Chapter 27
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T he sun appeared lower on the horizon, giving the atmosphere a hot, almost expectant silence.
The smell was pungent with a woodsy richness.
Steele walked back over to the tree line, crossing the rich green meadow with the sun beating down on his back.
A weird eagerness was inside him, as if he couldn’t wait to get to the tree line,… to the shadows ahead.
He continued to walk forward in the sunshine but turned his gaze inward.
That eagerness wasn’t his.
His energy was chaotic, frustrated, yet searching for answers.
It was so different from the energy reaching for, pushing almost toward the safety of the trees, which made the two energies much easier to sort out—now that he knew it was there, of course.
He would deal with that later. And would figure out how to never have it happen again.
Just as he went to step closer to the forest, he felt another energy surging, mingling with his.
Cyan . Her warm caring energy was hesitant to enter this new world they were in, yet stood strong with his energy—supportive, caring,…
and dare he say,… loving. An energy he could trust. It had nothing to hide.
Nothing suspicious, just like his energy, both working toward finding a solution to the current problem.
And, yes, this was a their problem. As long as they were linked, their energy was in his psyche, so he could then access hers.
Once he reached the treeline, he leaned up against a thick tree trunk, closed his eyes, and sorted out the energy inside him. It was there, mingling with his as if it had always been there. That alone shook him.
He was not just dealing with betrayal and a sense of not being good enough and of being a failure in not protecting his own space, but now he needed to protect Cyan.
She had nothing to do with his history and whatever game Brent, if it was him, was playing.
She was innocent and needed to be protected.
Scanning his own system with a sneaky shadow of a ribbon—a mere sliver of his normally robust ribbons—he went on the hunt.
He refused to go deeper into the shadowy woods, when that’s so obviously what this other entity wanted.
Moving his shadow ribbon at the same pace as the other shifting circulating energy so as to not attract Brent’s attention, Steele moved closer and closer, searching for the piggyback energy, sensing the similarities and the differences. And the recognition hit.
Brent.
Steele could see it, could sense it, could identify it.… Yet something was strange about it. Then Steele understood. This Brent energy was more than just part of Steele’s system; this same Brent energy was outside Steele’s physical body. Somewhere close. As in somewhere in the woods ahead of him.
That’s where the sense of eagerness was coming from. The energy inside knew and recognized its own energy close by.
Instinctively Steele slid around the back of the tree to hide a little better from prying eyes. Brent had found this weird space that the Beacon had created somehow. Steele called out to him, “Brent, is that really you? I thought you were dead. Where have you been hiding all this time?”
An odd laugh came from the woods around him.
Steele frowned. At least he thought it was in woods, but that weird laugh echo was also in his head… It wasn’t necessarily the same laugh he had heard before, but it wasn’t unknown either. “Brent, are you here?”
“Come on, Steele. Why are you looking out there, when I’m in here too?”
Shit. Steele recognized the echo effect of the Brent inside and the Brent outside, both having resonating energy. Steele closed his eyes and whispered, “Damn.”
“Yeah, you really thought they were wrong, didn’t you?”
“No, I wanted them to be wrong.”
“That was foolish of you. People like that, they tend to think they know everything,” he explained in a mocking tone, another chuckle tacked on the end.
Steele frowned at Brent’s laughter. It too had a weird echoing sound, a tinny sound, thin and irritating. Steele had to also deal with his own anger and frustration at being caught out in this way.
Brent continued. “Just like you think you know everything, but you know nothing. You’ve been so easily fooled. Doesn’t that make you feel good?”
“I’ll get over it. No one was expecting betrayal from within the ranks, having one of our own toss his team to the lions and walk away. Play dead for six years and now pop out when it benefits you.”
“Well, if ever anybody deserved it, it was you guys. All so pious, so good, so righteous, while everything and everybody else was so wrong. You just couldn’t see that there were other ways to be.”
“Really?” Steele asked, outraged. “So you killed the rest of our team? Why? To prove you were better? Or was it all about control? You killed them because you could? To teach them a lesson? But they are dead, so it’s not as if they are still around to see how powerful you are and how much better you are.
Anyone pulling the shit that you did just shows how empty you are inside. ”
“You don’t know that.”
Steele was busily trying to figure out exactly where in his system this Brent energy was coming from.
Almost as if he knew, Brent told him, “Don’t even bother looking for my hook in you. I’ve been hiding there for a very long time, and I know more about you than you ever did.”
“So I understand. I don’t particularly care how long you’ve been there. You didn’t kill me, so this would make sense why you didn’t. At least somewhat. So, what triggered you now?”
“Because of where you are. Something brought into my awareness the reality that this group, these people, could change my nice, happy little existence. I won’t allow anyone to do that. No one gets to ruin my retirement, especially not you.”
“Why? I mean, you’re the one who’s so good at all this stuff. You knew more than a lot of us. I was impressed by your skills.” Unfortunately he was, but it was also a warning to himself about how vulnerable he’d been at the time that Brent had managed to gain access to Steele’s own energy.
“Cut the bullshit. If you could get rid of me right now, you would, and, if it didn’t kill you to do it, you would. But it ain’t gonna happen. I’m only here now because you are looking to get rid of me as it is.”
“No, I didn’t know you were even there, so that’s on me. I always thought you were dead.” And, damn, that was hard to admit. He asked the one burning question on his mind. “Why me?”
He laughed. “We were friends. You had connections within the government. If you heard any updates on the case, then I would know soon afterward. I needed you to keep me safe, to alert me if my nice peaceful life was in danger. We were best friends. I knew how much the guys were your family. It was kind of fun watching you suffer for weeks after losing them. You even grieved my disappearance, so sure that I was dead too. That was nice. I doubt you’ll do it again though. ”
That same laugh filled his head. It was Brent’s laugh, the one they’d heard in the forest. How?
And God help him if the Beacon didn’t answer Steele’s question with a shocking statement.
That was me all along. I amplified Brent’s energy, his laugh inside your system to try and get you to see he was in there.
But it didn’t work. The knockout attacks, as you called them, was me trying to remove his energy from your system.
I tried draining his energy from the ground, but it was draining your energy instead, so I tried a second time with both of you—as you are now fully connected.
It only woke up his energy in a bigger way.
You dealing with Brent is a better answer. It needs to be dealt with permanently.
That explained so much yet brought up so many more questions, ones Steele didn’t have time to answer as Brent kept talking.
“I let you believe I was dead. I wanted you to go on. You didn’t tell them we were best buds, did you?”
“No, I didn’t. At least not close friends because we weren’t. Besides,” Steele admitted, “I felt like I’d had enough betrayal from you, and I didn’t want to bare my soul to everybody else, letting them know how bad it was.”
“It wasn’t all that bad. We could have had a great time, you and me.”
“No, we couldn’t have. You were too busy being an asshole, too busy doing things behind my back that I would get blamed for.”
“All you had to do was play along, but you wouldn’t even do that.”
“You were hurting people.”
“No, I was stealing. There’s a big difference. And, since it was from the government, it wasn’t hurting anybody,” he explained, with a mocking laugh. “You always had such a strong sense of right and wrong. You never did understand what we could have achieved.”
“No, I still don’t understand,” he admitted. “What was the point of putting a hook into my system?”
“And even now you still don’t know where it is,” he gloated. “You know why?”
Steele kept quiet.
“That’s because we were so close. So close that, when you turned me in, I felt that blow like a betrayal, such as you’ve never experienced.
I didn’t want to attract too much attention, didn’t want to let you know I was there.
Then you would have done anything to get rid of me.
So I stayed dormant. A sleeper inside your own body.
That’s what kept it fun. That’s what kept it great. Knowing that you didn’t know.”
“And now that you can’t anymore?”
“Yeah, I’m not real impressed with that either. Like, what the hell? But you haven’t found my hook in you. You’ll just beat around and make sure you get into every little nook and cranny and make life hell for me. That’s the thing about energy. It’s two-way. You’ll feel the pain too.”
“I didn’t even know you could work energy to this level.”