Elite 2: The Wrong Side of Revolution Page 21

  Beyond the room with the fireplace and a single step down was a den area. The den was filled with far less décor and seemed to be designed more for entertainment. There was a small brown couch and a loveseat that came together at a one-hundred and forty degree angle at the center of the room. Each was positioned facing a television that was hanging on the right hand wall. A small brown table with a lamp on it separated the two pieces of furniture. Off to the side of the couches, was a large, overly cushioned recliner that was also facing the TV and had its own end table beside it, equipped with three different remote controls.

  Underneath the TV was a wood stained cabinet with glass doors, and inside was a DVD player and a gaming console. The cabinet was topped with framed photos of Carlos and Marie’s family.

  At the far end of the den was a giant bay window that looked out onto a screened in porch, and beyond it an acre or so of open land, and beyond that the forest. Daniel imagined the view from the porch must have been absolutely exquisite during the spring, summer, and even fall months.

  “There’s our very own heard of deer,” Carlos said, pointing to a group of five or six deer out in the field, not too far from the house. In the middle of the group was a large buck. Daniel counted ten points on its antlers.

  To the left of the den was a sliding door that led out to the screened in porch, and past that was a half-bathroom. Opposite the sliding door was a wooden door that led down to the basement.

  Through the window, Daniel could see a part of the house that protruded outward past the screen porch. It too had a door that connected to the porch, but it didn’t fit in with the plain rectangular shape of the rest of the house.

  Carlos noticed Daniel taking notice of the addition. “That’s mine and Marie’s room. We added that on…shoot…twenty years ago now, something like that.”

  “Jorge was just a baby,” Marie agreed.

  Daniel nodded his head in a way that made him appear interested in the details.

  “It connects to the kitchen,” Carlos explained, gesturing with his finger to demonstrate where the connection to the rest of the house was.

  Daniel smiled as he and Jordan took another hearty glimpse around the house. He loved it. It was no Benze mansion, but he had no interest in such things. This house was perfect. It was warm and cozy, and although it would never really be home, it could very easily feel like one.

  Chapter 16

  Daniel and Jordan spent most of the winter getting acclimated to what was their new—and hopefully temporary—home. On the surface it seemed that there was little to do during the winter in Northwestern Michigan. Lake effect snow fell almost daily making driving on the two-lane highways a nightmare, and the most of the small towns along the lakeshore depended on summer tourism to survive, meaning most of them shut down during the winter season.

  But Michiganders were used to snow, and they knew how to make the most of it. It seemed everyone who lived in the area had a snowmobile, and Carlos was no exception. He had bought a second snowmobile the winter before—a fixer-upper—and had spent all summer getting it ready for the winter. His original intention was for Marie to go out riding with him, but she absolutely refused claiming that she couldn’t stand to spend that much time in the cold and that it scared her trying to go fast enough to keep up with Carlos in the treachery of the forest.

  Daniel and Jordan were the benefactors of Marie’s refusal to pilot the snowmobile, as they often took turns driving with the other riding on the back. The repaired snowmobile was an old, scratched up yellow piece of junk that pulled a little to the left and made an awful noise when running at full-throttle, but it was enough to keep up with Carlos’s three-year old royal blue machine when out in the open. On occasion the four of them would go out with Marie riding on the back while Carlos drove, but it never took very long for Marie to get cold and want to return to the warmth of the house.

  Daniel had always considered himself a creature that belonged in a warmer climate, but when he got out there on top of the snow, feeling the crisp air pushing his goggles against his face and the adrenaline rush of flying along the forest trails, he seemed to forget all about the temperature.

  On more than one occasion Carlos and Daniel would get up at the crack of dawn and go out riding without the women folk. They would go out and ride deep into the forest, trying their best to get lost and find their way back. It was on these occasions that Daniel had felt freer than ever before. Just man, machine, and the wilderness.

  Sometimes they would bring along fishing gear, and Carlos would lead him to a small lake a few miles off their property. They would walk out to the center of the lake, drill a hole and drop in a line. Daniel never understood the concept of ice fishing—sitting out in the freezing cold and waiting for a half-frozen fish to bite—but as he sat out on that lake, sipping coffee spiked with Jameson and telling tall tales with Carlos, he had no complaints.

  It was also convenient that there was a skiing resort just a dozen or so miles down the road from the house. Daniel and Jordan took a couple trips to Boyne Mountain—Daniel having never skied before in his life and Jordan having only gone twice over five years ago. The first time they went they rented equipment and received lessons, but they found it much more fun to find the nearest bunny hill and try to figure it out for themselves. They fell down a lot, but that only provided them with hours of laughter. After their second time out Jordan wanted to buy her own skis and other gear, but Daniel convinced her that they weren’t going to ski enough for it to be worth spending all of their government stipend on ski equipment.

  Carlos was also a fan of ice climbing, and he introduced Daniel to a friend of his named Dan. Dan was a self-certified ice climbing aficionado who had more than enough geared stored up in his house for Daniel to use, and he was more than happy to let him do so.

  Dan was a scruffy old man with a baritone voice and a lazy tongue which meant that half of the time he spoke Daniel couldn’t understand him. He was in his fifties, but maintained a strong build that offered him no physical restrictions that were evident. He was a Gulf War vet and a volunteer leader with the local Boy Scout troop having been a scout himself when he was younger. He had a long, scraggly grey beard that sufficiently hid the lower half of his face and bounced around when he spoke.

  Dan took Carlos and Daniel to a few different peaks in the area and taught Daniel how to climb. On just their third time out he felt Daniel was ready for the more advanced cliffs, though Daniel assumed he was just getting tired of climbing the easier ones. With Daniel’s abilities it was no problem for him getting up each peak once he’d mastered the technique. Dan was clearly impressed and on a couple occasions he took Daniel further north to some of his favorite climbing spots when Carlos had to work.

  Given that farming wasn’t much of an existent industry in the winter, Marie and Carlos both had other jobs that they did part-time to make ends meet. Marie worked as a teller at a local bank, and Carlos held the title of the county’s unofficial handyman, doing different odd jobs for people in the area. He quite often took his snowmobile out to his client’s houses when the roads were too bad.

  This meant there was a lot of down time for Jordan and Daniel without much more to do than read or watch TV. It did not take long for Jordan’s active spirit to get bored, so Marie set her up with a job at a restaurant in Petoskey. Business was a little slow for them during the winter, but Jordan wasn’t in it for the tips. The thousand dollars that Eva deposited into their account each week was more than sufficient to get them by, Jordan just needed a reason to get out of the house every once and a while.

  Daniel on the other hand did not need a job to keep him busy. He preferred to spend his time working out, or going out and wandering the wilderness on his own. He was fascinated by the calming effect that nature had on him, and he enjoyed just wandering and pondering. It was the perfect way to settle his mind and put the chaos that was his life away for a while. He quite often found himself climbing trees and boulders
and leaping over creeks as a way of keeping his physical abilities sharp. He knew that one day he would need to use them again.

  Daniel also spent a great deal of the time at the library doing internet research and browsing different biology textbooks. The last few words Demérs had said to him never left his mind. Demérs had told Daniel that he didn’t even begin to understand his full potential, and Daniel was determined to figure out what that meant. Without Dr. Horchoff to break down the science for him it was difficult for Daniel to determine just what his full potential was. He started by focusing on Demérs’ seemingly unbreakable skin, trying to decipher how to duplicate the ability.

  Once he stumbled across an essay that talked about cellular regeneration. Much of what Daniel could understand made it sound a lot like what Dr. Horchoff had explained to him when he learned to heal himself. He thought that maybe if he could find a way to create more skin cells when he wasn’t injured, he may be able to create a denser layers skin tissue, making it more difficult to break through. It was only a theory, but one he decided to try.

  On those occasions when he was alone in the house, Daniel would close his eyes and use his neural pathways to slip into a meditative state in which his conscious mind entered the realm of his unconscious brain. It was as if he were entering a virtual reality game in which he could manipulate every function of his body with the use of a controller. He took his time to absorb the proper nutrients from his digestive system and utilize his endocrine system to send those nutrients where they needed to go. From there he dug deeper and deeper into his brain until he could feel things happening within his body on a cellular level. He began to create skin cells and tissue at an increased pace, packing them in tightly and filling them with the maximum amount of nutrients to make them stronger and denser. The process was similar to the one he used to heal himself at an increased rate, only rather than closing wounds he was fortifying his tissue against them.

  One day he went to a nearby sporting goods store and bought a hunting knife. When no one was around he went to the bathroom sink and attempted to cut his arm, just above the bicep—the area he had focused on thickening the most. To his chagrin, the sharp knife cut right through. Daniel cringed and quickly shut off the pain, but he was disappointed in his inability to create unbreakable skin. Perhaps the knife was too sharp, and even with extremely dense tissue there was no way to keep the slim blade from slicing through. His skin might still hold up better against a blunt object, but there was no way for him to test that—at least not any way he wanted to attempt.

  As the days went along he spent more and more time replicating skin cells and trying to increase density. The more he attempted it, it did seem that it became more difficult for the knife to cut through, but he was never able to fully prevent a wound. After the fifth time when Jordan almost caught him without enough time to fully heal his wound, he decided to give up.

  That didn’t stop his curiosity though. At one point it got so bad that he actually decided to ask Jordan questions about her former fiancé’s body.

  “Did Gordon’s skin feel different at all?” He once asked her,

  She looked at him with a face that expressed both frustration and confusion. “It felt like skin.”

  Jordan had made it quite clear that she wanted to completely forget about her engagement to Demérs when she tossed her engagement ring out the window somewhere in Missouri, but Daniel couldn’t help but press a little further. “Did it feel thicker or stronger at all?”

  Jordan threw her arms out to her side and started to answer, but paused an extra beat to consider the answer. “I don’t know, I guess there were a couple times when I thought that he could have used some lotion.”

  Daniel made a face that showed he was accepting the answer as inconclusive, and went back to watching a science-fiction show about explorers who travel across the galaxy through wormholes.

  “You can’t ask that question and not tell me why,” Jordan commanded.

  Daniel replied unconcerned as she was absolutely right. “He had unbreakable skin.”

  Jordan’s face first expressed disbelief, but quickly turned to one of understanding. “That would explain why he never had any bandages in his apartment.”

  Like all things, winter eventually came to an end, and although Daniel had greatly enjoyed his time playing in the snow, he was excited when it finally started to melt and the sun began peeking its head out from behind the clouds more and more. Spring had arrived and summer would soon follow, and he could not wait to spend some quality time out on the water.

  Daniel and Jordan had grown to feel quite comfortable living with Carlos and Marie, and he believed that Carlos and Marie had become quite content with Daniel and Jordan living in their house as well. In fact, Daniel felt that the four of them had grown to be rather close friends, and outside of Jordan he considered Carlos as perhaps the closest friend he had anymore.

  As the weather warmed and business picked up, Jordan began working more and more at the restaurant. On top of his duties as handyman Carlos got his land prepped to plant his new cherry crop and also started helping out a couple of days a week at a nearby marina. Daniel greatly admired Carlos. He had never seen anyone work harder to make a living in his life and he deeply respected him for it.

  Daniel volunteered a lot of his time to helping Carlos tend to the cherry fields when the time came, and as spring turned into summer Carlos asked Daniel to come help him work at the local marina. It wasn’t his plan to take a job over the summer, but out of respect Daniel could not say no, and so he went to work for the Harbor Springs Yacht Club.

  He found that he actually quite enjoyed working at the club as he got to spend his days by the water and was fortunate enough to meet a lot of really great people. Harbor Springs was a rather wealthy community, therefore the employees of the club were able to bond over their blue collar backgrounds and quite often mocked their white collared employers, usually out of jealousy but occasionally out of distaste as well.

  All except for Jessie Holmes, a nineteen year-old who’s family lived in one of the wealthier suburbs of Detroit and owned a summer home in Harbor Springs.

  “I didn’t know there were any rich neighborhoods in Detroit,” Daniel once joked when Jessie was around.

  “Dude,” Jessie replied, “Not in Detroit, just a little outside of it. Once you pass those city limits into the suburbs everything changes.”

  Jessie despised the life of luxury however, and acted out by getting into every bit of trouble that he could. He had once been arrested for stealing his neighbors Porsche, but using the power of high-priced attorneys his parents were able to get the charges lowered to community service.

  The crazy thing about the skinny, sandy haired blonde with blue eyes was that he completely understood that he was a spoiled rich kid, and knew that was the reason he behaved the way he did. “Hey, I might as well abuse it while I can,” he would say.

  Daniel knew that he should have hated Jessie, but he couldn’t help but like the guy. The thing with Jessie was that he wanted to be what he considered “normal” like the rest of the club grunts. Working at the club during the summer was supposed to be a punishment, but he saw it as an opportunity to get away from the yuppies and into the trenches with the real people. He hated being a part of the uppity lifestyle. He would often steal things off of member’s yachts and justify it by saying, “They can afford more. I know because I’m a rich kid.”

  Jessie and Daniel also became drinking buddies. At first Daniel had inhibitions about drinking with an underage kid, but every bartender in town knew him by name and still served him, so Daniel just went along with it. Jessie was fascinated with Daniel for some reason and was always asking questions, most of which Daniel had to lie about. He thought that Carlos may have spilled something about his unique circumstance to the other club employees and that was why Jessie was so interested, because Jessie for some reason or another seemed to associate Daniel with trouble and adventure. He never
stopped talking about wanting to get out in the world and get his hands dirty. It sometimes scared Daniel a bit to hear the young man talk, but while Jessie was a lot of things, boring was not one of them.

  However Jessie also reminded Daniel of the risk he took working around so many wealthy individuals. Anyone with the money to not only own the type of boat that filled the slips in Harbor Springs, but to be a member of the club in the first place meant that they fit the description of a potential member of the Birthright. Daniel was careful to always keep an eye out for those who could be members, but it wasn’t like there was a symbol tattooed on their forearms that gave them away. He made sure to never reveal too much about himself to anyone and never displayed any feats of strength beyond his natural capabilities. The last thing he needed was to reveal himself to a Birthright member and have to find an all new place to hide.

  One evening in late June Daniel sat on the roof of the Hamilton’s farmhouse and watched the stars. It was something he did quite often. From his bedroom window he could step out onto the part of the roof that covered the screen porch on the first story. From there he was able to look out over the trees and wilderness and up into the heavens. Chicago’s city lights had always obscured the view of the night sky.

  Out here, in the middle of nowhere, the heavens were completely visible. He would sit and imagine Colonel Jack O’Neill and his team out there among those bright lights, fighting evil alien races and keeping the galaxy safe; or Admiral Adama and his crew leading the survivors of the Cylon attack on the twelve colonies to the mythical thirteenth colony they called Earth. Such fictitious ideas would temporarily take his mind off of the true chaos that was his own life.