Chapter 29
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S teele didn’t know what woke him, but he came alert with something weird echoing in his head.
Get up .
He sat up, looked around, and frowned. He was all alone. He was in the same armchair he’d sat in when the healer had been working on him, and he’d been surrounded by the group when he’d fallen asleep. Although it was likely more of an energy burn. At least that’s how it felt coming out of it.
He barely remembered closing his eyes as the healer worked on him, easing the pain, removing the trauma from his system, until he found it difficult to do anything but crash.
There had been a whisper as he’d gone under, telling him to just rest. He was safe, and, with that, he’d gone under in a big way.
But now he wasn’t so sure.
The same voice shrieked, Get up .
He made it to his feet, then took a moment to recollect that he was in the same room thankfully, and voices came from the room beside him.
The same voice commanded, Forget them. You need to be outside, and outside right now .
He stumbled toward the door, frowning, no idea why he was doing what he was doing, without question.
Somebody you need to deal with has arrived .
He wasn’t sure what that even meant or how that could even be. As he stepped out the front door, he froze, feeling the same weird energy around him. Buzzing. Pushing. He glanced around and muttered, “You are the Beacon.”
Yes, I am the Beacon , the Beacon replied. Brent is here .
With that, the Beacon disappeared from the front of his mind, leaving Steele shocked and horrified.
He moved swiftly to the woods, knowing that his supposed friend, his true enemy, would be hiding somewhere along the edge of the trees.
The Beacon was watching, listening in, but was anyone else?
And did the Beacon have any defensive measures if things got ugly?
Or was this an energy battle everyone should stand back and just watch?
As Steele stepped into the woods, he was in that same weird space again. He’d gone from being safe and okay to coming full circle and being firmly on the outside again. In the protected zone, quarantined, where the Beacon kept everyone away from everything precious.
In theory, Steele agreed with that. In reality, it sucked because he was out here alone. And, yeah, that’s exactly what he deserved and where he should be because he too would do anything to protect all those lives inside Terk’s castle.
Yet it would be nice to have backup.
Message sent , the Beacon said in the back of his mind.
Steele frowned at that. “Good thing,” he muttered, as he moved swiftly through the darkness. “Can you lighten up this space a little bit?”
Silence was all around him, but then came that hum, and a very soft lightening of the air came around him. Surprised, he thanked the Beacon and added, “That’s a help.”
The Beacon didn’t reply.
Steele asked, “If you can alert me, and you can alert them. So why is it you can’t stop this person from coming after us?”
I can , the Beacon stated, but it has to end. This cannot continue .
That was a judgment call which Steele never expected to hear from the Beacon. In a way, it was one of the most sophisticated systems he’d ever seen. With eery human overtones…
Standing under the branches of the largest evergreen, guarding the entrance to the woods behind it, Steele stilled.
Someone was here. In all the times he’d been in the woods, he’d never had the same sense as he did this time of Brent’s energy.
Yet the Beacon had known and had amplified it, bringing the issue to the surface, getting Steele to notice certain things.
Moving silently, Steele left the safety of the big guardian tree and slipped through the shadows, retracing his steps to the first gate.
There were no pathways, no footsteps to follow.
And, more than that, no energy signature.
That concerned him more than anything. Surely that energy couldn’t be erased, could it? Beacon ?
Not erased. But the signature blends with the other energy into one cohesive visualization. So it doesn’t show up here as it would out there. It blends with the energy of this world and can’t be separated out.
The first gate appeared in front of Steele. Closed, safe looking,… normal. Yet the Beacon wouldn’t have woken Steele and sent him out here for no reason.
Thanks for that.
That was the first sign of a distinct personality to the Beacon and its wry sense of humor. That surprised Steele. But this so wasn’t the time to contemplate the Beacon’s anthropomorphism.
Steele opened the gate and stepped through, knowing that this would be one of the ways that the Beacon kept out whoever was here, at least on one layer, with one level of defense still secure.
As Steele slipped through, he glanced around, looking for the same landmarks as before.
Yet they weren’t there. “Why has this part of the woods changed?” he asked the Beacon.
Energy was the response, which Steele took to mean that adding another energy to blend with the energy here would have affected how this all looked right now, which was also a very strange thing to contemplate, since everybody’s interpretation of the energy would give it a different view.
That was definitely a brainteaser. “Did you tell the others?” He couldn’t help questioning if the Beacon had done what it’d said it would.
Affirmative .
This new terrain meant Steele didn’t have the same safety checkpoints he’d noted earlier, even if they were subconscious and a hard-learned lesson.
Even now he searched for similar places to hide as he walked.
He felt a second energy moving toward him, but he couldn’t see anything.
The trees were thick and hard to walk through with so much deadwood and brush in this area.
He shifted toward a less dense area for easier walking when he sensed somebody coming up on the side.
He shifted, ducking down low, trying to stay hidden, but everything stopped beside him.
Then came a harsh laugh. “I didn’t really think you would be the kind to hide.”
Steele didn’t say anything but slowly stood up to see Brent, in the flesh, somebody he hadn’t seen in a very long time. Older, thinner, and the look on his face?… Definitely the same mocking arrogance. “Why are you here?” Steele asked.
“Why are you here?” Brent repeated, with a taunting laugh. “You do realize that you’re not the only one who plays with energy, right?”
“I see that,” Steele noted, without adding anything to the conversation. He glanced around, and, from the looks of it, Brent had come alone. “You’re awfully cocky to come into somebody else’s space like this.”
“You’re awfully cocky to send MI6 after me.”
He froze. There it was. The truth. “Ah.”
“What do you mean, ah ?” Brent snapped, his voice twisted in fury.
The words echoed in the suddenly quiet woods as if the world were waking to a war that it didn’t know existed and now could only watch helplessly from the sidelines.
“How dare you do that? As long as you left me alone, I was okay to leave you alone,” Brent yelled, “but not anymore.”
“Right,” Steele noted, “so that puts us at an impasse.”
“You’re right, it does, but that impasse is your fault, not mine.”
“And I don’t particularly care who you think is to blame. I had forgotten all about you, but here you are again, causing trouble,” he noted, struggling with the truth of that. “I had literally put you out of my mind, along with all the pain you caused so long ago.”
Brent laughed. “Part of that was me,… helping you. Did you really think you did so much yourself, Steele? All that rage and grief? Like, enough already. The anger I could understand, but not all the drama.” Such disgust filled his tone, along with that same mockery.
“That’s a load of crock.”
“Oh, it’s true all right. I put a block in to stop the heavy emotions and to hide me, of course, so you couldn’t see me.
Couldn’t feel that I was in there, a part of you.
I don’t know how that block broke, and I’m not happy that it broke at all.
That should have held for a whole lot longer than just these few years.
But sending MI6 after me?… That’s extreme. Why?”
“I had a little help breaking your block,” Steele shared, “but MI6 was absolutely necessary once we located you.” And obviously that had failed, which was why Steele and Brent were here now.
“You forgot to tell whoever that I could do this stuff too.”
That arrogance and superiority was back.
“Not that it would have changed anything. I almost didn’t get out, you know? And that,… that just pisses me off.”
“Too bad they failed.” Steele kept his voice even, studying the man in front of him. “How did we become enemies?” he asked. “We were best friends.”
“We were,… until I realized you didn’t have my back when things got ugly.”
“You mean, after you killed our teammates?”
“They deserved it. They all deserved to die. Besides, what was I supposed to do, leave loose ends? No, that wasn’t happening. You knew that.”
Steele closed his eyes, feeling the trauma return in a big way.
The broken bodies of his friends, his teammates.
Blood, bone, and tissue all over the vehicle as Brent had opened fire on them all.
Steele took a step closer. “You didn’t have to kill them.
They didn’t know anything about what you were doing. They were innocent.”
“But they wouldn’t have been innocent for long, now would they? They wouldn’t have let me walk away and do what I needed to do, would they?”
“No, probably not.”
“So, I took them out beforehand.”
“And me?” If all this was true, why had he left the biggest threat to his safety alive? Surely he hadn’t counted on that block to keep Steele in check?
“I struggled with what to do with you. I didn’t want to kill you,” Brent admitted.
“You were the closest thing I had to a brother, so I was determined to find another way, if possible, and I found it. But, with the block gone and your damn MI6 BS, well, that grace period is gone.” His tone darkened.
“I should have taken you out in the first place. You judged me for what I did, making it very clear that you were never on my side.”
“You killed not our enemies but our own men, the people who were under your leadership. Our friends,… your friends, and you killed them. Betrayed them. And you disappeared before anyone could find you accountable. We thought you were dead, but that was the rumor to settle all of us down, as we wanted to find you and drag you back to pay for what you did. Or worse, and again maybe better, depending on your viewpoint, make sure you couldn’t come back. ”
“More the fool you,” Brent declared. “I had been making deals for a very long time. I had an exit plan ready to exercise, and yet you thought I would tell you guys all about it and let you put me in military jail over it? Not happening. No way I would let you ruin my world.”
“And was it worth killing everybody for?” Steele asked. “Is that who you are on the inside?”
“I don’t know if I always was,” Brent conceded, as if contemplating the question. “But over time and distance? Yes, it was worth it. Absolutely. Whatever works to keep me safe. And now you have become a problem. And one I have to fix… permanently.”