Old Porters

Chapter Twenty Nine

Twenty Nine

At some point early Saturday morning Roger had returned the laptop to the Golden Clock office. Rhyana and Alex were still there. They had offered the vigilante their thanks and a slice of the take away pizza that had sustained them as they put their furniture back together. It seemed that Alex was going to need a new desk, again.

     The vigilante had declined, even though he was starving. He went home, unsure if the ringing in his ears from the exploding fire extinguisher was worth the blink and you miss it look of shock that had appeared on Street’s face as the extinguisher went boom. He had not looked like ‘the man’ just then.

     As Roger crept into his bedroom, he chuckled. Clearly, Street had not seen that coming. Not that the vigilante had seen him turning up with electric powers coming either. It seemed Rhyana was right. That Bee place was involved in giving people artificial powers. Maybe that was what those Death Bird guys had been after. Maybe Ivan got his upgrade from Bee, or this Hammer guy. The vigilante did not know. All he knew was he wanted sleep. He changed into his pyjamas in the dark, not nothing to turn the bedroom light on, and lay on his bed. He closed his eyes for a moment.

     What felt like seconds later an irritating buzzing noise forced the vigilante to open his eyes. He reached for his phone and held the tiny vibrating device. The screen said two things of interest. Firstly it was just after seven on Saturday morning. Roger looked around. There was daylight sneaking into the room around his curtains. He groaned. He did not feel as refreshed as he would have hoped after approximately five hours sleep. The second thing the phone told him was that he had a text from Kate.

‘We need to talk. Woods at three.’

     He gulped, hoping that this was not the start of a sting operation.

After trying and failing to get back to sleep, the vigilante had eventually got out of bed and started his day.

Now that Roger was in the woods, it was raining. And it turned out that there was a split in the bottom of his left shoe. His sock was getting wet and no doubt muddy too.

“So,” Kate said as the pair walked under the relative cover of the treetops. Neither bothered to look at the signs pointing out interesting (in a loose sense of the term) information about the local wildlife. Her shoulders felt damp, even through the fabric of her coat. The bottom of her jeans was splattered with mud.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Ryan before,” he said, hopefully cutting off anything awkward that Kate was struggling to say, or throwing any pre planned speeches she had out of the window. “He asked me not to. For your own safety.”

“Then why did you tell me?” she asked. Ryan was not really what she wanted to talk about.

“I didn’t think you were ever going to talk to me again. I thought it best you knew.”

“Dramatic much?”