Black Tie
Book One of the Sparrow Archives
Kieran Strange
Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright © 2017 by Kieran Strange
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
for Kit, who taught me absolutely anything is possible;
for Mary, who taught me never to put down a good book;
for Wade, who taught me to believe in myself the way others do;
for Christina, who taught me a light always shines in the dark;
and for all you gits who told me I couldn’t:
this ride’s for you~
Prologue
The famed Magnificent Mile district of downtown Chicago looked like a bomb had hit it. And that was probably because, after a fashion, it had.
A bomb that wasn’t a bomb, but was in fact something the people of the city never thought they would see. Yet these sorts of weird, scary, supernatural abilities, things right out of comic books and video games... they were something that, in the last fifty-three months at least, had started to become terrifyingly commonplace in everyday American society.
It was a bomb in human form. At least in theme and theory.
It – or rather, she – stood high above the chaos that had flooded out onto the streets from the buildings that lined it, the scuffed white toes of her Converse peeking out over the edge of the neon sign she had clambered up onto. Some eighty or so stories below, amidst the scattered blazing cars and shattered storefronts, families and friends panicked, screamed, sprinted, cowered, and hid. People who, only minutes before, had been gushing about the light snowfall that was adding a festive feel their seasonal holiday shopping, or rummaging through bags to show each other what deals they’d managed to score so far. People who were now running for their lives, or were frozen in total and utter fear. Or curiosity.
Or stupidity, thought the lone man who had been only minutes behind said human bomb on her way up to the roof of the building her mother worked in, as he peered over the ledge and saw a young man about his own age (mid- to late-twenties) standing prone in the middle of the intersection with his smartphone raised high in front of his face, aimed up at the tiny teenage girl who had been the sudden source of so much destruction.
The man didn’t care. His priority wasn’t clearing the streets of wankers and idiots who thought fifteen seconds of YouTube footage was worth risking their life for. His priority was the girl who had started it all.
The girl who now stood not fifteen feet from him atop the enormous, flashing red sign proclaiming something he hadn’t bothered to read, which extended out over the street below; she gazed over the city, teetering on the ten-inch wide ledge in her simple gray skinny jeans and Panic! At The Disco hoodie, which gave her a deceivingly harmless appearance. Her white-blonde hair whipped about her face on the wind, shrouding her expression from his view. Which didn’t make judging her current state of mind any easier. The man whose job it was to follow her eased himself up onto the concrete sill of the building, waiting until he was on roughly the same level as her before making his presence known.
“Hey there –!”
Because what better way was there than that to reach out to the sixteen-year-old kid he’d spent the last three weeks surveilling?
The blonde sophomore whipped around at the end of the sign, managing to keep her balance somehow as the wind the city was famous for blustered around them, pelting them angrily with tiny flakes of snow. Her dark mascara was smeared down her cheeks and her nose was red from crying. She was clutching a cheap Bic lighter in each of her small hands, which were both completely concealed beneath what appeared to be welding gloves.
That’s... that’s not a good thing.
“You...” Those tear-smudged eyes were huge and round, staring at the tall, bulky, blond man who had followed her up there with a mixture of surprise and fear. “You’re the guy who’s been stalking me...”
“Actually,” the man shouted back over the whistle of the wind, his voice carrying the rather prominent, lazy drawl of what Americans would consider a Cockney accent, “I personally prefer to think of it as ‘Guardian Angel-like behavior’.”
“Are you a cop?”
The question didn’t exactly catch him off-guard. It was usually one of the first he was asked upon confronting one of his targets. “I’m a... I’m a sort-of agent. But I don’t work for the cops, or the government. I guess technically I work for the United Nations.”
The blonde girl snorted. “Is that good news for me or bad news for me?”
“Well, see, thankfully for us both, it’s good – I hope,” the British man was saying as he dared to place one foot closer to the bolted sheath clamping the sign against the rooftop, the toe of his combat boot just nudging the steel. “I mean, if that news makes you kill us both, then I guess it’s bad news... but if you’re willing to trust me, Riley, then it’s gonna be good news.
“My name’s Cabe, okay?” he continued, after her eyes grew rounder at the realization that this strange man knew her name. “Agent Cabe Sparrow. And I’m with a Division of the U.N. called W.A.R.D. – our job is to protect Anomalies like you and make sure that they’re safe, and that everyone else around them is safe, too.”
“Is that why you’ve been following me?” Riley demanded, pivoting more fully on her perch to face this Cabe Sparrow head-on. “Because you think people aren’t safe around me?”
Well, considering I just watched you breathe streams of fire down eighty storeys into the street... thought Cabe, before he shook it out of his head. Sometimes, when he was on the job out in the thick of it, it was difficult to remain clear-headed and unbiased, especially after witnessing so much senseless violence and carnage.
But it wasn’t senseless, he reminded himself. This young girl was petrified. She was one of only an estimated two thousand in his jurisdiction of North America who, in the past four-and-a-half years, had begun developing these... abilities. Some could do more than others, which made some more frightening. Some caused more panic and alarm within society than others, whether it was the schools, the local P.D., or just society itself.
Those were the scenarios when W.A.R.D. received a case file, and an agent like Cabe Sparrow was charged with keeping the situation... calm.
“No, Riley,” replied Cabe, with sincerity in his voice. “I’ve been following you because we’re worried you’re not safe around people. Like I said – helper, not stalker. I know you probably really don’t want to trust me right now, you’ve not been able to trust your teachers or you friends...”
“Are you afraid of me?”
Whether it was her own natural defense system kicking into play, or a product of exposure to the Winter elements for too long, her words were frosted with a thin layer of ice. One hand extended ever so slightly, the thumb of her welding glove (which he noticed no
w she’d driven a screw or nail through in order to make striking the lighter easier) poised over the flint. He’d already witnessed with his own eyes what could possibly happen next if she didn’t like his answer: she flicked, exhaled, and a torrent of fire and flame grilled his ass like a well-done ribeye.
He had to admit, despite his desire to put a stop to it, it was a fairly innovative way to weaponize the fact that one could breathe freakin’ propane or something.
Sometimes science had to be laid aside for the short while it took to remove himself and his super-powered charge from the dangerous situation. The few seconds it took for him to doubt what he saw was the few seconds of distraction that would get him killed. Repudiation was suicide, as the W.A.R.D. agent who’d trained him years ago had once said.
“I don’t... I don’t think that’s really a fair question.”
Riley was impudent, refusing to back down. “Why?” she demanded.
“Because I don’t know you at all. I haven’t been given the chance.”
The girl snorted, motioning with the lighter as if to remind him it was still in between the two of them. “You’ve been stalking me for three weeks, I’d say you know me pretty fucking well.”
Cabe shook his head, the wind tossing his short, ash-blond spikes to one side as he squinted against it, remaining focused on his young charge at all times. The dizzying downward sight of brick and stone spiraling ground-ward toward smudges of color that were trees and cars and people was a little too much for his head, which was already spinning in loops. Heights had never been a friend of his. “Yeah, but that means I know you, it doesn’t mean I know you. Get what I mean?”
“No... not at all.” Riley shook her head, bending her free arm to wipe her eyes and nose on her sleeve. “By the way, Agent Cabe Sparrow... you look like you’re totally about to shit your pants.”
“I’m not gonna like to you, mate, I probably am.”
“You scared of heights?”
Cabe tilted his head in a so-so motion and pulled a face. “Not exactly? I just don’t particularly enjoy being suspended over them for any extended period of time.”
Somewhere, within the curtain of billowing platinum hair, his sharp eyes caught the way her lips curved just the tiniest fraction at the corners. “Look,” he said, smoothly and sympathetically, seizing would could become a rare opportunity to de-escalate the situation, “I’m not like you, Riley. I can’t do the incredible things you can do.”
“Incredible?” she spat. “I’m a freak! I got kicked outta school... my girlfriend dumped me ‘cuz I nearly suffocated her last time we made out! My mom called the cops on me! These guys in... in suits keep coming over and Mom talks to ‘em for hours and I know what they’re talking about...!”
“What are they talking about, Riley?” asked Cabe, without even a single hint of dubiety to his words. He wanted to do what quite possibly no other adult had done for her yet – listen to her.
The blonde sophomore student scoffed at him, peering down over the edge of the sign she stood on as it wavered ever so slightly with a strong gust. Cabe’s muscles coiled, ready to spring into action if needed with no more than a split second’s notice.
“They’re gonna take me away, and lock me up,” she said in a voice so quiet Cabe had a hard time hearing her over the wind and the din from below. “And I don’t care if you think I’m a crazy conspiracy theorist, because I know that’s what they do to people like me! People they’re scared of! They don’t, they don’t even think that... that maybe I don’t wanna hurt them...”
“And now you’re trapped and you feel like there’s no way out,” Cabe offered to finish for her, his low tenor soft with empathy.
“Oh, there’s a way out,” she replied darkly, and her line of vision dropped again to stare at the street below. “For me... and maybe some of them. All of the doctors who examined me told my mom my lungs are full of this, this... hexane-propane-compound-thing...? That apparently now I inhale oxygen, and exhale all this fucked up super-flammable gas, that my body can create it... so... so how much of an explosion d’you think I’d make if I hit the ground from this height...?”
So, that’s her exit strategy... Suicide, especially among some of the younger Anomalies he was assigned to, wasn’t an uncommon solution to this sort of a dilemma. And the method used for said suicide, especially when an individual had been especially hurt or betrayed or abandoned by society, was quite often specifically planned to leave more than just the one person dead. Bollocks, shit, and fuck the side of the bed I woke up on this morning...
“I’m really, really crap at science,” replied Cabe cautiously, “but I’m willing to bet ten bucks you’d make a pretty fucking big boom. I would guess six, maybe seven square blocks?”
Riley’s head lowered even further, her expression completely shrouded by the curtain of white-blonde hair. “And they would all deserve it.”
“I know, Riley.” Unlike his charge, Cabe was still trying not to look down. “I know they would, because they’ve treated you like shit. And I know because I’ve helped dozens of people like you, and my Division at the U.N. has helped thousands, all over the world. It’s what we do. Because this world, Riley? It’s unfair. It’s a bitch. And whether it’s because you listen to music that isn’t on the radio, or because you like girls more than boys, or because you can breathe out a highly-flammable toxic gas... the world’s gonna try and shit on you. It’ll take whatever opportunity it can, and it’ll do whatever it takes to try to drag you down to its own crappy level.
“That’s why you gotta rise above it, Riley,” he continued, sensing that he may be starting to chip away at the walls and boundaries she had put up for her own protection, and get through to her. “That’s why you gotta rise above them, all of them, down there. There are people in this world who are chosen to make a difference, to face animosity and adversary and come out on top. People who are meant to do something bigger... I don’t think you’re a freak, Riley. I think you’re a young woman who’s been shoved into a piss-arse situation that she’s trying to navigate, that even someone her mom’s age would have trouble navigating, and who could maybe do with the help of a team of allies who can make sure all those broken, overlooked, shadowy areas of the law can’t get their teeth into you. I’m talking lawyers, meetings with senators, and judges...”
The grooved rubber sole of his combat boot braved the first step out onto the neon sign. It shifted a inch or two under his weight and his stomach churned like butter, but he boldly extended his dominant hand to her regardless, palm-up, the invisible and metaphorical olive branch clutched right there between his outstretched fingers.
“Riley, please. Let us help you. Let me help you. And I promise you, you’ll be safer in our hands than anywhere else in the world. I promise you.”
Whenever Cabe was forced to confront one of the charges he had been assigned to for a case like this, there was always that moment – that peak in the conversation, like an apex of emotion – where his charge was offered a blunt and blatant choice. A choice which would, if they accepted it, grant them safety, sanctuary, legal representation, and a real shot at freedom in a world that was fast becoming a formidable and dangerous place for anyone with any skill or ability even slightly supernatural. A choice which could save their life.
Most of the time, they chose logic and reason over emotion, and he was able to bring them in for an interview and, if required, fully-funded medical treatment. Sometimes, he wasn’t so lucky; those were the days he usually returned home with broken bones.
During that moment, all sights and sounds and other sensual stimuli had a tendency to melt away into a backdrop of hazy white noise, rendering them both vulnerable and naked. It was a near impossible feat, convincing those who believed trusting others was fatal, to put their faith in you. It was a task as fragile as crystal; it couldn’t be rushed, or forced, or mishandled. Every fraction of every second was an opportunity – for something to go right, or to go very, very wrong.
The silence lasted three seconds. Then four, then five, then six... Cabe wrestled against his inner phobias to stay by the edge as another wind kicked up, rustling his bomber jacket and jeans, which did little to protect him against the biting chill of the air. But he wasn’t abandoning her... not now.
After what seemed like an eternity of that same static nothingness, Riley raised her head to peer at him through her long bangs. Her eyes were brimming with tears again, her cheeks already wet. In that instant, his heart tore in two at the sight of someone so young faced with such a serious and possibly dangerous decision to make. Life was most definitely far from fair these days.
“They... they won’t let me go...” she whimpered, again at a volume Cabe had to strain to hear, getting just a hair closer to her with his one foot out on top of the sign. “I’m a criminal, I... I’m a terrorist, I’ve killed people –”
“You’re not a criminal or a terrorist, Riley,” interrupted Cabe, determined not to lose the inch or two of ground he had managed to gain. His terminology was well-practiced and adapted from scripts he had trained with, to ensure the wrong messages or signals were never accidentally conveyed. “At W.A.R.D., we... we would refer to you as an ‘Assailant’. It’s our own special terminology for a person, especially an Anomaly, who may have committed a violent crime or done something heinous when we don’t know what specifically triggered them to act in that way. The ‘Anomaly Panic Defense’ clause work in both directions, you know.”
“Not in this country.”
“Yes, in this country,” the blond man replied sternly, firmly, in a tone that allowed no room for protest. “The A.C.L.U. work for it. Democratic independent politicians work for it. We work for it, at W.A.R.D., and we aren’t going to turn you over to any justice system we believe is biased or partisan, or in any way unfit to try you without total equality. You’ll be a witness of the Security Council of the United Nations... now that’s something cool to tell your room-mates when you go to college.”
Black Tie: Book One of the Sparrow Archives Page 1
