Fluorescence: The Complete Tetralogy

by P. Anastasia

  I lost control of my body. Hit the ground hard.

  The room shook. Spinning.

  I couldn’t think.

  Every muscle in me was having a spasm. I didn’t know if I’d created a portal or not.

  All I knew was that two metal barbs had pierced my flesh and were pumping thousands of volts of electricity straight into my system.

  Chapter 20

  Blurry surroundings. The cops scooped me off the floor and hauled me across the room. My shoes dragged over the brick walkway. Everything ached. Flashing police lights blinded me. My head was spinning. My body tingly and weak.

  Someone pushed my head down and I slipped into the backseat of a car. My hands were still cuffed behind me. I wriggled around, trying to right myself until I could sit up and look through the wire divider at the police officer in front of me.

  “Hey. I have to get back to my daughter. This is a mistake. That girl lied about everything.”

  “You have the right to remain silent,” he said stiffly. “I told you your rights already, but if you need to hear them again—”

  “No. No,” I replied. “I got it.” I’d heard them before.

  I looked out the side window at the street. Nosey people were lined up on both sides, gawking at us like we were some kind of parade float driving by.

  And I was the goddamn President.

  What the hell was I going to do? Where did Kareena and Judas go? When did Jordan skip out on us?

  Questions zipped through my brain. Mostly about what the hell I was going to do now and how I could get back to Lucy.

  As soon as I set foot in that police station, I was gonna be hammered with felonies. Larceny. Murder. Prison for life, probably, even if they didn’t connect me to a scrap I’d gotten into with a dealer way back. It was self-defense at the time, but now—six years later and still running from it—it looked a lot worse on my record. They’d find something to pin on me. Some reason to take my little girl away.

  Damn it! They had my gun, too, and with my hands cuffed behind my back, I couldn’t even try to make another portal. Not that I had the energy to. Every muscle ached from the induced seizure I’d had from being tased.

  “I’m not going to lie,” the cop in the passenger seat started, “those were some damn good special effects you put on back there at that girl’s house. What are you? A pyrotechnic?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Hey. I’m talking to you back there.”

  “I thought I had the right to remain silent,” I grumbled.

  The driving officer laughed. “He’s right.”

  . . .

  They pushed me down into a chair and one of the cops sat behind the desk in front of it. He slid a flat electronic device out from behind his keyboard and handed it to the cop standing beside me. He flipped a switch on the side and it beeped faintly.

  “I’m gonna need a finger for this,” he said, reaching behind me for my wrist.

  So I gave him one.

  “Smartass.” He popped me in the back of the head with his elbow and I grunted. “Don’t screw with me.”

  “I don’t belong here,” I snarled.

  “That’s what they all say.” He pried one of my fingers from my fist and pressed the tip against something cool and glass-like. Another shrill chirp came from the thing.

  A fingerprint scanner? Not one I’d ever seen before.

  “Looks like they’ve got you pinned for larceny here and that you’re a suspect in a homicide case in New York,” the cop behind the desk read. “And those are just the things we do have you for. This isn’t even counting the kidnapping in NYC. We heard a story about some guy there trying to steal someone’s child and all three witnesses swore he had yellow light coming from his chest. Sound familiar? We thought that precinct was trying to get attention, but I guess it wasn’t a load of crap, after all.” He took the scanner from the other cop and pushed a button that released a USB adaptor. He plugged it into his computer and started typing something on his keyboard.

  “You must enjoy being in jail. You have a lot on your record,” he said, leaning closer to his monitor and scrolling down the page. “David—”

  “I know my name, damn it.” I shifted in the uncomfortable metal chair. “So what are you going to do with me?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On what else we find out when we run that shiny, limited-run gun of yours.”

  Shit…

  . . .

  I did not have time for this.

  They set my bail at thirty grand. Thirty. Freakin’. Grand. I can’t remember a time I had more than a couple hundred bucks on me, let alone thousands of dollars in loose cash. A lot of people don’t even make that much in a year. I sure as hell didn’t.

  I scuffed my feet against the concrete floor of my claustrophobic temp jail cell and shuddered. It was cold and nasty, but it wasn’t supposed to be comfortable. The odor of B.O. and vomit kept wafting through the air.

  “Where did you say you were from again, José?” a man in the cell across from me asked, slurring his words together.

  “It’s David,” I snapped. “Shut the hell up and leave me alone. Unless you want the crap beat out of you when I get out of here.”

  It didn’t help that there was some drunk-ass guy in another cell wallowing in his vomit-soaked shirt and pants who had been asking me questions since I’d arrived. That, and I must have had a name change every ten minutes. Pedro. Mario. Javier.

  Jesus. I’ve gotten wasted and said and done some stupid stuff in my time, but this guy was so far gone, it wasn’t even funny. At some point, though, he muttered something about his wife kicking him out, and for a moment, I felt a little sorry for him.

  A little…

  The cops said they’d move me to another jail in the morning, but that wasn’t soon enough for me.

  A wanted man in three states. One allegedly, but only because they couldn’t actually prove they saw me glowing back at Kareena’s house, which meant they couldn’t pin me 100% for the kidnapping either.

  I couldn’t believe Kareena thought it would actually be okay to call the cops and make up a fake story. She was smart most of the time, but this afternoon, I lost all respect for her.

  What kind of idiot was I to develop feelings for a brat like that? She didn’t care what happened to me. If she did, she’d have asked before cooking up a half-ass-baked plan.

  I’d overheard one of the other cops verifying that they couldn’t find the girl at the scene. One of them even went so far as to claim he saw her disappear into thin air.

  Either my portal worked or Judas got her out of there. Either way, she was safe, hopefully. I really shouldn’t have even been thinking about her.

  I should have been worrying more about Lucy than the woman who betrayed me.

  . . .

  Someone rapped on the bars of my cell.

  “Hey, Pyro.” It was one of the cops who had brought me in. Officer Kenneth, I think. I didn’t look up when he walked over. I’d just woken up and was sitting on the edge of my bunk, irritated and antsy from the crappy sleep I’d endured.

  “Hey. I’m talking to you,” he said, raising his voice.

  “Name’s not Pyro.”

  “Yeah, okay, smartass. There’s someone here to see you.”

  I lifted my face. A middle-aged woman in a dark pantsuit came in behind him with a small black briefcase dangling from her hands.

  “Are you a lawyer?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at the stuffy-looking woman. She had short, layered, and highlighted brown hair and a pair of glasses tucked into her shirt collar.

  “I’m afraid I’m not,” she replied, approaching the bars. “I’m Doctor Sasha Cortez. I’m a biologist working with the city forensics department.”

  “And you want…?”

  “I’m here for some samples I can take back to the lab for analysis. I was told by the department th
at you were seen glowing at the scene yesterday. Is that right?”

  I shrugged. “Does that sound normal to you, Doc?”

  “Well, no, but…”

  “They didn’t see shit.”

  “Regardless of what they think they saw, we’ve had two different accounts from over six witnesses who say they’ve seen you glow with some kind of yellow light. Whether it was a trick or not, that’s what I’m here to investigate.” She crouched down in front of the cell so she was slightly lower than eye level with me. “David. Can I call you David?”

  I nodded.

  “David, I’m not the bad guy here. I’m a biologist trying to do my job. Can you cooperate with me, please?”

  Sasha sounded like she’d done this before and was just going through the motions like she would with any suspect.

  But at the same time, she was right—she wasn’t the bad guy.

  I was.

  “Yeah. Alright.”

  Officer Kenneth unlocked the door and slid it open to let Sasha in. “Don’t try anything stupid,” he warned.

  I laughed to myself. I could have grabbed the doctor by the throat and have broken her neck if I had wanted to. If.

  She opened her box and laid it beside me on the bunk.

  “I need your arm,” she said as she rummaged through her things for a pair of gloves, a rubber tourniquet, and a syringe. She slid the gloves on.

  Better yet, I could use the syringe to pierce her throat. Take out an eye and then relieve the cop of his gun. Could.

  This precinct wasn’t used to guys of my caliber, apparently. It made me feel sorry for the doctor. Officer Kenneth was putting the doctor’s life in danger by allowing her to get close to me without making sure I was properly restrained first.

  I laid my arm out on my thigh with the sensitive inner flesh facing up and she tied the rubbery strip around my bicep. She wiped the insertion spot with an alcohol pad.

  “Relax your arm, please,” she said, tapping the spot she was about to aim for.

  I grimaced as the needle pierced the thick scar tissue of my inner arm.

  The blood collection tube began to fill. “I see you’re no stranger to needles.” She looked me in the eye briefly and then untied the tourniquet.

  My jaw tightened. I had scars from my days of shooting up. They weren’t something to be proud of, but they were obvious if you knew what you were looking at.

  “I’ve been clean for a while,” I replied. “I’ve got a daughter to worry about now.”

  “Oh?” Sasha withdrew the needle and capped it. She tucked a piece of gauze over the mark. “Bend your arm, please. Hold it there.”

  I shook my hand to drive off the tingling sensation.

  “How old is she?” she asked, swiping a piece of bandage tape over the mark.

  “Five.”

  “Just at the age when you can actually start taking them places, huh?” She smiled. It seemed genuine and I cracked a small one myself, chuckling at the irony of her words.

  “Yeah. You have no idea,” I replied.

  Chapter 21

  Sasha packed the syringe carefully back into her case and took out a plastic bag with a label on it.

  Officer Kenneth tossed a plain white t-shirt at me through the doorway. “Change your shirt.”

  I caught it. “What? Why?”

  “I was getting to that,” Sasha said, wrinkling her lips to the side and shooting him a dirty look. “You could have given me two more seconds.” She looked at me again. “We need your shirt to test for flammables or chemical residue from whatever it was you did back there that made you glow.”

  I reached behind my neck for my collar and began pulling my shirt over my head. “I seriously doubt you’re gonna find anything on here,” I said. “But if your police friend wants to see the goods that badly.” I flashed a smirk at the officer and his nostrils flared.

  “Shut up!” he barked.

  “Please stop!” Sasha tucked my shirt into the plastic bag and zipped it closed. “Christ, you two.” She walked over to the cell doorway and turned. “You’re from New York, right, David?”

  I nodded.

  “Then let me put this into words you’ll understand. Behave if you want a chance in hell at making it to court in once piece. They’re sending you to Pembrook Detention Center later today. That place is a shit hole compared to this slice of heaven. It will do you some good to make friends while you’re there. If I were you, I’d start appreciating the last few hours you’ve got here.”

  Officer Kenneth slammed the metal cell door closed behind her and scowled at me as the doctor walked past him.

  “Damn it!” I slammed a fist against the metal bars and recoiled from the shooting pain ripping through my bones. A glimmer of gold beamed from beneath my shirt and I quickly turned away from the hall and brought my arms in close to my chest to shield the light from view.

  My bracelet…

  The heat of my light made the bangle warm around my wrist. Maybe, just maybe I could use it to escape.

  I scooted over to the bars and looked out. No one was in the hall and the guard at the front wasn’t close enough to see what I was doing from his post. I returned to my bunk and shook out my hands.

  “Okay. Come on,” I whispered. “You can do this again. You want to see Lucy, right?” I clenched my fists and tried to summon my light, using the pain from a moment ago as a catalyst to aggravate the fluorescence. My hand came up and I parted my fingers just as I’d seen Judas and Solus do. The light in me grew brighter. Hotter. It sparked and crackled beneath my veins and skittered down my wrist until it crashed into the bangle and…

  “Ah! Shit!” I jolted and slammed my back into the concrete wall. A line of black raised skin sizzled across my wrist. “Shit!” I tried to shake it off, but the searing pain wouldn’t fade. Damn. The energy burned the hell out of me.

  It had worked earlier though. Maybe the taser had shorted the thing out.

  So that option was off the table.

  For now.

  I flopped onto my bunk and dropped my head back against the cell wall. Would I be in for the long haul this time?

  Once ballistic reports came back on my gun… I was screwed. Guns and cars were a passion. I got my hands on a rare gun because I wanted something uniquely mine, but being cocky like that only makes it easier to trace the bullet striations when you end up having to use it.

  Striations—rifling impressions—are tiny, scratches inside the barrel of the gun that get imprinted on the bullet casing when it’s fired. Think of it as a kind of fingerprint. Every gun is unique due to manufacturing variations.

  “Knock knock.”

  I looked up. A new police officer was at the door of my cell, along with Officer Kenneth.

  “Let’s go, Pyro.”

  “Quit calling me that,” I muttered through gritted teeth.

  “Hey, I know what I saw, and until Cortez or someone else at the lab finds out why you lit up like a damn firework, that’s what I’m calling you. Besides, the boys at Pembrook will come up with something else soon enough.”

  They unlocked my cell door and entered with two pairs of cuffs. One for my hands and the other for my ankles.

  “Where the hell is this Pembrook place anyway?” I asked, putting my arms behind my back before they could force me to.

  “All you need to know right now is that it’s where guys like you belong. You’ll be right at home with the others there.”

  The last time I was in jail was when I was a teen. Got caught stripping a car and had to do three months behind bars in juvie and another nine of community service. It sucked, but it didn’t change who I was or keep me out of trouble for long.

  They snapped the second pair of cuffs onto my ankles and walked me to the back exit where a police van waited. They opened a door, gestured for me to get in the back, and then attached another chain to my cuffs, securing me to the seat so I couldn’t get away even if
I had the chance. Not that I would have tried. I was no good to Lucy dead. As long as I was alive, I had a chance at getting out in one piece.

  The ride to Pembrook was a bumpy one.

  Once inside the jail, they made me change into ugly jail garb—a conventional orange short-sleeve jumpsuit with buttons up the shirt.

  “Orange, my favorite color,” I said sarcastically.

  “Keep moving.” One of the guards pushed me in the back with a baton and I took a breath of warm, stuffy air.

  Damn it. This is really happening.

  . . .

  The cell was small, as expected. No more than about eight feet by eight feet. Ugly white brick walls. Two metal bunks with sad excuses for bed linens draped over top. Steel toilet. A tiny writing desk in the corner and an even tinier TV perched on the wall above that. My cellmate, Herman, was a tall, hefty guy with a shiny bald head and a spider web tattoo up his neck and throat. He was slow in the head, a little punch drunk, maybe, and quiet. That was okay with me.

  You know how, stereotypically, the guy people end up bunking with in jail is an asshole? Well, that wasn’t the case.

  The guy in the cell across from me was.

  They called him Splitter. He was in for, allegedly, cracking some guy’s skull clean open after he found the guy messing around with his wife. Then he did the same thing to her.

  Technically, he belonged in a high-security prison, but someone slipped up on his paperwork and he ended up here, with guys like me who weren’t out for blood.

  He was still awaiting his sentence, and from what I’d overheard, it was going to be a while before that day came. Splitter had been behind bars for a year and a half, but the courts were taking their sweet time getting to his case.

  When were they going to get to mine?

  Why hadn’t the Prism made any attempts to free me? They were quick to coerce me into saving Kareena when Taylor attacked, but now that I needed help—nothing.