Thanks to AGW, Cinnybun, and NaguraFlames for your reviews! I'll get it together soon and send you guys response private messages (especially you, AGW - sorry about that!)
Longest chapter ahead, y'all - but it's got some pretty nice things I enjoyed writing, plus a sorta-kinda surprise? You'll just have to judge for yourselves. Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Chapter Twenty-One
The Fall of Corvus Black
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Chuck's mansion is, in all sense of the word, incredible. Hidden somewhere in the old money suburbs of Auburn, California, the travel took nearly two hours. The unexpected drive hadn't been too bad now that he thinks about it. The taxi driver wasn't chatty, which was for the best. The man just occasionally darted annoyed glances at him through the rearview mirror.
Leo supposes it was because he was absolutely drenched when he got in the car.
When the taxi pulled into the driveway of what looked like an abandoned asylum up on a hill, he was absolute he had gotten into the wrong car and had unfortunately ended up as a voluntary victim for some serial killer. However, what was worse than the thought that he was going to die was the fact that he didn't care if he actually did.
He was scared out of his wits, but he hoped The Glare – the name he came up with for the supposed serial killer taxi driver – would do it quickly.
To his surprise, though, after letting him out of the vehicle, the man drove off.
'I'm gonna die' quickly turned to 'I'm being pranked' as he stared at the dark oak doors of the abandoned house. He stood under the unending rain for what felt like forever before finally deciding to give the door a try.
Here's a lesson he learned tonight: Chuck is very, very good at keeping things on the down low.
Here's another lesson: a person can't judge another person correctly by just an assumption.
Just like Hangar 72, the house that welcomed him when he stepped inside was definitely not what he expected from looking at it outside. It's so modern, clean. Inviting. It's like one of those perfectly engineered houses he's seen on TV.
Chuck walked in as he's taking in the interior of the house. He looked at him from head to toe then his eyes softened. He directed him to a room (one of the billions he must have at this place) and told him to change into something dry and comfortable.
He then told him to wait for him in the living room, which is exactly what Leo is doing now in a pair of jeans and an ash-colored long-sleeved shirt that he found in one of the drawers in the room.
He sits up when Chuck comes from around the corner with a mug of something steaming and a manila folder. "Thanks," he says when Chuck slides the drink towards him after sitting down.
"I trust that you turned off your phone like Rolando told you to?" Chuck asks.
"He threw my phone out the window, so yeah – I think it's off," Leo says wearily.
Chuck nods.
Leo sees the apology ghosting in Chuck's feature, so he says, "Seriously, it's no big deal. I know you're being careful for security reasons." He lifts up the cup. "Besides, that phone is the least of my concerns right now."
"You must've been in a pretty bad situation," Chuck comments. He grins. "Your call had a great timing."
Leo's shoulders hang. "I know. You probably don't even want to see me right now. Is everyone still mad at me?"
Chuck sighs, and already Leo can tell that a bad news is coming. "Vanessa and Nisha blame you for the attack at the Hangar. They're convinced you called it in, no matter how much I tell them to give you a chance to explain," he says. "Amai doesn't say anything, but she doesn't look very happy about what happened either. Doc is...well, he's still Doc."
"Chuck, please, believe me when I say that I didn't tell anyone about the Hangar," Leo pleads. "I'm not like that."
"I know," Chuck says amiably. "That's why I keep trying to tell the girls that you had nothing to do with it. Wynnford is in town, and I have no doubt that it was just part of his plan."
Plan? Leo buries his face in his palms when the answer comes to him. "He attacked all of you because of me, because I ticked him off," he laments into his hands. "It is my fault."
Chuck kindly pulls one of Leo's hands away from his face. He smiles when the boy looks at him. "He would've done something despicable anyways," he says. "He also has an axe to grind with me and Amai. At least she wasn't there when he came."
Leo's head hangs low. He knows Chuck wants him to be more forgiving of himself, but he can't get rid of the guilt that comes from knowing that the place Chuck built is now compromised because of him. "Is everyone okay at least? Were any of your hurt?"
"No. We were surprisingly efficient in getting out of there," Chuck says, a grin rising to his face.
Leo nods. "Seo Woo helped me this morning," he says later when he remembers the mission at the mountain.
"Oh?"
"Tin Can forced me to come with them on the rescue mission. I should've known it was a trap," Leo says. "He was going to kill me, but Seo Woo stopped him in time. Or, at least, the mountain bear that he talked into helping me did."
"Well, Seo Woo is definitely full of surprises. At least when you don't know him that well," Chuck says.
"Can you please tell him I said thank you when you see him? This probably sounds super cheesy, but I was so glad to see him there."
Reading the chaos of emotions on Leo's face, Chuck finally asks, "Leo, what's really going on? You look like the world's beaten you to a pulp."
"Between almost getting killed, finding out I have a few extra organs, and getting blamed for the truth bombs that dropped tonight, what isn't going on?" Leo exclaims.
Chuck frowns. "Extra organs?"
"Long story short, a medical professional told me I'm not human. Apparently, I have some extra features that a regular person doesn't have," Leo explains. "What's worse is finding out Doc is right: I am adopted. That ticks me off the most. I can't believe there would be a day when I'd say that the crazy guy who stabbed me with a needle was right."
"Ah. So the reason why you called is that your mom told you the truth."
Leo closes his eyes, tired already of thinking. "It was like my day couldn't get any worse."
Chuck checks the date and time on his watch. "Didn't you turn 20 yesterday?"
Leo's head drops low. "It just got worse."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"No. Don't be." Leo takes a deep breath then confesses, "To be honest, I forgot about it, too. These past few years, birthdays have become like any other day to me. I only really remember now because I have to renew my driver's license."
"Does that make you sad?"
Leo thinks about it deeply. Then, he shakes his head. "I do miss feeling special, though. I don't mean just that one day, but being special on some other days of the year, too. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that, right?"
"Right," Chuck says, smiling sadly at him.
"I kinda wish Vanessa and I are on speaking terms," Leo admits. "I miss her being all smirky and factual and surprisingly nice."
Chuck's brows draw together while a smile comes up to his face.
Upon seeing this, Leo huffs. "Don't tell her I complimented her. She'll make fun of me," he says, smirking.
"On the contrary, I think I should," Chuck says, grinning.
The smirk on Leo's face falls slowly – a change that Chuck also subconsciously mimics. "Is she really that mad at me?"
"Sadly she is, kid," he says.
Great. "I don't even know how I can prove to her that it isn't me."
"Well, that may be kind of hard. Vanessa, she's really good at giving people an opportunity to prove themselves when she first meets them. But, once she's convinced that you've done something to break her trust, it's almost always impossible to get her to trust you again." After Leo buries his face in his palms again, he adds, "I'm sorry."
"I feel like my day was an episode out of Maury or something," Leo comments before once again picking up the fragrant tea Chuck gave him.
"Maybe you should turn in for the night," Chuck suggests as Leo sips a little of the drink. "It is a little past two o'clock already. I'm sure you're tired."
"I am," Leo admits. Shyly, he says, "I hope it's all right for me to stay here for the night? There's no way I'm going home. I just don't want to see any of them right now. If you've got a couch I can crash on, that'd be great."
"You don't have to sleep on the couch," Chuck says. "The room where you found those clothes in, you can sleep there tonight."
Leo chuckles out of embarrassment. "I really feel bad dropping in on you like this."
Chuck shakes his head, smiling. "It's always been just me here, especially at nights. It's nice to have a guest for once."
Leo smiles a 'Thanks.'
Chuck nods. He mulls over his next thought for a moment before cautiously offering, "And, when you decide to talk to your family, I've got a line nobody can trace. You can call from there. It's safe."
The weight of the events of two hours ago falls on Leo like an armored tank. The words and the actions and their consequences have churned in his head over and over and over again like a water mill while on the way to Chuck's house, and it seemed to only power the hollow feeling that pulls him under dark and hopeless thoughts.
He's been trying to fight it, to swim against the current, but he's way too tired now. The yield that comes from winning doesn't even look like it would be much. "I have no family," he mutters in defeat.
"Of course you do," Chuck tells him sympathetically. "The woman who raised you, the man who mentored you, and your siblings – they're all your family."
"I want to believe that, Chuck. I really do. But it's hard when all I see are the reasons why it isn't true. They don't care about me, man. My mom, her world is Naomi – which makes sense because she's actually her daughter. And my stepdad, his world is Adam, Bree, and Chase, and Naomi."
Leo shakes his head. "You should've seen how angry they were at me for that serum, something that happened because Adam went into my room without my permission. And they trust Titan Red over me. Titan Red. Someone they met not too long ago."
"Wynnford's a really good manipulator," Chuck tries to reason.
"Apparently so is everyone else," Leo says. He sighs. "I'm tired of this. I'm just tired of everything."
Chuck regards him sympathetically, truly feeling sorry for him.
Leo looks at the cup in front of him and sees that there's only half left of the gingery liquid. "What is this stuff? Hot tea isn't my thing, but I can get behind this one," he says.
Chuck laughs. "Nisha gave it to me as a gift. It's a sort of a flower tea, native to her homeland. It's got the same effect as chamomile; it calms ya."
"Did you tell her you're going to give some for me tonight?"
"No."
Leo makes a face. "You should've," he says. "That way, she could've slipped something in here to send me a message of how she feels about me."
Chuck shoots a deadpan stare his way.
Leo nearly chokes on the sip of tea. "Sorry," he tells Chuck. Upon seeing his apology accepted, he says, "What happens to Hangar 72 now? Will you ever get it back?"
"I doubt it," Chuck says. "Frankly, I don't want it back. They probably bugged the place as if they're decorating a Christmas tree."
"I'm—"
"Leo. Seriously. It is not your fault," Chuck says. "I've known it ever since I built it that there's a possibility that one day, it'd be discovered. They'd probably find a couple of information we have on them, which I'm sure they'd use as evidence to really justify pursuing us, but I've got a feeling they'd be too scared to execute it perfectly."
Leo smirks. "That's right. You, Vanessa, and Seo Woo are on the No Fight list."
Chuck smiles. "Yeah. Right. That thing," he says. He shrugs. "I guess it is a sort of protection."
Leo nods. He's seen what just the mention of their names does to superheroes, and in a way that offers him some relief about his friends' futures. "By the way, Vanessa told me to ask you why your place is called Hangar 72," he says. "Why is it called that?"
Chuck grins as memories come with the answer. "It's really a long story, something that," his grins shrinks into a sad smile, "that involves who I was long before I became who I am."
Leo sits up. "I like listening to people's stories."
"Are you sure? You might not like me so much anymore afterwards."
Leo smiles. "Someone asked me earlier if I knew Corvus Black. I told her the truth. I told her I don't, because I only know you."
Chuck smiles appreciatively. After taking a deep breath, he finally relates, "Hangar 72 was supposed to be my, Corvus Black's, hangout. It was about two decades ago, I think. I just got out of jail then, and I had this massive plan of eliminating all superheroes."
"So that's why Super Nova looked freaked out when she mentioned you earlier," Leo says. "You—I mean Corvus Black really did have a plan in place before against them."
Chuck nods. "I was so angry because they managed to put me in jail. I swore to eliminate every single one of them," he says. "And you know what's the worst part? I think I had the means to do it. I was really, really angry, I had the means, and I had all the information I needed. The Hangar would have been my base of operation, and if I carried it through, you would have been brought into this planet in chaos."
"Why did you hate the heroes so much?" Leo asks.
Chuck thinks about it. "I...don't even remember now," he says. "I guess it's because back then, they stood for the things I saw as wrong in my life. I had a pretty miserable childhood, and it was worse when I became a teenager. None of them were ever there when things were going bad in my life so I thought, 'If none of them are good for anything anyways, I might as well get rid of them.'"
He looks at Leo. "That's why I keep teaching Vanessa and Seo Woo to never be so angry at someone that you start hating them. And now, I want to teach you the same thing," Chuck says. "It's all right to be angry at the things that has happened between you and your family, but don't ever let it get to the point that you hate them. I was born to poor parents who hated each other and who hated me, and I was adopted by a filthy rich family who has no love for each other and had less love for me. It scares me to see brilliant kids like you who feels so angry and unloved because I know the damage you can do. So don't be like me, because you might end up doing things you can never take back."
Leo shifts a little in discomfort. He doesn't hate his family, of course, but he also sees how his resentment could lead him there if he doesn't address it. Still, a question bothers him. "What...what exactly did you do?"
An uncomfortable look clouds Chuck's features.
"If you're not comfortable," Leo says quickly, "just forget I—"
"No. You'll probably read it somewhere anyways. Might as well hear it from me," Chuck says. He hesitates a little before saying, "I'm...known...in the superhero world for that one dinner event that I successfully infiltrated. There were about a little over a hundred superheroes and League Agents there that night. I, uh, put something in the drinks, and, uh...many of them died."
"Oh man," Leo says, shocked by the picture his tale creates. "Chuck."
"I regret it now, so much," Chuck confesses. "There's nothing I can do to bring them back to life."
Leo's chest wrings at the sight of devastation on Chuck's face. It's not hard to see how honestly, brutally crushed his friend is at the memory of it all. He wants to comfort him, but how does he do it?
"They hunted me down for such a long time after that," Chuck continues. "And when they caught me, I knew they wanted to kill me right on the spot. Why wouldn't they? I took away their friends, their family members, and the people they respected. But at the time, it made me feel great to see them so miserable. I was even laughing when they handcuffed me because I knew their values prohibited them from doing what it was they wanted to do.
"But then, I was angry again. I hated them for putting me behind bars, hated them for bragging about catching me and telling people they were safe from me, as if I was dead. So I got in touch with my lawyer, this brilliant guy who could get you out of jail no matter what you did, and I plotted. I plotted to get them back for the humiliation and, to be honest, just because I didn't like them."
Leo frowns when a small smile slowly emerges on Chuck's face after a moment. "Then what happened?" he prompts.
"Then the start of Hangar 72 happened," Chuck says.
"What do you mean?"
"I met these two guys while I was in jail. James and Cory were their names. James was older than I was, but Cory was a lot younger, probably in his 20s then. I met them when I was transported to some jail in this one country; can't even remember where it was now. I think the League of Superheroes did that to scare me, or maybe even in hopes of getting me caught in a fight that would get rid of me permanently, which was a bit pathetic of an attempt considering many of the inmates knew me.
"Anyway, there I was, stewing in prison, and then I noticed the two of them. They kind of made me curious because there they were, same as me, but they looked happy. It kinda surprised me, too, to find out that some of the inmates and even some of the guards are friendly with them. At first, I thought they were same as me. You know, maybe my rivals. But after asking around, I found out that they were just civilians.
"One day, at lunch, they ended up in the same table as me. They were...friendly. And happy. It's not hard to see that life in there still took some toll on them, but all in all they looked happy. I learned they were there because of some religious thing, so at first I thought they were just some nut jobs," Chuck says, laughing. He shrugs. "They tried to talk to me – well, James did; Cory was a shy little guy back then. I ignored him. James tried again, and I stayed the same, and eventually he realized that I didn't want to be friends with him.
"But they were still nice. It was really annoying to me at first because I thought no one could be that nice without having an ulterior motive. Worse yet, their attitude was making me curious. They were good people, and I didn't want to know good people.
"Eventually, though, they got to me. We were out in the yard one day, and the next thing I know I'm listening to James talk about his family and his friends." The smile on Chuck's face increases in brightness. "I wouldn't admit it at the time, but I became his friend, too. I kept my distance but – I spent some time just listening to them. I guess I did because I just felt they were genuine. I also wanted to figure out why they were okay going to jail for something that they believed in. I mean, I was really convinced they were crazy.
"But one thing that I now understand, that I now realize, is that I hung around them because they...they were loved. By whatever God it is they serve, by their families, by their friends. It made me really curious because I've never seen that before." Chuck shrugs. "I don't think I'll ever get into religion, but still. I saw what I saw. And I saw good. It is what it is."
Leo smiles. "Yeah."
Chuck takes a deep breath. "They were released some months later, though," he continues. "They promised to visit me again, and some years ago I found out that they did try to visit me, but before they came back the League moved me again. It didn't take long until I was back to hating the heroes and being angry.
"It was a pretty long process to get me out, and my lawyer had to blackmail so many people just to get them to even set a bail on me, but I did get out," Chuck says. "That's when I started all these plans of building the Hangar as my base of operation. I had pretty much everything I needed against the heroes thanks to the people working under me at the time. I've never had any problems with resources because I had sequestered all the money that the family who adopted me had. I still had the anger, the hatred. I was ready to destroy.
"But then one day, while I was imagining how I would eliminate Black Sahara, I realized that all of that, it will never end. Hatred is voracious: it just feeds and feeds and feeds and feeds and will never be content. And I wondered, how much more of my life was I willing to spend on that? It didn't make me happy. It gave me some satisfaction to see other people be more miserable than I was, but then I realized that maybe even that was just in my imagination. It wasn't long after until it came to me that I was at a crossroad: I can carry out my plan, which I know will succeed again, or I can end it right there, right before anger consumes me until the day I die."
Leo smiles. "And you chose the right one."
Chuck nods. "Thankfully, because now I sleep just a bit better at night," he says.
"How did the others find you?"
"That's kind of a tricky question." Chuck's features wrinkle into a frown as he broods over it. "I don't really know how they found out. Word of mouth, I guess? Doc was the very first person who found me. There were a few others who came, some of whom didn't come back after their heroes caught them. After about a year of the Hangar being up, I got some disturbing information about a gifted little boy in South Korea who's being hounded down by some gang because of his abilities." He smiles knowingly. "Doc and I teamed up to rescue him and bring him here to America. Corvus Black adopted him, and news about that scared the gang away forever."
Leo gapes. "Seo Woo is your son?!"
Chuck shrugs. "Technically, but he prefers to think of me as his mentor," he says. "Uh, after that, there's one person who turned out to be some young superhero who, at one point, almost told the League about us. But then she saw how bad things are getting even with the superheroes, particularly after Titan Red came into the scene, and she decided to leave us and keep it a secret." He smiles. "Can you guess who it is? You've heard of her."
Leo frowns. "Super Nova?"
"No."
"Right. She didn't like you." Leo thinks. "Solar Flare?"
Chuck shakes his head. "Lady Windsor."
"The lady that Tin Can badmouthed?"
"Exactly," Chuck says, grinning. "Jess was an intelligent, resourceful girl. She still is. She's so smart. I don't even know how she found out about the Hangar, but she did. I think that's why Seo Woo was ticked off after hearing what Titan Red said on that video. He still respects her after all these years."
Leo smiles mischievously. "She was his first crush, wasn't she?"
"I'll neither confirm nor deny that."
However, from the chuckle that precedes that, Leo can tell that the answer was yes. At that he grins.
"By the way, I heard that you had a thing for Skylar Storm?" Chuck carefully asks.
Leo huffs. "What is it with you guys and asking about me and Skylar? Are we really that interesting?"
"Just a bit. It's kind of adorable."
"You...think we're adorable?"
"Yeah," Chuck responds, confused by his response. "I could see that working out. She seems to trust you a lot, and you seem to trust her, too. You're both good-looking kids."
Leo smiles, appreciative of the compliment. "Yeah, well, Amai doesn't seem to think we're a good match. She says the probability of us being together is near down the dumps."
"Well, in the profession of abilities, power, and heroics and villainy, nothing's for certain," Chuck says.
Leo doesn't have to ask what he means. It's become clear to him that his and Skylar's paths are meant to diverge some time in the future, some time before they can really get to know one another. "So, when did Vanessa come to the Hangar?" he digresses.
"Uh, maybe about eight, seven years ago? She was fairly young when we took her in."
"I'm guessing she lived here with you for a while?"
"That she did."
"I could tell. She thinks so highly of you."
"Yeah, well..."
"So," Leo continues, "Amai and then Nisha?"
"You got it," Chuck says. "There's another person."
Another person? "Me?"
"Yeah you."
Leo sits up and thinks about it for a moment. "Well, I guess I am included since I ate a lot at your place."
"You ate so much that I wondered just how much they feed you at home," Chuck jokes. He then slides the manila folder he brought earlier towards Leo.
"What's this?"
"I've been doing research of my own for you," Chuck explains. "Doc had some pretty weird theories of what you actually are that I got annoyed and decided to do this."
"Let me guess: he's insisting I'm some kind of worm alien coming from the future."
"Close, but with Doc you've gotta get weirder," Chuck says.
Leo's eyes carefully goes over the photocopy of old file reports and a few photographs of a wide farmland hosting stunted sprouts of crops and patches of snow. There were men and women in there, too, garbed in suits with the same insignia he saw on top of the Superhero Network's Heroes and Villains list. They were looking at something, maybe a crash site, but it's hard to tell what's really happening in the picture. "I don't really understand this," he admits.
"About two decades ago, there was a bit of a scare both for the heroes and the villains," Chuck relates. "The pictures that you're looking at are from the crash site. Back then, we weren't really familiar with beings from other planets. There were a few here and there, but there aren't as many as there are now. That's why back then, both sides kind of went berserk whenever spaceships show up; we never really know what it would be that would come out."
Leo looks closer at one of the pictures, and on the side he sees an outline of a ship. "So my guess is that they did find out what was in there."
"Yes, and no." At Leo's frown, Chuck explains, "The LoS Agents knew it was someone from outside the planet, no doubt. But the person wasn't there. What made everyone more nervous is that the technology in the ship, of the ship, is unlike we've ever seen before. It's so advanced. There were docks for what looked to be weapons, and they were empty.
"The being, for lack of a better word, wouldn't have even been found if not for her causing a commotion at a convenience store a year later."
"She? It was a woman?"
Chuck nods. "She looks exactly like a human," he confirms. "But, she didn't fight like one. Some drug dealers mistook her for a competitor and were going to squash her out, but she took them down. Or up. The witnesses said those guys were flying."
"She was really strong."
"And inhumanly fast. My guess is that wherever she came from, she was a warrior," Chuck says.
Status: Missing. Leo checks the notes at the end of the report. Updated May 2016. "Where is she now?"
Chuck sighs, and there on his face a shadow of something morose comes over. "My guess is that she's dead." He nods at the report. "Look at who it was that had her in his charge before she went missing."
Leo scans through the boxes. Immediately, he finds it. He huffs. "Unbelievable," he exclaims. "Tin Can's been a dirt bag ever since, hasn't he?"
"He's one of the skeletons the League of Superheroes have in their closet."
"Just one of them?"
"If you know what some of us know, you might just lose your respect for them altogether," Chuck says. "That's why you should take in information like this one at a time. That way, you'll remain aware of the reality that not all of them are bad."
Leo shakes his head. He's reminded of what Skylar said to her teammates about the negative changes in their team, and suddenly he thinks that things must be worse on the bigger scale than he thought. "Why would he do this to her? Did she tick him off?"
"He probably just didn't like the fact that she was stronger than he was."
"What a piece of garbage," Leo says in disgust. "What is it with him and women?"
Chuck shrugs. "His brain is not a place I want to be in."
"He probably has all kinds of shrines for himself in there." Leo shivers in distaste. "Ugh. Why does he even call himself a hero?" He continues to look through the pictures as he asks, "I noticed they left the species part blank."
"Up to this day they don't know what she is."
Leo pauses. "They don't."
"Mm-hm."
"But you do."
Chuck smiles. "The perks of having someone with omnilingualism in your family," he says.
"I guess there's a reason why big bro's number seven."
The mentor chuckles. "I got someone on the inside send me a few key artifacts for research. Since it's a cold case, it was easy for him to send me the things."
"You have someone inside the League of Superheroes working for you?"
"Not working. I just asked him as a favor."
Leo smirks. "I like the way you think."
Chuck grins. He points to the pictures of objects that had been taken at a lab. "The control panel of the ship revealed that it has the capacity to jump from one point in space to another – kind of like a shortcut portal."
"Whoa. Really?"
"Yes. And when I consulted with Nisha about this about two weeks ago, she said it would've served the crew, or in this case the sole captain of the ship, well," Chuck says. "Nisha's very knowledgeable with different species living in other planets."
"What, is she an ex-LoS agent or something?"
Chuck shakes his head. "Even now the League doesn't know as much as she knows," he says. "Anyway, she said that she suspects that the woman originated from a planet some billions of lightyears away."
"She came from that far away?!"
"Yeah. Sadly, upon research, I found out that the planet has long been gone. One of the stars in its system collapsed, and the black hole it created sucked it in."
"That's sad..."
"Yeah. Even if she survived, there's no more home to go back to," Chuck says.
Though saddened by the outcome of the woman, Leo couldn't help but ask, "But, what does she have to do with me?"
A serious expression gradually dawns on Chuck's face. He reaches for the folder, lays out a few key pictures, and then explains, "On one of her earlier logs, Seo Woo caught her talking about a rebellion. She talked about her trip to the future, to some faraway planet, as a lesson to someone. She took something, and it seems that she counted on it as her security."
"Did she steal a power source or something? Maybe a weapon?" He grins. "The crown?"
"She stole a baby."
Leo's grin falls.
"Seo Woo was surprised to see some of the patterns in your coding because it's so similar to the one found on several gadgets of the ship," Chuck says. "It's easy to think of it as a coincidence, but there are other things that convince me that our suspicion could be right. You are who she stole."
"Wait," Leo says, holding up a hand. "This is a little too much, man. I can't..."
The first question he has is, this is ridiculous – which is not a question at all, but in this situation it might as well be. The second question he has is, is this really viable? What are the chances that things like these, that history like this, involves him? "There must be a mistake," he thinks aloud.
"It's possible," Chuck concedes. "But Leo, there are more checkmarks in this theory than there are exes."
Leo thinks about it. Again, he looks at the pictures at the crash site. Now, with all of the information given to him, there's something in them that jumps out at him more: the farms are located by a state route.
He told me the police found a baby in a ditch, at the side of some road, his mother's tearful confession replays in his mind. But how come the League Agents didn't find him? "If it was me, then shouldn't the League have connected me to her by now? My mom – or maybe not-my-mom – told me that the police found me in some ditch, which is pretty depressing but..." He shrugs. "If the police found me the same night."
"Maybe they didn't. Maybe she made sure to take you to a place so far away from the site that whoever could connect the incidences would never connect it. You were her weapon. A warrior like her would make sure that her ace against the people she was running away from would never find you."
Leo sighs, more tired now than he's ever been the whole day. "So you're saying that, I actually have a family somewhere out there, who probably wanted me, but they died billions of years ago, and now I'm stuck here in this planet without a chance of ever knowing what I am and where I came from."
"For the most part," Chuck says apologetically. "I'm really sorry."
"Yeah. Probably not as sorry as I am, but..."
"If it helps, the additional information I have that supports our theory could give you some insight in what will happen to you soon."
Leo groans. "Please don't tell me I'll turn into some weird-looking thing from outer space," he says. "Because in that case, I'll just jump back into a ditch somewhere."
"No, you won't," Chuck says, smiling. He takes out a sheet of paper from the pile, the information on it mostly handwritten. "Her species are known to go through a change."
"Okay, a second go at puberty will actually be worse."
"It's nothing like that," Chuck assures, grinning. He taps on the paper. "Nisha believes that they go through what is called a Quarterly."
"A Quarterly?"
Chuck nods. "It begins when a person reaches the age of 20."
Leo's eyes widen. "My age."
Chuck nods again. "The first thing they develop are physical defensive mechanisms, which is where your immunity to Vanessa's ability falls into."
"I can heal pretty quickly, too."
Chuck gestures to him with open palms; it's another evidence. "A Quarterly is a five-year process where a person develops all kinds of abilities. By the time he or she reaches the age of twenty-five, the person will have a wide range of skills that would prove helpful to them. My guess is that it's to help the individual live their life on their planet, something that, while amazing to us is probably commonplace to them."
"You think I'll be capable of doing greater things?" Leo asks.
"I know you are. You will be part of something bigger that I don't think you're even aware of."
Leo frowns. "Like what?"
Chuck blinks, the warmth in his eyes clearing due to a realization. He looks like how his stepfather looked a few years ago when he remembered he left the stove on at home. Before drawing more suspicion, though, he covers it up with a smile, "Your inventions, for one. They'll bring about great things."
However, that cover up isn't convincing enough. "Oh," Leo just says, letting it go for now.
Chuck gets up from the couch with a groan. "Now, I don't know about you," he says, "but it's way past my bed time..."
"Right."
"...and it's hard for old people like me to stay awake." Chuck grins at him. "I can't keep up with young folks like you anymore, even if my mind says I can."
Leo chuckles. His eyes widen in fear when something occurs to him. "My arm," he says. "What if my stepdad has turned on the GPS on this?"
"Oh, don't worry about that. I prepared for it," Chuck waves it away. "All they'll see in their log is that you vanished at the corner of Ruby and Trindle."
Leo easily imagines how freaked out his parents would be. "They'll be worried."
Chuck smiles. "Do you want me to have someone take you back?"
Leo shakes his head. "I won't be able to sleep there."
"Okay. Just tell me when you're ready to go," Chuck says. "Sleep well tonight. If you need some snacks before you go to bed, you're free to get whatever you want from the fridge. Breakfast is at 9:30 tomorrow."
Leo smiles. "Thanks, Chuck."
Chuck nods. "Please leave that file on the table. If it leaves the house, it'd be an even bigger problem for us all."
"Noted," Leo says.
Chuck smiles. "Good night, Leo."
Leo nods. "Good night, Chuck. See you tomorrow."
As Chuck leaves, Leo turns his attention to the rain still pouring down outside. There's not a star in sight tonight. After a few minutes, he finishes his now cold tea, closes the folder, and finally heads to his room for the night in hopes of a long and dreamless sleep.
Next: Chapter Twenty-Two - Still Your Family