by Blou Bryant
With a sigh, he moved to the right. “You could let a guy be a gentleman, now and then.”
The elevator was slow and had only reached the second floor. She put an arm around his waist, pulled him close and gave him a sisterly kiss on the cheek. “I tell you what, if you take me to dinner, you can pay,” she said. “Don’t expect to get anything for it, though. Never expect.”
“With you? I expect nothing,” he said and turned to her with a grin.
“Okay, how about you expect good company and great conversation, how’s that?”
Wyatt gave a small growl. “Women,” he said. Third floor now. Both tensed as the elevator slowed. With knees bent and arms forward they were ready for whatever awaited them.
The doors opened, and they faced...Seymour. His round face was wet with sweat. Unsmiling, he gestured to them to follow him. “Come on now,” he said in his high, squeaky voice.
The two followed him to a small, empty operating room. Medical equipment filled the space, all turned off, the tables covered with bright white sheets. It looked abandoned.
“Where are we?” asked Wyatt, but he already knew the important part of the answer. They were at the hospital Patterson had been taken to. The first hospital had been the wrong one. “You hijacked the car, didn’t you?”
Instead of replying right away, Seymour checked each of the windows. With a tap on one, he summoned someone. When a large man appeared, the hacker said, “Ensure we’re not interrupted unless there is an update,” he said.
The block-faced man—a guard, it appeared—nodded and stepped back out.
“Yes, I did that. Patterson’s here, he’s being treated.”
“How is he?”
“Two gunshot wounds, one to the leg and a one to the shoulder. He’s in surgery.”
“Where is he, we need to see him,” Wyatt said.
“While he’s in surgery, are you insane? That’s not going to happen, you can’t. Police are everywhere. And worse.”
“Worse?”
“Guys in black suits, gray ties, young and in good shape, with guns and while I don’t know who they are, they’re not cops and they look dangerous.”
“I’ve seen them, and dealt with them before, they won’t stop me from helping Patterson,” Wyatt replied, deadly serious. God help anyone who got in his way.
Seymour hefted himself up on the operating table and looked Wyatt in the eyes. “Are you kidding? Then there’ll be two of you shot. Or three,” he said, with a glance at Hannah.
“Then why bring us here?” asked Wyatt, with no intention of leaving without helping Patterson out. He didn’t care what would happen, or how his old friend would be impacted by infecting him with the virus. Alive and altered was better than dead.
“You were going to come no matter what I said, it’s better this way than you charging in the front door.”
“Where is he?” asked Wyatt and moved to the door, intent on finding Patterson, no matter who got in his way. He opened the door and found the large guard blocking his exit. No matter, he thought and raised his fists.
“Wait,” yelled Seymour. “Look, don’t be an idiot, he’s being taken care of.”
Wyatt turned from the impassive guard, still holding the door open. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve got the best doctors treating him and lawyers talking to the district attorney. Everything that can be done for him is being done.”
“Not everything,” said Wyatt under his breath.
Hannah walked to the door and pulled at him. After a moment, he let her drag him back into the room. “Listen to him,” she said. “A minute won’t hurt.”
“Won’t it?”
Seymour interrupted, “I’m not having you run around the hospital, putting him in any more danger.”
That… seemed fair, but there was still Wyatt’s unmentioned power to heal. His hands itched, he was ready, he could save his friend if needed. The man was in surgery because he’d helped Wyatt. Torn and scared that he’d do the wrong thing and make everything worse, he looked to Hannah. Could they heal Patterson? He wanted to break down the door of the operating room, push the doctors aside and use his or Hannah’s genetic skills to save him. Torn, he worried someone would get killed, never having forgotten Wilbur, who died because of his impulsiveness three years before.
Hannah reached out, squeezed his arm. She asked Seymour, “What’s the prognosis?”
The short man put both hands on the operating table, one on each side of him, and leaned forward. “As I said, I’ve got the best doctors I could find in town, and more are flying in from Toronto. My guy said nothing key was hit, they expect he’ll recover. He’s not in the best shape, though, he’s older and not healthy, so no guarantees.”
“And legal?”
“No charges have been filed. I’ve got as many lawyers as doctors working on this now. The early word is that he resisted arrest, but the police didn’t have probable cause to arrest him, so that’s not going to fly. Nobody is willing to explain why the raid happened in the first place, and it’s the cops word against his. They won’t go to trial on this, with all the controversies lately, the word of police officers isn’t worth much in court now.”
“If he survives.”
Seymour nodded. “If, yes, if. But it looks good right now.”
Hannah squeezed Wyatt’s arm. “If it looks bad and if Patterson takes a turn for the worse, we need to know.” She walked to Seymour and took his hands. “All you need to know is that we have something special. Wyatt is something special. There isn’t enough time to share, but can you trust me, we can heal him if we need to.”
“What do you…” Seymour said and caught himself. “Not enough time; okay, I got it.”
Hannah’s phone rang, she looked at it and tossed it to Wyatt. “It’s the girls.”
Seymour left Hannah and walked to stand with Wyatt. With a pointed look at the phone, he said, “Don’t trust anyone, don’t trust anything. I can’t—I won’t—help you anymore, but I’ll do everything I can for Patterson. Do you understand?”
Wyatt wasn’t sure he did but nodded. He swiped right on the phone to answer. “We’re on our way. Where are you? What’s going on?”
Chapter 19
Ira and Ari had been back at the HUC for an hour when the police arrived. The house was packed with people who’d fled the fighting in the park. Not everybody could get in, and there was overflow outside on the lawn and on the street itself. Ira was with Joshua in his office as Ari watched as one police cruiser after another screeched to a halt out front.
The mob rushed to the building, ignoring those who fell in a mad scramble for relative safety. It was too late, however; the door was barred, there was no room inside for more.
Ari sent her sister a quick path, “Flee, danger.” The message was acknowledged. This done, she turned to the crowd. “Everyone get upstairs or to the back, away from the door.” Nobody moved. She shouted again and still there was no response. In frustration, she grabbed a vase off the mantle and smashed it into the fireplace. That got everyone’s attention.
“Move away from the door,” she yelled again, and this time, people responded. “Police will come in, don’t fight, don’t argue and don’t make any sudden moves.”
“Running’s for cowards, I’m gonna fight,” a ragged-looking man said. “We can’t let them push us from here, we’ve got nowhere else to go.” A couple people close to him nodded, but most continued to move, they knew how it worked. Ari ignored the ones who wanted to fight, there was no arguing with them.
With an excess of caution, she pulled at the window blind and peeked outside. The police had established a perimeter and weren’t moving forward. More cars had arrived, including several unmarked vehicles. A group of men in black suits stood behind one, talking to two officers. They appeared to be settling in for a siege.
Perhaps the police weren’t out back yet, Ari thought, and pathed her sister, Run to the back.
The response was emph
atic disagreement, followed by the pathed wish to fight. Ari closed her eyes and reached out mentally to feel what her sister was doing. She was moving, coming towards her. Ari turned away from the window and the crowd in the room and ran toward her sister, pushing people out of her way as she went.
When she entered the large kitchen, she could sense her sister was close. Two large men pushed past her and Joshua followed. He didn’t acknowledge her as he passed, but Ira was behind him. She stopped and they hugged.
The two spoke, a mix of words and pathing when only feelings were needed.
“What…” said Ari, taking her sister by the arms and pulling her close. While their ability to communicate worked across distances, touch and sight helped make things clearer.
“Joshua wants us to fight,” Ira responded and pathed trust.
It wasn’t a surprise that Ira liked the director, she liked too fast, too much and trusted too often. Ari remembered how quickly he’d been willing to sacrifice the homeless in his care in a fight with the police. He had been the guy at the back, pushing people forward. It’s easy to fight if you’re not the one getting hurt. She pathed caution.
Ira tilted her head—Why? she pathed.
Ari paused.
“You never…”
“I know… I worry…”
“Too much…”
Two men pushed past them, Ari shot them a dirty look as an elbow dug into her shoulder. She let it go and turned back to her sister. “We have to...”
“… stay, not leave,” disagreed Ira, knowing that her sister wanted to get out.
Ari didn’t understand her sister’s desire to stay. “Why fight for them?”
“For us...”
“No, it’s not,” Ari said, and pathed the urgency she felt to get out of the building. “Our...” she said and pathed kinship with the Red Dogs, their only family, the only family they’d ever had.
“Friends,” acknowledged Ira, and pathed resigned agreement. While she wanted to fight, they had their own challenge, their own people to save.
The argument over, the two were united again. Ari pushed past her sister and led the way through the building, weaving between groups of frightened people. “Back,” she said.
Ira grabbed her hand and pulled her to the left. Big people pushed through crowds but they were small, hardly over five-foot-tall, and were able to find holes in the mass of people and make it through to the back in less than a minute.
Ari cursed when they got to a back door and saw flashing lights behind the building. “Surrounded,” she said, unnecessarily. She pictured the building, there wouldn’t be side doors, the houses on either side were too close. “Upstairs?” she asked.
“Climb? Dangerous,” said Ira, pathing the risk of getting shot by the police. “No choices.”
As much as she wanted to, Ari didn’t disagree. The battle was theirs now. She pathed, I’ll follow your lead. As they walked back to the front of the building, she asked, “What did Joshua say?”
“He wants to fight. Anti-police. Anti-government. Anti, anti, anti…” Ira responded.
Ari grunted, politics wasn’t her thing. Her sister, though, had always been aggravated by what she perceived as unfairness in society after how they’d been treated as children. They’d been conjoined for years and had spent most of their childhood in hospitals.
At birth, they’d been rejected by their natural parents. That underlying, first abandonment was relived over and over again as they moved from foster home to foster home. Most foster families were good, but not able to handle them. Everyone wanted to help the special kids, but when they found out how hard it was, they backed out. Some wanted the money, but even that wasn’t enough to keep the girls.
Worse, however, was the last foster father. He’d had other uses for them, ones that even now, she couldn’t—wouldn’t—think of. Luckily, someone had seen him hurting them, through a window. This someone knew the Dogs and had called them for help. Later that night, Sandra showed up, with Rocky and two others in tow. They took the girls. Ari had Googled the foster dad two years later and found out that he was a missing person case. She never asked Sandra what’d happened to him. It was enough that he was gone.
“I know,” said Ira, sensing her thoughts. “Look,” she said, forcing herself into a corner of a window between people watching the police watch the house. The crowd out front was thinning. There were three check posts, and the police were letting people leave after briefly scanning them.
To Ari’s surprise, nobody was being detained, nobody being questioned. “What’s going on?” she asked the surrounding group. Eager to share, several people spoke up at the same time.
“They’re letting everyone leave.”
“No arrests.”
“Just a quick scan.”
Ari sensed hesitation in her sister and pathed the same back. Why would the park have been raided if they were simply going to let everyone go? Especially after the violence—the rocks, the fighting, the shootings. Her sister continued to watch the movement of people out front and, at an unspoken request, passed the phone.
Ari dialed Wyatt again. No answer. She dialed Hannah and after four rings, the line was picked up. Wyatt answered. “They’re coming,” she said to Ari.
“Duh,” said her sister affectionately and pathed an echo of Ari’s own relief.
“We’re at the HUC,” she said and paused. Where would they meet? Where could they meet? Not here, they’d be arrested, even if everyone else was being let go. “Meet us…” she said when the phone cut out. She took it away from her ear and looked at it. No bars. “I lost the connection,” she said to Ira, and held the phone in the air, close to the window, then away from it. Still no bars. “I’ll try upstairs,” she said.
“Don’t bother,” a woman next to her said. “Cops probably blocking phones. They don’t want this to spread, or us to share.”
Another man beside them at the window cursed and tapped on his phone, which he was using to tape the police. “Streams off,” he said dejectedly.
“Yup, they’ll delete that vid. No YouTube millions for you, or for me,” said a third person, his phone out as well. He swiped and deleted the video. “No point now, don’t want em to know I was tapin’, get my ass kicked for nothing.” Others followed suit.
The twins stood at the window and watched as the crowd slowly left. As individual after individual left without incident, those who’d hesitated lined up as well. “What are the cops doing?” asked Ira.
Ari shook her head, but a familiar voice answered from behind her. “They’re not here for the mass of people. The police have specific targets, getting rid of the extras will make it easier for them to focus on who they really came for.”
“Shaz,” squealed Ira and turned to hug their friend. “Where have you been hiding?”
His face filled up with a smile as she sat down on his lap. “Not hiding, plotting.”
“With me, and we were planning, not plotting,” said Joshua as he joined them. “The authorities want this—they want us—to go away. But we won’t.”
“The director wants to fight,” said Shazam. “We’ll lock the house down, let them burn us out if need be. Once the media hears about it, he figures the city will rise up.”
Ira sat up on one arm of the wheelchair and crossed her legs, resting her ankles on the other arm. She grimaced, “I’m not the burning down type.”
Joshua kneeled down next to her and took her hands in his. “It’s not just for us, it’s for all the poor, all the people that the rich ignore. The people who can’t eat, those who have no future. A few deaths, our own sacrifice if necessary, it’ll ensure a better world for all of them.”
Ari watched him and kept her face impassive. She didn’t like and didn’t trust martyrs.
Her sister looked up at her, sensing her unease, and pathed back confusion and excitement. Ira was always ready and willing to fight, and believed herself invulnerable. The twins argued again, using feelings and impress
ions, not needing words. They were unnecessary.
From Ira, something like, “Excitement.” A sense of their bodies, strong, young, powerful.
Fear. Images of death.
Trust! Shazam, memories of partying with him.
Distrust! Ari sensed something was wrong in the room, she couldn’t believe her sister didn’t feel it.
Live!’ Ira meant, live life to the fullest.
Ari responded with, Can’t live if dead.
Nobody else in the room likely even sensed the exchange, it took place so quickly.
Ira gave the barest of shrugs. “No…”
“Choice…” replied Ari and nodded. “In for a penny, in for a…”
“… pound,” finished Ira.
“What?” asked Shazam.
“Nothing,” said Ira and gave his face a gentle stroke. “What’s your plan?” she asked Joshua.
“They’re here for me, but I’m not giving in. I’ve spent years in this house, doing just enough to help others while they ran the city their way. All these programs are nothing more than sugar pills that prevent people from getting the medicine they need.”
“Programs?” asked Ari, tired of listening, but wanting to understand.
“Food programs, housing programs, everything the rich give to let people live, just enough to stop them revolting, but not enough for them to actually live a life. We live in cages with invisible bars.”
Ari saw Shazam roll his eyes and smile at his mentor, but she sensed something different. Sensing others was hit and miss, she wasn’t sure what she’d detected. She reached out to her sister, questioning. Ira looked up, confused and shook her head, she wasn’t sensing it.
“He’s a revolutionary,” said Shazam. “He’s seen both sides now.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He’s rich, you didn’t know that?”
“I was rich,” said Joshua, defensively.
Shazam looked up at him like a son would look at a father. “You saw what your people were doing to the poor, to the people on the street.”
