Jason was pacing back and forth in front of the bench, clenching and unclenching his fists as shame and rage warred on his face. Asya looked on in silence, picking up the dropped folder. She took a closer look at the photographs in the folder. A naked woman in a concrete room. A close-up of her face, with the shaved head and the suppression collar. Clearly, Jason had not realised who she was until he saw the pictures.
“We’re doing our best to get her out,” Asya assured him, which was the truth. The International Committee had been convinced by the reports of Jason’s contribution to the incursion event and were willing to make heavy concessions for his voluntary cooperation.
Asya strongly suspected the International Committee’s global executives had already looked the other way at the Lyon branch’s promises of torture-extracted dividends. She believed that had changed once Jason presented both a more reliable and a more palatable option.
“You’re doing the best you’re willing to do,” Jason said, still pacing.
“Jason, we’ve essentially finalised our agreement at this point.”
Jason stopped moving as she spoke. She could feel the unsteadiness of his aura where she normally couldn’t sense it at all. It was stifling, like being in the middle seat of a car between two overweight people. He turned his gaze, filled with fury, on her.
“The agreement doesn’t matter,” Jason said. “As of right now, I have one priority: protect my family, whatever that takes.”
He marched over and jabbed at the photograph in her hand.
“She is family,” he said in a voice that poured ice water down her back. “If I have to burn your Network to the ground to get her back, then I will.”
He winced, then shook his head as if throwing off befuddlement. His aura settled until she could no longer feel it pushing uncomfortably against her. His eyes softened from angry to hurt and vulnerable.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a tired voice, backing off from her personal space. “My first reaction is always to fight these days. To be willing to go further and do worse than the other guy.”
He rubbed his temples.
“I’m not the Incredible Hulk,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I know that my anger doesn’t make me stronger, as much as it feels like it should. All it does is cloud my judgement and stop me from making the considered choices that will actually get me what I want.”
“Who is she?” Asya asked.
“When I went to the other world, she was a teacher and a friend. She taught me to wield my aura but also just how to live in that world. The stronger I grow, the more I realise just how much she set me on the right path. Even after we lost her, it’s like she’s still teaching me.”
“Lost her?”
“She died,” Jason said. “Like me. And she came back to life here, also like me. Now it’s my turn to help her in a strange new world, but while I’m having family barbecues and going on jet ski rides, she’s being tortured in a concrete hole!”
“We’re working on it,” Asya said.
“That’s not enough anymore,” Jason said. “I know you have no incentive to help her other than the benefits I’m offering in return, so let me be plain: There is no agreement until Farrah is safe and here. The only things I need from the Network are definitive assurances and a definitive timetable. If you can deliver that, I’ll do my best to stop her from taking revenge on you all. We have no other business until that is done, and here’s my timetable: You have until I come up with a better way to get her back myself, at which point, I will.”
Jason didn’t wait for a reply, calling up a portal and stepping through, after which it descended into the ground and vanished. Asya looked around after Jason vanished. Yarranabbe Park had a lot of long sightlines, but no one seemed to have noticed.
She let out a long sigh, setting down the folder and running her hands over her face. She took the folder and put it back in her briefcase and pulled out her phone.
Jason portalled to Hiro and Taika, and then back to the houseboat. There was a ten-minute wait between portal uses and it didn’t have the range to reach Casselton Beach in one hop. This meant a ten-minute layover halfway. Hiro, Jason, and Taika emerged amongst trees on a small hillside that led down to a sandy beach.
“I think I’m getting used to that,” Taika said as they emerged from the portal.
“At least I’ve stopped throwing up,” Hiro said, although he was leaning against a tree with a pale face.
“It’s kind of trippy,” Taika said, slightly wobbling in place. “And I think it makes me hungry.”
Jason pulled out a cardboard food carton and handed it to Taika, who opened it to see pieces of crumbed and fried meat, still steaming hot.
“Is this chicken?” Taika asked.
“Blood-seeker pheasant,” Jason said. He had cooked it from meat he looted from the incursion space and had been happy with how it turned out.
“Never heard of it,” Taika said and took a bite. “Oh, that’s super good. Where are we?”
“Just up from Tuncurry,” Jason said.
“It’s nice. I’m going to go check out the beach.”
As Taika wandered down the slope and out of the trees, Hiro was watching Jason.
“Are you alright?” Hiro asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Bollocks you are,” Hiro said.
Jason let out a groan.
“I just found out that I’ve been failing someone very important to me very, very badly.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. If I go off on a tear like I normally would, throwing around as much weight as I can bluff people into thinking I have, that will only make things worse. I have all this power but it’s not enough.”
“Is there ever enough power?” Hiro asked.
“I don’t know,” Jason said. “There are people who are basically demigods, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be that strong. Very few ever get there, or so I’m told. For all I know, they have just as many problems, but on a scale that would crush me underfoot in an instant.”
“Perhaps you should focus on what you can do for now,” Hiro suggested, “with the power you have today.”
Jason nodded.
“I need time to stop and think,” he said. “I haven’t been doing enough of that, but I can’t mess this up.”
He released his frustration by fiercely kicking a tree, sending leaves tumbling to the ground.
In his spirit vault, meditation helped Jason deal with the storm reeling through his brain. Farrah. Alive and in his world but caught up in circumstances that filled him with white-hot rage. His body was almost twitching with the need to roar off and start tearing his way through everyone who could get him closer to her. Instead, he pulled out a bronze-rank suppression collar, snapped it around his neck and went back to meditation.