Requiem, a shadow fanfic

Requiem

Stephen felt the weight of the world on his shoulders and every set of eyes in the cathedral on him. For a man who prided himself on his ability to blend into the crowd and disappear into the darkness, the center of the spotlight was especially uncomfortable.

Peter, at his right, leaned over. "You don't have to do this."

Stephen answered by rising to his feet and strode toward the sanctuary, stopping at the altar to kneel and cross himself, taking a moment to still trembling and unsteady nerves as he stepped up to the lectern. With all of The Shadow's bravado, he looked out over the gathered congregation and spoke.

"Thank you for coming," he said solemnly. "It's customary on occasions like this to say 'On behalf of the family…', but in this case, I am the family." He gave a tight smile and tried not to let that thought crush him as it had threatened to for days now. "Victor Cranston was a lot of things to a lot of people. Billionaire businessman. Pillar of society. Patron of the sciences and the arts. Philanthropist extraordinaire." Steady, he reminded himself. Keep the hyperbole under control. "But to me, he was first and foremost my uncle. My father's brother, my guardian, the only family I had." He stopped to force the emotions down again and refocused his calm. "He was a man of passion. Of laughter. Of fury. Of power. When he entered a room, your attention snapped to focus on him. He could have flaunted that attention like some kind of pompous king, but he never did. He used that attention to shine a light on often suffocating darkness that surrounded him and the city he loved with a passion. He lost the only family he had to the sometimes terrifying violence of the darker side of this city, but he never let that break him." Voice. Focus on the voice. "And he taught me to never let it break me. Victor often said he was no teacher, but that was pure, unadulterated modesty, for no one else could have taught like he did. He taught me to be the person I am today. He taught me right from wrong. He taught me about love…about hate…and about keeping constant vigil to never let either extreme consume me. He taught me that wealth and power are meaningless without justice and freedom for all. He knew everything about everything, and he taught it all to me. And by his examples in life, he taught others around him. He touched hundreds…thousands of lives, and made almost all of them better, if only for a little while, and many of them never even knew it. And that was the way he liked it. Victor's greatest regret was that he was merely one man, that he could never do more than one man could do. He knew loss, and he knew it intimately, the way few in this world could ever know nor should ever know." Another pause, another deep and cleansing breath. "He knew loss and wished it to never touch an innocent soul, and did everything within his considerable power and influence to ensure that it never did. Anyone can give money to charities, and Victor gave a lot of it, but he gave more than that. Few people will ever see the things Victor Cranston as a person did to help others--things that went far beyond just writing checks and running fundraisers. He spent the vast majority of his 67 years on this plane dedicating his life to words, thoughts, and actions all designed to protect others from ever knowing the pain and horror of loss. It was a hopeless and noble goal, and that this man who gave so much to help victims of crime and violence should fall victim to such a violent death would be enough to turn even the most hopeless romantic into a cynic, to seemingly make a mockery of his life's goals. But if you knew Victor, you knew that he was no victim. He never allowed himself to think of himself that way, and I am certain he took that belief with him to his last breath. Victor understood that hopeless causes are sometimes the only causes truly worth pursuing, and he pursued them with a passion that only those who knew him best would ever truly understand. And I understood. The one lesson Victor taught me that I will take with me the rest of my days is that…" Don't lose it now. Steady. "…that if you can make life better for only one person, if only for a little while, then all your efforts and all your struggles are worth it. It is that belief that turns the pursuit of a hopeless cause into a true legacy…a shining light piercing the shadows of the world." One more breath to gather himself, then he gave a nod to the mourners, stepped off the podium, and gave one last lingering look at the casket housing the earthly body of his beloved uncle. Then he crossed himself and returned to his seat in the front row pew.

Somehow, without his noticing, Peter and Sarah had switched places so that she was next to him when he sat down. "I don't think it's a hopeless cause at all," she told him. "Not for anyone in this room."

Stephen had to nod at this….because practically everyone in attendance were agents.

Sarah took Stephen's hand in hers.

He flinched heavily, but regained his composure and tried to center his focus on the rest of the Mass. It was the only thing he could do to keep from going completely insane with grief.

Stephen finished unpacking his bag finally and looked around the room. All his things had been moved in. The last of the bloodstains had been washed clean, the hardwood floors refinished, the antiques professionally treated to remove any and all traces of blood. A new mattress was on the king-sized bed, with an oversized down baffle-box mattress pad under elegant silk sheets. It was all his now. His room. Not his grandfather's room, not his uncle's room…his room.

There was a soft knock, and Peter stuck his head in. "I was wondering if there was anything else you needed."

Stephen shook his head. "Thanks for your help with the moving."

"Yeah, like you'd trust anybody else to carry some of those boxes. Should I go back and give your place one more sweep to see if you forgot anything?"

"I didn't forget, but you'll probably do it anyway just to prove me wrong."

Peter nodded. "You know me too well."

Stephen smiled wryly. "I was about to say the same."

The nearly-brothers exchanged a handshake, then a warm embrace. "Call if you want to talk," Peter offered.

Stephen nodded and walked with Peter down the stairs to join MJ and Sarah. "MJ?" he called as he did.

She looked up at him as they descended. "Yeah?"

"You like Peter's penthouse, right?"

She shrugged. "I love the view."

"Want one just like it?"

Beat. "Say what now?" MJ said finally.

"I don't need the penthouse any more. Peter has the other one, and you're one of the few people that I don't have to worry about stumbling across the hidden compartments…"

"Are you kidding me?" MJ spluttered. "You want to give me your penthouse?"

"Yes," Stephen said. "Assuming you can stand to live across the hall from Peter."

"Stephen, this is amazing, but I can't afford it."

"Good thing it's already paid for, then," Stephen quipped, finally reaching the bottom. "I'll pay the condo fee. Consider it hazard pay for your work as an agent."

MJ started to speak, sending a look to Peter that begged for help finding the words.

"Peter, we're going to need her now," Stephen stated firmly. "We need everyone who's in on the secret now. We've got to make up for Victor's…" And that was where he had to stop and gather his thoughts. "MJ's sitting at the grownups' table now. She's in."

Peter nodded. He wasn't going to argue the point. Not now, at least.

MJ couldn't find the words to say "Thank you" any other way than taking Stephen's hand and giving it a squeeze.

He gave her a you're welcome smile, then released the grip and headed into the parlor.

Everyone understood. They had been dismissed. Peter and MJ left.

Sarah went after Stephen.

Stephen had been contemplating the view out of the parlor's oversized windows for fifteen minutes. The police had been thrown a few suspects, but nothing would stick. No charges would be pressed, the society pages would forget the whole thing sooner or later, and the company's financial portfolio had stabilized as soon as all the necessary promises and deals had been made. Stephen was more than a little revolted by the fact that his uncle's death had left no lasting impact other than a momentary panic of grant recipients wondering if their funding was about to be cut now that the company's ownership had changed hands. There were times it was indeed beneficial that Victor had never taken Cranston Enterprises public, and this was one of them; the handover of power had taken only as long as it took to read the will that left everything to Stephen with a few token stipends to Andrew and Moe and a coded message that told Stephen where a hidden cache of assets was to give to Marpa Tulku.

There had been a lot of coded messages with a lot of different instructions, some of which Stephen was still finding days later as he worked his way through opening safes and secret compartments that he'd always been instructed to leave closed until the day he took full control of the massive Cranston empire. I'm the only one that knew it all, Stephen thought bitterly. I'm the last.

Stephen turned away from the window and nearly walked into Sarah, who was standing an inch behind him, with two snifters of brandy in her hands.

Stephen wasted no time on surprise. "Why do you do this?"

"Do what?" she ditzed.

"Everyone understands that I'm not a people person. Whenever Peter drags me somewhere, I find a corner and vanish. Whenever I'm in a crowd I find a vantage point and stay there. Whenever something bad happens, I withdraw and tear apart anyone who gets to close. Everyone understands that. And yet, when Peter drags me somewhere, you spend three minutes scanning the room, then come find me and drag me into the crowd, whenever we're in a crowd and I'm invisible, you spend the whole time demonstrating how you know where I am, and Every! Single! Time! I feel like brooding, something I am very, very good at, you keep coming back here, being annoying."

Sarah smiled merrily. "True. But I'm here for a reason."

"And that is?"

"You could use someone to talk to."

"No, I couldn't."

"Then you could use the company."

"No, I couldn't."

Sarah handed him a drink. "See, you say that, but I think you want to talk to me."

"How do you figure that?"

Sarah spread her arms wide. "Because there's nobody else."

Stephen looked around the room. She was right. "Yeah."

"I'm here."

Stephen didn't say anything.

Sarah put a hand to her temple. "You aren't saying anything, but it feels like your mind is screaming."

Stephen laughed. "Yeah." He looked depressed. "You're the only one around here that can hear me now when I don't want anyone else to know what's going on in my head."

"Which is the other reason I'm here. Your family history is really important to you. The last three generations especially."

"Well, duh," Stephen responded.

"Hear me out. There's this whole other family tree that nobody knows about. Three generations of Shadows, and you still tell the world that he doesn't exist. And with Victor gone, nobody else knows. Peter knows about Victor, and MJ knows about Victor, but you…you are the only one that knew what he did, how he did it. Peter knows he was your teacher, Moe knows he was your teacher, MJ knows he was your teacher, but only you know the way he taught and the way you learned from him. Your family is so important to you, Stephen, because your entire family legacy is a legacy of secrets that only your family knows. That eulogy you gave, it was all true, but you left out all the biggest parts of his life. And now with Victor gone…you don't have anyone to talk with it about, and there are very few people who can be told this story." Sarah shrugged. "So here I am. I saw stuff in your mind when I was awakening, stuff that you wouldn't tell Peter about, and since I know some of it already…"

"Sarah!" Stephen interrupted.

Sarah sighed. "I thought you could use someone to tell your stories to."

Stephen gave a scoff, dropped into what he was slowly beginning to regard as his armchair, and sipped his brandy as a way of dismissal.

Sarah mirrored his position on the sofa across from him.

Both of them just sat there, sipping their drinks and regarding each other until the snifters were empty.

Sarah gave an I give up sigh, stood, and started to walk away.

Stephen caught her arm as she passed him. "Sarah…my family was killed by our enemies when I was five. I was told the secret when I was twelve. I awakened when I was thirteen; I killed my first bad guy before my sixteenth birthday. I spent school nights learning languages and karate; I spent summers learning to shoot to kill. I spent prom night leaning to make explosives out of kitchen supplies. This is all I know. I never learned how to be a good friend, I never learned how to dance, I never learned anything that typical kids learn growing up. It was all for the mission, it was all in the name of the mission, and now, thanks to the mission, all I've got is a bazillion dollars and an empty mansion." He looked her in the eye. "I learned so many different things from Victor, things that I could never learn from anyone else…and probably could never teach anyone else. And I'll tell you, because…" He took a deep breath. "…because I can't stand the thought of nobody else knowing what he did and what I learned from him."

Sarah took his glass, poured a refill for the two of them, and returned to her seat on the sofa.

Stephen didn't look at her directly as he told the story. Sarah understood. It was easier to say these things without having to look anyone in the eye.

"It started, of course, when I moved into the manor," Stephen began. "Social fixture, wealthy young man-about-town Victor Cranston was suddenly a parent with a five-year-old to look after and absolutely no experience doing so. He had, as you might imagine, a pretty heavy and hectic nighttime schedule, and I was not the easiest of children to control. I remember my parents complaining that they'd been through three nannies before my fifth birthday. So Victor depended on the staff at least keeping an eye on me. And when they'd grow weary of it, he used a lot of babysitters. Paid them big, too."

Sarah gave him a knowing look. "Got a reputation, did you?"

Stephen smiled. "You could say that."

"I will be back as soon as I can," Victor told the woman. "Just…Stephen can be a handful."

The babysitter looked back confidently. "Don't worry, Mr. Cranston, I can handle it."

Victor took a breath and got into the cab. "Good luck, Elaine."

Moe headed out into the street. "Fresh meat?"

Victor rubbed his eyes. "I'll be glad when Andrew gets back. Nobody else can handle Stephen when I'm gone."

Moe chuckled. "Something tells me I'll be driving him around one day."

Victor reached beneath his seat and pulled out a hat and cloak. "I hope not. If he's like this at eight…criminals wouldn't survive his twenties."

Elaine walked cheerfully into the study to find young Stephen, barely eight years old, hunched over at the desk with his nose buried in a huge book, a pad next to him on the desk. "Hi, Stephen," she greeted. "I'm Elaine."

"I remember," Stephen said without looking up. "I was paying attention to my uncle's announcements."

Elaine sighed her best oh, boy, another kid-with-attitude sigh. "What are you doing?"

This time the boy barely looked up over the top of the book. "I think the brother did it. I don't know the motive, but he knew the combination to the safe."

She looked at the cover of the book, and saw that it was one of the latest murder thrillers, barely off the bestsellers list, and certainly not considered children's reading. "You can follow that?" she asked in surprise.

Finally, Stephen looked her in the eye full-on. "Are you mocking me?" he said in a mocking voice.

Elaine looked a little unnerved. Kid's got some killer headlamps, she mentally noted as the boy's intense blue-green eyes seemed to drill right through her. She looked at the pad on the table, and found it was filled with the names of the book characters and details about the mystery. "You like mysteries," she observed. "Ever read The Hardy Boys? I was into Nancy Drew, myself…"

In reply, Stephen returned his full attention to his book.

The young woman shrugged, smiled to herself, and headed out to make a phone call.

"So, did you ever read The Hardy Boys?" Sarah asked.

"I tried," Stephen admitted. "Preoblem was, they were kids mysteries. Details didnt add up, plot holes were never resolved. That's when Victor decided to try me on more detailed mysteries." He smiled. "It was early training for discovering the evil that lurks in the hearts of men…not to mention the less-than-honorable behaviour that lurks in the minds of teenaged babysitters…"

With the night deepening outside, Elaine came back into the study, to find Stephen hunched at the desk, under the lamp, still reading the novel. "All right, Stephen, time for bed."

"Not now," Stephen snapped, annoyed at the distraction.

She pulled back in surprise. "That almost sounded like an order, young man. Come on. You can finish the book tomorrow."

"Not now," Stephen repeated. "This is the important part. I have to see."

"See what?"

"If the bad guy gets caught," he responded, annoyed that she wasn't catching on. "If he does...if he pays, I can sleep."

Elaine was shocked at his vehemence, but it was late, and this is what she was being paid for. "It will say the same thing if you read it in the morning or tonight. You need sleep. Now come on, it's time for bed."

The boy, less than half her height, turned slowly in his chair to face her. The look on his face was amusement and triumph. "While we're on the subject of time, how long did you spend on the phone?" He picked up the pad. "From what I heard from in here, it was three phone calls, to three different people, none of them listed on the list of references, or the list of contacts you turned in with your resume last week."

Her jaw dropped.

"Who were those people, Elaine?" Stephen asked calmly. "And while I'm on the subject…"

"O.K., that does it," Sarah declared. "Naughtiness is genetic." She gestured toward him. "We now have proof positive."

"Like you once said, I've always known I was different from other kids," Stephen noted. "I've always had this incredible focus on details, including being able to spot changes in those details that just didn't seem right. Of course, my 'gifts' weren't always appreciated…"

Victor jumped out of the cab and walked quickly up the driveway. The nightly activities took longer than usual, and he was worried about what he left behind.

The door opened before he got there, and Elaine walked out with a shell-shocked look on her face.

"Elaine?" he asked in concern.

Stephen appeared at the door. "Well, good night, Elaine. I had a wonderful time."

She looked back at him and nodded absently. "Good night, Stephen."

"Don't you want your jacket?" the boy asked, holding it up.

Victor looked horrified as he snatched the jacket from his nephew and hurriedly passed it back to Elaine. He'd taken too long again. Or Stephen was getting more efficient at freaking out babysitters. Either choice was entirely possible, and he wasn't sure which one scared him more.

Elaine walked down to the cab and paused as she thought of something. "Did the killer face justice?" she asked.

"Yep," Stephen said with a smug nod. "Like I said, he knew the combination, he found the documents. That was the motive." The boy looked extremely satisfied. "Everyone gets their comeuppance."

Elaine got into the cab. "That's nice to know," she said to herself.

Victor, who was thoroughly lost but sure that the exchange meant he'd lost himself yet another sitter, leaned in the cab's driver-side window and handed Moe a $50 bill. "Take her home."

The cabbie nodded.

Elaine looked up at Victor blankly. "That's one smart kid, Mr. Cranston, but I'm pretty sure I don't ever want to sit for him again." She rolled up the window and the cab pulled away before Victor could acknowledge her.

Now Victor was steamed, and pretty sure this was some sort of cosmic revenge for all the mocking he'd ever given Alexander about not being able to handle his own kid. He came back inside the mansion and closed the door. "What happened?" he asked the boy before him menacingly.

The oh-so-clever eight-year-old yawned. "We played a game of Truth or Dare. She isn't very good at it. Well, I'm beat. Good night, Uncle Victor." He turned to go up the stairs, then turned back. "By the way, I finished that mystery novel you gave me."

"How long did it take you to solve it?" Victor couldn't help asking, despite his anger over the babysitter situation.

"About eight pages ahead of the detective." Stephen once more headed for the stairs. "Good night, Uncle."

Victor watched him leave and shook his head.

Sarah laughed merrily.

Stephen smiled a bit.

Sarah struggled to get her breath back. "You were good."

Stephen shook his head. "I was a brat. I was a spoiled brat who didn't know what to do with his powers and used them for evil tricks and torturing babysitters."

"Wait--I thought you didn't awaken until you were thirteen. You mean you had powers back then?"

"Yeah. Stubbornness, cruelty, ruthlessness, and a mean streak wider than Times Square…"

Victor rushed into the classroom. The first thing he saw was a group of three boys, large and angry, with many bruises and bloody noses. The second thing he saw was Stephen, bruised a lot worse, his clothing torn beyond repair, and looking a lot more angry, glaring right back at them.

The third thing he saw was Principal Olympia Nicodemus, with whom he was rapidly approaching first-name basis.

"Please," Principal Nicodemus said, "tell me he's an only child."

"What did Victor do about that?" Sarah wondered.

"Manual labor," Stephen remembered with a smile.

"See, that's the thing." Sarah said. "How do you discipline a kid who has a private staff? You can't send him to his room because he has a full audio/visual system and a book collection bigger than most public libraries; you can't make him clean his room because he's had a private maid do it already that day; you can't send him to bed without supper because his daily care is the entire job of three people; you can't take away his allowance because he's got a multi-million dollar trust fund just waiting for him to come of age…"

Stephen chuckled. "That multi-million dollar trust fund paid for a lot of staff vacations."

Stephen came home and tossed his schoolbag into a corner near the massive marble staircase. "Do you even want to hear my side of it?"

"Let me guess," Victor stated in a tone that suggested this wasn't a new conversation point for either of them. "You saw some kid getting beat up, one of those kids called you names when you intervened, you did or said something you thought was clever--probably both--except the other kid didn't appreciate the cleverness, and you went ballistic."

"There were three of them, and the kid was younger than me," Stephen retorted, annoyed that his uncle wasn't taking this seriously. "Was I supposed to do nothing?"

"That's the teacher's job."

"Teacher wasn't there."

"Then you should have gone to get one."

"My way was faster."

Victor grabbed his nephew roughly by the shoulders and turned him to face the mirror in the hallway. "Stephen, look at your face."

Stephen shrugged off Victor's grasp. "Mason Carter is a trained ape, only without the training. He started the fight. And besides, you should see the other guy."

Victor once more grabbed Stephen by the shoulders and turned him around to face him. "First, I don't care who started it; second, he didn't start it with you; and third, I did see the other guy, and his brother, and his best friend. You cannot keep doing this, Stephen! There were three of them! What would you have done if they'd brought more so-called friends into this brouhaha?"

"I could have taken them."

The defiance in Stephen's eyes was almost scary. Or would have been, if Victor weren't trained in staring down men with stronger bravado than even this determined nine-year-old. "You shouldn't be fighting. Especially when you're outnumbered, and especially at school. That's what got you thrown out of…"

"I am not the bad guy here!" Stephen interrupted. "Find me a school where kids don't get bullied and I'll stop fighting!"

"Keep getting thrown out and you won't have that option!" Victor snapped, then got himself under control. "Violence begets violence, Stephen. You fight them, they fight you. You beat them, they come back with five kids, bigger kids, some of them with weapons. You can't fight them all. You have to pick and choose your battles, and those kids…are just kids. They're stupid kids, yes; they're bullies, yes; and they're not as clever or bright as you. That doesn't matter. This isn't a movie or a TV show, and those aren't 'bad guys'. They aren't even close."

Stephen glared at Victor.

Victor glared straight back.

Stephen broke the glare first and stormed up to his room…and froze at the door.

His room was empty. The TV was gone. The bed was gone. The stereo was gone. There were two candles under the window, and a single match beside them. There was a lumpy cot mattress and a thin blanket on the floor in place of the elegant antique double bed that normally held center court in the boy's room.

"Andrew!" Stephen shouted.

"No screaming in the house."

Stephen whipped around to see Victor standing right behind him. How the…?

"Besides," Victor continued, pulling a cigar out of his suit pocket, "he's not here."

Stephen's eyes widened. "Rosie!"

Victor snipped the end of the cigar. "I said, no screaming. And she isn't here, either."

"What happened to my room, and where is everybody?"

Victor fished a box of wooden matches out of his suit pocket. "I gave them the weekend off."

"For what?"

Victor gave him a look over the top of the match he was using to light the end of his cigar.

Stephen balked. "No way."

"You think you're above it?" Victor gave the cigar several puffs.

"I know I am. Cooking and cleaning is a job for servants."

"Other people who can't afford chefs and maids do just fine."

"How would you know? It's not like you've ever been without them."

"That's what you think. My father was not above making his children do manual labor to make a point about responsibility and discipline. And neither am I. Andrew and Rosie are not slaves, and they're not your servants, either. They are my employees, and the sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be."

Stephen steamed. He was not going to be made a fool of in his own home. "Bring my room back."

Victor gave a slightly sinister sounding laugh. "You need to learn humility."

Stephen glared.

Victor glared back.

"So," Sarah asked, "do I need to ask who won the stare-down contest?"

Stephen shook his head. "Allow me to give you some advice. Never try to stare down a billionaire businessman who never made a bad deal in his entire life, a parental figure who holds all the cards, a vigilante who can use fear as a weapon, or a projective telepath with hypnotic tendencies. I tried to stare down all of them at once because I was a nine-year-old spoiled brat with a Black Irish temper who wasn't used to hearing the word 'No'. I folded like a wet newspaper inside of thirty seconds, and five minutes later I was scrubbing the kitchen. I got to know the inside of that oven very well over that very long weekend."

Sarah laughed. "He really emptied your room out?"

"I tried to find where he hid it, but he was too good," Stephen laughed back.

"Man, my dad never did anything that cool."

"It wasn't just cool, it was inventive. He was like that." Stephen's laugh trailed off and he found himself staring sadly at the fireplace.

Sarah saw the shift in mood and reached out a hand to him. "Hey…"

"Why am I telling you this?" he grumbled.

"Because you want somebody else to know."

"Right." He gave a sigh.

"So, what happened next?"

"A lot, but let's skip that part and move up to when I came back from my awakening. I don't think I need to tell you what that was like."

Sarah shivered. "Nope. But go back."

"To what?"

"You found out the secret when you were twelve? How did you find out?"

Stephen smiled fondly. "Ah. Well…"

"Stephen, this is Moe," Victor said as he introduced the older teen who was quietly standing behind him to the young pre-teen sprawled across a chair in the parlor, nose deep in a mystery novel as usual.

Stephen looked up from his book and gave Victor his best And I'm supposed to care…why? look.

It was a look Victor recognized. "You're going to be his host while I'm gone this evening," he clarified for his nephew.

Stephen looked Moe over while Moe tried very hard not to stare at the huge mansion. "I don't know him," Stephen noted to his uncle, who was clearly not getting the point of the earlier dismissive glare.

"His father and I are old friends," Victor said in a tone that suggested he not only had gotten the point but was going out of his way to ignore it.

Stephen considered that, then wandered over to the kid, who was a full inch taller than him. "Hi. I'm Stephen." He shook hands with Moe. "Who's your father?"

"Michael Shrevnitz," Moe replied.

The name didn't ring a bell with Stephen, who had already made note of the fact that while Victor had a lot of acquaintances, he had very few real friends. "And what does he do?"

Moe looked proud. "He's a cab driver."

Stephen sent Victor a low you've got to be kidding me look.

"I'll be back in about three hours," Victor said cheerfully, donning a hat and strolling out the door before Stephen could make another comment. "Be ready for bed when I get home," he called just before the door closed.

Moe, meanwhile, hadn't stopped looking around the parlor. "Wow. Looks like something out of a movie."

"Yeah, it does," Stephen agreed. "Where do you live?"

"In a two-bedroom apartment on the west side," Moe said. "I think you could fit the whole thing in this one room. You really live here?"

"I do now," Stephen said, mindful of the three-bedroom condo where he'd lived before his world had changed seven years earlier. "Your dad's a cabbie?"

"Yeah. The best."

"You planning on being a cabbie too when you grow up?"

Moe nodded. "Hard not to love cars when you live in my house. Dad's been teaching me to drive--he says I've got talent."

Something in Stephen's mind began to click as he listened to the young man talk. "Your dad drives Victor around a lot."

"Yeah," Moe admitted. "And that's kind of weird, especially now that I've seen this place. The guy can afford to live in what amounts to a small hotel but hires cabs all the time." He laughed slightly. "But I shouldn't complain. He said your dad's a great tipper."

"Uncle," Stephen said sharply.

"Huh?"

Stephen caught himself and tried to calm the still-sensitive subject of his current state of guardianship. "Victor's my uncle, not my father."

"Oh. Where's your dad?"

"Dead."

Moe felt a chill at the coldness in the young man's voice. "Sorry."

"Me too." Stephen gave the situation some thought, then looked back to Moe. "You said you like cars?"

"Yeah."

Stephen gave a mysterious smile. "Then have I got something to show you." He beckoned with his head and started walking.

Moe followed, trying not to gape at the museum-like hallway they were traversing.

"Your dad drives a cab, so you might know this," Stephen remarked as they walked through the house. "What could my uncle have to do at ten o'clock at night that he would take a cab for?"

"I got a better question," Moe answered. "What could your uncle have to do at three in the morning that he would get my dad to get out of bed and drive him to?"

Stephen looked at him. "Three in the morning?"

"Yep."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. Happens at least once a week. He thinks I don't hear him sneaking out of the house."

"And it's always your dad he calls?"

"Yeah."

"Hm-m. That's interesting. Because now I know where I know your dad from. He doesn't just drive my uncle; he drives both of us everywhere we go. He even drives me home from school sometimes when Uncle Victor can't make it, and most of the time, the meter's turned off."

"I got something more interesting," Moe said. "Dad's cab company doesn't take fare calls between midnight and six A.M."

"Huh." Stephen opened the door in front of him, reached into the room and flipped a wall switch, then strolled into the room.

Moe started to follow him inside, then stopped in his tracks and immediately lost all interest in the conversation. "Wow."

Stephen smiled. "This used to be the carriage house when my great-great-great grandfather built the place. My grandfather, I think, was the one who turned it into a garage. Uncle Victor, though, is the one who filled it with all the cool, shiny toys."

Moe immediately realized Stephen had made the understatement of the century. The garage was filled with a half-dozen of the most expensive cars he'd ever seen. He wandered over to one and reached toward it, but did not make contact. "Whoa."

"It won't break, Moe," Stephen laughed. "You can touch it."

Moe shook his head. "I scuff the paint and I spend my entire life paying it off. Man, what does your uncle want with a cab?"

"That's a good question. Want to find out?"

"How?"

Stephen went over to the Lincoln Town Car limo and opened the front door, sat in the passenger seat, and flipped on the CB radio. "We can use this to find them."

Moe paled. "Isn't that…illegal?"

Stephen laughed. "Have you ever ridden with your father?"

Moe nodded and smiled despite himself. "Yeah."

Stephen changed the frequency and picked up the radio. "C&C, I need a twenty on a Sunshine Radio cab. License number…" He looked at Moe, who stammered out the license, which he repeated.

"What's Shrevnitz done now?" came the answer.

Stephen and Moe sent each other a panicked look. "Uh…he ran a red on 32nd street while I was getting coffee," Stephen replied with relative calm. "Where is he now?"

"Then you got the license wrong," answered the voice. "Shrevnitz's cab just ran a red and cut off three lanes of traffic on Lexington. Double-check the license and give it to me again."

"I'll have to find him," answered Stephen as he quickly shut off the radio. "Lexington. He's heading down toward the docks. What would my uncle have to do on the docks at ten PM that he would take a cab to?"

"Maybe your uncle's a crook," Moe said lightly.

Stephen got out of the car and somehow gained three inches of height. "If I could think of any other reason I'd knock you on your butt for that."

"Sorry."

Stephen thought for a long moment. "You're probably going to think this is dumb, but my uncle…well, he has some really weird interests. Really bizarre things. Like how you can tell if a gemstone is fake without a jeweler's loupe, or how to beat a street hustler doing the three-card monte trick. Stuff I could care less about, but stuff he insists on telling me about."

Moe looked a little uneasy. "My dad does that, too. I just thought he was bragging about all the stuff he knows."

"Huh." Stephen went over to another car, a bright red high-end sports car. "Tell me about this car."

Moe's eyes lit like a Christmas tree. "This? This is a Lotus. You know what this thing can do? Zero-to-sixty in less time than it takes to say the words. It'll hit 180 without straining. This thing will corner like it's on rails. Antilock brakes, more aerodynamic than a jet fighter. Not to mention that it probably costs more than a year's rent on my dad's apartment. I can't believe I'm even in the same room as one. This is a nice set of wheels."

"Can you hotwire it?"

"Seriously?"

"Can you?"

Moe tried to look nonchalant. "Probably."

That intrigued Stephen. "Who taught you?"

"My dad."

"You're what? 14?"

"15."

"How many parents teach their fifteen-year-old kid how to steal a car?"

Moe's eyes dropped. "I don't know."

"I'd bet my entire trust fund that whatever it is my uncle does, your dad's up to his neck in it."

Moe nodded. "Ever get the feeling like they're teaching us stuff because we might need them one day?"

"Yeah." Stephen looked thoughtful. "I for one would really like to know what they want us to know this stuff for."

"Me too."

At that moment, something occurred to the twelve-year-old. "You know what's cooler than a 200 square foot garage with a few million bucks worth of cars in it?"

"What?"

Stephen pointed to an ordinary cabinet on the other side of the room.

"What's in there?" Moe asked.

Stephen gave a grin that raised the hair on the back of Moe's neck. "The keys," he hissed in a dangerous tone.

Moe started to salivate. "You mean…"

"Pick a car. You're driving."

Now Moe looked a little uneasy. "I've only got a learner's permit."

"So, consider this a learning experience." Stephen hit the button on the garage door opener. "What are you waiting for, Andretti? Let's go."

Sarah laughed merrily. "No…he didn't…"

"Oh, yes, he did," Stephen chuckled. "It was the start of a beautiful friendship."

"You and Moe, joyriding through the streets of Manhattan in a stolen Lotus?"

"Borrowed. And it wasn't exactly joyriding…"

Stephen frowned at the slow speed of the supposed rocketship-on-wheels Lotus. "You know, Moe, this car can go faster."

Moe's hands were locked around the steering wheel white-knuckled. "I scratch it and I bankrupt my Dad."

"Depends what our betters do for a living," Stephen pointed out. "And we need to find that out, so drive the car faster before they leave the docks."

"This car isn't exactly crash proof…"

"Then drive it right."

"O.K." Moe floored it.

"WHOA!" Stephen whooped.

Moe had an idiot grin on his face. "I am so getting grounded for this!" he cackled, spinning the car round a corner.

A few minutes later, they were approaching the docks. "Stop here," Stephen directed.

Moe stomped on the breaks, spun the wheel and brought them to a screeching slide to the side of the road. "Why here?"

"Because whatever they're doing, I don't want them to know we're watching them. Our incredibly conspicuous car not withstanding."

"Oh. Right."

"You forgot we were tailing them, didn't you!"

"I'll never get a chance to drive a red Lotus again," Moe admitted.

Stephen chuckled. Then his face froze. "There they are."

The cab was at the other end of the street.

"Whoa," Moe whispered.

"Pull forward a bit," Stephen directed.

"Why?"

"We're under a street light here."

Moe idled the car forward a few feet, just enough to bathe them in darkness.

The cab door opened, and out from one of the warehouses came a figure dressed in deep black. Even from a few blocks away, both Moe and Stephen drew back.

"What…what is that?" Moe whispered.

"I…I've seen that before," Stephen whispered to himself.

"Where?"

"I've seen that before." Stephen whispers were tinged with anger now.

"Where had you seen The Shadow before then?" Sarah asked in surprise.

Stephen sighed. "You don't know the story, do you?"

"What story?"

He looked away. "Reader's Digest Condensed Version: My parents were retired Shadow agents. My dad secretly unretired and was working on a deep cover assignment to flush out a mob boss. Dad's cover got blown, Mom and I got kidnapped and held as bait for The Shadow, my parents fought back, and both of them got shot dead in front of me. That's when The Shadow showed up and cleaned house, killed any bad guy still stealing air, then swept me away. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in my uncle's house and he was confirming that my parents had been killed."

"And you never made the connection?"

"Between Victor and The Shadow? Not until that night." He gave a light chuckle. "Not until he came out of that warehouse and it exploded 30 seconds later."

"Aha. So that's where you picked up that trick."

Stephen snorted. "I suppose so." He sighed. "So, after thoroughly terrifying Moe, I have him drive us back. Nobody ever knew we had left; I told Andrew I was giving Moe a tour of the house, and he bought it. So I sat and waited for Victor to come home."

"Good night, Moe," Victor said as he closed the door, then headed for the parlor for a drink.

Stephen was waiting for him, watching as Moe got into his father's cab and they pulled away.

Victor looked for a moment as if he was reminding himself to say something to Andrew about enforcing bedtime rules, then put on his best nonchalant smile. "How'd you like Moe?"

Stephen turned to face him. "You're The Shadow."

Victor got over his moment of surprise and calmed himself. "I take it that when I go out to the carriage house, I'll find one of my cars has a bit more mileage on it than it did the last time I checked."

"Don't change the subject."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Don't tell me any more lies. You are The Shadow."

Victor's expression was tight but controlled. "Yes."

"You saved my life that night."

"Yes."

"But not my parents."

"It's not possible for me to feel worse about that fact than I already do," Victor noted coldly.

Stephen didn't miss the coldness, but right now he didn't care. "You're The Shadow. You've been The Shadow for all these years. You, who scoff at radio and newspaper reports and call reporters 'fearmongers' for even mentioning him, are The Shadow. How? Why?"

Victor set down his jacket, poured himself a drink, and sank into his armchair. "Family business. Your grandfather started it all. Lamont Cranston made it his mission in life to battle those who would harm innocents. He made it his personal crusade to fight evil, chaos, and crime. He used the talents he learned in the Army during the first World War, plus several skills he picked up elsewhere, and fought a secret war against crime for about 25 years. As he did this, he realize that he could do better not as a fighter, but as a myth, so he established a mythos, planted rumors and whispers in the dark, and established himself as an urban legend."

Stephen sat down on the sofa and turned to face his uncle. "The Shadow."

"Right. He understood that people do not fight well when they are terrified. So he terrified them as a wraith in the darkness, a voice everywhere and nowhere at the same time, an avenging angel of the night. When Alexander and I were born, we inherited his powers…"

"Powers?"

Victor took a sip of his drink. "Ah. Did I forget to mention that?"

Stephen looked confused. "You mean superhero stuff?"

"Depends on what you mean by superhero stuff. Those headaches you've been complaining about lately…those really intense dreams…that fight you got into with the kid you thought was talking about you behind your back...remember those?"

Stephen faltered. "Yeah."

Victor nodded. "Your grandfather was what they call a 'projective telepath'--a master psychic with the power to manipulate thoughts, including being able to read them to some degree. It's a trait that I inherited from him, and so did your father…and so did you."

Stephen looked up sharply. "Me?"

"That kid wasn't talking about you behind your back, but he was probably thinking about you behind your back. That's the first sign that your powers are beginning to mature."

"I can hear people think?"

Victor smiled. "Not really. It's a side effect of the ebb and flow of psychic energy in a developing telepath's brain. Sometimes thoughts get swept in by the flow, sometimes they get pushed out again."

"But you can."

"Sometimes, but not like you think. It's something that's hard to explain when your brain isn't yet capable of wrapping itself around the concept…"

"I want to be The Shadow," Stephen interrupted sharply.

Victor stiffened. "No," he replied curtly.

"No" was a word Stephen had never liked hearing. "I have to be The Shadow."

"No," Victor repeated, this time more insistent.

"Why not?" Stephen challenged.

"I forbid it."

"I don't think that's your call," the younger Cranston retorted. "This isn't something we get to negotiate."

Victor was not going to put up with this. "You're right. It isn't. The answer is no." He got up to leave the room.

"You got this power from your father, I got it from mine. This is who we are. This is our life."

"No, this is my life, not yours."

"You can make it mine."

"I could, but I won't."

"Why?"

"Because I promised your father I wouldn't!" Victor snapped, turning away in frustration.

"Well, it's not like he's here to actually make that call, is he?"

Victor whirled around to face the petulant brat.

A flash of darkness crossed Victor's eyes in a way that Stephen had never seen even in all the times they'd butted heads and matched wits. And it scared him.

Victor seemed to know it, too, because he backed off slightly and got himself under control. "I made a promise to your father that I would keep you out of this. This isn't a life for decent people. This isn't a life for people who like it easy, and it certainly isn't a life for the safe. This is a war."

"And I have to fight it."

"No, you don't."

"Why not?"

"Because your father didn't want you to get shot at. Because he didn't want you to be hurt. Because he didn't want you to die!"

"This is my family. This is my birthright. This is my history. This is my future!"

Again with the flash of darkness in Victor's eyes, and again he got it under control. "You want to see your future?" He closed the door to the parlor, then crossed the room, unbuttoning his shirt as he went. He turned his back to his nephew before removing the garment. "Take a look."

Stephen stared. His uncle had more scarred tissue than undamaged flesh. "My God…"

"Blades, bullets, beatings, burns." His uncle pointed to the scars one by one. "This is the cost of doing battle, Stephen. This is what happens to those of us who fight this war. This isn't a comic book, and it isn't a movie. What I do is dangerous work. I come home every night and have to use every bit of my strength to hide my wounds until I can get behind closed doors…"

Stephen looked awed. "Man…nothing can kill you!"

Victor balked. "What?"

"Look at you! They've tried to kill you a thousand different ways. They've tried to beat you every night, and you not only survived, you've triumphed!" His eyes almost glowed. "I'll triumph too. But you have to show me how."

Victor pulled on his shirt and harrumphed. "I'm not teaching you."

"Then I'll make my own Shadow costume and do it without your help!"

Victor glared. "They'll kill you!"

"Then you'd better teach me how to kill them first."

Victor covered his eyes.

"Look, Uncle Victor, I can appreciate that my dad didn't want a dangerous life for me. I can even understand you don't want me to get hurt. But look at my life. I fight bullies. I fight you. I get knocked down, and I keep getting up again, and I had no idea why I was so driven to do it--I just knew that I was. You tell me I need direction, I've found one. I got these powers the day I was born. I got caught in the line of fire when I was five years old. This fight took my family, and I want to take it back! This is my birthright, this is my destiny. This is what I was born to do!"

Victor shook his head. "You still don't understand. When you're bleeding from a dozen wounds while people keep shooting at you as you're up to your waist in blood and sweat and murder and mayhem, then come and talk to me about your life, your destiny, your birthright. You don't even like to do your homework. The hardest you've ever tried to do something is trying to avoid doing something; the most seriously you've ever taken anything was mystery novels; the most manual work you've ever done was scrubbing the kitchen as punishment for not doing your homework! You've been thrown out of two schools because you don't care about them one bit--what the Hell makes you think you can do this?"

"Because now I have a reason to care!" Stephen roared back. "I never cared because I never had anything to care about. What do I need effort for, I have money; what do I need perseverance for, I have a staff; now I have this! You can't deny me this!"

"Not good enough. This isn't a gig you do because it seems like a decent job. This isn't something you fight for because you've got nothing better to do."

"What about the five-year-old kid who watched his mother and father gunned down before his eyes? Is that good enough?"

"No! Revenge is not good enough, either!"

"Not revenge! Punishment! And who the Hell are you to stand there and tell me that it isn't my job to do? As if Granddaddy didn't make that argument with you."

"Stephen, this is not what you want to be doing with the rest of your life. Trust me on this."

Stephen laughed. "You slip out of this house every single night, all hours of the night, and I'm betting it's for no reason other than this mission. This is your life's work. It was my grandfather's life's work. I want it to be mine. There's still work to do. Uncle Victor, my whole life I've been looking for a purpose, and now I've found it. This is my inheritance. Not the money, not the business, not the manor, this mission. It's mine. And you have to let me take it."

"You are twelve years old."

"So? How old were you when you found out?"

"Not relevant."

"How old?"

Victor grumbled. "Twelve."

"And you're repeating the speech your dad gave you. I can tell. The difference is that I'm a lot more stubborn than you are."

Victor rolled his eyes. "You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You wouldn't even get out of bed in the morning if there wasn't something in it for you. You shirk your responsibilities the moment they get hard to handle. The moment anything gets hard, you walk away."

"Not this time."

"Bet me?"

"Yeah!"

Victor got up to pace the room. "O.K. Let's suppose I entertain this ridiculous notion and even consider training you to do this. The moment you quit, that's it. The moment you give up, it's over."

Stephen got up to follow him. "Bring it on. I'm a lot more determined than you think I am."

"You really think so."

"I know so."

Victor chuckled sinisterly. "So you're convinced I'm just repeating the speech my father gave me."

"Yes."

"Well, you're right. I am. And this is what he did next." He whipped around.

For a brief instant, Stephen saw that same flash of darkness in his uncle's eyes he'd seen several times tonight.

And then, he was knocked off his feet and pinned to the floor as shadows engulfed him.

"This isn't a game, Stephen," The Shadow's voice intoned. "This isn't something you play at doing. The Shadow isn't some slight-of-hand charlatan doing cheap parlor tricks. The Shadow is a warrior, the master of darkness and guardian of the night, fighting a war waged in dark and desolate places, fought with weapons stronger than guns or knives. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" A dark, sinister, foreboding laugh echoed through the room. "The Shadow knows."

Stephen struggled to sit up. "What are you doing?"

"You want to claim your birthright, your legacy, your inheritance? You have no idea what all that entails. This is the Cranston legacy, Stephen. This is what projective telepathy can do. It can hold a petulant child on the floor until he wears himself out from struggling through a temper tantrum."

Stephen felt the weight pinning him down lift, and he looked around.

"It can turn a man into a shadow."

Victor was gone. And one by one, every light in the room extinguished until the only light was coming through the parlor window. On the floor, Stephen saw only a momentary glimpse of a man's shadow before the parlor window curtains drew themselves shut and cut off all remaining illuminations.

"It can cloud your mind and twist your thoughts until you have no idea which thoughts are real and which are mere echoes of imagination."

Stephen saw the face of his uncle in front of him. Then it vanished.

Laughter echoed off the walls. Stephen looked around…

…and into the face of the dark-cloaked man from his nightmares. But only for a second, before it too disappeared.

More laughter. "Fear is a powerful weapon, Stephen. The Cranston psyche feeds off of it. Men fear what they cannot see and what they cannot control. That fear makes us even stronger. It makes our illusions more convincing."

Out of the corners of his eyes, Stephen could see things moving, but every time he turned to face them, they were gone. And as much as he hated himself for it, he was scared out of his wits.

"And that is when the enemy makes their final, often fatal mistake."

The end of that sentence was punctuated by the feel of cold steel on the back of his neck. Stephen stiffened.

And then the lights came up. "Turn around."

Stephen did…

…and saw Victor standing behind him, pointing a metal-bodied fountain pen where the back of his neck had been.

Stephen groaned. "I can't believe I fell for that."

"You didn't."

Just like that, the fountain pen turned into the pistol Stephen had felt on his neck.

Victor gave the trigger a squeeze…

…and the gun gave an empty 'click'.

Stephen felt his blood run cold.

Victor lowered the gun. "That is why you must remain ever vigilant. That is why this battle is not for the weak. That is the world that The Shadow lives in. Still think you can do it?"

Stephen couldn't stop himself from shaking.

Victor put the gun on a side table and took his nephew into his arms and held him tightly until the boy calmed down. "My father did this, too."

Stephen finally dared to speak again. "I still want to learn," he said in a trembling voice.

Victor nodded. "And that's exactly what I said."

"You know, people don't really talk like that," Sarah told him. "Too melodramatic."

"Melodrama is my second favorite sin," he remarked. "Right behind Wrath. But yeah. I made that comment too, once. Thing is, the choice of words didn't change anything. Victor was making a point about the commanding power that scaring your opponent gives you."

"That never made sense to me. Why would you want your opponent scared? If the adrenaline's flowing, doesn't that make them harder to get?"

Stephen shook his head like this was a silly thought. "I was terrified. I was hardly thinking, I couldn't move, I couldn't react. I was scared. And not horror-movie scared, or near-miss-car-accident scared, but really and truly so scared that I was for all intents and purposes paralyzed with fear. This wasn't some cheap parlor trick Victor pulled, it was terror, in the truest definition of the word. The kind of terror that makes you want to throw yourself down some deep hole in the ground and pull the dirt in over you. That was his weapon, Sarah, and mine too." He looked at her. "Do you know the first time you feel fear? I'll tell you when it is. It's when you're four years old, in bed, the dead of night, and you're wide awake…and you're certain that there's a scary man in the closet, or a monster under the bed." He looked right at her, leaning in closer. "You don't want to look, but you don't dare look away from the dark corners. You don't want to stay there, but you don't dare move. So you cry out to your mommy to come and save you, and she does."

Sarah was barely breathing. He was closer to her than he'd ever been. Somehow he'd shifted so that he was whispering right in her ear. His voice had taken on a new quality, as if the sounds he made were alive and squeezing around her heart. She could feel a tickling at the corners of her mind and realized that this was actually a hypnotic trick. But it was a damned good one. He was making her hands shake with just the tone of his voice.

"And you grow up, and night by night you get less afraid because you are patiently taught that there are no such things as monsters…except for some men who grow up become monsters. But when you can do this, you can touch them in that memory…you can send them catapulting back to that feeling…you show them that there is a monster in the corner, where they can't see it, and they can't look but they can't look away, they want to run but they don't dare move…that's power you can't get from a weapon. That's power you can't buy. That's the power of fear."

"I…" Sarah choked on her own tongue. She couldn't quite form words. The air itself had become suffocatingly confining, like a shroud.

And then, just as it quickly had come over her, she felt the spell lift away. She gasped for breath and stared at Stephen.

He got up from his seat on the sofa and crossed the room to pour himself another drink from the bar. "Every adept, no matter what their mental energy skillset, has one emotion or set of thought patterns he or she is capable of sensing and manipulating without any training whatsoever. The Marpa Tulku's mind, for example, can pick out signs of weakness from even the tiniest of clues, which makes him excellent at spotting and helping adepts on the verge of awakenings and breakthroughs. My mother, as I understood it later, could pick out deceit, and she knew my father was lying to her about something, but he was too good at screening his thoughts to allow her to find out what he was doing until it was too late. Mine, like my father, uncle, and grandfather before me, is fear. Fear is a very powerful and very loud emotion, and the ability to manipulate it is an invaluable skill." He kept talking, casually doing things like drawing the curtains and turning off end table lamps as he paced the room. "It's a very particular style of combat. You take out the lights, usually fairly dramatically--sometimes all at once, but sometimes in stages so that the darkness creeps up on them. You strike in hallways, aisles, corners, places where there's only one body's worth of room and sufficient cover so that you can't be ambushed. You strike at them one at a time, leaving either the least experienced one or the one who you think would least like to fight alone till last. You make noises, but unusual ones, the ones that encourage imagination to take over. You strike at irregular intervals, so the last one has at least twice as long to think about his inevitable fate as the two before him." He shook his head and chuckled. "These are things that cops don't do. But they're the things that Victor taught me to do." He gestured dramatically.

The room went pitch black dark. Sarah felt that engulfing fear sweep over her again as her heart dropped into her stomach.

Something brushed against the back of her neck. "Don't turn around."

Sarah jumped and whirled to look behind her, backing away from the sound that seemed to be swirling all around her…and then she took a misstep.

A pair of strong arms were quick to catch her, and the lights came up.

Sarah gathered her senses and realized that she'd tripped on the edge of the rug and fallen right into Stephen's arms…into the same spot where he'd been before the lights went out. "That was all a trick," she realized as she pulled away from him, feeling unnerved and offended at the same time.

"But an effective one." A strange awe crossed Stephen's face. "Sarah, I wish you could have seen Victor as The Shadow. I really mean that. He was unbelievably strong, unbelievably focused…a force of nature."

"You don't do too badly," Sarah noted.

Stephen wasn't listening. "The things he could do. The things I saw him do. He was wild, he was electric, he was something else…everything they threw at him he took and kept coming. He was untouchable. The man had power, the kind of power I will never have even if I do this a thousand more years. I would give my right arm to be half as good now as he was then."

Sarah didn't speak.

Stephen got up. "I can't do this any more." He left the room hurriedly.

Sarah decided not to follow. Not for the moment, at least.

But twenty minutes later, her curiosity got the better of her, and her clairvoyance swept through the house more or less unchecked in search of him, finally finding him in a workout room in the basement. She grumbled about needing to fine-tune her mental GPS finder and started looking for a way downstairs.

When she finally did find him, she looked impressed. "I've seen high-end health clubs with less equipment," she noted.

Stephen, lying on his back on a weightlifting bench, set the barbell back on the support struts. "Well, I can't exactly belong to one of those health clubs. It's kind of hard to explain why a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter has to work out like a madman."

Sarah noticed the room was full of equipment that wasn't exactly health club related. "And I don't suppose most of them have arsenals of martial arts gear just lying around."

"You noticed."

"Hard not to. Do I even want to know what some of this stuff does?"

"Probably not." Stephen sat up and toweled himself off. "I sure didn't when I first came down here. And I thought it was a waste of time, considering that The Shadow carried a pair of .45s instead of ninja gear. Of course, that was before Victor...um, corrected my thinking on the subject."

"I'll bet he did. What was that like?"

Stephen chuckled slightly. "Very strange."

The clicking of wooden staffs colliding echoed off the walls of the basement, while swooping whistles of the poles swinging through the air filled the silences between clicks.

"You're still too stiff," Victor cautioned his twelve-year-old nephew as their staves collided again.

"Maybe I should try a baseball bat," Stephen snarked in reply. "It'd be closer to what I'll really encounter on the streets."

"The correct use of the bo can produce a stimulating and practical means of extension training," Victor replied as he countered each of Stephen's swings. "It offers a means of martial arts training and discipline. Weapons training teaches the meaning of control, timing, distance, and flexibility as one unit. The practitioner is required to possess speed, coordination, strength, and endurance in utilizing the respective weapons."

"What book did you get that speech out of?"

"My father's training manual. And I do mean 'manual', as he was very hands-on." Victor stopped acting on the defensive and stepped up the timing of his strokes.

Stephen was clearly having trouble keeping up, but nevertheless managed to consistently knock back the staff before it struck him. "So, how many ninjas do you run into on the streets?"

"More than you think." Victor gave three swift strokes in three different directions--one near Stephen's hands, one under Stephen's hands, and then one across the young man's knuckles when he twisted his hands to avoid another smack in the forearm.

Stephen's weapon went flying, and he flailed his arms to reach for it.

Victor smacked him in the lower back with the bo, then used it to take Stephen's legs out from underneath him and let the boy crash to the floor. "If you drop your weapon, let it go. Flailing for it leaves you vulnerable to attack."

Annoyed, Stephen gave Victor a swift kick in the shin.

Victor stumbled slightly, giving Stephen just enough time to roll away from him and retrieve his bo.

Victor looked impressed. "Very good. You have learned something from your playground fights." The clash of the staves began again, and Victor pressed his nephew harder than ever.

Stephen ducked one blow, then got in a backhanded shot on Victor's hands that made him loosen his grip on the bo, and a forehanded one that knocked the weapon out of his hands.

Victor's eyes darkened as his hand flicked outward sharply, and suddenly Stephen found himself on the floor.

"No fair!" Stephen snapped, struggling against the invisible force holding him down.

"Life isn't fair," his uncle's Shadow voice reminded him. "And neither am I."

Stephen smacked his staff into Victor's shins again, then hooked his leg around his uncle's ankle as Victor tried to dodge.

Now they were both on the mat. Victor found himself chuckling slightly. "And neither are you," he noted sardonically.

Stephen sat up slowly, rubbing his temples as he did.

Victor noticed. "Is that the first one today?"

"Third," Stephen replied. "They're not as bad when we're fighting."

Victor nodded. "Whether you realize it or not, you're expending mental energy when you fight. Your body and mind try to maintain a balance of available strength, and when one is low, it draws from the other. That's a valuable life skill you're learning, even if you don't know you're learning it. It's a skill you'll need to master once you actually awaken."

"And when will that be?"

Victor hesitated.

Stephen recognized the hesitation. "I don't care if you're 'not good at guessing', like you always say. I'm not stupid, Victor; if this is my third headache today and it's not even noon, it's gotta be close."

Victor gave a deep sigh. "Two weeks. Tops." He reached for a nearby towel and wiped his face with it. "Until then, think you can work through it enough to finish your schoolwork?"

Stephen nodded, pouring cold water onto the back of his neck and draping his towel over it to hold the coolness there.

"Good. Monica will be here in an hour. Go get yourself cleaned up."

"Wait…who's Monica?" Sarah asked.

Stephen gave an amused chuckle as he wrapped tape around his knuckles. "Jealous?"

"As if."

"Uh-huh."

Sarah looked annoyed. "Well? Who is she?"

"At the time, she was the most gorgeous woman I'd ever seen. Looked like she'd just stepped out of a Ralph Lauren catalog. You know the type--chestnut hair, ice-blue eyes, amazing skin, full preppy wardrobe with the khakis, the pastel cotton button-down with white contrast cuffs, the blue blazer, even the penny loafers. Legs longer than a thoroughbred's, and just as shapely."

Sarah found herself feeling something akin to jealousy, though she wouldn't dare actually admit it aloud. "So, you were already working the Cranston playboy reputation at the age of twelve?"

"It wouldn't have worked on her, considering she was twice my age," he said as he gave a laugh at Sarah's presumption. "She was an evaluator at Columbia that my uncle took me to see. She had a Master's in education and was working on her doctorate. I became the subject of her dissertation."

Despite being extraordinarily familiar with the insides of school administrators' offices to the point of sheer boredom, Stephen found it really hard not to stare at the woman sitting on the edge of the institutional-style desk bearing the nameplate "Monica Kiernan". He wasn't sure when his opinion of girls had gone from viewing them as alien beings with cooties to alien beings with strange hypnotic powers and damn fine curves, but he wasn't exactly objecting to the transition. Especially when the transition involved close contact with something that was setting his hormones percolating.

Victor, meanwhile, was going over the papers the woman, a fellow in the Alternative Education program at Columbia University, had handed him. "I'm not sure I understand," he said. "You're recommending taking Stephen out of school because he's not learning?"

"He's not learning enough," Monica responded in a voice that Stephen was pretty sure sounded like what angels were supposed to sound like. Or maybe saints. Better than the nuns at Catholic school, that was for sure.

"Are you saying…my nephew is learning impaired?" Victor sounded defensive.

"Yes, but not the way you think," Monica replied. "He's impaired by the traditional school system. According to the records the school sent me, he's been classed as a discipline problem, and it affects his grades."

"I'm surprised they were that polite about it," Victor groused.

"I am, too. Usually schools label kids like Stephen as 'hyperactive' or 'learning disabled' or whatever term it takes to get more special education funding this week. It's true Stephen has a focus problem, but it's not because he's disabled in any way, shape, or form. It's actually the opposite--he's a genius."

Stephen turned to his uncle. "Told you."

"You always think you're so smart," Victor retorted.

"This time, he's right," Monica interjected. "In fact, he's what they used to label a 'supergenius'. He's got a 183 I.Q." She took the papers from Victor, flipped to another page, and handed them back. "He's got incredible recall and attention to detail." She pointed to some graphs on the page. "His verbal skills are so far above his physical age that I tested him with two different test sets to make sure I wasn't getting an erroneous reading. His logic and math skills are almost as sharp. One of the reasons he acts out in classes is that he's frankly bored by the system and desperately needs to find another outlet for that fast-acting mind of his."

Victor hesitated for a moment. "There is another explanation for that."

Monica got up off the desk and crossed the room to lock the door. "Yes, I know. He's an adept. Pretty strong one, too."

Victor looked surprised.

Monica sat back on the corner of the desk and gave a smile. "Don't worry. No one else knows."

Victor locked gazes with the woman for a moment…then broke the gaze and looked curious. "Telepath?"

"Telekinetic, with projective telepathic tendencies. You?"

Victor gave a somewhat knowing smile. "Extremely projective telepath."

Monica nodded her understanding. "Thought so. When you came in and applied for Stephen's evaluation, I recognized the thought patterns right off. It's why I asked for the case to be assigned to me." She hesitated for a moment, then decided to be direct. "I'm doing my doctoral dissertation on supergenius kids who are floundering in the conventional educational system. At least, that's the official wording on my paperwork. I'm actually unofficially studying school-aged adepts at various stages of development to see if there's a correlation between their less-conventional skills and their intellectual learning styles, IQs, behavioral evaluations, etc. From what I've seen in the tests I gave him, Stephen is absolutely the classic case of an unawakened adept with strong intellectual gifts that need to be developed along with his psychic gifts in order to maximize the potential of both. And to do that, he needs to be removed from a traditional school atmosphere."

"And taught where?"

"At home, preferably, with a dedicated tutor…"

"Which, I take it, would be you," Victor said, somewhat annoyed with the whole sales pitch aspect of this evaluation.

"…who understands how to handle the mental aspects of his development," Monica continued, unfazed. "He needs far more stimulation than he's getting in a traditional school environment. With as sharp as his mind is now, it's only going to get more exacting when his gifts come into fruition. He needs literally year-round education, constant education, focused education, going through whole semesters of conventional curriculum in a matter of weeks instead of months. If he doesn't get it, I can almost guarantee you he'll be drummed out of even the most permissive schools around as a 'hopeless problem child' before he turns 15."

"And if he does get it?"

Monica's expression fairly screamed confidence. "He'll be college-bound by 16 and out into the workforce before he turns 21."

Now that got Stephen's attention. Because there was nothing he wanted more than to be done with the monotony of the traditional grammar school system and on his way to really pursue being The Shadow. "When do we start?"

Victor looked over at him. "You do understand what she's saying, right? No more goofing off. No more 'teacher hates me' excuses. You'll be pushed non-stop and won't be allowed to slack off in the slightest."

"And this would be different from the past few weeks…how?" Stephen retorted.

"I'm a lot tougher than most of the nuns you've probably encountered," Monica replied. "And I'm definitely tougher than any teacher you've had yet."

"Somehow I doubt that," Stephen challenged.

Monica raised an eyebrow, then glanced over at a corner of the room.

A piece of rebar glided through the air and stopped in front of the boy.

She focused a laser-sharp gaze on the rod.

It twisted itself into a pretzel, then dropped into Stephen's lap.

Stephen quickly caught the heavy metal on reflex, and his eyes widened. "Whoa! Hey, can you teach me to do that?"

Monica held out her hand, and the rebar jumped out of Stephen's hands and bounded into her grasp. "Maybe. If you're willing to learn everything else first."

Stephen turned to his uncle once more. "When do we start?"

"So you learned telekinesis from lusting after your tutor?"

Stephen rolled his eyes as he set up his punching bag. "Hardly. The telekinesis I do know is a combination of learned techniques and practical experience. Monica was light years ahead of anything I could ever hope to accomplish in that regard. Even Victor couldn't do the stuff she could."

"Why is that?"

"Because his mental energy didn't work that way. Neither does mine. My grandfather reportedly got more telekinetic as he aged…" Stephen stopped the story, took a deep breath, and reminded himself that some things should not be discussed at this point. "I'm getting sidetracked. The reason none of us could do what she could do was that our minds don't work that way. You're a good example. You're clairvoyant, but as your powers work now, you can't cloud someone's mind. Now, that's partially because you've had no training in mind clouding, but also partially because even if you were trained, you'd likely find it a lot harder than I do because your psychic energy is receptive and visually oriented--your mind pulls in the necessary information from surrounding thoughts and life energies to form clairvoyant impressions--whereas mine is projective and aurally oriented and thus very suited to the techniques necessary to project mind-clouding hypnotic suggestions over a broad area to blanket every mind in the vicinity. I can do telekinetic things--push things, grab small items, even give an approaching enemy a good, hard shove…" He gave the punching bag a mental smack to punctuate the point. "…but it takes focus to turn my normally sweeping, broad, outward-flowing energies into a tangible force that can actually physically affect things. I've met a good many adepts with at least minimal telekinetic abilities, and Marpa Tulku has an incredible ability to manifest any form of psychic power imaginable and do it to perfection, but Monica remains the most powerful natural telekinetic I've ever encountered."

"So, did she whack your knuckles like those Catholic school nuns did?"

"Did she ever."

Stephen came into the conservatory that Victor had converted into a home classroom and sat at the table across from his new teacher. This was it, the start of the promised accelerated home schooling plan that would pump his brain full of knowledge and have him finished with his schooling in a matter of less than four years. But school was still school, and Stephen was still twelve. Those two things together were enough of an obstacle to thwart even the most determined of educational forces.

Except when said force was telekinetic extraordinaire Monica Kiernan. She gave him an icy I-will-outlast-you smile and clasped her hands in front of her. "You are very smart," she began.

"Thank you," Stephen said, his tone full of confidence.

"You're welcome. I want to acknowledge that fact up front because there's no sense in tap-dancing around it. You are supergenius-level smart, you know it, and you don't care who else knows it. You also don't care for anything that might possibly paint you as not being as smart as you'd like people to think you are. That's your problem. You're the boy king. The brat prince. You never work in schools, because they can't keep up with how your brain works, and they don't acknowledge you as much as your ego demands." Her smile turned menacing as she leaned over the table at him. "So we're going to solve that problem starting right now. Right now, you have my complete and undivided attention. I am going to take you by the throat and shove knowledge down your gullet if that is what it takes. And let me make it clear that the only thing that distinguishes me from your other teachers is that I'm never taking my eyes off you, and I am not even a little bit intimidated by your temper or your telepathy, and you have at this point not done or said anything that makes me even slightly impressed by you."

Stephen tried to give a charming smile. "No. That distinguished you from all but one of my teachers."

"You're real smart, all right. For the next four hours, you're also mine." She handed him a textbook, a middle-school book on World History. "Let's begin."

Four hours after having his brain flooded with half of the textbook that was still lying open before him, Stephen sat exhausted at the table, not even aware that Monica had left.

And that was when he felt a cold prick at his throat. "School's out," his uncle's voice hissed. "Now you're mine."

Stephen tossed the table in front of him over and moved with it, away from the blade. He snatched up the nearest thing, which happened to be a large vase, and threw it at his uncle, who knocked it aside, shattering it.

Stephen ran through the house, Victor chasing him all the way.

Monica looked over his creative writing essay, her expression showing just a trace of frustration. "Not good enough," she finally said.

"Why not?" Stephen demanded.

"The wording is wrong for what I asked you to convey." She pointed to a single sentence. "'Agreeable' is not the right word. 'Satisfying' is a better word for that sentence."

"What's the difference?" Stephen retorted. "They mean the same thing."

"They do not. Agreeable indicates that something is only better than a worse choice. Satisfying means that something is more enjoyable, that something has a lasting effect."

"Oh, come on. It's not like the sentence is any different by changing one word."

"One word!" Monica spat. "One word can change the world. One word written in the right place can inspire. One word written in haste can destroy. Legal teams spend an entire day going over the words on reams and reams of paper looking for a single badly-worded phrase that could send a man to jail or free a man from death row. The world turns on words, Stephen! The universe began with a word! And you're not only smart enough to know that, you're smart enough to care! And anybody who ignores what he knows he should respect for the sake of apathy frankly pisses me off!"

Stephen recoiled.

Monica tossed the blue composition book down on the desk in disgust.

It slid across the table and brought itself in front of Stephen, where it folded its pages back one by one until a blank one was sitting open before him. Then, his pen pressed itself into his writing hand, and its cap went flying.

Monica didn't even take her eyes off Stephen as she flicked her fingers outward, then snapped them shut on the pen cap that had jumped off the floor into her hand. She slammed it down on the table in front of him and glared at him so hard that he swore she'd taken lessons from his uncle. "Now, start over! And this time, get it right!"

Stephen slammed into the mat back first, knocked over yet again by Victor's aggressive self-defense training.

Victor was looking down at him in smug triumph. "Start over. And this time, get it right."

Monica slapped the worksheet down. "The second largest country that produces lentils is Canada, not Korea."

Stephen groaned, annoyed at her never-ending series of pop quizzes and in-depth exercises. "All a part of the service at Monica's house of useless knowledge."

"Cranston Industries holds patents on agricultural supplies, farming equipment, soil supplements, engineered plant embryos. I'd think you'd want to know a bit about supply and demand, including who creates the supply and who creates the demand. There are two less wrongly answered questions today than yesterday. You're improving."

Stephen rolled his eyes. "Monica, stop, you're too much."

She gave him that glare with her ice-blue eyes and pushed a fresh composition book in front of him once more. "Now, do it again. And this time, get it right."

Stephen took a second pick out of his mouth and kept fiddling with the lock before him.

Victor blew an airhorn right behind him. "Time's up. The guard has come around the corner. You've been spotted. Do it again. And this time, get it right."

"Which one of them was tougher?" Sarah inquired.

"My answer at the time would have depended on what day you asked me that question," Stephen admitted as he paused between tales told while pounding the stuffing out of the punching bag before him. "Let's just say I had no desire to encounter either of them in a dark alley. And that was before I awakened." He shook his head. "I thought the pressure was on before my awakening. Let's just say I had no idea what pressure really was."

"We have an agreement," Monica told Victor sharply. "6 days a week, two four-hour sessions a day, no vacations, no breaks. And now you want him to have a 'summer vacation'?"

"He needs the time off," Victor asserted. "If you're worried about your salary, Ms. Kiernan, rest assured you'll be well compensated during the break."

"Compensation isn't the point, Mr. Cranston, and we both know that. If he's allowed to be off for three months, he may never get back into the rhythm of this again. He's only just now starting to make the kind of progress we both know he's capable of, and if he steps away now…"

"He's two days at most away from his awakening."

That statement stopped Monica cold. "Wow. I knew he was having more problems with headaches and short tempers lately, but I had no idea. Why didn't you say that in the first place?"

"Because it's not something one generally advertises."

"One also doesn't generally base one's doctorate on a study of such phenomena, either, another reason it would have been extremely useful for me to know this." She sighed. "We are in this together, Victor, whether we like it or not."

Victor raised an eyebrow. "Quite a bit of familiarity you're displaying there, Ms. Kiernan."

"I watched my older sister die during her awakening. It's not an experience I ever want to have again. Unfortunately, you can't always get what you want."

Now Victor was intrigued. "How many of your study subjects met similar fates?"

She looked away. "Three in the past five years. The last one never made it to 12." She looked back at Victor. "Do what you have to do to get him through this. I'll be here when he's ready to start again."

"I'll have him back before Labor Day."

"Good. Then neither of us will have to explain to the state school board why he's not in school." She gathered her briefcase and study materials. "Give him my best."

Victor nodded his agreement.

Monica left the room.

Victor waited until he heard the door close downstairs. "You can come out now, Stephen. You're not that good at hiding."

Stephen quietly slipped out from behind the curtain. "Two days?"

"At most." He checked his watch. "Andrew's packed you a small bag, and Shrevnitz is probably pulling up in the drive as we speak. Let's go."

Stephen couldn't help shivering as he followed his uncle out of the room.

"Wow." Sarah shook her head. "That's almost less warning than you gave me."

"In some ways, that's better," Stephen remarked. "You had almost no time to think about it. I'd been expecting it for months, and every headache felt like it was the heralding trumpet." He took a moment to wipe the sweat from his face before returning to pounding the bag. "But, as hard as it was, it was pretty much a breakthrough for me personally. Victor and Monica pounded me harder than ever, but now I felt like I could pound back on a more even playing field. Or, at least, so I thought."

Monica snuck up behind him and covered his eyes. "Guess who."

Stephen smiled. "You're early."

"And you're ahead in your homework for once." She handed him a notebook. "You handed this in yesterday with your other workbooks. I read it."

Stephen blushed. "That…I mean, you weren't meant to see that. It wasn't anything, it was just…"

"It was excellent," Monica stated. "This is the best thing you've ever written. It's…I mean, I could barely get through this without weeping. It was so…deep, so poignant. How did you come up with this?"

"I don't know. Stories about loss, hope, redemption, protection…everybody relates to them, because in some shape or form, everybody is guilty about something, everybody hopes for something, everybody wants someone looking out for them."

He looked up at her. She had a tear forming in one eye, and still looked beautiful.

"Stephen, you have a gift for words. You could do anything. Write the Great American Novel. Win a Pulitzer Prize. Create huge volumes of academic study material. I'm serious, you could do anything if you put your mind to it. Promise me. Promise me you'll do something with it."

"I promise."

Stephen walked into the training room. Victor was waiting for him, bo in hand.

Stephen went to get his. It wasn't there.

Stephen was confused. "Where's my…"

Victor answered with a sudden attack.

"Ack!" He dove to the left just as Victor's staff came crashing down. "What the Hell are you doing?"

Victor nearly cut him in half as he ducked away and belatedly realized this was today's lesson. He bolted.

He had nearly managed to get to the stairs when the staff came down and cracked his heels. Stephen fell to the floor, pain flashing through his legs, and he could hear the staff whirling.

Stephen threw himself away from his uncle, rolled, and came up on his feet. For a heartbeat he froze, trying to decide if he had really done that, decided he had, and settled into posture, the stances feeling almost as easy as breathing.

Victor gave a brief smile of approval. Then he spun the staff and started lunging again.

Stephen was bleeding and beaten on the floor inside thirty seconds.

"You're dead," Victor intoned. "Promise me you won't be so impressed with yourself next time you learn to do something new."

Stephen gave a low moan. "I promise."

"You're not concentrating," Monica snapped.

Stephen came back to himself and shook his head clear. "Sorry. Thinking."

"Think about this. Spanish is a good language to learn if you're going to run a megacorp. A substantial number of low-level jobs are manned by Latinos, a lot of them working for minimum wage. They're already going to resent you because you're a rich gringo, so the least you could do is talk to them in their language."

Stephen nodded, thinking of the advantage that The Shadow could gain by being able to speak Spanish in New York slums.

Monica noticed his gaze drifting. She glanced behind him, and suddenly a notebook jumped off the table and smacked him in the back of the head.

In a heartbeat Stephen had flipped the table up, put his back to it, and was holding the nearest pen in his hand.

Monica started. Her charge was breathing hard, his eyes were wild. "Whoa! Easy!"

Stephen relaxed and set the table upright. "This is pointless," Stephen told her as though nothing had happened. "The books can teach me words, sentence structure, but not how to understand people who are talking, or people who are emotional, or people with accents…"

Monica thought about it for a moment, then smiled. "Get your jacket. We're going for a drive."

"Aw…your first date," Sarah teased.

Stephen gave her a look that would freeze lava. "As if."

Sarah paid it no mind. "So, did you take her out for Chinese food like you usually do with women you attempt to charm?"

Stephen gave a wry smile. "In a way…"

Forty minutes later, teacher and student were in Chinatown. "Why are we here?" Stephen asked. "I thought today's lesson was Spanish."

"Yes, and last week's lesson was Mandarin." Monica gave him a cheeky grin. "Let's see what you remembered. You are forbidden from speaking English for the next three hours." She pulled out a slip of paper. "Here's a To Do list. I will pick you up at two o'clock."

Sarah chuckled. "How'd you do?"

Stephen responded in Mandarin.

"And what does that mean?" Sarah asked him easily.

"It means: My uncle was surprised to see what I brought home from school that day.'"

Sarah laughed. "I think I'd like Monica."

Stephen smile became sad. "Yeah. You probably would have."

Sarah's heart stopped. "Would have?"

"Yeah." He sighed and started hammering the bag again. "I was having a bad day. A bad few weeks, actually--I took the SAT, the GED, a half-dozen AP exams, and filled out a few dozen college applications in the span of less than a month, all while I was still trying to master the finer points of defending myself against what I aspired to become. Things were not proceeding smoothly. And they were about to get a lot worse."

Stephen slammed into the mat, the breath knocked out of him yet again.

Victor put the staff at Stephen's throat. "Twelve weeks," he said harshly. "Twelve weeks I've been putting you down with that move. You should be able to do it yourself by now. At the very least you should be able to dodge it."

Stephen was gasping pitifully for air. "I know."

Victor shook his head. "I'm afraid this isn't going to work out for you, Stephen." With that, he turned and walked away.

Stephen lay on the mat for a while, unmoving. After the clock in the hall chimed he found the will to sit upright and drag himself up the stairs to clean up for afternoon schooling.

But by the time he reached the middle landing, he couldn't go on any more. He sank to the floor, plopping himself down on a step, then lowered his head into his hands and sobbed in frustration.

It felt like an eternity passed, but it had merely been ten minutes, interrupted only by Monica sitting down next to him on the step and giving him a hug. She pulled his chin up to look at her and gave him her best maternal smile. "Whatever it is, it can't be that bad."

Stephen sniffed, smiled up her, and started to get to his feet. "Lost track of time. Sorry I'm not cleaned up…"

She put a hand on his shoulder and urged him to stay seated. "It's O.K. I rushed over here because I wanted to tell you the good news right away."

"Great, I could use some good news. What's up?"

She fished through her papers. "Well, first off, your GED score came in. You passed it with flying colors. You got the highest score in the state in at least the last five years that we could find on record."

Stephen blushed. "Wow. Thanks. Now I can finally finish filling out all those other college applications…"

"No need."

"Why?"

She held up a letter. "Dear Mr. Cranston: Columbia University is honored to extend to you an invitation to join the incoming freshman class…"

Stephen beamed as he snatched the letter away from her. "I got in? On that application?"

"Yep. Your AP test scores more than covered any doubts they had about your pre-tutoring school records. Once your GED came through, that was the last of the formalities. You did it, Stephen. You'll be in college just after your 16th birthday."

"Just like you promised." Stephen's smile faltered. "So I guess this is goodbye."

"Oh of course not, honey. I work for the university, remember? We'll still see each other, I just won't be your teacher any more." She gave him that smile. "Besides, once you meet all those Ivy League girls you'll forget about me." That smile again. "First freshman mixer is two weeks after classes start. Plenty of time to find a date."

Stephen's smile dropped. "Ah. Right."

"Nervous?"

"Yeah. I don't do well around girls, or in classrooms. God help me when I'm stuck with both."

"I find it hard to believe you'll be nervous around people."

"Monica, do you know how many beautiful women I've spent any amount of time with? You. I can't even dance."

That surprised her. "Really? Well, I'll tell you what. I've got to take these to your uncle. Then I've got some other paperwork to fill out. We'll do a light review day today to preview some of the stuff you'll encounter at Columbia, and I'll be back tomorrow morning to teach you to dance."

Stephen's heart leaped into his throat. "Really?"

"Yeah." She beamed at him. "You've got to know how to dance if you're going to be a university student." She gave him another hug, and their foreheads touched. Monica winced slightly as they did. "You have a headache."

He smiled ruefully. "Yeah. I get them every so often, especially when I'm overstressed. Like today."

"Let me help," Monica offered, and slipped into his mind before he could react.

Stephen gasped. This was amazing. His uncle had done this before, as had the Tulku, but this felt different, it was warmer somehow. He could feel her in his mind, and she was guiding his power…

Guiding it to…

You're The Shadow.

That is why you must remain ever vigilant. That is why this battle is not for the weak. That is the world that The Shadow lives in. Still think you can do it?

I WILL NOT BE DENIED THIS!

My mission! My redemption.

Hahahahahahahahaaaa….

Blam! Blam!

Mom…wake up…

I won't take it easy on you…

This is my destiny…

Monica ripped herself away from his mind with a shriek.

Stephen stumbled away, horrified at what she'd seen, scared of what his uncle would say, scared of what would happen next, scared of what she would do.

Monica put a hand to her head, working it all through. Once it had all registered, she reached out and hugged him tightly. "Stephen…oh, God, Stephen…"

He hugged her back.

She broke first and looked at him. "You've chosen such a difficult path for your life. Why? You could do so much more…you could do so much in any other field…"

"This is my field," Stephen whispered back to her. "It's the only field I've ever wanted. It's the thing that drives me to keep going." He looked nervous. "Are you mad at me?"

She gathered herself and forced a smile. "No."

"You can't tell anyone," he said with a panicked edge in his voice.

She tried to look reassuring. "Who would I tell?" She gave a light sigh, then gathered up her papers. "Look, why don't we call it a day today? I'll go give these papers to your uncle, and we'll start fresh tomorrow morning with some real life lessons you need before you start college."

He was still panicking as they both got to their feet, not sure he wanted to let her out of his sight after what had just happened. "You aren't going to…you know, wash your hands of me?"

She gave him that smile. "Never. After all, even superheroes need to know how to dance." She gave his shoulder a pat, then descended the stairs and headed for Victor's study.

Stephen watched her go, a feeling of foreboding filling his brain.

"Something tells me that didn't exactly work out as planned," Sarah noted.

"Yeah." He looked frustrated.

She was dying to hear the rest of it. "So…?"

"So, two days later, I was still waiting for my dance lesson. And I was getting tired of waiting."

Stephen was worried. Monica wasn't answering her office phone, and she hadn't been by in two days. He called Shrevvy and had him drive him to Monica's house, and now he was racing up the front steps. Once he had decided that something was wrong, he couldn't waste a second to check on her. He pounded the door.

A moment later, the door opened, and she looked a little winded and a little confused. "Yes?"

"Monica," he sighed in relief.

She looked even more confused. "I'm sorry, do I know you?"

"How could she not recognize you?" Sarah asked.

Stephen gave her an almost menacing look. "Ah. Never described that particular Shadow skill to you, have I?"

She looked at him, somewhat chilled. "This is a skill? Victor did something to her?"

"Yes, it's a skill…and yes, he did."

Stephen stormed into Victor's study and slugged him across the jaw. "You monster! You sick freak!"

Victor recovered from the momentary surprise and rubbed his jaw. "I take it you went to see Monica."

"What did she ever do to you?" Stephen roared at his uncle.

"She did nothing. You did."

"What?"

"What were you thinking, letting an outsider into your head?"

"She wasn't an outsider!"

"Yes, she was. She wasn't in on the secret, so if you don't tell her, she doesn't find out, and everyone's a winner."

"She would have protected the secret!"

"Why? Just because you asked her to?"

Stephen's eyes blazed, and his angry mind shot out a telekinetic blast at his uncle.

Victor fired back, and the two thought waves collided with more force than Victor had ever felt from Stephen before, judging by the surprise in Victor's eyes. "You really don't want to do that," Victor's Shadow voice warned.

"Oh, yes, I do." And with that, Stephen grabbed a fireplace poker and swung it at his uncle.

Victor dove to the side, then snatched up a cane out of the umbrella stand and whipped out a saber sheathed within the cane.

The two of them fought harder than they'd ever tussled in the training room. The clashing of metal echoed through the house, interrupted only by the grunting of the two men as they each swung at the other.

"This is a pointless exercise," Victor warned. "You're wasting your time and energy."

"Let me be the judge of that," Stephen retorted, and then whacked the poker hard on Victor's forearm. The next blow knocked away the saber, and then Stephen swept Victor's legs out from under him and stomped on the prone man's open hand.

Victor looked impressed between the grimaces of pain. "You finally learned how to actually do that move."

Stephen gave a quick side glance to the sword, and it jumped off the floor and landed handle-first in his open hand. He put the blade against Victor's jugular. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't slit your throat right now."

"Because she was going to tell someone."

Stephen froze, then pressed the saber a little harder against Victor's neck. "That's a lie."

"No, it's not." Victor's eyes widened and darkened.

Suddenly Stephen was blasted backward against the far wall, and he crumpled to the floor.

An instant later, Victor had a foot planted on his chest. "Done with your little temper tantrum now? Shall we continue this discussion in a slightly more civilized manner?"

Stephen gave his uncle a death glare but said nothing.

Victor offered a hand and pulled Stephen to his feet. "She was worried about you. She was worried you were going to get hurt, she wanted to help, so she was going to go for another opinion on what to do." He put his hands on the boy's shoulders. "I heard it in her thoughts when she was giving me all your great college paperwork, and I had to stop her."

"Who was she going to?"

"Her husband."

Stephen collapsed into a chair in numb shock. "Monica was married?"

Victor gave a wry smile. "Secrets are a prerequisite for having something to do with us, aren't they?"

Stephen couldn't answer.

Victor came around the table and sat next to him. "I'm sorry, Stephen. I didn't have a choice. She was your friend, and my friend, too. But she was going to tell the secret. The secret that you let slip. You can't do that, Stephen. It isn't just your life, it's mine too, and every agent under you at stake, for the sake of telling someone you had a crush on, someone you didn't even really know." He looked at his nephew. "She was proud of you, Stephen. You turned from an apathetic brat to a voracious student for her, and she was proud of you. It's nobody's fault, she just found out something that nobody can ever know."

Stephen nodded. "Yeah."

Victor put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm proud of you, too."

Stephen looked up. There were tears in his eyes. He wiped them away angrily. "That doesn't help right now."

"I know." He gave a sigh. "This is a life that is as difficult as it is dangerous. My father nearly blew Margo Lane's memory away when she discovered his secret. Protecting the secret is as much a part of the mission as fighting the evil that dwells in the shadows. I'm sorry you had to learn that so soon." He reached into his pocket and extracted a cigar, snipped the end, then lit the cigar. "So, you proved me wrong in a lot of ways over the past few years. You didn't give up in your schooling. And you didn't give up in your training."

"Nice of you to admit that," Stephen grumped.

"We'll have to do something about that attitude," Victor remarked. "I'm not sure I want that attitude by my side on a mission."

Stephen turned to Victor. "What?"

"As a present for my sixteenth birthday, my father took me out on my first Shadow mission. I thought I might continue the tradition tomorrow night, if you think you're up to it."

Stephen's eyes lit. "I'm ready."

Victor smiled a mysterious smile. "I know."

"You forgave him that fast after what he did to her?"

"I was pretty mad at him for a few days," Stephen admitted. "He was right, though. Monica wasn't a part of the family, she wasn't a part of the mission, she wasn't even an agent. The secret isn't about trust, or about loyalty, or about friendship…the secret is an absolute."

"Then…why didn't he wipe my mind?" Sarah asked. "Or for that matter, Peter or MJ?"

"Because we made a deal. I would never tell anyone the secret, on the proviso that if I ever let it slip inadvertently, I'd be the one who did the memory wipe. Peter and MJ and you weren't accidental slips, they were choices. So were you. But even choices can be un-chosen." He gave her a look that raised the hair on her neck.

She tried to still her chilled nerves. "I still can't believe that you can even do that."

"Why? Because you think it's impossible? Or because you know it's possible and that scares the Hell out of you?"

She didn't answer.

"I learned the technique for myself not too long after I started going out on missions. It's a necessary survival skill when your effectiveness depends on no one being able to see you, recognize you, or remember any trace of you." He took a swig of water and wiped his brow. "It is an incredibly difficult thing to wipe a memory of something when there are layers to it. When one thought connects to another, you have to block them both, or one could bring the other back. Monica's knowledge was connected on three levels--the Cranston telepathy, The Shadow, and the fact that she was teaching me. If he eliminated one, the other two could bring it back to her. So he had to eliminate it all. He gave her a new set of memories, and her own amazingly uncanny mind filled in details. She'd had us sign nondisclosure forms so none of her friends knew whom she was teaching, but she had a very detailed and thorough set of case study notes about our time together. Victor destroyed all of those and replaced them with detailed but completely misdirected case notes cribbed from some of her earlier studies. That was the last of the loose ends to be closed."

"Still…she was your friend."

"Yeah. One of the few people in my life I've ever called 'friend'. But you know what? Most of the so-called 'friends' I made later in life came from rich families, and they trade loyalties and loves like trading cards--you can't rely on them. The important friends I had were those like Monica, and even she would have given the secret away had Victor not stopped her. I got by without them. I got by apart from the crowd. It wasn't out of fear, or insecurity, it was just simpler, and in a life like mine, you need to keep other things fairly hassle-free. And if I made friends, I couldn't tell them any of the important stuff. I had Victor for that. He was my friend. You know why? Because he was like Monica. He wasn't the least bit impressed by me. I had to work to impress him, and he was always in my foxhole. He was…"

And then the emotions welled back up again. He turned away. "Would you excuse me a moment?"

Sarah wasn't sure that was such a good idea. "Um…"

"Now."

Sarah nodded and left the room.

Stephen waited until she was gone, then slumped to the floor and rocked himself for a moment, trying not to lose what little control he still had.

He stayed that way for almost twenty minutes when footsteps on the stairs interrupted him. "You still there?" Sarah called out.

"Yes," Stephen responded, getting to his feet and taking another swig from his water bottle.

She poked her head into the room. "The doorbell just rang, and I feel like somebody's trying to poke inside my brain…"

"That would be Marpa Tulku."

"The Tulku?" Sarah said, surprised.

"Yeah."

"O.K., I'm going to head out and let you talk to him."

"Stick around. You really should meet him."

"No. That's O.K."

He gave a curious gaze at her. "You're scared to meet The Tulku, aren't you?"

"Yes," she admitted.

He nodded his understanding. "Go."

Sarah fled the room.

Stephen waited a moment, then spoke to the air. "If you were waiting for her to leave, she's gone now."

The Marpa Tulku swirled into visibility at the bottom of the stairs. "Hello, Stephen."

Stephen bowed to him. "Welcome, Tulku."

"Rise, please. How are you faring?"

"I've been better," Stephen admitted. "I didn't see you at the funeral."

"I could not get here in time. I am sorry, it was unavoidable."

"Probably a good thing. There would have been questions about what connection Victor had to a Buddhist holy man."

"Well, he was one of the biggest donors to the Tibetan Freedom Society. I am so sorry, Stephen."

Stephen was getting really tired of hearing that phrase lately, but now was not the time to lose his cool. "Thank you."

"Would you like to talk about it?"

"Tried that already."

"With Sarah, I take it?"

He nodded.

"She was certainly in a hurry to leave all of a sudden. Is it possible that she's afraid to meet me?"

"Yes, for some reason."

"She means a lot to you."

Stephen ignored the comment. "She wanted to hear all my childhood stories."

"And you told them."

"I started to. Then I remembered that I don't do that sort of thing. I don't talk to people about that sort of thing."

"You don't want to finish the story?"

"Not really, no."

"I think you should."

"I handle my emotions in my own way, Tulku. I control them, I focus them, and then I take them out on whatever bad guy happens to be within my range. I don't want to talk about it."

"Then I came for nothing."

"Well, we could go out for pizza if you're into that sort of thing."

The Tulku laughed. "I think not. But it is a long trip back to the mountains tonight, and I would like to stay the night, if you have no objection."

"Fine." He turned to the weight bench and set up a barbell, then started a new round of chest press repetitions.

The Tulku simply sat quietly, his gaze never leaving the young man whose mind was practically screaming in pain.

"You're going to keep staring at me until I say something, right?" Stephen said as he pressed the weights up and down.

"I have far more patience than you can possibly imagine," The Tulku answered calmly. "Not to mention 22 generations of practice."

Stephen sighed, put the barbell back on its struts, then sat up and turned to the Tulku. "His mind was betraying him with its power. Andrew told me. His mind was overloading from the sheer power in his head; it would have killed him eventually. My grandfather was superhuman, and his brain tears his body down till he wastes away in a hospital bed. My uncle was superhuman, and he gets killed in his sleep without ever seeing it coming, his own body starting to fail from the power in his head. All the things they could do, and they die in bed, asleep, instead of on their feet."

"Yes."

"My God, Tulku. I hope I die before I get old." Stephen turned back to the punching bag and started pounding on it again.

"That is not the right answer."

"Then what is?" Stephen felt the rage and pain mixing again. "I live with the notion that the next mission could be my last. And that's fine, because if it is my last, then it's my last, no one else's. Victor taught me that, too, and it was a hard lesson to learn, because there were nights after I found out about his 'business' that I laid in bed waiting for him to come home, trying like Hell not to wonder whether he'd come home at all. I finally learned to accept that when your number's up, it's up. I'm fine with that. The things I do I could never do if I cared whether or not I died. But Victor, who'd earned the right to grow old in peace but who spent his last days struggling with an enemy none of us can fight off, pays the price of my arrogance and my indecision instead of me and takes a blade through his aorta in my place. This mission claims everything in my life, Tulku. The attacks come not just from outsiders, but from our own power. Our weapon is what claims us. Is this the infamous Cranston Curse--no matter what we do, it'll never be enough? How am I supposed to just pick up and go on from this when in the long run, it makes no difference because I'll just grow old one day and my own mind will betray me? Why shouldn't I just give up and let it take me now?"

"Because you are not meant to be the last."

Stephen gave an angry and contemptuous Shadow laugh as he once more attacked the punching bag with fury. "Tulku, just how stupid do you think I am, anyway? You honestly think I'm going to inflict this insane quest on another? Khan, Kingpin, supervillains…this has to end sometime, and it's going to end with me. You think I would wish this life on anybody? Let alone on my son?" He froze mid-punch at his own slip--Freudian or not--and laughed. "My son. Ha! Would you listen to me?"

"It is not such a foolish thought as you might think."

He pounded the bag with new fury. "Yes it is. I have no family left. There's a good reason for that. It's that same reason that would allow me never bring another into this family Hell."

"Not even Sarah?"

He stopped punching again and rolled his eyes at the monk with the thousand-year-old psyche. "Tulku," he said in a more subdued mental tone, "you sound like Peter. I don't feel anything like that for her."

"You would never actually admit it to yourself because you believe you are cursed. Everyone you have ever loved has left you, usually violently."

"I cannot lose anyone else violently."

"What makes you believe that you would?"

"History. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result every time."

"There are some things you simply have to accept on faith. Sometimes faith is all we have in life." He looked up the stairs. "She will not be back as long as she thinks I am here."

"Maybe it might be best if you did stay," Stephen noted wryly.

"And maybe it might be best if you stopped trying to hard to push everyone away."

Stephen gave a nod. "Touché."

Marpa Tulku smiled wistfully at him. "You remind me so much of your grandfather. Neither of you felt worthy of what great gifts you had been given. Your confidence in what you can do is strong, but not so much of who you are inside. There are others who can see the goodness within you. Perhaps you should not just allow them to do so, but to accept that they do and try to see it in yourself."

Stephen nodded, then turned back to the punching bag. He went at it again for about ten minutes, when his vision blurred suddenly.

"Have you slept since Victor died?" The Tulku asked.

"No. I'm fine. I'll sleep when I'm dead." He drew back his fist to throw another punch, then felt the world spin and his mind begin to cloud. He turned to his family's greatest teacher. "Oh, I don't believe this…"

The Tulku gave a serene smile. "Pleasant dreams, Stephen."

Stephen started to turn away, then overbalanced backwards and collapsed.

The Tulku caught him and carried the unconscious man back up the stairs.

The world was dark, cold, and filled with people whose hearts were just as dark and cold. Gunfire blazed all around. The Shadow and Spiderman were firing back with everything they had in their arsenals.

"I can't hold them!" Spiderman shouted, webbing villains with one hand and flinging manhole covers at oncoming vehicles with the other.

"I'm coming!" The Shadow called back, reloading his guns and turning to help his partner.

A familiar voice cried out in pain. He turned toward the sound.

Victor was crawling toward him, blood flowing from a knife wound to the belly. "I couldn't stop him…," he whispered.

"Hang on!" The Shadow cried out, rushing toward his last surviving relative.

A woman's scream filled the air. He looked around frantically…

…and saw Khan dangling Sarah over the edge of the building, her hands bound by a silken cord whose end he was holding in his hands. "You cannot be everything to everyone, Ying Ko," Khan taunted. "Choose what is most important to you."

"Don't do it!" The Shadow said, his tone becoming more frantic.

"Help me!" shouted Spiderman as the criminals closed in.

"Help me!" whispered Victor as his life force ebbed away.

"Help me!" cried Sarah as Khan let go of the cord with one hand.

"Help! Help! Help!" the voices all mingled together.

And then, as one, they all fell victim to the terror that was preying on them.

And all The Shadow could do was watch. And scream.

Stephen opened his eyes and gasped for air.

"Sh-h," a familiar voice soothed. "You were having a nightmare."

Stephen blinked, then let out a moan of pain as every move was fire through his limbs. He turned his head and saw Sarah. "Am I dead?" he croaked out.

"Not from where I'm sitting."

Stephen groaned and rolled his eyes upward. "O.K. You've got me for another day." He sat up. "What happened?"

"According to what I was told, you threw a punch and knocked yourself out without making contact," Sarah noted dryly. "That's quite a feat, even for you."

"You were right to be nervous about the Tulku. Never trust a psychic who knows more than you do."

"I'll keep that in mind," she deadpanned.

He rubbed his eyes, trying to reorient himself. "How long have you been sitting there?"

"About ten minutes."

He couldn't see the clock, but the fading light through the windows gave him some vague idea of the time of day. "It's late…you should go home."

"Actually, I just got back."

"Back? Where did you go?"

"Home. You've been out for almost twenty hours."

"Huh." He gave a mental sweep of the immediate area to determine whether or not there was anyone else nearby. "And the Tulku?"

"According to Andrew, he carried you up here to your bedroom, tucked you in, napped in the corner until dawn, and went back to the mountain. Andrew says there is a standing invitation for both of us should we ever want to come up."

"You still haven't met him?"

"No."

"Chicken."

"Ghoul."

"Snoop."

"Psycho."

Stephen threw up his hands, losing interest. "What time is it?"

"6:30…P.M."

"It'll be dark soon. I should get ready for a night patrol…"

"It will be dark in 43 minutes," Sarah reported. "Peter is already patrolling, and Moe has a team of five agents working your usual route. We organized it to give you a day off."

"Why?"

"Because you deserve it, because quite frankly I don't trust you not to get yourself killed out of self-pity, and because I want to hear the end of the story."

"Later."

"Well, look at it this way, you could either have a shower and a meal, or you could have the next 42 minutes of me bugging you about it."

Stephen glared. "You wouldn't."

Sarah smiled.

Stephen rolled his eyes. "Of course you would. Why ask?"

"Stephen, if you can get out of bed without groaning, you can go on patrol."

"Deal." Stephen peeked under the covers, gave himself a head-to-toe appraisal and was gratified to see that he was still dressed in his exercise clothes, then threw back the covers and stood up.

The overworked muscles spasmed violently halfway into the stand and he grabbed at the bedside table for support.

Sarah smiled merrily. "Go get a shower, then you get the privilege of having dinner with me, and if you're very good I won't do the ditz act all night long."

Stephen nodded and started stretching out the muscles. "O.K. But not yet. My muscles are strained and they don't want to move. I have to get them willing to move again."

"O.K. Back to the gym?"

"Nah. Shower first, them maybe a swim. Something low intensity."

"I'll wait."

Stephen got up, and started moving mechanically.

Sarah followed. "Oh, and you had about thirty phone calls while you were out of it, two of which I think were worth mentioning. Andrew gave me the messages while you slept."

Stephen glanced over his shoulder. "Andrew's giving you my messages?"

"Yep."

Stephen shook his head. Didn't care. "Tell me later."

"Actually, there's one from the Cranston Industries board that I think you really need to take…"

"I said later."

Sarah backed off slightly. "O.K."

Stephen gave a sigh, trying to strike a balance between his need to be alone and his desire to be anything but alone. "Wait for me downstairs. A man needs some privacy."

Sarah decided now was not the time to remind Stephen that if she really wanted to, she could still see him from another room. "O.K."

The two parted company and left the bedroom through separate doors.

The phone rang for the umpteenth time in the past gazillion hours. Sarah looked around for it and was frustrated not to be able to find a ringing phone anywhere in the parlor.

The phone stopped ringing. A moment later, Andrew appeared at the parlor door. "Miss Branson, Mr. Parker is on the line."

"Tell him Stephen's busy."

"He asked for you, Miss Branson."

Sarah looked confused.

"Is there anything else you need?" Andrew asked her.

"Just a phone…"

Andrew lifted the lid off an elegantly carved box on an end table. "Anything else, madam?"

"Coffee, please. It's probably going to be a long night." Sarah took the phone. "Peter?"

"How is he?"

"Clinically dead," Sarah reported. "When he isn't talking he's a zombie."

"Has he been talking much?"

"Intermittently. Mostly about Victor. His training and such."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"Amazing." His voice went a touch more distant as he spoke to somebody else in the room. "See what I mean, MJ? We can't do that."

"Do what?" she heard MJ answer.

"Get him to talk about anything lately," Peter continued his off-phone conversation.

"He's talking?" MJ asked incredulously.

"Peter," Sarah snapped, trying to bring him into focusing on one conversation at a time. "Just tell me. How do you handle Stephen?"

"Handle Stephen?" Peter mocked.

"Handle Stephen?" MJ's voice cackled in the background.

Sarah sighed. "Never mind."

"You might be better off trying to handle him yourself if he's actually been talking to you," Peter counseled.

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right. Was there a reason for this call, or are you just being nosy?"

"He hates being out of the loop, so I wanted to bring him back in for a minute. I intercepted a note from Cardona that he's just about to wrap the 'official' report on Victor's murder and needs to go over details with him. Since you're there, you can tell him."

"I don't think he needs to be going over anything related to Victor's death right about now."

"So, how do we hold Cardona at bay?"

She shrugged. "Got me."

"Think of something, because life is going on out here without him."

"Trust me, I think he knows that." She sighed. "But I'll think of something. Thanks." She hung up the phone and stared at it for a long time.

Andrew tapped on the doorframe in the parlor.

Sarah looked up.

"Your coffee, Miss Branson," Andrew indicated as he gestured with his eyes at the tray in his hands.

"Oh, right. I did ask for that." She sighed and leaned back on the couch.

Andrew poured a cup of coffee for the young woman and handed it to her. "Miss Branson, if I may impose for an opinion, do you believe that Stephen would be so inclined for dinner this evening?"

Sarah blinked. "I really don't know, Andrew. I don't think he feels like eating. He should, but he won't."

"Then if I may, Miss Branson, you are most welcome to have your meal here. Or if you are so inclined, I could provide you with a platter so that you could enjoy a meal for yourself."

Sarah blinked. "Thank you, but no. I'm not very hungry either."

Andrew looked disappointed, but got it under control. "As you wish. If you would like, however, you could make your preferences for meals or refreshments known to me for the next time you are here at mealtimes."

That took her a few seconds. "Andrew, are you asking me what my favorite food is?"

"If you wish to put it that way, Miss Branson."

Sarah smiled tiredly. "Cheeseburger and fries."

Andrew nodded. "Different from Pierre's normal area of expertise, but I am certain he could manage it."

"Pierre?"

"Mr. Cranston's chef. He's been…a bit disappointed at not being asked to prepare a meal for the new master of the house."

For the first time, Sarah realized that Stephen hadn't actually eaten a real non-commercially-prepared meal at Cranston Manor since Victor's death--MJ had brought cake that horrible night, and Stephen had ordered takeout the rest of the time. This was getting a little ridiculous. "Andrew, how did Victor handle Stephen?"

Andrew looked uncomfortable.

"It's O.K.," Sarah urged. "I won't tell him you're talking about him behind his back."

Andrew considered this, then replied. "It has been my experience, Miss Branson, that one does not handle Stephen when he is in a temper, one merely directs his energy to a more productive, or less directive use."

"I tried that. I got him talking. It was surreal, all this stuff came pouring out of him like he had to get it all out."

Andrew gave the situation some thought. "It seems, Miss Branson, that often the hardest part of leading a double life is the discretion that it demands. Mr. Cranston has always been private, preferring to let his actions give notice of his intentions to conversation. It has apparently become habit even when it is unnecessary. It is encouraging to see that he is talking to someone about his feelings at the moment."

"Yeah. Except that three times now he's changed his mind and tried to stop talking about it."

"Indeed, Miss Branson. As I said, one does not force his hand, only redirect his focus."

"His focus seems to be blaming himself for everything bad that has ever happened."

"If I may, Miss Branson, was this also the case when he was telling you of his history?"

Sarah paused. "No. No, he wasn't."

"But he was speaking at length, and with interest, or…focus?"

Sarah gave him a look. "Andrew…drop it, would you?"

Andrew resisted the temptation to roll his eyes at the somewhat capricious change of approval by the young woman. She was still the only person who had actually managed to shake Stephen out of his depression, however briefly, and that deserved some respect. "Of course. Do you think that Mr. Cranston would be interested in having a meal, either today or tomorrow? If the latter, than I could provide him with a protein shake or an energy drink to get him through the rest of the day; if the former, I would need to direct Pierre to start cooking soon, and the pantry is a bit sparse…"

"You're asking me to plan his meals?"

"Discretion requires that the house servants cannot merely ask something of the house master when he is clearly not amenable to being asked anything. But I have in the past observed that after weight training, he usually moves to the pool. If he is going to keep up that regimen, he needs some sustenance."

Sarah sighed. "O.K., well, I would like a chicken salad. I'll see if I can get Stephen to eat something. When we eat at the Cobalt Club he usually orders pasta in some kind of Alfredo sauce."

Andrew smiled lightly. "No burgers?"

Sarah laughed. "Not tonight."

"Very good, Miss." Andrew left the room.

After another mental search through the house and another round of wondering if she should just draw up a map of the house and be done with it, Sarah finally made her way through the basement to the indoor pool. Stephen was in the water, doing laps fast and hard. She gave a loud whistle.

He stopped for air at the end of the pool. "What?"

"Pierre's cooking pasta Alfredo for you. Don't make me go back and tell Andrew to have him to throw it away. I've always heard it's not good to tick off French chefs."

"Not hungry." He started swimming laps again.

Sarah gave another sharp whistle and waited for him to stop ignoring her. "Stephen, you've been working out for over half an hour, which was supposed to be a warm-up, just to get your limbs working again. Remember? I know you haven't eaten all day. I'm having a meal that your chef is preparing, on a menu your butler got me to make up. Get up here and eat it with me at least."

Stephen wiped the water out of his eyes and stared up at her. "He got you to make the menu?"

"Yep."

"And he got you to come in here and talk me into eating."

"Yep."

Stephen sighed and climbed out of the water. Having a full-time staff again was definitely something he was going to have to get used to.

Sarah handed him a towel, then noticed the blossoming bruises on his knuckles. "Those look nasty."

"They'll heal." Stephen towelled himself off.

Sarah looked him over. She couldn't help the way her stomach flipped a little. He was chiseled like a statue, every muscle was toned perfectly, but not like a bodybuilder...more like a track star. He bent over to dry off his legs and she licked her lips just a little…if it wasn't for the scars he'd look like something out of a magazine.

One scar in particular drew her eye. A vaguely circular one on his left thigh that looked like a huge mouth had taken a chomp on him. "Doberman attack?" She asked, proud of the way her voice held steady.

Stephen looked where she was pointing and grinned. "Kodiak bear."

"No way." Sarah burst out laughing. "New York drug lords are using bears instead of Dobermans now?"

"I wish, sometimes. No, this was during my training. Victor was teaching me to fly a helicopter…in Alaska."

Stephen gripped the controls with an iron grip and looked out over the snowcapped mountain. "Where are we anyway?"

His uncle sat in the co-pilot seat of the small two-person helicopter. "About forty miles from the nearest town."

"Not much help if I crash us," Stephen muttered.

"Then don't crash. Besides, we don't need help. That's what I've been teaching you all this time--how not to need help."

"I don't need help. I've got you."

"My help you should trust least of all…especially while I'm still training you." With that, Victor reached over, unbuckled Stephen's belt, and grabbed the controls, forcing them into a hard sideways tilt.

Surprised, Stephen struggled to grab onto something.

Victor gave him a telekinetic shove out of the canopy, and all of a sudden, Stephen was airborne.

Eighty feet later, he plunged into a mountain lake. The impact hurt, but a heartbeat later he was screaming up precious bubbles of air as the cold stabbed at him. He fought madly as his heavy clothing dragged him down. He managed to dislodge himself from his heavy overcoat, then realized in horror that he now had no idea which way was up…and he was rapidly running out of oxygen. Taking a chance, he stopped fighting the water for a moment and let what little air was left in his lungs provide buoyancy and direction.

A few seconds later he broke the surface and gulped air. Taking a moment to get his bearings, he swam for the shore, aware of the sound of the helicopter that was still hovering over him.

He reached the shore, and the cold knives started digging deeper. The wind was brutal. His brain was fogging, but he kept moving, jogging in place, and ripping his wet clothes off. Wet clothing increases the rate of body heat loss, he reminded himself. In extreme cold survival situations you're safer naked than in wet clothes. Not, of course, that you're necessarily any warmer.

The helicopter turned and flew off.

"Yeah, you'd better run!" he mentally screamed after it.

His uncle's Shadow laugh filled the air for a moment, then trailed off with the vanishing helicopter.

As the noise faded, Stephen looked around and caught a glimpse of himself in the lake's reflection.

The reflection was turning three shades of blue that weren't in the water itself. He could see his hands were shaking.

Focus. Find some way to get warm. Tumos work by redirecting heat and circulation to needed areas. But I need body heat to work with, and right now my body's so cold my blood's not circulating effectively. I'll be unable to move soon if I don't get some heat going to my limbs…

He found the steel-toed workboots he'd tossed aside in his mad rush to rid himself of his wet clothing. Scanning the water's edge, he started selecting a few rocks. He scuffed off the leather on the toe portion of the boot and smacked one of the stones against the uncovered metal.

There was a small, brief spark.

Gasping for every agonizing breath, Stephen staggered further from the water and started collecting undergrowth from the forest floor, then scuffed off some more leather and once more struck his makeshift flint.

A few minutes later, he had a small fire going. He sank to the ground and huddled near the fire, rubbing heat into his aching limbs, trying to direct enough mental energy through his body to speed up the rewarming process without completely draining his psyche.

It took what felt like forever for him to finally get enough warmth back into his body for him to fully feel his extremities again. Now more alert, Stephen took inventory of what he had left after the unexpected adventure. He had a pair of solid boots that were woefully inappropriate for walking over long distance. His warm overcoat was at the bottom of a lake. He had no tools and no equipment except for this pair of steel-toed boots that could provide him with fire.

And he was forty miles from anywhere.

"Well," he said aloud, "looks like I'm in for a bit of a walk." He thought for a moment, then checked his clothes.

They were dry.

Stephen nodded, stood, got dressed…and froze. He had absolutely no idea which way to go. Any wrong direction would take him further from civilization.

He checked his watch. It had stopped from the lake water at 3:45 P.M. How long had he been sitting here? Twenty minutes? An hour? He looked around for clues.

The sun was past its zenith in the sky. He drew a line from the sun to the ground and labeled that direction as "west". They had been flying northwest, with the mountain in front of them, which gave him a second point for his mental compass. The refuelling station from whence they'd started was southwest of his current position and just off the beaten path. If he walked south, he could probably find the main road to Anchorage. The refuelling station was most likely closer, so he chose that as his destination instead.

Forty miles from anywhere. If I'm going to walk that far, I need food. He turned back to the lake. Picking up a stick with a reasonable point, he stood on a rock five feet beyond the waters edge and waited, then stabbed the thin stick down into a fish swimming by.

Grinning victoriously, he held his catch aloft as he returned to the small fire he'd built. He was about to add fuel to the fire to cook his dinner when he gave the situation some more thought. I'm not hungry yet, though, so eating now might not be the best idea. The trail will take me away from the lake, and there may not be a lot of edibles along the way. With a sigh, he folded his shirt up and stuck the stick through the fold. This left his stomach open to the wind, but made a pouch that he could carry close by. He stowed away the fish, tossed some dirt on the fire to extinguish it, and started walking.

Half a mile later, he fell down in agony. As he'd already suspected, the boots he was wearing were good for lighting fires and fighting criminals but woefully inappropriate for hiking. Pulling them off, he checked his feet over, dismayed to see that he already had blisters. There was no way on Earth he was going to make it back wearing these. He scanned the ground, frustrated that he couldn't find a single stone of the right size and shape, then calmed himself down and stood still, taking stock of his surroundings.

A moment later, he heard running water. He followed the sound to a stream. Falling to his knees in relief, he drank his fill, then soaked his blisters to calm down the fiery pain. Then he started searching the riverbed for what he needed.

This time he found it…a thin stone, worn to a smooth, blunt edge.

He picked it up, sat on the ground, and started using the edge to cut his boots apart. First he cut off the painfully hard sole. Next he unlaced the laces and set them aside. Finally, he measured the leather against his foot, make a rough idea of the sizes he needed and started cutting until he finally had two wide strips of leather, which he wrapped around his feet like moccasins. Using the stone again, he cut one of the long shoelaces in half and tied his new moccasins around his feet. He stood up. The material gave and was softer than the soles he was walking on. "Much better," he declared.

Next, he turned his attention back to the hard rubber soles he was left with. The steel toecaps were still sewn into them. Picking up the sole, he started working it till the steel cap was loose enough for him to pry it off. Again his persistence paid off, and he pocketed both the steel caps and the hard rubber soles and started walking again.

The moccasins broke in comfortably around the five mile mark, but by that time his body was beginning to give out. He found a quiet place to curl up for the night and dragged firewood over to it. He threw me out of a helicopter, Stephen mentally grumbled as he did. I'm going to have to think up something really good for payback. He pulled out the spark stone and the steel and lit a fire to cook his fish.

Roaring animal noises rose around him.

Spooked, he built the fire higher and stared out into the night as he ate, trying to see through the darkness. But even the Cranston psyche's natural night vision enhancements weren't helping. There was something out there, all right, but it was completely camouflaged. Oh, great. Over 30 miles from nowhere and surrounded by Arctic wildlife, some of which is higher than me on the food chain. Terrific. Just terrific. He looked at the thin stone in his hand and shook his head. It was pathetic against whatever might be out there. Out of curiosity, he gave it a quick upward toss.

It came down edge first.

Pathetic, he mentally noted as he picked it up and shook his head.

A moment later, the noises stopped. The silence after the noise was all engulfing…and frightening. They've sensed something they didn't want to hear them, he mentally noted, and the thought gave him the shivers.

And then came the low growl.

Stephen spun, exhaustion forgotten, and stared through the darkness behind him.

A Kodiak bear was looking at him with a non-friendly look in his eyes.

Stephen immediately flopped over and played dead, the one piece of advice he could remember from all those wild-animal-encounter textbooks Monica had thankfully made him read for whatever warped reason.

And that seemed to work, right up until the moment it took a bite out of his leg.

Stephen howled and swung upward with the stone, slicing into the bear's nose.

The beast howled in response as he reared back away from the blow.

Stephen bolted, adrenaline wiping out the pain, racing into the trees in search of better cover. It was dark. Stephen felt the branches reach out and slap him.

There was a loud snapping sound repeating itself with frightening speed. Stephen spared a glance back and yelped in horror.

The bear was running right through the trees. The thin trunks were snapping like twigs, and it was still gaining on him.

Stephen turned left and ran into the denser forest.

The bear followed, getting tangled, being slowed down by the steadily thickening trees.

Stephen found himself a spot between two huge oaks and hid.

The bear was frustrated. It started snuffling, searching for his scent, then started tracking.

Stephen swore to himself. The thing had gotten a bite out of him and apparently liked what it tasted. It wasn't going to give up now, and it could afford to wait. Unlike himself, because he was bleeding pretty steadily out of the open thigh wound.

He collapsed backward against the tree and tore a strip off his shirt, then wrapped it around the leg, securing it with his last shoelace. He gave a sigh and took stock of the situation. He was hungry. He was wounded. He was alone. He was God-only-knows how many miles from anywhere. He was being hunted. He was cold. He was helpless. If he hunted for food, he would leave himself open to the bear. He was leaving an all-too-easy blood trail for a grown Kodiak to trace every time he moved. If he ran, the bear would wear him down and catch him. If he hid, the bear would have plenty of time and patience to search, because the size of the creature made it pretty clear he was definitely well-fed. If he waited, he'd be dead by the time help came, because it was clear by now that Victor wasn't coming back. It was now clear it was him against the bear. Not just the bear, but the mountains and the cold and the rest of the elements as well, and he couldn't fight Mother Nature.

Helpless, he snarled unconsciously, then cooled his rage. He needed food. He needed heat. He needed something warmer to wear. He needed time. He needed strength.

He could hear the bear moving away and settling in some nearby cover, waiting for him to emerge from hiding. The bear had all those things in abundance.

Fine, he decided. But you're going to have to work for your meal. He looked again at the stone.

No good. It had to be sharper. He drew the twin steel caps from his pocket and started scraping the stone across them, methodically sharpening the stone.

An hour work made the stone sharper. He tested the blade on the nearby tree trunk and carved a neat, sharp line. Good. The edge was fine and sharp.

Next he pulled out the hard rubber soles and started making lengthwise cuts into them with the stone. The stone was slightly wedgeshaped, so after a good hours work, Stephen had cut a slice the length of the stone itself into the rubber. The result was that the stone was left wedged in the rubber, making an axe shape.

Stephen tested the heel of the rubber sole to see if the stone would hold its position.

It wouldn't.

Frustrated, Stephen pulled the edge loose and got out the other rubber sole, cutting the wedge slit the other way. Another hours work, and Stephen had set the stone into the rubber, and backwards through the other. The resulting gap pushed the stone edge against itself, keeping the new axe head in place.

Now to find a handle. He used the axe head to hack off a thick branch on a nearby tree, then carved a few notches into it. Working the stick between the two soles, he untied the shoelace from around his leg, winced against the pain, and tied the axe together as tightly as he could.

He swung it into the nearby tree, and it bit deep with a satisfying thunk.

He could hear the bear deciding to settle in for the night and await the emergence of his meal. Enjoy your night, he thought as he gave a vicious grin. Tomorrow, I'm going to kill you.

That thought chilled him worse than the night air. He was actually going to fight that beast.

"O.K.," Sarah said in interruption, "that I cannot believe."

"Why not?" Stephen asked, towelling off his hair.

"Because I've seen Kodiak bears. I don't care how good you are at making axes."

Stephen smirked. "Oddly enough, I very nearly didn't get a chance. Of all the things I did that weekend, the one thing that nearly got me was the cold."

The dawn came without letting him sleep. Three times during the night Stephen's thoughts had been fogged by the sudden and horrifying realization that he was freezing to death, and he fought to keep enough mental energy running through his body in a modified tumo summoning to keep his blood moving.

Finally, however, it was morning. The moment it was light enough to see, Stephen rose from his fortress between two tree trunks and retraced his steps to find where the bear might have gotten to. It wasn't difficult, and he had soon found the broken tree trunks. Each was about ten inches thick.

For a moment Stephen hesitated. The bear had sprinted through these trees like they were tall grass.

He lit a small fire and began slicing twigs and thin branches off the trunk of a nearby small tree, selecting a stick that was about six feet long. He stuck the end into the flame and watched it crackle and burn.

Every few minutes he could hear the bear circling. That clinched it. This had to be done. It was going to happen.

Never let them pick the time and place, Stephen mentally noted, reminding himself of his uncle's rules of street battles. He began sharpening the blackened end of the pole into a point. That was enough to harden the wood. He repeated the process with a second pole, and slung it over his back with a length of vine.

Stephen let the fire burn out, and hefted the first pole. O.K. Now how do I get him to come for me?

The absurdity of the question almost made him laugh. You're the bait, Stephen. You're the bait. It's not like it would be your first experience as bait, you know.

Stephen peeled off his bloody bandage, stuck it on the end of his spear and held it up to the wind. "O.K. big guy, come and get me."

As if the bear had heard him, the crashing sounds came closer.

The bear came into view. It stopped about twenty feet away from him, as if sizing him up for the kill.

Stephen knew that he had to get the bear moving. Taking a steadying breath, he counted to five in his head, and drew his axe. Then, with a war cry, he hurled it.

It flipped end over end and caught the huge animal in the neck.

It wasn't enough. Pinpricks against a monster. But the blade bit deep. The bear roared and charged.

Oh, brilliant. I've gotten him angry, Stephen thought grimly, and started running. He went back to the twin oak trees and planted himself between them.

The underbrush was thick again. The bear was getting tangled again, but this time it was too furious to retreat.

Stephen took the opportunity to stab at him, jabbing him in the face with the spear.

The beast roared and thrashed, finally tearing loose enough to bat Stephen away with one huge paw.

The impact knocked Stephen down hard, bursting the air from his lungs. Wheezing for breath, he fought to get to his feet as he unslung the second spear.

The bear, meanwhile, had torn loose from the thick brush and now was charging again.

Stephen turned and led him on a merry chase through the woods.

The math of it was undeniable. Stephen was lame in one leg, exhausted, and nearly starved. The bear was merely nicked, big, strong, and mad as Hell.

Stephen charged for the nearest big tree he could find, put his back to it, and screamed with every ounce of his vocal strength at the onrushing mass.

The bear charged him down, ready to strike the death blow.

Stephen planted the base of the spear at the tree trunk and angled the point up, then ducked.

The bear reared up and pounced on him…and fell straight onto the sharp stick.

The force of the drop, combined with the weight of the bear, drove the spear straight through the beast, and his entire bulk toppled atop Stephen.

For a moment, Stephen just lay there. Finally, he pulled himself from under the dead weight, then started laughing in relief. Forcing himself to stand, he planted a foot on the bear, and stood on top of it, screaming out a victory cry to the entire forest.

"Oh, come on," Sarah protested.

"You wanted to hear this story," Stephen reminded her, fetching his terrycloth robe from a hook on the wall.

"I wanted to hear a true story, not something out of a bad 30s pulp novel," she retorted.

"Fine." Stephen wrapped the robe around himself and started up the stairs.

Sarah followed. "Hey…wait a minute…what happened next?"

What happened next was a very nice bear meat dinner that Stephen cooked over a blazing fire and dined on for the next half-hour. He let his food digest as he roasted another flank from the bear's musculature, spending the time washing freshly-cut bear skin in the nearby stream and stretching it out to dry over another small fire.

About an hour later, Stephen was finally ready to move on. He had cooked as much of the rest of the bear's meat as he could carry and put it in a sack he'd made out of the bearskin and sewn together with tendons. He took the remaining bearskin and fashioned a coat, then made himself a new pair of soft moccasins with bear belly fur on the inside and the remains of his crude leather ones for the soles. The remaining leather strips were washed and wrapped around his wounded leg. He still walked with a limp, but his spear would make a fine walking stick.

Taking a final bite from the roasted thigh he'd been gnawing on, he looked back at the dead bear and felt an odd affinity. Good fight, Smokey.

Then he pulled his coat around him, got his bearings once more from the sky and the mountains, and started walking, axe in one hand, walking stick in the other.

"Still not sure I believe you," Sarah responded as she walked behind him up the stairs.

Stephen gave a sinister chuckle as he dried his hair while he ascended the steps. "Can't say as I blame you. It was a long walk back. I still don't know why I didn't go to the refuelling station." He reached for the doorknob to the master bedroom.

Sarah blocked the doorway. "Wait…what? You didn't go to the refuelling station? Why?"

"The refuelling station was full of agents. They were told it was a training mission for a new agent, which was true. They were told to wait for me to show up and give me transport to New York."

"But…?"

"But once I got within sight of the place, I realized there was no way I was going to give Victor the satisfaction of knowing how long it had taken me to get out of his little test environment. So I waited for dark and followed the road from the station to the highway. I hitched a ride in the back of a truck that had stopped off for a fill-up. It had been carrying supplies, but had already delivered them somewhere else, so I had enough room to hide in the back without the driver even knowing. When I got to the city, I slipped out at a stoplight. I found a guy who was mugging a tourist in an alleyway. Something about a guy wearing a bearskin coat and carrying a stone head axe made him bolt." He chuckled. "He left the money and the guy alone and ran. I ran after him and found his stash of stolen goods. There wasn't much, but I managed to get enough money together to buy a ticket to New York. My bearskin satchel was my carry-on bag. I took apart the axe, so it was just a bunch of stone and rubber and wood and didn't set off any alarms. I used one of the IDs I found in the thief's place and bought a ticket, and back in the day before they actually used to check IDs at the airports, it was enough to get me to the gate. Got a few weird looks, and apparently I didn't smell too hot, but I made it home. Once the plane landed, I put my axe back together and got a cab back to the manor."

Victor was pacing back and forth across the parlor floor. "Andrew," he asked the butler who was pouring coffee, "has there been any word from the refuelling station?"

"Not since five minutes ago, sir," Andrew replied patiently.

"It's been four days. He should have made it back by now. He must have gotten lost or injured…"

"Perhaps sir, but unfortunately there is no way to know. All we can do is place our trust in young master Stephen's skills."

Victor sighed and paced the parlor again as Andrew retreated and closed the door.

As he did, the lights went out.

Victor spun as something whistled past his ear and dug itself into the wall with a #thunk#.

The lights came back on, and Victor saw Stephen standing at the light switch. Then he saw the stone head axe that was the mysterious throwing weapon.

It was still quivering in the wall. It had missed him by half an inch.

Stephen shook a dismembered bear claw at his uncle disapprovingly. Pure thunder was on his face. "Next time you decide to throw me out of a helicopter, make damn sure I don't know where you sleep." He pulled the bear's ear out of his pocket and tossed it to his uncle.

Victor looked at the ear. It had a silver tag on it.

Stephen pointed to his bandaged leg. "The bear that took this chunk out of my leg was tagged. This coat just cost you two thousand dollars. I think the Department of the Interior takes checks, so figure out which shell account you're going to have to tap for this one and get it sent in before they come knocking on our door. And if you even try to take it out of my trust fund, next time I won't be as careful with my throwing weaponry."

And with that, he stormed away.

"Welcome home," he heard Victor's Shadow voice smirk as he reached his room.

In answer, Stephen slammed the bedroom door shut.

Stephen opened a box not yet fully unpacked from his moves, took out a large lockbox, and extracted the axe and the bear claw from it. "Not sure why I held onto it this long," he admitted.

Sarah shook her head and laughed. "You were proud of yourself. You had every right to be."

Stephen nodded. "I was fifteen, and I killed a man-eating bear. It was my first kill."

"First?" Sarah was surprised by that. "You hadn't been in a fight before that?"

"Not a real one. Victor made sure my early experience on 'missions' was limited to situations where I'd be long gone by the time The Shadow swept in to clean house." He grimaced somewhat at the memory. "In fact, he was so overprotective of me in the early goings that by the time I got into my first real fight, I very nearly didn't survive."

"You killed a bear but were afraid of a bunch of New York lowlifes? That doesn't sound like you."

"Bears didn't carry automatic weapons. And for all my bravado and overconfident attitude, I was still a barely-trained projector with untested fighting skills and three weeks shy of my sixteenth birthday. That combination was very nearly lethal that night…"

Stephen had never felt so out of place in his life. He was filthy, he was smelly, and the gun stuffed inside his jacket was jabbing into his ribs. The bar was loud, raucous, and filled with smoke. He was supposed to be watching for a known criminal, a drug dealer.

The bar was growing more crowded. Lots of drinking, lots of smoke, lots of cards. He looked to the left and saw the target. Reaching into his pocket, he hit a panic button.

Seconds later, the door imploded. In strolled The Shadow.

The clichéd screeching halt happened. Except for the jukebox, there was silence. Stephen's senses were suddenly assaulted by a swift climb in the fear he sensed radiating off the people around him. It seemed to amplify the ebb and flow of his psyche, a sensation his uncle had cautioned him about while reminding him that he would eventually have to learn to harness those amplifications to augment his fighting skills. Right now, though, the feelings were distracting, and he pushed the waves of fear away, strengthening his mental walls against further assaults.

The Shadow took inventory of the room, mocking with his gaze every person who was suddenly pressed against the walls, edging for the exits. And he laughed.

One man reached for a switchblade.

The Shadow simply shifted that awful gaze onto him.

The man's knife hand was shaking so badly that when it finally dropped the blade to the floor, the man who held it fainted.

Stephen felt a strange mixture of revulsion and awe as the black-clad man with a blood-red scarf across the lower half of his face, the same man who had taught him to shave, could induce such fear that one man twice Stephen's size threw himself at The Shadow's feet and sobbed for mercy.

The Shadow slowly reached one gloved hand down to him and lifted his chin, those eyes burning into his face as The Shadow's gaze scanned his face, turning his chin left and right. "No," The Shadow intoned. "I am not here for you. Not today." And with that, he gave the man a shove away from him.

The man, a dark stain growing on his trousers, bolted from the room.

And The Shadow laughed.

The laugh was a signal. Most of the people ran for the door, stampeding over each other.

Stephen remained, sitting quietly on a stool away from the action. He was not alone. A few people remained--the bartender hiding beneath the bar, three waitresses, too scared to move, and the target.

The Shadow strolled up to the target, a somewhat unkempt mid-level drug dealer who was trying look braver than he likely felt at the moment. "You sell drugs to children," The Shadow pronounced. "One of them died this morning. Every man pays a price for sins. God doesn't always settle accounts right away." His voice turned lethal. "I do."

Stephen saw the door open again, quietly, stealthily. The first thing that came in was the barrel of a machine gun. "Gun!" Stephen called out the warning as he dove behind the nearest table.

The Shadow spun and drew his automatics, firing steadily.

The attackers overturned tables and started firing back.

Mahogany, with metal framing, a distant corner of Stephen's mind observed clinically as he watched the action unfold. Can withstand bullets. Good cover.

The gunfire increased, and The Shadow dove behind the bar for protection.

Oak. Not quite as good at holding back bullets. Tall, though, so lots of room for cover…

Then he watched bullets strike the liquor bottles on the rail over the bar, and glass and flammable liquids rained down.

…but surrounded by hazardous materials, the clinical thoughts observed.

And that was when Stephen brushed aside the clinical analysis….because The Shadow was now trapped and completely surrounded. There was only one thing to do…only one thing he could do. He gulped and drew the gun from his jacket.

Just like practice, he told himself. Just like the targets. He crouched down and began moving into position to ambush the attackers.

One of them was watching the bar. Stephen had gone unnoticed and flanked him easily. A clear shot. An easy mark. Stephen aimed…

…and froze.

Come on, he urged himself as he stared down the barrel of the gun. You can do it. Just like target practice…

…but still he just stood there, completely frozen.

The guy he was aiming at saw the light glint off the barrel and spun.

Stephen tipped the nearest table and dove behind it, shaking as bullets hammered into his makeshift fortress. He clapped his hands over his ears and pulled himself into a terrified ball. People were shooting at him! People were shooting at him, and his uncle, and they weren't afraid of pulling the trigger. What the Hell was he doing here? Why wasn't he at home, in bed, like any other sane fifteen-year-old would be at this hour? They're going to kill Victor…and then they're going to kill me…

No, they aren't, whispered a voice inside his head. You can take them.

Stephen froze. It sounded like his voice, but not quite like it…had he even spoken? Was his uncle speaking to him from behind the bar? It sounded like his uncle's voice, but not really…no, wait, it sounded like his own voice, but deeper, hoarser, darker…

Shadowy.

Stephen caught himself at that point. Yes. It sounded like his voice would sound if he tried to imitate his uncle's Shadow voice.

An imitation? Is that all? This is what you've always said you wanted.

They'll kill me! his fearful thoughts responded.

No, they won't. They aren't set out to cover each other, only the room. They weren't expecting to have two targets tonight.

There are too many of them.

There are four of them. Three are focused on your uncle. Four feet apart, with you at their flank, all of their attention diverted away from you. The fourth is more interested in The Shadow behind the bar at the moment than anyone else in the room.

They have guns!

So do you.

Theirs are bigger and more powerful!

Yours is lighter and faster. Only one pound of square pressure is needed to cut flesh. Fight! Win! Kill! Your weapon is more than sufficient. You have others.

No, I don't!

Yes, you do. That bottle. That chair. That pool cue. Those pool balls. Eight tables for cover. They are six feet away. You can cover that distance in two seconds. They are distracted. The fourth can be cut off if you go left around the bar stools.

They'll see me!

Three sources of light. One overhead light, two wall lamps. Avoid those and you're home free…and you can save Victor. You wanted this. You wanted to do this.

But…I can't!

Go away, little boy. Go home, frightened child. This is not a place for spoiled rich child victims; this is a place for men of war. This is not a place for the idle wealthy; this is a place for ruthless efficiency. Go home, little boy. Go hide under the bed and leave this work to those that care enough to take the chance.

"You know that one of the signs of insanity is talking to yourself," Sarah told him.

"Only if you argue with yourself," Stephen returned.

"Yeah, like you just said you were."

"Well, yeah. But it's only really insane when you lose the argument."

Sarah wasn't sure she wanted Stephen to clarify that statement.

Stephen wasn't going to. His eyes had taken on that nostalgic look he'd had early in their conversation. "See, people often compartmentalize their thinking. That's why you can do two things at once. You're presented with a problem and you immediately see the ramifications in two different ways. For your friend and for yourself, for your schedule and your plans, for your family and your job. Or in my case, for The Shadow and the family." He gave her an empty glance. "I look around this room, and I immediately see it from two different viewpoints. This dresser, for example. I have nostalgia for it because I was there when my father gave it to Victor for a birthday present. I know what it's made of and what it's worth. At the same time, I look at it and I see how hard the surface is, what could be concealed in the drawers, how hard it would be to overturn, whether or not it could hold back gunshots…" He gave a shrug. "My brain works differently. Most telepaths work on multiple levels, because their psychic senses give them that ability. In a projective telepath, it's even more acute, because their minds press outward with such force that it becomes almost an extension of the person themselves. That is what allows a mere man…to become a shadow."

Stephen's eyes opened, and he quickly took stock of the situation.

The four gunmen were still shooting at the bar.

The Shadow was occasionally popping up from behind the bar and firing back at his assailants.

The waitresses were looking for a way out. They were frightened. They weren't thinking clearly, they were looking for a straight line to the door.

One of the men abandoned his cover and turned toward the two waitresses. His intent was clear…to use them for cover.

Protect! PROTECT! both instincts screamed in the same instant.

"Protect!" he roared aloud, and leapt, brandishing his weapon as if he'd done it all his life.

He fired twice at the nearest gunman to keep him down. The third shot shattered the nearest wall lamp and cut the light sources in the room by 33.

Stephen cleared the distance to the two waitresses in what seemed like a single leap and put himself between them and the reaching thug. He caught the man's gun arm with his free hand and twisted it hard.

As the thug yelled in pain, Stephen pistolwhipped him, left-right-left, then knocked his legs out from under him, putting him down hard.

The three remaining fighters took notice of the new attack. Two of them fired back.

Stephen saw that the waitresses had frozen, half ducking, uncertain in their terror. He snatched up a table, held it by the center leg, and threw himself to his forward right, putting the table between the women and their attackers…

…then dove between the foes he'd been cowering from only moments earlier.

He slammed one of them down like a human battering ram.

The second managed to get around the oncoming force and headed for the two waitresses.

Stephen reached instantly. He threw his gun straight up in the air, used the newly freed hand to grab his opponent at the waistband and heave him off his feet in a short sharp arc, then tossed him against the broken light, its exposed wires doing the rest of the work in shutting down the threat.

Stephen had never felt so free. All his doubts, all the chaos, all the fear was gone in a heartbeat, washed away in a tide of adrenaline and split-second reactions. He spun around without moving from the spot, caught the two women firmly and drew them behind him, and still caught the gun as it came down.

And to punctuate the whole thing, he fired the gun and dropped the remaining shooter with a single shot.

The Shadow raised his head from behind the bar and saw his nephew, standing there with his arms outstretched to his sides, one terrified, protected civilian under each. There was a gun in one hand, a broken table leg in the other…

…and four unconscious bodies at his feet.

Stephen finally raised his face and met his uncle's gaze.

In an instant, he saw in his mind the image The Shadow was seeing in his gaze…his own face filled with pure ruthless calm, his eyes pitch black, his features harder, more linear…

…and then the moment passed, and Stephen felt every ounce of energy drain from him.

The last thing he remembered was The Shadow's arms catching him as he felt his legs turn to water and the room fade to black.

Sarah was staring in awe. "Wow," she breathed.

"Wow? What wow?" Stephen repeated, surprised.

"Nothing, just…wow. You've got a whole James Bond thing going. Four guys, fight for your life, two damsels to save, O.K., that's done, naptime." She was still staring at his hands as her finger traced one of the visible scars lightly.

Stephen stared back. Her mouth was parted and her eyes were practically glowing. What the…

"Exciting," Sarah said finally. "Exciting is the word."

It took Stephen a beat to come up with a response. "Yeah." Something about the way she said it seemed…well, it seemed strangely familiar...way too familiar…

Andrew suddenly came in, carrying the dinner tray. He set the tray on the small round table by the French door windows, carefully removed each item and positioned it for dining, then gave a nod and took his leave.

Stephen watched the entire thing unfold as if he were in the middle of some bad made-for-TV romance movie. And he was tired of it. He turned to Sarah. "Start without me."

Before she could stop him, he was out the door.

Stephen caught up to the majordomo in the hall. "Andrew?"

Andrew turned around. "Sir?"

"You've been giving Sarah my phone messages. You asked her to get me out of the pool to have dinner. You got her to select a menu."

"Yes, sir…"

"When exactly did you decide that Sarah was the new lady of the manor?" Stephen snapped angrily.

Andrew took a moment to compose his response. "If I may, sir…"

"You've got 30 seconds to convince me not to fire you," Stephen interrupted.

Andrew took a sharp breath at the sudden attack, then pulled himself together. "I believe you still need my service, even if you do not. Even your uncle needed someone he could trust to take care of the day-to-day necessities."

"You're not doing well at convincing," Stephen warned.

"And you are not doing well in adapting to your new role in life," Andrew responded, far more sharply than he intended.

Stephen just stared at him for a moment, doing a slow burn.

Andrew decided to get it out before he lost his nerve. "Whether you realize it or not, sir, you are the new master of Cranston Manor. This house has been home to five generations of your family…and two previous generations of Shadows. Whether you like it or not, you are the sole heir to the family name, the family fortune, and the family legacy…and all that entails. And if I may be so bold, it is time for you to actually accept that role and stop behaving like the arrogant child you were while you were growing up here. You are not the only person who has ever lost someone close to them. Just days ago, I lost a man whom I considered to be the closest thing I had to family in this world. Perhaps it is time you considered other people's feelings in addition to your own before capriciously barking out orders and tossing loyal friends out the door." The butler took a deep breath, then resumed his normal look of calm humility. "Now, if you still desire my resignation, sir, I shall reluctantly but graciously tender it."

Stephen was still fuming, but he shook his head, then turned around and headed back into his room.

Sarah was just starting her meal when he came back into the room. Something in his eyes told her not to ask him about his conversation with Andrew, which she'd heard just enough of to know that it had not gone well. That same something indicated that this might not be a good time to bring up the messages she'd been given, but since he'd already argued with Andrew about the fact that she had them, this was probably as good a time as any. "There's one message you got earlier that I think you need to know about," she began.

He looked up at her with a mixture of annoyance and curiosity.

Sarah didn't like that look, but took a deep breath and continued. "Peter called a few hours ago. He says that Cardona is about to wrap up the official report on Victor and needs to confirm some details with you. I told Peter to put him off, but…"

Stephen threw aside his napkin. Now she was sending instructions to his agents. That was it. That was the last straw. Nobody directed his agents except him…nobody. He got up out of his chair and stormed over to the door. "Get out."

Sarah frowned. "Look, I know you're upset, but…"

"I said, get out," he interrupted, his eyes indicating he was in no mood for further discussion of the matter. "And take your food with you."

Sarah quickly gathered up her dishes and left the room.

Stephen gave the door a slam, then pulled dark-colored clothes out of the closet and sent for Moe.

Long-time agent Joe Cardona, The Shadow's top inside man in the New York Police Department, was at the moment interrogating a suspected drug dealer. It was times like this he missed the more intriguing cases The Shadow's mysterious work brought him. It would save him from dealing with this low-life worm and his scumbag legal mouthpiece. "We've got your gun at the scene," he said, trying to intimidate the man. "We've got your car in the area."

The perp wasn't the least bit worried. "That gun was stolen three days ago. Of course you saw my car in the area, I live a block from the alley."

"Look, we know you did it. That girl was 16. You got her hooked, you sent her away broke, then you killed her when she couldn't pay."

"If making up bad TV plots is the best you can do, Mr. Cardona," the lawyer interrupted, "then I think we're done here. Call us back when you actually have something on my client…"

"Lock me up!" the perp suddenly shouted, gasping and shaking.

Cardona looked curious at the sudden change of heart, then got his expression under control. Clearly the young man had had a change of heart…or a change of mind. He glanced over his shoulder. Unnoticed by the lawyers, out of sight of the cameras and viewing windows, Cardona's shadow had suddenly taken on a life of it's own. And it was glaring at them.

"Shut up, Stan," the lawyer hissed.

The perp was still shaking. "Lock me up! I did it! The girl wouldn't pay up, and I had to make an example out of her! I did it! Lock me up right now and don't let anyone near me! Don't let me out of the building!"

Cardona tapped on the observation mirror. "You heard the man," he said.

Three cops came into the room and dragged the terrified man out, who was more than willing to go with them.

Cardona stayed behind and looked around. He made a pretence of straightening up the room, then flicked a switch on the wall to turn off the microphones and videocameras. "All clear," he whispered.

The door closed and The Shadow swirled into visibility across the room from him. "You wanted to see me?"

Cardona nodded, then extracted an envelope from his pocket, which he handed to his boss. "The official story will be that somebody who lost their job because of Cranston Enterprises. lost it, broke in, and killed Victor Cranston for revenge. We have a suspect, and while we're investigating if anyone else was involved, we're keeping his name secret. We went to arrest him, and found his suicide note, saying he couldn't live with what he'd done, and jumped off the Queensborough Bridge, where officers are now dredging for his body." He shrugged. "Not the most convincing story in the world, but it'll do for a press conference. We can fill in the details later if necessary."

The Shadow nodded curtly. "Fine. Autopsy results?"

Cardona pointed to another page. "Cranston likely didn't have much longer to live, based on the condition of his heart--it was really enlarged. He also had what looked like a stroke near his left frontal lobe in his brain, but the M.E. attributes that to the sudden change in blood pressure caused by the stab wound through the aorta--strokes aren't uncommon in that kind of situation. She said something about the heart trying hard to push extra blood to the brain to save it as a last resort before it all drained away. He had broken ribs, but those were likely from the CPR that the younger Cranston performed on him. Cause of death was exsanguination from the stab wound--in other words, he bled out his entire blood volume in probably about a minute and suffered catastrophic organ failure. He was likely dead long before anyone found him."

Those words once more drove a painful spike right through The Shadow's own heart--a stroke in Victor's left frontal lobe meant that he had likely tried to call for help mentally in his dying seconds and overloaded his brain in the attempt. Yet another reminder of the true price of the Cranston legacy. "Weapon?"

"All the M.E. could tell was that it was some really long blade because it nicked his spinal column on the way in, and that takes a lot of force in an adult male. This isn't C.S.I.; there are no magic tricks to generate the shape of the blade or anything like that."

"Maybe someday." The Shadow looked at the papers Cardona had handed him, his eyes almost dead.

"How's the heir doing?" Cardona asked.

The Shadow glared. "What?"

"He's an agent too," Cardona remarked, a bit taken aback at the ferocity in the glare. "I thought maybe you might have had a chance to talk to him…"

"Yes."

Cardona didn't miss the chill in The Shadow's voice. "Something going on there that I need to know?"

"No." The Shadow got control of himself. "He's all right. He understands what's going on."

"It's gotta be tough, though. I mean, he lost his parents the same way, according to the papers."

"Most agents have loss in their lives as a result of this war."

Cardona nodded. "Is there anything any of us can do? Does he need some help from the network? I mean, I was at the funeral, and…"

"I. Was. There," The Shadow hissed.

"R-right." That look in The Shadow's eyes was absolutely chilling. "Does he need protection, official or otherwise?"

"No."

Cardona didn't look convinced. "Look, I never question anything you say, so don't take this as questioning. But…let's be honest here, this attack on Cranston was a hit, pure and simple, and we are covering up the details I presume because you've got your own investigation going. The Cranston kid's a good guy, and a first-class agent. Protecting the network is as important as protecting the mission…at least, that's the way I've always looked at it. We have to protect each other, because we're all each other's got."

The Shadow didn't say anything. He'd expressed this sentiment to Victor on more than one occasion when he was growing up. Watching agents go on missions where their deaths were practically the only sure thing was hard enough; dealing with their families afterward was even harder. Victor was rather stern about the need to stay strong under these circumstances…

"We are at war," Victor said as they stood at the graveside of yet another agent and looked over at the agent's grieving family. "Rule number one in a war is that people die. Rule number two is that no one can change rule number one. Not you, not me, not anyone. I have sent agents on missions where their death was not only a possibility, but a highly likely consequence. It was a consequence that they understood as well. And yet, none have ever refused to go. Because they understand that this is a war against evil, a war that has been waged since time immemorial. My agents follow my orders not merely because they are bound to me by a life debt, but because they know that they are not being asked to anything I would not do myself. My mission in life is to separate good from evil, to drive evil from the shadows and into the light where it cannot survive. My agents are an extension of that, but they have to be able to stand on their own in order to be that extension. I protect my agents because they protect me. When one is lost, the others band together even stronger. That is their job. And I go on with my mission to ensure their sacrifices are not in vain. That is my job."

"You're right," Cardona replied.

The Shadow looked over at Cardona. "What?"

"You're right. We are at war. And Cranston was one of the best foot soldiers in this war. But in the end, we're all just soldiers. Sometimes I forget that." He sighed. "Thanks for the reminder."

The Shadow fought to keep his expression calm. Once more, he'd shared something from his past that he never wanted others to know. This had to stop, and it had to stop now.

A paralegal dropped her papers as something dark and cold burst forth from the interrogation room and nearly knocked her over, and then it was gone.

Stephen stalked back into the manor. Sarah was waiting for him. "Everything O.K.?" she asked.

Stephen glared. "Would everybody please stop trying to get into my head?"

His eyes and her sixth sense told her not to push it.

Everything told her not to push it.

She did anyway. "Well, it's not like getting into your head's a terribly hard thing," she reminded him.

He growled, then hung up his coat and stormed into the parlor.

Sarah followed. "Walking away from me is not going to make me stop talking."

"As if I hadn't already figured that out," Stephen snapped, frustrated that even in his own house, he could not get away from well-meaning annoyances.

"That's right, keep it up. Keep pushing everybody away. It's not like you don't have a captive audience of folks to take your frustrations out on. Keep on snapping at everyone like the big, bad Shadow having a big, bad day."

"I am The Shadow having a bad day."

"No, you're Stephen Cranston in mourning. There is a difference, despite the fact that you want to pretend otherwise. Stop acting like The Shadow and start acting like you."

"Did you not listen to anything I said earlier? I am The Shadow. And I am having a very bad day. There's no difference."

"The night Victor was killed, you said you needed a friend more than an agent. You don't think you still need someone who isn't going to blindly take orders from you when you're in this state?"

"You are still an agent, which means you are supposed to take orders from me. It also means you're not to question that I know what I'm doing, which as I recall you took a vow not to ever do again."

"Oh, come on! You are being completely ridiculous! What is wrong with you just admitting that you're scared and you're hurt and you're completely at a loss for what to do next…"

"Because I am The Shadow!" he burst out angrily. "I stand in the breech between good and evil. I command an army of agents who owe a life debt to me. I have sent agents into battle knowing that their death was not only a possibility but a distinctly likely outcome. I control the fates of dozens of people who trust me to be in control of everything at all times. I can't do that if I'm seen as…"

"…human?" Sarah finished the sentence.

Stephen pondered the word for a moment. "Exactly. The Shadow is seen as superhuman. It's an image kept by agents as much as crooks. I can't break that image."

"Why not?" Sarah demanded. "MJ. Peter. Moe. Andrew. None of these people would hold it against you. None of us would think you any less strong. Any less powerful. Any less smart. Any less brave."

"Yes, you would. Think about it. MJ's been kidnapped by supervillains a number of times. Moe's cab has been blown up a number of times. Andrew has been wounded a number of times. Peter's been worried or conflicted a number of times, to the point where he psychologically blocked out his powers for a month. In every case, it falls to me to keep it moving, to keep them brave, to keep all of this functioning. They want me to show them how to keep going. They want me to show them how to be fearless. They don't want to see I'm as scared as they are."

Sarah couldn't think of a response to that…because on some level, she knew he was right. She'd seen enough of the network's functioning to realize that the strong presence of their leader was often the only thing that kept them all going in the face of the horrors of fighting evil. But surely the people who knew the real story wouldn't think less of him for daring to show human emotions…

…or would they? Hadn't all of them spent at least some measure of time mocking the idea that Stephen might want to actually show a human side, as if such a thing weren't possible from him? Sarah found herself feeling a sense of remorse that any actions on her part may have reinforced the notion that Stephen wasn't capable of actually having feelings or emotions or…or, well, anything that didn't conform to his image as the master of darkness and sentinal of shadows.

Stephen had finally had enough of this whole thing. He didn't want sympathy, he didn't want psychology, he didn't want anything except a chance to talk to Victor once more. And if he couldn't have that, then all he really wanted was to be alone. "Andrew!" his mind shouted.

"Yes, sir?"

Stephen jumped and spun around to find his butler standing just inside the doorway to the parlor. If he hadn't already had the last straw piled on him by now, this would have been it. He felt completely surrounded, and something had to be done about that. "Call Peter, MJ, and Moe. Tell them to get over here right now. I have an announcement to make."

Andrew raised an eyebrow, but quickly got his reaction under control. "Yes, sir," he responded, then left the room.

Stephen turned around to find Sarah giving him a suspicious look. "What?" he snapped.

She gave him a determined look. "What you just said? All of that? It made sense, and you wouldn't be the only one to think that way, and God only knows you've earned the right to feel that way…but you know something? World leaders, brilliant strategists, military legends? You don't think any of them have people they can turn to when the world gets completely insane around them? Napoleon, Alexander the Great, George Washington--you're telling me no one saw their weaker side? Their reputation was strength, but I can guarantee you that they all had people they could talk to. People who didn't care about their image or their reputation, people that they could tell anything without worrying about how it made them look. I…I really think you need somebody like that, and I think you know it, too…"

Stephen did know it. But that someone had been Victor. And now he was gone.

Stephen had the strangest urge to cry. He had a similar urge to give Sarah a hug. He did neither. He merely left the room.

"Did he say what he wanted? Mary Jane asked anxiously as they all assembled uncomfortably in the parlor at Cranston Manor a half-hour later.

"No," Andrew admitted. "And that worries me. He just said he had an announcement to make and wanted all of you to hear it."

Peter understood Andrew's concern. "And we all know that Stephen doesn't make announcements. He issues proclamations."

MJ rolled her eyes. "You know, you guys just encourage him when you do that."

"Do what?" Peter asked.

"Kowtow to him. Treat him as if he's something more than human. 'Oh no, can't fool him, The Shadow knows. Oh, no, can't argue with him, can't reason with him, can't try to work around him, The Shadow commands. Oh no, can't disagree with him, The Shadow must be obeyed'. I swear, his whole façade would just crumble around him if we'd just stop coming when he calls."

"And yet, here you are."

MJ whirled, and came face-to-face with Stephen. She would have sworn he was not there just seconds ago. How long had he been there? And why hadn't Sarah warned her? She turned back to face Sarah.

Sarah was looking away, looking uncomfortable.

MJ slowly backed away from Stephen and took a seat on the sofa.

Stephen looked around the room, meeting everyone's gaze. It only took a moment of glancing in his friends' eyes to realize that he'd made the right decision about what to do next. He took a deep breath, then walked straight to the center of the room and addressed the gathering. "I'm aware you're all worried about me. Believe me, it hasn't gone unnoticed. As you may have figured out, I hate any kind of attention focused on me, and I've vacillated between protesting and pushing and gathering and reeling you in with hints of humanity, stories of childhood, etc., then shoving you away when the weight of the world comes crashing down on me again. What you've all given to me over the past few days was as much love and friendship and fellowship as I've ever felt anytime in my entire life. And for that, I'm grateful. I'm also so sick of everybody trying to 'help me work through this', I could spit. So, I need you to give me something that I know will be very hard for you to give, because it goes against everything you've always been told you should give someone in my situation." He took a moment to make sure he had everyone's attention before proceeding. "I need you to give me time to grieve. That means I need you to give me room to grieve. I need to learn how to be alone in this house without going insane. I need to learn how to deal with a full-time staff of loyal and faithful servants, who also need to learn how to deal with the new lord of the manor. I need to learn how to handle my emotions without the one person who was always there to pick up the pieces for me. I need to get used to everything about being Stephen Cranston, billionaire businessman, and figure out how to fit that into the mission I know I have to one day resume. And I will resume it. When I'm ready to fit these new parts of my life into the rest of it, you'll know, because I'll seek you out to help me. But…not right now. Right now, I need you all to leave and go back to the things you do best, the passions in your lives that enable you to get through your own crises. I'll need those examples to help me get through mine. Thank you for understanding."

And without another word he simply walked out.

The five agents looked around at one another, completely confused by what had just happened. "So…that's it?" MJ asked.

"That's it," Sarah replied.

"What, we just leave now? We just walk out of here while he's in that state?"

"Yes," Peter declared firmly. "Yes, we just walk out of here."

Moe turned to Peter. "You gotta try to talk him out of this…this is crazy talk…"

"No, it's not," Peter interrupted. "In fact, it's the most sane thing I've heard him say in days." He looked around. "Look, maybe I just have a different perspective from the rest of you. I've been where he is right now. As bad as we all want to help him, it's the worst thing we could do right now. Right now, he doesn't need our help. He needs Victor's help. And that help isn't here, and won't ever be again." Peter fought back a memory of his own struggle after the loss of an uncle. "He's the only one who knows when he'll be ready to come to terms with that…and it isn't today." He looked at MJ. "See, the reason we all kowtow to Stephen's wishes is…well, he's usually right. No matter how crazy it sounds, no matter how contrary to our own opinion his words are, he's usually right. And being right like that deserves respect. And that's the most important thing we can give him now…our respect."

Everyone looked away from each other, searching their own hearts and minds for something to counter Peter's assertion…and finding nothing.

One by one, they gathered their coats and filed out to leave Stephen alone with his grief.

THE END