Kindred Spirits - Part 2, Revelations
Location: Tokyo, Japan - 5am
Boredom could kill even the most hardened detective. It was said that
she was the best detective that ever lived but Carmen was inexorably
dying of boredom. Reminding herself that her patience was the asset
that excelled her above all others, she could not help but sigh with
irritation. It was her precision in executing the theft that she had
not set off any alarms that guarded the ancient artifact but to be safe,
she hid herself in the shadows. Waiting.
She surveyed the darkened interior of the showroom but saw no blue halo
anywhere. There was just her, the shadows and a silhouette drifting
towards her. Carmen's eyes snapped back. A silhouette drifting towards
her?
Shrinking backwards into the shadows until her back touched the wall,
Carmen studied the moving shadow closely. From its height, it must be a
man but it moved soundlessly. Thus it was definitely not one of the Acme
detectives then. She amended that, only she or Lee Jordan had such stealth
skills. Ivy might attain it, if she learned to curb her impulsiveness.
The silhouette was moving at a leisurely pace, why was he doing so? He
must have realized by now that Carmen had seen him.
The silhouette stopped a dozen feet to her left. From this close up, she
could see that the man had an athletic build and from the clothes most
probably a detective. He wore shades that hid the color of his eyes but the
shade of his hair brought Carmen a feeling of dejavu. He scanned his
surroundings but suddenly spun and faced her.
"Doctor Carmen Sandiego?" the man said in a cultured, soft voice. He did
not seem uneasy or indolent. However, there was an air of deadliness and
cold confidence about him. He stood waiting for her to show herself. He
had to be guessing where she was.
"Come on, Carmen. You know I 've seen you," the man pointed unerringly at
her.
Carmen stepped forward with a confidence she did not feel. With her high
heels added to her height, her head reached his chin. Carmen saw from the
way that he carried himself, he was no Acme agent.
"Who are you?" Carmen asked coolly.
The man smiled, when he did that he reminded her strongly of someone.
Carmen noticed that he wore a silver locket around his neck. If she
were not so disciplined, her hand would have crept up to touch her own,
similar locket. He moved closer to her and she just as unconcernedly,
moved a step back.
"My name is Derek Patten. I am a detective of the San Francisco Police
Department. I was given the task of bringing you in."
Something struck Carmen. His voice was soft yet oozing with confidence,
so like Lee Jordan. She tried to shake off the feeling of dread but an
afterimage of Avalon lying crumpled on the pavement kept creeping into
her thoughts. Sadness threatened to overwhelm her but she retained her
composure in front of this arrogant stranger. There was an odd flicker
in his eyes. She fervently hoped that she did not show any of the emotion
she felt whenever she thought of Avalon, she always felt so lonely.
"Where is Zack and Ivy?" was her next question.
He told her and suddenly lunged. He caught her wrist as she danced back.
Using his superior strength, he pulled her closer to him, ignoring her
futile struggle. Surprise flooded him when Carmen somehow managed to twist
out of his grasp. Without a word she fled. Growling to himself, he pursued
her.
*
The soft tapping of keys filled the ominous silence of the Acme's main control
room. Ivy peered over Zack's shoulder as he called up various windows featuring
some information. The Chief was off somewhere, helping Joshua and Armando in
their case of catching Sara Bellum. If Ivy and Zack got caught, they could be
in very serious trouble.
"Well?"
Zack flinched at his sister's snappish tone but they were both uneasy with
what they were doing. It was just that Detective Derek seemed odd. They were
just checking his background to see if he was legit. Zack ignored a voice that
said that the Chief would have already run a background check on any outsider.
Zack whistled as he read Derek's history from the San Francisco Police
Department's files. Ivy tapped him on the shoulder and he enlarged this window.
"Wow," she breathed.
Zack cleared his throat and read out loud, barely keeping his amazement out,
"Derek Patten was sent to boarding school in England at the age of six. He
spent his holidays with his distant relatives. His parents were successful
entrepreneurs and thus had little time for him. His mother and sister died in
a fire in San Francisco. Welfare decided that his father was unfit to raise
Derek, as his father was suffering from severe depression. Derek was given to
a distant relative to raise and changed his surname to the one he has now.
His real surname is unknown.
"Derek graduated from Harvard with a doctorate in Criminology. It is said
that his father did not come for his graduation. After graduating, he joined
the San Francisco Police Department and reached the rank of detective in 4
years. Derek has the following skills:
He is multi-lingual - French, English, Spanish, Kurdish (all dialects) and German.
He is a sharp shooter; never misses a target.
He can ride any motorcycle.
He has a civilian pilot license and regularly flies his father's private jet.
He has fast reflexes. This is shown in a reflex test, where a pin was dropped
and he caught it in 0.003 of a second. He sets a new record for time and
precision every time he participates in an obstacle course.
IQ 200
He has a photographic memory, concerning everything he sees and hears.
"Due to his sensitive nature, Derek was shifted from homicide to Missing
children division last year. He has never fired a gun throughout his career
and has received many commendations and offers of promotion but always
declined every offer."
Ivy looked at Zack, impressed in spite of herself. "This guy should have
gone to Acme. I wonder how the Chief could have missed such potential."
Zack frowned at the dossier. This guy would have made an excellent Acme
detective. In fact, he would have been the best detective Acme had seen
since Carmen Sandiego and Lee Jordan. In private, Zack could admit to
himself that Lee Jordan bettered him and Ivy. He was a combination of the
two siblings, just like Carmen was. If he admitted this feeling publicly,
his sister would rant and rave for hours. Ivy could never forgive easily
and she took everything personally. For himself, he just wanted to catch
Carmen. With her in jail, VILE would disperse shortly without her guidance.
Since Zack and Ivy was the legitimate successors, they would order VILE to
disband.
Ivy looked like she was having the same thoughts. She studied the dossier
closely but the truth was she still did not believe that the Chief did not
trust them to bring in Carmen. She and Zack were going to show him otherwise.
"Player, C5 us to Detective Derek's location."
Zack glanced at her startled and anxious. He raised both hands and took a step
away from the C5 vortex. "Wait a minute, sis. We're off the case, remember?"
Ivy explained to him in a tone suited to dealing with a frightened, wild
animal, "Zack, if both of us can't catch Carmen, Derek won't be able to do it
alone. Carmen did tell us once that every detective needed a back-up."
Zack nodded slowly.
"Also, if we do catch Carmen, it would reestablish Acme's credibility with the
world's governments. Right?"
Ivy did not wait for his agreement and jumped through the C5. Zack cast one look
around the main control room, wishing it silently goodbye. Then he leapt after his
sister.
*
Derek paused and strained his ears to listen for Carmen's footsteps. She ran so
lightly that she almost did not make a noise. She had a 5 seconds head start and
she already had disappeared. Suddenly, he saw a shadow detached itself from a
sculpture and race for the door leading to the roof. Derek ran after her, catching
up. When he reached the roof, he saw her fleeing for her aircraft. If he had the
time, he would have admired it but he didn't. Derek increased his speed and came
up soundlessly behind her. He was about 13 feet away.
Carmen paused as she laid a hand on her aircraft; she glanced over her shoulder
and saw Derek was too far away to catch her. She regretted that Ivy and Zack were
taken off the case but that didn't mean that she should lose out on her fun.
Reaching into a coat pocket, she threw him a paper airplane. Surprisingly, he
snagged it out of the air and tossed it to one side. In those few seconds, he had
closed the distance until he was an arm's reach away. He wasn't even breathing
hard. His triumphant smile faded when Carmen threw a smoke grenade on the ground.
While he was distracted, she climbed into her plane and hurriedly started the
launch sequence. The aircraft hovered and flew off. Derek was standing a short
distance from where she had threw the grenade as his reflexes had taken over and
he had jumped to the side to avoid the smoke screen. This maneuver had cost him
Carmen. He wasn't bothered much it was rare that he solved a case in one night.
An electrical hum announced the arrival of Zack and Ivy. They approached him
casually as if they had every right to be here. He picked up the airplane and
unfolded it, written in concise handwriting was a scrambled word: Rymusonhei
He ignored Ivy and Zack as they discussed what that word could represent and
how to unscramble it. They ordered the Player to infoscan the word to come up
with the variations. Derek frowned, concentrating intensely, searching through
his memory for a word that contained all those letters. He muted out the
discussion to a buzz, his blood pounded in time with his thoughts. Flashes of
the process of unscrambling the word appeared in his mind's eye. Ronymushei.
Heironymus. Heironymus!
"What are you two doing here? You were taken off the case," he asked harshly.
Zack replied that they were his back up. Derek's amused laughter cut off the
rest of his explanation.
"I don't need any help to catch Carmen Sandiego," he said good-naturedly. He
pressed a node on his watch and a small, sleek blue and silver aircraft
appeared from a nearby cloudbank. He climbed into the cockpit, and took off
his shades. Green eyes regarded the two detectives somberly for a moment
before he added softly, "Thank you for volunteering, though."
Ivy spoke up quickly to forestall his departure. She wanted to be on this
case. She wanted to catch Carmen. "Where are you going? We haven't unscrambled
the word yet. Let us figure out what this clue is pointed to."
Derek considered telling them a lie but shook off that idea. He explained,
"Hieronymus Bosch made a painting based on the Faust legend. This legend
was based on a historical figure that was said to have sold his soul to the
evil. I believe she will try to steal this painting but I have no idea where
it is. Probably in a museum in Wurttemberg, since this is where Faust died.
But, I don't think she'll be doing any capers tonight. Running into me must
have been a shock, so she'll be busy researching my history, undoubtedly
which you have already done if you are half as good as I think you are.
Also, I need to sleep.
"See you, detectives. I'll catch Carmen soon."
*
His apartment was spacious but had a Spartan aspect to it. Plush carpeting
and a queen-size bed was all the luxury he permitted himself. His father had
offered to buy him a condo but Derek had refused since he had been independent
most of his life, he wanted to have something to call his own. On his coffee
table was a small, hard cover book titled, "FOLK TALES, MYTHS AND LEGENDS."
He absently straightened the book so that its edges paralleled those of the
table's.
On his bed was another book but this one was a photo album. He leafed through
it, bitterly realizing that his father was not in any of those pictures. He
did not bear his father any animosity but he wished he had been there for his
graduation from Harvard.
With a shudder, he threw the book away from him; it bounced off the wall and
landed with a thud. An aged newspaper clipping had fallen out and floated to
land near his hand. Despite his reservations, he picked it up and read the
headline:
"Elite San Francisco Hotel burned to the ground - anarchy suspected. 27
casualties."
Getting up, he went to his gas stove and lit it up. He placed the newspaper
clipping on the flames and silently watched it burn to ash. Except it didn't
all burn, a fragment remained. It read: 2 casualties.
He remembered that before going away for boarding school, his mother was
getting fat. She was a beautiful woman but it seemed that at that time she
had turned into an angel. Her blue eyes would sparkle as she sang lullabies
to her belly, he would ask who she was singing to and she replied her little
one. When he asked why wasn't he her little one, she told him that he was the
guardian for the little one. His father said that he hoped Derek would grow up
to be brave and would always follow the law.
His parents never did spend much time with him but they always did tell him
that they loved him. He knew that even though he ate most of his meals alone,
they would contrive to spend an hour a week with him. He had his mother's hair,
wavy and brown and his father's green and confidant eyes. In university, he
wondered what his little sister would have grown up to be like. He never did
find out her name.
Opening up his locket, he regarded the picture of a young man, a beautiful
woman and a girl with black hair and blue eyes. The young girl had her mother's
beauty but even at that young age, Derek could see that she had his father's
confidence. Derek smiled wistfully and wished that he could have talked to his
sister, just once. He fell asleep, dreaming of trying to catch a fleeing woman
with sable hair and intelligent blue eyes.
*
Carmen had spent the last three hours trying to hack into Acme's mainframe.
She had eluded all the alarms set and still haven't reached her goal. The
police files on Derek left her with few answers and this left Acme, which
had caches of trivia and vital information. She found an encoded file and
easily cracked it. Then she scanned the scrolling information but one thing
in particular caught her eye:
Name: Derek Patten
Age: 35/36
Occupation: Detective, Missing children Division of San Francisco Police
Department.
Relatives: Mother and sister deceased.
Surviving relative - father, Malcolm Avalon
Carmen's eyes widen in astonishment. Her heart seemed to have frozen in shock;
she struggled to draw breath and managed to gasp, "Brother?"
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