girls down the driveway to where Krista's car was parked at the curb. “Adam, get your ass back here!”

Whatever happened to Angie, I knew it was my fault. The only question was, would I be able to undo it, to save her, without relying on my power?

I couldn't see how.