Notes: Thanks to Merry and Nita for intensive beta-reading, moral support and just being generally faboo, Emily for the good advice, and Mary for the beta. Gloms go out to Tanya, Seah and the rest of the Rainier Delinquent Writer's Support Society (you know who you are) for putting up with all my whining and moaning. I bounced ideas (and blunt objects) off of them for the year or so I worked on this story.
Welcome, Madness
Spring arrived, and brought with it a gentle evening breeze. Perfect walking weather if that were the type of activity the residents of Elk Street engaged in. The rare passerby would have noticed a familiar sight in the small white clapboard house on the corner. Through the partially drawn curtains, in the darkened living room, a blue-white glow flickered like sporadic lightning, illuminating dark, featureless furniture in an unremarkable room. A man who could have been anyone sat immobile in an easy chair, his face bathed in the fitful glow of the television set. He gazed at it in a sort of dumb trance as the riot of colors washed over his face.
A cynic might say that the same scene was being played throughout the city at this very moment by thousands of other zombies, lulled into a false sense of comfort by the vacuous offerings of a device that drained souls and deleted personalities.
Every night after work, the man brought home his greasy bag of fast food and a twelve-pack of beer, shed his oil-stained jumpsuit and settled himself in front of the idiot box. The events of his life were barely registered as background noise. Divorce was a brief interruption. A few papers signed and then blessed silence. Bills were paid at the first of the month in cash, the rest deposited in a rusty coffee can under the bed. Work was a series of repetitive motions that involved contact with a bastard of a boss, but few others. The days and nights melded together into a numbing routine of semi-wakefulness and sleep. No one watching would be able to detect any changes in the man from last year to this.
But changes don't always take place in the light.
Chapter I
"Sentinels have survived for centuries, Sandburg. What makes you think they need an instruction manual?"
Blair had been trying for an hour to finish the course outline. Every time he started, a certain genetically superior pain-in-the-ass staged a coup of his brain cells. In particular, a conversation they'd had two weeks ago while running some tests in the Ophthalmology Lab. Jim's comment had come out of the blue. His casual dismissal of years of research had stung a little.
"What about Alex, man?" Blair had asked. "I think she could have used some help."
"She was a psychopath. I'm betting she would have been one with or without the senses."
"You don't know that."
"Drop it, Sandburg."
"Yeah. Drop it, Sandburg, and get the outline finished."
The blank page stared at him insolently, mocking his inability to write. Blair solved the paper's attitude problem by crumpling it into a tight ball and tossing it behind him. It landed dead center in the waste basket.
"He shoots, he scores!" Blair raised his arms over his head and made cheering crowd noises.
His self-satisfaction was short-lived, however. He had one day left to submit the outline, and he hadn't even started it yet. Hadn't wanted to start it. Life was short, and if he were faced with a choice between solving a crime or writing a syllabus, well...
Lately, procrastination was his middle name where academic work was concerned.
A year ago, that hadn't been the case. Things had changed, and now he wasn't sure where his life was headed. Anthropology was his first love, but it lacked the immediacy of, say, stopping a shipment of radioactive material from being sold to Iraq, or busting gun smugglers looking to arm a local gang. It wasn't just the adrenaline rush he got when he helped Jim nail some evil bastard who richly deserved it--although he couldn't discount that entirely. It was also the feeling that he was making a real difference. Keeping the world safe for democracy--hell, it was every young man's dream, right?
"Ri-ight," Blair snorted as he hunched over his desk and tried to start the outline again.
Thing was, his sentinel research was important, too--especially to the other sentinels out there who had no idea what was wrong with them. And he couldn't kid himself any longer...there were other sentinels out there. Alex had proved it, and if she had found him as easily as Blair had found Jim, then there were bound to be a lot more out there, weren't there? So he couldn't just pack up his work and play Starsky and Hutch with Jim for the rest of his life.
Could he?
"Faulty logic, Sandburg." He'd probably never meet another Sentinel as long as he lived. And judging by his last encounter with one, that probably wasn't a bad thing.
Blair's thoughts wandered back to the confrontation in the lab.
"Are you going to ignore the fact that you were one step away from forced retirement when we met?"
That had pissed Jim off. "I wasn't nuts."
"But you thought you were. C'mon, Jim, you needed help and you know it. What would have happened to you if you hadn't found out you were a sentinel?"
"I would have learned how to deal with it. Now can we just drop it and finish the damned tests?"
And that had been the end of that. Blair had known the man long enough to realize that Jim's denial was just another symptom of his need to pretend he was in control.
Cops, man, they had enough to deal with without any extra baggage, and enhanced senses were more like a steamer trunk than a carry-on.
Blair looked down at his second attempt at a syllabus and laughed. He'd assigned a viewing of "The Planet of the Apes" for his Introduction to Physical Anthropology course. Crumpling up the paper, he leaned back in his chair until it almost tipped, and tossed the ball into a Zuni ceremonial urn on the top of the book shelf. Blair wondered if it would shock the potter who created it to see it being used for paper basketball.
Blair shook his head. "You ought to have more respect."
Except, he was really, really tired, and he liked to think that the Zuni possessed a sense of irony. Blair laced his fingers together and stretched out his arms, hearing his knuckles crack.
"One more try and then I'm out of here."
"Professor Sandburg?"
Blair jumped a little and looked up into the red, watery eyes of one of his second year anthropology students. "What can I do for you Carrie?"
"It's about my paper..."
Blair pushed the unfinished outline and unfinished thoughts aside and motioned to a chair.
The dog was out there again. Dig dig dig. Stupid mutt. Other animals, they had a reason to dig. He'd been watching a show on the Nature Channel about it just the other night. Some animals built themselves nice little homes underground that were safe for their kids. What in the hell did that dog dig for? Not a bone, that's for sure, because Fred hadn't seen one. The dog was digging for the hell of it. All the smarts had been bred out of it 100 generations ago.
There went the daisies. Little bastard. Sure, he was lazy about keeping up the garden, but those flowers had lived anyway. He admired their ability to survive in all those weeds. Now this pint-sized, manicured bundle of curls with a red bow on each ear was ripping them to shreds. God he hated that dog.
With a grunt, Fred pulled himself out of the chair and walked to the screen door. The neighbors' flashy BMW was sitting out front. They were home. He had half a mind to go over there and complain, but he knew what would happen. Same thing as last time. They'd apologize condescendingly and then ask him if he could move some of the junk out of his back yard. Like they had any right. They'd only moved in two months ago.
First thing they'd done is try to pretty up the neighborhood. Mowed Old Lady Griffin's yard for her, even fertilized the damn thing. When they'd offered to mow his lawn, he just pointed to the old hand mower rusting in the corner of his garage and said he'd do it himself.
Two weeks after that, they put new siding and a new roof on their house, re-paved the driveway, and landscaped the yard. It made him angry just thinking about it. They probably thought they could shame him into changing. Well, they were dreaming. He'd been in this house since he was born, and he'd live any damn way he wanted to.
If only that mutt wouldn't keep digging up his yard.
He wandered into the kitchen and shuffled through the cupboards. Under the sink, behind a half dozen bottles of unused cleaning supplies, he found what he was looking for. It had been there forever, and he wondered if the stuff wore out after a while. Worth a try.
The hamburger had been tonight's dinner, but he'd just have to order out. He balled up a piece of meat and worked the white powder in with a fork, then tossed the fork in the trash. Fred wondered if the dog would smell the poison and know something was wrong.
Probably not.
It was a stupid mutt, and it liked to eat.