by Lee French
“How far back do you want us to stand until there’s a signal?” one of the SWAT guys asked.
“Stay out of sight if you can, as close as possible. We’re hoping you’re not needed at all, but if you are, we want you close. These people are capable of causing serious damage.”
“Yes, sir.” The SWAT guys looked unconcerned and ready for anything. His dad had been like that: always ready for the unexpected and never showing fear. It had probably been what got Marine Sergeant Edward Mitchell killed in Afhganistan.
The elevator doors opened and the SWAT guys poured out around the two suits, lined up half on each side of the apartment door. When they were ready, they nodded to the suits, and one of them knocked on the door. About two seconds passed before Will answered it.
“Can I help you?” He had a properly confused and suspicious look, Bobby thought. One that said ‘who the heck are you and why are you knocking on my door?’
One of the suits said, “We’d like to speak with Miss Jasmine Milani.”
“And you are?”
Suit Number One pulled a badge wallet out and held it up. When he tried to whisk it away, Will snatched it out of his hand.
Will’s brow furrowed as he examined the badge. “Do you have a warrant?”
“We don’t need a warrant to speak with someone.”
“You do if you want to come inside to do it,” Will told them with a frown. “I know my rights, and hers, too.”
Suit Number Two made a face. “Can you ask her to come to the door, then, please? We’d just like a few words.”
“What’s this about?” Bobby had to admire Will for being obnoxious about all this. He knew they had men with them even though he probably didn’t see them. Would he be this paranoid about the whole thing if they hadn’t been here to warn him?
“We just want to ask her a few questions. Who are you, exactly?”
“Her boyfriend.” Will handed the badge back. “I’ll talk to her. Just a minute.” He shut the door and locked it. Bobby heard the deadbolt clack home.
“Are we going in?” a SWAT guy hissed to the suits.
“Not yet.”
After several long seconds, Jasmine cracked the door open enough to see out without letting them see in. “What do you want?” she breathed, her voice small and scared. Bobby had a feeling it might not be an act.
“Miss Milani, have you been contacted by any of these people?” Suit Number Two held up a piece of paper Bobby couldn’t see. He assumed it had pictures of the four of them.
Taking the paper, Jasmine ran her fingertips over it. “They have eyes like mine.”
Both suits blinked at her. “Ah, yes, Miss Milani, we noticed that, too. Have you seen any of them? ”
“That would be so neat! I’ve never met anyone with eyes like mine before. They’re like Persians’. Mom has eyes a little like this, but not blue and less,” she lifted a hand and made a funny little motion to suggest the unusual tilt her eyes had.
“Miss Milani, can you focus please? This is important.” Suit Number Two tapped the paper again. “These people are dangerous, and we want to help you stay safe. Have you seen any of them?”
“What kind of dangerous? Do they have guns or bombs or something?”
“They may have one or more guns, yes. More importantly, they may come here to try to harm you specifically.” Suit Number One fished a business card out of his pocket. He paused in the act of handing it to her when someone inside sneezed. It sounded too high pitched to be Will. “You have company, Miss Milani?”
“No, I’m a waitress.” Her answer came from so far out of nowhere that Bobby couldn’t help but wonder if she was kinda dumb or kinda brilliant. It made no sense in such a remarkable way that he thought a person would have to stand and stare and forget about everything else until they understood.
“What?” Suit Number One, apparently not as entranced or impressed as Bobby, gave the hand signal.
Bobby did what he could: the little dragon in the hall trilled a warning. At that noise, someone yanked Jasmine out of the door and slammed it shut. The deadbolt locked while the SWAT guys moved. Bobby sent the swarm back into the window. If they needed him in there, he’d be in there.
The SWAT guys looked around for the source of the noise. One aimed his weapon at the doorknob and fired three times. Two shoved the door open. Bobby recognized the signs of Ai’s passage in the form of men shoved off balance for no apparent reason. The door slammed shut.
As the lead SWAT guy kicked the door in again and pointed his rifle straight at Jayce’s chest, Suit Number One staggered back into the shut elevator doors. His phone disappeared from his hand. Suit Number Two dropped to the floor with a grunt of surprise for no apparent reason.
“I wouldn’t,” Jayce said to the SWAT guy, his flesh silvery. He grabbed the barrel of the gun and squeezed it, crunching the metal with an unpleasant creaking, shrieking noise. The SWAT guy pulled the weapon back and tried to kick Jayce in the privates, but he hit solid metal. Jayce grabbed his foot and shoved him back. “We don’t want any Girl Scout cookies, gentlemen,” he told the hallway. “No means no.”
The swarm flowed around Jayce and into the hallway. It must have looked to the SWAT guys like the tiny dragons came from him, somehow. He split the swarm into two halves and surrounded the Suit Twins, focused on their heads and hands so they couldn’t accomplish anything at all. They swiped at the dragons , and it was so ineffectual Bobby wanted to laugh. The dragons made little chirps and trills and growls of amusement in his stead, filling the hallway with a cacophony.
Stepping into the hallway, Jayce paused while a SWAT guy punched him. The guy pulled his hand back with a yelp of pain, while Jayce failed to react. Another fired his weapon. The bullet bounced right off Jayce, though it put a hole in his shirt. With that, the SWAT guys backed away, in both directions.
The one on the floor put up a hand to ward him off and scrabbled backwards. “Stand down,” he shouted at the rest, “stand down and back off!”
“Gentlemen.” Jayce held his fists ready, yet made no move to charge anyone down and use them. “You’re doing the bidding of men who want to perform experiments on us. We have no quarrel with you, or even with them, we just aren’t excited to be treated like lab animals. All of us are patriots; we love this country and have no intention of doing anything against it. So long as it decides not to do anything against us.”
Figuring the fight had, more or less, ended, Bobby let the two suits go and re-formed there in the hallway. Much to his surprise, he still wore the boxer shorts this time. Maybe he just needed time with clothes he felt comfortable in to have them defy physics with him. The boxers fit well enough and had been with him for several hours now.
Movement to the side made him look to see Suit Number One backing away. Suit Number Two, sitting on the floor next to him, jammed something into his thigh. His fingers worked frantically to push the plunger of a needle down.
Jayce stepped in and shoved the suit away while Bobby stumbled back. His fingers managed to grip the needle and pulled it out, then tripped and fell to the floor. He met Jayce’s eyes and they shared a look, a nod, then he blinked a lot. One blink, he heard the sounds of fighting. Two blinks, Jayce growled angrily. Three blinks, he felt a strong breeze. Four blinks, Ai patted his cheek.
“C’mon, Bobby, we have to go. It’s a mess and we have to get out of here. Jasmine and Will are packing their stuff up, Jayce and Alice are helping.”
“Whu’uppen?” Everything felt heavy, and his mouth refused to do what he wanted.
“One of them stuck you with something. In your leg. It knocked you out, but not completely.” She held up the syringe, half-full of clear liquid. “Jayce smashed that guy’s head into the wall, the cops tried to take him down, they retreated. I saw them outside, they’re hanging around by their van. Will and Jasmine have a car, were going to try to get to it with their stuff. Jayce and I will go out first and clear the way, to keep them from stopping any of us.�
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“Alice?” Bobby remembered not seeing her in the apartment when stuff started going down. He caught a whiff of an unpleasant, pungent smell, one his brain couldn’t put its finger on.
Ai sighed. “She’s curled up in a ball in the bathtub. We’re kind of ignoring her until we’re ready to go.”
Bobby put his hands out and tried to lever himself up and get to his feet. “Wha’s in tha’ thing?” He sounded drunk. He felt drunk, too, the kind that came from five too many beers.
“No idea.” Ai shrugged. “I’m an accountant, Jim, not a chemist.”
Bobby frowned. “Who’s Jim?”
“Forget it. It’s a joke. Maybe some water will help.” She happened to have a glass and handed it to him.
He chugged down half the glass. His vision continued to clear along with his head. The smell got stronger, too. To the side, he noticed a a small pile and associated spray of vomit next to the body with its skull smashed and brains splattered across the wall and floor. Oh, that must be the smell.
“Who threw up?”
Ai coughed as she draped his arm over her shoulders and helped him stand. Between her and the wall, it worked. “That was me. I saw him do it.” She averted her eyes from the whole sight and helped him lurch into the apartment.
“Damn.” Just inside the door, he realized he still had two scouts out. He stopped and leaned against the wall, waving Ai off. Each scout had a different view of the parking lot. Picking one, he focused on it. “They’re talking to someone on their radios.”
Ai nodded. “Jayce thinks if we go charge them now, they’ll bring a nuke next time.”
“Jayce also thinks we’re about ready to go, except for Alice.” The man himself stood there with a large bag full of stuff slung over his shoulder. “They’re leaving a lot behind. Jasmine will go squirrel in the car to save space, and we’re hoping you can handle following along as your swarm. Nice job keeping the boxers, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Bobby grinned, now tired more than woozy. “I’ll see if’n I can talk Alice out. And yeah, I can go as dragons.”
“I’m going to try running alongside the car,” Ai said.
“Good deal.” Bobby lurched toward the bathroom. Ai left him there with an encouraging smile. “Alice,” he called in, “we gotta go or they’re gonna take us down.” When she gave no answer, he opened the door and leaned against the frame. He saw here curled up in the bathtub, as promised. “Whatever they stuck me with, it’s a doozy, and they’ll be able to stick you with it, too.”
“I can’t do this,” Alice whispered. Her voice cracked in the middle.
“You got two choices, Alice, you know that, you just don’t wanna deal with it. Choice one, you let ‘em take you. They do whatever they want and you’re just a guinea pig. Choice two, you run for it. We’re running, you can come with us if you want. At some point, we’ll stop running and make a stand and take what rights we’re owed, but we gotta find someplace and the rest of our kind and do it all together.
“One of us on our own is gonna get took. Five of us working together can run. Thirty-five of us, shoot, we can do a lot more’n that. But we gotta get up and get going now if we’re gonna have that chance. Your choice.” He waited, feeling himself recovering with every second that passed. Thank goodness he didn’t get the full dose. “I know you’re shook up. I ain’t gonna let you curl up and die on account of it. We’re in this together, and don’t nobody hate you or nothing.”
She sniffled while he stood there, waiting. He checked on the two scouts, making sure they had no lingering effects from the drug. It seemed they hadn’t been affected at all, which he figured could only be a good thing.
Jayce tapped him on the shoulder and gave him a significant look, then nodded towards the front door. Bobby nodded and held up two fingers. In return, Jayce shook his head and held up one. They needed to get going now, not ten minutes from now. He nodded again.
“Look, Alice, there’s guys out there that’ll be happy to shoot you. They’ll either kill you or knock you down, just ‘cause there’s so many of ‘em. If they just take you down, then you’ll wind up hogtied and poked and prodded again. Guaranteed. The rest of us, we’re not looking for that. We’re gonna go ahead and resist. In order to do that, we gotta leave now, before anyone else comes to back these guys up.”
Standing away from the wall, Bobby found he still needed it to brace himself. He took three steps before Alice croaked out, “Wait. I don’t want to die.”
“Then get your ass up, hon, ‘cause we’re getting while the getting’s not too bad.” He put one foot in front of the other, heaving with the effort.
Behind him, she scrabbled out of the tub and hurried to slip under his arm. “Lean on me,” she murmured. “I’ll get you out.”
“Thanks.” He considered saying something like ‘welcome back’. Walking took too much energy to waste it on something stupid like that, especially when she had to still be raw on the inside. In her position, being the one ripped up about all this, he felt confident it’d piss him off something fierce.
Out in the hallway, they had two full size suitcases and a carry-on stacked up and ready to go, all with wheels. That would make getting them to the car doable, given how that had to happen. “If nobody minds, I’m gonna give my dragons as much time to recover as I can before I make ‘em work. I got two outside, watching for us, they seem fine, but I ain’t keen on finding out the hard way that dragons on this fly drunk.”
Still silver and carrying the one bag again, Jayce nodded. “Works for me. The plan is I go out first and make it clear we’re not surrendering. If any fighting needs to happen, Ai will assist. When we’re clear enough, everyone else goes for the car, it gets loaded up, then we drive away. Ai and Bobby stay there as deterrents until the car is on the road.”
No one stood guard at the elevator on the ground floor, and Jayce left his bag outside the front door. Will picked it up and handed the other suitcase off to Alice, who left Bobby to sit for another minute or two. He took a deep breath. This moment seemed important to him. They’d tangled with cops for the first time, and Jayce killed someone in a fight. After this, anyone they tangled with would leave the kid gloves at home.
He focused on a scout dragon, watching while Jayce walked up to the group of SWAT guys and smiled at them. “We’re leaving. You can assault the apartment as much as you want, but none of us are staying behind there, so you won’t find much. You can try to stop us, even follow us if you want, but I think you already know we’re not going without a fight, and we will kill to stop you from taking us.”
The lead SWAT guy, the one whose weapon got crunched, nodded. “Message received, loud and clear. Westbrook, right?” At Jayce’s nod, the man continued. “We have orders to bring you and the others in and are authorized to use lethal force if necessary to protect ourselves. Just so you understand the position we’re in.”
“Officer, nothing would make me happier than knowing you get to go home to your family tonight, something none of us will be able to do. With that in mind, I strongly recommend you don’t follow us and suggest to your superiors that we’re not worth the effort. I’m not completely certain what I can withstand or not, but I’m willing to bet you’ll need a nuke to take me down, and even that might not work. The others are going to be pretty hard to take down, too. Something to keep in mind.”
“Sir, I don’t think we have much choice here.”
Jayce nodded. “You should listen to him.”
The leader thought about it for a second or two, then nodded. “We won’t follow you, but I can’t guarantee anything else.”
“Just pass on the warning.” Jayce turned and went for the car.
Bobby huffed in relief. At the questioning looks around him, he said, “They’re backing off, at least for now. Let’s git.”
Chapter 7
For three hours, Bobby followed the car from above. They drove on the main highways to Philadelphia, where they could find the next clos
est person on the list. The little car pulled into a parking lot for a small apartment complex and he dropped down to re-form. His belly growled so hard it hurt, and Jasmine bounced out of the car to shove a granola bar into his mouth. She did the same when Ai stopped in front of the car and slumped against it.
Everyone else piled out of the car and produced what remained of the food they’d been eating along the way: pita chips with hummus, vegetable curry, bananas, apples, and a salad. The pile seemed impressive, yet it had been picked over already. Bobby let Ai eat her fill, knowing he could eat nearly anything and not grouse about it. What she left barely took the edge off his hunger for now. He’d find more as soon as he knew what kind of plan they’d cooked up.
“It seems to us,” Alice said, surprising him by speaking up, “that odds are good they’ll ignore us now and go for trying to take the others by surprise.”
Nodding, Bobby stepped into his clothes. “We need to find a base location and split up, get to as many of them as possible as fast as possible.”
“Yes, exactly,” Jayce agreed. “Another of ours lives in that building.” The small complex had two floors and a fence around it. “We’re hoping that not only do we not have another run-in here, but that we might be able to crash here for the night. If you can keep things in a pocket on you come morning, we can split up more.”
“I’m good with that. My guess is I gotta feel like it’s mine for it to stay with me, or something like that. Hoping, anyway. Who’s gonna do the intro?” They all looked at him. Of course he should do it, since he hadn’t been around to veto the idea. He sighed and nodded, too tired to resist. “Yeah, fine, okay. Jasmine, you’re harmless looking, you come with me.” He scraped himself up off the asphalt and trudged that way.
Jasmine squealed with delight, like she’d been chosen first for dodgeball. The fence had been designed to keep out casual riffraff. Bobby had no trouble with it. He’d hopped fences worse than this when he was fourteen and could handle this one with a hand tied behind his back. Being ready to conk out for the night barely slowed him down.
