by David Jobe
And here he stood, a lone guardian against that trembling march on the horizon. True, he had his brothers in blue, but they were as ill-equipped to handle this, as they were the rash of suicides that had taken the city by storm. Funeral homes and churches were finding more and more business, while the police still struggled to keep up. Lanton knew he needed to start building a team, but he had no idea where to start. He still wrestled with if he should accept Altered or not. Well, more Altereds. He had to be fair. He had been infected. If that was what he called it. Infected. He would have to wait until he heard back from the Medical Examiner on what had been in that can. Then he might be able to find the right term to label his affliction.
Thinking of the Medical Examiner, he remembered that he had yet to turn his phone back on. He had told himself that it would have been impolite to turn the phone back on, but deep down he knew it was something different. This small apartment in this modern day mage tower had felt like home. A home he hadn’t known in years. He didn’t want the outside world to have even the slightest foothold on this place. Not that he was even sure he would be invited back. He hoped he would, but he had never been very good at reading women in that regard. Some had treated him just the same and then vanished like a thought in the wind.
He sighed, pulling his feet off the railing. He had left his phone off for far too long. He would need to turn it back on. Only he still could not bring himself to turn it on here. After a few moments of consideration, he decided that he would turn it back on when he got back to his car. Another twenty minutes wouldn’t send the world over the brink. He got up and slipped inside, careful to ease the door closed, latching it, even though they were on the seventeenth-floor, he reminded himself that there were people who could fly now. It wasn’t unreasonable caution.
He stepped over to Eleanor and planted a soft kiss on her cheek. She murmured something and he made his apologies, explaining that he needed to get back to work. He whispered that he hoped to see her again tonight and she gave him a sleepy smile. He hoped that meant she did too, but he didn’t want to press the issue.
When he finally got to his car, he sat with his phone in hand for a few minutes. With a sigh, he turned it on. After the loading screen finished, and he typed in his code, the phone began to ring. “Really?” He gave another sigh and answered it. “Lanton.”
“Geez, buddy. Where have you been?” A familiar but as of yet implacable voice joked.
“Heaven.” The shadow of which rested across the hood of his car. “Who is this?”
“It’s Grimm.”
Lanton smiled. Detective Grimm had been his partner for years. A good man who had lucked out and got a posh job in an area up north that didn’t see the drama that downtown did. “The case, or you?” It was an old joke, shared between friends from a bygone era.
“Why not both?” Grimm gave a soft chuckle. “So, um. I just got off the phone with the captain, and he says that all Altered cases need to run by you or something.”
“That so?” It was news to Lanton, but considering, it made sense. It also meant there was a good chance that the hits would not stop coming.
Grim chuckled. “They didn’t tell you, did they?”
“They did via you.” Lanton shook his head and started up his car. “What’s the case.”
“Invisible peeper who got blown away by said peepee. Only witness is the shooter, but she claims he appeared out of nowhere. Just materialized, though she said she could hear him. Oh, and smell him. Gah.”
Lanton laughed. “Alright. Give me the address. I am on my way.”
Grimm gave him the address.
“Coffee?” Lanton felt like he was going to need coffee. Only seemed polite to offer Grimm some.
“Sure, and lots of it.”
“Same?”
“Ain’t nothing changed by the locale, my friend. Hurry up. I’ve been sitting on this corpse for a bit, and I’m guessing he stank before he died.”
“Lovely. On my way.” Lanton hung up. As he did, he saw that he had a couple of voice messages. Four to be exact. Three were from Grimm begging him to answer the phone. The fourth had been from Carrie Anne.
“Detective.” Her voice the barest of whispers on the phone. “I just heard back from my friend at the CDC. Someone stole the sample. He had been able to get some details before it went missing, but none of it is good. Whatever this thing is, it is in no way natural. He said that the stuff was crafted in the same manner you would imagine cancer if it had been weaponized. While cancer cells create more cancer cells by destroying good cells, this stuff seeks out normal cells and modifies them. It looks like it is rewriting DNA somehow. What’s more is that it causes the mind to react in ways that mirror clinical depression, paranoia and borderline schizophrenia. Whoever built this, I… I don’t want to ever meet them. Also, he couldn’t be sure of it, but he believes this…this virus. It’s communicable. It’s not airborne, at least he didn’t think so. But it is transmittable through body fluids.” She gave a brief pause that sounded like a hushed sob. “Oh, and an hour after telling me this. They found him dead in his home from an apparent suicide. Be careful, Lanton.”
Lanton pulled the car over to a parking lot in front of a fast food chain that had not yet opened. In his rearview, he could still see the tower jutting up along the skyline. How could he have been so stupid? He had put Eleanor’s life at risk. He had no idea what these changes had done to him, yet he had gone on like it had been just a cold. He would have to tell her. He would have to sit her down and be open with her. She deserved that at least. He debated turning around and going to do it now. That would be quite the wake-up call. He shook his head and put the car back into traffic. He would go see her tonight after her shift. He had already committed to checking out Grimm’s scene, and he couldn’t put that cat back in the bag if he wanted to. A couple hours delay wouldn’t make a difference. Plus, he needed time to think about just what he planned to say.
Yes, a couple hours delay would be best.
Chapter Eighteen
Holding the Grenade
“I don’t understand why I have to come along.” Drew crossed his arms over his chest and sunk deeper into the passenger seat of his father’s Chrysler. Bright green readouts lit the interior like they were space travelers headed for a distant planet. Clouds rolled overhead in the outside world, but in his father’s car, Drew always felt safe away from the world. The scent of cinnamon and clove filled the spacious car, the cinnamon wafting from the tree air freshener that hung from the rear-view mirror, the clove drifting up from the ashtray. His father smoked, but only when he drove alone.
“Because it would do you good to see what the justice system is like. Too many people have this skewed image of it from television shows and movie dramas. Kids your age need to get a healthy feel for how the real world works.” His father was suited up in what he referred to as his power armor. A gray pinstripe suit with a muted blue tie. Black shoes that narrowed at the end to somehow resemble a blade or one of those things you chipped off paint with. Even on the floorboard, they shone with the interior light off its smooth polish. Outside the window, a slight rain obscured the highway, the wiper-blades moving too slowly for Drew’s preference. Thunder echoed in the distance, though Drew hadn’t seen any flashes.
“You know I don’t want to be a lawyer, right?” He fiddled in his seat; his own suit feeling like it had been crafted with Brillo pads and children’s tears. Even the socks had opted to torture him, clinging to his calves like two green and black monsters hell bent on devouring his foot in one chomp. His black shoes lacked the weapon feel or the impressive shine. Try as he had the night before, he added shoe polish, and then removed it, only to be met with the same dull shine as had been on it before the application of polish.
“Really?” A smirk played across his father’s lips. “I don’t recall you ever saying that before.” He kept his eyes on the road but managed a sidelong glance.
“Funny,” Drew said. The city
slipped by, moving from green well-manicured lawns to a sort of hodgepodge of buildings that looked to Drew like playsets from different themes slapped together by an uninspired child. Then they slipped past the outside loop onto the road leading downtown, which would bring them past where he had staged his little jailbreak.
His father gave a muffled chuckle. “You never had said why you didn’t want to be a lawyer though.”
“I don’t want to have to defend people who are guilty.” They drove by the spot where Miss Fire had died, and he could see nothing to mark it other than his memory. “Or go after people I know are innocent. I know you have had cases where you had to do both.” The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but the wiper’s speed now annoyed him in the opposite direction. Every other time now they made a horrible screeching noise as they tried to clear an already dry window.
His father gave a sigh and a nod. “True. And though that part is troublesome at times, there are rewards hidden within.”
“Like what?”
“Like helping to give someone who has messed up, a second chance, or a third. It’s never too late to help someone off the dark path they have found themselves on. Sometimes all it takes is someone willing to speak up for the person. And of the few times I went after someone I thought was innocent, it turned out that most of those weren’t. It’s a tough line to walk, but I hope you can see the nobility in it.”
Drew shrugged. “I guess. Just not what I want to do.”
“You want to build video games, right? Those violent little affairs with guns and cuss words.” His tone disapproving and seasoned with distaste.
Drew bowed his head. “No. I don’t want to do that anymore.”
“What do you want to do, son?”
“I don’t know. Just not that.” The rain had begun to pick up, pelting the window now.
His father risked another sidelong glance. “What changed your mind?”
Drew thought for a few moments, unsure what to say. He couldn’t tell the truth. “I read somewhere that it was all math. Like lots and lots of math.”
“I thought you liked math?”
Drew chuckled. “I am good at it. I don’t like it. I like being better at it than the other kids in school. I don’t want to fill my days with it. No way.”
“Well, what do you like to do that you are good at?”
“I like to create things.” Drew clamped his mouth shut. That lingered far too close to an admission. “Dad,” he moved to change the subject, “If I do figure out what I want to do, and it involved opening my own store, would you help me raise the money?” He scratched at his legs, trying to dislodge the mouths of the socks from their tight grip on his already pained legs.
His father gave one of those smiles that Drew lived for. The ones that said he found pride in what Drew had done or said. “Of course. Your mother and I have built quite the nest egg over the years. I think we could shoulder footing you a loan. As long as we became silent partners in your venture.” He gave Drew a wink.
Drew smiled. “But what if I was in trouble and needed a lot of money fast?”
His father seemed to ponder it and when he spoke his tone had become less joking and more serious. That tone parents get when your simple joke stumbles headlong into what psychologists and nosey people liked to call ‘teachable moments’. “Are you in trouble, Drew?”
Drew shook his head, his hair flailing about his forehead with each exaggerated movement. He had washed and combed it, but the suit had started to make him sweat and his once smoothed out hair edged toward unruly and near clownish. “Purely hypothetical.”
His father again took his time to ponder it. “If it was the last option to help you, then yes. Absolutely. You are our son, and we would drain the banks dry if it meant keeping you safe.”
Drew knew that while his father was willing to foot the bill, he doubted it would be such an easy sell with his mother. She loved the lifestyle and made no effort to hide it. She had been keeping up with the proverbial Joneses long after the Joneses had fallen away into the well-to-do distance. She wouldn’t part with it. Not without a great deal of struggle and complaining. He didn’t bring it up though. Pointing out his mother’s love of status had earned him a detention for three days last time. “I appreciate it, Dad.”
Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the conversation, Drew reached forward and clicked on the radio. Well, after several tries of deciphering which bit and bauble actually turned the radio on. His hope that it would have been some delightful song about shaking butts or slinging dough fell onto the sharp sword of a special bulletin. The reporter, a female with a voice that sounded like everything was of the utmost urgency explained that members of Congress were meeting to discuss the recent events in Indianapolis. The world as a whole had yet to decide if this was some sort of weird plague, the announcement of the end times, both, or just a sudden spike in our evolution. The only consensus was that it had to be addressed and fast. The solutions being pondered lingered on medieval to draconian, with few landing on any space in between. Drew clicked off the radio and found himself sinking again into the plush leather seats.
“Dad. Do you think Congress will do some of what that lady was saying?” He loosened his paisley tie, sure that it had become the cause of his sudden feeling of being hot.
His father gave him that look Drew had come to understand the basics of. His father sat at the crossroads of a decision and had yet to decide on which path had just become required. He could take the route of the dad that eased the bubbling fears of his offspring, or he could go with the truth and prepare his spawn for the possibilities of unpleasantness. Drew had come to call those decisions ‘Friend or Father’.
His father decided on the latter. “Honestly, son. History is full of horror stories about how people act when something new and strange comes up. Every time we as a species seem to have gone beyond that point, something rattles us again and we revert to these rash and impulsive things. We have killed over religion, race, sex, sexual preference, and each time we overcome one unfounded fear, we create a new one. I think the world is in for a rough time. A time where bad people with loud mouths and horrible ideas will convince the public to set aside their reason again.”
They had pulled off the freeway and had come to a stop at a stoplight for the off ramp. His father turned to look at him fully now. “The only difference this time is that I think the power of this particular minority will not be one so easily cowed. If wiser minds do not prevail, there will be another blemish in our history marred with blood and bad decisions. “
Shivers ran up Drew’s spine. “And do you think these Altered will survive?”
His father stared straight forward. “I think those poor people have been handed live grenades.”
Drew nodded but found he didn’t know what to say to that. His father had hit the nail on the head. He himself held a live hand grenade. Throw it, and people got hurt. Hold onto it, and people got hurt, only this time people close to him.
Outside the storm had picked up, lashing at the windows with such a fever that the windshield wiper struggled to keep up. The tall towers of downtown loomed above them, filled with what he could only assume were thousands of eyes staring down at him. Drew sat in silence chewing his bottom lip. He didn’t want to be a villain. He wanted to be noble like his dad. Problem was that he couldn’t find a way clear of this particular grenade blowing up in his face.
Chapter Nineteen
Deciphering the Clues
Chris awoke with a pounding headache and a sour taste in his mouth. Throwing aside the covers he put his feet on the floor and tried to keep the contents of his stomach from ending up on the cold floor in front of him. The dream, or vision, or whatever it was called had been different this time. This one had felt less metaphorical and more to the point. Even with that, he found himself at a loss for what to do next. Through squinted eyes he peered out the window, hoping to get some bead on what time it was. The yellow light creeping across the floor indica
ted it was mid-morning.
He glanced at the hallway and found the gurney gone. That seemed to stir his mind up even more. The gurney had been there in the vision. Of course, it had also held the body of Silvia. He doubted that he would have slept through her murder, so it left more questions on his mind. He tried to remind himself that he had been a pretty good detective before, and while he may have addled some of his cells, surely he could find a way to smack two of them to figure this out.
A shadow fell across the floor from the doorway. Chris looked up to see Silva standing there with a smile on her face and a coffee cup in her hands. The coffee cup looked liked one from the outside and not the white Styrofoam ones that they let you use here. “Good morning,” her tone sweet, “I just thought-“ She cut herself off mid-sentence, her pretty eyes narrowing. “Are you high?”
Chris stared at her for a long moment. “I feel like shit.”
The smile vanished as if it had never been there. “Are you high?” This time the words spilled out from between clenched teeth.
“I don’t know. Probably not anymore.” He had thought about lying, but after years of being a cop, he knew people who could detect the slightest hint of bullshit from a mile off. Silva had been one of those from the start. She’d have made a great cop. Plus, he knew he had to tell her about the dream, and he had already told a room full of people that he couldn’t see them without the drugs. She was smart enough to put two and two together. Hell, Clyde, who had fewer brains than the horse Chris assumed he had been named after could have reasoned that one out.
“You stay right there.” Before Chris could reply, she marched out of the room. For a few tense moments, Chris imagined her bringing in an orderlies to rough him up, or a doctor to demand he be thrown in this place’s version of solitary confinement. She returned not long after without the coffee, but without anyone in tow. Arms crossed, she glared down at him. “Isaac is enjoying his coffee.”
