Paranormals (Book 2): We Are Not Alone

by Andrews, Christopher

  “Yes, Mister Cooper, yes,” Falkenberg soothed him. Speaking louder than necessary for Cooper’s benefit, he said to the guards, “Stand back from the door.”

  The guards did as they were ordered. Michael heard one of them sigh, and wondered how many times they’d been through this. How many DA reps and PCA reps had been here before them? What about meal times? For that matter, what was Cooper doing for toilet facilities?

  Falkenberg retreated with the guards, then called out, “All right, Mister Cooper, we’re all standing back. Lieutenant Takayasu is going to pull the door open now. Is that all right?”

  “... yeah. Yeah, come on in.”

  Exchanging one final glance with Mark, who rolled his eyes, Michael pulled the door open, and the smell told him exactly what Cooper was using for his toilet needs.

  When you’re paranoid, I guess a mop bucket makes an acceptable chamber pot.

  Cooper looked awful. He was unwashed, unshaven, and appeared to have lost about ten pounds since Michael last laid eyes on him. Cooper must’ve had a hard time while on the run.

  “Yeah,” Cooper said, his voice still a little muffled, coming from within his bubble. “Yeah, you’re the guy. You were in charge at my apartment complex.”

  It wasn’t really a question, but Michael still answered, “Yes, I was. And I was here when you escaped.”

  “Who’s that with you?

  “My partner, Shockwave. You should recognize him as well.”

  “Yeah. He’s the one who fell in the pool.”

  Mark grumbled, and Michael made damn sure to keep all traces of humor out of his voice when he said, “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Cooper said. “Where’s the other guy?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The other guy. The one who’s always in the news.”

  Mark snorted, but his tone was surprisingly civil when he said to the prisoner, “Powerhouse ain’t with us, Cooper. We didn’t know you wanted him, too.”

  But Cooper waved that away. “No, not him. I mean, he’d be okay, I guess. He’s in the news and he was there before it all started, but I’m talking about the other guy. The one who did this.” He pointed at the remains of his ear.

  Michael cocked his head. “Vortex?”

  “Yeah, him. The superhero guy. He’s not here?” Agitated, Cooper called out, “Warden! I said I wanted the superhero, too!”

  Remaining out of Cooper’s view, Falkenberg said, “I passed along your request, Mister Cooper. But I warned you at the time that it probably would not go over well. Remember?”

  Michael looked a question over to Falkenberg, who nodded; he was telling the truth.

  Under his breath, Mark said, “I guess Brunn’s only takin’ the vigilante-turned-Earth’s ambassador bit so far.”

  Michael nodded, then said to Cooper, “I’m sorry, we honestly did not know you wanted to see Vortex. I guess the two of us will have to do ... unless you’d like to call this whole thing off and move to a regular cell?”

  Cooper held up his hands in surrender; Michael could see that they were shaking. “No, no, it’s fine. I’ll ... I’ll take what I can get. I can’t be moving around.” Cooper drew a deep breath, presumably to settle his nerves or harden his resolve. “Okay, come on in and close the door.”

  “Mister Cooper,” the warden said, still hanging back out of sight, “the room is too small. They can’t join you in there unless you drop your force field. This was per your request, remember.”

  “Yeah, okay, I got it.”

  Huffing one more breath, Cooper dropped his shield. No sooner had his feet touched the floor then he moved as far from the doorway as he could. He waved Michael and Mark inward with impatient hands.

  With one final glance back to the warden, who offered a tired smile in return, Michael stepped into the room.

  Mark joined him, closing the door behind them; the only light came from a pair of incandescent bulbs above. Not a second had passed before Mark said, “Cooper, you better make this quick. We don’t plan to stand here and breathe your shit all day, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Hey,” Cooper snapped, “you think this is fun for me, punk?!”

  Before they could really get going at one another, Michael held up a hand in each of their faces. To Mark, he said, “Shush,” which received a shrug. To Cooper, he said, “Mister Cooper, my partner’s delivery aside, he has a point. We were pulled away from an extremely important assignment to be here, apparently at your insistence. What do you say we get to it so that maybe we can all get out of this closet, all right?”

  Cooper’s gaze dropped to the floor, and he looked more miserable than ever. “Sure, sure. I just want this to be over.”

  “The warden said you know something about how the rogues have been escaping?”

  Cooper steeled himself one last time, then said, “Yeah. We haven’t been ‘escaping’ — at least not me and the other two who were with me that day. Someone let us out.”

  When Cooper paused, presumably for melodramatic effect, Mark guffawed. Michael let that slide and said, “Yes, Mister Cooper, that’s been one of our foremost theories. Can you tell us anything about who freed you?”

  “Not directly, no. I never actually saw him—”

  Mark muttered, “Oh, for Christ’s sake ...”

  “That’s not what I mean!” Cooper said in a rush. “I don’t mean ... what I mean is, he never ...” He paused to collect himself, and when Michael started to interject, he raised a finger to the Lieutenant. “I’m trying to explain. We were in the detention cells, and then all of a sudden my door unlocked itself and my head gadget popped off. When I stepped out, the guards were down. We had nothing to do with that — they were already down before any of us got loose. The other two took off, so ... I guess it seemed like a weird blessing at the time, so I ran for it.” His eyes dropped again. “Sorry about rolling over you guys on my way out. I was just trying to get away.”

  “That it?” Mark groused. “Someone let you loose, and you didn’t see nothin’? That’s what you wanted to tell us?”

  “No,” Cooper fired back, but without much force this time. “If that’s all it was, I’d probably be halfway to Canada or Mexico by now. But it got a lot creepier after I got loose.” To Michael, he said, “Am I right that a lot of the rogues who’ve escaped have been causing trouble? I mean, instead of running or hiding, they’re raisin’ all sorts of hell?”

  Michael thought about that for a moment. When he’d last paid close attention to the escaping-rogues situation, that had been the primary issue: Unexplained prisonbreaks. Once he met his first alien face-to-face ... well, he’d had other priorities. But now that he thought about it, there had been a lot of PCA traffic showing up on his phone over the past day or so, notices that he’d scrolled past in favor of the glowing situation which took him through the White House and up into the Montana mountains.

  “Are you suggesting, Mister Cooper, that you have some knowledge of what’s been going on after the prisonbreaks as well?”

  “Yeah, I do. I can’t speak for all the others, I guess, but I know what’s been happening to me, and trust me, kid, it ain’t been fun.” He licked his lips. “I was all right at first, stole some clothes to cover this ugly prison outfit, stole a little food from a convenience store. But when I got my hands on a some money and was fixin’ to sneak out of town, I got ... interrupted. By a voice.”

  “A voice ...”

  Cooper nodded with vigor. “Yeah. I couldn’t see him. He sounded like he was right there, sometimes in front of me, sometimes behind me, sometimes above me, but I couldn’t see him. He wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept pushing me, pushing me to do things — he said he didn’t want me hiding, that he wanted me to ‘make noise’ and ‘pull down fire’ and other weird shit like that. And when I didn’t keep it up, he’d show up again and start threatening me ... he ...” He shook his head in frustration. “Do you get it? Do you understand? He forced me to keep causing trouble. He wouldn’t
leave me alone.” Cooper’s voice trembled with barely contained emotion as he added, “You guys gotta help me. Please.”

  What an awkward moment. The man must have had some sort of psychotic break from all the stress — he simply couldn’t handle everything that had happened to him in such a short time. Michael didn’t know how much of this he’d shared with the other officials before they arrived, but if he spilled even half of it, Michael took it as an indication of just how desperate the PCA was to solve this prisonbreak mystery that they had given in to Cooper’s demands at all.

  “Ooooo ... kaaay, then,” Mark slurred, his tone dripping sarcasm all over the concrete floor. “Hearin’ voices. That ‘force’ you to do bad things. Right.” He whistled. “Mike, this guy’s obviously a coupla beers short of a six-pack. Can we get outta here now?”

  “You don’t think I considered that, punk? That it’s all in my head? That I’ve gone crazy? Yeah, I admit, it crossed my mind. But then I considered this: Crazy didn’t turn off your gadgets. Crazy didn’t kill those guards and open the doors for us. And crazy ain’t contagious, so if it’s all in my head, why are rogues attacking big, high-profile corporate buildings instead of gettin’ the hell outta Dodge when they’ve already been caught once before? So, yeah, you think I’m nuts, fine ... but how do you explain all the rogues bustin’ out but stickin’ around? Can you?” He glared at Mark a moment longer, then turned to Michael. “And besides, in this freaky world we live in now, is it really that hard to imagine some guy being able to turn invisible? Huh?”

  Feeling a little slow on the uptake and appropriately chagrined, Michael answered, “No, Mister Cooper, I suppose it’s not that hard to imagine.”

  “You suppose right.”

  “So what is it, Mister Cooper, that you want from us?”

  “I want this guy caught, that’s what I want! I want him off my back so that I can get some goddamn sleep, that’s what I want!”

  “Okay, I can understand that. You don’t want to keep looking over your shoulder. Fine. That makes sense. A new friend of ours recently said the same thing.” Michael held his hands up in a show of helplessness. “But you aren’t giving us much to go on, Mister Cooper.”

  Cooper was back to looking miserable. “Don’t you think I know that? I don’t know what to do about him. If I did ... well, like I said, I’d be a long way off by now. You guys are the experts ...”

  “Mister Cooper, as far as that goes, any agent of the PCA is an ‘expert.’ Why did you ask for us?”

  Cooper shrugged. “You’re the ones who put me in my place when I ... when I was acting like an asshole punk. You and the Power guy and the superhero. You’re the good guys, right?”

  Michael cocked his head noncommittally.

  “Look, I don’t know who to trust. You guys were around before this all went south, you guys are the closest thing to real good guys I could think of, so I asked for you. It was that, or wait for the invisible guy to follow me in here.” He offered a weak shrug, and it made him look even more beaten down, as he repeated, “So I asked for you.”

  “Why do you believe he would follow you in here?” Michael asked.

  Cooper guffawed, and it bore the hint of a sob. “Christ, he followed me everywhere. I couldn’t get away from him. He’d be quiet for an hour, maybe a coupla hours, and I’d think that maybe it was over, you know? Maybe I finally did enough stuff that he was finished with me. Then he’d say something from right behind me or right above me and scare the shit outta me, and start bitching that I wasn’t makin’ enough noise. He kept finding me, didn’t matter where I was or what I was doing.” He chuckled without humor. “First he told me that if I didn’t do what he said he ‘wouldn’t need me’ — probably kill me, I guess. But as the day dragged on, that started not soundin’ so bad ... and I suppose he figured that out, ‘cause he started sayin’ other stuff, weird stuff that sounded worse ...”

  “Where do you think he went? When he got quiet, I mean.”

  “I don’t know, but after I saw that other rogues were out raisin’ hell, I got to wondering if maybe he was over there with those poor souls — you know, actin’ like the little devil on someone else’s shoulder for a while.”

  “Did he tell you to attack the PCA way station?”

  “No, no, that was all me. I figured it was my best chance of gettin’ you guys’ protection. Sorry about the trouble I caused there, but I didn’t know if he really was still watching me, so I had to make it look good, like I was trying to make more noise and got caught.”

  Mark cut in. “I got a question. You said that when this guy figured out his ‘won’t need ya’ leverage wasn’t workin’ anymore, he started makin’ ‘weird’ threats. Like what?”

  Cooper shook his head. “It’s hard to remember exactly, ‘cause a lot of it didn’t make sense ...”

  “Why?”

  “Well for one, he talks funny.”

  “Funny how?”

  “Well, like the whole ‘making noise’ and ‘pulling down fire’ stuff. I wasn’t even sure what he meant at first. It’s like he doesn’t really understand English. Which figures, I guess, with his accent.”

  Michael perked up, and he sensed Mark doing the same. “What kind of accent?”

  Cooper shrugged. “I don’t know, just ... you know, not American.”

  Mark prodded. “Did it maybe sound Polish?”

  “Or Russian?”

  Cooper mulled that over for a moment before answering, “No ... I mean, I don’t think so. I’ve heard plenty of Russkies talk in the movies, but, you know, that’s just the movies.”

  Michael confirmed one last time, “But he definitely had a foreign accent? And his lexicon was skewed?”

  When Cooper got a What the hell is a lexicon? look on his face, Mark hurried to clarify. “You’re sayin’ the guy’s choice of words didn’t seem right, right?”

  “Yeah. I mean, no, it didn’t seem right at all. It was all jumbled up, like ...” Cooper saw the look they exchanged, and it excited him. “Wait, is that helpful? Do you think you might know who the guy is?”

  Maintaining thoughtful eye contact with his partner, Michael answered, “Not necessarily. But we’ve recently come into contact with a group of individuals with unusual accents, and who, we’re led to understand, sometimes phrase things in a funny way.” Then, more to Mark than Cooper, he said, “Seems like another awfully big coincidence, doesn’t it?”

  Mark nodded very slowly. “They were pretty freaked out over that thing Vortex found, whatever the hell it was. And Mister Shine did say it meant they weren’t alone, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. He did.”

  Cooper watched their interplay like a tennis match, even though he didn’t understand it, waiting for them to reach some conclusion.

  Finally, Michael shifted his attention back to the inmate. “Mister Cooper, I think I have ... well, it’s too early to call it a plan, but definitely an idea. But listen: You’ve said that all you want is to see this guy caught, to get him off your back, right?”

  Cooper nodded with vigor. “Hell yes!”

  “That’s good to hear, Mister Cooper. Because this guy, whoever he is ...” Or whatever he is, he added privately, “... he’s been running rings around the PCA for days now. But if you’re willing to take some risks, I think we might finally be able to catch him.”

  Cooper started to speak, had to swallow first, took a moment ... then asked, “What sort of risks?”

  VORTEX, POWERHOUSE, AND THE TAALU

  Six ships down, Steve thought, one left to go.

  Steve held in a heavy yawn as Callin flew him to the final ship. They had spent the entire night and through the dawn inspecting what felt like every inch of the hulls of the Taalu vessels, and he was really starting to feel how long it had been since he last slept.

  After the hubbub over finding the beacon attached to Refuge One, followed by the frustrating orders that drew Takayasu and Shockwave away from this momentous occasion (man, Shockwave had
pitched a fit over that — not that Steve blamed him!), Callin had carried Steve high into the night air to perform a more thorough UV scan of the fleet ...

  ... and sure enough, Steve had seen a suspicious flash that Callin could not. Just a twinkle, a mere fraction of the bright pulsing beacon — not even as bright as a regular camera flash — but it was there.

  Now, six inspections later, they had found four of the smaller beacons scattered across the various ships, each about one-tenth the size of the original and still only visible in the ultraviolet spectrum, and all of which flashed only intermittently (hence, the long inspection). Larr had proposed they were backup devices, placed just in case the primary beacon was discovered, and probably counting on the Taalu enjoying a false sense of security upon not finding any more of the larger variety.

  Steve yawned again as he and Callin landed on top of the last ship. Callin noticed and said, “I’m sorry for not taking into consideration that your people require more sleep than mine. My people generally sleep ...” He paused as he did a moment’s cross-lingual calculation. “... about five hours after every forty.”

  Steve grunted. “Less sleep, and only every other day. That’s awesome. You people rock.”

  Callin looked baffled. “Excuse me?”

  Steve chuckled — it was one of the few times since Callin’s language imprint that Steve had managed to throw him for a loop. “Sorry. Idiom. It’s a compliment. It means I’m impressed.”

  As they moved along the hull, Steve sweeping his gaze back and forth, Callin said to him, for the third time, “Thank you again for helping us with this.”

  Steve waved that away. “Don’t worry about it, the least I could do, really. With everything you’re willing to—”

  Callin laughed, giving Steve another glimpse of his all-molar teeth.

  “What? What’d I say?”

  Callin shook his head, Taalu-style. “It seems that we are each constantly insisting that the other has offered greater service.”