Sebastian got up, grabbed the wine bottle from the kitchen, and returned to the couch. He poured the doctor another glass, then started drinking straight from the bottle.
I really do fucking hate how wine tastes, he thought.
“So where’d you go when you left the exam room?” he asked.
“There’s a POC listed on your file—all your files. I tried to call him but that office said he’s not in the military anymore. Then I called my supervisor and he told me to stick with the script. That’s why I came back and told you there’d been no change.”
“That no one really knows for sure. That no one might ever know.”
“Yeah. Listen—” The doctor reached to grab Sebastian’s shoulder, but the younger man recoiled. “I’m sorry. Telling you that was just part of the job. I hope you get it. I’m just a doctor. Just a person trying to serve our country and live his best life at the same time.”
Despite himself, Sebastian did get it. “No judgment,” he managed. “I’m a propagandist.” They sat together on the couch for a few minutes more, Sebastian drinking slowly from the bottle, the doctor asking if a meal or drinks with Justice might be a possibility. Sebastian interrupted on a whim to ask if the doctor remembered the POC name from his file.
“It was a lieutenant colonel,” he said. “Asian name. Tong? Tran? Trang? Something like that. Mean anything to you?”
It didn’t.
* * *
Sebastian hadn’t seen Pete in a couple of days but when he returned to his apartment and found him on his couch watching TV alone in the dark, he wasn’t surprised. Chance or fate? he wondered. They’d melded together a long time ago for the superman.
For anyone caught in his wake, too.
Sebastian took a seat next to him to watch the final minutes of a documentary on the Battle of Ha Long Bay. “Vietnam’s Midway,” Admiral McCain called it in his memoir. “Where we salvaged victory from the jaws of defeat and ensured the northern advance would be justified.” It was the first major battle where American generals used the International Legion, who proved themselves worthy with great ferocity. “Napoleon said that a soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon,” a retired army major who’d fought at Ha Long Bay said. “I’m here to say that no one in the history of warfare fought longer or harder than my brothers in the gook horde did that day.”
As the credits rolled over still images of mangled bodies, blown-up tanks, and other war gore, Pete turned to Sebastian.
“Wish we still had battles like that.”
He sounded drunk. He smelled drunk, too. Sebastian stood up and found the light switch.
“You need to hear this,” he said. Then he told the great national hero what he’d learned, what he suspected, about Tripoli, about what Flowers had said, about what the government doctor had said, too, about their World War I ancestors and what he thought it meant and why he thought it mattered and how he thought there was more to the story, much more, and how they could find out that much more by working together and figuring out a plan.
“Someone did this to us, and intended it,” he said, feeling the buzz of resolve in his declaration. “Just a matter of moving up the government chain until we find out who.”
Pete had crossed his arms and was leaning back into the couch, still in TV-watching mode. His voice slurred with boredom, like he’d only been half paying attention.
“Why?”
“Why?” The question caught Sebastian off guard. He’d prepared for all sorts of reactions but not this. “Well. Why not? For the truth.”
“Truth?” Pete’s eyes crystallized, one hyper-black, one hyper-green, and he sat up. A new hostility blitzed his words. “I don’t fucking get you, hostage. You could be the world’s greatest spy if you wanted to. Someone who helps. Someone who protects. A bomb fell from the sky and turned us super. Turned us beyond. That’s truth. That’s the only truth that matters.”
Pete rose and took four long steps into the kitchen. He threw a light jab through the top of the metal refrigerator. A sucking vacuum sound rushed from it and the lightbulb inside zapped out. Pete raised his fist in admiration and laughed, more to himself than anything, the fridge now framed by a hole the size of a children’s basketball.
“This power.” Pete turned back around. “I owe it to my fallen brothers to make something of this. Soldiers die in war all the time. That’s what we’re here for. To die so that America could build the greatest army ever? An entire army with powers like ours? How is that not defending the homeland?” Pete stepped toward Sebastian like he was going to grab and shake him but stopped halfway with a sneer.
“You’re just like the rest of them.” He finished by spitting out one last word like it was a pox. “Citizens.”
They stood apart from one another in strained silence, one man standing tall and straight, the other hunching a bit. So, Sebastian thought. Pete had figured out Tripoli, too. Maybe had known a long time. He didn’t understand where the other man’s anger came from, but it didn’t matter. He knew he’d replay the speech in his head over and over again for days on end, and he’d do that because there’d been some legitimacy to it. People needed help, everywhere. He could help them, somewhere. He hadn’t. It’s not that he’d thought about it and chosen not to. It was worse than that, he realized.
He’d never even considered it in the first place.
“I don’t deserve my powers. I know that.”
“You don’t.”
The intensity in Pete’s voice had lessened in pitch. He cleared his throat. “Apologies if any of that—I don’t know.” Sebastian gave a half nod. “What happened to us? It happened. I didn’t sign up for it specifically but I signed up. That’s how it works. So I look forward. I believe you want to help people. You have it in you. It’s what brought you to the Near East in the first place.” Sebastian half-nodded again. He believed that, too. “Only three percent of Americans serve in the military these days. Only three percent loves America enough to fight for it. Our country needs help. Here, now. Everyone knows it. Everyone feels it. And I’m here to tell you that there are public servants, combat veterans, in government just like us. People willing to do what’s necessary.”
“I’m not following,” Sebastian said, because he wasn’t.
“You can do incredible things, Sebastian. I want you to be a Volunteer. But not overseas. Here, in the homeland.”
Sebastian’s head was swimming and his conversation with the government doctor seemed months old, not hours. He took a chair across from the couch because he thought Pete had more to share but instead the other man grabbed an envelope from the kitchen table and handed it to him.
“It’d be a big change, I know, but a good one. Give you purpose. There are people—things are going to change, man. They’ll need you. We’re going back to war soon. Real soon.”
“What people?”
“Think all this over. It’s a lot to digest. If you’re in, we can talk details. In the meantime, read that over. It’s what people think of you, now. It’s my gift to you. It’s my charge to you, too. To do something.”