“What are our options then?” Athan crossed his arms.
Belinda padded out of the bedroom holding half a bottle of beer.
Athan raised his eyebrow in surprise.
“What?” She laughed “I sometimes have a beer while I type. It helps me focus.”
She looked at the seriousness of the two men and the large knife resting on the arm of the lounge. She knew there must have been something dangerous coming.
“I can’t go hon,” she said taking another sip.
Brad sighed with relief.
Belinda took a mouthful of beer and ruffed up Brad’s hair. “I have work to do boys. If you had jobs, you’d know all about it.”
“Harsh.” Athan laughed.
On her way back to the bedroom she turned to them and pointed. “The only reason I’d be going on a field trip with you is to keep leashes on you two, so you don’t do anything stupid. And since you guys don’t party at the best of times, I guess it’s to do with your fancy magic powers. That I will keep my nose out of, as long as you promise to be careful.”
Brad smiled at her and gave her a reassuring speech about how he would never do anything dangerous. Then she shook her head and walked away doing the ‘I don’t believe you for a second’ face.
Brad turned his attention to the issue of weapons.
“Sedating and electric shock,” he said with an evil smile.
Athan wondered if he meant Belinda.
“You realize I can’t carry anything extra when I travel through minds?” Athan reminded him.
“You can carry a little. It’s will power, I think. When we were The League, you managed to always wear that black balaclava mask and that long black coat.
Athan shrugged, “I don’t really remember how. I guess I just really wanted them so they came with me.”
“Was it your Matrix phase?” Brad teased.
“Shut up! That movie was freaking awesome.” Athan smiled.
“Well, the weapons will be based on sedation and electric shock.”
Athan nodded. “Sure.”
“I have a few things I built for fun a year or two ago. I didn’t know we would need them for this, but I guess deep down I knew that we couldn’t get through our lives without some kind of unpleasantness.”
“How do they work?” Athan asked hoping that there could still be some violence to inflict on the PHC officers if they got into a pressing situation.
“My favourite is a shock glove. It is fingerless and has a pad in the palm that produces enough power to stun a man.” Brad tossed it to Athan who tried it on. “On the back of the glove, the knuckles have smaller pads that can produce a fairly heavy shock as well. It would improve a punch, six-fold.
Brad took out the second weapon for himself.
“A set of two torso quivers of poisoned darts and forearm-mounted gun. The gun projects the darts with just enough speed to take a man in heavy clothes down. They won’t penetrate armour or go through a naked body, but as long as the dart tip breaks skin, there should be about six seconds before the target is unconscious.” Brad wrapped his weapon up in the fabric it had been stored in.
“Brad, you are a badass,” Athan said giving him a mischievous grin.
“I know. I’ll carry a small toolkit in my boot as well, just in case. For picking locks and such.”
“Awesome.” Athan took a deep breath and slid the glove onto his right hand. “When do we leave?”
“In the morning.” Brad said as he collected some other items. “We can’t afford to waste any time. If they are turning that girl into a weapon, things may become more dangerous if we wait.”
Chapter 15
“CONGRATULATIONS DARLING! THEY’RE gorgeous!”
Cynthia Abell was distracted from staring into her glass of champagne. “Pardon?”
“Your work darling! It’s gorgeous!” It was Matilda Crisp.
Matilda seemed to turn up at every exhibition opening in Melbourne and she was always impressed with everything.
Unfortunately Cynthia’s exhibition had not escaped the woman’s notice either. She was the kind of obnoxious person everyone dreaded.
Always drinking too much champagne.
Always talking everyone’s ears off.
Her hot topics were how amazing the current exhibition was or how hard it was in Melbourne for a struggling artist. No one in Cynthia’s circle of artist friends had ever seen Matilda’s work, or even knew if she was an artist at all. It was Cynthia’s conclusion that she was just lonely or bored.
“I love what you’ve done here darling! There are so many good pieces that I could not possibly decide which are the best!” Cynthia smiled back and told her she was too kind.
She noted the outfit, one that was so Melbourne cliché it was sickening; frizzy dark hair, black frilly blouse and red lipstick, always the red lipstick. It was that shade of red that isolated a mouth and made it an entity on its own, so when you spoke to her you didn’t know whether to talk to her face or to her mouth.
“So have you?” Matilda pursued.
“Pardon?” Cynthia had missed every word.
“Have you been working on this collection long?” Matilda shook her head and performed an upside down smile with her red mouth. “Deary, you’re off with the fairies,” she laughed.
“Champagne I guess, sorry,” Cynthia said apologetically.
Something had been growing in her mind the last few months, broodiness or an impending sense of despair. Her paintings had become a little darker, even a little abstract. She felt compelled to paint blank faced beings in the backgrounds of all her works. She didn’t know why she included them, or who they were.
In the opening speech her friend Julie had described them as being a self-portrait of the artist in the fringes of society, or some other nonsense, but Cynthia knew they had no meaning.
Altogether she had produced a collection of thirty paintings and drawings for her exhibition entitled ‘Hiding’.
She had never done so many works in such a short period of time before, and she put it down to this new sense of foreboding.
Thinking about the feeling gave her goose bumps, so she decided to snap out of it and concentrate on having a good time.
It was her day.
She looked at her reflection in the glass covering a painting, titled ‘Contact’.
She looked good tonight, her long blonde hair tied back in a messy bun, her long black silk gloves covered her hands and she sported one of her better make up attempts. The dress cost three hundred on Chapel Street.
Yep, she thought, as she looked at her reflection, quite tidy indeed.
“You should go lighter darling! Bright colours. Summer’s nearly here, and by the time the weather gets hot, your summer collection will be ready to blow us away!”
“Geez, Matilda! I’m an artist. I need to be inspired. I can’t just turn creativity on and off!” Cynthia blurted with a laugh.
She thought she better be civil and charming, or every exhibition in Melbourne would be filled with gossip about how rude she was.
“Well Paul Blue said that he can do that. Like a light switch he said. Switch on the creative juices or put a stopper in them till later.” Matilda nodded matter of factly.
“Matilda,” Cynthia said shaking her head, “that is from a guy who only paints in blue, and changed his name to Blue on purpose. I don’t want to be nasty about the guy, but he’s a show pony. The big pseudo-intellectual glasses and the bright pink shirts; it’s a gimmick, and it’s getting old.” She felt the heat in her cheeks. She needed to calm down. “Julie and Martin both went to Art School with the guy, he can’t draw and he used to claim works done by his kids as his own.”
“Really?” Matilda’s eyes were glowing with interest.
“Yeah, that thing about naïvety, children’s art and the beauty of the unbiased heart crap? He rode that all the way to town. The idiots at Artsake Magazine lapped up his drivel like kittens with milk.” Cynthia took another s
ip of champagne and smiled smugly with one hand on her hip.
“My goodness! You don’t say?” Somewhere inside Matilda a tiny secretary was scribbling down gossip notes.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like a bitch, but he’s just one of those artists that gets my goat, ya know?” Cynthia shrugged.
“Oh no! It’s good to know these things. I might boycott his next exhibition!” Matilda was glowing. She loved the attention.
“Don’t get crazy,” Cynthia finished, with an undetected note of sarcasm.
“I simply must go and pick Julie’s brain about that man!” Matilda grinned. “What a scandal! I’ll get another wine first. Love the work dear!” Matilda scurried off into the crowd to annoy someone else, giving Cynthia some peace.
It was time to mingle.
She saw her friend Carlton, and nudged her way through the crowd to speak to him. He was a tall man with a ponytail and small ever-present sunglasses.
Before she reached him Cynthia felt a hand on her shoulder.
She pulled away roughly, uncomfortable with people touching her.
“Excuse me!” she said brashly.
“No, excuse me, ma’am.” It was a stocky, bald American man in his fifties. “I don’t know if you can help me,” he chuckled, “but I’m looking for a very talented young artist named Cynthia Abell.”
“You know that’s me, right? My picture is on the flyer.” Cynthia flashed a brief smile.
“Yeah, I did, but it’s nice, you know, when people are honest about who the are.” The bald man was smiling confidently, waiting for some kind of witty reply.
A prickling sensation crept over her skin.
Something was not quite right here.
“Why are you looking for me?” Cynthia managed to say with some poise, sipping at her champagne.
“You see, Miss Abell… You are a Miss or am I wrong?” He grinned showing off perfect white teeth.
“No.” Cynthia swallowed a quick sip. “You are correct.”
The bald man looked at the taller man who stood at his side then back to Cynthia. “Miss Abell, we are representatives from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and we’d like to interview you on their behalf and talk about acquiring some of your…work,” he said with an animated expression.
Cynthia’s stomach went cold.
She could almost taste their lies.
Who are they?
“I’m not convinced… I mean, when would The Metropolitan Museum of Art have seen any of my work? I don’t upload anything online…”
“We’ve been scouting Australian galleries, Miss Abell.” The bald man said.
“I see.” Cynthia looked about the room.
Something wasn’t right. No one else seemed to even notice her, or the bald man and the two men that stood behind him.
She could see Carlton was laughing with a small group of university students not far away; she needed to get his attention.
“This one here…” the bald man pointed to one of her bigger pieces that portrayed a crying woman sitting in a field of bones. It was called ‘Deadfall’. “…I love this. It says so much, you know? And the title! Wow!”
Cynthia could see through the man’s false front. He knew who she was in her other life.
She was Deadfall.
Did he know?
Her hand tightened around the stem of her wine glass, her knuckles white.
PHC. It had to be.
Her skin burned and tingled with panic.
“I’ll have to go and get my manager,” Cynthia said, stepping back into a woman behind her, “she does all of this international, exhibition stuff. Just give me a moment.” Cynthia tried to slip into the crowd, using a couple of human shields.
“Is it true that you can take a person’s life just by touching them Deadfall?”
Cynthia’s stomach was in her throat.
She remembered days when she was part of The League, when one of the boys or Kiranda had her back.
This time she was alone.
She had no choice. It was time to run.
She smiled at the bald man then threw her glass of champagne to the floor making a loud smash that echoed enough to get the attention of everyone nearby. As people pressed in to help her she slipped further into the crowd. The American stood smiling in the crowd.
Cynthia noticed how calm he was as she slipped out the door and into the vaulted space of the 101 Building.
She kicked off her heels and ran as fast as she could on the polished wooden floor.
Damn, she thought as her stockings slipped awkwardly.
The corridor was long and smooth; a mixture of highly polished wood and polished concrete.
Then down she went. Her right elbow hurt, her head hurt and her left hand, and worst of all her stupid knees.
Cynthia tore at the stockings, ripping them off her feet. Her eyes darting around and her ears listening for any sound of pursuit. She could hear nothing, but the cacophony of the party where she had come from and the throb of her own heartbeat.
She couldn’t stop.
She picked herself back up and continued to run. Her bare feet getting far better purchase on the polished floor.
She was nearly at the big glass door when she saw three tidy looking men in suits pretending to look busy in the foyer.
They had to be PHC, but how had they tracked her there?
Why did they find her now?
She hadn’t used her ability in so long, except to put that poor magpie out of its misery, but a car had hit it, and how would they even know?
“Carpark.” She muttered to herself.
The downstairs carpark would offer her an alternate way out, or at least better place to hide.
Rather than taking the elevator straight down, Cynthia chose the less conspicuous stairwell. It smelt a little of urine which was unexpected for such a well-respected building. Maybe it was too far to a toilet for the car park security guards.
She swiftly padded down the stairs to the bottom door and took a deep breath before pushing it open quickly and hard, in case there was a…
Bang!
The car park security guard on the other side of the door collapsed to the concrete clutching his face before passing out.
Well he wasn’t PHC, which is positive.
She had to get out.
Cynthia could see the light from the car park entrance was at the other side. She also saw a pair of black vans parked in the middle of the lanes that divided the cars. Around them were three men and a woman, all dressed in khaki uniforms. They were carrying some kind of gun she didn’t recognize.
The badges on the uniforms, however, she did recognize: the letters DPHR.
The Department of Post-Human Relations.
Her knees were weak and she knew she only had one chance.
The PHC had found her.
She turned on the spot to run back to the stairwell, but the grinning face of the bald American man stopped her.
“There you are, Miss Abell.”
Cynthia moaned as she came back to consciousness.
Then she felt the grating sting.
She was being dragged across the concrete of the underground car park to the back of one of the black vans.
Heavy men’s hands gripped her under the arms, their gloved fingers pressing roughly into soft skin.
Cynthia hissed as she became aware of her aching knees grazing the concrete and the dull throb from a blow to the back of the head.
Her stomach turned for a moment and her vision swam.
“I bet ya going out of your damn mind thinkin, how did the bastards find me?” The arrogant bald man gestured theatrically. “Well, Miss Abell, I’m gonna show ya, because I’m a nice guy and I’m pretty damn proud of it myself.”
The bald man pulled the door open on the back of the van, revealing a big glass box containing a girl. Beside her was a series of computer monitors bolted to the wall of the van.
Cynthia was confused, and it took a seco
nd for her blurring vision to focus properly on the scene before her.
The leads and cables from the monitors were threaded through plugged holes on the side of the glass box, then into the skin of the girl inside. They were into her half shaved head, into her arms and legs and spine, and she hung inside the box from restraints that didn’t let her move, except her head which rolled around in a drug addled stupor.
Cynthia tried to free herself from the gloved hands that gripped her tightly.
She felt the need to help the poor girl, but she was in no position to do anything. She couldn’t even help herself.
“Ya see, Miss Abell, she’s great in’t she?” The American man pointed. “It’s our prototype ya see?”
Cynthia looked blankly at the man and back at the poor Asian girl in the box.
“You can’t work out all that gibberish on them there screens?”
Cynthia shook her head, not really wanting to know.
“Oh, man, are you in for a treat. Let me explain. This is how we can track down any o’ your folk anywhere, anytime.” He held out his arms as if he were accepting applause. “You see? She’s like you, ya see? ‘cept her special thing is that she can feel your kind when y’all are close.” The bald man laughed. “And when I say close,” He slapped the side of the van appreciatively, “this little baby found you from two blocks away. She’s a little gold detector, Miss Abell, and she’s gonna make me a very rich man.”
“What do you want with me?” she demanded, feeling the pressure of a growing headache, probably from the hit to the head.
“Well you are just another piece in the puzzle aren’t you?” He crossed his arms.
“What puzzle? Who are you?”
“Name’s Evan Boothe, Miss Abell, and the puzzle, is that gang I hear so much about. The League, my bosses say. Had gangs like it back in the States. They think they are gonna solve the world’s problems. It never works out like in the comic books. People don’t trust anyone different, ya know?” Evan smiled and slammed the door of the van, hiding the poor suffering girl inside.
“Boys!” He called.
Cynthia heard a soldier open the back of the second van behind her. The two men holding her arms dragged her back across the concrete towards it. “Don’t worry, Miss Abell. We’ve a fancy little box just for you as well.” He finished with another laugh, and straightened his tie before getting into the first van’s passenger seat.
The Post-Humans (Book 1): The League Page 15
