The Spirit Warriors: Choosing the Players, Chapters 2 and 3

Let's see what happens with Xavier now that strange things have started...

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Chapter 2: Rescue and Remembrance

Xavier blinked himself slowly awake. A room he didn't recognize. Carefully fitted stonework, painted in a pattern of sunset colors that made the room feel warmer, comforting. A soft bed under him, one that smelled new-washed. His head was slightly elevated, and looking ahead he could see the wall, also of stone with a polished wooden door – currently closed – in the center.

Just tightening his gut in preparation for sitting up warned him that was a terrible idea. A wash of sharp, ripping pain screamed at him to lie back down! He did so immediately; his training with Shihan had taught him to listen to what his body told him, and there obviously wasn't any emergency right now that justified taking chances.

For a moment he wondered if the last memories he had were some kind of dream or illusion. But if they were, how had he gotten out of that attack alive? No, it had to be real, ridiculous though it seemed.

The door opened silently, and the old man came in. He glanced over at Xavier and nodded. "Awake already, I see. You recover quickly, Xavier." He put down a tray which held a pitcher of water, a cup, and a bowl. "I will help you sit up, and then you can have some broth. Your insides are not yet ready for much else."

As the old man helped him up, Xavier noticed the IV drips in his arms. "This… isn't a hospital, but you've got IVs?"

"Such equipment is not hard to get, if you know how."

"Did you… sew me up?"

"I did." The old man frowned, putting deeper lines in his mohagany-colored face. "Such wounds are very dangerous, and demanded immediate attention. I have also made sure your rib is properly set, reinflated your lung, and attended to your other injuries."

"Are you… a doctor?"

He smiled. "I am. And other things as well." He picked up the bowl. "Now, let's see if you can hold this down."

Xavier didn't like being fed by someone else, but he liked pain less; moving his arms hurt the rest of him, although his arms themselves seemed fine. It was a pretty good broth. "That's … homemade," he said. "Not packaged bouillon."

"Your sense of taste, at least, is not dulled." Another smile. "Your mother cooks well, I take it?"

"She does, Michelle does, I do okay, and when Mike's home he…" He found he couldn't go on; once again, the realization that his big brother was never coming home again had ambushed him in the middle of a thought.

"Mike? A brother? Did something happen to him?" The man's voice seemed to hold genuine concern and interest.

Xavier opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head. "Sorry. It's nothing you need to worry about, sir."

"I apologize. As long as it has nothing to do with why you were in that alley, nearly nine hundred miles from home, you are correct, it is nothing for me to concern myself with."

Xavier winced, then his head snapped up. "How the hell do you know where I live?"

The dark-skinned hand pointed. Xavier saw his backpack lying there against the wall. "You carried more than sufficient identification, including your address."

"Er… yeah. Sorry." He looked away, then back. "Why would it matter?"

"I have saved your life from a rather unusual and perilous situation. Even traveling alone I would have expected a young man of your age and apparent social standing to have taken a rather different route out of Chicago."

He grimaced, swallowing another spoonful of broth the old man offered. "Yeah, I should have. But I'm mostly walking and hitching to save my money. This other old guy said you could get to a good road for walking that way."

His benefactor raised a white eyebrow. "He did? Interesting."

"Interesting enough that if I ever see him again I'll kick him somewhere painful. And you still didn't answer my question."

"Not entirely, no," the man agreed. "Because, in short, I would hate to have saved a life that is to be thrown away immediately afterwards. Where are you going, son?"

Xavier looked at him, then shook his head. "Sir… look, I'm not really ready to talk about it."

The white hair combined with mustache and beard made it harder to read his benefactor's face. The man merely studied him for a long minute while Xavier took a few more spoonfuls. The eyes behind the hair glinted green, a startling color in that dark face. "I suppose you can take your time, Xavier. You won't be moving for a while. I can make sure you recover, but those kind of wounds are slow to heal for even young men like yourself." He smiled suddenly. "Even young men who are in excellent shape. You acquitted yourself quite well in that confrontation."

"Well? I only got two of them, maybe messed up a third. You … Damn, sir, I thought I'd seen people who knew how to fight, but I don’t think even Shihan could have done that."

"Shihan Butler?"

"You know him?"

He smiled again. "He is … quite well-known in the profession, and knowing where you came from, it seemed most likely. I have met him a few times, yes, some years ago. You have great fortune in having him as a teacher."

Xavier nodded, and finished the last few spoonfuls of broth. "He taught me and… and Mike. Mike was way ahead of me there, though, he could've been on the track for champion, which is one reason it makes no sense…"

He stopped.

"Ah." The white head nodded slowly. "No accident, but murder, then."

Xavier suddenly felt confused. What the hell am I doing here? How can I do what I have to do if a few punks … He looked up. "The police aren't going to find his killer," he said, as the old man began to stand, taking the empty bowl away.

The head turned, a white eyebrow raised. The man slowly seated himself again. "Aren't they?"

"I don't think so." He realized he was committed now; if this man wished him harm, he could simply have let the gang finish him. Why not trust him? He had to tell someone. "I remember when I told them how my brother died…"

***

"… and that's all I remember, ma'am." Xavier felt numb, exhausted and every feeling except dull rage gone.

Lieutenant Reisman nodded sympathetically. "I'm sorry to have to put you through that again," she said, "but Morgantown PD is trying to do this so that – hopefully – you don't have to get flown out to L.A. to testify." She looked at him with an analytical gaze. "Are you up to a few more questions – ones you've probably heard before?"

He nodded.

"The voice – are you sure it was a woman?"

He thought about it. "Yeah. Young one, maybe just a girl. I'm sure. I could be wrong, but I'm sure, if you know what I mean."

She smiled. "Yes, I know exactly what you mean, and I wish more people could say things that clearly. You mean that your gut says it was a woman, even if you could imagine a man sounding like that."

"Yes, ma'am, that's it exactly."

"You mentioned your brother was on edge, more nervous lately, and that he said he had 'evidence'. Do you know what he had evidence of?"

He'd been going over that in his head for hours. "No, I'm sorry. All I know is… it can't have been anything ordinary. I mean, drugs or smuggling or something like that, he'd run into all that before, but whatever this was, it was weirding him out somehow. I never heard M…Mike so…" and the tears were trying to start again.

The police lieutenant put her hand on his shoulder. "Sorry, Xavier. Look, that's enough, I think." She shut off her recorder and straightened up. "We'll find the person who did this. I promise."

***

"But they didn't. Weeks went by, and eventually they found some guy, drug-related gang, and said he was the one who did it." The anger and bitter, acid disappointment rose in him again. "They said Mike had a history of investigations into drug-related crime, and okay, yeah, he did, but anyway they said somehow the cartel had figured out he was onto them and killed him."

The old man's eyes flashed green again from beneath his hair, but he said nothing for a moment. Finally, "But you don't believe they got the right man. He denied it?"

"No," Xavier admitted grudgingly, knowing how that sounded. "He confessed. Exactly the story they said it was, and he was going to testify about the rest of the gang. Found hanged in his cell before that happened, of course."

"Hmm. Still, he did confess to that crime. Why do you feel so certain this man is not the guilty party?"

Xavier started to reply angrily, but then it penetrated that his benefactor wasn't arguing; he was asking, quite seriously.

"I… a lot of little things. Partly it's just that I'm sure that was a girl I heard. Not some guy six feet two and two hundred pounds. And what the person said, that just didn't sound like someone doing a killing for a gang would do. Hell," he said with a small smile, "I just found out what a gang might do when they're killing someone."

The old man nodded seriously. "Go on."

"Umm… well, there was Michael's reaction. Before…" he didn't let himself start crying this time, but it was a close thing, "… before he screamed, that is. If some big guy had come towards him, while he was on a payphone trying to avoid a drug gang, he wouldn't have been all casual about it. But he sounded like he was just trying to tell someone that he was busy on the phone – like maybe he thought this girl wanted to use the payphone. He didn't sound like he thought this person was a threat until, well, they pulled out whatever weapon they used on him."

Xavier realized his eyelids were starting to droop. "Jeez, I'm tired. But there's other things… like, um… well, Mike wouldn't just scream like that if someone ordinary cornered him… plus Mr. Wood said…" It dawned on him that he was getting disjointed. "Sorry, I think I'm checking out."

"You should have gone to sleep some time ago," the old man said with another smile. "Strong will must run in your family. We'll finish talking, later."

Xavier tried to protest, but somewhere in the middle of that, sleep ambushed him.

 

 

 

Chapter 3: A Doorway Opened

The room seemed warmer and brighter when he woke up, and the pain in his stomach was of hunger, not the lingering agony of being stabbed. Cautiously, he tried sitting up. Hurts a little… but it's a lot better. In fact, it's a lot lot better than I'd have thought. Wonder how long I slept.

He was tempted to try to get up, but he restrained the impulse with a reminder of discipline. Don't want to undo anything that's been fixed so far.

The door opened and once more the old man came in, as though he knew Xavier had awakened. "How are you feeling?"

"A lot better. Better than I thought I'd feel."

"You slept a very long time, and I've been treating you to maximize your recovery." Xavier did not miss the fact that this didn't actually tell him a thing about how the stranger was treating him. "If you are hungry, I will give you something. It appears you sat up on your own, so perhaps we will even let you walk a bit afterwards – and go to the bathroom on your own."

Thinking back, Xavier could vaguely remember a few times where he was awakened, at least one of them involving a bedpan. He winced. The idea of some stranger helping him go to the bathroom really bothered him. "Yeah, let's do that."

"First, we'll see how well you handle your food."

It was food this time, of a sort anyway – pureed stuff, mostly. But it wasn't just clear liquids, and that bothered Xavier. I was stabbed in the gut. That should take a while to heal enough that anyone would want me putting something even vaguely solid through it.

On the other hand, again, this guy clearly had saved his life and seemed to know what he was doing; Xavier had absolutely no doubt he'd have been dead even if the gang had decided to leave him alone after that wound. So he ate, and felt that vague shakiness of someone who hasn't eaten for a long time fading away. The old man waited patiently until he was done.

"Do you remember what we were talking about before you slept?"

"Why I didn't think that guy killed Michael."

"Clearheaded enough. Do you need to use the bathroom?"

"Not yet."

"Very well. Then let us go on. Were there any other reasons you can recall?"

Xavier tried to remember where they'd left off. "For me I guess the clincher was when they sent Mike's stuff back to us. He used to keep a lot of stuff on his laptop, but he also took notes in paper notebooks. He showed me how he organized his stuff before, and one habit he had was that he took down each major investigation or job in a fresh book, and then copied things into electronic files afterward.

"Well, there wasn't a current notebook. The stuff they found on his body didn't include it. And the notes on his laptop talked about other jobs he had, but nothing about a current investigation on his own."

"Ah. You mean that he had other freelance work?"

"Yeah. Mike was in pretty good demand, so he always had jobs on for someone."

The old man nodded. "And that meant, of course, that there were entries of work being done – no obvious gap of time in which he was not working."

Xavier felt a rush of gratitude at the fact that the old man seemed to be taking him seriously. "Exactly, sir. But I just couldn't believe it all, so I took the machine to this guy who lives near us and runs an information service and I paid him to have it checked out.

"So Mr. Wood comes back and says that in his opinion someone did a lot of erasing. He couldn't recover much but he found enough to tell him that there were a lot more notes on the drive during the last four months than we found." He looked up. "Er, I need to go to the bathroom now."

The old man helped him get up; it hurt a lot, but Xavier didn't feel that sensation of something ripping, or about to rip. The door on the lefthand side of the room opened into a large and elaborate bathroom – what Xavier guessed were literally marble floors, hand-cut stone counters, décor he'd only seen on television. This guy… he's either rich, or he's got a serious bathroom obsession.

A few minutes later he came out under his own power and sat back down on the bed. He decided not to lie down yet, even though his gut ached, and so did his chest now. "I asked Mr. Wood to see what he could find out about Mike's last few months, and he found out a lot of interesting things. Like there were a lot of big gaps in his location – he was mostly around Los Angeles, yeah, but Wood had a hard time tracing exactly where and what he was doing. In his opinion, that meant that either Mike was being real covert, or someone was covering their tracks, or both."

"Getting a professional to do that for you must have cost something."

"Cost a lot, actually, yeah. And at that point Mr. Wood said I needed to go hire a professional investigator, because it was getting too much like a criminal case for him." He took a deep breath, ignoring the pain. "And then I found the pictures. He had one of those really expensive miniature digital cameras, a Lumiere SilentShot 2100, and that wasn't on him when he was found – but I was trying to…" he suddenly found himself unable to speak, and his eyes stung again.

Breathe. The pain helped this time. "I was trying to salvage his coat, you know, it was something I might be able to keep, and when I was trying to work the stains out I felt something hard. It was a memory card for the camera. He'd shoved it into a hidden pocket I hadn't seen and I guess whoever killed him hadn't seen it either. The card was mostly empty… but it had three pictures on it. Pictures of a girl I'd never seen before, still don't know who she is, but I can recognize buildings and things around her – and the timestamps are the from the day he was killed."

"You brought this evidence to the police?"

"Yeah," He grimaced. "Lieutenant Reisman agreed with me that it looked funny, but the LA police felt they'd closed the case and no one wanted to re-open it." He shook his head, and he couldn't keep the fury out of his voice this time. "They were going to let that monster who killed my brother walk, they didn't even care that she was still out there, that she'd laughed right in my ear when she killed him! Didn't care that my mom was like a total wreck and my sis wasn't much better, that I couldn't … couldn't even…" he stopped, tears of rage once more on his face. "So if they weren't going to do anything, I was going to."

"I see." The old man looked at him for a while, then stood, offering his hand. "Let's walk a bit before you lie down again."

Xavier found walking was painful, but he was curious about this guy's home. Through the main doorway there was a wide, carpeted hall, going in a gentle curve in both directions. They walked slowly, coming to another door every so often; sometimes his host would stop and open one of them, letting Xavier get a glimpse. The kitchen was brightly lit, white countertops and stainless steel and efficiency glittering on every sparkling edge, with multiple appliances spaced across the counters. There was a separate dining room, actually smaller than the kitchen; Xavier guessed that this guy didn't have many guests. Another door opened to show a library – a real library, which extended so far that there were actually three separate doors at widely spaced intervals leading to it. Those doors were all on the left; when he saw a door on the right, it was clearly an elevator.

Something was bothering him about the setup, though. The old man seemed to notice, because he smiled. "What have you noticed?"

What is it? he asked himself. Something about the rooms seemed … off, as though there was some essential feature missing. But what feature would you expect to see in all the different—

"Windows. You don't have a single window anywhere here."

"Very good, Xavier. You are observant."

"You still haven't told me your name, either."

"That, also, is true. I have been pondering that for quite some time."

"Pondering? What's there to think about? What should I call you?"

"A name can mean many things," he said. "My question to you is quite simple: when you are well, what do you intend to do?"

"Finish my trip. Hopefully with fewer stabbings this time."

"I see. If I understand you correctly, you have set out – yourself – to find your brother's killer and bring her to justice." The man was looking at him with a quizzical expression on his face, one eyebrow raised in amusement.

The flippant phrasing stung. "Well, no one else will!"

"Perhaps not. Still, allow me to put it this way: you have disappeared from your home to seek this revenge, leaving your mother and sister doubly bereaved, to hunt down a person – or, more likely, persons – whom your brother was still tracking, and about whom there was some secret that made your brother disbelieving, nervous, or even afraid. You are doing this on your own, with no help or backup, and if you are successful, you will be confronting someone who managed to kill your brother – who, you yourself imply, was a more formidable man than you are – with apparently little effort at all. Have I described the situation correctly?"

Xavier found himself simultaneously infuriated at this old bastard's cold-hearted summary and appalled at himself. What the hell have I been thinking? Mom's going to be going crazy! 'Shelle too!

He sagged against the wall, the pain in gut and chest trying to take over. "Yeah. Yeah, you have, and I'm such a moron. I… I guess… I guess I'll have to go back."

The old man nodded slowly. "But can you?"

Xavier thought about going home, admitting what he'd done… staying home. And his gut twisted, this time for nothing having to do with being stabbed. "I guess I could. But… I can't stand the idea that she's going to walk. I can't! I hear that laugh every night! She thought it was funny!"

Another nod. "So you would destroy yourself in the process if you were to return without having at least finished the effort."

Boy, that makes me sound like some obsessive psycho. But – well, yeah, maybe I am. "Maybe I'd be okay. People get over stuff like this, don't they?"

The man sighed, and suddenly he did look old – not just white haired, but ancient as though the whole world weighed down on him. "Some do, Xavier Ross. Others… others can only 'get over' it by finishing the job they begin. I said to you that I did not want my work wasted. Tell me as honestly as you can: if I bring you back to your home, will Xavier Uriel Ross find his way to healing?"

Xavier wanted to say he would. He thought of his mother, and sister, and wanted to be back home with them so much it hurt. But he thought of just going back to school, of letting that past go, and that high, delicate laugh echoed through his head and he felt his teeth grind, his stomach boil, his chest and gut scream as he tensed. "I… I don't know. I don't know, sir, I really really don't."

The old man looked at him for a long moment, then extended his hand, helped Xavier to stand fully upright again. "So it has to be, then. You have asked what you shall call me."

He turned, and his back was once more straight, the white hair cascading down in perfect verticality. "You shall call me Sensei."

"Er… what?"

The man was leading him down the hallway. "You will not be yourself unless you see this through. Yet even you now realize that you have set yourself on a course that cannot help but end in death, the way you are now.

"So the only choice is that you become the weapon you wish to be, Xavier Ross. You must become more deadly than your brother, faster, more capable than he was or ever could have been. You need to pass into secret places without being seen, learn truths hidden even from your police, and in the end you must be able to trace through those truths to the ultimate confrontation that you seek – and survive that confrontation – before you can go home again."

The two were in the elevator, going down, and Xavier felt a chill as he stared at the mysterious old man. He suddenly realized there was something much stranger going on than he had ever imagined. "You… you know who she is, don't you?"

"I do not know. But your story gives me reason to suspect not who she is but what she is, who she serves and why, and how a young woman of such slight stature could so easily overpower and kill a man such as your brother."

The elevator had two sets of doors, Xavier realized – one on the side by which they had entered, another opposite those, like some he'd seen in hospitals. The second set opened as the old man finished speaking.

Xavier stared, open-mouthed. It was clear that the hallway's curve encircled this entire area, a single cylindrical room that was over a hundred feet across and a hundred high. The center was dominated by a slender column that rose three-quarters of the way to the ceiling and ended in a wide, flat platform whose top he could not see. The column was covered by projections of metal and glass and wood.

The rest of the room was filled with equipment – barbells and weightlifting machines, balance bars, vaulting horses, climbing projections on the walls, a complex wooden sparring dummy, sandbags, practice mats, racks of wooden swords, poles, other weapons, some of which Xavier didn't even recognize. There were real weapons, too, glittering with steel edges or unpadded, polished wood, a set of the plum flower or Mui Fa Jong poles, other equipment more exotic than anything he had ever seen. "Holy…"

"I did not find you by accident, Xavier Ross," the old man said quietly. "The one who sent you down that alley knew precisely what he was doing. He intended you to be caught by that gang – not because he intended you to be killed, but because he knew that the confrontation would draw my attention, that I would intervene."

Now Xavier transferred his stare to the old man. "You… you know who that guy was?"

"Know, yes, and I also know he would do no such thing without pressing reason. He saved your life, albeit in a most … roundabout and painful manner. I know this, and I … owe him certain favors.

"So here you will stay, Xavier Uriel Ross, until you are ready to continue your quest… or until you find enough inner peace that you find you can let that quest go."

This is … a storybook moment, Xavier thought, and wondered wildly if he was going to wake up in a minute, with Michael alive so he could laugh at the ridiculous fantasy. But another part of him knew it was real, very real indeed, and that terrified him, because if stories like this came true, the world was something much scarier than he'd ever imagined.

But the old man was waiting, and Xavier knew why. He swallowed, knowing that in a way the decision had been made a long time ago, the moment that someone laughed into a phone with blood on her hands. "Yes, Sensei."