10-29-2013, 10:43 PM
Head still splitting from his hangover, Jon entered the Ritz-Carlton hotel with as little fanfae as he could muster. He gave the bellhop at the front a quick nod and sped down the hall at a brisk walk in search of the room number Nick Trano had given him in his dreams last night. He wasn't about to waste time on posturing or niceties if they weren't vital to his purpose.
He found the right door and knocked on it. He wondered when hotel rooms would adopt the doorbell convention. Probably not anytime soon, as it wasn't very cost effective.
It took a couple minutes for the door to open. When it did, Nicholas Trano didn't look like his usual well-dressed, clean cut self. It was clear he had been woken by the knock. When he registered Jon's face, his eyes widened in momentary shock before he caught himself. "Jon, you seem to have a habit of turning up unexpectedly. What can I do for you?"
Nick Trano looked like a bag of beaten fertilizer. Jon wondered what he'd remembered from the previous night. "I didn't think I was that unexpected. Don't you remember anything?"
He smirked. "It's been a rough night. Come in, I'm pretty sure there's a coffee machine somewhere."
It was clear he knew more than he was letting on--of course, nobody wants to be the first to bring up "yes, Jon, you came to me in a dream."
"I will definitely take some coffee,"
Jon said as entered the hotel suite and followed Nick to the kitchen. "As long as it's black and strong."
That should do wonders for his headache.
Nick nodded. "Can't stand it black myself, but that shouldn't be too hard to manage."
Jon chuckled at that obvious joke, although Nick might have been sincere about the level of difficulty of preparing a cup of coffee without adding anything to it. He certainly looked as bad off as Jon felt, had he been drinking yesterday as well?
As Nick got the coffee brewing, Jon reached into his pocket. There, he kept that odd stone that grew warm when he touched it. "Nick, what do you remember from last night?"
A bitter smile crossed his face. "Enough to think I might be losing it."
"You're saner than you might think,"
Jon replied. The coffee was done and Jon happily accepted a cup poured straight from the carafe. He sipped it -- yeah, it was hot and strong. "Just like I like my women,"
he said.
"Black and bitter?"
He shook his head. "So--let's make sure I'm not missing anything. You can go into peoples' dreams, and talk to them."
Jon touched his nose and pointed at Nick. "You are absolutely correct there, my friend. And last night you gave me your hotel suite so I could come here and see you."
His face had gone neutral--not doubtful, but not fully believing either. "So what else did I tell you, then? I'm not much of a dreamer."
From the far room, the sound of the door slamming shut echoed through the suite. There was the sound of things deposited on a table and instructions issued by a commanding female voice. "Damn it Trano if you're still asleep I swear to God I am--" The voice cut off. Then there were several moments of dead silence.
Jon turned away, distracted by the noise. Where did that female voice come from? Who else was here?
She appeared in the kitchen entrance without warning, planted against the side of the wall. He'd seen her before – or at least a dream image of her. Jon saw how her hard eyes cut across the room and focused on him and Nick like she was scanning for foreign objects in the place. She carried herself like a soldier. Their eyes met and Jon saw a glimmer of recognition – she knew who he was. Her eyes narrowed, but she relaxed the hand that had gone to the holster beneath her suit jacket.
Jon glanced back at Nick. A paramour, perhaps? Or a body guard, or perhaps both. Damn bossy one. Jon decided he liked her. "Who's your companion here?"
"Believe it or not, she's supposed to be my assistant."
He sighed. "Sometimes she thinks it's the other way around."
Jon's eyes went to where the woman had relaxed her grip. Definitely was packing something. "Your 'assistant,'"
he said, making quotes in the air. He winked at Trano -- it was indeed the same woman Jon had seen in Nick's dream before he'd interrupted.
The woman crossed the room to the kitchen counter, keeping a wary eye on Jon meanwhile. The glare she shot at Trano as she passed between them to get her own cup of coffee could have cut glass. "What a fucking gentleman," she smirked while pouring a cup for herself and backed away. Reed liked her personal space. "Julie Reed," she introduced herself apparently hovering between leaving and staying.
She fixed onto Jon. "And you're the dumbass that sued the CCD."
Jon returned the stare. "Pleased to meet you Julie. I think. Are you insinuating that somehow the CCD is above an individual's right to redress grievances under the rule of law?"
Reed just started laughing and shot Trano a glance across the rim of her cup. Jon frowned and wondered what was exactly so funny about it.
Nick didn't laugh. "It's hard not to be when you can kill anyone who displeases you."
Reed wasn't too impressed. "We need to talk soon," she told Trano. With that, she nestled the cup close and disappeared down the suite toward where the bedrooms were most likely located.
Jon watched her disappear down the hall. "She's charming,"
he said to Nick.
Nick raised an eyebrow. "In her way."
He set the cup down. "So, we have some stuff to talk about."
Jon reached into his pocket and retrieved the black stone teardrop. The instant he touched it he felt warmth against his palm. He set it on the table, and it balanced, seemingly impossibly, on the edge that tapered to a curved point. "Tell me what you think about this. How does it maintain its balance?"
He examined it for a few seconds before answering. "Can't say--I'm not much of a sculptor either."
Another moment and he looked back up at Jon. "But you're going somewhere with this."
Jon watched Nick examine the stone and nodded. He had such a suspicion about the strange object, and finally he had an opportunity to confirm it. "Go ahead and pick it up."
He did as asked. "It's warm. What's it made of?"
Warm. So the object did do what Jon had suspected. "Honestly I have no idea what it's made of,"
he said. "It's old. Very, very old. But aside from you, the only other person who has ever said it felt warm...is me."
He opened his mind to the Great Spirit and took hold of the power, filling himself with the raw surging energy.
A look of discomfort materialized on Trano's face. "I really hate that feeling."
He leaned against the table. "You realize how crazy this is, right?"
Jon sent out threads of solidified air and used them to bring the carafe over to his cup and fill it, then return it to its station. Well, maybe that did look a little crazy. "Did you see how I did that? You aren't crazy, Nick. This is real."
He laughed dryly. "I saw it--but that's the crazy part."
He put the stone back on the counter top. "So, let's just assume we're sane and magic exists. What now?"
Jon sighed. Nick didn't want to seem to accept his own sanity, and that was the first step. "My people have stories, Nick. Stories so old they probably predate the Bible. Stories probably as old as that stone. Of gods that walked among the first people. Medicine men who performed miracles. And --"
He paused. "--You aren't the first I've found that's like us."
"That's..."
He looked like he'd had the wind knocked out of him. "That's bad. How many?"
Jon released his hold on the power of the Great Spirit. "Two here in Moscow. One other that I know of who is probably still alive back in the States. But there are many, many more coming. You recall the time you had the Sickness?"
He crossed his arms. He still looked uncomfortable. "Yeah. They kept me in the infirmary for a week."
Jon nodded. "You're lucky your symptoms escaped notice if you went to the hospital for treatment. But it isn't a physical affliction, Nick. What happened about a week before you first fell ill?"
"Convinced the most hard-assed chief on the boat to let me off watch, went out clubbing in Bangkok."
Jon chuckled. "You must have wanted to go very badly. And I bet you were surprised you were able to get shore leave."
Nick laughed. "More than you can imagine, Jon. That guy hated me."
Then something dawned on him. "So I was right..."
he muttered to himself. "Using it without building up some kind of tolerance is what causes the sickness."
Jon nodded. "You're half right. The Sickness is a reaction to the first touchings of what my people call the power of the Great Spirit that flows through all things. The symptoms go away after you gain some control over the power. That, or you die."
He paused, and stared at Nick. "So how many people have had the Sickness since it first appeared?"
Nick sighed. "I need a drink."
He reached for the mini-bar that happened to be right next to the coffee maker. 24 hour service, Jon supposed. He kept talking while he filled a glass with whiskey--Jon couldn't make out the label, but judging from the hotel it was unjustly expensive. "So what can you do? I'm guessing you've had more time to experiment than I."
He brightened after the first sip of whiskey. Suddenly he didn't look so haggard. Jon's lips tightened as he saw that. It was an obvious sign of a dependency issue – not a good thing for someone being talked of as a Presidential candidate.
“Little early for that, don't you think?”
Jon remarked. “As for what I can do...the power of the Great Spirit is the power to alter the waking world as I see fit – with certain limitations, of course. It seems to follow its own set of physical laws. Move objects, create fire, lightning, fracture the earth... I suspect there are much more useful things that can be done, if my people's stories aren't too far off the mark.”
He paused. Should he tell Nick? Apparently the man knew something of it already judging by his first noted channeling experience. “And I can use the power to control people's thoughts.”
He nodded. "That's why Brandon's been a bit angry with me."
Jon blinked. "You said last night that he had the same ability. Does he know that you-- "
He took a breath. "Did you do something that brought his attention, and that's why our phone call was traced last night?"
"Let's just say I accidentally tried to control Brandon's mind when I was interviewing him."
He swirled the glass and took another sip of his drink. "Needless to say, that didn't sit well with him."
"Really."
Jon took a step toward Nick. "You have to be careful with the mind medicine, Nick. I have an idea of why it works, but it's very dangerous -- a weapon as surely as a gun."
He took a deep drink of the coffee. It was hot enough to nearly burn his throat as it went down. "Anatoly Kant -- I'm sure you saw the news -- I used it on him to get him to make a critical mistake in my lawsuit. And he went and killed himself."
There. The confession was out. Jon didn't suspect Nick would be one to turn him in for the crime -- well, that and the fact there weren't any laws to regulate what Jon had done.
Trano was clearly conflicted. "Alright, Jon. Looks like I'm not the only one who needs a drink."
He turned back around and filled another glass. Once he handed it to Jon he dropped the bombshell. "It's not your fault he's dead."
The stench of whiskey that Jon had found so appealing the night before turned his stomach at the moment, but he still knocked the whole thing back in one swig. Then he slammed the glass down on the table and turned his attention back to Nick. "What do you know about it?"
"We both know due process isn't in the Custody handbook. They killed him for failure."
He looked Jon straight in the eye. "With all I've read about you, he was dead the second you brought the case to court. Don't beat yourself up over it, your 'great spirit' had nothing to do with him dying."
Nick spoke with such certainty on Kant's fate it was hard to not believe him. Anger welled up within Jon. He'd flayed himself over his mistake, and it turned out Kant had been killed -- for poor performance in a courtroom? What sick, sick bastards ran a country like that?
Almost before he was aware of what he was doing, Jon seized hold of the power again. Hot. Fire. That was what he wanted. Threads shot out in all directions, like the warming trick he'd used in Kallisti's, but more...focused. Precise. And tiny filaments fired off in several directions, leaving tiny smoking holes in the ceiling, a couch in the living room, and two of the cabinet doors in the kitchen.
Jon blinked and let go of the power. It'd been a long time since he'd let his anger get the best of him like that. "Sorry,"
he said.
Trano's face was as pale as the mug Jon held in his hand. "You--that's everything I'm afraid of."
He took another drink. "You realize that if this is as common as you say, millions are going to die right?" He looked around the room again before turning back to Jon. "And that's not even taking into account the Middle East. If some nutjob decides he's their Mahdi and shows them that... we thought Al Qaeda was bad."
"I couldn't agree more,"
Jon said, releasing his connection to the Great Spirit. He was calm. He would-be-calm. He reached out and dabbed a finger at the still-smoking hole in the cabinet door. It looked like a molten pin had been shoved through it. "Total chaos is coming, Nick. And we can't let some horrid dictator who runs a tyranny like this place get control and use this power to his own ends. Did you know some of the native tribes are considering approaching the CCD to take them over?"
Nick frowned. "I didn't know the education was that bad. Do they honestly think they'll get anything from Brandon? He'll use them for leverage and then throw them away."
He finished his first glass of whiskey for the day. "Knowing him, he won't even feel guilty about it."
Jon drank the last of his coffee. "The CNA is in agreement that approaching the CCD is a bad idea, but the problem is they don't really have any enforcement power. But that's only half the issue."
He set his cup down. "It seems about four out of every hundred young Native Americans are afflicted with the Sickness once they reach maturity. That's more than four times the average incidence among other populations."
"So if we're correct in our assumption that the two are related, Brandon could be getting the best weapon in the world in ridiculous numbers."
That was enough to pour a second glass. "So how do we stop that from happening?"
Jon clapped his hands. "I've already started. But what I need to know is, can I count you as a friend in this matter?"
Nick held out a hand. "Whatever you need me to do, Jon. You're not asking me to do anything I wouldn't want to do anyways."
Jon grasped it in a hearty handshake, a devious grin forming on his face. "You're going to like this, I think. First we're going to get you elected President."
Nick smirked back. "That's not the worst idea I've ever heard. Seems I'm pretty popular right now."
Edited by Jon Little Bird, May 17 2014, 11:19 PM.
He found the right door and knocked on it. He wondered when hotel rooms would adopt the doorbell convention. Probably not anytime soon, as it wasn't very cost effective.
It took a couple minutes for the door to open. When it did, Nicholas Trano didn't look like his usual well-dressed, clean cut self. It was clear he had been woken by the knock. When he registered Jon's face, his eyes widened in momentary shock before he caught himself. "Jon, you seem to have a habit of turning up unexpectedly. What can I do for you?"
Nick Trano looked like a bag of beaten fertilizer. Jon wondered what he'd remembered from the previous night. "I didn't think I was that unexpected. Don't you remember anything?"
He smirked. "It's been a rough night. Come in, I'm pretty sure there's a coffee machine somewhere."
It was clear he knew more than he was letting on--of course, nobody wants to be the first to bring up "yes, Jon, you came to me in a dream."
"I will definitely take some coffee,"
Jon said as entered the hotel suite and followed Nick to the kitchen. "As long as it's black and strong."
That should do wonders for his headache.
Nick nodded. "Can't stand it black myself, but that shouldn't be too hard to manage."
Jon chuckled at that obvious joke, although Nick might have been sincere about the level of difficulty of preparing a cup of coffee without adding anything to it. He certainly looked as bad off as Jon felt, had he been drinking yesterday as well?
As Nick got the coffee brewing, Jon reached into his pocket. There, he kept that odd stone that grew warm when he touched it. "Nick, what do you remember from last night?"
A bitter smile crossed his face. "Enough to think I might be losing it."
"You're saner than you might think,"
Jon replied. The coffee was done and Jon happily accepted a cup poured straight from the carafe. He sipped it -- yeah, it was hot and strong. "Just like I like my women,"
he said.
"Black and bitter?"
He shook his head. "So--let's make sure I'm not missing anything. You can go into peoples' dreams, and talk to them."
Jon touched his nose and pointed at Nick. "You are absolutely correct there, my friend. And last night you gave me your hotel suite so I could come here and see you."
His face had gone neutral--not doubtful, but not fully believing either. "So what else did I tell you, then? I'm not much of a dreamer."
From the far room, the sound of the door slamming shut echoed through the suite. There was the sound of things deposited on a table and instructions issued by a commanding female voice. "Damn it Trano if you're still asleep I swear to God I am--" The voice cut off. Then there were several moments of dead silence.
Jon turned away, distracted by the noise. Where did that female voice come from? Who else was here?
She appeared in the kitchen entrance without warning, planted against the side of the wall. He'd seen her before – or at least a dream image of her. Jon saw how her hard eyes cut across the room and focused on him and Nick like she was scanning for foreign objects in the place. She carried herself like a soldier. Their eyes met and Jon saw a glimmer of recognition – she knew who he was. Her eyes narrowed, but she relaxed the hand that had gone to the holster beneath her suit jacket.
Jon glanced back at Nick. A paramour, perhaps? Or a body guard, or perhaps both. Damn bossy one. Jon decided he liked her. "Who's your companion here?"
"Believe it or not, she's supposed to be my assistant."
He sighed. "Sometimes she thinks it's the other way around."
Jon's eyes went to where the woman had relaxed her grip. Definitely was packing something. "Your 'assistant,'"
he said, making quotes in the air. He winked at Trano -- it was indeed the same woman Jon had seen in Nick's dream before he'd interrupted.
The woman crossed the room to the kitchen counter, keeping a wary eye on Jon meanwhile. The glare she shot at Trano as she passed between them to get her own cup of coffee could have cut glass. "What a fucking gentleman," she smirked while pouring a cup for herself and backed away. Reed liked her personal space. "Julie Reed," she introduced herself apparently hovering between leaving and staying.
She fixed onto Jon. "And you're the dumbass that sued the CCD."
Jon returned the stare. "Pleased to meet you Julie. I think. Are you insinuating that somehow the CCD is above an individual's right to redress grievances under the rule of law?"
Reed just started laughing and shot Trano a glance across the rim of her cup. Jon frowned and wondered what was exactly so funny about it.
Nick didn't laugh. "It's hard not to be when you can kill anyone who displeases you."
Reed wasn't too impressed. "We need to talk soon," she told Trano. With that, she nestled the cup close and disappeared down the suite toward where the bedrooms were most likely located.
Jon watched her disappear down the hall. "She's charming,"
he said to Nick.
Nick raised an eyebrow. "In her way."
He set the cup down. "So, we have some stuff to talk about."
Jon reached into his pocket and retrieved the black stone teardrop. The instant he touched it he felt warmth against his palm. He set it on the table, and it balanced, seemingly impossibly, on the edge that tapered to a curved point. "Tell me what you think about this. How does it maintain its balance?"
He examined it for a few seconds before answering. "Can't say--I'm not much of a sculptor either."
Another moment and he looked back up at Jon. "But you're going somewhere with this."
Jon watched Nick examine the stone and nodded. He had such a suspicion about the strange object, and finally he had an opportunity to confirm it. "Go ahead and pick it up."
He did as asked. "It's warm. What's it made of?"
Warm. So the object did do what Jon had suspected. "Honestly I have no idea what it's made of,"
he said. "It's old. Very, very old. But aside from you, the only other person who has ever said it felt warm...is me."
He opened his mind to the Great Spirit and took hold of the power, filling himself with the raw surging energy.
A look of discomfort materialized on Trano's face. "I really hate that feeling."
He leaned against the table. "You realize how crazy this is, right?"
Jon sent out threads of solidified air and used them to bring the carafe over to his cup and fill it, then return it to its station. Well, maybe that did look a little crazy. "Did you see how I did that? You aren't crazy, Nick. This is real."
He laughed dryly. "I saw it--but that's the crazy part."
He put the stone back on the counter top. "So, let's just assume we're sane and magic exists. What now?"
Jon sighed. Nick didn't want to seem to accept his own sanity, and that was the first step. "My people have stories, Nick. Stories so old they probably predate the Bible. Stories probably as old as that stone. Of gods that walked among the first people. Medicine men who performed miracles. And --"
He paused. "--You aren't the first I've found that's like us."
"That's..."
He looked like he'd had the wind knocked out of him. "That's bad. How many?"
Jon released his hold on the power of the Great Spirit. "Two here in Moscow. One other that I know of who is probably still alive back in the States. But there are many, many more coming. You recall the time you had the Sickness?"
He crossed his arms. He still looked uncomfortable. "Yeah. They kept me in the infirmary for a week."
Jon nodded. "You're lucky your symptoms escaped notice if you went to the hospital for treatment. But it isn't a physical affliction, Nick. What happened about a week before you first fell ill?"
"Convinced the most hard-assed chief on the boat to let me off watch, went out clubbing in Bangkok."
Jon chuckled. "You must have wanted to go very badly. And I bet you were surprised you were able to get shore leave."
Nick laughed. "More than you can imagine, Jon. That guy hated me."
Then something dawned on him. "So I was right..."
he muttered to himself. "Using it without building up some kind of tolerance is what causes the sickness."
Jon nodded. "You're half right. The Sickness is a reaction to the first touchings of what my people call the power of the Great Spirit that flows through all things. The symptoms go away after you gain some control over the power. That, or you die."
He paused, and stared at Nick. "So how many people have had the Sickness since it first appeared?"
Nick sighed. "I need a drink."
He reached for the mini-bar that happened to be right next to the coffee maker. 24 hour service, Jon supposed. He kept talking while he filled a glass with whiskey--Jon couldn't make out the label, but judging from the hotel it was unjustly expensive. "So what can you do? I'm guessing you've had more time to experiment than I."
He brightened after the first sip of whiskey. Suddenly he didn't look so haggard. Jon's lips tightened as he saw that. It was an obvious sign of a dependency issue – not a good thing for someone being talked of as a Presidential candidate.
“Little early for that, don't you think?”
Jon remarked. “As for what I can do...the power of the Great Spirit is the power to alter the waking world as I see fit – with certain limitations, of course. It seems to follow its own set of physical laws. Move objects, create fire, lightning, fracture the earth... I suspect there are much more useful things that can be done, if my people's stories aren't too far off the mark.”
He paused. Should he tell Nick? Apparently the man knew something of it already judging by his first noted channeling experience. “And I can use the power to control people's thoughts.”
He nodded. "That's why Brandon's been a bit angry with me."
Jon blinked. "You said last night that he had the same ability. Does he know that you-- "
He took a breath. "Did you do something that brought his attention, and that's why our phone call was traced last night?"
"Let's just say I accidentally tried to control Brandon's mind when I was interviewing him."
He swirled the glass and took another sip of his drink. "Needless to say, that didn't sit well with him."
"Really."
Jon took a step toward Nick. "You have to be careful with the mind medicine, Nick. I have an idea of why it works, but it's very dangerous -- a weapon as surely as a gun."
He took a deep drink of the coffee. It was hot enough to nearly burn his throat as it went down. "Anatoly Kant -- I'm sure you saw the news -- I used it on him to get him to make a critical mistake in my lawsuit. And he went and killed himself."
There. The confession was out. Jon didn't suspect Nick would be one to turn him in for the crime -- well, that and the fact there weren't any laws to regulate what Jon had done.
Trano was clearly conflicted. "Alright, Jon. Looks like I'm not the only one who needs a drink."
He turned back around and filled another glass. Once he handed it to Jon he dropped the bombshell. "It's not your fault he's dead."
The stench of whiskey that Jon had found so appealing the night before turned his stomach at the moment, but he still knocked the whole thing back in one swig. Then he slammed the glass down on the table and turned his attention back to Nick. "What do you know about it?"
"We both know due process isn't in the Custody handbook. They killed him for failure."
He looked Jon straight in the eye. "With all I've read about you, he was dead the second you brought the case to court. Don't beat yourself up over it, your 'great spirit' had nothing to do with him dying."
Nick spoke with such certainty on Kant's fate it was hard to not believe him. Anger welled up within Jon. He'd flayed himself over his mistake, and it turned out Kant had been killed -- for poor performance in a courtroom? What sick, sick bastards ran a country like that?
Almost before he was aware of what he was doing, Jon seized hold of the power again. Hot. Fire. That was what he wanted. Threads shot out in all directions, like the warming trick he'd used in Kallisti's, but more...focused. Precise. And tiny filaments fired off in several directions, leaving tiny smoking holes in the ceiling, a couch in the living room, and two of the cabinet doors in the kitchen.
Jon blinked and let go of the power. It'd been a long time since he'd let his anger get the best of him like that. "Sorry,"
he said.
Trano's face was as pale as the mug Jon held in his hand. "You--that's everything I'm afraid of."
He took another drink. "You realize that if this is as common as you say, millions are going to die right?" He looked around the room again before turning back to Jon. "And that's not even taking into account the Middle East. If some nutjob decides he's their Mahdi and shows them that... we thought Al Qaeda was bad."
"I couldn't agree more,"
Jon said, releasing his connection to the Great Spirit. He was calm. He would-be-calm. He reached out and dabbed a finger at the still-smoking hole in the cabinet door. It looked like a molten pin had been shoved through it. "Total chaos is coming, Nick. And we can't let some horrid dictator who runs a tyranny like this place get control and use this power to his own ends. Did you know some of the native tribes are considering approaching the CCD to take them over?"
Nick frowned. "I didn't know the education was that bad. Do they honestly think they'll get anything from Brandon? He'll use them for leverage and then throw them away."
He finished his first glass of whiskey for the day. "Knowing him, he won't even feel guilty about it."
Jon drank the last of his coffee. "The CNA is in agreement that approaching the CCD is a bad idea, but the problem is they don't really have any enforcement power. But that's only half the issue."
He set his cup down. "It seems about four out of every hundred young Native Americans are afflicted with the Sickness once they reach maturity. That's more than four times the average incidence among other populations."
"So if we're correct in our assumption that the two are related, Brandon could be getting the best weapon in the world in ridiculous numbers."
That was enough to pour a second glass. "So how do we stop that from happening?"
Jon clapped his hands. "I've already started. But what I need to know is, can I count you as a friend in this matter?"
Nick held out a hand. "Whatever you need me to do, Jon. You're not asking me to do anything I wouldn't want to do anyways."
Jon grasped it in a hearty handshake, a devious grin forming on his face. "You're going to like this, I think. First we're going to get you elected President."
Nick smirked back. "That's not the worst idea I've ever heard. Seems I'm pretty popular right now."
Edited by Jon Little Bird, May 17 2014, 11:19 PM.