Apprentice

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

Jackson was nearly half way through his first cup of coffee as he sat with his long legs propped up on the rugged, wooden, farmhouse kitchen table. He was scanning through news clippings and bits of information he found online via his nano-crystal link to the web. He was looking for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary concerning the huge city of Sydney and its surrounding areas and towns. He intended to take Macy and pay a visit to the police department headquarters, using their credentials to attempt to gain some inside information. For the most part, cops rarely hesitated to divulge information to other cops no matter where in the world you were. If there was any useful information being kept from the public eye and ear, he was confident that he and Macy would have little difficulty coaxing it out of the authorities in Sydney.

It was still pretty early and, other than Jerome, he hadn't seen anyone else up yet. He leaned his chair back on its hind legs and sipped his coffee, his attention turned inward to the information on the virtual "desktop" inside his head. He started when a shadow fell over him and he let his chair fall forward with a loud thump before looking up to see who was there. He made a mental note to himself to be a little more careful while using the nano-crystal technology. He wasn't used to being snuck up on and was usually very aware of what was going on around him.

His hooded gaze fell on the tall, lithe form of Natasha, standing just a little behind him and to the side with her arms crossed. She gazed down at him expectantly and he returned the stare for a moment.

"What do you want, Natasha?" he finally asked when she didn't speak.

"You know very well what I want," she retorted.

"Uhh, yeah. You want to drive my partner to murder, for one thing. You want to cause a bunch of trouble, most likely because you crave attention and don't care whether it’s good or bad attention. You want..."

"Enough!" she barked, obviously irritated. Jackson didn't care. The corner of his mouth twitched in amusement. He enjoyed giving her a taste of her own medicine when she opened herself up for it. "I want to talk to him."

His eyebrow shot up and he scooted his chair back and stood to his feet. Eyes narrowed and locked to hers, he imprisoned her so that she could not look away. He watched as some of her arrogant resolve seemed to flicker and quell under the scrutiny. 

"Him?" he purred, his tone quiet and even.

She took a small step backward before squaring her shoulders and jutting her chin out a little more. She was trying her best to hold her ground and gain the upper hand with him, but Jackson was no meat-headed grunt to be pushed around by her intimidating persona and he was growing tired of having to remind her of that. He was also annoyed with the way she kept wedging herself between he and Macy, causing his usually good-natured, easy-going partner who openly adored him (until Natasha had appeared in their lives), to push him away, just when he had finally realized that he loved her.

"Y-you know who I am referring to, Detective," she said with an almost imperceptible tremble in her voice. "I want to talk to him. I need you to let me see him. What do you want from me in order to make that happen?"

He smiled. "Well, then... Wish granted. You want to talk to Father Time? So? Talk!" 

She looked at him, confusion crossing her features briefly. "You aren't him!" she snapped. "I want to talk to him! Not you!"

"What? Do you think he's sleeping? Do you think that when I'm awake, he isn't here, somehow? Where the hell do you think he is, Natasha? Taking a vacation on a beach somewhere? When you talk to me, you talk to him. He's aware of everything that I'm aware of. Probably more. No. Definitely more."

He stopped talking abruptly, realizing he had said far more than he had planned to. It had all just come tumbling out of him without crossing his brain first. What he had just told her surprised him as much as it did her, although it wasn't really information that was new to him. It wasn't anything he had put any thought to, really. It was just fact.

Her guard down and arrogance seemingly forgotten, Natasha took a step closer to him, looking into his eyes as though searching. It was his turn to be uncomfortable under scrutiny. 

"Is that true?" she whispered with something that bordered on desperation and a glint of hope shining in her hazel eyes. "He's.... he can hear me and see me right now?"

Jackson held her gaze for a moment before turning away from her and picking up his coffee, shaking his head.

"What?" she cried, grabbing his arm, trying to pull him back around to face her. "Tell me! I... Jackson... I don't... I need..."

"What you need..." he growled, shrugging her hand off of his arm.”.... Is to drop this. Even I don't fully understand who or what he is. What I do know, however, is that he is not available. Not for sex. Not for love. Not for romance. Not for any of the girly notions you have running around that pretty head of yours. Leave him alone. He isn't interested."

He shifted his eyes back to drill into hers, hoping that she would obey him. Hoping that she would finally give it up and move on to something or someone else. Her fascination with and stubborn refusal to let go of his alter ego was going to wind up costing him more than he cared to lose. It was dangerous and distracting. Not just to Father Time, but to him as well. He didn't want to think of the dark side of him as another entity. He didn't want to see him as a separate person with the ability to feel and care.

He had hesitated, not allowing Lillian access to him in order to figure out if Father Time could successfully be removed from him without causing permanent damage. She had brought it up once or twice, but he had put her off. It hadn't been intentional and he hadn't even stopped to think about why he had put her off. With everything that was going on, he'd been able to successfully avoid thinking about it at all. Now, with this persistent woman refusing to leave him (them) alone, he was being forced to ponder the situation.

"I love him." Her words sounded alien to him and it took a few seconds for them to penetrate his consciousness. He stared back at her, trying to comprehend what she was telling him, but it sounded so ridiculous.

"Get over it," he finally replied. "He can't love you back."

With that, he pushed past her, ignoring the tears that he saw spring to her eyes, and headed out of the kitchen. This coocookachoo conversation is over, he thought.

.................

Not very far away from the farmhouse in which Jackson struggled to retain his grip on reality, a cloaked and hooded figure glided across the marbled floor of his underground study. The furnace gave off the only light in the vast cavernous room and that light flickered and jumped, playing with the shadows that danced just out of its reach in a constant, never-ending performance.

Standing facing him with their backs toward the wall were five, hand-selected, young subjects. These five would be given identities once again. They would regain awareness of who and what they were. They were his top picks based upon strength, ethics, potential loyalty, obedience, and of course, talent.

He kept his face in the shadows of his hood as he slowly moved from one to the next, studying each one in turn, carefully.

The first, a female, tall and lithe, not more than 16 or 17, kept her eyes cast to the floor as he studied her. Her straight, brown hair hung just past her shoulders, recently washed and brushed along with the rest of her by one of his minions. His eyes roamed down her body, taking in the newly developed curves she had just barely begun to show. Her legs were long and there wasn't an ounce of fat on her. She was perfect. He reached his hand out and cupped her chin to bring her face up so that he could see her eyes.

When she met his gaze, her eyes changed slowly, becoming reptilian for a second, before changing back to their normal, human form. In human form, they were a chocolate brown, but when they changed, they became pale grey in the center surrounded by green and gold tinted material similar to scales. The coloring had an oil in water effect. Disturbing to most, but to him, they were exciting. He felt further excitement when a long, forked tongue flicked out of her mouth and then back in so quickly he almost missed it.

He released her chin and nodded at her approvingly. The darkness simmering just below the surface of the girl would serve his purpose well. He moved on to the next subject. A boy, no more than 9 or 10 stood there looking up at him with curiosity. The boy wore glasses and continuously shoved them back up his nose which he constantly wiped with the back of his sleeve. He sniffed and snuffled, looking more than a little confused and uncomfortable. His talent wasn't immediately apparent, but it would be when the time came that it was needed.

He moved on to another male subject. This one was in his 20s. He was short and his hair was unkempt, his clothing disheveled. Out from under a thick lock of black hair shone eyes that glinted with intelligence and awareness on a level that most people would never know existed. This awareness kept him isolated from others. This young man existed in multiple dimensions. He saw, heard, and felt the events taking place in an infinity of parallel places and times. Somehow his mind survived it. The immense overload of information he took in didn't collapse his nervous system. Instead he had learned to control the input and separate each bit of information so that he could analyze it and use it in whatever way he chose. He was the most powerful and potentially dangerous of the chosen subjects.

He moved on to the next and his gaze travelled down, down, nearly to the floor before it fell upon the tiny girl standing there. She stared back up at him defiantly, hatred glinting in her eyes. She was no larger than the length of his forearm, but her voice carried up to his ears quite clearly.

"When I am finished with you, you will wish you had never messed with me!" Her threat was shrill and contained not even a hint of fear. "I will conquer you and all of your filthy guards and make every last one of you beg for your lives!" 

He stooped down and brought his head almost to her level. "Wouldn't you preferrrr it if I provided you the chanccce to conquer somethinggg much, much larger than meee?"

Her tiny head cocked to the side as she considered his offer. She placed a hand on her hip and narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. "How much larger?" she asked, her tone carefully kept even so that he wouldn't see how interested she was. What she didn't realize was that he knew exactly how interested she was even before she spoke.

"How about world dominationnn?" he breathed at her and watched her eyes grow wider.

She composed herself and threw her shoulders back. "I'm already planning to conquer the world, but I suppose I might allow you to help me..." she mused, gazing into the distance, thoughtfully. “Fine. I will consider you as my advisor if you help me to bring the world to its knees!" She thrust out her tiny hand toward him and he chuckled silently as he reached his clawed appendage out to shake it. She didn't even flinch. An evil glint danced in her miniature eyes.

He moved on to his last subject. His favorite. He stopped in front of the boy and half turned toward him, keeping his face shrouded in shadow.

"World domination? Are you fucking serious? That's what all this is about? How boring and unimaginative can you possibly get?" The boy snorted, his tone derisive and angry. 

"Oh, nooo, my young friend. Thisss... thisss isss not about meee. Thisss isss about you. All of you. If she desires world dominationnn, then she shall have it. What isss it that you desire.... Jack?"

He watched the anger turn to confusion for a split second. The boy's face relaxed in that moment to become almost innocent in its ignorance, but the mask of hatred quickly went back into place.

"What makes you think you have anything that I would desire? What makes you think that you could even hope to give me..."

"I know your sssecret, Jack." His voice was hushed as he leaned in causing the boy to take a step back, recoiling. "Think of your sissster. I know what both of youuuu.... hide inssside that minnnd."

Jack said nothing, closing his mouth with a snap. How could the hideous creature know about Victoria? 

With a final glide down the line of his young wards, the hooded figure waved a gnarled hand in the air and Gideon stepped from the shadows.

"If you'll follow me, kids," he said gruffly. "I'll show you all to your quarters." 

He didn't even look back to see if they followed before exiting through a doorway opposite the one they'd been brought in through.

(Comments? I'm sorry my updates have slowed. School has started again and I've been working on getting the first book ready for print. Don't forget that its available on Amazon. By the way, the car's name has changed again. His name is Orion, but I've only changed it in one version of the first book and none of this one yet. Please vote!)

You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net