The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage (2 page)

“Ask Marc Teslowski if there’s any question on that point.” She acted like he wasn’t eight feet away from her. Dude was suing us, too, after all. “It’s his son those
assassins
,” she hissed the word, drawing it out, “nearly gutted in my mother-in-law’s driveway.”

I don’t think Azarrio liked my mother directing his show for him. Instead of turning his attention to Teslowski, he addressed the camera, smooth as sculpted shit.

“Ms. Charters refers to young Byron Teslowski, the teenaged boy hospitalized after the incident at Kirby Lake left two dead under circumstances that are at the heart of the Charters’ legal battle with PrenticeCambrian, the government, and, in a related but separate case, the Teslowskis.”

Now he faced Marc Teslowski, who held the arms of his chair in a white-knuckled grip. Teslowski didn’t look at me in the same way my mother didn’t look at him.

So, I made sure to stare, hard, at him.

“Marc and Jeri Teslowski,” Azarrio said, “you contend that your son Byron, who the Sovereign claim as one of their own under the controversial Sovereign Compromise, is being illegally held at the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies near Missoula, Montana.”

“That’s right.” Teslowski spoke through gritted teeth. “Everybody knows that.”

“And you hold the Charters—including Nate’s father, Andrew Charters, a fugitive and suspect in the killings—responsible. How, exactly?”

Teslowski turned to look at me at last. I let the shit-eating grin I’d been holding back push slowly at the corners of my mouth. I kept my eyes on his.

“That punk helped my kid make a break for it—"

Teslowski’s lawyer put his skittish hand on Teslowski’s shoulder. “We intend to show that Nathan Charters,” he made his voice project, “very likely with the cooperation of his father, and on behalf of the Sovereign, conspired to create an opportunity by which the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies could apprehend Byron Teslowski.”

Our boy Drake spoke up. He had a voice like that DJ on KLOS who plays whole albums on Sunday night: deep and slow. It didn’t fit his face. “As our suit brought against PrenticeCambrian and the United States will show, those accusations have no basis in fact.”

I looked away from Teslowski to glance at the audience. They were getting into our little circus.

Azarrio acknowledged both attorneys with a nod of his head and turned back to Teslowski. “Marc, you and Jeri also have a civil suit against the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies to get your son back. Why isn’t this a case of criminal kidnapping?”

Teslowski’s face darkened. “The goddamned Sovereign Compromise.” I imagined someone in the control room hitting the bleep button.

Azarrio shook his head and looked as if he wanted to tut-tut into his microphone. His sympathy didn’t reach his eyes.

“Mrs. Teslowski…Jeri…” She went as white as her husband was red. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your son?”

She swallowed and looked at her hands. My smarmy grin felt a little tired. I didn’t have a problem with Byron’s mom. She still had to live with her husband.

At least Byron got out.

“It was…” She glanced past me, I guess to my mother. I didn’t see any blame in her face. Figured. The Teslowskis might be suing us, but it must be all Marc Teslowski’s idea.

“It was May fourth, last year.”

Azarrio seemed to actually soften for a second. “That’s a long time.”

She nodded, birdlike.

Azarrio turned to me. “What about you, Nate? Byron’s a friend of yours…the Donner Institute is assisting you and your mother in your legal battles…have you heard from Byron Teslowski? Maybe chat on the phone?”

“Nope.”

I think Azarrio expected me to say something else. When I just looked at him, he ad-libbed, “Do you think he’s being held against his will?”

My mother said, “You don’t have to answer that—Drake, should he answer—"

“Knowing how things were,” I said quickly before Drake could speak up, “I bet Byron’s fine.”

Marc Teslowski grunted. Azarrio met my eyes like we were partners in his little show.

“Why do you say that?”

Byron Teslowski had made my life hell for years. He somehow made it okay to pick on the weird kid with the odd bone structure and giant eyes when no one would even think of making fun of Tom Harper in his wheelchair or Keri What’s-her-name with one leg all bent and shorter than the other one.

We hit high school, and he filled out, and girls liked him, and he kicked ass at every sport he tried. All along, he kept pushing at me, making sure everybody kept thinking I was the weird kid. He ended up with a whole little gang of jocks and cheerleaders in orbit around his smirking face. I could count my friends on one hand and not need my thumb.

Declaration Day changed everything. I learned some things about Byron. About his dad.

Which is why I helped Byron a year before, but not in the way the Teslowskis thought. It’s also why I answered Hank Azarrio the way I did.

“Because his dad’s a prick.”

A groan of disapproval flowed off the audience. Azarrio, his back to them and fully aware the live camera was on me for the moment, actually gave me a wink. He was quick about it, and made sure he closed his left eye—the one the Teslowskis couldn’t see.

Asshole.

He turned his back on me and faced the audience while a different camera put him in frame.

“Strong words from a young man in the eye of the storm.” His tone hit perfect notes of concerned disapproval. “When we come back, we’ll hear what our audience thinks. After this.”

The lights turned red. We had two minutes. Teslowski made the most of it. He flew out of his chair and loomed over me.

“You little shit. Who do you think you are?”

His belly strained beneath his button-down shirt. It was kind of a stupid move, really, putting his gut right in front of a guy whose fingernails can slice through aluminum cans and “still cut tomatoes like this,” as they say on the knife commercial.

I fought the urge to see how good a job I’d done blunting my nails. I stayed seated. Fucker wouldn’t dare try anything, not with the lawyers all there, not with the studio security guards moving in…not knowing what
I
could do.

“Mister Teslowski, please sit down.” Azarrio probably wished Teslowski had waited to perform this little show when the cameras were live.

My mother stood up. “You even think of touching my boy…”

I looked over my shoulder, up at her. “Seriously?”

I saw she was as irritated with me as she was with Teslowski. Great. What had I done, other than say what everyone on our side of the stage all thought?

“Marc…” Jeri Teslowski’s protest, if you could call it that, was a little peep.

Teslowski stayed where he was as the seconds ticked away. We looked at each other. The smell of his sweat was thick on my extra-human olfactory glands. He reeked of anger and…yep. There it was.

Fear.

It made my own crawling irritation and frustration with this whole stupid ordeal ratchet tighter. The dense muscles in my thighs bounced with the urge to leap. My peripheral vision blacked as my focus narrowed.

This guy had no idea.

Jeri Teslowski, too quiet for anyone but Marc and my own sensitive ears to hear, said, “Please stop,” in a whisper that was way more disgusted than I thought she had the guts for.

Teslowski slumped in his chair, glaring at nothing, and acted like he hadn’t heard a thing.

Azarrio moved up into the audience. He was unruffled and ready when the lights changed.

“Welcome back to
The Azarrio Show
, where we’re with two families at the center of a number of legal battles sure to affect relations with the people calling themselves Sovereign for years to come,” he said into the camera. “Let’s see what the audience thinks of all this.”

He found a bald man even softer and fatter than Teslowski. “Hello, sir. What’s your name?”

“Frank.”

“And what do you do, Frank?”

“I’m a corrections officer.”

“A public servant. Good for you.” Azarrio put a hand on Frank’s shoulder. “Do you have a thought you’d like to share, or a question for our guests?”

Frank’s gaze swept past me in the want-to-look-don’t-want-to-stare way I’m very, very used to. “My question is for Mister Teslowski…”

We’d been coached on this. Teslowski grumbled, “Hi, Frank.”

Frank nodded. He had that weird air of bashful excitement I’d seen on so many television audience members; it was strange to watch it in person.

“Hi. Um…why do the Sovereigns say your son agreed to stay at their…headquarters, or…”

“Institute,” Azarrio said helpfully.

“Yeah, their Institute? I mean, if they kidnapped him, what are their demands?”

I almost laughed out loud, which made my mother nudge my chair: a subtle warning for me. How awesome. I couldn’t help but wonder if our lawyers had planted this guy.

“Well…Frank…” I watched Teslowski lick his lips and flare his nostrils. “They’re not going to come right out and say they kidnapped him. Right?”

Frank scratched the side of his head. “I don’t know… I mean, their whole thing is they don’t care about our laws, I thought.”

Azarrio said, “Perhaps the Sovereign would be reluctant to admit to kidnapping, given the somewhat negative opinion of them held by the majority of Americans, according to one recent poll.” He looked at me. “No offense, Nate.”

The camera was on me again, ready for a reaction shot. I tensed my legs to keep them from jumping. The butterflies came back.

A memory from almost a year ago popped into my head. My friend Jason, standing up to Byron Teslowski, even though Jason was about a foot and a half shorter and fifty pounds lighter. That helped.

“None taken. Everybody knows I’m not a Sovereign. Hank.”

Azarrio had a twinkle in his eye that made me want to rip one out and feel it pop between my teeth.

“That’s the assertion of your legal team—funded in part by the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies itself, we must remember—but doesn’t PrenticeCambrian contest that?”

This particular time, I didn’t mind my mother speaking up. “I don’t think there’s a single person in your audience who doesn’t know the basics of our legal fight.”

Azarrio inclined his head briefly. “You claim there’s evidence PrenticeCambrian conducted human experiments that provided Andrew Charters—your husband—with Sovereign-like abilities…and that Nate inherited some of those abilities.”

“Conducted, and continue to conduct.” My mother’s face twisted with disgust. “The assassins they sent after Nathan and Byron had been turned into…monsters.”

“These…assassins, as you call them…were killed by Andrew Charters, according to the police report filed by an eyewitness—"

My mother kept her tone firm, but civil, like when she tried explaining why I really, really needed to take the trash out for the good of all mankind. “That’s not correct, Mister Azarrio. Andrew killed one of them, in self-defense. The other one died when Lester Brenhurst,” she said the name carefully, as if it was a rotten piece of fruit with a pit that threatened to break a tooth if she bit down too hard, “tried to kill my husband.”

“Allegedly,” Azarrio smiled. He took control of the exchange by turning back to the camera.

“Immediately after the events in question, Andrew Charters disappeared. He remains at large, despite the fact that his testimony could resolve many of the questions at the crux of this drama of corporations, our government, the Sovereigns, and these two families.

“Now, we extended an invitation to both PrenticeCambrian and the Donner Institute to be part of the show today, but their respective representatives declined.” Azarrio put his attention on us again. “It makes me wonder, though: have any of you met the leader of the Sovereign and, it’s said, the most powerful metahuman known…Dr. William Karl Donner himself?”

As if. I shook my head. I heard my mother exhale with exasperation. To my left, the Teslowskis shook their heads as well.

Azarrio moved to stand near Byron’s mom. “Jeri Teslowski, William Donner, quite possibly, has been in daily contact with your son for nearly a year, while you’ve literally counted the days since the last time you heard Byron’s voice. If you could say one thing to William Donner, what would it be?”

I was developing a real healthy hatred of Hank Azarrio. Byron’s mom seemed like she wanted to fold in on herself. Her eyes were wide enough to fall out of her narrow face.

“What…what would I say…?” She looked quickly at her glaring husband, then at her own lap. She shrugged her shoulders.

A vein along Marc Teslowski’s jaw thumped. I found myself fixating on it. I wondered what it would be like to grab it and pull it right off his face like a magic trick with a ribbon…just pull and pull until he unraveled.

My stomach grumbled. It had been too long since I’d fed my hyper metabolism.

Teslowski stepped up for his wife. “I’ll tell you what I would say.” He looked from camera to camera until one moved closer. “Listen up.”

He leaned forward, red-faced, and faced the camera.

“You’re just…you’re just a suit, Donner. You’re a little, small man. I’ve seen the pictures. I could snap you in half.”

Azarrio stage-chuckled. “Those are some harsh words, Mister Teslowski. No doubt under—"

“I’m not done.” He jabbed a fat finger at the camera, at the demigod who, we could all pretty much assume, wasn’t watching.

“You put aside that shit you do, Donner, and let’s see what happens. You be a man, and you give me back my son, and you answer to me.” He stabbed at the camera again. “Then. Then we’ll see, won’t we?”

Teslowski sat back in his chair. I had to give it to him…even if he was an abusive, puffy asshole, if he had any anxiety about threatening a guy who could pretty much literally do anything he set his mind to, he sure didn’t let it show.

Azarrio looked at the audience and shrugged before turning his attention back to Byron’s dad. “Mister Teslowski…are you saying you would challenge Doctor Donner to a…to a physical fight?”

Teslowski’s lip curled. “What is it with this ‘doctor’ thing, anyway? Why does everyone refer to this guy like he deserves our respect? What’s he done to deserve that?”