Luthecker (28 page)

“Yes sir. Understood sir.” The answer was devoid of emotion. Which Brown knew meant that there was plenty behind it.

“Are we good then?” He asked as a subtle warning.

“Yes sir. Yes we are.”

“Glad to hear. Good job. Dismissed.”

Stern nodded, emotionless, about faced, and exited the office.

Brown watched the young man leave, a clear look of suspicion on his face.

Damn, He thought to himself. I lost another one.

HAVEN

M
aster Winn carefully walked the one block section of 108
^th
in Watts, examining the half a dozen run down apartment complexes, which he now effectively controlled. Built in the sixties, the building owners had allowed the now faded stucco constructs to fall into disrepair, permitting drug dealers, sex workers, and criminal types to overtake the units. They were now empty of this element, all forced out by Rooker and his men, per their contract, leaving only a handful of legitimate tenants.

Winn, along with his newest student, Joey Nguyen, had begun an effort to clean off any tagging or gang territory markings, along several bus stops and park benches. He wanted the block clean, and the rest of the neighborhood to see the effort to make it so. It had paid off. At first, by passers had stopped and looked, the attention initially starting off as suspicion, which then turned to curiosity, and eventually, to some choosing to pitch in and help.

The Martial Arts Master knew the deal he had bargained for with Rooker, who was one of the original leaders of the decades old Crips gang and whose turf this block of real estate lay on, was tenuous at best, mostly because rival gang factions were watching, and many saw the vacuum of normal underground activity as a potential opportunity for territorial gain. Rooker had a particularly ruthless reputation on the street however, and Winn counted on a combination of this and the respect his own reputation had earned to keep the predators at bay long enough for him to establish a safe zone for those who were most vulnerable, one that over time, the community would get behind and protect.

Winn stopped in front of one of the structures he controlled, a four-story apartment building on the corner of the block, the one that housed the two empty two bedroom units he planned to use for living space when the package he sent his couriers to retrieve, Vietnamese immigrants who had been smuggled into the country and sold through a sex trafficking ring, had arrived. Winn had planned to house them here until the local Vietnamese community could absorb them into their economy.

The building, along with the others on the block, had long been abused before Winn had negotiated terms for their control. Now, free of any sordid activity, every unit inside the complex needed to be thoroughly cleaned. Nguyen had taken a small crew and had started on the hallways and the apartment interiors earlier that day, and Winn wanted to check in to see how they looked. He expected his couriers to return with the package soon, and he wanted make sure that they were ready.

Winn was aware of the fact that the Black Hats had captured Alex in the desert three days previous. William Hayes the 3
^rd
had told him this, when the Indian had reached out via payphone to inform Winn that William Hayes the 1
^st
, or Mawith as Winn knew him, had passed away the night previous. Winn quietly mourned the loss of his old mentor, the loss of a Great Spirit, but it was not unexpected. He had been ill for years, and, upon meeting Alex, Winn knew the old man would view that his time on this plane of existence had come to its rightful end. He hoped that the old man had given wise counsel to his group before he left.

All the other members of the loose band of couriers had been let go, which only meant they were now being tracked by the Black Hats for intelligence purposes, their freedom no doubt also being used as leverage to insure Alex’ cooperation. He trusted that Alex was aware of this, and would handle his situation appropriately, whatever that may be. He also trusted that the entire group’s training would see them through the difficulties that lay ahead for them as well, as those who had paid for the package of individuals they were to deliver to this location would not take kindly to the sudden loss of merchandise. But these four were Winn’s best, and he was counting on them. If they failed, all he that he hoped to set in motion would be lost.

The Martial Arts Master understood why the Black Hats were obsessed with Alex. The government had long since been sold to private interests, and those interests only understood two things: Greed and fear. The two motivations were symbiotic, feeding off of one another in a simple loop. Greed led to greed for everything, which led to the fear that there was not enough of anything. It didn’t matter what the object of desire was, be it time, love, money, food, water, it was all the same. This led to the monetization of all consumable and desirable resources that defined human existence. Everything was turned into a profit center, which in turn could be controlled and sold to the highest bidder. Winn knew that this two-headed monster of greed and fear was growing exponentially now, and becoming desperate, as resources of all types across the globe were becoming depleted. The flesh and blood behind this disease of the soul, this narcissistic ideal, would look at someone with Alex’ abilities as yet another tool to use to feed its addiction, a way to enhance the ability to instill more fear, consume even more.

Winn saw Alex’s ability quite differently. He hoped and believed that Alex, with proper training, could have the opposite effect, and actually turn the monster on itself, one person at a time, until a certain momentum would take over and make the change self-sustaining.

He had picked up on Alex’s unique ability to some degree the first time he had met him, and thus he began the young man’s training with a great deal of curiosity. He had no idea to what extent Alex could grasp an individual soul and completely change its perspective, until he had been training him for well over a year. He was shocked at this young man’s ability to perceive the absolute truth about an individual, and therefore alter their future. But even after one full year of hard training, Alex was still just a boy, unable to cope with the chaos of the countless visions of people’s behavior that came naturally into his head. He would regularly turn inward, isolating himself from the world in absolution, as a way to protect himself and others from the bombardment of information. He needed to be carefully nurtured. He needed discipline, confidence, and the love of family, the latter element something to fight for, the former elements something to fight with. And this took time. Three years, to be exact. It had been Winn’s goal from the beginning to give him exactly these tools, and when Alex was ready, he would send the young man and his new family to one of his own mentors and teacher, Mawith, with a mission in mind, and hope that the old Shaman’s words would be the final guidance necessary to open the young man’s eyes to what he could do.

Winn entered the apartment building, turned left into the stairwell, and sprinted up the steps two at a time. His legs were strong and perfectly balanced, and he barely made a sound as he glided to a stop on the fourth floor. He carefully walked down the freshly painted empty hallway, and stopped in front of Room 513, the first of the two apartments where his new guests would be staying. He put the key in the lock, twisted, and opened the door.

He stepped inside to find Rooker waiting for him.

“Winn, you old gangster.” The tall and muscular black man announced.

“Rooker.” Winn replied, a hint of suspicion in his voice.

The men shook hands and embraced, like respectful old adversaries.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Winn asked.

“Heard your best boy got pinched.”

“Word travels fast.”

“You ain’t the only one with messengers, my friend. This could be a problem.”

“How so?”

“Heat. We can’t have it.”

“There won’t be any heat. They have what they want.”

“That may be. But that changes things.”

“You want more money.”

“No. I got plenty. That’s not why I’m here.”

“Then why are you here?”

Rooker flashed a platinum-toothed smile, before his face got serious.

“You and I seen a lot of bad shit in our day, haven’t we?”

“Yes we have.”

“And we survived all of it. We survived ‘cause we knew how to. It’s what we’re best at, you and I.”

Rooker scratched the small amount of stubble on his chin and thought carefully about what he intended to say next.

“Believe it or not, you old Nip, I’m backin’ what you want.” He stated. “Why? Survival. Shit’s about to fall apart in this world, and where you’re goin’ with all this is the only way we survive in the long run. I see that now.”

“I am honored.”

“Not so fast. In order to survive the long run, you need to survive the short run. And to do that, ‘way we came up, you need to trust your senses. And right now, I sense violence. On a large scale, on its way here, and very soon.”

“Perhaps. At some point, my old friend, you are going to have to choose which side you are on.”

“I have. We have an agreement. I let you clean up this block, as long as no shit starts here.”

“I will honor our agreement.”

Rooker studied the old Asian for a moment. Winn came up in a hard section of Torrance, many years ago, and was spooky-tough in his day. But Rooker found the current peaceful yet determined Winn far spookier.

“Look, you got your Spiritual shit, I got fuckers who want me dead.” He finally said. “And the Feds? A whole different league of violence. And I don’t want those animals crawlin’ around on my streets. They kill everything and let God sort it out. You know this.”

“That won’t happen.”

Rooker pointed a finger at Winn.

“You better do your little Buddha-dance and pray that it don’t. Because I will not go down. You hear me? I will not go down.”

Winn didn’t answer. He only looked at Rooker, the calm on his face unnerving the gang leader, who, satisfied his point had been made and not wanting to face the martial arts Master any longer, abruptly brushed passed the old Asian and exited the apartment.

EVAL

“T
he structural abnormalities indicated in the MRI show a somewhat enlarged cerebral cortex, similar to that of an individual with Apserger’s, or high functioning autism.” The grey haired man in his sixties began. “Not unusual, particularly among those considered having “savant-like” abilities. What is unusual however, is the actual amount of brain activity.” He continued.

“How unusual?” Richard Brown, who sat across from the man at a conference table, asked.

“Much higher than normal. Unlike anything I’ve ever encountered, in over twenty-five years of practice.” The man answered.

Brown nodded in response, evaluated the report a moment before turning to the second man who sat across from him.

“Initial interviews are inconclusive.” The other man said.

Both men worked for Coalition Properties and therefore Richard Brown. Dressed in white lab coats more out of habit and formality than out of requirement for employ at The Coalition, their names were Doctor’s Eric Lax and Pavel Lansky respectively. Both men were at the top in their respective fields of neuroscience and psychology, recent hires in the human resources department for the Coalition, and Brown had wanted their input first before he put Alex Luthecker to use. Because of their expertise he had put them in charge of the initial evaluations, and, so far, in Brown’s mind, neither man had revealed any useful or conclusive answers regarding Alex’ unique cognitive skills. He nodded for Lansky to continue.

“He’s cooperative, but very quiet, only revealing to us what he has to.” Lansky explained. “His temperament is even, there have been no indications of a history of tantrums or social disconnect, and he appears to be able to focus on several things at once, atypical of someone with the usual deficits that typically go along with an abnormal perceptive ability. Also unlike most with high functioning autism or similar diagnosis, he has a clear grasp of metaphor. Across the board, these dysfunctional elements appear to be absent. Yet, his analytical ability is off the charts. He has the most complete example of photographic memory I have ever witnessed. How he manages to process and consciously register all of that information and not be completely shut down and in his own world or flat out schizophrenic is something truly worth studying in detail. In one test, he rattled off prime numbers until they were sixty-three digits long. Do you have any idea how difficult that is?”

“Yes. I do.” Replied Brown. Prime numbers, which were integers divisible only by themselves and “1”, were difficult to verify let alone calculate, even with the most powerful computers, and were considered extremely useful for computer security and complex code encryption schemes.

“And I’m thinking maybe he just read them in a book and memorized them.” Brown continued, not impressed.

“The test wasn’t structured in a way that would allow him to do that. But even if he did, it wouldn’t be any less astonishing. When I asked him what algorithms or methodologies he used in their derivation, he simply said, “Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away.”

Brown mulled over Lansky’s statement. “Did you test his IQ?” He finally asked.

“No. I’d guess at least one-eighty. But more than likely much higher. I think it’s obvious that we are dealing with someone with a considerably elevated intellect.”

“And?”

“After the mathematics aptitude test, he stopped talking to us. Claimed he needed to rest. It was my impression that he felt he had shown us enough, and I felt it wise not to push him.” Lansky finished. It was clear by the man’s voice that Alex had left him in awe.

Brown was not pleased.