James got back to the hotel with the pizza a little while later to see Bradley sitting on the previously uncluttered bed with all of James’s Foundation training papers scattered around him. He was reading over the schedule for the two days and looked up as James turned the deadbolt behind him.

“They added the practical training on the day of?” he asked, holding up the paper. “That’s weird.”

“I know, right?” James said. “That’s part of why Jessamyn was so suspicious. I thought it was weird too, but they’re so disorganized that I thought maybe they just forgot to add it in.”

“Not when they had a full list of workshops scheduled for tomorrow,” Bradley said. “So fill me in.”

Over some halfway decent pizza and crappy beers, James told him everything that had happened that day. For once, Bradley didn’t have any snide comments to make, just nodding or asking questions to fill in missing details. It was starting to feel like an ordinary case now, not some conspiracy from on high. He wished the others could be here too, to the point where he considered calling to see if anyone could come by. But he’d already completely disrupted Bradley’s night off and he was pretty sure that the others were all scheduled either tonight or tomorrow. So he reluctantly kept that idea to himself.

“They said the other captain was okay,” James said as he wrapped up his story. “Connie. But she didn’t look so good and there were civilians down too. And I saw Dr. Oliver on the platform when I went to help and she didn’t look like she was part of a training exercise.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No time,” James said. “But you’d think a training that went wrong would be postponed, right? I’m thinking maybe they found a case and just played it off as a training exercise.”

“Then why not tell you all that?” Bradley asked. “You’re adults. And there’s an entire Suffolk County branch.”

“Control, maybe? I don’t know, that’s the only part of it that I can’t make work.”

James opened a beer, then offered it to Bradley, who nodded. He passed it over, then opened another for himself. “But they lost control so fast. They said Jolene says they’re alright, but I don’t know, man.”

“What do you want to do?” Bradley asked as he set the beer on the shared bedside table.

“Solve it, I guess.”

He waited for the critique of that plan, something about how James was just following along and was too stupid to see what they were really doing. But shockingly, none of it came. Bradley thought for a moment, tearing his pizza in a way that struck James as a little weird.

When the pizza was properly shredded, Bradley just shrugged. “I guess that’s all we can do,” he said.

James threw his own grease stained pizza plate in the trash and pushed the pile of clothes off of his own bed, where they half-landed in the open suitcase beside it.

“This is all so stupid,” he muttered, falling back against the laughably large stack of pillows piled in front of the headboard.

“No, it’s completely typical,” Bradley said, from where he was now tearing the label off of his beer and ripping it into tiny pieces that were falling onto the carcass of his pizza.

“You good, dude?” James asked.

Bradley looked up from what he was doing. “Fine,” he snipped, brushing the plate into the trash as well.

“I’m going to shower and go to bed,” James said, making no move to actually start doing so. “I’m exhausted and we have to be there at eight tomorrow.”

“Are we driving or taking the train?” Bradley asked.

James shrugged. “I drove last time,” he said. “They have a lot. Somehow.”

“Hmm.”

Maybe he was out of sorts because of the mysterious not-date that he’d been on. Or he was just irritated that James had ruined his night off by dragging him into a stupid Foundation conspiracy. Either way, James tried not to take it any more personally than he ever did as he got up and left the room.

***

He woke up shortly after going to sleep to the sound of his phone beeping. Half-opening his eyes, James grabbed at where it was charging beside him on the bed and glanced at the screen, wincing as he realized he’d forgotten to turn down the brightness before going to bed.

AMELIA

Is Bradley with you?

He glanced over toward the other bed, where Bradley was buried in pillows, including the ones James had tossed off of his own bed and onto the floor a couple hours earlier.

JAMES

Yeah.

AMELIA

You two taking a midweek getaway?

There was a sliding door to the tiny balcony attached to the room and James reluctantly got out of bed and went outside to call her. A sharp wind blew through his old hockey t-shirt and he went back in to grab a sweatshirt from the pile beside the bed.

Amelia answered after two rings. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Are you tracking us or something?” James asked. “How did you possibly know?”

“He texted me that something was up,” Amelia replied. “And to let me know him and Madelyn had swapped shifts. But then we got busy, and I didn’t get a chance to text you again. Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“Yeah, but no big deal.”

He sat down in the small plastic chair beside an ashtray that was overflowing with old cigarette butts. “What made you guys so busy?”

“Um, a ghost that wasn’t a ghost. Fucker had a chainsaw.”

“A ghost chainsaw?”

“Probably, but I wasn’t getting close enough to check it. He’s gone now, though. Gabriella did a good job.”

Even now, almost a year after things went down, there was still occasional tension between Gabriella and the others. So it was nice to hear Amelia say something nice about Gabriella’s performance. 

“Did you get a chance to submit the report?” James asked.

“Yeah, that’s what distracted me after.”

He could picture her stretched out on the sofa at Headquarters with Fang asleep beside her. “So what’s going on?” she asked.

James sighed. “The Foundation,” he answered. “They’re on their usual same old bullshit, you know?”

“Of course.”

He laid out everything that had happened that day, going through the details yet again as he turned them over in his mind. Yeah, that was it, wasn’t it? They had messed up. A small part of him had still been thinking, even now, that maybe someone at the Foundation was some kind of genius at planning. He’d been doubting things, even though he knew the truth about that from his own interactions with them every single day. This was a fuckup on their part and they were trying to hide it.

“It sounds like they just found a case and decided to put you guys on it,” Amelia said.

“That’s what Bradley said. But they have a whole Boston team. Why would they do that?”

“You’re asking me why they do what they do?”

James laughed, looking out over the highway. By this point traffic was slower, but it wasn’t completely quiet. Headlights sparkled as cars and trucks rushed past and he could see a radio tower blinking somewhere nearby on the other side. Now that he was semi-properly dressed for it, the cold air was actually kind of refreshing, though he’d rather be in bed soon. 

“Maybe it’s something they don’t want on the record,” Amelia said softly.

“Maybe,” James said. “Maybe they messed up somewhere and we’re fixing that. It’s not a case they found, it’s a case they made. Just not intentionally or safely for a training session. It’s pretty outrageous, but still.”

“Do you want me to come out there?” Amelia asked.

Yes, he very much did. “No,” James answered instead. “I mean, given the option I’d have you all here. But if you’re dealing with not-ghosts and chainsaws, we need you in Leominster. Especially if Bradley’s here too. Madelyn is great, but I’m not dropping all of that on her at the last minute.”

He half-hoped Amelia would argue, but she knew he was right. “I was tempted to, like, bring Bradley with me and have one of you guys stay here at the hotel as backup,” James admitted. “But I realized there was no difference between that and me calling you tomorrow. Except for the fact that there would be one bored person here in this moldy hotel room and a shortage of people there.”

“Between the two of you, you’ll be fine,” Amelia said. “Especially since you’ve got Rosa there too.”

That small bit of guilt squirmed in his stomach, even as James tried to remind himself that it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t know for sure that Rosa was dating someone else. Maybe it was a family member she loved very much who was meeting her at North Station. Or maybe Amelia knew what was happening. All that James saying anything now would do was stir the pot. 

“Yeah, I was working with her and Jessamyn from Hampshire County.”

“Oh, I’ve met her once. She’s cool.”

“Yeah, she’s the one who really put it all together.”

They talked for a few more minutes and by the time James hung up, he was feeling much more confident about his decisions. The Foundation wasn’t being run by geniuses all of a sudden. This wasn’t a game they’d set up, or some kind of simulation. There were real people being injured by whatever this strange energy was. They needed to figure out what it was, where it was coming from, and how they could eliminate it.

But before they could do any of that, he needed to go back to bed.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 10