by Koch, Gini
“So you and Paul can be romantic next door and Martini’s not going to know?”
Reader laughed. “He might know, but he’s not going to wake up and rate our performances. He’ll ignore it, because that’s part of what the blocks do—help them ignore all the emotions around them. Like Daredevil’s chamber but without the being locked away and submerged in water parts.”
I considered this as we sat there, not moving much, if at all. “So, when did the strongest empath on the planet’s talent surface?”
Reader cleared his throat. “Birth.”
“Um, you’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not. Jeff’s parents aren’t empathic, they aren’t talented in any way. So from what I’ve gotten, it was hard on them.”
“Had to have been harder on him.”
“Yeah. Jeff had to be in isolation a lot as a child. And as for what that’s like, you’ll have to ask him—I’ve never spent any time in or around the isolation chambers.”
“Why not?”
“They creep me out. They make Daredevil’s chamber look like a tanning bed. But Jeff insists they’re not that bad. Christopher won’t give me his opinion about them, though.”
“Does he go into isolation?” And could we put him there right away?
“No, not that I’ve ever heard of.” He looked to his right. “But as a child, Christopher wasn’t all that much better off.”
“He’s an empath?” I found that hard to believe.
“No, different talent. But his surfaced at birth, too. It’s why they’re a team—no one else can keep up with them, in that sense.”
“And yet the image of me killing a ‘terrorist’ made the international news. You know, there’s a part of me that’s really unimpressed.”
Reader laughed again. “They’re only human, if you know what I mean. Everyone makes mistakes, girlfriend, even you.”
“Point out what mistakes I’ve made today, other than agreeing to get into the limo in front of the courthouse.”
“Too busy driving to think about it.” Reader looked over his shoulder and flashed the cover-boy grin. “But give me a little time and I’m sure I can come up with something.”
“I’ll bet.” I closed my eyes and tried to rest. Couldn’t. Opened my eyes. “What happens when they run down? The empaths, I mean.”
“Again, it depends on the empath. Usually they just need to sleep. If they’re not doing well, they need to sleep in isolation. They do almost a system flush, to clear out toxins that build up from the exposure to negative emotions. Then they put the good stuff back in. I don’t really know much more about it.”
“Because you haven’t asked?”
“Because no one wants to talk about it. A-C talents seem physically connected as much as mentally, at least to me. It’s hard to get a straight answer.”
“They don’t want us knowing their weaknesses.”
“Can you blame them?”
I thought about it. “Honestly? No. So what happens to Martini when he gets drained?” Reader was quiet. “Ah, James? Are we being followed or something?”
“No.”
“Then why are you suddenly Mr. Silent Night?”
He sighed. “The stronger the empathic talent, the longer they can last, so the more they can push themselves.” He didn’t say anything else.
Of course, it wasn’t hard to figure out the obvious conclusion. “And, therefore, the harder they crash.”
“Right.”
I looked at Martini. “He sure seems healthy.”
“He is. And hale and hearty and whatever other descriptions you might want to apply. At least until his blocks wear down. Then he becomes, first, almost like a regular human—can’t pick up much, it’s like the talent mutes.”
“You said at first. What happens at second? Or third?”
“The muting goes away, and it’s a barrage of emotions. Hard to handle.”
“Like putting a chameleon on plaid?”
“Yeah, pretty much. Then it starts to affect him physically and mentally. The reactions are similar to anyone who might have pushed themselves too far physically and mentally, only they hit faster and, from all I’ve seen, a lot harder. After that, if he doesn’t get care in time, and in time means really fast . . .”
“The dramatic pause is great, only it’s lacking that certain something. Like actual information.”
Reader looked over his shoulder again, only this time he wasn’t smiling. “If he doesn’t get care in time, Jeff will die.”
CHAPTER 13
THAT CHEERFUL STATEMENT SAT ON THE AIR for a while. I resisted the urge to wish it were Christopher instead of Martini who was the walking death time bomb, then reminded myself I wasn’t attached to any of them, least of all Martini, and decided I could worry about something else.
“So, would this evening’s entertainment mean Martini’s at death’s door?” Okay, I could almost worry about something else.
“Nope. Believe me, when Jeff’s that bad, you’ll know.”
“Can’t wait.” Since imminent death wasn’t on the docket, unless we were trapped in the never-ending traffic jam and were going to die from old age, still sitting in this limo, I chose to relax.
I watched the cars as we all inched forward. Which was so very soothing that my mind raced to the next set of questions it wanted answered while we snailed along. “Why can’t we kill Yates?”
“We have to kill him when he’s Mephistopheles.”
“Why?”
Reader sighed. “It’s complicated, but I’ll give it a try.” He was really pushing the complicated. I wondered if there was a hidden message Reader was trying to get across to me, but if so, I wasn’t picking it up.
“Didn’t you ask these questions when you joined up?”
“Yeah, I did. But the scientists handle most of this, and they don’t share all that much information with one of the human drivers, even if I am a part of Alpha Team.”
“Seems unfair.”
“I deal with it. You still interested in all the superbeing stuff, or do you want to head to office politics?”
“I think I’m more at risk from a superbeing, so let’s deal with that.”
“And you say you work in marketing? Anyway, when the parasite hits, it takes over. That’s why the superbeings mutate immediately.” I’d seen that in action, so no argument there. “But in the rare cases where the human-parasite combination doesn’t go berserk, the parasite internalizes.” He’d told me as much already, so, fine. “In those cases, the human brain seems split. So when they’re in human form, they don’t really know they have a parasite inside them. As far as we can tell, it’s only when the parasite senses a threat that it converts back into a superbeing.”
This was news. “So in the cases where the combination is, what—stable?—the parasite is smart enough to hang out as a human unless threatened?”
“Seems that way, yeah.”
“Does the parasite remember it is a parasite?”
Reader sighed. “We don’t know. There are only a few in-control superbeings, thankfully. But because there are a limited number, and we can’t find them, we don’t have a lot of intelligence about them. Most of what we know is conjecture.”
“No Cerebro-type thing for finding parasites or superbeings, huh?”
“No. I know a lot of this sounds like the comics, but reality means we’re stuck with certain things we can’t get around. Or haven’t gotten to yet. Honestly, I think one of the scientific teams is working on something similar to a mutant finder like Cerebro, but they’re a long way away from it working, at least as far as any field agents are aware.”
“Okay, so, I still don’t understand why we can’t kill them while they’re in human form.”
“Politically, it’s a bad thing. We’d come off like terrorists murdering an innocent person.”
“But they aren’t people any more.”
“Yes, well, the thing is, if the parasite isn’t active, or, rath
er, if you can’t see them as a superbeing, then when they die, you still can’t. And,” he added, “the parasite can escape and reestablish itself with someone else. The parasite has to be killed, and it can only be killed while the entity is in superbeing form or if it’s separated from any host.”
I thought about this for a bit. “But you all told me the human forms could be killed only if the parasite allowed it.”
“Yes. But let’s use Yates as an example. He turns back into a human, is totally confused about why he’s standing in the middle of the tarmac. You go to kill him. Maybe the parasite decides it would rather join with you—Yates is old, you seem more compatible, Yates is able to come back to human too well, whatever the reason. So the parasite does let you kill Yates. And then it moves to you.”
“So you’d kill me and the parasite, too.” I didn’t like this plan, but it seemed logical.
“Right. Only, do you really think we could?”
I considered this. I knew he wasn’t asking if I thought they were capable. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t think we could. We know you.”
“Well, yes, but I could see someone, say, Christopher, managing to get past that and do me in anyway. And,” I had to admit, “it would be the right thing to do.”
“Maybe. I don’t want to be in the position to have to find out—with you or anyone else we work with. Besides, we need the bodies in their superbeing forms, for study, for proof. If we kill Yates, we’re murdering terrorists. If we kill Mephistopheles, we’re heroes.”
“Fine line. And hard to do if he’s invulnerable no matter what.”
“He’s vulnerable, we just have to figure out where the parasite is inside him. It’s harder than you’d think.”
“Not in the torso or head.”
“Could be, though. You have to hit the spot exactly. It’s why tanks and heavy artillery work well—they have a more likely chance of hitting the area when they’re hitting the entire being.”
“So why didn’t anyone call in the military? I mean, there was a huge monster stomping around JFK. I can’t understand why the entire police force wasn’t called in.”
Reader sighed. “We monitor all of this kind of activity from the Science Center and from our other bases. The moment we can spot the superbeing showing up, we alter all media. No one sees it, so no one reacts to it.”
“How many bases are there?”
“We have them dotted all over the world. The most active one outside of those in the U.S is Euro Base, located in Paris, but there are several on each continent. We have a lot of bases spread over the U.S. Gate technology lets us get around, and, of course, there are gates in every airport the world over, even the tiny, obscure ones.”
“That’s fine, but speaking of that, what about the people there, in the airport? What do they think happened?”
Reader seemed uncomfortable all of a sudden. “Well, that’s complicated.”
Again with the complicated. “Because it’s the mind-control thing Martini mentioned to me, right?”
“Yeah,” Reader sounded relieved. “It’s complicated to explain, though,” he reiterated, in case I’d missed it the first time. I wanted to ask if “complicated” was Reader’s code word for “I’d rather not say,” but I wasn’t sure what I’d do if he replied that the answer to that would again be complicated.
Decided to find out. “James, what’s with all the complicated? It’s like your code word.”
“You’re good.” He sounded impressed. “Complicated means classified. As in, civilians don’t get to know this.”
“So, why are you telling me? Or, conversely, why don’t you want to tell me?”
“I have no problem giving you what I have, girlfriend. I’m just not sure I’m supposed to. Besides, the mind stuff really is complicated as well as classified.”
“So Martini told me, at least the complicated part. Feel free to take a stab at it. Who could I tell that would believe any of this anyway?” Other than Chuckie, though I didn’t say that for a variety of reasons, not wanting them to snatch him and do God knew what to him being one of the stronger ones.
I felt Martini’s arm tighten around me. “I’ll do it,” he said drowsily. “Just cuddle up here.”
“My mother is snoozing right across from us,” I pointed out.
“She seems cool with it,” Reader offered.
“You’re not helping.”
Martini pulled a little harder, and I gave in. Snuggling up against him really wasn’t all that bad. “Okay, I’m cuddled. So talk.”
“Naps are good for you,” Martini said, sounding a bit more awake.
“Information’s better. Spill it.”
He gave a good-natured grumble but opened his eyes a crack. “Oh, okay, fine. The mind-control device is for large crowds, only. It doesn’t work on one person. It’s not even mind control, really. More like creating a group hallucination.”
“How does it work?”
Martini yawned and stretched. He looked like a big cat. Then he settled back and moved me a little closer. “Odorless gas that affects the brain’s receptors. Human brains only, because we don’t need to fool any A-Cs and we don’t care about fooling any of the superbeings.”
“How is this gas dispensed?”
“It’s in the air all the time,” he said, as if this was just a minor thing.
“You have gases in the air that give humans mass hallucinations? All the time?” I was outraged, but kept my voice down. People were sleeping, after all.
“They’re natural to Earth,” Martini said patiently. “We just know how to use them.”
“Just how do you use them?”
He sighed. “We can see the gases, and all agents know how to manipulate them. Basically, we create what we want the human crowd to see and project it. Alien technology, remember? We’ve all got devices implanted into our brains, sort of like radio transmitters, only really tiny and set up to handle these kinds of things.” He yawned again. “That’s why no one was asking what happened with the superbeing you took out. I altered what everyone saw. Christopher’s side of the house handles the media. Normally they can get to the cameras and the like and alter them before any human notices.”
I pondered this for a bit. “I saw the man sprout wings and start killing people.”
“You were intimately involved in the action, so you weren’t affected by the mass hallucination.”
“That seems convenient.”
He groaned. “Nothing’s easy with you, is it? It’s not convenient, it’s adrenaline and the fight-or-flight syndrome all humans have. When the adrenaline starts pumping, it either helps or hinders the hallucination. If a person’s reaction to danger is flight, then they see the hallucination. If it’s fight, then they see reality. And, before you can ask, in the case of law enforcement or military personnel, all those trained to fight no matter what, and all those who are fighters by nature, if they aren’t intimately involved in the action, they’re affected by the hallucination.”
“The guys who were driving the baggage carts didn’t think they saw a monster,” Reader added. “They saw whatever Christopher wanted them to see. Your mother, on the other hand, was intimately involved and saw what the rest of us saw.”
“You and I weren’t intimately involved when it started.” Reader and Martini both were quiet. I looked up at Martini. “What does that mean? I assume I won’t like it.” I didn’t expect an answer from Reader—besides, I had a feeling his reply would be that this was complicated.
Martini looked uncomfortable, but I stared him down. “It means I gave you a shot when you passed out the first time. It protects you against the hallucinations. You can’t see what we project any more.”
I considered this. “You made it so you can’t fool me like the general populace?” He nodded. “How long will this last?”
“I gave you enough for a week. If you end up becoming an official agent, you’ll get regular injections monthly.”
“They don’t hurt,” Reader threw out. “They use some special alien shot-giver thing, much nicer than a hypodermic.”
“I’m thrilled.” I wasn’t that upset. They’d made me less susceptible to them, not more. If I could believe them. Then again, fast or not, Martini hadn’t been there when the man had sprouted his killer wings. If he’d wanted me to see something else, it hadn’t worked. And if I believed he wanted me to at least go to bed with him, he certainly wasn’t doing himself any favors by making me less adaptable to his will. I decided to let this one slide.
He picked it up and looked relieved. “Thanks,” he said quietly. “I’d really rather not have a fight with you right now.”
We were still sitting in traffic—I was fairly sure we’d gone about a whopping ten miles in forty-five minutes—and I got sleepy all of a sudden. “You making me tired?”
“Nope,” Martini said with a chuckle. “It’s just been a big day.”
“O-kay,” I said through a yawn. His chest was right there and rather inviting. I leaned my head against it, and I didn’t have to be an empath to determine he liked it. He pulled me closer, and I was so tired that I decided to ask about the double heartbeat I was hearing when I woke up.
CHAPTER 14
I AWOKE WITH A START. “It’s in his throat!”
“What? Kitty, are you all right?” My mother put her hand to my forehead. “You might be a little feverish.”
“I’m not feverish. Where are we?” I looked around. Still in the limo, but it looked like we were at the airport. “Where’s Martini or Gower?”
“They all went inside to make sure we’ll be safe in there.”
“So they left us alone in the car? Like this is some sort of shield?”
Mom coughed. “They explained that it is. Their cars are, um, special.”
It figured. “Okay, so we’re all safe and sound in the vehicle?”
