Back at Tory’s apartment, Ashanti and I stood in the middle of the living room and watched the man in black devour a sandwich Darius had given him. He then grabbed the cup of kool-aid off the table in front of him, gulping the drink down like a desert dweller on his last legs.
“Damn, did they starve you?” Tory couldn’t resist asking.
The man picked at the breadcrumbs on the small plate in his hand. The brown complexion of his skin was beginning to return as he sat on the couch without saying a word.
“Aight, we fed you,” Darius said, scrutinizing the man as he sat down on the couch across from him. “Tell us why they had you locked up.”
His eyes darted to each of us before asking, “Will I be free to go after?” He had a southern accent.
“That depends on what you tell us,” Darius replied. “The boys here told me in the ride that you tried to kidnap Ashanti. What’s all that ‘bout? And why you got beef with Mr. Payne? I wanna know.”
“We all do,” Ashanti expressed. “Whatever’s goin’ on is related to what’s happenin’ in the city, isn’t it?”
The man sighed, straightening his body as he pressed his fingers together and focused on everything in the apartment but us. After clearing his throat, he finally revealed, “My name is Agent Dai, and I work for a government organization known as Obsidian. We track down and neutralize individuals known as Dreamers; people who possess abilities from their inner desires.”
“Damn.” Darius stood up and paced back and forth while rubbing the back of his head. “How is somethin’ like that even real?”
The man looked down with no answer. Not even he knew how it was possible.
“So, that day at the supercenter,” Ashanti began, causing the man to look up, “is that when you started followin’ me?”
“Not specifically you, no. My partner at the time, Agent Grant, and I were tasked to this location due to it being a potential spot for a marked Dreamer. It is crucial we find and detain this person before they do.”
I lifted my hand and inquired, “What’s the deal with Shadows?” His left eye twitched from my question. “We know they get in the heads of people and cause them to use their abilities for bad things, but where are they from? How did this all start?”
He looked away at the black screen of the TV. “That is classified information.”
His words triggered Ashanti, who slammed her hands on the table to regain his attention. “Lies. But fine, answer me this: why do you neutralize people instead of gettin’ them help? I know for a fact your organization took innocent lives in the past. People are dead because of you.”
I knew she was talking about her friend Ciara and what happened to her cousin, James, at Ravenvale High School. She flinched after feeling my hand on her arm before slowly easing into my touch.
“I apologize for the strife we have caused,” Dai consoled. “However, we are only following orders. Dreamers—like you children I assume—have untapped power that comes from your innermost self; the part of you that longs and craves a goal in life. That needs to be controlled, or else you could be a danger to others. You can very well end up with a Shadow. It is the darkest part of yourself that feeds on corruption and negativity. We cannot let that happen. Please understand.”
His words left us all distraught and unsure of what to say or do next. We sat in silence for a few minutes until he spoke once more.
“There may be…one more piece of information I can share with you.”
“What now?” Darius’s gruff tone came with a curled lip as he rubbed the patch of hair on his chin.
“An army of Obsidian soldiers will be arriving in Newburgh tomorrow due to agents not reporting back to base in a timely manner. Obsidian takes that as a code red. Backup is on the way.”
Stunned, our eyes widened in fear. Agent Dai looked in Darius’s direction and continued.
“You must allow me to contact Obsidian headquarters. I overheard my captives discussing the marked Dreamer’s whereabouts, and I can direct the soldiers to the person’s location in order to complete the mission.”
“Can you tell us who the marked Dreamer is?” Tory requested to know.
“Yes. He is the leader of the street gang who held me hostage. The one called Mr. Payne. I discovered this in my confrontation with him the night outside of the hotel. A light from the building flashed on his wrist, revealing the cursed mark before I was thrown into an unconscious state.”
We all turned cold yet again, but a hot idea burned into my mind.
“This is good news.” They all looked at me, confused. “We can have real, armed soldiers run up on Mr. Payne and arrest him. He can’t buy his way out of a top-level government lockup, can he? I say we let Dai contact Obsidian and have them handle it from here.”
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Darius’s lips pressed together with a shake of his head. “Nah, I ain’t no snitch. I don’t associate with Payne and the Cogs, but I ain’t ‘bout to be a rat to help out the feds.”
Ashanti scoffed under her breath. She may have kept her retort to herself, but mine was about to come out loud and clear.
“You really gonna let some street code stop us from puttin’ an end to Mr. Payne? Put your pride aside for a minute, Darius. Do the right thing. Don’t…be another cog in the machine.”
My words were shaky and emotional. I couldn’t help it. Just looking at Darius made me feel a disarray of emotions that needed to be sorted out, and soon.
He stared at me with no expression until he cracked under the pressure of the unspoken reveal. “I’m goin’ out to smoke. This all too much.”
He walked out of the apartment in a hurry. I stood next to Ashanti and contemplated on following him until I couldn’t resist anymore. We needed to talk.
The smell of weed permeated the air outside of the building entrance, where Darius leaned against the brick wall with his head to the ground. I didn’t know what to say or how to feel, but it was him who spoke his emotions first.
“So, now you know. You know the misery I gotta live with.”
My brow furrowed watching him take a puff of the joint. “Yeah… I know. Were you ever gonna tell me? All those times I be over your house and hangin’ with Tory, did you ever think to say somethin’? Like damn, you even watched me as a kid over a few summers so my mom could go to work. What the hell was that, huh? Some pity payment for killin’ her husband? My dad?”
“What would I even say? ‘Yo, eight years ago, I shot your pops. Sorry, lil’ man.’” He didn’t smile despite his words laced with sarcasm.
My lips trembled, tears blurring my vision. The floodgates of sorrow that had been suppressed for so long were now busted wide open. Darius didn’t move a muscle, though. His jaw tightened as he pressed the joint to his lips for a long puff, not saying a damn thing afterward. It angered me that he could just stand there without a care in the world.
“Do you even know the pain you caused me and my mom? I was only eight years old when you took my dad’s life. Eight. That moment still torments me to this day. I’ve been livin’ in a nightmare ‘cause of you, and I never told my mom ‘cause she has enough to deal with being a single mother in the hood. All these years, Darius, and she still doesn’t know what happened or who killed him. Does any of that mean anythin’ to you? Do you feel anythin’?”
Tired of his silent act, I grabbed his shirt and yanked him to face me. He was taller—maybe by a foot or something—but I wasn’t about to punk out. I stuck out my chest and looked up at him, seeing a void in his eyes that could only be caused by guilt and grief. It was at this moment that I realized he had been fighting demons for a long time.
I released my grip on his shirt. He dropped his joint and crushed it with his foot before saying, “I was seventeen at the time, workin’ for Mr. Payne as a member of the Silicon Cogs. Your old man’s death shook me enough to walk away from that lifestyle, no matter how tough it was gonna be for me in the streets afterward.”
“But why my dad? Why was he your target? Why did he say for you not to be another cog in the machine?”
He shrugged and answered, “Maybe to save his own life? I don’t know, but your pops must’ve crossed Payne enough times.” He held three fingers up. “That’s the only reason why somethin’ like that would go down. Payne ordered me to do it, and I didn’t know you or your family until you started hangin’ with T a year later. I saw your face and knew you were the same kid who watched me smoke their father. All ‘cause of some blueprint Mr. Payne has for our society. He removes you if you’re a problem in his grand design.”
Blueprints… Grand design. Like a machine, a switch flipped in my mind that revealed the ugly truth.
“The Cogs are being controlled,” I voiced my thoughts. “They’re Mr. Payne’s tools and nothin’ more. That’s all—”
“Nah, it ain’t that simple,” Darius cut me off assertively. “Most of the dudes who work for Payne do it ‘cause they ain’t got no choice. They got no direction in life and operate for survival. He knows that, so he oils them up and let’em go to work while he benefits off they grind. He like one of them Shadows that agent was talkin’ ‘bout. He brainwashes the Cogs into thinkin’ his plan is the only way, and that they’ll be rewarded once he builds his empire and takes over the world. It’s wild, but I know some of them Cog boys got heart and wanna be somebody. They just don’t know how to go ‘bout it.”
His breakdown of the Cogs and their connection to Mr. Payne further clarified what I had figured out moments ago: The Cogs are being controlled. Mr. Payne’s ability is mind control—complete power over those who have no clear desire, which explained why Miguel didn’t have any super abilities. There was no desire to manifest.
Still, there was one more question. One last thing to piece together.
“Does Mr. Payne…you know, feel pain?”
He laughed. “Damn, you saw him in action, huh? He ain’t just a businessman. He’s a damn monster who believes pain is the biggest weakness in the world. I found out a year after I met him that he endured some rough stuff in the past to harden his body so he’d never feel pain again. The crazy thing ‘bout it now is, he has become a fiend for that feelin’ ‘cause he hasn’t felt involuntary pain in so long. He treats the Cogs the same way, too. As long as they follow orders and don’t show weakness, they can do whatever they want ‘round here.”
With that, it seemed everything had been answered except our biggest problem: how to stop Mr. Payne. Thankfully, there was a glimmer of hope to solving that murky equation.
“You gotta let Agent Dai contact Obsidian,” I told him. “Those guys are the key to shuttin’ down the Cogs and Mr. Payne. You gotta see that.”
“I do see it, and you right. I just wanted to be the one who ended Mr. Payne someday, you know? But this opportunity… Damn, I can’t pass it up, so I’m gonna go back in and let the agent do his thing. But Zayn, you gotta know something.”
He turned away from me, his body unable to stay composed. He was nervous. Scared, even. These were feelings I had never seen him show.
“I’m sorry.” His gaze returned to match mine. “I apologize from the bottom of my heart to you, your mother, and your father. I can’t excuse my actions or even blame Mr. Payne ‘cause I should’ve been a better, more smarter person. I can’t ask you for forgiveness ‘cause God knows I don’t deserve it, but you should know that I’m gonna protect you like you my own blood ‘til the day I die. It’s all I can do for you, and for your pops. You have my word.”
I didn’t know what to say. No longer did anger or sadness linger within me; only a mass of confusion that would be understood with time. Hopefully.
“We should put our demons to rest,” I suggested firmly. “They’ve caused enough negativity. I won’t let them cripple me anymore, and neither should you. We’ll fight harder, grow stronger, and accept more. We can be better than we’ve ever been.”
Darius smirked with a nod. “Yeah. Aight, Zayn. Let’s do that.”
A dap formed into a hug. What did it all mean? I wasn’t sure. I was just happy to let go of the darkness in my life.
All that remained…was the end of Payne’s reign.