Chapter 6: The Director’s Decision

“There are forces on either side of the veils, which try to manipulate and control the events to their advantage. I now see I won’t be around long enough to prevent these manipulations, and Jo-Laina will face them on her own. Some of these manipulations come from her enemies, but others from her allies.”

Excerpt from the diary of Panpar

Jim Ceiphart couldn’t quite wrap his head around what he was seeing. He was standing inside of Dillard’s, where the body of the terrorist was either incinerated, or shot through the roof of the store like a cannonball. He understood what happened, but he had no clue ‘how‘ it happened. He knew his eyes weren’t deceiving him. Tommy William Leighton somehow contained the explosion. Tommy William Leighton used some hellacious mental powers, powers nobody could entirely understand without taking extreme measures to study them, preventing anyone from being injured. Including him.

The boy hadn’t stopped there. In the john, just before the twins left, he mentioned their video problem were taken care of. He suggested they wouldn’t have to worry about anyone publicizing video footage of them, but Jim hadn’t known what to think of that. He assumed he would have to ‘contain’ it, but he didn’t have to. His phone, wiped, along with everyone else’s within two miles of the mall. It was completely wiped to the extent that there wasn’t a single bit of information on any of their phones. The same thing was true with all of the mall security footage. It was all gone, which was both good and bad.

Jim crossed the yellow police tape and stood in the center of where he figured the terrorist departed the scene and looked straight up. The hole above him wasn’t exactly clean. It wasn’t as if a laser cut a neat circle through the ceiling. It looked more like a rocket ship blasted through it, tearing away debris as the explosion forced its way up, but Tommy did his job and did it well. The blast hadn’t injured anyone.

He had many questions to answer for the director and the footage from the security cameras would be helpful, but the director was going to have to take him at his word. The twins were valuable. Ultimately, that’s what the director was going to want to know and he did have that answer. They were definitely valuable assets.

“I’ve been trying to call you for two hours,” a voice said from behind him.

Jim didn’t have to turn around to know who was speaking. He knew the voice of the director enough to recognize him.

“Figured as much,” Jim replied, “phone’s shot to hell.” Jim turned toward the director and crinkled his brow. “I never expected to see you on the scene.”

The director finished approaching him, standing on the outside of the tape, but gazing up into the massive hole above his head. The director had his own way. Every stitch of the man screamed of order and control. His hair shaved tight, barely more than fuzz at the sides of his balding head, his suit pressed, his shirt ironed and starched, and his shoes shined to black perfection. The director wasn’t funny, nor did he find humor in anything. The closest Jim ever saw him to a laugh was scrunching the skin above his nose, looking more like a scowl than anything, but it was after a joke. The man took life very seriously and had little time for anything other than work. “Reading some things in a report just isn’t the same as seeing them for yourself,” he said nonchalant.

The director turned toward the remaining officers still gathering their data. He motioned to have the room cleared. Those officers didn’t seem pleased about having to leave but they did it anyway.

“These twins are something else,” he added after a moment,

“I’ll say. The boy is the reason my phone is shot. I mentioned to him that we didn’t want any footage leaking, so he cleared the memory of every damn phone around, not to mention the security footage.”

Director Margraves did a double take. “He did what? How?”

“Don’t know how, but it’s as clean as a slate. So clean the phone number isn’t even tied to it.”

“But your phone is triple encrypted. Hacking the damn thing would be next to a miracle,” Margraves said.

“And yet,” Jim replied handing him the phone. “I figure you probably want the boys to check it out.”

Margraves took the phone from him, looking at it quizzically as he did, and deposited it neatly into his suit-coat pocket. “Looks like I’ve made the right decision then.”

Jim gave him a blank stare.

“I’ve ordered them to be collected for questioning. A team is on the way now.”

Jim closed the distance to his boss and grabbed his sleeve. “YOU WHAT?”

“We can’t just leave these two running around,” he said as he yanked his arm back from Jim’s grip.

“Hold them off, Richard. Call them now and tell them to wait for me!”

“You don’t give me...”

“Do you SEE THIS?” Jim said pointing to the ceiling with both hands accentuating the damage there.

“Relax, Jim, our boys can...”

“Look. They know me and they’re even expecting me. Let’s at least try to minimize the chances of another event. There’s no point in not waiting. The teens aren’t planning on running and if I show up with the team, the chances of them doing anything irrational go way down.”