Rance grabbed the front of Gallows' lab coat and hauled him closer to eye level. "Why are you doing this at all?"
"I am trying to equalize outcomes. To give us, via induced powers, the equality we've failed to get so far. The thing is, the original formula, Iteration Zero, has a caustic reaction with melanin. It took me until Iteration Four to get rid of that. Iteration Seven was the first that reliably induced powers, albeit temporarily. I just didn't have the money to keep going. Research isn't cheap, even when I live in my lab and scrounge most of the hardware. You have to understand, I'm doing this for the future. It was never my intent to hurt your boys."
"Can you do it?" Rance asked. "Or is all this just pointless jabber?"
"I can, and I will," Gallows said.
"Pack him up. All of his gear, all of his notes, anything that can be moved," Rance said.
"What?" Gallows asked.
"We're moving you to Riverside."
"Riverside?"
"You won't have to worry about the rent, and you'll have our protection, so no one will fuck with you. We'll get you what you need, and when you get it working, you're going to give it to us."
"This is all very delicate equipment and many of these chemicals are volatile, you can't just throw it in boxes," Gallows said.
"Then you pack it away," Rance said, "'Cause you're moving."
Kevan sat in the empty chair, folded his hands between his knees, and gave Lindenbaum a sheepish look. Light from the courtyard diffused through the room, mingling with hidden lamps in an overall irritatingly calm manner. It looked fake, artificial in its serenity. Kevan adjusted the sit of his plaid shirt and didn't lean back, too afraid he'd stain the pristine beige fabric of the chair. He knew it was absurd, these clothes had been laundered and the worst they'd do was leave off-colored lint behind.
"How are we this afternoon?" Lindenbaum asked.
"I don't know, I've never been in counseling before," Kevan said.
"Really?" Lindenbaum asked. "It says here that you were among those sold to the Ygnaza by the trafficking ring before it was shut down. I'm sure you should have gotten counseling after you were freed."
Kevan gave a nervous smirk. "Well... they were going to."
"What happened?"
"I ran away." There was a pause. "I'm not sure how I got from Minnesota to here," Kevan said. "I must have hitched a ride, since I don't think I walked."
"Why did you run away?" Lindenbaum asked.
"They were going to send me home."
"What about that made living on the street the preferable option?"
"I don't know."
Lindenbaum frowned. "That doesn't strike me as a credible answer. I think you had a good reason for what you did. Moreover, I think you know what it was."
Kevan glanced at Lindenbaum, then at the floor, his feet, Lindenbaum's feet, then back up at Lindenbaum again. "I'm not good at this."
"At what?"
"Telling the truth."
"Please elaborate."
"The aliens went and screwed around inside my head. Pumped in a whole other set of memories so they didn't have to boss me around in English. Thing is, it didn't mess up the memories I already had. I just... find it easier when everyone thinks your brain is scrambled. They expect less of you, don't treat you the same."
"So you've been pretending that your mind has been messed up for leniency?"
"Yeah. I don't mean any harm by it."
"You're the only one being hurt by it," Lindenbaum said. "If everyone thinks you're less capable, they'll think you have less to contribute and shut you out."
"That's not true!"
"Oh? You say that with such conviction. It's only been a few months since the Ygnaza were defeated, most of that time you spent on the street. So, from where do you draw that certainty?"
"I--" Kevan shook his head.
"It comes from the reason you don't want to go home, doesn't it?"
"Yes."
"Why don't you want to go home?"
"Because they don't want me back," Kevan said. "They don't have time to waste on me or my troubles. That's why I ran away the first time around."
"Go on," Lindenbaum said. "More details will help me understand."
"I have a twin sister," Kevan said. "She was... we... There was this big tree in the back yard. When we were little, we used to climb it all the time. There was this big old branch at the very top. It was clearly dead, there were never any leaves on it that I could remember. Neither of us could make it up that branch. One day, I was sick. I'd caught something at school, so I was stuck in bed. Sara decided that was the day she was going to make it to the top of the tree and up that old branch. She did, only in addition to being dead, that branch was rotten and her added weight made it break."
Kevan paused and glanced around nervously. "She cracked her skull falling through the tree and nearly died. The whole mess left her brain damaged. Something about loss of blood flow for too long. Ever since then, if they weren't asleep or at work, my parents were looking after Sara. My whole existence became an afterthought. No matter what I did, or what I achieved, I was ignored because Sara needed them. Academic honors-- they didn't say a word or bat an eye. When I enrolled in sports, they noticed. They yelled at me because there wasn't a bus after practice that went by our house. I dropped from the team so they could look after Sara." Kevan rubbed his eyes, trying to hide the fact that he was on the verge of tears.
"It just got worse," he said. "The last straw was our birthday. Or rather, Sara's birthday. They couldn't even be bothered to remember I'd been born all of two minutes later. That's when I left. I was in their way, and I was done being ignored. With me gone, they could look after their favorite child."
"I see," Lindenbaum said. "Now, what aren't you telling me?"
"I could keep giving you examples of how it all went. But, I don't want a pity party."
"And yet, you emulate brain damage to change people's expectations of you."
Kevan froze, then swallowed hard.
"It wasn't even a conscious choice, was it?" Lindenbaum asked.
Kevan shook his head. "I didn't... It wasn't an intentional parallel." Kevan looked back up at Lindenbaum. "Is this the part where you give me that trite claptrap about how Sara just needed more attention because of her injuries, and I should have sucked it up because I could cope?"
"Why would I say that?" Lindenbaum.
"It's essentially what my dad said to me."
"Were those his exact words?"
Kevan frowned, his shoulders slumped low. "No," Kevan said.
"About that birthday," Lindenbaum said. "Lets talk a little more on the specifics."
"What's there to say? Mom was high-strung and frazzled from trying to get all the little bits and pieces in line. All for a girl who could barely understand that something significant was going on. Every time she saw me, she had some excuse to snap at me, even when I hadn't done anything. Then there were the guests for the party. They came from Sara's school, and they were all at least as mentally challenged as she was." Kevan sighed. "The little things didn't mean anything alone. It was the aggregate of years of this shit."
"Where was your dad that day?"
"I don't know, I didn't see him at all." Kevan shook his head. "All of this fussing about whether we had enough plastic spoons, or if the paper napkins were the wrong color. No one noticed that my name was nowhere to be found, except when someone snapped at me for standing in the wrong spot. It's not that the one day went wrong, it's that it was like every other day, only exaggerated."
"So you left," Lindenbaum said.
"I couldn't take it any more. I wasn't welcome in my own family."
Drizzle fell on Westbrook as the van came to a stop at the gate. Ed groaned
in boredom, but straightened up as Razordemon presented his credentials to the guard. Peering out the windows, Ed saw an old concrete building perched on the lip of a massive hole in the ground. The bulk of Westbrook was an abandoned open pit mine. Razordemon parked the van and got out. A chorus of grumbles accompanied the four in the back as they climbed out.
"Are we there yet?" Ed asked.
"Yes," Razordemon said. "We're going to evaluate the extent of your abilities. This is a legal requirement for everyone who has to register with the BHA."
"So why is Flynn here?" Ed asked, jabbing a thumb towards Errol.
"You're all registering as a part of this program. Even those who don't have powers."
"Ed's just worried he'll turn out to be less of a threat than the unpowered guy," Lazar said.
"Well, my only power is flight," Ed said.
"That would be the first time flight has manifested alone," Razordemon said. "They're going to test for anything you may not have noticed. Passive abilities are frequently hard to detect."
"Whatever," Ed said. "You're not going to find anything else. I've checked."
"Dude, do you really think you've got better tests than the Community Fund?" Lazar asked. "Dealing with powers is pretty much what they do. And, they've been at it for decades."
"We also have deeper pockets for more precise equipment, along with much more data to compare it with," Razordemon said. "Don't rule us out yet."
"Fine, I'll play lab rat for the afternoon." They headed through another security checkpoint and entered the building. Inside the concrete shell, cement board walls had been set up, and diamond-patterned steel plates formed the floor of the hallway.
"We have test chamber two," Razordemon said. It was a tad redundant, as he led the group to a door with a massive '2' stenciled on it. The test chamber was about three stories tall. Its floor was made of interlocking rubber tiles. In a few places, gym mats had been laid out. Several stations of what looked to be extra heavy-duty gym equipment had been set up. At the end was what looked like a medical scanner. It had a bed that went through a plain white ring. A couple of guys in suits gave a quick glance at the new arrivals, before going back to their muffled conversation. A woman in a white lab coat walked over.
"I was terribly sorry to hear about Tuesday," she said. "But we understand."
"Speak for yourself, Kwan," one of the suits said.
"Ignore Mister Pekkanen," Kwan said. "He's just cranky."
"Shall we get started?"
"Yes, please," Pekkanen said, "You've wasted enough of my time already."
The base physical metrics turned up no surprises. Most registered within human norms, except for Lazar's abnormally quick reaction time and Kevan's strength. He loudly repeated the value of two tons after it was read off the gauges. Though it was his upper limit, Kevan sounded quite pleased with the number. Ed wasn't the least bit surprised that his numbers were less than stellar.
"Do you have anything to measure brains instead of brawn?" Ed asked.
"I'm sure they can dredge up a microscope to try to find yours," Lazar said with a smile and a chuckle.
"We're doing a liability insurance assessment," Pekkanen said. "In the median, brawn is more likely to break something. It's at the outliers that brain spectacularly outstrips brawn."
"So something like linear versus exponential, with the median being less than one."
"Shut up, wiseass, and get on the table." Pekkanen pointed to the scanner at the end. Ed sighed and walked over, climbing onto the platform. He laid himself out and stared at the distant ceiling.
"This won't hurt a bit," Kwan said. "It's probably the most boring test we'll run today."
"Joy," Ed said. "Just kick this overglorified MRI into gear and get this over with."
"Despite appearances, this has nothing to do with an MRI," Kwan said, pressing buttons on the control panel.
"I thought it was a psychic resonator. It rattles the nervous system to see what shakes loose."
"It doesn't do imaging, and it has nothing to do with magnets," Kwan said. "One out of three isn't a correlation."
"One out of three is more than nothing," Ed said as the platform glided into the machine.
"Computer says," Kwan said, reading off the screen, "We have a five nines confidence in flight."
"Already knew that," Ed said.
"Three nines confidence in strong biokinesis, and equal confidence in weak telekinesis."
"That's a load of bull," Ed said. "Your machine's wrong."
"Probability of shapeshifting is zero. Highest confidence bands are for healing."
"I was right, your machine's broken."
"Are you sure of that?" Kwan asked.
"I'm no medic, and I don't have a healing factor."
"It's almost certainly not an autonomous response," Kwan said. "But we can run a simple test on the machine's accuracy." She pulled a felt-tip pen out of her pocket and held it up. "Take this pen." Ed reached for it, but Kwan pulled back. "We're testing the claim of telekinesis, not your arm. Take this pen with your mind."
"That's not going to happen. Even if your machine weren't dead wrong, we'd be talking an untrained--" Ed's eye went to the pen in his hand, then back to Kwan's smug expression.
"You were saying?"
"I ain't no fucking medic!"
Part 10
Ed stared at the fork twirling above his hand in agitation, before grasping the handle and stabbing it into the top of his burger. Errol's eyes glanced towards the motion, but he didn't interrupt his prayer.
"Hey!" Lazar said. "I put a lot of work into making that."
"I do not have biokinesis!" Ed insisted.
"Why does the possibility bother you so much?" Lazar asked.
"Because it's as much a prison sentence as walking out that door right now. If I'm a biokinetic, they're going to lock me in a hospital and make me spend all of my time treating the worst cases. I'll be called a monster if I don't want to spend thirty hours a day, eight days a week healing people," Ed said. Kevan raised a fry and started to say something. "I was exaggerating for effect," Ed said, cutting him off. "I will never get a chance to do anything I want to, because there will always be another emergency that needs my attention. Red can lift two tons, but they can make machines to do that, so he's free to go spend his time however he sees fit. I'd be too 'valuable' to let out. I'd end up a prisoner to the power."
Ed shoved away from the table and stomped off upstairs, leaving his food untouched save for the fork embedded in it.
"You may want to wrap that up," Gabe said. "He's going to be hungry later."
Errol finished his prayer and started into his food.
"You know, you're holding that upside down," Kevan said.
"The bottom bun is saturated with juices," Errol said. "The top bun will hold together long enough for me to finish."
Kevan looked at the mess on his own hands. "You have a point there," he said.
There was a knock at the front door and Gabe sighed. "Why do they always show up at dinner?" He stood and went to the door. "Hello, little lady, is this business or personal?"
"Yes," she said.
"That's not an answer."
"I'm supposed to make a business delivery and deliver a personal apology," she said. "So it's both." Gabe shrugged and opened the door for her to enter. The pencil-thin girl in a light purple hero suit strolled in carrying a black plastic case.
"I'm afraid we've not been formally introduced," Gabe said.
"My codename is Blue Streak," she said.
"Gabe Derleth. Now what's this delivery?"
"Its for your resident archer. I sort of broke his bow, so I have the replacement."
"In that little thing?"
"Yes."<
br />
"If it's not terribly inconvenient, could you wait in the living room until we've finished dinner?"
Blue Streak sighed. "Sure," she said, wandering off to find a seat.
"Is that the girl I heard call Razordemon 'Dad'?" Kevan asked.
Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus) Page 57
