by Blou Bryant
Wyatt could just make out her shape in the faint light, even though she was pressed up against him. “I don’t want to be with you?” That was funny, she was the one who was always too busy hanging out with her new boyfriend. “Right, and like I’m allowed out,” is what he said.
“Of course you are. It’s dangerous, but nobody ever told you to spend your life locked away. That was your choice.”
Wyatt didn’t reply, it sounded too much like it might be true, something he didn’t want to consider.
Timo returned and whispered for everyone to follow. Five minutes later the group was inside, gathered around a battery operated heater. There were three Dogs already there, Sandra, Quince and Emm. They gave him tired smiles and hugged Rocky, Timo and the twins. Sandra let the new arrivals know that four others who’d been at the farm were outside guarding the cabin.
They shared their stories over cups of hot chocolate. All four Red Dog safe houses had been raided at the same time. Sandra and two of her team had seen their attackers coming while they were tending horses in the barn. In the dark, they’d managed to sneak away. The other two safe houses had gone silent. She assumed everyone was captured. Wyatt did some quick math and figured that was at least fifteen people.
“So, if I hadn’t gone out…” Wyatt said.
“You—and everyone else—would have been caught.”
“Lucky bastard, you saved us,” Emm said, her face jewelry jangling as she spoke, “Mom always said to trust in stupid.”
Thanks, thought Wyatt. “What about this place. Is it safe?”
“Only a few of us know of it,” Sandra said. “But we won’t stay, just in case. Only long enough to make a plan.”
“How’d they find us?” Wyatt asked, and it was clear that he wasn’t the only one wondering. The attacks were coordinated and well planned, against four different sites they’d assumed were safe.
Sandra shrugged. “Good question. I’ve wondered the same. They’ve surprised us a few times in the last months, but today was different, more organized. Somehow, whoever they are, they knew about each of our safe houses.”
She pointed at the twins, who were tearing apart the phones. “What’s going on?”
Ira finished with one and tossed it to Timo. She said, “Wyatt told us to steal the phones from the guys we beat up, and take them apart. So we are. We’re looking for clues.”
Sandra raised an eyebrow at Wyatt. “Smart,” she said. “Is it safe, are you sure they’re not trackable?”
“Ira said they’re not, I trust her geekiness.”
“Say’s a guy who plays chess,” was the small woman’s reply.
He ignored the dig. “Keep working on them. Sandra, I’d already thought it was time to go on the attack. Now, I’m sure it is, we don’t have a choice. We have to rescue them.” While he had never considered himself one of the Red Dogs, they’d taken him in and treated him like family, despite his reluctance to open up. This was on him.
“What’s your plan?” she asked, without a word of argument.
Everyone looked at him That was the hard question. He didn’t have one. “Do we have any more safe houses like this or any money? What about people? What do we have to work with?”
Sandra sipped on her hot chocolate. “This is our last one. People, I don’t know. We’ll find out over the next couple days, there are protocols for them to let us know if they’re safe.”
“Like the doll at the side of the road.”
With a nod, she said, “And as for money, that’s not an issue, we have some. We’ve got cash in a few places and Rocky and I have fake credit cards we traded for one of your heals.”
The group debated and discussed for an hour, each bringing up a suggestion only to have it fall apart when challenged. Timo wanted to ask other Altered groups, Rocky favored bike gangs, he had friends everywhere.
Wyatt rejected both options. Anybody they went to would want him for his powers, for what he could do for them, or they’d turn the whole group in, to get what they could from Jessica. “We need to split up,” he said. “With me, you can’t go anywhere, can’t do anything. I will always be a risk. I need to separate from the group.”
Hannah interjected fiercely, “No, that’s idiotic.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“A better one than you playing a martyr like you always do? Anything is better than that.”
She was right, he’d spent the last years feeling bad for himself and complaining about his lot in life. Hannah had fit right in, but he hadn’t. But this was different and he knew he wasn’t being his usual whiney self. “We’d be apart only while we find out where the other Dogs are.”
Hannah leaned in and whispered, “How do you plan on finding them?”
Despite the near-total lack of an actual plan, and because she’d been pissing him off, he leaned in as well and whispered conspiratorially, “It’s best if I don’t share, in case one of us gets caught.” Leaning back, he asked the twins. “Have you found anything?”
“Nothing much,” said Ari. “Phone numbers, a few texts, but nothing detailed. We’re only half done.”
“Can you check location information. Can you find out where the phones have been?”
“Of course.”
“Do it,” he said and looked to Sandra for confirmation. She’d grown and matured over the last years as the burden of leadership had made her into a different person. The change he’d noticed most was that she was quieter now, and—sadly—less fun.
“I agree. Keep looking, girls.” To Wyatt, she said, “Let’s step outside.”
He gave her a look, wondering why she wanted to talk to him alone, but nodded and followed her.
Sandra had a small flashlight and she used it to lead them down to the stream. “Carl,” she whispered as they approached. A guard appeared out of the dark and she sent him inside. “We’ll be fine,” she said when he protested.
Sandra let out a weary sigh and sat down next to a tree. “Wait,” she said, and the two sat quietly for a minute. “Carl has crazy hearing and night vision from his implants. I wanted to make sure he was inside. So, it’s been a crazy night, Wyatt.”
He agreed, “It’s been a long time in coming for us.”
The light clicked off and the two listened to the sounds of the night forest and the stream as it bubbled by them. After a silence, she sighed and said, “So, now it’s us and not just you. And now you want to go to war?”
“We’re already at war.”
“We are. Are you?”
Wyatt thought about that. Did she wonder if he was at war or if he was one of them? Or both, perhaps. “I have been since Jessica first kidnapped me.”
“No, you’ve been hiding. And now you want to lead? I took over when Vasca died because there was nobody else. Rocky’s great, but he’s a follower, not a leader. Most of us are. We just want to live. People come to the Dogs because they’re avoiding responsibility, not looking for it.”
“I’m not out to replace you,” he said.
She laughed out loud. “I know that, but if you go after them, if you want us to help, you’ll need to lead. You can’t be a lone wolf; you have to be one with the people you ask to follow you.”
He hadn’t thought about that. “I’m not like you guys,” he protested. “I don’t want to alter myself with tattoo’s, I don’t use drugs and I’ve got no implants. I certainly don’t want to be a criminal and on the run. I just want a normal life.”
Sandra laughed. “Criminal? Don’t judge us for breaking rules. They aren’t our rules. What we do to survive may not be legal, but it’s moral.”
He looked at her, seeing nothing but the faint reflection of starlight in her eyes. “I don’t know how to be one of you.”
They sat in silence for a spell. Finally, she said, “It doesn’t matter. I need you.”
“For my powers?”
“No, for crying out loud, you’re worse than Rocky with the conspiracies sometimes. I need you because yo
u’re willing to lead. You were right, back there in the cabin. We’re out-gunned, out-manned and out of options. I worry about putting you in charge, but I don’t have a choice.”
“Great, thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Stop whining. That will be rule number one. You want to lead, act like it. Can you do that?”
That hurt, likely because it was true. Wyatt nodded. “Yes,” his voice catching as it came out.
Sandra put an arm around him and pulled him closer to her. “We need to be honest with each other. It’s the lies that kill, especially the ones we tell ourselves. That’s rule two. Honesty. Even if it hurts. When I took over after Vasca died, I told myself everything could be the same. But it’s not. If you’re going to lead, you need to be honest with yourself.”
“Okay.”
“Good. I will take most of our people. We need to get a base set up again, to regroup.”
“And me?”
“You go after them. Hunt them down. Bring the rest of us in when needed, but otherwise, you’re on your own. You can take three Dogs, that’s it. Choose well, I need the rest. To help out, we can give you some cash and credit cards, and a phone that’s off-grid. You won’t even have my number. I’ll call you when I’m ready, when we’re ready.”
Wyatt was stunned that she trusted him.
“How do you feel?”
“Overwhelmed.”
“Good, you should be. Do you have a plan?”
“Just an idea, but it’s not much. We’ll figure it out”
“That’s the spirit,” she said, and patted him on the thigh. “Who do you want?”
“I’d like the twins,” he said, thinking of how well they’d fought earlier in the night.
“They’re yours. Hannah will go with you as well. The twins are still healing from their new implanted mods and may need her touch. I need Rocky, he’s not up for debate. The others, it’s best if they stay with me,” she said.
There was a weird edge to how she said that. Wyatt wondered why and asked, “Don’t you trust them?”
“I trust them completely,” she said, and squeezed his leg.
What did that mean, he wondered? Was she saying she didn’t? He couldn’t believe that one of them would betray the group. She didn’t want to say it out loud, so he moved on. “Do I have to take Hannah?” He winced at how that sounded. Sandra knew they hadn’t been getting along. “How about Timo? That invisible thing came in handy earlier.”
“Yes, Hannah,” Sandra reiterated with a light chuckle. “It’ll give you two a chance to talk and work things out.”
Unlikely, he thought and had to ask… “How’s Teri?” The little girl that he’d saved—and who had saved him—three years before wasn’t with the main Dog groups. For her safety, she’d been placed somewhere away from the Dogs. Even Wyatt didn’t know where, and he hadn’t seen her in those years.
“I don’t know, I haven’t reached out, but I’m sure she’s safe where she is. Safer than with us…” Sandra said, pointedly. Wyatt had asked many times to see her, to talk to her, and had always been rebuffed. With that, Sandra got up and helped him to his feet.
Before they returned, she gave him one last hug and said, “No, I don’t trust everyone,” in his ear, so quietly that it almost didn’t register. At the same time, she gave his arm a squeeze like the one she’d given his leg. Wyatt wanted to ask her what she meant, but she quickly walked away. As they returned to the cabin, he thought about that whisper.
He was still mulling it over as they told everyone what they were going to do. Nobody asked questions, which was great, given that they didn’t have much of a plan.
Wyatt took his team to a rough wooden table. “What did you learn from the phones?” he asked.
Ira pulled out a piece of paper. “Each of them has been all over the city, but there are four locations that each has in common. In addition, they were texted multiple times from the same number.” She handed it to him. Wyatt took in the information, committed it to memory and then threw the paper in the fireplace.
“You’ve got it?” asked Ari.
“It’s all stored,” he said. He used something called a ‘memory palace’ to store information. It’s amazing, he thought, how much you could read and learn when you weren’t allowed out into the world.
Rocky interrupted the conversation, a small jar in hand. “Time for your makeup, girls. A little dab for each of you.” He smeared on two small dots of a clear cream on each of their faces. “It’s invisible to the naked eye, but cameras will pick it up. Screws up the facial recognition software.” That done, the two groups cleaned the house of all prints and paper.
An hour later, the sun poked through the trees as the group walked through the woods. Wyatt had two credit cards, a stack of bills and a phone, which Sandra assured him was untraceable, in his pocket. Three hours later, he was back in Detroit, his small group ready to take on Jessica.
Chapter 4
Wyatt stopped at the first shopping mall on the outskirts of Detroit. He parked as far away from cameras as possible and wiped the car down, for whatever that was worth.
As they walked to the mall, Hannah stayed next to him, letting the twins lead. Quietly enough that they couldn’t hear, she asked, “So, what are we doing. Do you have a plan?”
Wyatt shook his head. “I’m not sure and I do, but it’s not much of one.”
“What’s first?”
“I want to take a look at the places they identified, where the phone calls all went to.”
“So, a stake-out? Sounds like fun,” she said and took Wyatt’s arm.
He looked at her with surprise. “Being friendly now?”
Hannah grimaced. “Don’t start. We’re out, and finally, you’re doing something. Don’t go emo on me.”
Blah, blah, blah, Wyatt thought to himself but kept quiet as they walked, still not comfortable with her on his arm. He’d suspected she’d liked him, then decided she didn’t, and then gave up thinking about it. Mostly at least. “Yes, it’s a stake-out.”
“So, we stand out front, is that what we are going to do?”
He’d read a lot of mysteries over the past three years and figured he could plan something. “No,” he said, with an undertone of ‘I’m not an idiot.’ “We’ll take turns, use the twin’s ability to communicate telepathically to keep in touch. They’re natural walky-talkies.”
“And?”
“Well, I don’t know yet. We need to see who is working there and follow them. Perhaps the other Dogs are at one of those locations, and if not, someone might lead us to them.”
“How about we get some clothes?” She nodded at the twins. “They’re too obvious, don’t you think? And you’re looking a bit worse for wear.”
Wyatt glanced down at his sweat pants, which were covered in dried mud and burrs from their walk through the woods. His shoes and socks were still damp from the river. He agreed. “Ari, Ira, we’re going shopping,” he yelled ahead.
The girls looked back, gave a ‘woot’ and high-fived.
“Wal-Mart,” said Wyatt, pointing to the large blue sign. The girls walked in the other direction. “Hey, what are you doing?”
“You’ve got a credit card. We’re not shopping there,” they said in unison, with equal amounts of disdain.
He prepared to argue when Hannah put up a hand to stop him. “A small store facial recognition is less likely to be flagged, and if it is, it won’t be as quickly as at the big box stores.”
“Facial recognition doesn’t matter, you heard what Rocky said, it won’t work for us.”
“Still, let’s stay off the grid as much as we can. Anyhow, why not make the twins happy?”
Wyatt grunted.
“And, truth be told, you could use some nicer clothes.” Hannah stared him up and down, “You look like a shut-in.”
Wyatt shrugged, he was a shut-in after all. He’d never been a clothes guy, but decided to let them dress him if it made them happy. As they walked, he p
ulled out the phone and looked up the first address on a maps app. It was an Italian restaurant in the west end. The second was a laundromat, he wasn’t sure what to make of that. The third made him grimace.
“What?” asked Hannah, who watched him while the twins checked out a mall map.
“Police station. One place where all the phones pinged a lot, it’s a police station.”
“Ugh,” she said. “If they’re in jail, we won’t get to them.” She gave his arm a tug.
Wyatt glanced up from his phone and followed her, following the twins. “I’d sorta assumed that Jessica hadn’t used the police for this.”
“Why not?”
“Dunno. The guys we saw last night didn’t seem like cops. Too preppy. And their car wasn’t police.”
“Hmm,” she said. “What are the other places?”
“Laundromat, restaurant and I hadn’t checked the fourth. Hold on,” he said. The last was a warehouse, still in the west end. He checked it out with Google, but there wasn’t much to see other than fencing and a non-descript building in the middle of a field. “Nothing too interesting.”
The twins pointed towards a garishly decorated clothing store, its name a rainbow covered three capital letters.
“NYM?” he asked.
“Not Your Moms,” they said and ran in.
He waved Hannah to follow them and went to a drugstore on the other side of the aisle. A minute later, he was in a washroom, changing the gauze around his left hand. Some of the old bandage had stuck to the wound, covered in blood. After three years, it should have healed, but it hadn’t. After three years, he should have got used to the pain, but he hadn’t.
Wyatt stared at himself in the mirror and held up his hand. It was the same as always, an open scar, a red eye in the middle of his palm. All this, the people tracking him, the years of living in basements, was because of one unhealed wound and the power he was able to direct through it. With a long sigh, he dropped the old bandage in the bin and wrapped himself up, winding several lengths around his palm to keep everything in place.
With a weak smile plastered on his face, he joined his friends. The three women took turns over the next thirty minutes telling him what to wear. They spent more time, it seemed to him, on his options than on their own, despite his almost complete lack of response and what he hoped was an attitude of complete disdain.
