Jillian stood outside the LaGuardia Airport, the sky darkened by black clouds, visibility blinded by sheets of pouring water. She pulled her coat tightly around her neck, relieving the unusual chill crawling down it.

Her good for nothing brother had the audacity of not meeting her at the airport! And though it was comforting to have such a sum deposited into her bank account, she could have done with a little more accommodation. She reached into her coat pocket and brought out a sheet of paper where she scribbled the address.

456 Sycamore Avenue Apartment Building 7, Apartment 21, Queens…

Te cab ride was swift and Jillian found herself standing outside a very nice apartment complex. Staring up the front at the stone and brick that composed the structure, she forgot all about the sheets of rain soaking her clothes.

Then she felt a familiar pull, as if someone took her by the hand, and guided her through the door and towards the elevator. Once inside, she was urged to press the 6 button. Pressing it, she regained her senses, a sense of panic… The elevator chimed. She was now on floor 6, should she get out to see what was behind that door?

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Mathew Easton: The Phantom

Detective Mathew Easton, a man in league with the enemy, stood in room 1013 24 hours after Burr and the two senators were found dead. Mathew was born with a strange knack of figuring things out. He detected, what most would say, the undetectable. Top of his class of those destined for the title Detective, Easton had solved over 100 cases before the enemy acquired him. It was this uncanny ability that also attracted my late master.

The time was 20:00, and Detective Easton stood at the now open window of that 10th floor room, contemplating the photos taken by his people. He turned from the photos to the window glass. The holes from the rounds, spidering cracks, led him to believe that someone must have been perched somewhere with a high velocity rifle, but that was impossible, unless the man were superman.

His eyes wandered back to the pictures. The window was originally closed, blinds down, and a sheet draped over it, meaning zero visibility for anyone shooting a rifle… unless they were superman.

No casings were retrieved. Video footage was no help. The maid, they had questioned, saw Edward Burr walk out of the room at 13:40, but all the cameras captured was static at that time. Curious, however, that it was only when whoever it was passed by that the cameras went nuts. They were all working perfectly afterwards.

And though she had seen Burr walk out, it could not have been him, because forensics put him to be dead about that time, in the room, with that dreadful mark on his face…

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Jillian Perry: The Ghost

Jillian Perry, the future love of my life, grew up like James seeing ghosts, though for her, they appeared as shadows of different color. The ones that she feared the most were the ones that showed up as black; those, she said, were evil. But as time went on for Jillian, she saw the shadows less and less until she didn’t notice them at all and ultimately forgot about them.

Much was like her relationship with her brother after high school. James was the weird one. Having very little friends and a magnet for ridicule, Jillian shied away from him and his misery, often finding refuge in her textbooks.

Jillian studied voraciously biological sciences; she wanted to solve the mysteries of human biology and discover how to cure maladies and the pains individuals felt from their own bodies, both physical and mental. One of her more lofty ideas was to develop a means to permanently increase a person’s metabolism…

But all of that seemed so far away. She was very close to finishing her masters degree in biochemistry, but with the economy in the shitter, she was having a hard time finding a job that didn’t involve managing high school students and their burger flipping endeavors.

Patience, time, the economy will recover soon… When was soon? She went on to her masters specifically to wait out the failing economy, she even took her time and spent four years on her masters instead of two, all the while waiting tables… Waiting…

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James Perry: The Specter

“Who is James Perry?”

…

James Perry, my mentor and founder of The Psychic Society, was raised knowing one thing: that America was freedom. No other nation was as blessed as the United States of America. No other land had the opportunity, the resources, the people who the US had. We, as a nation, were blessed beyond that of any other, an example for other nations to aspire to.

He told me, once we had found each other, that it was a great lie. That though our country was in fact richer than most, we were still just as poisoned as all. With the desire for more and the lust for everything, our covetous nature was the cause for the disparity in our nation.

James wished to destroy the United States and recreate it… He was a bit of a fanatic, of that I am certain. Still, given all I had learned in the time I spent with him, I would follow him anywhere.

James Perry grew up with his twin sister, Jillian, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The two lived with their parents on the outskirts of the city, far enough to be close to the old battlefield and really get a glimpse through a soldier’s eyes.

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