Chapter 25

Eric was nearly at the door to his apartment, bike helmet and gloves in hand, when his phone rang. He paused at a side table to drop the items there and answered the call. There was no Caller ID given so he was pretty sure who it was.

“Hi, Nobody” he said cheerfully.

“How did you know it was me?” demanded the girl’s voice.

“I do have a Quantum Processor in my head, so I am very smart” he replied smugly, feeling strangely happy to speak to this unknown girl.

“Humph!” she snorted. “If you were that smart you would have figured out who I am by now”

Eric leaned against the wall of his entrance hall and laughed softly.

“Did you call me just to insult my intelligence?” he teased her. Every time he spoke to Nobody, he felt more of a connection between the two of them. The line was quiet for a few moments and he could hear her faint breathing down the phone.

“I just wanted to make sure you were Okay” Nobody finally replied. “The news feeds showed the attacks at the Archimedes Tower and there were a lot of injuries reported. You were there with your school friends, weren’t you?”

“Yeah” he agreed. “It was quite dangerous for all of us. Some of my friends got hurt and my teacher is in hospital right now”

“I’m sorry” Nobody whispered, so softly he barely heard her speak.

“Thanks for being concerned” Eric told her. “It’s nice that you care about me, even if I don’t know who you are”

“I meant I am sorry for what happened, Eric. It was never meant to be like this”

Eric stood up suddenly and gripped his phone tightly.

“Nobody, do you know who was behind the attack?” he nearly shouted.

The line was silent and Eric wondered if the girl was still there. Then she spoke again, a different tone in her voice.

“Forget what I said” the voice told him. “I was just upset about the thought of you being hurt. Please take care of your friends”

“Nobody, are you alright? You sound different somehow!”

“It’s Okay, Eric. It was nothing” she responded and the call disconnected.

Eric stood like a statue, holding his phone in front of him as if he could see the girl at the other end by sheer force of will alone.

“Sir, are you still leaving on an errand or shall I return your helmet and gloves to storage?” Jeeves the robot butler asked him. It wheeled itself to stand before him, its blank plastic face and black camera eyes watching him intently.

The boy shook himself and addressed his robot servant.

“It’s fine, Jeeves” he assured the mechanical. “I am leaving right now”

“Very good, Sir” it replied and rolled away to its standby position.

Eric picked up his gloves and helmet and headed for the door and the elevator beyond. There was so much else he needed to deal with right now, but sometime soon he needed to find Nobody and speak to her face to face.

There was a connection between them, one that his brother Two knew all about. Yet he doubted his secretive sibling would reveal anything until he was ready to.

For a moment he considered asking Archimedes then discarded that thought immediately. The AI held more secrets than anybody and was even harder to deal with than his brother.

Eric sighed and stepped outside, closing his apartment door behind him.

“I’ll have to work this one out myself” he muttered and summoned an elevator to his fortieth floor apartment.

Eric paused in the lobby of Carmody’s building, wondering how we was going to explain his visit. His electric motorbike was parked in the visitor’s bay outside, the panniers weighed down with the AURA coveralls and boots for Carmody and Angelina.

Getting those had been the easy part, with the school empty but for the four Guards at their Post and a trio of Security patrolling the grounds. Even Stanley had been absent and he assumed the dragon was off visiting Sarah.

Mustering his courage he pushed the intercom for the Brentwood’s and got a young boy on the other end.

“Who’s that?” Vance demanded, his face pressed so close to the camera all Eric could see were two eyes and the bridge of his nose.

“Hi Vance, it’s Eric Hargreaves” he said amiably. “I’m a friend of your sister from school and I called your dad earlier this evening. May I come up to the apartment?”

“Hang on” Vance announced and seemed to climb down from whatever he had been standing on. There was a brief glimpse of his tousled hair as he rushed off, shouting out loudly for his dad.

In a few moments a harried older man appeared on the screen, a man of middling height, in his late forties but with a handsome face surrounded by a dark beard and moustache.

“Hey Eric! I’m glad you made it. Come on up” he said in a rush and opened the elevator doors for him by remote.

The ride up was brief, giving Eric little time to think of a plausible reason as to why he needed Carmody’s bat. All too soon he was at the Brentwood apartment and he managed to touch the doorbell only seconds before an excited boy flung the door wide open.

“Come on in, Eric!” Vance welcomed him loudly, taking a firm grip on his hand and dragging him into the main living room. He had visited here only once before, picking up Carmody for a group outing. The room was much as he recalled, comfortable looking with a pair of worn sofas, dining table and chairs and a big view screen fixed on one wall.

One new addition was a green plastic Christmas tree, decorated so heavily with baubles, glittering tinsel and strings of lights that the branches drooped visibly towards the carpeted floor. A collection of brightly wrapped packages were already arrayed beneath the tree and Eric would bet most were for Carmody and Vance.

“Evening, son” Mr Brentwood said, stepping out of the adjoining kitchen nook with a ladle in his hand. “Sorry about the mess, but with Mrs B at work and Carmody out and about, it’s up to me to feed this monster!”

“Um, not a problem sir” Eric stuttered. “I just stopped by to collect those things for Carmody, if that is Okay?”

“Sure” her father agreed easily. “I put her overnight bag together with Excalibur on her bed. You can go and grab it now. I just need to keep an eye on this soup”

He gestured with the label towards Carmody’s room, readily identified by a large sign tacked on the outside that declared: “Warning: Dangerous Child Inside. Do Not Feed after Midnight”. Above that was a smaller painted wooden sign that simply said “Carmody’s Room”.

Eric went to the indicated door and tentatively pushed it open. Inside he could see a small room, as cramped as any within Pan City, filled with a bed, shelves, desk and built in robe. Visible in the light from the living room he could make out a carry bag and a longer sports bag he assumed contained Carmody’s cricket bat.

“Go on!” urged Vance and reached past the hesitant older boy to flick the light switch on. Immediately the room was bathed in bright light, making the pink coloured walls and bedspread send a rosy hue over everything.

The younger brother gazed in boyish disgust at the girlish style of his older sister.

“She is such a girl!” he declared, an obvious statement Eric thought to himself.

Emboldened by Vance’s presence, he stepped to the bed and picked up the two bags, slinging Excalibur over his shoulder like he saw Carmody do. The room had a pleasant scent, wafting from an air freshener, but it reminded Eric of the floral scent that Carmody often wore.

Vance had noticed him daydreaming and poked him in the ribs.

“Are you my sister’s boyfriend?” he asked with interest, looking up at Eric’s face.

“How about you come and eat your supper” Carmody’s dad suggested and hustled the inquisitive boy out of the room. Eric followed them both and closed the bedroom door behind him.

“Thanks for this, Mr Brentwood” Eric called to the father and made his way to the door. He almost made it when the older man caught up to him, having settled his son with a bowl of hot soup at the dining table.

“Before you go, Eric, a quick word if you don’t mind”

Eric stopped and turned to face the man.

“I don’t say much when Carmody is around, because I want to support her in everything she chooses to do in her life” her father began, his face set into a stern expression. “But I know the things she gets up to with your Project at the school are dangerous. You are teaching my little girl to fight, which I am Okay with, but I worry about what she is fighting against”

Eric regarded her father and saw the love for his only daughter shining like a beacon from the man. It made him jealous in a way and he wondered if Carmody knew how much her father put aside his own fears to let her achieve her desires.

“She is brave and resourceful, Mr Brentwood. Her Ability is powerful but what makes her strong is her own ideals. I can see how she learned to be this way after meeting you and I hope you will trust me to protect her as best I can”

The father looked deep into Eric’s eyes and seemed satisfied with what he saw there.

“Kiddo would save the world given the chance” the man said. “You just make sure she comes home to her family afterwards”

“I will, sir” Eric promised and with that he was released.

It was only on the way down in the elevator that he realised Carmody’s father had not asked for any details of what his daughter was up to that evening. Despite all the drama at the Tower, indeed all the strange events Carmody had been caught up in recently, he accepted she knew what she was doing. He trusted his daughter implicitly and knew she would do the right thing.

It had been an incredible string of events that linked his path to Carmody’s, and both of them to Sarah and the Steam Dragon she had discovered. As Eric left the building, the cool night breeze washed over him, a relief from the hot air of the daytime. Excalibur bounced against his shoulder as he walked to his bike, making him wonder if it was truly some ancient weapon in disguise or just an old, battered cricket bat.

Either way, Carmody needed it and he had promised to watch over her. With a deliberate action he let his worries go for now and stowed the extra items on his bike. Eric donned his helmet and gloves and mounted the powerful sports racer.

With a potent whine the engine cycled up to power and he accelerated away from the building, joining the few vehicles on the road as he raced to Nata’s apartment.

=====

Nata was dressed in her armour coat when she answered the door to her apartment, which raised an eyebrow on Eric’s usually unresponsive forehead.

“Expecting trouble?” he asked as she welcomed him inside. He laid the bags of equipment on the floor against a wall, laying Excalibur in its own bag on top.

“Not here” Nata replied “But I need to go meet someone”

“That would be Yolanda Brackenridge?” he guessed and the grim set of her mouth was all the confirmation he needed. “I’m coming with you then”

“No, you aren’t” see told him flatly. “If I bring an Avatar into this she may go all crazy on me. Besides, I need you to stay here and watch over the girls”

Eric was decidedly unhappy at that and told her so.

“You are the Sword of the Order of Michael” he reminded her in case she had somehow forgotten that fact. “If she is a Witch, aren’t you guys mortal enemies or something?”

“That is not how it works, Eric” Nata answered with an edge of frustration in her voice. “Yolanda and I have no quarrel with each other unless she breaks the Covenant. If she does it right in front of me I have authority to enforce Judgement, but she wouldn’t be stupid enough to do that”

“I see” Eric nodded sagely. “So if she kills you on the spot, then you are allowed to do something about it.That seems perfectly reasonable to me”

“I am glad you finally get it!” Nata laughed and laid a gauntleted hand on his shoulder. “The girls always tell me how stupid you are, but I just don’t believe it”

Eric laughed too and the pair of them shared a look, one that the younger boy was unsure of how to interpret. Even attired in her armour, the hilt of Lacerata visible under her coat, she was a remarkably good looking woman.

“Don’t you have a meeting to get too?” he asked, breaking the spell and she lowered her arm.

“Yeah, thanks for reminding me” She gestured in the direction of her kitchen. “There are snacks and cold drinks in the refrigerator. Help yourself and I’ll be back before you know it”

“Wait a minute, am I the babysitter?” he asked with sudden realisation.

“Of course not” Nata said with a grin. “Babysitters get paid. You are doing this as a favour to me”

With that she opened her apartment door and walked out, Eric watching her with a small smile until the door closed.