by James Moore
Joe had to guess Sean was the slab of meat Hank had just brutalized. Hank came back into view, his face bloodied and bruised, his eyes darkly murderous. Though Joe had no idea exactly what had happened, he could tell that Hank had been in a savage battle. He pounded his fist into the side of the van farthest away from Joe, doubtless hammering the face of his enemy again.
The dark-haired leader from the Successes met Joe’s eyes. A grin pulled at the corners of Joe’s mouth. He knew this one. They’d met in Boston.
Joe pulled the pistol from the seat of his running pants—Hunter had been a good boy and stowed a pistol in close range in the car—and aimed it at the other Alpha’s head. But before he could pull the trigger, his target slid toward the van, vanishing from Joe’s sight.
And then they were all moving, all of the enemies. They said nothing as they moved, but they stopped facing off and retreated at a fast pace.
“Hey! Bitch!” Not-Gene’s voice exploded just before he triggered another explosion, this time from his pistol. The girl who’d been fighting him grunted and fell against the van’s side, bleeding from her shoulder. “Something to remember me by!”
The van roared to life even as the other team was climbing into it. Joe could just see the shape of one of theirs being gently lifted into the vehicle. He aimed at the driver’s side of the windshield and a few feet away, Not-Gene aimed as well.
Go for it. He sent the mental command toward Not-Gene, who silently nodded and blew out the windshield with a bullet. Joe could see the driver dropping even lower as he hit the gas and the van lurched forward, rapidly gathering speed. Hank slammed into the side of the moving vehicle, but the driver managed to keep his calm enough to compensate for the brutal impact.
Joe also fired, pounding holes into the vehicle, but his shots failed to hit a single target inside the damned thing. He could hear them screaming in furious, panicked voices. The sounds did him good.
Hank watched the retreating van and a slow smile worked its way across his brutish features. He’d just been in a knock-down, drag-out fight with someone mean enough to make him bleed, and he seemed amused by the notion. Not far away, Not-Tina was screaming obscenities and all but snarling. Not-Kyrie was almost as bad, flexing her hands and shaking off the fight. Not-Gene very calmly checked his pistol’s clip and, on realizing it was empty, moved toward the car.
“Well, that was unexpected.” Joe spoke softly, but they all listened to him. That was the way it was supposed to be. He was their leader, whether or not they liked it, or even knew it. His eyes cut to Hank, who’d stood up to him the last time they were both in charge of their bodies. Even Hank was his subordinate, despite his display of power the previous night. Joe remembered watching the Other crush the pistol in his hand, a feat Joe could not match on his best day. Hank could have killed Joe. He’d had the weapon aimed at Joe’s head and instead had settled for a display of power and a warning. Hank just wanted his privacy. Joe would respect that. For now.
Not-Gene had walked to the back of the battered old car they were driving in and was sorting through a suitcase. He pulled out a box of ammunition and began reloading his clip. The others came closer, regrouping. Of the whole lot the one who looked the worst for wear was Hank, who was once again rolling his shoulders and looking toward where the van had gone. The van had headed down the road toward Illinois and Chicago.
“Who the hell were they?” Not-Gene’s voice was still surprisingly calm
Joe shook his head. “I have no idea. But I think maybe we got the attention of the wrong people. I think they were like us. Others.”
Not-Tina nodded. “They are. Too fast to be human. Too damn tough, too. I hit that bitch hard enough to break her jaw, but she kept coming.”
Not-Kyrie added her own opinion. “They smelled like us.”
That caught Joe’s attention. “How do we smell?”
She frowned. “Not like people. Different. I don’t think I can put it into words.”
Not-Gene finished reloading and slid the pistol into his belt, carefully setting the safety first. “Whoever they are, they got stupid.”
Not-Gene was getting cocky. Joe needed to correct that.
“No.” Joe shook his head. “We got lucky. I don’t think they were expecting us to change. If I hadn’t taken over from Hunter, we would’ve been screwed. They were better trained than us. They had weapons and they were used to working together.”
“Like I said. They got stupid. They weren’t expecting us to change and they challenged us. They’d been smart about it, they would have just shot us and been done with it.”
“They didn’t use any weapons. They didn’t want to hurt us.” Not-Tina was finally calming down a bit, but she was still looking everywhere. Her counterpart was used to being paranoid as a result of growing up in a very violent neighborhood, and that had apparently carried over when she changed.
Hank laughed. “Could have fooled me. Bastard tried to throat me.” He pointed to the red mark on his thick neck. All of them saw the abrasion easily, but only because they were enhanced and the darkness around them wasn’t as much of a handicap for them. Had they been merely human, their senses would have failed them. Except maybe for Kyrie. Kyrie seemed a little better at seeing and hearing than the rest of the Failures. Maybe not quite as sharp-sensed as her counterpart, but better than human. He would have to test that theory, when he had the time.
“No. She’s right. If they’d really wanted us dead, they would have just opened fire. All of them were carrying. They could have just cut loose and blown us to hell. They want us alive.”
“So what does that mean?” Not-Gene was frowning, not upset so much as trying to figure out the angles of this particular equation. It was what he did. He liked to understand what was behind the actions of all the people around him. He liked the puzzles of human minds. Joe could admire that. He also looked at the other Failure’s analytical mind as a possible risk that had to be considered.
“It means they probably got sent after us by Janus. That means we might not be able to surprise Evelyn Hope the way we wanted to.”
“So what? We’re screwed?” Not-Tina’s voice rose as she spoke. Joe suppressed a desire to tell her to calm down. It wouldn’t do any good. She was high-strung, and it would just rile her even more.
“No. We just have a few new obstacles.” That was Hank. He looked at Joe for a second with a strange smile on his face and then he looked toward Not-Tina. “They don’t want us dead. They just want us. For all we know, if those losers had caught us, they’d have taken us where we want to go, to see Evelyn Hope.”
“Not a chance in hell.” Joe shook his head violently. “We might have gotten there, but we wouldn’t be in any position to fight back.”
“How do you know that?” Not-Gene again. Not challenging him, just curious. It was good to be able to sense what they were thinking. It made worrying about betrayal unnecessary. Of course, there was Hank to consider too. Hank knew Joe could read their thoughts, could feel it when he read them. He had to avoid even seriously considering messing with Hank for the present time, and that was inconvenient.
“Because I was their unfortunate guest, remember? I told you before, you guys had your lives as regular people. I had a life of getting experimented on.”
“Why doesn’t Hunter remember any of that?” Not-Kyrie. She was looking at Joe with a puzzled frown. “What did they do to him?”
They hadn’t done anything to Hunter. A collision with a car had brained Hunter hard enough to destroy his memories, his ability to exist, for several years. Now he was coming back around, which was why Seven had started hunting down the rest of the Failures in the first place. That was where the problems began, wasn’t it? That was the source of most of his frustration. Trying to find a cure for his dilemma had led him to discover that there were other Failures out there and that, in turn, had led the lot of them to where they were now. He just couldn’t explain that to the others, not yet at any rate. Not until he
was sure exactly who he could trust and how well he could trust them. Maybe not even then.
“I don’t know. Look, I know some of you have bleed over. Some of you can remember your other selves.” He looked at Hank and Not-Gene, both of whom had shown certain signs of the syndrome. “I don’t. I can’t remember what Hunter does. I have to guess. It hasn’t exactly made this easy for me. Or for him, I guess.” This wasn’t exactly the truth, but it was close enough for Joe’s purposes.
Hank stared hard at him, a smile playing around his mouth again. Joe was tempted to check what was going on in that head but knew if he did, Hank would do to him what he had done to the van and the soldier he’d used to dent it. Hank was on an entirely different level than the other Failures strength-wise. Joe thought he could probably still take him, but not without getting seriously damaged in the process.
That meant waiting until the right time to test out his theories. There was something about Hank that bothered Joe a lot. More than just his challenging nature. How had he realized that Joe was reading his mind? Why did it seem sometimes that maybe Hank was returning the favor? These weren’t thoughts that Joe liked very much.
“I don’t know who those losers were, and I don’t much care. What I do know is we have to go faster if we’re going to get to Evelyn Hope. Climb in, kiddies. We have a mission to finish.”
Without another word he headed for the car. The others followed. He knew they would. They didn’t fit as well as they should have. All of them were bigger than in their other forms. In the long run, Not-Tina wound up sitting in Hank’s lap. Hank didn’t complain. Neither did Not-Tina, who enjoyed being the center of attention more than her counterpart did.
Chapter Seven
Not-Gene
THE RADIO WAS PLAYING in the car, and as much as he hated country music, he listened to the words of the songs playing. He knew the singer, of course. The man was a legend, even if he was dead. Johnny Cash—that was the name. He knew it because Gene’s father liked to listen to the man when he was working in the garage, or at least pretending to work in the garage. Gene’s “dad,” the man who had raised him as a son, also listened to the nonsense whenever he was hunting or off pretending to be a man with his college friends. Football games, the occasional sports outing, whatever let him have freedom from the harpy he’d married. Gene loved his mother, admired her greatly, even when he was angry with her like he was now. Not-Gene didn’t much care for her either way. She was neither good nor bad, but merely another person in the world.
The song was about a man going to his death, unrepentant, unforgiving and unafraid. That was something he could admire, and so he smiled and nodded.
“You said we should name ourselves?” He spoke to Joe. Not quite asking permission but merely asking for clarification.
The man who liked to think of himself as their leader nodded. “Absolutely. You’re all going to need names when it comes time for fake IDs. Why? You come up with something?”
He smiled. “Yeah. Call me Sam Hall.”
Bronx smiled. “Like the song?”
“Definitely.”
Bronx laughed. “Good one! Sam Hall it is, ‘damn your eyes!’”
Sam nodded, acknowledging the line from the song. Seemed about the only thing Sam Hall in the song liked to say, really. And it suited exactly how Sam felt about most of the people in the world around him. The Others, maybe even the Failures, they were a bit different. They were kin. There was a connection to them that went beyond the link that let Joe speak to them through their minds. There was a camaraderie that came from being almost unique in this world.
Not like the others, the ones that wanted to take their freedom from them.
Sam smiled. “Damn your eyes, indeed.” He said the words softly as he thought about the girl who’d damned near beaten Gene unconscious. He would finish what he started with her if he saw her again. The more he thought about the girl, the more she enraged him. It didn’t seem to work that way with all of them. Not everyone felt offended when someone hurt their counterparts, but he did. And so did Hank. He was fairly sure of it.
He was connected with Gene. He didn’t much like that fact, but he understood it. The worst part was he didn’t much like Gene. Hank seemed to accept Cody, maybe even sort of liked him, but Sam didn’t feel that way at all when it came to his counterpart. Gene was weak. He held everything inside and took whatever was thrown his way like it was something that he deserved. Like he had to be punished for having a life of privilege. Sam didn’t know for sure if that was how Gene felt, but he suspected it was. He wasn’t Gene. He shared some memories, and he sometimes felt the emotions that Gene was feeling, but he wasn’t really connected beyond that. What made Gene angry made him angry; he understood that too. But it was different for Hank and even for the two females. So far when they changed, they took on the same emotions as their Jekylls, but none of the memories. He could tell by the way they looked around when the transformation occurred. They were disoriented, but in the case of Tina, he could see the fury whenever she became Not-Tina. She came into the world enraged every single time. Of course there was little to go on for that. So far he’d only seen her become Not-Tina a few times and normally he was busy waking up himself.
That was something he and Gene had in common: they studied everything around them. They wanted to know everything. The difference? Gene wanted to hide from the things that scared him, wanted to hide from the aspects of his own personality that worried him. Sam wanted to embrace everything. There was so very much he hadn’t done yet.
Kyrie sat next to him, looking out the window, lost in thought. In the front seat, Hank rode shotgun with Not-Tina in his lap and Joe drove, turning off the interstate and heading onto a side road without consulting any maps.
Joe had been around for five years. It was impossible to imagine how much he had already experienced. Sam envied him every last second of his life.
“Where are we going?” He asked the question just to see what Joe would say. He didn’t really much care, as long as he could be alive, be in existence, instead of giving control back to Gene. But he wanted to know more about Joe, more about the guy who was basically in charge of their lives right now.
Joe looked at him in the rearview mirror, his dark blue eyes unreadable. “I think we need to stretch our legs for a bit.” He shrugged. “I know we need to get to a certain destination, but first we need to make a plan and for that I need to think. And I think best when I’m moving. So, let’s move.”
As he spoke he pulled off the road and into the parking lot of a sleazy-looking bar. There were several trucks there already and half a dozen motorcycles that had been tricked out enough to guarantee they belonged to a bike club. Bike club, like Hell’s Angels was a bike club. Hardly a mild little social group.
Joe was out of the car before the engine finished settling, pocketing the keys and stretching his legs. Hank stood up and stretched, rolling his shoulders again. He was always doing that, and Sam had to wonder if the Other was having trouble adjusting to the size change that his body had to go through each time. That was something to consider for the future. Gene would have noticed the same thing, but the difference was, Sam noticed it and cataloged it for later.
The rest of them climbed out and Sam couldn’t help looking at the two girls. Both of them had grown when they changed from Jekyll to Hyde. They’d grown larger. The end result was clothing that strained in the most interesting areas. Not-Kyrie looked around with a smile playing on her lips and moved forward with a sensual strut that was completely unconscious. Kyrie seemed almost self-conscious about her looks. Not-Kyrie reveled in the knowledge that men were looking. She exuded confidence that bordered on arrogance. Not-Tina was on the prowl. That was the only way to put it. Every move she made was fluid grace, and the expression on her face was purely predatory. Not necessarily in a good way for whatever she decided to stalk, either. She was attractive, yes, but there was a serious edge of danger to her. Not surprising, not really,
not when you considered that she had apparently taken a couple of million dollars from mobsters in New Jersey. Sam decided to keep that in mind, just in case he found himself alone with her again. They’d fought alongside each other on the very first occasion when they met, and while he knew that his body was physically stronger and more durable than Gene’s, Not-Tina had recovered from being hit with a Taser faster than he had. It was possible that she was tougher than he was, and that said a lot.
Still, he looked at the way the two of them wore their now tighter pants and it wasn’t combat he thought of. A flash of a smile played across his face as the group headed into the bar. Well, not combat, but definitely something just as physical.
Chapter Eight
Joe Bronx
THE PLACE WAS A dump, just like he remembered. Not-Tina slid a hand over his bicep and moved in front of him. She wanted to be seen—to be acknowledged—so for a moment he saw her. She was easy to look at. Tina was a rail, thin and pretty, yes, but not exactly stunning. Not-Tina was sleek muscles and had the same sort of appeal as a panther. Unsettling and deadly but absolutely impossible to ignore.
“How do you know this place?” Her voice had the same strong New Jersey accent as Tina’s, but otherwise everything was different. They didn’t speak with the same rhythms or use the same words. Different bodies and different minds in one form; each of the Others was developing, becoming a complete individual, and it was fascinating to watch.
Joe smiled and placed a hand on her shoulder, making sure to look into her eyes deeply. It was what she wanted, intimacy, and he needed all of them on his side. “I’ve been all around. Been to Chicago about ten times before. I found this place a couple of years ago.”
