Shadows of Fire

Chapter IV- Jake (part II)

Pond Household

1:05 AM

            Jake awoke groggily, taking time to recollect himself. All of that had happened so long ago, and yet he remembered it as though it was yesterday. He had been sworn to secrecy, sure, but after that, it was amazing times, running around with Will on missions and undergoing training outside of his school hours; after the Fall, those days became significantly more difficult and tight-stretched.  Jake sighed deeply, rubbed his eyes, and looked up, to see the bedraggled face of Vicky looming over him, fully armored up, sans helmet. Jake pushed himself up into a sitting position, groaning softly.

            “What’s going on? Anything exciting happen?” Vicky shook her head gently, her sleep- tangled hair forming a veil in front of her face.

 “Silent as the grave. Although thankfully, not as active as that case in Arlington. Remember that?” Jake grinned wearily, and shook his head ruefully.

“In the middle of that scuffle, Will and Lex had their leader by his-”

            “Jake, Vick,” Will muttered from his bunk. “Enough.  Now you two get on watch, before I have to get up from this cot.”

“Beard,” Jake finished lamely, before forcing himself out from his warm shell of blankets, and sat up fully. He pulled the blankets off of his legs, and re-secured his leg-plates, tugging on each strap to test it for tightness. He leaned over and rustled around in the darkness by the couch for his armor-vest, before “finding” it by scraping his knuckles against a slightly-chipped (sharply so) armor plate.

            Jake got to his feet as he slipped on his armor-vest, its strangely-comforting weight settling on his shoulders, and he zipped up the side-panel, snugly securing it to his body. Finally, like in a coronation ceremony of old, he slipped his helmet onto his head gingerly, the neck seal hissing gently as the helmet locked into place. At first, everything was dark and nothing seemed to happen, but when Jake gave the rear aeration vent a smack, the cooling fans within the helmet kicked into gear with a stuttering hum, and a few moments later, the low-light vision filter flickered into life, filling his vision with a dim blue glow. Jake smiled gleefully within his helmet; no matter how many times he used his helmet tech, he could never get used to the view behind the visor at night. Jake nodded at Vicky, as she slipped on her helmet as well, and the two of them walked off into the darkness of the Pond household.

            When they reached the foot of the staircase, Vicky padded into the kitchen to take up her watch-post observing the back yard, while Jake carefully made his way through the family room, past the slumbering bodies on the futon, and into the “library”. He smiled softly as he closed the door quietly behind him, and looked around the room, letting the smell of old paper and book-binding glue wash over him through his helmet’s filters. The walls were lined with bookshelves that touched the ceiling, and many of the shelves were packed tight with books of all sizes and subjects. Pale beams of moonlight glinted in from between the thick curtains shrouding the great bay window overlooking the front lawn. The moonlight settled like a spotlight upon a large, Edwardian-esque overstuffed armchair, the sort that you could imagine yourself drowning in while reading an entrancing book. Instead of pulling one of his favorite older authors off the shelves, Jake simply opened the curtains a bit wider, scooted the chair out of the moonlight, and settled down into the chair with a squoosh as the chair’s padding enveloped him.

            To a casual observer, it looked like Jake simply had dozed off in his suit, tucked away in the shadows to avoid being disturbed by the moonlight, or unwanted trivial duties. While he may have been stock-still, aside from his chest-plates gently rising and falling with his breathing, Jake’s eyes were restless behind the visor, scanning over the front yard. First they’d hover up close, on the front steps, taking care not to focus on any one object (so his peripheral vision could pick up any and all movement), then out far off, at the end of the driveway. Back down to the center of the lawn, and then out to the roughly-crafted stone wall surrounding the Pond home, where- were it not for months of training, and immense self-control hammered in by Will, Jake would have leaped from his chair. Where there was nothing to be seen on the wall, there was a hunched, bulky silhouette mixed in with the wall’s low, sloping shadow on the lawn; a shadow with nothing to make it.