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

by Brad Magnarella

  Janis’s eyes were moist when she released him. She leaned her head back on the couch and stared at the ceiling where a brown ceiling fan sat at a still and crooked angle. “My powers have hurt people too,” she said. “That’s part of why I agreed to the summer training, to help control them. But for them to use that against you. That’s just so wrong.” She rotated her head to face him. “What do you think would happen if we all said no to the Program?”

  Tyler’s stomach lurched. “I try not to think about that.”

  “So you don’t believe Kilmer’s golden handshake version?”

  “Not for me.”

  (An eye for an eye, and a fry for a fry.)

  A pack of his mother’s Marlboros sat on the end table, a green lighter tucked inside the cellophane. Tyler’s fingers trembled for a smoke, but he didn’t think Janis would approve. He slid his hands beneath his thighs, trying to forget about the pack.

  Janis nodded as though what he had said confirmed something in her own mind. She asked, “What if we had something on them, too?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like someone from the last team to tell us what this Program’s really about.”

  “You know someone?”

  “I think so.”

  Tyler listened as she shared her intuitions about how the last group of Champions had come to a bad end, how someone had betrayed them, how there had been a survivor, and how she believed the survivor to be a man she encountered a few months before in some fucked-up sounding hotel in Tallahassee.

  “I was going to go up this past weekend — I had a ride with Margaret — but Scott backed out.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, he’s sticking to some line about not wanting to disrupt the team training, but they’re leveraging something against him, too. The thing is, he knows I know, but he still refuses to talk about it.”

  Now that Janis brought it up, Tyler had noticed a sort of cool distance between her and Scott in training the last couple of weeks.

  She sighed and shook her head. “I should’ve gone anyway, when I had a chance.”

  “You still can,” Tyler said.

  A small furrow dimpled the skin between Janis’s eyebrows.

  “I could drive us up there,” he said, working out a plan as he spoke. “Creed restored our dad’s truck last month. I’ve taken it out a few times. Mostly around the neighborhood and mostly when Creed’s not home, but yeah, I’ve gotten enough hours in that — permit or not — I could get us up there in one piece.”

  She tucked her upper lip behind her lower, appearing to think about it.

  “How early can you get us on the road Sunday?” she asked.

  “Early as you want.”

  25

  Arlington, Virginia

  Wednesday, January 18, 1961

  9:35 a.m.

  “Reggie.”

  He started to turn before realizing his name had come through the payphone’s earpiece. The computerized tones had stopped. “Halstead?” he asked, because he wasn’t sure. The voice sounded old and tired.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” Hal said. “Where are you?”

  Reginald peered out the phone booth’s glass door and onto the stop and start of morning traffic. The night before, he had taken four cabs, altering his appearance between rides, directing the cabbies along complex routes. When he was certain that he wasn’t being followed, he had the final cabbie drop him at a motel on Arlington Boulevard, less than a mile from Champions headquarters. He checked in as Helmut Schwartz, a German tourist.

  “I’m safe,” Reginald said. “And don’t worry, I changed my mind about your friend at 1600 Pennsylvania.”

  “Good.” A cough. “Why don’t you come on in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come to the office. The sooner we get to the bottom of this, the better.”

  “The bottom of what?”

  “Wolfson just finished his investigation of Dr. Iglarsh’s laboratory. The cell and blood samples he took off you?”

  “Yeah?”

  “None of it’s been tampered with, Reggie. It’s all there.”

  An ice floe slid into Reginald’s stomach. “What about the evidence at the murder scenes?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Oh, I get it.” Reginald’s lips trembled. “This is where I’m supposed to fall to my knees and confess.”

  “Or maybe you can help us understand what’s going on.”

  “Understand this, Hal. Someone murdered Madelyn. Someone murdered our child. And if you’re going to suggest I’m behind it all somehow, I’ll tell you to fuck off right now.”

  “Is that what I told you when you accused me last week?”

  Reginald fought to calm the breaths that flared his stout nostrils. He remembered the shock of gun butt on bone, the blue-white gash inside Halstead’s left eyebrow, the way it filled with blood.

  And here Halstead might be the only friend I’ve got left.

  When he relaxed his grip, he felt a crack running the length of the phone receiver.

  “Look, I’m not suggesting anything of the sort,” Hal said. “I know you. I know you haven’t been idle this past week. And if the president’s off your hit list, then you’ve learned something. I’m asking you to come in and share what you know.”

  “Someone tried to take me out last night.”

  “Who?”

  “The same person who knew Madelyn and I were going to be at that safe house.”

  “Did you get a look at him?”

  “I wasn’t home. It’s a long story, but there was another man in my bed. He was covered in blankets. The killer must’ve thought he was me. Put two bullets through his skull at pointblank range. Left without a trace.”

  “Jesus.”

  “So who are our suspects?”

  “I’m not going to lie to you. We’re at a loss.”

  “What about your number two? How much does he know?”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Reggie.”

  “You say you vetted Kilmer, but what does that mean?” Anger brewed beneath Reginald’s words. “He could’ve come to our program with any story he wanted. If he’s working for the defense industry, then he’s got access to money. Shit, money can get you anything. A work history, people in high places to vouch for you. You should know that better than anyone, Hal.”

  “Why Kilmer?” Hal sounded ready to suspend his disbelief for another ten seconds.

  “Process of elimination. And it seems more than a little coincidental that when he supposedly jetted off to South America, Champions started showing up dead. So why not Kilmer?”

  “He got back yesterday. We spent all last night going over the cases.”

  “He was with you the whole time?”

  “The whole time.”

  Reginald leaned against the glass. Kilmer’s alibi was a blow to his theory, but he wasn’t ready to scratch the assistant director from his list. After all, money could buy assassins, too. Pointless trying to convince Hal of that until he came up with better evidence, though.

  “Why don’t you come on in?” Hal said again.

  What, so the killer can learn I’m not dead? Take another crack at me? No thanks.

  Reginald opened his mouth but then switched his line of thinking.

  “I’ll be there in a half-hour,” he said.

  A slow, gray wave moved through him as he replaced the receiver. All the time he’d been hunting the killer, pursuing false leads, facing dead ends, he had overlooked the obvious: He hadn’t needed to hunt the killer. The killer had been hunting him. Now it was just a matter of announcing his return from the dead. And then waiting.

  * * *

  Mrs. Nance’s stern eyes glared over the tops of her glasses as Reginald closed the office door behind him. The skin around her aging lips puckered into a hundred trembling creases.

  “I have an appointment this time,” Reginald said.

  The secretary glared at him a
nother moment before dropping her gaze to the appointment book. “And I was forced to cancel an appointment in order to make room for your spur-of-the-moment appearance. Would it kill you kids to call in advance? Is that asking too much?”

  Lady has no idea she’s talking to the only “kid” left.

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, go on in.” She ticked a check beside his name. “Lest I have to cancel another appointment.” She depressed the button for the intercom system and announced his presence.

  Hal sat with his elbows on his desk, hunched shoulders framing his sober face. The stitching in his left eyebrow looked like a rust-colored caterpillar. Kilmer stood from one of the two chairs facing the desk and extended an arm. The black suit he wore was trimmer and better tailored than Hal’s.

  “Very sorry to learn of your loss,” Kilmer said. “I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through.”

  As he accepted Kilmer’s hand, Reginald tried to read the assistant director’s eyes. In their darkness, his eyes appeared neither sincere nor insincere. Kilmer gestured for Reginald to sit in the chair beside his.

  “Thanks for coming,” Hal said.

  “As the prime suspect, I have an interest in clearing my name.”

  “You already know my feelings on that.” Though his eyes were heavy and sleep-deprived, Hal spoke with sober conviction. “And Kilmer here happens to share those feelings.”

  Kilmer folded his hands over his crossed knee. “Any idea how your cellular matter ended up at the crime scenes?”

  Reginald clenched and relaxed his jaw. “Well, my hair could have been collected from anywhere. Pillow, shirt collar, shower drain. That wouldn’t have been difficult. The skin cells? Harder to say. We’re supposed to shed millions a day. Maybe someone got a hold of some of mine, saved them in a dish. I went jogging around the National Mall last month, threw my shirt over the back of a bench. When I returned, my shirt was gone. Maybe someone simply wanted a shirt. Or maybe they wanted the tiny cells embedded in the fabric.”

  “Plausible.” Kilmer steepled his fingers beneath his chin, looking more and more like a prosecuting attorney. “But I understand the cells beneath Madelyn’s fingernails changed pigmentation in the hour after they were scraped. Caucasian to brown. How might that have happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Reginald said as evenly as he could. “But I sure as hell don’t like what you’re insinuating.”

  Relax. If Kilmer’s the killer, he’ll come to you. That’s all that matters.

  Hal shifted at his desk. “We’re just thinking out loud here, Reggie. This is where we keep getting stumped. Was there any other way your skin might’ve ended up beneath her nails?”

  “Did you fight before you left for the Soviet embassy that morning?” Kilmer asked.

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

  “We argued,” Reginald said. “She didn’t want me to leave, and I wouldn’t let her come with me. But she never grabbed or — or scratched me, for chrissake. This is Maddie we’re talking about.”

  Kilmer arched an eyebrow. “Had you been intimate?”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  A slight smirk wrinkled Kilmer’s lips. “I’ll take that as a yes.” He turned to Halstead. “There’s your answer. That’s how his skin ended up beneath her nails.”

  “I know it’s a sensitive question,” Hal said to Reginald. “But is that our answer?”

  Reginald narrowed his gaze. They had been intimate, of course. The night before. But Madelyn didn’t scratch. She was the gentlest woman he’d ever held or who had ever held him. His vision swam as he nodded his head. He had no idea how his skin cells had gotten there, but by removing himself from suspicion, there was far less likelihood of a good guy coming after him. He needed to be certain his trap would ensnare Madelyn’s killer and no one else.

  “Is that what you stayed up all night discussing?” Reginald asked.

  Sighing, Hal pushed a hand through his receding crew cut. “No, actually. We were also discussing the future of the Champions Program.”

  “And?” Reginald asked.

  “Doesn’t look good,” Halstead said. “All of our funding comes through the executive. We don’t get a dime from Congress. Eisenhower was keen on the program — is still keen on it. But the new president, this Kennedy, not so much. Not on paper, anyway. Until he assumes office, the details of the Champions Program are beyond his clearance. But let’s face it: it’s not going to be an easy sell. There are no more Champions. It’s just you, Reggie.”

  “What about Kilmer’s recruiting trip?” Reginald said.

  “Dead end.” Kilmer had lit a cigarette and now smoke curled up from behind the backrest where his arm was draped. “We’d heard a girl in an Amazonian village could summon the elements. Turned out the only thing remarkable about her was her father, who happened to be literate.”

  “So?” Reginald said.

  “He was having weather reports snuck in from Brasilia. The daughter would then summon what was already forecast — for a price, of course. The family was amassing a fortune in cassava and dried fish.”

  “That’s how most of these recruiting trips go,” Halstead said with a sigh. “We got lucky with the six of you. Rumors actually panned out. We had you here within a year of one another. Since your class, though…” He opened his empty hands. “We’re starting to think you Specials are a generational phenomenon.”

  Reginald leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “How so?”

  He hadn’t come to the meeting to glean insights into his powers, but Halstead was speaking on the topic with more candor than ever. It was hard not to want more.

  “We have a research arm,” Halstead said. “They’ve been combing written records the world over, all the way back to the ancient Sumerians. What they’ve found is that every quarter century or so, there’s a surge in what they’ve termed ‘phenomenal accounts.’ That is, accounts of people said to possess superhuman abilities: saints, miracle workers, certain generals, witch doctors — witches, in some epochs. In 1692, twenty so-called witches were executed in Salem, Massachusetts. That also happened to coincide with a surge period.”

  “So you think some of them actually had powers?”

  Beside Reginald, Kilmer nodded his smoke-plumed head. “Probably one or two, but that’s all it took to sow fear and distrust in the hearts of the Puritans. Funny thing. A Special born in one time and place may well be lauded a savior of men — God, even. Drop him a thousand miles or years away and that same person’s staring at a mob armed with torches and pitchforks, Satan incarnate.” He took another drag. “Fickle human nature, I guess.”

  “Is that what’s killing the Champions, Kilmer?” Wrath scored Reginald’s voice. “Fickleness?”

  Cool it, Reggie. If he starts thinking you suspect him, he’s going to be harder than ever to lure in.

  “Anyway,” Halstead said, chopping his hand through the air as though to cleave the tension, “the researchers think these surge periods coincide with cosmological events. Something that incites mutation at a key stage in the developing fetus.”

  “Of course we’re telling you this in strictest confidence.” Kilmer leaned toward the black porcelain ashtray on Halstead’s desk and snubbed out his cigarette. “If the Champions program has a future, that’s it.”

  “What’s it?” Reginald asked.

  “Being able to predict when the next cohort of Specials is due,” Kilmer said. “We could be more proactive. Hone in on them early. Select the ones who show promise and relocate them to a model community.”

  Reginald scowled. “You mean an internment camp?”

  “No, no, no, somewhere suburban — open, but safe. I’m picturing a Levittown. Only we’d be there, too, making sure nothing happened to them while helping them to develop their abilities.”

  “And what’s to stop someone from picking off that group?” Reginald asked.

  “He’s got a
point,” Halstead said, giving his number two a frank look that said, This conversation is done. He turned toward Reginald. “Your account of your skin cells is probably enough to get Wolfson off both our backs. But your work around here is over. Too dangerous.”

  “The hell it is.”

  Halstead raised a hand. “I’ve left a folder with Mrs. Nance. Pick it up on your way out. Inside you’ll find new identification, money, bank information that I want you to use this time.”

  Reginald affected a look that suggested struggle, then sighed and nodded. The last time, he had destroyed the identification and avoided the bank for fear he would be tracked. Now that was exactly what he wanted: to be tracked, hunted, pounced on. Or at least pounced at.

  Halstead and Kilmer stood at the same time as Reginald.

  “You’ll tell me when you know something?” Reginald asked, taking Halstead’s offered hand.

  “Of course,” Halstead said, and then pulled him into a hug. The director had never hugged Reggie, not like this. It felt like a goodbye. When they stood apart, the eye beneath Halstead’s stitched eyebrow looked especially forlorn. “You deserved better than this.”

  Reginald nodded with compressed lips, not sure how else to respond.

  Kilmer stepped forward and seized Reginald’s hand. “We’ll be in touch,” he said. Something gleamed in his inscrutable eyes.

  Reginald squeezed back. And I’ll be waiting, you son of a bitch.

  26

  Interstate 10, Florida

  Sunday, August 18, 1985

  7:22 a.m.

  Janis shifted around on the cracked plastic seat as the truck’s cab bumped and rattled. Raw sunlight glinted off the rearview mirror. She must have nodded off. Stretching her arms, she squinted over at Tyler, who, in the huge cab, seemed ten feet away. For someone who’d never driven in traffic — much less highway traffic — he appeared at ease, right hand at four o’clock, the elbow of his far arm resting on the window ledge.

  “I don’t know if you drink coffee,” he said, “but I got you a cup when I stopped for gas.”

  Janis followed his nod to a plastic-lidded Styrofoam cup that was nested in a bed of crumpled receipts and wrappers below the dashboard. She lifted the cup into her lap, peeled the small perforated section of lid away, and took a sip. A bitter warmth filled her.