Chương 195: The (Not So) Wise One

Ten Months Earlier Gabriel Cross stepped out of the internet cafe and tightened his jacket against the wind funneling between the buildings. Beirut was loud even at this hour, all neon and foot traffic, and nobody gave a second glance to the foreigner lingering in a doorway. The problem with seeing the future was watching it change. And not like peeking at your partner getting dressed in the mirror, either.

It was more like a surreal, accidental, and thoroughly unavoidable glimpse of your old, hairy neighbour through a gap in his curtains waving in the breeze. Uninvited. Unpleasant. And once you'd seen it, impossible to unsee. Terrible, really. Still. A few days ago, he'd begun catching flashes of his own future, which had never happened before. Scattered and confusing, they painted a picture he couldn't reconcile with anything resembling logic. He was an AEGIS agent. Senior. Trusted.

Well-liked by most, despite his habit of showing up fifteen minutes late to everything. He couldn't think of a single reason why his own organization would abduct him. Beat him. Torture him into helping them build an illegal military operation in the middle of a desert that, by rights, nobody should be living in. But the neighbour behind the curtain was quite insistent, even if his lingerie kept changing every other second. And Gabriel Cross wasn't the sort to leave things to chance. Never had been.

Even as a boy, his mother used to say he'd pack an umbrella on a cloudless day and be the only dry person in Atlanta by noon. So, a few dozen emails with dead man's switches later, he was ready. Tires squealed. The side door of the black van that slid to a stop in front of him was already open before the vehicle finished moving. Several masked men jumped out, moving with the kind of coordinated efficiency that only comes from military training or a very well-rehearsed abduction. It probably was.

They probably practiced it at their secret little base. Gabriel glanced at his watch and smiled. Trust a member of the Cross family to be right on time for their own kidnapping.

The door crashed open hard enough to bounce off the stone wall behind it. Two men grabbed Gabriel by the chains linking his wrists and hauled him through the door. He didn't resist. Didn't have the energy for it. His body had long since given up. Cracked ribs. A collarbone that had healed crooked. Something wrong with his left knee that flared every time they dragged him up or down the stairs, which they seemed to enjoy doing.

The collar around his neck sat heavy against his skin, its suppression field pressing down on his power like a hand over a candle flame. He could feel it there, still just beyond reach. Smothered, despite efforts to train himself to resist it. Resistance Gabe knew was possible, because He was going to tell him so one day. Maybe even one day soon. Hopefully. They pulled him through a maze of tunnels.

Bare stone, flickering lights, the kind of place that smelled like earth and diesel and too many people living underground. He didn't pay it much attention. Knew the layout by heart, despite making no effort to learn it. Had been here for months now. They threw him face down on the floor of the main room. Gabriel took a moment to appreciate how cool it was against his cheek. Then he pushed himself up, slowly, until he was sitting. The room came into focus around him. There were several groups.

At the far end, the two he'd come to know best. The scarred man who controlled sand like an extension of his own body, seated in a chair that was the closest thing to a throne this place had to offer. Beside him, the one with the unsettling eyes who never seemed to sit still, always shifting his weight, rolling his shoulders, cracking his knuckles. Gabriel had never seen him use his power. He wasn't sure he wanted to.

Every flash of knowledge showed the man morphing into horrors under the assault of those he fought. To the left, a woman in dark glasses and a suit that belonged on Wall Street, not in an underground desert bunker. She stood with her arms crossed, radiating the particular brand of impatience that only came from someone accustomed to being the most important person in whatever room they occupied. Gabriel looked at her. The recognition hit like a punch.

"Pierre?" he rasped.

"Holy shit. No wonder I become best friends with a fucking villain." She crossed the room in four quick strides and kicked him in the stomach. Hard. Gabriel folded. Air left his lungs in a rush and didn't come back. He gasped, retched, curled in on himself while the room tilted sideways.

"Didn't see that coming, did you?" she said.

"You self-righteous prick."

"Nope," he managed between ragged breaths.

"Sure didn't." He had. Two weeks ago, when they'd removed his collar to use his powers. Just not who'd be delivering the blow. The cliche taunt hadn't been included either, but he didn't blame her. He'd reported her to command when his precognition revealed she'd be involved in some shady shit. Not this. Whatever this really was. Across the room, one of the three men standing in a loose cluster waved his hand through the air.

Little stars danced across his knuckles and trailed from his fingertips, hanging in the dim light before fading. An illusionist. He said something in Arabic about finalizing their agreement and gestured toward his two companions. The scarred man nodded in Gabriel's direction. The guards released the collar. It fell away from his neck and clattered to the ground, and his power flooded back in a rush that was equal parts relief and curse. The world opened up around him.

Futures layered on futures, branching and splitting and dying, pressing against his consciousness like water against a dam. He shuddered and forced it down to a manageable stream. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. They dragged him back to his knees and held him there. The scarred man studied him from his chair. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. Measured. Certain of obedience.

"Should we support these fine men in their endeavours?" There were no threats. No reminder of what would happen if Gabriel lied. He didn't need to by this point. The scars on Gabriel's back and chest and the soles of his feet were reminder enough. The man simply stared at him and waited. Gabriel dipped into the stream. The futures around him were ugly. The neighbour behind the curtain had deteriorated badly since the last time he'd looked. Rotting. Dying.

Timeline after timeline collapsing into darkness and violence and things he didn't want to see twice. But occasionally, threading through the rot like a vein of gold in ruined stone, there was a flash. A single bright thread. The last of its kind for him, where all the others had failed. So brief that these days he feared it was just his imagination playing on his hopes. He coughed. Closed his eyes tight. Muttered the words he'd already decided to say.

"Yes, they're what you want. They'll need three vials." A flash of imagery overtook him. He almost hesitated, as past tortures for lying warred with his desires in the space of a single breath.

"Four," he rasped.

"Give them four." The scarred man's eyes narrowed.

"Why? They negotiated for only three." Gabriel met his gaze and pushed the fear down deep enough that it didn't show on his face.

"The illusionist will meet someone who needs it. He'll know when." Silence. The scarred man studied him for a long time. Long enough that Gabriel's pulse climbed despite every effort to keep it steady. Long enough that he started running through what the next round of punishment would feel like. Maybe they'd pull out the rest of his nails. The man nodded. He almost let out a breath of relief, but held it back.

"Take him back to his cell. Feed him. He earned it." He turned to the three visitors.

"Guess you'll be needing four shots of serum, hm? Let's discuss the new price." As the guards hauled Gabriel out of the room and dragged him back to his cell, he replayed the vision one more time. A short woman. Metal rippling away to reveal ginger hair and a freckled face. Leaning down to pick up a golden vial from the wreckage of a fight. Gabriel let his head hang low, hiding the smile that fought to reveal itself on his face.

Something exploded. The ground shook. Gabriel was curled in the corner of the command tent with his arms wrapped around his knees, chains pooled around him on the canvas floor. The collar lay nearby, discarded after his most recent reading. They'd gotten lazy about putting it back on. Or maybe they just didn't see the point anymore. He hadn't tried to run the whole time he'd been captured.

The superpowered monster in human skin grabbed Gabriel by the front of his shirt and hauled him up until their faces were inches apart.

"What's happening out there?" Gabriel kept his expression blank. Tired. Broken. It wasn't hard. He'd had a lot of practice.

"I'm telling you the truth," he slurred.

"You have to wait a little longer. Just a little—" The backhand snapped his head sideways and sent him sprawling across the floor. Pain bloomed across his face, sharp and familiar. He lay where he landed, tasting blood, and spat out a few more teeth. He was running out of those. The monster turned to the quiet guy and the scarred man, whose face twisted with anger as another tremor ran through the ground and the sound of screaming grew louder.

"We need to go now. This motherfucker is playing us." The scarred man looked at Gabriel. But Gabriel just lay there, broken and small, months of accumulated bruises and scars and old, deep aches making it the easiest role he'd ever played. The scarred man stood.

"Let's go." All three of them moved at once. The scarred man was already pulling sand through the tent walls as he pushed through the flap, the spiral forming around him before he'd taken two steps. The monster followed. The third was already gone. The tent flap settled closed behind them. Gabriel lay still for three seconds. Listening. Making sure. Then he muttered to himself.

"Sorry, old friend. I tried." A giggle escaped his cracked lips, the kind of sound that would have worried a therapist.

"Though I guess we're not best buddies just yet, right?" He rolled onto his hands and knees with a groan of effort. Then his feet. The chains fell away with a careful twist, the lock already open before the attack began, sprung by a key he'd stolen and hidden weeks ago. He limped to the tent flap and pushed it aside. The camp was hell. Fires everywhere.

Tents collapsed, vehicles crushed, debris scattered across the sand in patterns that suggested something had picked them up and thrown them back down with terrible force. People ran in every direction, some screaming, others dragging the wounded. Most were dead. The air smelled of smoke and burning fuel and metal. Of freedom. Gabriel looked up. High above the burning camp, a man in dark armor fought two figures in the night sky backlit by the full moon.

Lightning cracked across the darkness, followed by a spiralling wall of sand. A pair of wings, white and wrong, swept through the chaos trailing sparks.

"Good luck," Gabriel whispered. Then he turned and started moving. Toward the eastern side of the camp, where the prison trailers sat. Every step hurt. His knee screamed. His ribs protested with each breath. The camp churned around him, and twice he had to dodge behind wreckage to avoid panicked soldiers crashing into him. He kept his head down and his pace as fast as his body would allow, which wasn't fast at all. But he'd waited a year for this last chance. Planned for it. Suffered for it. Bled for it.

Being nearly dead would not stop him. He was close enough to see the trailers when one of them vanished. Dropped through a dark circle that opened beneath it and swallowed it whole. Gabriel gritted his teeth and pushed harder. His vision blurred at the edges from pain and exhaustion, but he could see the final portal beginning to form beneath the last trailer. A dark shimmer in the sand, still coalescing, still building. He had seconds. A soldier crashed into him.

Shoulder to shoulder, hard enough to send Gabriel spinning. He hit the ground on his bad knee, cried out, then sprawled face down in the sand and felt the seconds ticking away like a physical loss. That wasn't supposed to happen. The portal was forming. The trailer was about to drop. It was his only way out. He crawled. Climbed to his feet. Ran. Hobbled. Stumbled forward with everything he had left, which wasn't much. The portal solidified. The last trailer dropped through. He wasn't going to make it.

He was ten long steps away and the dark circle had completed its task already.

"Wait!" he yelled, his voice tearing through his ruined throat.

"Auggy! Please!" Five steps. Four. The portal held. Two. One. Gabriel Cross didn't care how much it was going to hurt. He threw himself forward, face first, into the inky black void that he'd seen thousands of times before in visions both terrible and exciting, joyful and wrathful. Even in this moment, the single bright thread of hope he'd refused to let go of. The only thread that hadn't abandoned him. He fell, and the darkness swallowed him whole.