“The Catalyst” Series
		“Touring Under Pressure”
		Crumbly Writer All rights reserved © 2012
	Home | “An Unknown Attraction” | “Trying To Be Normal” | “Normalcy Is Harder” | “Racing the Clock” | “Touring Under Pressure” | Contact me

16:  Another Lady in the Night

           

“Man, I can’t believe this is happening to us,” Wendy Branch said to Sarah Mitchell, someone she’d only known for a couple of hours but already felt was closer to her than her own sister.

“I know what you mean,” Sarah responded. “My whole life was changed in a single moment, in just the amount of time it takes to make eye contact with an angel.”

Alex had asked Wendy about her name after they’d met earlier, and she’d sighed. “My father was always a practical joker, he wanted to name me ‘Windy’, but my mother compromised on a ‘standard girl’s name’. At least they didn’t name me ‘Broken’ or ‘Twisted’.”

The two women encountered Alex at the Diane Washington concert at the Cardinal’s Stadium just outside Phoenix. He’d knocked their world askew and they felt honored to have been boosted. They knew what it entailed and had no problems with it. In fact, they were not only looking forward to it, they would have traded almost anything they had for the honor.

Cate dropped back a bit, moving close enough to the two girls to whisper. “I think you’re making Alex nervous. He’s uncomfortable enough with this, if you could ease back on the whole adoration thing; I think he’d appreciate it.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Sarah said with an effervescent enthusiasm which belied her promise to tone her attitude down.

Sarah was naturally bubbly. A young, positive individual with short dark hair and facial features which marked her Semitic roots, even her muted pink blouse and shorts marked her outlook on life, so Cate didn’t think she’d be able to dissuade her for long. She’d been hoping she could keep it under control until they reached the room at least.

Wendy, on the other hand was a bit mousey, with clear pale skin, wavy brownish, almost oily, hair, and the wide eyes of those Alex had recently won over. That was fine, but she tended to echo Sarah’s enthusiasm, which only compounded the problem.

Returning from the concert late at night, they parked at a parking lot a short distance from the hotel so Cate could stop at a convenience store to pick up some food for Alex. It had been an interesting day. Despite the news reports about him, so far no one had linked the activity to Alex, nor to the famed Angel of New Orleans. Alex had been right in his perception of the area around the hotel, there hadn’t been a lot of activity around it, and while the various sports and arts venues were nearby, their limited access prevented anyone attending from seeking Alex out. Thus they hadn’t met many followers. They’d picked up a few Seekers, but hadn’t met any Seers.

The concert had been different, though, as many people were drawn both by Patricia’s growing reputation and also due to her appearance on the morning news program. It hadn’t taken the Seekers and Seers in the audience long to find him, as they’d been told by Patricia to ‘trust your feelings and seek out what you feel you can trust’. Wendy and Sarah were two of those; the two Alex selected to share his bed for the night.

He’d chosen Sarah because of her attitude, figuring her happy persona would make the others in the community feel welcomed. Wendy he’d chosen because, although she was very shy and reticent, she was connected to several social organizations and had contacts with a great many people, groups and services she could call on to help the others in the community, and to help temper any negative reactions to Alex which might pop up in the future. Sarah was a Seer, while Wendy was a Seeker.

Coming around the corner, after Cate had finished purchasing her supplies for her brother, a young blonde woman standing on the corner noticed them and approached Alex specifically.

“Uh oh,” was Gail’s only comment.

“Hey, there, looks like a party. Need any company?” the woman, hardly more than a girl, asked, mistaking Cate’s bag of cookies for an alcohol stash.

The woman, while pretty, looked a bit world weary. She was extremely thin, with bags under her eyes her makeup tried vainly to hide, and looked a bit like life had driven over her with a Mack truck. She was wearing a light olive halter top with the straps to her black bra showing, along with a combination black miniskirt and matching black hosiery. It didn’t take much to figure out why she was interested in them.

“Look, if you knew who he really was, you wouldn’t be propositioning him,” Gail cautioned her, though it was probably too cautious of a warning for her to understand.

“Why, is he famous or something?” she asked, her eyes growing brighter as she thought she might have hit a good mark.

“No, he’s a friggin’ angel, bitch,” Sarah hissed, growing defensive of Alex and marching up to face the woman down. “Now back away, he’s feeling stressed enough. He doesn’t need a common street whore making his life more difficult.”

“An angel, huh? I figured he must have something going for him to be trailing so many beautiful women,” the woman responded. “Personally, I think we should let him decide himself,” she said as she sidled up to him, slipping her hand into his pocket, though whether it was to grab any bills Alex had there or to grab his junk, Alex wasn’t sure.

“He’s not a John,” Wendy said, betraying her mousey image by sticking up for Alex. “He’s a religious figure that’s going to change the world.”

“Hell, I’ve done plenty of ‘religious figures’ before. I don’t discriminate on the basis of either blasphemy or hypocrisy,” the woman responded, showing she was brighter than they’d anticipated, even if she wasn’t exactly aiming to achieve a lot in life on the basis of her intelligence.

Gail was moving towards the woman when Alex held up his hand, waving her off. “What’s your name, honey?” Alex asked, putting on a southern persona with the unusual endearment.

“It’s Suzy,” she answered in a deep melodious voice, while grabbing Alex’s cock via his pocket. He gently pressed her back, not taking his eyes off her face the entire time.

“No, I mean your real name.”

She seemed stunned he’d ask her that, but was even more surprised when she answered him. “It’s Sasha. Sasha Gorev.”

“Wait,” Cate interjected, “isn’t Sasha a shortened version of the Russian name Aleksandra?”

“Da,” Sasha answered without thinking about it, stepping back and glancing at the people around her in some confusion.

“Man, this just gets weirder and weirder,” Cate commented to no one in particular. “Out of all the people in the world to run into, we encounter a random hooker, and she ends up somehow tied to Alex through some spiritual relationship we can’t understand.”

Alex ignored Cate’s ramblings, not wanting to get sidetracked. “Do you really want to be doing this?” Alex asked her in a carefully measured tone, ignoring everyone else. Sasha couldn’t help it, she felt pulled in by the caring expression in his eyes. For some odd reason she felt she could trust him, even though she didn’t know him from any other John who’d use her without any concern for her feelings or safety.

“I … I no know,” she responded, struggling for a response.

“Do you want to get out of the life you find yourself in?” Alex pressed. “Or are you happy with your position?”

Sasha, in a moment of weakness, felt her eyes grow damp. “I want to. I feel trapped. I no have green card and I have no options.”

“We can take care of that, but only if you’re serious. I’m not going to help you if you’re not fully committed to this. That means no going back to your pimp. If you so much as return for a few possessions, he’ll try to talk you out of it. Quite persuasively, too, I’m sure, as he’ll likely question my motives and whether you can trust me or not.”

“I …” she started, again hesitating before seemingly making up her mind. “I have a young son. I can’t leave him behind,” she said, suddenly looking very worried.

“OK. We’ll take care of him. I want you to go with Sarah and Wendy. You’re going to buy a bus ticket to New Orleans and wait for us. You’re going to have to renounce this lifestyle, because I won’t have you taking advantage of my people there. If you backslide, it’ll be your soul you’re putting in jeopardy here and not just your life. Do you understand?” Alex asked her, laying it on a bit thick, but it was a conscious choice on his part, because he wanted her to know just how serious this decision was. He didn’t want her getting cold feet in a couple of hours.

“I understand,” she said, looking him directly in the eyes in honesty for the first time since meeting him. “You’ll get my son, Jason, for me though, won’t you?”

“Yes, we will.”

“I’ve also stashed some money away, in case I ever needed it. The rest of my possessions don’t amount to much, so I won’t worry if I lose them, but the money could ensure Jason and I survive for a little while.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll need to give us some detailed information, but—”

“Uh, Alex, I hate to interrupt, but don’t you think we should discuss this before you commit us to it?” Gail asked him.

“I’m not turning my back on her. I’m sure it’s going to be dangerous, but I’m also confident you’ll be able to think of a way of handling it for me,” he answered her, effectively shutting her up.

“All right, everyone, we’ve got a new item on the agenda. Let’s see how quickly we can handle it,” Alex announced, hoping to get everyone moving on an issue he felt queasy about undertaking himself.

---

Alex walked right into the sleazy dive like he lived there, and while the occupants of the boarding house stared at him, no one tried to stop him. Actually, that isn’t quite true, he walked in like he owned the place, since most of the inhabitants lived in constant fear of the place. Even if they wanted to say something, the look in Gail’s eyes as she marched behind him would have made them back down.

Alex hurried upstairs, showing an energy and enthusiasm the other occupants seemed to be lacking. They reached apartment 312B without anyone questioning them. Alex already had the key in the lock before anyone did.

“What the hell are you doing?” someone called out. Alex didn’t even bother looking up, concentrating on opening the door, but Gail backed up as if surprised, pressing herself against the far wall, where she could measure who was responding. He was a large man, tall but thin, with a grizzled look, a stubby unshaven jawline, and a conniving gleam in his eyes, as if he knew he could control anyone stupid enough to backtalk him.

“Hey, I’m talking to you. Get away from Suzy’s door before I break your fucking leg!” the man shouted.

Gail seemed to shrink even further into the wall, backing away from Alex, which meant the man ignored her as immaterial as he closed on Alex.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t know any Suzy. We’re here to pick up Sasha’s things,” Alex told him, finally turning to face him now that he had the door opened.

“Sasha Gorev no longer exists,” the man sneered as he neared Alex, reaching out and grasping his wrist. However, before either one could say anything, Gail walked up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. When he spun around to confront her, she simply stepped back. Letting go of Alex, he turned on her, reaching out to grab her, however she spun around grasping his hand, flipping him over using his own momentum in a Ju-Jitsu move that ended with him flat on his back with Gail’s forearm against his throat.

He glanced up into Gail’s eyes with a panicky expression.

“We aren’t here to dick around, jerk.” Gail spoke in a low pitched whisper, forcing the man to strain to understand her. The effect was intimidating. “We just offed Sasha. She’s buried out in the desert where her body will never be found, so don’t worry about her coming back. But we wanted to take care of her kid to make sure no one bothers to investigate. I figure it’s safe to assume you won’t be ‘investigating’, am I right in that assumption?”

Even though he couldn’t breathe and was having trouble fighting off the panicked response to continue breathing, he managed to nod yes.

“That’s what I thought. Now you just be a good boy and wait here patiently, or I might feel the need to cut you a new asshole in your throat so I can shit down it. It that understood?”

He again nodded, still clutching at her arm.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? That you’d like to breathe? You really should have thought of that before you tried to grab me, now, shouldn’t you? No, don’t bother to answer. It was a purely rhetorical question. I’ll give you enough air to survive, but just enough. You try to pull anything, though, and you’ll be breathing through a hole in your forehead, got it?”

She didn’t wait for a response as she pulled back slightly so the guy could breathe, even though he had to struggle to do so. While the two of them were conversing, Alex had quietly slipped inside the apartment. He managed to find Sasha’s son, Jason, cowering behind his bed in his tiny room.

“Hey, Jason, don’t worry. I’m here to rescue you from this terrible place. Your mother is waiting for you, but you’ll have to grab your stuff so we can get away from here. We’ve got to leave quickly, so you can’t pack much. The people here have been hurting your mom, so she can’t stay here anymore. But we’ll take you to a new home where your friends will be real, and not the types living here.”

When Jason didn’t respond immediately, Alex said, “Your mom said to trust me, Litl lyudyna. I’m here to help.”

That seemed enough to convince him. He still didn’t say anything, but Alex was able to get him out from behind his bed, and he set him to packing his stuff into his school bag while Alex set about checking out the apartment on his own. He could hear gasping breaths coming from the hall, so he figured Gail had things well in hand. She’d let him know if anyone else showed up. He quickly found a heavy dresser in Sasha’s bedroom. Moving it away from the wall he found the covered hole in the back, where he found a handful of bills. It was a decent sized bundle, but Alex didn’t bother to look, not even enough to see if the bills were singles or hundreds. Instead he simply pocketed it, then moved the dresser back and grabbed a handful of clothing which he shoved into an empty pillowcase.

When he was finished, he returned to Jason’s room to get him.

“You’ll have to carry this,” he explained. “I’ll probably need to keep my hands free.” With that, he led the young boy out of his room and out of the apartment for the final time.

The young lad was cute. While he didn’t have the bleach blonde looks of his mother, his hair was still light, and he bore enough similarity to his mother for Alex to see they were both related. Jason had a short haircut and was healthy, certainly healthier than his mother was. Alex took that to mean she had her priorities straight, and that hopefully she cared enough about her son to make a serious go of this one chance she had at turning their lives around.

When they entered the hallway Jason stopped to gape at Gail holding the man, still gasping for breath, against the floor. Alex quietly relocked the door, ignoring the looks of the neighbors peeking through their partially opened doors, then approached the man. He carefully took the man’s right hand which had been grasping Gail’s arm, no longer struggling with her, but ready for a chance to ease his breathing if she offered it.

“Grigori, just to ensure you’re not going to cause us any trouble, I’m disabling your hand,” Alex said, calling him by his Russian name as he released the one hand and picked up the other. “You won’t be able to hold anything for some hours, so I’d be careful about picking up things like, say, telephones or weapons. After all, we don’t want you to shoot yourself when you fumble and drop whatever you pick up.”

“Should I disable his vocal cords?” he asked Gail.

“Nah, I’ll take care of it the old fashioned way,” she told him, making Grigori glance at her nervously.

Finished, Alex stood, held out his hand for Jason, and when he took it led him down the hall away from the man and Gail.

“Uh, is she coming with us?” Jason asked.

“She’ll be along shortly. I suspect she didn’t want to hurt him while you were still looking,” Alex casually told him. The little boy glanced back, then turned and followed along, not bothering to question Alex’s assertion. Gail caught up to them when they reached the street, and they took off at a quick trot, hoping to escape before anyone else tried to stop them. Alex realized they were really lucky there wasn’t anyone else trying to stop them, potentially someone with a gun and a couple of friends. But Alex wasn’t completely sure that luck alone could account for it, even though he hated to consider the alternatives.

---

Alex and Jason approached the waiting women, who were sitting around a little table drinking coffee and discussing their options.

“I have someone who’d like to say hello,” Alex said by way of greeting.

Sasha, who hadn’t been expecting him to approach from that direction, spun around.

“Mommy!”

“Jason! Thank God you’re OK. Thank you, whoever you are. I know the other girls think you’re someone important, but I never even got your name.”

“Don’t worry about it, it wasn’t anything. And don’t fret about who I am, but when you get to New Orleans, head to the French Quarter and ask any of the locals there for help and mention that Alex sent you. It may take a few tries before you find someone who’ll know what you’re talking about, but when you do they’ll take care of you. But just remember, if you screw up, it’ll be on you. I won’t give you another chance. This is your last shot at a new life. Grab onto it with both hands. I’ll arrange for someone to meet you to discuss citizenship issues. Hopefully you can work out an asylum deal with the government. But if you so much as make a single phone call, all bets are off. No one in New Orleans will have anything to do with you, and you won’t hear from me again. Got it?”

“Da, I understand. I’ll do my best. I’ve been praying we could get away, but they always say we have no options and police would only arrest me, beat me and ship me back home to the Russian mob. I never knew how to get away. After having lived here for years, I still don’t know much about the country. They kept us pretty tightly controlled.”

“You seem to be pretty well educated. I’m guessing you weren’t a high-school dropout?”

“We call it ‘secondary school’,” she explained. “But no, I had a good university education in business outside of Moscow, but someone with some prestige offered me a chance to sign a modeling career in America, and I took it with the blessings of my family. Only when I got here, I found myself in a brothel against my will. When I fought, I was raped and beaten. That’s where Jason came from. Once he was born I lost most of my will to fight. They’ve used him to control me ever since.”

“Grigori sends this, and his love. He wanted me to convey that he hopes you do well in your new life,” Alex said, as he pressed the wad of cash into her hand.

“Really? Grigori said that?” she asked disbelievingly.

“Well, he really couldn’t say much at the time, but that seemed to be his intent. He didn’t seem to be terribly interested in coming after you at the time.”

“I have no idea how you pulled this off. Any one of those men would have killed you, and the rest of us, without having a second thought as easily as they would have taken out the garbage. But I want to thank you, and I promise I won’t let you down.”

“Well, excuse me, but this is no place to be talking about this. After all, you never know who may be listening. How long until the bus leaves?”

“Not long, only another half an hour.”

“Good, now be careful. Don’t talk to anyone until you leave the state, and don’t go with anyone who tries to talk to you. If anyone tries to force you, stay on the bus and scream as loudly as you can. There’s no way we can be sure someone didn’t follow you, so you’ll need to be cautious. Once you’ve left the state you should be safe to strike up normal conversations, but I’d suggest changing buses along the way to make sure you aren’t being followed. Since we bought your ticket with cash they can’t trace your bus tickets, but still….”

She nodded and gave him a big hug. When she finished, Jason did the same. “Thank you, mister. I’m glad to get away from all those bad men.”

“Hey, there are always bad men around. That’s why it’s important for good men like us to stand up to them whenever we have the chance.” With that Alex said his goodbyes and they left, hoping to draw off anyone who might be watching.

Cate gave her brother a knowing look. “You know just how irresponsible that was, don’t you?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I’m perfectly aware of it.”

“Good, I’m just checking,” she answered. “By the way, where’s Gail?”

“She’s maintaining a watch for anyone keeping track of our little family. She’ll be along shortly. Let’s just duck into this late night coffee shop. That should allow anyone trailing us to show up. If no one does by the time her bus takes off, we should be clear to leave.”

Cate eyed her brother oddly. “You certainly take all this subterfuge in stride, don’t you?”

“Ha, you don’t think an angel is afraid of a petty criminal, do you?” Wendy asked, suddenly brave in the knowledge that she was under the protection of someone with connections.

“Don’t mention that word too casually,” Alex quietly told her. “So far, no one has made the connection here, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“And don’t think they don’t get hurt either. Al… he’s been hurt plenty of times. However, he always manages to slink away by the skin of his teeth. However, I’m afraid that skin is beginning to get a little long in the tooth, as they say,” Cate concluded with a smile, grinning at her bad pun. However, it was just the right touch for the overwrought crew, and they laughed.

“Actually, I had plans if anything happened, so I wasn’t completely unprepared,” he explained, not giving any details. “Actually, I was almost hoping something would happen, just so I could try a few things. But you never know what’ll happen when you try something for the first time.”

Cate knew better than to respond, but she gave her brother a dubious look. Perhaps being so close to death and staring it in the face daily, gave him a false sense of confidence. He just didn’t seem to realize how much everything depended on his sticking around and on his staying out of danger. But she knew she couldn’t convince him of that.

---

“Alex…, Alex, wake up.”

“Hmm, mrmph umph?”

“Alex, you need to get up, something is happening,” another voice said, poking him in the side trying to rouse him.

“Argh, it’s the middle of the bloody night. If I’m going to change the world, I need my bloody sleep.”

“Hell, it may be night for you, but not for us,” someone that Alex, in his sleepy state, couldn’t immediately identify said. “But you’ve got to get up. This is important.”

“Here, let me through. Alex, this is Cate. Get the hell up! We have a crisis here.”

“OK, OK, I’m up. What the hell is wrong?” he asked, groggily sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

“Your aura is too bright,” a woman Alex now recognized as Sarah said. “It’s bad enough sleeping with you normally. With all the lights turned out, it’s like every light in the room is on at the same time, but we deal with it by always facing away from you. Why do you think you’re always spooning us from behind? But now the light is just too bright. There’s something wrong.”

“Huh? My invisible light is too bright? What the hell does that mean?”

“We don’t know, but we figure it must mean something,” Wendy said.

“Do you feel different?” Cate asked him. “Do you feel winded, tired? Do you feel any strange sensations?”

“No, I just feel like someone woke me from a sound sleep for something I can’t quite work out.”

“Well, you might not be able to feel anything, but I could feel you from the other bed. It feels like I’ve been curled up with you all night. I’m positively tingling with your energy. You’ve got to be giving off a lot more energy than you normally do.”

“I don’t feel anything unusual, and I don’t feel any more tired than usual. Again, you just woke me up, so of course I feel tired, but it’s not like I’m physically exhausted, and I’m not having an attack like I do when I overexert myself.”

‘Alex, what’s going on?’ Patricia’s voice asked from inside his head. ‘I woke up because your aura is filling the room over here with too much light to sleep. This isn’t usual and I’m concerned that—’

‘No, I’m fine. We’re trying to figure out what’s going on, but I feel fine. It seems my BCM energy output has spiked for some reason.’

“What was that about?” Cate asked, once again recognizing when Alex was having a telepathic conversation.

“Apparently my aura woke Patricia in the other room. It must be a lot brighter if it woke her up over that distance and with so many intervening walls.”

“So you don’t feel differently at all?” Gail asked him, looking concerned. Well, she seemed concerned. It was really hard to tell without any lights.

“Could someone turn a light on? The rest of you may be blinded, but I can’t see much at all.”

Gail, who was the only one standing and not sitting on the bed with him, turned the overhead light on. It didn’t really make any difference to her, since his aura was washing out any details the light might reveal. As she did, the connecting door opened and Patricia entered, trailing several tired looking people behind her.

“Have you figured anything out yet?” she asked.

“No. What do the rest of you feel?” Gail said. “Wendy, you’re a Seeker, can you feel anything different?”

“Yeah, it’s like Cate suggested, I can feel it. It’s like having my finger in a light socket. After the initial shock has passed, that is. It’s like my skin is vibrating and I feel incredibly alive and aware, like I want to get up and dance or something, just to burn off this excess energy and because I just feel so good.”

“Yet, you feel so good you want to wake me up and rub my nose in it?” Alex asked snidely.

“No, we’re concerned something is wrong,” she answered back. Not happy at being accused of treating this lightly.

“She has a point, Alex,” Cate said. “We’re already dealing with your burning yourself out because of the energy your body is processing. If the energy level is increasing, then the risk to you would rise as well. This could potentially be quite threatening to you, and it begs questioning.”

“OK, then, let’s figure it out. What’s different?” Alex asked, sitting up and concentrating on what was going on. “What’s changed between last night and now?”

“Maybe it’s a new ability?” Wendy suggested. “Maybe the fight you were in triggered an increase in your abilities?”

“I don’t think his abilities have anything to do with his BCM levels, at least not in that direction,” Cate explained. “He gets most of his abilities from the BCM, so I don’t think it would make sense for an increase in his abilities to increase them. That’s a reverse attribute. But maybe he’s increased his ability to process the energy, and so he’s giving off more BCM because he’s absorbing less of it himself?”

“Do you really think that’s true?” Gail asked, sounding skeptical about the idea.

“No, I guess not. After all, we’ve decided the BCM is probably bleeding over from his portal to another location, so an increase in energy would probably mean the portal has increased in size. That would suggest Alex has done something to himself, since he’s the only one who can create those portals.”

“Hell, I was asleep. How the hell could I do internal surgery on myself while I’m asleep?” Alex asked.

“Alex, you do all this stuff unconsciously,” Gail interjected. “You’re never aware of any of it, and quite frankly, if you ever stopped to think about what you’re actually doing, you probably couldn’t do it.”

“OK, so the general idea is that I somehow did some magical operation in my head for no apparent reason, with no motivation or purpose. Then why the hell haven’t I been doing the same thing for the last 18 years? We’ve examined my brain scans. There aren’t that many holes in my head. If this kind of thing occurs randomly, my head would look like Swiss cheese.”

“Maybe not,” Patricia offered. “When you boost us, the ‘hole’ in our heads doesn’t increase. Instead you seem to create a stronger link in our heads. At least that’s the prevalent idea we’re relying on at the moment. So maybe your brain simply increased the size of the portal, which wouldn’t necessarily correlate to the physical dimensions of the gap in your brain.”

“Either that, or you created a new linkage in some new area,” Gail suggested. “After all, you typically create these things in empty areas of the brain. Maybe you’ve created a new portal for some new reason?”

“But then for what purpose?” Alex asked. “So I can die that much sooner? Because I’ll tell you, from an evolutionary standpoint, that would be a big drawback to having this particular trait.”

“We don’t know if there is a reason for it or not at this point,” Cate emphasized. “Right now we just know something has changed. We have no explanations for what’s happened, so we’ll just have to wait for more observational evidence to appear. Once we have more data to work with, we can start formalizing explanations.”

“Are we likely to observe much data between now and … say 7 a.m.?” Alex asked.

“Uh, no,” she hesitantly replied.

“Then how about we put the whole issue, and ourselves, to bed, since I can’t see how we can get any more evidence than we have at the moment, and I’m still sleepy.”

“You have a point. We’ve established you are giving off more BCM energy. Chances are we won’t know any more until we see whether it varies, or if there are any other symptoms which might shed some light on it.”

“Good, then I’m going back to sleep,” Alex announced, rolling over dramatically to show he considered the conversation finished.

“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but it’s too bright in here for me. Patricia, could we sleep in your room with you?” Sarah asked.

“It’s pretty bright in there, too,” Patricia replied. “I’d suggest we trade rooms with Chelsea and Jordan. Their room is farther away and thus a bit more protected.”

“Hell, even that might not be far enough,” Sarah commented. “I hate to say it, but maybe I’d better head home?”

“You can if you want,” Wendy responded, “but seeing how this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and he’s going to be gone in another day, I’m willing to stay up all night rather than miss the opportunity to spend time with him. After all, we’ve each stayed up all night to party before, haven’t we?”

“Um, present party excluded,” Cate said. “I’m still too young to get into any clubs that stay open all night.”

“Some rock star groupie you’re turning out to be,” Patricia teased, ignoring the grumbling noises Alex was making into his pillow, where he currently had his head buried. “All right, I’ll trade rooms with Chelsea and Jordan. Anyone who wants to can either use my room, assuming the extra energy isn’t as obnoxious to the Seekers, or share Chelsea’s with me.”

“No, Wendy has a point. It doesn’t make sense to piss away an opportunity like this just because I can’t sleep,” Sarah responded. “I’d rather spend the time here, although I likely won’t be able to sleep. So if anyone is interested in playing some cards or something, since it’s too bright in here to do much reading at the moment.”

“Don’t worry, I doubt I’ll be able to sleep either, since I’ve got to stay here to guard him. We can stay awake and gossip about him, I can tell you all the juicy little secrets I’ve got about him. He’ll hear it all as static in the back of his head, but it’ll serve him right for keeping us awake all night.”

“Look, it’s really not that I’m unconcerned or that I want to hurt any of you,” Alex said, rolling over and addressing them once again, “but it’s just that there doesn’t seem to be anything that I can do about it. I’m thinking the best thing is for me to rest up, so when we head out in the morning I’ll be awake enough to figure out any clues we receive about it during the day.”

“Well, if no one else wants to cuddle with you, I will,” Cate offered, to which Alex simply grumbled and turned over again, offering his back to anyone wanting to cuddle it. Everyone decided how they wanted to handle the situation as best they could, and they each found their own sleeping arrangements, but Alex’s sleep was sufficiently disturbed that it took him a long time to fall back asleep himself. After all, this wasn’t really a matter of simply not getting more sleep. This could literally mean another drastic reduction in his lifespan, which already appeared to have been radically shortened as it was. That thought did more to keep him awake than anything else.

---

“So, how’s my aura this morning? Still brighter than normal?” Alex asked as he climbed out of bed, still rubbing his eyes. These late night ‘after concert sexcapades’ took their toll, even when he wasn’t woken up in the middle of the night afterwards.

“It’s still as bright as it was last night,” Gail told him. She was sitting with both Sarah and Wendy, playing cards and talking quietly, each facing away from him. Cate, too, had abandoned his bed, sitting cross-legged on the other one.

“Et tu, Brute?” Alex asked.

“Si, Kimosabe,” she replied. “I got all of your energy I could stand. After a bit I felt like my skin was going to slide right off of me. I don’t know how you handle it.”

“Honestly, I can’t feel any difference. But if you can feel it that strongly….”

“Don’t forget, I’ve got my own ability to detect you, but this is the first time I’ve ever had too much exposure to you.”

“That’s right,” Wendy replied, turning to address him. “I got out of bed simply because I was missing all the stories about you. It’s been a very educational night for me,” she said, flashing him a knowing smile.

“Well, don’t believe all the stories you hear,” Alex cautioned her, “because chances are that while they’re likely all true, I’m trying to build a movement based on something less than that.”

“You mean the mysterious Alexandra no one’s ever seen?” she asked.

“Yeah, exactly. I initially used her to throw people off my track, or at least to take some of the pressure off of me, but it’s becoming a bit of an issue now. As Gail taught me, you need to keep your lies simple so you can remember them. So far it’s a pretty simple story, but it’s a different story for the Seers, and a separate one for both the Seekers and the type 3s.”

“What, why I do declare, how could you ever have deceived me so,” Wendy responded, resting her hand on her forehead and acting like she was about to faint. Although Alex thought it a clever comeback, he wasn’t about to get into it. Instead he headed for the bathroom to relieve both his bladder and himself of his morning wood.

“Hey, you gotta quit moving around,” Patricia called out as she entered the room. “We had to sleep facing away from you in the other room, despite the obstacles, but when you start moving around it defeats the purpose.”

“Yeah, your glow is way too bright today,” Sarah agreed.

“Sorry, I’ll see if my sour disposition spoils my morning-after glow,” Alex replied, giving himself a finishing shake before rejoining the others.

“Speaking of which, I—” Patricia said before she was cut off by the ringing of the hotel phone in her room. However, instead of answering she stopped to consider it first.

“That’s odd. Who the hell would be trying to contact me now?”

“I have no idea,” Jordan answered. “Could it be your manager or the Stadium?”

“Nah, Henry won’t wake up for another couple of hours, and the Stadium knows better than to contact rock stars this early in the day. They tend to get nasty when you wake them from a serious hangover.” She stopped to think about it for another moment. “Alex, I think you’d better come along and listen in. I have a feeling this may be concerning you.”

That got Alex’s attention, and a number of possibilities sprang to mind, from the police wondering why they’d found a body with his name written on its palm in the desert, or possibly a pimp’s muscle calling to threaten him. But instead of worrying about invented scenarios he followed Patricia, not stopping to pull on pants first. Cate and Gail followed, which meant the other girls trailed along as well.

As they entered Patricia’s room, they observed Chelsea and Jordan sleepily glancing at the phone, not quite awake enough to answer it themselves.

“Hello?” Patricia said, answering the phone informally, not knowing who might be calling.

“Yeah, I remember you.  After all, the interview was only yesterday,” she responded, letting the others in the room know who was calling. After another moment she rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yes, I was there. I know what happened. Look, I really don’t want to discuss it. I’m not one of these young stars who want everyone to talk about them. I’m older and I have a life I like to keep private. We were there purely by chance, and we responded just because we were there before anyone else was. Besides, despite getting there right after the accident, we really didn’t do anything.”

She listened again to the response before continuing, letting Alex follow along with the other half of the conversation.

‘That’s certainly surprising, and while it sounds nice, I find it a bit hard to believe. However, it wasn’t you we were interested in. We were more interested in the young man who was helping the injured people,’ Nancy Atkins, the news reporter, said in a less than ingratiating manner.

“There were several people there at the scene. You’ll have to be more specific,” Patricia answered, not even attempting to help her at all.

‘The one we have recordings of praying over them. The one everyone on the scene is reporting healed the victims.’

“Do you seriously expect me to answer that? You really want me to respond to some wild-assed story about a laying on of hands by someone no one has even spoken with?”

‘And how would you know who we’ve spoken to?’ Nancy asked pointedly.

“You wouldn’t be calling me, asking me if I knew the young man, if you had already managed to locate him,” Patricia told her plainly.

‘So, that doesn’t answer the question, do you know him or not?’

“I know of him. But tell me just how much you know?” Patricia asked, trying to fish for how much they’d already dug up. If they’d gotten hold of the police records, which clearly listed Alex as traveling on her tour bus, there really wasn’t much use in denying it.

‘Just that you were the first on the scene, were seen working with him, and that you talked to him repeatedly. We’re trying to reach him. We figure it would be an interesting story.’

“There really isn’t much to tell. He got there when we did and he was trying to help, but there really wasn’t much that any of us could do. The people had injuries that required hospitalization. We tried to make them feel better, but that was all we could do. One of my security people, an ex-cop, tried to—”

‘Yeah, yeah, that’s fascinating. All our reports mention this young man knelt and prayed over each of the injured people and they recovered. Can you either confirm or deny those reports?’

“Personally, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, as there’s no story here. The man you’re looking for didn’t actually do anything. Before he got there, my security person got to the older man who was thrown from his car. She checked him out, saw that his condition was stable, and went to check on the other injured people in the other car. She didn’t want to take any chances trying to do anything with him, since she suspected he might have internal injuries.”

‘Well, you’re right about that. From what we gathered, he had a broken hip and a number of other injuries. But they also report he had had a major heart attack, and his heart wasn’t beating at that point.’

“Oh, really? And who might your source be? Someone with an EKG machine standing on the side, while the rest of us were trying to help as best we could until the ambulance arrived. As I said, when we got on the scene he was stable. I have no idea what caused the accident, as he crossed into oncoming traffic and ran right into the other car, but he was stable when we left him. I saw the man you’re referring to, and frankly, all he did was try to listen to his heart. The kid didn’t even know enough to check his pulse. Instead he tried to place his ear on his chest. However, when he did the guy woke up, surprising the hell out of the kid.”

‘Really? That’s not what we heard?’

“Yeah, that’s what I figured. What other wonderful information did you hear?”

‘They said he went over to the other car, where someone else was standing on the side, and he got the woman breathing again.’

“Yeah, you really need to check your sources. She had a punctured lung, so she was gasping for breath. This kid gets there just as she’s recovering from her initial shock. He reacted so badly, she had to get control over herself in order to calm him down. She managed to get her own breathing under control, but she still was struggling for breath.”

‘But wasn’t he praying over her? We have multiple reports of—’

“He was trying to listen to her lung by pressing his face against her breast. He got so panicky at being caught, he was hyperventilating,” Patricia told her, feeling especially creative trying to play down the story.

‘So you contend he didn’t actually do anything?’

“Frankly, none of us were able to do anything, despite having a trained professional there. There were serious injuries, but everyone was stable.”

‘Well, whatever your thoughts on the issue, the decision to run with this rests with the program manager, and right now it’s looking like he’s going to run with it.’

“OK, if you do, just keep this in mind. If you quote anything I said, or refer to my presence there, I’ll go to your competitors and tell them what I told you, on the air, and your public can hear how you’re trying to milk a story you know perfectly well is pure shit. Just how do you think that’s going to go down? Especially if you manage to milk a lot of sympathy with a make believe story beforehand?”

‘Uh…, OK, I’ll keep that in mind. I’m not sure if the manager will go for it, but would you allow us to use your information if it’s posed as a counterpoint to the story?’

“That depends on how it’s presented. If it’s clear I don’t agree with your characterization of the story, then maybe. Quite frankly, I’d rather see the whole story dropped. Now if you want to help the people injured, I’d consider that commendable. But if you’re looking to ignore them while playing up a make believe ‘feel good’ piece of crap, then I simply won’t be a party to it.”

‘OK…, I’ll take that into consideration. But you realize that you were involved in an incident that’s considered part of a news scene, thus you really can’t—’

“Look, if you insist on running this idiot story, don’t blame me when your station goes down in flames as the laughing stock of Phoenix. I don’t bear you any ill will, and I’d like to see you succeed in your career, but I think this attempt to create a story where none exists is an attempt to take advantage of people’s serious injuries. That’s why I don’t want to be a part of it.”

‘OK, I think I’ve gotten your position. Thank you for your time, Ms. Moore,’ Nancy finished.

“I’m glad I could be of assistance,” Patricia answered, grinning evilly at Alex before hanging up.

“You realize your interview isn’t likely to air today, don’t you?” Alex reminded her.

“Yeah, I considered that. But it’s better than having someone come forward and connecting us, and then having the station conclude we’re hiding something. That would just cause them to dig until they discovered something.”

“Yeah, that’s something we definitely don’t need,” Alex responded. “By the way, could I put some pants on now? My dangling here in the cool breeze is about to put a chill in my shimmering aura.”

Patricia laughed and sent him on his way. She hoped this didn’t develop into anything, but she’d done what she could. That was all they could ever do. Whenever Alex was involved with anything, it was going to attract attention. They could try to play it down, or try to bluff their way out, but if it was their time to be exposed, there wouldn’t be much they could do about it. Luckily no one had made the connection to New Orleans yet.

           

Check out smashwords.com or vincentberg.net for all of my eBooks.

---

e-mail Author
Requires an email address, for anonymous feedback
use the "Contact me" button at the top of the page.

		Copyright © 2012-2014, Crumbly Writer. All rights reserved.
		Reposting on other sites for commercial or non-commercial purposes without specific written consent from the author is strictly prohibited.