The Talon Family The Spy of London Part 1

Missouri, The Ozarks Base

Time: 1641

 

Gabriel Talon leans against the steel walls of the large elevator descending into the earth. The steel box normally brought down vehicles for Paladin like tanks or heavily armor jeep, but today it only had two people to lower into the massive base within the ground. The base unknown to anyone above them was far enough down that it fell out of the jurisdiction of the United States, not like it matter to Paladin. Paladin, a special organization outside any laws of the United States or any other county in the world tasked with saving the world from anyone, would wish to do it harm. Surprisingly there were more groups and people who wished to take over the world then most people thought, and Paladin was the one who stopped them all.

                The organization or as Gabriel thought of them as a shadowy military had bases, teams, and people all over the world, but the Ozarks base was one of their main headquarters. It was the size of a small city and fully socket for the people who lived there. Although, if the truth is to be told, there weren’t that many people within the city. Most of them were out on missions, living in the world beside everyday people. Some of them were living on the moon base, in secret space stations which they were trained for at this base.

                Gabriel glanced up from her phone once the signal was lost staring out the window to the living and breathing city. There were more people down here then she expects and the years of being a part of Paladin told her something was going on, but she wasn’t sure what.

                The tall blonde with a button nose and a body that screamed she worked more than most because in her life being able to run for miles while carrying someone on her back meant life or death. She thought about all the people, the normal people, who ate too much fast food and didn’t have to go on missions to save the world. They got fat, and for a moment she wishes she could get fat. It was a beautiful luxury she did not have, even if that luxury was killing the average person. It would be nice to be able to enjoy the normalness of a dull life.

                But it was because of people like her that the poor fat average person could live without true care in the world. Not that there were many people like her, she could, after all, turn herself and anything she touched invisible. A gift given to her by a meteorite exploding in her fathers’ lab. Shrapnel from the space rock embeds itself into her and her brothers giving them powers. Powers which became vital assets to Paladin.

                She glanced down at her pale hands seeing the green rocks under the skin the scours of her power wondering what life would be like if they were gone. She offers wonder this but her mind race to the thought when she found herself overwhelming with sadness. A sadness, if you asked her, she wasn’t sure where it came from. Some days the loneliness of her life was hard. Some days staying in bed was all she longs to do. She would lay in bed watch movies and eat ice cream. She would get fat with her Egyptian adopted sister and life would be alright. She wouldn’t be happy but most of all she wouldn’t be sad. She would just be.

                “You okay?” The larger black and silver automaton asked her. She didn’t look over to the metal shell that held her father’s mind in it. He gains the power from the meteorite of being in a coma but being able to place his mind into the bodies of the automaton he built. He built a lot of thing for being one of the world’s greatest super geniuses. The larger metal man looked as if he stepped right out of a 50’s movie or the Iron Giant or The Day the Earth Stood Still. The good one, Gabriel told herself, not the lame one with Keanu Reeves.

                She had been trying to get her dad to add some personality to the robots for a while, but it hadn’t work yet. She was going to have to do it for him in the end.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Gabriel said.

“You seem a little down,” Alexander said.

“I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night,” she told him.

“Do we need to get some more antidepressants?”

“Dad, not now,” she hissed at him like she was sixteen again even if she was pushing twenty-two.

“Right not?” He asked not moving the head of the automaton. “No one is around.”

“Because I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, knowing she hasn’t told him the old antidepressants didn’t work anymore since she got her powers. She didn’t feel like going through another round of therapy sessions for a year. Not too add, there was a lot she couldn’t tell her therapist about her life. She couldn’t speak a word of how her mother was once the world’s greatest spy and died in a plane crash over the ocean. A crash she was sure of one of her mother’s enemy orchestrated as an act of revenge. It was something she couldn’t tell a random person because she could barely tell her family about it.

She couldn’t tell any of them she was tired of not having someone to rely on when the missions got hard. She could rely on them, but she couldn’t vent about them to them. She wanted a man in her life she could turn to and say, “My family is driving me mad. I’m tired of being their mother.” But she couldn’t blame them for the fact they came to her like their mother, she acted it that way ever since the death of their mother.

“If you need them then you need to talk about it,” Alexander said. “Don’t let your depression get out of a hand again.”

“Dad,” she yelled, “I know. I got it, and I’m fine.”

“Alright, alright.”

“You trust me to save the world and keep this family together. So, trust me to take care of myself.”

“That my love is a battle you can’t do alone because it is the hardest battle of your life,” he said to her never moving his head, but she felt the robotic eyes on her.

“Can’t we please just drop it.”

“It is dropped.”

Author's Note

Writer’s Notes:
I must admit to you that I love me a good conspiracy theory, but I find them as entertainment than any kind of truth. I also must watch which ones I find myself reading about because there had been too many nights of me screaming at the computer over the theories. I can’t believe there are people out who say faking children death is something someone would do, it’s hard to read and even harder to believe. (I don’t think anyone fake the deaths of children, by the way.) I always have to remind myself these theories are base of real life and have to remember the old saying “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't,” by Mark Twain. How true his words are in this world?
I only bring this up because anyone who reads about conspiracy theories might see that I pulled some of my ideas from them for this story. Not so much the whole story, just The Ozarks Base which is a real conspiracy theory. By no means am I saying it is real and I don’t believe to it be so. Like I stated before I enjoy the theories I don’t buy into them. I also enjoy reading about cults doesn’t mean I’m going to go join one.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bring up Gabriel’s depression. It has been something sitting in the back of my mind for a while with her. I knew she would have battle it when she was younger, still not sure how far I was to go down that hole with her. I guess you can say, I’m not sure how much she wishes me to tell you about her depression. It has nothing to do with shame, but the fact, she feels like it doesn’t need to be brought up. At the end of the day no matter how bad her depression is she still has to fight to save the world. Like in other stories she can and does put her emotions aside for the mission which might add to the depression, but I don’t know yet because Gabriel is holding me back on diving into that part of her. Either way, it might come out again, and it might help make her seem more human.
I know I am talking about Gabriel as if she is a real person and for me, she is a real person. When I go on a walk to think about my characters if I can see them walking beside me, then they are real. Or when I wake up in the morning thinking about what they would be doing when they got up, then they become real to me. I do this for all my characters.
Another game I play in the morning which helps me see my characters is I like to wonder what other people are doing right now. I open my eyes stare at my ceiling telling myself there is someone just going to bed, someone heading to work, someone kissing their lovers, someone sitting down to read a book, someone going to the gym, someone crying because their night was hard, and so on, and so on…