Man, I hate the fact that payphones were pretty much entirely phased out once cell phones became a thing. Pagers had been okay, but now, any old stranger could contact you anywhere without even bothering to find you face-to-face.

I had one, courtesy of Mickey, and it was both my point of contact and my way to reach Naomi or her… people.

Honestly, Naomi was kind of a princess. She came from wealth, even if her father’s wealth was built on a somewhat less than-legal foundation, she was some kind of company owner, and apparently, she and her sister were considered something of nobility back in Haiti and Jamaica.

It would be a serious coup to ‘get with’ a princess like that if it weren’t for the fact that I didn’t want all my soft bits disintegrated the moment she started to get excited. Maybe I could survive it, maybe I couldn’t, but like hanging out in rocket exhaust, it was likely to not be very much fun.

I have always thought of my gift as a bit of a mixed blessing. Sure, I could survive anything, but I would also outlive anyone I got close to. Hers, on the other hand, made it impossible to even try. I wasn’t like a scientist or anything, but I knew that most disintegration powers were based on some sort of special effect. Did she burn things instantly? Reduce their surface tension? Remove all moisture instantly, desiccating them? Or did the force holding their molecules together simply stop working? I doubted very much it was a failure of atomic bonds because nuclear reactions would make the news.

Yes, I knew a lot about atomic bonds, both the fission and the fusion kind. I had been reading for a long time, and for much of that time, I really wanted to know what could have happened to make me what I am.

Speaking of weird energies, I finally pushed and held the power button on the phone. Apparently a lot of people nowadays just left them on all the time, but with only a week’s worth of battery power, assuming that I didn’t actually use it for anything, that would mean remembering to plug the thing into this tiny little jack all the time.

Mickey had rerouted my landline number to this one, somehow, but I wasn’t terribly worried about missing calls. Except for one of the few times I had actually tried being social with a woman for a while, my answering machine had usually been empty.

When the phone finally finished doing whatever it had to do, with little bell noises, I got several of those weird chirps that meant I had mail on it. Fortunately, all I had to do was push on the screen, very lightly, where a button that looked like a speech balloon from an old comic strip was.

Yeah, okay, I also found out the hard way that whatever it was didn’t like the screen touching thing, because if I did more than the barest flick, pretty soon the entire screen would go black and I had to wait for a couple of minutes for it to start glowing again, usually with the little battery icon down to half or less.

Yay for superpowers!

Go to Folly Beach Marina -Rattler

I m waiting at Folly Beach -Rattler

U planning on heading to Folly Beach? George Reeves? I call, straight to voicemail -Rattler

Got update. Train, not Plane. Meet Folly Beach, The Drop In.

Turn on your fucking phone. It’s a train, not an airplane.

Seriously? Whoever this ‘Rattler’ was, had definitely just lived up to his namesake. Fortunately, there was actually a taxi stand with a taxi waiting next to the train station. It was kind of odd, neither the Train station I had left from nor this one had a line of taxis waiting… last time I had been to a Train station, there’d been dozens of cabs waiting, although admittedly that had been almost 30 years ago.

It was a day for surprises as well, the Taxi Driver was a white guy, who, when I leaned forward, quickly dropped his window. SC was not exactly cold even near wintertime, but he smiled, “Where ya headed?”

“Umm… you know where a place called the Drop-In at Folly beach is?”

He pulled out his phone and tapped it for a few moments. “Got it on GPS.” he glanced at a newish-looking screen on the passenger’s side, which changed to an overhead map. “28 bucks.”

I had been out of the loop for quite a while. No fare meter, and it barely looked like a cab, although the cab was white with a little yellow and black taxi sign on top and “Charleston Taxi” on the side.

28 bucks were also extremely expensive for a cab ride, but again, out of the loop. Maybe paying more than an hour and a half’s wages for a ride to the beach was ordinary. I did have the cash, but his screen was actually displaying the fare.

Once I got in and closed the door he looked at me expectantly.

After a few moments, he pointed at a card reader on the back of the passenger’s seat. “If you could just run your card, we can get going.”

I scratched my head and pulled thirty bucks out of my wallet. “Will you take cash?” I asked.

He chuckled and turned back to his wheel. “Yeah. I got it. Don’t often get cash anymore, though.”

Once we stopped at a little place with a big bamboo-backed ‘The Drop In Bar and Deli,’ sign, I handed the guy the twenty and ten and waved off his offer for change. Almost there. There was a red surfboard on the wall next to the entrance with some specials, and an odd-looking hand-painted sign of a girl with her eyes replaced with fish, that said “Sushi by Lisa.”

Inside, It was… a surfing-themed dive bar and restaurant. There were a few people at the bar, a big guy wearing shorts, a white fishing hat, and a yellow shirt at one of the tables, and a runty little guy with slicked-back hair that looked like he was trying for the role of Fredo Corleone in the Godfather part XXI.

I was going to just try to figure out who this rattler guy was, but I was betting on the shrimp. Big guys usually don’t start cussing out people that they have never met, because they don’t have anything to prove.

I was, however, caught by the specials menu, and immediately walked to the bar, asking the 30something blonde working there for something called a double-double that had caught my attention.

Okay, if I had one weakness, it was for a good burger or ten. And it looked like a good burger. I even asked her to add a fried egg and bacon. Who am I kidding? I just liked food, as much of it as possible, and the train ride had been long. I changed my mind and asked her for three of them, heading into the washroom to wash my hands and then sitting at the bar away from two guys who were talking about some TV show.

After a few minutes, the typecast drug dealer walked over to me. “You George?” he asked quietly.

I nodded, “Yes. Are you Fredo?”

“Who?” he asked.

I shook my head, “Nevermind. Are you the guy that cussed at me on my phone?” I held up the phone and waved it.

He nodded a little, “I’m Rattler.”

I smiled my best-winning smile. “Good, then you are the one taking me to Naomi, right?”

He nodded, “We will need to go soon, George. Miss Dupree is waiting”

This guy was irritating. “You can call me Mister Reeves. I need to eat first. Five hours on a train.”

He looked irritated. “I already ate.”

I nodded, “Good, then I don’t have to buy you a burger too.”

“So you want me to just wait for you?”

“That depends. Did you come in on a ferry or something? Drive in?”

He shook his head, “No, I am driving the boat. It’s about an hour’s ride out to the ship.”

I nodded, “Then you really want me to eat first, or I can get moody. I am moody right now.”

He shook his head and turned to the lady behind the bar. “He’ll have his to go.”

I shook my head, “No I won’t. I am not going to try and eat on a boat. I will be eating them right here.”

He scowled at me, “You don’t keep the Duprees waiting.”

I grinned. “I do.”

He just kept scowling at me, and at one point, shifted slightly. He had on a jacket, and I noticed that he had a pistol in a shoulder holster. The nasty smile he flicked at me when I noticed it implied that he very much intended that I notice it, and I just raised an eyebrow, picking up the first burger and taking a big bite.

That was a good burger. I took my time polishing off all three burgers, and the fries that came with them, and then paid cash for the burgers and asked the bartender if I could tip the cook also. She nodded, so I folded two extra fives in when I paid her.

I went into the washroom to get my hands clean. Okay, I didn’t really need them washed again, but it seemed to piss off the walking stereotype of a stool pigeon.

We were finally walking back towards the beach Marina.

“Do you always flash your gun around?” I asked him.

“Only when I need to,” he smirked a little.

“And you felt that flashing it at some random guy just because he was taking the time to eat a few hamburgers was needed?” I asked, curiously.

“I told you we needed to leave,” he said.

I shook my head a little. I understood his problem. Shrimpy guy. Big guy dating, I guess, the boss’s daughter. In much better shape and much better health, he needed to prove himself somehow. If there’s one thing every two-bit criminal had in common, it was the desire for respect, especially if it was unearned.

I sighed. “Okay, let’s get something out of the way right now. I totally understand where you are coming from. You have talents, but they are being wasted babysitting some arm candy. You probably got stuck delivering me because somebody thinks that the normal guy that would do it is too busy doing something else, so you got stuck with the fucking bill like a blind date that just ordered the lobster. Am I close?”

He nodded slowly, “Something like that, yeah. This shit is way beneath me.”

I smiled a little, “Look at the bright side. I am going to be around for a while. I understand your real job is to help keep the business running smoothly, and I have no intentions of getting in your way. I really do get moody when I don’t eat, like crazy moody. My job before this gig was working for Razor Blade Smile.”

He paled a little, and I continued, “Yep. Nameless goon number four. I have been in your shoes lots of times, so let’s call it square, alright? You don’t get angry because I delayed you, I don’t get angry for you texting profanity and then accidentally threatening me. That way, neither of us makes Kjootoo’s daughter angry enough to turn us into random piles of dust and goop. That sound fair? Are we good?”

He nodded slowly as we went through the check-in at the Marina. “Right, we are good.”

The boat Rattler was driving was not your typical ski boat. It had two inboard motors and an armored pilot’s cockpit and looked like it should have been mounted with a pair of machine guns and ammo boxes. Not exactly a modern patrol boat, but definitely a fast attack boat refinished to look more luxurious.

I pretended not to notice the machine gun mounts bolted to the inside of the railings, but I was pretty sure that this boat had more jobs than just picking up people to head to the ship.

The ship itself was older, and like the boat, looked like it had started service as something military. I was not exactly a sailor, so I couldn’t tell exactly, but it looked like it might have, at some point, been powered by steam engines rather than a modern power plant.

It was big, nearly 30 feet wide and over 120 feet long, and fairly deep, but it looked like it had been rebuilt into a more luxurious accommodation, with polished wooden decks, brass fittings, and an actual helicopter landing pad behind a small pool at the rear of the ship. I think it was called the stern or butt or something.

We pulled to the side of the ship, under one of those frame things that is used to bring a boat onboard a larger ship, and there was a cool rope ladder thing that went up to the ship. A dark-skinned man in blue coveralls dropped down the ladder onto the boat and started hooking it up to large padeyes at the front and butt end of the boat, and when I looked at him and then the ladder, with an eyebrow raised, he smiled and shrugged, “You can stay on board until we lift it to the davit, or go up the ladder. Your call, sir.”

I went up the ladder. It wasn’t that bad of a climb, about 20 feet, and the wide fiberglass plates held it plenty steady as I went up.

A young woman dressed in one of those green wraparound skirts, with a matching crop top, who looked like a considerably younger version of Naomi, was standing and watching back behind the framework as I popped over the edge. Naomi was next to her, wearing a filmy beach wrap, around a white swimsuit, and she beamed at me as I hopped over the metal edge of the deck.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” I said semi-smoothly as I walked towards them, and offered Naomi a hug, as we had discussed. She moved into my arms, and I wrapped my arms around her for a moment.

“Hi, I am George.” I offered as I held out my hand to the younger girl. Definitely younger than Naomi, but a little older than a teenager. She reached forward and took my hand, and then shook it lightly.

“She doesn’t talk,” explained Naomi. “George, meet Caelo, my little sister. Caelo, This is my boyfriend, George.”

Caelo looked at me closely, her hand cool as it held mine, and then she frowned, looking at me for a moment and then glancing back at Naomi. I felt it then, an inquisitive hint sliding across my consciousness, almost like a fingertip brush, and I knew she was one of those ‘not psychics’ that Proteus so frequently claimed didn’t exist.

Naomi pursued her lips slightly and shook her head, and I smiled again. I had been hit by mental abilities before and could feel the energy getting absorbed by whatever it was that made x-rays such a bitch, before Caelo let go of my hand and then lightly shook it, a weird quirk at the corner of her mouth.

I knew she knew something fishy was going on. So I shrugged looking at her closely. “That’s your sister’s business.” I said, quietly, “But It’s not safe to do that. I am not sure what will happen if I absorb more.”

She nodded, and Naomi sighed to Caelo, “I will tell you later.”

I chuckled, “Are you here to make sure I am not some kind of weirdo? What do you think?”

She held out her hand and wobbled it, so-so.

I clutched my chest dramatically, “I am wounded. Here I am, the living embodiment of purity and chastity, to be struck low by a single harsh gesture from such a lovely and lively young woman!” I exclaimed, taking two steps backward and falling to my knees on the deck. “I beg your forgiveness, Madam, for fear of the punishment such harsh blades of judgment shall strike into my heart!”

Naomi was looking at me oddly, but Caelo grinned and gave me a thumbs-up.

I quickly pointed at her, touched my temple, and then rolled my index fingers around each other for a moment, when Naomi was looking away.

She shook her head, brushed her thumb under her chin, and then made sort of half-devil horns with the same hand, turning her palm skywards and lowering it to her waist. “Not Now”

I nodded and smiled at Naomi, “Perhaps I am forgiven for now. I will not have to tear out my heart and… uhh… lay it at your feet.” I said to Caelo, and she smiled beatifically. “Or at least not this minute,” I added, hopping back up.

I noticed that she closed her hand into a fist, and made an s over her heart for a moment. The cool thing and bad thing about ASL was that you had to be looking at it, or know what you are seeing, to understand. I nodded to her slowly in response to her question… Technically, by her standards, I was a metahuman, since I doubt a normal person could absorb her probe, but I wasn’t going to explain.