Secret Identities by J. D. Brink

Author:J. D. Brink [Brink, J. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fugitive Fiction

Eight

Seventeen days later, I witnessed my own funeral.

Apparently there had been surveillance video from the Evolution Room at the Institute. The Thanksgiving family feast had ignored them at first. Memphis and Stubs, after all, were the heads of security there. Why worry about your own cameras? But after the fight, it occurred to one of them to smash what was left.

Investigators recovered most of the digital footage. Enough to see me get dumped into the tank. Followed by several minutes more of Dollman’s one-man, multi-man assault on the Crew and their master. There were, reportedly, several minutes of this, during which time the man in the fish tank lay at the bottom.

He had stopped thrashing long before the last camera was taken out. He must have drowned.

The man in the tank, according to TV news and the papers, was revealed to be FBI Special Agent Gabriel Nathaniel Swickard, who had been embedded within the highest echelon of supervillain Warlocke’s criminal organization. He was survived by his wife, Tricia, and ten-year-old son, Nathan.

The only problem was that there was no body.

Special Agent Swickard’s wife fought the FBI’s conclusion for over a week.

They must have taken it with them, the FBI told her, to dispose of the evidence more thoroughly. They would likely never find a body. This was the Warlocke, after all.

“He doesn’t leave loose ends to dangle.”

This last bit was a quote from Special Agent in Charge Mark Holbrook. He finally convinced the grieving widow to accept her husband’s fate, and seventeen days after his apparent death, they held a funeral.

I know Holbrook was doing what he thought was right, but I wanted to bury his ass in the ground and see how he liked it.

So they buried an empty casket with a hero’s farewell.

I watched from a distance, leaning against someone else’s tombstone, as grief-stricken as everyone else.

It was a bigger turnout than I expected. I had to be proud of that, I told myself. Black suits, gowns, and uniforms, both Army class A’s and police blues. People I’d worked with at all levels, and some I probably hadn’t, but came to support fellow law enforcement anyway.

My eyesight had become hawk-like in the previous two weeks, and I easily picked my family out of the crowd, even at a distance. Tricia wore a new dress. She hadn’t bothered to wear mascara though, knowing the mess she would make of it. That’s my girl, always thinking ahead.

Nate… Little Nathan.

Fatherless…

It was overwhelming for me.

I almost thought someone would hear me crying and sobbing up on the hill. I almost wanted them to, so they would all know I was still alive. So I could walk down—run down—embrace my wife and son and tell them I was finally coming home.

Even if someone had heard me and glanced up the hill, they wouldn’t have seen me among the winter-faded grass and cold, grey headstones. One trick I had learned since my re-evolution in the fish tank was camouflage. I could change the color of my skin to match my surroundings.

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