Operation Blackout

by J. L. Middleton

  With his hand on his firearm and his feet in a shooter’s stance, Connor was immovable, and yet he was making a conscious effort to be otherwise nonthreatening and approachable. He retrieved his badge with his free hand and displayed it briefly before replacing it in his inner jacket pocket. Sone had been correct; he was a member of the dreaded BSI, although he was being more evenhanded than his peers, who would have shot the three of them without initiating dialogue. “It occurs to me that the two of you are here to collect Mr. Grimm,” he said, inferring their SION membership. “I’m willing to overlook your presence here, Sam, if you’ll just step aside so I can take him in and get him help.”

  She gave him a dirty look because she knew that he was lying. “You’re not going to get him help. You’re going to kill him.”

  He nodded slowly. “That’s probably true,” he admitted, “but he’s a danger to public safety.” Though his posture remained resolute and unyielding, his soft brown eyes found hers, and he spoke to her directly. “He’s got no control,” he reasoned. “He’s traumatized a park and a pharmacy, and he’s just killed my partner.” He paused, biting back anger or tears, and the corners of his mouth tightened and then twisted. “I can’t say he’s a prime subject for rehabilitation,” he hissed, undoubtedly with more acidity than he had intended.

  “Aaron needs help, and he’s not going to get it from you,” she replied protectively; this was the path she had chosen, and she would stick with it to the end if that’s what it took for redemption. “Now, I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to,” she continued. “You’re reasonable, so just leave, and we’ll call it even.”

  “You’re right. I am reasonable, but he’s a time bomb,” he asserted in a small, tense voice. As he continued, he made grand gestures with his free hand, attempting to distract her from his tightening grip on his weapon. “An episode like this on a larger scale could kill more. SION claims it saves Others’ lives, but he killed one just now. That park was full of children, and so was the pharmacy.” He scowled, his brow furrowing like it once had when he’d lectured her in college after an ill-advised drunken night out. “Next time, we might not be so lucky, and there’ll be a death count. Now, I don’t want to use force, but you have to admit this situation warrants it,” he remarked sardonically. “All I’m asking is that you step—”

  Risking extreme speed one last time, she relocated to Connor’s position and removed his hand from his weapon. She didn’t know much about firearms, and it took her several attempts to dismantle it fully before she allowed the stripped pieces to fall from her hands along with the unexpended ammo, which had been unburdened from its clip. She then returned to her place beside Aaron, not allowing his body to waver due to her transitory lack of support.

  When time returned to normal, the disassembled firearm clattered to the floor and startled both Connor and Sone, who had likewise never seen her ability demonstrated. “He’s coming with us, Morgan,” she said resolutely. Powerlessly, Connor looked at the pieces scattered across the floor and reassessed the two foes before him. Acknowledging that he was disarmed and outnumbered, he prudently spread his arms in submission. “Alright, but if he kills anyone, those deaths are on your head, Sam,” he warned and retreated.

  Now that the threat had passed, she returned her attention to Aaron. His recovery from his episode had progressed further, and he seemed aware of his surroundings. She kissed his forehead, reassuring him of her presence in reality, and murmured comforting words. Sone interjected urgently, “We should go,” and he helped her support Aaron as they left.

  - - -

  Orion inhaled deeply, hungrily, as if his lungs had finally found air after a long time underwater. The adrenaline in his veins forced his eyes open wide so that they could catch any hint of danger. He was lying on his back, and he could see only an enormous carved ceiling overhead.

  He tried to piece together how he’d arrived at his present location. He remembered that they’d driven up to the house on Meadow Lane and that he’d waited outside for Connor’s direction. While he’d anticipated a confrontation, he hadn’t known what to expect. Would it be potentially violent, as Lena Malmkvist had threatened, or would the Other come along quietly, as he had? Connor had seemed wary, but he hadn’t said anything.

  Casually, he’d glanced through the windows of Primrose and glimpsed his sister lying in a pool of blood. Even though he’d known that his sister was safe with the Vickers in Pennsylvania, no amount of logic had been able to eradicate the fear that he’d felt during that moment, and he’d run to her without a moment’s hesitance. Her body had been warm—so warm—as if he’d just missed her assassin, and the gaping hole in her chest had testified to the fact that it had been her blood on the floor. He’d known intuitively that he had failed to protect her from their father, who had returned to exact his revenge on his own family. Orion had closed his eyes and willed her flesh to answer his call, but her body had remained inert no matter how hard he’d concentrated.

  He felt a sharp twinge and an enormous, bludgeoning pain that engulfed his whole body, and then there was darkness. When his vision returned, Cassie stood before him with her arms wide, welcoming him. Her red hair was tamed, and she wore a long white dress that suited her age rather than the adult she desperately desired to be. She was angelic and beautiful, and she was also his little sister and not the rebellious teenager. He took her hand and followed her from this place. The light was dim, as if he wore shades, and everything was covered in a fine, gray mist. He could not see more than twenty feet ahead, let alone where she was taking him, but he wasn’t worried; she was unharmed, and she was with him.

  He did not remember leaving the mist nor returning to this place, but the ceiling resembled Primrose’s style. His body no longer ached, and as the adrenaline fled his body, he realized that he felt rested as if he’d had a full night’s sleep. Perhaps it had been a dream—or more likely a nightmare, given his energetic awakening—but he did not have long to ponder the situation, as Connor’s face soon appeared in his field of vision.

  The muscles of his face were tight, and his eyebrows were knitted together. “How ya feeling there, lad?” Connor asked soberly, offering his hand; he seemed worried but unable or unwilling to properly express it. Orion accepted his aid and the older man helped him into a sitting position. Orion was covered in grainy residue, which he recognized as the chalky remains of the walls, and he dusted himself off.

  “Fine,” he answered uncertainly. He felt great, all things considered, but Connor’s expression hinted that this might not have been the correct response.

  “You took a pretty bad blow. I wouldn’t say you’re fine,” Connor said, and Orion could only shrug. The lines in Connor’s face deepened, and he cocked his head as he quirked his lips. He still hadn’t released him, and though there was no pressure, he had the feeling that Connor wouldn’t allow him to stand on his own yet. “Are you sure nothing hurts? Not even a little?” he pressed. “Maybe we should take you to the hospital just in case. Get you checked out with an MRI or something.”

  “I don’t need doctors, remember?”

  “Right,” he remarked, unconvinced, and the gap that followed was oppressive. Gradually, Connor moved his hands and assisted him to his feet, bracing him awkwardly in case he lost his balance. Orion felt no different as a result of the change in elevation, but he suspected that Connor had expected the worst.

  They were now in uncomfortably close proximity, and Orion began to feel self-conscious. He shifted away, and Connor reluctantly released his supporting grasp, allowing him to stand on his own. “What happened?” he asked, breaking the silence.

  Connor immediately looked away toward the center of the house. “They got away,” he said. He then flipped a mental switch and gave a conceited smirk, curling his lips wickedly in Orion’s direction. “Looks like you’ve got your first failure.” Though he�
��d spoken the words aloud, Orion didn’t believe he was speaking to him, and his fleeting glibness evaporated unexpectedly.

  “‘They’?”

  He ignored him. “But it’s a great learning opportunity, isn’t it?” he scoffed, mocking their normal teacher–student relationship. He was sour and angry, and Orion didn’t know what he’d done to provoke him. One moment, Connor was fuming, twisting his expression into ambivalence, and then his perplexing episode ended, and he sighed deeply as he relinquished whatever negative energy he’d amassed. He gathered himself, and when he met Orion’s gaze, his face showed sheer exhaustion. When he spoke, his tone was apologetic, and he clapped him on the shoulder again. “Let’s head back to the hotel, eh? ’S been a long day.”

  - - -

  Connor spent the entire evening monitoring Orion, watching for an irregularities. At first, he doubted the young man’s healing abilities, examining him every so often in search of a fractured skull or tender rib. He tested his vision, forced him through motor control exercises, and quizzed his memory in an attempt to diagnose him with a concussion, but Orion passed and showed no signs of brain injury. He even checked his temperature, looking for signs of infection. Eventually, Orion tired of his obsessive attention, and Connor had to shift to subtler observational techniques.

  He tried without success to persuade him to discuss the incident, but it seemed Orion was a master of evasion. This skill was likely a result of years of having to avoid answering uncomfortable questions about the whereabouts of his parents, and Connor felt no strong need to relive the day himself. Without Orion’s input, he could rely only on his own recollection of the events, and though the memories unsettled him, he could only press Orion so hard without drawing suspicion. His vision, along with what followed, would become the standard narrative, and he changed the topic.

  In the end, he found no evidence of harm, and at Connor’s insistence, Orion settled in the agent’s bed. Connor took the armchair, using the excuse that he would work on their report; while true, he also wasn’t ready to let the boy out of his sight. Connor couldn’t shake what he had seen at Primrose, even if the boy was alive and well now.

  It was late when he began the report, but it was easy to write. Despite the positive identification of the Other, he had failed to take Aaron Grimm into custody, and worse yet, he’d allowed him to fall into the hands of VSION. Connor took full responsibility. He had no doubt that the individuals he had encountered were members of the Vanguard, given their coincidental appearance and preparedness to fight him, and accessing the BSI’s database confirmed it: The dark-haired man was Sone, a known terrorist. There was not much that Connor could add to his file, even to pad it out. Instead, he built dossiers on the other two. He knew about the first, Aaron Grimm, thanks to Sergeant Luna and her unwitting provision of his file, which Connor had requested from the local station’s Human Resources under her name. His undiagnosed schizophrenia, compounded by his post-traumatic stress, was a potent and deadly combination; an episode could be triggered at any point in time, and now that he was in the hands of VSION, he could be honed into a weapon.

  However, the inclusion of Sam Anderson saddened him. As kindred spirits, they had once been drawn together, and he could not imagine her as an adversary creating disasters and murdering innocent people simply to send a declaration of “freedom” for her kind. He checked for her in the database after he found Sone, and she was absent from its catalogue, but now that he had engaged her, he was obligated to complete a dossier on her. This meant that she would be classified as a high-value target like any other member of the Vanguard. He tried not to think too hard about it as he wrote her biography and psychological profile.

  The report became more difficult once the dossiers were completed. To properly document the case, he had to record all the events that had occurred. He did it primarily to help future investigators learn from his methods: how to find an Other, determine its abilities, and bring it into custody. This time, they would learn from his failures.

  He thought it might be useful to describe his vision—the details and differences from reality—but he could not progress past his departure from the car at Primrose. Years prior, he had recounted a similar event to military investigators in a desert thousands of miles away. His words had been mechanical, as if he had been reciting from a script, and had even included the fantasy of Stern’s telekinetic shield, and his thoughts had never truly entered the moment. Now, however, his mind would not permit him to leave the bumper of their rental car and continue down the trellised sidewalk toward the house. He knew what had happened then—a terrible reenactment of the airstrike that had almost killed him—yet he could not recall one moment of the episode; his brain shut it down, instead forwarding to his confrontation with Sam, so he had no choice but to continue from there and leave the delirious period a blank.

  His recollection of that moment was scrambled, mixing his vision with bodily sensations and glimpses of the intact room, so he was not entirely certain when he returned to reality. He had seen Orion thrown through one of the walls and watched the collapsing weight crush his body. The BSI database described the power of Sone’s sound waves as reaching the pulverizing force of a freight train, and he didn’t believe Orion could withstand the impact, even with his extraordinary regeneration. Yet, Orion was unharmed and sleeping in his bed, which meant that he had somehow survived.

  The ability to recover from catastrophic wounds was different from being an exceptional healer. People—even the good ones—still needed to die to maintain the natural balance, and the BSI wouldn’t permit the existence of an Other who could upset the balance too much. Even if this Other never fell into SION’s hands, there were elements in the government who would misuse effective immortality, which meant that the Other had to be terminated to prevent a quandary; the BSI’s rules were very black and white.

  The moral choice was to recommend Orion’s immediate euthanasia, even though he couldn’t prove definitively that a resurrection had occurred; he couldn’t risk this possibility, and the BSI’s rules mandated the elimination of threats before they became problematic. Nevertheless, he could not avoid his personal feelings on the matter. He had come to know Orion and appreciate his circumstances, from his difficult relationship with his sister to his nigh-abusive childhood of neglect; he had done well raising himself and his sister, superseding his selfish parents, and he was genuinely a nice kid. He had taken Orion under his wing, just as he had been instructed, and they had forged a bond, unsteady though it might be.

  It was an agonizing decision. Shortly after meeting the Starrs, he’d had to recommend a child for euthanasia because he, too, could have overpowered the natural balance, and he had just placed his college friend on the kill list as well. Connor didn’t think he had it in him to recommend another murder in such a short period, and that ended up being the key differentiation: He could not think of Orion’s removal as euthanasia or as protection of the civilian population as he had with previous Others; he could view it only as homicide.

  In disgust, he deleted his short paragraph on Orion and forwarded the report to headquarters. Since when had he begun to waver on BSI principles? He had sworn to protect the civilian population against Others no matter the cost, even if it meant sacrificing a few extraordinary individuals, and he had made the hard choices before. He had made it with Brian Chamberlain, who had been a young child, and with others who had been unable to control their abilities but had otherwise been blameless; he should not have faltered just because he knew Orion Starr.

  He stole a glance at Orion, who was snoring softly in the bed. No jury would convict a defendant if there was reasonable doubt, but the BSI did not work that way; before Eric Dane, every Other had been a time bomb, and so it had been necessary to draw a hard line. What Connor had just done had been an immoral choice, yet he knew that it had still been the right one; he just needed to convince hi
mself of this.

  He opened the mini fridge and studied its contents. He grabbed a whiskey miniature, paused, and then took the rest of the bottles, emptying the fridge of its minor stock. As he poured himself a glass to drown the conflicting voices, he mused that his job was turning him into an alcoholic.

  - - -

  Jack had been galvanized ever since he’d recovered from the initial shock of Pierce Starr’s death. The experiment had been a failure because it had not been conducted properly. His child with Evangeline Starr had demonstrated that his abilities could be passed through heredity, and Pierce’s children had confirmed the theory, so he had examined the genealogies of all Others he’d identified, tracing any possible bloodlines to see what talents had been passed on and which had developed spontaneously. While Pierce had inherited Jack’s ability to drain life force, his children had not, instead developing different traits while still remaining Others, and he was currently researching the root of the disparity.

  While exploring the pedigrees of various Others, he was also developing a new experiment. He contemplated marrying Amanda Darling-Whitcomb—whose human bloodline could be considered superior to that of his other subjects—and fathering several children with her; after all, pedigree propagation was what she had originally been raised to do. Acceptance of the marriage proposal would take considerable persuasion, but her hunger for the presidency would be her downfall. He had substantial, important ties to influential people and powerful industrial complexes that she couldn’t ignore, even if she didn’t trust him, and she would accept the alliance to acquire his power base. After they bred a large enough brood, he could fake his death, and she would initially be happy to be rid of him. She would still be in his power, even if she had no part in his seeming demise, because two dubious spousal deaths begged the label of black widow, and the circumstances of his “death” would provide further leverage against her.