Chapter 34

One-night stands are interesting concepts and one that - despite my recent change in luck with them - still confused me a little. For example, Amanda, I had fucked her six ways from Sunday the night before and then again another few more times that morning; there was so much of my cum inside her, it was a minor miracle that she wasn’t leaving a trail of it behind her as she walked - with something of a hobble - down the hallway and the stairs on her much acclaimed and thoroughly earned walk of shame. Did it really count as a one-night stand if it had been repeated the following day?

The question died on my lips, though, as no sooner had Amanda’s blonde hair disappeared down the stairs than Jimmy’s dark hair appeared coming up them. His eyes locked onto mine, a brief look of surprise flashing over his face before his eyes lit up in delight. “Pete! You’re home!” He rushed forward and wrapped his arms around me in the tightest bear hug he could manage. “Dude, I’ve missed you! How are things going?”

I had to admit, I smiled, possibly my first genuine, heartfelt smile in months. Jimmy was my best friend, a man closer to me than family; he was - out of everyone - the only person whose mind I couldn’t bring myself to block. I needed that connection; I needed something to fight for, something to keep me connected. It was never going to be my family, nor could it be now that they were dead; the same went for Becky and - to a lesser extent - Philippa as well. Charlotte was an Evo and not a connection to what I considered the real world. Evie hung between both existences in a way that none of us really understood yet. Olivia had potential, but she was too new; she wasn’t a connection, just the possibility of one. Jimmy was it; he was the last grasp I had on my ever-slipping humanity; he was the link between my new life and who I had been before it; he knew me as the me I had to aspire to. For all my failings and faults as a human, I had been a good man, a man who would have been horrified at some of the things I had been forced to do.

I didn’t want to lose sight of that. I couldn’t. Even though he had no idea how deep the sentiment actually went, Jimmy was all I had left, all that was stopping me from falling into the maelstrom of endless, vengeful war.

I hoped he would never know how much he had done for me.

With his arms around me and the happy smile on his face - and more importantly, sensing nothing in the way of external influences over him - I felt myself relax a little, losing myself in the moment of normalcy. “Dude, what happened? Where have you been? I’ve been freaking the fuck out!”

I sighed heavily and stepped back out of the bear hug. “I ... um ... I kinda lost it a bit,” I said, stepping back into my apartment and letting him follow in beside me, placing a bottle of milk on my counter before he joined me on the sofa.

“Yeah, I heard about Becky, man. I know you liked her, I’m sorry. I ... Jesus, what can you say to that?”

I smiled weakly and nodded. It was time to start getting creative. “Thanks, but it’s worse than that. My asshole parents went and got themselves murdered, too.”

“What?!?” Jimmy spluttered around his tongue. Part of me felt bad talking about them like that, not after they had sacrificed themselves for me, but Jimmy knew my feelings about them, and there was no way to tell him what happened without explaining how I knew.

“Home invasion gone wrong,” I shook my head, “Or at least that’s the working theory.”

“Fuuuuck! Now I really don’t know what to say.” Jimmy slumped further into his seat. “When did that happen?”

“Just before Christmas,” I sighed. “But you know what they were like. They weren’t found for a few weeks; nobody raised the alarm until they missed a few of their Rotary Club meetings.”

“Didn’t you say your cousin was killed before that, too?”

That was the excuse I had used to talk about the death of Faye. I just nodded.

“I’m ... sorry?” He said, his eyes filled with sympathy. “I mean, you know I wasn’t the greatest fan of your parents; they were pretty shitty people, but ... wow.”

“Yeah,” I huffed out a breath. “No explanation, no closure, just ... It knocked me for six a bit.” I was surprised with how honest that answer was. People in my position would usually either take the condolences without comment or launch into a tirade about how it wasn’t needed. My parents had been the worst sort of people right until the very end, but at the very end, they had both stood their ground to protect a child whom they had spent a lifetime torturing. There was no other way to put it; I had no idea how I was supposed to feel about that. It went nowhere near far enough to absolve them of their actions for the entirety of my life before that; it raised more questions than it answered, and yet, they had given their lives for me, seemingly without a moment’s hesitation. It was totally at odds with everything I knew about them. And it really had completely thrown me through a loop.

“I ... I don’t know what to say, buddy,” he sighed and flopped back onto his own end of the sofa. He looked around and sniffed. “You’ve been fucking.”

“Needed to blow off some steam.”

“With...” he tossed his thumb over his shoulder, “ ... The blonde on the stairs.”

I just smiled and nodded.

“Damn, dude, you get her number for round two?” I shook my head, causing him to snort out laughing. “I’ve created a monster.”

“How’s Lori?” I asked, an intentional and highly unsubtle attempt at changing the subject.

The smile that lit up Jimmy’s face answered my question better than his words ever could. Then it suddenly dropped. “Oh shit, she sent me to the store, she’s waiting for me, be right back!” He hopped up and ran out of the apartment.

I blinked at the door as it closed behind him, then snorted out a laugh—same old Jimmy. I got up and headed to the kitchen area, pulling a glass out of one of the higher cupboards and filling it up with water from the sink. After having lived months on nothing other than water, it felt strange to have other options and not even consider them before still opting for that. It was automatic. For someone who very rarely, if ever, drank plain water in my life before my foray into a warzone, it was something of an unexpected change. I shrugged it off and took a large gulp from the glass before leaning on the counter.

A few seconds later, there was a knock on the door. I still wasn’t quite over my paranoia despite having taken a decent amount of it out on Amanda the night before ... and that morning ... and I let my senses wash out to the couple on the other side of the door. A smile pulled at my lips. Jimmy could barely contain his excitement at having his friend back, and Lori wasn’t far behind him, but more than that, she was happy to see her boyfriend so happy. I walked over and pulled the door open, letting them both in. Lori stopped and gave me a tight, tender hug before stepping all the way in. It was nice. To be welcomed home, to have people happy to see me just for being me, it warmed a part of me that had been left to wither in the cold for months. To make matters even better, there was no sign of corruption or influence in Lori either. “I’m sorry about your folks, Hun,” She whispered to me before she pulled away.

“Thanks, Lori,” I smiled back. It was nice to just ... be. It was what I had hoped for with Charlotte the day before, but the incident with Marco’s spy in her head, coupled with her knowing everything there was to know about my exploits in Ukraine, had thrown that out quite dramatically. Things had gone much better at the memorial - as much as things could go well at a memorial - at least between her and I, the contact with The Judge notwithstanding, and could almost seem to be back to normal by the time she’d dropped me home. But that ‘normal’ was not the same as this one.

There was always an edge between Charlotte and me, not necessarily in a bad way; it was just that everything about our relationship was founded on the fact that we were both Evos. That influenced everything, some ways for good, others for bad, and often it was very subtle, but it was always there. In fact, if you discounted every subject linked to our Evo nature and every conversation we’d had about something to do with it, We had barely spoken. I supposed it was a bit of a redundancy for us, though, I knew everything about her without a word about ever being spoken aloud. My friendship with Charlotte - assuming it could go back to the free and easy way it had been before the way - was as close as it was with Jimmy; I knew even more about her than anyone else in my life, but it stopped us from having ... this.

In those longest nights, in the darkest hours, in the deepest pits of my rage, loneliness, and sadness, both in Ukraine and before it, this is what I had missed the most. Just being in a room with my friend and shooting the shit about any inane thought that popped into our heads. It was damned near perfect. Even more so when Jimmy jumped up after a few minutes of idle conversation and went to grab a few beers from the fridge that I hadn’t even realized were there. We were halfway through April now; I doubted I had spent more than a few hours in this room before the previous evening since early December.

Well, four-month chilled beer was as good as any other, and I groaned loudly as I took my first pull from the condensation-soaked bottle.

“So,” Jimmy chirped up after a swig of his own, lifting his feet onto the coffee table before Lori promptly batted them off again. “Are you back to see the king?”

“Sorry?”

“The King. Professor Jacobs? You know, the surly old dude responsible for deciding if your project has a passing grade or not? Says I’m his favorite student?” Jimmy quirked an eyebrow. “Jesus, dude, you really have been away with the fairies.”

I cracked out a laugh. Fuck, there was normalcy, and then there was this. Despite my perfect memory, I had completely forgotten about my college course and the origins of my computer. It had seemed - and still seemed - so laughably inconsequential compared to everything else going on in my life. On one hand, I had found a heap of massacred civilians in Alchevs’k and discovered a plot to essentially render all of humanity into slavery, and on the other hand, I had to turn in my final project to get my degree. Chalk and cheese, oil and water, there were no conceivable analogies to the massive degrees my existence seemed to swing these days.

But then, there was a part of me that craved that level of normalcy. I had created something truly extraordinary, and it would take all of a few minutes to replicate the operating system and revert it back into a games engine from the surveillance system I had turned it into. With that and the notes I had prepared all those months ago, I was confident of not only a high passing grade, but possibly the highest grade possible. There was even a good chance that I would be asked to stay on to do my Master’s degree or even PhD in the course, too.

Those thoughts flashed through my mind in an instant before I looked back up to Jimmy. “Actually, with everything going on, I had forgotten all about that,” I chuckled. “But everything was finished before Christmas, all I really have to do is set up the meeting with King Jacobs. What about yours?”

“Oh, I completely revamped all of mine, thanks to this fucking genius.” He nudged Lori.

“I didn’t do anything, babe,” she blushed.

“I know,” he grumbled teasingly, “You just came up with so many awesome ideas that I would have been an idiot not to put them in there. Then I had to do all the work. Good thing you’ve got a nice ass.”

Lori giggled and then kissed his cheek.

“What else did you add?” I asked, both intrigued and happy for the distraction from everything else I had running through my head. “Last time we spoke about it, you were putting together a VR simulator for the military or something, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right. It’s like a training simulator, but I thought it could have added benefits for recovering from PTSD. That last part was a little more complicated than I thought because the events would need to be identical to what actually happened to a person; a generic simulator wouldn’t work; well, it would, but it wouldn’t be any help. Seriously, never in a million years did I think that I would be doing research into trauma therapy for a degree in software programming. But it’s still doable. Lori had the idea of extending that idea out further, though...”

“Like what?” I asked when he didn’t elaborate.

“Search and rescue scenarios for disaster areas,” he listed things off on his fingers, “accident simulators for EMTs to practice on, even something like training surgeons how to perform certain operations a few hundred times before they need a real patient to practice on, but even down to something as simple as virtual vacations. Get some dude to map out the slopes of Mount Everest, and then anyone could visit the peak, or walk the Great Wall of China, or ... I don’t know ... spray paint the Grand Canyon or something. Total VR immersion.”

“That ... would be a hell of a lot of programming,” I laughed.

“Fucking hell, don’t I know it.” Jimmy rolled his eyes and threw an exasperated glance at a giggling Lori. “But I only need a proof of concept for Jacobs, and that is what I have.”

“Well, shit, dude,” I was still laughing. “Sounds like she’s been a good influence on you.”

“Of course I am,” She grinned playfully with a little bow. “Someone had to kick him into gear. I need a man in gainful employment, not a bum who failed his degree ‘cause he slacked off at uni.”

“Oooh, already thinking about the long term, eh?” I smirked at Jimmy, who, in turn, had the good grace to blush a little as he grinned back. “Any wedding dates or baby showers I should put into my diary?” I asked as I took another long sip from my beer.

“Not yet,” Lori giggled. “But we’ve talked about it.”

I promptly spat my beer out, my eyes flicking back and forth between a very pleased-with-herself-looking Lori and an equally amused-looking Jimmy. “Fuck me, you’ve tamed him! I never thought I’d see the day.” I laughed out loud again.

“What can I say?” Jimmy shrugged, wiping a bit of the water spray from his jeans. “When you know, you know.”

“I’m happy for you,” I smiled and nodded. “For both of you. Really.”

“Pete, I...” Jimmy started before Lori put a hand on his shoulder and silenced him.

“Pete, love,” she said, looking almost affectionately into my eyes. “You’ve been through a really hard time, and losing Becky, shit, I can’t even imagine what that must have been like. We didn’t want to rub our ... I don’t know ... our happiness in your face. But the way Jimmy says it, you two are like brothers...” she paused to let the smiling glance flick between Jimmy and me, “ ... and I have no intention of coming between that. So, as far as I’m concerned, going forward, when we do have a family and all that stuff, you are part of it. Okay?”

It would, I suppose, be the manly and macho thing to say that I just nodded stoically and thanked her. But if this war had taught me one thing, it was that being a man and being macho were not the same thing. I have no shame in admitting that I choked up a little at Lori’s heartfelt declaration. “You are going to find someone one day, Pete. And that girl will be lucky to have you. You will find happiness, and you will have a family of your own, and when you do, she’ll be part of this family too... our family.”

“Thanks, Lori. That means ... more to me than you know.”

Seeing the emotion etched into my face, she smiled warmly, crossed the room, and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me tight and waving Jimmy across to join us.

“Nope,” he coughed hoarsely. “You ain’t getting me started, or this is gonna turn into a very messy night.”

“Perv,” she smirked at him, causing me to snort out a laugh. “But two strapping men, little old me...”

“I meant getting drunk! God, woman, get your mind out of the gutter!”

“You like my mind in the gutter.”

There was a pause before he said, “Touché,” then laughed loudly. We held the hug for a few more seconds before parting and returning to our respective chairs again. The next few hours raced by in that way that time only ever did when you wanted it to slow the fuck down. I wanted to savor the moment, to bask in it, and to relish every single minute of normality. It was hardly a rushed affair; Jimmy and Lori must have spent the better part of five hours just catching me up on what they had been doing for the last few months and how things were going in their relationship. It also gave me a bit more of an opportunity to get to know Lori better. I had to admit, I liked her. I didn’t use any of my powers on her, at least no more than had been needed to make sure no other Evo had influenced her in any way, and with that concern satisfied, if felt ... disrespectful - both to her and to Jimmy - for me to probe any further.

She was studying - of all things - psychology and spoke about her subject and course material with a passion that made me smile to myself. She reminded me of me, or the me I could have been if I had the self-confidence to talk about anything with that level of assuredness, back when my college life was the only thing about me of any consequence. I didn’t ask, and I couldn’t tell for sure based on that single conversation, but I got the impression that the subject meant something to her. Be that struggles of her own or witnessing the mental-health struggles of someone close to her, she spoke about her passion with the meaning and the fortitude that could only really be found in someone who had witnessed that sort of thing up close. It wasn’t - as many people often do - a course taken just to satisfy a curiosity; it wasn’t an interest that developed into an academic pursuit; she had wanted to learn so that she could actually help someone.

Considering the problems I’d had readjusting after my stint in the war and the fact that even I could see that I had some form of PTSD bouncing around my head, it was a sentiment that resonated with me very strongly.

There was also something else to it, though. to the conversation with these two people. I hadn’t really realized it before, having been apart from what I would have considered my ‘normal’ for so long; I had forgotten what it was like to just be in the mundane company of humans. Sure, you could argue I had spent the first stint of my time in Ukraine with Henry and his men, but that was far from normal. For the past few months, since my self-imposed lockdown before Christmas, I had grown more and more accustomed to thinking of humans as the weak link in any problem. I had wiped the minds of almost all of the ones who knew about me; Jimmy and Lori had been the only exception, same with Olivia, but all of those had been because they had already gone away for the holidays when I made that decision.

Aside from them, I had completely cut myself off from people. More than that, humans had been the weak link when it came to finding me. Toussant, the Judge, the Praetorians, whoever it was that could be held ultimately responsible for the things that had happened to Becky and Philippa, they had used those two to get to me. And it had been practically effortless for them. Even despite what the Judge had said about the resistance in Philippa’s mind, I got the impression that it was only hard work compared to a normal human, rather than it being particularly difficult. It was a sentiment I had capitalized on myself in the Praetorian compound, too. I had ripped through the minds of every human in the area; I had arrested their loyalties, stripped them of their autonomy, and turned them against their masters with - in hindsight - astonishing ease. More than a few of them had paid for that with their lives, and the rest had been handed off to the Inquisition with less than a second thought.

More than that, almost every death of every person standing between me and my target in my months-long stint in the war had been human. They were, for lack of a better word, chattel. Obstacles. Marginal inconveniences. And I had treated them that way. I hadn’t consciously realized it at the time, but my safety and the safety of the people I loved were squarely rooted in a need for secrecy and security. Humans, no matter how oblivious they were to the world I now seemed to be buried in, were the weak link in that. They were a liability in any meaningful attempt at shielding myself. As a result, I had been increasingly isolating myself from them. For the last few months, I had considered that a necessary evil, something to be undone when the danger had passed, but sitting here, just talking with my friend and his love about things that were so laughably unimportant, made me feel better than I had done since the night of the party in October.

For those few hours, I was Pete again. Not the warrior, not the killer, not the burning winds of vengeance I had been for months, I was not an Evo, I was not a soldier, I wasn’t anything ... I was just me.

And it felt good to be just me again.

Listening to Jimmy animatedly describe the silent competition between himself and Lori’s dad about who could polish off the most food at their Christmas dinner, his laughter, Lori’s rolling eyes, and the time flying by with each passing second, I resolved to make this the thing I was fighting for. Because no matter what came of this war, no matter who emerged alive and victorious on the other side, this was the life I wanted ... no, the life I needed to still be here when I got back to it.

The losses, the horrors, and the fury of war would leave their scars, shit, they already had done, and they would be things I would need to work through when it was over. There would be more killing, more death, and almost certainly more loss, but if I didn’t have this to come home to, and if this was another casualty of this insane fucking war, then I really would be lost. I resolved to never let that happen. I would make sure that nothing happened to Jimmy, or Lori, or anyone else that mattered to me, and I would make sure that I was still the same person when I came back to them when all this was finished.

But most of all, I resolved to make sure that this would finish. This would not be a march to the drumbeat of endless war, this conflict would continue only for as long as it had to. I had a clear set of goals: Destroy the Praetorians, hunt down Marco and fucking end him, root out and destroy the treason in the Conclave, the Sect, and the Inquisition, and then make sure that I could live out the rest of my life in peace. Give or take the remaining questions about the Judge - that could go either way at the moment.

Would it be easy? Fuck no! Would it be quick? Almost certainly not, but was it impossible? I really hoped not. But I hoped that God would have mercy on the next person who came for my people because I sure as shit wouldn’t. I would dedicate my immediate future to making a very graphic and very public example of them and what would happen to those who went after the people I cared about the most. The days of me only reacting to events around me were over. I would go to see Philippa that evening. Then, the next day, the war would start anew, with my mind firmly fixed on what I considered to be my victory conditions and my resolve revitalized by the only real thing that meant anything anymore.

Home.

With the drinks flowing a little too easily and the late morning giving way to the late afternoon, Jimmy and Lori finally said goodbye. Both of them were enjoying a happy buzz, and neither of them noticed my complete immunity to alcohol as - after a few more hugs - the door closed behind them. Those few hours were the best I had experienced since the end of October– the night that had left Faye dead and started this whole thing. For once, against all of the expectations of the day before, I felt hope.

The sun was setting when Charlotte and I pulled up outside the Sect’s mansion. I could feel how much I had grown, how much more intune I was with my powers now, compared to the last time I had been here. I could tell, for example, that there were no less than thirty Evo’s in the building, split into smaller groups dotted throughout it. Of course, I had only the most basic understanding of the mansion’s layout, having only visited once and apparently led on a straight beeline for the conference room, but that one trip told me at least - roughly speaking - where in the building that room was. There was a large group gathered there. Another group seemed to be congregating on the opposite side of the building, and another smaller group was in one of the rooms on the upper floor. That left the two Evo presences in the basement - one that was in very close proximity to one of the very few human presences - as something that stood out rather prominently.

Evie, incidentally - at least the last time I saw her - was still completely invisible to me. Ever the fucking puzzle that one.

It wasn’t that I could see them; it wasn’t even that I could sense them - that implied that they were giving off something that I could detect, and although that was technically true, it wasn’t what was happening now. This was more like a feeling, an awareness; I had been on such heightened alert to be on the lookout for them for so long that my mind was simply able to point to a direction and say, “There’s an Evo over there,” and be confident that it was right. They would not only have to be pretty powerful to block me at this point but also actively try to block me as well. I had inadvertently trained my mind into something like a radar, able to pin down the location of any Evo in the area with a pretty small margin of error.

It had been about a minute since the engine was shut off when the double-sided, large oaken doors opened, and a woman stepped out. Margaret had been the old woman who had shown us to the elders on my first visit. I hadn’t liked her then, and I was certain the manner of our departure - especially her casual dismissal by a furious Charlotte - probably hadn’t endeared us to her either. She stopped just beyond the threshold, crossed her arms, and tilted her head back a little to make it perfectly clear she was looking down her nose at us with something approaching a shrew-like look of scorn on her face.

“You know what they say will happen if the wind changes, don’t you?” I called up at her from next to the car. I was in no mood to avoid the toes of self-important snobs. Charlotte tried her best to stifle the guffaw and failed miserably.

“Mr. Roberts,” she said disdainfully. “I’m not sure that either of you are welcome here after the end of your last meeting with the honored elders.”

I sighed and started toward the door. “Margaret, I don’t have the time, the patience, or the crayons to explain the reasons for my visit to you, but I think it’s quite cute that you think you have a say in the matter.”

“I have been guarding these doors for...”

“Listen,” I interrupted her. A move that seemed to be as much of a shock to her as being slapped across the face. “I’m coming in. There isn’t anything you can do to stop me, and even if there was, you don’t have the authority. Arthur told me to come back when I needed something so that is what I am doing. I have matters to attend to that are more important than your little mind can fathom, and you are wasting my time. If I decide to upgrade that to ‘standing in my way,’ then I will be forced to move you. So if you value the use of your spine for what is left of your self-important little life ... Get the fuck out of my way!”

She tried to hold my eyes. That burning spark of defiance blazing behind them.

She failed, lowering her head and moving out of my way.

It was harsh and adversarial, I knew that, but I didn’t care. This new resolve gained from my time spent with Jimmy and Lori somehow clarified a few things for me. Before, I was far too concerned with not making enemies, wanting to find allies and friends. Since then I had learned that these people, like the Conclave, weren’t my friends, let alone my allies, and at least a number of them were outright enemies. The majority of them were, at best, neutral, not working against me, but they sure as hell weren’t helping. At this point, they needed me far more than I needed them, and they had done nothing - absolutely nothing - to earn the slightest bit of leniency or consideration from me. I was going to find Philippa first and help her in any way I could, but once I was done there, a reckoning was going to be brought down on the collective, the likes of which had never been seen before. If I deemed it necessary, I would burn the whole fucking thing to the ground with all of the members of the Sect locked inside. They had bought some goodwill, providing a safe haven for Philippa, Evie, and Fiona. Still, I got the distinct impression from Charlotte that Agatha had been doing that off the books and without the rest of the Sect’s knowledge, meaning that she had bought herself some goodwill. Everyone else would have to be dealt with the hard way.

“God, I hope she is one of the traitors,” I whispered to Charlotte as we stepped past the now-meek-looking Margaret. “I’m already very tired of that fucking sneer.”