Sunset Volume 2: High Noon

Las Vegas, NV.

“Gareth, what if we can’t get to him? Reeve always does this part. I’m getting really worried,” Hannah said, her voice a boom cracking through the silence. Alex flinched, jerking his arm from her grip before howling in pain. He couldn’t comprehend how his arm was still injured. It felt like he’d been gone for weeks, living the lives of beetles, the slow degradation of stones into dirt.

“Oh my god, Alex! I’m sorry. I’m sorry, please be okay. There were too many cars coming. We had to move you. We’ve been walking for an hour,” Hannah said.

Alex blinked up at her, uncomprehending. He couldn’t see her. His eyes stung. Sometimes, when he was in the Story, he forgot to blink often enough. His mouth was slack, but he couldn’t get it to straighten out or do what he wanted it to do.

“Alex. Come on. Don’t do this, don’t get stuck. You’re almost there. I know you are. I don’t know how to help you.” Her voice had taken on a whine to it, the one that happened when she was frustrated and wasn’t paying attention. She was hurt, and tired, and scared. She put one hand on his cheek. He struggled to blink, and once he did, struggled to open his unseeing eyes again. “Did you find it? Did you find out where they took him?” She shook his shoulders and he winced.

Gareth’s voice interrupted. Alex could feel his breath against his face—he’d have stooped low to be level with Alex’s shorter height. “Come on, kid. I know you’re in there. Look, take my hand. Step out of the Story you don’t know and into one you do. You know the one. We’ve used it before.” Alex felt Gareth take hold of his hand.

A memory presses in around the quiet Story of the earth. Alex knows this one. He’s seen it before, a thousand times. He knows it as though he were there when it happened. Gareth is young. Maybe six years old or so. He is sitting on his parents’ porch—a white-painted wrap-around porch surrounded by flowers. It’s summer. The air is warm and fragrant. Alex sits down next to Gareth on the steps of the porch. He is solid again. Relieved, he watches the sway of the leaves on the trees scattered in their yard. Gareth is playing with a toy car. It looks tiny, even in his small hands. It is Gareth’s favorite one—red with a streak of blue across the doors. Alex watches, for the thousandth time, as Gareth rolls the wheels across the boards of the floor, listens to the now-familiar rattle of tin against wood as the wheels bounce across the space between boards. He counts. Three beats. He knows the rhythm. Gareth’s mother’s voice calls from inside, asking if he wants lemonade. Her voice is sweet. The toy car feels warm in Gareth’s hand. Alex breathes in the summer air.

The scene replays.

When Alex opened his eyes, it was dark, but the kind of dark he could see. The Story he’d been living in took place under a bright sun, but suddenly, he felt blinded. Before he could get his bearings, he noticed they were walking. He was holding Gareth’s hand as he and Hannah guided him down the street. He didn’t know where they were. He wondered how many times he’d watched that Memory replay before coming to. Night had solidly fallen.

“Where are we?” he asked, voice dry and cracking.

Gareth stopped walking. Hannah took a few moments to register that Alex had snapped back to the here and now, but once she did, she scrambled back to where they stood.

“You okay?” Gareth said.

Alex nodded. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat of the rasp. “I am now. Thank you. Where are we?”

“I got us a room at the motel down the street,” Hannah said. “We’re heading there now. Figured we’d walked you around town enough for one night and I’m really starting to hurt.” She chewed her lip, hesitating, but she didn’t break eye-contact with him. “Did you find it? The location?”

Alex cleared his throat again, as though he hadn’t spoken in years. “I have coordinates.”

---

SolCorp Pharmaceutical’s Chicago Office. Uranus Department.

Marek hesitated before knocking on the door of the head of Chicago’s Uranus department. It had been his office only five years ago and his life had gone in a thousand different crazy directions since then. He knocked.

“Come in,” came a familiar voice. So he went in.

Emmett’s startled expression as he looked up from the desk was gratifying. “Hi, old friend,” Marek grinned.

Emmett was an empath—a little younger than Marek, but not by much. He had blue eyes and blond hair that looked soft enough to sleep in—he was deceptively sweet looking. He was not an imposing man, until you looked him in the eye; he had a fierce pride and passion for his work. He was wearing joggers and a sweatshirt that would have looked cozy, if not for the words See you in Hell emblazoned on the front.

Despite the confrontational vibe his shirt projected, the office had been redecorated from Marek’s more playful, rag-tag, ‘I don’t know, I just like it,’ style of decor to something that could have been pulled from a magazine. It was cozy and warm, which, admittedly, was the other, equally prominent side of Emmett’s personality. He was like a switchblade that smelled like fresh baked cookies. And Marek loved that about him.

“When did you get into Chicago?” Emmett asked, as he made his way around his desk.

“Literally thirty seconds ago.” He grinned and Emmett hugged him tight. They hadn’t seen each other in over a year—not since Marek’s last visit for work.

Emmett leaned back with a genuine smile on his face. “Congratulations on the promotion. How’s it feel?”

“Wild,” Marek admitted. He helped himself to one of Emmett’s exquisitely cozy-looking chairs and Emmett followed his lead. “But Nancy is happily ensconced in her little beach house on the coast of Maine and she left me in charge for some reason. I asked her if she was having a stroke, but apparently not.”

“Yeah, they should have given her psych eval before making that decision,” Emmett grinned.

“How are things here?”

“Things are good. I finally managed to strong-arm the budget into that energy-saving overhaul throughout the whole building.”

Marek blinked. “You’re a god. How did you do it?” Marek had fought for that project as head of the Chicago branch and gotten exactly nowhere, but that was very like Emmett. He was a force to reckon with when he wanted something. He made things happen and wasn't afraid to go around or above (or below) someone to do it. For some reason, it was always the empaths you needed to watch out for.

He shrugged and glanced at the ceiling. “Stopped repairing anything in the Jupiter offices and apartments. The work tickets just kept falling in the shredder for some reason.”

Marek shook his head at him in something like awe with a sprinkling of terror. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“I don’t know how you do it,” Emmett countered. “Head of Chicago’s Uranus to head of all Uranus in five years ain’t bad.”

“That’s why I’m here actually.” Marek leaned forward. “I’ve got a vacancy to fill. I want you to come to LA with me.”

There was a smirk forming but he could see Emmett was holding it back. “As your Second?”

“No,” he said, deflating a little. He would if he could. “Second is going to the current Third, Becca. As much as our personalities don’t particularly mesh, she’s earned it. And she’s been in LA her whole career, so the building knows her. I can’t have it looking like Chicago is staging a coup on the Uranus headquarters.”

The smirk broke through. “What if we were, though?”

“I’m serious. I want you to come handle Physical Plant as Third. It’s what you’re best at, anyway, and I wouldn’t want to trust it to anyone else.”

“If I did, does that mean I’ll have your job in five years? If we’re following the pattern.”

Marek couldn’t help but chuckle. “Technically, that would mean Becca would have my job in five years.”

“Try me.” Emmett crossed his legs and sat back. “Is the culture among the departments the same in LA as it is here?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I mean how other departments view us. That Uranus is the catch-all for people who couldn’t make it into the ‘elite’ departments.” He rolled his eyes and gestured with air quotes on the word elite. “That we’re plumbers and janitors, as if that’s a bad thing, and they all look down on us because we don’t work in the field, even though we’re the reason they have food to eat and running water in the apartments we furnished.”

“Ah.” Marek sighed. “Yeah, that’s everywhere.”

Uranus wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t the noble calling of teaching children or thrill of covert spy work. Infrastructure wasn’t sexy but it allowed for everyone else to exist and do their jobs, and that was what Marek loved about it. Uranus was huge, bigger than most people realized, and touched every department in Sol—food, HVAC, IT, housing, you name it. And Emmett was the only person Marek knew who was even more passionate about Uranus than he was.

Emmett nodded, considering his answer. “So what have you done to change that culture during your time in LA?”

Marek raised his eyebrows. “Are you interviewing me for your promotion?”

“What would you say if I was?” he asked, cocking his head.

Marek sighed. “LA is pretty set in their ways, but I’ve made some headway in making Uranus a little more casual, a little more friendly—and less silent. Less something that’s only ever behind the scenes. I’ve got the Uranus Pet Program going, which Pluto says has had a significant impact on mental health. You’d be running that. Baguette is the official, unofficial mascot,” he grinned.

“And that’s great and all…” He paused and wrinkled his brow. “Baguette is a helluva weird name for a dog or even a cat.”

“Well, sure,” Marek rolled his eyes with an effort to keep a straight face as he showed the picture of Baguette set as his cellphone background. “She’s my hamster.”

Emmett was less impressed than was appropriate. “Marek.”

“Listen, you’re going to take the job because we both know you want it.”

He smiled finally. “Yeah, of course, I’m going to take it. I don’t know how Becca’s been running things, but I’m going to run it my way, and LA’s just going to have to deal with it.”

“Why do you think I’m asking you?”

“Alright.” Emmett stood up and stretched. “When do you need me in LA?”

He shook his head. “Five years ago, but now will do.”

“Then I should get packing.”

---

Las Vegas, NV.

Reeve felt himself drowning. He opened his mouth to gasp, but his throat was clogged and his lungs were useless sacks. He forced his eyes open to look for the surface and saw a light yellow patterned quilt so close it took up his whole field of vision. The color and stitching were unexpectedly more terrifying than any watery landscape he had prepared himself for. Facedown on a bed, he tried to flail but found his limbs unresponsive and hogtied. He coughed, chest spasming. His skull and mouth were so full of the minds around him that he couldn’t begin to translate them. They were blurred and unintelligible like text on a page held too close to the eye. The minds felt all but inhuman. A movement to his left made him startle. An agent in all black impersonally checked his restraints. The image of him looked surreal, fake even. That a person could stand next to him without Reeve knowing he was coming or being able to sense his thoughts at all was alien.

He slowly turned his head, cheek dragging on the quilt, to look at the agent. He knew he had to be drugged somehow. He fought to ground himself and climb back down from the abstract. Black MOLLE vest and black tactical armor. Neptune. The car. Sluggishly wrenching at his bonds, Reeve rolled and craned his neck, searching the room for Gareth, Hannah, and Alex, horrified that they might be close by without him being able to feel them. They weren’t, or at least they weren’t visible. He gathered he was either in a cheap hotel room or a nice, but barely lived-in, studio apartment. There were three Neptune agents he could see. They were still in their gear, but had pulled down their half-balaclavas. The closest agent put a firm hand on the back of his neck and pressed him back down flat onto the mattress. He sucked in another breath, feeling the blanket contour around his teeth.

“Hey, you want me to hit him with another five mgs?”

The hand pinning him maintained a painful grip on the point where his neck met the base of his skull. Reeve tried to reach out with telepathy, but it was as if there was nothing for him to latch onto. In his mind, he executed the steps he would take to gain control of the agent, but the only thing he felt was an indiscriminate crushing blur. His mouth was still open and the quilt, wet with spit, was bellowing in and out of his mouth with each breath. It turned his stomach and he let himself go limp.

“No,” another agent called. “We need him conscious.”

The hand relaxed. “I’d feel better if we just black-bagged him and let the Reintegration team sort his head out.”

Reeve heard footsteps. More hands turned him onto his back. The movement and overhead lighting made his eyes feel squashed and misshapen. His back bowed with the hogtie and his wrists were trapped under him painfully.

“Yeah, you and me both, but HQ doesn’t even want him alive long enough to get that close to the building. He doesn’t look like that much.” A backlit figure loomed above him. Fingers grasped his jaw, moving his face back and forth. “Are you with us, 37A?” Reeve wanted to yell. He managed a short groan.

“Just check his head already.”

A voice from the far end of the room answered, “Between the concussion and this much sedation, his mind’s such a mess I couldn’t find out his favorite color, let alone if his team’s been indoctrinated. I have to wait for him to recover and find the right dosage.”

Indoctrinated?

“How long?”

“Can’t say. After the hit he took, might be hours. He needs to be drugged enough to not resist me, but clear enough that I’m not wading through mud in there.”

Hands slapped at Reeve’s cheeks. “Hey. Come on, 37A. We’re losing him again.”

Reeve was dreaming.

---

The motel room was dingier than Hannah would have expected, even from Vegas, but she couldn’t help thinking that it was the comfiest bed she’d ever felt. She hadn’t realized how tired her body was. She propped herself up on her pillow as she watched Alex sit down on the other bed and Gareth poke through the contents of his go-bag.

“One gun, enough bullets that they’ll do, and your razors,” Gareth said, glancing at Hannah. “That’s what we’ve got. The rest is still in the car. Or with Neptune, probably.

Hannah frowned. “My baby,” she said sadly, referring to her sniper rifle, which had been packed away hidden in a trunk compartment for the mission that had brought them to Vegas.

Gareth said, “So what’s the plan?”

For a few minutes, they all sat there in a stupor. Alex got back up and started pacing. She could feel his anxiety growing. She said, “Alex, please settle. Take a minute. We’ll figure it out.” He stopped and sat on the threadbare chair by the window.

Gareth said, “If we go rescue him, we’re burning our bridges with Sol. You both realize that, right?”

Alex nodded, his face set. “I don’t give a fuck. Reeve is the one who gave me a life. Sol can suck it. Whatever he did, it can’t have been that bad, right? I mean, we would have known about it, wouldn’t we?”

Gareth shrugged. “I want to believe that, but… He’s a telepath.”

Alex’s face flushed with anger. “There is no way he did anything that bad, and you fucking know it.”

“I’m not saying I’m for ditching him, but I’m saying we need to be realistic.”

Hannah said, “Maybe we can work it out with the company after we get him back. They can Reintegrate him or something.”

Gareth shook his head. “If we go get him back from a Neptune team, we’re disobeying Sol, straight up. If we were hoping to work something out, we’d have contacted Neptune by now and requested a meeting or something, or stayed to wait for the Cleanup team, but we didn’t. Do you want to call Neptune?”

Hannah thought for a moment, picking at her nails.

“No,” Alex said. He gestured to Hannah. “It’s like you said earlier—Neptune doesn’t make mistakes. They won’t listen. That’s not how Neptune works.”

Hannah nodded, almost imperceptibly.

Alex continued, “So the question is, do you two love Reeve enough to stand by him anyway?”

It felt like the air was sucked from the room. Hannah and Gareth exchanged a look, before nodding to one another. They were doing this.

“Okay, so what do we know?” Alex said, reaching to remember things he'd learned from tactics lessons and all the time Reeve had spent showing him how to plan missions. “They have a telepath, a sublimator, a strongwoman, and someone else whose knack I didn’t Read. So that’s great. Always good to have an unknown, you know, just to keep things interesting.”

“It’s okay,” Gareth said as he was checking the gun. “You got us a lot of intel. Knacks, a location, and you said they wanted him alive, right? So we have a little bit of time on our side.”

Alex replied, “Not too much time, though—I have no idea how long they’re planning to stay.”

Hannah shrugged. “They’re feeling that crash too, for sure. I’m not saying we should dick around for a week, but we have to assume we have enough time to make ourselves effective.”

Alex repeated, “So what’s the plan?”

Hannah knit her eyebrows. “Well, I would say we barge in and let Reeve’s telepathy cover us, but the prick went and got himself in trouble.” She chewed her lip. “I hate how dependent we’ve gotten on his knack.”

“We’ll worry about that later,” Gareth said. He and Hannah tossed some ideas back and forth for several minutes, but they were just talking in circles without getting much of anywhere.

Alex hushed them from his seat by the window. His face was thoughtful and tense, eyes darting back and forth as he sorted through his thoughts.

“What is it?” Hannah asked.

“Shut up, I’m thinking,” Alex said. “I might…”

“Might what?” Hannah said.

“Shut up, I might have an idea but I need to focus.”

She huffed and crossed her arms, staring up at the ceiling. She could hear Gareth packing things back up into the bag.

After a few moments, Alex said, “Gareth, how confident are you that you can wall your mind off against a Neptune telepath?” He hesitated for a moment and then pressed on, “I know you have practice.”

Gareth balked for just a split second, but it was enough that Hannah could tell some painful memories flashed in his mind. But then he said, “Pretty damn confident. What do you have in mind?”

Alex said, “We don’t have much of a choice but to barge in. There’s no getting around it. So we split up, create a distraction, and you go in. You can shield your mind better than any of us, and I’m good at projecting my thoughts. I’m useless with this arm anyway,” he gestured to his sling in frustration, “I think I can draw the telepath out at least, and give you a fighting chance.”

Gareth made a sound of protest as Hannah sat up. “Oh, hell no. You are not going to go out there to lure in a fucking Neptune telepath while you’re wounded. We don’t even know why they’re doing this!”

Alex put up his good hand and cut her off, “They’re supposed to bring in Reeve alive. They didn’t take any of us. I’m not eighteen until the day after tomorrow, so they’d have to keep me alive on technicality anyway, right? Plus, I haven’t done anything wrong. Then again, it’s possible that neither did Reeve, right?”

Gareth shrugged. “Who the fuck knows.”

Alex sighed. “It doesn’t matter right now. Fact is, if we’re doing this, and I sure as hell am, we have to get moving. We need to be on this ASAP, as in like ten hours ago, and neither of you seem to have any better ideas.”

Hannah slumped back down. “So how are you going to distract them?”

“I’ll find some spot nearby and I’ll project my thoughts. Something lame about being scared because I woke up in the car and you two were gone and I just want to find my way back to Sol. It won’t be hard to sell the scared part, at least, and it’ll keep me safer if I sound like I want to go back.”

“So what’s my role in this then?” Hannah asked.

Alex said, “You go with Gareth to get Reeve. That’s the more dangerous part.”

“No,” Gareth said. “They’ll be sending a telepath out to get you and bring you back to Sol. If you want to stick this out, we can’t risk that. Hannah will go with you.”

Alex shook his head. “If she does, that kind of goes against the point of me projecting that I’m alone and want to go back.”

“If we can check the area out beforehand, I can find a spot to watch from a distance. Take them out before they get to you.” She nodded to Gareth. “If you think you can handle it unarmed and you trust me to make it work with this dinky ass gun.”

Gareth looked at his hands, clenching them into fists in his lap. “I can do it.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Hannah said.

“When do we leave?” Alex asked.

“Dawn,” Hannah replied firmly. “We’ll need the light.”

Alex shook his head. “I can’t sit up all night just waiting for the sun to rise.”

“So lay down,” Hannah said.

Gareth stood. “I’m going to go get us a car. We can find the place and stake it out until morning.”

***