Age of Power 1: Legacy (35 page)

I walked out, as I
did,
I heard a
slight gasp behind me, followed by her muttering something in Gaelic. I smiled,
hoping that I’d broken through a wall that had been up since before the chaos
had started. Since meeting her, I had always had a feeling that Dana felt
responsible for what Alex had done. She wasn’t. I knew that Alex was
responsible for his own choices from the moment he had thrown that brick at
James Jessup to his flight into space. Once Alex decided something, he carried
it through, no matter the consequences. And I’d thought he was a sociopath for
doing such a thing.
Not anymore.

Outside, I looked up and saw that the sky was bright with
twinkling stars that shone on this moonless evening. I took in the air,
smelling the coming spring. It was a good smell. It was the smell of the coming
spring. For a few moments, it gave me a moment of peace.

A falling star crossed the night sky, flickering away. Sighing,
I went through the gate and walked to the bench, noticing snow melting in
patches around the yard and on the trees. Sitting down, I looked at the shadowy
oak, trying to let my mind process things. I needed to do this. It wouldn’t be
long before something new happened.

Somewhere, a madwoman was gathering a group of super humans. She
was going to come here, and she was going to destroy the town where I’d grown
up. And it was from some insane idea to start a new war between good and evil—no,
rephrase that, between heroes and villains. Thank you, BJ.

No, that wasn’t fair. True, he had been the one to give her the
idea. He had likely told her everything about comic books and their stories. At
least, I think he did, if he wasn’t joking about that table. Ugh. But if taking
over the world was the direction that Yasmine had already been
considering...then BJ had given her a way to do it.

A phrase from an old movie came to mind. 
“Good cannot exist
without evil, and evil cannot exist without good.”
 The filmmaker, M.
Night Shyamalan, had said that about the archetypes of his superhero
movie, 
Unbreakable
. And, while the movie was where I’d first heard
the phrase, historically, it stemmed from a philosopher of the 1200s, Thomas
Aquinas. This was the basis of every superhero conflict in comics, stories, and
legends since the ancient Greeks, and long before even that.

So, of course, BJ had walked right into it. He was a comic geek
like me, and he had super powers that
had literally been
given
to him by Alex. Put the crisis with magnesium aside, and I can see
the fun of having powers. I might’ve done the same thing. But things had gotten
too serious for me from the very beginning. Now, I had to deal with the
consequences of him talking with Yasmine about it. It was all fun and games
until someone lost a life.

I dropped my head in my hands with a sigh. I couldn’t fight
something like that! If Yasmine managed to pull this off, the worship of the
superhuman would be just the beginning. I fought against that sort of thing
when I tried to get Alex’s story out to the world.
And if I
had to do that again…

I muttered to myself, “I can’t. I can’t do this again. It’s too
damn big for me.”

I heard boots on snow, and I glanced up to see Dana walking out
to the patio. She stopped at the corner of the patio and touched a switch on
the corner. Behind me, light shone in pastel blue and rose. It reflected softly
off the snow in the yard.

She said, “Hi, I figured you might like company.”

I nodded and gave her room to sit down as she joined me. We sat
there for a while. In the distance, I could hear the sounds of traffic and a
couple helicopters above. I tensed when she sat down, but then forced myself to
relax. I was just too on edge. But right then, I couldn’t afford to be.

After a bit, I said, “I can’t do this.”

I felt Dana’s hand rubbing my back. But she said nothing. I took
a breath and said, “Back in the hospital, I realized it. I can’t do this
anymore. I quit.”

My next words came out in a sort of tumble. My emotions were
finally coming out after I’d bottled them up for so long. “They took my best
friend. My brother, a guy I would die to save, and now, it’s his body, his
face, but the thing running it, is a program made by Yasmine.”

I looked at her and said, “I…I just can’t go on. Right now, Mom
and Dad are at home, watching television, maybe snuggling together on the
couch, and I don’t know what to say to them. I have the power to blow apart
buildings, and I can’t begin to tell them what I can do.

“And Brand is alive, but he’s someone else. An angry,
hate-filled Brand exists instead of the guy I remember.
And
if I have to fight him.
I don’t know if I can win, or what I might have
to do 
to
 win. And I can’t even think of what I can possibly
say to his parents.”

Looking at the tree across the yard, I let out a breath of air,
watching it waft away. Softly, I said, “I can’t do it. I can’t go play hero.
Somebody else has to. If I do it, people are going to die. And I’m going to lose
something important, I know I will.”

Who
was I kidding? I was
a kid. I’d grown up in a family split between Riverlite and Chicago. Powers or
no, what could I possibly do to stop this insanity? Yasmine was going to come
in and take it all away. And from what I had heard so far, I’d be dealing with
a lot more than her soon enough. I needed a way out, an answer that could stop
the war before it started. I needed help, and I just hoped that people would
listen.

Leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, Dana gestured to
the tree in front of us. “I put that tree here when I moved in two years ago.
It was what made me decide to get the place.”

“Why?”

“It was a memorial to what I lost…
who
 I lost.” The
sadness in her voice was back again. The same sadness I’d heard in San
Francisco.

I put a hand on her knee, squeezing it slightly. “You told me
about training, but it never occurred to me why you left the city and came
here. I’m sorry, Dana.”

She nodded and sighed. “Yeah, Maria warned me not to
fall too hard for him. Care, yes, but not fall in love with him. She said I
would be hurt.”

Dana said, “I couldn’t go on. 
Not without
Ian.
 And it was so unfair. He had just asked me to marry him. I had
this wonderful fantasy of us being a psychic duo, going out into the world and
helping the gifted. He was the same thing Alex was, a telekinetic. He even had
some limited telepathy. Oh, and the fun part was that he could make ectoplasmic
illusions.”

I gave her a skeptical look. “Ectoplasm—isn’t that stuff that
charlatans used in the 1800s to pull off hoaxes with?”

If Yasmine hadn’t just put me through hell, Dana’s glare might
have bothered me. Just the same, I said, “Okay. I believe you.”

Dana gave a slight snort and said, “He couldn’t do much with it.
You can think of it as a sort of a field of energy that becomes solid in the
form shaped by the ectoplasm’s manipulator. Ian would manipulate it into the
shape of roses.”

“And they looked real?” I asked.

“To a point.
Have you ever seen a substance called aerogel? It looks literally like smoke,
but it’s an extremely light material that looks like blue smoke and feels like
Styrofoam to the touch. That’s sort of what Ian’s roses looked like.” Dana
said. She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. I saw that her eyes were
distant, as if remembering. She probably was.

“Illusion…?” I asked. At her confused look, I said, “You said
‘illusion.’ But if the stuff becomes solid…why is it an illusion?”

“Oh. Sorry. It’s because the material he creates disappears the moment
he stops concentrating on it. So…it’s real, but it’s not. Understand?”

I gave her a nod. Then I asked the hard question. “Dana, what
happened with Ian?”

Dana took a moment before answering. She looked into the night,
silent. Then, after a sharp intake of breath, she exhaled and said, “It was
raining that night, and he promised to come back. I’d just said yes to his
proposal. I called BJ, and we talked for a while. But time passed and Ian
didn’t come back. And he didn’t call. So I decided to go to his place. But, as
I went out to my car, I saw him. He was just standing there in the rain. I
called out to him, asking why he hadn’t come back in.”

She hesitated. The pain of loss was in her voice. I reached out,
and she took my hand for support. “I heard a whisper. He said goodbye, and then
he disappeared.”

Dana took a deep breath, and, fighting through the pain, she
said, “I nearly killed myself getting to his apartment. I rushed into the
apartment house and up the stairs. I remember that I almost broke the key to
get into his apartment. But…”

I said softly, “Dana, you don’t have to go on.”

She shook her head, and a look of hard determination showed in
her eyes. “The place was completely empty. Dust was all over the place. I’ve
been there before—multiple times, in fact—and it was as if nobody lived there
for years.”

I said, “What?
How?”

Dana shook her head. “I confronted Mrs. Gullaney, the building’s
landlady. She didn’t even know me. I’d said hello to her half a dozen times
before, but nope, she didn’t know me. And she swore that she’d never had anyone
in that apartment because it leaked from the bathroom ceiling. But I had
showered with him—hell, I had sex with him there. I left and checked
every place and everyone who’d ever talked to him or knew him. And it was as if
he just never existed, not to anyone. He never existed.”

Dana leaned back and looked at me. “I gave up. But Caryn and
Maria, and BJ—oh, that funny little brat brother of mine—they pulled me
through. After that, though, I couldn’t take on any others. I was out of the
witchcraft business, the coven. And I came here to make sure I’d never have to
do it again.”

“And saw Alex.”

Dana laughed, but it was bitter sounding. Then she said, “Yes,
it’s as if the Goddess was laughing at me. I swear Gaia was daring me to
walk away and watch him end either his life or fall into madness. Once he
trusted me enough to tell me what was wrong, I understood his problem all too
well. Those gifted with telekinesis can literally feel the world around them.

Dana’s face took on a wistful expression. “Ian had the same
problem. And I helped Alex…in the same exact way I helped Ian.”

I looked at her for a moment before I asked, “Did you expect him
to disappear like Ian did?”

After a few seconds, she nodded. I didn’t say anything to that.
What could I say? After all, Alex did disappear in his own way. It was just a
really public
way of doing it. I now had to wonder…wait, BJ
was his boyfriend…my brows furrowed. “Dana, if BJ knew about you and Ian—”

“—Why did he get together with Alex?” she asked knowingly. I
nodded.

Dana cocked her head, giving me a half smile. “BJ and Alex were
close, but Alex knew that BJ was a bit of a free bird. BJ cared about Alex, but
those two weren’t ready to settle down. If anything, I think BJ expected Alex
to leave, like all the others we’ve trained.”

“Ouch. Had to be hard, just the same,” I thought aloud.
Overhead, I heard the whispers of birds flying. It was about time.

Dana sighed. “When you suggested that the New Men might have
been people we trained, I didn’t want to accept the idea. I still don’t. But,
one by one, they’ve all left us, and we’ve never heard from any of them again.
Ian was an outlier, though. He literally vanished from everyone’s memories.
Now, I have to wonder, if everyone, but
us
have
forgotten all those people.

I said, “You still remember him, though. BJ does, and I’m
guessing your coven does, too?”

She nodded and I went on, “And it sounds like Caryn and Maria
remember having trained psychics. So it wasn’t total memory loss.”

Dana shrugged and said, “Why should we forget them? We were
training them. It’s been our calling since the early 1970s.”

I took a breath and sat in silence for a bit. If this was their
way of developing the gifted, then the New Men sounded cruel. No, I didn’t want
to deal with this on top of my own problems.

To distract myself, I looked at the tree and said, “I’m sorry. I
never meant to bring up so many bad memories. I didn’t know why you’d come here
except to be near your dad. I never saw any pictures of him in the house so it
never really clicked in my mind that it might be more personal.”

Reaching out, she took me into a tight hug. Eh, it was that kind
of thing, a good friend bonding moment. And that’s what we were—friends.
Nothing more, nothing less.

Dana smiled and said. “It’s not your fault. No one started this.
It’s just…it’s just how things happened.”

Still smiling, Dana pulled back and said, “And as for a picture
of Ian…”

She pulled out her wallet from a back pocket. It
was filled
with pictures of her life, and she flipped
through the various scenes until she stopped at one particular photo. She said,
“This was taken at the Pacific Mall Walk a year after he started to train with
us.”