Eagless 107

Everything hurts.

Again.

Ashley groaned as she opened her eyes, blinking to adapt to the light. The walls were dark, but the room was well lit. She reached for her knee and found it in a tight wrap, then grimaced as she touched her eye. It was tender, but the swelling had gone down. She pulled herself up and realized she sat on something somewhere between a training table and a hospital bed.

The room wasn’t very large. There wasn’t much currently in the room, but it was clear that there had been previously—scratches on the concrete floor,  outlines in the dust, accessories left behind for equipment that had been moved. As she scanned the room, her eyes fell on a man in a white suit of armor leaning against a desk off to the side. He was a little blurry, but there was no question who it was. Franklin University’s original hero. The person whose shoes she was trying, and failing, to fill. The man who had saved her and Nicole last spring. The White Knight.

“Hello, Ashley,” he said. His voice was soft and hard to hear through the mask. “How are you feeling?”

“Honestly? Not great.” There was no point in lying. “How did you save me tonight? I thought you had moved on to Duncan?”

“I had gotten word there was a new campus hero, and I’ve been keeping tabs. I was prepared to come visit when you went off the grid a couple months ago. I’ve been waiting for you to resurface. Tonight, I was alerted that you were on the move again, so I came to speak with you, not to save you. It just happened to be good timing.”

“It could have been a bit better if you ask me,” Ashley answered, gently touching her still swollen eye.

“I actually arrived right before the fight occurred.” He shifted slightly as he answered. She couldn’t see his face with the mask on, but he almost seemed uncomfortable. “I was unaware that you were still compromised, so I stayed away to let you have your moment. After you were struck in the knee, I rushed in as quickly as I could.”

“Wait, I have so many other questions. How do you know who I am? How did you know I was going back out tonight when I didn’t even know until I left? Have you been talking to Nicole? Why do you care? And what are you here for?”

“That’s a lot of questions,” he laughed, “so I’ll take it one by one. I know who you are because even after leaving the campus, I still care for it and try to keep tabs on it to the extent I can. I still have surveillance in place around the campus, so I just checked the monitors and could see you before you put the mask on and after. Which is also how I knew you’d gone out again tonight. I saw you walk onto campus in your jacket, and I immediately left for Franklin. I’m not the only one who could find your identity through footage. You need to protect that better. Campus police may be incompetent, but there will be others who could easily find out your secret. I’m surprised Jasper hasn’t yet.”

Why didn’t I think of that? Be better, Adair.

“Nicole has not been in contact with me. I care because I care about this campus’s well-being, and I care about your well-being. And that’s the reason I’m here. I want to work with you. I want to help train you so you can do this better. This campus needs a hero. It needs you.”

“If it’s that important to you, how come you’re just now coming here? I’ve been lying on a couch for a month with my mind and body completely broken.”

“I’ve been, uh, a bit preoccupied handling another situation in Duncan. A similar situation with some complicating factors. That, and I had intended to come down a week or so after you had gone off the grid.”

“Oh yeah, I guess you’ve probably had your hands full with the whole White Knight thing up there. Sorry.”

“No need to apologize. Your frustration is valid. I didn’t realize how badly you were hurt. I would have come down sooner if I had. I should have made a bigger effort to come down as soon as you stopped going out. To at least reach out.”

“That’s a nice apology and all, but how do I know I can trust you?”

“Well. Maybe you can’t know if you can trust the White Knight. But”—the White Knight lifted off his helmet—“do you think you could trust me?” Lance Locke asked, his dark hair disheveled from the helmet, glistening with sweat.

“Lance!” Ashley yelped.

“In the flesh.” He smiled as he laid his helmet down on the desk. He was still blurry, but it didn’t matter. She knew who it was as soon as he removed the helmet. “I’m sorry for not being here sooner. I don’t think I understood the gravity of what was happening and the instability I had caused by bringing the White Knight in and then leaving. There was a hole that I created that you stepped into, even though it wasn’t your burden to bear. I am indebted to you for that, and I’m so sorry you got hurt bearing it. I should have been here for you before now. I’m also proud of the way you’ve handled what’s been thrown your way. I’m sorry for the situation I put you in.”

“It’s always been you, hasn’t it!” Ashley exclaimed. “I knew you were acting weird when we met at Hailey’s, it’s because you recognized me from saving me! I thought you were just a bit awkward!”

“To be fair, that’s also true.” Lance grinned as he rubbed the back of his head.

“Wait, Hailey. Does she know? Did she know she was writing about you when she wrote about the White Knight? What about Gwen? And Jason and Taylor?”

“Hailey knows. She didn’t when she started writing about the White Knight, but she’s sharp, I’ve recently discovered, and had put it together before long. Gwen figured it out too, turns out. She and Hailey put it together and didn’t say anything about it until we moved to Duncan. That’s one of the reasons I’m warning you about Jasper. We’re never as sneaky as we want to think we are. We have to be careful. And Jason and Taylor learned early on and helped me here at Franklin. They’ve rescued me just like I came through for you tonight. We all need help at times. Taylor is the reason my body isn’t in shambles, or my cover blown by going to the hospital once a week. Jason is—”

“Ironside!” Ashley interrupted, clutching the pillow next to her on the bed as she pieced it together.

“He is.” Lance nodded, still leaning against the desk a few feet away. “He’s also a genius engineer. He created my suit and sword, as well as his suit and his spear. His intelligence is even more indispensable than his physical abilities, and without either of them, I would be dead by now.”

“This all makes so much sense. Like. I didn’t know. But now that I know, it feels like I’ve always known. You know? Like all the pieces fit so neatly that it feels like old information.”

It did make sense. She didn’t know them super well, but of course it did. Hailey had such good information writing her stories. Lance had a meltdown when she told him she had a test the day that the bombing happened. Jason had been one of the people she saw going back into the buildings to help people get out. Of course it was them, she just hadn’t been close enough to see it. And he was right. Had she been looking for it, she might have been able to piece it together even from the outside. It could happen to her, too, if she weren’t careful.

“I’m glad you’re coming to terms so quickly with it. So, what do you say? You mind if I hang out around here for a couple weeks?”

“I think I can make that work.”

Eagless will continue with episode 108, November 17th.

For more stories set in this world, buy my books, The White Knight and SAMSON – OUT NOW! Or read my short story series The Street Rat for free like Eagless!

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