Feeder

by Patrick Weekes

  Maya was thinking about the miracoral seeming so happy and friendly and warm around her, and then turning red all of a sudden and all the little lobster things swarming out of the coral and coming at them. Maya was thinking about flailing to get away while the swarm closed on them, a cloud of claws and bubbles, and then how Lori’s hand, still linked with Maya’s, had tightened, and then—

  “I think we should split up,” Maya said, breaking the silence. “We’re a big group right now. If we split up, we’ll attract less attention, right? Lori and, and, and”—she thought about who else would like hitting things—“Tapper can go look in Tia Lake’s office for like special information? And the rest of us can find a computer so Iara can do her thing?”

  “That’s actually not stupid,” Tapper said. Maya flashed him a thumbs-up.

  “Sweet.” Hawk nodded, or at least Maya thought he nodded, since he still had an armful of Iara. “So, which way is which?”

  “The executive offices are on the top floor,” Iara said. “We will search for the central servers here on the main floor.” She smiled at Tapper and Lori. “Hunt well.”

  “Always do.” Lori nodded to them and took off with Tapper in tow.

  “So yeah,” Maya said as soon as they were around a corner, “wherever Lori goes when she teleports or whatever is superbad.”

  Iara and Hawk looked at her in confusion. “What was it like?” Iara asked.

  “Superbad. I just said!”

  “Okay, so what does that mean?” Hawk asked. “Was it like . . . space?”

  It had been dark and cold. Maya hadn’t been able to see anything at all, or even tell which way was up or down as she floated dizzily in that other place, but even with all that, she had somehow known three things: First, even though she couldn’t tell which way down was, there had been something below her, something that called that other place home; second, whatever that thing below her had been, it had been really really big; and third, it had seen her.

  “It means we shouldn’t make her do that very often.” She looked at them indignantly. “And now we find the server room, right?”

  “Correct, alemã.” Iara’s lips curved into a sweet smile. “Let us go.”

  The main floor had a big open space with a lot of cubicles, and the hallways were marked with meeting rooms. Hardly anyone was in yet. Once they passed another guard, and Maya, still in Big Security Guard shape, nodded to her as they went by.

  Finally, up on their right, Maya saw a door labeled SERVER ROOM. She walked up to it confidently, since that was what the guard would have done, and turned the handle . . . or tried to. The door was locked.

  “Can either of you pick locks?” she asked.

  Iara shook her head. Hawk shrugged and said, “Uh, kinda. Hang on.” He eased Iara to the ground gently, so that she was sitting against the wall with her legs folded beneath her. “You okay?”

  “I believe I know how to sit,” she said, smiling up from under her bright green bangs.

  “Oh, yeah. Right.” Hawk turned back to the door. He reached out and brought the handle down without any particular effort. Maya heard the sound of metal snapping inside the door, and then it swung open.

  A trio of guards stared out at them from a room filled with big rows of computer equipment.

  “Uh, hey,” Hawk said. “So this guard here said that I was supposed to come here and check . . . something.”

  Maya stepped into the doorway behind Hawk and waved wordlessly, hoping she wouldn’t have to say anything.

  Then, as yellow-green eels slithered from the guards’ mouths instead of staying inside like they were supposed to or, even better, not having been there at all, Maya decided that she had other problems.

  LORI

  Lori’s phone had started buzzing almost as soon as she headed down the hallway with Tapper in tow. She was ignoring it.

  “You gonna check that?” Tapper asked.

  “Nope.” Lori kept walking. If Handler wanted to talk, it could wait.

  “Whatever. You worried about security cameras as we go up?”

  Her phone buzzed again. That was likely Handler telling her it had the cameras covered. “My power should knock out the security cameras.”

  “If you say so.”

  Her power. The monster that let her be human enough to feel things, but not human enough to fool the miracoral.

  They reached an elevator. Lori punched the up button. Her phone buzzed again. “I don’t care,” she muttered.

  “Yeah, I can tell by the way you’re refusing to answer your phone and gritting your teeth and all,” Tapper said, glaring. “Definitely not caring.”

  “You know, there’s a reason nobody likes you,” Lori said.

  “No kidding.”

  It wasn’t what Lori had expected, and she looked over at him in surprise. He was totally dry now, his dreads pulled back, and his red sweater giving his skinny frame a little more bulk. His eyes glittered as they caught the overhead lights.

  “You know you get on people’s nerves?” Lori asked, looking at him in confusion.

  “I’m not stupid,” Tapper muttered.

  “Then why do you act like such a jerk?”

  “This is the best I can do.” Tapper glared. “How come Maya was scared when she teleported with you?”

  Because it’s not teleportation, Lori didn’t say. It’s getting pulled out of this world and into Handler’s, and for just a minute before you’re dropped back into this world, you can see everything, and you know the truth, so Maya now knows the truth, and so much for her smiling at me and asking to be water-breathing buddies.

  The miracoral had known the truth. It had been friendly and nice to Maya, but as soon as Lori got close . . .

  The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. “Come on.” Lori stepped in and hit the button for the top floor.

  Tapper followed as the doors started closing, shoulders hunched. He stood on the other side of the elevator cabin. A moment later the elevator lurched into motion.

  “You kill monsters,” he said as the elevator climbed.

  “That’s the job.”

  “Why?”

  “Somebody has to.”

  “How, then?” Tapper’s eyes jerked over to her, then back away.

  “You’ll see.” Lori’s phone buzzed again. “Fine,” she muttered, and looked down at it. All the texts were some variation of the last few.

  Handler: You need to be careful.

  Handler: Be angry at the miracoral if you want.

  Handler: But the thing in the water was BIG. There could be feeders here.

  Lori: This is how we learn more.

  Handler: And yes, I got the cameras, thx for asking.

  Handler: I don’t want you getting hurt.

  Lori: If I die, you’ll grow another me.

  Handler: Hey.

  Lori: Don’t. I saw the miracoral turn.

  Lori: Stop complaining. At least you’ll get to eat.

  The elevator lurched to a stop, and Lori slipped her phone back into her pocket as the doors slid open. “You ready?” Lori asked Tapper as they walked out.

  “Depends on how you kill the monsters,” Tapper muttered.

  I don’t, Lori didn’t say. I have this monster, and it kills them, and I used to hope that I was real and just stuck with it like some horrible fairy godmother, but the miracoral loves you guys and hates me, so I guess that answers that.

  And now Maya knows.

  She wiped her eyes. It didn’t change anything. She had Ben, and Ben was real, and she was going to protect him. Right now the easiest way to do that was to kill another monster.

  The hallway was nicer up here on the top floor. The carpet was forest green, and the walls were bright white and covered with art. Lori led the way.

  They passed expensive-looking offices, all of them empty and dark. At the end of the hallway, a large double door was flanked by a panel that read TIA LAKE, CEO.

  Lori turned up the volume on the phone.<
br />
  “—responsible for bioengineering the miracoral in the first place,” the radio guy was saying.

  “Of course,” Lake replied with that assured confidence, “but even so, there’s so much about it that we don’t understand. That’s why we’re taking steps to take our knowledge of the miracoral to the next level and better all of humanity.”

  Lori clenched her hands into fists. “We should be safe, but just in case, stay out of my way.”

  “Done.” Tapper looked at the last door before Lake’s room. It was unlabeled, and Lori thought she heard something coming from inside. Someone moving furniture. “Should we care about that?”

  “Later.”

  Lori turned the handle on Lake’s door and flung it open.

  The office was unoccupied, and everything in it looked expensive. The desk was mahogany, and the chair was sleek and made from black leather. The art on the wall was all dark blues and purples. Most of it was abstract stuff, but it somehow reminded Lori of being underwater. The window looked out over the ocean, which was still gray with predawn light. The bookshelves had sculptures that were all curvy and spiky and generally weird.

  She looked back at the desk, trying to figure out what was wrong. After a moment it clicked.

  Tapper walked in slowly, taking stock of the room. “Rich.”

  “Rich and fake,” Lori said. “No pictures of a family. No sticky notes, no pens, no coffee mug.”

  “None of those desk-toy things for people like me to fidget with,” Tapper added. “She knows she needs a desk to act like a person, so she gets one. But she doesn’t get any of the stuff that goes with it.”

  “Fake,” Lori said again. The desk had an office phone and two large flat-screen monitors lined up with perfect precision, with cables leading down through a hole in the desk to a computer below. The glossy black keyboard and mouse on the desk were wireless. “Let’s look at the computer.”

  “Better than nothing.” Tapper zipped closer. “Doubt a feeder stores all the good stuff on its personal desktop machine, though.”

  “She’s doing a radio interview,” Lori muttered. “If a monster can do a radio interview, it probably uses a computer.”

  “You throw around ‘monster’ real easy,” Tapper said, still looking around. “Am I a monster?”

  “I . . .” She looked at him. He was slouched, hair already pulling free from where he’d tried to tame it.

  Her phone buzzed twice for no, and for a moment Lori was irrationally angry that Handler was telling her what to say.

  “No,” Lori said anyway. “I don’t know what you are, or what happened to you, but I don’t think you’re a monster. But she is, all right?”

  “Why, because you couldn’t lie to her?”

  “Because she wanted to kill me, and that means she’s a danger to my brother, too,” Lori said, ticking off the points on her fingers. “And she tried to do something to all of you. Experiments or torture or something.”

  “So you care about us?” Tapper looked over. “Hunh. Then maybe you’re not a monster either.”

  Lori shut her mouth and kept walking around the room. She pulled out the chair and brought Lake’s computer out of sleep mode, but it was locked. “Do you know anything about hacking computers?”

  “No.” Tapper looked down under the desk. “The cables aren’t even tangled. Even I don’t set up my computer without getting the cables tangled.”

  Lori sighed and, out of a mild sense of anxiety and the thought that it might help her guess the password, turned up the phone again.

  “The miracoral isn’t just an energy source or a new alternative polymer that can replace our dependence on oil,” Lake was saying. “The applications to medicine are astounding as well. In fact, we are very close to some exciting breakthroughs in the field of treating diseases using miracoral augmentation.”

  “Or you were,” Tapper muttered, “until we busted out of that black cargo container.”

  Lori tried typing in “miracoral” as the password, and then “MIRACORAL,” “Miracoral,” “m1r@c0r@l,” and a few other combinations. Nothing worked.

  “So, Ms. Lake, can you give us a picture of what these advances might look li—I’m sorry, are you all right?”

  “Fine, fine. Just a phone notification. The Lake Foundation is busy at all hours, sometimes busier than others.”

  “Nothing.” Lori glared at the password field. “We’ve got nothing.” She glanced back at her phone, then picked it up and typed quickly.

  Lori: Can you get us in?

  Handler: No. Security here’s more than normal.

  Handler: Hard to keep the security cams down, even.

  Handler: And just got harder. Like something’s pushing.

  “We’ve got more than nothing. There’s something there on the floor.” Tapper pointed to a spot by the desk. “Something happened last night. Those eels were here. They fed or killed or . . . something.”

  “Okay, that’s . . .” Lori broke off. “How can you tell?”

  “Because I can see it,” Tapper said, his voice harsh as he looked away. “You get to kill stuff, the blonde is Mystique, Pint-Size is bulletproof, and even Ipanema can mess with people’s heads. I can see stuff.”

  “You also get superspeed,” Lori added.

  “Come on. Nothing else here.” Tapper left the office. “Let’s see what—” He broke off as Lori’s phone rang. “Seriously?”

  “Sorry!” Lori glared at the phone. It said “J Vickers Cell,” and she picked it up. “Hi, Jenn!”

  “It is way too early for Hi, Jenn,” her friend deadpanned. “Anyway, sorry to bug you on the job, but Ben’s up, and he’s concerned about how you weren’t there when he got up.” Jenn was using the careful language that indicated she was trying to be a Responsible Babysitter.

  “Oh, for . . .” Lori sighed. “I did tell him before he went to sleep last night that you’d be there when he woke up.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I told him,” Jenn said agreeably, “but he said that just because I was going to be here, it didn’t mean you were going to be gone, and you never said that you were going to be gone, and—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it.” Lori pinched the bridge of her nose. “You mind putting him on?”

  “Sure thing.”

  There was the sound of the phone on the other end of the line jostling, and then a tiny “Hi, Lori.” Her phone buzzed, and she looked at it.

  Handler: Remember, he’s seven.

  “Hey, little guy.” Lori found a smile from somewhere deep inside her. “How are you doing?”

  “I was worried when I woke up and you weren’t there,” Ben said.

  “I’m sorry that I didn’t make it clear that I’d be off at work this morning,” Lori said, rolling her eyes. “But Jenn is staying with you, and since you’re already up, you’ll have time to play with her before you go to day care.”

  “Um,” said Ben, and Lori winced, because she had really been hoping that one was gonna slide by smoothly, “if Jenn is here, can she stay with me until you come home instead of going to day care?”

  “Well, I think that Jenn may have other plans for today,” Lori said.

  “Jenn said she’s free as long as we need, so she can stay all day until you come home, okay?” Ben asked, although “asked” was stretching it.

  Jenn, you traitor, Lori thought, and said, “Sure thing, little guy. But only if you eat your breakfast, okay?”

  “Okay!”

  “I love you. Put Jenn back on.”

  “I love you too.”

  The phone made more crazy jostling noises, and then Jenn said, “It’s really okay.”

  “I shouldn’t be too late,” Lori said. “Thanks. Also, tell him that breakfast includes a banana.”

  “Don’t worry, Lori. We’ll be fine. And when you get back, you can try on the outfit I got you.”

  “See you!” Lori hung up the phone and looked over at Tapper, who was actually kind of smiling. “What?”
<
br />   “Weird to see another side,” Tapper said, still almost smiling.

  “If it helps, I can gripe at you to eat your fruit at breakfast too,” Lori muttered.

  “I’m good.” Tapper moved around the room, still looking, and Lori followed. The phone kept playing the interview.

  “And you really think it’s possible to make advances like that, to augment humanity?”

  “I absolutely do, dear. We already wear glasses to improve our vision. We take vitamins to strengthen our bones. While enhancing ourselves with what we learn from the miracoral might sound absurd right now, imagine a world in which we solved world hunger with sea farms and genetically grown superfoods. Imagine life without disease, without war over natural resources, perhaps even without aging. If the miracoral has that potential stored in it, I intend to see it unleashed.”

  “And how close would you say you were, ma’am?”

  “While I can’t get into specifics,” Tia Lake said with a smile Lori could hear over the radio, “I think I may have some of the answers in my office right now.”

  Lori winced right as her phone buzzed.

  “Tapper,” she said, “that sounds like she knows we’re here.”

  “How would she know that?” he said, glaring over at her.

  Handler: So hey

  Handler: Maybe possible those password attempts tripped an alarm

  Handler: And that the alarm pinged Tia Lake’s phone.

  “Um, no idea,” Lori said. “But we should probably get moving.” She stalked out of the office. The room next door still had something going on behind the door, someone moving a desk or a chair. “Come on. We check this, then we grab the others.” Her phone buzzed.

  Handler: Or leave now.

  Handler: Or that.

  Handler: Instead of being dumb.

  Tapper glanced back. “Ready?”

  “If there’s a feeder inside, just stay out of my way,” Lori said.

  Tapper nodded and tried the handle. It was locked, and he sighed, rolled out his shoulders, and then blurred. One moment he was standing in front of the door, and then next the door was swinging crazily from its hinges with small pieces of metal and sawdust puffing out in a cloud around Tapper’s extended fist.

  There was a feeder inside, a strange thing that—