Renegade Reborn

Part 8

Ren left his artwork to dry and trekked out and down another hallway, down a few steps, and then through another archway. He pushed open the door recessed in an alcove and entered his training gym. Ren stripped off his shirt and threw it aside, not looking to see if he got it on the chair or not.

He had spent a lot of time in his gyms since the demons' banishment, working off the aggression that built up inside him because he could no longer release it in combat. And after Ally's injuries and subsequent descent into a coma, his routines had become even more punishing as he placed all the blame squarely on himself. Ren loped along one of the room's edges, gunning for the floor-to-ceiling salmon ladder. He swiped a six-foot metal pole as he passed it and continued a few steps on until he stood in front of his objective. The salmon ladder was two metal bars about five and a half feet apart with wide V's protruding on either side at 1-foot intervals.

Ren cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders, then put the pole on the two protrusions at about his head height, so that the metal shaft was lying horizontal. He curled his bare toes, arched his back, and lifted his feet so that he only hung by his hands. He pulled himself up, dropped down slightly, and then, muscles bunching, exploded upwards on the forward swing. In the air, his arms stretched up with split-second timing and clacked the pole onto the next pair of rungs up. And so on he went, his body coiling and then exploding, moving up the salmon ladder.

Then, when Ren was twenty feet off the stone floor, his phone rang. "This is inconvenient," he muttered, glaring at the glowing, vibrating lump in his right pocket.

Settling his left hand grip on the pole, Ren forwent telekinesis, reached down with his right, and plucked out the offending electronic. He scowled at the iPhone's touchscreen display, which currently displayed an unknown caller. Nevertheless, he hit 'Accept' and held the phone to his ear. "What?" he said calmly.

"Mr. Malachai?"

It was the human from earlier- Alexander. "Yes?" Ren replied, his voice dry.

"We'd like you to come back in- whenever you're ready of course."

Ren let go with his left hand and manifested socks and boots on his feet before he hit the ground. His shirt vanished and reappeared on his body, and then he himself disappeared in a cloud of shadows.

He reappeared standing next to Leo Alexander, the human sitting at a desk, waiting. "I'm ready," Ren said to the stunned human, disconnecting the call and dismissing the phone back to its shadowy origins.