Shakar looked down at the pile of stairs at the bottom of the shaft. With a pleased nod, coiled a rope into his pocket and put his stick away in the other. Xole took the lead, running down the hall near the top floor of the building.

  “Who carries a missive rope with them anyways?” Xole asked, “And was that stair collapse really necessary? What if Mr. Holdover can’t get up?”

  “I’m sure he’ll find a way,” He said, “As for the rope, I’m someone who prefers to be prepared. Speaking of which, are you sure you actually know where this ‘Brandon’ fellow is? I mean your memory hasn’t been the greatest.”

  “Just…trust me okay?” Xole said as he kept running, “The closer we go the more ominous vibe I get, it’s making my head hurt.”

  Shakar stopped. “Oh, so we’re just going off a whim then? If knew that, I would’ve happily left you back in that abomination of a car.”

  “Are—are you SERIOUS?” Xole stopped, pivoting and marching back to the kufi wearing individual, “After all we’ve been through—”

  “Which wasn’t much.”

  “—you still treat me the exact same as before! What do you want from me?!”

  Shakar opened the first door to their right, stepping inside for a few moments and stepped out.

  “I want you to do that.” He said.

  Xole stuck his chin out, eyes squinted. “Do…what?”

  Shakar held up three fingers, “It’s what I call the big three. Stop, breathe, and think. If you’re stuck on a problem, forcing yourself through if will yield disastrous results.”

  “There’s no time to think!” he exclaimed, “If we don’t—!”

  “Xole, there’s always time to think.”

  Xole groaned, reluctantly taking a deep breath. To his surprise he wheezed. He didn’t realize how fatigued he was until now.

  “That’s it!” Shakar said gesturing with one hand and placing another on Xole’s shoulder. “Catch your breath, clear your mind of any panic or worry. And most importantly think! Never let your mind go to waste!”

  Xole closed his eyes and took another breath, thinking. He could hear something—no, feel something. It was small but nearby.

  ‘Why does this feel familiar?’ he thought as he began to head that direction.

  “Ah yes, you never did rate my teaching expertise.” Shakar said following him towards a large room. “So, how’d I do?”

  “Let’s see…” Xole began, opening the door to a penthouse. “Your lecture just now was fine but, a little basic. Oh, and I’ll have to dock points for what you did at the massage parlor.”

  “So do I pass?”

  “With a ‘D’ maybe.”

  “At least it’s not an ‘F’, right?” Shakar responded happily skipping ahead. Xole was starting to wish he’d just failed him instead.

  The room was dimly lit by a few overhead hanging lights. The two were barely able to make out a black and white pattern checkered along the floor. The view of the city was dull, especially against the cracked glass of the windows.

  “You’d think someone so rich would take better care of this place.” Shakar said, running his fingers across the bar. “I’ll have a look around the bottom, feel free to roam.”

  Xole didn’t say anything, instead making his way up the stairs to the single room on the second level of the penthouse. He took the handle; instantly his body and mind instinctively forced him back as his mind raced with memories becoming more and clearer.

  “…by any means necessary!”

  “GO! HURRY!”

  “…stupid…useless Talent!”

  “End of the line, kid.”

  “No.” Xole shook his head. He took a deep breath and looked at the door. “Not this time.” He grabbed the handle and kneed it open.

  Bodies.

  Not just any bodies, but faces he could almost make out littering his field of view, as if he was looking through a foggy window. He kneeled over a security guard, lying face down with a hole through their abdomen.

  “Is that…you?” he whispered. Then he looked ahead of him in utter shock to a body in a liquid-filled tank connected by hundreds of tiny tubes.

  In it was Gus.

  “Had I known you’d arrive so quickly, I would’ve had this place cleaned up.”

  Xole spun around to see Brandon standing there in his familiar gray suit to match his hair topped off with his thick glasses. Behind it was a calm smile.

  “So this is how you treat your son?!!” Xole shouted, “Like some lab experiment?!”

  “It’s the only wat to preserve him!” Brandon shot back angrily, “Besides this would’ve been much faster had you come alone, now hurry, we don’t have much—”

  “No.” Xole replied, stepping towards the slightly taller businessman. “I never agreed to your terms, Amesworth. Before I do anything I want you to call off any reinforcements you have on us. All three of us.”

  Brandon chuckled and took a step towards the boy. “Or…what? I thought you cared about your friend?”

  “And I though you cared about your son,” Xole replied taking his phone out and putting it to his neck. “Three hundred thousand volts go straight in to my neck and ‘boom’! No more projects or chance to redeem yourself. I’ll be dead!”

  The older man gritted his teeth. “I see you aren’t as anxious as you were before. I commend your bravery, Xole, if only you had this same resolve when my boy was still alive.”

  Xole didn’t break eye contact. “Call them off.”

  “It’s already done.” Brandon smiled. “I only trusted those three fools to bring you up. The fact that they couldn’t beat a mediocre bunch like you shows their value to me.”

  “Good.” Xole said, he pressed a button on the phone, keeping it to his neck. Brandon began to sweat.

  “What are you doing, there are no more reinforcements!”

  “I know,” Xole said, “just as little insurance. I’ll be sure to keep this close by. If the phone leaves my hands, the voltage goes off and we know what happens next.”

  Brandon cursed under his breath. He regretted building that blasted phone for him. He turned to leave the room, motioning for him to follow. “Follow me to my office, Xole, we have business to discuss.”

  Xole followed him out the door and looked over his shoulder, no sign of Shakar anywhere. Should he ask Brandon?

  “No.’ he thought, following the man, ‘He’s clearly capable enough to take on anymore of Brandon’s thugs with the other three out of the way. It’s better I leave his status ambiguous in case something happens.’

  ________________________________________________________________________

  Three minutes earlier:

  “I wonder where Xole ran off to so quickly?” Shakar thought aloud, making his way to the locked back room. He tossed another security camera behind him.

  “This one was wiped too,” he sighed. Just then he heard a noise upstairs and Xole say something to himself.

  “Ah, that’s my student! Push past any door and find the answers you seek!”

  Kicking down the door into the compact office-like room, Shakar made his way to the back and snatched a camera hidden in the corner of the ceiling. He carefully eyed it.

  “Ah, untouched. Hopefully this has something.” He opened the back, revealing a finger identification spot. Shakar pressed his tongue against it, leaving a small black piece of paper on the spot and activating the camera footage.

  ‘It’s a good thing I kept a piece of that rancid Black Dollar with me.’ He thought, ‘Though the taste is still stuck, destroying it will be worthwhile once I locate it.’

  He rummaged through a day’s worth of footage until something caught his eye, the sight of Brandon speaking to the other side of the room. The man then stopped, glancing around nervously before stuffing something into a potted plant before leaving in the direction he was talking.

  “Hmm, the plant?”

  He spied a plant sandwiched in between two bookshelves. He dug around the plant until he felt something between his fingers; a USB. Quickly, he dashed out the room, running back towards where they entered until he was near the stairs, taking the first door to his left; the security room. Immediately the stench hit him.

  ‘Corpses,’ he thought to himself, looking at the collapsed men keeled over the monitor. ‘And security at that’ Why kill his own men? Unless he needed something to stay confidential.’

  Carefully stepping pass the bodies to the multi camera set up, Shakar stuck the USB into a port. All the screens turned white, a green bar filled the bottom left corner before quickly turning to code that filled the page. Shakar leaned closer. He could see the name ‘C.L.A.R.I.S.S.A.’ around a bunch of numbers with a diagram of a tube shaped contraption.

  “Clearly an acronym for something,” he said to himself, “I assume this odd machine. The rest of its information seems to be missing from here. Hmm what’s this?”

  Another file stood out to him, one simply titled ‘The Big One’. The first thing he saw upon clicking was name, ‘1952’.

  ‘Hmm, later.’

  He rummaged through the rest of the files. Thankfully it was in alphabetical order, bringing his curiosity to the video feed section. There he saw numerous scenes with Brandon either in his office or speaking to potential customers, even him and Mr. Holdover from earlier. However, one stuck out to him. It was him and the three Collared men from the parlor speaking together.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  ‘So he did hire them.’

  Going back he saw Brandon speaking with a woman with long black Mohawk falling to her back. She had the man pinned to his desk by the neck tie. Shakar leaned closer. ‘Was that the woman Xole was referring to back at the house?’ he thought.

  Scrolling back to find past interactions, Shakar now saw something horrific. It was of Xole standing before a broken glass window, bloody and battered. Another boy, dead, lay on the ground face down with the same woman and Brandon looking at them, her weapon pointed at Xole’s chest. He said something before the sound of a gunshot sent him off the edge, making Shakar wince.

  “I’d be best to download this while I look for the Black Dollar’s location.”

  Going back to the next page he was greeted by the sight of a large drawing a blimp within the clouds with coordinates. His eyes went to the next page, showing a step by step manual of usage of the blimp as well as its passenger capacity and a separate space for the ‘valuable’ goods. Off to the bottom right he saw a green checkmark next to its quantity.

  “Looks as if he hasn’t used it to escape yet? Why? Unless he plans on taking Xole with him…”

  ‘Click’ ‘Click’

  The sound of footsteps out the hall door put Shakar on high alert. Yanking the drive out of the monitor, his back was immediately pressed against the wall next to the door, peeking out into the dark hallway. Empty—at least so he thought. Quietly, he stepped into the hall, his stick out and extended to four feet. He carefully stepped back through the hall towards the penthouse, wrapping his head around his predicament.

  ‘Whoever this is could be after Xole, but is more than likely trying to lure me out. My best option is to get back to him as soon as possible and find Mr. Holdover. Especially with the information I have.’

  He stopped, hearing the steps again. This time from the door to his left. He reached for the handle then paused.

  ‘Skint!’

  A flying knife flew to his direction, as he drew his stick to parry, swatting it away. He saw the shine of dozens more flying down the hall at an abnormal speed. Reluctantly, he dove into the room headfirst, just getting out of the way of the knives but now seeing the blur of a long nailed demonic figure flying his way. Extending his staff against the wall, he shot himself across the room, stumbling through chairs as he flipped back to his feet in time to see the shape, now of a woman with long hair, reach for his face. Arching his neck back, he swung his beaded staff in a wide arch, finally forcing his attacker to take the defensive position—by catching his weapon in her claw-like purple nails.

  “I figured as much…” Shakar panted, “Amesworth had better security than the three downstairs.”

  Without a word, the shorter woman released his weapon, letting it fall to the ground and stepping back like an unsatisfied predator. He could see she was dressed oddly for someone seemingly corporate. Under her long black coat was her dress shirt, tie, rolled sleeves and fish netted forearms that matched the open part of her bottomless pants tucked into ankle high silver heeled boots. He took note of the purple make up around her eyes curling away and a beauty mark under her left eye. He began to feel nervousness creep up his back.

  “Your weapon is quite strong, how unfortunate to go to waste on you,” She said in an ice-cold tone. She slowly rolled her neck, running her hands along the shaven sides of her head past her tattoos, pushing her long top hair over her shoulder to her lower back. She cocked her head to the side, staring at him.

  “You have approximately ninety seconds before my poison kills you, boy. One question, where’s the third one?”

  Shakar touched the side of his cheek, feeling blood drip down where he had nearly gotten hit upon entering the room and another spot where he reeled his head back. He fell back against the wall, feeling his lower legs already numbing. She had done it on purpose to get information out of him. She was good, he’ll give her that.

  ‘Third one?’ He had to think quickly, he hated dealing with poison. ‘She’s talking about Mr. Holdover. Amesworth must’ve told her about us. Can’t buy time, darn! Even if I try to administer a cure, she’ll just kill me. Speaking of which, she isn’t an ordinary government agent, who in the world are we dealing with?’

  “Miss?” Shakar forced a smile on his sweating face. “That man hates me with all his guts. I’m actually grateful you’re the one to finish me off and not him.”

  Her eyebrow raised in curiosity. “If you’re trying to save him—”

  ‘Why would I?” Shakar nearly laughed, fighting back the pain of the poison. “If I were you, I’d go back to the penthouse, kill the gray-haired kid first, then stop downstairs for the angry man, afterwards go home and pray—”

  The woman shot her foot him upwards into his chin. “Don’t tell me how to do my job.” She turned to leave, putting her hands into her coat pockets as he slumped to the floor. “And don’t worry about the boy, he’s already dead. I just need to make sure he gets the message this time.”

  “This time…eh?” Shakar mustered all his strength to get back to his feet once more, his numb hand went to his kufi, “Tell me…why kill…a boy? Why kill…innocents? Why abuse…your Talents?”

  She let out an annoyed sigh as she opened the door.

  “It’s just a job, idiot.”

  “…”

  She took a step away only to spin back at the sound of a noise behind. He was still standing, staff back in hand ninety-one seconds later. He removed the kufi off his head past his face, revealing a new face; one full of lines and shadows, twisted in anger all balled into a cursed looking scowl.

  “The life of a child…is just income to you?!”

  The way he spoke sounded the polar opposite of before, like a screaming whisper, raspy but clear. As if he’d become possessed, or been suppressing something. Anastasia let her coat fall to the ground, now she was intrigued. Her eyes widened, followed by a grin.

  “Now this could be worth something—” she said before abruptly cutting herself off as the younger man had leaped all the way across the thirty foot room toward her, weapon recoiled behind his back, ready to swing it into her skull at full force.

  “I’m going to erase any trace of you from this world!” his words were the only sound in the room to her right before his weapon came down.

  …

  “So back there…” Xole’s words trailed off, struggling to even process what he was saying. “So he’s…”

  “Dead? Scientifically speaking, yes,” Brandon answered stepping into the lab behind his office’s bookshelf. It was a small compact white room, yet full of books on each wall, except for the one with the tank and another, housing a large monitor. Bright screen and buttons under. “Please, take a seat on the examining table in the middle of the room, Xole.”

  Xole nearly took a step, then, stopped, thinking about what Mr. Holdover would trust him to do. After ruling out any acts of violence, he looked to Brandon. “Tell me how this all works first, Gus’s here so I’ll comply as long as you keep this up.”

  “Keep, ‘what up’ exactly?”

  “Honesty. Something I’ve been appreciating more and more as of late.”

  Brandon snickered, adjusting his glasses. “You’re sounding more and more like a professional, Xole, and I like it! Well you might as well have a seat there because this is going to be a lengthy explanation.”

  Keeping the phone trained to his throat, Xole sat on the table, his eyes on Brandon while he carefully sat on a chair in front of the monitor, legs crossed.

  “My son is—was privileged to be born with Spiritual Talent and in his last moments… you stole it from him.”

  “…”

  “You now possess the rarest and most mysterious of all Talents, son. The possibilities are endless. The power first hand—”

  “That’s wrong.”

  “I’m not mad at you, Xole. In fact, what you did may be the very reason—”

  “Why should I believe you?!” Xole shot up from his seat. His tense body shivered, he could feel a pain in his stomach. “No, no, no you’re lying! You’re just—!”

  “Let me show you this.” Brandon turned his back to him, typing a few keys under the monitor and pulling up a screen with an outline of his body with a slight clearish glow over his belly button. There Xole expected to see normal statistics like his height and weight. However, he ended up seeing something much different:

  TALENT: Spiritual (un-awakened)

  REINFORCEMENT: Alive/None

  INNER-GI COMPOSITION: 50/50

  DOMINANT PRIORITY: None

  Xole examined the diagram wide eyed. He could see a clear aura around his body like an energy surge. Adjacent to that was an outline of a hamster with a similar aura. He was confused as to why it was even there.

  “Perfect Inner-gi composition, how rare. No reaction to reinforcement either.” Brandon said to himself, adjusting his glasses. He turned back to Xole. “As you can see from the screening, the talent is still un-awakened, which in turn means it’s still relatively new.”

  Xole touched his chest. “Even…even if it were true—”

  “Which it is”

  “—then how would giving him back his Talent work if he’s...”

  “Deceased?” Brandon smiled hopefully. “Well I’m glad you asked that because I have friends in very, very high places who’ve provided me with the means to do so right here!”

  The gray suited man motioned toward the tank with Gus in it. He then drew his finger from there to another tank hidden in the corner of the penthouse, this time without water and a glass door on the front. Xole felt uncomfortable just looking at it.

  “Think of it as CPR,” Brandon said, “it hasn’t been long since my son died, so there is a likelihood his body will reabsorb its former Talent, thus restoring his life by reabsorbing his ‘spirit’. It may take a few tries but I think we can do it…if it works.”

  “If? The hell does that mean? You said you could do it!”

  “When a Spiritual Talent user dies,” Brandon said, “at least in my research, the last life absorbed will be the one that shows upon death. Essentially swapping out one life for another if the host—in this case you—were to ‘die’. When you were shot the last thing I saw go off that building was my son.”

  A cold silence filled the void between Xole and Brandon. Xole’s fist clenched, he got up and walked to the end of the room, his eye shaking in frustration.

  ‘I came this far…for nothing?!’

  Brandon smiled and turned off the machine, dulling Gus’s face out. “It’s not a complete loss though, we can still try it with a ninety-five percent chance of failure…or you could keep it.”

  “Keep it and do WHAT?!” Xole shouted, kicking the wall. “What was the point of all this?!”

  “It’s because I need your help Xole!”

  Xole was puzzled. Brandon continued.

  “You know I spoke to someone, who might I say wasn’t very intelligent, that provided me with an interesting theory. Imagine the same ones who run this country, my ‘friends’, are also the same ones who created it’s downfall in the first place. Now imagine, they to possessed Spiritual Talent. All the power in the world.”

  Xole thought but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Now imagine this!” Brandon thrust both index fingers up. “The reason for that wasn’t because of too much control, but a lack of it! They allowed a single man to get too close to them under the false justification that democracy is a lie. He exposed their Talents and abused their good will to overthrow them—and it nearly worked! Many think that man to be a dictator who plagued our country for years. However, I more so see him as a scientist. His name was Jakub, the single greatest criminal in history.”

  “I know of the conspiracy.”

  “Conspiracy?” Brandon’s head fell, chuckling to himself. “Funny. Do you have any idea how many people I’ve seen them kill who made the same excuse?”

  Xole glared.

  “Understand now, Xole? People like us or Holdover, even Jakub. People who can get a hold of such knowledge, such precious information, are a danger to the entire world. Such dangers don’t last very long…”

  The man suddenly stood up excitedly, gesturing to himself. “However I understand the error of their ways and plan on fixing it once I join them! It may take a bit of blackmail, but as long as I have someone who can combat their Talents, someone like you, I truly believe I—no, WE can be leading figures for the new order of things to come!”

  Xole closed his eyes for a second, slowly exhaling as he opened them.

  “…Amesworth, I don’t give a damn about your theories, I don’t give a damn about these ‘elites’, I don’t give a damn about some dictator I barley know, and I especially don’t give a damn about your self-righteous ideology!!” He pointed to Gus in the tank. “This is what I came here for! Not to join you in your grand scheme for power or some bullshit! But NOOO, you just care more about ‘control’ and ‘order’ than your own loved ones! We’re done here.”

  With that, Xole went to grab the door handle to leave. It was locked.

  “Vowing never to let a show of defiance happen again,” Brandon continued, “they had all knowledge and information on their Talents hidden and eventually turned to myth, replaced with the simple idea that all Spiritual Talents do is give you a few years extra to live. You know something more innocent. Still, every now and then some random individual gets a hold of such precious information, whether it is a politician or some unintelligent thug. They’re all dealt with the same way.”

  After trying the door a few more times, Xole looked back at Brandon. “So how do you know so much then? You have these ‘elites’ on speed dial or something?”

  Brandon laughed. “In a sense. Thank you, Xole. With you and Mr. Holdover I can finally get things moving.”

  Xole’s mind raced. ‘Wait, that was the ‘thug’ he was referring to?! Yeah, Mr. Holdover did say he worked at Amesworth back at the house but he said it was super temporary! Not only that but he didn’t want me coming inside because he didn’t ‘trust me’. Can I really trust him? Screw it, time for violence.’

  Xole lunged towards Brandon, swinging a fist at his face only for his hand to go through, the hologram projection disappearing before him. Panicked, he put the phone to his neck again.

  “I’ll do it! Don’t try me!” he yelled.

  “Oh no you won’t!” Brandon’s voice echoed from the walls. “After your last stunt, I’ve installed and EMP in that room. Not to mention your phone must be damaged, otherwise I would’ve been notified by my monitor the minute you stepped foot in here!”

  Xole spun around, desperately looking for an exit as the room began to fill with gas. He began coughing, losing consciousness.

  “Do you get it, Xole?!” Brandon’s voice grew lower, “It was because of you! Had it not been for you, my son could’ve very well been alive! Now his Talent—that precious Talent is with you, YOU of all people! You took what was rightfully mine!”

  Xole shook his head feeling dizziness overtake him. His body fell against the wall. “It’s. It’s not true—”

  “But don’t worry! I’ll be sure to return his Talent where it belongs. Now, you are going to go to sleep as I finish the extraction my way. We’re going to do great things together!”

  Xole fell to his hands and knees. ‘He’s lying! He has to be! I KNOW I didn’t kill him…so why…do I feel….so…guilty?’

  He blacked out.