Different Strong

by Nat Kozinn

  “1919 All Over Again” by Gregory Winfield, LA Times

  I hit the deck hard. I hear metal ricocheting around me. The bullets are coming incredibly fast, ten rounds a second. The Regenerator looks like she doesn’t weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds. Despite that, she’s handling the gun like a pro. The machine gun fires so fast she’s a human whirlwind of destruction.

  Her magazine clicks empty. The police open fire again. I hear hundreds of shots being fired from all around the square. The bullets riddle her body while she struggles to put a new clip in her gun. The shots tear her apart, but she doesn’t go down. I watch the wounds seal up almost as quickly as they form. The cops miss a lot, too. One bullet sinks into the back of a hostage lying on the ground behind the Regenerator.

  “Hold your fire. The OEC is handling this. Stand down!” Victor yells.

  It’s only his third day back. I remember when we used to hope for some real action. We’re both feeling pretty stupid about that now.

  A hulking officer makes a run at the Regenerator while she’s still struggling with the machine gun. She spots him coming, pulls out a small handgun, and drops the would-be hero in his tracks.

  “I told you all to stand down!” Victor yells.

  She puts the handgun away, finishes putting the magazine back in her machine gun, and goes back to laying down suppressing fire at the police officers all around her. They scramble to get behind cover.

  She picked the perfect spot for this attack. She’s standing right in the center of Beckett’s Square. It’s a three hundred yard diameter circle of flat concrete with nothing for cover. Standing in the center, she can whirl around and gun anyone down before they can get close enough to tackle her. Victor, all of the police, and I are basically pinned behind barricades. She’s armed to the teeth with at least two handguns to compliment her machine gun, and she’s surrounded by cases of ammunition. She has about twenty hostages lying on their bellies in a circle around her. I can hear them cry.

  This is a different situation than the Heater and the Acid-Shooter we took down. Those two were dangerous, but they were also mentally unstable because of psychoactive drugs. Drugs don’t work on Regenerators, at least not any that I know of. Besides, she is not acting like a drugged-up lunatic. She’s cold and calculated. I wish I could see her face so I could look her up on think.Net, but she’s wearing a scarf that’s covering most of her head.

  Whoever she is, she’s one hell of a quick healer. I’ve seen three bullets go through her head, and the wounds healed up before she could even hit the ground. She’s been popping Manna Bars to keep up with her healing body’s insane energy demands. She’s got enough supplies to keep this up for hours.

  “Okay, OEC. You want to handle the freak? She’s all yours,” an officer yells over the din of bullets.

  “Don’t you try anything, or these hostages are getting their brains splattered,” the Regenerator yells in response.

  I go on think.Net and think about talking to Victor. He accepts the call.

  <<
  >>>Don’t have one. If I could get close enough, I could pin her down easily. The problem is getting that close.

  <<
  >>>We might not be able to get her to run out of ammo completely, but it takes her a while to reload that machine gun.

  <<
  >>>I’ll have to get her to shoot all those bullets too. I’m going to try to draw her fire.

  <<< I know you’re fast, but can you really dodge bullets?

  >>>No, but I can make myself hard to aim at. Is your gun loaded Gavin? I might need you to lay down cover if things go south.

  <<
  >>>It’s not worth the loss in mobility. I’m going to make my move. Be ready.

  Victor lets out a high-pitched yell, then leaps into the center of the square. The Regenerator whirls around to face him, but she hesitates for a moment before she squeezes the trigger of her machine gun. What’s with the hesitation?

  Victor breaks into a gymnastic routine that would embarrass every Gold Medal Olympian that has ever competed. He is a blur of back flips, handstands, summersaults, cartwheels, and moves I can’t even name. He is graceful and magnificent. I’m captivated by his skill, and jealous too. I can never hope to move like that. Human muscles cannot do that no matter how much they’ve been improved. Bullets splatter all around him, but he doesn’t stay in one place long enough for the Regenerator to get a bead on him. This might actually work.

  As soon as that thought occurs to me, it seems to occur to the Regenerator too. She lets go of her machine gun, which stays attached to her by a shoulder strap. Then she digs in her pocket, pulls out a small round object, picks something off of it, and rolls it towards Victor.

  I yell, “Grenade!” at the top of my lungs.

  Victor wasn’t really paying attention to the Regenerator. His routine was more about him moving as quickly as possible, not reacting to her. It takes him a second to realize the bullets have stopped. When he hears me yell, he turns around and leaps as high as he can into the air.

  The grenade detonates below him, but the shockwave knocks him out of the air. He lands with a thud. The Regenerator grabs her machine gun and prepares to fire. I’ve got to act.

  I jump over the barricade and charge forward. I aim my .38 special at her machine gun and squeeze the trigger. The bullet pangs off the metal and knocks the gun out of her hands. I follow up with another shot that goes into her back. She pulls out one of her handguns and whirls around to face me.

  I put a bullet right between her eyes. She staggers back but doesn’t go down, so I shoot the pistol out of her hand. Not to be too full of myself, but I’m a hell of a shot. I learned how to shoot once and now it’s in my muscle memory forever.

  “Enough! It’s over, time to give up!” I yell.

  My shot to the head didn’t slow her down, but it splattered blood all over the scarf wrapped around her head, obscuring her vision. She pulls off the scarf and throws it to the ground. She’s in her mid-thirties and pretty. There are tears streaming down her face. Not your typical terrorist.

  “I can’t stop. You don’t understand,” she pleads.

  As she says that she pulls out her other pistol. I try to shoot that one out of her hands too, but she throws her shoulder in front of my bullet. Now I’m empty.

  “I’m sorry!” she yells.

  Then she points her pistol at me and squeezes the trigger.

  I drop to the ground, and the bullet whizzes by me. I look to Victor, who’s struggling to get back to his feet. He isn’t going to save me. I break into my best approximation of Victor’s gymnastics routine. A summersault and a bullet hits the ground where I was lying, a cartwheel and a bullet hits to my left, jump in the air and a bullet lands at my feet, another cartwheel, and a bullet tears through my thigh leaving a gaping hole in my muscle. I fall back and barely avoid a bullet destined for my head. I scramble back to my feet in time to take a bullet in the shoulder.

  I cover my head to protect from a headshot that never comes. Her pistol clicks empty. She ejects the cartridge from the bottom of the gun and pulls another from a bandolier on her chest. I’m not going to be able dodge anything with two gunshot wounds. I have to go for broke.

  I charge at her the best I can considering the bullet lodged in my thigh. The damage to the muscle is slowing me down. Pain might not matter to me, but I can’t direct muscle tissue that is torn to shreds. I’m closing in though, fifty yards away. She finishes reloading her handgun and turns to aim. I throw my revolver and hit her square in the face, but she barely flinches. She takes pain as well as I do.

  There’s nothin
g I can do but keep charging. I should only take three or four bullets before I get to her. Let’s hope her accuracy fails and she misses everything vital. Right as she’s about to put another bullet in me, Victor yells.

  “Stacey?! My God, what the hell are you doing?” He recognizes her?

  Stacey turns and faces Victor, but she keeps her gun pointed at me.

  “Victor, I’m sorry. You don’t understand. I have to do this,” she says with tears in her eyes.

  Victor has a steady stream of blood flowing down his forehead. He landed hard when that grenade blast hit him. I inch forward towards Stacey while Victor has her occupied.

  “So tell me. Make me understand,” Victor begs.

  “I can’t. They have my family. If I stop, they’ll kill them. They’re watching,” she says and waves her arms towards the crowd of police, onlookers, and reporters.

  When she turns to wave her arm, she spots me inching towards her. I get ready for the bullet, but something else happens.

  “Save my little girl,” Stacey pleads. Then she pulls a small object out of her pocket and pushes the red button on top.

  The explosion rips Stacey to shreds. I push all of the air out of my lungs and signal my abdominal and diaphragm muscles to relax. The shockwave blows me twenty feet through the air. I land and bounce, tearing a chunk of flesh off of what was my good shoulder. I’m lucky that’s the worst of my injuries. If I hadn’t pushed the air out of my lungs, the shockwave would have made them burst.

  I look to the center of the square, it’s become a flaming crater. Victor managed to jump out of the blast radius too, but Stacey is gone, and she took the twenty hostages with her. What did she mean she had no choice? Who has her family?

  Victor helps me to my feet. Medical personnel move towards the crater, but there’s no use. We failed. Everyone is dead.

  “You okay?” Victor asks.

  “If you mean ‘will I survive,’ then yes. I’m far from okay though. What do you think she meant telling us to save her little girl?”

  “I’m going to go find out,” Victor says. He then turns and breaks into a run.

  “Where are you going? What’s going on?”

  “Her name was Stacey Rothschild. Look her up, you’ll figure it out!” he yells back.

  #

  “I really don’t know what to say. I’m guessing you’re already beating yourselves up about this. All I can tell you is that we’ll get them next time,” Captain Murphy says. “This is the nature of our jobs, sometimes we are going to fail, and nobody bats a thousand. Now some losses are worse than others, and this is a particularly bad loss. There are going to be lots of questions from the press, but that’s what I’m here to handle. You two button your lips if anyone asks you anything. There’s nothing to gain by trying to explain yourself. They’ve already decided how they’re going to handle this story, and it’s going to focus on the failure of the OEC. Nobody is saying that’s fair, but that’s how it is,” Captain Murphy finishes. He got a little winded giving that speech. It was a long one.

  “I suppose no one is going to talk about Stacey’s missing family?” Victor asks.

  “I’ve been told the police are still working to verify that fact, and I am not supposed to mention it until they have more information.”

  “More information? The apartment was ransacked and I haven’t been able to raise her husband, Charlie, on think.Net. What else is there to know?”

  “I know that Stacy was a friend of yours, Victor, so I can appreciate your desire to figure this all out. But have you considered the possibility that you’re too close to this issue and not thinking clearly? The police are investigating the kidnapping as one possible explanation, but there are other explanations. Maybe the two of them had a horrible fight and Charlie left the house with the kid and Stacey couldn’t take it and snapped. Or maybe she was already acting strange, and Charlie took the kid so they’d be safe. Maybe he’s not answering your think.Net calls because he’s not ready to talk about all this. And I hate to say it, but maybe they were the first victims of her rampage.”

  “Maybe,” Victor says flatly.

  “That’s why we’ll have to wait and see. I’ve got to go down to the front of the building and feed the vultures. Victor, you should head on home; you need some rest. That’s an order. And leave through the roof. Otherwise you’ll have to face the horde. Gavin, how’s the healing coming?”

  “I’m all right. I’ll be a little slow for a few days, but nothing that’ll keep me from doing my job,” I answer. My thigh is almost bursting from all the blood I rushed to the gunshot wound, which should help the tissue heal more quickly but Captain Murphy never wants the details.

  “Right back up on the horse, that’s the way to do it. You’re a trooper, Gavin. Chin up. Like I said, this is all part of the job. I’m sure you’ll be racking your brain trying to think of what else you could have done, and maybe there was something, but maybe not.”

  “Thanks,” I say for some reason. That had to be one of the worst motivational speeches of all time.

  “I’m going to head home after the unpleasantness with the press. I’ll see you to tomorrow,” Captain Murphy says and walks out the door.

  Victor and I sit silently until the captain is safely out of ear-shot. The silence is killing me. I want to talk first to break the tension, but this is Victor’s tragedy. After a few more pain-staking seconds, he speaks.

  “This wasn’t some lover’s quarrel gone wrong. I know Stacey, and that is not how she would react to anything. She would never hurt innocent people unless she felt like she had no other choice,” Victor says with authority.

  “She used to be part of the OEC?”I ask.

  “Yeah, she quit a couple of years ago to have a family. Got a new job working to make better vaccines or something. She wanted a safer job. That didn’t quite work out,” Victor says and shakes his head.

  “I was thinking about this. There are maybe five Regenerators in the Los Angeles Metro Area that can heal as quickly as Stacey could. Whoever targeted her either got lucky, or they purposefully picked the only one of those five who could dish out bullets just as well as she could take them.”

  “Her time in the OEC is classified. It’s not information that’s easy to come by. Even the people she worked with at Ultracorps didn’t know what she did before. Hell, her husband Charlie barely knew.”

  “Would a detective have access to the file?”

  “I don’t know, maybe,” he says with a shrug. “You’re thinking about that detective aren’t you?”

  “Detective Rose. He’s the one who’s been drugging Differents all over the Metro Area. But that plan didn’t work, so he switched strategies and found a way to make a Different go berserk without also making them insane, by threatening their family.”

  ”Why would Rose do all that? Why would he want Differents to kill random civilians?”

  “Because he’s being paid off. I know for a fact he spends more money than a police officer could possibly make. I just haven’t figured out who is writing the checks.”

  “I’m not going to ask about how you know about Rose’s finances. If we all end up arrested, at least I can have plausible deniability about who has been helping you get out at night. Keep it up. If you find anything, you let me know. I’m going to follow orders and head home.”

  17

  The Timberwolves’ lead was never in danger. Nevertheless, Billy the Kid kept his foot on the gas, ultimately scoring 55 points in the 105-78 victory over the Lakers. When asked if he will take any time to enjoy the championship victory, Jefferson had this to say: “Sure I will, I have a whole month planned where it will be nothing but my wife and baby. After that, I’ll be hitting the gym. My footwork in the post still isn’t quite where it needs to be.” It seems that despite winning his second championship and his second MVP award, Jefferson still seeks improvements to his game. A scary thought for the rest of the league.

  “Timberwolves Win 2nd Championship i
n a Sweep” by Roger Burns, Minneapolis StarTribune

  October 3rd

  Sit-ups: 871

  Pushups: 1129

  Pull-ups: 321

  Running: 15.47 miles, 88.34 minutes total, 5:42 Average Mile time

  Diet: 2,700 Calories, 203 grams protein, 303 gram carbohydrates, 75 grams fat.

  Sleep: 7:55

  Funds: $8,216.45

  Ammo Count: 161 rounds 7N1, 281 rounds 9mm, 12 Stun Grenades, 12 Smoke Grenades, 12 Standard Grenades. Nice to have enough ammo to get some target practice in.

  Activities: Planning.

  Target Notes: Preparing for three possible targets. 25 Male Beta Physically Enhanced, 26 Male Gamma Anthropomorphic Control and a Male Police Detective, Human.

  Test Subject Notes: Experiment Suspended.

  Personal Notes: Regenerator did her job perfectly. Money Man hoped she would kill OEC agents, but they serve the cause better as failures than martyrs. Spoke with Friend on the Force. Concerned he won’t live up to his end of the deal. Will follow tomorrow and confirm, otherwise will need to eliminate.

  Friend on force provided intel concerning “The Beast Slayer” tracking me. Nearly time to make a move against the OEC. Victor is primary target. Met him at a charity event back in my playing days. He was quiet and intense. He is the man to beat. “The Beast Slayer” tracking me presents an intriguing opportunity. Developing a plan to neutralize the OEC while also utilizing Money Man’s latest acquisitions.

  Mental State: Hoping there’s no need to eliminate Friend on the Force. Don’t like killing normal humans, but can be justified as collateral damage in the war for survival. Worried about the rabbit hole that line of reasoning can lead down.

  18

  The tragic events in Beckett’s Square should serve as a sobering reminder of the pitfalls of relying on Differents to combat crime. We outlawed Differents from law enforcement for good reason. Perhaps everyone else has forgotten what happened in the Chicago Metro Area in 1996, but I have not. Captain Freedom had the best of intentions when he attempted to stop the Bruno crime family, just like the OEC agents had good intentions. Good intentions didn’t keep hundreds of thousands of people from dying as a result of Captain Freedom’s actions; good intention didn’t save those people in Beckett’s Square. We need to stop this failed Field Office experiment before the next mistake results in a more costly disaster.