He took a couple deep breaths. “Australian Outback still?”
“Down Under is still your guess, is it?”
Caleb lowered the curtain and turned slowly as Boris stepped out of the shadow of the kitchen’s doorway.
He could never forget those lupine features, the chiseled jaw and perfect haunted eyes, now even more blazing with pride of his success. Caleb let go of the curtain and tried to sound confident himself. “There’s no point in trying to use my other senses to figure out where I am, is there?”
“No sir. Not really any point, but you could try. Could be fun seeing you squirm, wondering if the talent… Oh I’m sorry, the curse as you’ve termed it most of your life, if whatever you want to call your special sight, would actually show you any sort of truth…” Boris licked his lips. “Or only what I want you to see.”
“So you’re that good.” Caleb regarded the stringy young man, the arms crossed over his chest, black turtleneck and grey khakis that reminded Caleb of the Keepers’ dress color of choice.
“I guess I am.”
“You fooled my entire team. You completely fooled Xavier — er, Calderon, half a world away, when he viewed the future of the terrorist operation, while simultaneously you were messing with my team back in DC.”
Boris seemed to hover over the ground and tremble slightly, along with the surroundings, making Caleb wonder whether even this was real. Am I really even here, talking to him?
He glanced around the room again, and then reached out to touch the wallpaper, sliding his index finger down its ridges.
“Oh, we’re here,” Boris said in a low, deep voice. “Really. You just want to know where here is.”
“More than that,” Caleb said, “or first, I really want to know how you’re doing it. How you did it.” He narrowed his eyes, sizing up Boris, and not seeing anything that special.
Boris pulled up a chair. Sat and crossed his legs while reaching over to the bowl of fruit. Selected an apple and tossed it in the air, caught it and then motioned to the chair opposite his. “Have yourself a sit.”
Caleb noticed the chair now. “I don’t think that was there a minute ago.”
A laugh. “I’ve really gotten to you, haven’t I? Doubting the very nature of reality now, are we?”
Caleb glared at him. “Screw you.” He reached for the chair, intending to drag it over, only to find nothing there.
“I’m sorry,” Boris said. “That was terribly impolite of me. You were right the first time.”
Closing his eyes, Caleb straightened up and turned around.
Boris couldn’t stop grinning. “I’m just saying, trust your gut, man. It got you this far. Got you out of that nasty business with Waxman and the Keepers. With Robert-what’s-his-name and Calderon-who’s-no-longer-Calderon. And it saved you from the Khan’s tomb and those killers at the Statue of Liberty. I mean, man… you’ve had a busy life! So many damn adventures!”
Caleb stared hard, not rising to the bait, or the flattery. “What do you want from me?”
“Not your autograph, dear Caleb, although really! You’re like Indiana Jones, only without the cool hat, and instead of a whip you’ve got that neat inner vision to see your way out every trap and past every brain-noodling puzzle.” He chomped into his apple and kept on talking. “I’m sure if you went back to teaching at Columbia all the cute little co-eds would be fawning over you for a private session, but me? Well, what I want will be apparent soon, but for now I just want to answer your question.”
Caleb watched him chew messily, as the apple juice and bits clung to his lips. “Which was what, again? Sorry I’m a little lost here.” He looked around the room helplessly. The room that might not even be a real room. A place that might not even be ‘here’.
Boris swallowed and waved the half-bitten apple like it was a Snow-White prop. “You wanted to know how I made you see a chair that wasn’t there.”
“Yeah, that.” Caleb shrugged, tried now to sound disinterested. I’m losing at his game. Losing badly and he’s so enjoying that he’s got me rattled and desperate. Have to try to seem like I at least don’t give a shit.
“Don’t be cagey, mate.” Boris took another bite as he shifted in his chair, getting more comfortable. “I took the only chair here, by the way, because I want you uncomfortable. Standing should focus your senses, one of which, by the way, should be giving you a clue right now. One I’ve put there specifically to answer your question.”
“Just tell me. This is getting tiresome.”
“You got somewhere else to be? Late for a date?” Boris chewed noisily. “Just you and me out here, mate. And you know you’re not getting out until we say so.”
“We? I thought it was you and me. Mate.”
Smiling, Boris nodded. “The metaphorical ‘me’, then. As I represent…quite a group of powerful interests.”
“Such as?”
“Oh you know them fully well. Had more of your share of run-ins with several of my compatriots or their like, behind the scenes. But you caused some degree of mayhem, throwing wrenches and the like into their plans.”
“Like finding the Emerald Tablet.”
Boris’s chewing paused, his teeth pressed against the pure skin of the apple’s untouched side. He spoke against it. “And then…destroying it.”
“Sorry about that,” Caleb said, offering a smile of his own now. “I’m sure you all really, really wanted that, and too bad none of you had my ‘susceptible’ and all-too-fallible ability, or you could have found it yourselves. Any time during the last how many thousand years until I came along?”
Boris shrugged and waved his hand with the apple. “Before my time. But at any rate, you’re correct. This ancient war between my side and…I can’t really call them yours, these Keepers and such, the miserable protectors of weak humanity and so-called guardians of knowledge…you’ve been aligned against them and for yourself on so many occasions that you’re really more of an ally to me than you were to them.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
Boris waved the apple core in the air. “Maybe not, but you served our…my masters’ purposes on many occasions. Which is why you and your little team were allowed to live, to exist, for so long.” He settled his eyes on Caleb as his hand stopped moving. “But obviously, times change. People change, and we’ve got to move on.”
Caleb cocked his head. “I destroyed the Emerald Tablet. The last power source for your scalar weapon. Ruined your masters’ plan on destroying humanity and saving themselves.”
“Freeing themselves, and so many others,” Boris said. “But you should know, that was but one plan of many. Many factions within our team. Other contingencies existed simultaneously, pursued by other splinter groups — sometimes with their own leadership and differences in opinion.”
“Differences, huh? Dissent in the ranks of the super elite?”
“More like agreement on the ends, disagreement on the means.” He took a last nibble of the apple, then tossed the core over his shoulder. “While one team was hell-bent on using you to recover the Tablet, vying against the Keepers, another more patient group has been working behind the scenes of the world’s ostentatious power players.”
“Towards what end?”
“You know the end. Or at least one version of it. This one might be dressed a little sexier than the last, but it’s quite the same hot little number underneath.”
Caleb sighed wearily. “Either tell me what you want me to know, or give me a real chair. I’m tired. Of you, of all this.”
“Fair enough, but you’ve forgotten what I told you.”