“You will do it,” Asiro hissed, then winced, closing his eyes. They were in the car, on the beltway, with the city lights glimmering ahead.
“What’s the matter?” Montross asked. “Seeing things you’d rather not?”
Asiro groaned.
“Get used to it. That’s the hardest part to learn, and you need to learn it first before you can direct this power. Do your goddamned research, General. Look into my background. I’m sure you’ve found the hundreds of notebooks from my youth, the images I didn’t ask for, the violence and horror no kid should ever see, much less feel compelled to draw, to understand.”
Asiro’s eyes opened and in the passing headlights, hardened. “I…can deal with it. The reward is worth anything.”
“What reward would that be?”
“You think we’re evil, Montross. You with your vaunted powers, thinking yourself a race above the rest of us. Elitist, gods maybe?”
“I never, we never…”
“Shut up, we know all about you now. But now, this gift? You wasted your time stopping minor attacks, saving cities and preventing this or that tragedy. You have no idea what’s really coming.”
“If you have knowledge of something else, some other danger, I should have been in on that information. Could have…”
“No. Your solution would have been wrong.” He looked up painfully, his expression full of hardened determination. “Sometimes the solution isn’t avoidance, but acceptance.”
Montross stared back. “I have no idea what you’re spewing, but if you want my help, you’d better talk.”
Asiro shook his head. “I have my orders. Sorry, old ‘friend’, but you’ll help. As soon as we’re back at your comfy cell. You’ll help, or else…”
He dug into his pocket and retrieved his smart phone. Turned the screen and showed the live feed.
An observatory, and a familiar collegiate skyline. Asiro’s fingers stretched the image, zooming to the figure on the balcony.
“Diana!” Montross fumed and struggled against the cuffs.
“No need for that, my friend. Relax. She’s fine, as long you help me.”
Montross sat back, thinking, trying to figure out a way he could get out of this, get back in control. In power.
But those days were gone, and this threat rivaled the worst of what they’d already been through.
Don’t we ever get a break?
“Do you know whose bidding you’re doing?” He looked sideways in the dark car. “Your ‘friend’ Calderon knew, and still his madness put him on the wrong side of not only history, but morality, life and death. You really want to join him?”
“This is different, as you’ll learn.”
Montross sighed. “Whatever.” Asshole. He figured he better stall some more and give himself some time to see the way to freedom. “I just don’t know how you found a way to transform—”
“Enhance…”
“—yourself. This energy.”
“Nikola Tesla’s designs. He was one of you, you know.”
“I didn’t know, but hey, good company I guess.”
“He was a nut job.”
“And you’re a psychotic kiss-ass, so what?”
Asiro gave him a death glare. “Regardless, this energy, it has the power to enhance, evolve us maybe.”
“So, the world dodged a bullet when Edison one-upped him and gave us boring old regular electrical wired power?”
“And expensive. But yes. As to…this?” He held his head again. “Miriam would have some more elaborate scientific description of what actually happens during the process, but all you need to know is that we found a way to do it. Modify what it does. To give anyone the gift.”
“It’s not such a hot gift,” Montross said. “And hey, big question: is it returnable?”
“What?”
“Can you just flip the directional switch on that thing and suck the gift back, or turn off the brain wave accelerator or whatever you did?”
“Again, I have no idea. I only know I…” He groaned and held his forehead. “Damn, how do you deal with this? The visions keep coming!”
“What did you see now?” Montross rolled his eyes. Actually he could care less, but again just wanted to keep him talking. They were getting close to the exit, and he still didn’t have a clue what he was going to do.
“I saw, shit, I’m not sure. What looked like a pair of eyes, hungry and deadly, looking at me through a slated window of some kind.” He grabbed Montross’ shoulder. “What the hell am I seeing?”
“I don’t know, General. Not without understanding more about you, about your frame of mind, about what you might have been wondering or asking yourself in the moments before the vision.”
“That’s how it works?”
“Part of it, sometimes. Sometimes it’s way more complicated.” He sighed. They were turning now, destination almost reached. Got to convince him, play along a bit. Until…
Suddenly a glimpse came to him, maybe the right question at last.
What did General Bensari see in his vision?
It came to him. The eyes behind the grated ‘window’, the hungry, killer eyes.
Xavier Montross smiled and relaxed.
“I’ll teach you, but it’s not going to be easy.”
“I’m sorry, old friend.”
Back in Montross’ confinement room, Asiro’s eyes flinched. The gun wavered. “What the hell do you mean?”
This had gone on too long, and Asiro finally realized Montross was stalling. He decided it was past time for patience, for doing things by the book. Past time even for threats. He could come back to using Diana Montgomery as the carrot, but now was time for the stick — or in this case, the gun.
At first, Asiro thought he miscalculated, that this Montross inside of his old friend’s body was seriously unhinged, and perhaps didn’t care about death.
Montross stepped a little closer, and then closer still, until the muzzle of the .45 was pressed against his own forehead. “You think you know about me? The real me?”
The finger tightened on the trigger and the resolve came back to the general’s expression. “I studied the files. I know you.”
“Then you know my power isn’t quite the same as what you’ve got, I imagine.”
Asiro paused. He had forgotten, or hadn’t been thorough enough with the file.
“You know my gift. You know why I’m still around and kicking.”
The seconds ticked by, accentuated now by the actual ticking of the clock in the room, which only served to highlight another subtle sound overhead. If Asiro heard it, as Montross did, his reaction was muted, overcome by the recollection of what he had forgotten.
Asiro remembered now. “You can foresee your own death.”
Montross smiled as the gun trembled, then lowered. “Yeah, tricky that one. Double-edged and all that, but useful for the old stress levels at times like these.”
Now the general heard the slight skittering sound from above, and his eyes found the vent, just as Montross took a step back. “Yeah, like I said old friend, I’m sorry. So if today isn’t my day to die…”
Asiro raised the gun at the metal slats overhead, but the muffled hiss came first.
Neat, perfectly centered in his forehead, the bullet struck and blasted out the back of his skull. The general fell like a lifeless puppet, strings cut.
Montross sighed without looking up. “Haven’t lost your touch, my dear.”