Chapter 5: The Healer
     “We rescued Katie from a home invasion,” said Wade.  “Someone had learned about her abilities and sent armed men to retrieve her.  We got there in time to save her life, but not in time to save her parents.”
     “What kind of abilities did she have?” said Elizabeth.
     “She was a healer,” said Rose.  “When we found her, she was just saving injured pets and keeping the houseplants green, but after a few months of tutelage, she could close wounds, knit bones, cure diseases, neutralize poison, and even revive people who otherwise would be dead.  It took a long time for her to get over her parents’ death, and the fact that there was nothing she could have done about it at the time, but once she did, she became part of our team.”
     “So where did Sam enter the picture?” said Elizabeth.
     “March 10, 1982,” said Steve.  “Sam and I had been kidnapped by some nut occultist who was trying to gain some great cosmic power.  His day job was as an astronomical researcher at Kitt Peak Observatory, about 50 or so miles southwest of Tucson, Arizona.  He had used their equipment to predict a major syzygy that took place on that date.”
     “Syzygy?  Isn’t that something to do with the alignment of the planets?”
     “A syzygy is any special arrangement of celestial bodies,” said Wade.  “Originally, the word referred to the arrangement of three or more bodies on a straight line.  If you’ve ever seen an eclipse, that’s a syzygy.”
     “At 25 points, it’s also a good come-from-behind word in Scrabble,” said Steve.
     “Anyway,” said Wade, “on the day in question, all nine planets were situated on the same side of the Sun at the same time.  They weren’t perfectly aligned, but there was still plenty of astrological power available for this guy to perform a pretty strong ritual.  In addition to the arrangement of the planets, he also needed a sacrifice.”
     “And because of the imperfect alignment, he needed as powerful a sacrifice as possible,” said Rose.  “Twins, in this case.”
     “So he was going to kill Sam and Steve?” said Elizabeth, looking over at Steve.
     “Apparently so,” said Steve.  “Now, before the ritual, Sam was totally normal.  I was still as nerdy as I am now, and he was the “normal” one.  That night, though, everything changed.  The guy had made some kind of magic circle at the top of the mountain, and we were trussed up and laid out in some kind of pattern.  As he was beginning the ritual, Wade, Rose, and Katie showed up.  They were able to stop him before he finished his incantation, but he had already managed to conjure up a big node of energy.  Since he had been distracted and incapacitated at the crucial moment, all that power dissipated and blew outward in all directions.  Most of it discharged harmlessly into the rock and the air, but a lot of it went into Sam.  Wade and Rose released me and checked me over, and Katie went over to Sam.  She checked his vitals, found none, and placed her hand on his forehead.  When he woke up, he was blind and magical, just like that.”
     “We brought Sam with us to monitor his reaction to the malfunction of the ritual,” said Rose, “and naturally, Steve insisted on coming with him.  After talking with Steve, however, we managed to find some uses for him, too.”
     “Katie took most of the responsibility for helping Sam learn about his new abilities,” said Wade, “and gradually, the Florence Nightingale effect set in.  They were inseparable, they were perfect for each other, and eventually, they got married.”
     “A few years later,” said Steve, “we were out on a job.  Sam and I had just put together our special surveillance gear, and we were field-testing it for the first time.  Sam, Katie, Wade, and Rose were moving in on this amateur sorcerer that had gotten a street gang to do his wet work for him.  He was set up in a rundown tenement building, and the gang members were keeping a perimeter.  Wade got everybody inside, and they made their way to the sorcerer’s inner sanctum, but we hadn’t really scoped the building’s defenses out enough.”
     “We assumed that being fairy new to magic, this guy would try all sorts of arcane tricks to keep intruders at bay,” said Rose.  “We had underestimated his intelligence, plain and simple.  When we confronted him, all he had to do was push a silent panic button in his pocket, and we had every gangbanger in the building surrounding us.  The commotion was more than any of us could deal with, and Katie got shot in the chest.”
     “What happened to Sam?” said Elizabeth.
     “A lot like what just happened outside your boat,” said Steve.  “First, he went ape and julienned everyone in the room.  Then, he ran over to Katie and held her in his arms for about five minutes until we made him leave with us.  After that, he was like, well, a lot like how he’s acting now.”
     “We made the protection suit not long after that,” said Wade, “when he was back to being able to concentrate.”
     “My God,” said Elizabeth.  “So, how long do you think he’ll be like this?”
     “Who knows?” said Steve.  “Took him about three months last time.  The best thing for all of us to do is just do our work.  We’ve got some body parts to interrogate, so maybe we’ll finally be able to find out who we’re going after.  If you don’t mind, we’d like you to look at the disc and try and translate the writing on it.”
     “I don’t know about that,” said Elizabeth.  “I looked at that writing, and I’ve never seen anything like it.  It isn’t any language I’m familiar with.”
     “We do have some samples we can show you,” said Wade.  “We’ve got some ideas as to what language it might be, but we don’t have much of a reference to do any kind of a translation.  From what we know about you, though, you’re more of a linguist than any of us.  We’re hoping you might spot something we’ve missed.”  He handed her the disc.
     “Well, I’ll do what I can,” said Elizabeth as she took it from him.
     “Thanks,” said Rose.  “We’ve got a spare room you can use.  It’s got a computer, and we’ll upload the linguistic data we have to you.  Appreciate your help, Doctor Peyton.”  Rose and Wade went into a well-insulated room so Wade could reproduce the various henchman body parts they had collected.  Steve went to his very large console to archive the logs from the operation.  That left Elizabeth with an ancient language to decipher, and it left Sam sitting in his room, right across the hall.
     She set the disk on her desk under a table lamp, and she switched on the computer to take a look at the language fragments she had been sent.  But she couldn’t really concentrate.  Her mind kept going to the remarkable, fractured young man across the hall who had saved her life less than fifteen minutes ago.  
     She stepped out of the room and walked across the hall to Sam’s door, which was sitting slightly ajar.  She slowly opened the door to see Sam lying on his bed, holding his cane in front of him.  
     “Sam?  Are you okay?”
     “I think you know the answer to that question, Doctor.”
     “Well, will you be okay?”
     “I don’t know.  I suppose time will tell.  Why don’t you get to the point?  These aren’t the questions you came here to ask.”
     “Okay, look.  I just wanted to tell you that…”
     “No, you don’t.”  His voice sounded a little irritated.
     “I don’t?  I don’t what?”
     “You don’t understand what I’m going through.  You don’t know how hard it can be to lose a loved one.  And no, pets don’t count.”
     “I just…”
     Sam stood up in front of Elizabeth.  “You wanted to be helpful.  But you want to know something?  You won’t be.  Because you really don’t know what I’m going through, and you know that you won’t be able to hide that fact from me.  Now why don’t you just work on that disk, okay?  Stick with your strengths, and leave the grieving to the professionals.”  He lay back down on his bed, and Elizabeth went back to her room.