September 6th, 2030, 9:43 pm

The man of mystery and Medo alliance plants his heeled dress shoes into the pavement upon reaching the alleyway. His head swings toward both roads at either end as I approach from the rear. I shut the steel door behind me and step down the short staircase. "This should do."

I wander around him, enough so I can focus on the raven mark under the cuff of his sleeve. "Call me Captain Obvious, but I'm guessing you're with Roarke. What does he want?"

He sips his drink and allows it to seethe through his teeth. "Roarke was right; you are brilliant. He would like to debrief with you. There has been some confusion over the past few days as to your mission and he would like to apologize." The man takes in another gulp, sucking in the last drops of whatever liquid occupied the glass. He places it by his feet. "He knows you do not like him, but he sympathizes with you. He hopes to clear the air between him and yourself."

Clear the air? The more him and I talk, the worse things become. The situation grows into something far more complicated. The first time we spoke, I had to live with the secret that I was conjoined with a murderous cult. Then, he tries to kill the Captain and forces me to speak with him, and I am tortured with the notion that I may have to save the world. What could another speech entail?

"Okay," I say, scanning the ends of the alley. "So, are we just going to wait for him? When is he supposed to get here?"

He stifles an obvious snicker. "Forget I ever called you smart. You are a damned fool, Slater. As a member of the Medo, we simply do not wait for Roarke to come to us. We go to him."

"Go to him?"

The man bends his arm over his sternum with his hand balled. "Precisely. Hold on."

I reach for his arm. In the same instant, a gust of tapered wind oscillates from the ground on which we stand. His night-black hair flutters skyward. The breeze lifts the goosebumps from the skin on the nape of my neck. The current circulating us screams in one of my ears and out the other, jolting my brain against my skull. The man grins as I succumb to a flash of light.

The alleyway outside of Ambiance dissipates as a wide, elegant room constructs itself around us. The gale flees through my shirt before fading into the air. A mahogany trim encapsulates the floor and wall, surrounding a basic maroon paint. The ceiling rises high over our heads, shortened by only a shimmering golden chandelier. A green carpet under my shoes spreads to a lustrous, metallic door on the far wall.

"Hello, Slater."

I alter my head away from the long carpet and door to follow the sturdy vibration of the voice. Rodney Roarke leans against a sleek desk facing the rest of the room. Behind him is a window stretching the width of the room, accepting view to the great city lights on a black backdrop. The reflection of the chandelier in the glass faults the prospect.

The man who tracked me down releases my arm and I tremble. A drift of chills slithers up my arm, dancing over my mark as it ignites. "The boy you have chosen to represent us spends his nights partying at clubs he has no business being at. The clearest evidence of Imperial Guard privilege you could find, sir."

Roarke riles his fingernails along the groove of the desk before pressing off, heading toward me. "What Slater does in his free time should not concern you as long as he is not actively exploiting us. You worry about your duty and he will worry about his."

"Of course, sir."

"Slater, I am glad you were able to join us so quickly. We knew you were going out with your Imperial Guard friends tonight, but we could not wait any longer. You are very behind on information of relevance to your mission." Roarke crosses his arms, staring at my mark.

"So, this is stuff I need to know for these creatures that are coming, right?"

"Yes, partially," he admits. He pivots back to his desk and sits on its surface. "But we have plenty more to discuss. For starters, the only person from the Medo that you know is myself. If you are going to be one of us, it would help to get another name under your belt." Roarke points to the transporting man to my right. "This here is Grayson Irons. He is one of the most loyal members of the Medo and is better equipped to assist you in dire situations. He will also be the one providing you with information regarding your mission."

Grayson clears his throat, delivering my attention. "You and I will meet prior to the appearance of a beast, and I will tell you everything you need to know. Instead of Roarke being up your ass all the time, it will be me."

The snapping of formality catches me in the chest. Grayson transitioned from robotic alien to one of the kids in my Imperial Guard class. A smile reaches wide across his face. The leader of the Medo lacks amusement.

"Shut up and hit the lights, Irons," Roarke stammers. He jumps off the desk and swings to the window behind him. "Come over here, Slater. Look out to the domain."

Grayson flicks his thumb against his middle finger, and the chandelier over our heads dims to black. The city brightens this side of the room with the vast expanse of glittering lights. The window looks out to piercing skyscrapers and racing cars far below my feet. If I can associate a location with this view, glaring at the bustling eastern shore, I could place us along the border of Bluefield and Woodrow. This must be the tallest building in the west. How have I never seen this place before?

Then again, have I?

Roarke leans his shoulder on the glass and faces me. His silver eyes spark in the mirror of a city on fire. His dream. "Isn't it amazing, Slater? How often do you see the world from up here? To think that this city is only a speck in the whole Empire, yet it houses the most people. So many places to hide, to keep secret. Amongst millions, who are we? No one tends to notice us. We look just the same as the next pure human, only marked by that thing on our arms. Some by choice, others are forced."

"You force people into this?" I groan, turning to Woodrow. "Like other people, not just me?"

He relaxes with a sigh. "I do not have the power to control every person in the Empire. I have someone else in the Medo recruit new people. We always need new people." Roarke strokes his arm up to his mark, with his fingers being fondled by shadowy wisps. "But if it were up to me, I would never want anyone to live like this. You know how hard it is to be in the Medo. Well, imagine being here for almost your whole life."

I peer at him. "What are you talking about? You hate being in the Medo?"

"The Medo is my life, Slater. If I hated it so much I would have killed myself years ago. Once I got in, there was no turning back."

"You joined?"

"Much like you, I had no other choice." He leans against the window and confronts the dark room. "I must have been eighteen or so. I fell violently ill to the extent that my parents believed I was possessed. They tried to consult a psychologist, but it was too late. Boom. My body could not handle the amount of power I was given and I exploded; blew up our whole house in Frayton. When I regained consciousness in the rubble, both of my parents were dead. I killed them.

"A man approached me, surrounded by a black aura like the one that comes out of my mark here." He teases the thorns poking from the M with his finger. "His name was Jay. Jay Roarke. He was to me what I am to you, except he claimed me as a son and took me here, to the beautiful Kingsport Hotel in Bluefield. To hide my identity, he forced me to change my name. From that day on, I was Rodney Roarke." His bottom lips ducks under the top for a moment. "Come to think of it, I could not tell you my birth name. It has been so long."

To think that the leader of the Medo was once a teenager like me is daunting; the most powerful man in the world was a normal kid. Is this a cautionary tale? When I found out that I was in the Medo, there was no explosion that killed everyone around me. Maybe my explosion came in the form of my months-long, mindless tirade, controlled by a man who claims to never want his fate to return upon another.

But imagine living your life in a path that you never considered possible? One day, you catch a cold and the next, you are in an interdimensional cult that is responsible for the murders of so many innocent people. The worst part is that once you're in, you can never leave. Desertion will result in you becoming the prey, and you can only run for so long.

What am I doing? This is Rodney Roarke, or whatever the hell his real name is. He said it himself; he is the one who ruined my life. The one who almost killed Brian and set the weight of the world on my shoulders. I should have no sympathy for him.

"If you hate the Medo so much, and you are their supreme leader or whatever, why don't you just break it up?" I shuffle my feet, evading visionary contact.

"It has been a long foretold prognostication that these hellish creatures will run rampant for nearly a century. The role of the Medo was originally to allow entry for them to roam, but Jay Roarke changed the protocol. We would need to defeat them when they arrived in the year 2030. Once they were killed, we would leave the Empire or try to return to our lives."

I shatter my protest and swivel in his direction. "Oh, so you leave it on me to kill them, huh? And you're just going to sit around on your ass all day and try to stop me, making me want to shoot myself in the head every time I go to sleep? Fucking asshole. Why don't the Medo and the Imperial Guard just team up to stop them?"

His fingers curl into his palm, and he stares at his mark. "We already tried to ask for their help. We asked if they could help us fight back against a serious threat to the Empire and do you know what they did?" He reaches for the collar of my shirt, lifting the chain of my dog tags. Though he holds the steel tight in his hand, the groovings do not illuminate. "They laughed at us and were convinced we were all crazy." He drops my dog tags against my shirt. "They killed Jay Roarke right in front of me. I will never forgive the Imperial Guard for that."

"And you almost killed the Captain in front of me. Don't expect me to feel bad for you."

Roarke snarls. "The Captain was never in any danger."

"You said the blade held a deadly toxin that would kill him, remember?"

"Oh, right." He smirks, turning to the city. "There was no toxin. I made the whole thing up."

I take a step toward him, squeezing my fists. The M under my elbow burns golden. "You piece of shit! You lied just so I would take your fucking deal, you asshole!" I shove him as a surge of electricity courses through my body. My mark brightens. "How do you expect me to help me with your stupid vision if I can't even tell when you're lying? I bet you made that shit up, too!"

I whirl my fist at Roarke, but he seizes my wrist on the downward strike. "Tranquility," he coos. A faint vapor travels through my hand up to my arm, seeping into my chest. Floral aromas dust across my nostrils and crawl into my brain. The tension eases. I exhale as the M dims to its raven hue.

He expels my wrist, and it tumbles to my hip. "It is unwise to use your fury until you have been given any kind of power. Grayson, lights."

"I thought you gave me power when we met at the ceremony." I scuttle around the desk as the chandelier glimmers to life. "Or did you lie about that, too?"

"No, that was true. I granted you the ability to gain our powers at my will. You have not yet discovered them, however. But you have been using one longer than you think."

I tuck my dog tags below my collar. "Which one is that?"

"Invisibility. You understand that it is as easy as merely wishing you were invisible while hiding from adversaries. Following that same principle, you have the power to transmit your being from one place to another. Your range, though, is limited. You may only transport to where you can see."

My fingers twitch as I peer at them. Go invisible. Instead of fading into nothing, a cloud condenses, circuiting around my hands. No, come on, disappear. Like, vanish, goodbye. The puff of smoke lightens but there is still clarity of a figure.

Roarke snickers. "When you are inexperienced, controlling your power is difficult. As time goes on, you will master how to harness those abilities and use them as you need. It won't happen now because you don't need it. You vanished before because your safety depended on it and you truly believed that you needed it. In front of me, there is no threat."

"Oh, shit," Grayson Irons mutters, strolling toward me. "Listen, sir, this conversation is great and all but Slater needs to get back to his friends. They said that if they didn't see him in ten minutes they would come looking for us."

"Did they?" Roarke turns me toward his assistant and gives me a light push. "Well, it's best not to keep them waiting."

My eyes widen at Grayson. "Wait, you're actually listening to them? I thought you were just brushing CJ off when we left."

He collects me from the shove. "We want to stay on the Imperial Guard's good side as long as possible. Yes, we did murder nearly a thousand people and we are wanted all over the Empire, but we don't want them to get suspicious of you. That would be the end-all." The young man clutches my arm. "Off we go!"

The mystical wind sweeps through my shirt and bats against my collapsed hair. I turn to Roarke, stretching my marked arm to him. "Wait! I still have a bunch of questions!"

"No worries, Slater!" The commander of the Medo swats my request from the air and waves. "Grayson is your domain correspondent now. He will inform you of everything you must know. I wish you nothing but the best. Nothing but success."

"Wait!"

My call is killed by the roar of a gust floating between Grayson and I. The inescapable flash of white returns, and my feet collapse onto the dark floor of the alleyway. The screeching of car tires tears into my ears, as does the muffled thumping of the electronic music in Ambiance. Rodney Roarke is nowhere to be seen.

Grayson clasps his hand on my shoulder for an instant. "Thank you for your time, Slater. I'm glad you and I could finally make acquaintance. In due time, I will provide you with details about your first beast. For right now, go enjoy yourself in there. I think I might have pulled you out of a good time." He winks.

"Thanks, Grayson. See you around." I smile through the dim city light. He vanishes into a wisp of ash. To think I could be able to do that.

Now, I just have to go find CJ and Mai to let them know I wasn't kidnapped. Oh yeah, and Craig. Hopefully, he still remembers who I am.