by Nat Kozinn
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And now the first section from my novel Different Strong, the sequel to Chosen Different. Available now.
https://www.amazon.com/Different-Strong-Chosen-Book-ebook/dp/B00XWD0A66/
Excerpt
My muscles are screaming for more oxygen. I don't have any to give. I'm breathing as deeply as I can, but it’s no use. I've been running too long. I am going to have to stop and catch my breath. I put my hand on an old, useless electric pole and take deep, slow, methodical breaths. I flood red blood cells to my lungs, gathering oxygen that I send all over my body. While I'm at it, I use my lymphatic system to clear out the lactic acid building in my leg muscles.
Within a few seconds I feel ready to start running again, but before I can, I hear someone else behind me. It's someone who's moving faster than any human can, faster than I can. My partner, Victor Campos.
"What are you doing?" Victor demands.
"I had to stop and rest," I answer.
"I thought you're supposed to have the perfect human body. You've been running for six or seven miles. There are a lot of humans who can run farther than that."
What does he know about what the human body is capable of? He doesn't have a human body. He has something much better than that. He’s Physically Enhanced, Athlete Type. He has super dense muscles that make him stronger and faster than any person should be. He was five miles behind when we started running, and he still caught up to me with ease even though he’s a six foot five and built like an extra-thick brick wall.
"Humans can't run that long at full sprint. What's the point anyway? The kid is long gone. He moves so fast he makes you look like a snail," I respond.
"Speedsters don’t have much endurance. They need to stop and rest for an hour after a few minutes of sprinting. They make you look like an ultra-marathon runner."
"How do we know if we're still on his trail?"
"Speedsters always run in a straight line, especially in the Metro Area. It's hard to round a corner at two hundred miles an hour. Look down at the street, do you notice anything?" Victor asks and points.
The sidewalk is covered in debris, a mix of dirt, old concrete, cardboard and even old clothes, it looks like a landfill. There’s a path cut right through the filth.
"Running at two hundred miles an hour generates a lot of wind. I'm going to the roofs and see if I can spot where he went. You keep after him down here.” With that, Victor takes a running start and leaps two stories up onto the roof of a half-collapsed building. I turn and break back into a sprint, a bit slower than before. I don't want to hear it from Victor if I have to stop and rest again.
Victor is moving above me. Even though he has to jump from rooftop to rooftop, he's covering more ground than I am running on the street. The way he moves reminds me of The Beast. Power mixed with grace. I push The Beast out of my mind. He doesn't deserve my consideration. I put my head down and keep following the path the Speedster left in his wake. Victor seemed confident that we will catch up to him, but I'm skeptical. He was moving so damn fast.
It's no wonder the cops couldn't catch him and had to call us. The kid, Arnold Chapman, freaked out in a crowded upscale restaurant, screaming nonsense about bugs all over his skin. He ran around in circles spilling people’s drinks and throwing plates of food. By the time we got there, he was hiding in a corner of the kitchen, covered in spices. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. It was Arnold’s first week out of Section 26, he was a contractor Delivery Boy for a few restaurants in the area. I’m not sure if he took some drugs or had a psychotic breakdown, and frankly, it doesn’t matter. It’s just my job to catch him.
I finally have the job I always wanted. The job I told everyone, including myself, I was perfect for. I'm an agent for the Office of Exceptional Cases. My duty is to apprehend dangerous Differents. Now I have to put my money where my mouth is and do the job. It's extra motivation that my own partner doesn't think I am qualified. And it just so happens, if I fail at the job-- I go back to prison.
Victor drops down onto the sidewalk and waits for me to catch up. I make sure to focus and time my breathing so I don’t appear to be winded.
"Why did we stop?" I ask.
"I saw the trail come to an end. He’s in a half-collapsed building up ahead. It looks like it was a school before the Plagues. It's big; it’s a good place to hide."
"What should we do?"
"What do you think we should do? You're supposed to have the ideal human mind too," Victor says sarcastically.
"I guess we should split up; each take half of the school and search for him."
"Wrong. Well, half wrong. What if you find him? You aren't fast enough to catch him, or strong enough. It takes big muscles to move that fast. Besides, a building this size is going to have a half a dozen different exits. You were right about splitting up though. And you should go try to find him. I'll stay on the roof and pounce down on him when he runs out."
"What should I do when I find him? We're out of range of think.Net out here so I can't call you. I knew we should have brought Linda."
"We don't need think.Net and we don't need Linda. How was a fifty-year-old Telepath supposed to keep up anyway? That kid is going to run by you so fast you won't have time to do anything. If you do get lucky and somehow manage to sneak up on him, yell so I know he's coming. You’re just scaring him out. I’m apprehending him. Don't try anything stupid. Are we clear?" He says with a look that tells me “yes” is my only option.
"Clear."
We go our separate ways. He climbs onto the roof of a building overlooking the school, and I head inside the school, or what's left of it anyway. The entrance I walk through is missing a key feature of entrances, its doors. Inside is a war zone, there isn’t an intact piece of wall in sight. Many of them have been demolished on purpose, the work of salvagers.
The walls are made of concrete. Concrete means rebar, which means steel. Steel is rare and valuable thanks to the Plagues. Cabot's bacteria could and did eat rebar, but the concrete often protected the metal from the little buggers. The remaining steel rods can be salvaged, but they need to be removed from their concrete casing. It is a difficult job that requires painstakingly smashing through the concrete with a sledgehammer. Ten hours of labor will earn about ten dollar’s worth of metal, but there is no shortage of desperate people willing to work on these terms.
The missing walls make it easy to search through the barren rooms. Dozens of looters have been through this school over the years. They picked it clean of anything of value. All that’s left are papers, and broken desks and chairs. Whatever metal held them together was salvaged long ago. There’s a time worn children’s drawing still hanging from one wall, A Dog Named Lucky, by Brian age 8. Not bad for a kid that age, good sense of perspective.
My hunt goes quickly. I clear all of the classrooms in short order and the gym and lunchroom are big piles of rubble, leaving only the auditorium. I step into the large room while stretching out my perception of time. To me, it will seem like I’m moving slowly and carefully almost in slow motion, but I’ll really be moving at normal speed. Great for making sure I can move quickly while still taking silent steps. I search through what's left of the rows of seats that used to fill the auditorium. The metal was eaten away by Cabot's bacteria, leaving behind piles of wood, which my Speedster could be resting behind. I get to the middle of the room and look back over my shoulder. Someone stands up and stretches. There he is! He’s covered in dirt and blood and shaking with fear. We lock eyes.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it. I had to get them off my skin,” the Speedster plea
ds. His arms are scratched to shreds, the product of his own fingernails tearing red ribbons in his flesh.
“It’s okay. Come with me, and we’ll figure it out,” I say in a soft friendly tone.
His eyes are jitter bugging out of his head, and the pupils are fully dilated black pits. His carotid artery is pulsing so violently in his neck; his heart might jump right out onto the floor. He’s breathing short desperate breaths through a mouth covered in drool. That’s a weird mix of conditions for his body to display. I wonder what drugs he’s on? It looks like uppers, downers, and everything in between.
“This isn’t fun. The drink is poison,” the desperate kid pleads.
“Sure it is. Come with me and will make sure you don’t have to drink anymore,” I say with my hands up.
I watch his deranged eyes move from me to a doorway that has an exit sign. I'm about ten times closer to the door than he is, but that still may not be close enough. He starts running like a bolt of lightning. I slow down my perception of time as far as I can and make a full speed charge to intercept him. I move at top speed, which is like a sloth compared to the Speedster. He's almost at the door. I'm close enough to stop him if I stick out my left arm.
The radius and ulna bones in my left arm shatter into a thousand different pieces. Those pieces burst through my skin like shards of glass, tearing my arm open from the inside out. I'm thrown backwards into the wall, causing massive bruising to my left shoulder. Arnold goes flying too. He hits the wall headfirst and goes down. I run over to him and roll him over with my good arm. He's unconscious and bleeding from the head, and his left leg is bent like a pretzel, but there's a pulse. We have to get him help.
"Victor! I'm in the auditorium; I need your help!" I yell as loud as I can.
It takes Victor fifteen seconds to make his way to the auditorium. He sees my broken left arm hanging limply at my side and our suspect, bleeding from the head.
"This counts as stupid," he says.
Want more? Buy Different Strong (Chosen Different Book 2) on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Different-Strong-Chosen-Book-ebook/dp/B00XWD0A66/
