Knaves

by Abbott, Alana Joli; Meadors, Melanie R. ;

  “No one?” Marcus asked. “No family?”

  “He did have a daughter, but she died a couple of years ago. He’s taking a class or two but if he disappears the school will assume deportation. There’s no one left to question his disappearance.” Garvey’s eyes narrowed. “Or yours, for that matter.”

  Marcus sighed, and shrugged in a helpless gesture. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to hear me out,” he said.

  Garvey was on him fast, faster than Marcus would have expected from a burn victim with a heavy metallic arm that swung him off-balance when he turned too quickly. In a flash, Marcus felt the powerful grip of steel fingers throttle him about the neck and heard the shrill whining of hydraulics as Garvey picked him up and slammed him back against the wall.

  “You know,” Garvey began, “I’m sure it has not escaped your notice that I am not a patient man. I have worked long and difficult hours to get where I am. I’ve sacrificed more than you can imagine to achieve what I have, of myself, and yes, of my staff. So don’t think for a moment I have any reservation about simply turning you inside-out if I think it will help me in the slightest.”

  Marcus grunted in pain and tried to speak, but could only manage a hoarse cough.

  “Oh dear,” Garvey said, relaxing his grip. “I seem to have broken you. Pray, continue Dr. Dufresne. Please, convince me not to kill you, Subject 0067, and this meddlesome janitor right here, right now, and move on to the next subject.”

  “Y… y… you…”

  “Really, man, you need to speak up,” Garvey said. He released Marcus, who fell to the ground in a heap, breathing heavily and holding his throat in pain.

  “You’re…” Marcus wheezed. “You’re missing an opportunity here.”

  “Oh, this should be rich,” Garvey sighed. “You have thirty seconds. Convince me.”

  Marcus exhaled, drew a few deep breaths, and began.

  “I’ve done a full analysis of her resting power. That’s what we’ve been seeing, that mature, low-level resonance that’s always in play when we record. We almost got the full read, once. It was coming back to rest after her last display, but we were too late to get a decent pattern. We need to have a recording during a full telekinetic flash. And the closest we’ve come since is when we threatened to throw Subject 0013 into the sensory deprivation tank for a week. The green one. The one the subjects call ‘Gremlin.’ She seemed to have some concern for the boy. What if we could use that? Run the scanners, get a full reading, just one, and I assure you everything you need to unlock her talents will be found there.”

  Garvey knelt down and pulled Marcus in close by his shirt.

  “And how do you propose we do this?”

  Marcus glared back at Garvey, and told him.

  THE ATTENDANTS BROUGHT her in, dropping her unceremoniously in her chair. Test Subject 0067 slumped forward, face and body rigid with apprehension, her hair already clumping with nervous sweat. Without a word, Marcus stepped forward and attached the sensor to the base of her neck. There was a soft click, followed by a gentle hum as the device flared to life.

  “There now,” Marcus said, stepping back. He brought his tablet up and checked her vitals. All systems seemed normal, and the steady, resonant waves began to oscillate across his readouts, like clockwork. “I think we’re just about ready to begin.”

  Test Subject 0067 stirred and gave him a furtive glance.

  “No tests today?” she mumbled quietly.

  “And why would you think that?” Marcus asked, his fingers tapping his tablet, queuing up the standard equilibrations and baseline monitors.

  “Because…” The girl hesitated, and looked about, flinching as she caught her reflection in the one-way mirror. “Because you’re in here, with me. Not in there.” She pointed at the mirror. “You’re safe in there. In here…”

  “You think I’m in any danger?” Marcus asked. “Really, Sixty-seven, you’ve hardly done anything dangerous. Yet. I’m in here today to try and change that. I think we can give you a nice little boost and see what you’re really made of. Would you like that?”

  The girl didn’t answer, at first. Finally, she nodded. Clearly she had learned it best to always agree.

  “Very good,” Marcus murmured. “If it helps, you might be happy to know that today we’re not interested in hurting you at all.”

  Slowly, the girl raised her head. There were tears in her eyes, and a wild hope.

  “R… really?” she said.

  “Really,” he answered.

  “No shocks?”

  “No shocks.”

  “No gas?”

  “Not a bit.”

  She stumbled through a wavering sigh of relief and gingerly wiped away her tears.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Oh, thank you…”

  “No, I thought we would do something a little different today, Sixty-seven.” Marcus looked over at the mirror and nodded. “It seems you’ve made a friend here. I thought you could use some company right now. Would you like to see him?”

  The girl looked simultaneously elated and terrified. “I don’t have any friends! Don’t hurt Gremlin! He doesn’t even know who I am!”

  “Oh no, no,” Marcus said. “No, no, no, not Subject 0013. I don’t think he’d provide the…” Marcus paused, scratching his head theatrically, “…the depth we would require for today’s agenda.”

  The girl stared at him.

  “I don’t have any friends,” she repeated. “The other kids don’t talk to me, they…”

  She paused as the door swung open, and a man strapped firmly down to a gurney was rolled in. He was frightened, shivering, his hands clenched into tight fists at his side. He turned to look at the girl and tried to give her a reassuring smile. Instead, he looked phrenetic and crazed.

  The girl screamed. “Ramon!”

  “Yes, Ramon,” Marcus said, waving the attendants out of the room. He strolled over to the gurney, looking down at the struggling man with a curious tilt of his head. He glanced up, and the girl shrank from him, sobbing uncontrollably.

  “P… please…” she stammered. “D… don’t hurt him! Oh please, don’t hurt…”

  “Then show me!” Marcus barked. “Show me what you can do!”

  “Yes! Please! I’ll do anything you want me to! Just…”

  “We’re out of patience, Subject Sixty-seven! You have power! You’ve used it before! We want a full demonstration, now, or…”

  Marcus paused, as Ramon stopped struggling and glared up at him.

  “Her name is Virtue,” Ramon hissed.

  “I do beg your pardon?” Marcus said.

  “Her name is Virtue,” Ramon repeated. “She’s not some number. She’s a child, and she has a name!”

  “Of course, she does,” Marcus agreed. “Very well. Where was I? Ah. Virtue. We want a full demonstration, and right quick. If I have to ask you again, I don’t think Ramon here is going to have a very good day.”

  Virtue’s eyes overflowed with tears, which ran unheeded down her cheeks, dripping onto the front of her smock. She shook, her hands clenching and unclenching. The blood drained from her face until she was almost the same color as the smock itself. “I… I can try…”

  Virtue braced herself, laying her hands flat on the table in front of her. Completely rigid, she stared at the foam ball on the table before her.

  Nothing happened.

  Marcus picked up the scalpel from the tray beside him and jammed it into Ramon’s shoulder.

  Ramon’s whine of agony was drowned out by Virtue’s scream. “Stop it! Stop it! Leave him alone! I’m trying, can’t you see I’m trying?”

  But the balls didn’t move. Not even a fraction of an inch. Clearly this was going to require an extraordinary level of stimulation.

  He twisted the scalpel, and with clinical precision, dissected out the brachial plexus, laying it bare to the air. Ramon’s screams rang in his ears, and Virtue—Sixty-seven’s—screams echoed them on a higher note. Marcus fough
t down an urge to join them. This was getting out of hand. For once, he was thankful for the goggles and the half-mask that Garvey made all the scientists and technicians wear. Keeping his hands steady from shaking was one thing, but if anyone could see his face they would know. They would see his doubt. He glanced at the mirror and could feel Garvey’s cold eyes staring back at him. Marcus felt an odd tingle about his neck, where Garvey had so callously wrapped his metallic fingers around the day before.

  He struggled with indecision, staring down at the screaming man, at the exposed nerve bundle glistening with a sheen of blood, and the blood dripping down the shoulder, onto the stainless steel of the gurney, and from there to the floor. This… this was wrong. People weren’t… things, objects to be manipulated and broken. They weren’t disposable. Were they? They weren’t, surely. Were they?

  It seemed an eternity, but then one, singular, sharp sound broke his concentration. A sharp rap on glass.

  He looked up at the mirror. He felt Garvey’s impatience. He felt what little tolerance Garvey had for him rapidly coming to an end. In a moment, Garvey would summon security, and he would die along with the janitor.

  It was only a janitor. No one of importance. The man’s last link to anything had died along with his daughter in a school bus crash. No one would care when he was gone—no one except the single person Marcus needed to goad into the full eruption of her potential.

  Him, or me. Or him and me. It was no choice at all. He couldn’t die. He had too much to do. For Emily.

  With a single swift incision, he slit the carotid artery. Blood fountained over the edge of the gurney in a long arc. Marcus felt something snap inside of him. He had done it… dear lord, he had done it…

  He glanced at Sixty-seven, bracing himself, expecting to see the horror of the moment consume everything else on that young frail face. She would likely be crying. Those who witnessed her last episode swore that her eyes had lit up in a brilliant silver flash, so he braced himself for that as well. Instead, he saw something else.

  She wasn’t Sixty-seven—Virtue—anymore. In her place, he saw another. He saw Emily’s face.

  And it was angry.

  After that, there was nothing but incredible, excruciating pain as he smashed into the wall behind him. Then into the wall to the left. Then to the right. The ceiling, the floor, and the ceiling again. And now, barely conscious, he felt himself flung through the one-way glass, smashing it, to land in a shower of shards at Garvey’s feet. His body was screaming, bent in odd angles. He was screaming as well. He heard himself stop, coughing, wheezing, and he stared, astonished, as a bloody froth erupted from his mouth.

  Above him, Garvey peered over his tablet and flashed him a grin.

  “Reading complete,” Garvey said. “Well done, Dr. Dufresne.”

  Marcus stared back at him.

  “You look dreadful,” Garvey noted, sighing. “Those wounds are clearly… oh, what is the word… ah! Mortal. I doubt you would even last the trip to the infirmary. Still, you never know. We do perform miracles here, don’t we?”

  There are no miracles, Marcus thought, sinking into the black.

  FAMILIAR SOUNDS PENETRATED the deep and formless blackness. The steady beep of a heart monitor. The whine of an overhead fluorescent light. Pings and clicks and hums of other medical equipment, all comforting in their familiarity. Cold comfort, but still, comfort,

  Thoughts swam up, like curious fishes.

  I’m not dead.

  Where am I?

  Why am I not dead?

  A face appeared out of the shadows. Emily. Emily enraged, as he had last “seen” her. He cringed. And to avoid looking at that angry face any more, he opened his eyes.

  And winced away from the light, that cold, pitiless fluorescence he had heard.

  “Welcome back, Dr. Dufresne.”

  Marcus knew that voice. It filled him with an icy resolve. He let his eyes adjust to the light and looked around. There were the monitors, the IV drip, and next to his bed there was the man himself, Dr. Joseph Garvey.

  “Where’s Virtue?” Marcus said.

  “I’m sorry, who?”

  “Virtue,” Marcus repeated. “Subject 0067.”

  “Oh, you need not worry about her anymore,” Garvey said. “She’s progressing nicely. No, Dr. Dufresne, I think our time would be better spent discussing you, and what a pleasant surprise you’ve turned out to be.”

  Marcus didn’t respond, and instead tried to prop himself up on the bed. He felt some alarm as his arms refused to move. He strained to look down at himself, and snarled as something blocked his chin. Was he paralyzed? If this was paralysis, it wasn’t like anything he would have imagined. For one thing, his senses seemed, if anything, ramped up. He could swear he felt slight eddies and shifts in the air around him. He thought he could taste a faint antiseptic perfume on Garvey, almost masking the metallic, oily aroma wafting off Garvey’s metallic arm. Marcus felt alert, energized, alive. He tried to lift his head again, and caught a disturbing sight before he let his head fall back down again.

  His body was in a full metal restraining suit.

  “What have you done?” Marcus demanded, glaring up at Garvey, who smirked in return.

  “I saved your life, you ungrateful twit,” Garvey muttered. “And more. You, Dr. Dufresne, are the first successful test subject of the next stage of the Icarus Project. I suppose I should thank you. It seems being so close to death was an unforeseen exploit for portions of the process. Pity, if only we had known that before. So many test subjects lost to pointless, stubborn attempts by my witless team. As for you, virtually every bone in your body was broken. You had multiple internal ruptures and bleeding, and severe head trauma. As I told you at the time, I frankly had no expectation you would make it as far as the infirmary. In any case, it would seem that congratulations are in order. Believe me when I say I am very intrigued by what you are now capable of. We’ll let you rest for a spell, of course. You will be very weak for a while. We will need to monitor you quite closely while you recover.”

  Garvey rested his metal hand gently on Marcus’s chest, and smiled.

  “But when you’re ready, oh my boy… you will be a wonder. The first of many. So believe me when I say, I shiver to think of the possibilities.”

  “You can’t keep me here,” Marcus seethed. “I did what you wanted. I got your results. A deal’s a deal, Garvey.”

  “The situation has changed, dear boy,” Garvey said. “You are now far more valuable to me than ever before. You can’t think for a moment I would simply let my crowning achievement just… leave.”

  “You can’t keep me here,” Marcus repeated.

  “Of course I can,” Garvey scoffed. “Like all my employees and subjects, you were vetted. There’s no one to miss you. There’s no one to come looking for you. You are mine, Dufresne, and the sooner you accept that, the easier your life will be. You are alone. Best you accept that.”

  “I’m not alone,” Marcus said, struggling within his iron prison. “I’m not! I…”

  “You have no one,” Garvey said. “You had… what… a sister? A sister who died years ago? I had you investigated quite thoroughly, you know. She was the only one, and from what I understand, you failed her. Spec-tac-ularly. You were supposedly a brilliant neurodegenerative specialist, Dufresne, but let’s be blunt, hmmm? You were always a failure. And now, you are the first in a new, highly advanced line of prototypical meta-soldiers! You have me to thank for that.”

  Garvey leaned in closer and smiled again.

  “Isn’t it about time you did something right?”

  Marcus didn’t answer and continued to struggle against his restraints, for all the good it did him. He was stronger, much stronger, he could feel it, but it didn’t seem to matter against the iron maiden that deadened any of his attempts to flex his muscles. He supposed he wasn’t the first metahuman Garvey had to restrain. The suit would be reinforced, of course. It had to be. Metahumans, especially newly minted on
es, had a tendency for rage. Aside from the moment Emily announced her diagnosis, Marcus could not remember a time he had ever felt rage. Some people just didn’t have the temperament for it. Instead, he felt what he always felt when on the defensive—an icy resolve to turn the tide, to find a weakness to exploit, to win.

  He buzzed with energy. It was a strange sensation and so surreal—to be so confined and helpless, yet suffused with so much vigor and life. And it was growing. He exhaled, a faint and cold mist trailing off his lips. It felt odd and out of place. Under the harsh lights and encapsulated in a heavy metal prison, the room had felt so warm…

  “I asked you a question, Dufresne,” Garvey said.

  Marcus grunted, his breath steaming in the cold air.

  “I asked you a question. Are you ready to finally do something right?”

  Marcus glared at him and sneered.

  Garvey sighed, and began to pull away. “A pity,” he said. “Breaking your spirit will take time, and I was so hoping we could skip the dreary preliminaries and hit the ground running. Ah well. I suppose it was too much to ask for. I suppose it—” Garvey stopped, a puzzled expression on his face. He shook his arm, but it appeared to be stuck fast to the restraining suit, fused palm down to Marcus’s chest.

  “What in the—”

  Garvey’s eyes widened as wispy ropes of vapor flowed from his metallic hand and a frosty rime traveled up the arm. Garvey couldn’t move; he was pinned in place, immobilized as a sudden chill had fused them together, a chill that intensified in waves from Marcus’s suit, from Marcus himself…

  Marcus felt the energy crescendo and let it flow over him, through him. In a sudden explosive burst he lashed out, shattering his now brittle prison into jagged pieces. Already he was moving, bounding from the confines of the bed, on his feet, his hand lashing out, gripping the astonished Garvey about the throat and ramming him back against the wall.

  Garvey gurgled his surprise and tried to swing his arm. Nothing happened. The sound of the arm’s hydraulics moaned and stopped. The arm shuddered in place and shattered, pieces falling to the floor, trailing wisps of vapor from the extreme cold, leaving nothing but a bloody stump that flailed wildly from his shoulder.