Pale: 7.a - Interlude

Gone Ahead – 7.a | Pale
Ulysse sat at the ‘adults table’, at the end of the bench where the sun shone past the canopy, the sun shining on him and making his simple engagement ring and his stupid golden hair glisten and shine.  He stared off into the distance, looking vaguely bored as kids ran off into the woods.

What was the saying?  Women wanted him, and men wanted to be him?

The ring was a platinum gold in a mobius twist, bearing a single black gemstone set slightly off-center.  There was a tiny scuff mark where it had banged against something.  A scuff like a flaw, a scratch that could be the first of many.  No relationship was perfect, and no matter how lucky a kid like that could be in the looks department or in getting a sweet position in a place like this, he couldn’t avoid the fact that people in a relationship were people.  And people could do a lot of damage with little comments and assumptions…

There.  A shift in the light, a little bit less of a shine.  More flaws stood out.

Ulysse dropped his hand from the table, shifting position.

Then, slowly, as if he knew and he’d known all along, the golden-haired kid in a skintight black tee and ripped black jeans turned to make eye contact.  Staring the bull down as the horns were leveled his way.

Kevin smiled with one corner of his mouth, leaving the rest of his face stone cold.

Kevin’s gaze drilled into the little flaws in skin…

Rae took a seat beside Kevin, resting her head on his shoulder.  He looked away from Ulysse.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Always,” Rae replied.

“That just means you’re losing weight,” he told her, giving her arm a light pinch.  She met his eyes, then looked away.  He smiled, and even though she was looking away, she smiled back, reflexive.

“At least the food here is great,” she said.

“Lucky kids,” he said, his eye returning to Ulysse.  “Great food, summer school in the great outdoors, fancy building… do you ever wish you could be a kid again?  Relive your life knowing what you know now?”

“I don’t know,” she said.  “I was an ugly duckling.”

“You became one heck of a swan, babe.”

She smiled, still staring off into the woods, head turned slightly away.  “Thanks.  I had braces, baby fat, and you know how my mom is.”

“I know how she was.”

Rae’s mom had been legal counsel and administration for a hospital at seventy-one years of age.  A proud lady, perpetually… furious, if he had to pick a word.  That was the vigor with which she had tackled the world, her enemies, her romances.  Like there was a fire lighting every single one, propelling it.  She’d joined clubs and boards with a kind of recklessness, until anyone watching had to think this would be the one that broke the camel’s back.  This would be when she had to scale it all back.  But she’d always risen to the occasion.

Until a moment, while he and Rae had been visiting for dinner.  Bam.  Stroke in the left hemisphere of the brain.  They got her promptly to the hospital, of course.  Anything else would be negligent.  It hadn’t helped.  Of course.

That fiery old hospital admin had lost all ability to communicate.  It came out as infantile babble, so she’d ceased trying.  Simple words and ideas had to be communicated five or more times to her before they reached her through the damaged regions of the brain.  Rephrasings of a question, like whether she wanted a glass of water, or that they were leaving now.  She lived her days alone in her big house, now, shuffling from room to room and gardening while playing music without lyrics.  The regular visitors and old friends had fallen away when her condition hadn’t improved.

When he and Rae visited, the old woman had a way of glaring at him, like she knew he was somehow responsible.� Which was fine.  What would she do, really?  It wasn’t like she was equipped to exclude him and Rae from her will.

“Would you?” she asked him.  “Go back to being a teenager again?”

“Oh yeah,” he replied.  “But only if I could bring you with.”

“Even if I was an ugly duckling?”

“Even if,” he lied.  Then he kissed her.

He wondered if there was a way.  He’d made deals and arrangements, along the way.  Their landlord, Lawrence, was clearly in the know about a lot of the culty stuff that was going on in the background.  Stuff that worked.  Now and then, Lawrence would point Kevin at a target, and Kevin would see a bit behind the curtain.  And if Kevin was poised to look in on things from a certain angle as a powerful person fell from power, then he could see a bit more.  Like what that power was.

Like a woman who had a past older than she appeared to be that caught up to her after Kevin crossed her path.

Pretty good hint that there were ways to be young again.

Or the guy who’d been trying to arrange some big real-estate claim or something.  Lawrence had sent Kevin as his representative.  The guy had closed the door to his room at the end and when the door had opened again he hadn’t been inside.  And he hadn’t existed as more than a reference in papers, a blurry image in the background of photos.  That hinted there were ways to rewrite reality.

If Kevin did enough work for the right people in the right positions, knocked certain individuals from their positions at the top so that others could rise and bring him with them, then there could be a day when he got invited behind the fold.

Being here, around all these teenagers, he’d come close to settling on the idea that he’d want this.  Youth and privilege from the beginning.  To be a young man amid the next crop of Raes, the ones who hadn’t been ugly ducklings.  To have a whole life ahead of him, without the dismal periods being inflicted on him.  The most important years of his life taken from him by his parents’ bad decisions, so busy trying to survive and deal with the shame of living in a shelter that he couldn’t even be a kid.

To do that and to get there, he had to work.

“Where are you going?” Rae asked.

“Bathroom,” he lied.  “Stay.”

At the end of the other table, Ulysse rose from his bench.

“I don’t need an escort,” Kevin said.  “I can hold my own dick.”

“I’ve been asked to keep an eye out for trouble.  I’ll do as I’m told.”

“Do you really want me to return the favor, Ulysse?  And keep an eye out?”

Ulysse turned, facing Kevin directly, eye contact and all.

“You’re proud,” Kevin said.

“Justifiably,” Ulysse said.

He didn’t move or react.  It was too important to not give ground.  Especially because he had things to do and he couldn’t do them without this guy dogging him.

A hand reached around Kevin’s head, fingers covering his left eye.

“Interesting that you knew it was me,” Ted said, from behind Kevin.

“Your hand is massive, the callouses scratch, and you never make noise when you walk.”

“Yeah.  Let the boy go.  We were told to try and leave him and his friend alone.”

Kevin turned around.  Ted withdrew his hand.  Kevin looked up at the big guy.  Ted wore yoga pants and a loose-fitting shirt like he intended to lounge around all day, but with a build like that and some natural good looks, he could turn heads with a Hawaiian shirt and jorts.

“If he wants to be left alone, he can back off.”

“We’re all fulfilling our roles, Kevin,” Ted told him.  “Ulysse’s role seems to be to serve.”

“Serving the woman teacher,” Kevin noted.

“Well, my role is that I’m heading into that school there.  Your role is what?”

“Keeping the peace.  You and Shellie have your own ways of causing chaos.  I can keep it from getting too bad, if it starts going that way, though I think we’re going to let it get worse before it gets better.  Shellie was just on a rampage and nobody nudged me to tell me to step in.”

“Maybe you’re wrong about your role, then.”

“I’d be surprised if I was.  I’m confident about this sort of thing.”

“What if I said I was going to go take a peek inside the school, and I want you to keep that kid from following me?”

“If I did, it would help keep the peace,” Ted said, looking at Ulysse.

“Would it?” Ulysse asked.  “Is it really that peaceful?  Generally?”

“You and I are peaceful enough,” Ted replied.  “Let’s not test that.”

Ulysse nodded, smiling.  “Then get out of my way.”

“It’s a contradiction, Ted.  It makes things a whole lot less peaceful when and if an allegorical David smashes Goliath’s brains out,” Ulysse said.

“I know,” Ted told the boy.  “Believe it or not, I was David, once.  And my Goliath… she was big.  I haven’t known peace since I delivered the killing blow.  As much as I’ve searched.”

“I’m having trouble following this.  Ted’s killed someone?” Rae whispered in Kevin’s ear.  She’d risen from the bench despite him telling her to stay.

Kevin shook his head.  He pushed Rae lightly in the direction of the bench as he took a step toward the school.  Ulysse took a step closer, to follow, which made Ted place himself between them, blocking Ulysse’s way.

You don’t win this, Kevin thought, staring Ulysse down.

He began to focus on the flaws, considering the options.  Ulysse tensed.

Ted’s hand reached back, a single finger placed over Kevin’s eye.  “I have this, Kevin.  Don’t interfere.”

Kevin stepped back, away from the finger that was touching his face, and this time, Ulysse didn’t advance to keep the distance between them consistent.

Ted’s whole aura was like a karate master in the movies, from the good old days.  It was like the guy who seemed ill-suited for a fight, who walked easily onto the scene, not wearing anything threatening, eerily calm, like he already knew the outcome.  Then he handled everything easily.

Ulysse was well suited to being the brash teen punk who couldn’t read the situation and picked the fight anyway.

Except in this case, Ted had that atmosphere and he looked like he’d be a beast in a fight.  He made Ulysse look small, and Ulysse was more athletic than ninety-nine percent of teens Kevin had paid any attention to.

“Stand down, take a seat, dinner is about to be served.  Enjoy it,” Ted said.

Ulysse placed one knee on the bench, bowing his head, and reached under the table.  He looked up at Kevin and Rae.

“What?” Kevin asked.  He smiled.  “Are we holding you back?  Are we not supposed to see?”

“You’re walking a fine line,” Ulysse said.  “You more than any of the others I’ve met, from among Bristow’s collection.”

Kevin nodded, smiling.  “Yeah, probably.  See, Shellie, something baaaad happened to her, and she froze in place.  Doesn’t want to budge.  Ted’s too much of a man to freeze, but he doesn’t want to get any closer to it, so he walks away, I guess.  And Rae…”

“In denial?” Kevin shrugged.

Ulysse dropped his head, bowing it, and whispered something.

When he stood, he held a wicked looking bit of metal.  Too fancy to be a mace or any kind of medieval hammer, but it was big, it was iron, and it was studded.  It looked like it weighed a ton, even if it was hollow.  Ulysse held it easily.

“If you really want to fight, I won’t say no,” Ted told Ulysse.  “I waive any protections as guest, those watching can pass that on.”

“I can but I won’t,” Kevin said.  “Neither will Rae.”

“Yeah, I won’t either,” Rae said.

“It’s fine.  It should still help,” Ted declared.

“Should it?” Kevin asked.

“For reasons I’ve seen hints of, but, like you said, I walked away before I got the explanation.”

Kevin chuckled.  “Rae?  I think they want to go all out.  Look away.”

She turned her back on the pair.

Ulysse’s weapon began to glow like it had been sitting in a fire.

“What gods do you worship?” Ted asked.

“Only one I won’t tell you the name of.  By his gospel, the one we came to name Prometheus had peers, and it was not the one who tried to seize the original Fire, but many.  All who tried, succeed or fail, were punished.  I found my deity nine miles beneath the surface of the earth, thoroughly protected so none might disturb his eternal punishment.  Had he succeeded, our campfires might not be wood we’ve set alight, but something else entirely.”

“Your god’s a loser?” Kevin asked, sneering a bit to drive the question home.

It did seem to nettle Ulysse.  “He was the greatest of them.  So they placed the most obstacles in his way.  Now he is my god and I am his sole worshiper, his champion.”

“It’s my understanding that if you pick this fight and lose, your god’s power will dwindle.”

Then he sprung forward.  It looked like a practiced movement, bounding into the air in a leaping strike, weapon thrust down and forward.  It clipped Ted, setting Ted’s shirt on fire and grazing skin, and it had enough heft to make the man stagger.

Ted pulled his shirt off in one fluid motion.  The big puckered scar across his back and chest was clearly visible.

“You’re good enough to dodge that.”

Ulysse approached more tentatively now, weapon held out in front of him like a rapier.  He swiped.

The swipe clipped Ted’s chin.  The wash of hot air that followed made Kevin blink hard, and it set Ted’s hair on fire.  Ted pressed the bundled up shirt to the burning portion.

“What are you doing?” Ulysse asked.

“In two thousand and fifteen, I met you.  We fought then too.  It was my fault, that time.  I wanted what you had.  I learned my lesson very quickly.”

“What lesson was that?”

“That a direct hit with that tool of yours will go through flesh like butter.  And an intended strike that misses will punish the person who won’t meet the blow by raising their temperature.  Three or so misses and they should pass out from internal fever.”

“Three to five, yeah.”

“I have a high natural body temperature, so I’m susceptible.  It’s easier to take the grazing hit than to dodge or take it directly.”

“How do you know that much?”

“Because you and I have met, several times.”

“I tried to take your tools, the first time, in two thousand and fifteen.  I learned my lesson quickly.  I then tracked you into that hole in the ground, where you met your god.  Later, I met your god before you did.”

“That makes no sense,” Rae said, her back still turned.

“How’d he take it?” Ulysse asked.

“He burned me alive both times I ventured down there.  Others had claim over me.  In another lifetime, toward the end, we became friends.”

“And how did that one go?”

Ted shrugged.  “It wasn’t the recipe for success.  I realized toward the end that I couldn’t do it alone.  I went looking for the right combination of key people.  You, obviously, since you don’t remember, weren’t part of that combination.”

“And my other tools?” Ulysse asked.  He closed his hand, then opened it.  He held a burning metal orb between two of his fingers.  Something like a narrow snake squirmed, dark, within the red-white metal.

“I know about them too.  In some ways, better than you do.  If you would like to call it a draw now, we can excuse it by saying the esteem and power your god holds reaches to deeper places and times.  I wouldn’t have this knowledge if he wasn’t strong.  I came prepared.”

“I’m not sure that’ll fly, Ted.”

“Sit, let’s wait for students to arrive and for dinner to be served.  I’ll tell you things about your tools that you might not know.”

“My mentor won’t like that.”

“She’s been hinting at her interest in my story.  We can pacify her if I let her ask some questions.”

“I think you’re wildly overestimating how easy she is to pacify.”

“I might be.  In the course of my journey, there were many people important enough that I came to know them intimately in the course of my journey, many who… well, my memory isn’t perfect.  I can’t recall everyone I met.  And then there were some who were like your mentor.”

“Deliberately out of my reach.”

Kevin touched Rae’s arm.  “Want to come?”

“Come now,” he lowered his voice.  “It’s not really the bathroom I’m so intent on.  Why do you think we wanted to escape the kid?”

“You have to stay sharp in a place like this.”

‘Sorry,” Rae answered him.

They walked away.  Ulysse watched them, tense, but didn’t follow.  When Ted sat, he reluctantly sat too.

The front door of the school was still sealed.  It sealed off the central classroom and front hall.  That left the dorms of the east wing, along with the kitchen, showers, and similar facilities, and Kevin and the others from Sargent Hall had all been asked to steer clear of there.  Strangers and kids.

But his interest was in the western wing.  Where the permanent teachers and senior students slept.

The door was locked.  He reached into his pocket, pulling out his wallet.

“I’ll watch out,” Rae said.

“Thank you.  Stay outside?  Give me some advance warning.”

It was weird.  Rae was useful, and smart, and dangerous, but something about her had come to unsettle him, and he couldn’t put his finger on it.  He’d even tried to get rid of her at one point.  It hadn’t stuck.

Still, in a circumstance like this?  He had a chance to get another peek behind the curtain.  Maybe more than ever.

All in general orders.  Lawrence had talked about things he wanted to do, things he was interested in.  Stuff like disrupting some of the more rebellious students, getting more information on certain things, and throwing a wrench into Alexander’s plans.

Never explicitly stated, but… he made it clear.

He used lockpicks at the door lock.  It seemed the staff and students of this wing had been asked to lock the doors as they came and went.  It would be easy for Lawrence to ask some of his loyal students to ‘accidentally’ leave a door open, but he hadn’t.  He had to have his reasons.

Lawrence revealed more about his reasons to Kevin than to anyone, as far as Kevin could tell.  Even his family members, who he used as staff at the apartment building.  Who was the latest one?  Like a puppy dog with neon green braces?  It was a white trash name.  Barbie?  Arbie?  Darling?

She called him sir, which he liked.  Way better than the last one, the snarky kid.  But she had no clue.  Even Ted didn’t want to listen if Lawrence wanted to talk about certain things.

The lock popped open.  Kevin let himself in, closing and locking the door behind him.

The western wing was nice, with painted images on the walls that seemed to hint at who the residents of the nearby rooms were.  Nooks aplenty, with small tables and vases of plants within, and he didn’t recognize many, which surprised him, because they looked nice and he had an eye for quality.

That was the thing that he kept going back to.  That Lawrence trusted him with information and certain tasks.  He shared an appreciation for things of value, and if Lawrence wasn’t keeping the company of fellow weirdos from the same families as these kids at this school, he would sometimes invite Kevin.  To taste some brandy, to go to a show or sporting event, or attend a quiet party where everyone present was an artist, musician, or something fancy.

That trust and that companionship was because they were fundamentally similar.

He stopped in his tracks.

She was the librarian, if he remembered right.  Slim, her large glasses slipped a bit down her nose, slightly European fashion that was modest and hard to pin down.  Her black hair was in a ponytail that looked like it had been hastily pulled up, and she carried a stack of books.

“Access to this wing is currently restricted,” she told him, peering around the stack.

“Let me help you,” he said.

“No need.  I’m very good at managing these things.”

He still took a few books off the top of the stack.  “What are you up to, here?”

“Escaping.  It’s my job to look after the library, but things are so awful right now.  I’m taking one of my breaks, enjoying some tea, and reading.”

“Your escape from the library is to sit and read?”

“Of course,” she said, smiling.  “Do you read?”

“I think you have an inkling of something in you, where you got a book, perhaps Infinite Jest or something Umberto Eco, and where others wouldn’t read them, you saw it as a challenge to finish it when others wouldn’t.  And it spoke to you on some level.  You keep telling yourself you should dive into a work like that again, but you can never find the time.”

“No?  Perhaps you’re not there yet.”

“It was The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles.  Have you read it?”

She smiled.  “Yes.  Gosh.  It’s interesting.  Some deep themes to dive into.  Not an easy read for many.”

“Sure.  Some guy who goes looking for a cat and ends up hiding at the bottom of a well to escape the world.  There have to be themes, or it’s just really dumb.”

“Don’t run from what it made you feel and think.  It spoke to you, didn’t it?  We’d all be better off if we read more and took away lessons from what we read.”

He followed her to one nook with two armchairs set on either side of a tea table.  The nook was backed by three large windows, giving Kevin a view of the new building where Bristow currently was, in his own words, ‘dealing with a nuisance’.

He set the books down, then turned the top book on the stack around, and turned the cover.  Belanger Compiled Notes, Vol. II.

“Ah!” she started.  She put a hand over the cover.  “I’m afraid I can’t let you read that.”

Now he wanted to read it more.  “Why not?”

“Because it’s from a private collection.  I got special permission, and I thought I had privacy to enjoy it.  I’d read in his study but it’s not the most comfortable place right now.”

“In… Alexander Belanger’s study?”

“Yes.  I’d be happy to share the reading with you, but you’d need permission, and that’s-”

“Easy,” he cut her off.

He left.  And he didn’t lock the door behind him as he headed outside again, walked past Rae with a hand gesture to get her to stay put, and circled around to where Shellie was, outside the new construction project.

With one eye on the window, he approached.

Shellie was hurt.  She rubbed at her shoulder, which was a little red, and she had cuts near her hairline where she’d threaded silver wire through in a complex braid pattern, until it looked like she had an ornate hairpins inset into scalp.

“You alright?” he asked.

“Do you really care?”

“I want your help.  So yeah.  It matters if you’re too hurt to be useful.”

“Nice try.  You pretend you don’t care, Kevin.  You bury it all inside.  But these things curdle inside us.”

“I’m curdled enough.  Come on.  It annoys Lawrence’s enemies.”

“Does it annoy Lawrence at the same time?”

“I don’t think so.  If this works on any level, I think he’d be tickled pinker than he already is.  Why?  Would him being annoyed make you more or less likely to help?”

“Neither.  I just like the context.  What do you need?”

“I remember a year ago, it was one of the first times we met-”

“We met plenty of times before a year ago.”

“But we talked, and we worked on that thing. I wanted access to a startup CEO.”

“He hired a professional, someone who specialized in infiltration, phishing, catfishing, but the company was good.  They were pretty on the ball, we couldn’t find any cracks.  Then he said okay, let me call one of your neighbors.  Just… be prepared for people to get very hurt along the way, now.”

“They did,” Shellie said.

“One of the staff might’ve died.  I never looked into it and I never saw anything in the news.  Not that I follow the news.”

“And it was easy.  We sent you in, the absolute opposite of a guy in a clipboard who social engineers his way into places he shouldn’t be.  A brash, punk girl covered in piercings, with wild… your hair was blood red then.”

“Are you going somewhere with this?”

“I want access.  The librarian needs permission before she’ll let me look at some books, and I’m wondering if there’s a way into Alexander’s office.  That was my original goal.  I thought stealing stuff that looked valuable could ruin his day and make Lawrence’s.  But the librarian just let slip that the old headmaster still has books he’s very protective of in there.”

“His place of power?  It’s harder to break into than you think.”

“Let’s try it and see?  I’ve got a little bit of experience messing up those who think they have power.”

“Yes.  West wing, there.”

“Good.  Then wait five minutes before following.”

He nodded, letting her go ahead.

Lawrence’s enemies were liable to look at Ted as the big threat.  Which he was.  Kevin had next to no idea what Ted’s deal was, but he’d pieced together enough to know there’d been time travel or something.

Which was another little piece into the puzzle that suggested that going back was doable.

He let Shellie go ahead, and then walked lazily around the building, glancing now and then at the librarian, who was visible through the back window, oblivious to the world as she paged through a book so quickly it was hard to believe she was digesting any of it.  Here and there, she would take a sip of tea, pulling the books well away from the cup before she tipped it back, to keep them safe.

Was Lawrence a version of Kevin who had access to people like that?  With the sage wisdom and deeper understanding of the world and of people?

Kevin, when he was operating at his best, found himself tapping people as resources, like he was doing with Shellie now.  Like Lawrence was doing, by bringing them here, or like when he wanted Kevin to target the kid of a random woman in local politics.  The woman’s kid got into legal dispute, that dispute could find the news, and a friend of Lawrence would ascend.

He didn’t know why Lawrence didn’t handle all that himself, and a part of him hoped that it was because Lawrence was raising him up to be an apprentice or something.

A more realistic part of him knew that people didn’t get breaks like that.  They had to take them.  Usually from someone else.

As he walked around the corner, Rae went from looking the other direction to staring at him, the moment he was in view.  It wasn’t that he’d made noise.

It was like she just knew he was there.

Last year, he might have walked over to say hi, to kiss her, to talk.  She was a ten out of ten, as looks went.  But over the years, little moments like that had stacked up.  And now…

…Now he was a bit afraid of her.

He remained where he was, a hundred feet separating them, his eye on the window.  She kept looking out.

He wanted this.  He wanted it to work.  The apartment was fine, he was good at his job, he had a stunning girlfriend, and he had a special power.  With minimal effort, he could bring the high and mighty low.  A deep, focused look, and he could wound them.  Or worse.

His neighbor who revved his truck engine at eight in the morning on Saturday, doing endless builds and rebuilds of the engine?  Four fingers lost as the diesel tank exploded.

His demanding old boss at his last workplace had gone to jail for fourteen years for embezzlement.  Kevin had done the embezzling, kept the money, bought a new car, and set the rest aside for buying a cabin.

The girl at his workplace before last had dated him.  He’d stretched the truth a little when talking about his past, and she’d stretched it more, to an unfair degree, when gossiping to their workmates.  He’d gotten his justice when a rumor about her and the boss’s seventeen year old son had gone around the workplace.  She hadn’t been aware, she’d made a comment, and cemented the rumor as truth in people’s minds.  She’d lost her job.

The neighbor’s kid who rode his skateboard back and forth underneath Kevin’s window all weekend had tried jumping the stairs and now had his jaw wired shut.

The guy who lived two apartments down from Kevin had a parking spot next to Kevin’s with the obnoxiously expensive Tatra ’81 sports model.  Worse, he liked to stand by that car and ever morning he’d annoy Kevin with conversation about work, at way too early an hour.  They worked at the same place.  Then he’d hit a family with that expensive car.  Nobody dead, but he’d had to sell the car because insurance wouldn’t cover the restitution costs.  The parking spot sat empty.

But in most of those things, it got complicated.  Rae had become creepy, over the years.  The neighbor who’d lost fingers had started a new project, less focused on the truck and more on creating and certifying handicap-accessible modifications to gearshift and steering wheel.  After the embezzling thing, the company had gone under.  Kevin had had to use the embezzled funds and then some to cover costs while he looked for another job.  The kid with his jaw wired shut just hung around the apartment building now.  His mom had taken away his skateboard, and every time Kevin rode the elevator, the kid would seem to be in there, breath whistling past the wiring and teeth.  His boss insisted on him bringing the coworker who was now carless into work, and he wasn’t in a position to refuse, unless he wanted to go looking for another job.

The rumor thing wasn’t as easy to put a finger on.  There was a bit more of a nasty, defensive, wary culture at the workplace.  He’d nearly been bitten by that twice.  He’d dealt with one such bite by pre-emptively using his eye on one of the big gossipers, but that had only made the atmosphere worse.  He had to avoid the staff lunch room now.

Lawrence had implied there was a trick to this.  Sometimes Kevin would bring up these things, and Lawrence would laugh, wrinkle his mustache, and make comments.  He rarely seemed surprised.

He made those same comments in passing about Kevin’s neighbors.

Kevin wanted to know.  Whatever threshold he was supposed to meet to get ‘in’, he was grinding his teeth with the desire to get there.

It had been at least five minutes.  He returned to the building, entering through the back door, with a glance and a nod to Rae.  He walked down the empty hallway.  At the far end, the barrier to entry had fallen away.  He could hear people in the classroom, and he could see the damage Shellie had done.  Smoke, water, fire, broken wood, scattered pages…

He kept out of view, even though he was fairly sure it was Lawrence’s group that would be handling that.

“You have your permission, sir,” the librarian said.

“There’s supposed to be something important in there.  I was told I’d know it when I saw it.”

“I couldn’t say.  In- oh!” she put a hand to her mouth.

“You’re friends with Ted Havens.  He’s the large fellow.”

“I can make the connection now.  I had to use what I’ve been learning about the digital landscape to organize it.  If Ted has any problems the school can help with, there may be clues in there.  Ask me if you need help sorting through it.”

“Yes.  Do you have permission to enter?  I’d have to double check before I pulled anything out for you.”

“No need,” he said.  He didn’t want to test whatever Shellie had done.  “Thanks, and excuse me.”

Ted?  What was going on with Ted?  Was Alexander in communication with the man?

Whatever it was, this felt like the sort of thing Lawrence would want handled.

He went to the door of the study, checked the librarian wasn’t in a position to see, and then bent down.

“He’ll have protected and secured it,” a man’s voice said.

Looking into the shiny doorknob, Kevin could see a tall man with orange-red hair that had streaks of grey at the sides, his face lined a bit with middle age.  Looking over his shoulder, he saw Shellie, smiling.

“Conventional lock, it looks like,” Kevin said.

“Even if you get past that, I don’t think you’ll get any further,” she told him.  She rubbed at the red spot on her shoulder.

“If you’re hurt, you shouldn’t rub at it,” he said, as he used the lockpicks.  It was an old fashioned lock, carefully maintained, with a weight to the individual components that would have made for a very satisfying, chunky ‘click’ when locked and unlocked.  It threatened to bend his picks out of shape.

In the end, he took out more picks, held them so they were beside the first set, and used them doubled-up for the rigidity.

He pulled on the knob.  It resisted, like someone on the other side was pulling in the opposite direction.

Kevin straightened.  He pulled out his phone, and dialed.

Shellie made an amused sound, pacing.  He could hear some of the piercings, clacking against one another.

“Hello?” the voice on the other end asked, wary.

“Sharon.  It’s Kevin.  Shellie’s with.”

“I know.  Phones do this thing nowadays where they tell you who’s calling.  What I’m wondering is why?”

“I’m being tested.  Our landlord sent three of us on a trip to the middle of nowhere, an all-expense paid trip for me to do a video, and after some locals went bananas and pulled guns on me, Clementine decided to be the opposite of helpful and go along with their crap.”

“It sounds like you came out unscathed.”

“I got bludgeoned over the head.  They messed with my work and you’d think that someone else who works online would realize how sensitive these things can be, but Clem was as stupid as I’ve ever seen her.  We’re not best friends anymore, and I’m sorry Shellie, but Daniel played along with it.”

“He does that,” Shellie said, rolling her eyes. “You had to know he would.”

“My boyfriend broke up with me, my online following is… it’s better than ever, frankly, but it’s taking more of my time to manage until all the fights and arguments die down.  Whatever you’re doing or whatever it is you want, I’m pretty sure my answer is going to be not now.”

“It’ll take a few minutes, max,” Kevin told her.  “And I’ll make it up to you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Door lock, it’s unusual, and the guy who the door belongs to, he likes traps and tricks.  I’m putting you on camera phone.”

He did, and he turned the camera toward the door lock.

“Show me the rest of the door?”

He did, moving the phone around, to show everything that there was to show.

“I don’t see anything.  I don’t deal with a lot of traps, but occam’s razor says it shouldn’t be trapped.  Do you have the key?”

“Just the picks.  Give me a second.”

“How are you making this up to me?”

“One second,” he said.

“Who does the door belong to?” she asked.

Kevin shook his head, then handed the phone to Shellie.

“Alexander Belanger,” Shellie said.

“I’ve heard that name before.”

“Old rival of our dear landlord.”

“No, there was someone by that name talking to Clementine this morning.  He was asking questions and touring the place.  Some people thought he was a prospective tenant.  That middle aged woman in 212 who’s been widowed six times was making eyes at him.  He didn’t seem impressed.”

“You’d think someone who can land six husbands could land a seventh,” Kevin commented.

“Seven,” Sharon said.  “The seventh didn’t die, but he’s in a vegetative state.”

The lock clicked once more.  He pushed on the door and there was no resistance.  It swung open.  The kind of trick that didn’t always work.  It helped that he and Sharon had a working relationship, and she had some breaking and entry skills of her own to get into the sites she did haunting videos on.

“I’m in,” he said.  “No obvious traps, yet.”

Not that he really expected there to be any, but they had to keep the narrative up for Sharon.

He motioned.  Shellie turned the phone around, the screen showing the view that Sharon got.

“Swanky.  Geez.  Mrs. 212 really missed out.”

Floorboards creaked dangerously as he crossed the room.  Papers lifted up in a breeze, one end pinned down by a book, the other raised up.  He avoided the sudden motion, and a paper sliced at his arm as he passed it.

As he stepped back, the floorboard creaking peaked and floorboards dipped, like it was about to give way and let him drop through.

“Enough!” a man’s voice raised.

When he walked in further, the creaking wasn’t as bad.

“Really swanky,” Sharon commented, from the phone.

“What can I do for you, to thank you for your time?” Kevin asked.

“What sort of thing do you do for our landlord?”

“I’d rather not go around broadcasting the particulars about that.”

“Remember how Richmann was running for the post, touting a lot of electoral reform?”

“She didn’t make it.”

“Because her kid got into legal trouble.”

“I remember certain things about you coming into some money, buying a new car, around the time your boss got into legal trouble, too.”

Kevin didn’t comment.  He paced around the study.  There were three sections and he couldn’t remember there being three floors when he’d viewed the area from outside.  At the ground level was the study, which almost flowed out to be something of a living room, filled with leather-covered chairs and seats.  Bookshelves lined the wall.

No television though, but there was a desk with a computer.

“I’m looking for something digital,” he said.  He booted up the computer.  It was an old thing.  What a contrast to Lawrence, who always had the newest machine with the most ostentatious interfaces.

The door slammed, making him jump.  Shellie was with him, though, and she didn’t jump.  She just smiled.

Through a door and up to the second level, up half a flight of stairs, there was an area more for living, though the ‘study’ bled out into it.  A counter and an arrangement for food and drink, a bed at the back, behind a half-wall, and couches.  A laptop and scattered papers about students and classes covered the table and some parts of the couch.

Kevin ventured up the stairs.  Each step creaked more as he walked up, protesting.  His sleeve caught on the railing, a blunted, protruding bit of brass sticking through the eyelet for a button at his wrist.  He extricated himself.

If the study was where the man faced his students and staff, and the second tier area was where he retreated to to rest and recuperate, then the third area was where he retreated to when he wanted to work in private.

It was a workshop, and everything here felt like it was in motion, even when it was still.  A large eye-shaped table dominated the center of the room, and in the center of that table was a recreation of Sargent Hall, complete with mini-figures representing the occupants.  The recreation was surrounded in triangular pieces of black metal with dovetail teeth along the edges, and by black and white pictures of Sargent Hall, taken from elsewhere.

There were cards laid out, and chalk drawn between cards.  There were books, narrow notebooks, from waist height down, and there were filing cabinets inset into the wall, a bit further back than the short bookshelves, so the tops of the bookshelves could be counters.  A ladder on wheels allowed traversal up to the cabinets.

“Our landlord is very, very interested in this school,” Shellie declared.  “He wants it so badly.  And on the other hand…”

Sharon’s voice came through the phone, “Our Alexander Belanger is very interested in Sargent Hall.”

“You know,” Kevin said, bending down to look into the apartment building.  He could see through windows and make out the people.  “If you wanted to interfere with whatever Alexander is doing with our Clementine, our landlord would probably appreciate it.  He might throw you a bone.”

“Like you said you would?”

“You know what I can do.  Name a name.”

“Want to travel to Hungary?”

“No,” Kevin replied.  He reached into the building and pulled out the figures representing Arlene and the creepy guy with the bad breath that handled the night shift.  It would be right about now that they were changing over shifts.  “No, I don’t want to go to Hungary.  Local only.”

“I’ll figure someone out.  And I can’t interfere.  They left.”

“Clementine and Alexander?”

“And a few others.  Not Daniel, don’t worry, Shel.”

Shellie made a noncommital sound.

“Huh,” Kevin mused.  “Even telling him that much might be good.”

“I’ll phone him after.  Where’s my room?”

Shellie carried the phone around.  “Are you sitting in your armchair as you talk to us, Sharon?”

“…That’s a good sign I’m spending too much time in this chair, nothing else.”

“Uh huh.”  Shellie managed to sound very smug as she replied.

“Great to know we’re being spied on.  I wonder how he recreated this.  Drones?”

“Sure, Sharon,” Kevin answered.  “I think we’re going to let you go.  As you said, you have a lot to deal with.”

“Wait, no, I have questions, and I want to get some footage, this is great creepy-”

“Do you think you can make it work?” she asked.

“No idea.  How would it work to begin with?”

“I’ve seen things like this get made.  But they were dangerous.  I could see this being dangerous too.”

Kevin walked another circuit around the room.  He looked at the cards this time.  Arrangements grouped together, laid on a chalkboard-like surface that was blacker than any chalkboard he’d ever seen, wet or dry.  Lines were drawn out so crisp and bright that they seemed to float on the glossy surface.

Ted — Kevin — Shellie — Rae

They were surrounded by numbers, by markings.  Arcs were drawn between cards, and notes were made beside the arcs.  Respective to their names were cards and numbers.  3, 7, 13, 19.

His own name sat at the top of his part of the arrangement.  Below was a card, black with gold-inlaid markings depicting a lizard.  It was captioned ‘The Basilisk’.  Noose in one corner, connecting to Ted, coin in the other, connecting to Shellie.

A circle had him at the leftmost part and Rae at the rightmost part.  Three cards were spread at the upper half, three at the bottom half, and he couldn’t make heads or tails of them.

But he could read the notation.  ‘Noone will die at his girlfriend’s hand’.

“Rough luck,” Shellie observed, looking over his shoulder.

Kevin snorted, but he felt the worry in his heart, like he’d known.

There were more.  The skull pointed to dates.

The space they were in creaked violently.  It felt smaller than it had, before.  There was nothing visible, but Kevin couldn’t shake the notion that the boards that made up the wall were bending inward, like they were preparing to snap.

Nothing had moved, by his ears and eyes, but he bumped into the corner of the eye-shaped table as he stepped back.  It hurt.

Like things were being moved or moving of their own will whenever he wasn’t looking.

He traced the line from Ted’s card, a giant with a boulder in gold on a black background, to another card, which was more traditional and colorful, an inscription of an open book wrapped in chains.  ‘The Epic’.

Shellie sorted through black and white pictures.  There was one of Clementine in a car with Alexander.  One of a student.  Another of three girls in animal masks.  Shellie paused at that one.  Kevin stopped her as she got to one.

“What?” Shellie asked.

“Nah, stark resemblance to an old crush,” he said.

“Writing on the back says… Laila Throop.  Was your old crush a Throop?”

“No.  And the age, I don’t think it’d be possible for them to be directly related.  I’m not that old.”

The girl had been condescending when he’d tried to ask her out.  He wondered how his life would have gone if she’d said yes.  If he’d had a girlfriend when his brother had graduated, if he hadn’t gained this power then.  Or would he have gotten something else, other than the ability to bring people to ruin with an intent enough look?

Shellie smirked, like she knew something he didn’t.

He moved the picture of Clementine and Alexander.  They were in a ludicrously tiny truck.

“Alexander interviewed me once.  I think… it might have been about bringing me to a place like this.  Letting me into a space where I’d get taught what all of this supposed to mean.  If it means anything.”

“But he didn’t let you in.”

“I wonder what answer I was supposed to give.  Or what I was supposed to do.”

“Who knows?” Shellie asked, and he couldn’t escape the feeling that she was being ironic.  Like she knew.

But that feeling was constant when Lawrence brought groups of them together like this.  Nobody really talked about this stuff.

What would his story have been?  He touched the card with the book.  Simultaneously, he heard the computer chime from the other room, and the entire space they were in creaked.

He tapped it firmly, and again, he heard a sound from the computer.

“Go.  Leave me here, I’ll mess around, see if anything jumps up,” she said.

She put the photos down, and they were showing similar scenes to before, but slightly different.  The image of Clementine and Alexander in the little truck had put trees in the view of the far window before.  Now it was open field with scattered trees in the distance.  The girl that looked like his old crush was standing, not sitting.

He tore himself away from it all.

What connected this computer to Ted?

It didn’t take long to find.

612,142 texts, divided into 814 ‘journeys’.  As Alexander’s notes outlined, each journey was a separate overarching approach.  Some were two texts long, and some were in the length of thousands.

He hit the arrow key, and the page turned, from Alexander’s notes and foreword, aimed at his apprentice, to Book 1, Journey 1, Page 1.

Year 100, sixth life, as far as I can count.  My memory isn’t perfect and I’ve met so many people and seen so many things I lose track of things in the shuffle.  Decades can pass in what felt like days if I stop paying attention.

In my efforts to try to organize my thoughts and keep track of the ground I’ve covered, I aim to write of my journey.  I do this knowing that when the clock turns back and I find myself born anew, my writings will be consigned to oblivion.

He turned back to the foreword and notes.

The librarian can at times uncover those works that have been lost.  The great unfinished works, the books of which no known copy survives.  This requires power and to these ends I’ve spent a fair share.  But retrieving the texts themselves from distant oblivion is not the full story, nor the full burden.

Each text links to hundreds of individuals and events, some of whom do not wish to be found or disturbed.  The works themselves are a trove of detail on people, especially those in the Maritime provinces and the major cities of Canada and the northeastern United States.  They, at times, venture worldwide, to distant locales, though there is less detail there.  To crack open a text is to demand a rendering of these many connections and their implications, and penetration of those passive defenses, looking into those things which reality had thought safe.

With this in mind, as I progress and as my apprentices and successors take up the task, should they be so inclined, it is important to be organized.  At an initial look, entire ‘journeys’ of Ted Havens’ adventure are left without written feedback and are not included here, and more are rendered into his own unique language or shorthand, which requires its own decoding.  There are sections where he seems intent on turning to faith and belief to rewrite his existence, concocting an alternate reality where he is free of the loop and giving whole lifetimes, age 0 to 35, to this belief, rejecting all observable reality.  The data from these experiments can be reduced down to an amusing anecdote that it appeared to start to work, necessitating intervention and some nudges from the powers that set Havens’ task into motion.

As he started typing in it, the foreword skipped ahead.

Courtesy of Raymond, the prompt is yet unfinished, but each pull from the coda of texts will help it improve.  For the time being it will do its best to list texts that may be relevant.

Kevin thought, then typed out: He went looking for groups of people.

Some two hundred pages popped up, appearing in a grid.  The last few took ten or so seconds each to pop up.

He clicked on a few.  Each one turned up an error message.

“He wanted us to find this place.”

Lawrence Bristow stood in the doorway.

The place groaned and complained as he entered.  His mustache turned up in a smile.

Ted was behind him.  Rae behind Ted.

“You’re not keeping watch?” Kevin asked.

“I’m sorry.  Mr. Bristow said-”

Lawrence cut her off.  “It said it was fine.  Everyone who matters is preoccupied.  Alexander, I think, wanted us to find it because there may be traps here, not in the sense that a blade may jump out of nowhere, I don’t think, but the wrong information in the wrong person’s mind.  What are you doing at the computer?”

Kevin turned the monitor a bit to the side.  Lawrence approached.

Kevin looked over at Ted, but Ted didn’t seem to know what this was.  Or if he did know, he wasn’t interested.

Rae had sat down and was looking at papers.

The place groaned, protesting.  There was a sound of glass cracking.

“It’s a place he’s invited people, so it’s a place that accepts our intrusion more easily.  More so because he thought we’d come here.  I think he thought it was more important that he hurry after the silver bullets that he might use to shoot me, metaphorical, than securely lock the doors and windows behind him.  He was in a fury, that night.”

“I remember,” Ted answered.

Lawrence read some of the foreword, flicked forward, then flicked back.  He navigated back to the page Kevin had been on.

“Doesn’t work, there’s not enough power-”

Ted Havens’ diary pages from text 611,048 loaded up.

I’ve seen you around, I told him.  You’re one of those faces that keep turning up, but I can never find you when I go looking.  I scare you, somehow.

Yes, he replied, smiling like a grandfather greeting a grandchild.

Why now, then? I asked him.

That’s your first question?  Of all the possible ones?

I replied: I want to find a way out.  It’s important to figure out what changes things.  Are you one of the ones who imprisoned me?

I wish, I really do, he told me.  It would make me great and powerful.  This was an arrangement of a court of judges in this region, who saw the danger and reached out to everyone in the area to ensure they had the power to set this into motion.  The short answer is that very specific things fell into place.  You recently became something other than what you were.  You’ve transformed in this way and this label before, but this one makes you essential to me, as I may be essential to you.

Essential how?  Do you know how I escape? I asked the man.

With my assistance, of course, he replied.  I am a collector of people.  If you’ll take my help, I’ll point you to certain people.  But the moment you’re free, if it has anything to do with my help, I want your assistance after.

Ted met Kevin’s eyes as he looked over.

Rae was there too.  He felt a chill as she met his eyes and smiled.

Lawrence had gone upstairs already.

Maybe this was the dangerous information that Alexander had intended for them to stumble on.  Would telling Kevin any of this make him more likely to leave?  To betray that deal?

Or something else?  Would Shellie rankle at it?  Or Rae, somehow?  Would this precipitate her murder of him, somehow?

Kevin wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

“Kevin!” the call came from above.

Kevin lifted his head away from the screen.  He closed the window, and he ascended the stairs.

The image of Sargent Hall was gone.  It was a diorama of cars around a gas station.

“Alexander once considered bringing you on board,” Lawrence said.

“He thought you were too dangerous to.  He likes students and scholars.  They can only do what they’re taught.  And that can be a lot, but it’s something he can monitor and control.  You are… you’re a force of nature, Kevin Noone.”

Was this it?  Was he in?

Lawrence used a stick to move a figurine closer to Kevin.  A young man with glasses and red-brown hair.  Similar to Alexander.

“He,” Lawrence said, moving the figure over to the side of the gas station.  “Is currently relieving himself.  This device, empowered by this space, makes a fine lens.  Alexander has invited each of his apprentices to use this table at different times.  If you were of a mind to, you could make some use of it now.”

“To do what?  Who is that man?”

“Wye Belanger,” Shellie said, from the far end of the table.  She tossed a photograph.  It showed a man with glasses standing at a urinal, from shoulders-up.  Sure enough, the name was on the back.

“You don’t want to target him or any of the others like him.  Wye and Alexander are too careful,” Lawrence said.  He picked up and investigated the figurine.  “Wye here has Pendants at his neck and wrist.  Warding him against the eye.  Just a curiosity, this.”

Shellie leaned forward, photograph held up, and prodded figures at the gas pump.

Not Wye directly, but… them?

“I have to ask,” Kevin said.  “Could this be the trap he set?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Lawrence said.  “I’ll leave it to others to explain.  Alexander’s study seems to be fine.  Carry on looking around, if you’re curious.  Or do whatever.”

Those last words took on a vaguely dangerous tone, even as the short man smiled.

“Where are you going?” Ted  asked.

“I must go talk to some students about their mischief around the staff.  They tried to organize an insurrection and should be dealing with my reply now.  Come with me?”

“It could be a trap,” Shellie said, looking closer.  “There are things he could do to retaliate.”

Kevin frowned.  It was just the two of them again.  Rae on the couch downstairs.  He could hear her talking to Lawrence.

It made him nervous, now.

“You’d be especially vulnerable if we targeted him or one of his subordinates directly.  But we won’t.  For now, before our man is out of the washroom and aware of what is going on…” Shellie mused.  She picked up the photograph, looking.  “…Nevermind.”

“He’s aware,” Shellie said, turning the photograph around and pushing it across the table.

Wye was at the bathroom door, frowning, it looked like he was moving fast.

“It’s your choice,” she said.  “Lawrence wouldn’t think less of you if you chickened out.”

Kevin leaned down, staring at the figure at the pump.  The background blurred, the details of the figurine shifted.

He looked closer, then closer still, until he could make out the expression, the lights in the eyes.  The distraction, kids in the car.  All cast under a green tint.

Holding the pump with one hand, he reached into the car to take a plastic toy from the hands of squabbling children.

Plastic generated static electricity, and static electricity became the spark.

The scene brightened, and Kevin was left blinking the bright orange light out of his eyes.

Shellie straightened, and very quickly gathered up the panels.  She tossed the photographs Kevin’s way as she worked, boxing up the gas station.

The photographs were singed, wrinkled with heat.  He couldn’t make out details.

“Kids,” Shellie said, her voice dark.  “Children, Kevin.  What’s wrong with you?  They were right there.”

He didn’t move, looking at the photos.

She snorted as she unfolded the box.

It was the same gas station, but cotton painted in orange and yellow and grey was stretched out to make fire.  Figures lay broken, cars had rolled, and the front windows of the gas station had shattered.

“Seems he took cover behind the car,” Shellie said.  “He’ll be harder than that to stamp out.”

The Wye figurine lay there by a crumpled car, one arm broken.

Kevin prodded.  It looked like the kid were maybe alive as well.  Scared and upside down and close to flame.

“Want to do another?” she asked.  She tossed photographs his way.  “Gotta find the ones who aren’t protected enough.  Or who are in the wrong places at the wrong time.  Or have you lost your nerve?”

“I haven’t,” he answered, while staring down at the scene.  It wasn’t quite like being ‘in’, like he’d hoped.  He didn’t understand much more than he had.  But being a bit like a god sure was a rush.  Terrifying and thrilling at the same time.

Shellie looked back at the diagram of cards with their names on it.  “I might be rubbing off on you.”

He remained still, looking over the photos and the scenes.

He wasn’t really focused on all of that.  He watched as Shellie folded things up and broke them down again.

The kids rescued, the father with the plastic of his figurine boiled and burned.  Wye hadn’t moved far.  He nodded slowly.

Lawrence might be doing more than we think, with all of this, Kevin thought. He couldn’t shake what he’d read in how Lawrence had reached out to Ted.  Had started making connections and gathering soldiers even that far back.  How much of this did he plan or arrange?  Did he know I’d end up in this room when he brought us here?  Or was this luck?  Or skill?

He had to have seen the thing about Rae and what Rae would do to Kevin.  Was that part of the plan or something he’d intervene in?

So many deeper meanings, signs, and hints, and he had none of the equipment or know-how to interpret it all.  He’d never had the chance to learn.

He just knew that he wanted to be a god, capable of smiting those who stood against him, and one student named Laila Throop was on the opposing side and had a really strong resemblance to someone from his past that he hated.

“Her next.”  He tapped her photograph, and Shellie began putting the box up around the diorama, to set the scene.