Evolution

by R S Penney

  Biting his lower lip, Jack stared down at himself. “How do you like the place?” he asked, his brow furrowing. “I do hope you're impressed. We made it specifically for guys just like you.”

  On the other side of the bars, Arin sat on his cot with hands folded in his lap, baring his teeth and snarling like a caged animal. Which, in some ways, he was. “You know that you can't keep me here forever. Slade will come for me.”

  Jack crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, heaving out a deep breath. “The funny thing about bad guys,” he said with exasperation thickening every word. “They're not exactly big on loyalty.”

  Arin flashed a cheeky grin.

  Pressing his fist to his mouth, Jack winced and cleared his throat. “Of course,” he said, stepping closer to the cell. “You could always try to escape. Please try to escape. I missed the fireworks display in London, and I really want to see what happens when you grab those electrified bars.”

  Nothing. No response.

  It was becoming clear to him that the techniques he often used to rile Leo weren't going to work on this man. Arin had the same smug self-assurance – that was probably the first point on every job description Slade posted on FlunkiesForHire.com – but he wasn't as volatile.

  In the corner of his eye, he saw the only other person who had come down here with him. Aamani Patel stood like a silent spectre with hands clasped behind her back, watching the prisoner without a hint of emotion.

  “You want to try?” Jack inquired?

  Arin grinned with a burst of laughter, bowing his head to stare into his lap. “You people,” he said, his eyebrows climbing. “Really, Hunter, what do you hope to gain by siccing her on me?”

  “A little tradition we have here on Earth,” Jack answered. “She's what you might call 'the bad cop.' ”

  Aamani stepped forward with stiff posture, lifting her chin to stare down her nose at the man. “This one can't tell us anything,” she said in a voice dripping with disdain. “He's nothing but hired muscle, Jack.”

  Arin leaned back against the wall of his cell with his hands folded behind his head, whistling softly. “I see,” he murmured after a brief moment. “I'm supposed to be so eager to prove I'm valuable to Slade that I spill the entire plan.”

  If Aamani was in any way deterred by the man's arrogance, she gave no sign of it. Summer felt…It was hard to say. Apprehension, maybe? He could sense anxiety from the Nassai, but couldn't quite put his finger on the cause. She was often that way whenever Aamani was around. Perhaps those first few weeks working with CSIS and witnessing Aamani's pragmatism first hand had left an impression on Summer.

  The woman sniffed to show her contempt, then backed away from the cell, stroking her chin with the tips of her fingers. “Can't you see what he is?” she asked Jack. “Look at the desperation in his eyes.”

  Jack did as he was instructed.

  On the surface, Arin seemed as cool as a snowflake, but there was something in the way he looked at you. A sense of awe…and hatred. Hatred for Jack but not for Aamani. Why? What made her different?

  Arin hopped to his feet, striding toward the bars with an expression that said he wanted to punch right through them. “You want to see desperation?” he hissed. “Wait. Very soon now, I will be the least of your concerns.”

  “Come,” Aamani said. “Nothing more will be accomplished by wasting our time speaking to him.”

  She turned and started up the hallway.

  Jack tapped a panel on the wall next to the cell, causing a heavy titanium door to slide in place in front of the bars. The only window into the cell was a small rectangular slit at eye level, but that was enough to let Jack hear the rough rasping of the other man's breathing. It wouldn't be long before boredom made Arin start clawing at the walls.

  As a teenager, Jack had never thought much about the prison system, but in the last few years, he had come to embrace a Leyrian point of view. Keeping someone cooped up in a cramped little room with nothing to do but sit and wait was inhumane – hell, it could even be called torture – but Arin left them with little choice.

  Aamani was halfway up the corridor.

  Jack slipped his hands into his pockets and followed along behind her, shaking his head in dismay. “You really want to give up so easily?” he asked, catching up. “We do need to know what Slade is planning.”

  Aamani shot a glance over her shoulder, her mouth a thin line, her eyes as hard as concrete. “He's in no frame of mind to tell us,” she said. “But boredom can be a powerful motivator. I'm glad you people are willing to do what must be done.”

  Well…that left him with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He didn't like to think of himself as the sort of person who “did what must be done.” Not in the way that Aamani meant it, at least. Still…what else did you do with someone who could Bend the very fabric of space-time? They couldn't risk Arin getting loose up here while they were trying to deal with Slade down there.

  That didn't make him feel any less wretched.

  The door to Larani's office slid open, revealing a room with black floor tiles and a wooden desk set on a dais, bathed in sunlight that came in through the windows. After his eyes adjusted to the brightness, Ben saw the skyscrapers of Denabria on the other side of the street.

  He paced through the room with hands nervously clutching the hem of his sweater, head bowed to avoid eye-contact. “Could you do something about those damn reception holograms?” he growled. “Every time I come here, it insists that citizens with a criminal record aren't authorized to see you, and I have to convince it to let me in.”

  Larani stood with her back turned, dressed in a pair of black slacks and a blue top and peering through the window like a child witnessing her first snowfall. Except there was no snow. “A minor software glitch, I'm sure.”

  Ben looked up to fix his gaze on her back, then narrowed his eyes to a fierce squint. “Yeah,” he said, nodding to her. “So, you wanted to see me? I take it the list of potential suspects I provided last week came up empty.”

  “Painfully so.”

  “What's our next move?”

  With a sigh, Larani whirled around and strode to her desk, spreading her hands over the SmartGlass that crowned the desk's wooden surface. “Earth,” she said. “There's little more that we can do here.”

  Crossing his arms with a heavy sigh, Ben let his head hang. “I thought that I wasn't allowed to go to Earth,” he said, shuffling toward the desk. “There's not much I can do to help you if I'm stuck-”

  His multi-tool beeped.

  Swiping one finger along the screen brought up a receipt of clearance to board the military ship Vindication for its journey to Earth. Clearance in his name! How precisely had Larani managed to-

  “I pulled a few strings with the sector attorney's office.” she said, answering his question before he could ask it. “I told them you were assisting with a Justice Keeper investigation, that it was part of your rehabilitation, and that you would be unable to complete the work here.”

  Emotions welled up before he could subdue them, and he found himself having to fight to maintain his composure. Darrel! Would he get the chance to see Darrel? Would his boyfriend – or perhaps his ex-boyfriend – want to see him after he had been gone for so long? “What are we going to do?”

  Larani dropped into her chair with hands folded in her lap, hunching over as though exhaustion threatened to knock her out. “Slade is planning something,” she said. “I don't know what, but he's been steadily increasing the number of violent altercations. It seems he has recruited even more lieutenants who carry twisted symbionts.”

  Ben closed his eyes, sighing softly as he ran through scenarios in his head. “That could be a problem,” he said, climbing the steps to the dais. “If you expect me to go up against Justice Keepers-”

  “They aren't Keepers.”

  Ben winced, shaking his head in dismay. “Regardless…” He stepped closer to the desk, bracing his hands on its surface. “I
f you expect me to go up against people who can Bend space-time, I'll need my weapons.”

  Larani stared up at him with those large dark eyes, her face as unreadable as any mannequin's. “You want your accouterments back,” she said. “You do realize that such devices are illegal, don't you?”

  “I do.”

  “How do you expect me to accomplish this?”

  It was difficult to keep his frustration in check, but he managed it with a little extra willpower. “I don't know, Larani,” he said. “But I have no innate abilities to help me. No Nassai, no telepathy.”

  Ben did a quick about-face and strode across the dais with his arms folded, pausing in front of a potted plant. “Cunning and skill can be a match for brute force,” he went on. “I was able to keep Calissa off balance by employing a few tricks, and you'll forgive me if this is a biased opinion, but I can't help but think that's why my modifications are illegal. Keepers don't like losing their monopoly on power.”

  After working up the nerve to turn his head, he found Larani watching him with a frown that could start an avalanche, but she nodded her agreement just the same. “You may have a point.”

  “So you'll get my weapons?”

  “I will try.”

  “Good enough, I suppose,” he murmured. On some level, Ben could understand the desire to restrict access to some of the deadlier forms of weaponry that an enterprising young engineer might develop – he certainly didn't want the average citizen picking up a Death Sphere in the interest of self-defense – but his job had been one that required him to face enemies with any number of potential advantages. He needed every edge he could get, and now was not the time to be squeamish about doing what was necessary.

  Until recently, the idea that an LIS agent would ever find himself facing down someone with Keeper powers had been beyond ludicrous. Perhaps that was why it had inevitably happened. That which you assumed to be impossible was usually the first thing to sneak up an–how did Jack often put it–bite you in the ass. “So what about my other suggestion?” he inquired. “Do you think it's a good idea?”

  “Indeed I do,” Larani said. “In fact, I just put through the paperwork this morning.”

  “Companion be praised!” he exclaimed. “Maybe now the three of us will have a real shot at unraveling this conspiracy.”

  When he stepped through the door to Jena's office, Jack found his boss sitting on the edge of her desk in a pair of gray pants and a dark red blouse that seemed a perfect match to her short auburn hair. There was a tension in her face as she skimmed through some document on a tablet.

  His spatial awareness picked up the presence of Anna who froze in the doorway behind him. “A bad place to stop,” she said, poking him in the back. “Some of us prefer not to conduct our meetings in the hallway.”

  Jack shut his eyes, then bowed his head to his boss. “Something is wrong,” he said, striding into the room. “You've got that look that says you're ready to chew through the hull of a shuttle.”

  “Something is wrong,” Jena agreed.

  In a heartbeat, she was off the desk and striding toward them, pausing to wave the tablet in his face. “Sometimes, even I can't anticipate how the game will play out,” she muttered. “Seems Larani got a copy of your speech.”

  Tilting his head back, Jack grinned up at the ceiling. “Oh, is that all?” he asked, his eyebrows rising. “And let me guess, she's pissed that I decided to go all Lyanna Mormont on my fellow Keepers.”

  “On the contrary!” Jena snapped. “She's impressed.”

  Anna stepped forward to stand beside him with hands clasped behind herself, her face tight with concern. “That doesn't sound like the Larani I know,” she said cautiously. “She's always been a stickler for decorum.”

  Jack had to agree.

  Scathing criticism of his failure to exemplify the dignity of a Justice Keeper was all well and good – he'd come to expect as much from his superiors – but praise? He didn't know what to do with that. It left him uneasy.

  Heaving out a deep breath, Jena hunched over and covered her face with her hand. “It seems they did the worst thing they could do to you, kid,” she muttered into her palm. “I don't know how to fix it.”

  “They suspended me?”

  “No. They promoted you.”

  It hit him like a splash of cold water to the face. A promotion? How…He'd grown so used to being the man who made trouble that he had honestly expected to spend his entire career at the bottom of the food chain. Now they were giving him more authority? Well, it could be an advantage, he supposed, but…Wait.

  There had to be more to it or Jena wouldn't be so flustered. Something had thrown her off her game, and that made him very uncomfortable. Nothing ever threw Jena off her game. Ever. Before he could even voice his concerns, she began reading from the tablet.

  “Jack Hunter is hereby promoted to the rank of Special Agent,” she hissed. “And reassigned to the Denabrian Justice Keeper office as the personal attache of Larani Tal. You're going to Leyria, Jack.”

  As she stepped onto the subway platform in the middle of a crowd of people, Jess Callaghan instinctively huddled up on herself. The station at Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street had walls of bright red bricks with ads depicting the latest summer blockbuster. Some film with giant robots that shot purple lasers. Metal Warriors, it was called. Jess would see it if her boyfriend dragged her, but she had no interest in going herself.

  A short woman with a tiny frame, Jess wore a black miniskirt and pink top with a round neck. Her dark brown hair was left loose to frame a pretty face with large, hazel eyes. She felt very exposed here. In truth, she never liked riding the subway, but rush-hour traffic was a nightmare in this city.

  In a huff, she started across the platform.

  The crowd froze.

  Instinctively, people split apart – some flowing toward the wall on the far side of the platform, others rushing back toward the train – creating a corridor of space that let her see two men standing side by side, two men who had no business being in each other's company without violence.

  The one on the left was olive-skinned with a thick, dark beard and a white taqiyah cap. Around his neck, he wore a pendant that depicted the symbol of the now defunct Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. His companion was pale and bald with an American flag tattooed on one arm and a swastika on the other. By their markings, these men should hate each other in their bones; so how could-

  Both men lifted pistols and fired into the crowd. “For Grecken Slade!” they shouted between shots.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Jess covered her ears with both hands and tried to ignore the sound of her own screaming. No, no, no! she thought. This can't be happening! This can't be happening!

  It was pandemonium, people fleeing in all directions, some rushing back into the train cars just before the doors slid shut. So much for that avenue of escape. Jess knew that she should be moving, but her legs didn't seem to want to obey. Or maybe she was just in a daze.

  The men fired indiscriminately, hitting targets with no real precision or finesse. Jess was no expert on military operations, but even she could tell that these guys were sloppy. Some of their targets got hit in the arm or the shoulder and just kept running. Others took a shot to the chest and collapsed.

  CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

  Three more people dropped, and then she was being pulled up by the back of her shirt, herded toward the wall where some older woman in a hijab cradled her like a baby. Was the woman using her own body to shield Jess? Why would anyone do that? It took several moments for her to realize the gunshots had stopped.

  When she worked up the courage to look around, people were standing on the platform with horrified expressions. Many were crying. There were nearly a dozen bodies spread out on the floor, all lying in pools of blood, and the sight of them made Jess double over and throw up right there.

  The horror.

  For the rest of her life, she would never be able to forget the horror of what
she had seen today.

  Chapter 8

  In any other organization, this place would be called the War Room. A ring-shaped walkway of black tiles overlooked a pit where technicians in gray uniforms scurried back and forth in a frenzy. Control consoles placed in a circle smack dab in the middle of the pit were operated by even more technicians. Keepers called this the “Prep Room.” Jena would have preferred a more honest name, but in a display of typical Leyrian arrogance, her colleagues had embraced the idea that war was a dirty business, unworthy of anyone who carried a symbiont. Live on the Fringe for a while, she thought disdainfully. See if you still think it's dirty when the Antaurans throw you into it.

  This place should have been called the War Room. That was its purpose now that Grecken Slade had effectively declared war.

  Down below, a tall, blonde woman in black slacks and a maroon top with sleeves that flared at the cuffs stood with her arms crossed, watching the whole thing with a sour expression. Tiassa Navram wore her hair loose, golden waves falling to the small of her back. She was gorgeous – so gorgeous that Jena would have gladly hopped into bed with her if not for the woman's miserable personality. And the fact that she already had a partner, of course.

  Four holograms rippled into existence above the ring of consoles – one to face each wall – displaying a news anchor in a gray pants suit. A pretty woman with blonde hair not much lighter than Tiassa's, she looked frantic. “Seventeen confirmed attacks,” she said as people scrambled past on the street behind her. “NYPD is reporting a total of seventeen attacks across the Manhattan area, with several more shootings in Brooklyn and Queens that may be connected to the rogue Justice Keeper Grecken Slade.”

  The image flipped to a picture of Slade.

  Baring her teeth, Jena squinted at him. “Just you wait,” she growled with a rasp in her voice. “You think you made a clever gambit, asshole? The only thing you've gained is a guarantee that every last Keeper in this galaxy will hunt you down until they manage to stick your head on a spike.”