Chapter Eleven
White Ravens
Gage
Gage woke to the smell of coffee and something burning.
For a few disoriented seconds, he thought he was back in the facility—inhaling the stink of scorched metal, and antiseptics—until the scents separated.
Strong coffee was brewing. Eggs with cheese, and fried bacon was being overcooked in a frying pan.
It had to be late morning because the dark behind his eyes was thinner. When the sun was at its peak, the black wasn’t as pressing. Shapes and shadows had a faint but noticeable difference.
He shifted on the couch, wincing when the springs jabbed his hip. When he sat up, the flimsy blanket dropped down his chest and pooled at his waist.
Every muscle in his back complained. Most of it was from the road, but some was from the night before.
Disclosing everything to Roz had left him hollowed and raw.
He blinked…nothing.
Again, hopelessness tried to settle in. He eased off the couch and dropped to his knees.
He pressed his palms together and his voice came out cracked, barely more than breath.
“Our Father…who art in heaven…” The familiar words scraped out of him.
“Thy kingdom come…Thy will be done…” He swallowed hard, chin quivering.
He opened his hands, let them fall to his thighs, and exhaled slowly, anchored for what he wished was more than a fleeting moment.
Gage grunted as he got to his feet. He stretched and popped the kinks in his upper body as his bladder screamed for relief.
He skimmed his fingers along the arm of the couch, counting the steps in his head like he’d done five times already in the middle of the night.
“A few more feet, then a hard right. I left a towel on the sink,” Roz called from the other side of the apartment.
Gage lifted his hand in acknowledgment. The hallway narrowed around him, the slight echo changing as the walls tightened.
He brushed his hand along textured plaster until it hit the cold edge of the bathroom doorframe.
The tile under his bare feet was freezing and a little sticky. He found the toilet, took care of business, then groped for the sink.
His knuckles bumped smooth ceramic—the faucet—on top was a folded towel and a crinkled half-used tube of toothpaste.
It all made him huff a short, incredulous laugh.
This was his life now.
He ran the water and splashed it on his face until he felt more awake. He squeezed a stripe of toothpaste onto the damp towel and scrubbed his teeth.
He wasn’t sure how much sleep he’d gotten, but his brain felt wired instead of foggy. Restless. Ready to do something. But he had no idea what.
He toweled off and found the door again, following his footprints back.
Roz’s apartment wasn’t big—he said it was about five hundred, thirty square feet—but it might as well have been a maze with all the unknown angles.
He walked down the hall and into the main room, his bare toes brushing a throw rug that was three steps from the couch, fifteen from the kitchen. The air was warmer there, saltier from the scent of greasy bacon and the pungent tang of coffee that’d brewed too long.
A chair scraped.
“Right here, PK,” Roz said, knocking on his two-seater kitchenette table.
Gage followed the sound until his knee hit the edge of a chair. He gripped the back of it and lowered himself slowly.
“So…after everything that’s happened, I see you’re still praying.”
“Always. Day and night.” Gage said. “I won’t let this test take my faith.”
Roz hummed under his breath.
Gage angled his head toward him. “You remember the first time I prayed for you?”
The silence stretched so long he almost took the question back. It’d been a dark time for his friend.
“Of course I do.” Roz said. “It was your prayer that got me off that ledge, brother.”
“Thank God,” he whispered.
“That was the start of us. Me with my pitchfork and you with your halo.”
Something hard and hollow thumped down in front of him, and a cup of bold roast coffee that jolted him more awake.
He wrapped his hands around the mug, fingering the chips and dents before he muttered, “Thanks.”
The silence in the small apartment wasn’t the comfortable kind.
Gage brought the mug to his lips and took a cautious sip. It singed his tongue, burned down his throat, and settled in his gut like a hot stone.
The coffee was bitter and too robust, the same way Roz used to make it when he had to pull a twelve-hour hustle on the streets.
Gage didn’t call it out, but he picked up an alcohol-laced scent drifting from Roz’s cup.
The quiet stretched.
“What time is it?” He finally asked.
“Almost ten.”
Gage leaned over, inhaled his plate and turned it clockwise.
Eggs there, bacon here, toast on the other side. He took a bite, and despite the char, the chalky eggs hit the spot.
They both ate in silence. Gage didn’t know what else there was to say.
Last night, he’d told Roz all he knew after being taken from the prison infirmary and waking in the facility—the experiments, aggressive doctors, the anxious businessmen who checked in three to four times a week, demanding results.
He confessed to the weird strength, heightened awareness, and experiencing new sounds as sharp as blades forged in fire.
He told him about White Sector, and being strapped to a table like an animal for three months, and the promises of helping those in need instead of finishing his prison time.
But there were still parts he’d avoided. Names he excluded.
Scar.
He had no idea how to explain that extreme coincidence.
Besides, Roz would swear Scar had masterminded the whole thing, and he didn’t need his best friend in revenge mode. He needed him to develop a strategy.
If anyone could help him figure out how to repair the ruins of his life, it was him.
“I think we should find this shady facility and level that motherfucker,” Roz growled. “Find the kidnappers that did this to you, torture the truth outta them, and take their damn eyes before I put ’em six feet under.”
Gage sighed. “Oh yeah? You and what army?”
“I don’t need an army to take down a bunch of old-ass scientists,” Roz said, slamming his fist down on the table.
Gage didn’t flinch.
“Let’s go back. For real. You say the word, and we hit the road within an hour. I ain’t got shit left in Chicago anyway.”
“Don’t you have a job?”
“That bullshit construction gig sucks, but getting paid under the table and not paying taxes has allowed me to stack enough bread to disappear. I can support us for a while, G.”
Gage finished chewing a piece of toast, then muttered, “It doesn’t matter, Roz. I already told you I don’t know where it is. I went in unconscious and came out blind. I only know we were in Virginia, and Virginia’s a big state.”
“What about the guy you said was in there with you?” Roz asked. “The one who helped you escape. Maybe we can find him.”
Gage straightened. No! Absolutely not!
“I don’t know where he is either,” he said, keeping his voice flat. “We got out and split ways. That’s it.”
Gage changed the subject to something far more important.
“So how does someone come back from the dead?” he asked, setting his fork down and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Roz’s chair creaked again. “I was wondering when you’d circle back to that. You’ve been quiet since I told you about the funeral.”
“I’ve been grieving,” Gage said dryly.
Something rustled, probably Roz scratching his beard. “Look, if Elvis can fake his death and go live in peace somewhere in the Midwest, so can you.”
Gage almost snorted coffee out of his nose. “You think Elvis is living in the Midwest?”
“I’m serious! I saw online that an old lady saw him at some hole-in-the-wall diner in Baraboo, Wisconsin.”
Against his will, a startled laugh exploded out of him.
Gage hadn’t thought he’d be capable of laughing ever again.
Leave it to Roz.
“The Midwest is where people go to disappear?” Roz doubled down. “Places like…I dunno…fuck…Kalamazoo, or some shit. We get you a new name, identity, and move you somewhere with a fucked-up name. Timbuktu. Winnebago, or Nimrod, Minnesota. I swear, no one’ll find us.”
Gage was struggling to catch his breath from laughing.
“I’m not going to Timbuktu, or…what the heck did you say? Nimrod.”
“What about Mud Butte, South Dakota…that sound better?”
“Are these even real places?”
“Hell yeah, last night I googled, ‘cities where no one will look for me.’” Roz answered. “There’s tons of places.”
Gage shook his head. “I’m going home.”
The words surprised him with how solid they came out. No tremors or doubt.
Roz went quiet.
Outside noise—that most hearing people didn’t notice— filled the pause: The click of a mailbox closing, someone locking their car door with a quiet chirp, a sprinkler head ticking as it rotated and the rattling of a bicycle chain as someone coasted downhill.
“You sure that’s smart?” Roz asked. “Your folks… They buried you, G.”
“I know.” He cupped his coffee mug with both hands. “I broke their hearts. Burned down half of my dad’s ministry. Embarrassed them in front of everybody who’d ever trusted them.”
He exhaled, long and shaky.
“I can’t fix everything, but I can’t let them live the rest of their lives putting flowers on a grave I’m not in. I gotta tell them I’m alive. Even if they slam the door in my face and tell me to stay dead.”
A heavy hand landed on his shoulder.
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Roz said simply. “You wanna go home, fine. But I’m not letting you go without me. Never again, G.”