The Nuclear Winter

by Brian Thompson

  Though it was truth to me, I dared not speak it out loud for fear it disappear on me. I leaned forward. “All good?” I asked her.

  Kendel eyed the results. Must have been the ones written in code — nonsense to me and not to her. Her gaze tightened at the bottom. I’d seen concern like that before on my oncologist’s face. She raised her wrist in front of her face and called for my father. He was on my side. Whatever it was, he’d defend me. He came running, with Mom close behind him, and demanded the shapeshifter tell him the truth about his daughter. Though he referred to me by title, the way he halted prior to saying daughter sounded like he was talking about a stranger, which I was. Mom and Kendel noticed what I’d called him, and it threw them off.

  Dad enlarged the details on the holo screen. His face showed less concern and surprise than hers, almost as if he expected to see what he’s seen. Mom, like me, was clueless. “She’s a legacy. An extraordinary one.”

  Kendel added, “Her antibody and antigen levels are higher than Jade’s. You can’t seriously be thinking — ”

  “Those aren’t the conclusions I’m arguing against — ”

  The two of them spoke over one another, each argument growing louder than the next. Mom jumped in and started cursing them both in Spanish. My parents were on my side, and Kendel was not. Matter of fact, she’d never really warmed up to me or even been cordial. Nobody cared to address my questions, no matter how much I cursed back or yelled, so I tightened my fists and set them ablaze. “Answers. Right now.”

  The display of my powers stopped them from arguing. “She knows what a legacy is.” Mom’s Spanish accent exaggerated as she explained. “And--”

  Dad’s booming voice shut down both Kendel and my mother. “That legacies have…problems?”

  “You call insanity and homicidal behavior problems, Director? Your personal ties are clouding your perspective. Lucy, by all measures, you’re a nuclear bomb, and if you weren’t his daughter, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  My parents’ extended pause told me the truth about my potential. Nuclear Winter wasn’t hyperbole. I could cause damage equal to that of an atomic explosion? On top of that, Jade was an insane murderer? “Should I grab a razor and get in a warm bath now or later?”

  “That’s not funny, Luciana.”

  I fake laughed. “Wasn’t joking, Mom. I can blow up, and all the others like me were psychotic, right, Kendel?”

  “You’re not wrong,” she answered. She talked about me as if I was a rodent or a swarm of insects. “Power at that level must be eliminated.”

  I shrugged and turned to my father. “Or controlled. Teach me.”

  He cupped my chin in his hand. “I’m not a teacher. But I know someone who is.”

  Kendel stormed off, mumbling about “abandoned directives.” Meanwhile, Dad led Mom and me to the grooming and outfitting area, where we threw the clothes we’d slept in into the laundry, chose new clothes, and showered. I washed my hair for there was no telling how long it’d be until the next time I’d do it. Following that, we ate a full breakfast and walked to the armory, which had racks of Ordnance, ammunition, and other equipment. The weapons were familiar, but the only time I’d seen artillery that heavy was the attack at my house.

  He opened a tray display and handed each of us a disc small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. “Place this at the back of your neck and press it down until you feel it attach.”

  After lifting my hair, I did what he said and jumped when the disc clamped onto my skin. It didn’t hurt, but it tickled a bit. Mom did it faster than me, and the process didn’t surprise her.

  “Our newest, kinetic-powered [XW96]armor interacts with your lower brain functions. Heads-up display in your mask shows vitals and damage. Includes heat, air, underwater breathing up to fifty feet, healing apparatuses, and cloaking tech. Fits over your clothes, however thick or thin.”

  I wanted to see it work, so I “called” my suit into action. In seconds, I was covered, and I saw everything he was talking about. When I activated my powers, the suit registered a severe temperature and radiation warning. Dad waved a small machine over my head and, I assumed, recalibrated things so that the warning wouldn’t happen again. Mom tried her suit out as well and seemed impressed. “Who made these?” she asked him.

  “Sasha.”

  Her eyebrows raised. “She’s here?”

  “She was.” His words were short. I didn’t think he wanted any more questions about Sasha, whoever she was. “Ready for training?”

  Zhang Minh, the Chinese guy from the transport who saw me naked, was my trainer. Apparently, he hadn’t shared that part with my father[XW97]. I wouldn’t tell either. He may be sensitive about a grown man seeing his nude teenage daughter or be one of those weirdoes about virginity and sex and things like that. Zhang was gentleman-like and kind, and he trained me with patience. We worked on healthy breathing patterns because, and I hadn’t known this at all, but I held my breath several times while using my powers. It hadn’t affected the intensity of the fire the way I thought it did. My flames were larger, longer streamed, and more intense when I steadily breathed.

  Zhang showed me to an open circle room like the cell Liam had dragged me into. That fact alone set me on edge. “What’s this, Zhang?” I asked him.

  “Target practice. Remember to breathe, and nothing in here can permanently hurt you.” He gave the command for Ordnance to be set to stun.

  “But it can hurt me?”

  “Not unless I want it to,” he replied with a smirk. “I’ll be in the staging area watching with your parents. Feel free to talk to me over comms. Only I can hear you.”

  I grinned. A chance to show off to my father. “Can you set it so I can hear what they say?”

  My trainer winked at me and left the room. The lights flickered, and the next thing I knew, a flash of blue light whizzed past my head. Live Ordnance fire. I threw flame at my attacker. Before I had time to verify the mechanism had indeed met its doom, the attack intensified.

  Good. Give me more.

  To conserve my energy and better my accuracy, I narrowed the stream from my hands and shortened the bursts. I struck every target, and if it wasn’t a direct hit, the proximity and temperature of my heat burst did enough to disable it.

  “Hey.” My father’s voice was distant in my ears. He wasn’t talking to me.

  Mom’s response was shallow and cold like she strictly said it out of courtesy. “Hey.”

  Keeping my concentration with live Ordnance fire shooting in my direction was difficult. Doing it while eavesdropping on my parents’ conversation was near impossible, but I did it.

  “You look amazing.”

  Mom pretended the compliment didn’t hit her ego. “You’re…yeah. You, too.”

  I knew so little about the two of them, as individuals and as a couple. I had to know more. When they chatted, I ducked behind blockades they had given me to simulate real life objects to eavesdrop.

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “She’s never had a man tell her that, which is why she doesn’t think it. Tell her.”

  No, I didn’t, but, at least, I’m self-aware. My nose is too blunt, and I could use thinner thighs. Who couldn’t? Anyway, guys don’t focus on my lower body, at least, not my legs.

  “Of course, she doesn’t. We didn’t at her age, either. She looks like you.”

  “And you. Did you think she wouldn’t?”

  “I… It’s been fifteen years, and I…”

  “And what? I’ve never been with another guy, and besides, how many superhuman fifteen-year-old girls do you know? She’s obviously your daughter.”

  I wished Mom would tell him how she really felt about him. Not that it’d make a difference. He was tied down to the stepmother I had never met.

  “You owe me a conversation or a thousand.”

  She made a sound that made me angry for him. “I don’t owe you anything, Jason.”

  My father’s voice spiked in
volume and pitch. “Of course, because Rhapsody doesn’t need anyone’s help to do anything. Next time, rescue yourself.”

  “Nobody asked you to interfere or to send anyone after us.”

  Dad cursed at her. “I’ll remember to say that when I notify the families that their loved ones died saving mine.”

  “Don’t be afraid, Lucy.” Zhang was on to my delay tactics. “I’m setting your cover to dissolve and regenerate.”

  I wished I could tell my parents to shut up without letting them know I was listening to their conversation. Their back and forth was really screwing with my concentration. I didn’t expect him to be overjoyed to see me or for her to be so combative — hardly the warm, family reunion I had envisioned for myself.

  “You have thirty seconds. Go.”

  Sure enough, the digital transport became nothing. I sprinted to an imaginary wall and watched as it, too, disappeared, but the transport reappeared. I counted to twenty in my head and timed my counterattacks. Soon, I had disabled or melted the Ordnance. With my hands on my hips, I stood proudly and faced my trainer and parents. “Do I get to enter my name as the high scorer?”

  “We’re going again,” Zhang said. “Higher armament rate and less cover.”

  I made a “come here” signal with my hands to my father, which I’d soon regret. “Bring it, baby.”

  “Director override. Set to injure-slash-maim.”

  Mom came to my defense and cursed him. “Are you crazy? You want to injure or maim my daughter? I’ll ghost down there — ”

  “And what, save her? What about when you’re not there? That’s what we’re training for in the first place.”

  “I’ll always be there,” she said. Meanwhile, the course had reset itself.

  Dad argued back. “Like Peters was? Courtney, Hughes, Camuto are all gone, Rhapsody, and you know as well as I do that day will come when neither of us will be here to defend her.”

  An Ordnance burst hit me in the back. Searing pain traveled up my spine. I said a few words I wish I could’ve taken back, but from the laughter over the comms, Zhang didn’t think my injury was serious. This armor was trash if it couldn’t block a shot like that.

  “Cancel it,” Mom said to one of them, “or I’ll do it for you.”

  Dad tried to reassure her after she’d done something I couldn’t see. “Rhapsody, don’t. Give her a chance.”

  I quickly located the offending Ordnance and fried it. This time, the transport lasted fifteen seconds. I practiced stopping the actual Ordnance blasts with walls of flame. Once I nailed the right temperature, I erected a wall of flame high and wide enough to block incoming fire and hit all the targets I located. More came up behind me, and I managed those, too.

  “See,” he said with joy in his voice, “she did it!”

  Mom didn’t say anything else. She was wrong, and she didn’t have a leg to stand on.

  I had a feeling Dad wanted to level up one more time, but my mother wouldn’t have it.

  Last training module today was flight. I enjoyed this training the most because there was one spectator for my failures. I asked for that. The constant bickering got in my head, and I wasn’t the greatest fan of towering heights.

  Zhang and I walked to the end of wherever it was. During the trek, I asked him, “What was going on up there?”

  “At the end of your last session?”

  I nodded [XW98]since I couldn’t see into the viewing area.

  “Your mother quantum tunneled her hand through my chest and was threatening to yank out my heart if I didn’t shut down the simulation.”

  To think my mother possessed that kind of savagery — the same woman who baked red velvet cupcakes for my third-grade class on my birthday and watched holovision shows with me could ghost her hand through another human being — made me believe the side of her I knew nothing about was a side I [XW99]didn’t want to know. She was, in many ways, a stranger to me.

  “You weren’t afraid of her?”

  “Not really.”

  There was apparently more to Zhang, too.

  “Your mother has killed before. It’s an instinct there behind the eyes, but she didn’t want to murder me. She also did not want you to die.”

  “So, what stopped her?”

  Zhang smiled. “The director touched her hand. Anyway, here we are.”

  My father kept her from killing him with a touch? What was that?

  We ended up in front of what amounted to a sparkling glass tower. Its size and circumference gave me claustrophobia. “I’m supposed to get into that and do what?”

  Zhang opened its door. “Fly, of course.”

  Huh. “Come again?”

  “Don’t be afraid. You’re not in any danger.”

  Inside it, I was able to stretch out my arms without touching anything all the way around, and though air freely flowed inside of it, the suffocating feeling was real. He put an arm around my back, rubbed my shoulder to comfort me, and reminded me to breathe. Crazy how I had to be reminded to do something to keep myself alive.

  “Your powers are intuitive. They shape themselves around your personality like an extension of who and what you are. Think of your abilities like you would a talent or gift, playing piano or such. Let them flow from you and guide them to where you’d like them to go.”

  “Okay.”

  He pointed to the tube. “Step inside and fly to the top. Levitate yourself there, and then descend.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  Zhang said six words. “Focus, breathe, control. Lift and thrust.”

  The chamber closed. Almost immediately, I started hyperventilating. Okay, I didn’t get the breathing thing, which sounded ridiculous.

  Rather than close the chamber, he clearly mouthed “relax” and “breathe.” I accomplished that, eventually, and pictured myself rising to the apex of the chamber.

  Then, I channeled my powers through the soles of my feet and reached my arms upward. Slowly, I ascended about four feet off the ground then five. He shut the chamber. Soon, I was halfway up the tube.

  I was doing it!

  My progress brought a smile to my face. I increased my speed and got to the top quicker than I had anticipated. I was supposed to levitate there, but the middle ground between on and off was harder for me than just on. Fighting off the urge to look was unbearable.

  “Breathe!” Zhang yelled. “And don’t look down!”

  I peeked and immediately panicked. The back and forth cut my powers in and out some fifty feet in the air. As I plummeted downward, my powers yanked me between flying and falling. I screamed and tried to regain control of what my body was doing to no effect.

  The last thing I remembered was blacking out in midair.

  I woke up in the twin bed I thought they had assigned me alone. [XW100]The corner chair was empty. My father directed this entire facility. It was naïve of me to assume, after meeting me half a day ago, he’d discard all his responsibilities to be there for me like Mom had done for most of my life without pause.

  Cool massaging sensations traveled my spine, and a cushion at my hips kept me from rolling onto my back. That added up. Numb from the back of my neck down, I wiggled my toes, tested my legs, and swiveled my hips — all functional. “Not in danger, huh?” Zhang had lied to me, and it’d be a while before I trusted him so much again.

  Getting up was a chore. I gathered myself and maneuvered to a sitting position, my rubbery legs dangling over the bedside’s edge. Little by little, my nerves tingled, and then feeling returned. The massage pad beneath my clothes was too hard to reach. Its work continued while I eased out of the room and down the hall to where I had been training.

  Out of nowhere, Zhang teleported in front of me. God, that sulfur-smelling green cloud was awful. “Don’t worry,” he said, fanning the fumes away from his face with his hands. “You never get used to it. Good evening. What are you doing out of bed?”

  I pointed to my back. “I’m starving, and I can barely wa
lk, thanks to you.”

  He explained, using big, scientific words, that the security measures worked, and my falling velocity had strained my back muscles. Didn’t make me feel any better. I had to stay off my heels to walk with minimal pain. “So, you’re my trainer and probation officer?”

  He showed me a flashing red light coming from the device on his wrist — a tracking device. “You don’t know your way around this place yet. I had to take precautions.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Isn’t that what Kendel is for? Where is she, anyway?”

  Zhang avoided my eyes. “Yeah, well, it’s me again today. Do you mind much?”

  His accent sounded less harsh to my ears, and I was getting used to his perfect smile and unmoving buzzed black hair. “No, I guess not.”

  “Good.” He took me by the elbow and tried turning me. “Back to bed. You need to heal.”

  “C’mon, Zhang. I only turn fifteen once, and it is about to be my birthday, isn’t it?”

  “In another half day, yes.”

  I thought about how to avoid confinement until morning. “Do I get an early birthday wish?”

  “Sure. I have just the thing.” He plucked two, yellow, pebble-sized tablets from his suit. He held them beneath my face. They smelled sweet, like a mixture of flowers, perfume, and candy. I sniffed them, and they vanished from his hand. Had they flown up my nose? I squeezed my nostrils and exhaled.

  Zhang laughed his head off and teleported me to a part of the place overlooking a marvelous cliff. I swallowed, thinking, in moments, I’d be vomiting all over myself. No nausea, though, and no sulfur. He’d given me the gift of keeping down my last meal. I asked him why we were here. He hushed me and instructed me with his hands to look straight down. I wished I hadn’t. My stomach dropped at the sight below us — a cliff formed of shadowed mud and brown rock, and from this perspective, its ledge did not look large or secure at all. Ahead of us, I loved the view. The sunset was beautiful, and it colored the distance a palette [XW101]of oranges, reds, purples,[XW102] and blues. I could watch this every evening for the rest of my life.