He coughed and rubbed at his nose when a pungent waft of chemical devoured something his brain had translated into the fragrance of fried fish. Damn, Darwin. Aaron found himself smiling. I suppose I am a cliché after all.
A random turn brought him down a street bordered on one side by Sanctuary Park, a one-sector reserve of nature amid the steel and glass. It was a wonder how land developers had allowed a five-mile-square of ‘not buildings’ to exist. He collapsed on an empty bench a few paces away from the sidewalk. It faced in the same direction he’d been walking, allowing equal views of the city to his left and the park to the right. The dark expanse of green held his attention for several minutes with the odd sensation of being watched, though a subtle glance around revealed no one in sight. Some areas felt like that; the occasional flake at Division 0 claimed it meant spirits wandered about.
He’d tried to go nosing around the archives after the incident, looking for any solid information on spirits, ghosts, or an afterlife, but as a wanted ex-cop, using his official ID to log in had to be perhaps the dumbest thing he’d ever done. He hadn’t seen anything but thousands of reports that sounded like bullshit. He had located one with some promise, from an I-Ops agent named Wren that detailed a ‘wraith’ terrorizing a small girl, but he’d only read three lines of it before a tactical squad surrounded the net café. If he somehow wound up surviving the confrontation with Talis, and (more unlikely) wound up no longer a wanted man, he’d have to find that woman and ask her if she could contact Allison.
Chirps and tweets lingered in the dark leaves from birds afraid to show themselves, assuming they existed at all. He smirked at the shifting branches. Minutes’ worth of concentrating brought him no closer to knowing if the birds were real, synthetic, or mere sounds played to create ‘natural ambiance.’ At this hour, the place looked deserted. Anyone here would be deeper in the cover of trees, selling drugs or sex―or stealing them. The park comprised the centerpiece of a local councilwoman’s revitalization project and had too many eyes on it for serious criminals to come anywhere close.
Aaron examined his fingernails. Two enormous, augmented meatheads in one day. What else could happen?
Hands stuffed in his coat pockets, Aaron fidgeted with the nametag. The metal still felt cold. Touching it reawakened the frustration at Lucky’s uselessness. He’d gotten no closer to finding Talis than he had been earlier. Well, perhaps the name Rakshasi was a gain, albeit a tiny one. He debated trying to make contact with some of his old buddies, more specifically Tactical Officer Vernon Ridge. The man had been his first partner after his training officer. If anyone still in Division 0 would believe him, it had to be Ridge. His new partner though… she could be a problem; he didn’t know a thing about her.
They might be able to find something about who this Rakshasi person was in the police system, though Division 0 officers looking for an aug with a suspicious background would raise red flags.
Aaron debated if he should ask his old friend to take a risk like that. His wife’s nametag slid between his fingers inside the pocket, an absentminded thing to do while thinking. The too-young girls passed by, stopping a short distance away to lean on the side of a Nippy-Nom convenience store. He settled into the bench, observing people pass back and forth on the street, mostly unemployed gang types… or those who looked soon to become such. A group of more well-dressed men he remembered seeing in the bar came stumbling along, drunk and warily avoiding the trio of armed teens. He couldn’t help but chuckle at the exchange. The girls were as worried about being attacked by men as the ‘norms’ were about the ‘gang punks’ robbing them. A shootout waited one ill-timed sneeze away, but two groups from opposite ends of the economic spectrum passed with slow movements and uneasy stares.
“This seat taken?” A woman’s voice came from above and behind, to his left.
Her English accent caught his attention. He glanced back at the white-haired woman who’d given him the death stare an hour ago. She still didn’t look happy, but her hostility had faded to resignation.
“Looks open.” He returned his gaze to the sparsity of pedestrians.
She glided around the edge with feline grace, gathered her coat, and sat. “Are you awright?”
“Feelin’ a bit like a dead duck,” he muttered.
An almost-smile formed on her lips. “You poor old sot.”
“I’m not that old.” He ran his thumb back and forth over metal lettering. “A bit surprised you stopping ’ere after the glare you gave me in the pub.”
“’Ave we met?” She squinted. “You look incredibly familiar.”
“I have one of those faces.” He flashed a cheap smile.
“The kind of face people think they remember or the kind of face people want to punch? Seein’ your mug this close, it makes me think I wanted to wring your neck at some point, but I can’t figure out why.”
“Touché.” He shrugged. “I suppose a bit of both. Sorry about the poke.”
She straightened for a moment. “What? You haven’t touched… Oh… The telepathy.”
“Yeah.” Aaron slouched. “Figured you were givin’ me the look on account of―”
“I’ve not the least bit of interest in your sex life.” She crossed her legs and glanced away.
Aaron shot her a whimsical look. “Yet you chose the one bench out of six that wasn’t empty.” He offered his hand. “I’m Aaron.”
“Pryce, yes, I know.” She whipped her head around, squinting. “You’ve the same name as someone I rather detest.”
Aaron couldn’t help but grin at finding her frustration cute. “You seem like you’d rather not be here.”
She drew a breath to speak, holding it while a pair of inebriated men stumbled past them and went deeper into the park. “Aurora usually handles first meetings. She insisted I be the one to make contact with you. Quite takin’ the Mick I bet.”
“I didn’t realize my fan club had a UCF chapter.” He leaned back, arms stretched along the backrest.
She didn’t react to the hand creeping along behind her back. “A bit jumped up, are we? No, not your ‘fan club.’ More like people with similar problems.”
He let off a sigh, staring past slouching knees at the grass. Above the wavering blades, a memory of Allison’s face seemed to form out of the pattern of street light.
“Not that kind of problem,” she whispered. “The government.”
“Not what kind of problem?” Hostility replaced the charm in his voice.
The woman showed no outward sign of intimidation. “That face you made looked rather personal. I’m not talking about whatever happened to you. I’m talking about what you are.”
He bent forward, elbows on his knees, looking away from her into the park. “What exactly am I?”
“Other than a hard-drinking womanizing sod?”
Aaron chucked. “Yeah, other than that.”
“Well, I’m not sure just yet. Let me do something?”
“I thought you said you weren’t interested.”
She smirked. “I mean mentally. I need to look into your mind.”
Color drained out of his cheeks. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“I’m not going to brain-wank you, Aaron. I just need to check something.”
“Really…” He held up his hand. “Don’t. I…” He hung his head. “I’ve a bad reaction to it.” He lurched to his feet.
“Hey, don’t ya start away uneasy.” She grinned. “It’s only me.”
He cracked up, falling to sit again while making noises halfway between laughter and sobbing. “Who’s me?”
“Anna. All right… I really ought to verify things before I say any more, but I know you’re at least psionic.”
He held up his fingers, as if pinching something.
“Telekinetic?”
“Quite.”
“Is that your strongest gift?”
“Mm hmm.”
“How much can you lift?”
Aaron held up his arm, fiddling wit
h the bicep. “Upper body was never my strong suit; I’m more leg than arm.” Her growing frown made him laugh again. “Oh, right. Of course. Umm. Not sure rightly, I’ve never measured it since. Last check in was about two hundred pounds or so.”
“Aaron.” She scooted closer, lowering her voice to a whisper. “We think you might be one of us. Do you find your abilities any sort of unusual? More potent than they ought to be?”
He stared over her shoulder at a group of parked cars on the far side of the street by the Nippy-Nom. With a faint smile, he focused on the sense of their mass and lifted three of them several feet off the road.
“What the fuck?” yelled the youngest of the girls. “Those cars just turned on all by themselves.”
“Uhh, Mia, those aren’t hovercars,” said a girl with a teal strip of cloth for a shirt.
The third girl screamed. Mia took off running without making a sound; her friends followed.
Anna whirled around at the screaming. Once she could see the cars, Aaron moved them about in a shell game for a moment before setting them down. A handful of people emerged from alleys and in windows, drawn by the screaming, but noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
“That’s unusual, innit? Used ta put me out to haul a desk around.”
“Quite,” she said. “Was that tiring?”
“Not so much. Though, I admit those are much lighter than a police patrol craft.” He winked. “No armor.”
When she looked at him again, she had the eyes of an eager little girl. “You’ve got to be one of us, Aaron. You’re Awakened.”
“I’m not sleeping.”
She frowned. “No, you spoon. It’s what we call people with power like ours.”
“Well, I’ve shown you mine. Are you going to show me yours?” He flashed a rogue’s smile.
Anna’s answer stalled in her throat as she blushed, coughed, and squinted at him. “Another one like that and I will… and not the way you’re hoping.”
“Pity.” He glanced at the park again, eyes drawn to motion.
A small, rectangular hover bot glided along behind a drunken man, chastising him for littering. The figure stumbled, falling face-first into the grass. Shivering with glee, the brick-shaped machine warned the unconscious man about the fines for unauthorized use of public land.
Anna gestured at it. “That little blighter almost looks happy it’s giving someone the business.”
“Aye.”
“You think it’s capable of being happy or just programmed to act that way?”
Aaron rubbed his chin. “Seems like a waste of effort to program it to act like that. Also rather silly to imagine it having any sense of emotion.”
She had a far-off look.
“You all right?”
“Yeah. Just remembering a little robot. Damn the CSB.”
Aaron cringed. “Aye. Bunch of sodding bastards, the lot.”
Anna turned her head toward him. A glimmer of something else flashed across her face, as if a different woman peered out from within a hardened shell. He considered offering his hand, but left it where it draped on the back of the bench. A moment of silent understanding passed between them.
“There are more of us, Aaron. The government doesn’t know about us yet. Archon has a plan to save us all. We need you.”
“Archon?”
“He’s the one pulling us all out of the gutter.” She fidgeted with her coat. “At least those of us that want to be. Awakened and plain psionics alike, he’s going to give us a new future.”
“Sounds awful romantic, doesn’t it? Some gallant bloke leading the poor, downtrodden psionics into a new age of prosperity. How could anyone refuse that?”
Anna chuckled, still not looking up. “Only someone incredibly naïve thinks the world won’t turn on us once they find out about us.”
“That’s a bit alarmist.” Aaron stood. “Well, that’s an awful nice story you’ve got, but I’m a bit preoccupied at the moment.”
“You don’t understand the importance…” Anna got up and put a hand on his arm, fear and concern brimming from her wide, sapphire eyes.
Aaron pondered a crass remark, something about listening to her offer after a shag, but the stare she gave him rekindled that sense that he couldn’t do that to her. She looked like some manner of Dickensian waif afraid of the beating she’d get for failing to bring him home. He stifled a snarl.
“Look, I’m not saying no. I’m saying not right now.” He took a step. “I’ve got some things I need to take care of.”
“How shall I find you?”
His second attempt to walk away stalled. “How’d you find me this time?” Aaron leaned back and sighed at the roiling charcoal smog. “Fine, let’s ’ave your PID.”
“Is that your usual method of asking a girl for her number?” Anna’s expression settled on a spot indiscernible between amusement and annoyance. “Fine, lets ’ave your PID?”
Their NetMinis chirped at the exchange of contact information.
“I don’t usually have to ask.” He winked and wandered off.
housands of tiny black dots blurred into a mass of pale grey, marred here and there by water stains or patches of mold on the ceiling tiles. Few were intact, most sagged, and a handful had ripped, exposing their yellow foam interior and the bare concrete above. Rats scuttled overhead out of sight, the sound of their claws a single instrument among the symphony of urban decay. Darwin’s heavy snoring, distant angry shouts, and the occasional whirr of a hovering bot blended into a constant mechanical thrum permeating the building.
Aaron couldn’t tell how long he’d been awake, lying motionless in his excuse for a bed, searching the rot above for answers it couldn’t provide. Waking up without a hangover hadn’t occurred in so long he’d almost forgotten how it felt. Another twenty some odd minutes of mental drifting did nothing to push him back to sleep. He shivered, finally aware of what had dragged him back to consciousness: a blast of unusual chill rolling over him with the intensity of ice water. It vanished before true awareness set in, leaving him wondering if he’d dreamed it.
Odd. He picked at his blankets, at a loss to explain how such a sensation could have affected him. Both hands covered his face, rubbing away the last vestiges of sleep after he sat up. The room was stagnant, neither warm nor cold. Aaron moaned, cringing in anticipation of a hangover’s claws digging into the back of his neck, but no headache came. He splayed his fingers, peering through the gaps at the wall of hanging clothes defining a ‘bedroom’ out of the larger space.
The pink flower-print pants still hung at the foot of the bed. They reminded him of how Allison had wanted a daughter. He also thought of Anna for no reason that made sense to him. She was small, but the child-sized garment wouldn’t have fit her. With another moan, he pushed aside the melancholy thought of an innocent trying to survive in a grey zone and swung his legs over the edge. Why did his brain keep skipping down the path of dark thoughts? Did it search for something gloomier than his reality to make him feel better?
He sat for a while, trying to clear his mind, but kept circling back to Anna mentioning the CSB. Britain’s government established the Clandestine Services Bureau as a psionic task force. Due to some rhetoric about preventing mass panic, they did everything in secret. Some bureaucratic wankshaft in a suit assumed if the citizenry didn’t know about people with mental powers, the world would be a better place. The agents in dark coats ‘disappeared’ psionics in the middle of the night, even children. They would’ve gotten Aaron too if not for who he had been. Another life, so far off it could’ve been a dream.
He plucked the nametag from the nightstand and held it in his fingertips, elbows on his knees. “Bugger the frictionless club.” Aaron wanted her back. He hated getting caught and having to flee the UK. If he hadn’t, he never would have met Allison. If he wasn’t a celebrity, he’d be rotting in a hidden military prison likely in the ass end of Wales, but she’d not be dead.
A moment of selfishness gripped him. The
idea of her bright eyes and smile directed at another man reddened his cheeks. Jealousy flared, lingered for a few seconds, and waned to acceptance. At least she’d be alive. He clutched the sliver of metal in a fist pressed to his cheek and shuddered. A tingle ran under both eyes signaling an onrush of tears that never happened.
Aaron froze, staring at a swath of bright red cloth draped over a broken chair.
He sat up straight, blinking at the Arsenal t-shirt set apart from the rest of the clothes he had rushed to pack when he fled his real home. A rat burst through a crumbling ceiling tile, falling to the gelatinous mess of a Comforgel pad with a dull plop, amid a snowfall of foam bits.
“Now where do you think that came from?” Aaron gestured at the shirt.
The rat shook off the disorientation of its unexpected dive and scampered off the far side of the bed.
A lack of response to his question should have come as no surprise, being his conversational partner was a rodent. Aaron felt a twinge of rejection from the little furry beast; it hadn’t even given him the courtesy of pondering his inquiry for a perceptible span. He shoved off the bed and stood, paralyzed with confusion for the second time in ten minutes.
On the floor by the chair, and consequently near the shirt, a female footprint caught his eye. Obvious as anything, it occupied a patch of exposed concrete a step’s distance from a spilled canister of synthbeer. Another dreaded ‘Final Sip’ he bequeathed to the slow grave of evaporation rather than drink. He crept up to the spot and crouched to touch it. The scent of perfume hung weak in the air where the shape of a bare foot appeared in dark, dried beer upon naked floor.
Fancy that’s a bit too big for Anna. He glanced at the bed. Did I bring a woman home last night? A forced swallow found his throat dry but not cottony. I didn’t drink that much.
Zero Rogue Page 10
