Hulle there, Sparks.
I am so sorry!!! I broke my index!
Well, to be more accurate, I broke the links to my index on all my posts, so now I have to go back through all sixty episodes and change the link for the index on each of them. I’ve been working on it all week but it’s taking FOREVER. The first few are fixed, and this one, If you go to INDEX here, you can click through the links, I think up to chapter four. If you do, please be a dear and let me know if you find any that aren’t working yet, and I promise I’ll get right on fixing.
My humblest apologies, friends. I did not mean to do that.
As for the story…
Last time we learned some things about Tom.
He is observant and considerate, self-controlled, reserved and private, and above all, disciplined. Other things we already know of him are that he is dutiful, never steps out of line, he always meets others’ expectations of him, well, everyone’s except Logan’s. Logan who understands him on a deeper level, can always push his buttons. Just like my dear big brother always did with me.
INDEX | Chapter 8 | Scene 1 | Scene 2 | Next Scene → Coming soon.
Previously: On a rare night out, Tom leaves his friends on the dancefloor to go get a round of drinks and bumps into a waitress who messes her tray of drinks on his head. While cleaning himself up, he gets to thinking about what brought him here and decides he should make the most of this chance to blow off some steam.
“…it was just a little tap, a little tap with an open palm. I barely even saw the flash of silver-green…” the man mumbled, his shoulders sagging while his head rolled from side to side on the table. Tom couldn’t help but listen in, wondering what it could be about. The man looked utterly hopeless.
“…looks so innocent, with her small feet and that long black braid… It’s just not fracking fair… damned Energy wielders… unfair advantage in a scrap… don’t even have to use it, but it’s always there in reserve, like a secret weapon to be called up at a moment’s notice…”
At first, nothing stood out. A tap on Tom’s elbow let him know his drinks were ready, startling him out of the daze. He shook his head, fished around his pocket for a generous tip, the poor guy was overworked after all, and grabbed the three narrow-necked bottles between his fingers.
As he elbowed his way around the outskirts of the large dancefloor his mind started to race. A devastating touch, light but charged with silver-green energy held in an open palm. Long black braid and an innocent look. It can’t be.
By the time, Tom reached the spot where Sam and Kay had brought the throng to a standstill, he had convinced himself that there were too many coincidences, he had to know more.
He saw his friends. Kay’s overzealous breakdancing had tripped someone up, who tripped up a bunch of other dancers, and a big pile of bodies lay in the frantically blinking lights, everyone laughing as they slowly went through the process of untangling all the limbs. Tom smiled as he jumped in to start helping people up. Sam and Kay had been a pair for years, since the club days. This crazy clumsiness was the reason they’d stayed under the PG’s radar so long.
“Woah, dude! Are you okay?” Sam said as Tom pulled him up.
Tom shrugged, “Little mishap,” Tom said pulling up the next guy, while his mind raced with possibilities, and missed connections. A soldier. A PG soldier. Could be ex, or just off duty.
Kay jumped on Tom’s back, startling him back to the present. “Aww, ew! Tom! What happened to you!?” She exclaimed, holding her arms up as she felt the claggy stickiness soaking through his thin jacket. He gave her an apologetic grimace and let her look him over for a minute and take in the sparkling rainbow.
“Looks like unicorn puke or something.” She laughed, Tom gritting his teeth at the attention. He’d always preferred to be in the background. Off-duty would mean he came from the base near the city. Or maybe one further out…
“Listen guys, I think I’m gonna call it a night.” He said, handing over their drinks, then shoving his hands into his pockets, conveying his discomfort bodily.
Sam and Kay would understand. Tom was having trouble controlling his thoughts. A decade and a half of living with Luke had given him way too much practice to be struggling like this. He had to get out. Clear his head.
He barely remembered getting back to the dojo. But there he was in his little private office staring at the pull-out board that no one else had ever seen. Elle’s picture stared back at him from its prideful place in the center, her tied-back hair and her dead eyes mocking him. A few dozen red twine lines zigzagged across the evidence board, linking anonymous tips and message boards with sightings all over the world. All the ones that weren’t outright dead ends or wild goose chases had some link to the PG.
They’ve had her all along.
Tom’s heart raced as he realized that one simple truth. He flew home to the Manor, forgoing the shuttle’s confines. The wind dried him as he went, the cold night air clearing his head. He had to tell Logan. This was the key to everything.
“Logan! Luke!” Tom called bursting into the foyer. He was out of breath from the exertion of the flight, or from hyperventilating with excitement, he wasn’t sure which.
He sensed them stirring at his summons, from the Library. It would take precious seconds for them to get here, he ran up the stairs to meet them halfway, nearly bowling Logan over in the hall.
“There was this guy- a soldier- he was out of his mind- he said she tapped his knee-” Tom gushed, his mind raced ahead and his mouth couldn’t keep up. He bristled with irritation as he noticed the feather touch of Luke’s influence, compelling him to calm down, but not digging any deeper to understand his agitation, thankfully.
“What happened Thomas?” Luke asked placing his hands squarely on Tom’s shoulders and looking him in the eye. Tom took a few seconds and allowed his anger with Luke to run its course. He hated it when Luke pulled his mind straight like that. It just felt unnatural. It had happened so many times before though that the flash of indignation and revulsion always passed quickly.
Tom blinked at Luke, his breathing relaxed, his physical tension, just - gone. He hadn’t felt this at ease in months.
“I was at the bar getting drinks, there was a soldier drowning his sorrows. The guy was a mess, head hanging… unh, his leg had this frame, like he’d had a bad break, like, near amputation bad, this thing was massive steel rods and rings and screws…” Tom was getting agitated again. The way Luke was looking at him begged the question, “Do I need to calm you down again son?”
Tom didn’t want that.
“He was talking to himself. He said some things, that sounded like random junk at first but the more I thought about it, the more the pieces fell into place.”
The two of them stared at him expectantly, hanging on his every word. His brother, his adoptive father, who’d been a father to him longer than his own.
“It’s Elle. I have a lead, a good solid lead.”
* * *
Who knew it would be Luke who would take Tom’s side? Who could have guessed that Logan would react with anger and resentment? He wanted nothing to do with the business, saying “We won’t get her back, neither do we deserve to.”
Tom felt confused. Logan had spent months tracking down every tenuous lead, he was manic, hysterical for every clue. Now when Tom had what Luk insisted was credible information, Logan blew it off as if Tom were the crazy one.
Luke had been digging over the weeks since Tom had his encounter with the Maori soldier, and he said it was looking more and more like the lead was good.
There were two PG bases near the city. The one they knew of, and another smaller one, where they kept the really dangerous prisoners.
* * *
Witness statements, physical evidence, photos, medical records, legal documents… Evidence… The list went on.
Luke and Tom stared at the board. It had taken two months but they had pared it down to the bare bones, a report of a sighting in Kenya, reported on a South African message board, another report, and a blurry photograph of a girl with a long braid in the Amazon Basin during monsoon season. A waiter’s statement from a high-end steak joint in the city. One disgruntled ex-soldier was dismissed for insubordination after some supergirl took out his buddies like breaking twigs and he threw down his weapon to avoid a similar fate, allegedly under the supervision of a Minister.
They didn’t have much. With a Minister involved they couldn’t go to the Authority. Against the PG they had no legal recourse.
Next Time: After months of consistent investigating Tom and Luke have hit a wall and Logan wants nothing to do with the investigation. Will Logan finally see the light and get on board?
Thanks so much for reading! If you like, please:
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and as always, I love hearing what you think so, feel free to:
Unicorn puke... Yep, never going to unsee that LOL good stuff this time around
Tom is lucky enough to stumble into the drunken rambling of the broken soldier, and starts to put some pretty obvious clues together. And we have a natural progression of his reaction to tell Luke and Logan. But Logan doesn't want to buy in after being obsessed about Ellie himself, but not clear exactly why... and clearly they all need to be onboard before pursuing finding her against the weight of such authority!
Just a small note about handling abrupt time frame changes... I have a little trouble tracking the leaps that start just after Tom lays out the lead he has discovered, and then the paragraph that ends with Logan implying that Tom is the crazy one. In the very next paragraph suddenly Luke has already been weeks into investigating the lead! It took me a couple of rereads to realize the jump. I had thought the conversation was continuing still from when Tom delivered the news. Now, there is another time frame change that was flagged by a three *** separator and line feeds which alerted to a change and worked I think.