XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation

by Brad Magnarella

  “No, no, you shouldn’t be up.”

  Scott turned toward his mother’s voice. A pink snowman entered the room.

  “Where are my glasses?” he croaked.

  “Lie down. I’ll get them.”

  The snowman went to his dresser and, after Scott had pulled his legs back into bed, handed the glasses to him. His bedroom sharpened as he pushed them onto his face. In her pink workout sweats, his mother frowned down at him in concern. But the glasses didn’t feel right. Scott ran a finger over the thick plastic.

  “No, my newer ones,” he said.

  “They’re broken.” Her mouth pinched in a way that said, And do you know how much those cost me?

  “Broken?”

  “What possessed you to bike home in the dark? You know you could have called me or your father. One of us would have picked you up. But biking home in the dark?” She huffed as though he had been Evel Knievel attempting to leap Snake River Canyon on a motorcycle.

  Scott scrubbed his jaw. “I was in an accident?”

  “You rode right off the sidewalk and over an embankment. The police found you in a ditch, for Pete’s sake.” Seeming to understand that her son’s well-being was perhaps more important than a pair of glasses or the fact that he had been found lying in a ditch, she took a calming breath through her nose. “You were groggy when they brought you home and explained you’d probably suffered a small concussion. The best thing, they said, is for you to rest.”

  Scott was pretty sure the concussed were to be kept awake at all costs, but he was in no condition to debate the point.

  “Oh, and drink plenty of fluid. Which reminds me… I meant to mix you up some Crystal Light.”

  A dozen aspirins too, please.

  Scott squinted after his mother, who closed the door behind herself. J.R. had already slipped into the room, though, and he now tiptoed around the bed. He looked up at Scott, his tag jingling.

  “Do you remember any of this?” Scott asked.

  J.R. licked his muzzle and peeked around, seemingly disappointed that the room was no longer the trash heap that used to hide all sorts of goodies. Scott dropped an arm over the side of the bed and ran a languid hand over J.R.’s stiff curls.

  “Dad’s car stalled, so I biked to the school,” he murmured. “I remember that. Then there was this guy with glow-in-the-dark glasses… oh, yeah, Mr. Roboto. Janis and I danced. I definitely remember that… and the close talking… and the kiss.” Scott raised his head. “Holy cow, we kissed.”

  J.R. looked up as though the change in Scott’s tenor meant a treat was forthcoming. But Scott’s head had already fallen back to the pillow, his hand clasping his brow. He remembered the gymnasium with its disco ball and the constellation of lights revolving around them. Janis’s face tilting up toward his. The moist pressure of her lips. The world around them falling away.

  “And then…” The rest of the night became lost in gray fog.

  Hate to break it to you, pal, but then you got to talking politics, and she up and left. Went looking for that other fellow, what’s-his-name. Serves you right, if you ask me. Politics, for crying out loud?

  Scott knew it hadn’t happened quite like that, but Bud was in the ballpark. Scott sat up to think. The room spun a little less. He pushed both hands through his salt-stiff hair, the roots aching to the deepest layers of his scalp.

  All right, so he had told her about Gorbachev’s assassination, but only because she hadn’t known. But that was the extent of the political talk, as far as he could remember. After her shock, Janis’s face had taken on a distant look, like when they went into their pasts together. Then Janis said she had to leave, that she would explain later. When he closed his eyes, he could see her back, her flaming hair shifting side to side, as she hurried toward… Blake.

  Scott groaned, prompting J.R. to look around worriedly and flatten his poodle tail.

  Yeah, but it’s not like you left there solo either, pal. There was something of a “wink-wink, nudge-nudge” in Bud’s tone.

  “What are you taking about?”

  Tall broad. Five ten, five eleven. Good build. Not a lot of personality to the face, though. And the hair? Don’t know about you, pal, but if it ain’t past the shoulders, I ain’t buying. Know what I mean? Well, I don’t guess you do. This one’s barely grew past her ears.

  “Where did we go?”

  Hey, now! Scott imagined Bud throwing his palms out. Whattya figure me for, one of them fruity Peepin’ Toms? Look, I’m here to help with the redhead. That’s what you bought my program for, right? Anything else is your business, far as I’m concerned. He lowered his voice and spoke in Scott’s ear. But here’s a freebie: watch your step with the older ones. That one especially. Looked like she coulda snapped you in half if she’d had a mind to.

  “Older…? Wait, did she have a scar on her mouth?”

  Yeah, wasn’t so sure about that either…

  The room spun so violently when Scott stood that he staggered in a circle to keep his balance. He grabbed onto his desk, his head threatening to come apart. Agent Steel? He pressed his eyes closed, bolts of light jagging across his vision. And then he saw her dispassionate face. And the room in the front office. And the card with his fingerprints. And something about handcuffs and links in a chain…

  She had drilled him pretty good, he remembered, and he had — Scott clenched his eyelids tighter — denied everything.

  Scott stood straight, his eyes opening. That’s right. He had stonewalled her. He remembered thinking that if she really had something on him, she would’ve arrested him on the spot. Instead, she’d brought him to her temporary office at school, no parents, no lawyers, to see what she could scare out of him. In the end, nothing. Scott grinned as he remembered how he’d even managed to slip in a few jokes. Janis’s kiss had done wonders for him.

  Scott paced the room on unsteady legs, like a sailor on his first minutes of shore leave.

  The rest of the night? Nada, not even fragments. He guessed the accident had happened shortly after his dismissal. Must’ve landed on my head in that ditch. He paused in front of his closet. Or was I even in an accident?

  He felt over his scalp for a telltale cut or lump before remembering his entire scalp hurt. In the mirror, he saw the sorry state of himself. Scott had never been hungover — never even had a drink — but he guessed it looked something like the swollen-faced, bed-headed thing squinting back at him. He’d be able to think more clearly after a shower and some breakfast. He glanced over at his alarm clock.

  Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink.

  For some reason, the sight made a slow wash cycle of his already delicate stomach. He staggered toward the clock and began mashing the buttons until it displayed a time — any time — just as long as the infernal thing stopped blinking at him. Then, for no reason at all, he sank against his bedside. His chest begin to hitch. The sobs that emerged were dull and bruising. Maybe it was Janis, he told himself. Maybe it was his fear — no, his certainty — that she’d gotten back together with Blake.

  Scott sniffled and pushed his forearm across his nose.

  But then why did he feel guilt?

  27

  There was a spinning, mind-bending moment when Janis wondered whether she could fly. Whether she could slide the window in room 611 the rest of the way open, dive out into the naked air before one of the vagrants grabbed her, and use her abilities to, if not float, then stall her descent enough that she wouldn’t wind up a broken heap, doomed to power an electric wheelchair with puffs of breath for the rest of her life.

  That last thought killed the idea.

  Her knees began to wobble. She clutched the sill behind her as though she were about to launch into a set of dips.

  “There there, kitten,” said the bum holding the serrated knife. He spoke in a syrupy voice that made Janis’s skin crawl. “We’re not here to hurt you, heh heh. We’re gracious hosts, aren’t we, boys?”

  Janis’s eyes shot to the two men who had ente
red the room. One was dark skinned and lean with an afro the size of a beanbag chair. His grin broke open around a row of glinting gold teeth. The other man, white, squinted at Janis from a pointed face, his nose upturned. Stuffing burst from slashes in his red-brown jacket, which whispered as he shuffled toward her, sniffing the air.

  “She smells nithe,” he lisped, saliva hissing through his overlapping front teeth.

  Outside, a tide of applause rose at something Star had said.

  Focus, Janis.

  “Just so long as she plays nice,” Split Lobe said. He paused ten feet from Janis and, half crouching, made a beckoning gesture with his crusty serrated blade. “Here, kitty kitty kitty.”

  Janis stood from the sill, searching the room for a seam to slip through, for something to use as a weapon — anything that would get her back to street level and the capitol building. But judging by the footfalls in the hallway, the only way out — the only sane way out — was about to become even more crowded. And unless she was planning to wad up greasy newspapers and throw them, there were no weapons, either. She thought about her “escort of one.” If they were protectors, as Scott seemed to think, now would be a good time for them to start, well, protecting. But Janis sensed it was only her.

  Her and her abilities.

  Split Lobe puckered his lips and smooched the air. “Here, kitty kitty kitty. Heh heh.” The other men chuckled as they made room for a new addition, this one with a wild smile and leering blue eyes. And Janis could see in his eyes, in all of their eyes, that this was their game: batting their prey around, stoking her fear to an insane, eye-scratching pitch, and then finishing her off. The men here feasted on fear.

  As much as you do?

  The same hungry voice that had begun stalking Janis in the hallway seized her like a pair of jaws. Make them fear you. Make them feel pain. Janis staggered from the voice’s suddenness, from its… vehemence.

  Blood is good.

  Janis grunted and held her hand out, as though to blunt the voice. Instead, the luminous threads burst back into being, bright throbbing lines connecting her to the room and the men inside it.

  “Aww, are we frightening you, little kitty?” Split Lobe shuffled forward. “I bet if we stroked her little belly, she’d calm right down.” He grinned with his nubs and started into another series of wet smooches, groping forward with his hand.

  Her pulse caught him in the right hip and spun him through the air like a gyroscope, his dirty coat flapping madly. He collided into the wall above his bed with an umph! and landed on his mattress, newspapers and plastic bags gusting off around him. The knife clattered across the room.

  Janis aimed her hand toward the others.

  “What in holy mother of shit…?” Afro staggered back a step, his gold smile shrinking.

  Mr. Lisp scrambled on hands and feet for the knife, which had come to a rest near the bathroom, while the man with the lecherous blue eyes, his smile wilder than ever, leaped over him and stumbled toward Janis, arms outstretched. His fingernails were long enough to be blades.

  He hits you at that speed, and you’re both going through the window.

  Janis spun from his path. Claws raked the back of her sweatshirt before her neck whiplashed back. She collapsed to her knees, her scalp on fire. He’d seized the end of her pony tail, and now he twisted it around his fist. No! The breath of high laughter brushed her ear. A second later, she smelled it, a stink of doggy doo and madness. His other arm closed around her throat. Janis dug her fingers beneath his slick, steely grip, her teeth gritting.

  “Get over here with that knife,” Wild Smile called to Mr. Lisp. Then into Janis’s ear, sweetly: “I prefer cutting to the chase.”

  More applause rose beyond the window.

  Make them feel pain.

  Janis released Wild Smile’s arm and aimed her palms at the wall in front of her. Squeezing her eyes closed, she pushed with both hands. The force shot them backward. They collided into Mr. Lisp en route. He somersaulted over them, serrated blade flashing. Janis grunted with the teeth-rattling impact at the far wall, her legs kicking up in the air. Dust fell around them. Wriggling from a pair of twitching arms, she pushed herself to her feet and stood with her back to the window.

  The bedding where Split Lobe had landed remained still. To her right, Wild Smile was down for the count, a bowl-shaped indentation in the wall above his sagging head. And Mr. Lisp was pawing around for the knife, too dazed to realize that the blade was hilt-deep in his shoulder, blood already dripping from the handle.

  Good, the voice whispered.

  Janis pulled her gaze from Mr. Lisp, from the red speckles on the carpet. Fresh arrivals crowded the doorway, the tattered assemblage bunched together like the flies she’d seen crawling over the carcass in the stairwell. Their hungry, soot-ringed eyes surveyed the room. She took out three of our men, they seemed to be thinking. But what if we rush her at once? As though having calculated the risk to be worth the reward, blades began glinting among them.

  “Let me out,” Janis said, her voice thrumming like a power line, “while you still have the chance.”

  Laughter rumbled from the men, and a few of them exchanged amused glances. Even if she had managed to batter three of them senseless, the picture of a fifteen-year-old girl, alone, cornered, and by all appearances weaponless, threatening a mob of armed men on their own turf probably would seem pretty darn funny were she on the other side of the room.

  But they’d have to forgive her for not laughing.

  They shoved their way toward her. Janis narrowed her eyes at the lines that pulsed throughout the suite. Without quite understanding what she was doing, she began shaping the lines into a circle, a vortex, all the while feeding it energy from her moving arms. The newspapers and plastic bags succumbed first, flapping in circles like nightmare bats. Sheets billowed up around Split Lobe, who lay prostrate, half on and half off his stained mattress. Then the mattress itself began to shift into a herky-jerky dance across the room.

  As if being buffeted by storm winds, the front line of men bowed their heads. A couple of them staggered onward, each with a forearm to his eyes, the jacket sleeves of their outstretched arms slapping back and forth.

  Make them fear you.

  Janis pushed more energy into the twisting formation. The mattress dumped Split Lobe to the floor and then lifted up and joined the newspapers, bags, empty food cans, and streams of sheets. Men shouted as the thrashing mattress slapped them into walls and one another. Janis watched a potbellied man claw at a blanket that had wrapped itself around his head, muffling his screams.

  A dark joy spouted inside Janis, as though from a spike driven into a pocket of black crude. And even though she feared it, she allowed the joy to fill her veins and vital organs… to feed her. When the same voice inside her began to laugh, it felt like flames licking through her.

  Make them feel pain.

  And now men were being picked up and carried into the maelstrom, the air vibrating so insanely that Janis could hardly hear their shouts and screams. She glimpsed Mr. Lisp, who had found his knife. He was gripping the buried hilt with blood-soaked hands as he wheeled in circles. The other half-dozen men flopped through the air of the high-ceilinged room, half senseless.

  Those who’d had the prudence to retreat to the doorway of room 611 began to flee.

  “Trips!” Afro cried. “Get Trips!”

  Janis watched her hands, mesmerized at their motion, at their ability to shape space. One of the men passed so closely in front of her that the toe of his duct-taped shoe grazed her cheek.

  Janis recoiled and blinked her eyes.

  Star, she reminded herself. You’re here for Star.

  She stopped circling her arms and tried to pull her energy from the room. It was a struggle, as though she were engaged in a tug-of-war with another force equal to the task.

  She gritted her teeth. Please, there’s no time for this!

  Slowly, the lines stopped pulsing; the vibrations faded. Bod
ies thumped to the floor. The mattress flopped against the wall, then fell with a shudder atop Wild Smile. Empty cans clanked around. Sheets, newspapers, and plastic bags billowed to a rest. Janis surveyed the sprawl of bodies until she found Split Lobe.

  He groaned when she tugged his wool hat from his bald head, his eyelids fluttering.

  “Kitty says thank you,” she muttered.

  Glancing toward the doorway, Janis stuffed her ponytail inside the hat and tugged it over her ears. One of Split Lobe’s arms had come out of his coat, and she pulled the empty sleeve until he flopped onto his stomach and the rest of the coat came free. Grimacing, she pushed her arms into the foul-smelling coat and zipped it up. The coat fell to her knees, but she wrapped a dark blanket around her waist to hide her jeans and Reebok sneakers.

  Finally, she allowed herself a peek toward the window. Star remained behind the podium, but the crowd was pumping its fists in unison, just as they had been doing in her vision.

  Stepping over mumbling bodies, Janis half ran, half shambled from the room. The hallway was empty, but she could hear shouts from the other floors — and echoing in the stairwell, the only way out. Janis turned the corner. That stretch of hallway was also empty. She seized the handle to the stairwell door, said a prayer, and pulled it open.

  The smell landed in the pit of her stomach, and Janis choked back what would have been her breakfast. Flies swarmed angrily, probably from the recent commotion up and down the stairwell. Janis could see where the dog’s carcass had been trampled and kicked to one side.

  At least it’s out of the way.

  Janis held her breath and descended, her feet pattering through the dark. At the fifth-floor landing, she drew in a giant lungful of air. A babble of voices outside the door shouted for “Trips.” Seconds later, the door flew open. Pale light and a wet bout of coughing filled the stairwell. But Janis was already at the fourth floor, and her feet weren’t slowing. By the third floor, the stairwell had fallen dark again. She listened, but in the mixture of her own echoing footfalls, she couldn’t tell whether the new footfalls were going up or down.