“Inverted?” the boy asked, finally interested in something she’d said.
“It’s upside down,” the medium explained in a tremulous voice.
“Not to me,” the boy observed. He was sitting opposite her.
They were both correct.
The reading drew to an uncomfortable close, the woman seeming suddenly anxious to be rid of them. No doubt she’d done her shtick for the two hundred pesos and was hoping for more revenue for the day. The boy couldn’t believe anyone would buy this hackneyed song and dance and he was annoyed when Jasmine lingered, murmuring with the old biddy, as they both flicked furtive glances at him.
Once they had ridden their bicycles back home, Jasmine seemed withdrawn and distant, showing no interest in a romantic interlude. She hadn’t responded well to the boy’s mockery of the reading, taking it as a personal affront to her sacred beliefs. In retrospect, he could have chosen his few words with more kindness. ‘Baffling bullshit’ could be misinterpreted, as could ‘superstitious idiocy’.
Whatever the woman’s ability to divine the future, one thing changed forever from that afternoon on. Jasmine and he were never the same, which he directly attributed to the vicious old witch’s black predictions. She had the ability to foretell the future, all right, in that she had initiated a subtle campaign to undermine their relationship, for who knew what reason. But he learned quickly that the power of superstition could be significant – a lesson he would carry forward with him into life. And he vividly remembered the final card that seemed to have such an effect on the old faker – the oldest of the tarot face cards, the reversed King of Swords.
The previous months had passed with the topic of how to deal with the romantic fait-accompli aired often among the elders. It was a constant sticking point between Emilio and the ladies. Emilio was of the opinion that if the boy was going to be sampling his precious hothouse flower’s bounty, he should plan on getting married, the sooner the better. The ladies argued against any sort of confrontation, partially because of who he was, as well as mitigating their youth. Neither Jasmine nor the boy had been aware of the seething disagreement their tryst caused, not that either of them would have been particularly interested in the older adults’ opinions. Youth believed in its supremacy, as always, and the young were typically convinced that the aged had little grasp of how the modern world worked.
Emilio and the ladies were terrified that the boy would use Jasmine for his pleasure and then break her heart, and so it was with considerable surprise that Emilio found the boy to be increasingly moody and dejected as his sixteenth summer wore on. When Emilio confronted him, the confession that the couple had been intimate came as no shock, but his complaint that Jasmine had grown disinterested in him and decided that they weren’t compatible did. Emilio didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved, but the boy was suffering, as only those experiencing the tender cuts of young love can, so he redoubled his training and poured on the challenges. The boy lapped it up, growing more adept each day, and eventually moved beyond his infatuation with Jasmine, even as she showed no further interest in him. It was as though a switch had been thrown – she’d swung from obviously enamored to wanting nothing to do with him, confounding not only the boy, but also the adults. Still, Emilio sensed that there was unfinished business between the two, and got the impression from the boy that his passage to other girls would be a bitter one, tainted by Jasmine’s memory.
From the boy’s perspective, Jasmine’s rejection was an abandonment, serving to remind him how foolish it was to trust others or allow them into your emotional life. It was during that sixteenth summer that he made the mental resolution to be an island, impenetrable and aloof, using others for his convenience but nothing more. For the first time in his life he’d opened up and entrusted Jasmine with his heart, only to be repaid by her spitting in his face for his trouble. His rigid training provided the solution: never allow anyone to get close, never reveal your true self, and never care.
And so it was that he found a philosophy that was useful, that afforded him some relief in his time of confused pain. Others had no innate value beyond what they could do to further his agenda or satisfy his needs. They were objects that only existed as minor moons orbiting his solar system, in which he was the sun – the giver of life and the destroyer of worlds. His narcissism was not unusual for isolated youths who found every task or challenge laughably easy, but the combination of his past and Jasmine’s snubbing of him, transformed him into the very character that the old medium woman had described when articulating the meaning of the reversed King of Swords – a selfish megalomaniac who would go to any lengths to satisfy his needs, even if it resulted in the destruction of others.
The boy had slim interest in considering the ramifications of his chosen worldview. His training now consumed all of his free hours as he sought to exceed even the highest bars Emilio could conjure as challenges. He’d increased his Dojo sessions to five times a week and had become adept in most of the offered techniques. His school had graduated him early due to his advanced academic performance so he set about studying engineering and architecture in earnest, mainly as a guide to understanding how things operated or were built. He had a ravenous intellect unlike any of his instructors had ever seen; a young man who could do or be whatever he wanted. The future was beyond bright for him and he soon discovered that there were many willing young females who sought his attention – and so, in time, Jasmine became a distant memory.
The remainder of his sixteenth year was spent in rigorous pursuit of excellence, whether they were intellectual, physical, or defense-related endeavors. His teen years were a defining period, where he honed his proficiency to a razor’s edge. Never before had Emilio seen someone who could shoot as well or expertly disappear into the woods without a sound and become untraceable, or swim as athletically, or remain inscrutable through any circumstance. The discipline Emilio had sought to instill had yielded incredible dividends. The boy was almost superhuman in his commitment and self-possession. It was as though providence had blessed him with a surplus of fitness and acuity. By the time he was due to turn seventeen, Emilio was satisfied that his work with the boy was done. He’d made the transition from boy into young man, and the world was now his playground, to do with as he liked.
Which made it all the more surprising when he vanished without a trace on the morning of his seventeenth birthday.
Chapter 4
Eleven Years Ago
The navy base in Veracruz, Mexico was expansive, crawling with personnel and equipment. This was the primary headquarters for the Gulf region and was where the specialized training for the country’s equivalent of the SEALs took place – the Fuerzas Especiales, or special forces. This elite team had just been created after a reorganization of the Navy’s marine infantry – the marines. The brass had decided it needed a special response organization that was trained to far higher standards than the already elite marines, and so they formed a group of five hundred specialist commandos, to be trained in explosives, parachuting, military diving, sniping, urban combat and vertical descent. They would be Mexico’s ultimate ninja squad, to be used in the most dangerous of circumstances, on the most hazardous of missions.
After the young man had abruptly departed Sinaloa he’d floated around Mexico for a few months, creating the appropriate paperwork so that he could join the navy under a new identity. He quickly impressed his commanding officers with his supernatural weapons capabilities and was placed on the fast track for the new group. He was the dream candidate for the job: young, athletic, a prodigy with weapons, smart, fearless, and extremely tough. If there had ever been a vocation specially made for him, being one of the new navy commandos was it. Even the motto resonated with him – Fuerza, Espiritu, Sabiduria. Force, Spirit and Wisdom. He had all three in abundance and he’d arrived at the perfect place to continue the education he’d begun with Emilio. Much as he’d liked his mentor, it was clear to him that he’d learned all he could and needed to go somewhere designed to produce professionals if he was going to progress as he wanted.