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"The Jennifer Coda"
by Michael O'Connell
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Events detailed in this story are taken from "The Jennifer Chase" (Forte #'s 237-241), "The Jennifer Sanction" (the uncompleted "Pharaoh" novella by Michael O'Connell and Randy Auer), and "The Life, Trial, and Death of Twostep" (forthcoming historical write-up in the Forte Datasbase).
The woman who had once been known as Jennifer Chase watched through her well-worn Ray Bans as her son, Ian, waited in line to purchase a pair of ice cream cones at a wheeled, canopied cart. Ian was not his birth name. Just as Maggie, the name she was known by now, was not hers. But to him, being anyone other than Ian was just a vague, early childhood memory. To him, he WAS Ian. Some days, she wasn’t quite sure who she was. But today, with the dipping summer sun warming her, the Atlantic breeze caressing her face and tossing her long hair (hair of a color, too, that she was not born with) along with the flanking palm trees around her, and life treating her with a kindness and tenderness she had so rarely known, she was peacefully, thoughtfully content being Maggie.
His “old” Mom, she reminded herself, was
nothing of the sort, thank you. At 32, she hadn’t lost a step
yet, and was still in great shape. Religious trips to the gym helped
make that a reality. She had her share of admirers. Not that many
suitors, as she came with a teenaged boy attached to the bargain,
but the offers were there. While some were certainly tempting (Roger,
a constantly tanned dentist from the gym, most especially), she kindly
declined them. She wasn’t ready. Still. She told herself it
was because of the secret life she led, and the dangers of letting
anyone else into it (danger both to her and Ian, and to Mr. Maybe
Right). But she often felt that was the excuse she wielded to keep
from admitting that her past track record with relationships may have
screwed her up for relationships for life. She’d barely been 17, living in Texas, when she’d
caught his eye. Joshua Bane. Rich, charismatic, powerful. Her, a simple
country girl who ended up an early and impressive bloomer. She had
entered a teen beauty pageant (entering pageants in Texas was almost
mandatory for teenage girls with looks), and this well-known businessman
had been one of the judges. He was much older than her, but didn’t
seem to care. This flattered her, and the adventure of it all snared
her. She’d kept her relationship with him secret until she turned
18…by then, she was already three months pregnant with his child.
They married quickly, and she was brought into the Bane family, the
innocent young bride now a part of one of the wealthiest, best-known
families in the country. It didn’t take long for her to figure out why
they were so wealthy. More than a family, they were a crime family.
And her husband, Joshua, was the eldest of the several sons, being
groomed to take the family over from his father one day. His strength
had first attracted her, but it quickly turned dark. He became domineering,
abusive. She was not allowed to have an opinion, and certainly not
allowed to ask questions about the family business. Her job was to
raise Joshua’s son, the heir that she’d given him. The
more secrets about the Banes she uncovered, the more she wanted out,
wanted to get her son away from them before he grew into one of them. She tried to leave, but on her fist attempt Bane men
tracked her down and dragged her and her baby back. Joshua was beyond
rage, mostly at the thought of her trying to take his son from him.
In the middle of her beating, she made the mistake of saying how much
she knew and could go to the police with. She was afraid he was going
to kill her right then and there. But his need to keep his family
together was too strong. Instead, he used his wealth to hire a freelance
super-villain—a telepath named Mindwarp. Mindwarp violated her
mind and wiped many of her memories. The incriminating Bane memories,
yes, but the traumatic process erased many other memories that she
never regained. The process had also opened the floodgates in her mind
and released telekinetic abilities that had lain dormant. Jennifer
Chase, simple country girl and abused wife, turned out to have super-powers. The mind wipe had left her with cognitive problems to
go along with her memory gaps. As she tried to work through them and
understand them, living through the fog that her waking life had become,
she learned of her powers and kept them a close secret. Mindwarp had
done her job on Jennifer, and the incriminating knowledge was gone,
but it wasn’t long before Jennifer was discovering (or rediscovering)
damning truths about the family. The worst of which was when she found
out that the long-dead Bane brother named James had, in fact, been
killed by his own family when he tried to turn against and testify
against them. Terrified but unable to stop her investigations, she
snuck into her husband’s files and journals, and eventually
learned about the mind wipe that had been done to her. This was too
much. It finally got through her head that she and her son might not
make it out of this marriage alive. She escaped again, with her baby,
and this time made it out. And she made it to Seattle, where she became a super-hero
at age 19. Why? Specifically to become a part of Forte. To surround
herself with super-heroes to protect her baby from the Banes. It was the perfect time for it. The world was still
in recovery from the Saoshyant invasion, and both travel and communications
were iffy at best, so tracking someone was not the easy chore it used
to be. Plus, Forte had a hidden base, one that she could live at with
her baby full time. There was no need for Jennifer Chase to have a
life. She could be with the team as Telesis, the hero name she took,
and then come home to a secret place with armored walls where no one
outside her team could even find her. She had good memories of those times. Others on the
team lived at the base. Dr. Jackal and Knightsabre had both retired
as heroes, but in the wake of the invasion and the dangers still in
the world because of it, they had decided to move into the base with
their twin daughters. They befriended Jennifer, and she became their
babysitter most of the time, and was happy that her little one had
other children to play with. And the others on the team became fast
friends, too. Anvil, the great cook. Armature, the kind and wise one.
Chill, the tragic girl who had just gotten her powers and was still
trying to decide what to do with them, someone Jennifer seemed to
relate to very well. And Twostep. At the thought, sitting under the Florida sun, she spilled
two rapid tears. She’d had such a massive crush on him. How could
she not? He was beautiful. The face of an angel, dreamy eyes, long
black hair that made him look like something off the cover of a romance
novel. And he was a Texan, too. He was rugged, but he was kind and
honorable, polite and respectful. She was still just a girl, then,
and fell in love easily. She used to catch her breath when he walked
into the room, and find her thoughts wandering when he’d be
talking to her and she became hypnotized by his face. The best thing
about him, though, was how much he seemed to care for the toddler-eventually-to-be-known-as
Ian. Twostep—Nathaniel—was a hero and a man of action,
but would think nothing of sitting cross-legged on the base floor
and playing with a little boy and making him laugh and smile. She
remembered being so sickly jealous when he was dating that Seattle
Supersonics cheerleader, and being grateful for the fact that the
base was secret, so he could never bring her home (he lived at the
base, too, down the hall from her). While Jennifer knew about the
relationship, she never had to witness it. So at least when he was
home, she had him all to herself. It was July of 1992 when she’d first met up with
Forte, and would spend a year as a member of the team. A super-hero.
She’d done it because it seemed like the thing to do with the
powers she had, but mainly to get into the Forte family. But she hadn’t
expected it would mean so much to her. She was no longer a scared
girl when she put on the costume of Telesis. She was strong. People
looked up to her. Both things she couldn’t imagine as Jennifer
Chase. She fought crime in Seattle. She traveled to Europe with her
team to rescue Vanguard, and ended up helping to save England from
destruction. She was in newspapers and on magazine covers. People
knew her around the world. It was extraordinary…but also felt,
in ways, to be a big lie. In actuality, she was hiding out in a hero
base afraid to come out without a mask. The miracles in her life from
all this seemed tainted by her past, her fears, and her continuing
mental problems from the wipe. It was March of 1993 when Twostep, as a hero, left Forte
and disappeared. Something terrible had happened. Nathaniel was fighting
members of the street gang called the Moon Dragons when he lost control
and killed two of them, beating them to death. Soon after there was
a mysterious SHIELD warrant for him, and, to everyone’s surprise,
Twostep fled. He connected with Anvil and Armature later (which she
remembered hurting a bit over. She knew that he and Anvil had been
close friends before she ever showed up, but it still stung that he
didn’t trust her the same way after all their time together)
and told them the secret. His powers had been genetically engineered
by a rogue SHIELD scientist named Carson—something specifically
against the U.N. charter SHIELD had to follow—and all of Carson’s
other “experiments” had gone bad and turned criminal.
It was thought that Twostep had been the exception. Now, he had to
get the process reversed, and give the powers up before he descended
further. With Anvil and Armature, he tracked down the despondent Carson,
a shell of a man. Carson completed the reversal process on Nathaniel,
and then took his own life, passing his own sentence for his crimes. Nathaniel Pharaoh—Twostep—was now wanted
for murder. And he knew he had to stand trial. But before he did,
there was something he had to take care of, and he convinced his teammates
(those few of them that knew back then) to let him go and handle this
first. Twostep had one other big secret, and Jennifer still couldn’t
believe she didn’t learn it until after he was already gone. All those months working on the same team, living under
the same roof. Neither of them had known that they were both part
of the Bane family. Jennifer had married into it. Twostep had been born
into it. He was the dead brother who had turned on his own family.
He was James Caleb Bane. Her brother-in-law. She still remembered when Armature had told her this,
after his return from Oregon where Twostep had parted ways with them.
It had taken everything inside her to hide her reaction and not speak
up, to keep her secret as she still felt she needed to. She’d
listened as he’d told how James Bane had betrayed his family
and gone to the authorities, finally driven over the edge when his
younger brother Jeremiah, the only other decent Bane brother, was
nearly killed and put into a coma when the family had tried to bring
(force) him into the business. James had been set to give them all
up. But a message came to him while in protective custody—the
fact that the message found him telling that they knew where he was.
It said that Jeremiah would pay the price if James did as he planned. He’d already made his choice when the choice was
taken from him. The convoy moving him to a new safe location was attacked
and bombed. Burnt and broken, James Caleb Bane had been left for dead.
And as far as the world knew, he WAS dead. But he’d been saved, a secret kept hidden by UNCLE,
and got a new (amazing) face during his months of reconstruction and
rehabilitation. UNCLE gave him a new chance at life by recommending
him to SHIELD…an organization that specialized in hiring “dead”
men. He took the fictional name Nathaniel Pharaoh, and become a world-hopping
agent of SHIELD. After he gained his powers, he became part of SHIELD’s
super-powered strike team, THUNDER, and called himself Twostep. When
Forte was dealing with the crisis of Intercrime and was undermanned,
Twostep was loaned out to assist them, and later, when he walked away
from SHIELD, was offered a permanent place on the Seattle hero team. But now Twostep, like James Caleb Bane, was no longer.
Nathaniel had run from his past for too long, and knew he had to take
his family’s criminal empire down once and for all. This would
be his last act before turning himself in to answer for the murders
committed as Twostep, if he lived through what was to come. Keeping
the name Nathaniel Pharaoh, he went undercover, working his way into
the Bane organization, slowly and methodically infiltrating his own
family. With his new face, no one knew that it was James among them. He was still just starting and too low-level in the
organization to know about the events surrounding the discovery of
Jennifer. Due to communications with her sister, her presence in Seattle
had been revealed. Agents of the family had descended on the city
to find her. She knew that it was time to move on, to disappear completely
with her son. She had planned for this, having, over the past year,
found out about and gotten in touch with a radical organization called
WEAVE (Women Escaping A Violent Environment) that ran something of
an underground railroad for battered or endangered women. After finding
out the Banes were in Seattle—including Daniel Bane, one of
the brothers himself, the family attorney—she panicked and fled,
getting word to WEAVE to start the process, leaving only a vague note
to her Forte family as a good-bye. And Jennifer ran. But she left a trail to Englewood, Colorado, and different
groups trying to find her there converged. Luckily, Armature and Anvil
found her first, and though she wanted to stay and escape with her
WEAVE contact, her teammates told her that this route had been compromised.
They took her back to the base in Seattle, where she told them the
whole story of her life and her escape from the Banes, and she fell
into deep depression, convinced that she was never going to be free
from them. They would keep after her and her son. She wouldn’t
know freedom until she was dead. It was Anvil who took that statement of hers and formed
an idea…the idea to publicly fake the deaths of her and her
son, and then move them on with WEAVE for their new life and relocation.
Her Forte teammates, including the former Forte member Mist, helped
stage this on a cruise ship in Puget Sound. As far as the press knew,
a depressed woman named Jennifer Chase committed suicide in the cold
Seattle waters, taking her two-year old child with her. With that,
she was free, met with a new WEAVE contact, tearfully said good-bye
to her Forte friends, and disappeared. She stayed that way for a while, living her new life
in a small town in Michigan. But somehow doubts arose about her death,
and Bane agents followed leads and clues that led them to WEAVE, where
they tortured and killed a contact that confirmed Jennifer was alive.
Joshua sent teams to find her, with orders to kill her and retrieve
his son. His teams included super-powered villains due to Jennifer’s
powers. And one of those teams included Mindwarp. It was during this time that Nathaniel had disappeared
from Texas. In actuality, he was in South America after escaping a
SHIELD capture, but he was gone long enough for things he had set
in place in case of his disappearance or death to happen. One of them
was for notice to be sent to Anvil, with a key to a safe deposit box
including all the information he’d been collecting on the Banes,
and a request for his old friend to take up the fight and bring them
down. Anvil went to Texas, and following the information, got in touch
with Jorge Velasquez, the former UNCLE Investigator General in Dallas
who had been the one to give James Bane his new life as Nathaniel
Pharaoh. Velasquez was now a costumed figure working with an international
group called UNICORN, but was still continuing his two-decades struggle
to take the Banes down. Nathaniel had been keeping him updated before
his disappearance. But now it appeared to both him and Anvil that
Nathaniel might, in fact, be dead. Before any plans for taking up Pharaoh’s quest
could be laid, word came to Velasquez from one of his contacts within
the Banes. He and Anvil discovered the plot to kill Joshua’s
wife and retrieve his son—and Anvil knew this to be Jennifer.
He and Velasquez raced off to find her. In the meantime, Pharaoh had
finally gotten back to America, but before he could properly make
contact with the family and let them know he was still alive, he found
out—through Marisa, the woman he loved—about Jennifer,
and he raced after her, too, faced with the task of finding and protecting
her without compromising his cover with the family. Meanwhile, the
first team had reached Jennifer, and she and her son barely escaped
with their lives, and were on the run. A race across the country ensued, Jennifer running,
assassins and heroes trailing her. Pharaoh’s path finally crossed
with Anvil and Velasquez, where they found out he wasn’t actually
dead. The final showdown happened in Wyoming, where Jennifer faced
Mindwarp, the villainess who had stolen her mind, and a bloody battle
ensued. She could still close her eyes and see Nathaniel there, risking
everything, from his life to his whole reason for being—the
downfall of his family—to save her and her son, the one Nathaniel
had learned some time back was his nephew. The day nearly ended his
life, but in the end, he saved her boy, and the heroes won, and Jennifer
was, for the moment, free again. But Joshua now knew she was alive,
and wouldn’t stop looking for her. She was on the run again.
Nathaniel promised her that he would destroy the Banes and she would
finally be safe. When they had lived at the base together, she had
had a crush on him. But it was that day that she truly fell in love
with him. She and Ian went back into hiding, and Nathaniel went
back undercover, having managed to not expose himself during the hunt
for her. But his life started coming apart after that. His woman,
Marisa, was killed in a mob war, something that drove him over the
edge. He lost his way, becoming the criminal he had only pretended
to be, helping his family kill as many of the rivals as he could to
avenge his love. An intervention had to happen, and it was Anvil,
again, who came back to help him find his sanity and his path again.
Soon the time had come to put everything he’d been doing together.
With the help of Anvil and Velasquez and other allies Nathaniel had
made along the way—including his younger brother Jeremiah—the
war against the Banes ended on one terrible bloody night at the Bane
family estate in Texas. When the smoke cleared, Joshua was dead, and
family Patriarch Jacob, along with most of the rest of his surviving
sons and hundreds of Bane crime family members and associates, was
arrested. The star witness in one of the most sensational cases in
U.S. history was Nathaniel Pharaoh, who admitted to the world to being
James Caleb Bane…and also to being Twostep. The Bane trial went down first, and all the evidence
that Pharaoh had been gathering paid off. The Banes all went away.
The crime family and all its businesses were destroyed. And the time
then came for Nathaniel Pharaoh to answer for the crimes he’d
committed while undercover in the family. He’d broken many laws
and killed many men, especially during his dark period in the mob
war. Though he did not request it, he was granted leniency for almost
single-handedly taking down his family, doing the work that government
and law enforcement agencies had been unable to do for many years.
He received his sentence, but the serving of it would wait. It would
wait until after the trial of Twostep. He’d arranged to turn himself in as Twostep as
soon as the Bane trial was over. He needed to answer for the Moon
Dragon murders, and for fleeing federal (and international) pursuit.
This trial even out-sensationalized the Bane trial—a well-known
hero, a member of Forte, on trial for murder. He didn’t seem
too concerned about defending himself or proving any innocence. His
life’s work was now complete, and he felt he deserved punishment
for his crimes. But character witnesses came, a who’s-who of
heroes. Jennifer herself had wanted desperately to be one of them,
and sent word to Nathaniel’s attorneys through WEAVE. But Nathaniel
refused, sending a message back thanking her, but, as in the first
trial, he didn’t want her involved. Joshua was dead, but the
family might still be seeking out revenge from behind bars, and he
wanted her and her son to stay hidden and continue their new life.
It was a handwritten letter, one that she still kept and treasured.
That was the last she ever heard from him. The trial was a media circus, and half of the evidence
was never released to the public due to the sensitive, classified
information involved. At one point, in an unprecedented move, Colonel
Nick Fury himself appeared and testified via video conference to the
judge, attorneys and jury only. Whatever he said was reported to be
powerful, and he had come out strongly on Twostep’s side. He
was one of the ones who had. Not all had. The hero community, and
the world, was divided on how to feel about this hero who had helped
save the world on a few occasions, but seemed to have gone so wrong
and done so much wrong in his later actions. Controversy circled the
trial like buzzards. In the end, he was found innocent. Enough evidence was
given to the jury to prove the genetic engineering he’d undergone
had been the base cause of the Moon Dragon killings. Twostep’s
reaction to the verdict was a blank one. He simply stared as it was
read and the courtroom—and the world—reacted. He was led out to his UNCLE transport to be sent back
to Texas to begin serving his sentence for his other crimes. It was
a day of heavy rain in Seattle (no big surprise), and Jennifer had
been watching on television from her sunny part of the nation the
whole day, an emotional wreck, and was watching live as he was led
out, guarded by UNCLE troops and members of Forte. Watching live as Twostep was shot and killed. Shots rang out, and bullets tore through his chest and
one through his head. Jennifer had screamed. The camera view had gone
jerky and frantic as people dove for cover and ran from the courthouse
steps. She watched as Forte heroes—some her old friends—shot
into the sky to go after the shooter, as Anvil sat on the steps holding
Twostep up, yelling for an ambulance but probably already knowing
it was too late. She’d been able to see that there was some
sliver of consciousness left in Nathaniel, and as she watched he whispered
something to Anvil. And then she and the rest of the world watched
as he died in Anvil’s arms. The shooter had ended up being a Bane man that Nathaniel
had faced off with during a war within the family, the same man who
had, during Nathaniel’s torture, cut off two of his fingers.
The two men later fought nearly to the death in Mexico, and this man
had fled into the desert. He was not seen again until somehow getting
past security with a forged press pass and setting up with a rifle
on a building across the way. He was jumped by no less than a dozen
heroes and was beaten senseless (certain heroes had to pull others
off of him). After his capture, the ambulance picked up Twostep and
took him away. At the hospital, his death was confirmed. Poetically,
it had been part of the Bane mob that ended his life. But not before
he’d ended their organization forever. His funeral took place in Seattle, and the press mobbed
it, again for the sensational elements, not out of respect or for
historical importance like other Forte funerals. Jennifer, as with
his trial, had had to watch it on television. She wanted so badly
to be with her teammates, to share in their grief, to be there to
honor the man who had done so much for her, and that she had loved,
though he’d never known it. But she could not surface, and knew
it. She cried for days, and it was months before she started to get
past it and move on. To get on with the new life that Nathaniel had
wanted for her. And here her life was, in Sebastian. It was a good life.
Having finally settled down long enough to do so, she pursued her
education—mostly online—and kindled a lifelong interest
into a career. With a degree in design and some interested backers,
she began her internet clothing business—Mind’s Eye Fashions—which
also culminated in a small shop in Sebastian. She had her career.
She had her music. She had her friends at the gym and around town.
She had pottery class on Tuesday nights, and Cuban cooking class on
Thursdays. And most importantly, she had Ian. Everything she’d
done, everything she’d been through, was for him, and it was
worth every moment. He was smart and fun and full of life, though
he did have a temper that she’d worked long and hard to weed
out of him—that Bane blood flowing through his veins. Once Joshua
was dead and the trial was over, a lot of her fears went away. She
knew the possibility of revenge was still there, but Joshua had been
the one most obsessed with her and Ian. In the years since the trial,
not a hint of a problem surfaced. She was still careful, and probably
always would be. But it looked like it was safe to call Sebastian
home, and they did. She watched as Ian got the two cones, finally, and started
edging his way carefully through pedestrian traffic back toward her.
She wiped under her eyes, happy that she was wearing sunglasses so
he wouldn’t be able to see evidence of her tears. Fast becoming
a man, she thought again. He had his whole life ahead of him. Thanks
to so many people he was either too young to remember or had never
even met. People like Mark (Anvil). Akim (Armature). Jack and Sabrina
(Dr. Jackal and Knightsabre). Sydney (Mist). Kyra (Chill). Megan (Eclipse).
Robert (Vanguard). And Nathaniel, who had long ago played with her son,
who had watched late night television with her and laughed with her
and cheered her up when he saw the darkness start to creep up on her.
Perhaps the one and final true love of her life. And proof that there
was good in the Bane blood as well. She’d seen and loved it
in him, and she saw it now in the cocky smile of the teen bringing
her ice cream. “Thank you, sir,” she said, smiling up at
him and taking her already dripping cone. “Hey, you paid for it,” he shrugged, taking
a seat on the bench next to her. She licked at her cone as he worked on his, and they
watched bikes and kids and old couples trundle by. “Hey, you want to see another movie?” she
asked all of a sudden. “Seriously?” he asked back, looking at her.
They had walked to this spot from their local theater, having walked
there from home to see a comedy called '3001'. “Two in one day?” “Why not?” she smiled. “I don’t
have anywhere else to be today. Do you?” “I’m clear,” he said, pleased with
this offer. “Awesome. Can we go see ‘Doom’?” “’Doom’?” she asked. “The
one based on the videogame? Haven’t you already seen that, like,
three times with your friends since last week?” “Yeah, but it’s awesome. It’s got
The Rock in it. Remember him? He played Dr. Jackal in that Forte movie.” She smiled at that. She remembered. And he hadn’t
done a bad job for being hired for his muscles and then being expected
to actually act—since this was an HBO miniseries produced by
Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. But she knew Jack Parker. She’d
worked with Jack Parker. Jack Parker was a friend of hers. And the
Rock, for all his muscles and charms, was no Jack Parker. And she had been unashamedly giddy at the performance
of the pretty young up-and-coming actress cast to play her. Ian knew
how much she loved Forte movies, and the Forte TV show on Fox. Someday,
she thought, smiling inside, maybe not too far away, he would find
out that his Mom had been Telesis, had been a super-hero, had been
one of them. For a time. For an amazing time. “How about we see something we both haven’t
seen?” she suggested, diplomatically, running her fingers through
his unkempt hair, happy that he still wasn’t QUITE cool enough
to resent her for such a motherly act. “We’ll just go
look at the board and see what’s starting and go with our gut.” “Cool,” he said, working his cone. She studied him, smiling, taking the chance he wouldn’t
notice and call her on it. “Are you happy?” she asked him, finally. “Huh?” “You know. Here. With your life.” “What’s up with YOU?” he asked, looking
at her warily, with a little amusement. “Just making conversation,” she smiled.
She brushed his hair some more. “I just…wanted to know.” He watched her, and she felt that generation gap, realizing
that such questions were so beyond him at this simple, magical part
of his life. People his age didn’t have to ask such questions.
Happiness didn’t have to be questioned or analyzed. It just
came with each new day, each exciting new experience, each step closer
to a tomorrow that seemed hopelessly bright and filled with possibilities. “Yeah,” he said, awkwardly. He shrugged.
“I’m happy.” She smiled at her son. “I love you, you know.” “Eww,” he said suddenly, like he’d
bitten into something bitter. She laughed and hugged him with her free arm. He let
her. “Come on,” she said, standing up. “Let’s
go find a movie. And I’m cooking tonight, so no more snacks
after this.” “Cuban?” he asked with some dread, standing
up too, having been her official taster throughout her culinary learning
curve. “Whatever you want,” she said, grinning,
throwing the last of her cone away in a waste basket and putting her
arm around him. “Sky’s the limit. Let’s indulge.
We deserve it.” They walked together through the throngs of vacationers
and Floridians, and Jennifer did her best to stop asking questions
and analyzing and, like Ian, just be happy. And she was so wrapped up in her happiness that she didn’t notice the man watching them. The one that had been following them since the minute they left the house.
His hair was chestnut and just touched his shoulders, his cheeks
covered in stubble. He wore faded, rode-weathered Levis and scuffed
black boots. His tee shirt, like the boots, was black, and sported
no logo or lettering. His arms were darkly tanned from summer riding,
as was his face beneath the sunglasses. He watched them, pulling out and lighting a cigarette, and casually
began eying the crowd around them as well. He looked for patterns
of action or movement—no matter how subtle—that would
stand out. None did. Nothing in the crowd, nothing in windows of business
overlooking and surrounding the crowd, nothing on any of the boats
on the river. All seemed calm and normal in Sebastian, Florida. As
ever. His eyes went back to the last sight of them, strolling lazily, before
they finally vanished for good. He exhaled Marlboro smoke and leaned
on his handlebars thoughtfully. He looked down at his keys and contemplated
starting his Harley up and following them, seeing where their day
was taking them now. But after thinking it over, he realized he’d
seen enough. He’d gotten what he needed. Gotten it today, gotten
it in the week he’d been in town shadowing them. They were fine. The man once called James Caleb Bane, and later called Nathaniel
Pharaoh, let himself smile. It was something he did these days. Not
something that had used to come natural to him. His ever-winding path had brought him back here again, back to his
routine, his regular check-ins on Jennifer and his nephew. He never
let them see him, though they wouldn’t know him by face anyway,
as—for second time in his life—he was wearing a new one.
While he was sure they were safe, with Joshua dead and the rest of
the family powerless and rotting behind stone and steel, he had made
a promise, and intended to keep it. A promise that she and her boy
would be all right. So he learned their routines, watched the town
around them with the trained eyes of a former agent, wary for any
sign of someone, like him, keeping tabs on them. He’d never
found so much a hint of one, with the exception of a dentist she went
to the gym with, but he’d turned out to be local, and divorced,
and just interested in her for the normal reasons. Reasons, he had to admit, that made him a little jealous. She’d turned into a damn fine woman, Jennifer, that easy-laughing
girl he’d known and lived with and fought alongside years ago.
He’d noticed it then, of course, but she was so young. She was
no girl anymore. She was confident, strong, and even more beautiful
with a few more miles under her. And she had been through so much,
and come through on the other side smiling. A fact that made him,
too, smile. He often wished, while surveilling her (and trying not to think of
it as “stalking” her), that things had ended up differently,
and he could just walk up and knock on her door like an old friend
and take her in his arms. But things were different. They had to be.
The man she knew was dead. Dead to her, dead to all the rest of their
teammates and friends, dead to the world. He hadn’t asked for it. When Garrett had trained that rifle
on him and fired—finally getting his vengeance for their duel
back in Mexico—that should have been the end. Bullets had torn
through him. Mortal wounds. He had felt himself slipping away, letting
go, and he was all right with it. He’d been tired, tired of
fighting, tired of running. He’d had to look up at Mark’s
face and see the anguish there, and wanted to tell him that it was
fine. But with so little breath and life left in him, all he’d
been able to tell Anvil, his best friend and partner that he owed
his life to so many times over—was… “I’ll save you a sandwich.” It was the fitting end…for them, for him. He’d given
up, gratefully, and let the blackness draw him near, and all the yelling
and the sirens had peeled back and faded to nothing. And then he’d awoken, months later, aboard the SHIELD Helicarrier. He HAD died, right there on the steps. But somehow SHIELD had gotten
him into that ambulance without Mark, without anyone from Forte, and
had used their then-experimental teleportation technology to transport
him right to the ‘carrier, the one he’d been a prisoner
on the last time he’d been there, the re-captured rogue agent.
Now, some the top medical people on Earth, with the most cutting edge
technology (some of it, interestingly enough, alien, some goodies
left over from the invasion), had gone to work on him. He’d
been revived…or least his heart had been restarted. Nick Fury,
the instigator of all this the minute the shots had gone off, used
everything at his disposal at frantic speed, creating an L.M.D. (Life
Model Decoy) of his shot up body and teleporting it back into that
ambulance. Nothing but SHIELD doctors worked on that L.M.D. as it
was rushed to the hospital and rolled out of the ambulance in front
of cameras and heroes. Twostep’s teammates were even able to
watch the sham as they desperately tried to “save” him,
only to pronounce him D.O.A. in the end. Twostep had died. Everyone thought so. Everyone but SHIELD. SHIELD took care of their own. It had been touch and go, and he had suffered massive brain trauma
and internal injuries. He had been comatose for months. During that
time his body had been healed (right down to the addition of cloned
fingers to replace his missing ones). And, for the second time, SHIELD
had taken the opportunity to turn his facial reconstruction into a
new face. A new face for a new man. The physical recovery was tough, but the emotional road tougher.
Nathaniel had not wanted to be alive. He’d wanted it over. He’d
wanted to pay for his crimes, and if jail had been denied to him,
death was an acceptable alternative. The years spent undercover with
the Banes had taken too much of a toll on him. During the forced exile
on the ‘carrier, essentially a prisoner again, but this time
for his own good instead of for crimes, he’d faced months of
agonizing counseling to go with his physical therapy. He’d had
to examine his entire life, everything he was, everything he’d
done. In the end, Nick had finally convinced him. He had paid whatever
penalty he felt he deserved. And for all he’d been through,
he deserved to be at peace. Finally. No more fighting, no more vengeance,
no more saving the world. A fresh start. A chance to choose his own
path. But this came with a price. Everyone had to keep on thinking Nathaniel
Pharaoh was dead. He still had convictions hanging over him. His teammates
would be culpable if they knew he was still alive and they didn’t
reveal the truth. And he was also the man most hated by the Bane family,
and if word ever got out that he was still around, he was sure their
reach would stretch out for those he loved, as their vengeance would
be drastic and total. And besides this, Nick himself, and SHIELD,
could not be allowed to be tied into his miraculous survival, not
after the storm they already had to weather during his trial. And besides, Nick had told him…it really wasn’t a fresh
start if he still had ties to his old life. His friends had mourned
him and moved on. Now it was time for him to do the same. Let them
keep him buried. Time for him to start with a slate truly cleaned.
And be whatever, and whoever, he wanted to be. He had earned it. And now, the man called Travis Monarch had mostly outrun his demons.
He had a Harley saddle filled with maps, a generous store of seed
money still left over, and a whole country to explore and experience.
He had started life as a criminal. Turned into an agent and seen the
world. Become a super-hero and saved that same world, several times
over, fighting beside the best men and women he’d ever know.
Returned to his roots and exorcised his past by ridding the world
of its murderous reach forever. And now, he traveled the highways,
with no clear destination set or needed. In time, maybe he would find
a new destiny, a larger place in the scheme of things for Travis Monarch.
But for now, just being was enough. Just being. And just being free. And occasionally checking up on his nephew—a Bane, for once,
with a chance, with his life and his future in his own hands. And on a woman who had earned her own fresh start, her own new life,
her own chance to be free. A damn fine woman. Crushing his cigarette beneath his boot, Travis turned his key and
kick-started his Harley. He checked traffic both ways, pulled a left
across the crowded riverfront street, and headed out of Sebastian.
For now. Leaving the street lights and stop signs for the open highway, he
headed west. And rode off into the sunset. END. |