A Twist of Destiny Bk. 01

"You wanna be next, guv?" he growled at me. "Go 'way, Yank. This ain't none of yer pigeon."

I shrugged. "Matter of opinion, I'd say," I replied. I kept walking towards the trio and they all turned to look at me, the old man forgotten for the moment. The bald guy was clearly their leader and the other two, dressed similarly but nowhere near as muscular, flanked him. With their attention diverted, the elderly victim started to quietly crawl away from the fracas that was about to ensue. He was probably thankful for my interference but expecting me to die for my trouble. Little did he know what he was about to witness.

"Oy," the bald punk said. "Is that right? Wadda ya reckon, mates? Think we ought ta show this Yank how things go 'round here? Looks like the fuckin' faggot needs a fuckin' lesson in mindin' 'is own business."

I stopped about ten feet away from them, plenty of distance between us for me to react to their first move. "Am I to assume, then, that class is in session?"

"Get 'em," Baldy snarled to his friends. "Fuck 'im up, lads!"

The two men, one tall and the other short, rushed at me quickly, but I made no move to defend myself just yet. When the tallest one was within three feet of me, however, I reached out to him, my fist closed, and connected with his chest powerfully. The result was immediate: he went sailing backwards, air whooshing from his surprised mouth, and he came crashing into a jumble of alley debris and trash cans loudly, out like a light upon impact. The short one, meanwhile, was coming in low and, even as his buddy flew through the air, I was already moving to the side, spinning out of his path and allowing him to charge past me. As soon as he realized that I'd moved, he started to reverse himself, but it was too late. I pushed my leg out and planted a solid kick to his knee just as he was turning. I heard the joint snap like a thick branch and he immediately screamed in agony. I ended his consciousness with a well-planted punch to his forehead and he collapsed like a sack of wheat. Thump.

Just as I was about to turn around and face the last assailant, I felt a searing pain in my kidney. He'd stabbed me from behind while I was distracted. Almost without thinking, I snapped my hand behind me, grabbed his wrist and twisted it forcefully. I heard the soft crunching of several tiny bones and felt them crumble in my grip. He howled in pain and surprise. With my other hand I reached back and yanked the blade from my body, which brought on a fresh explosion of sharp pain in my side. I pulled it around to look at the nasty weapon, saw it covered in my own blood and then focused my angry glare at him while he whimpered in pain. I still hadn't let go of his destroyed wrist. I felt my pulse quicken and could already feel the wound closing, not as fast as I'd like but fast enough. In about an hour I expected that I'd have an angry scar there but nothing else. By the morning even the scar would be gone.

"That," I said as I pulled him closer to me, "hurt."

I tossed the weapon to my left, my throwing hand zipping just past his ear, as hard as I could and he watched it fly straight into the building's wall, where it sank in about halfway down its blade. He then snapped his head to look me in the eyes and I could see absolute dread there. "Oh, fu-"

I didn't let him finish the sentence. As soon as the weapon had left my grip I was already bending my knees, ready to push up off the ground. As I started to jump into the air, I flicked him ahead of me by his arm, surely wrenching his shoulder from its socket in the process, and quickly followed him into the space above us. I caught up with him about thirty feet up, just as he was nearing the apex of his ascent, my arm pulled back. With every ounce of fury I had in me, I punched the thug square in his chest and sent him hurtling back down to the ground with the added momentum of my strike. He hit the concrete and was instantly unconscious. When I floated down gently to stand at his feet I noticed that the ground beneath him was cracked from the impact of his "landing."

"Holy fuck!" I heard Holly's voice gasp from behind me. I spun around in surprise and found myself speechless. She was staring at me with unabashed awe and possibly a little horror.

"Holly?" I asked. "I thought I told you to go get the police."

My step-daughter blinked at me, thrown off by the statement. "I found one," she said. "I told him what was happening and he went to go get reinforcements. I came back here to see if I could help somehow."

"You could've gotten yourself hurt," I said as I stepped toward her and I immediately regretted it. With the battle over, my body was already starting to radiate the pain that I felt even as it started to heal. My back felt like I'd been kicked by a mule and I winced because of it.

Holly quickly came to my side and spotted the knife tear in the back of my shirt right away. "Dad! You're hurt!" she cried. She put her hand over it to apply pressure and then jerked it back like she'd been scalded. While the wound was undoubtedly hot to the touch (my metabolism kicking in the high gear, I suspect), she was probably more surprised by the fact that the gash was already closed. "What the-?"

I took a deep, painful breath and let it out slowly. "I can't explain it right now, sweetheart. And we should probably get out of here before that cop arrives."

Holly glanced to the end of the alley and then up at me, worry and confusion etched on her face. We could already hear the police whistles being blown in the distance and it sounded like they were getting closer by the second. "I don't think we have enough time, Dad."

With no other options available to me, I hooked my right arm around her waist tight enough to hold her close. "Hold on," I told her and, without another word, launched us both into the air. She screeched in surprise and reflexively wrapped both arms around my sides, which hurt like hell but I didn't let it distract me. When we got about 100 feet into the air I altered our trajectory and took us about a quarter of a mile away, into a less populated part of the city, where I brought us safely down into another alleyway. During the whole trip Holly, her face buried in my right side (away from my aching kidney), kept muttering "Ohmyjesus ohmyjesus ohmyjesus!" like a mantra.

Holly untangled herself from my arms as soon as we touched down and stepped away from me, her eyes fixed on mine as she searched for words. "What the hell, Dad?" she finally blurted. "I mean, what the fuck was that? What've they done to you?!" By "they" I knew what she meant: the government.

"Nothing," I said flatly. "At least, not yet." Then, as I did with her mother, I explained what had happened to me and we talked in hushed tones. Unlike her mother, however, Holly interrupted me frequently and asked all sorts of questions, which took more time than I'd have liked to explain, but after an hour of discussion in that alleyway, she finally had the full story.

"So you're thinking that, next week, is when you'll become NightShade?" she asked.

I nodded. "I think so, yes. But I don't know how they'll do it or how long it'll take. And I might be completely wrong- it could be a month away. I honestly don't know any more than what I've already told you."

"Super-Dad," she mused aloud with a bemused grin.

"Jesus!" I cried out. "Don't say that!"

"Why not?" she countered. "To me, that's what you'll be. Fucking unbelievable!"

I shook my head in disbelief. "Honey, I'm not sure if you really are aware of what's at stake here. I already explained to you that I don't think they're necessarily planning for me to be a super-hero. They want me to be a weapon, a super-soldier. Society and the media will see a hero, sure, but other governments will see a threat. This might be all cool to you, but it'll be a major mess to a lot of other people and, like Spider-Man with his secret identity, I can't have anything happen to the people I love, so I need you to shut up about this. Hell, you need to shut up about this. You can't talk about it to anyone, period. Ever."

"Does Mom know?"

"Of course she knows," I snapped in annoyance. "She's my wife!"

Holly crossed her arms indignantly. "Well, why did you wait this long to tell me?" she snapped back. "Don't you think it's something I probably should've heard about by now?"

I sighed and shook my head. "I... I didn't know how to tell you. Hell, I didn't know if I should tell you. And that's more for your protection than mine, really. I expect that we're under almost constant surveillance back in Belgium. Probably at home in the States, too. I don't know. All I do know is that you can't be held accountable for what you don't know."

"You mean I can't blab," she said hotly. "Fuck, David, can't you give me a little more credit than that? I'm not a fucking child, you know!"

I took another deep breath, trying to calm my nerves. Holly didn't call me by my first name unless she was really annoyed with me. What had been an otherwise wonderful outing with my step-daughter had now ended up completely ruined. I found myself wishing that the whole alley incident had simply not happened. But, then again, I'm sure that old beggar might not have survived the night if I hadn't stepped in when I did. All things considered, that man's survival was worth enduring my step-daughter's ire.

"I know you're not a child, Holly," I said calmly after a few seconds of strained silence. "And I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. You know I love you and that wasn't my intention. I never want to hurt you."

She turned away from me and looked into the darkness of the alley. "You can't always protect me, Dad. There was a time when I thought nothing could hurt me, that I was invincible, but you've taught me a lot over the years. Sometimes I'm going to get hurt and you can't stop it from happening."

I walked up to her, the pain in my side still throbbing but not as badly as it probably would have been if not for my healing ability. When I was behind her I said, "I know I can't always be there, sweetheart. But, as your dad, I'll always try to be." I reached my arms around her and hugged her from behind as tenderly as I could. "That's what it means to love somebody," I said softly into her ear, "to always want for someone else's happiness and safety. I may not always be there, but I'll always want to be. Because you're my daughter, plain and simple."

She turned around in my arms and said quietly, "What if I don't want to be?" With that, she reached up on her toes and kissed me full on the lips. I felt her tongue probe past my lips and, God help me, I permitted it and kissed her right back. It was wrong by every social standard I knew, but it felt so right in that moment. We kissed deeply for several moments until we both had to come up for air. As we stared at each other in that dark alley I could see her eyes twinkling like they had earlier in the week, alive with excitement and desire. "Wow," she breathed. Her breath was warm and sweet and I wanted to taste it again.

But, once again, my paternal instincts kicked in and I found myself releasing her from my embrace, shaking my head as though to clear away mental cobwebs. "We should probably get back," I said absently.

Holly huffed in exasperation and growled, "Holy shit! Really, Dad? Really? What the hell is wrong with you?! That was, like, a fucking 15 on a kissing scale of one to ten and that's what you think of? What the fuck are you so afraid of?!"

"Of hurting you!" I snapped back.

And that brought her up short. She stiffened as though I'd thrown a bucket of cold water into her face and then she said, flatly, "Oh."

Now it was my turn to sigh in exasperation. "Look," I said, "I'd be lying if I said that I don't want you. And I'm sorry for keeping the truth from you. The fact is, your mother and I already talked about this... you. She's already told me to go ahead with it, that she's okay with it. We decided-"

"What?!" she said in surprise. "So why haven't you-?"

I cut her off. "Because of everything else going on, Holly! The move to Belgium, a change of unit, the NightShade stuff... a lot has been and is still going on with me. Getting involved with you... it'd be just one more distraction that might cause me to drop the ball. And, frankly, both your mother and I were sort of hoping that this was just a phase, some sort of exaggerated crush that lots of girls develop for their dads. It's actually pretty common. Like I said, I don't want to hurt you. I'm hoping like hell that some of this shit dies down a little so that I can give you my full attention, the way you deserve it. I know from experience what it's like to have a lover whose focus is divided- it's not fun. I wouldn't want you to go through that with any man, let alone me. So, please... I'm begging you... just please be patient, okay?"

At that moment a window a few stories up on the building next to us flew open, which startled both of us, and a gruff, elderly woman's voice shouted out, "Oy! Either give the lass what she bloody well wants or bugger off! We're tryin' ta sleep, you Yank twits!"

Holly and I both looked at each other, our faces crimson with embarrassment. My step-daughter giggled lightly and said, "I think, maybe, she's got a point."

We walked, this time, out of the alley. It took me a short while for me to get my bearings, but before long, I was able to lead us back to a bus route that was still running. For the entire walk Holly kept her arm draped across my waist so that the blood stain from my healing knife wound wasn't obvious to anyone unless they looked closely. Along the way Holly was smart enough to dip into a pharmacy (the British analog of a convenience store) and bought me a fairly plain-looking t-shirt to replace my knife-torn and bloodied Oxford (which was promptly dumped into a street-side trash can). Six relatively exhausting hours later, we were walking into our Belgian apartment.

As soon as we were inside the door I took off the t-shirt and asked Holly to inspect the wound. As I'd expected, there was nothing more than an angry-looking scar where I'd been cut and it was still hot to the touch. Once the inspection was complete, however, she started to run her hands up and down my back lovingly. "So why do they call it Project Odyssey?" she asked quietly as she admired my back.

I stepped away from her touch and moved into the kitchen where I grabbed a large zip-lock bag from a drawer and pulled an ice tray from the freezer. As I emptied the tray's contents into the plastic bag, I replied, "I'm not entirely sure, but I have my suspicions. Are you familiar with the Greek epic The Odyssey? Did they cover that in school?"

Holly took the bag from me as I turned around and she applied it to my aching back, right on top of the sealed wound. "A little bit," she answered. "Honestly, I wasn't paying close enough attention."

I grunted in slight dissatisfaction but didn't reprimand her. She had graduated and that was all that really mattered in the final analysis, but I would have preferred her to be more well-read just the same. "Well," I explained, "it basically comes down to this: a sailor, Odysseus, is commanded by the King to go and retrieve the Golden Fleece, a sheep skin that was blessed by Zeus. Whoever wore the Golden Fleece was supposed to be guaranteed absolute victory in all conflicts and never be touched by the weapons of his enemies. Odysseus and his crew face all kinds of legendary challenges on their journey- the land of the Cyclops, the Song of the Sirens, among the more notable of them. Along the way, many of them die. The ones to survive, all of them, including Odysseus, are forever changed by their experiences. Some for the better, some doomed to end their lives in tragedy. There's more to the story, of course, but that's The Odyssey in a nutshell."

Holly was thoughtfully silent as she held the ice pack to my side. The pain was already starting to abate and the coolness of it made me extremely grateful. "So... are you supposed to be Odysseus?" she asked after a moment.

I chuckled lightly. "Not hardly, honey. No... whatever it is that they use to... empower me is probably something that will be excruciating. I'm willing to bet that there's more than one test subject or candidate for the project. Whoever survives the ordeal without negative effects makes the cut. Whoever dies from it... doesn't."

"And what happens to the people who survive it and don't make the cut?"

I took a deep, pensive breath, having given it a lot of thought already. I had, so far, been able to come to only one conclusion. "Imprisonment, probably," I answered. "Maybe cryogenic stasis, to keep them from hurting themselves and others. I don't know for sure. That's what I'd do, anyway."

"Super-villains," Holly said quietly.

I turned around quickly and gave her a stern look. "Bite your tongue, young lady! This is not some comic book movie. Look, after what I experienced when NightShade visited me, I wouldn't be at all surprised if some people actually go insane from the change. It hurts in ways that you can't imagine unless you experience it for yourself, and I only got a taste of it. I don't envy the ones who couldn't make the cut, who couldn't endure the pain long enough to hold their shit together. But I wouldn't think of them as criminals."

Holly hugged me close in a non-seductive manner. It was almost protective in its meaning. "Well, I hope you never have to deal with them."

I hugged her back, grateful for the sentiment. "If I do, sweetheart, I can tell you this much: it won't be good."

The rest of the night was innocent enough between us. We watched a movie on the couch. About halfway through the film Holly had fallen asleep while leaned up against me. I'm one of those people who can't start watching a movie without seeing it all the way through, though, so I let her be and finished it out. I'd like to say that it was a memorable feature, but, unfortunately, my mind was mostly focused on my step-daughter. When it finally ended I gently picked her up in my arms, carried her to her room and laid her to rest on her bed. I didn't undress her, figuring that she would eventually do that on her own at some point in the night, but I did plant a soft, gentle kiss on her forehead.

As I walked out of her room, she stirred and looked at the partially-opened door, catching my attention. "I love you, Dad," she said softly.

"I love you, too, Babygirl," I replied. "Good night."

She sat up a little and looked at me pensively for a moment. "I won't see you until the end of the week, will I?"

"No," I answered quietly, "you won't."

"Be safe," she said lovingly.

I smiled at her wistfully. "You, too, sweetheart. You, too. I'll see you in a week. Go to sleep, honey." Then I closed the door to leave her be. I wasn't sure of what condition I'd be in a week later, but I knew that I would see her again. I also knew, deep down, that when I did see her again, I'd make her mine.

Chapter Seven : Change

On Monday I reported to General Hannis' office, just like I had the previous week, at 0800. And, just like always, Mrs. Thrush was seated behind her desk, busily typing something. When I entered through the door, however, she stopped immediately and gave me, to my shock, a warm smile. "Good morning, sergeant. The general is expecting you in his office."

I arched my eyebrows in surprise and returned the greeting. Without sharing anymore niceties, however, I opened and walked through the general's office door. "Staff Sergeant David Shayles, reporting as ordered, sir!" I said firmly, but not loud, with a clean salute. While doing so I'd barely registered the fact that General Hannis wasn't alone in his office. A woman of about fifty years of age, her hair streaked with gray, sat opposite from him in one of the chairs facing his desk. She turned when I announced myself and wore a bemused and cryptic expression on her face.