GeneSix

by Brad Dennison

  PART SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Jeff said, “I have always had the ability to, you know, just sort of travel back and forth through time. I can travel from one place to another, too. I don’t know how I do it. I just do it.”

  He was sitting on a stool by a lab table. Scott was sitting beside him, staring into a computer monitor. They had just run a thorough scan, which involved Jeff standing still for a couple minutes while the central computer simply bathed him in various energy fields. They were now waiting for the computer to process the results. It would have been quicker for Scott to run a scan with his tricorder, but the results wouldn’t have been as thorough.

  A day had passed since Scott and his team had returned from their mission to the alternate universe. His battle suit was in a locker they kept for their battle suits, and he was in jeans, a t-shirt and his long, flowing lab coat.

  April stood by. She had grabbed a shower after her morning run, and was now in a floor-length robe, and held a smoothie in one hand.

  Scott said, “So, I suppose it’s safe to assume you vanished from here voluntarily, even though you were just an infant.”

  Jeff shrugged. “I guess.”

  Jake was sitting on a swivel chair at the far side of the room, staring at the boy who was his son. The previous morning, he had been the parent of an infant. Now, he had a son who was thirteen.

  In Jake’s hand was a coffee mug with the Boston Red Sox logo painted on it. “When you beamed out of here, do you have any idea where you went?”

  The boy shrugged. “Boston, I guess. That’s where I was raised. I don’t really remember any other home.”

  “Who raised you?” April said.

  “A bunch of people like us. Well, not like us, really. Like us, but different.”

  “How different?” Jake said.

  “They look different. Some don’t look human at all and some do.”

  Scott took his eyes from the computer monitor. “You mean meta-humans? Super humans?”

  “Yeah, I guess. People with different kinds of powers. There’s an older woman who’s sort of center of the group. They claim she’s an Indian. An Iroquois. She was the only mother I knew. We all just call her Mother. She’s a healer. There were others, too. A man who had green skin. They call him Snake. His skin looks more like a crocodile, though. And there’s a blind man. His name’s Nate. He can reach into people’s minds and share thoughts with them. Plant ideas there. He can teach a person an entire language in the blink of an eye, just by planting the language there. There was a Mexican, an illegal, I guess. He was covered with sharp little quills, like a porcupine. He couldn’t speak a word of English, but Nate - he just touched his mind and gave him English. Sometimes Nate uses a seeing-eye dog. He can actually see through the dogs eyes.”

  Scott said, “Just how many people like this are there?”

  The boy shrugged. “Dozens. Maybe a hundred or more.”

  Scott was staring with disbelief. “Dozens? Dozens of meta-humans?”

  “Yeah. I guess. Mother and Snake are the leaders. Then there’s Chloe. She’s not quite like Snake. She looks normal. In fact, she’s really kind’a hot, if you know what I mean. She’s a little older’n I am. She can talk to computers. Doesn’t even have to touch ‘em. She can just think at ‘em and make ‘em do anything. She gets money from ATM’s so we can eat.”

  April said, “This Snake person, the way he looks, it sounds horrible. Are most of them disfigured like this?”

  Jeff shrugged. “Not really. Most look normal, I guess. They’re people Mother and Snake rescued.”

  “Who did they rescue them from?” Scott said.

  Jeff shrugged. “I don’t know. Cops, I guess. Some of them from the FBI. They had gotten into trouble. People see ‘em use their powers, and get scared and call the cops. You guys here - you’re safe. But most of the people like us are alone out there. So Mother and Snake step in and rescue ‘em. Another thing Nate can do is tell if someone is like us or not. He can just feel it as he walks past you. He can even feel the presence of one of us from a distance, sometimes. Mother and Snake rescue them, and most of them are welcomed them into our little community. Chloe escaped from the foster care system, and they found her living on the street.”

  April glanced at Scott. “I thought we were alone. That there were only just a few of us in the world.”

  Scott said, “So did I. I mean, I theorized the genesis gene was a rather rare occurrence. That’s why I was so surprised to find you have it, too.”

  Jake said, “For the smartest man in the world, you seem to screw up a lot, don’t you?”

  Scott nodded reluctantly.

  Jake got to his feet and crossed the room, and dropped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Don’t take it so hard. I’m just kidding. You might have this four-dimensional thinking, or whatever, but you’re still only human. Maybe you’re trying to do too much. Maybe it’s time we all shared more of the burden. Maybe it’s time I took on more of a leadership role around here.”

  Scott looked up at his friend. He had never heard Jake talk this way before.

  “After all,” Jake said with a grin, “they do call me Captain, don’t they?”

  “I thought you hated that.”

  He shrugged. “I guess it’s not so bad.”

  April took a slurping sip on the straw stuck into her smoothie, and said, “Jeff, where do all these people live?”

  “Mostly in abandoned buildings and stuff. Snake used to live in the sewers when he was alone, before Mother found him. Being amphibian, he can do that. I don’t know how he could stand the smell, though. Some of us live under bridges.”

  “This Nate,” Scott said. “You say he can feel the presence of others like us?”

  Jeff nodded. “That’s how they found me. And his ability to tap into people’s memories is how we figured out where I came from. Mother had the idea. She thought Nate could touch my memories, from when I was too little to remember. She said we all have those memories from when we are a baby, locked away somewhere in our subconscious. He brought these memories out, and that’s when I remembered all of you.”

  He took a sip from a bottle of Coke. “What apparently happened is I beamed not just away, but back in time about twelve years, and landed in Boston. Mother and Snake found me in an alley. They don’t think I had been there long. It was a few months before they found out I had my ability. Then, Nate had to use his ability to help me control mine, until I was old enough to understand how to do it myself. Once Nate tapped into my memories and I knew I came from here, I wanted to come back. I wanted to reconnect with you all. I wanted to meet my father. And find out where my mother is.”

  “That,” Jake said, “is another story entirely.”

  “Apparently when I beamed back here, I somehow tied into a sort of trail created when I beamed out, and landed here just moments after I left. Even though, for me, twelve years had passed.”

  “I didn’t know that was possible,” Scott said. “I thought if you were gone twelve years, your time, you had to come back twelve years later, our time. That’s a limitation my own time travel device has.”

  Jeff shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know I can do it. I can dance and sidestep all through time.”

  Jake said, “Maybe it’s because his ability is organic.”

  Scott nodded. “It gives me a lot to think about.”

  “That’s what we need.”

  Scott chuckled, and Jake returned the grin. What had been something of a bone of contention between them, often expressed in jabs and taunts, was now progressing into simply a joke.

  The computer console in front of Scott beeped. “The analysis is completed.”

  “So, what’s it say?” April said.

  Scott glanced at the monitor, as binary code flashed by. “As I suspected, Jeff has the genesis gene.”

  Jake nodded. “I suppose that should have been obvious.”

  “Not necessarily. It does, how
ever, tell us something about Mandy Waid.” Scott looked at Jake, who was still standing beside him. “To have a genesis gene, at least one parent has to have one. “

  Jake said, “And I don’t have one.”

  Scott shook his head. “You are the way you are solely because of that reactor accident.”

  April said, “You mean, Mandy has the genesis gene?”

  Scott nodded. “Apparently. I should have scanned her for one when she was here at the complex. I didn’t even think of it, because I believed the genesis gene to be so rare.”

  “So,” Jake said, “my son not only glows with zeta energy, but he also has the genesis gene. He’s a time traveler.”

  “So it would seem.”

  Jeff said, “What’s zeta energy?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Faint lines had begun to trace their way across Mother’s face, though they were not so much the tired lines that come with age, but the lines that can come from a lot of smiling and laughing. Her hair was long and black but with strands of silver, and tied back in a tail.

  Hasani was lying on the floor before her.

  “Mother,” Snake said. “We need your healing touch.”

  She nodded. “He is gravely injured. I don’t know what I can do for him.”

  She knelt beside him, closing her eyes, and touched one hand to his forehead, and the other to his chest.

  “What now?” Akila asked. “How long does this take?”

  Snake shrugged. “It takes as long as it takes.”

  Akila had waited patiently while they found Mother, who had been with a band of meta-humans at the other side of the city. Mother liked to make her rounds, as a way of keeping the community united. Akila had waited at Hasani’s side, as he lay on a mat of old blankets. He was unconscious, barely breathing.

  They were in an abandoned storefront, on a dilapidated street near the harbor. It had been a jewelry store once and the counters were still in place, though now covered with a thick layer of dust. Windows had been boarded over with sheets of plywood, but light crept in through gaps between them.

  As Mother worked on Hasani, Akila and Snake stepped into a back room so Mother would have no distractions, and Akila told him her story. Snake then sent a runner to get Quentin Jeffries. He had an idea the situation this strangely clad girl Akila was talking about might fall more into Quentin’s field of expertise.

  The runner was a young man by the name of Henry, whose ability was that he could run endlessly. He was no faster than the average track star, but he could run all day and night, without sleep. Tirelessly.

  There was a knock at the door and Snake opened it, to find Quentin Jeffries and Chloe outside. Henry was with them. He was maybe fifteen. African-American, with short dark hair. He wore jeans and a green Boston Celtics jacket.

  “They were hard to find, man,” Henry said. “Their headquarters are filled with cops. I found them across the street, on a roof top.”

  Quentin said, “It’s a long story.”

  “I filled them in on the way over,” Henry said.

  Snake waved them in.

  Lying on the floor was Hasani. Mother was kneeling beside him, her eyes shut.

  Quentin said, “Is that him? The one for whom you were seeking Mother, last night?”

  Snake nodded. “She’s working on him now.”

  Quentin’s eyes went immediately to Akila. Not only was she fetchingly but strangely dressed, but she had a beauty that was like a beacon to the male eye.

  Snake said, “This is Akila. She has quite a story to tell. I think you should hear it.”

  They went to the back room, which had probably been an office at one time. There were crates to sit on, and a candle for a little additional light.

  Akila told Quentin and Chloe of her world, and the mission to the past that she and Hasani had been on. She told of meeting the others, and of their battle.

  “Kontar, the third member of our team, was killed. Hasani tried to get himself and me back to our world, but it had changed. It was not the world we knew. It was dark, and evil. The buildings were of a design I had never seen before. More similar to what you have in your world, than what I knew in mine. It looked like there had been a great war of some kind.”

  “How did you get here?” Quentin asked.

  She told of the battle with what were apparently refugees on a war-ravaged world, possibly the new future of her world, or possibly even this one, and Hasani had been injured. He attempted a teleport, but injured and drained, he landed them here by mistake.

  As she spoke, Quentin was gently probing her mind. “Does Nate believe her?”

  Snake nodded.

  Quentin said, “As do I.”

  “At first, we couldn’t understand her at all, but Nate gave her English. The language she was speaking was something I have never heard. It sure as hell wasn’t Spanish, or French. And it didn’t sound Asian.”

  “Now, all we have to do is make some sort of sense of all this.”

  Snake said, “It sounds like she encountered these friends of yours. The ones you and your team are trying to get ready to fight.”

  “Indeed it does. But I am still puzzled about the where and the when of it all.”

  Chloe said, “She’s talking about an alternate reality. It only makes sense.”

  Quentin looked at her puzzledly. Snake diverted his gaze to her, but it was difficult to read his reptilian features. Snake said, “An alternate...what?”

  “Reality. Another Earth, on an alternate plane of existence. Come on, guys. I’ve read physics books. I was on my way to college. Gonna be a physics major, before I had to hit the streets.”

  Quentin nodded. “I have heard the theories.” He began to pace thoughtfully, his hands clasped behind is back. “And popular science fiction has used them as plot devices for decades. Another Earth, like ours in many ways, but existing on a different plane of reality. But..,”

  Snake said, “Is such a thing possible?”

  Quentin shrugged. “I am learning a great many things are possible. Things I once would have thought to be otherwise.”

  “It would seem to answer a lot,” Akila said. “If such a thing can truly exist.”

  “So,” Quentin stopped his pacing and faced her. “You went to the past to investigate this Great Stone, and its imminent collision with the Earth. An asteroid, possibly.” He glanced to Chloe, who nodded. “Then the man clad in blue and black, very likely Jake Calder, flew off into space and very likely stopped it somehow.”

  Chloe said, “Is that even humanly possible? I mean, for a human being to be able to stop an asteroid?”

  “Oh, yes. If that human being is Jake Calder. I don’t doubt it in the slightest. And then you,” looking back to Akila, “and this Hasani, returned to your present world, but found it greatly altered. Then, in desperation, the now severely injured Hasani attempted to teleport you elsewhere, and sort of shot blindly and you both ended up here, in a biker bar.”

  Akila said, “Whatever a biker bar is.”

  “You’re probably better off not knowing.”

  Snake let out a snicker that sounded more like a hissing hiccup.

  Quentin returned his gaze to Chloe. “Do you have any doubt now about the dangerousness of these people? It is possible they essentially wiped out an entire civilization, and created a new one in its place.”

  She shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t sound like they were doing it to be mean. Sounds like more of an accident.”

  “Indeed. I really doubt they intended harm. But don’t you see, that makes them even more dangerous.”

  Chloe said, “Now, Mandy Waid - she’s what I call mean.”

  Snake said, “What has she done now?”

  Quentin said, “She nearly killed Peter LaSalle.”

  “You’re kidding me. I didn’t think anything, short of maybe Calder himself, could hurt LaSalle.”

  “She did,” Quentin said, “and she made it look entirely too easy.”

 
“Man, you gotta part company with her. I understand this crusade you’re on. Maybe I even agree with it – I don’t know. But she’s a loose cannon.”

  Chloe was looking at Quentin but not saying anything. She alone knew the truth about how Quentin felt about Mandy.

  Quentin said, his emotions entirely in control, “I understand the danger. But believe me, she is necessary. Calder and Tempest can command great power. I need to surround myself with the most powerful among us.”

  Snake apparently shrugged. Difficult to tell, because his body language seemed to be sometimes different from that of a human. “You’ve done that. Chloe, here, could practically control the world if she wanted to. And that fire-starter Cosmo. But, my friend, be careful.”

  Snake might have been smiling. He showed his teeth, and his forked tongue wriggled a bit.

  Quentin returned the smile. “I will, old friend.”

  Chloe said, “Akila, you said you have strength and acrobatic abilities?”

  She nodded.

  “Can you show us?”

  Akila suddenly leaped upward and backward, toward the ceiling at one corner of the room. Spreading both legs into a perfect split, she pushed each foot against one wall, and with one hand she pushed against the ceiling, and managed to use opposing force to hold herself in place.

  “Impressive,” Quentin said. “And you are a fighter?”

  Snake said, “She took out an entire bar full of bikers. And some of them had knives.”

  Akila released herself and landed lightly on the floor. “My bloodied sword is a testament to my fighting skill.”

  Chloe said, “Quentin, with the big dude out of commission, we seem to have room on the roster.”

  He nodded. “We have to do something about her wardrobe, though. She would stand out a little too much this way.”

  “I’ll pull some money from an ATM and go shopping.”

  Quentin looked to Snake. “How long do you think it will be before Mother has this Hasani fully functional?”

  Snake shrugged. “He was near death. It will take at least a few hours. Maybe more.”

  Quentin nodded. “I think I have a plan.”