Chapter Text
The Oracle of Birds
Chapter One: Finding
Subject: Unknown
Date: Deleted
Location: Deleted
The boy who is nameless stared at the bottle solemnly. He rather wished it hadn’t come to this but he’d done the calculations and the cost/benefit analyses and, while he didn’t know them by these names yet and also despite the fact he hadn’t reached double digits in years, he was already very, very good at them.
The testers would be here tomorrow, though most of the other children didn’t know. He, however, quite undeniably and almost frighteningly bright, actually listened when adults talked over his head as if he wasn’t there.
He didn’t ask questions; he wasn’t that type. He sat down quietly and turned the words over in his head, adding them up and fitting them into other things he already knew. Like; if you passed the test, you might be taken away from your family. A couple of the other kids talked about siblings that way, hushed and grieving; sometimes full of arrogance, being special at one remove. If you passed the test you might end up in the army or some such and the boy didn’t really like the idea of being in the army. He didn’t like loud noises or crowds much. He liked quiet, where you could hear yourself think and figure stuff out. If you passed the test you seemed to be respected for it but it seemed to his simple world view you were respected the way history was respected – at a distance, behind impenetrable walls. And also, lots of other people told you what to do and the boy reserved an almost adult sized hatred for that sort of thing.
There was nothing else for it. He opened the ipecac and downed it. A long time after he was grateful he’d done it. Just not immediately.
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Date: [........./..........] 2012
Location: Sub Cam 00009883
Why New York? he thought through a haze of alcohol. This was the last place he should really try to hide. Survivors guilt, perhaps? For having such a good day in Mexico when he could have been stopping madmen from stealing planes? The last place he saw Jessica....happy?
He knew why, of course. A lot of Sentinels and Guides with no fixed territory were being pulled here by base instinct after the Towers fell; any that didn’t join – or re-join - the military, that is. There had been a huge space to fill after September 11, because the Sentinel and Guide ranks had been decimated to a catastrophic level not seen in recorded history.
It was a fact that there were a handful on Ground Zero but the biggest losses came after; Sentinels were nature’s own first responders, getting hit with dust and mercury and all sorts of hazards while diving into the wreckage for survivors, any survivors which in turn lead to injuries, respiratory complaints, permanent damage and mostly deaths. Even if they made it past all that some had just dropped, literally dropped. Their Guides had dropped, the anguish and pain and terror proving far too much even for the strongest and the most disciplined. Their agonised empathic projections were felt not just across America, but across the planet.
All told, a good ninety percent of Sentinel and Guides in New York and died or been wounded by the tragedy. Even more than a decade after the event the numbers still weren’t what they once were; most of the Sentinels and Guides pulled active had joined the military to hunt the threat down at the source. The military had been pleased, but the city of New York hadn’t benefitted much. Now any unattached Sentinel or Guide – even some attached ones – found themselves drawn to New York city as nature tried to fill the vacuum.
The man currently called John Reese took another swig from the bottle and let the alcohol burn down his throat. Even with his heightened sense of touch, it still wasn’t enough to drown out the pain and guilt though. Nothing may be enough. Ever since....well, ever since, the world had turned into a monochrome of greys and a din of silences. The alcohol only occasionally let him sleep past the memories in his head.
His spirit guide, a sleek caracal was with him constantly now. Some days he was grateful for the company but other days he hated it, hated the thing. It always seemed to be there, reminding him of his failures, of his duties.
Well, he’d spent the better part of his life up to his eyeballs in duty and what damn bit of good had it done? Had he changed anything? Was there any reward? He couldn’t even get there in time. He could hear heartbeats miles distant, he could taste a molecule of poison in a lake of water, he could see to the horizon, hell, he could smell to the horizon, he could touch....
He threw the bottle in one violent move. What good was it? What good was any of it?
His caracal leapt up as the bottle smashed and it jaws snapped at something in the air.
The anger vanished as quickly as it had sparked. He was too numb to even maintain that. Reese hunkered down in his filthy clothes against his filthy walls and tried to sleep.
A chirp interrupted his search for respite. He wearily opened his eyes to see his spirit guide sitting patiently in front of him, it’s feline face slightly warped by the struggling bundle it gripped loosely in it’s mouth.
Grunting, Reese reached shaking hands up to free the fluttering thing and about to comment to the caracal that since when does it eat, when his brain – his trained, tortured, never sleeping brain – gave a kick.
His caracal wasn’t real, not in the physical sense. It wouldn’t be able to catch a real bird.
Surprise granting him momentary clarity, he looked down at the brown bundle that squirmed upright in his hands. He thought for one moment that his caracal had hurt it but the wing that hung down, broken and scruffy, looked to be an old injury.
“Where did you come from?” he rasped in wonder, gently stroking the tiny head with the finger.
John Reese looked up and the world was suddenly full of colour that had been lost, sounds that had been muffled.
Something wrapped tight around his chest, almost too tight to breathe around, and pulled hard. It yanked him to his feet where he staggered unsteadily for a moment before his legs picked a direction and started to stride.
He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for, but by the time Reese had hit the underground he was running flat out, bird in hand.
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If he was the type to curse, he would have cursed. He had miscalculated badly and it wasn’t the kind of mistake easily corrected. He tripped and stumbled again, fiery agony shooting up his bad leg, but the hand hauling him along the dank tunnel was not concerned with his comfort. The throbbing bruises he’d already gained from half falling down the ladder and tripping half a dozen times on the rough ballast testified to it.
He shook himself to clear his head. He’d gotten too close to the meeting between Diane Hansen and, as it turned out, her posse of corrupt cops. He’d called the police to the location when it became clear she was meeting with her potential murderers and could only hope they would be there in time. He had needed to get close enough for his camera to get a good shot of the meet though, so if worst came to worst at least he could get justice for her. Consolation prizes, he thought bitterly, made up a lot of his work.
Well, worst had come from a different angle. Hansen was perpetrator not victim. It could have turned out to be one of the easier ones to solve had he not been spotted. And now....
“Here,” Stills, the most corrupt of corrupt cops. “I’m not dragging your crippled ass any further. Jesus Christ, who the hell came up with your neighbourhood watch anyway?” He chuckled darkly. “Okay Mister Interested Third Party, take a good look around,” Stills shone his flashlight obligingly. “This is the last place you’re gonna see living. Hell won’t come as much of a shock then. Subways, you gotta love ‘em. They leave messy corpses but a clean kills. Any last words?”
Worth a try. “Point zero two percent, Detective Stills,” he replied levelly. He’d faced down cut throats on every level of wealth and business, he could fake calm with the best of them.
“What?”came the answering scowl.
“That’s how much of a cut you really get, Detective,” the tone was heavy with patience. “Hansen is extremely well paid for her services. She gets at least a forty two percent share. That’s over six figures in real money, Detective Stills. Have you ever gotten close to six figures? No? You think you have robbed the bank but you are thanking patrons for pennies.”
“What would you know about it?”
“I know everything about you, detective. Jason Stills, 47. Married three times, divorced three times. Four children from various partners, one illegitimate whose mother you had sent away to prison for demanding child support. Your mother left when you were ten, your father was then and is now a chronic alcoholic. Once upon a time you rose up the ranks quite well and were a crack shot until a street fight damaged nerves in your arm. You never did get your marksmanship back. Your psychological profiles indicate you struggle with impulsiveness and would not be a suitable candidate for senior roles; nonetheless, you were appointed captain in your precinct until the rank was stripped for drinking on the job, you...”
“How’n the hell do you know all that?”
A shrug. “Information is my business, detective.”
“Yeah?” the cold barrel was pressed to his temple. “Well now your business is a bullet.”
He opened his mouth and shut it again. He thought about offering more money, a bribe perhaps, but Stills wouldn’t accept it from him, he could tell. He was just some anonymous nosy parker.
He had tried to use his empathy to get inside the man’s head but it had been too long since he had called on those gifts, too long. His control was too shaky to get more than miasma of greed and resentment, of brittle pride that had drowned a conscience, swirling in that mind like a swarm of wasps. He had drawn back behind his too-thick mental shield to avoid getting lost.
He looked down at his hands instead. They looked twig like in the bad light. There never seemed to be time for anything now. He felt like eating even less times that he remembered to eat and it had clearly been taking a toll. On a good day he might manage a few hours of sleep but he couldn’t remember when the last good day was.
He’d tried to juggle the demands of the Machine and the demands of his privacy and had barely made any headway with either. He’d failed.
I tried he protested to himself; but his business side retorted that does not change the fact that you failed. He was forced to his knees, one screeching in pain and bent awkwardly.
Maybe someone would find the video and do the right thing with it, he hoped as he heard the nasty click of the hammer cock. Maybe the gun would misfire. Maybe, maybe, maybe...
But if he didn’t come back, the Machine would dutifully report numbers from the list to an empty room, with no one there to see or even care.
I should have gotten help, he thought with perfect hindsight.
Something growled. He blinked in surprise from where he kneeled.
Then there was an explosion of gunfire, the crack of it echoing up the tunnel.
He was shoved aside, ears ringing and the tunnel boomed with the sounds of flesh hitting flesh, grunts and hisses of pain. The torch had been dropped to the ground, and the corona showed only feet – two sets of them.
There was an odd, muffled sound and Stills howled; it sounded, for example, like a man whose arm had been twisted past breaking point.
There was a flash and a bang as the gun went off again. He could hear the deadly skips as the bullet ricocheted off the walls.
Scrambling to find his feet so fast that his coat tore, the unexpectedly rescued man hobbled as far as he could away from the savage fight and into the pitch darkness of the tunnel. He wasn’t being callous; he knew that they only thing he could do for his rescuer is not get in the way and not get hit with a stray bullet.
The noises dimmed as he haltingly made his way through the dark. An eternity of minutes passed and he shambled as fast as he could, his body protesting every step. Soon he could hear nothing but his own uneven gait and harsh breath.
It took him another two eternities to reach light; he found a subway platform and (thank goodness) this one has steps up onto the platform proper. The locked gate at the end gave him a moments trouble before he hobbled into relative safety.
His checked his cell phone but it was still useless. He then beelined painfully for the payphones at one end.
He only managed two digits of 9-1-1 before a hand reached over him to hang up. He spun around.
The youth sneered at him. “What’re you lookin’at?”
“What do you want?” he replied impatiently, though he noticed with a sinking feeling more youths were lining up behind the sneerer and they all shared a predatory gleam in their eyes.
The first youth mimed a shot to the heart. “Oooh, that’s rude. That was rude, wasn’t it?” His pack all nodded. “A faggot like you should learn some manners.”He eyed the high-end cell phone that was still clutched in his prey’s hand. “He should learn to share.”
The youth shoved him against the payphone while the others crowded in, but the hand that snatched for the cell phone never made it.
A larger hand folded around it and the teen gave a yell of surprise and pain as the grip locked.
The now twice rescued man looked over at his rescuer. Tall, was the first impression. Broad shouldered too, though the rest of his physique was hard to pin down past his ragged drapery. The face was largely concealed by unkempt dark hair and a shaggy beard, but no random derelict wanderer had ever had such an intense expression of burning rage in their eyes.
There was a livid, bleeding graze on one of the newcomer’s temples, to which the rescued man stared. He couldn’t be the man in the tunnels....could he?
The teen was white with pain, and tried to throw a punch with his free hand.
That turned out to be a mistake.
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End Chapter One