Waling an Endless Path

Author's Notes:

Walking An Endless Path: Part 2 is the continuation of a prequel trilogy for the Jack Danner Universe. Think hundreds of years before Jack finds his way into the Altarian Trade Commission waiting room.

But without this, he'd never get the chance.

-=-

This trilogy is dedicated to my brilliant and beautiful wife, whose support of my passion for writing and drive to keep me healthy keeps me balanced, productive, and happy.

I love you, lady!

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Walking An Endless Path: Part 2

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Chapter 1

Joe shuffled forward a few inches as airport security allowed a few more frustrated travelers to enter the inspection zone. This was the first time he'd ever been in an airport, and he was already convinced air travel wasn't worth the effort.

Adjusting the straps of his heavy backpack to a more comfortable position, he stole a glance over at his traveling companion. His main reason for making this trip. His sister Amy was the prettiest little thing, standing just under five foot two but perfection in every inch. Where she'd been robbed of height, she'd been doubly gifted in beauty. She had the warmest and bluest eyes he'd ever seen, and he swore they sparkled when she was really happy. She had fair, smooth skin with just a hint of freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her slim, delicate nose. Combined with her slightly pointed ears and petite stature, some had suggested she had Fae blood in her heritage. Her lips had a natural upturn and often burst into a dazzling smile that took your breath away. She also had the softest blond hair that reached the middle of her back, now twisted into a single braid. Though she was tiny, she was perfectly proportioned with generous curves that had driven a number of the local boys to rash and lustful aggression. Too bad for them, her virtue was faithfully, and sometimes physically, guarded by her big brother.

Big was the first description anyone used for Joe. At six foot four, he towered over Amy, and his big frame carried the thick muscles he'd earned from years of physical labor on the family farm, his part-time job at the feed store moving heavy inventory, and his daily exercise regimen with free weights. Amy told him she was grateful he hadn't overdeveloped any of his muscles like some of those monstrously huge bodybuilders. His body, while long-limbed and broad of chest, remained proportional. His big hands and powerful arms, which felt clumsy when holding Amy's dainty hand as she crossed an icy driveway, were more at home slinging bales and carrying eighty-pound bags of feed between his fingers. While he wasn't aggressive by nature and avoided violence, he certainly had used his strength as a useful tool when dealing with bullies.

As well as their disparity in size, Joe's appearance was almost an inverse mirror to Amy's petite burst of sunshine. His hair was raven black and always neat and short. His skin had a healthy golden all-over tan, which didn't seem to fade, even during the long winter months, since his unfortunate over-use of a homemade tanning room. He had dark, chocolate-brown eyes and handsome features, so his looks got him more attention than he was comfortable with. Amy's beauty drew admiring glances, but she had less issue with this.

Their personalities were polar opposites as well. Amy was friendly, outgoing, passionate, and outspoken, while Joe was reserved, shy, and a man of few words. He preferred to stay in the background.

Joe glanced over at Amy again and noticed she was showing signs of exhaustion from their efforts just to get to this point. Because Glennville, North Dakota, was so far from Fargo, they'd left home early and endured hours of driving in their father's pickup until they finally reached the airport in the city. Amy shed a few tears against her father's chest, and Joe shook his strong hand before he drove away, unshed tears welling up in his eyes. Joe had seen them but kept that fact from Amy as he knew it would just make her sad.

They continued to shuffle forward as the security checkpoint slowly consumed the line. To ease her burden, Joe gently took Amy's heavy carry-on duffle from her shoulder and tucked it under his arm. Amy made to protest, but Joe's smile showed her he wouldn't listen to any arguments. She gave him a quick smile and touched his arm in thanks, filling him with contentment. Her eyes were tired and distracted as she looked at their tickets and boarding passes one more time as if to convince herself of the reality of their leaving everything behind.

They had no baggage other than her duffle and his backpack. All their necessary worldly possessions were in these two bags, just the clothes they needed and a few personal items. Amy was on her way to Hollywood to meet up with a woman, a noted star-maker she'd impressed with her performance during this past summer's Shakespeare in the Park. Amy's dream had always been to become a star in Hollywood. She was active in drama club throughout school (Joe built sets to be nearby) and was a natural on stage. Joe listened to her dreams for years, and when this opportunity presented itself, he ensured he'd be there to support her in any way she needed to make it happen.

They planned to travel together, but Joe had been in a serious car accident and needed time to recuperate, so Amy graciously delayed her departure until he was better. It had taken only two months for him to return to full health. He intended to make sure Amy made it there and was safe until she got the stardom she deserved so much. To reward her for her patience, Joe used some of the money he'd earned from his job to purchase two tickets to Los Angeles. He surprised her with the news he was ready to go and presented her with the tickets. Amy was stunned by his gift, and he cherished the memory of her tears and laughter when she fiercely hugged him.

While the trip's primary purpose was for Amy to find a career as an actress, Joe was following his own calling on this trip. He was traveling to Hollywood to attend a personal security training course. He intended on getting real training to do the job he'd done this past summer when he'd worked security for the Shakespeare in the Park troop. He'd had too many close calls as he had no idea how to do it right. With training, he could be proper security for Amy when she became famous.

Joe came out of his memories when it was their turn to enter the security checkpoint. Amy handed over their boarding passes and photo IDs, and they moved to the X-ray conveyor. Amy showed Joe where to put the bags and stepped through the metal detector arch. Lights blinked green, and she walked over to the conveyor to collect the bags. Joe stepped forward through the arch, turning his wide shoulders slightly to fit, and the machine made an awful squawk and blinked red.

"Sir, do you have anything in your pockets?" the guard asked, looking up at Joe's confused face.

"No sir," he answered.

"Please step back through the detector and walk through again."

Joe stepped back, and when he came through again, the machine squawked loudly once more.

The guard approached Joe with a strange, flat plastic wand. "Please stand with your arms out."

He did so, and the guard ran the device over Joe's arm but pulled it away when the device squealed shrilly the entire time it was over him. The guard asked him to roll back his sleeve, and he did so, but the wand still screeched over his bare arm. It didn't act like that when the guard ran it over his own arm, and he asked a colleague to switch devices with him.

Approaching Joe again with the new device, he tried running it over Joe's arm, but the screeching still happened. Next, he ran the wand over Joe's legs and torso, and the noise was constant.

Amy stepped forward to see what was happening, and the guard asked her to step back and wait at the end of the security area. He then asked Joe to follow him to a tall, clear booth at the side of the security zone. Joe kept glancing back to Amy to ensure she was waiting for him. She gave him a quick nod to indicate she understood.

The guard told Joe to enter the booth and face forward with his arms over his head as this was a body scanner. Joe did so, but the booth was very cramped, and his hands were against the ceiling. The machine made a little whirring sound, and a tall vertical bar went from left to right. As Joe started to step out of the booth on the opposite side, a female security agent was frowning and listening to an earpiece. She asked him to step back inside the machine so they could run it once again. He stepped back in place, and the machine whirred once more, followed by a series of loud crackles and a series of awful bangs. There was a large flash, and sparks exploded from the top and side of the booth. Joe stepped out of the machine quickly, unaware that the back of his shirt was on fire. An agent rushed forward and blasted his back with a fire extinguisher before moving on to the sparking machine.

Joe ripped the shirt off and tossed it on the floor, dismaying at the huge scorched hole in his favorite and only tailored shirt. Suddenly, he felt small hands touching his arm and the bare skin on his back and looked around to see Amy's frightened face as she looked for burns.

"Joe, thank god it only got your shirt!" she gasped. Then she pulled him into a big hug, her head on his bare chest.

A blush ran up Joe's face until he heard the female agent's voice behind Amy.

"Return to your bags. Now!"

No one spoke to Amy like that. Joe looked straight into the eyes of the agent and said, "I don't know what the point of setting me on fire was, but we're done here, right?"

Amy turned a worried gaze toward the agent.

When Joe was really angry, his eyes went completely black and cold. He wasn't consciously aware of it. The agent looked up into eyes the color of pitch, and her mouth went dry as she froze. A shiver ran down her spine, ending in an intimate place. Her face flushed as primal survival instinct washed away rational thought and years of trained response.

"Yes..." she breathed.

Joe blinked, and the whites of his eyes were back with their chocolate brown irises. No trace of the black remained. The agent just stood there and watched Joe walk Amy back to their bags. He dug into his backpack, pulled out a white t-shirt, and pulled it over his head. The fabric stretched tightly over his muscles, and the agent felt that strange thrill again. The agent struggled to regain her composure when they left the security area. She knew she should stop them, but when she tried to move toward him, her body wouldn't respond and shivered instead. Embarrassed, she looked down at the charred remains of the shirt and frowned. She used her pen to pick it up by the collar, carried it over to a workstation, and spread it out flat. A rough oval more than a foot across was burned out of the back of the shirt, but there had been no sign of any burns or blistering on the smooth skin of that young man's beautiful, broad, muscular back. She shivered again, then gave herself a shake. Pulling an evidence bag from a desk drawer, she used her pen to push the shirt inside the envelope and sealed it shut.

She had a call to make.

Chapter 2

NSA Agent Rachel White could feel the moment approaching. A moment years in the making that would get her out of this purgatory and set her career back on track. Those years had been put to very good use. Since her abrupt departure from the CIA and arrival at the NSA, she'd meticulously built a web of watchers: dock workers, police detectives, port and transit authority workers, and especially airline security agents with specific instructions to call in reports of anomalous activity. Now, her web was trembling with news that might bring her the evidence she needed to make those clowns at Langley eat their words.

She pushed her straight, shoulder-length black hair behind her ear and reviewed the details of the recent call. Her pale blue eyes drank in the details from her screen.

The subject was a Caucasian male, age twenty-one, named Joseph Neumann. He was tall and heavily muscled. Rachel's dark-tinted lips pinched with distaste. She preferred her men slim and lean. She found the subject's tall, muscle-bound body grotesque, like a big slab of meat.

Traveling with the subject was a petite Caucasian female, age eighteen, named Amy Lynn Neumann. Apparently not related to the subject by blood. According to her database, the subject was listed as adopted, but there was a definite lack of information on his birth parents. Rachel didn't like loose ends. She'd have to do more digging.

According to her agent's report, the subject came to their attention when he triggered the metal detector arch and even the wands, with no visible evidence to explain why. While this might have been due to medical plates and inserts, that would have required a significant amount of extensive surgery for that to be the reason. Her limited medical records for the Neumanns did not reference such work. No history of the surgeries required to explain these results could be found in nearby hospitals either.

The digital body scan file they managed to save before the machine malfunctioned so dramatically was... disturbing. Instead of a light gray negative image of the subject, his form appeared almost black, and only a faint, distorted outline showed against the usual black background of the picture. The right edge of the scan showed signal disruption, indicating the machine had begun to malfunction by the end of the scan. Again, there might have been a mundane reason for creating this image, such as the machine's impending failure, but combined with the metal detector anomaly, Rachel's gut told her differently.

Most damning, in Rachel's opinion, was the report that the subject's shirt had caught fire and burned extensively with no apparent injury to him. The shirt was being couriered to her for forensic analysis. Perhaps some form of accelerant and flame-retardant gel?

Or maybe it was the proof she was looking for.

Rachel accessed the security footage her agent forwarded her during the call. She played it at half speed and could see the body scanner explode in a blast of sparks. The subject stepped from the machine, and the back of his shirt was indeed ablaze. There was no indication that the subject was even aware of it until the agent with the extinguisher put out the fire. Only then did the subject react by tearing the shirt off and flinging it to the floor. The flames from the garment had been high and reached the height of his hairline. His hair should have been singed badly, but it appeared as if his hair was not affected at all.

The camera was not sharp enough or close enough to show much detail of the subject's back, but she'd expected to see something other than a smooth, unmarked surface.

She dug up the DMV photos of the two travelers and started a case file on her computer. She linked in the security footage, the body scan image, the recording of the call, and the DMV photos.

Rachel placed a call to the Los Angeles office to speak to her contact there. Agent Cooper and his partner Agent Ryan had previously worked with her, and she could count on their discretion. She heard the phone ringing.

"Agent Cooper," a bored male voice said.

"Agent Cooper, it's Agent White, Washington Bureau."

"Agent White, what can I do for you?" he said, life returning to his voice immediately.

"I have a couple of persons of interest in an investigation flying to your location this evening. I need you to pick them up and hold them for my arrival." She was going out on a limb to say there was an investigation, but even the activity in Fargo warranted these actions, in her opinion.

"We can do that," the voice said, and Rachel could hear his smile.

She forwarded along the DMV photos and flight details. "I've sent you their photos and their flight information. It is imperative that you detain them. The male suspect is very large and muscular, so exercise caution when approaching him. It's not clear how they escaped being detained in Fargo." She was concerned that this big brute might escape as he somehow did from her airport security agent. The woman had been unable to explain why the Neumanns had not been detained after this event. She almost seemed evasive about it. This made Rachel all the more suspicious. "He might be dangerous."

Agent Cooper just chuckled. She suddenly recalled that he had a predilection toward violence. She thought of the subject's brutish size and put her concerns out of her mind.

He came back on the line. "Okay. The photos have arrived with the flight details. Not to worry Agent White, Agent Ryan and I will collect your

persons of interest

at the airport and keep them there for you. See you soon." The phone went dead as he hung up.

She frowned at his rudeness, then put the phone down. She had to book a flight of her own to Los Angeles. It was time to go meet the Neumanns.

Chapter 3

Melissa Wilson was a damn good flight attendant. While she'd only been at it for five years, she was already a veteran of the air. During her brief years of service, she'd served pretty much every walk of life, from obnoxious drunks to charming royalty and obnoxious drunk royalty, for that matter. Amongst hundreds of uneventful flights, she'd accumulated some amazing experiences. She'd delivered a baby, talked down a suicidal teen who'd locked himself in the bathroom, and interrupted dozens of couples ranging from teens to octogenarians attempting to join the Mile High Club. She'd had an irate, self-important celebrity escorted from a plane by marshals for insisting he should be allowed to continue his online word game as they prepared for take-off. Not even surviving a bad belly landing with an emergency evacuation had turned her away from this job. All of these experiences, and she hadn't even turned twenty-six yet.

Her non-airline friends thought she was nuts, but she just loved her career. While there were a

lot

of similarities in the travelers she met, once in a while, there was a gem, someone to keep in touch with to expand her network of contacts, someone to meet for drinks or dinner during a layover, and sometimes, not very often, someone whose world she'd rock. It was the people who kept the career fresh for Melissa.

Her latest flight was to Los Angeles, and she'd take a little break there. Four weeks off, staying with her brother Doug in his huge Santa Monica beachfront condo. She hadn't seen him in a little over a year and was seriously looking forward to reconnecting with her big brother.

Melissa stood in the entranceway smiling and greeting, checking boarding passes as the already weary travelers shuffled past her, lugging their carry-on baggage. By her count, there were only two passengers unaccounted for. Probably stuck in security.

As she waited, she stepped back into the small galley and straightened her uniform. Sliding her hands down the soft fabric, she smoothed it over her curves. She killed in this uniform! Some airlines had the worst fashion design, but this uniform was sleek and flattering. Looking deceptively tight, the pencil skirt stretched, making her long legs seem longer and accentuating her hips and ass. The smart short jacket over a crisp white blouse presented the girls up and forward, and she could show as much or as little of them as she pleased with a few buttons popped or fastened. At six foot, she was one of the tallest flight attendants in this airline and always drew the eyes of the travelers, men and women. Melissa checked herself in a mirror, and her red hair hung straight down and curled in at her shoulders. She was a natural redhead but occasionally boosted the color to make it pop! She silently thanked the designer of the uniforms that they hadn't included one of those stupid little hats.