Chris`s
uncle turned slightly, as though to sit on his bed. “May I?”
“Sure,”
Chris said, turning around himself to sit with his legs over the side of the
bed. The crease of the mattress pushed into the folds of his knees.
The mattress
sagged under his uncle’s weight. Henry Wong held Chris’s report in his hand,
with the copied Chinese figures on one side and Chris’s translation on the
other. “Figure it out?” The former Furious Fist asked, running his index finger
over the characters of the original text.
“It’s the Analects, Book Twelve, Chapter 19. Once
I got “Duke of Qiu,” I just put it in Google. Made the rest of the translation
pretty easy.”
Uncle Henry
smiled. “It isn’t mean it to be hard, Chris.
I’m not trying to replace your school work, which, hopefully, you’ll be doing
again tomorrow afternoon.. Not much of a way to celebrate Chinese New Year, I
admit, but your aunt didn’t want you missing any more class time. And we get to see you bat against Old Sarum again.”
Chris looked
down at his lap. He wanted to go back to school, but he couldn’t quite believe
that it was actually going to happen. “What about the hearing?”
“PRIMUS has
backed off. Rashindar will listen to the board. You just have to persuade a
majority of the parents on the Advisory Committee that you’re not some soulless
sociopath. It’s tough, I admit, especially since your aunt has to recuse
herself. You have to get three out of four, but I think that’s doable.” His
uncle paused for a moment, then shuffled Chris’s translation on top of the pile
of papers in his hand. “Now let’s have a look at these characters.”
Chris
frowned. He was unsatisfied with his brush strokes, to say the least. “I don’t
understand why I have to use a brush when everyone on Youtube just uses else a
calligraphy pen.”
“You kids
today with your social media. When I was your age, we had a single Telex
terminal in the basement of the monastery. You had to schedule a session a week
ahead. . .” Uncle Henry trailed off as he stared intently at Chris, gauging his
reaction. “Also, dinosaurs snow uphill both ways.”
“Can you
show me how you swept that Tyrannosaurus’s leg some time?” Chris asked.
“Who told
you about that?” Uncle Henry scowled.
“May. Why?
Is it a secret or something?”
“It wasn’t a
real dinosaur. Just somesupervillain. It’s not right to gloat about beating up
some sad lunatic.”
“Oh.”
His uncle
sighed. “But, yes, I will show you that move. You never know when you’re going
to run into a serious shapeshifting
tyrannosaur. Or allosaur, even. And as for why you have to use a brush, it’s
because you’re a Wudan master in the making. Do you know how many initiates
there are into the inner secrets of Eight Spirit Dragon Kung Fu?”
“Well,
there’s you, and Henry, and May, and me and Charlotte, and, uhm, does Dad
count?”
A sad frown
passed across Uncle Henry’s face, just slow enough that Chris could see it. “He
does now. There’s also Spirit Fist. Not a member of the family, unless May
isn’t telling me something.”
Uncle Henry
paused and smiled. “Or David, come to that. Anyway, the point is that you have
rare and special abilities and you need to learn the skills to go with them.”
He ran his index finger along the line of one of Chris’s strokes. “Would you
let your sword’s point wobble like your brush did, here?”
Chris shook
his head. “No. I think.”
Uncle Henry
raised an eyebrow. “You’re not sure, Chris?”
Chris began
uncertainly. “When I fought my Dad on the boat in Osoyoos Lake on Thursday –or 1934,
or whenever it was, I went for a disarm. My blade was easily an inch off
position. I can`t believe I could be so careless. He was trying to shoot
Charlotte!”
Uncle Henry
put his hand to his chin again as he sat, silent, for a long moment. “What did
you think about the text you translated?”
“Kings have
to be true kings if the kingdom is to flourish. I don`t understand the big
deal. Confucius is always talking about government, but I`m not a king!”
Uncle Henry
flashed a smile. He liked talking about this. “Master Kong taught government
because kings were his students. It was his road to teaching ethics. Yes, kings
have to be true kings, but he mentioned fathers and sons in the same breath for
a reason. We all have to remember our
duties to each other.”
Chris
nodded. “I aimed killing strokes at Dad twice on Thursday. If I hadn’t pulled
them, he’d be dead. That’s terrible, right? A son killing his father?”
Uncle Henry looked
at his nephew for a long time. “Yes, Master Kong would say so. But you were
trying to save your sister.”
“The second
time, anyway. And Morning Glory saved me. Do you think she still likes me,
after what I said to her?” Chris looked his uncle in the eye, intently,
dreading the answer.
“Time will
tell, Chris. But I think that a sincere apology will go a long way. Can you
look her in the eye and tell her that you’re sorry?”
Now it was
Chris’s turn to think. “But I’m right. She
only goes along with Professor Paradigm because she’s confused him with her
Dad.”
Uncle Henry
put his hand on Chris’s shoulder. “Ah, Chris. So prematurely, cynically, wise.
The question is, where is the sly charmer who would know not to blurt that out
loud?”
Chris
blushed. “I don’t want to treat
Morning Glory like a mark!”
“Don’t want,
or can’t?”
“Whenever
I’m with her, I open my mouth, and words just come out. Dad always said that
you couldn’t do that, that it would just get you killed.”
Now Uncle
Henry took Chris’s other shoulder and turned his nephew to face him. Chris felt
the edge of the bed shift under his butt. “Chris, your Dad is a supervillain.
There’s not a person in this world that he can trust with his true feelings.
You don’t have to go down that road. You have nothing to hide from Morning
Glory. But it wouldn’t hurt to be gentle with her feelings. Being abandoned by a parent is hard on kids.”
Chris
nodded. It hadn’t been easy for him, that was for sure. “So I shouldn’t try to
warn Morning Glory about Professor Paradigm?”
Uncle Henry
shrugged. “She strikes me as a smart girl. She probably knows. Help her figure
out why she’s still with him. That’s my advice.”
“How do I do
that?” Chris asked.
“I never
said that it was very good advice. Maybe find her real Dad for her, instead, if
it’s easier.”
Chris’s
phone buzzed. He looked at it. “It’s Tyrell.”
His uncle stood
up, with a pause in mid lift as he dealt with the unimaginable aches and pains
that came with being so very, very old. “I’ll leave you to your social life,
Chris.”
Chris held
up his translation. “What should I do with this?”
“Take more
care with the brush work on the next one.” He opened the door of the room and
stepped halfway through it, leaning back for a moment to look down at his
nephew, a broad smile on his face. “Good night, Chris.”
The moment
the door closed, Chris tapped, “Answer.”
“Hey,
Chris,” he heard Tyrell say.
“Hey,” Chris
answered.
“Want to
come out for a minute?”
“Sure. Who’s
chaperoning?”
“A grownup.”
When Chris
got to the end of the block, Tyrell’s Reliant convertible was nowhere to be
seen. A plain, white minivan that pulled up under the streetlight instead. The
back door slid open, and Tyrell looked at Chris over the seat. “Hey, dude.
We’re going cruising with The Man.”
Chris got
in. The driver looked back at him. He was wearing sunglasses, in spite of being
past 8 at night. “Good evening, Mr. Wong. I’m Agent Smith,” he said.
“Agent
Smith?” Chris snorted as the door closed behind him.
Agent Smith pulled
the SUV out into the road. Once it was in its lane and rolling, he looked up at
the rear view mirror as though to check whether Chris was quite all there. “A
kid named Wong is bugging me about my
name? The reason there are so many ‘Smiths’ around is that there are a lot of
Smiths. You know that, right?”
“Smiths are
common, Wongs are common. All Chinese names are common. That’s how it works.
Have you seen The Matrix, Agent
Smith?”
“Of course
I’ve seen The Matrix,” Agent Smith
answered. “And the other two. It’s part of anti-interrogation training at
PRIMUS now. You learn to resist relentless boredom. And going on too long if
you haven’t got a good story. Speaking of field training, next time, ask to see
my badge before you get in my car, okay?”
“But Tyrell
was right there!” Chris protested.
“Someone who
looks like Tyrell,” the person in the
front seat said, the voice changing as he or she dipped her face into her hands
for a moment, and came up looking like Babs instead. She grinned at Chris.
Tyrell’s
voice came from behind the seat. Chris cricked his neck back to see him leaning
over the seat back. “Awesome, hunh? She’s practically a shapeshifter. Way
better than her brother.”
Babs
snorted. “Of course I’m better than
the pipsqueak. I have a gift.”
“I’ll ask to
see badges next time,” Chris mumbled. “So what have you two been up to?”
Tyrell
glanced at Babs and blushed. “Nothing.”
“Okay then,”
Chris said, rolling his eyes. “What are we up to?”
“We’re doing
a good deed. Visiting the sick.” Tyrell answered.
“Visiting hours
at 8:30 on a Sunday night?” Chris knew hospitals very well, and that didn’t
sound likely.
“PRIMUS
facility, PRIMUS rules,” Agent Smith growled. “And in this case, the rule is
that the annoying teenagers whose Mom rags on the Special Agent in Charge about
how her precious boy isn’t going to miss his first day back at school gets to
see the patient and be home before curfew.”
Chris opened
his mouth to correct the Agent, but shut it again without saying anything. For
some reason, he felt a flush of pleasure at the thought that someone had
mistaken Auntie Ma for his Mom.
Instead he
went for defence. “Why is everyone on my case? “I didn’t ask to be expelled!”
“Yeah,”
Agent Smith growled. “That’s what they all say. And next thing you know,
they’re trying to take over the world.”
Tyrell
hauled out his phone, and they played Minecraft for the rest of the trip, which
wasn’t long. The PRIMUS hospital was only ten minutes from the McNeely Hill
neighbourhood, hidden underneath an abandoned factory. They paused at the
entrance, while Agent Smith handed out ID badges. Chris looked at his. It was a
laminated piece of cardstock with a computer-drawn picture of himself in the
corner that looked like something that you could make for yourself at Kinko’s.
“This doesn’t look very professional,” he pointed out.
Agent Smith
shrugged. “Yeah. Those are temporary passes. We kicked a request for proper
passes upstairs, but it’s been pending all afternoon for some reason. Now come
with me.” He led them down the corridors
and past a series of security stations into a hospital room that looked more
like the kind of laboratory that you see on TV than anything else.
A patient
lay the bed, nestled in a huge machine that connected to a massive hose leading
to a mask that covered his lower face. A doctor stood at the left hand side of
the bed, holding a tablet, while a PRIMUS field trooper in urban camouflage sat
on the right side, his blast rifle propped against his leg and a Kindle laid
down on the bedside table.
“Good
evening. I’m Doctor Braun, and this is Agent Sanchez.”
In spite of
the mask, Chris recognised the patient. “That’s Twelve, isn’t it?” He asked.
The doctor
looked at Chris. “You can actually tell him from the other clone warriors in
his batch?”
Chris
thought about it for a moment. The patient just looked like Twelve, he thought
for a moment. But then he paused for a moment, trying not to think. He heard
the strains of the Heart Sutra in his mind, and the singer sounded more like
Morning Glory than ever. “Yes. I can see
the difference. He and his brothers are one in body, but their souls are their
own.”
Behind him,
Agent Smith slid his foot across the floor. In his hyper-meditative state,
Chris could see the scene as clearly as if he were actually watching it. He knew exactly where and how the Agent was
standing, heard the intake of air that meant that the Agent was about to talk,
and, somehow, even knew that it was not going to be very serious. He wondered
if this were how his Uncle perceived the world all the time.
“Oh, great,
Eastern mysticism to the rescue.” Agent Smith even snorted at the end.
“Exactly,”
Chris answered. “What happened to him?”
“He was fine
up until the day before yesterday, and then his body just shut down,” the
doctor said.
“How? Some
kind of programming?”
“No,” the
doctor said. “A lot of clones that you’ll see, and regular super-agents, too,
have had these automatic loyalty treatments. It’s like a switch in your brain
that someone can set with the right equipment. Probably has something to do
with mirroring neurons. The instincts in the brain that allow us to learn from
example, anyway.”
“But?. . .”
Babs prompted.
“These guys
don’t have that switch. Some people don’t. It’s strange that Teleios is
producing agents without it, since it seems to be genotypical, but it is
genotypical in a non-genetic way.” The doctor paused for a moment. “I should
explain.”
“Don’t
bother,” Chris said. “It’s like their immunity to the Apocalypse Plague. A
metagenetic trait that Teleios can’t manipulate in the lab.”
“Um, yeah,”
said the doctor. “Anyway, Twelve can’t breathe because some nanotech devices
came out of hiding and burnt the part of his brain that’s in charge of
breathing.”
Babs sucked
in a breath of air. “My prisoner is brain dead?”
“The doctor
shook his head. “No. It’s healing back. Which is even weirder. Brains aren’t
supposed to do that. It’ll probably get worse, too.”
“Why?”
Tyrell asked.
“We did a
DNA search to find out who he was cloned from. Archon.”
“The
Sentinels member from the 70s? Flying brick with energy blasts?” Tyrell asked.
“Yes, him.”
Doctor Braun answered. “We need him in Stronghold-class restraints before he starts
showing those superpowers.”
“So let me
guess,” Babs said. “I bet you checked to see if he were a mutant first thing,
right?”
Doctor Braun
nodded.
“And he
wasn’t, but now he’s showing signs of having Archon’s powers. Which are also
‘genotypical’ but not in the DNA.”
The doctor nodded
again.
“Uhm, Doctor
Braun?” Agent Sanchez said, holding his phone. Braun took it.
“Oh, crap,”
he said. “I’m sorry, I can’t answer any more questions. Agent Smith will see
you home.”
“What?”
Tyrell protested. “He’s our prisoner. We’re the ones investigating the
Apocalypse Plague! If you have any useful information, Doctor, we need to hear
it!”
“I’m sorry,
this is orders from the Director’s office,” Doctor Braun said. “We’re in enough
trouble for what we’ve already told you.”
“You’ll be
in even more trouble if the Apocalypse Plague goes epidemic,” Tyrell said,
almost shouting.
“It’s okay,
Ty,” Babs said. “We’ve got what we need. Let’s go home.”
We do? Chris
thought. Well, that was the problem with hanging out with two of the world’s
greatest detectives. You never got to finish your own crossword.
They
followed Agent Smith out of the room. “Our elders are keeping one helluva
secret from us,” Babs said to to the air as they walked down the hall. “But
that’s okay. The more you hide, the more obvious the shape of what’s hidden is.
Chris, are you ready for your hearing?”
Chris
thought about it. He hadn’t realised that it might be the kind of thing that
you had to get ready for.
“I want you
at the match htomorrow afternoon,” Babs continued. “Because we’re going to have a
little conversation with a certain red-headed cave girl.”
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