Chapter Nine

Joshua and Katie

A short time later, Joshua and his team returned to Snack Shop Gon, taking the secret elevator down to the lab, where Anthony and the science team waited to greet them.

"Welcome back," he said.

Joshua nodded to Anthony as he sat down on the nearby bench, tapping his morpher and deactivating his suit. While he let the medical team look him over for any injuries, James's body was brought into the lab and laid down on a stretcher, the grotesque black cross still carved into his chest. Joshua stared at his brother's face, his mind still numb. General Kenpachi stepped into the room, looking down at the body with a grim expression on his face.

"Take him away, please," the general told a couple of the medics. "Make sure he's well taken care of."

Yes, sir," one medic said.

"How are the kids?" Joshua asked once the body had been removed.

"They're alright," the general said. "We got them back to their school and their parents were notified. They're all in good condition and all accounted for."

"Oh, good." Joshua breathed a sigh of relief.

A few minutes later, the entire team got together in a nearby conference room to be debriefed. Joshua gave his account of the day's events and then each of his team took their turn adding in any additional details. Joshua didn't really pay too much attention to the meeting, his mind in another room with a couple of medics and a corpse. He only came back to the present when Katie failed to mention the intel she'd said she'd found. Joshua looked at her strangely, but didn't say anything about it right that moment. If he knew Katie, she likely had a good reason for it.

After about a half an hour of back-and-forth, General Kenpachi released them to go back to their barracks to get ready for lunch. Joshua walked silently down the hall with his team as Dayton, Doug, and Harriet talked excitedly about the events of the day's mission and the lasagna being served in the mess hall. He noticed Katie didn't seem to be talking much either.

"You guys go on ahead without me," he told his crew once they reached the barracks. "I'm just going to lay down for a while."

He crossed the room and slumped down onto his personal cot. Dayton and the cadets glanced at each other, watching him with concern.

"Alright, Cap," Dayton said. "We'll save a place for you, okay?"

Joshua nodded, but didn't say anything more. His team went to their personal footlockers and started changing, carrying on their conversation. Joshua ignored them, waiting for them to leave. After a few minutes, Dayton, Doug, and Harriet finished up and headed out for the mess hall. Joshua opened one eye, watching the few other soldiers go about their business. He rolled over, pretending to go to sleep. Images of the day's events, the sight of his brother's body, and the memory of the days both he and their parents had died ricocheted around in his head, slamming into each other at full force. He clenched his fists, trying to force the images to just go away and leave him alone.

Katie sat on her own cot nearby, watching Joshua and waiting for the soldiers to clear out. He was pretending to sleep, but she knew him better than that. Once the last soldier was gone and the room was empty, Katie got up off of her cot and crossed the room to Joshua's cot.

"Captain Cage," she said.

Joshua ignored her, pretending to be asleep.

"May I speak with you?"

Joshua was silent for a couple more seconds before grunting to show he was listening. Katie sat down on the cot beside him. "Are you okay?" she asked.

Joshua opened one eye and looked over at his friend. He swallowed several times before answering. "I'm fine," he said, his voice hoarse.

"No, you're not."

Joshua shook his head. His second-in-command could be annoyingly persistent. He sat up on his cot and turned to face her. His eyes were red, his whole frame feeling heavy. He really didn't want to talk right now. "I'm fine," he said. "Really, it's not a big deal."

Katie crossed her arms and gave him a look that said she could see right through him.

Joshua shook his head, his eyes still seeing James laid out on the table before him. "Do you have a brother?" he asked her.

"I do," Katie said. "A little brother. Taran. He'll be ten years old this August."

Joshua looked up at her. "That's a bit of an age gap."

Katie smiled. "Just a bit. Our parents took their time with the second kid. He lives with them back home in Turtle Cove." She fiddled with the hem of her uniform. "He's a sweet kid. You'd like him." Her face got hard. "If anyone ever did anything to him like what they did to James, I'd rip them all limb from limb."

"I think I know the feeling," Joshua said, scowling at the floor.

"I never really knew James," Katie said. "Not the way you did. Tell me about him."

Joshua smiled sadly. "I don't know what to say," he said. "He was smart. He was so smart. He got into all the best schools and graduated with the highest honors. Our parents were always so proud of him. He could solve any math problem you put in front of him. Sometimes, we would go out of our way to find overly complicated equations for him to solve, only for him to figure them out in about fifteen minutes."

Joshua looked at his hands, holding them like he didn't know what to do with them. "I could never do that. Even passing remedial math was a struggle for me. I was always more of an athlete than a scholar. And even then, James always tried to keep up with me." Joshua smiled, remembering an incident from their childhood. "There was this one time, James tried to climb up a really big tree to try and impress me and got himself stuck up there. He knew how to get down, he just couldn't actually do it physically. I had to climb up there and get him, but the branch broke and we both ended up with broken arms for the next month."

A faint memory pulled at the back of Joshua's mind. He pulled over his footlocker and dug through it for a second, pulling out a pair of dog tags, both old and weathered with age. Engraved on them were the names James and Joshua Cage. Katie leaned forward to get a better look. "Old dog tags?" she asked.

"Our first dogtags," Joshua said. "From just after we joined EAGLE. When we eventually got new ones, James let me hold onto them as a keepsake." He held them lovingly in his hand, brushed his thumb over the engravings.

"Want to see them?" Joshua asked, offering them to Katie.

"Sure," Katie said. Joshua placed them in her hand. She held them carefully, turning them over.

"We both joined EAGLE shortly after our parents died. We made a promise to each other that we'd do whatever it took to bring down the Black Cross."

"You must have really loved your brother," Katie said.

"Yeah," he said. "I did."

Katie handed the dog tags back to him. Joshua looked them over once again, the realization sinking into his heart that he'd never see the awkward kid who got stuck up a tree or the smart young scientist who let his brother keep his old dog tags ever again.

The loss finally sank into his heart. After so many weeks of pushing down his feelings and hiding from his grief, he couldn't keep it back any longer. Despite himself, tears spilled from his eyes and down his cheeks. He doubled over, his body shaking. He covered his face, still trying to hide his pain.

Katie got up off of her cot and moved over to sit beside him. She put her arm around him and just let him cry.

"It's not fair," Joshua said. "James worked so hard on this suit, and he never even got to see it finished." He undid the strap around his wrist and held the morpher in his hand. "How can I pretend to be a ranger, when I couldn't even save the guy who built it? Instead, he had to go and take the blast for me." He set the morpher down on the bed between them. "I don't deserve to be a ranger."

Joshua buried his face in his hands, shaking some more. Katie sat silently, letting him grieve. She picked up the small morpher and held it in her hand.

"Well, you look like a ranger to me," she said. Joshua looked up at her. Katie shifted to face him and get a good look at his face. "In the time that I've known you, you've been a good leader, you have taken care of your team, and you have cared, a lot, about the people you are trying to protect. That sounds like a hero to me. I think James would be proud to see you as a ranger."

Joshua rolled his eyes. "I think you're laying it on a little thick," he said.

Katie grinned. "Maybe," she said. "Look. You didn't save James. That's going to happen sometimes. You don't always get to save everybody. But you saved those kids today, didn't you? And there's a lot of other people you've saved in the past. And there's plenty more you'll save in the future. And if nothing else, at least you got James's body back where it belongs."

Joshua shook his head and stared off into empty space. Katie watched him, wishing she could help him more. She reached out and took his hand. "Look, Josh," she said, calling him by his first name. "I know it hurts. And it's going to keep hurting. But I want you to know you're not alone in this. You still have me. You still have Dayton. And Doug. And Harriet. We all care about you. I care about you. You can lean on us if you need it."

Joshua looked over at her. He smiled and squeezed her hand a little. "You're right," he finally said. He looked down at the morpher in Katie's hand. He held out his hand and she handed back to him. "I suppose James wouldn't want me just sitting here moping all the time."

He dropped Katie's hand and reattached the morpher to his wrist. He gave James's dog tags one last look-over before stashing them back inside his footlocker where he knew they'd be safe. He sat up and took a deep breath. The pain was still there, but he made an active choice to let James go. A slight bit of the burden lifted from his heart.

He looked over at his friend and comrade. "Thank you, Katie," he said.

"No problem, Joshua," she said.

Something tugged at the back of Joshua's mind. "You said you found something, right?" he said. "Something in the lab where James and I had worked?"

Katie nodded. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny flash drive. "I think he left it behind in case something happened to him in the escape. He had it really well hidden, so I think the Black Cross missed it when they were clearing out."

Joshua took the flash drive and held it up. "What was it?"

"Well, that's the thing," Katie said. "It didn't look like it was anything important, just a goodbye message to you, I guess, but it's written weirdly. A lot of words are out of place and flipped around. I think he hid a code inside it."

Joshua looked at the tiny flash drive. He remembered the secret codes that they had used while in the Black Cross compound. It was definitely something his brother would do. Joshua handed the device back to Katie. "Show me," he said.