Dante

  I’m drowning in a sea of darkness, unable to draw a breath or form a thought until, with a fingersnap and a burst of lights, the waters recede, and I’m sitting back in a chair, blinking away swimming patterns before my eyes.

  “And… he’s back,” a loud voice proclaims. “You good, man?” A huge, red-headed teen stands at the far side of the round table where I find myself sitting, in a booth in some restaurant.

  I shake my head, not in disagreement, but bewilderment. The kaleidoscope of abstract diagrams I just saw are fading, but I feel like a fog is breaking inside my head.

  I notice two other people seated at the round, polished table to either side of him, and me, but giving me a wide berth. The one on my right is a girl close to my own age, with dark hair, intent silver-gray eyes and intensely beautiful. A faint light seems to cling around a strange card held in her fingertips, the image of a Tarot’s Magician on it, but with dark features which remind me of my own face. She lowers the card as I look her way.

  The guy on my left shares the girl’s dark hair and silver-gray eyes, but is holding a plugged-in phone, not a card. I glanced at the screen as the teen lowers it, which is flashing some of the patterns I just saw in my eyes before waking.

  “Dante, is it?” the girl asks. “Are you back with us?” She’s at one end of the padded wooden bench wrapped around the table, with the guy on the left at the other. Both seem ready to jump clear if I make a move. Or jump towards me if I need help.

  Strange, normally I’m better at reading people, but things seem a bit off.

  I blink. “Back with who? I don’t know you.” I glance at my smartwatch, trying to get my bearings, but it’s inexplicably dead on my wrist.

  The big teen shrugs his muscular shoulders. “Guess he’s conscious, or close enough. I’m getting our beers. Shout if he tries to eat your brains.” He waves at me. “I’m Anton, by the way. These two’ll get you up to speed.” He saunters off towards the bar, winking at a passing waitress as he does so.

  The seated guy speaks. “Sorry we skipped introductions, but you were kind of out of it. I’m Chris, and this is—”

  “Andrea,” the girl cuts in with a ‘I can speak for myself’ tone. “We found you on the outskirts of town, and walked you here. You seemed…”“Confused,” Chris says.

  “Entranced,” Andrea counters. “You answered to your name, followed us when we asked you to—”

  “But it was like you were hypnotized, or something.” Chris continues. “We decided to sit you down before trying to get you out of it.”

  “Hypnotized?” I ask. That doesn’t sound good.

  “Seriously hypnotized,” Chris says. “Like somebody put you into a deep trance and then spent days deepening it.” Okay, that sounds worse.

  “Not,” Andrea says, raising a significant eyebrow towards Chris, “that we’ve seen anything like it before.”

  A snort comes from Anton, walking over with the handles of a pair of foaming tankards in each fist. “We totally have. Maybe not as strong, or as close to home.”

  Music bursts out from behind him. “Roll up, roll up for the mystery tour…!” Some old rock song.

  Anton shrugs at the sounds as he sets down the mugs. “They’ve got a jukebox, so it’s all oldies from here on out. But at least we’ve got cover noise. So let’s talk.” He slides the tankards one-by-one to everybody else, then pulls up a chair and settles down with the last one. “So talk, big guy. Any idea why you’d be wandering the woods, mindwiped down to your toenails?” Anton slurps froth from the top of his beer.

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  I eye the mugs. “I’m underage,” I remark. “And I’m pretty sure you are too.”

  “Definitely,” Anton says, licking away a foam mustache. “But you haven’t lived until you’ve had the Embark’s root beer. Harry makes it in his barn out back. Real roots and everything.”

  Andrea sighs and looks over at him. “And my green tea?”

  He waves a hand back towards the bar and kitchen. “On its way, your majesty. In the meantime, live a little. You know you love slumming it with us peasants.”

  “So anyway,” Chris says before quickly sipping the foaming head on his tankard, “we found you out there in a state most hypnotists wouldn’t believe is even possible.”

  “Full-on zombie mode,” Anton agrees. “Feared for my brains, but then I figured you’d eat their big ones first.” He grins and gestures at the other two. “Honestly, I felt a little dizzy myself when we stumbled on you.”

  “Which makes us wonder,” Chris continues, “have you been doing anything strange lately which might explain that?”

  “Self-hypnosis class?” Andrea asks. “Deep meditation?”

  “Biofeedback experiments mixed with hypnosis?” Chris continues. “And maybe… drugs?”

  “A lot of drugs? Like zombie-level?” Anton throws in.

  “Something slipped into your beer at a party?” Andrea taps her root beer disdainfully. “Real or otherwise?”

  “Cheerleader who said it’s all part of that Kama Sutra stuff she’s so into?” Anton asks. Everyone stares at him. He shrugs. “Well, it’s happened to me.”

  Chris waves Anton off, rolling his eyes. “The less I know, the better.”

  All of this is sounding familiar, and yet not. “So you guys just bumped into me like this?” I ask.

  “Nah,” Anton says between slurps of his root-beer foam. “Got a secure text saying a fellow Archon might be in trouble, asking if we could check it out.” He takes another long sip and adds, “Weird, though. We were supposed to meet you at the train station. Not in the middle of the woods. And I’m still wondering how we managed to wreck Arden’s flying bike before you even got there.”

  Andrea rubs her temple. “I don’t remember.” She seems perplexed, as though a gap in her memory was like unexpectedly missing a limb.

  “Not sure how we found you, either,” Anton says. “Like someone just snapped their fingers, and there you were. And there we were.”

  Andrea murmurs, almost inaudible, “And I don’t remember how.” A shadow passes over her face, and she goes still, her eyes distant as she thinks.

  “Kind of dramatic, though,” Anton reflects. “Scorched grass, Arden’s smashed bike, the three of us striking a Charlie’s Angels pose and you… driven to your knees by nothing at all. While we were wondering where this guy was we were supposed to pick up when he hopped off his train.”

  “That’s you, unless there’s another over-6-foot black teen Archon named ‘Dante,’ in the neighborhood,” Chris adds.

  “Which there could be,” Anton notes, “in which case, too bad for him. The mindwiped thing made us figure ‘trouble.’ But it’s a small town, not L.A., so hopefully there isn’t another superhero in danger out there.”

  I shake my head. “‘Archon’? You mean like…”

  “The coalition of gifted working to make the world a better place?” Andrea fills in.

  “The wannabe superheroes without funding, authority, or decent costumes?” Anton says. “Wannabes in training, I mean?”

  “We’re new members, basically,” Chris explains. “Probationary until we prove ourselves. Which I’m guessing you are as well?”

  “Or are we supposed to induct you for your uncles?” Anton asks. “Bad news. There’s no secret handshake.”

  I draw in a deep breath as things start to come back to me. I am an Archon, or close enough. Even if I’d thought that was more like a club. And I’m not in this town by accident. My uncle called, and said…

  “Is this Greywood?” I ask, suddenly intent.

  “No,” Andrea says. “You’re in Waycross. Westside. Greywood is several miles down the road.”

  “And smaller. Fewer amenities. Which explains the zoning out…” Anton rubs his chin with his thumb, feigning thoughtfulness. “Terminal boredom’s a heck of a drug.”

  “But you might have been coming from that direction,” Chris says. “And the text said you could be there if you weren’t here, or in the forest in between.”

  “Why?” Anton asks.

  “There was something going on there.” Dante starts to slide down the padded bench circling the table, heading for Andrea. “Excuse me, I need to get back. Could I?” He gestures past her.

  The girl slips off the bench and rises smoothly. Andrea is tall, though not as tall as I am. “Could we help?” she asks.

  “Can you?” I ask. “I don’t know you. Your resources, skill base, anything.” Somehow that statement seems right, and wrong, at the same time.

  Andrea sighs, and hands him a pair of mirrored sunglasses. “This will pair with your Archon AI, if you need to ‘read’ us. You can pull our public files.”

  “Throw in a couple earbuds, turn on the CES pulses and they should also help protect you against whatever happened out there,” Chris notes. “Assuming it was mostly hypnosis.”

  “Though they may have gotten their hooks into you,” Andrea warns.

  “Deep.” Anton looks a little grim.

  I flash a smile as I meet Andrea’s gaze. “So you really want to back me up, huh?”

  “Since we just defrosted your brain, yeah.” Anton shrugs his immense shoulders. “If we just let you walk out the door and never hear from you again, that’s gonna look bad.”

  “Like ‘lose your Save a Superhero Merit Badge’ bad,” Christopher clarifies. “Not to mention we get stuck with the paperwork. And putting your face on a bunch of milk cartons.”

  “And someone,” Andrea adds, giving the others a significant look, “would have to tell your uncle.”

  “And in that case,” Anton observes, “if you disappear forever, we want to disappear with you.”

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