Chương 129: Levi, Part 1

Had to make headway on figuring out the mole problem. Tancred and I agreed to tackle the two sides of the people who actually were in the know. He'd handle administration, our staffers, everyone on the upper floors. In return, I was going to investigate my teammates. I trusted them, for the most part and much to my chagrin, but I had to recognize that if they were a competent spy then of course they could betray my trust. The first suspect I had to investigate was Chris.

There were factors that made me consider him first. The most obvious was that he was there with me for the attack. While he didn't seem to expect it, that's an easy thing to fake. On top of that, he didn't seem to pick up on who I was staring at when we first stepped out of the store. Third, him being with me means he could confirm our locations. I had enough of a gap in my focus at the bank that he could've used that opportunity to let them know where I was going. Of course, I had to consider the counterpoints.

The group referenced Hidalgo, and didn't mention anyone else. While that could be explained by Chris simply telling Hidalgo who then told the henches, that's an unnecessary layer of conspiracy to add on. But worth considering. Chris is terminally averse to lying. He's blurted out and made embarrassing statements due to his pathological honesty. He resisted the undercover op because he didn't want to lie to people.

I could counter that by suggesting he didn't want to go an extra layer of undercover, but I trusted Tancred's vetting even if I didn't trust Tancred himself. Another big thing was Chris' moral center and his struggle with maintaining it. He had his slips, like mine, but he kept trying to stick with doing what was right. And he had motivation to struggle.

If that memory Foras put me through was based at all on the reality of what happened that day, I could see exactly how it all built up into him just wanting to kill the guy and be done with it. But if he was a mole for specifically the ADU, they could have made offers. The vision they gave me showed an ideal life. The same could have happened to him. But when? I had no idea. There was only so much I could put together by thinking about it.

I had to actually figure out how to interrogate him without him realizing he was being quizzed. That would be hard, he was about as intuitive as I was. Maybe more in some places. And if I just went and told him what I was looking for, then he'd have all the reason to lie, should he be the mole. Come the morning of the 10th, I decided to pay a visit to Chris' room, where he was writing through what seemed to be a report at his desk. I recognized the template.

"Didn't know we were supposed to do reports on the fight." I called out. Chris looked up towards me from his writings, shaking his head.

"No, I'm actually writing up Jairo's for him. He evacuated a house during a fire and has to write a report on it, but he's also got to study for his finals. So in return for him promising to study, I'm doing the report for him."

"Am I the only one who actually likes filling out the reports?"

"May likes it too." I shook my head in exasperation as I made my way down the steps, trying to keep away from all the weapons he had racked up down there.

"You ever think you've got too big of an arsenal?" Putting his pen down, he turned in his seat to face me before speaking.

"You need to remember that the mutation in my eyes just lets me see how things move, how weight's shifting, all that. I'm not any stronger or faster or more durable. In a fight against the ADU, especially the Fathers, I need weapons." I shrugged.

"I guess." I furrowed my brow at that last sentence. That might actually be a good prodding point to start at.

"How many Fathers and Mothers do you think there are?"

"Mothers?" He asked. He didn't know? Or maybe he just didn't infer it. That's a mark in his favor.

"Yeah, like the Fathers but women. There's been two so far. Socratea and Belladonna. First one was a sniper, second one was the one that captured Jairo."

"Huh. Just assumed they'd all go by Father. Didn't think they'd take it so literally."

"Why not?" He shrugged.

"'Father' and 'Brother' are pretty regular terms in the Church. Fathers are priests, brothers have taken the vow to serve God but are unordained." That made me ponder Brother Gleditsia's position. He definitely had the most authority not including Master Sequoia. The way Chris framed it, 'Brother' is a lower rank. What makes him a Brother and not a Father? Actually, the first time we fought. He said he was a champion of the Arboreal Senate. Not the ADU. Was Gleditsia's ranking not actually with the ADU?

He said it was designated by Master Sequoia, but now that I recall, that was never a personal topic for him. Mostly because his preferred topic was trying to kill people, but that was beside the point.

"…You think there's any Sisters? Like nuns?" Chris piped up, derailing my train of thought.

"We would've seen one by now, don't you think?"

"We only saw all those Fathers recently." If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"…Yeah. And there might be more. Definitely more." Chris nodded, leaning back in his seat after turning his chair so that he didn't have to keep bending his entire body.

"Well, we'll be able to stop them, regardless. I think those first encounters geared us up for any future fights with the ADU's own supervillains."

"Even if they might be as strong as Gleditsia?" He scoffed.

"Leo, the only guy as strong as Gleditsia in this entire region is you. If they had anyone else on his level, they'd be brought in by this point. And if they were as strong as Gleditsia, wouldn't they be 'Brothers' too? Not Fathers?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, think about it," he spanned his hand out.

"Remember the reports on all of them. You fought one who just had a big tree gut and the lady with the root legs. I fought a guy who grew pain-inducing hairs and another guy who had bamboo shoots in his arms. The guys May had to fight had wooden legs, and the other guy who was spitting out vines has a throat that's apparently all Wyrdwood." I blinked as the conclusion came to me with just those words.

"They can only kind of use Wyrdwood. Parts of it. Gleditsia's entire body is Wyrdwood." The redhead snapped his fingers before pointing one of them at me.

"Bingo. While we don't know the entire structure of the ADU still, it's pretty clear Fathers can use Wyrdwood that's part of their bodies, but Gleditsia seems to control it wholesale." I nodded.

"I figured he had full control of Wyrdwood. He grew an entire tree just to leap off from it, and he's done all sorts of weird tricks with it. Just didn't really think too hard about how the other Fathers were more limited. I know Master Sequoia can control any kind of wood, though. Either a superpower or by magic."

"Either's possible." I nodded.

"I wonder what his name means, Gleditsia. It sounds fancy. He told me it wasn't his real name, in our second fight. Said it was David, called it a 'king's name.'""King David. Guy from the Bible. Was the leader of the tribe of Judah, and later became the second King of Israel." I nodded.

"I see."

"Oh, and I did figure out what Gleditsia means."

"Wait, when?"

"Oh, I had a whole conversation with Sam about it, since my Latin isn't super good. I know a tiny bit from my Bible studies, so a lot of the names sounded familiar but I couldn't figure them out. They're all named after trees." I nodded again, frustrated by the mention of Sam, but I just let that pass by.

"Well I could figure that part, Master Sequoia, and there was Father Pine."

"Yeah. So Gleditsia is a family of trees known as honey locusts. Sam thinks his is specifically from 'Gleditsia triacanthos,' the thorny honey locust. Like the name says, they're trees that grow out a bunch of super sharp thorns to keep big animals from trying to pick at and eat them."

"Thorns…" I thought about some of the moves he used on me.

"That explains why he makes so much sharp stuff. Maybe he was a Father at some point and all he could do was sharp stuff, and 'ranked up' to Brother when he could fully control Wyrdwood."

"Yeah, but why the giant swords?"

"Well, they work, clearly. They ripped through a Dumb Metal shield."

"Must've forgotten to make the Dumb Metal forget how to be ripped or cut apart."

"If I knew that, those cuffs wouldn't have worked on me when I first got arrested. I kept trying to break them, instead." He let out a laugh at that. That gave me a second to review the past conversation. He was actively speculating on structure and researching names. And he was unfamiliar with certain conventions like how female Fathers were Mothers. Plus smaller bits of curiosity like Gleditsia's preference for swords. Gleditsia told me why he used swords in our first fight. He thought they were a heroic weapon.

There was also the after-action report made on what he did in his follow-up fight with the two Fathers. A mole wouldn't get that violent with his own, normally. Unless he was really hooked on the higher causes the ADU seemed to believe in. The fact Chris apparently wasn't familiar with that narrowed it down to three potential options. The first was that he simply was not the mole. The second was that if he was the mole, he was recent enough to not be familiar with things like Gleditsia's philosophy.

And finally, he could simply just be a very good liar. There were other factors I had to consider, such as how he was the first on my team to try and reassure me after the raid. Sure, it was an attempt to proselytize me, but that might simply be the only way he knew how. I just had no way to be sure.

"How are you holding up after the fight from yesterday? You didn't really talk about it with me." Chris asked, catching me on a lingering beat between thoughts.

"Oh. I must've forgotten to," I answered.

"The trying not to use my power thing worked better than I thought. At least, I think it did. The issue is they really were like you said, they weren't used to fighting. They were used to hurting people. So someone fighting back overwhelmed them, especially someone who knew how to fight."

"But you managed to do it without seriously breaking anyone to bits. I know you took out some teeth and probably really messed up the other guy's ACL, but that's super light work compared to how you used to be, man." He explained it with a smile that I'm certain he felt was reassuring. Whether or not it was, I couldn't tell you.

"I guess. I did try to use a bit of it when we were interrogating the bigger guy, tried thinking of it as gravity, even, and it did seem to work. But that's really small compared to what I apparently could do with it."

"Well, what could you do with it? I've been kind of in the dark since I don't really help with the science-y stuff." I thought about it. If I told him, that'd be a lot of information to hand over to a potential mole. I had no way of knowing. But he's the kind of insightful that maybe, just maybe, he could put me in the right direction. …No. Had to keep those cards close to my chest for now. Maybe after I could verify he's not the mole. But I just wasn't sure how I could debunk that claim.

"It's… technically confidential. I might be able to tell you in the future, but right now I gotta clam up."

"First time I've seen you care that much about official policy." I shrugged.

"Just don't think I should be letting all those details out yet. I don't want to set up any false expectations." He frowned.

"Leo, I'd never have any false expectations for you. All I expect from you is to be yourself, dude." Shaking my head, I let my gaze pass over to the window facing all the water, the fish passing by. Same damn aquarium window as mine. Didn't like how many things I kept being able to compare with Chris. We lived completely different lives. He had a family. I never did. He didn't deserve me giving him that kind of leverage.

If he was the mole and knew what I could do, there'd be a lot more efforts to try and get me killed. If I died, I wouldn't be able to help anyone.

"I can't trust that you'd let that stay the case if I started bragging to everyone about what I can really do." He furrowed his brow and frowned at me, before suddenly his eyes lit up. Getting up from his seat, he jogged over to his bed and fiddled through his nightstand, before procuring a thick book with a leather cover and a cross on it.

"Leo, let's try a Bible study."