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

by Brad Magnarella

  “No!” she yelled.

  “It’s over,” the voice repeated in her ear. “We’ve won.”

  When Janis twisted her neck, she found Scott holding her.

  “We’ve won,” he said again.

  Mrs. Montgomery was beside him, senility glazing her eyes ever so slightly. Behind her stood someone else. Janis had seen the man in the black suit and tie once before, at a distance. She recognized his height and graying hair. He was the man her mother had been walking with in the park.

  “You’re… you’re the head of this?” Janis asked.

  “He’s my son,” Mrs. Montgomery said proudly.

  The man stepped forward, his hand extended. “Walter Kilmer,” he said. “Project coordinator. What do you say we all sit down and talk?”

  35

  Tyler studied the plate in front of him. It held a thick turkey sandwich and a spill of Ruffles potato chips. A tall glass of Coke fizzled beside it. He looked from the plate to the round conference table, where the others were seated — Janis, Scott, Jesse, Creed, and this Director Kilmer. Not an hour earlier they’d been fighting for their lives, and now they were in a large room in some sort of underground complex, lunching with the man in charge.

  “Eat up,” Kilmer said, dabbing his lips with a paper napkin. “There’s more, if you’re still hungry.” He’d removed his jacket and folded his sleeves back, nearly to his elbows, revealing two healthy sweeps of graying hair. Though the man’s face had begun to groove with advancing age, the dark eyes that looked out were keen, almost prankish.

  Tyler lifted the sandwich to his mouth, took a tentative bite, and decided it was the best turkey sandwich he’d ever tasted. Maybe it was the medicine they’d injected him with — not only was it making him float a little (some morphine in there, probably), but it stoked his appetite.

  Unlike Jesse, Tyler hadn’t lost consciousness. He’d been stunned — as much by Agent Steel’s revelation that she knew about his powers as from the projectile that had nailed him in the chest. When the fighting ended and he’d been uncuffed, a medical team in white coveralls appeared from nowhere to patch them up. The small team went about their work efficiently, almost robotically. A woman with a plain face tended to Tyler, wrapping his shoulder, spraying his bruises with some sort of cold aerosol, and administering the injection. When the medical team dispersed, Director Kilmer called Tyler and the others into the kitchen, where he opened the refrigerator door and adjusted the thermostat down to eighteen degrees.

  The whirring of hydraulics sounded as the kitchen counter began to rise.

  “I knew it,” Scott whispered.

  When the countertop reached the ceiling, a door slid open in the counter’s face, revealing a metallic room with soft lighting. The six of them crowded inside, and the door closed. The room descended quietly, like an elevator. When the door opened again, Kilmer led them down a cement corridor. They passed rooms where Tyler glimpsed men and women in plain clothes manning computers and peering up at giant wall monitors. After several lefts and rights, Kilmer pushed the doors open on an empty conference room with a round table circled by twenty-odd chairs. Their lunches had already been set out.

  Tyler took another bite of his sandwich and chased it with a swallow of cold Coke. It was the first time in weeks that his stomach didn’t feel like a lava field. He was suddenly ravenous for the nutrients his body had been lacking. The others were chowing down, too, even Creed. Tyler wondered whether they’d put extra morphine in his brother’s injection.

  Janis, who had refused to be stuck, stared at Kilmer, her food untouched.

  Scott brought the side of his fist to his churning mouth. His left eye was covered by a big wad of gauze. “So can we assume the switchboard closet is down here somewhere?” he asked.

  “Under the garage.” Director Kilmer set his sandwich down and smacked the tip of a finger before wiping his hands. “August, right? That’s when you learned about the switchboard? We wondered why you’d stopped using your computer.” His eyes shone with what appeared interest and maybe even a little admiration.

  Scott gave an uncertain nod.

  Kilmer smiled and held his hands out. “Look, no one here’s in any trouble. Once we finish eating, I’ll explain everything I can. Get everyone on the same page.” Kilmer turned toward Jesse, who hadn’t said a word since waking up but, judging by his clean plate, was plenty hungry. “Ready for another sandwich?”

  “Why don’t you explain now,” Janis said, shoving her plate aside. “We didn’t come here for the free lunch.”

  Kilmer ran a hand through his steely hair and chuckled in a conciliatory way that said, All right, you’re the boss. Standing, he pulled a black remote control from his pocket. When he clicked the remote, the conference room lights dimmed, and a three-dimensional image rose from the center of the table, like a hologram. Tyler saw it was being projected from several lenses around the table. The image, showing houses, streets, and trees, rotated slowly.

  “Recognize this place?” Kilmer asked.

  “Our neighborhood.” Scott was squinting with his good eye.

  “Right-o,” Kilmer said with a grin. “Oakwood with its three subdivisions: the Downs, the Meadows and the Grove.” Each one lit up in turn. “Constructed in 1968 with enhancements completed in 1974 at a cost of more than two billion.”

  “D-dollars?” Scott asked.

  “We spared no expense.” Kilmer clicked another button, and red pulses appeared along the telephone lines in the image. “As you rightly deduced, the phone signals converge here, passing through our switchboard before exiting into the local network. Were we listening? Yes and no. The voice data is fed through computers programmed to detect certain words and phrases. Namely, the computer listens for anything that could suggest a threat.”

  “To us or to your little secret hideaway?” Janis asked.

  “Both, actually,” Kilmer replied. “Our hideaway is what protects you.”

  “From what?” she asked.

  “We’ll get to that in a moment.”

  Janis sighed, but Kilmer returned to the hologram as though he hadn’t heard. There was something disarming about this man with his avuncular, though professional, manner and hint of a Bronx accent.

  But does he know What Happened?

  “Here, of course, is the levee, which you might also have understood to be part of the neighborhood security system. It employs advanced motion detection. Your houses are protected by a similar system, though the detectors are buried several feet around the perimeters of your yards, forming a field.”

  Janis seemed to sit straighter.

  “And then we come to the cameras.”

  Tyler’s stomach lurched as tiny lights ignited over the hologram like fireflies. They numbered in the hundreds, easily. He leaned nearer, trying to see the ones around his own house, but the lights faded quickly, and the neighborhood in the hologram became, well, a neighborhood again.

  “In short, no one goes in or out of Oakwood or contacts you without our knowing.”

  “I guess Mr. Leonard didn’t get that memo,” Janis said.

  The skin below Kilmer’s mouth crimped as if he’d been insulted, then he held his chin and frowned thoughtfully. “That was our fault, Janis,” he said at last. “I offer you my personal apology. Agent Leonard was doing what he thought was right, which made him a poor operative. He took matters into his own hands. When that happened, he was beyond our help.” He nodded as though he’d just concluded a eulogy and, before anyone could speak, lifted the remote again. “Here, let me show you something you only got a peek at.”

  The image of the neighborhood rose, and beneath it, an underground complex appeared. A huge complex, like a second neighborhood. Scott’s sandwich fell apart in his hands. Creed muttered a “holy shit,” while Jesse’s grunt sounded like a question mark. Not even Janis could mask her surprise.

  “Impressive, huh?” Kilmer pointed to several of the underground buildings. “Each of you have a pr
otection team — something else I think you figured out — and each team has a coordinator. Communication hubs are located beneath the coordinators’ homes. But we’re apart from that.” He indicated a large complex situated beneath the entire end of the Meadows. “We’re here. At more than twenty rooms and fifteen thousand square feet, we are your command and control.”

  “So who lives above us?” Scott asked.

  “Well, that is my mother, in fact. Adeline Montgomery, God bless her.” He shrugged modestly. “I never had the heart to put her in a nursing home, so she stays in the house. I visit her as often as my job lets me.”

  “How sweet,” Janis deadpanned.

  Director Kilmer clicked the remote. The lights in the conference room came back on as the hologram glimmered out. “All right, time for your questions. Ask me anything.”

  “So is everyone in Oakwood in on this?” Scott asked.

  “Everyone who lives here, yes, but clearance levels vary. Only a handful are privy to the big picture. Otherwise, we’re just like any other neighborhood. Mail service, newspaper delivery — all of that’s coming from the outside. The more normal we appear, the better you’re protected. The last thing we want is to look like a black hole. We even contract yard service from the outside.”

  “Yard service…” Scott echoed.

  Janis raised her hand. “I’d like to make a comment, if I may. You keep talking about protecting us, but the only ones to ever harm us were your own damn agents.”

  “You’re right,” he said frankly. “One hundred percent right. The fact is we underestimated you.” He began pacing, hands clasped behind his back. “The idea was to remain deep behind the scenes so that each of you could live as normal a life as possible. The last thing we wanted was to intrude. But system protocols were broken, intrusions happened.” His brow became a conciliatory bed of wrinkles again. “And with your keen perceptual abilities, we became visible to you — or more visible than we ever should have been. We responded in the way we thought best, and that was by drawing the drapes closed.”

  Janis laughed sharply. “Is that what you call pummeling us and scrubbing our brains?”

  “All very regretful. In the case of these three young men” — he nodded toward Tyler, Jesse, and Creed — “what happened in February was an unfortunate act of self-defense. What you don’t know is that Agent Niedermeyer had to be given four units of blood and undergo an emergency bowel resection. Seems someone cut into him pretty good that night.”

  Creed peeked to either side and hid his hands under the table.

  “As for what happened today, I assume full responsibility,” Kilmer said. “I gave our head of security a mandate, and she pursued it zealously. Overzealously, in fact, but again, the fault is mine.”

  “Overzealously? She was preparing to execute Scott.”

  “A bluff, Janis, I assure you. We would never grant her that kind of authorization. But let’s not blame Agent Steel. When I was alerted to your presence, I should have understood we were past resorting to subterfuge. I should have called her off and met you at the front door myself.”

  Janis glared, her lips pressed together. Director Kilmer held up his hands in a way that said, I get your anger, just hear me out. Janis blew out a sigh and looked away. The man’s charisma was understated but potent. Tyler couldn’t help picturing a tomcat circling a roomful of mice.

  “Let’s pretend for a moment that that’s what happened,” Director Kilmer continued. “Let’s pretend that we met at the front door. I invited you inside, and none of the messiness in between ever happened.”

  “Tell that to Scott’s eye,” Janis grumbled.

  “The first thing I would have done,” he said, “is have your parents brought over so we could all meet.”

  “Our parents?” Scott asked in what sounded like horror.

  Director Kilmer turned toward the corridor. “Ah, and here they come now.”

  Tyler waited for the punch line, but instead he heard footsteps. All of their heads turned. Janis’s family entered first, Mr. Graystone frowning as he peered around the table, his wife appearing on the verge of tears. Margaret strode ahead of them, her chin lifted, green gaze unwavering, as though she owned the room. Scott’s parents followed closely, Mrs. Spruel shrieking, “Oh my god!” She scurried to Scott’s side and began touching the wad of gauze over his eye. Mr. Spruel, meanwhile, scratched his beard and eyed Janis’s uneaten sandwich. Both sets of parents took seats on either side of their child.

  “What in the hell’s going on in here?” Mr. Hoag bellowed. “What’s my son done this time?” He was a squat man with no neck, a receding crew cut, and a face as pink as a ham. A faded black Harley Davidson shirt stretched over his stomach while the hems of his oil-stained jeans puddled around his shoes. Jesse flinched as his father waddled toward him. The only times Tyler ever witnessed fear on Jesse’s face were in his father’s presence. Tyler knew the feeling.

  Director Kilmer stepped deftly between them and pulled out a chair. “Your son’s done nothing wrong, Mr. Hoag. Please, have a seat.”

  Mr. Hoag grunted and, after glaring at Jesse another moment, plopped down.

  Shame burned over Tyler’s face at the sight of his mother, taking up the rear. She staggered in a stained sleeveless blouse and jean shorts, her legs as flimsy as a pair of dandelion stems. She was being helped by one of the security agents. Tyler nearly knocked his chair over as he stood and rushed toward her. His mother wilted against him as the agent transferred her into his possession.

  “Hey, honey,” she drawled, a smile pulling her mouth to one side.

  “C’mon, Ma,” he whispered, wincing at the cloying smell coming off her lips. As he escorted her to the table, he peeked to make sure Janis wasn’t watching. Thankfully, her face was downcast, her father speaking to her in a low, chastising voice. For some reason, Tyler didn’t want her to know how screwed up his family was. Maybe because hers had always seemed so upstanding.

  He sat his mother in the chair between himself and his brother, shooting Creed a look: Help me keep an eye on her. They each placed a hand on her back to prop her upright.

  “All right,” Kilmer said. “Thank you for coming. Events have grown beyond us, as I was just telling your children. With your permission, I’d like to explain the setup to them, as I once explained it to you.”

  “Wait, you knew about this?” Janis asked, turning to each of her parents.

  Mr. Graystone pointed at Director Kilmer. “Let him explain.”

  The lights in the room dimmed again so that only Kilmer remained illuminated, shadows deepening the lines of his face. “In the early years of the Cold War, President Eisenhower proclaimed that history had chosen the United States of America to lead. This is true now more than ever. The Soviet Union has committed itself to a course that will either enslave the world under the banner of communism or destroy it trying. Day by day, they are amassing the might and means to accomplish both.” Director Kilmer’s voice resonated with warning. “Whether we like it or not, a position of leadership has been forced on us. If we fail, free countries the world over will topple like dominoes, culminating in our own downfall.”

  When Tyler peeked around, he found everyone’s eyes riveted on the speaker, Mr. Graystone nodding his head. Even Tyler’s mother seemed to be listening. She was leaning less, anyway. He reached for her hand and held it.

  “Just as history has chosen the United States,” Kilmer continued, “it has chosen the six of you. You are Special Enhanced Humans, remarkable examples of human potential that come along but rarely. Though the free world doesn’t know it, they look to you now for hope.”

  “But how did you know about us?” Scott asked.

  Scott’s mother started to shush him, but Director Kilmer signaled that it was all right. “Early testing and observation. Every year, groups of children are winnowed down and winnowed down until only a handful remain, if that. Those who show promise are relocated for further observation. You’re the first
group we’ve had in a long, long time.”

  Tyler thought back to his childhood. He’d gained a certain notoriety for shocking the hell out of classmates with a touch. It got to the point that every time he’d scuff his feet across a carpet (the one in the elementary school library had been especially good for building up a static charge), the entire room would clear out. He supposed that might have drawn some attention.

  But had they been observing him that New Year’s Eve night when he was twelve?

  “So it’s genetic?” Scott asked, looking skeptically at his parents.

  “We believe so,” Director Kilmer replied, “though a specific gene or set of genes hasn’t been pinpointed to my knowledge. The powers that be have determined the information to be beyond my clearance. What I can tell you is that the abilities you possess are present in all humans to some extent — strength, speed, electrical conduction, persuasion, intuition, extrasensory perception.” He gestured toward each of them in turn. “In the case of Specials, abilities such as these develop far past the point of normalcy — often to the point that control becomes an issue.”

  Tyler’s stomach contracted as he glanced around.

  (I can’t stop, Dad! I can’t, I promise!)

  “What’s to keep the Ruskies from doing the same thing?” Jesse asked.

  “For one, the exact methodology for selection is highly classified — something else beyond my clearance. And that’s good. The fewer who know, the fewer the potential leaks. But that’s not to say the Russians haven’t tried to locate their own Specials. According to our intelligence, they haven’t succeeded… yet. In the meantime, they’ve been working to develop a team of Artificially Enhanced Humans.”

  “Cyborgs?” Scott asked.

  “After the images I’ve seen, I’d call them monstrosities. There’s no telling how many citizens were butchered in their attempts to fuse man and woman with machine and circuitry — medieval attempts to bypass the limits of normal.” Director Kilmer shook his head as though trying to clear the images from his mind. “But whatever their origins, the surviving Artificials are effective. Twice they’ve played havoc with our nuclear early warning systems.”