Something Begins

  “This is going to kill JR,” said Ed.

            He, Ian and Dev were in the morgue looking at Melisa’s corps.

  “At least we got some info out of her,” said Dev.

  “Yeah. But now we need to hire a new graphics designer,” said Ian.

  “Who do you think did this, the Others?” asked Ed.

  “Who else?” asked Dev.

  “No, they wanted her alive. Got a call from them last week after the whole Robert thing, they wanted her for their own justice. This was someone else, not sure if they wanted us to think it was the Others,” said Ian.

  “So we wait?” asked Dev.

  “We wait,” echoed Ian.

 

  “Are you home again tonight?” Ed asked Ian a few minutes later as they headed to their respective cars.

  “Yeah, I think so,”

            For the past week, after getting engaged, Ian had been sleeping at Danny’s place. Neither Ian nor Ed knew exactly what they’d do when he got married. Technically it was Ian’s house as his name was on the deed. At the time of purchase, he was the only one with a steady enough income between him and JR, and Ed had his own house. But then things changed.

  “Good, we’ve missed you,”

  “JR driving you up the walls yet?” asked Ian.

  “He always drives me up the walls, but at least Aaliyah’s been around to provide balanced company,”

  “This really is gonna kill him,”

  “Yeah,”

 

            That night, after helping Danny carry in a few boxes of her stuff, Ed and Ian sat down to tell JR about Melisa. They told him about the Others attack that had happened little over a week ago, how Dev had knocked her out and how she’d been locked up since then. At first he was angry, then sad, then he left.

            Ian couldn’t sleep that night. He worried for JR’s safety, their friend had the knack of finding trouble, or rather trouble found him. It was well past midnight when he snuck out of bed and headed upstairs to look out at the town. Ed had had the same idea.

  “How’s the novel going?” Ian asked.

  “Good, pretty much a quarter of the way,”

  “No bad,”

  “Not good enough, unfortunately. With everything that’s happened lately, I’ve lost a few days,”

  “And JR running off doesn’t help,”

  “No, it doesn’t,”

 

            The next morning both Danny and Ian were out of the house early. On his way to work, the Colonel phoned and told him to head to an art gallery immediately, but she didn’t give him any more details.

  “Special Agent,” greeted a man in his early thirties as Ian crossed the police line into the gallery.

            There were three bodies, well-armed and armoured, and all three had black crystalline arrows protruding from their heads. The arrows seemed familiar to Ian, but he couldn’t place it at that moment.

  “Sargent,” Ian greeted his new partner, “this looks like a gun fight, why were we called in?”

  “She didn’t tell you?”

  “No, tell me what?”

  “Follow me,”

            The Sargent led him to a control room where an elderly man lay face down in a pool of his own blood.

  “No arrow,” Ian noted.

  “No, someone thought his neck was a USB hub,”

            Ian bent down and inspected the wound at the base of the man’s skull, sure enough it appeared as if someone had jammed a USB port into the man’s neck. He looked at the man’s face and recognised him immediately.

  “Sergovich,”

  “You know him?” asked the Sargent.

  “I know of him, he’s a cybernetics trial patient. The only man on this planet with a cybernetic lung,”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, not at all. Ten years ago his left lung was lost to cancer, a year later the other lung was lost as well. The only way to save him was to implant a cybernetic device that worked just like lungs do. Apart from that, this man is just a normal man,”

  “Damn, and I thought we had an MO,”

  “This is the first such killing, isn’t it?”

  “She really didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what, Sarge?”

  “Thor, Robert, he was found dead in his cell a day after you brought him in,”

  “Yeah,”

  “He had the same wound at the back of his head,”

  “But he wasn’t a cyborg. What about outside?”

  “Unrelated, completely. This guy was dead hours before that happened. I think it’s a bunch of your Others friends out there but no idea who put the arrows in their heads. It does look like the Red Arrow’s work,”

  “Only those are black arrows,” said Ian as he remembered why it had appeared familiar to him. “Did anyone see anything?”

  “Our case, no,” said the Sargent, “the arrow killings, yes, a drunken car guard said he saw a man with a bow made out of light shooting at four men,”

  “There’s only three corpses outside,”

  “He missed,”

  The Red Arrow never missed, Ian thought. “I’ve got a contact that might be able to shed some light on Sergovich’s death, meet you back at HQ?”

  “Yeah,” said the Sargent.

 

            An hour later, Ian found himself in the fire gutted remains of a very old mansion. Of the four stories, only two were still intact, mostly. The third and fourth stories were almost completely gone except for a few centimetres of floor here and there.

            He was on the second floor looking out over a dense grove that grew behind the ruins. The trees had gotten thicker and closer over the years as no one lived there anymore.

  “I didn’t think to see you again,” said an old voice behind Ian, a voice filled with wisdom.

  “I didn’t thin to find myself here again,” said Ian. “You can get up from the chair, you’re not fooling anyone,”

            He heard two heavy foot falls and the sound of servos before he turned around to look at the old agent. His hear and beard where silvered, his eyes dark and his legs abnormally long.

  “You’re taller than I remembered,” said Ian.

  “The cybernetics helped,” said the agent, “It’s been years, Dragon, why have you returned?”

  “I’ve got a few questions, Oracle”

  “Only a few?” the man said producing a pipe from his jacket pocket and lighting it, “well, ask?”

  “Do you know of anyone hunting augmented people?”

  “No, can’t say that I’ve heard such rumours, why?”

  “We found Sergovich today, he’s dead,”

  “Then he’s the first,”

  “No, Robert was killed in the same way as Sergovich, some kind of USB device was shoved into the base of their skulls,”

  “Neural Download Interface,”

  “You know what killed them?”

  “Yes, perhaps,” said Oracle and blew a hollow circle of smoke, “it was experimental tech back in the day but the logic was sound. The NDI allows you to download data from someone’s mind, unfortunately the device killed the person you were downloading from, so they stopped the research,”

  “And now someone has one of these NDIs,”

  “Yes, if what you describe is indeed what I think it is. It could just be a very elaborately designed knife or rod. Either way, I’ll keep my ear to the ground,”

  “Thanks,”

  “Did that cover all your questions?”

  “No, I’ve got one more. There’s been reports of a man wielding a bow made of light and shooting arrows made of shadow, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “I lost my Star Bow years ago, and my arrows were red,”

  “That they were,” said Ian and headed towards the ruin’s entrance, “Ed didn’t ask you to train him, did he?”

  “Not that I recall,” said the old agent, “but if he had, he would also have asked me to deny it, especially if you asked. Besides, there’s nothing I can teach him that he doesn’t already know or cannot find on the internet,”

  “True, but the world isn’t ready for the return of the Red Arrow,”

  “I believe they’ll call this one the Black Arrow,”

  “Be that as it may, you know full well the cost of being a self-made superhero,” said Ian and the old man looked down at his legs.

  “Luckily you have nothing to fear, Edward is not a self-made superhero,”

  “I hope that’s true,” said Ian and left the ruined mansion that had once been the Agency’s HQ.