The short grasps at breath from a cying Annalise stopped some time after seven, right around the same time they stopped their watch shifts and gave way to exhaustion. Almost predictably (I say almost because I half expected him to sleep, feeling that a leader might deserve such fringe benefits), Mr. Cavalier was seated at his old desk, feet propped quite proudly on its top and twiddling something between his fingers.

“So, if I am going to help you, you need to answer my questions, and you answer them straight or pack up and leave.”

“Demands? You wouldn’t have partnered with me if you didn’t need something. That much I know. So if you feel so entitled to answers, just remember that there may be limits to that.”

The youth of his eyes were severely disparate to face, craggy and worn as it was. Those eyes burned with everything contemptible about youth; arrogance, seething ambition, and sheer carelessness, all seen in a pupil and an iris surrounded by folds of skin.

“Nonetheless, I expected them, so ask, and maybe we’ll find some middle ground.”

And he had me promptly beat on that point, which pigeon-holed me way beyond where i was comfortable.

“Your past isn’t what I am so worried about, so lets leave that to the winds, shall we? I want to know about the plan you have to hit that regional office.”

“Fair enough.”

He moved with an obvious swagger, rolling his chair over to a metal file cabinet and withdrawing a three foot roll of papers secured by several rubber bands. He slid undid those and then rolled the papers out full length across his desk. It was all schematics, copiously hand drawn, not printed.

“It took ten years to scrape up this info and I have plans for three regional offices. The great thing is that these building were so heavily fortified that it becomes to expensive to remodel, so everything is just about the same now as it was when first built.

“Ok…um…lets see…design… Standard design is four stories. Outer perimeter walls are usually made of a ceramic-ferro composite concrete, about thirty feet thick, and reinforced and pre-stressed with heavy titanium-carbon composite pylons. Inner perimeter walls are carbon-spectra fiber composite blast resistant layers several inches thick with hydraulic membranes sandwiched in the middle.

Inside, the interior is structurally decoupled from the exterior, relying on it’s own framework. The same with each of the floors. Everything is over-engineered. The active and passive shock dampening was designed for a building more than twenty times its height, and there is so much of it that I am not sure the thing would even budge if the big one hit.
Utilities? You can count those out. Completely self contained. They could go on for years with what they have inside. The buildings themselves look like nondescript, perfectly innocent office buildings of bland design, occupied by a cover business. The Delta agents, a uniform one hundred, come and go through hidden entrances.

They even have offensive capability in the form of surface to air missile batteries and tactical nukes. Worse than that, they have null field generators.”

That last piece of information piqued my interest, but I declined to ask, fearing that he would ask questions in return and dig too deep. Besides, it was evident enough as to do what it did.

“So, in other words, it’s the epitome of overkill. Any direct siege would be suicide for even a moderately sized army. But there is one weakness…”

I simply remained silent in this one sided dance of a conversation, allowing him to show off.

“That would be their central network. It isn’t connected to any outside systems, but it controls everything. Unfortunately, the only info I haven’t been able to get is on their RF and EMP shielding, though it’s probably insanely tough. However, since you came, our fortunes have changed.”

I really didn’t know if his information was accurate or not, since it just as well could have been a more militant version of maps to the houses of Hollywood stars, but those eyes told me different. He had written extra notes on the map while prattling on with hos speech and it was the same handwriting as the map’s original notes. He had done this map himself and I had a feeling he didn’t mess around where his ego was concerned.

“You took out a professionally trained psi, a Primer no less. That means you have a good chance of getting inside somebody’s head.”

So he knew. I guess it was expected. Jigger and Cannonball were still out cold, but he probably had an extra set of eyes on the streets.

“Ok, but what about other psis? Part of my survival was luck.”

“Don’t be so modest, but if you are truly worried, just realize the psis are truly rare things among us Deltas and fewer still among the Primers.”

So, not only was he willing to bet a nearly suicidal operation on chance (even a good one), he was also not willing to take stock of what he truly need. I was liking him less and less. That got me to contemplate a risk of my own.




But I guess what sealed it was an awkward silence when neither of us had any more questions or demands. He then put the schematics away and while the drawer was open I caught a glimpse of something that was apparently personal to him. It was a black and white photograph, well worn, and obviously of someone who had lived probably before the turn of the century. The man possessed long and grayish, almost unkempt, wiry hair, paired with straight tree trunk of a beard.

The image took a minute to process in my mind. I don’t know why. I should have recognized it, but I kept trying to choose between the obvious choice and a civil war general. However, it clicked. Carl Marx.

That tipped the scales. I began slithering into his mind, or at least trying to. The first shock was the tangle of pathos and neurosis that he possessed. Hatred, insecurity, and unbridled ambition all competed for the spotlight. After taking a long hike through that hall of broken mirrors, I found his memories.

The Flow school of psi, at least in my opinion, is the safest way to use psi. It utilizes the natural strengths, leaves the quirks of psi as they are, and does everything not to work against it, while achieving the objective at hand, probably better than the Control school of psi. The best way I can describe it is riding a wave on a surf board. You go with the curl, following its flow and contours, but you are always moving toward the shore. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t get pulled under.

So, instead of stringing out his experiences like photos in a wallet to be viewed at my leisure, they came in an onrush: Divorce. Marriage. Birth. Old age. Youth. Exile. Marines. Assassination attempt. Viet Cong. Delta abilities. Resistance. My tk went wild and I flew my chair, hitting the wall with a rather resounding and deep thud. He spun from the cabinet, staring at me with the first surprised expression I had seen on his face since I met him.

“What happened?! Dammit, another Primer assault?”

While he was staring at the walls with unhidden paranoia, everyone had awoken, including Annalise. They were following his gaze, breaking only to give a staring glance at me and then returning to their searching wait.

Then Cavalier turned with a smile, eyes fixed and boring into me. The smile was thin, curled at the corners, and bearing teeth as his lips were tightly stretched over them. It would have been a typical anger filled grin, if it wasn’t for a nauseating quality that spoke to wicked sadism.

His right arm liquefied into an amorphous mass and surged outward like a blast from a fire hydrant, stopping short of running me through and then circling my neck in a ring. He lifted into mid-air. Wrong move, for me and him.



My head still pounded and, both excited and stressed, fought to piece the the images dug from his mind together into something cohesive. Then my consciousness rather spontaneously spat out a name, Lee Harvey Oswald. The whole of my mind, being dragged behind, snapped back in to place. I finally comprehended the significance of the name. So it was that one lonely misfit in my world had shot another dead, changing history and adding a rather sorry staple to our culture. Ironically, in this one he had become more powerful, more skilled, more wise, and yet had accomplished, or perhaps demolished, far less.

But these thoughts didn’t help. He hit something under his desk and with a buzz the huge bulkhead of a door opened and we moved into the tunnel. Two of his lackeys had taken Annalise, keeping her in a choke hold. The others stayed plastered to the walls of their bolthole. Jigger and Cannonball stayed unconscious.

Oswald through me to the grimy pavement while my head was still splitting. His arm slithered back into its original silhouette, by quickly gurgled and stabilized into a thing and straight blade. The other arm did the same.

“You know, I never really needed you. I just wanted to give you a chance at greatness. Now you have betrayed me. Now you will will pay.”

Overly brooding and dramatic, I thought. I wondered if he had seen one too many crime dramas or action movies. Usually villains were much less wordy when they kill someone, excluding the occasional tirade of the self-justified ones.

“Get up! NOW!”

There goes that insecurity.

“Fight me. Show me that you could have been great…”

I got up, slowly, to really piss him off. And then I went into a drunken boxing position of sorts. I had abandoned the “drunken” part of the art, preferring instead to retain the mechanics and underlying philosophy. As Miyamoto Musashi said, “One thousand days of training to forge . . . ten thousand days to polish.” To add and then refine.

And he proved to have no knowledge of this principal. He moves were flashy, garnering attention more than any tactical advantage. I let him go first.

I won’t lie to you and say that he never touched a hair on me, or nearly so, because he did hit. Flashy or not, skill is skill, but I had developed true understanding, transcendent of memorized movements and bullet points in a training manual. One of those benefits was spacial awareness.

As much as he tried to strike a deadly blow, I kept him from getting closer than a moderate graze. His frustration rose and he fumbled and then it rose more and he fumbled harder. He let down his guard more and more, opening up wider and wider windows for me to strike. I just hoped the non-morphed parts of his body were normal.

As he arced one of his blades over to bring it down on my head, on my knees I struck a nerve in his thy, bringing him to eye level with me. He tried figuring where i was going to strike next, liquefying his head and neck. I just listened to his hear heart beat, thumped with in a key fifteen millisecond window, and he dropped to the ground dead, his limbs not morphing back.

His lackeys stood dumbfounded, loosening their grip on Annalise. She then promptly shocked the two of them to the ground and ran behind me, clutching my arm. I spoke to the assembled crowd.

“He thought nothing of you. All I want is to change things, and in that cause I will treat you as equals. Join me.”

It didn’t take anymore negotiation than that. The lot, most around Annalise’s age, lined up in an orderly column, and followed me in step out of that tunnel. However, I did leave a note for the four that would wake up that they had the place to themselves. I wished them luck.

Being in a fairly abandoned part of the city, we had a lot of freedom of movement, but in the more populated areas we stuck to the shadows to avoid fresh troops brought in, apparently searching for me. I found a good ‘ol deuce and a half army truck, punched out the driver, taking his uniform. I loaded up the back with the bunch, brought down the drop clot and got in. Annalise rode up front.

“Where are we going?”

“St. Paul.”

“But we won’t be able to take the regional office with these people.”

“I know, but we’ll finally have real help this time.”