Chapter 3
My dad had retired from SWAT, he‘d gotten too old and too slow to continue with the gung-ho group of dudes; had transferred to the detective division of homicide. He had an impressive solve rate and only a few knew I was his secret weapon. Of course, it wasn‘t so secret, all of the 4-7 knew I could find anything lost and return it to its owner.
I had just turned 15, just had a birthday and been gifted with new clothes, a laptop and a small motor bike. I had to swear I‘d wear a brain bucket or Dad would take it back.
What I didn‘t want on my birthday was the talk my mom and dad gave me. Not that talk.
I had never wondered why my eyes were green and not blue like theirs or why my hair was not brown or black, or that I stood a head taller than my Dad did. I had not remembered being found by the team next to my dead mother nor realized I was adopted. It had left me stunned and adrift.
"She said your name. Jadewyn. I looked on the Internet and found nothing, Jade, nor the words you spoke, 'Eleohim Madaras.‘ The closest I could come was ’Elohim‘. God‘s Angels."
He told me how my mother‘s body had disappeared and some of the answers he‘d come up with to explain the oddities about the both of us. There weren‘t many or believable.
"We didn‘t tell anyone where or how we got you, Jade. Except for the Team. The guys were there, they know."
"You never tried to track her down or me?"
"We tried. I couldn‘t find anything on her or you. No DNA, no fingerprints, no missing persons. Your mother‘s clothes were unique and different. Sarge found a coin under her. We had it appraised. It was gold with a gemstone in the center of it. I thought it was an emerald but the experts said it only looks like one, like the coin looks like gold but is something more, something not of this…world."
"What---you‘re saying I‘m an…alien? Come on, Dad, you know me, raised me for thirteen years. You‘ve seen me bleed red blood, get sick with the flu, break bones. You know I‘m just a kid," I protested.
"Jade---your eyes, your hair, and the way you find anything that‘s lost---it‘s not …normal."
I stared at him in horror. "Are you afraid of me, Dad?"
He rushed forward and hugged me. "NO! Never that, Jade! I‘m afraid for you. If certain people find out about your…trick, they‘d steal you away from us. So far, no one but the team knows what you can do and most of the missing people you‘ve found were in my name. They think I have a knack for it…or well-placed CIs."
"You do have an impressive array of snitches, Dad."
"We wanted you, Jade. I wanted you from the second I saw your eyes," he said quietly.
"And your mom and I have never regretted it for a minute."
He handed me a coin and I stared at the gold piece in my palm. An emerald the size of a dime gleamed up at me. "It‘s worth a lot of money, Jade. The stone is three times harder than a diamond; it will cut a diamond or steel. The gold or whatever it is will not burn, melt or scratch.
It weighs more than it should and less than it seems. It won‘t X-ray, bounces light off it and absorbs energy. It glows in the dark and weirder---" He picked it up out of my hand and threw it as hard as he could. My eye tracked its trajectory and saw the thing fly out the window yet when I looked again, my palm stung and it was plainly sitting on my red flesh.
I closed my fingers on it and pressed the stone. Instantly, flares of light escaped from between my clenched hand and sparkled greenly around me to form a column hovering over us.
Dad stepped to my shoulder and gripped it as a beautiful woman dressed in a transparent gown of light stood before us. I was reminded of the princess from Star Wars except that there was no droid, no Han Solo and I wasn‘t Luke Skywalker.
"That‘s your mother," my dad said.
"Ya think? It‘s a hologram," I opened my palm and the thing spoke. In a language I did not understand save for my name. JADEWYN.
"It never did that before," Dad answered my unasked question.
"I have a feeling it only does when I touch it. Do you understand any of the words?"
"No. Smitty is a language buff. He might know," he named one of his old teammates from SWAT.
"I‘m going to head downtown to the library, check it out."
"What about the Internet?"
"I don‘t think it‘s a good idea. Too many spies cruise the net checking out weird stuff.
Nobody goes to the library for research anymore. It‘s quiet and safe."
"You need a ride? I would prefer you don‘t take your bike."
"Dad, I‘ll be careful," I smiled. "I‘ll wear the brain bucket, I mean helmet. Hey, you‘ve given me a mystery with a lost item I can finally sink my teeth into."
"Yeah? What?"
"Me." I left him there, tucked the coin or whatever it was into my jean pocket. My bike was a small 250cc Vespa but I‘d souped it up so it had more than enough kick for my neighborhood. I might not be able to race with the Harleys but I could hold my own with the Hondas and crotch rockets. We did some biking out along the swamp where people dumped garbage.
The library was a branch office in the town where I lived; a massive three-story brick building fashioned in the early 1800s with columns and Federal pergolas, a broad marble colonnade of steps inside. I always wanted to salute and march at attention when I climbed them.
A flag slapped at the pole on my left as a stiff breeze played with it. I heard the metal grommets chime against the aluminum of the forty-foot pole.
The doors pushed open with a slight hiss as if the air inside was not only rarefied but also pressurized and I entered into a world of dreams, fantasies and imagination only as limited as my own.
I hadn‘t told my Dad the entire truth; I had surfed the Net for info on stuff I wasn‘t supposed to know about---like the Melissa Rosslyn case 13 years ago and others but I had used the library‘s computers and not my own. I had an entire Internet identity where I explored strange phenomenon ranging from fish falling out of the sky to Bigfoot roaming the Northwest.
I had been plagued by dreams of the hologram woman and spent the last few months searching for mention of her or the words I had spoken to her years ago. I had not found any news of her death in the papers or in the police reports at my Dad‘s station house. It was if neither of us existed.
I headed now for the carrels where the public terminals were and had to wait until one was free, swiped my library card and entered the system. My e-mail was filled with 142 unread mails and I deleted all but four. All the others were spam or junk mail offers, the four were from net friends overseas who reported weird sightings for me from their own networks.
SPAWN wrote that he‘d lost his virginity and would I please help him find it. I didn‘t bother to reply other than a generic FU.
Just found out today I’m adopted. My Dad found me next to my dead mother at a drug dump. Said she blew up like one of those vampire movies---you know---when sunlight hits them.
I’m not even legally adopted; he brought me here, kept me. Suppose I should be glad, he kept me from BPS and foster care. He gave me something my real mom had---some kind of weird coin that is a hologram. My mom is on it, she speaks. Says some weird language. Words like Eloahim, Tizmat, and Arytlgeaddon. My name. Any ideas? Arrow.
I sent it to all my contacts and went back to the research department to pull out several old books on archaic languages. One of them was so old the pages crinkled and I was afraid they might disintegrate with my touch.
Under ancient Hebrew, I found the word ‗Elohim‘ from ancient Sanskrit meaning messengers from the Almighty. It went on to state that the Almighty did not necessarily mean ‗God‘ as in Christian text but a mighty Being that preceded Aramaic Jehovah and was thought to be the beginnings of all creation. Funny, I thought God had created the universe or at least the Big Bang before.
My cell phone was in my pocket, I had put it there on vibrate so no ringing would disturb the sacrosanct silence of the library. When it went off, it startled me and I flipped it open when I saw my Dad‘s cell number.
"Jade? Where are you?"
I hid in the back of the stacks where no one could hear me. "Library." I looked up.
"Research 976.5 through 998.8. ‗The Strange Sexual Practices of the Somali Tribe of New Guinea‘."
"Ha-ha, Jade. Don‘t come back here. Go someplace." He hung up and I stared at the phone.