Retrograde

Chapter 5 • Elucidation

• Chapter Five •
Elucidation

"So, I wasn't in a car crash?" Cael asked, wincing as Reena was tending to his gun shot wound after having wrapped the cut on his hand. After they left the scene that marked the end of Cael's old life—or, rather, his new-old life—Cael had fallen asleep. He awoke when a stalactite broke and fell on him from the ceiling of the Lincoln Memorial basement. He was welcomed in by the sight of Reena, who had been a little too close to his face.

The basement had been preserved well enough, despite the memorial itself being destroyed. Some things had fallen, but the place looked like it had been tended to and occupied for a while, having lanterns, tables, and various tools and gadgets laying around. Cael sat on a black futon with his leg laying across Reena's lap. She managed to get the bullet out of his thigh without damaging too much.

"No," she replied, looking at Garver discreetly, who was sitting in a chair in front of them while the other two seemed to be out. Garver nodded as if he were in silent communication with Reena and got up to do something. "You were beaten before your memory was erased. That's why you were in the hospital when you first woke up. Your accident report was all fabricated. The Syndicate has people in many places, so that's why we have to learn to take care of ourselves."

Cael watched Garver suspiciously as he handed Reena a purple vial that looked like it had an eye dropper for a cap. He winced as he started to move away. "I think I'm at my limit for mysterious ass vials," he said with uncertainty. Garver laughed, but Reena only smirked and held him in place.

"Struggling will only hurt you. This vial—," Reena holds up the vial, "—has something that will help you, rather than hurt you. We have a bit of a ride that we have to take, and we can't risk you possibly losing too much blood, one gun shot or otherwise." Thus far, Reena had been trustworthy, despite the fact that she was rough around the edges. So, Cael made the decision to settle and let her do...whatever it is that she intended to do.

Reena took out the eye dropper with some of the nearly clear liquid in it and held it over the gunshot wound. "Gabe. Hold 'em," she warned.

"Wait, what? Hold me for what? Hold me for what!?" Garver walked behind him and held Cael in place by the shoulders. Reena squeezed four drops of the liquid on to his gun shot wound, and all Cael could feel at that moment was fire. Burning. His body jerked up, but Garver held him down. Cael yelled in pain. "Fuck!" He bit his bottom lip as Reena and Garver held him in place. Soon, the burning sensation calmed to a mere tingle. And then a tingle turned into nothing.

What amazed Cael was that he saw the tissue of his thigh...regenerate. It was an interesting sight, one that calmed him. Garver and Reena looked at each other and then let him go. Reena closed the vial up and handed it to Garver, who took it and put it away. "Tissue regeneration. What is that stuff?"

Reena slipped from under his leg to stand up. "Classified. And the healing is only partial. Your body has to do the rest of the work, but you're okay enough to walk without a limp." Reena grabbed the gauze from the first aid kit that was sitting on the table near them. "Here. Wrap up." Cael took the gauze and carefully raps it around portion where there was a cut-out part—Reena had cut his pants to expose the wound.

"Would it have been too much to ask for a warning?" Cael wondered.

"If I had told you that it would burn like a bitch, you wouldn't have let me use it." She wasn't wrong...the cut on his hand would have to heal on its own.

"Shit works like a charm, but pain before gain," Garver chimed in, spinning the loop of a wrench around his finger. It slips off of his finger and he fumbles to catch it. Cael stood to his feet, shaking his head at Garver. "What?"

"I should give you a damn F in my class, Gabrian. This whole time, you knew things about me that I didn't know about myself."

Reena smirked, crossing her arms over her chest. "He wasn't allowed to say anything that Sabin didn't authorize. We knew how important you were to the Syndicate, so we knew that, sooner or later, they would send someone to keep a closer watch of you. That was Clarice." Cael cleared his throat uncomfortably, looking at the ground. It turned out Clarice was crazy, but he still had loved the woman for three years.

"So?"

"So, we sent you one of ours. Garver was tasked to gain your trust. We figured if we sent you someone that you could get to know, you'd be more comfortable with us. You'd have someone here that you'd already...know." Reena had a moment's pause before the last word, and it made Cael look up at her. Garver interrupted the moment.

"But, I mean, c'mon. It's a pleasant surprise, right? I'm pleasant as fuck." Garver chimed in, failing to read the awkward energy.

Cael couldn't help the grin that spread over his lips. "At least I know your personality wasn't an act."

"Moi? An act? Never. It's hard to pretend to be normal when you're extraordinary." The dark brown-haired young man gave a smirk that could break tension, and it did. Both Reena and Cael chuckled.

From the corner of his eye, Cael could see something white. When he looked at it, he discovered that there was a white sheet draping over something. He gestured to it with his chin. "What's that?" Reena and Garver both looked, but Garver was the one to answer.

Walking over to the lumpy and obscured figure, Garver grabbed the sheet. "This? It's a little something that we've been working on. Or, rather, I have been working on." He pulled the sheet off and what Cael saw was a circular platform with a railing and an arch attached to it. Cael and Reena walked closer. The surface of the platform seemed to be made of glass.

Reena crossed her arms, rolling her eyes. "He calls it the GeoStep."

"GeoStep?" Cael questioned.

"Geography Step," Garver explained. "In other words, teleportation. I made this baby so it would be easier for us to reach our checkpoints. But...it's a work in progress." Reena took the floor then.

"The LM basement is just our segue place where we patch ourselves up if we need to. With some help, he was able to make two others, at our main location and at our safe haven. We've only ever tested on fruit, but there was an incident..."

"Do I want to know what happened?"

"Probably not, but I'll tell you anyway. One of our guys tried to use it without clearance—"

"—and not all of him returned when we tried to get him back," Garver finished. "In other words, it's best if this thing stays under the sheet until I'm able to figure out what needs fixing." He shakes out the white sheet and covers the contraption up.

Cael shuddered, thinking about the pieces that might have gotten left behind. He shook off the thought, in favor of asking about the main location. "So, where is the main location?"

Reena had moved to grab her vest, which she had taken off when they got there. "Germantown, Maryland. We wanted our main location to be close enough to Washington, but just enough away. Even then, we kind of hide in plain sight."

"And we're going there now?"

Garver picked up the briefcase that Cael had gotten from a now-dead Clarice. "Of course. After the shit show at your house, you are now a hot button for the Syndicate. The other two guys that were with us packed your essentials and went off to our location already. You're with the Cipher now."

The Cipher...he had distantly heard of it, like a whisper that you weren't sure was actually happening in the world or in your head.

"You're with Sabin now," Reena nodded in agreement. "Guess you get to meet the phantom sooner than you thought.