September 28, 1999
6:27 P.M.
Seattle, Washington

Jared Banks cranked the wheel on his emerald Ford Expedition and braked to a halt in a parking spot marked “Reserved” on the north side of the Art Institute of Seattle’s parking garage. The sign didn’t state whom it was reserved for. One would assume it was for someone actually affiliated with the Institute. He was not. But it was his spot. The attendants all made sure he was the only one who used it. They were paid extra to do so. Paid by the same ridiculously wealthy old man who’d bought the spot for Jared, and who signed Jared’s very generous paycheck.

He put out the last of his cigarette in the S.U.V.’s ashtray (just because he got special treatment didn’t mean he had the right to toss butts on the garage floor, he figured) and reached for the tie he’d dropped, unceremoniously, on his passenger seat. He still wore the rest of the suit, but he always pulled off the tie the minute he climbed into his vehicle after clocking out of work—work was deeper downtown, at the Tether International complex, where he was head of corporate security. He hated the tie, but it came with the job. Even someone so close to the boss—Warren Tether, eccentric billionaire and international business mogul—wasn’t immune from the company dress code. This particular tie was one of several that a pretty girl working at Barcelino on Union Street had picked out for him when he was buying his suits, someone who knew much better than him what looked professional and what didn’t.

He stuffed the tie into his jacket pocket and reached for his umbrella as he got out. It was never a question of IF it was going to rain in Seattle, but WHEN—he’d taken a look at the thick gray skies before he pulled in, and while the waterworks were playing it fashionably late this evening, it looked like it wouldn’t be much longer. He instinctively checked his belt to make sure both his cell phone and pager hadn’t fallen off during the drive. His men back at Tether—personally hand-picked by him from a large selection of applicants with resumes ranging from former F.B.I. to former C.I.A. to former UNCLE to former P.D.—had to be able to reach him at all times. Tonight, Dawson and Brannigan were on the job. The night shift at Tether. He didn’t envy them. Very little in the way of excitement. With the exception of the rare special case, he was out of there an hour after business hours. The boss knew, better than anyone, that Jared had to keep his evenings free.

For his other line of work.

With the double-chirp of his alarm system activation and the replacement of his keys into his pocket, Jared and his umbrella headed for the garage exit. He paused to wave companionably at Eric, the garage’s evening attendant. Eric waved back. Of course he liked Jared. Jared was the reason for his extra monthly spending cash.

Jared walked out and joined the early-evening pedestrian traffic on Elliot Street. It was the usual mix tonight—people like him, coming home from work, or on their way to some bar or restaurant or coffee joint to blow off some post-work steam; a menagerie of tourists from all corners of the globe; Institute students; cynical locals; waterfront workers. A big cross-section of Seattle itself. That made them his people, as he’d lived in Seattle his entire life.

He walked among them as the winds started to pick up and blow his coat around, and listened to their conversations as he walked toward home. But he kept going straight instead of turning right as he should have. He wasn’t quite ready to head home. At Bell Street, he turned left and strolled up the hill, then turned right onto Western. He took this little detour from time to time. First, he liked the walk. It helped him unwind after hours indoors on the job. But more importantly, it allowed him to eavesdrop a little, as he was now, and read the pulse of the city. This was something he found he needed. For his other line of work.

He strode casually for the handful of blocks to Pike Place Market, and soon enough found his leather shoes scraping the damp cobblestones on 1st Street as he crossed it, all of them reflective with the various neon signs of the Public Market Center (including the famous Pike Place Market sign itself, with its equally famous and pleasantly retro clock). Then he was headed down Pike toward the Farmer’s Market. The fish-throwers and produce-pushers were all packing up or hosing down, but the stores, like Pike Place Flowers on his right, were quite packed and jumping, still a long way from ending the day’s business. He walked the Market, passing the bead and tee shirt vendors, the artists selling their works or doing portraits, the musicians with their open cases belting out unplugged 60s covers for cash, the old Chinese couple selling their exotic wares and calligraphic Chinese symbols (which Jared always imagined being the symbols for words like ‘dishwasher’ and ‘dental insurance’ and sold to unknowing kids who thought they spelled out ‘courage’ or ‘lone wolf’ or something. This thought always made him smile). He looked suitably casual and inconspicuous as he did his eavesdropping.

After an easy stroll he circled back, cutting down Post Alley, passing outdoor cafés and parked motorcycles, all flanked by a virtual gallery of flyers and posters slapped haphazard all over the Alley’s brick walls. He did some more listening to people here. Folks were bitching about traffic, as always. Some were falling in love. Some were falling out. A pair of suited gents were griping about urban expansion and the benefits to be reaped by the Straub Corporation. Jared paused near them and faked interest in a concert post (Rust Geometry, he noted, with Down Above and a band “To Be Announced” were playing Saturday at the Tractor Tavern on Ballard Avenue) so he could listen in. One never knew. The big picture, after all, was made up of many individual pixels. Something else to stuff away in his vast mental file.

Soon he was coming up on the Bell Street Pier, right off of Pier 66, downtown’s closest and favorite harbor. The people traffic here was especially heavy. It was a big port and a big tourist spot. He waded his way through a sea of people as he meandered toward Anthony’s.

Anthony’s was actually three restaurants. First, you had Anthony’s Pier 66, one of Seattle’s better seafood restaurants in Jared’s opinion, though it was snubbed by many locals who found it too touristy. Chef Tony Ring knew Jared by name there, as Jared would stop in from time to time when he felt like treating himself or when he had the (very) rare date. Crab cakes, he felt, to kill or die for. A step down the ritz scale, you then had the more common and casual Anthony’s Bell Street Diner. It was more of a family place, really, and had been voted “Best Chowder” at the Maritime Festival in both ’98 and ’99. Jared tended to drop in there for dinner a lot, both since it was so close to home and because it was more relaxed than the ’66. And yes, it was another great place to pick up stray conversations and catch the general mood of the waterfront area.

But tonight, Jared wasn’t feeling like a sit-down, so his destination was Anthony’s Fish Bar. This was your classic Seattle waterfront “to go” joint. No waiters, no pretense, just walk up to the counter and order your pleasure. You could then walk away with your food, or take one of the harbor-view tables outside and dine to the scenery. Walking away was what Jared had in mind tonight. The Market journey had sounded good, but in the end, he found really just felt like getting home.

He paused at the door to hold it open for a family that was clearly from elsewhere (they were just way too happy to be there. A dead giveaway. His best guess was they were down from Canada, probably having sailed in). Once inside, he had a patient wait in a long line before he was face-to-face with Ashley, a red-haired girl behind one of the registers. Her nametag gave her name away, but Jared knew it already. He came here a lot.

“Hey Jared,” she said, smiling.

“Ashley,” he smiled back. “Hey, how’d that paper turn out?”

“’B’,” she griped, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. “My professor hates me. But I’ve got three more to write this semester, so I hope I can bring that up some.”

“Ah, you’ll do fine,” he offered. He was struck again by just how young college students seemed to be looking these days. When he’d turned thirty, he remembered thinking, hey, this isn’t so bad. I don’t feel that old at all. Now, however, creeping up on thirty-six, he found himself finally slipping into the what’s wrong with these kids today? set. Why a pretty young girl like Ashley would stick a bar through her lower lip was completely beyond him. But, who was he to talk? At her age, he was wearing parachute pants. Let history decide who the real fashion victim was.

“Hey, big Jared!” a cook called from behind a wall of steam, poking his head up from the noisy food prep area (you really didn’t call it a kitchen in a place like this. Jared was pretty sure you could only call a kitchen a kitchen if it had a door). “How’s that climb up the corporate ladder going?”

Yeah, Jared came here a lot.

“Big Ricky,” Jared called back. “How’s your wife and your girlfriend?”

“Ah!” Ricky laughed, lifting his knife of briefly and waving it in mock threat. “Don’t even start talk like that, my man. My wife’s got ears everywhere! One of her sisters is hiding back in the freezer and taking notes!” Ricky was second generation Dominican, had a wife he’d never even fantasize about cheating on, and three kids he couldn’t stop talking about.

“Yo, J.J.!” Ricky called back to another cook. “Three fish tacos and a side salad!”

“What if I wanted something different this time?” Jared called to him.

Ashley chuckled at Jared, having already rung him up. “You NEVER want anything different.”

Okay, maybe he came in here TOO much. He made a mental note to try ordering pizza once in a while.

Not wanting to agitate the folks in line behind him, Jared kept the rest of the chat quick, and got out of there with his bag of dinner. He looked up at the darkening sky and could tell the rain wasn’t far off, so he followed the inclination he already had and skipped any further people-listening. From Anthony’s, he took the very short walk to the Bell Harbor Marina (close enough to be considered a back yard for Anthony’s). He passed through the main gate and walked down the dock past various sizes of yachts and sailing vessels. He noticed the family he’d held the door for, already up on the aft deck of their 33-foot Carver 355. Looked like they’d had the same idea about at-home dining that he’d had. He noted the Canadian flag flapping on their vessel and felt a little deductive vindication.

Theirs was just one of the boats in the thirty-five available slips at the marina. Seafaring folks came and went all the time, usually in for just a 24-hour period, and marina rules restricted stays longer than seven days. For most people. In actuality, there were only thirty-four slips available now, because one was on permanent lease to the same certain Mr. Tether who paid for Jared’s parking space. And it, like that space, was leased for Jared. Jared didn’t even want to think about how much year-round tether (hey, “tether”…that joke never got old, he mused, knowing that it, in fact, did and happy that it was a private joke for that reason) was costing the old man, but Tether, as ever, didn’t seem to think about it much himself.

Jared paused to return a wave and a smile to Ben Higgins, the harbormaster, who was visible in the window up in his office. Jared kept friendly with him, firstly because he was pretty cool old guy with no end of interesting anecdotes—A Bostonian by birth and Seattleite by fate, he’d amassed many stories in his maritime adventures—and secondly because it seemed the smart thing to do. Jared was sure the old seadog had been quite curious when he’d been told he had his first-ever permanent resident at the Harbor. Avoiding Ben would only have fueled more questions, and Jared was doing his best to avoid those. So he’d come right out and introduced himself at the start, and fed him what info he could. Telling him that he was head of security for one of the world’s best-known billionaires, one known to be a bit eccentric, went a long way to giving Jared some slack on a little cloak-and-dagger. So he and Ben stayed friendly—just friendly enough—and Ben kept his questions to himself.

What Ben didn’t know was that Jared had picked this particular location for his boat specifically because of the transient nature of the neighbors. He didn’t want questions from any of them, either. When you have permanent neighbors, they tend to notice things like you going onto your boat, and then you seeming to have magically disappeared from it when they drop by later to say hello. And Jared pulled that little disappearing act most every night.

All the berths in the harbor had locked security gates. Jared’s, however, had a few invisible extra goodies on his—ones installed discretely by top Tether people under Jared’s direction and specifications. As he stepped up to his gate at slip number seventeen, he pulled out his card key and slid it casually into its inconspicuous slot, taking an equally casual look around to make sure he wasn’t being watched. It activated a hidden touch pad, which, when revealed with the whisper slide of a small panel, accepted his access code (which was the date his son, Gabriel, took his first step). With that, the plain-looking but actually reinforced gate opened, and Jared stepped inside, closing it behind him. He was home.

Home was Jared’s pride and joy, the third greatest love of his life—the Giovanni, named for his maternal grandfather. It was a 1987 Oceania 42 Sundeck, white and blue with teak interior (which most of the vessel designs coming out of Taiwan at the time had), a forty-one foot beauty (beautiful to him, at least) with twin 225-hp Lehman diesel engines that cruised the craft along upwards of twelve-to-fourteen knots. She had two staterooms, fore and aft, and could sleep eight in a pinch with galley conversion. Upper and lower helms, an enclosed aft deck complete with patio furniture and wet bar, an 11-foot tender with a crane for lowering, large walk-around decks with stainless steel and teak rails and handholds, and all the little extras a pure boat enthusiast could love…and quite a few they never would have thought of.

Growing up in Seattle, and on the water a lot of the time, owning a boat like that was all Jared had ever wanted in life. And it seemed—no, to him, it WAS—like fate when she’d popped up at the police auction. She’d belonged to a two-bit would-be drug prince to whom doing something stupid and getting caught were just a matter of inevitability. It was love at first sight, the moment he’d headed down to the yard to check her out after seeing the listing. He’d spent the next few days working it all out, ignoring any thoughts of the consequences to his financial future or his marriage. He’d mortgaged himself to the eyeballs, and gotten his grandfather (his paternal grandfather, Anthony, a retired cop of many years) to help out, the man who had first given him his love of the sea. And then, she was his…technically a steal, but still way too much money for a young cop like him to be spending, especially one with a family.

The time had soon come to spring the news on Stephanie, his wife. In another twist that made him sure fate was lending a hand, his secret purchase had come right near their anniversary. That’s when he hit her with it, building it up like a big surprise, a gift for them, for their family, to be enjoyed for years to come. In his mind, he’d imagined out her reaction, how he’d have spun it all in such a way that she’d love him for it and see it as the dream-come-true that it truly was. He was a lot better at kidding himself back then. “Ballistic” was a kind way to describe how she went. He’d ended up having to take Gabriel to his parents’ house, and he and Stephanie had spent an entire weekend locked in what was, at the time, the biggest knock-down, drag-out rager of their marriage. He remembered kicking himself through the whole thing for not thinking to name the boat “The Stephanie” to cushion the blow.

By the end of that weekend, the peace was reached, and the marriage saved (at least for a while). She’d made him understand that he’d acted without thinking of his family (even though he’d convinced himself that he HAD done it for his family) and should have consulted her first. And she accepted the lifelong dream that had caused him to act like such an ass. In the end, they’d had the Giovanni. While it had still taken her a while to warm up to it, soon they were taking some of those family trips he’d promised, up to Alaska, down to Mexico. Yes, he’d done something very stupid, but in the big picture, those trips had been some of their happiest moments together. Before everything had gone so wrong.

With a bag of fish tacos in hand, he climbed aboard and let himself in through the starboard entry door, crouching down and stepping into the salon (what the land-lubbers and sad weekend renters would call a living room), past the lower helm and its classic wooden wheel and navigation gauges to his right. He tossed his umbrella on the couch, took a couple of stairs down toward the stern, and stopped in the galley/dinette area. He dropped his dinner on the table and stepped to the fridge, pulling its door open and leaning down to survey his beverage options. He was really in the mood for a cold Black Hook, but he was still figuring on going out later, and that and the brew didn’t mix too well.

Instead, he grabbed a bottle of Cool Nestea, popped it open, took a swig, and headed back to the aft stateroom—his bedroom. The one up front was decorated for a child, as it served as Gabriel’s room when he came to stay with Dad. Jared’s was decorated like a bachelor’s should be, and, like it not, that’s what he had become. There was a framed 45 record from 1969 called “Go, Go, You Pilots” there, the official theme song of the Seattle Pilots, the American League team that only lasted one entire season in Seattle before being sold off to Milwaukee and becoming the Brewers (and having the distinction of being the only Major League team to ever file bankruptcy). There was a mounted home run ball Jared had caught at a Mariner’s game in ’84, autographed by “Mr. Mariner” Alvin Davis. Other baseball memorabilia he’d collected over the years adorned the walls and shelves, too, as, Jared was fond of saying, baseball IS life. Along with all this were plenty of photos of Gabriel, and one of Jared’s parents, Patrick and Sophia Banks. Next to it was an old photo of his mother’s whole family back in Italy, where she’d grown up before coming to Washington as a student and falling for a by-the-book cop who was investigating a break-in at her dorm (that would be Dad). And there was a shot of him and Grandpa Banks fishing in ’73 on one of their many trips (Jared had let him know the boat would have been named after him, but he was the grandfather who was still alive, so the Giovanni it had become. All things considered, Anthony Banks figured he’d come out on top, so could live with that).

There were plenty of photos of him and Stephanie—and just of Stephanie herself—but those he kept in a drawer under his bed, just in case she ever happened back into his stateroom when she was dropping off Gabriel. His stateroom; it used to be THEIR stateroom. The bed he sat on, removing his shoes, was where they had made love so many times, quietly while little Gabriel slept up front, with the waves gently rocking the boat—their home away from home—beneath them. Once the love boat, now just a divorced man’s sad cliché. The photos in that drawer got looked at a lot more than they should. And there was still one of her stashed in his wallet as well, something else she never needed to know.

He took off his suit (and his holster, and his gun, and his Tether keys and security cards, all of which he placed in his safe) and got into sweat pants and his Bob Seger tee shirt (from the “It’s a Mystery” tour in ’96). Suitably dressed down, he climbed back up to the salon and checked for messages on his answering machine. There was one waiting, and even that was a windfall these days. Most messages he got were Tether-related and ended up on his corporate voice mail. Her personal line, like his personal life, didn’t see a lot of action lately.

The message was from his mother, asking him to come over for dinner some time next week in her stubbornly lingering accent. His Mom meant well, as ever. She tried as often as she could to get him and Dad in the same room in hopes that if they were stuck in the same room together long enough, things might start to heal between them. It hadn’t happened yet. Patrick Banks had retired from the force just a couple of years before, after spending his whole career in the S.P.D. He was much-decorated, much-honored, much-loved. So naturally, having his only son walking away from the same police department under a dark cloud of accusation wasn’t one of the highlights of his life. Jared knew his father still hadn’t forgiven him. It wasn’t even a matter of speculation. Jared didn’t know if he ever would. Jared’s reasons would never make sense to him, though they did to Patrick’s father, Anthony, the first Seattle cop in the family (but not the first cop—the family badge tradition went all the way back to jolly old England). So Jared and his father saw less and less of each other, since seeing each other just didn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference. Jared felt it only managed to make things worse. For his mother’s sake, though, he still did struggle through the occasional dinner, and he’d now have to take a couple of days to decide if he felt like subjecting himself to this latest one.

Back in the galley, he worked his way through his tacos and salad in silence. He contemplated turning on the Mariner’s game on the satellite, but TV didn’t really sound like his mood at the moment. Instead, once he put his Anthony’s packaging in the trash, he pulled another Nestea and took it with him to the aft deck, where he figured he’d listen to his team on the radio instead (a time-honored baseball tradition). The rain had finally started to fall and was pattering down hard on the canvas cover above him. The transparent plastic surrounding the deck was beaded with rain, and little vertical rivers were starting to wind their way down. He turned on the beat-up old boom box he’d had since college after sitting down on one of his blue-and-white patio chairs, and had to up the volume to hear the game over the weather.

He put up his feet and lit up a Winston with a flick of his S.P.D. Zippo…one of his few mementos of the force that wasn’t packed away. The Mariners were in Boston tonight (had it been a home game, he would have been able to hear the crowd, as his boat was walking distance from Safeco Field), tearing up Camden Yards from the sound of things. Boone, he soon found out, had just put one into the stands. He grinned a little, thinking to himself that at least there was that. Divorced, dumped a career in the crapper, living alone on a boat with a drawer filled with pictures of the woman he still loved…but the Mariners were headed for the pennant. As Mom always liked to say, you had to count your blessings.

He was most of the way through his cigarette and starting to settle in to the rhythm of the game when he heard something back in the boat behind him. He reached over and turned down the volume and listened, and heard it again. Another voice, on another radio, this one up at the Giovanni’s helm. But this was no A.M. radio, and this was not the voice of New York Vinnie on KIRO.

Jared was being hailed on the VHF. There was only one person who ever called him on it, and that man didn’t do it just to chat.

He stamped his smoke out quickly in the tray as he rose, feeling his pulse quicken. He darted in toward the helm just as he heard the hail repeat again.

“Soundhopper calling Vindicator. Over.”

The caller’s boat was not the Soundhopper. Jared’s was not the Vindicator. But one never knew who else was listening, did they? He grabbed the mic, and thunder rolled somewhere out across the Sound.

“Soundhopper, this is Vindicator. I copy. Go ahead.”

“Read you, Vindicator. Good evening, Mr. Krieg. Over.” (Not his real name).

“Evening, Mr. North.” (Not HIS real name either). “How’s the fishing business treating you? Over.” Normally there was a little more small talk between them, but Jared could feel something big happening, so he cut right to the chase. If this was the call he’d been waiting for, he’d been waiting for a long time.

“Oh, just fine, Mr. Krieg. In fact, you mentioned you were looking to do a little fishing yourself. I think I might have a lead on a good spot for you. Over.”

Bingo.

“That’s good news, Mr. North,” he said, trying to stay calm. “We ought to get together and discuss it sometime. Over.”

“Anytime you choose. Over.”

“Well, then, we’ll have to make it as soon as possible won’t we? Over.”

“We certainly will,” ‘Mr. North’ responded. Jared could hear the grin in his voice. He knew the other man got a kick out of this covert stuff. “Then we’ll talk soon. A good night to you, Mr. Krieg. Over.”

“And to you, Mr. North.” You slick seafaring son of a bitch, you! “Thanks for the tip. Vindicator, out.”

Only half sure he’d properly replaced the square mic with its coiled cord back on its hook, Jared scurried down to the engine room. The door to it looked like an average one, but just like his gate outside, it wasn’t. Tether techs had been in there, too. In fact, his whole boat had been taken to a secluded Tether marina for a number of special modifications. And if anyone thought that didn’t make Jared nervous, a bunch of techs taking tools to his baby, they obviously hadn’t met him yet. As with the gate, this one had a hidden panel that he activated, where he punched in another code.

The door opened into what appeared a normal engine room, with the exception of a short locker. Crouching down, Jared crawled into the room, closing the door behind him, and tapped a nondescript button. His ears popped as the room sealed and started to pressurize. Not a standard feature for your average Oceania. He stripped off his sweats and tee shirt and tossed them aside. The non-standard locker took another code from him (he sometimes wondered how he kept track of them all, but like your average high school internet surfer, he knew better than to reuse the same password over and over).

The locker, airtight itself, hissed as it opened, and its interior walls, floor and ceiling lit up and bathed him in a dull whiteness. Folded there, in its collapsed state, with its helmet resting on top, black and green and looking ominous as hell, was his Seahawk armor.

This was his other line of work.

He grabbed his helmet and settled it on. It covered his head from the nose up, and from the chin down, as was molded specially to fit him. It scooped back and down in the rear, coming to a point, so his profile, while wearing it, made him look a little like a hood ornament. It gave him kind a bird-like look, which, taking its namesake into account, was the idea. It also made him look quite scary, which was a nice bonus.

He pulled on the suit and let it seal to his helmet, and horizon view screens popped up before his eyes. He felt that was a really nifty trick of engineering, the fact the green text and icons that appeared before him were actually less than an inch from his eyes but all perfectly readable. This was the boot-up sequence. The screens told him, at frantic speed, that each of the systems were functioning properly. He made minute movements with his fingers, ones that would be unnoticeable to anyone that might be watching. This interface functioned like a computer’s mouse, letting him activate and scroll through systems commands. He called up the main menu. An imposing red-lettered word at the top of the list read ‘Initialize’. When they first started training him in the suit, he’d dreaded the hell out of that crimson word.

He clicked on it, and the miniature…whatever they were, he always forgot the word the techs used…fed into his ears from the walls of the helmet and did their thing. In the time it took for his heart to beat twice, the melding happened. The always-present involuntary spasm bucked him. The intake of breath through his teeth was quieter than it used to be in response, but it never went away. The sensation felt like lightening coursing right through his veins, supercharging every muscle, a hard-line adrenaline soul-tap that suddenly made him more than he was. Yes, he used to dread it. Now? He was pretty well hooked on the rush. It never got old.

He and the suit were now one.

The armor had two functions. It operated as its own system, yes…but it also linked directly into HIS own system…his body. Suddenly he was stronger, he was faster, he was BETTER. When he geared the thing up, he was not just a man in a suit. It made him an honest-to-God super-hero. Cue theme music. Here he came to save the day. And being one with the system meant that everything was tied into his nervous system, so for all intents and purposes, he WAS the suit.

He reached for the trapdoor in the engine room floor and cued the unlock sequence (which you had to know how to do and couldn’t do accidentally, because he really didn’t want Gabriel somehow getting in here while he was shaving, opening it and sinking the boat). It opened for him, and now that the room pressurization was complete, he was looking down at cold, dark seawater. He did one of his finger moves, and a transparent mouth-cover dropped down from below his nose and sealed his helmet. He was now self-contained, set up with one way-beyond-cutting-edge re-breather that actually pulled oxygen from the surrounding water.

He slipped into the water feet-first, having to force himself to slow down, because both the suit rush and the need to find Mr. North were practically making him shaky. He reached up and pulled the trap shut behind him. The cold, of course, didn’t touch him, as the suit was originally designed to be a deep-sea rescue suit, and that amenity was probably the one of the first design considerations. He floated for a moment, there under the Giovanni, in darkness before the ultraviolets in the helmet’s visor kicked in. After that, it was bright and cheery as day as far as he could see.

Spinning and angling himself downward, he activated the suit’s propulsion system. It worked partly with the boots, partly with what he called ‘the backpack’. Like most of the suit’s other systems, it was beyond anything anyone was using in the ‘real world’, a water intake mechanism Jared couldn’t even begin to understand. All he knew was that it was fast…really, really fast.

But he didn’t cut loose right away, instead getting down to the harbor floor and flattening out and coasting beneath the bellies of the other boats tethered next to his, picking up speed slowly as he moved out across Elliot Bay. He looked up and around as he went, an instinct, really, as he wasn’t sure what he expected to find (a couple of random scuba divers, perhaps, suddenly pointing and chewing into their mouthpieces, “Look! It’s Seahawk! He’s came from that boat! He’s really Jared Banks! Call Connie Chung!”?). He looked at the pier, at the undersides of cruise ships and trawlers and massive commercial container and breakbulk cargo ships as they began to fly past him. Up there, they were dealing with the growing storm. Him? He was down there in the invisible world, scattering schools of startled sea life as he passed them. All those years living cluelessly up above, he’d never known—never understood the vast alien universe that existed below the breakers, a world of ancient beauty that man hadn’t even begun to properly understand. Down there was the true final frontier. And it was fast becoming as much a home to him as the world of daylight above. And he was beginning to become a part of it.

When he’d gotten far enough out into the bay, he hit the gas.

And, quite literally, he was gone.

Propulsion kicked into full, and the armor produced its field, the one that displaced water in a way, again, that he wasn’t smart enough to understand. In next to no time, he was a human torpedo. Please—he LAPPED torpedoes. He turned on the suit’s active sonar array to avoid any unfortunate accidents, and Elliot Bay was soon just a memory as he rocketed out into Puget Sound.

Technology does not yet exist, he mused, to accurately measure how absolutely BADASS I am.

Seattle’s newest hero, Seahawk, raced through the black, his muscles tight and his mind razor-focused.

Tonight, this hawk was on the hunt.

And his prey awaited.

TO BE CONTINUED

 

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