GEN13 - Version 2.0

by Unknown Author

Rainmaker summoned up one last bolt of lightning.

  This one was aimed at herself.

  CHAPTER 12

  Slowly, Roxy opened her eyes and brought them into focus.

  “Hey, babe,!’ said Grunge. “You feeling okay?”

  Roxy thought she was okay, but she was still struggling to get coherent thoughts to gel. As she drifted, little by little, back into consciousness, the numbness was replaced by a soreness and a dull ache that crept over her whole body.

  Why did she hurt so much?

  She fought through the cloud of cotton balls that filled her head and searched her memory. The last thing she could remember was ...

  Was...

  Oh, right. Flying headfirst into a brick wall.

  Yeah, that would do it, she thought. Fortunately, Roxy had managed to cut down Growing Boy’s weight just before he stomped her flat. Otherwise, she knew, she’d be hurting a lot worse—if at all.

  Roxy needed a cigarette,

  “Who, me? I’m just spiffy,” she told Grunge, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  Grunge paused for a moment. He listened to her words, then her tone, and his eyes lit up. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “That’s my sweetie! You’re back!”

  It took Roxy a minute to figure out what he meant. But then she got it. Despite Roxy’s physical pains, time and a taste of oblivion had left her in better mental shape than she’d been in all night. Thanks to her earlier fit of blind rage, she was pretty much past the helpless terror that came with Bogeyman’s attack. As long as she didn’t think about it (or so she realized, quickly pushing the thoughts away), all that was left was a tinge of anxiety floating around the edges of her psyche. Meanwhile, the bout of unconsciousness had mostly dissipated the rage itself— helped along, of course, by the memory of how stupidly she’d acted.

  Roxy still felt a bit peeved, but she’d get over it. Besides, all things considered, she figured she was entitled.

  Now that she was more fully awake, Roxy looked around at her surroundings. She was relieved to see that the rest of her friends were there, too. Most of them had awakened before her. Only Sarah’s eyes were still closed. Roxy could see that Sarah was breathing quietly, though, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

  Then, Roxy did a double-take as her mind registered the older, black-clad figure beside Grunge.

  “Mister L!” Roxy cried. “You’re alive!”

  It was indeed their mentor. There were manacles around his wrists and ankles. His numerous cuts and bruises indicated that he’d been through a phenomenal beating. But he was alive.

  “Funny, that’s what we all said, too,” Bobby remarked.

  “Nice to know you all care,” Lynch said, deadpan, as his eyes studied the edges of the room.

  That was the good news.

  The bad news was that, while it was true that they were all together, they were all together in a small, dirty cell with concrete walls and a reinforced steel door that didn’t have so much as a keyhole, let alone a knob or window. The floor of the cell couldn’t have measured more than about eight feet by eight feet, hardly enough room for six people. And that was assuming you could even see the floor through the thick layer of dust that covered it like a shroud.

  The only things that weren’t covered with dust were their shackles. The manacles circled each of their wrists and ankles, and gleamed under the fluorescent lights. A short length of thick chain connected each manacle to the wall, leaving each prisoner suspended a couple of feet above the floor. No wonder Roxy felt like her arms had been through a taffy pull.

  They hung in a row that wrapped along two walls of the cell: Roxy on one end, followed by Sarah, Bobby, Grunge, Lynch, and Kat. Dangling there, they looked like someone’s twisted idea of a series of family photos. Or maybe a set of animal heads, stuffed and mounted as trophies.

  Roxy looked up to see a small video camera that was mounted near the ceiling. It was angled downward, watching them with an unblinking eye.

  “Anybody wanna tell me where we are?” Roxy asked.

  “Wish we could,” Bobby said with a shrug. Or as much of a shrug as he could manage while hanging by his arms.

  “And I don’t figure anyone’s thought of busting out to go take a look?”

  “I wish we could do that, too,” Kat replied. “Our powers aren’t working. It’s the restraints.”

  Roxy took a closer look at the manacles that circled her wrists. Woven through the links of each chain, Roxy •noticed, was a cable that led from the cuff into the wall.

  Experimentally, Roxy tried to make herself float. But despite her efforts, she only managed to rise an inch or so—not nearly as much as it should have been.

  Kat was right. The manacles were some kind of power dampeners. It wasn’t the first time that Roxy had encountered the technology. They’d been locked up in these kinds of things before. Back when ...

  Oh.

  Suddenly, everything was starting to make sense.

  Roxy turned toward the others. “I know who’s behind this ...”

  As one, the others all gave a matter-of-fact nod. “Yeah.” “Uh-huh.” “Yes.”

  “You too, huh?” she said.

  “Yup. Any other questions?” Bobby asked with a wry smile.

  “Yeah,” Roxy said. “How’d we get in our costumes?”

  It was true. Roxy’s and Grunge’s Gen13 uniforms weren’t all that different from their typical street clothes. For Roxy, it came down to a halter top, mini-skirt, and leather jacket, while the muscular Grunge opted for skintight pants with no shirt. However, everyone else had gone through a complete change of wardrobe. Kat’s T-shirt and biker shorts had been replaced by a green-and-purple outfit that resembled a French cut bathing suit with long sleeves and boots. Bobby was dressed in a tightly-fitting red top emblazoned with a triangle that pointed down toward his yellow tights. And Sarah, though still unconscious, was now wearing a red-and-turquoise span-dex leotard that left both arms and one leg bare. It was accented by the knee-high, fringed leather boots that she wore as a reminder of her home on the reservation.

  The only detail that was missing from any of their uniforms was the metal armbands that Sarah usually wore. In fact, she’d been wearing them before the change of clothes, and Roxy could see them lying on the floor. It was no surprise that their captor had neglected to put them back on Sarah’s arms, though. The high-tech bands intensified both the power and the precision of the lightning blasts that Sarah controlled.

  The notion that their captor had undressed them and re-dressed them like playthings disturbed Roxy, but it didn’t surprise her. If her suspicions about their captor’s identity were correct, it wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. It was just one more piece of evidence to support her theory.

  Sarah started to stir. “... Where ... ?” she mumbled.

  Lynch looked at Roxy as he gestured toward Sarah with a tilt of his head. “Your questions should be answered soon. Now that all of us are conscious, I’d expect a personal visit in approximately three ... two ... one .. *

  The heavy door slid open.

  “Oh, hey, Ivana,” said Roxy. “What’s up?”

  Ivana Baiul stood in the doorway in a mock pout. “Tsk,” she said. “No shocked gasps of recognition? No cries of, ‘You! It—it can’t be you?’

  “Weren’t you surprised by my little revelation?” “You’re getting predictable, Ivana,” said Lynch. “Just like your love of dramatic entrances.”

  Ivana’s choice of clothing didn’t particularly make her look like the former head of International Operation’s sci-tech division. She was dressed in a clingy, black leather jump suit that showed off her figure to full advantage. Her jet black hair was pulled back in a tight bun. The stiletto heels of her high-top boots added six inches to her height.

  However, one glimpse of Ivana’s dark eyes and the hard lines of her face would have been enough to convince anyone of the sheer, unflinching ruthlessness that lay not very far beneath Ivana
" s surface. Ivana had learned long ago that she could use her looks to divert and manipulate the men around her. Even her playful tone was heavy with menace.

  Gen13 knew what Ivana was like firsthand. When I.O. first brought them together, Ivana had overseen the gauntlet of tests and treatments that was designed to activate the superhuman abilities that came with their gen-factors. As the team struggled to endure the grueling regimen, it quickly became all too clear that Ivana didn’t care whether they lived or died. All she cared about was creating her own super-powered, personal army.

  Now, apparently, she had.

  “Sorry to spoil your surprise,” said Kat. “Once we had the chance to think about it, it was pretty obvious. Your fingerprints were all over this thing.”

  “Who else could crank out gen-active kids?” Bobby said. He chuckled dryly. “And who’d want to?”

  “How many people would know enough to come after us? Or know enough what each of us can do to pair us up individually against kids who counteract our powers?” Kat added.

  “Who else would wait to kill us so she could show off first?” said Roxy. Then, she thought about it for a second. “No, wait—everyone we fight does that.”

  “And who else would fill out that leather S&M suit in all the right—” Grunge looked at Bobby. Now that he wasn’t so busy worrying about Roxy, Grunge suddenly remembered their bet. “Um . .. who else would ... um ... trash our place?”

  Lynch studiously ignored Grunge as he spoke to Ivana. “You even gave your pawns personalities as scintillating as your own.”

  “Personalities are overrated, Jack. Too much personality in an operative can prove to be more trouble than it’s worth,” Ivana replied. She gave Gen13 an icy glance before looking back at Lynch. “As you well know.”

  Roxy opened her mouth to lash back with an equally cutting retort, but stopped when Kat caught her eye and shook her head.

  “Over time,” Ivana continued, “I’ve found that I prefer my soldiers without a lot of independent thought getting in the way. Simple, slavish obedience is far more satisfying.”

  Bobby reacted indignantly. “So what, you just lobo-tomized a bunch of kids?”

  “Lobotomized?!” Ivana looked genuinely offended. “Where would be the point in diat? Do you honestly believe that I would create a new generation of superpowered operatives, merely to have them wander around aimlessly, drooling oatmeal? Please. I didn’t have to lo-botomize them. It’s far more effective to raise them that way.”

  “You raised them?” Sarah said, surprised. Even though she was still a bit groggy, the notion of a maternal Ivana seemed more than a little ludicrous. It was a little like picturing Lucrezia Borgia at a PTA meeting.

  Ivana brought a hand to her lips in false astonishment.

  “Oh, my! Don’t tell me that, with all my predictable ways, I’ve actually surprised you!” Her lips curling into a selfsatisfied smile, Ivana patted Sarah’s cheek. “I’ve cultivated and reared these children from the finest in fourteenth-generation, gen-active DNA. I hate to be the one to tell you, dear, but you and your Gen13 friends are outdated. How does it feel to be obsolete?”

  “ ‘Fourteenth-generationRoxy said. “So they are our kids!”

  Ivana laughed. “I’m sorry. You must have misheard. I said the finest in gen-active DNA. I wouldn’t let your gutter-rat genomes anywhere near my prize creations.” “But then, how ... ?”

  Kat nodded, understanding. “We’re not the only thirteenth-generation gen-actives.”

  “Threshold and Bliss,” Lynch said.

  Threshold and Bliss were the dark shadow of Gen13. They’d been abducted by I.O. as children, a full fifteen years before Kat and her friends. All of those years with Ivana and her crew accounted for their much finer control over their powers. Not to mention their sociopathic tendencies, or their utter lack of anything resembling a conscience.

  Roxy recoiled with a shudder. “Ewwww!” she said. “But—but Threshold is, like, Bliss’s brother! Gross!”

  “I think she’s talking about cell samples and test tubes, Roxy,” Kat said.

  “So? It’s still totally gross!”

  “Hey, Sarah!” Grunge exclaimed happily. “You’re an aunt!”

  Sarah shot him a withering look. It was true. Although she hadn’t known it for most of her life, Sarah shared a father with Threshold and Bliss. But it didn’t mean that she liked to be reminded of it.

  “Even with accelerated aging, it must have taken years to set this up,” Lynch said to Ivana. “But I never heard a whisper of it. Craven and the rest of the brass at I.O. had no clue that this operation existed, did they?”

  “It’s remarkable what one can accomplish with a bit of diverted funding.” Ivana replied. “A decommissioned NORAD facility, some ‘missing’ technology, a small number of hand-picked technicians.... Of course, they’re all long dead now, the poor dears. It’s really quite tragic.” “So even while you were running the Genesis Project to develop Gen13 for I.O....”

  “... they had no idea that I was already a full generation ahead of them.”

  A silence descended over the room as the implications of Ivana’s statement sank in. It wasn’t just that Ivana had succeeded in creating her personal army. It wasn’t just the thought of what Gen14 was capable of doing at Ivana’s command. It wasn’t even the fact that, with Gen13 imprisoned, there was no one who stood a chance of stopping her.

  It was that, in all the time they’d opposed Ivana, none of them—including Lynch—had ever suspected that anything like this was going on simultaneously.

  Of course, they knew that Ivana always made sure to have an extra ace or two up her sleeve. But the idea that she could have concealed a shadow operation of this magnitude for so long without a trace ... that she could have actively overseen the millions of details undetected, despite the constant security checks that everyone at I.O. endured ... that her long-range planning had been so many steps ahead.... It was staggering. But not as staggering as the big question it all raised:

  If they had never suspected the existence of Gen14, then what else might Ivana have waiting in the wings?

  Ivana drank in the looks on her prisoners’ faces with a self-satisfied air. “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she said, smugly, “as lovely as all this catching up has been, I have a diabolical master plan to execute.”

  “Wait!” Kat said. “Now that you’ve won and you’ve got these kids, aren’t you even going to tell us what you’re going to do with them?”

  Ivana looked amused. The ploy to keep her talking was so obvious as to be iaughable. How stupid did this child think she was? “No, I don’t think so. Goodbye, children. It’s been absolutely no pleasure at all knowing you.”

  Ivana spun sharply on her heel and started for the door, a jaunty spring in her step. She did so enjoy winning.

  “But things didn’t work out quite like you planned, did they, Ivana?”

  Ivana stopped in mid-stride at the sound of Lynch’s voice. She turned slowly toward him. She did her best not to show any reaction, but while the smile remained plastered across her lips, it had left her eyes. “What?” she asked.

  Lynch regarded her with narrowed eyes. The others could almost see the wheels turning in his head as the pieces of the puzzle slowly came together. “Things didn’t work out like you planned,” he repeated.

  Ivana gave him an icy look. “The last time I looked, you were chained to a wall and I was in charge. How, exactly, would you conclude that things didn’t work out as I planned?”

  “You were working on Gen13 and Gen14 simultaneously, hoping that at least one of them would pay off. But the only downside you foresaw was the possibility that one of the projects might fail to produce results. When you were tallying up the projected gains and losses, the loss column never went much beyond a few extra corpses and a delayed timetable.

  “You never expected that one of the strike teams you created would rise up to oppose you so effectively. You never expected someone like me
to train them and protect them from your schemes. You never expected them to bring your tidy little position at I.O. down around your ears.”

  “Oh?” Ivana said, a testy edge in her voice.

  “You thought you’d still be running the sci-tech division at I.O. to this day. You never pictured the gravy train ending. But thanks to these kids—your own creations— you suddenly found yourself out on the street, with none of your old ‘friends’ daring to admit they even knew you. Your access to those fat government pocketbooks was gone in a snap, like a little girl whose allowance got cut off.

  “That’s what all this is about, isn’t it?”

  Ivana glared at Lynch without saying a word.

  “I don’t get it,” Bobby said.

  The edges of Lynch’s lips crept up. Now it was his turn for a self-satisfied smile. “Ivana’s broke,” he explained. “You kids beat her once too often. So now, she’s got all these grand plans, but none of the resources she needs to deliver on them.

  “She needs that government funding back. She needs that position of power. She needs I.O. reunited under her, bigger and better than before.”

  “That’s nuts!” Roxy said. “Who’d be crazy enough to let her do that?”

  “I can tell you who wouldn’t,” Lynch replied. “Among the House and Senate committees that set budget allocations, there were several key players who never would have backed Ivana or gone along with rebuilding I.O. Martin Cheswick. Charlene Sturmer. Evan Lowenthal.” Lynch inclined his head toward Ivana. “What was the phrase Sturmer used in I.O.’s budget review a few years ago? ‘Science-fiction storm troopers?’ ”

  Ivana bristled, but said nothing.

  Lynch took her silence as confirmation. “All of them opposed I.O. funding, even before the problems and scandals. They certainly wouldn’t have changed their minds about the organization—or Ivana—now. So over the past few months, Ivana had Gen!4 eliminate them, one by one. Each at a different time, each in a radically different way. A typical accident here, a splashy murder there. If you weren’t looking for a connection, it wouldn’t jump out at you. But if you knew what to look for, the signs were all there in plain sight.”