Supernormal

by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway

  Ashley flexed her feet against the wood of the floor again. Her place. Her home.

  She stood, and was surprised at how little effort it took. “No.”

  Brody stopped her. “Are you sure?”

  Ashley nodded.

  He stared down at her for another moment, then abruptly turned towards the door. “We’re going now.”

  Meg was in the living room, sitting hard on the couch, fingers clawing into her long red hair. She looked up when they came down the stairs, and Ashley had to look away from the expression on her face. Brody didn’t stop, but headed straight to the hall closet, coming back with two large black totes and a metal case under his arm.

  Meg stood, swiping at her cheeks. “What is that?” And, when he didn’t answer. “Brody. What are—what are you doing?”

  Brody let go of the black totes; they thunked heavily on the floor. Ashley drifted over as he set the metal case on the kitchen table and popped the hinges. Secure in padded foam was an injection gun and what looked like a small tablet. “We’re going to pay Proom a visit.”

  “You don’t know where he is—”

  “We’ll take care of it.”

  “‘We?’” Meg echoed. She looked over at Ashley, and there was less anger and more pain and fear. “No—no, you can’t. He’ll—he’ll be at that damn place by now, you can’t go back.”

  Ashley’s legs carried her over to Meg with jerky marionette movements, and she didn’t understand what she was doing until her arms were wrapped around Meg. Ashley wondered what it had cost her to say that. To think of Ashley and want her safe, even if she could help Cam. Meg’s arms came around her, tight, and rocked her back and forth, and Ashley was aware of…gratitude for the thick blanket of Novocain running through her. If she could’ve thought about this moment, if she could have felt it, she would break.

  And, because she sensed that, Ashley eased herself away. Meg sniffed and nodded. “I’m going with you.”

  Brody pulled the tablet free of the foam. “No, you’re not.”

  “I am going with you.” There was a sob in Meg’s voice. “You are not—you are not going to leave me here, you’re not going to tell me to sit here and wait and do nothing.”

  “I don’t have time to argue with you, and you can’t help.” He tossed the tablet to Ashley, and she caught it without thinking. It flared to life at her touch. It showed a map of the western half of the States, in cool electronic shades of blue and gray, and…dots. Two dots, glowing up from the screen, and every few seconds they would ping. They were labeled Evans and Scott.

  Brody hefted one of the black bags onto his shoulder. Ashley grabbed the other. It was very heavy, but she still beat him to the car.

  Brody’s pre-flight check took some time. He was thorough, though Ashley could smell the nerves and urgency radiating off of him. Ashley spent the time in the front seat, buckled in and ready to go, cradling the tablet in her lap, living for the next ping.

  Brody had just swung himself up into the cockpit and turned the engine over when the pings stopped and the dots winked out.

  She should have felt something. She should’ve felt angry. She was so good at it, she’d had so much practice. But she still couldn’t feel anything; she wasn’t really there to feel it. The part of her that felt things was tucked away inside, safe and screaming.

  Brody confirmed that the tablet really had lost the signals, then turned the engine off and fished in his back pocket for his phone. “This isn’t unexpected,” he told her, dialing.

  “No,” she said. Ashley watched her hands turn off the tablet and carefully tuck it away.

  “Proom had to know I’d try it. And I knew he’d know, but I hoped that we’d get a little more time. I hoped we be able to get up in the fucking air and maybe even get a fucking direction—”

  “I could go back,” Ashley said. Brody looked at her, phone halfway to his ear. She could hear the tinny ringing of the other line through the speaker. “Proom wants me back. I could call him and tell him…that I want to go back.” She didn’t have very much trouble with that last part.

  “I’d never let you do that,” Brody said. “I told you. We go there together, we leave together. Besides,” he added, “Proom wouldn’t let you through the door.”

  Something dangerously close to anger flashed in her. “He wants me—”

  “And he knows you wouldn’t go back on your own. He’d know you were after your friends. He’d take you somewhere else, or he’d put you on ice. He wouldn’t let you through that door still moving.”

  “I can’t do nothing,” Ashley said, and had to make herself stop because she felt cracks.

  Brody’s mouth pressed into a grim line. He pressed the phone to his ear when someone picked up, their, “Good evening, Sal’s Shwarma” perky even through the small speaker. “Brody, J.L.”

  “Could I get your order number?”

  “LJX-V9. I need to talk to Cole.”

  Ch. 22

  Cam woke to whiteness. He had to close his eyes, blink a few times before he got his bearings. White walls, white floor, white ceiling. Light from…somewhere overhead, but it was bright enough it hurt to try to see where it was coming from. Cam squeezed his eyes shut again. He had a searing headache, and he couldn’t be entirely certain the room wasn’t rocking around him like a toy boat on a tidal wave. Cam clutched around for something to hold him steady, found a metal bar, and realized he was lying on a bare, metal-framed bed.

  When he was fairly certain he wasn’t going to throw up, Cam opened his eyes again. Carefully. Cot, yes. He was wearing hospital scrubs, blue ones. The color stood out like a flag against all the white. His actual clothes were nowhere in sight. It took a second to process that, mostly because he didn’t want to, and his stomach twisted in a way that had nothing to do with how the room was swimming. He’d been kidnapped, held at gunpoint, drugged against his will, and somehow that was almost as bad as the thought that someone undressed him.

  Cam tried to push away the disgust, to focus on the insult. He needed to be angry.

  When the room started settling down he took another look around. It was a small rectangle, cot in one corner, toilet and sink in another. And a door, outlined by the barest hint of a seam in the wall. It was directly across from him, with a window at the top, a slot at the bottom, and no handle.

  Cam sat up cautiously, then stood, his shoulder stinging as he pushed himself up off the bed. He felt his way to the toilet, and threw up. After, he clutched the sink and rinsed his mouth out ten, twelve times, until his mouth lost the horrible acid taste.

  His shoulder ached. A different ache than his head, or the rest of his body, but it took a minute for his head to clear enough to focus on the gauze bandage, high on his arm, by his shoulder. He peeled the gauze back to find a neat row of stitches.

  Time passed.

  After twenty minutes, or two hours—it was impossible to tell in the white, white room—there were three dull knocks, and the door slid open. “Good morning,” said Proom.

  Cam tried to charge at him, but his legs were still weak, and he had to grab the edge of the cot to keep from falling.

  “Careful,” Proom chirped. He was wearing a long white lab coat over gray scrubs, and the same black, thick-framed hipster glasses. Cam wanted to knock them off. “Our little cocktail has rather a doozy of a half-life, but fear not. You’ll be on your feet again soon enough. Of course, once we get all those tiresome little preliminaries out of the way and can start on the real work, these nasty little side effects won’t bother you as much.” Proom tapped something into his tablet. “Shall we get started?”

  “You haven’t already?” Cam managed, swallowing back against another wave of nausea. It helped that there wasn’t anything left in him to throw up.

  Proom’s expression was confused for a moment, but then it cleared. “Ah, that.” He waved a hand at Cam’s shoulder. “No, no, that was just a precaution. Our friend Brody was trying to be clever, getting a tracking devic
e under your skin. I suppose he thought he might pay us a little visit. Once we get you settled, we’ll have a look at those stitches, but I assure you there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.” He stepped back and nodded to someone outside the room. The two men who came in were large, and armed. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to. Cam fought the urge to back up, clenching his teeth when his legs threatened to buckle.

  “If you would be so kind as to escort Two-Thirteen to Medlab One,” Proom said.

  Cam flung himself at one of the goons, laying the odds that they wouldn’t go to all this trouble if they intended to shoot him. He tried to remember everything he’d seen from Brody’s lessons with Ashley. Maybe if he landed one good punch, it would make him feel better when they inevitably overpowered him.

  But he didn’t, and it didn’t.

  With his arms twisted up behind his back, they marched him out of the room and down a long, white hallway, spaced with numbered doors. He wondered which ones were his friends and tried to dig his heels into the floor. They simply slid along the polished tile. “I demand to see Danny,” Cam said. If there was one thing he’d learned from his parents, it was if you said something with enough icy disdain, it didn’t sound ridiculous. “And Liz, and Ian Reese. I know you’re keeping them here.”

  Proom wagged a finger at Cam, a happy light in his eyes. “You have me. I confess. We did…extend our hospitality to several of your friends, yes. But I am afraid we discourage interaction between subjects. After the excitement of our last round, we agreed it was best for everyone if we kept the subjects separate. You understand,” he continued with a sympathetic smile. “I can assure you, however, that the majority of our guests are responding positively to the treatment. For the most part. Two-Twelve was sleeping soundly when we last checked in on him.” Proom winked at Cam. “We may have helped with that a little. He needed it, the poor boy. He was wearing himself out with worry, and, well, I am afraid we didn’t help the matter very much. We’ve been running him through the preliminaries—trying to, that is. We haven’t encountered anyone quite like him before and it’s making it a little difficult to get proper readings. Do you know that he can absorb and process oxygen through his entire epidermis?

  “As for Two-Eleven, I’m happy to say that is progressing faster than we anticipated. We learned so much from our last round of testing; we’ve already moved into the first stages with her.”

  The long hallway ended in an elevator, which the doctor operated with a key card. Cam glanced as best he could at the two guards. They both appeared to have cards as well. He did not. He was going to have to get one. And find a way out of his cell. And a way to get his friends out as well. He didn’t think about the how. He’d plan the whole thing out first, then work on the details.

  The elevator whirred up two floors, then opened to another hallway. This one branched off in different directions, all of them empty and quiet except for the sound of their footsteps and the muted hum of electronics. They took a left, and down a short hall was a set of big double doors. A discreet nameplate labeled this as MEDLAB 1. Cam’s stomach twisted. He didn’t think it was the nausea.

  The doors opened smoothly as they approached, revealing actual people inside. Three of them, two men and a woman, all younger than Proom, all of them in scrubs and surgical caps. Cam kicked out, managed to hook an ankle around the doorframe. There was a moment where Proom gave Cam an exasperated look, but the problem was solved when one of the young men saw the trouble and came over to politely unhook Cam’s leg.

  Inside, the room was one long rectangle with a number of hospital beds hooked up to various medical equipment, separated from each other by glass dividers. One of the beds was occupied. On it, a man lay prone, accompanied by the steady beep of a heart monitor. “What did you do to him?” Cam demanded.

  “Oh, that is not my work,” Proom said, heading to an empty cubicle. “Our dear Doctor Burke had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a little too soft-hearted for his own good. Always did have a tendency to baby the subjects. However, with what we’ve learned and the leaps we’ve made, I am confident we can restore partial, if not complete mobility. Of course, he will need to wake up first, but I am sure it’s only a matter of time until we untie that little knot as well.” He tossed a smile to one of the men holding Cam. “Isn’t that so, Craig?”

  “It better be. Doctor,” Craig said.

  The two guards towed Cam along and settled him on one of the medical tables. There was a tray of instruments by the bed. Cam recognized some of them: scalpels, needles, various tweezers. No bone saw, for which he was profoundly grateful. And a number of things he didn’t recognize. He stared at the scalpels. They were lean and silver and very sharp. Cam thought he could use one on them. If he could get to it. If he was lucky, he could get one and—and use it. Grab a key card, and then run. Try to find his friends. Try to get out. Somehow. Even though he wasn’t sure where he was, or where they were, or even where this building was.

  If it came to it, he thought he could probably use it on himself.

  The lab doors slid opened again and two more guys with guns shoved in another prisoner. It took a second for Cam to recognize him, but he did. “Ian!” Cam was on his feet, but one of the guards shoved him back. “Ian!”

  Proom gave a look of paternal patience to one of the young men in scrubs. “Clark. You know I don’t like to subject schedules to intersect.”

  “Sorry, Dr. Proom,” the young man said. “But there’s only the four of us, and we’ve been getting in a lot of new subjects. Full isolation isn’t going to be possible unless we take on more staff, and maybe open another wing.”

  Ian Reese looked like Cam felt. Gray-faced and dead-eyed. He shuffled to the medical table next to Cam and automatically edged onto it.

  “Ian!” Cam twisted futilely against his guards. “We knew you were alive, we knew it—Diana—she knows you’re alive—she’s looking for you!”

  “No interaction,” Proom said, tapping his tablet.

  Cam ignored him. “They’re going to find us! Dr. Mac—”

  Ian looked at Cam. His eyes, his face, were blank. “Who?” he asked, his voice as blank as his face.

  “Diana—”

  Proom touched a sensor on the divider, and the glass went opaque. “I said no interaction. Now. We have a great deal of work to do, and not very many people to help us do it, so how about we get a start on?” He set his tablet down, and went to the sink to wash his hands and snap on a pair of rubber gloves.

  She is coming, Cam told himself. She is going to find you.

  “We’re going to start with a simple physical examination, to set a baseline to go by. After that there will be a mental examination.” Proom moved towards the row of instruments. “Please remove your clothes.”

  Ch. 23

  Two days.

  Two days since Cam had been taken.

  Two days since Brody’s call with Director Cole, which had…not gone as hoped. (“Well, obviously you weren’t watching him anywhere near close enough.”) Ashley had heard it all, curled up in the passenger seat of Brody’s plane, as Brody circled, arguing and occasionally punching things.

  Director Cole had said, We’ll take care of it.

  Brody had said, Goddammit, Greg, you should have known, you should have stopped him. What did you think he was going to do? Sit on his fucking hands? Play fucking Tiddlywinks and wait for your fucking permission?

  Cole had said, You said four people? You could have told us earlier.

  Brody had said, Tell me where that fucking lab is right now, so help me—

  Cole had said, Thank you for your assistance. We do appreciate, of course, the information.

  Cole had hung up then, and Brody had shouted curses and kicked the hell out of his landing gear until he’d calmed down enough to go back and face Meg.

  Ashley could hear Meg out on the back porch, talking to someone. Arguing, her voice sharp and angry and raw. Over the
phone, Ashley guessed, judging by the tinny, feeble responses. Not that there were many; Meg didn’t give whoever much time to respond.

  It had been bad, having to go back. Having to walk through that door where Meg was waiting. It had been a bad night. A long, ugly, awful night, and it seemed like it would never end. Even now, with time stretching out like taffy and the hours ticking brutally along, it still felt like that night, which would never, ever end.

  Brody alternated between calling friends and associates, and going through those heavy black bags. Removing items, one by one, cleaning, checking, re-checking, and re-packing. He was able to eat, though, and sleep. Ashley wasn’t entirely sure when the last time she slept was.

  Tyler had come over at some point, his Xbox under his arm. He set it up in Brody’s living room and had been there for…a while. Ashley wasn’t certain how long. She’d spent most of the time watching him. The game he was playing had aliens and spaceships. There was a story, but Ashley was having trouble following it. She liked it better when he had to stop to shoot aliens. It was simpler. At the moment there was a long stretch of dialogue; Tyler kept picking the little red options, the ones that had his space soldier person kick people out of windows and drop shipping containers on them.

  “I thought Scepters were good,” Ashley said.

  “Spectres,” Tyler corrected her.

  “I thought Spectres were good.”

  “They are,” Tyler said. “Good doesn’t mean nice. I don’t have to be nice. I’m not feeling nice just this fucking moment,” he added, as much to himself as to her. He paused the game and waved the control at her. “Want a go?”

  Ashley eased herself off the couch and took the controller. It was harder than it looked. She couldn’t seem to make the buttons work.