Phantom Ace (aka Gideon Young)

Gideon Young grew up invisible.

Oh, not the bend-light-around-you, transparent-to-the-naked-eye kind of invisible. No, he was simply the eighth child out of ten in a lower middle-class Catholic family. Combined with a naturally quiet disposition and nondescript looks, neither unusually good looking nor particularly hideous, he was just very easy to overlook in the mob. And overlooked he was.

When his harried mother passed out lunches as the herd thundered out the door to school in the morning it always seemed to be Gideon who didn’t get one. More than once on family outings they had to turn the van around because someone finally noticed Gideon wasn’t with them – and on a few occasions no one missed him at all. His mother loved to tell the tale, when she was reminded of her youngest son, of how they almost forgot him in the hospital after his birth. Gideon always assumed the story was apocryphal, or at least greatly exaggerated… but knowing his parents, he could never be entirely sure.

But being invisible wasn’t all negatives, it had the occasional upside, too. Gideon was quiet, to be sure, but that didn’t mean he didn’t get into the usual amount of mischief young boys are prone to. He just never got caught. Whether it was stealing a candy bar from the corner store as a kid or sneaking out (and back in) as a teenager, no one ever seemed to notice. As he got older Gideon often wondered what it would be like to grow up in a family where your parents cared enough to notice you…

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Denise Griffin married George Young when she was 17 and he was 18, high school sweethearts who managed to find themselves pregnant in the summer of ’85. Under parental pressure, but not really unwilling (they were in love after all), they decided that the wedding would be at the end of July – a small affair, as the bride was seven months along and very much showing.

George got a job, through his father-in-law’s influence, at the Stetson Shoe Company in their home town of Weymouth, Massachusetts. He made a decent wage, and they got an apartment with deep-part carpet, a couple of paintings from Sears, and a big waterbed that they bought with the bread they had saved for a couple of years. Denise was able to stay at home and take care of George, Jr. and the future looked to be pretty good.

Then, in January, Denise announced that she was pregnant again. They were both a little dismayed, of course, but George was doing well at the factory, and they figured four could live about as cheaply as three… besides, they were good Catholics, so there wasn’t really a choice. In October of ’86 Kelly joined the growing family, and soon everything seemed good again – one kid of each gender, close together in age, so when they left home George and Denise would still be young enough to enjoy life.

Eight more children over the next eight years put an end to that particular fantasy, however. After the twins were born in December of ’89 Denise was ready to say to hell with the Pope and the rhythm method, and go on birth control. But George was adamant – it was a sin, and they’d just have to try harder not to catch a baby every friggin’ year. This lead to the biggest, most protracted, fight of their marriage, but in the end George prevailed, and birth control remained off the table and out of the medicine cabinet.

By the time Michelle was born the Young marriage had begun to run on separate, parallel tracks, only infrequently intersecting to produce another child. Denise refused George’s advances most of the time, unless she was absolutely sure she couldn’t conceive – a ploy that had proved of limited utility in achieving her goal. This strategy led to George spending more and more 12-hour shifts at work (“I’ve got to pay to feed all these kids of yours”), and eventually spending his evenings and weekends at the Union Brewhouse with his two best friends Jack Daniels and Captain Morgan.

Denise retreated into her soaps for awhile, and scrap-booking, and church activities… but by the time Gideon was born she was forced to find part-time work to help keep food on the table. Not being qualified for much, she took weekend shifts as a waitress at a breakfast joint named Stokesy’s Egg House, and afternoon-evening shifts at Jackson Square Tavern. During the week she shuffled the kids to school, then worked lunch at the middle-school cafeteria, then shuffed the kids home, or to some kind of practice or recital or sleep-over…

By the time Gideon was six his oldest sister, Kelly, was pretty much raising the younger children. Although only 12 herself when her mother began shifting more and more responsibility onto her shoulders, she didn’t seem to mind. She was the only one of his family that Gideon felt a real connection with, and was the only one who seemed to notice him more than occasionally. She made him lunches, saw that he had proper clothes (even if they were all various hand-me-downs), and made sure he had school supplies. She also read to him at night, igniting a life-long love of books in him, and a thirst to learn… if not a thirst for school.

George Young never hit his children, or his wife, even at his drunkest. Rather, his abuse came in the form of neglect… unless one of the children found a way to stand out, he would often have trouble just remembering their names during the few hours each week that he might chance to interact with them. Only his oldest, George, Jr., seemed to make any lasting impression on him. Good student and star athlete, his father’s heir and namesake, the younger George seemed to be the conduit through which his father relived the life he’d once had, and lost.

Denise was a kind-hearted woman, and loving in her own distracted, harried way. But she was never the brightest person in the room, and love and good intentions couldn’t help her properly split her attention between ten kids. Her jobs, a cold and distant husband, constant attempts to find some way to “define” herself (from pottery to yoga to book clubs), and an increasing reliance on self-medicating left her little time to focus much attention on any one child… the invisible Gideon least of all. Kelly taking increasing responsibility around the house as the years went actually seemed to exacerbated the problem.

If his home life was not idyllic, school was little better for young Gideon. Quiet, shy, introverted by nature, an unobtrusive chameleon by habit, he found it difficult to make friends. On the rare occasions his peers noticed him, it was usually to mock his hand-me-down clothes, his low voice, or for being a good student. As they got older, they also mocked his family’s fecundity – the kids weren’t the only ones to notice the large number of Youngs passing through the school system, and what their parents snickered about at home, the kids were happy to repeat on the playground. Over the years Gideon developed strategies to avoid these confrontations, becoming even more chameleon-like and introspective. Unfortunately, these strategies also included dumbing it down in class – which led to a steady decline in his grades over the course of his elementary school career.

No one really noticed, of course.

But if things were not great in elementary school, they got much worse in middle school. Shortly before his 12th birthday Gideon’s beloved sister Kelly, in many ways the only real mother-figure in his life, died. In her senior year of high school the pressures of being a surrogate mother, studying to get into a good college, and trying to at least match the achievements of George, Jr. (who had gotten into MIT the previous year), led Kelly to take up her mother’s habit of self-medicating, stealing drugs from her easily distracted parent. Unfortunately, the very day after she got her acceptance letter from Stanford, Kelly accidentally overdosed.

Gideon was devastated. As the shock and incomprehension began to fade, and the new reality asserted itself, he began to blame his parents for her death. If they had bothered to be around in their children’ lives maybe Kelly would’ve been happier and more fulfilled, and wouldn’t have had the world on her shoulders. Over time his resentment smoldered, and he knew he would never forgive them for this. Nor would he forget any of his shitty little peers who mocked his dead sister.

When he began high school himself, things got ugly fast. His usually reliable camouflage failed him in the face of his sister’s lingering notoriety and his family’s already tarnished reputation. A number of the resident bullies seemed to take great pleasure in tormenting the small, quiet youth, mocking him for his dead sister, calling his family trash and asking if she was buried at the dump. An attack on Kelly was the one thing that could get Gideon to forego his usual strategy of fading into the background, and once this became obvious, the taunting redoubled. He always fought back, and he almost always lost – relatively short, somewhat thin,  and certainly inexperienced, he was not much of a fighter.

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Eventually the novelty of tormenting him about his sister wore off, but the habit remained, and several of the worst bullies were always looking for new things to poke Gideon about. His sister had loved Hello Kitty, the one piece of her abbreviated childhood she had managed to hold on to, and her collection reminded Gideon of her in the best way. It was the day that he had absent-mindedly left the house wearing one of her Hello Kitty T-shirts that his life changed again, and this time for the better.

As David Frazzeli was holding him down and Tim Krieger was punching him, there was a sudden squawk – and Tim was suddenly gone. Shoving a surprised David off himself, Gideon looked up to see a tall blond kid punching Tim repeatedly in the face. When he finally dropped the bloody-faced bully he turned to glare at David, who quickly gathered up his dazed friend and stumbled away in fear and anger.

“Hey,” the blond boy said, offering Gideon a hand up. “I’ve seen you around… Gideon Young, right?” Gideon nodded and started to mumble thanks, but the other kid waved him down. “No biggie, I hate those assholes anyway… but I gotta say they might have a point about that stupid shirt!”

Gideon started to blush, and made to pull off the offending garment.

“Whoa there cowboy,” the blond boy laughed. “No need for a strip tease, I don’t swing that way… though it’s cool if you do.”

“No!” Gideon said, blushing even more furiously. “I’m not gay, and I only wore this by accident, I–”

“It’s cool, Gideon,” the other boy said, turning serious. “Actually, the shirt is sort of growing on me… it’s, what you call it, ironical… and if those assholes hate it, then I think you should wear it like a badge of honor… sort of like giving them the finger, right?”

And that was how Gideon Young met Eddie Dean.

Although only a year ahead of Gideon in school, Eddie was two years older, having been held back to repeat his freshman year. Like Gideon, he came from a poorer family, if not one quite so large (only five siblings), and had been on the receiving end of bullies from a young age. Unlike Gideon, Eddie hadn’t adopted a strategy of fade-and-cover, instead choosing to fight. He had quickly learned the best way to avoid conflict in the long term was to fight hard and fight dirty in the short run – fight to win quickly and to win decisively. As a deterrent it worked well, and with a few broken-bully-noses victories under his belt, he gained a reputation as someone not to cross.

After that first encounter, Gideon and Eddie became fast friends, finding that their personalities complemented one another well. Eddie helped Gideon with being more assertive, as well as bulking up his wiry frame a bit, and Gideon helped Eddie learn there were subtler ways to get what you wanted. He also helped the older boy with his school work, to prevent him ever being held back again. This also benefited Gideon by forcing him to do better in school himself, and his own grades quickly began to rebound.

Eddie eventually began to let Gideon into a secret world he’d occupied since he was 10, one of excitement – and crime. He was especially motivated to do this as he learned what his friend could do from his “Invisible World.” The Dean men had been small-time crooks in and around Boston for several generations, and Eddie immediately saw the benefit of Gideon’s ability to blend in. While the younger boy had certainly used his “power” to commit petty larceny, it had never been a central pastime for him, and never very serious. Now he began to learn what it could really do when applied creatively.

For the next two years the friends grew closer than brothers, certainly closer than to their actual brothers, and reveled a life of escalating crime. Eddie’s father and older brothers were more than happy to use the boys for appropriate jobs at first, such as lookouts or casemen; but after Gideon managed to learn some juicy, and lucrative, bits from rival gangs thanks to his “invisibility,” they too began to see the possibilities. The boys got promotions, and moved on to burglary, pickpocketing and high-ticket shoplifting.

By the time he was a junior, and Eddie was a senior, both boys were making more money that their peers with legit jobs. The only thing Gideon refused to be involved in was drugs – it wasn’t street drugs that killed his sister, of course, but he still wanted nothing to do with them. Or with physical violence, but the Deans were not generally into that sort of thing anyway, and if it ever came up the older, stronger men handled it. But Eddie and Gideon always had one another’s back – if Eddie couldn’t punch their way out of trouble, Gideon could talk, weasel or misdirect them out of it. He was so good at ghosting out of trouble that Eddie took to calling him “the Phantom.”

Gideon continued to wear Hello-Kitty T-shirts on a regular basis, although he did switch to more masculine black and white versions eventually. As Eddie had said the day they met, it was like Gideon was giving the world the finger. He rather liked giving the world the finger, he found.

Unfortunately, at age 17 the world decided to give the finger back to Gideon.

♠  ♠  ♠  ♠

He never found out exactly how his mother died, only that she had collapsed at work in the middle-school cafeteria, and died en route to the hospital. But he knew in his heart it was stress, constant work, depression… and his father. Gideon had blamed them both when Kelly died, but he could never really work up much anger at his sad, washed-out mother. His father on the other hand, he had no trouble loathing, and now all his pent-up rage fell on the man. It was time to rip the bastard a new one…

But when Gideon got home that day he found his old man drunk and crying at the kitchen table, moaning about “what will I do now?” All his rage turned to disgust, and everything he wanted to say died on his lips. He turned around, went up to his room to grab what few possessions mattered to him, and found his younger sister Rose, crying in her bedroom. He hugged her and handed her a very large wad of cash, all of the ill-gotten gains he’d saved over the last two years. He told her not to let their father find out about it, but to use it to keep her and Jessica safe until they could leave too. Then he got up and walked out of the house, never looking back.

The Dean family took him in, and for the next several months he shared a room  with Eddie. Bobby Dean eventually told him that George hadn’t even reported his minor son missing to the police, apparently not even aware he was gone. Even the low-life Deans found George Young to be a waste of space and oxygen. And being a better man, Bobby insisted that his son finish the year and graduate from high school – so Gideon perforce finished his own junior year.

Gideon was all for getting out of Massachusetts then, maybe heading to New Atlantis or the West Coast. But Bobby also insisted that he finish high school too. Shocked at having an adult actually pay attention to what he was doing, Gideon could only nod and comply. While he was finishing up his schooling (with a 3.4 GPA), Eddie went to work full time in the family business, saving up some scratch for the both of them. He’d razzed his friend about giving away his stash, but secretly all the Dean men respected Gideon for it, Eddie most of all.

The day Gideon turned 18, he and Eddie announced their plan to move out to San Diego. Somewhat to Gideon’s surprise Bobby was fully behind the idea, having a brother out there who could hook the boys up with some “work.” A week later, diplomas rolled up in their backpacks, the two young men set out west. Taking their time, they cruised across the continent in an old beater Tesla which Eddie’s dad had given them, seeing the sights and getting into no more trouble than they could get out of.

In San Diego Eddie’s uncle, Harry, was dubious at first, not so much at his nephew, but by the bland, unassuming kid with him… geez, if you looked away for a minute you practically forgot the twerp existed! Both his brother and his nephews vouched for the kid, though, so what the hell. He’d give the runt a chance.

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Six months later he was very glad he had.

By then the boys worked everything from burglaries to grand theft auto, and made some good money doing it, bringing in even more for Harry Dean. The only work they didn’t get involved in was anything involving violence… not that it didn’t come up in the course of business, but never as the primary job – the Deans weren’t leg-breakers. And since Harry also wanted no part of the drug trade, Gideon was content with his new life.

Eddie, however, was more ambitious. He kept urging his uncle to get into the drug trade, at least the marijuana end of things – Massachusetts had decriminalized it two years ago, and California had just done so as well, making possession a civil infraction. Legalization was coming, and they should get in on the ground floor. Harry was unconvinced, and eventually forbade his nephew to bring it up again.

Eddie seemed to acquiesce to his uncle’s decision, and backed off on pushing the idea. But after more than a year in San Diego, he was making connections of his own, and one day he brought an offer to Gideon that surprised him. He’d met a guy, who knew a guy, who knew somebody who wanted some very delicate transportation work done. Eddie had convinced him that they were the men for the job, but really he couldn’t do it with out Gideon’s mad “Invisible World” skills.

It took some convincing, but eventually Gideon gave in to Eddie’s wishes, as he always did, and agreed to meet “the guy.” He knew that it was almost certainly drug work, but he smoked pot himself occasionally, and it wasn’t like it was really dangerous… He was adamant that they not use their real names, however, at which Eddie had laughed.

“Do you think I’m an idiot, Gid? Nobody uses real names in this line of work, and I’ve been going by “Ace” for months now. Nobody knows my real name, or my connection to Uncle Harry’s business. I told them your name is “The Phantom,” so we’re cool.” He had also had some high-quality fake IDs made for them, in case anyone insisted on “real” names – Teddy Asher for himself, and Roland Deschain for Gideon.

The meeting went well, and the client decided they should meet his employer in person and interview for what could be a very cushy position with a very wealthy organization. They both agreed, Gideon somewhat reluctantly, and were provided with two commercial air tickets to Sinaloa, Mexico. Telling Uncle Harry they needed a vacation and had hooked up with some coeds going to Mexico for Spring Break, Eddie had them at LAX before Gideon knew it.

When they landed in Mexico they were met by a man who introduced himself as El Azul. The two men who… loomed Gideon decided was the only word… behind him he introduced as his associates, El Phoenix and El Cali. Gideon eventually learned that they were in fact hired guns, what the cartels called Sicarios. This would not be the last time they met.

El Azul met with them as a representative of the Sinaloa Cartel and offered them a lucrative opportunity smuggling methamphetamine into the States. Gideon balked at this, having been led to believe they would be smuggling pot, but he also recognized they’d come too far to back out at this point. So OK, one run and then forget the whole thing, a strategy Eddie agreed to. Being young and, despite Eddie’s pretensions, inexperienced, they didn’t fully understand what they were getting themselves into. But the money was fabulous… and they agreed to take the job.

That first job was really a test, of course, and one they passed with no trouble. When Gideon wanted to quit after that, Eddie pulled out all the stops to win him over to the idea of doing it again. As always, Gideon let his friend convince him…and over the next two years they learned the art of international drug smuggling. Gideon was already a past master at going unnoticed, of course, and Eddie proved a talented artist when it came to creating undetectable hidey-holes for contraband. The two friends didn’t work often, but when they did they were always successful.

They also worked at perfecting their rusty high school Spanish, although El Azul disapproved of this – they were useful to the cartel precisely because they didn’t seem to have any connections to anything south of the border, and speaking fluent Spanish didn’t help that illusion. It was from El Azul that Gideon (or Roland Deschain as the Cartel believed him to be) got his first official Cartel nickname – El Gatito Noche, in honor of both his stealthy, cat-like abilities and the Hello-Kitty T-shirts he often wore. When Eddie wanted to wind him up, all he had to do was call Gideon “Night Kitty.”

It was around this time that Harry Dean finally tipped to what the boys had been doing in their occasional stretches of “off time,” and he blew his stack. Furious, he demanded to know if the Cartel knew who they really were, and even after proving to to his satisfaction that Eddie was telling the truth when he said they didn’t, he insisted that they quit this idiotic and dangerous side business. When Eddie, equally hot by this time, absolutely refused, his uncle washed his hands of both of them, telling them never to darken his doorway again.

Now free to work exclusively for the the Cartel, the next year saw Gideon and Eddie becoming two of the Cartel’s best smugglers, making everyone a lot of money. Gideon was so successful at getting through customs that some of the Cartel members stopped using the mocking nickname El Gatito Noche and started using his original nom d’crime El Fantasma. Eddie, as always, remained El As.

By the summer of 2015 they were making so much money that Eddie actually started to bury some of their loot in hidden caches throughout Mexico, Arizona, and California, because it couldn’t be laundered fast enough. Gideon never really cared about the money, finding that his tastes were simple and he could get by with very little cash. Instead, he had become addicted to the challenge and the danger of the business.

Eddie, on the other hand, loved the money and flaunting his wealth. He bought himself a candy red chopper he named Lucky Lucy, and had a friend paint a fanned-out set of four aces on either side of its gas tank. He adorned an expensive leather riding jacket with an ace of spades on the back, with his pseudonymous “Ace” beneath it. And Lucy was no ordinary motorcycle – Eddie had it customized with several secret compartments he designed himself, so he could work while riding in style.

Gideon found the bike to be gaudy, but he trusted Eddie more than anyone else in the world, so he tolerated it. Besides, that was what made them such a good team – where Gideon was stealthy and chameleon-like, sneaking under the radar, Eddie was so brash, so visible, that he he lit up the radar like a B-52, and so no one suspected him of anything illicit.

Eventually their success led to being introduced to the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, a man named Joaquín Guzmán, better known to the world as El Chapo. He had just escaped from the Mexican Federales for the second time and was deep in hiding. When Eddie and Gideon met with him it was, to their surprise, in an unassuming little apartment in Los Mochis, a city in northern Sinaloa. It seemed his cartel had been offered a job by an organization that even a butcher like El Chapo did not want to disappoint, and he wanted his best men on it. His lieutenants assured him that El As and El Fantasma were the men for the job.

They were each to carry one package, quite small, and weighing almost nothing. The exaggerated care with which the packages were carried into the room made Gideon think they were handling nitroglycerin. That definitely worried him, but Eddie, as always, played it cool. How they did it, El Chapo didn’t care, but they were to deliver both packages to a warehouse in Tucson in 48 hours. Money had already been exchanged with the mysterious client, and their own payment would be waiting for them in the usual Arizona safe house after the hand-off.

Whatever Gideon’s misgivings, it was clear this “job offer” was anything but optional… they accepted the packages. Leaving the apartment they quickly began their planning phase. It was decided that they should travel separately on this job, and to make things more interesting Eddie challenged Gideon to a race. Whoever got to the warehouse first got the other’s share of the money. Gideon never cared about the money, so he accepted the challenge on one condition:  Eddie would give him Lucky Lucy if he lost. Eddie had to think about that one, but eventually he agreed, realizing his friend didn’t really want the bike and would no doubt forgive the bet… in the unlikely event Eddie lost, of course.

Gideon had a knack for getting through airports with just about any contraband, so he decided he would take a plane, which should let him beat Eddie by at least a day. But the US had recently begun installing new incredibly advanced chemical sniffers in international airports, the latest brainchild of Swift Industries. Not having a clue as to what the contraband he was carrying might be, or if it would trigger these new sensors, Gideon decided he would have to smuggle the shipment in the old fashioned way.

Opening the package he found a small brown vial labeled “Reactive Agent 11.” Slipping the vial into a condom, he dipped it in some olive oil, took several deep breathes, and shoved it up his ass. If these new SwiftChem detectors could sense anything now, well, he deserved to be caught!

He had absolutely no trouble getting through customs, slipping into his old familiar “Invisible World” routine until he finally made it to a hotel room in Tucson. He never got nervous on these kinds of trips, and he’d made it through the new detectors without a hitch… so why did he suddenly feel queasy as he sat trying to pass the vial? A sudden, horrible thought occurred to him then, and he grew concerned that the vial might have broken in the last six hours.

When he finally retrieved the vial, he was relieved to see it intact, and chided himself for being so paranoid. Then he saw that the cap had somehow cracked in two – the vial was completely empty. The condom appeared unbroken, but whatever “Reactive Agent 11” was, it was also apparently permeable to latex… none remained in the sheath.

Gideon suddenly felt very light headed, and staggered into the bedroom and onto the bed.  He didn’t feel like he was dying, really… just a little dizzy  and strange… probably more from panic than any chemical poisoning. Still, the reality of his situation began to settle in. If the mystery drug he’d accidentally absorbed didn’t kill him, he had just failed one of the most powerful and violent drug cartels in the world, and they certainly would. And if they somehow missed him, there was always their mysterious and apparently very dangerous client…

Gideon knew Eddie would stop at least once for the night on his way up, but he still had less than a day before they were to meet at the warehouse. He spent the next couple hours shaking, breaking into a cold sweat, and nervously pacing, uncertain if the symptoms were due to the chemical or simply his own fear. Glancing compulsively out his window every few minutes, he knew he was in trouble.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when his burner phone, an old-style AzTech flip phone they bought in bulk at Walmart, rang. He knew it was Eddie, of course– no one else had the number– but his nerves were frayed to the breaking point by then. He answered with a convulsive gulp. Eddie was at the warehouse – he had only stopped once to eat, driving through the night to get to Tucson as fast as possible. But even through his good-natured gloating Eddie could tell something was wrong.

Having no desire to explain over the phone, Gideon said he’d be there as fast as he could, and hung up. He raced to the warehouse to find Eddie with a huge shit-eating grin on his face, ready to begin boasting about all the bells and whistles he’d load up Lucky Lucy with using Gideon’s share of the cash. Until he noticed the look on his friend’s face and froze. But before Gideon could explain what had happened a small metal canister landed next to them, followed by a blinding white flash and shouts of, “Get down! DEA! On your knees!”

The next few minutes were a blur to Gideon, as he staggered back against a stack of crates – and right through them. For a moment the was blind, eyes wide open but seeing nothing, his already panicked mind unable to process what his senses were telling him. Then he was out the other side of the stack, hidden from the sight of the DEA agents swarming the warehouse… mind numb from shock, he dimly realized that it was just a matter of seconds before he was spotted. He wanted out of there, he wanted to escape, he –

– was suddenly standing in an alley across from the warehouse, staring at the flashing lights and scurrying figures of the DEA strike team surrounding the warehouse. There had been the strangest sensation, like he was being… compressed, but from the inside out… which made no sense, he was going crazy… but now he was outside… had he blacked out? But then how had he gotten away from the government agents, they were everywhere…?

Gideon watched in agony from the shadows as his best friend was dragged out in handcuffs and placed in the back of a government SUV. And he continued to watch as they eventually drove away with Eddie, and while the forensic teams went over the whole building, and while the sun began to lighten the eastern sky and the last of the Feds packed up and drove off. No one noticed him in the alley…

♠  ♠  ♠  ♠

It took him a day to get himself together enough to go looking for Eddie. In that time he figured out that he could will himself to simply become intangible, able to pass through any solid matter. He had a sense in his gut that if he could just twist in precisely the correct angle he could… travel. But he didn’t seem to be able to make himself repeat whatever feat of… he guessed it was teleportation… he had achieved the night before. Whatever “Reactive Agent 11” was, it seemed to have given him super powers, but he didn’t know how to use at least half of them!

He knew where Eddie had to be, in the detention cells in Federal Building downtown. He’d have to try and ghost in, find out what he could, and plan from there. Experimenting with his new phasing powers, he found he could carry at least a couple hundred pounds of other matter into intangibility with him, as long as he was in contact. He also successfully phased a dog, just to be sure he wasn’t limited to non-living matter. So, he could take Eddie through the walls with him, if he could just find him…

In penetrating the Federal Building Gideon quickly discovered a new aspect to his powers – if he moved slowly and didn’t do anything to draw particular attention to himself, he appeared to be invisible to the people around him. It seemed a suped-up version of his natural anonymity, and between it and his phasing ability he quickly learned where his friend was being held. Unfortunately he also learned that getting the two of them out from the bowels of the  building would be damn difficult. The Feds were used to dealing with meta-humans, and there were cameras everywhere. While surprise might get him far, once it was gone Gideon didn’t doubt they’d find a way to restrain him, maybe even kill him.

He spent two days lurking about the Federal Building, eavesdropping and spying, and hoping that Eddie might be moved to some exterior area where escape might become more practical. Then he learned that Eddie had flipped, agreeing to help the Feds and the Mexican Federales find El Chapo in exchange for witness protection, and he became terrified. His friend must have thought he was on his own now, that there was no other choice… but they’d both heard too many tales of failed witness protection situations, especially involving the drug cartels, for it to seem like a good choice.

The only upside to this was that they planned to move Eddie to a safe house until they were ready to fully debrief him… and rescuing his friend from that situation would be a cake walk compared to this building. So Gideon withdrew and kept his eye on the motor pool until they moved Eddie, and followed them when they did. The safe house was only about half mile from the Federal Building, a nice enough condo on the sixth floor of a newish building of stucco, metal and glass.

Gideon spent the afternoon practicing his phasing, and deciding they would go straight down through the floor; timed just right, they could check their momentum at each floor and still make the lobby while the Feds were waiting for the elevator. Come midnight he would make his move. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one with plans for that night…

There were four guards on Eddie: one in the building lobby, two outside the door to the condo, and one inside the condo itself. Having scouted out that much, Gideon phased his way into the condo’s bedroom, where he stuck his face through the wall to peer into the living room. Eddie and his Federal Marshal guard were seated at the dinette table playing the card game War. He felt a twinge of jealously— that was a game he and Eddie had played for years. He suppressed the feeling and focused on trying to figure out how to get the guard to leave the room so he could make his move. Suddenly,  two loud thumps sounded from the hallway.

Before the guard could do more than stand and reach for his gun, and Eddie drop an ace to the table, the door burst explosively inward and two men rolled through, guns blazing. Gideon screamed as he surged through the wall, reaching for Eddie, realizing as he did that it was too late. The sleet of metal tore his friend’s chest and stomach to shreds, and dropped the Marshal with half his head blown away, before Gideon was halfway across the room.

Even through his rage and grief, he recognized El Phoenix and El Cali, the Cartel sicario they had met when they’d first begun working for the Mexicans. They had crossed paths more than once over the years since, and Gideon had never liked the killers… now his hatred, fear and grief combined into a rage like he had never felt before, and in the face of it even the two assassins took a step back.

But they were surprised only for a moment, and as Gideon stalked toward them, his face a twisted mask of fury, they both opened fire… and stood open-mouthed as the bullets passed harmlessly through him to shred the far wall. As he reached for El Phoenix, the closer of the two killers, the man drew his bowie knife, slashing it through Gideon’s throat and shouting “Muerte para el Gatito Noche!”  The knife passed quite literally through its target, leaving not a mark.

Out of sheer reflex Gideon grabbed for the man’s arm and felt a strange tingle –suddenly they were solid, at least to one another! Holding on to the knife arm, Gideon grabbed the killer by the throat, and willed them both to sink through the floor. The sicario’s eyes widened as he realized what was happening, and he struggled to break the grip, dropping his knife in the process. Despite Gideon’s rage-fueled strength the Mexican was bigger and stronger, and he managed to wrench himself away – and instantly became solid again. His death was not quite instantaneous as his torso merged with the materials of the floor – there was time for one horrific shriek of agony as he realized what had happened before the darkness took him.

Both enraged and horrified at his partner’s fate, El Cali opened fire once more. Feeling no guilt, but only cold, furious satisfaction at what had happened, Gideon reached for the second assassin, bullets passing through his body, wanting only for him to be GONE! He grabbed onto the man, but instead of the tingling sensation he felt both of their bodies… compress, in that odd way he’d felt that night at the warehouse. When the pressed-in-from-the-inside sensation stopped it was replaced by the feeling of free fall. They both looked down and found they were in open air, directly outside the condo, plummeting toward the street. Gideon let go of the killer, who began twisting and screaming at the top of his lungs. He felt the compression again and suddenly found himself safely back in the condo’s living room, standing over Eddie’s undeniably dead body.

He knew it was futile, but Gideon spent ten minutes trying to resuscitate his friend. Eventually, covered in blood, with tears streaming down his face, he gave up and just sat there staring at Eddie’s still face. He knew that he needed to move, before either more Marshals or more Cartel assassins showed up, but it was so hard… he forced himself to move, carrying Eddie’s body into the bedroom, surprised at how little it weighed, laying it out on the bed… he didn’t want them to find his friend on the floor, like some animal. After a moment’s hesitation he took Eddie’s leather Ace jacket from the couch, where it had managed to avoid both bullets and blood, made sure El Phoenix was really dead, then phased through the wall into the open air.

He found it was like walking on a sand dune, as he slowly “floated” down to where El Cali’s broken body should be… only to find nothing. A little blood spattered the asphalt, but not enough to account for a body broken by a six-story fall. Peering up at the building, Gideon saw that one of the third floor balcony railings was twisted outward, and he realized the damn killer had managed to break his fall, at least partially. He hoped he’d broken some bones, at least, but had no time to worry about it now.

Pulling the motorcycle keys from the jacket pocket, Gideon closed his eyes and focused intently on the image of Lucky Lucy in his mind, and… pushed. Almost immediately he felt the weird compression again, and when he opened his eyes he was in a darkened impound garage standing next to Eddie’s beloved chopper. He started her up, and as he roared up the ramps toward the exit gates, he felt  that odd tingling sensation again, but even more strongly – and both he and the bike passed harmlessly through the gates and a very startled security guard. With a grim laugh, Gideon gunned it, and vanished into the night…

♠  ♠  ♠  ♠

It took him several months, but in the end he had his revenge on the men responsible for Eddie’s death. He tracked down El Cali first, arm still in a cast, and materialized a length of pipe through the assassin’s heart. Then he hunted down El Chapo’s chief lieutenants, one by one… but most of those, with the exception of El Cholo, he didn’t kill, but rather made sure the Federales knew where to find and arrest them. Bit by bit he isolated El Chapo, watching him run and dodge in increasing desperation… Gideon had heard the man say he would die before being imprisoned again, but he didn’t plan to make it that easy for him. He wanted him to rot in a cell for the rest of his hopefully very long life.

Finally, on 8 January 2016, acting on an anonymous tip, Mexican Marines and Federales cornered El Chapo, who tried to go out in a blazing gun fight, but somehow found himself completely unharmed by the authority’s bullets. Less than 72 hours later, he was on a high-security extradition flight to the US, to stand trial for his many crimes.

Gideon Young smiled as he turned off the TV after watching the video of the former Cartel strongman being led into a Federal courtroom. Then the smile faded. What the hell was he supposed to do with himself now. He had no stomach for continuing a life of crime… that had really only ever been Eddie’s thing, something he’d gone along with out of loyalty and friendship. OK, and maybe the thrill. But the thrill was definitely gone now…

Just then his latest burner flip phone rang. Gideon started in surprise… only Eddie could know this number, and for a moment irrational hope surged in him. But almost as quickly, he realized it was probably just a wrong number. He flipped the phone open in irritation.

“Hello Gideon,” a deep, resonate male voice said. “Or do you prefer the name you’ve been using to hunt the Cartel, the Phantom Ace?”

Gideon turned pale and felt suddenly very light headed. “How– who is this?!”

“A friend. Don’t worry, your secrets are safe with me, I promise. And as a token of good faith this call is to warn you to leave your apartment in the next 90 seconds. Men are coming, not to kill you but to capture you, to study and dissect you – and if you are still inside that building a little over a minute from now, they will succeed.”

“What?! Who? The Cartel is broken–”

“Talk later, flee now. This is not the Cartel, it’s someone far more dangerous. Now GO!”

Gideon took no more time to think – he flipped on the camera in his laptop, set it to broadcast, and teleported to the garage where he kept Lucky Lucy. From there he watched on the bike’s built in screen as seven men in black burst into his abandoned apartment, strange looking weapons ready, glowing with an eye-hurting purple light. They looked more than a little annoyed at finding their prey vanished, and began ransacking the place. Gideon watched for a few minutes, until one of the intruders reached for the laptop. He hit the kill switch, fusing the insides of his laptop into slag and leaving his mysterious visitors nothing to go on.

Leaving St. Louis on his bike, Gideon headed west, based on a coin flip. Until he knew more about this new threat, he’d better avoid as many of his old patterns as he could. Of course he rather suspected he knew, in general outline, who this enemy was – the organization whose damn chemical had given him his super powers. Unfortunately that was all he knew. Perhaps his mysterious new “friend” would provide answers. But it was almost a month before Gideon heard from the mystery caller again, on his fifth burner phone since St. Louis, in a seedy motel in Coeur d’alene, Idaho. He answered on the first ring.

“How do you keep getting these numbers?” he demanded, before the mystery man could speak. “And who the hell are you? Why are you helping me? How do you even know I exist?!”

“You have many questions,” the voice sounded amused. “But I’m afraid I have very few answers. I would hope that my previous assistance would be proof enough of my good intentions.”

“Yeah, I’m grateful for that,” Gideon acknowledged. “But I’m not inclined to just trust some mysterious dude on a phone who knows way more about me than anyone alive should, and who won’t answer my damn questions.”

“Fair enough,” the voice replied, amusement undimmed.  “And I will answer many of your questions – someday. But for now I’m asking you to trust me. Not blindly… I’ve not asked you to do anything, have I? I’ve merely suggested what you should avoid. And as a further exercise in trust building, I now offer a new bit of advice. You were planning on heading to Seattle next, yes?”

Gideon felt the hair on his arms stand up… he’d only made a definitive choice of direction five minutes ago. To go to Seattle.

“The men in black are waiting for you there. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll head instead to Astoria, in Oregon. I can promise that you’ll be safe there for at least two months. We’ll talk again then.”

“Wait,” Gideon cried. “How can I–” but the line was suddenly dead. Well shit! What should he do? OK, not Seattle… why risk it? But should he follow his disembodied benefactor’s “advice,” or just pick a new random destination?

♠  ♠  ♠  ♠

A week later Gideon rolled into Astoria.

For the next two months he laid low, getting the feel for the city, and finding a perfect hiding place in the deeper recesses of its Underground. There were a lot of strange people living there, but everyone tended to keep to their own business, and that suited him fine. He even found an occasion or two to help some of these odd folks with problems they faced, and he found he liked the feeling.

It was mid-May before Gideon heard from the mystery voice again. He’d been expecting the call for days, so he wasn’t even a little startled when his latest burner phone buzzed shortly after he returned to his Underground digs. Still damp from the gray drizzle of the Upside world, he flipped it open.

“It’s going to be a gorgeous day tomorrow,” the deep voice said without preamble. “You should get out, maybe do some morning shopping… have you visited Astoria’s famous Silver Mile yet? I hear it’s really quite something…”