Chapter 2
Jason:
The flow of events turned to dark molasses, and my mind seemed to grow sluggish... as if I were going through withdrawal, away from the power of those black eyes.
I was numb, dumbstruck as another cruiser transported us to police HQ, as we watched the fruitless helicopter chase, as the evacuation of Santa Monica beach gave way to the old man’s complete disappearance. I vaguely remember describing the fateful encounter to a friendly-looking policewoman... and finally crawling into bed sometime after midnight.
And then the loss hit me, hard and fast. For every birthday, holiday, any day, whenever we needed him, Uncle James had been proof positive that the brotherhood of the police force was a bond of strength unlike any other. My father wouldn’t let me get away with saying it, but I felt it. I felt it then, and over and over... every day, every sleepless night: Uncle James died protecting and serving, for the public good, for the force, for his brother in blue, but, in particular he had died for my sake.
I made myself a promise as I dropped a shovelful of dirt onto his casket. The country had a duty to its protectors, the police had a duty to one of their own, my dad had a responsibility to his partner... and I had a responsibility to my uncle. There would be justice for James.
Most people might have experienced those following days as a slow crawl. For me, it was more of a blur, a dark haze. I felt grief, guilt, hugs, and squeezes on my shoulder from friends and family lending me their strength. But it was like a river, rushing around me; I felt like a boulder plunked in the middle of it, like I was rough, dull, and useless. Still numb.
And so I made a choice: I decided that I wouldn’t be worn down by the torrent of tragedies that was too much for me to control. I decided that I was being carved, sharpened, shaped by the flow of the big events, those done, and those yet to come. And then, more than anything, I started to feel that I had been set apart, that, maybe, if I simply weathered the flood... then, just maybe, some greater purpose was waiting to wash over me. With that, the black waters took on some clarity. There would be justice for James.
The LAPD had sent its own men to Japan, of course, and the police who could be spared in Tokyo were willing to help. The leaders of the investigation were kind enough—or at least smart enough—not to insist that my father stay at home and recuperate. Dad hadn’t even tried to make the case for me staying back in LA. He heard me when I said I had to go, and somehow he negotiated me into his part of the international investigation. I realized I was grateful.
“We’ll be among good men. We’ll be prepared,” dad had repeated, again and again, to my mother.
No one mentioned that getting me out of the country meant that our family and friends wouldn’t be in harm’s way if the old man got restless and decided that I hadn’t taken him seriously enough. I was glad to accept the responsibility and risk, wordlessly, the way that, for Uncle James and my father, risking their lives had always been a simple daily routine of putting on a uniform and a badge.
“Strength is whatever remains,” he told me toward the end of the eleven-hour flight to Tokyo. “The beauty of a mountain is that it holds together, no matter what happens.”
“It’s a little over-the-top,” my dad had continued, “but it makes me feel better at times like this. That’s what we’re here to do, Jason… for James’ sake, for the sake of those people the murderer crushed with my car, and a little for our sake, too.”
We landed in Narita International Airport. We slept restlessly as ever. And then finally, backed up by a Japanese SWAT team, we came to the twisted remains of Tokyo Tower.
Strangeness upon strangeness. When the old man had made his demands, Tokyo Tower had already been rusting in a heap of twisted metal for months. In a way, it was easier now to get to the top of it, in the wake of the horrific earthquake.
As we scanned the metal corpse in the all-too-quiet neighborhood, predictably enough, there was no sign of the villain.
It was a joke, a trick, I knew. We stayed there for hours, but I knew it after only a few minutes as I walked the length of the wrecked tower. The old man wouldn’t show himself.
“Maybe we should check the Skytree...” one of the officers suggested in a thick accent. “It’s still standing, after all.”
I was the only one who laughed. I cut it short, though, when I caught a glance from my dad.
“You should go home now,” the Japanese officer finally said. “It’s not safe, especially if that killer is around here.”
I remembered my father’s poker face. My dad had nodded to appease the officer, but I knew his plan. He called in his favors. We stayed in Tokyo, as part of a smaller, less official investigation unit.
And a few days later, after I had given up, and our guard was down, the old man grabbed me, pulled me away from my father in the dark, neon-spotted streets of ruined Tokyo...
Damaged bulbs spat erratic, angry shadows into the dark streets. The glowing tubes of the Japanese store sign would not reach back to illuminate my face against the dividing night. My father squinted, shielding himself from the inconstant flicker. He searched desperately across the four directions of the intersection, only a single story and a hundred feet from me.
“Jason!” my dad cried out.
The unmistakably dark voice of a black-eyed old man whispered a warning into my ear. “Quiet, Jason Trudeau. You don’t want him hurt, do you?”
With the old man’s hand clamped over my mouth, I was in no position to argue. I forced myself to remain stone-still as I struggled to decide my next move.
“Let him go, Jason. If he interferes, I will cut him down more quickly than I killed the other officer,” the old man continued the warning. All the more frightening how my internal struggle was clear to him.
I twisted, but the villain’s grip only tightened.
“Silence.” He hissed.
My father’s feet swished in the street, following the noise. He waited several moments, but was unable to pinpoint its source. Apparently, he heard or saw something else, because he suddenly turned and dashed out of the intersection, disappearing behind a building, into the teasing catacombs of a collapsed metropolis, Tokyo that had fallen when the earth shook.
And there the realization struck. My dad was out of the line of fire for now, and the murderer was standing right behind me. My elbow hurled backward toward the old man’s stomach.
Turning back to grab his falling shoulder, though, I instead found the old man’s deep black eyes unmoved, staring at me without a trace of a flinch. The smooth leather of a glove resisted the increased pressure of my elbow, and, as I reached my leg back for his ankle, to trip him, he let me topple myself against a crumbling plaster wall. I brushed the chalky dust from my face and gritted my teeth. My feet were anchored for a fight. But the old man was already three steps down the staircase.
“I’m glad to see you haven’t changed your feelings about me,” he said, disappearing into the inky shadows of the stairwell.
I dashed after him, leaping down the steps to the ground floor. Scanning the first floor of the looted convenience store, I hopped over an upended magazine rack and dashed into the intersection where I had last seen my dad. Breathing heavily, I turned to search as much as the faint moonlight would allow. This bad guy was quick.
The black-eyed old man detached himself from the shadows under the sparking neon sign. “Your instincts were right, you know. The bad thing about not changing your feelings, though,” he stepped toward me, the tips of his ghostly hair twitching in the wind, “is that it suggests that you haven’t changed your mind, either.”
He grinned, exposing a target of unnervingly white teeth. Hoping that they weren’t dentures, my fist exploded toward his mouth, and bounced away with a pulsating crack of pain. When I forced my eyes out of their wince, I saw the cement block settle gently to the ground. The man’s flying tan coat darted around the corner across from the crumbled department store. A trailing chuckle died away. Shaking the
pain from my knuckles, I tore after him, adrenaline drowning my questions, my better judgment.
He had paused around the corner, a long block away.
“Remember: it’s not magic. It’s better than magic,” he called, black eyes burning as I rushed after him. “Without wires or mirrors or cards or hats. Without wands or pots or tongues or spells. Just talent, and the will to use it.”
I skidded to a stop just in front of him, the crazy old man. He was a murderer, insane, not to be listened to. The wind whistled harshly between us, and, remembering how he had used it before, it might as well have been a concrete wall. I hardened my fist once more, pretending that more punishment would numb it. But, he wasn’t moving, and I had to remain.
“Why are you doing this?” I said, remembering my question and the knife in my pocket, trying to meet his black eyes in front of my wavering fist. I would need to find the right moment.
“We should get better acquainted. But not here,” he said, and now his dark eyes were glancing down another street.
When he moved, the tan coat blended into the shadows. “Keep going until you’re in the intersection with a blinking stoplight. From that intersection, turn right and continue on until the building blocks your way. Or, try to find your father, get lost in an unknown, destroyed city, and never see me again, never get any answers, no justice.” The old man smirked.
He wore the same heavy boots as before, and, despite their weight, they made only the lightest click-click-click as he sprinted ahead of me. I leaned forward, but held my ground for another moment. Ahead, over his shoulder, I picked out a blinking red light from among the neon splashes that wrapped the buildings.
This is wrong I told myself. I’m on my own, with no plan!
I shouldn’t even be here at all...
The flood of support was cut off, but someone had to do something. There was no one else...
Powers aside, though, he was manipulating me too easily. He was crazy, but he was smart.
The old man seemed to read my mind as he continued on. “A piece of advice for the troubles to come: question your purpose on your own time,” he said over his shoulder. “When action is necessary, doubt is failure.”
I clenched my reddened knuckles, certain that I was playing into his hands, into his fortune-cookie suggestion. But he was a talker, I reasoned. He seemed to want my attention more than my blood. The more I followed him, the more I would learn, and assuming I survived this encounter, any information I gleaned would be useful to the police. And how far away was my father? No. I shook away the thought. If the super-powered old man did intend to kill me, well, not even the police could help me or my family anymore, and so it might be just as well that my father wasn’t around. I released my clenched fist and looked ahead. As I should have expected, he was gone.
If the crazy man didn’t have magic, he had something close enough: mad skills. Talent, he had said. I frowned. Was I already prepared to buy so much into his words?
With a growl of resignation, I broke into a run. Fighting my conflicting thoughts the entire way, I quickly reached the designated building... blocked by rubble. A dead end. Another trick? My legs ached, so I fell to my knees. Above my head, the heap of ruined building stretched four stories, and the walls were even higher on the right and left.
My head drooped and I opened my mouth to scream, to cry, but, when I did, I found myself wanting to laugh. It didn’t make any sense, so, of course, I had to try it aloud, “Why am I here? Why is all this happening to me?”
I flinched as one of the surrounding piles of debris crumbled away, revealing a huge, dented drain pipe. A reply emanated from within. “Using your head, Jason Trudeau?” the old man’s haunting voice drifted from the darkness inside. “Indeed, why would anyone go to all this trouble if he didn’t have a point?”
I didn’t allow myself to hesitate. “You promised answers,” I challenged, crouching into the pipe. “What is your point?”
The air inside was dry and hot. I fell to my hands and knees, crawling after the waving light that bounced around the old man’s bent arms and legs. “I promised nothing, but the answers I implied are just ahead.” His voice was low.
The light became bright and clear before me. I scrambled forward, scraping my jeans and T-shirt against the tight metal. The air tasted clear and fresh as I broke into the expanse outside. The hum of distant conversations reached my ears. Other people! Help!
The old man grabbed my shirt and pulled me to my feet beside a strangely stable corrugated steel wall. We were standing just outside the pipe, at the end of an alleyway between a ruined building to the right and the surprisingly clean metal structure to the left. With a slight creak, the old man pulled a section of the metal away from the corner where it met the ground. The knife in my pocket came to mind again, and I wondered how much good it would do against one bending metal like it was nothing.
“What are—” the slap of the old man’s heavy glove over my face crushed my question.
“It would behoove you to shut up.” Pressed up against him, the old man’s pupils seemed almost as wide as eyeballs, the dark consuming the light. His voice was just above a whisper. “There is a man with a gun here, guarding this place. I have plans for secrecy, and I assume you have plans to stay alive. Although… I’m more than happy to give up my plans if you are willing to throw away your life.”
He pulled his hand away and watched me expectantly.
I balled my fist—he would kill me to avoid getting captured here, but maybe this was my best chance to...
No, I had blinked, and he had already moved inside, beneath the peeled steel, into what turned out to be a large, dimly lit room. My focus shifted toward taking in the new surroundings. The ground went from dust to uneven sidewalk and cracked asphalt. The entire room seemed to be square, maybe half a city block. The walls of the makeshift storage area were lined with boxes and bags, numbered and labeled in mysterious Japanese characters.
I turned to the old man’s gleaming white smile and followed his finger toward the far wall. My gaze centered on a crystal that shone clear and bright from inside its plastic bag, reflecting the light from the fluorescent lamps. Tugging on my arm, the old man approached the crystal slowly, weaving between metal racks and shelves. Stopping in front of the glowing crystal—a cube, I realized—he let go of my shirt, and I pulled away. His brow furrowed, shaping a sinister frown. Black eyes burning, the old man gestured for me to come closer.
Stalling for time, I scanned the space around me, stopping briefly to eye a large red switch, an alarm. My intentions all too obvious, the old man growled, and reached for me. There the impulse struck me, primal instinct. He was trapped, confused. It was time to surprise him. Instead of going for the alarm, I pulled my knife and thrust it toward his neck.
The blade stopped, though, just before biting the skin. The old man gave me a pitying look. My hand was paralyzed in his, the knife-edge a hair’s breadth from his throat. He certainly did have talent. His reflexes were superhuman, and his grip on my wrist was as inflexible as stone.
He pulled me a step away from the alarm. “You’ve shown strength, Jason. For that, I’ll let you see me bleed.”
The evil old man squeezed my aching knuckles and jerked the knife slightly upward. A drop of blood ran down the side of his neck. He squeezed my hand again, and the knife clattered to the concrete floor, accompanied by a tiny whimper: mine.
I had completely lost control of the situation. My knuckles, so recently tenderized against a concrete brick, were now pulsating with fiery pain. With my wrist still in his hand, the old man thrust my fingers toward the glowing crystal cube. The bag was open.
“Take it,” he ordered, emphasizing the words with a vicious squeeze of my broken hand.
As I touched the glassy surface of the gemstone-like cube, the reflections of the fluorescent lights flared and reached out to me, white, red, blue, and green. The colors changed and split apart.
Confused, afraid, and ov
erwhelmed, I fell to my knees. The colors became images, pictures of tortured souls slicing back and forth in my head. I saw wide-eyed children in chains, men pinned to the ground with swords, and women tossed to the side of a desert road. Through it all, the old man was watching, his dark eyes flaring with an evil joy.
Suddenly, the crystal was cool and dark in my fingers, and harsh reality returned to cut through the terrible visions. The old man pulled the supernatural vessel away protectively... but it was no longer a clear cube. It was black, smaller, a pyramid.
“Devidis…” I said. The syllables were new to my lips.
The evil old man dropped to a low crouch to meet my eyes. My fists were clenched helplessly on the floor near his ankles. He leaned in closer and then closer still, his eyes looming wide, staring into me. It wasn’t just shadows playing tricks: the lunatic had black eyes—broad black circles on white orbs with no irises, no other color. They were hungry black holes, consuming my focus, my thoughts, my mind.
He put his palm to my forehead and grabbed my hair. “You saw it too, didn’t you? Yes. Those visions are true, or, at least, they will be.”
The old man’s breath was hot and harsh on my face. “But the cube has split again. Where have the four gone? Have you done something with them? I wonder…”
His hungry eyes scanned the room briefly, before returning their piercing focus to me.
“It’s a cruel world, boy, and getting crueler by the moment,” he said.
He put his mouth up next to my ear. Dark eyes wide and wild, he continued. “Much, much crueler. Now that you know my name, your choices are simple: see how far you get by fighting for me, or…” He chuckled, deep in his throat, and shoved me away, “see how far you get by fighting against me.”
“OK, OK,” I said, stalling for time, scrambling desperately to my feet. This man Devidis was just about done talking. “Let me just—”
He followed my eyes toward the panel on the wall, and guessed my strategy once again. Desperately, I moved, crashing against the shelves, pushing away from the falling boxes to reach the red switch, the alarm. I pulled away the cover and slammed the illuminated lever. The old man had my answer. It was bright, and red, and shrieking.
Angry, my adversary threw his weight against a nearby desk. The metal bulk hurtled with supernatural speed, tripped with a crunch on the uneven ground, and crashed against my legs. Before I was able to react, I found myself pinned against the doorway.
“Well, well, that’s the most intelligent thing you’ve done all evening,” he offered the twisted compliment, dashing back toward the way we had entered, with the black pyramid clasped tightly in his hand. “You might make yourself an Elemental after all.”
As he vanished behind the metal wall, I pushed with all my strength against the metal desk. Jammed, it held me tight between the shelves, while the alarm filled the room with panicked red light and sound.