Eric felt himself spiraling up from the murky darkness, confused, disoriented. He couldn’t remember where he was or why his head was filled with such pain. It hurt to think. His eyes fluttered open just a crack, but the world out there was too bright. It drove nails of agony into his brain. He wanted only to return to that comforting depth, back into the numbness. But the pain followed him back down, driving him out again.
He groaned and tried to open his eyes once more, squinting into the brilliant sunlight.
Tree branches hovered overhead, crisscrossing his blurred vision. The illusion was only more confusing. Where was he? Why did he hurt so much? What happened to him?
Then he remembered Aiden. The strange, golden liquid. The cowboy…
He sat up, wincing at the pain in his head and back.
The cowboy!
“There you are,” said a voice from behind him.
Eric turned, startled, expecting to see the cowboy hovering over him, perhaps ready to give him another demonstration with the shotgun, this time showing him the business end of the weapon.
But the cowboy wasn’t there. Neither was Aiden. Nor Paul. The man sitting casually on the ground beneath a pair of bushy maple trees wore dark glasses and a pink shirt with a matching tie.
“Welcome back.”
“You…”
“Me.”
Eric glanced around. They appeared to be alone. There was no sign of the cowboy.
“The other guy left,” explained Pink Shirt. “He took something of yours, I believe.”
Something of his? Eric looked down at himself, trying to remember. Then it occurred to him. The stone! He searched the forest floor around him, but it was gone.
“Was it important?”
Eric closed his eyes and tried to think. “I don’t know,” he confessed. He didn’t have a lot of time to examine it, but he was fairly certain there was nothing on it but the two letters. A and G. “Probably not,” he decided.
Pink Shirt watched him from behind his dark sunglasses and did not speak. He sat cross-legged on the ground, the mottled sunlight cascading down on him, his hands in his lap. He looked very Zen.
At least those shades looked more natural out here in the sunshine than they had in the gloomy interior of the asylum and the dark doorway of the motel.
Eric stood up and checked his pockets. He still had his wallet and keys. He still had Karen’s phone. (Thank God.) He pulled the phone out and checked to make sure he hadn’t broken it in his tumble from the train or his mad dash through the woods. As soon as he touched the screen, he received a text from Isabelle.
I’M HERE
That was good.
Eric looked up at the man in the pink shirt. “What are you doing here?”
“Checking on you.”
“Me?”
“You.”
Why did these guys like talking in circles so much? “Why me?”
“I had a feeling you were going to get yourself in trouble again.”
“You helped us back at the motel.”
He shrugged. “You looked like you could use a head start.”
Eric couldn’t say it wasn’t appreciated. “Who is that guy?”
“A colleague.”
“You work with him?”
“I work…parallel to him.”
Eric stared at the man, confused. “What does that mean?”
“Primarily, it means we don’t necessarily share the same goals.”
“And what are your goals? What do you hope to find here?”
“I’m only here to find what’s hidden.”
“And what do you think is hidden in Creek Bend?”
“Maybe lots of things. You never know until you look.”
Eric pointed a finger at him. “You’re very evasive. You know that, right?”
“Sorry. But I answer to some very intimidating people. I tend to avoid saying too much when I can help it. Wouldn’t want to get myself in trouble.”
The people he worked for were intimidating? That was a scary thought.
Eric rubbed tiredly at the lump on his temple. The cowboy hadn’t held back a bit. “What the hell was up with that guy? He was everywhere.”
Pink Shirt nodded. “Those damn projections of his.”
“Projections…” Of course. Back at the restaurant. The man sat there and told him right to his face that he could make them look like anything he wanted. That surely included copies of himself. He felt like an idiot for not realizing it immediately. “Damn it.”
Pink Shirt gave him a sympathetic smile.
It didn’t improve Eric’s impression of him.
“What about that goo that attacked us in the railroad car back there? What was that? Another projection?”
Pink Shirt raised an eyebrow behind those intimidating shades. “Aura plasma.”
“What?”
“Dangerous stuff.”
“Really?” Eric recalled watching Aiden’s spare clothes dissolve before his eyes. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“It can disintegrate a human body on contact, leaving almost no trace.”
“Almost?”
“It’s a messy process. Sometimes it leaves a stain.”
Eric cringed at the mental image this gave him. “Have you seen it happen?”
“Once. I’d rather not see it again. It wasn’t pretty.”
“I imagine not.”
“They say he does it by manipulating his own aura.”
“His aura?”
“The energy field surrounding every living thing on the planet. Somehow, he has the ability to churn his own aura into a physical substance and bend it to his will.”
Eric found it disturbing to think that anyone could possess such a power. But it wasn’t so different from creating projections. Or golems. He’d been told once that creating golems might have something to do with channeling one’s own soul into whatever would become the monster.
He wondered if the two things were related.
“It’s beautiful when it’s not trying to kill you.”
Eric had witnessed its beauty in exceptional detail back at the asylum. Knowing what it was capable of, it gave him a chill to remember standing in that queer, upside-down rain. What prevented it from turning him into a stain right then and there?
“It’s terrifying in large quantities, but even a single drop can cause a world of trouble. It’s almost invisible. And they say it sees and hears for him. The perfect spy tool.”
Eric recalled glimpsing the golden bead on the headrest of his PT Cruiser when he went to retrieve the iPhone charger. He also recalled a tiny flash of gold in one of the motel sinks. At the time, he’d assumed that he was merely jumpy and that it had only been a brief reflection from the doorway. And now that he was thinking back, he recalled that feeling of being watched while exploring the first floor of the asylum, before he’d even seen the strange, golden fluid.
He already knew that the cowboy had been there. He was chased from the building by the same projection he encountered at the restaurant. It made sense. If these two worked together, they’d probably arrived together and then split up to search the building.
Pink Shirt stared up at him. “That’s how he’s been tracking you all day. A single drop, lingering at each of the hidden places, waiting for you to arrive, listening to all your conversations, watching everything happen. He probably had one hidden on your body somewhere, too, in your pocket or your shoelaces or even your hair, following you around town, spying.”
Eric realized that he was right. It erupted out of Aiden’s backpack when they found the stone. It must have been inside somewhere, along for the ride. That was how the cowboy kept finding them.
He was a fool. He took Paul and Aiden to the library, thinking they were alone, but all he did was feed the son of a bitch all the information he needed. Instead of keeping everyone safe, he led the deranged redneck right to them.
“Why didn’t he kill me when he had the chance?”
“A good question. One of two reasons, I’d guess. Either he’s not sure he’s done with you yet, or he intends to wait until he’s done with what he came here for so he can take his time with you. He was pretty pissed off, after all.”
Eric cursed.
“Indeed.”
He closed his eyes and rubbed at his aching head again. “So clearly this guy’s a lot smarter than he looks. And infinitely more dangerous.”
Pink Shirt offered him an amused grin. “Clearly.”
“But that doesn’t explain why you’re helping me.”
“As I already told you, we don’t share the same goals.”
“But you work for the same people.”
“True.”
“And so did the people who murdered Aiden’s mentor five years ago.”
The man was silent for a moment. “Yes. I thought that might come up.”
“So it’s true.”
Finally, the man stood up. “It’s true. But I doubt you have the whole story.”
“Then would you care to share it?”
The man sighed. “His name was Glen Normer. He was a seer. A high-profile target. He was…eliminated.”
“Murdered.”
Pink Shirt shrugged. “Semantics.”
“So they were hunting seers.”
“No. They were hunting rogue agents.”
“Rogue… Wait… What?”
“Normer was one of ours. Until he went AWOL. I’m guessing he never shared that bit of intel with his little friend.”
“I guess he didn’t.”
“Normer was an information gatherer. His exceptional abilities as a seer made him a valuable asset to the company. My bosses aren’t in the business of giving away unnecessary information, so officially, I don’t know much about it.”
Eric recalled his last encounter with a mysterious organization. It sounded like everything was handled on a need-to-know basis. And very little ever needed to be known. This was all sounding more and more familiar.
“Unofficially, however, I’ve heard plenty of rumors on the subject. They say he found something really big. Something that could change the world.”
Eric recalled Aiden’s claims that Glen believed he’d found some kind of profound secret of the universe hidden within the unseen locations around the world. Surely it wasn’t true…
“I didn’t believe it. I mean, maybe he thought he found something like that. Information gatherers, in general, sometimes have a way of…losing touch with reality. But I can’t help but think that if he’d really found something like that, the higher-ups would’ve wanted it for themselves. Instead, when they finally found him, after almost twenty years of searching, no less, they simply eliminated him on the spot.”
That seemed like a very valid point. If it was true, then why wouldn’t they have dragged him back to whatever evil lair served as the organization’s headquarters? After all Aiden had told him, he found it difficult to believe Glen Normer would have relinquished such important information to his captors without extreme coercion.
“But about a week ago, I was sent here because someone was tripping the alarms left behind by the team that took out Normer.”
“Alarms?”
Pink Shirt nodded. “Apparently, they wanted to know if anyone ever came back to snoop around this area again.”
“That’s what you two are doing here now.” He’d wondered why everyone was suddenly very interested in Creek Bend.
“Exactly. My…partner…” he said the word as if it offended him. “He and I were sent here to find out why people were nosing around and report back. But the problem is that I can’t seem to stop wondering about something.” He clasped his hands behind his back and began pacing back and forth in the limited area the trees allowed him. “If Normer was just a crazy deserter, then why did they leave alarms behind to alert them to someone snooping around? I mean what would it matter?”
“It does seem fishy,” Eric agreed.
“It does. And if there’s any chance that Normer was right, that there really is some big secret out there that could change the entire world… I have to tell you, I’m not sure I want my superiors to have it.”
“Wouldn’t that make you rogue, too?”
“It would. I’m not saying it won’t paint a huge target on my back, but you don’t know what these people are capable of. Something made Normer go rogue, which is basically suicide. I’m here to find out what. If it really is what he thought it was, I’m going to make sure they can’t find it. And I need your help to do it.”
“My help? What makes you think I can help? I just stumbled into all this a few hours ago.”
“And yet, look how far you’ve come.”
Eric wasn’t sure how to respond. Sure he’d made some discoveries, but it was Aiden who understood what was going on here.
“That kid has Normer’s research, but we’ve been watching him since we first arrived in this town. He didn’t make any headway until you showed up. I don’t think he’s the one who’s going to find it. I think it’s you.”
Eric stared at him for a moment, considering. “Even if that’s true, I don’t know where to go next. Aiden’s gone. Spooked bad, if he’s anything like me. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again. And your fat friend just ran off with the only clue we had anyway.”
“Leave that to me. I’ll get it back.”
“Leave it to you? I don’t even know your name.”
“That’s true.”
Eric waited. When it was obvious the man wasn’t going to say anything more, he said, “And you’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“Technically, we’re not supposed to tell anyone outside of the organization our names.”
“You just told me Normer’s name.”
“Normer isn’t a part of the organization anymore.”
“I guess you’ve got me there.” Eric recalled his encounter with the mysterious foggy man the previous year. He, too, refused to give his name, although he never told him why. More and more it was looking like this was the same organization. He’d hoped not to be dealing with the same people. He did, after all, have something to do with the death of one of their men. Also, he possessed sensitive information about another rogue agent still on the run, a Mr. William Loneskey, better known to Eric as Father Billy.
But then again, he supposed it was far better that there weren’t two such terrifying organizations out there.
“What about the aura plasma?” asked Eric. “If that guy can spy on anyone, couldn’t he be listening in right now?”
The man gave him another of those smug grins. “Don’t worry about that. I found a way to block him for short periods of time. He won’t ever know we had this talk.”
Eric wasn’t sure about this.
“We’re on the same side,” promised Pink Shirt. “You just have to trust me.”
Eric considered his options. He didn’t have many. Begrudgingly, he nodded. “Okay.”
“Excellent. I’ll get back your clue. You see if you can find that kid again.”
Without waiting for a reply, the man in the pink shirt walked past him and disappeared into the woods.
When he could no longer hear him moving through the brush, Karen’s cell phone alerted him to a new text message.
YOU DON’T REALLY TRUST HIM
It wasn’t a question. She could read his mind.
Some of what that man said had rung true, but Eric sensed strongly that he was still lying about something. Maybe most things. “I don’t.”