The Sound of Wind by Raegan Millhollin
Chapter Twenty-One - Kinda Scary
They met Clem at an almost empty coffee shop. The tall man waved amiably when he saw CJ, giving her a broad smile, “Glad to see you’re doing well.”
CJ turned her focus to Hugo, frowning, “Did you tell him what happened?” Her irritation was very clear.
“Oh no, I was there,” Clem corrected as they all sat down, “I’m the reason he missed you.”
CJ stared at him rather blankly, “What?”
Clem tapped the side of his head with a finger, “I was in his head when you started talking to him. I’ve been with him for, what, about a week now? It was quite educational, but he crossed the line by attacking you, so I had to teach him a lesson.” The smile somehow got wider.
Hugo tilted his head; he definitely wanted to hear this, “What did you do?”
Clem laughed, taking a sip from his cup, “Oh, I just had him write a little essay on how he shouldn’t mess with us, and then had him strip and run naked to the nearest police station.”
Hugo snorted, trying very hard not to laugh, but CJ was laughing loudly already, so it was a lost cause. Crysta was just watching the three of them, shaking her head slightly.
“How did you get him to do all that?” CJ asked through her fit of giggles.
“Well, actually I wrote the note myself with his body, then I commanded him to do the rest and left. He never even saw me,” smugness was definitely in Clem’s voice. He deserved to be a much higher threat level.
Once Hugo and CJ had calmed down, Crysta interjected, “Won’t that just make them angry? They won’t know who to be angry at, so they’ll just take it out on Gideon Enterprises.”
Clem leaned back, throwing his arm on the back of the chair, “Oh, we’ll need to talk to them. Make it clear that if they start anything, we will end it. We’ll need to do it soon, and now I’ve got the contact information for the heads of every branch of the Agency. We should only need to talk to the head of the West Coast branch, Robert Tenant, but they’ll be more likely to listen if we go through Charles again.”
“Ok. Let’s do that,” Hugo stood, but Clem waved him back down into his seat.
“Hold on one second, there was something else I wanted to talk about. Mr. Gideon.”
“Oh," Crysta folded her hands together nervously, "Some things have happened while you were away." She took a deep breath, briefly glancing in Hugo's direction before focusing on Clem again, "Mr. Gideon deteriorated and I had to perform surgery. He’d been feeding himself the Substance for about the past two years.”
Clem let out an exasperated sigh, “What else did I miss?”
“Well…”Crysta trailed off, looking to the side.
Clem huffed, “Wow, sounds like I missed a lot. How bout you just show me? Just think about what happened, and I'll do all the work.”
Hugo tried to think about anything else and hoped that Crysta and CJ would do all the work. Several moments later Clem was relaxing back into his seat, shaking his head, “Well, that’s it. I was toying with the idea, but I’m sick of Mr. Gideon’s bullshit, and his reputation is just holding us back. I’m going to start my own company, the Phoenix Foundation, with some capital I…recently acquired. I recommend you all join me. It’ll be a think tank, and we’ll do the work Mr. Gideon pretended he was doing. We’ll help the world.”
Everyone sat quietly for several seconds, taking it all in, and then Hugo realized both girls’ eyes were on him. They were making it his decision, they would follow him. Clem was right, it wasn’t a good idea to stay associated with Gideon Enterprises, even if Mr. Gideon was out of commission for a while and they were already operating under their own volition most of the time anyway.
And if they left on good terms, it wasn’t like Mr. Hansen would never talk to him again, especially if they were sharing information. And he would be away from Mr. Gideon, the temptation wouldn’t be there, “Ok. We’ll do it.”
Clem clapped his hands together, rising from his slouch, “Excellent. Now we just need to get this in writing. But first, we have a meeting to set up.” He held his hand out like he was offering it to Hugo, “Would you like to do the honors?” Hugo shifted uncomfortably, trying to think of an elegant way to decline. Clem huffed, shaking his head with a wry smile like he’d just asked a stupid question, “Of course you would. Besides, I forgot Charles’ number.” CJ giggled, but Crysta frowned, her blue eyes moving to him.
Hugo gnawed his lower lip for several seconds before pulling out his phone. His eyes landed on CJ and he remembered why he was calling Charles in the first place. The nervousness lagged as cold anger surged upwards.
The phone only rang twice before Charles answered; his words filled with a boiling anger that matched Hugo’s, “You’ve got a lot of nerve calling me.”
“It’s not nerve,” Hugo returned, his voice cold on the surface. He saw Crysta beside him purse her lips, her eyes darkening. He could worry about that later. “It’s to curb this incident before it escalates. You’ve already broken our agreement, so I trust you know what happens next.”
“You started it,” Charles snapped back, “that monster, 132, shouldn’t have been making contact with one of ours. That was getting in our way.”
“Her name is CJ,” Hugo snapped back, “and if you consider a teenager asking questions out of curiosity a violation of our agreement, I should come over there and tear that fucking building of yours down around your ears for even coming within ten feet of Dr. McFadden. So, you may want to revise your statement.”
Charles’ voice was nearly a growl, “And now you’re threatening us? Your kind aren’t as invincible as you think you are.”
Hugo laughed and couldn’t deny it sounded a little unhinged, “Invincible? Don’t be silly. But you can’t deny I couldn’t follow through.” His voice lowered and flattened out again, “But clearly I haven’t. We don’t want this to turn into war, as much as you seem to want to push us. Scott tried to drug CJ, that’s crossing the line, having a conversation is not.”
There was a long pause, and Hugo distinctly heard several deep breaths on the other end of the line before the other man responded, “Scott wasn’t acting under orders; he knew the agreement and acted against it. If you really aren’t looking for a fight, you should just leave it at that.”
“But we can’t,” Hugo replied, a hint of dark amusement in his voice, “Clearly your authority wasn’t enough to ensure cooperation. We’d like to speak to your manager, the head of the West Cost cells, Robert Tenant.”
This request presented Hugo with a longer pause as he guessed Charles was calculating whether to take the time to deny the information or just deny the request, “That’s not going to happen.”
“Yes it is,” Hugo replied firmly, “If you’d like us to call him directly, I can certainly do so, but I thought you’d be smart enough to take the olive branch when it was offered.”
“Most of our own people don’t know who the head is,” Charles responded, sounding resigned, “He’s not going to be stupid enough to talk to powered outsiders.”
“I suggest you do your best to convince him to be that stupid,” Hugo returned coolly, “or he’s going to have more than just a negotiation to worry about.”
“I’ll try and speak with him and then-”
Hugo cut him off, “No, set the meeting up now, and then make sure he’s there.”
Hugo waited through the pause where Charles calculated the risks. If Robert wouldn’t attend the meeting, where could they set up where they would have enough of an advantage to take them out? “The abandoned Wilson Dairy Farm at 4:30 tomorrow morning.”
“We’ll be there,” he hung up.
Hugo stared at the disconnected phone and immediately started shaking, terrified of the words that had left his mouth during that conversation. Had he really just threatened to destroy an entire building full of people and actually meant it? Who was he?
Crysta seemed to be thinking the same thing, teetering on the edge o
CJ’s eyes were wide, but then her mouth spread in a grin to match, “Holy crap!” She exclaimed, delighted, “Angry Hugo is actually kinda scary!”
That seemed to bring him back, evaporating the last of the cold anger in embarrassment, “Well uh…” Hugo coughed, trying to ignore CJ’s comment, “That’s done. I don’t know what they have about the morning, but it’s at 4:30 tomorrow at some abandoned dairy farm.” He shrugged.
“Wilsons?” Crysta asked, raising her eyebrows, “That’s the only one I can think of close enough to Centralia."
Hugo paused before answering, something in the woman’s voice almost wistful. “Yeah. Well I’m glad someone knows where it is, because I was going to have to look it up.”
Crysta shook her head, bewildered, “You didn’t even think to ask?”
Hugo shifted, “Well…uh…I was kind of…”
Crysta held up her hand to end the stumbling sentence, “Never mind. But you must know I’m coming with you this time.”
“Absolutely not!” Hugo exclaimed, “This is way more dangerous than last time. You can’t-”
“Defend myself?” Crysta cut him off, her voice near-flat, “Powers are not the only way people can defend themselves. Besides, if anything goes wrong you’ll need a doctor there.”
Hugo chewed on his thumb, looking for a sound argument to refute her. Was she willing to use her powers if things went bad? She would be undeniably helpful if she did, but she was terrified of revealing herself and he didn’t want her to be in a position where she may need to, especially if they made enemies of the Agency, “I don’t-”
“Awesome!” CJ exclaimed over his weak retort, “Dr. McFadden is going to do the fun stuff with us now!”
“Glad to have you on board,” Clem added warmly.
Crysta chuckled, shaking her head slightly, “I just want to help.”
Hugo sighed, recognizing that the argument was over.