Something Left

            It was well past midnight when Ian made it back to the house. The first thing he did was head to his room and kiss Danny lightly on her cheek as she slept. She smiled as she always did. Instead of joining her, Ian made his way to the rooftop patio.

  “You’re the last person I expected to find up here,” said Ian as he noticed Devon looking out over the town. “We’ve been looking for you, where the hell have you been,”

  “The Project 8 offices,” said Devon.

  “You look like crap,” Ian said as he noted Devon’s torn and blood-stained clothes, not to mention the cuts to his face and back.

  “You should see the other guy,”

  “No doubt I won’t have the chance,”

  “Where’s Ed?”

  “At Prime, giving CNet an earful because the info he gave us on your location was useless,”

            After Ian and Ed had dealt with the assassins, they had searched the area from top to bottom but could find no clue as to where Devon was or what he had been doing there. They gave up after an hour.

            Now Ian and Dev stood in silence. Ian went to the bar and got two beers out of the fridge, one of which he offered to Dev who took it without a word and downed half of it.

  “Do you ever regret it?” Devon asked finally.

  “Regret what?”

  “This, all of this. The lies, the killing, the running,”

  “No,”

  “You’ve become a better liar,”

  “And you’ve become worse at discerning the truth,”

  “You honestly don’t regret any of it?”

  “No, it doesn’t help living in the past or thinking ‘what if’. What’s done is done,” Ian said and they were silent for a while, then, “I’m sorry for my part in Melisa’s death,”

  “It wasn’t your fault, if anything it was mine. If I had just let them kill her instead of her twin then Aaliyah wouldn’t have been captured, JR wouldn’t have gotten the Mind Fuck and we would never have been in that Cage,”

  “You cannot be sure of that, all of that might still have happened. The only difference would have been the lack of Melisa in all of it. And in your bed,”

            Again silence reigned amongst them, during which time both of them finished their beers.

  “I’m leaving early this morning, I’ve got some leads to follow up on,” said Dev solemnly.

  “You know, you could stay and help us,”

  “No, they will not fear me if I stay. I must hunt them and hurt them in ways they haven’t been hurt before,”

  “My blade is light and my heart heavy at what must be done,” Ian recited.

  “My steps sure and my spirit weary at the path I must follow,” Dev answered.

  “But I will strike forth from the darkness,”

  “And bring about the light of day,”

  “We’ll miss you,” said Ian and he held out his hand towards Devon.

  “And I will miss all of you,” he said and shook his hand.

  “But you’d better be back for the wedding, if you think the Council are a problem, you’ve yet to see Danny angry,”

  “Have you? Seen Danny angry,”

  “Only once, though I think that was barely angry, and probably the only reason Ed and I survived,”

  “Then I’ll be sure not to miss it. See you around, man,” said Dev and he headed for the stairs and the door.

  “See you around,” Ian echoed as he looked out over the town.

            The next morning Ian made his way over to Connor’s bar to talk to Safu. While he waited, he ordered a can of Cream Soda, as he felt it was too early to drink. A man sat down next to him at the bar and ordered vodka. The voice was familiar to Ian but it was only when he looked at the man that he realized who it was.

  “You’ve cost me a good deal of money, mister Erasmus. I thought it would take you much longer to attack the Cage,” said the man they only knew as Elizabeth’s brother. “Tell me, though, was it worth it? Worth the death of one of your own, and now the ever present fear that something might happen to that beautiful blond doctor of yours?”

  “I’ll warn you this once, touch Danny and the Devil will be the least of your worries in this life and the next,” Ian said calmly as he drank his Cream Soda.

  “I wouldn’t dream of touching her,” he said downing his vodka and getting up off of the barstool he occupied, “much,” he added and left.

            Ian had half a mind to follow the man out the bar and beat his head in with his bare fists, he could almost taste the salty spray of blood as he thought about it, but the thought died a quick death as he spied Safu on the other side of the bar beckoning him.

            The plane was already well into the sky when Devon finally relaxed a little. He had three small cuts on his right cheek and a nasty gash at the base of his hairline but they had been cleaned and disinfected.

            He lay back slightly in his first class seat and closed his eyes. Devon was tired as hell and until now he hadn’t dared to close his eyes let alone sleep. If he didn’t need to blink, he wouldn’t have.

            As he closed his eyes, flashbacks from his encounter in the office flooded back to him. He was looking at the damaged screen with the Shadow coming up behind him. As it lashed out towards his neck, Devon flung himself to the ground and drew the pistol hidden under the desk.

            He fired off every round but the Shadow moved with such speed that he missed almost every shot. Almost. One of them must have hit at least because a small splatter of blood was left on the wall behind the Shadow and it had made a terrible sound.

  So it bleeds, that means it can die, Devon remembers thinking.

            When his ammo had been depleted, Devon had rushed at the Shadow, but it was too powerful and flung Devon through the rhino walling and out of the Project 8 offices all together. That was how he escaped. That and a well-placed claymore.

  “Excuse me,” said the air hostess and Devon wrenched his eyes open. “Chicken or beef?”

  “This child is important,” said Safu.

            They were gathered in Connor’s office, much to his annoyance, and they had asked him to leave so they may talk in private, much to his annoyance. Yet Connor always obeyed without question. A good trait in a grunt but a useless one for an agent.

  “I have no doubt about that,” started Ian, “but Stronghold Prime is no place for a kid. Augmented or no,”

  “That’s just it, I cannot find any trace of Augs on the child, yet her reflexes are beyond her years. Eyesight is better than mine even,”

  “And you’ve got the eyes of an eagle,” Ian said, troubled.

  “Exactly, this child…my wife could help take care of her,”

  “That might be a start, but Prime-”

  “With CNet there it’s the safest place in South Africa, hell in the whole Africa. Which reminds me, that AI of yours is too smart for its own good,”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It hacked into my laptop and my email accounts, now it keeps telling me when I get emails while I’m there,”

  “It’s just helping, or trying to,”

  “Yes, well, I think computers are too smart already without you giving them ‘life’,”

  “Well, I can’t stop it now, even if I want to enslave CNet,”

  “Can you enslave a program any more than a toaster?” asked Safu.

  “And the girl? If she is biomechanoid, would she be a program or a toaster?” Ian asked in return.

            In truth neither of them had an answer to their own question let alone the others.