Chapter 25: 3-5-5 David Morrison

Interlude 3.5.5: David Morrison

2000, July 5: Phoenix, AZ, USA

The world was ending. At any moment, the floor would open up and the yawning maw of Hell would drag me down to where I belonged. The room spun as I desperately tried to focus, to process what Agent Carter was telling me.

Dad's body was found in some gas station like a two-bit druggie. The gas station manager noticed nothing, knew nothing. The security camera was broken, only there to scare casual thieves. We had no leads and a PRT liaison was dead. A Ward liaison was dead.

Dad was dead.

"-some time to yourself." Agent Carter's mouth was moving but the world was still spinning.

'Dad is dead.'

"Ranchero? Ranchero? David?"

'How the fuck was I going to explain this to Josie? Oh fuck. Josie. She's six years old.' I couldn't. I couldn't do this. It'd been dad, me, and Josie for as long as she'd been alive. How was I supposed to tell her she'd never see dad again?

I froze as Agent Carter gave me a tight hug. All I could think about was how she'd never broken decorum like this before and how fucked up I must look if this was her response.

"-to be okay. It's going to be okay," she kept murmuring.

But it wasn't. Dad was dead.

The world spun around me. The floor fell from my feet as the stars came alive. Swirling and spinning and making no sense at all. Dad was my rock. He was the ground I built myself on and now he was gone.

I was in the air.

The stars reached down to me and all faded to black.

X

When I woke up, it was to the sound of a heart monitor beeping away. White ceiling tiles speckled with black greeted me. Fluorescent lights illuminated the overly-sanitized hospital room.

"You're up," came Dr. Marshall's voice. Head physician. Former military man who used his experience dealing with unruly soldiers to deal with unruly troopers and heroes. That meant I was still on base.

I nursed a killer headache. 'What was I doing in the infirmary?'

Then it call came back. I returned from my patrol. I stopped a firefight and arrested eight gangbangers, might have even saved a few lives. I felt tired, but good, like I was making a difference. Then Agent Carter called me into her office; it was strange because a face-to-face meeting was rare; she usually just worked with us over console.

Then… dad.

My heart clenched.

"Doc," I rasped. What happened?"

"You… heard some troubling news, young man. Then you hit your head," Dr. Marshall said in his usual frank tone. "I recommend taking some time to rest."

"No. I know that. Dad… I don't just… collapse like that though. I'm not-"

"You're not, but you did." He placed a firm hand on my shoulder and pushed me down. "Rest up, son. I promise we'll talk about this."

I glanced at the clock. "I-But Josie…"

"We know. We had her picked up from school and brought here. Lovely young lady. She's having a blast getting autographs from Echo and Redbird."

Echo. Redbird. Protectorate Team One. Temporarily on loan to Protectorate Team Two. They were good people. I let out a sigh of relief and sank into the pillow. I felt tired, more tired than I'd ever felt in my life. Exhaustion settled in my bones like a physical weight, like sediment building against my joints, making every motion a struggle. The last time I'd felt something like this was… was when mom died…

"Doc?"

"Yes, son?"

"Can a person trigger twice?"

He was silent for a long moment. "Yes, David. Yes, they can. It has been observed that if a parahuman receives the same sorts of physical and emotional stimulus that resulted in their original trigger, their power can mutate, removing some of the restrictions they worked under previously."

I laid there and piled that information atop the mountain of other things I needed to process. "Shit," I said finally.

"Quite."

I let out a watery laugh. "Power testing is going to suck so much."

I thought I saw his mouth twitch upwards a little. "Yes, yes it will."

We bantered back and forth, him indulging in more of my bitching than he'd ever had before. It was all a distraction of course, to get my mind focused on anything else but the fact that dad was dead.

I clung to it like a lifeline, desperate for anything to shield me from my own thoughts.

X

2000, July 7: Phoenix, AZ, USA

I finally told Josie.

I insisted. She deserved to hear it from me. Dad was dead and was never coming home. Could a six year old really understand? She wasn't some freaky genius like Rubedo, and she was younger than him besides.

Yes. Yes she could.

I held her as she bawled and hit me and wailed into my chest. Every cry of abject despair ripped through me, tearing the wound open again.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," I whispered, tears rolling down my cheeks. I was the cape. I was the hero. I was the one with powers. I was supposed to save the day and make everything better.

But I didn't.

I couldn't.

Dad was dead.

X

Funny thing about the five stages of grief: They're not so much stages as they are stations, like bus stops or subways. I felt like a pinball, my mind bouncing from despair to denial to anger to acceptance and back around again.

In my better moments, there was a bit of pride there too. Dad died in the line of duty. He died protecting a child, right? Rubedo was alive somewhere because of dad, right?

I had to believe that, that he didn't die for nothing.

I was pissed. At dad for dying. At myself for not being there and not being able to help even now. At Rubedo for being so fucking brilliant, becoming a goddamn target. At whoever took him. At the PRT. At myself all over again for being pissed.

The shrinks saw me. They encouraged me to talk about my trigger, said talking would help.

It wasn't anything new. I'd done it before when I first joined the Wards. It had helped.

So I talked again, rehashing old ground, tearing open old wounds.

I triggered a bit after Josie was born, when mom died. I blamed her. The eggheads said my trigger was almost getting run over by Uncle Elliott's stud bulls when I was twelve, but they're wrong. It's never just one thing. It's never just one thing.

When mom died, dad moved us back to his family ranch, the ranch Uncle Elliott inherited from grandpa. It was a stud farm and stud bulls are mean. The idyllic image of black and white spotted cows grazing in a tranquil meadow? Yeah, those are dairy cows. Stud cows compete for mates, claim territory, and will gore everything that even looks at them wrong.

I hated them. I hated farm life. I hated waking up with the sun and taking care of smelly animals.

I wanted mom back. I wanted home back.

And one day, I messed up. I didn't lock up right and the stud bulls got out in the night. I knew they'd wreck the neighbor's farm so I went out to go get them. I fucked up. I turned a mistake into a fight for my life. I still don't know how I lost half my ear.

Maybe a stud bull bit me; God knows those fuckers are mean enough. Maybe I fell and cut something.

I fucked up and when I woke up again, golden bulls were driving the herd back into our farm.

It was too late. They wrecked a good $90,000 worth of the neighbor's farm and Uncle Elliott lashed me hard for it.

Triggers ain't ever just one thing, but mom dying was the start, the catalyst. New home. New life. New worries. New stresses. New sister. Everything came back to mom. I missed mom.

Talking… It didn't help much. It was too raw. Dad was still in the morgue, couldn't even bury him yet.

When I triggered, dad was the one who set me straight. He moved us back to the city and started working at the PRT. Being a sheriff before we left probably helped landing that job.

He talked to me. He got me help. He made sure I was setting in with the Wards nicely. He was my rock, the reason I moved forward each day.

And he was dead.

X

2000, July 7: Phoenix, AZ, USA

There was a melancholic cloud hanging over the Wards common room. Truthfully, Rubedo didn't spend much time in the common room, always cooped up in his lab as he was. His absence wasn't anything new, but there was now a sense of foreboding that came with his empty seat.

Whoever took Rubedo had leaked the kidnapping of a Ward and it had played merry hell with the morale of the city. In comparison, the death of a PRT agent was almost a footnote, forgotten amidst the drama. Part of me was grateful for it; dad never liked being the center of attention, but part of me felt like he was being forgotten much too soon.

The news of a Ward's kidnapping led to some sweeping changes for us. We couldn't be sure just whose information had been leaked and so Director Lyons was working under the assumption that absolutely no one's secret identity was safe. She'd pulled absolutely everyone related to a hero into witness protection, sending them out of the city altogether, likely Tucson.

The rest of the Wards had been recalled as well. It was likely that the perpetrators wouldn't target another Ward for a long while, but no one wanted to take any chances.

This left Raquel on base trying and failing to get her homeschool work done. Jazz had on a chef's hat and was baker her way through a small supermarket's worth of flour. I didn't know she was a stress-baker. I would have found it funny if things weren't so dire.

And as for my lovely girlfriend?

She was taking Rubedo's absence especially hard. She considered the team her family, treated Rubedo like a baby brother, so felt that it was her fault somehow, never mind the irrationality of it. Penelope hadn't left her room in days. She combed through every news article, cape dossier, and investigation report in the vain hope of finding a clue that the detectives had missed.

I sat on the couch, head in my hands as I tried to figure out how I could help. Not that the PRT would let any of us help at all. Penelope and I were eighteen now, Protectorate age, but so long as we were legally Wards, we were off active duty.

I wanted to find Rubedo. What I'd do when I did, I didn't know. Did I want to punch him? Hug him?

I wanted to settle things for Josie as fast as I could. I was eighteen. I could claim guardianship. It'd be hard, but I could do it.

Truthfully, not an insignificant part of me wanted to leave, to quit being a hero. My faith in the PRT was shattered. Rubedo was kidnapped from his home. How long would it take before Josie became a target?

But I couldn't leave. Leaving meant being an eighteen year old with no job. I could make it work if it was just me, but I had to think of my sister now. There was no way in hell the courts would let me keep her around if I didn't even have a steady income.

"Ranchero?" Agent Carter called over the intercoms. She'd been taking over for dad's role as Wards liaison lately. "Director Lyons would like to speak with you. Please make your way to her office."

I got up to obey and allowed a faint glimmer of hope to ignite. Maybe she found something.

X

"Sit down, David," Director Lyons said as I walked in. She looked older than when I last saw her, the stress of her job carving lines into her brow. She took a long dip of her coffee before letting out a depressed sigh. "How are you holding up?"

White hot flashes of anger sparked within me. "How am I doing? How the hell am I doing? Dad's dead!" I yelled. "Dad's dead and we don't have a fucking clue who did it!"

"Dav-"

"Don't 'David' me, director. Unless you're about to tell me who killed dad so I can rip him apart, we don't have shit to talk about," I snarled.

It went on like that for too long. The floodgates were opened. Everything I'd held back spilled out like water from a broken dam and I just… I couldn't stop. Everything that hurt, every grievance I had with the PRT, with the world, just spilled from my mouth in an unceasing wave of word-vomit. Until finally, I ran out of breath. I was breathing hard, tears running down my face.

I knew she wasn't at fault, not truly. But at the moment, I didn't care. I glared at her heatedly. Right now, she represented everything I found wrong with the world, with this fucked up system that left me in charge of a six year old girl.

We stared at each other for a long minute.

"I'm sorry," she said finally. She seemed to age a decade before my eyes. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry the PRT information network wasn't secure enough. I'm sorry that it was your father who paid the ultimate price. I'm sorry that words won't ever be enough."

"Director, I-"

"No, you're right. Words like 'He died in the line of duty,' are just that, pretty words. I can only try to make things easier for you. Not right, that ship's sailed. But maybe, I can help. I called you here to talk about what the PRT can do for you moving forward. I want to hear from you. You've always been a mature young man. What can I do for you, David?"

'I want out,' I wanted to say. I couldn't though. The past few days had forced me to do a bit of studying and soul-searching.

A Protectorate hero was on the G-schedule for federal pay. There was some wiggle room for negotiation, but generally, a new hero entered at GS-10. Heroes who'd worked as a Ward were a little different though. Our years as Wards counted as experience, meaning I'd be allowed to enter at GS-12. It was more money than a high school graduate with no college education or work experience could ever hope to make on his own.

It was the only way I'd have the kind of income needed to support Josie.

I settled for the next best thing. "I want a transfer," I said, voice hard. "I'm sorry, director. I didn't mean a lot of what I said, but I just can't trust the PRT here anymore. I need to leave."

"Understandable. You have every right. You'll graduate into a branch of choice. I take it you have no intention of parting form your sister?"

"No, ma'am. I can't," my voice broke, "I can't leave my sister here. Not even with Uncle Elliott and Aunt Mary. She's… She's the only one left. I need to take her out of here. Somewhere safer."

She nodded and produced three manila folders. "I expected as much. I took the initiative to draw up three possible stations for you, but I recommend Albuquerque, New Mexico. Director Watson is a good man and runs a tight ship. It's also a city with only a third of our population and nowhere near as many capes. It's safe and I think you'd do well there. He owes me a favor so I don't think there will be a fuss in organizing a transfer. And if there are any… political… issues, I'm willing to throw my weight around a little. It's the least I can do."

"When… When would I leave?"

"You'll graduate with the current batch in a month or so. This should give you the chance to say goodbye."

"Thank you, director," I said honestly.

"I'm just doing my best to look out for one of my own. There are a few more things however. His funeral. The PRT will of course handle everything while working with you and your uncle. He'll be buried with full honors and his life insurance paid out to you in accordance with his will."

"Thank you, director," I said again, though now I was swallowing a lump in my throat.

There was a sense of permanence to it, talking about dad's funeral. Still, needs must and I spoke with the director at length about what dad would have wanted. When I left her office, I wasn't happy, far from it, but it was with a weight off my shoulders.