Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set

by Harmon Cooper

  We didn’t get to see much of Wichita, but from what I could tell, it kind of looked like Texas. The city was divided into an old industrial area, and an area specifically designed for neighborhoods. There was a highway that cut through it, and like most cities we’d encountered in the South, it was sandwiched around the interstate.

  We passed a few billboards from a local Christian group claiming that everyone was going to die soon, that God was watching, and that a fetus was a person too, hung a sharp right after a donut place, continued over some railroad tracks, and arrived at the diner.

  I opened the trunk and unpacked the new laptop and hard drive, leaving the packaging in the Okay Buy bag. The laptop would definitely have some juice; they usually came at least sixty percent charged, but I brought the cable with us just in case.

  Before we sat down, I asked the age-old question that mostly didn’t need to be asked in 2030, yet we still asked it: “Do you have Wi-Fi?”

  “Of course we do, honey,” a middle-aged woman in a smock said with a tired smile. “The password is password.”

  “Thanks,” I told her as we were led to our booth.

  I went with eggs Benedict; Grace got sausage and biscuits; Dorian ordered an omelet; and Veronique got a cup of coffee. We all had coffee, actually, and also shared a full stack of banana chocolate chip pancakes.

  After munching down, and while the three CBGs chatted about a show they wanted to watch later in the day, I set up the new laptop.

  I plugged in the lipstick hard drive, let the software load, and once it did, I opened the second email from Dr. Kim and unzipped the file. I put a copy of everything on the drive and placed the drive in my pocket, where I’d always try to keep it just in case.

  With the headphones in – the laptop had come with a cheap pair – I started going through the folders to see what Dr. Kim had left us.

  I opened a folder named ‘final transmission’ and clicked on a video.

  In the video, Dr. Kim was standing at his computer desk when he heard a whistling sound behind him. A blast of pure light cut him down and I saw the black silhouette of a woman before the feed cut off.

  They sent a Super after him, I thought, and Grace looked up at me.

  The psychic shifter was in her base form, a T-shirt that showed a little midriff, and a pair of yoga tights. Her hair was in a bun, and as she studied me, her eyes shimmered white.

  He was killed by Chloe, she thought to me.

  Chloe? What are her powers? I just saw some light …

  Grace glanced at Veronique and the metal-wielding badass stopped chatting. “They’ve sent Chloe?” she asked.

  Dorian took a sip of her coffee and exchanged glances with the two. “And now they’ll send Victoria and Augustin as well.”

  “They were all born at the same time, but they’re a bit younger than us,” Grace explained to me. “They’re nineteen.”

  “That’s not that much younger,” I said.

  “They were also raised in a different way and were kept together rather than separated.”

  “Where?”

  “California, but my information isn’t the newest available.” Maybe there’s more info in the files Dr. Kim sent, she thought.

  “Good idea,” I said aloud and continued perusing the drive. I checked the folder labeled ‘videos’ and found well over a hundred in there, too many for me to watch now. ‘Facility location data’ told me more about the five facilities; it would come in handy as we tried to bring them all down. Not only did it give schematics, but it also gave a brief history of the superpowereds that had been held there, as well as features of the facility. It was in the ‘notes’ folder that I found a single document and a file type I’d never seen before.

  The note read:

  To whom it may concern,

  This drive contains all the information I have on the Subject Gene Therapy experiment which began in 2005 at the Rose-Lyle Facility at Yale University in conjunction with the Agency of Enhancement and Future Logistics (AEFL) and other private sector funders including Lockheed Raytheon and BAE Northrop Dynamics Corporation.

  There is a smartphone app in this folder that may prove of assistance. I’ve put all the information I have on these various superpowered humans into a database that can be utilized in real time based on certain keywords.

  For example, if you searched ‘psychic,’ you would find a list of some of the psychics that have been created. My database isn’t complete, nor do I account for those who have been discontinued and decommissioned. I simply put as much information as I could in a searchable directory.

  Do with it what you will,

  Dr. Ken Kim

  Did he do this for me? I closed the message and looked at the app.

  I still didn’t know how the government could track me, or the extent of their tracking capabilities, but I figured if I put all the info on my lipstick hard drive and then loaded it onto my computer without the internet on, I would be able to put the app on my smartphone without any issue.

  Maybe I was being too careful. Then again, I’d already gotten sloppy several times before.

  We need to get some gasoline, Grace thought to me.

  You’re right, maybe we can get some here and take it back with us.

  It’s probably better to get it there and get a car at the same time.

  I looked across the table at her. “Does anyone want anything else to eat?” I asked, closing my laptop.

  Veronique raised a single finger in the air.

  “I know, I know, you want to feed. We can work that out in Santa Fe.”

  I paid the bill, and we headed outside to the black cherry Cadillac. I tossed the keys onto the driver’s seat and handed the laptop to Veronique. “Take care of it however you want.”

  The laptop lifted into the air and began spinning counterclockwise. Rather than disassemble it there, she zipped it off to some rooftop and then on to several other places, the metal twisting and bursting out of the laptop as it flew.

  Chapter Seven: A Little Pressure

  Back to the Santa Fe. As soon as we arrived I doubled over. Would I ever adapt to traveling in the vortex that was Dorian’s long-distance teleportation power?

  We were near the center of a beautiful square, not far from an old chapel built in the 1800s, in the same alley we’d been in last night.

  The CBGs were going to do more training later, but we also need to get some gasoline. This would require no less than two of them – Grace and Dorian, to be exact. Veronique wanted to feed though, so she planned to come along as well.

  Up until this point, we hadn’t had to deal with the ‘appearing out of nowhere and someone seeing us’ issue. But sure enough, a guy pushing a trolley filled with beer cases saw us appear out of thin air. He started to say something but dropped to his knees, hands at his sides as Veronique fed. As he shriveled, her skin softened, and her lips lifted, revealing her canines.

  “We can use his truck,” Dorian suggested.

  “No, we need something smaller than a beer truck.”

  Once Veronique finished and we left the beer delivery man against the wall so he appeared to be sleeping, Grace morphed into him. We walked around for a bit, Dorian and Veronique following Grace and me like we were on an awkward date.

  We watched a guy pull up in a convertible Mustang, a definite classic – smoke gray, fierce, with fat tires and red brake pads.

  “Have we driven a convertible Mustang yet?” I asked Grace.

  “I can’t remember,” she said in a deep, manly voice, that I hadn’t heard her use before.

  “Yeah, well, let’s do it.”

  Grace approached the man with the Mustang, and he simply gave her the keys.

  Easy as that.

  I stepped up beside her and ran my hand through my beard as I studied the car’s owner, trying to think of a worthy story. “So, you let your friend borrow your car for a couple of days – an old friend, and you don’t have his number. He’ll call you when he’s
ready for you to pick it up,” I told the man, Grace relaying the message almost instantly on a different plane.

  “Yeah buddy, no problem,” he said. “Which friend?”

  I almost waved my hand at him Jedi style, but I stopped myself. “You’ll say he was your Indian friend and he works in the tech sector as a software engineer. Out of Albuquerque. And that he probably took your car to Lake Tahoe, because both of you like to visit there together.”

  “Yeah, Lake Tahoe, nice place,” he said, combing a hand through his silver hair.

  “I agree, I would love to go there,” I told him.

  “Got it.” He turned away from us. “I’m going to go have a beer.”

  “It’s a little early for that, but I approve! Everyone ready?” I called over my shoulder, but Grace was already sitting in the front passenger seat, and Veronique and Dorian were already in the back. I didn't see them slip in, but it was odd that she’d had me out here talking to this guy while she was inside the car brainwashing him.

  Or whatever it was she did.

  Damn, she’s powerful.

  Yes, I am.

  I smirked at her as I got in the convertible. Grace, now back in her base form, reached over and scratched the back of my head. My hair had started to grow out, a nice fuzz now, and I’d need a haircut soon.

  I may have been a loser up until the last couple of weeks, but at least I had a full head of hair.

  “You should do some type of Mohawk, or dye your hair an interesting color next time you get it cut,” Dorian said.

  I started up the Mustang. The vehicle smelled like the man’s musk, and there were fingernail indentations on the steering wheel, likely from some type of nervous tick.

  “Gideon really does need a haircut,” Veronique said from the back.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  The top was down, the breeze blowing through our hair as we left the city center. We cruised on the highway for a short while and eventually found a larger gas station. We bought two red gas containers and a case of water.

  Once we filled up the gas – paying in good ol’ cashola, of course – we headed back to our place.

  This was definitely a ‘garage with the door open’ kind of task. Fortunately, it wasn’t too warm outside, so as Dorian and Grace went into the back yard to train, Veronique and I began transferring the gas to the water bottles.

  It was an unconventional weapon, but I figured it would do.

  “Do you like the smell of gas?” I asked Veronique as she helped me fill the first bottle.

  “No. You?”

  “I think?”

  “That’s weird.”

  “It’s American!”

  We still hadn’t experimented with gas-filled water bottles yet, but there was a big enough space in the back yard that we could give it a test run.

  “Want to give it a shot?” I asked after we filled three of the bottles.

  I knew shit-all about gasoline and explosives; well, aside from the fact that gasoline was explosive. But I remembered enough from high school chemistry that it needed air to ignite. And I guessed that by putting a few nails inside, Veronique could zip the nails back and forth in the bottle, possibly triggering an even quicker ignition.

  Rather than take things slow and try to figure it out step by step, we were going to dive right in, doing our damnedest not to get our asses blown off.

  “Everyone, ballistic helmets on!” I said as we came around to the back yard.

  Once the CBGs were ready, Veronique threw a bottle and did her thing. It blew up way too close to us, the flames nearly lashing at my beard.

  “Holy shit!” I yelled, jumping back.

  “Be careful,” Grace said, in the harshest voice I’d ever heard from her.

  Dorian shook her head at Veronique. “Didn’t you train with this kind of stuff?”

  “No,” Veronique said, handing the punk rocker another gas bottle. “That was your group that trained with IEDs. They wanted me more for combat and extraction, not explosive ordnance detail.”

  I looked at Dorian. “Well, how do you suppose we use it without blowing ourselves up?”

  “I think the best way will be for me to teleport somewhere, charge the cap right before I get there, and disappear before it can blow up.”

  “You think you’re that fast?”

  Dorian raised an eyebrow at me. “What do you think?”

  To prove her point, she disappeared, reappeared about fifty yards away, and dissipated right when an explosion blew some cacti into the air.

  “How’s that?” she asked as her form took shape in front of us.

  “That was freaking badass.” I raised my hand to give her a high five, but she didn’t reciprocate.

  “Let me try again,” she said and took the final water bottle from Veronique.

  This time she reappeared nearly thirty feet up, fell about five feet, and disappeared before the bottle went off, raining shrapnel onto the dirt below.

  “That’s the coolest thing I’ve seen all day,” I told the three of them. “And remember, we’ve been to Wichita, Kansas, today.”

  Veronique rolled her eyes.

  “What? I enjoyed the city!”

  “I would have liked to explore Wichita more,” Grace said. “I bet there are tons of houses to flip there.”

  Veronique propped a hand on her hip as she thought about that. She wore a western shirt that was tied above her waist, revealing her taut midriff. “Probably. Cheaper houses too. Stay away from the coasts; that’s what the Fix Up Show said.”

  “I didn’t think about that,” Dorian said.

  “We can talk about flipping houses later, ladies. For now, Veronique and I have to fill up the rest of these bottles. We’ll need to get rid of them early on in combat; it’s too dangerous to be going around with this much explosive power in a backpack.”

  “Maybe it would be a good opener for our plan,” Dorian suggested. A gust of wind whipped her black hair across her face, and she shoved it impatiently out of her eyes.

  “That’s actually not a bad idea,” said Grace.

  “I like it. Let’s finish making more and then you three get some more training done while I go through the stuff Ken gave us. We’ll solidify our plan after that.” I gave them a serious look. “We can’t get caught tonight. We have to be on our A-game.”

  I was glad no one said anything about how I shouldn’t be going with them, because yeah, I probably shouldn’t have been going with them. I’m not going to say I was the weakest link, because I’ve already said that before, but I’m definitely not the strongest link.

  Once Veronique and I finished putting the gasoline in the water bottles, we went to the back yard and I took a seat at the table, waiting for the CBGs to start training again.

  “I need to feed after,” Veronique reminded Dorian.

  “Will do,” she said with a wink.

  I was hoping to go through some of the information Ken had left us, but I knew it would eventually be too distracting to watch them train. To scratch both itches, I decided to observe the training for a bit and then go inside to work.

  Grace’s eyes blazed white as she used her power to lift Veronique into the air and let her hover there, then did the same to Dorian, keeping them both suspended.

  Veronique pulled her frag patches out, but before she could zip one off, Grace dropped her to the ground. She landed on her feet but thought twice about throwing anything at the psychic.

  Dorian teleported away, only to find herself still hovering when she reappeared.

  She stuck her finger in her mouth and traced an arrow into the air, which she flung at Grace. The arrow landed just in front of Grace and sent her tumbling sideways. She was back on her feet in a matter of moments, Dorian still suspended midair.

  “Let me down!” Dorian called out.

  Seeing an opportunity, Veronique began draining Dorian, just a little, which only agitated the punk rock teleporter.

  “That’s cheat
ing!” she said as Grace and Veronique laughed.

  Grace eventually sat her back down, and Dorian glared at the two of them.

  She was gone in a flash, behind Veronique now, shouldering her to the ground. But she flashed away again before Grace could do anything.

  A slight look of panic now in her eyes, Grace pivoted left and right, trying to spot the teleporter, who eventually appeared before her and punched her in the stomach.

  Grace’s immediate response was to blow Dorian back about fifteen yards, where she hit the ground hard, tumbled, and nearly collided with a cluster of sharp rocks.

  “Too tense,” I said, standing. “Play nice, please!”

  Go inside. We won’t kill each other, we promise, Grace thought to me.

  “We promise,” said Dorian.

  “Yep,” Veronique added.

  Dorian, I believed. Veronique with her predatory snarl? Not so much.

  But there was something enchanting about her dark eyes, and rather than sit out there and watch them beat the hell out of each other – because really, that’s not my thing – I grabbed my laptop and the hard drive and went inside.

  Once I was in the house, I found a soda in the fridge and went to the study.

  Even though I heard the sounds of combat outside, as well as the occasional explosion (yikes!), I plugged the hard drive into my computer, stuck the phone’s cable in on the other side, and transferred the app over.

  I was a little nervous about starting it, but I had trusted Ken up to this point, and I didn’t think he would install something that would lead us into jeopardy. He genuinely seemed like he wanted to help and had paid for that desire with his life.

  Damn. I shook my head. I really wish we could have done something to save him.

  I waited for the app to install, and once it was done doing its thing, I clicked it open.

  “Interesting,” I whispered when a search bar appeared. I recalled Ken’s instructions and figured I’d give it a shot. I typed in ‘psychic,’ and a list of people started to appear. No Mother, but I found who I was looking for:

  Sabine, Subject S