“I was worried about you…when Beth told me what happened.”
“Beth! Is that what you call her?” she said, pushing him away, leveling an accusing finger at the dark-haired woman who stood in the doorway, arms crossed beneath her large breasts. “Do you have any idea what she and her asshole brothers did to me? I’m going to kill them, you know—her last. Did she tell you that when you two were fooling around?”
“I said I was sorry, I—” said Mary Beth, taking a step into the room only to find Rowen’s SIG suddenly jumping from her holster and pointed at her.
“One more step and I’ll empty it: the whole clip. I know you can’t dodge them all.”
“Please put the gun down, Rowen,” said Gibbs, backing away from her, hands out. “She can explain everything. She—we have an offer for you. An offer that will be good for everyone. Just come to my lab and—”
Rowen barked a laugh. Frowning, she pivoted her weapon back and forth between the two of them. “No way. If you’re with her, it means you’re with them, and I can’t trust you,” she said, trying to keep the hurt from her voice.
“Oh, come on. You gotta be kidding me. You know me; I would never do something like that. You’ve been my friend for a lot longer than she has,” said Gibbs, his voice rising to a falsetto.
Rowen shook her head, not believing any of it. “Look at her, look at me. Her boobs are bigger than your head, and I’ve seen the way you look at her.”
“Ok, that’s enough, sister,” said Mary Beth, stepping forward and unbuckling the worn leather straps of her gun belt, kicking the fallen weapons to Rowen’s feet. “I know you got no reason to trust me. I messed up…but I’m here to give you my help, if you ain’t too stupid to take it.” Next, she shrugged off her duster, throwing the heavy armored coat across the room and letting it fall into a heap. “Goddamn, I feel naked without that shit on; that’s what I get for goin’ soft.”
Rowen narrowed her eyes as she looked at the discarded weapons and armor. Cautiously, she lowered her gun to the floor, unsure what to make of the gesture. “Why?” she asked, locking eyes with the other woman.
“Truth be told, I need your help. This is gonna be a win-win kinda situation. I know in my heart I done you wrong, and I don’t got a lotta time left, so I wanna make it up to you if I can.”
Rowen cocked her head, eyes fixed on the nickel-plated guns. Mary Beth may as well have thrown her soul on the floor. She knew she shouldn’t trust her, but the gesture, something in her tone made her want to believe. “Ok, if Gibbs is vouching for you, I’ll come with you,” she said before suddenly turning to Gibbs and putting her fist just under his nose, “but if you’re messing with me in any way, I’m gonna give you another black eye and knock out your teeth.”
Gibbs could only raise his hands in defense, nodding sheepishly. “You’ll see, Rowen. I swear it’ll be worth it.”
***
The lab, as it was called, was a large portion of the station that Gibbs had appropriated not long after they found themselves trapped in the city. It was here that he first started turning the FEMA batteries into power and heat for the base. The place was pure chaos, looking more like a junkyard than anything else, with piles of gutted electronics scattered across waist-high workbenches filled with half-built gizmos and abandoned projects. Holographic screens full of bizarre schematics took up entire walls and floated above the tracks. Gibbs and a few like-minded team members had even managed to raid the NYU research labs, scoring some bleeding-edge equipment for 3D printing and nanotech production. Gibbs had a knack for turning lead into gold, recycling the old junk that he and some of the other men had managed to scavenge, giving them a formidable array of gadgets and ad hoc inventions that made everyone's lives better.
Rowen followed them with her weapon drawn, expecting trouble to appear from the dark tunnels at any moment, not sure what to expect. Her heart skipped a beat as they entered the primary lab area, shock turning to an uncontrollable smile upon finding her father at one of the workbenches. Immediately she ran to him and hugged him with all her strength, wanting to never let go.
“Daddy!” she said in a soft whisper. Her whole body went limp when his arms encircled her, the tension of the last few days draining away.
“It’s ok, sweetie, everything is going to be fine, right as rain. I promise,” he said with a smile. Rowen buried herself in his arms, relishing the rumble of his deep voice as he held her close.
After a moment that Rowen didn’t think lasted long enough, they turned their attention to Gibbs and Mary Beth. “Ok, Scotty, you asked me to come here without any explanation. I’m here on good faith. I think we both are. What's this all about?” said her father.
Gibbs hesitated only for a moment before pointing a shaking finger at Mary Beth. “It wasn’t really for me, Josh, it was for her. She has some things she needs to tell you, and we need you to keep an open mind about it.”
Her father frowned at the dark-haired woman before cocking his head and giving her a slight nod. “Ok, soldier, report. What was so important that we had to do this in the middle of the night?”
As he started to speak, Mary Beth immediately stood at attention, chin up, chest out, and shoulders back. “Sir, yes, sir! Three days ago, myself, and the other members of Divinity Corps assaulted Rowen.”
Rowen could see her father’s eyes narrow. He removed his arm from her shoulders and assumed a defensive posture just in front for her. “You better speak fast, and you better have a hell of a good reason for touching anyone under my command without cause, much less my daughter.”
Mary Beth looked down for a moment, not able to meet his eyes. Taking a deep breath, she began, fingers twitching at her side for guns that weren't there. “We needed her cerebral spinal fluid, sir. It’s the basis of an opiate called Diomoxicin—”
Her father closed his eyes and shook his head, his face a mask of quiet anger. Rowen knew the look. He wasn’t taking this well. She could see his nostrils flaring as he watched Mary Beth through hooded eyes. “Diomoxicin: I’ve never heard of it. You’re not really making—”
Mary Beth raised her hand slightly to stop him. “Please, sir, I’ll make it clear; you got my word on that.”
“Ok, soldier, make this crystal clear, and do it quickly.”
“The Ascension process. The way we get our abilities; how I can catch bullets, or Ariel can make armor and weapons from ice. Well, the government and the cardinals like to tell everybody it's a gift from the Holy Spirit, but that's a load o’ horseshit. Truth is that they use nanites, tiny robots injected into your body that turn on some latent genes people have. We got ’em from my daddy’s side of the family. His parents passed ’em down, so my brothers and I got one side only. We’re strong, can take a beating, and have abilities that ain’t crazy or nothin’, not that that matters much compared to a regular person. Pump the nanites into one of us and bam, you got a super. But the craptastic part is once the nanites are in your system for a bit, everything starts runnin’ out of whack, like a car that goes too long without a tune-up. The drug, we call it D for short, it’s like a pit stop in Nascar. It doesn’t fix everything, but it makes it so that you can keep goin’.”
“Why did you have to get the fluid from my daughter, and if it’s that important to you, shouldn’t you have a supply on hand?” he asked, curiosity in his deep voice.
Mary Beth shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut, her breath coming faster now. “No sir. Me an’ my brothers, we’ve been put out to pasture, so to speak. This mission, it’s supposed to be our last. That's why the cardinals were pushing so hard for us to hit the enemy hard. We got a couple months in us at best,” she said, brushing a shaking hand across her face, her eyes bright with unfallen tears.
“That still doesn’t really explain the attack on Rowen. What does she have to do with all this?”
“Well, sir, Ariel found out that you and your wife both carry the divinity gene, each inherited from both of your parents. The fact that you
even met and made little Rowen over here, it's like one in a billion.”
Rowen spoke up, not really understanding how that could help them. “I read about genes in school. Parents pass down lots of ’em, like eye color or the freaking ginger gene that I gotta deal with,” she said, her voice dripping with disdain. “Trust me, I feel more cursed than anything else.”
“The genes I’m talkin’ about don’t express most of the time. They’re recessive, not dominant like hair or eye color,” said Mary Beth with a sigh. “It’s like if both of your gramms and gramps had the gene for ALS, what they used to call Lou Gehrig’s Disease, then there would be a good chance your daddy would get it when he was young, but if both your mom and pop carried it…well, Rowen would be up a creek. She would have the disorder for sure. The way the divinity gene works, it’s like the opposite from ALS. Each progressive generation makes it more potent…and Rowen, she got the stuff from all sides. Her DNA is potent as hell.”
“And that makes the drug very potent,” said her father, running his hand along his jaw in thought.
“Yes, sir,” said Mary Beth, meeting his eyes. “Before we took it, we were looking down the barrel of a couple weeks. Now, we’re talkin’ months.”
When she had finished, Rowen’s father nodded to himself. Putting his arms behind his back, he moved to be face-to-face with Mary Beth, and when he spoke his voice was low, the deep timbre menacing. “Why are you confessing? So far, your actions have been nothing short of shameful, unbecoming of an American soldier. Why shouldn’t I lock you up for the months you have remaining? That’s what you deserve.”
Rowen could see Mary Beth’s shoulders fall as her father spoke. The older woman took a deep breath and looked past her father into her eyes. “Because of your daughter, sir. Yesterday she stood up for me even when I didn’t deserve it. That’s the type of person she is,” she said as she squared her shoulders once again, pride in her eyes. “My brother, he would kill her in the long run, tryin’ to buy more time for his sorry ass, but not me.”
“Jesus!” said her father, turning away and throwing up his hands in exasperation. “What the hell am I supposed to do with all this? Do you know what kind of situation you’re putting me in?!”
Mary Beth’s eyes were wide, darting around the room as her father paced back and forth, grumbling under his breath. “Gibbs,” she whispered loudly, motioning toward her father with her chin.
Gibbs blew out his cheeks, cocking his head as he began nervously, “Josh, she— We have an idea…but it’s a little nuts.”
Her father stopped pacing and looked back and forth between the two of them. “Well, spit it out. It can’t be any crazier than what I’ve heard so far,” he said with heat in his voice.
Rowen watched Gibbs rifle through one of his workbenches, muttering to himself while he searched. Finally, he pulled out a tablet and a biomonitor. He gave them all a polite smile as he went to Mary Beth’s side, fumbling around trying to attach the sensor to Mary Beth’s ample chest.
“Anything to cop a feel, eh, college boy?” said Mary Beth with a lopsided grin. Rowen’s jaw dropped as she took his trembling hands gently into hers, kissing them softly before taking the device and placing it over her heart. Gibbs gave her a smile and a squeeze on her arm before returning to the tablet, tapping away.
“Ok, here we go,” said Gibbs as an oversized image of Mary Beth’s vitals appeared just overhead. The image flickered between filters, going from heart rate to blood circulation and finally to something Rowen had never seen before. It looked like a crazy highway with millions of cars racing in all directions all glowing blue, red, and amber. “These are her nanites, those still functioning, interacting with her system. As far as I can tell, the blue ones are there to amplify her natural abilities, make her stronger and faster, but only to a maximum human level, so we’ll take those out,” he said, tapping a button on the tablet to filter out the blue nanites. “The yellow ones combine with her cells to make them denser. Tougher, denser muscle tissue means that she has superhuman strength and reaction time, that her skin and bones are tougher, and as far as I can tell, this causes atrophy over time. This is only part of the damage that is caused as time passes.”
“Scotty, I know this is your thing, but I really don’t need a science lesson. I need a way to solve the problems the two of you have so kindly dumped in my lap tonight.”
“Sorry, Josh, I’ll make it quick. Most important are the red ones. They're like little factories that make the other nanites. They actually consume biological matter to replicate, and these are the ones that do most of the damage,” said Gibbs, his eyes darting back and forth nervously between her father and Mary Beth.
“So does that mean we can remove them, give her some more time? Good for her, but still not seeing the angle for me, for us,” said her father with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes, we can remove them, but—”
“Ahh, hell, enough with the science bullshit, sweetie,” said Mary Beth with a snort. “Removing the nanites will kill me. Not right away, I’ll have a day or so, but that's not the point. If we don’t take ’em out, we’re gonna miss the chance to save this city, maybe win the war.”
Her father narrowed his brows, looking at the two of them. “I don’t get it. What could possibly be the upside of letting you die?”
Mary Beth took a deep breath and looked directly at Rowen. “Because the nanites could go to Rowen,” she said, pointing. “I want to give ’em to Rowen.”
Chapter 8: Manhattan by Air
May 2076
Gwen desperately sucked in a lungful of cool air, her lungs burning like she had just clawed her way to the surface from too long a dive. She was frozen, her entire body tingling like she had been swimming in frigid ocean water. She blew into her icy hands, flexing her fingers in an attempt to drive away pinpricks in her freezing extremities, gooseflesh puckering all over her body despite the morning heat. She found herself just as they had been in the holotheater, standing on a stone pathway beside a large lake, gleaming towers in the distance. It looked different than it had in the illusion, the lake still having traces of winter ice dazzling in the sunlight, the trees skeletal with only the tiny buds of spring on their branches and not the rustle of deep green summer leaves. The crystalline tower was tall and thin, blade-like, a faceted crystal that absorbed the light it gathered into a vortex of dancing colors running up and down its length.
“Please, God, never let me go through that again,” said Uriel from his hands and knees. He’d collapsed the moment they arrived, eyes wide and drenched in sweat, his ragged breath coming in short, desperate spurts as his head hung low to the ground, his nose almost touching the pavement.
Only Rodrigo seemed unaffected, the plastic smile on his face never wavering. He stood patiently, his black-and-red robes contrasting harshly with the park around them. “From here, it doesn’t look so bad,” he said, raising an eyebrow and looking around. “I was supposed to come here on business for the cardinal, just before the invasion.”
“Are you sure it was you?” said Uriel, flippant, giving the Italian a challenging look.
“Why don’t we bring a whole battalion into the city like this?” Gwen said, trying to change the subject just as Rodrigo’s brows drew together, his hands balling into fists.
Throwing glances at Uriel, he shook his head. His melodic voice serious, he began, “I can take one or two besides myself, and I cannot travel in this way without seeing a place first. Until Arthur came to the city, and his tracking system gave us a visual of this location.” He finished with a shrug.
“Why aren’t you on our roster? Why don’t we know about you?” said Uriel, frowning, the metallic lines on his face reflecting bright hues of silver and gold in the morning light. “We’re told constantly that there simply aren't enough of us, and now, what, the cardinal has his own little ascended errand boy?”
“Che palle!” swore Rodrigo, throwing his hands over his head. “You are told what you need to k
now. While I am sure I could make quick work of you, my abilities are not suited for the front lines, so the cardinal gives me…other responsibilities, none of which are your concern,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
Gwen, having had enough, stepped between the two men, nostrils flaring. “Ok, boys, put your dicks away. We can’t stand here all day arguing, so anyone who starts some shit around me is gonna get tossed into the lake. Rodrigo, tell us where we gotta go and let's go!”
Both men stared bullets into each other, not moving. “Ok, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she mumbled, having lost all patience. She gave each a gentle shove and both men were suddenly airborne, tumbling end over end from her in opposing directions, their screams of shock when they landed hard a few dozen feet away putting a tiny smile on her face. Ignoring their curses, Gwen looked out at the beautiful vista while fishing out the vial of D the cardinal had given her. Popping the cork, she swallowed it in a single pull, enjoying the burn in her chest as the crimson liquid slid down into her belly. She didn’t want any complications today if she had to push herself, so she took the drug. She needed a pick-me-up anyway and she didn’t see the harm. Reaching into her other pocket, she found the earbuds for her smart device. Humming to herself, she popped them in and began to sing under her breath, bopping in place as she scrolled through her playlist.
“What are you doing?” shouted Rodrigo, stumbling back to her, his robes dirty but his face still handsome, almost radiant.
“Looking for some good flying music,” she said, gazing up at him. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re very handsome for a priest? Oh, here, what do you think, some Steppenwolf, Magic Carpet Ride?
“Mios dio, are you mad, girl!”
“You know what, you’re right, too obvious. Let’s go with some Hendrix. This is going to be fun,” she said with a feral grin, giddy, happy to finally be doing something.
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