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

by Brad Magnarella

  Reginald stood before the window. It looked out over the front of the embassy. Morning traffic was thinning along Sixteenth Street, and the sun had begun to peek above the surrounding buildings.

  You’ve got twenty minutes.

  The folders on the desk held things like expense reports and clippings from the Washington Post — the “tragically mundane,” as Don Danowski used to say. God, he missed Don. Reginald didn’t have a brother, not so far as he knew, but Don was as close as one could come. Of course it hadn’t started out that way. In training, they couldn’t stand each other. Maybe it was because they were the only two in the group without offensive powers, and neither wanted to occupy that last rung in the group’s hierarchy. Reginald had his shape shifting, Don had his sound suppression, but neither of their abilities packed a punch. Not like Henry “Titan” Tillman, or Firebrand, or even Madelyn, with her mind blasts. To compensate, he and Don became the best hand-to-hand combatants on the team, training long after everyone else had quit for the day — even the trainers.

  Problem was, they could never quite best the other. Finally, after one particularly grueling sparring session, the two of them swollen and sweat-drenched, towels draping their necks, Don had looked over at Reginald and said, “To hell with this. Wanna grab a beer?”

  Reginald started to chuckle before reminding himself Don had been pumped so full of heroin that his heart had stopped, maybe by someone in this very embassy.

  Shouting sounded outside. Reginald returned to the window and peeked down. No matter how many campaigns he had participated in over the years, no matter how many close calls, the back of his neck never failed to break out in a cold sweat when something went wrong.

  Like now.

  The man he was impersonating was standing outside the front gate, pumping his stout arms and yelling to be let in. A small group of guards had congregated, and now one of them looked up. It was the guard who had opened the front door for him. Reginald shrank back just as the guard began to gesture toward the window with his Kalashnikov, his voice high with excitement.

  8

  Shedding his outer coat, Reginald left the office as fast as his barrel-shaped body would allow. He looked up and down the hallway. He needed a place to hunker down, to alter his form. The Comrade Bogrov disguise wouldn’t do anymore, not with the real Bogrov and the red cavalry on their way. And if the embassy was housing mercenaries, Reginald had to assume they would be on their way, too.

  As the first shouts echoed up the stairwell, Reginald slipped into a bathroom. The room was small — a sink and two stalls. He ducked into the farther one and latched it closed.

  On the commode seat, Reginald opened his briefcase and examined his face in the mirror. He’d already begun to transform, fleshy cheeks melding into hard, high cheekbones, chin narrowing, eyebrows thinning to black.

  A herd of boots thudded onto the third floor.

  He set the angles of his lips, remembering the small cleft, and colored them red. Hair bloomed from his head. His waistline shrunk like an hourglass, his clothes already beginning to flutter into the general shape of a woman’s jacket and professional skirt. His shoes grew heels. Molecules were molecules, but when they weren’t his molecules, they were far trickier to manipulate. It had taken him two years to master clothing, and he had to be in contact with them, preferably wearing them.

  The footfalls stopped at Bogrov’s office. Low mutters. A group splintered off and neared the bathroom.

  Reginald focused on his eyes, still blue. He couldn’t multitask with eye color; it required his complete attention. Neither could he ignore it. In close proximity, eyes were the first feature one looked at. Just his luck, the secretary’s had been the color of brown honey. Not even close to his own.

  The door to the hallway burst opened, and boots filled the small bathroom. “Open up!” someone shouted in Russian. The stall door shook beneath what sounded like blows from a rifle butt.

  Reginald flushed the toilet to buy another few seconds. His irises were darker, but he’d yet to pull enough brown into them. He shifted his focus to another part of his body instead.

  The stall door shook again. “Open up this instant!”

  Reginald blinked at the mirror and snapped his briefcase closed. He performed a quick mental check to ensure all of his parts were where and how they should be and slid back the latch.

  A crowd of angry red faces pressed forward, then startled back.

  “Yes?” Reginald said, assuming the feminine voice of the secretary.

  “What are you doing here?” the foremost guard asked, lowering his rifle. The gazes of several of the other young guards fell to the swells of Reginald’s chest, where he’d overcompensated. An old trick.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” Reginald-as-the-secretary replied.

  “You’re not supposed to be in here.” The man cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, as though sensing something was off.

  “It was an emergency,” Reginald said indignantly. “May I finish?”

  The guard stammered for a second, his face flushing brighter, then he wheeled and barked for the others to resume the search. Reginald closed the stall door. As the men filed out, Reginald cracked open the briefcase just enough to finish his eyes. Then he reshaped the briefcase into a secretary’s satchel, complete with a slender strap, and slung it over his shoulder.

  His escape plan was simple: staircase, foyer, front door, front gate. If anyone asked, he was being sent out on an errand. He had been in far tighter spots with far more at stake. The only thing that burned was having to abort the mission so soon after gaining entrance. And he still didn’t know who had staged the hits. That the Kremlin had ordered them, he had almost no doubt. But this embassy, with its aging bureaucrats and second-rate security, no longer struck him as the foremost candidate. The operation was above them.

  He pushed open the stall door and nearly jumped. A guard was leaning against the sink, legs crossed at his jack boots, a smug smile curling his lips. He had a face that looked as if it had been smashed flat, the tip of his nose nearly touching his upper lip. He straightened to a muscular six feet and stood between Reginald and the door.

  “Why aren’t you with the others?” Reginald-as-the-secretary asked.

  “Because I wanted you to myself.”

  Reginald glanced past him. “Isn’t there an intruder in the building?”

  The guard’s crossed gaze roamed Reginald’s body as he stepped closer. “Yes, the perfect distraction.”

  “I’ll scream.”

  The guard leaned his rifle against the wall, his smile mean with desire. “I will make sure you do.”

  No wonder the secretary got nervous when she noticed me outside of Bogrov’s office.

  Reginald remembered the frightened sound she’d made. He allowed the guard’s hand to come within an inch of his breast before seizing his wrist and snapping it with a quick twist. A hard blow to his Adam’s apple choked off his scream. A second blow to the underside of his chin landed him against the wall, where he sagged to the tiled floor. Reginald considered taking his rifle, but that would only draw attention. He stepped over the guard, checked his face in the mirror above the sink, and slipped out the bathroom door.

  The hallway was active, but in the confusion of shouting guards and bewildered embassy officials, Reginald slipped through them unnoticed. As he hurried past the office he had just searched, he overheard Bogrov demanding to know how somehow had been allowed in without identification. “But it was you,” a guard insisted. “I swear it a hundred times!”

  “How in the hell can there be more than one me?” Bogrov barked.

  As it turned out, Reginald had matched his voice pretty well.

  He sped down the stairs in his flats and reached the foyer. He was almost to the front door when a rifle cracked and plaster puffed from the wall beside him. He spun around to find the guard from the bathroom descending the staircase, the back of his broken wrist supporting the Kalashnikov
’s barrel.

  “You are not Oskana!” he bellowed.

  The rifle cracked a second time, but Reginald had already rolled to one side. By the time the guard steadied from the recoil, Reginald was springing at him. His heel struck the guard’s stomach. The man grunted and staggered for balance.

  “Intruder!” he gasped. “Intruder!”

  Reginald swept the man’s legs out, snatching his rifle as he fell. He made a quick pivot and thrust. The butt of the rifle cracked the base of the guard’s skull at the same moment his face slapped the floor.

  He was down for the count this time, but Reginald’s cover was blown.

  Above him, guards’ boots converged on the staircase. He gripped the oily Kalashnikov, thumbing the selector to full automatic. A part of him wanted to waste them all. Send the Kremlin a message that even though they’d reduced the Champions to a force of two, the Program remained as lethal as ever.

  But then he thought of Madelyn and the sting of her words from that morning.

  I love you, Reggie, but you refuse to listen. You refuse to learn from your mistakes.

  He removed the magazine and tossed the rifle away.

  Outside, the guard manning the gate burst from his booth, waving his arms overhead for him to stop. Someone must have radioed down not to let anyone out, even personnel.

  Reginald-as-the-secretary changed course and aimed for the booth. The guard watched in confusion, arms dropping. Reginald leaped and, using the small window as a foothold, gained the roof. With two running steps, he hurtled through the air toward the fence, gray skirt flapping up his legs.

  The guard began to shout. Reginald imagined him scrambling for his rifle, but too late. Reginald dropped from the fence to the sidewalk — land of the free, home of the brave — and ran south.

  Two blocks later, he was a West Coast professor again.

  Well, that went smoothly.

  Reginald was considering his next move when a shriek lanced his soul. He shot his gaze all around. Tall buildings, passing cars, and the tree-lined sidewalk flashed crazily in the winter light, but the scream hadn’t come from outside. No, it had come through the psychic rapport.

  It had come from Madelyn.

  9

  Gainesville, Florida

  Friday, July 19, 1985

  11:16 a.m.

  The bank of blinking consoles and monitors arrayed before Scott looked like something off of the starship Enterprise. He leaned toward one of the monitors where lines of red words edged up the screen — none of it decipherable to him. He studied the other screens, his temples starting to throb with worry.

  More Russian.

  “Remember, Scott,” Gabriella said from behind him, “inside the system, it’s all machine language.”

  When Scott nodded, he felt his helmet shift slightly on his head. The material was so light — silicon and titanium — that he had almost forgotten he was wearing it. Lined with special circuits, the helmet was designed by the Champions Program to focus his neuronal activity and ease his access into computer systems.

  Scott closed his eyes and concentrated. A tension the size of two nail heads grew and diminished in his temples. And then he was inside, electrical data crackling around him. Only he knew this language. From a distance, he felt a grin spread over his face.

  “You have an objective,” Gabriella reminded him.

  Right. According to the scenario, the Soviets have begun a launch sequence at one of their facilities. The Champions have gained access. Cleared out the personnel. And now it’s up to one Scott Spruel to halt the preemptive launch that will set off World War Three and the end of life as we know it.

  First, let’s see how much time we have.

  Scott flitted in and out of data streams until he found the one he wanted.

  Oh joy. Three minutes.

  He took a breath and let it out in a slow hiss as he rested his fingers on the console’s main keyboard. His awareness spread throughout the server, probing, prodding, testing. And not liking any of it.

  Blowing the system’s out. Loss of power triggers an immediate launch. Looks like I’m gonna have to punch in the deactivation sequence. Only thing standing between it and me is three layers of password protection. With a whopping two and a half minutes remaining.

  “Concentrate, Scott,” Gabriella said.

  Scott pictured Gabriella studying her own monitor, one that tracked his presence inside the system. He did as she said and banged out the first password. The second password was more complex. A longer sequence of bits. That one took him almost a minute, which he considered reasonably fast. He imagined Gabriella looking on in admiration.

  He sized up the final password. The most complex of them all, naturally. But Scott was in the zone. The blood that pounded from his heart mingled with an infusion of adrenaline, heightening his senses. His fingers punched one key after another — no need to double check his work — then Enter.

  Access.

  Hell yeah!

  Only the deactivation sequence itself remained, and then the world would be sav—

  Klaxons blared in Scott’s ears, and he was blown from the system. His eyes shot open to a console of red-blinking lights. He fumbled his hands over the buttons and switches, his helmet canting sideways on his head. Reaching past his shoulder, Gabriella coolly flicked a single switch.

  The lights stopped flashing. The klaxons wound down.

  Scott stared at the blank monitors. “Best two out of three?”

  “Look at me, Scott,” Gabriella said.

  He removed his helmet and, finger combing his sweat-slicked hair to one side, swiveled around. She had pulled up her own chair. Scott’s gaze lingered a moment on the neat cross of her legs before meeting her eyes. He expected to see frowning lines of disappointment — a response he’d come to expect after a lifetime of such looks from his mother — but instead he found Gabriella’s slender eyebrows arced as though to ask, Care to explain what happened?

  “I know, I know,” Scott sighed. “Too much internal dialog. I need to take the main task, break it down into a sequence of subtasks, and then work through them methodically. No stopping.”

  “You appear to have a tendency to celebrate each completed subtask.”

  Scott detected a hint of amusement in her voice. If there was anything he had come to enjoy more than impressing Gabriella, it was making her smile. Her lips — usually so serious — would pinch into the shape of a heart. Just like they were starting to do now. Blood rushing to his ears, Scott looked down and began finger-tracing the little gold circuits that webbed the dome of his helmet.

  “You would have found the deactivation sequence the simplest to decipher,” Gabriella continued. “True of many of the Soviet systems. Ten seconds more and you would have completed the task. For that I’m going to grade you at eighty percent. You’re improving, Scott.”

  He was improving, he thought as Gabriella tapped something into her computer. Indeed, his friend Wayne would have a shit fit if he knew the kinds of times he was clocking. Computer hacks that would have taken him hours, if not days, the year before now took him mere minutes. The goal was to get it down to seconds. And if the first month of training was any indication, Scott believed he would be there by the end of the second month.

  His lips spread from his braces as he thought about how Champions training was proving to be everything he could have hoped for and more. After his morning sessions with Gabriella, Scott reported to conditioning and combat training in one of the out buildings. The state-of-the-art equipment made Bud Body’s system look like a rusty museum relic, no offense to his old pal.

  And the sessions themselves — man, talk about pain! He’d become convinced that Gus, his personal trainer, was a card-carrying member of Sadists United, but Scott was seeing the gain. His six-foot frame was filling out. At last weigh-in, he’d added five pounds of muscle. Following a protein-rich lunch, he was back with Gabriella for his favorite part of the day, offensive-defensive training
— off-def for short. Basically it was the part of the day he got to blast things.

  The only downer was he couldn’t share any of his excitement with Janis — not over his ability to access systems, to deconstruct ever more complex layers of security, to bench press one-fifty — none of it. Not without drawing her ire. She was still preoccupied with the secrecy surrounding the Champions Program, secrecy that, to Scott, seemed reasonable. But when he tried explaining that the last time they’d been together, she accused him of not listening to her.

  “Is something the matter?”

  “Huh?” Scott looked up from his helmet to find that Gabriella had finished her computer entry. She was gazing at him, a pretty, comma-shaped wrinkle forming between her eyebrows.

  “You look troubled.”

  Scott smirked and waved a hand. “It’s nothing.”

  “Scott, part of my role as mentor is to help resolve anything that might be standing between you and the optimal use of your abilities.” She rolled her chair nearer. “Does this have anything to do with your girlfriend?”

  “No.” Scott swallowed. “Well, sort of.”

  Gabriella’s sigh was full of understanding. “Relationships are challenging enough as it is. Add to that the demands of training, and…” She removed her glasses and fixed him with her dark brown eyes. “What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t feel bad if things aren’t all sunshine and rainbows between you at the moment.”

  “It’s just…” He didn’t expect to ever have this conversation with Gabriella. It took him a moment to adjust things in his mind. “I’m learning so much — about who I am, what I can do. It’s all I want to talk about. That’s sort of how Janis and I reconnected.” He thought about their late night together on the swing set back in November. “But now our abilities are the last thing she wants to talk about.”