Westchester, New YorkFrom the corner of Michael Holt’s eye he spied the psychiatrist watching over him scribble something down on her notepad. Mariah Mitchell's mouth was moving too, he was certain of that, but he didn’t deign to listen into the words that were escaping it. He had been to countless sessions since the accident and none of them had brought him any closer to feeling whole. It didn’t help that Holt was better qualified in the field of psychology than every psychiatrist he had visited to date, including Mitchell. Instead, Michael simply shut his eyes and let the undetectable T-spheres that hovered beside him continue about their work.
A grainy recording of Terry Sloane began to play in Holt’s mind. Sloane's voice was gravelly, worn down by a lifetime of stress and exertion, but the gravitas was still there. It was his integrity that had first captured Holt’s imagination – and the hours of recordings he’d stumbled upon had been revelatory in the months since. To the rest of the world, the J-Men were a hoky urban legend: but hearing Sloane speak of his experiences in his own words was like being transported through time.
“<Dodds? Yeah, Dodds was something of a character to put it politely. Used to give a few of the boys the creeps with that mask of his. Truth be told though, he had a good heart. Wesley was like me, you know? A man of means. He didn’t have to be out there fighting the good fight. When he saw injustice he couldn’t help but run towards it. We were the same in that way.>”Simultaneously, one of Holt’s T-spheres projected the image of Cyberwear’s CFO into the air in front of Michael’s face. As with the spheres, the message was invisible to the unsuspecting psychiatrist and it appeared as if Holt was simply staring off into space. In truth, he was listening to Sloane speak
and processing near-to three hundred pages worth of information sent over by his CFO in a matter of seconds. A lesser man's brain might have wilted underneath it all but Holt looked like he was barely breaking a sweat as the portly, moustachioed man spoke.
“<Lord’s breathing down our necks. Heck, he’s been breathing down everyone’s necks since buying out Kord Industries, but with a little bit of grit, we should be able to see him off for another quarter or two. I know the past year has been tough on you, but if we’re going to survive this without the board turning on us, you’re going to have to be a little more present, Michael.>”Finally, a lithe figure in a beige suit and open-collared blue shirt appeared behind the psychiatrist’s desk. It shimmered slightly as if both there and not there at the same time. Somehow it interacted with its surroundings despite being a pre-recorded message. King Faraday, his shock of silver hair bouncing gently as he walked around the psychiatrist’s office, spoke directly to the operative he knew as Mister Terrific.
“<Holt, it’s me. The White Queen has been in touch. She has a new assignment for you. I think you’re going to like this one. You know where to find me if you’re interested. Faraday out.>”The message ended and from the chair next to him Holt heard Mitchell clear her throat curtly. His hands relaxed from behind his head and he pushed himself up from the seat to look in the psychiatrist's direction. It was clear that despite Holt’s best efforts, she suspected he had not quite been paying attention.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying, Michael, but I feel like your mind is elsewhere this afternoon.”
For a second, Holt considered lying but decided doing so would only compound his original sin. “I'm sorry, it’s been a bit of a stressful week.”
“You’re an incredibly intelligent man,” Mitchell said with an empathic smile. “You don’t need me to tell you that you’re never going to get the most out of these sessions unless you commit to them. So let me ask you this: what do you want to achieve by coming here, Michael?”
Suddenly the smiling face of Paula Holt appeared in Michael's mind. He heard her laugh ring through his ears and allowed his longing to feel the touch of her skin against his in for a moment, but quickly exorcised those feelings when they become too much. There was nothing that could be done for him. He could never bring Paula back and no amount of talking could change that. What it would do though was help Holt assuage his shareholder’s doubts about his wellbeing and keep Maxwell Lord from its door for a while.
“I want the same thing
everyone wants,” Holt shrugged. “I want to be happy. I want to wake up in the morning and feel like I have a reason to get out of bed but life took that from me. Now I suppose what motivates me is the thought of leaving the world a better place than I found it.”
Mitchell gave a polite nod. “And is leaving the world a better place mutually exclusive with happiness? Surely the two can coexist?”
“You would think so, wouldn’t you?”
Holt flashed a quixotic smile and Mariah looked taken aback by the comment. The watch on Holt’s wrist began to vibrate and Mitchell turned her head to peer at the clock at the end of the room. Their session had ended and, as ever, Holt had places to be. He was on his feet before Mariah had a chance to respond and it was clear that Holt was lost to her again. A rare moment of insight had been lost.
Faraday’s ghostly figure reappeared and on auto-pilot Holt extended a hand in Mitchell's direction. “Same time next week?”
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