29: The Successful Gargoyle

An overwhelming sense of déjà vu fell upon Goliath, as he came to once more in an unfamiliar room, feeling groggy but not so badly as to the extent he had been within Korily's captivity. This time, he found himself in a well-lit office, with soft blue carpet underfoot and mostly grey but decorated walls around him. There was a window ahead, the curtains drawn over it, with brilliant white fluorescents casting their stark illumination upon the room. Framed photos and paintings were about him, and he recognized some of the figures within those photos. Even more so when he saw himself in a few, which for a few seconds there made him even more confused.

"Goliath?" A voice sounded from the desk. As Goliath's vision focused, he saw the very familiar figure seated in the large, cushioned chair behind the desk. There was no mistaking Lexington's dark khaki-coloured skin, bald head and toothy smile. He wore a set of snug-fitting black shorts, and he appeared relaxed in his chair, all while watching Goliath carefully.

"Lexington…" Goliath rubbed at his throbbing head, the pain receding as his senses returned. "Where am I?"

"My office." The younger gargoyle spoke matter-of-factly. "You've never been here, though. I got all this after you left. I tried finding you for a while, but I got the impression you didn't want to be found." He sounded remorseful, his expression becoming somewhat morose. Lexington had grown well into his full-size, yet despite his growth he was still the smallest in the clan. 'Small', in his case, was still significantly larger than any average human being.

"I saw you on television," Goliath replied. "I remember now, your company, LexTech. Is that the one?"

"Yeah, it is." Lexington nodded. "I managed to make something of that interest in technology. And to think, it all started with a small workshop up in Castle Wyvern." He leaned forwards a little then, remorse creeping upon his face. "I'm sorry about Bluestone, Goliath. I had my people try to resuscitate him, but it was too late. He succumbed to his wounds shortly after we got to you."

Goliath put a hand to the back of his neck then, remembering exactly what had transpired to bring him here. A glance at the clock on the wall behind Lexington revealed that it had been a few hours since he had found him. Feeling at the back of his neck, he found a bandage there, and a small twinge of pain erupted from the incision under it as his fingers probed the former location of the implant.

"We removed that thing from your neck," Lexington said. "Real nasty piece of work." He pulled out a small plastic container from a desk drawer. Inside was a microchip barely larger than a thumbnail. Lexington slid the container across the desk to Goliath, who snatched it up and eyed the device with an increasingly angered gaze. The implant was still stained a little red from its time inside his neck, and without warning Goliath crushed the container and the seemingly innocuous device in his hand. It broke into a few dozen pieces with a satisfying crunch.

"The Illuminati have technology not otherwise available to the public," Lexington continued, offering a friendly smirk as he watched Goliath crush the device. The larger gargoyle brushed his hands clean of any plastic shards, allowing them to fall onto the floor by the side of his chair. "I think they wanted to keep you on a tight leash."

"It wasn't the Illuminati," Goliath said, his voice grim. "They were someone else. Creatures, 'imps' or something of the sort."

"I've heard rumours of their existence, but I've seen no records of them. The Illuminati have a lot of subsidiaries, and there's even some question that they themselves are the head of the conspiracy. These creatures you speak of may very well be the ones behind them, but that seems unlikely." Lexington shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not really sure of anything when it comes to that whole deal. I've used my position here to do some digging, and that's how I found out about Bluestone. He was a member of the Illuminati."

"He was?" This was news to Goliath. For a moment, the thought that the former Detective had been a part of that infernal group sent his anger surging again. Lexington must have noticed the abrupt way in which he had tensed, for he was quick to shake his head.

"He wasn't part of them, not the last few years. From what I can gather, and even that's sketchy, is that Bluestone worked his way up a few levels in the organization. I think he saw something he did not like, realised he couldn't be a part of them anymore and so he took what he could find out, some solid proof of their activities." Now Lexington picked up the item Bluestone had handed to Goliath. "This is heavily encrypted. Even with the best decryption software, this thing would take weeks to crack. We may not have that long." The item was a small USB flash drive, plain grey and otherwise bare save for a single letter written upon one side: 'I'. 'I' for Illuminati, no doubt.

"Bluestone might have told us how to decrypt it, if he hadn't been shot." Lexington put the flash drive aside, before he settled his generally pleasant gaze upon Goliath again. A lengthy pause followed, as if he was trying to think of what else to say, now suddenly hit with a loss for words. Finally, his mouth formed into a beaming smile and he leaned forwards, resisting the urge to scoot across the desk and hug the burly gargoyle.

"It's good to see you again, Goliath. After all these years, I thought maybe…" He trailed off, before he slowly shook his head. "I mean, I assumed the worst. Seven years is a long time."

"Long enough to tear this clan apart," Goliath said, eyes narrowing. He hated the way things had changed, hated learning of the ways in which the government and organizations such as the NEAB treated his kind. He had dreamed of a world where humans and gargoyles could coexist. So far, the world had gone well into the opposite direction.

"That's not your fault. Things changed, and quickly. I was living in Xanatos Tower one night, and then all of a sudden, I was out of there the next, diving headlong into my work because I had no other choice. They cleaned out that tower, the FBI and whoever else. Broadway and Brooklyn were detained for a while. I had already started my company before then, except at that point only a few of my close staff even knew the one in charge was a gargoyle. I tried to help Brooklyn and Broadway; I really did." He sounded sincere, even if Goliath detected something a little less so in his voice. If Lexington had truly intended to help his rookery brothers, then they would be here right now, maybe not working for him but at the very least sheltered by him.

He knew what the two were doing now, courtesy of Brooklyn and his Detective friend. Thinking about that now, Goliath's mind drifted to his son, not to mention Elisa. She was still in the clutches of those creatures, and the urge to rush out there and find her was quickly becoming overwhelming.

"I know what you want to do, Goliath," Lexington said. "But there's no point. The people who had you are long gone. I've tried tracking them, but they're apparently very good at making themselves scarce."

"They have Elisa and my son."

"And I'll help you find them; you have my word. I already have people working on it right now." Lexington tapped the USB flash drive upon his desk lightly. "What would help is to find a decryption key for this device. With it, we could gain some serious leverage over the Illuminati."

"You've been investigating them?"

"Ever since 2016. You know, 'Devil's Night'. A flamboyant name, but I guess it makes a strange sort of sense." Lexington did not sound especially amused by it. "Thousands dead because a small army of lab-grown gargoyles went on a rampage. And when Brooklyn and Broadway and Angela and the others helped take them down, they were the ones who got in trouble for it. Most of the bodies were destroyed or lost, which is convenient. Almost like a certain powerful group stepped in and used their vast resources to cover up the whole affair, and at the same time used the incident to drum up a considerable amount of hatred towards our kind."

"You're suggesting the Illuminati did this?" Goliath had pondered the same thing. Of course, he had had no way to confirm it, or to even find out if they hadtruly been behind those events. It was then that Lexington smiled again, this time a knowing grin that suggested more than he was letting on.

"It's a given, although I believe that one of their subsidiaries was more responsible. Specifically, one involved in genetics research. The lab-grown gargoyles didn't come from nowhere."

A certain name crossed Goliath's mind then. He had guessed as much in the past, but no proof had made itself clear to him. All he had was supposition and speculation, which was much the same as what the bulk of the population had when it came to what had really occurred that night. It was called 'Devil's Night' because to many, the gargoyles did resemble 'devils'. And the date it had occurred, that is, 6-6-16, certainly carried with it some diabolical connotation.

"Doctor Anton Sevarius," Lexington added. "I've tried to track him down, but I've been unsuccessful. He disappeared off of the face of the Earth. I think the Illuminati might have killed him once he was no longer useful. But no one knows for sure. What I do know is that the Illuminati may be planning something further. They were the ones, through the use of their lower front organizations, to make sure most of the gargoyles involved in the events of that night were killed and their bodies disappeared. Very few independent investigators were able to get hold of that evidence. You might even say such details were 'memory-holed', pushed out of the public conscious. The few who mention it are shouted down, all by a media apparatus that the Illuminati, or the powers-that-be, firmly control."

"You seem to know a lot about this." Goliath narrowed his eyes. "You must have been following their activities for some time."

"After what happened, I knew someone had to. You were gone, Xanatos was gone, even Brooklyn and Broadway were caught up in their own affairs. I had money, both from my books and my business. And I used some of that money to buy information from reliable sources." He paused, his face adopting a much grimmer expression. "I've made enemies, Goliath. I may have driven away Brooklyn and Broadway over the years, but that's only because I wanted to protect them. Thing is, I can't protect them anymore. Brooklyn's in trouble and he's been out of contact for a good twenty-four hours now. And from what I've learned, he may be getting swept up into this mess as well."

Lexington sounded apologetic. Goliath had managed to gleam some details as to what had become of his clan during his seven years absence, all of which he had heard from Brooklyn. And that young gargoyle had spoken of it rather sourly, his disdain for Lexington having been made clear in the few words he had uttered about his rookery brother. Yet here and now, Lexington seemed little different to when Goliath had last seen him. Sure, he was older and more confident, no longer carrying that youthful naïveté and uncertainty that had marked so much of his youth. The Lexington sitting before Goliath now would not charge headlong into a fight. He struck Goliath as being much more careful, much more measured.

"The clan's been torn apart without you," Lexington added. "I never wanted it to turn out this way, but I feel like I've…" He trailed off, shaking his head as he did so.

"You feel like you've forgotten who you are," Goliath said, finishing the sentence for him. "You feel as if you've forgotten what you are."

"I wanted to fit in," Lexington replied, meeting Goliath's gaze. "I wanted people to like me. The money was just a nice bonus, but it's allowed me to do things I wouldn't have been able to do before. Without this company, I'd probably have been forced into a similar job to Brooklyn or Broadway. The NEAB want us as fighters and laborers. We're just an exploitable minority to them."

"All because of Devil's Night," Goliath said. Before then, he had seen things slowly changing for the better. The gargoyles of Manhattan had been heroes in the eyes of many, even if the distrust had still run deep and was present in any media piece that had been made about them.

"The Illuminati see us as threats," Lexington said. "Our kind have always fought with people like them, those who see themselves as above everyone else. To many, the Illuminati is just a rumour, a conspiracy theory for the fringes of society."

"But we both know different." Goliath let out a sigh. The situation here was much more complicated than he would have preferred. "They have my son. They have Elisa."

"I know. Like I said, I'm trying to find them, but it isn't easy. You have to understand, I've been fighting a war here. A war of information, that for every piece of truth I uncover it's inundated with layer upon layer of misinformation. They've mastered the art of deception, mixing the truth with the lies so you can never tell what is and what isn't. That's why I was hoping Bluestone could help us."

"How did you know he'd be out there?"

"Because I intercepted the message logs. He believed he was communicating with you. They even knew things about you, things only you would know. He only agreed to meet you if you showed in person. I just didn't expect you to be there yourself."

"You intercepted them?" Goliath was no expert on technology, but even he knew this seemed a stretch. However, with what he had seen of Lexington's company so far, he did not doubt that the young gargoyle had all manner of sophisticated methods at his disposal.

"I've got a whole system here looking for anything Illuminati related," Lexington explained. "It was never intended for that purpose, but after Devil's Night it pretty much became all it was used for. Think of it as a virtual network you can practically hook your brain straight into." He put a clawed finger to one temple for emphasis. "Like something out of the Matrix."

This explanation did strike a chord of uneasiness within Goliath. Something about it struck him as ominous, and the more he thought about it the more certain unpleasant memories came to the fore. He had long put them to the back of his mind, yet now they came racing out of those dark recesses. Sure, it seemed unlikely, so much had happened that did not line up with what he had seen in that false reality. Yet, after what Lexington had said, he could not shake the feeling that maybe some part of that falsehood had been truth. Mix the truth with the lies, just as Lexington had said.

"Something wrong, Goliath?" Lexington's voice interrupted his roaming train of thought. Goliath shook his head, bringing himself out of the reverie.

"No, nothing's wrong." He paused for a few seconds, his face hardening into a frown. "That is, nothing more so than the fact that my mate and my son are in the hands of a group of despicable creatures."

"The imps?" The younger gargoyle shook his head slowly. "I can't help you much there, not unless my people can pull something out of the system."

"There was something about them," Goliath said. "Something that disturbed me on a deep level. Similar to our innate desire to protect, except this was almost an innate desire to…" He gave it a further moment's thought, trying to place what he had felt when first faced with Korily. The gloating, looming figure was clear in his mind's eye, the shine of his yellow eyes even more so. "A desire to fight them, you could say. As if something deep inside me knew they were the enemy."

"I don't know, Goliath." Lexington rubbed at his chin, falling deep into thought. "We were made to protect. Maybe those creatures are the opposite? Maybe they're our opposites?"

"They had no wings."

"So, they can't glide. Can they walk in daylight?"

Goliath had no answer for that. He had only ever seen them during the night, so perhaps that suggested a similar state of activity during the daylight hours as his kind had?

"My men scored hits on the two of them at Battery Park," Lexington said. "But they kept on running. So, they're tough. As tough as we are, maybe more."

"They took my son because they believe he may have something to do with an ancient dagger they stole. I don't understand the full extent of it, and neither did Brooklyn when he told me what he had learned." Goliath could practically feel the weight of the situation increasing the more he spoke of it. "He found Xanatos."

"He did?" Lexington's brow raised, surprised. "Just like you, I didn't think he wanted to be found."

"He led them to me. I don't know where he is now, or where Brooklyn is." Goliath huffed, the frustration welling within him. Rubbing the back of his neck, which still ached dully from where the implant had been, he shook his head. "I just want my family back, Lexington. I don't care what it takes. I know you have a life here, a successful one, but any help you offer would be—"

"I said I'd help you," Lexington interrupted, and he offered Goliath a warm smile. "Until we get a lead on Elisa or your son, there may be something we can do. We do have this decrypted drive." He held the small USB flash drive up for emphasis. "Maybe we can find someone else who works for the Illuminati? I have a few candidates in mind, although the one I'm certain of is someone whom Bluestone had a close working relationship with."

Goliath perked up then. Anything would be better than sitting here waiting for a break that may never come.

"There is a man whom Bluestone worked with during his days with the FBI," Lexington said. "I've been keeping tabs on him recently, but he's a hard one to track. Something about working in the FBI that makes people very good at keeping a low profile."

"Who is he?"

"Martin Hacker. I'm fairly confident that he's with the Illuminati. He's likely ranked higher than Bluestone. If you get to him, maybe he could help us find the decryption key. Or find the creatures that have Elisa and Vincent. Perhaps both, or more likely he'll point us in the direction of someone higher-up than he is who has those answers." Lexington tapped a brief command into the computer terminal on his desk, before he spun the display around to allow Goliath a look. The photo on board was one of a man in his fifties with short brown hair, glasses and a clean-shaven face. He wore a dark grey suit with a tie, and in the photo he was standing on a street corner somewhere, oblivious to whoever it was had snapped this photo.

"Fairly confident?" Goliath raised one inquiring eyebrow. Lexington gave a quick shrug.

"There are no certainties with this kind of thing," he countered. "He's the best lead I have right now. Thing is, Hacker's down in Miami, probably on business. So, it's a little outside your usual neighbourhood."

"You believe he'll help?" Goliath felt uneasy, travelling so far from New York. Something told him his son was here, with Elisa, concealed away in some rank underground hole in this very state. Yet, he could scour the entire city, even the entire state of New York searching for them and come up empty. Such a search would take far longer than he likely had. If the Illuminati and their wretched imp associates had plans for his son, they would not waste too much time getting them ready.

"Right now, he's our best bet." Lexington sounded convinced. Goliath looked at the photo again, mulling it over. Any lead was better than none, even if it meant a trip well away from Manhattan.

"I have a helicopter," Lexington added. "Better than trying to glide all that way."

"You're not coming, are you?"

Lexington appeared disappointed then, much like how Goliath was feeling.

"I need to stay here, keep business going," he said. "But I'll be with you every step of the way. The wonders of telecommunications."

It seemed that Goliath had himself a mission. As for what fruit it might bear, that remained to be seen. All the while he retained a small, underlying sensation of unease when faced with Lexington. Something about the young gargoyle did not seem quite 'right' to him, which he supposed was to be expected when meeting him seven years after seeing him last. Lexington had changed, as had Brooklyn; even Goliath himself had changed, and it had been years since he had been in a proper fight. Perhaps that was why Korily and his mercenaries had caught him so easily, that his skills as a warrior had been left to wallow and decay after seven years of inactivity?

He would have to rectify that. Finding this Martin Hacker seemed a good way to do so.