25. Scottie Reed
Scottie Reed
Cash: i miss you
Me: You’re at the gas pump.
Cash: it’s been at least four minutes
***
Two days later, I am stuffed back into the orange disaster that Cash calls our car, and after spending two hours driving across the state line toward Nashville, I am ready to die.
Cash hasn’t stopped smirking since we crossed the state line. Every time he looks over at me, that lazy, infuriating curve returns to his mouth.
“You’re doing it again,” I say, staring straight through the windshield at the endless stretch of asphalt.
“Doing what?”
“The smirk. It’s obnoxious.”
“I’m just driving the van, Scottie. Being your unmanageable client.”
“You’re thinking about the bear conversation,” I say, cutting my eyes sideways at him. “I can feel the judgment radiating off your shoulder. You’re mentally debating my survival skills against a grizzly again.”
“I wasn’t thinking about the bear,” he laughs, shaking his head. “I was actually thinking about the fact that you still haven’t given my shoes back. I’m starting to think you just like the look.”
“These are my legal property now, O’Connell. Emotional distress compensation for the Chattahoochee disaster.”
“Good to know,” he says, his grin deepening. “Well, get ready for the next stop. We’re five minutes away.”
The facility is a windowless concrete block tucked behind a wholesale plumbing warehouse. There is no sign on the door, only a small, matte-black logo of a single, unblinking human eye inside a triangle.
The second I push the heavy metal door open, a wave of distinct, herbal anxiety hits me.
The lobby doesn’t look like a gym. It looks like the waiting room of a high-end dermatology clinic mixed with a pretentious tech startup.
The walls are a blinding, seamless white, the lighting is blue, and there is a low, rhythmic hum vibrating through the floorboards.
Behind a curved concrete desk sits a guy in his early twenties with a shaved head, wearing a flawless, collarless gray tunic. He isn’t looking at a computer; he’s staring into a large, shallow bowl of black sand, moving a small wooden rake through it with absolute, hypnotic focus.
“Hi,” I say, my voice echoing slightly in the sterile space. “We’re here for the appointment. Finnian O’Connell.”
The guy doesn’t look up from the sand. He just raises his left hand, pointing a single, languid finger toward a set of double frosted-glass doors at the end of the hall. “The frequency is already set for him. Enter the collective.”
I step back, my heel catching on the edge of Cash’s giant, mud-crusted sneakers.
I lean into Cash’s arm, whispering out of the side of my mouth. “Cash, no. Absolutely not. This is a front for an international pyramid scheme for essential oils. We are leaving.”
“Relax,” Cash whispers back, his hand coming down onto the small of my back. “Yuri swears by this guy. He says he rewired three different Olympic biathletes after the winter games. If he can fix them, he can fix my reaction time.”
Before I can pull him back toward the van, the frosted doors slide open automatically with a pneumatic hiss, and a man steps out into the white light.
He is about fifty, entirely bald, with a beard trimmed into a precise, geometric square. He wears the same gray tunic as the receptionist, but his features a small silver eye embroidered on the collar.
“Welcome, Finnian. I am Master Calvin.”
“Master?” I repeat, stepping in front of Cash, my protective agent mode fully engaged.
“Is that a legal certification or a spiritual designation, Calvin? Because I’m his representation, and if there are any waivers involving sensory deprivation tanks or forced meditation, I need to see the fine print. ”
Calvin turns his unblinking gaze to me. “The analytical mind seeks walls where the river seeks flow. You are welcome to observe, counselor. But do not pollute the frequency.”
“I am going to pollute your entire perimeter if you don’t show me his training protocol right now,” I snap.
Cash lets out a soft, choked laugh behind me, his hand tightening slightly on my hip to keep me from lunging at the guy. “We’re good, Scottie. Let’s just see the setup.”
The main training room is even worse than the lobby.
There are no weights, no hockey nets, and no ice. Instead, the entire room is dark, illuminated only by fifty different colored strobe lights flashing in irregular, dizzying intervals against the walls.
In the center hangs a massive, suspended web of black elastic cords, and the floor is covered in thousands of tiny, glowing blue balls rolling around at random.
“The problem with modern goal tending,” Calvin says, gesturing to the flashing, chaotic room, “is that you are trained to look at the puck. The puck is a lie. The puck is a symptom of the shooter’s intent. We do not track the rubber. We track the neural ripple before the blade makes contact.”
“Right,” Cash says. He looks fascinated, his large frame leaning forward. “The kinetic release.”
“Exactly!” Calvin says, his voice rising with excitement. “Strap into the harness. Let the lights correct the fracture in your peripheral awareness.”
Within five minutes, Cash is fully strapped into the black elastic web, suspended about six inches off the floor, while Calvin stands at a control panel, increasing the speed of the flashing strobes until the entire room feels like a high-stakes rave.
Tiny green lasers begin to shoot from the ceiling, and Cash is dropping into the butterfly, his long arms flashing out to swat at the beams with a speed that doesn’t even look human.
I stand in the corner, my back pressed against the white wall, watching him.
He’s sweating, his breath coming in short gasps, his broad shoulders twisting through the harness with a fluid, terrifying precision.
The craziest part isn’t the lights or the weird tunic—it’s the fact that he isn’t missing. Every single laser beam that shoots from the darkness is met by his blocker or his glove before the light can hit the wall behind him.
Calvin glides over to me, his expression serene.
“He is transitioning,” he whispers over the pounding music. “By tomorrow, he will no longer require the conscious mind to defend the cage.”
“Calvin,” I say, leaning close. “If you try to make him drink any ‘special’ tea after this, I am calling the state police.”
“The tea is entirely optional,” Calvin says smoothly, drifting back toward his control panel.
***
Three hours later, we walk back out through the frosted glass doors and step out into the gray afternoon. The second the door clicks shut behind us, I turn on him.
“He called you a vessel, Finn. You just participated in an off-season sports cult.”
“It worked, Scottie,” he says, throwing his arm over my shoulder as we walk toward the van. “I’m telling you, the way the lights move forces your eyes to adjust to the speed before your brain can process it. It’s pure reaction.”
“You’re brainwashed,” I say. “If you start wearing gray tunics to our next training stop in Memphis, I will kill you. I have a reputation to maintain, and ‘cult-led goalie’ isn’t a great look for the agency.”
“Deal,” he grins, starting the air-cooled engine.
Before he pulls out of the gravel lot, he reaches into the dashboard compartment and pulls out a postcard he must have swiped from the truck stop at the border. It’s a terrible, grainy photo of a generic highway under a blanket of aggressive fog.
He clicks a pen with his teeth and flips it over, his shoulder blocking my view as his hand moves across the cardboard in a fast, heavy scrawl.
He lets the ink dry for a second, slides it into the thick white envelope nestled between our seats, and licks the seal with a smug look.
“Nashville is officially in the vault,” he says, tapping the console. “Now let’s find a place that serves real, greasy, non-spiritual food.”
***
We find a bar about three miles down the road. It’s a proper local spot—the kind of place where the air smells like deep-fryer oil, stale draft beer, and damp wool, and the walls are entirely covered in yellowed, autographed pictures of minor-league rosters.
We grab a booth in the far back corner, underneath a broken neon sign for a defunct local brewery.
“Two plates of the garlic parm wings, a basket of fries, and whatever coffee you have, please,” Cash tells the waitress, an older woman with a pencil tucked into her gray bun.
“You got it, honey,” she says, disappearing toward the kitchen.
I lean my elbows on the sticky wooden table, looking across at him.
“So,” I say. “The next coach on the itinerary is in Memphis. Are we expecting more strobe lights and tunics, or are we going back to standard ice drills?”
“Standard ice, I think,” Cash says, rubbing the back of his neck. “But honestly, after today, I feel like I could track a puck through a brick wall. That guru guy is weird, but his mechanics are real.”
“I’ll give him credit for the hand-eye coordination,” I say, reaching across the table without thinking and resting my fingers over his knuckles. “But if he sends me an invoice for ‘spiritual alignment,’ I’m deducting it from your travel budget.”
Cash looks at our joined hands on the table, a slow, soft smile breaking through the fatigue on his face. “You’re really tough, you know that? Most people would’ve run out of that place in two minutes.”
“I have to be, O’Connell. Someone has to keep you from accidentally joining a cult.”
The waitress returns, dropping the plates of wings and two thick glasses of dark ale between us.
We’re halfway through the first plate of wings when the front door of the bar swings open, letting in a blast of cold air and a group of four guys in canvas work jackets.
They’re loud, their voices carrying over the music, already smelling faintly of whatever pre-game drinks they had in the parking lot. They crowd around the horseshoe-shaped counter, ordering a round of whiskey shots.
I don’t pay attention to them until I hear the name O’Connell.