Chapter 13

As always, I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to my editors and my supporters. My gratitude and admiration are beyond measure.

Now, on with the story.

I suppose that when it comes to timing, some things just work out better than others. It took the better part of a week for Jeeves to comb through the local-ish listings and find somewhere suitable to rent. It was a small, isolated bungalow on a deserted country lane. That lane provided the only means of access to the property and was surrounded on both sides by thick woodland. Woods might not sound like the best of options when it came to being able to see an enemy approaching, but Jeeves and the computer system quickly solved that problem with a dozen or so well-placed wireless cameras.

Knowing there was a self-inflicted target on my back meant I had to limit my public exposure as much as possible. In layman’s terms, that meant sitting alone in my apartment playing the games my computer system had designed. Don’t get me wrong, the games themselves were amazing. The engine and the system built around it were performing beyond anything I could have hoped for, and producing content that would keep the average human busy for the rest of their natural lives. The problem was I wasn’t an average human. The mundanities of playing video games, especially when constantly on alert, did not come close to distracting me.

My college project was finished. I upgraded the system as much as I possibly could without resorting to inventing new computer components, I had done as much research on the Inquisition, the Royals, the crash, and the mysterious area of Ukraine as the internet allowed - even going as far as mapping out the actions in the ongoing war currently raging there - and after all that I still had four more days to kill. In an enormous break with tradition, and a good indicator of my state of mind, I was even too distracted to fuck Faye.

She was cool with it; she understood, and she was feeling the pressure as much as I was. Still, dismissing the opportunity for countless hours of hot, steamy, physics-defying sex with a drop-dead gorgeous redhead with a mind as perverted as mine, was something new for me. It set the benchmark for how I dealt with pressure. From that point in my life onward, I could measure how stressed I was by my willingness to bury myself into Faye’s willing and eager sex. If I could without getting distracted, then I wasn’t as stressed as I had been during those four days.

I spent more time than I would like to admit playing frisbee with my city’s superhero mole.

It’s funny the things you come up with when you are bored.

Anyway, timing.

The end of that week also marked the end of the academic semester, with the college breaking for Christmas. As much as I had previously detested the season thanks to my parents - you can imagine how badly they reacted to a holiday based around spoiling children - I had always enjoyed it whilst being a student. Jimmy and I spent most of the last couple of years painfully, liver-destroyingly drunk. Normally, this would have posed a problem, what with me moving out of the apartment, albeit temporarily, but as it turned out, I needn’t have worried. His relationship with his Grandmother, his only living blood relative, wasn’t a huge amount better than mine was with my family; he had always been happy to spend the holidays with Uncle Bob and me. This year, however, there was another option. In my preoccupation with the maelstrom of mystery and deceit surrounding my life, I had completely missed the strength and seriousness of his blossoming relationship with Lori. It was so serious, in fact, that she had invited him to go home with her for Christmas to meet her parents.

Yes, I mercilessly teased him about how much she would regret that choice by January. It was a joke, of course, and Jimmy, being Jimmy, took it as one. Even Lori - whose love for my friend had triggered the “within reason” clause of my powers, rendering her completely immune to them - had joined in the ribbing. Either way, I was happy for him. The most dedicated man-whore ever to grace the hallowed halls of our ever-anonymous college finally found the one girl capable of taming him.

Still, every time I watched their euphorically happy shared glances, I felt that sharp pang of pain, knowing that I would never share them with Faye outside of the confines of my own mind.

Maybe if this whole debacle was settled before Christmas, I could travel to Faye’s parents’ home and introduce myself. Faye assured me that it would go well if I tried but made a point of not outright asking.

The end of the winter semester also meant that Olvia was heading home. Evie, apparently, was sticking around. Charlotte had won the professional lottery and scored some time off over Christmas, which she was planning on spending with family. Becky and Philippa, also not being students, were working as they normally would. In fact, the Christmas period was an extra busy time for their profession, thanks to the inebriation of most of the general population. Drunk people have more accidents. Who knew?

Contrary to making me feel more isolated at the departure of most of my support network, it was actually a relief. Not only would I not have to exert power possibly needed elsewhere in an attempt to make sure people stayed away from me while also not noticing I had moved out, but I also didn’t have to worry about protecting them. They weren’t around, so as long as the rogue Inquisitors got their shit together and found me before my people came back, I wouldn’t have to worry about my friends getting caught in the crossfire.

On the sixth day, I had the keys in hand, and I moved the few belongings I actually needed to the new place. It was as busy as I had been for a week. Yet I couldn’t help but be amazed by the lengths that Jeeves and the computer’s intelligence had gone to to cover my tracks. Voting registers, bank statements, mobile phone bills, TV, internet, and utility bills, and even a healthy porn history had been created in my new alias’s name for this house and backdated for months. The computer even doctored my credit file to show that I had been living here since leaving home. Every single digital trace of me ever living in the Queen’s Head, or at my dorm before that had been erased from existence. Uncle Bob had been ‘programmed’ to have utterly no idea who I was until I needed to come back, along with every single regular who I thought could pick me out of a lineup. For good measure, the dynamic duo of Jeeves and the computer - who I quickly realized I would have to name - had checked to see if a search had been run on my name against any and every conceivable entity that could possibly have my information. If the Inquisitors so much as looked up the date I would be eligible for a state pension, Jeeves would know about it.

Fortunately, it would seem that no searches had been run.

The computer system itself had obviously stayed back in the lofts above the Head. The plan was to draw the Inquisitors to the cottage and then fuck them up. I had no faith or expectation that the cottage itself would survive and didn’t want the computer caught up in the carnage. Communicating with it via its permanent link with my cell phone slowed things down a little, but not enough to hamper the plan.

On day seven, the plan started in earnest. I became Mr. Fucking Social! I was everywhere. Anywhere where I could possibly be spotted by someone looking for me. I went to a pub - not the Queen’s Head, obviously - I went to the movies, I ate out, I got into a fight specifically to be arrested. Hell, I even visited the workingman’s club where the attack had taken place on the off chance that Inquisitors were watching that. Anything I could think of to get my fake name and new address into the system. I even hired a car. I gave myself the ability to drive as well as the world’s best race car driver and fabricated a license for myself that would show up on any records.

All the while, the Dynamic Duo was watching every single security camera within twenty miles of me and the bungalow to see if any unreadable people started getting closer. We had no idea if any of the people we were expecting to pick up were Inquisitors, blocking Evos, or even, I had realized, people like Evie. In fact, the only person it picked up for quite some time was Evie. If anyone else wandered into the perimeter for any reason whatsoever, they would be tagged and tracked like they owed me child support!

On day eleven, four days after putting the plan into action, the first of them was spotted.

By day fourteen, there were twenty of them. Splitting into smaller groups, they were very helpful in pointing out that they were who I was looking for by retracing the steps I had taken the previous few days. It was quite impressive to watch them narrow down the area, though.

I must admit, I felt more than a little spark of excitement when one group got as close as the end of the lane, but they turned back.

“Fucking spoilsports.”

Then came Christmas eve.

Twas the night before Christmas, and bored in my house,

I was scrolling through porn sites, with deft clicks of my mouse.

When, all of a sudden, an alarm loudly rang

“Someone’s approaching!” My old butler sang.

I lept to the window, and peered through the glass.

To spy a lone figure, stepping onto my grass,

Coatless and soaked through, her cold feet were bared,

An elderly woman, she was hurt ... crying ... and scared.

What the fuck? It was amazing how quickly the buoyant, almost gleeful, and totally unconcerning excitement over the possibility of upcoming violence vanished. Yes, yes, I could try to lie to myself by saying I was eager to get answers, not to inflict death and destruction upon my foe, but the simple fact is that I was itching for a fight. The ball of power had already been sizzling in my hand before I had made it to the window, ready to utterly obliterate any threat that approached. Answers would come, but they would be violently pulled out of an attacker with the devastated bodies of his friends lying around us. But no assault force leapt over the garden walls, and no armed men were running across my lawn. There was just a single, staggering old lady, wearing what could only be described as a nightdress, bracing herself against the damp and freezing winds.

Of course, I had been fooled by an outward appearance once before.

“Jeeves?”

“Where the hell did she come from?” I asked, my murderous plan faltering almost immediately.

The doorbell rang.

I stepped cautiously to the door; I wasn’t convinced yet. I had spent the past few days watching the enemy getting closer; I was literally waiting for the attack to come. More than that, Sterling’s attack, his complete mastery of the ability to bypass my strongest defenses, the way he was able to fool me and everyone else so completely, and the intimacy with which he had attempted to kill me had left their scars. The woman on the other side of the door had no conceivable reason to be here, and I was honestly wondering if the mantra of “better safe than sorry” included preemptively killing a half-naked pensioner.

Still, my hand unfastened the latch and slid down the door handle.

The woman’s eyes locked onto mine as soon as the door opened. It didn’t take my abilities to be able to see the fear and panic behind them.

“Please,” she whimpered weakly. “You have to ... help ... them.”

Her eyes rolled, and she collapsed forward into my arms.

Without even thinking about it, my mind entered hers.

Mary Jones was, as her generation liked to say, in her element.

She had spent a lifetime, one long decade after another, working so she could enjoy moments just like these. She had suffered through arthritis, failing eyesight, and growing bodily aches to build for herself a retirement that she could enjoy. It had been hard work, it had taken more years than she cared to admit, but she had done it. A week before her last shift in the bank, her eldest daughter had blessed her with the one gift she had always wanted.

Her first grandchild.

Eight years later, the count was up to three. Two girls from her own firstborn, followed only three years ago by a bouncing baby boy from her youngest daughter. Her middle child, her only boy, was still defiant in refusing to settle down and give her the full set, but - as she often joked with her husband - he always was the stubborn one.

Either way, it was Christmas Eve, and the family tradition had remained intact. All of the children, bringing all of the grandchildren, swarmed her modest-sized home on the outskirts of town, stayed the night, opened their gifts in the morning, ate food as a family, and then parted later on Christmas day. With free childcare, her grown kids opted to attend the various Christmas parties that they were invited to, while Mary got to do the thing she enjoyed the most.

Spoiling the grandkids rotten.

She had heard the jokes. That grandparents enjoy their role so much because they can top the little ones up on sugar and then give them back, that they could encourage them to act up just as their parents had done to her, then gleefully watch their children go through the same stress they’d gone through with them, that it was a parents job to raise a child, it was a grandparents job to spoil them. She’d heard them all and jokingly agreed with all of them. But the real reason she loved having them around so much was much simpler.

Working all those hours, for all those years, meant she had missed so much of her own children’s childhood. The simple joy of being able to pick them up from school and ask how their day had been was something that she rarely got to enjoy with her own. The indescribable pleasure she found in just playing with them. Added to that was the fact retirement - robbing her life of the stress that work had always brought - had seen her relationship with her husband, Stan, become stronger than ever. They had fallen in love all over again. These really were the golden years of her life.

For all the aches and pains, for the agony in her hip and in her fingers from the arthritis, those three little angels and her doting husband made her feel young again. She loved them all beyond anything that could be put into words.

The Muppets Christmas Carol had been a family tradition since its release in the 90s. The more modern and sentimental movies had their place, she supposed, but there was something about the innocent and humorous retelling of an age-old classic that just resonated with her. Her kids had loved it, she had loved it, and her grandchildren were learning to love it too.

The final credits were just starting to roll up the screen; Stan - his slippers on his feet and the glass of whiskey in his hand - was just starting to corral the kids into getting on their Pajamas while Mary stood to prepare Santa’s milk and cookies when the front door was kicked in.

Five men barged in, each of their faces covered in black ski masks and each of them carrying dangerous-looking assault rifles. Stan, despite his age, his frailty, and the amount of whiskey coursing through his system, was on his feet in an instant, lunging forward to tackle the closest intruder while screaming at Mary to get the kids and run.

A lifetime of working grueling hours to provide for his family already made him a hero in her eyes; he was still every bit the man she had fallen in love with and married fifty-two years earlier. But in that instant, he became even more so.

Mary grabbed the youngest of her three charges and made a break for the kitchen, the older two a few steps ahead of her. She looked back in time to watch the butt of the intruder’s rifle smash into Stan’s head, a nasty-looking gash ripping through the skin as he crumpled to the floor.

She looked to see three more heavily armed men step through the back door and into the kitchen ahead of her. They were trapped.

The oldest of the children screamed, the youngest was already crying, and the middle child, old enough to understand what was happening but too young to process the fear, was frozen to the spot, a puddle of her own terror wetting her pants and pooling around her feet as one of the men approached her menacingly.

Mary grabbed the children, all three of them, shepherding them behind her to protect them, and instinctively pulled a cleaver out of the knife block on the counter beside her. She may have been old, she may have been frail, but she would fight to the death to protect her family if that was what was necessary.

She backed herself toward the corner of the room, making sure that she was between the intruders and the children. One hand waved the knife at whichever armed man came closest, while the other was bent behind her, making sure the children stayed where they were safe.