Episode 3 #2
Ellisandre checked the rearview mirror. Alice pressed her body around Dana’s, offering comfort and protection.
In the very back seat, Ash slept slumped against a pile of equipment.
He’d probably stayed up all night prepping.
Ellisandre made a mental note to wake him with a can of root beer from the cooler.
He would be a pill until his blood sugar was restarted.
“Thinking of something?” Alice asked Dana, pointing at the woods.
Dana kept her eyes on the window. “There were trees, when we were running away.”
“Because trees are a good place to hide,” Alice answered. “That’s why Uncle Richard has lots of trees around his house out here.
Dana thought over what Alice had said. “Is that why you drove through the dark trees?”
“Yep. And Ash told us where to go. If there were lots of trees, it was harder for them to try to find us from above.
“So they can’t find us here?” Dana said.
“Nope. There’s a lot of things here to protect us, just like at home,” Alice said. “That’s why our 5N friends are here. Remember, we were here for Christmas? It was safe then.”
Dana took a deep breath and sat up straighter. “But Uncle Richard and Aunt Linda were there then. And Aunt Hypatia and Uncle Matthew. When will you teach me to shoot like you?”
Alice’s eyes met Ellisandre’s in the rearview mirror.
“Guns are too big for your hands,” Alice said.
“You have to be calm when you use them. If I hadn’t been calm, I could have hurt you, instead of just shooting the guy who wanted to hurt us.
You have to train your mind. First, we have to make sure you know how to use your phone, your headset, and how to get out of grapples.
Then we’ll work with you on stun guns and kubotons.
Remember how I used the phone to talk to Ash while we were running, and I did a lot of things with money and watching people? ”
Dana glanced toward Ellisandre. “I remember. Will it take a long time to learn all that?”
“For you, I don’t think so,” Alice said.
“But most of the time, those are the things you’re going to need to protect yourself more than guns.
Guns are dangerous. If you have friends around, you might shoot the wrong person.
What if a bad guy showed up and you had a gun but everyone was moving very fast and you shot Ash or Aunt Linda instead of the kidnapper? ”
“I’d hate myself,” Dana said.
Alice squeezed her hand. “That’s why we train our minds first. And we learn a lot of other things. Daddy Ellisandre has a lot of training. And they always use the other skills first.”
Ellisandre suppressed a smirk at Alice referring to them as Daddy. This was certainly an interesting development. They weren’t mad about it.
“How much training?” Dana asked, looking forward.
Ellisandre met Dana’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “For learning to use a gun?”
Dana nodded.
Ellisandre bit their cheek, doing math. It was a complicated question. “Around three years, roughly. The details are not quite the same. And once you’ve started training, you never really stop. Guns are just part of it. I spent a lot of time learning not to be seen.”
Dana’s eyes widened. “But everyone sees you.”
Ellisandre chuckled. “Now they do, because I want them to.”
Dana’s lips lifted in a smile. She was in her older-child head at the moment—serious, planning for the future, and insecure. It changed, moment to moment, whether she felt as young as five or as old as a middle schooler. That was the effect of trauma on a young mind.
Ellisandre eased their foot off the gas, letting the SUV roll up the last bit of hill toward the parking pad in front of the two-door garage attached to the main residence. “Ready to see Jaewoong, Geun, Yohei, Su-jin, and Jun?”
The main attraction of the Estate was a grand house, with a central section of soaring glass three-stories high, braced by massive dark-wood beams. Two wings branched off from either side, both two stories aboveground, quintessentially grand rustic with large mortared rock walls interspersed with wood and plaster, not a single bit of siding or paint was to be seen.
Below the massive expanse of wood beams and glass was a wide, multilevel porch large enough to host an event.
Fields of grass sloped away from the porch steps.
The SUV rocked to a full stop. Ellisandre turned off the engine. “Let’s go find everyone.”
There was no need to look, however. Gang Junseo sauntered out the side door, hands in his pockets, a large black hoodie wrapped around his shoulders, as if he’d been expecting them.
His eyes were sharp and bright beneath his spiky black fringe.
Most likely the security team at the front of the property had called ahead.
Alice jumped from the SUV and waved. Dana tumbled out after her.
Jun jogged toward them. “You made it.” His English had the kind of accent to it of someone who had spoken various versions of the language in many places. The underlining tinge, though, was American.
Alice grinned. “We did. And we brought Ash to help with the website. He’s asleep.”
Jun glanced into the back of the SUV, following the direction of Alice’s thumb.
“Let’s get you two inside,” Ellisandre said. “We have a bunch of stuff to carry in.”
“I can carry,” Jun said.
“You’re cleared for carrying weight?” Ellisandre asked. They nodded at Jun’s face. It hadn’t been that long ago that Jun had been in a wheelchair to get through the airport in Seoul. Jun touched it, as if he’d forgotten the bruises. They were dark green and brown now.
He met Ellisandre’s question with a shrug. “I didn’t break bones.”
“He can carry some,” Yoihei said, appearing from the direction of the house with Geun on his heels. Geun and Yoihei were both taller than Jun, and between them they had the arm strength to keep him from overdoing it. “We won’t let him do it on his own.”
Ellisandre rummaged in the middle seats for the cooler and retrieved a root beer for Ash. “Let me wake the gremlin.
“Who is Gremlin?” Yoihei asked. His English was heavily accented. He brought his native Japanese language skills to the group, but his English was still something he was working on.
Jun translated the “gremlin” into Korean. Yoihei chuckled and shook his head. He raised his hands and took a step back from Ellisandre. “All yours.”
Ellisandre
Ellisandre got the root beer into Ash’s hands.
He drank it before getting out of the back seat, supervised the moving of computer equipment into the house, then ate a pile of cold pancakes and downed two mugs of coffee leaning against the kitchen counter while deep in conversation with Mi Hi over topics like servers and data hosting.
Alice and Dana were already off to see Jaewoong and Su-jin.
Ash was Dana’s beloved monster most of the time, but not when he was talking about gigabytes and DOS attacks.
Ellisandre caught Jun’s attention and nodded in the direction of the hallway. Jun raised an eyebrow but tilted his head in acknowledgement. He led the way out of the room.
“Where can we talk?” Ellisandre said.
Jun pointed toward the gym. “No one’s practicing right now.”
That worked.
The gymnasium felt larger than usual. Ellisandre took it in. “You’ve been practicing.”
All the machines had been pushed to the back wall where they could still be used, but no longer took up the central open area in front of the mirrors. The colored tape marks on the floor were new.
Jun shoved his hands in his pockets, face guarded. “It’s what we do. Practice. We have to get back to our fans.”
Ellisandre crossed their arms and paced down the length of glass mirrors. Jun leaned back against a weight machine, hands still in his pockets. Away from his 5N members, Damian, and Collin, there was a coldness Ellisandre had not witnessed before. A wariness even.
The K-pop idol also had a comfort with silence. He waited them out, offering nothing.
Ellisandre paced the length of the room before speaking. “I’m in charge of Linda’s security. That includes Alice, Dana, and Ash.”
Jun nodded.
“I’ve been over the recording of your account of the kidnapping.”
“Trafficking,” Jun corrected.
Ellisandre tilted their head in acknowledgment. “The man who drove you off the mountain. You said little about him.”
Jun’s eyes grew hooded. “There wasn’t much to say.”
“You didn’t even describe him.”
“Tall. Caucasian. Mostly, maybe. Nordic, perhaps. Younger side of middle-aged.”
Ellisandre gave it a beat and then prodded. “Why did he help you?”
Jun crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his own head, eyes on Ellisandre’s face. “If you think I’m hiding something, say it.”
Whatever had been going down in the last few days had not made Jun open to easy conversation.
Ellisandre looked away, rearranging their thoughts again. How much of their hand should they show? “I think you’ve been honest. It’s the details you might not think are important that could mean something to me.”
Jun straightened up slowly. “He wasn’t supposed to let me go. He did.” Jun paused, clearly going back through his memories. “He’s already connected to The Residency.”
Ellisandre’s pulse spiked. “How?” Sevastyan had no connection to the Residency at all. The closest would be Collin’s ties through his dead father who had been a Russian spy turned double agent for the US. He’d died for it.
Jun raised his eyes slowly. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“I don’t have many loyalties. You’ve met most of them.”
Jun studied Ellisandre for a long moment. “You’re hiding something.”
Well, that was not expected. Ellisandre filled their lungs with air, letting Jun see some fraction of their discomfort. “Yes.”
“What?”
Ellisandre hesitated. But Jun was Damian’s claimed. Which meant Jun was Residency. The Residency was Linda’s family. So Jun was family, if not completely incorporated yet.