The Sovereign Era (Book 1): Brave Men Run

by Matthew Wayne Selznick

  “So what’s that have to do with Byron and me?”

  “They’re a big corporation. They probably do lots of other stuff.”

  Byron shook his head. “No shit. I knew it. They wanna experiment on us, dude.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said, “but I’m not gonna find out. My mother’s not going to deal with them, no way. But you…”

  Byron took off his cap. “I’m fucked.” He ran his fingers through his short hair. “Game over, man. Game over.”

  Lina said, “Look, Byron, why not just tell your parents?”

  “No way.”

  “But why not?”

  He held up his hands. “I can’t.”

  She crossed her arms. “They’re just your parents – they can’t be worse than that creep Brenhurst.”

  “I said I can’t!” He cast his eyes around the grass until he found a small stone, which he snatched up and threw across the field. I mean, all the way across. It went further than my eyes could follow.

  That’s far.

  “I can’t let my dad find out.”

  Lina and I exchanged glances. I bit my lip.

  “All right, man. It’s cool.” I sighed hard. “You’re not going.”

  “How?”

  My legs twitched like they had in Ms. Elp’s office. The urge to run. But I wasn’t going to do that any more. This would be more like... temporary evasion.

  “We’re not going to be here come Friday night.”

  I couldn’t help but smile when Lina and Byron provided a stereo “Huh?” I almost said, “Jinx.”

  Lina shook her head. “I don’t know if I want to hear this.”

  I gave her a kiss on the forehead. “I hope you do – I’m gonna need your help.”

  “Dude, you’ve got a plan?”

  Barely.

  “Sure. We have to get you out of the house before your folks take you to Tyndale.” I scratched rapidly behind my ear. “You still over on Magdelena?”

  “Nah, we moved. I’m on Santa Salvador. Across from the Glen.”

  That helped… so long as the bear-bum wasn’t still hanging out there.

  “Cool. When do your parents normally get home?”

  “Depends on the day.”

  “Thursday.”

  “My dad gets home around six. My mom works late.”

  “You have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No. Why?”

  I was thinking at a mental run. “So it’s just you and your dad until… when?”

  “Ten or eleven.” Byron put his cap back on. “Dude, what’s this plan?”

  I told them. Lina laughed, but I think she thought I was crazy. Byron smiled, even if it was a thin, desperate thing. I think he was glad to have something to do. We all knew it wouldn’t solve anything in the long run, and we’d probably be grounded for life.

  We would do it anyway. It would buy us some time to make up the next thing.

  Whatever that would be.

  Lester Brenhurst – Five

  The nanomechs swarming the Teslowski household were nearly spent. They would degrade to simple dust some time in the next hour. It was time for a last look. Brenhurst shut the door of his office and brought up the transmission on a small, dedicated monitor on his desk.

  The little devices cobbled together a blocky video signal from a composite of whatever each nanomech had in its field of vision. The signal bounced from a satellite to Brenhurst’s desk. He had a choice of “channels.” He quickly scanned each room of the Teslowski house, then settled on the view from Byron Teslowski's ever-present baseball cap. Based on the field of view, the kid was holding it in his lap.

  “Well,” said Brenhurst. He leaned forward. “Look who we have here.”

  Nathan Charters, himself. The girlfriend was there, too. They were at a park... probably the one close to Charters' house.

  Audio was optional on the nanomech feed – it took energy, and shortened the useful life of the devices. Brenhurst toggled it on anyway. He needed to hear this.

  “... right, man. It's cool.” Nathan Charters sighed. His big, round, freakish eyes blinked. “You're not going.”

  “How?” Teslowski said.

  Charters seemed jumpy. “We're not going to be here come Friday night.”

  Brenhurst narrowed his eyes. A tight smile spread across his clenched teeth.

  He managed to hear their whole delinquent scheme before the nanomechs finally gave up the ghost...

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Thirty Seven

  Lina and I returned to my house. My mother wouldn’t be home for another hour or so.

  “Hm. Home alone...” Lina tickled the back of my neck. “What's on the agenda, kitty cat?”

  We kissed just inside the front door. I’d already noticed that Lina’s body temperature was a few degrees lower than my own. She was always cool to the touch. Except for her mouth. Her tongue burned across mine, smooth and hot.

  She took my hand. “C’mon.”

  We made it to my bedroom and fell across my twin bed. “How much time..?” she muttered into my ear.

  “An hour, I think.”

  “Okay.”

  She rolled on top of me and we kissed again. And again. And more. I closed my eyes and away we went.

  We’d never been completely alone... left to our own desires, as it were... since our first date, and my little bed was still more roomy than Lina’s car. We twisted around and pushed against each other. We panted and laughed and guided our hands, alternately tentative and eager to feel more. Our faces, ears, and necks were slick where our mouths bit and licked and dragged across skin.

  Our clothes stayed on, but our grasps and clutches found the flesh underneath. Her fingernails left light scratches along my back that sent electric fissures down my spinal column and through my legs. I realized with sudden, unexplainable guilt that my fingers had found her nipple, but before I could pull away, she placed her hand over mine and squeezed.

  I opened my eyes. Her own eyes were hooded and shining. She smiled at me.

  I had no words. This wasn’t even sex… and that meant that, someday, sex would be even more unbelievable than this.

  She traced my cheek with her free hand and her expression softened. “Lucky me,” she whispered.

  I just shook my head and laughed. I still couldn’t talk, so I kissed her again. She reached down and slipped her thin hand between my pants and my ass.

  A clicking, meshing sound, metal moving between metal, broke through the air. I sat up.

  Lina looked confused. “What..?”

  “My mother’s home.”

  “Darn it!”

  We put space between us on the bed. I swung around and put both feet on the ground. Lina found a couple issues of Rolling Stone next to the bed and threw one to me.

  We made like we were reading. I was trembling, from being horny or from nerves, or both. Her hair was a fiasco.

  “Nate?” My mother called out from the living room. “Are you and Lina here?”

  We straightened up, brushed ourselves off in a futile attempt to lose the wrinkles in our clothes, and headed out.

  My mother put her purse on the couch. “Oh, there you two are. Where’d you go?”

  “Uh…” How did she know we’d gone anywhere? “We drove up to Romita for a little while.”

  “Hm.” She looked at both of us, her mouth an even line.

  “Lina, your hair is even more messed up than usual.” She gestured to the couch, so we sat down. “This is uncomfortable for all of us, children, so I’ll only say it this one time, all right?”

  I could feel myself turn red.

  “When you’re in this house,” she said, “under this roof, you’ll keep it to first base. Understood?”

  I was mortified. “Mom!”

  “Understood? I want to hear it from both of you, and I expect you to mean it.”

  “I can’t believe..!”

  I heard Lina swallow hard. “Yes, Mrs. Charters.”
She nudged me.

  “Understood,” I said.

  Lina patted my hand. “Well. I guess I’d better go.” She smiled, sheepish. “Homework, or something. I’ve got to do it. The homework, I mean. At home.”

  “See you again, Lina,” my mother said.

  “I’ll call you,” I said.

  “Okay.” At the door, so close to escape, Lina got some of her nerve back. “Nice to see you, too... Lucy.”

  She left me there with my mother and my embarrassment.

  My mother slapped me on the knee. “Oh, relax, Nathan. I’m sure you two were behaving yourselves, more or less. I just want you to know I’m serious about you keeping it that way.”

  I shook my head. “You enjoyed that.”

  She shrugged and smiled. “Mother’s prerogative. How are you holding up?”

  Oh, mother, if you only knew.

  “Alright, I guess. I mean, it’s only been a day.” I smirked. “Not really long enough to miss all the, you know, like, great company and supportive classmates and whatever.”

  “Especially when there’s so much to keep you busy around the house,” she said sarcastically.

  I turned away. “Yeah…”

  “We’ll go back on Monday,” she continued. “We have an appointment with Mr. Giles to get you set up with home study.”

  “Okay.” Something occurred to me. “I’m not, like, grounded, or anything, am I?”

  My mother looked confused. “Why would you be grounded? Just behave yourself with your lady friend, do your studies when you get them, and…” She looked thoughtful. “Actually, it would be good if you maybe did at least lay low for a little while.”

  “Um…” I thought about my plans for Thursday night. “What does that mean?”

  “I’m still not sure what that bastard from Tyndale Labs wants with you.”

  I started to worry. “So… what does that mean, mom?” I could be grounded for all intents and purposes if she didn’t want me to leave the house.

  “Just don’t announce yourself,” she said. “You know what I mean. Stay around the neighborhood.” She gave me a semi-serious scowl. “Don’t go getting into any fights. How's that for a guideline?”

  I decided this was going to be one of those things where I wouldn’t know I’d done something wrong until she told me. “I guess I’ll cancel the rest of my grudge matches for the rest of the week,” I said.

  “Very funny.”

  She turned on the television and switched channels until she found the news. That reminded me of the talk show.

  “Oh hey – I saw this thing today on Donahue. They had a Sovereign guy.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” I told her about the man’s molting “ability.” “They had this idea that he was shedding his skin because he was, like, unhappy with his life. Like he could change things by changing himself.”

  My mother was suddenly very attentive. It gave me pause. “Um… anyway, it got me thinking.”

  “About?”

  “Well, I’ve got, like, all these animal-like things I can do, right?”

  “I don’t know that I would call it that, but all right.”

  She was getting tense, which made it hard for me to not be uptight. “Well, c’mon – I mean, I can see in the dark, I can smell dinner down the street, etcetera, etcetera… I’m like some big human cat or something.”

  She turned back to the news. “Is that how you think of it?” She kept her voice light, but what was bothering her now?

  I plowed through. “My point is, I don’t feel like an animal, or anything, you know? So how is my Sovereign stuff related to my personality?”

  She tilted her head and shrugged. “Whatever they said on Donahue isn’t necessarily the only answer.”

  “I guess…”

  “There’s a lot to figure out,” she said. “So long as people like that Brenhurst prick aren’t the ones doing the figuring.”

  Thursday night loomed in my head and I fought to keep the invisible signs of preemptive guilt from my features and voice.

  “Yeah. Screw him, right?”

  My mother watched the news. Her scent still broadcast odd tension. If Byron’s freak-out about Brenhurst wasn’t enough to convince me I needed to do what we were going to do, my mother’s cryptic anxiety pretty much sealed the deal.

  “So… have you found out if he broke any laws, coming to the school like that?”

  She sighed, quick and impatient. “Let me watch the news and unwind a little while, all right, Nathan? Go take a shower, and we’ll talk about it over dinner.”

  We didn’t, though.

  Lester Brenhurst – Six

  The representative from PrenticeCambrian showed up at Tyndale Labs, without an appointment, just before six in the evening. Tamara buzzed him into Brenhurst's office.

  They shook hands over Brenhurst's desk.

  “Lou Uldair. Mister Quince is my boss.” He was a rosy-cheeked, plump man with immaculate fingernails and rough callouses on his palm.

  Brenhurst offered him a seat and returned to his own. “I apologize for missing your call the other day.”

  Uldair waved a hand. “We're all pretty busy these days, right? That's why Mister Quince decided not to wait. Figured we'd catch you at the office. It's practically your second home, am I right?”

  “What can I do for you, Mister Uldair?”

  He smiled, and Brenhurst was astounded to see him wink. “This is a secure room, of course.”

  “Against traditional methods, yes. We can go downstairs if...”

  “Oh, no, this'll do.” He laughed. “We're the only ones with methods that aren't traditional, so far, am I right? I'm thinking we'll be fine.”

  Brenhurst nodded. “I assume you're interested in hearing about our progress with the targets?”

  “You betcha.” Uldair shifted his fat ass in the chair. “I want you to understand, I'm here as Mister Quince's proxy. I'll be his voice for the meeting.”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay. So, then... where're we at?”

  Uldair might be their superior's “voice,” but Brenhurst had difficulty imagining Trenton Quince saying anything like “where're we at.”

  “The Teslowski boy is scheduled to be turned over to us tomorrow, after he gets out of school. However, he has made plans with the Charters boy to avoid that.”

  “No kidding! We thought those two weren't friends.”

  “Things have changed since the eighteenth,” Brenhurst said. “It doesn't matter. I've made arrangements.”

  “What about the Charters kid?”

  “His mother has developed into a reactionary conspiracy theorist over the last fifteen years. She responded... negatively. She won't be cooperating.”

  Uldair puffed out his cheeks and sighed explosively. “Hoo, boy. Well, I guess we can't blame her, right? After all, most of her theories are probably right, where her kid is concerned.” He laughed at that, and cracked his knuckles. “Pretty funny, when you think about it.”

  Brenhurst kept his silence.

  Uldair looked at him and nodded. “Okay, then. Look here, Les – can I call you Les?”

  Brenhurst no longer cared if his smile appeared genuine. “If you like.”

  “Les, I don't have to tell you how important these kids are to PC. To the whole operation. I mean, Charters' kid is proof-of-concept that the Augmentation Regimen can be passed down, for better or worse... and the other kid, well, if he's as powerful as we think... I know you know... you're a dedicated soldier. Everything I've heard tells me you're our guy down here. Heck, you were one of our first boys back on the Ranch!”

  “Mister Uldair, I assure you –”

  “Remember, Les, I'm just the messenger, here, right?” His eyes lost some of their sparkle. “Containing those two kids is priority number one for you and those two big Augments we sent over. No... scratch that. It's your only priority. Everything else – and by that, Mister Quince wants to stress that he means everythin
g and everyone – is either a tool you use to get the little rug-rats, or something in the way of you gettin' them. You picking up what I'm putting down, here, Les?”

  Brenhurst felt his face harden. His hands clenched in his lap.

  “Mister Uldair, can I call you Lou?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Lou.” Brenhurst sighed and took a moment to consider how far he wanted to go.

  “Lou, as you pointed out, I have been involved with the Charters situation for a very long time. Andrew Charters helped me perfect the Augmentation Regimen, after all.”

  “If you want to call it that,” Uldair said.

  “Begging your pardon, Lou, but Andrew Charters was successful in every way.” And a brilliant, passionate scientist, before his ethics made a fool out of him.

  Brenhurst wondered, as he had countless times over the years, if things might have turned out differently if Charters had been cleared to know the real purpose of his work. Would he have come around? Or would knowledge only have fueled his indignation?

  “It's not the fault of the process that he couldn't handle the results.”

  “I'll give you that one, Les.” Uldair shrugged. “What's your point?”

  “Charters and Teslowski will be in my custody before midnight tonight. Frankly, for you to infer that my command of the situation might be compromised by the schemes of a couple of... of children is insulting. I've been doing this for a long time. Lou.”

  Uldair stood up. He smiled and spread his hands. “Like I said, Les, I'm just the voice here, y'know? Honestly, I don't have any opinion of you, or your job performance. I'm just the voice.” He pointed a finger at Brenhurst. “So, if anyone’s questioning your ability to do your job, I guess it must be our boss. Right?”

  Uldair moved to the door and put his hand on the latch. “So. Speaking as Mister Quince: if I were you, I'd get your skinny ass out of that chair and over to Abbeque Valley, right quick. If the little freaks aren't down in those dungeons of yours by tomorrow morning, the next time you see me, I’ll be representing Mister Quince in another... capacity... entirely.”

  Brenhurst stood up to mask the coldness washing through him. Uldair opened the door.