After his initial shock passed, Sone’s battle mind awoke, and he reached out to the buzzing of the streetlamps, increased its reverberation, and directed the soundwaves back at the stranger and his partner. However, the attack seemed to pass right through them, as if Rho’s ability expanded to aid his assailant, and the blond man continued to drain his friend.
The incomprehensible attack seemed to last less than a minute, and the stranger discarded the corpse disdainfully and glared at Sone with steely blue eyes. “Tell your glocky blinkered scurf that New York ain’t some flash house where he can cause a blasted jolly,” he snarled, his face distorted with rage. “He’ll not queer my pitch with his pig’s ear revolution, or I’ll put down on him with the coppers.”
The blond’s accent was heavy and almost unintelligible, and his anger was practically palpable. Though Sone didn’t want to aggravate him further, he also thought figuring out his perplexing message might alleviate the situation if only he could understand him. Uncertainly, he asked, “What did you say?”
“Moreau’s dogs stay out my town else they get done up like a kipper,” the blond said, his accent softening into a more recognizable version of Cockney. Unfortunately, it didn’t make his speech any more comprehensible, and Sone didn’t have the opportunity to ask him again. He realized now that they weren’t alone. While the prostitute had long disappeared, a handful of other men had stepped from the shadows. Two immediately went to Rho’s corpse, barely hiding their revulsion as they wrapped its husk in a tarp for disposal.
“If you still want to scarper with my help, Javier’s your man.” The blond nodded to the man on his right; the lanky fellow oozed confidence despite his rather homely appearance. “He’s invisible to the BSI, if you have the bottle to trust me now.” The blond grinned, and it was strangely charismatic and reassuring despite his earlier show of force.
Sone looked at his offered guide and considered everything that had just occurred. Trusting him would be foolish, especially after the display, but the blond clearly wanted a message delivered to his father, and apparently, he could have defeated Sone as easily as he had killed Rho. There was no advantage in a further ruse, and while it would be in the blond man’s best interest to assist Sone if he wanted his message delivered, Sone still didn’t think he could accept the offer. Not only was it disrespectful to his partner, but the thought also made him ill. He shook his head. “I’ll find my own way out,” he replied, managing to conceal his disgust and anger.
The blond nodded. “Off you go then. And don’t frig about, else you’ll get brown bread too.” He turned his attention away from Sone toward a dour-faced man, and it was as if Sone had disappeared as the blond focused on other business. Sone took his leave quietly, retreating through the front door, and traced his way along the warehouses. His thoughts turned toward returning home as he reached the edge of the city, and he chose to leave introspection and analysis until when he was in safe surroundings.
- - -
Unlike his female counterpart, Eric Dane had retained his given name, but it was his identity that he had lost. He retained distant memories of a normal childhood in a close-knit town in rural Wyoming, where everyone was an aunt, uncle, grandmother, or grandfather. He remembered an older brother who shoved him and called him names at home but kept him calm and safe when the Youngs entered the school and herded them into a single classroom. He remembered the worried expressions on his parents’ faces, his mother’s streaked mascara, and when his parents charged the police line and gathered him and his brother into their eager arms. Images of his last memory of his family were obscured by his tears as his grim-faced father, grief-stricken mother, and uncertain brother said their final goodbyes as he was taken into permanent federal custody. His father had told him that the transfer was for the best, but years later, he suspected that the Danes had received generous compensation.
He maintained those memories, but his ties to his old life nevertheless rotted. When the BSI was created, it expended adequate funds to create a comfortable lifestyle for him and any Others who might join him at the Plum Island compound. His quarters were spacious and gave him enough privacy that he didn’t mind the constant video surveillance or the guards’ clockwork knocks on the door. He spent his youth in the laboratory with agency scientists who sought to understand his ability and helped him to hone it. His talent could produce avian wings for shields, their luminescent appearance giving the impression of angels. But he was capable of even more, and with the bureau’s guidance, he discovered that he could craft his radiance into simple physical objects, such as a hammer, sled, or even a footbridge.
He continued his education, albeit with a narrowed and sometimes heavily censored curriculum, and the bureau was forthright with its reasoning: Political ideas, cultural touchstones, and social issues only obfuscated their mission. So he learned from tutors and supplemented the lessons with readings of his own, and he didn’t mind when his materials were missing a page or two or a paragraph had been blacked out. After all, the bureau provided him with ample entertainment in the form of movies and video games, and he was allowed to read newspapers and magazines whenever he wished. As he grew older, he began to request books and was able to educate himself on the philosophies of the Founding Fathers and Theodore Roosevelt and the Classics, such as Shakespeare and Mark Twain. He was free to discuss these ideas with bureau personnel and his teachers for his own edification, and no one ever denigrated his opinions or beliefs.
He was also aware of the charges that SION had laid against the bureau—that it slaughtered Others to study them like animals and that Dane had been brainwashed. Of course he knew that Others were euthanized, but this occurred only on the rare occasion that they could not develop control over their abilities. It wasn’t the rule but was the final recourse after all other options had been expended, and it was a difficult decision when it was made. He was given ample opportunity to speak to captured Vanguards so that he could relay that message, but after the first few prisoners refused to listen and only spouted their own misguided propaganda at him, he stopped trying to reason with them and interacted with them only during apprehensions. Regrettably, the nonmilitant members of SION weren’t any more rational or levelheaded.
For the longest time, he was alone. Discovering a preadolescent Other was atypical—a rarity that was comparable to a paragon diamond—and even mature Others didn’t necessarily equal productive ones. So Dane remained unaccompanied as graduates were eventually returned to the general population, albeit in a different location from where they’d lived; this would ensure that anyone who’d witnessed the talents of the Other wouldn’t have the opportunity to revisit him or her for the purposes of recording.
But Dane wasn’t lonesome. Over the years, he’d acquired half a score of handlers who had continued to write him letters after they’d been rotated to new assignments, and the compound maintained twenty-four-hour staff, so there was always someone he could engage in conversation.
Then Emma Braddock arrived. She was slightly older than half his age, but she had spent her entire life sequestered from society and from any ideas that contradicted her strict religious upbringing. She was hungry for life and eager to make up for lost time. He helped mentor her, and the world now seemed smaller. The agency’s focus shifted to her—on prepping her and then sending her out on raids—and Dane found that he didn’t mind the lack of attention, even when she was given accolades for her role in bringing down the SION cell in San Diego and he was not. Her mere presence prevented grievous injury to their human counterparts, while he had to keep an active watch to achieve the same result. Not only would helping her mature and grow facilitate the agency’s mission, but he also found that he enjoyed taking the backseat to her fire, which he had lost himself years ago. If this meant that she went out on assignments more often, so be it.
Emma—or Antithesis, as she preferred to be called—ente
red the lounge and began upending furniture, magazines, and any objects she could get her hands on. Her cult severely punished any deviation from “good behavior,” so she had been a model citizen as a child. Upon her release, however, she’d discovered numerous feelings that she’d kept bottled up, and she did not always know how to deal with them properly. When she was angry, it was usually simple: She wanted to fight or scream, so they could point her at the Vanguard, but when no targets were available, her anger became a problem. Dane and the staff were working on teaching her healthy expression, but he needed to intervene in the interim.
“Sissy,” he said warmly as he caught her latest projectile and prevented it from rebounding and hitting her. He placed his hands on her arms, gently restraining them, and said, “We talked about this. What should you be doing instead?” She clenched her fists, tensed her whole body, and then, after a few seconds, relaxed and exhaled slowly. “Good girl. Now what’s wrong?”
She inhaled sharply and stiffened, but her voice was calm as she answered. “We lost them in a civilian center. They kept endangering civilians. They were using them as shields. They got a hold of this one girl…” She’d only caught a glimpse of the redhead as she and Johnson had closed in on the terrorists, and she’d seen Rho throw her into a wall, but she’d been too busy concentrating on the offensive to pay attention to any distractions. When the Taser hadn’t worked, she’d closed the gap between her and the muscle and attempted to overpower him with the strength of her zeal. Unfortunately, her enthusiasm tended to override her better judgement, and Johnson soon took him off her hands.
Nevertheless, she couldn’t believe she’d forgotten one of the core tenets of their mission: protect civilians. “I don’t know what happened to her. I lost track of her, and then the cops showed up, so Agent Johnson had to explain what happened.” Regardless of jurisdiction, the local police did not tolerate the discharge of a weapon within their gun-free city. Johnson’s attempts to extricate them were rebuffed, and the two were forcibly escorted down to the precinct to explain their behavior not only to the local police chief but also to Johnson’s supervisor and his boss back at BSI headquarters. It was a short reprimand, which was to be resumed at length in the BSI chief’s office after the mission was over, and they were free to return to the streets after a sufficient amount of paperwork had been properly filed.
It had been hours before they’d been able to check on the girl, whose apartment had been dark and seemingly abandoned, and when they’d checked with the doorman, he hadn’t seen her return that night. “After it was all over, we went to her place, but no one was there.” She bit her lip and then kicked the wall. “What if something happened to her because of me? Because I didn’t do my job?”
Dane pulled her close into an embrace. “VSION isn’t going to target a single person,” he assured her, though it wasn’t necessarily true. Years ago, he had overheard two analysts discussing the record freezing temperatures in Afghanistan and the rising death toll in the region due to frostbite and exposure. One agent, a veteran local interpreter turned federal employee, had returned to his home country to collect his extended family, and neither analyst had heard from him since he’d set out on his excursion. They presumed that the agent’s family had been targeted and that villages in the Herat province had simply been collateral damage. But Antithesis didn’t need to know this, so he said, “She’s probably shaken up and went to the police or a friend’s.”
She leaned into him. “Johnson said they had her address in their phone. Why would they have that?”
“I don’t know, but you’re home now,” he replied soothingly. “The analysts will handle it, and they’ll let you know,” he told her, and they might if they thought it was pertinent. But they often didn’t hear the resolutions of their cases because it might prove to be a distraction, and this was especially true for Antithesis, who took any failures personally.
“Do you want to watch some TV?” he asked, trying to assuage her anger and guilt by changing the subject. She gave him an unsure look before she nodded hesitantly. “How about some Gilligan’s Island?” he suggested with a smile and popped the cassette in the VCR. He knew it never failed to cheer her up.
- - -
Reluctantly, Pierce pulled into the gas station parking lot and rolled to a stop. He reached into the back seat and snatched another article of clothing from the overnight bag. He was still bleeding, and the gash was not healing quickly enough. It was as if his body was straining to replace his traitorously escaping blood and could do no better at helping the rest of him. He felt faint, hungry, and diminished, and his reflection in the rearview mirror showed a pale man. He should have taken the time to consume Madeleine. Even a slice of her flesh might have revitalized him enough to staunch the exodus of his lifeblood.
Madeleine’s flimsy scarf had already turned crimson and was becoming wet and sticky in his hand. He could tie it around his neck, but he doubted a tourniquet in that location would assist even a superior being such as himself. He threw the scarf on the back seat and grabbed another piece of clothing—this time, it was one of his good shirts—to place against his neck. No, he needed professional attention, which he could not receive without the authorities being alerted eventually.
His son suddenly entered his mind—his weak, pathetic son who would never partake in their sacred, life-sustaining meals. He remembered his last kill at their apartment and Orion’s sad attempt to delay the inevitable in the cycle of life like a child freeing the dinner lobster. Orion had tried to knit the animal’s wounds together, which was something that Pierce had never attempted to do to another being. Perhaps his son had abilities that differed from his, or were even stronger, and he could mend Pierce’s gash. But if he could not, he knew that the spineless boy would offer little resistance in a fight and was, therefore, not a dangerous option for a last-ditch meal. Regardless, his sensitive child offered an attractive alternative to a hospital if he could summon the stamina to reach him.
The gas station attendant, an elderly man in his sixties, dropped his squeegee and raced over to the car. His face was stricken as he asked, “Are you okay? Do you need me to call someone?”
Pierce should have realized that his appearance would garner attention. He’d wiped as much of the blood off the side of the car as he could, but congealed streaks were still visible, and his clothes were torn and stained dark brown from mud and dried gore. He glanced around the parking lot, realizing that they were alone on this stretch of highway, and he had a fleeting thought of consuming this man. Although he was old and would not provide much sustenance, it might still be enough to sustain him until he secured Orion’s help.
“Sir? Sir? Can you hear me?”
Pierce scowled. No, as old as the man might have been, he still appeared fit for his age and would, therefore, likely present a challenge, and Pierce didn’t think he could take him down without sustaining any more injuries. It would be wiser to continue back to New York City and coerce his son to give him aid than to risk further exposure. Without a word, he started the car, backed out, and returned to the road, leaving the gas station attendant concerned and confused.
- - -
Was it a slow news week? It must have been, because the video of that wretched woman’s suicide was being played on a loop on all the main city television stations. Amanda supposed it was because Hotel Carter was notorious for various reasons, and the news currently focused on the many murders and suicides that had occurred there over the years. However, she had chosen it at the time because it had been known for its unsanitary conditions and reputation—there would be countless unpleasant assumptions about the deceased found in such a tawdry place—and she’d thought that the location would alleviate the additional spite that she felt toward Elizabeth Singh, her husband’s unfortunate lover.
The news stations now broadcasted theories posted on Reddit and other casual forums as
if they were the gospel truth instead of some paranoid loser’s rants, and while some of the readers supported the official narrative of suicide, most doggedly attached themselves to the theory that Elizabeth Singh had been murdered. Each person had a different idea as to who or what had murdered her, centering primarily around paranormal explanations. Thankfully, no one postulated that an Other could have orchestrated her death. Regardless, Amanda didn’t feel safe with the face of her husband’s dead lover plastered all over the news; while she’d gotten away with the murder at the time, the renewed interest in the case made her fear that someone might finally connect Elizabeth Singh to Johnathan.
Her misplaced glass fell from the table onto the floor, shattering instantly. Her mother had always taught her that a proper lady should never show strong emotion, but she suddenly found it liberating. She picked up the coffee table’s centerpiece and smashed it on the floor with both hands, and like a deteriorating dam, the release she experienced overwhelmed her self-control. The next to fall victim to her anger was a vase she’d received as an engagement present. This was followed by a crystal prize that she’d received for being a political backer.
She didn’t know how long her therapeutic tantrum lasted, but her apartment was trashed by the time she was finished. “Imelda!” she shrieked as she stepped gingerly around broken glass so her bare feet would not be sliced. She kept screaming, receiving no answer, and the longer she called for her housekeeper, the angrier she became. “Baines!” she shouted finally, calling for the butler, who also did not answer. She didn’t even see the cook, who should have been preparing dinner, and the apparently unreliable servant had forgotten to turn off the burners and had left the knife dangling precariously on the cutting board in her haste to leave. Amanda clucked her tongue at her useless staff, not realizing that her outburst had also projected powerful pheromones and that their animalistic instincts had told them to flee. After furiously stalking the house once more to search for her neglectful staff, she decided that she’d leave the mess for them to clean when they returned and that she would take a nice shower to relax in the meantime.
Operation Blackout Page 13
