The Next Chronicle (Book 2): Damage

by Guess, Joshua

  It was the split second during the fall where he had been standing up. That was what killed him.

  A motion sensor or camera must have been pointing at the stand of trees. It made sense, given how useful the spot would be for any approaching enemy. When Johnson popped up during his fall, a flood of light erupted from the building. Giant stadium bulbs scorched away the night from recesses beneath awnings, others nestled in the flower beds.

  “Shit!” Kit hissed, rushing down the hill.

  A klaxon began to howl behind her, the sound barely muffled by the hill. Though she couldn't hear them, she imagined the hoarse shouts of men piling out of barracks, terrorists thirsty for the blood of the people sent to neutralize them.

  Those men might have been doing just that, but Kit never found out. Something else happened as her feet churned up rooster tails of sand, a new factor in the equation which turned her blood to ice.

  The sound of the air being cut momentarily drowned out the alarm, followed by a bracing windstorm slapping her with displaced sand. In the midst of the maelstrom, a figured clad in dark clothing flashed by, the power of his flight ripping the hillside to tatters as he passed.

  Before Kit could register what was happening, the enemy Next landed in the middle of her team, who had moved toward Johnson as a unit.

  With a rush of adrenaline Kit rerouted the power inside her to gain speed. It was an ability unique to her, so far as she knew, and incredibly useful. By sacrificing her other powers, Kit could temporarily boost another immensely.

  Her perception of time stretched, slowing everything down while she moved forward normally. It still was not enough. Between one footfall and the next the enemy superhuman casually raised a boot and stomped on Johnson's neck as he struggled to right himself.

  The sickening, wet crunch of bone was accompanied by a jolt in the ground itself. Fury rose up in Kit, instant and consuming, washing away rational thought and driving her forward. The enemy Next blurred, a hand wrapping around the throat of another member of the team. They drifted upward, five feet, then ten.

  Kit grunted as she launched herself off the side of the hill, bringing her knees nearly to her chin as she hurtled toward the murderer holding the struggling form of her teammate.

  Thanks to her genetics, Kit had many advantages. She was stronger than any three men, faster than an Olympic sprinter on her worst day, and had the coordination of an ancient Kung-Fu master. These and many other interconnected abilities made her an excellent generalist, capable of a wide variety of acts beyond even the most skilled vanilla humans.

  In this case, her weight was the best advantage she had. Clocking in at five feet and small change, petite of build, Kit still tipped the scales at better than two hundred pounds. Her muscles, bones, and organs were like stone compared to a normal person. And it made her dense.

  Slamming into the killer sent a wild rush of feral satisfaction through her. She dimly noted that he dropped the struggling member of her team as she wrapped herself around him. The impact drove them sideways through the air, though this too was merely a piece of data her brain cataloged behind the rage.

  Her legs wrapped around his waist, ankles locking over his groin. Kit snaked both hands onto his face, at first planning to simply lace her fingers together and try to break him. Then she thought better of it; he was probably too tough for that.

  Instead she went for the eyes. Even if he was the sort of Next whose body was suffused by a protective energy field, his normal human reaction would be to panic as someone tried to attack his organs of sight.

  As it turned out, he was not that type of Next. Like Kit, his damage resistance was purely physical in nature, confirmed by the wet spurt as her fingers slammed through his eyes with the force of pistons.

  He screamed and thrashed, but Kit held firm. Her legs stretched, putting immense pressure on his groin, her hands sliding down the blood-slick cheeks and coming to rest on his mouth and nose. Leaning her head against his back, she pulled tight with every ounce of force she could muster. The world faded to near-blinding darkness as she once more pushed all her energy into a single ability. Her muscles thrummed with strength, burned with power.

  The killer, despite the surely searing agony in his face, seemed to understand what was happening. As her hands cut off the flow of air, he panicked.

  His own hands skittered over hers, trying to find purchase. The blood made it difficult, his wild fear only worsening the situation. In his mindless need to breathe the killer tried hurting her, slamming them both into the ground.

  Kit felt a rib break as the man somehow managed to hit her with an elbow. She winced as a lightning bolt of pain circled her chest, but she did not loosen her grip. Now on the ground, rolling in the dirt, the killer tried once more to pry her fingers loose. It was a failing of many Next who grew too reliant on their powers; those men and women forgot in their arrogance about simple physical laws such as leverage.

  Kit had it. The killer didn't.

  His struggles weakened as his air ran out. Eventually his movements stopped completely, though Kit didn't release her hands for several minutes after.

  When she finally did, she found the remaining members of her team staring at her in shock, horror painted in every line of their faces. Without a word, she lifted Johnson from the ground, as gently as she would a child, and moved back toward the sea.

  Ray

  The face in the mirror wasn't his, but Ray was getting used to it.

  He left the tiny bathroom and stepped into his quarters. The facility—it had no name, only that general moniker—had more prison cells than any other single place on earth, and as a result there was a great need to house employees. Granted, most of the people staying in those tiny spaces were only doing so in between shifts or because they were on call. Ray actually lived here, which was why he rated a solo room rather than a cot in a cramped barracks.

  Not that his quarters were palatial. There was a closet about the size of the door opening into it, just deep enough to hold clothes. A dresser hugged the wall next to it, with a space just large enough to walk between it and the bed resting against the opposite wall. The floor was brown linoleum, the rest of the room a drab gray, and even with its flaws Ray loved the place. It was his. It was also not without its comforts.

  A large, expensive television hung over the dresser, several game systems plugged into it. The small, empty space where a tiny sofa had once been was being slowly filled with art supplies. An easel sat folded against the corner, waiting for him to finally have time to use it.

  Which would hopefully be soon. Ray Cassidy, born Ray Elliot, was now officially a junior agent of the Office of Superhuman Affairs. The OSA, being an agency created by a frightening law at the dawn of the age of the Next, was among other things exempt from many regulations other government agencies had to deal with. As such, he could be given a position without experience in law enforcement, though he had spent three months in classes and undertaking other training to reach this point.

  OSA agents, he had learned on the first day, were simply not police. Oh, they policed the superhuman population, that was for sure. What they didn't do was much in the way of investigation. They were the response team. The jailers. They were the heavy guns the cops called in once a suspect had been identified as Next.

  Ray sat on his bed, running a hand through the short, stiff brush of dark hair on his head. Four months ago he had been in a coma, a man gone from the world for more than a decade. Not without cause, either; Ray had been the first Next to go public. He had done so by disintegrating a small town, leaving behind a crater more than a mile across.

  A crater which had been filled in with a facility.

  When he'd blackmailed the director of the facility into letting him become an agent—or at least to try, as he had still been required to pass the same tests the other applicants endured—Ray thought he'd managed a miracle. Surely someone with his history would be turned away, especially considering his infamy.
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  Instead, they had given him a new face. The Next who had reshaped his skin and bones had also done something to his body chemistry, making his hair come in even darker. The world, long believing Ray Elliot dead, would hardly bat an eye at the new identity he was given.

  Ray Cassidy, low-level agent.

  Over those months of training he had come to understand the reason why he had been allowed, against all logic and reason, to try for this job. His brief stint as an extortionist had only kept him from being summarily dismissed. In reality the need for someone with his level of power at the OSA was dire. It was for this reason none of the agents who knew his true identity spoke up to the media. They were a relatively small group of people faced with the impossible on a daily basis.

  Ray evened those odds. Even Robinson, head of the OSA's parent department, the Department of Superhuman Affairs, recognized it. The old man had pulled the levers of power to secure Ray's new identity, creating an entire life from whole cloth.

  All that work, the stress of secrecy, the danger someone would recognize him despite having a different face, voice, and being taller, and what did he have to show for it?

  Junior agent.

  It was a start.

  He ducked in front of another mirror, this one on the back of his door, to double-check his tie. Satisfied, he stepped into the hall. Out of consideration for the off-duty employees sleeping in the rooms dotting the steel-lined corridor, Ray moved quietly.

  Though his commute wasn't as long as it was for the people who drive from Louisville every day, it was still annoying. Past the employee quarters was the administration section, containing the paper-pushers who dealt with the day-to-day tasks of running the facility. Then he had to walk through Command, which was a fancy name for the dozens of banks of workstations monitoring police activity and various other streams of information to stay on top of any situations requiring OSA attention. The analysts hunched over those desks rarely noticed him on his daily trek through their office, at least since the first few days.

  The facility was enormous, built on a scale that defied context. Since most of it was below ground it was easy to forget the office or mess hall you were in was part of one of the largest structures ever built by mankind. Walking halfway across it was a great reminder.

  Eventually he made it to the surface, stopping only briefly at one of the many kitchens dotting the fabricated landscape to grab some coffee and a couple donuts.

  “Now,” Ray muttered as he entered the main office, “where the hell is my partner?”

  Ray flopped down at his desk fifteen fruitless minutes later. Dan Kovacs, his partner and senior agent, was late. Ray couldn't go into the field without Dan, and because of an agreement he'd made with Director Archer, couldn't leave at all unless it was for work. For the time being the facility was his entire world. The short trips outside were like small vacations, both in the enjoyment Ray took in them and the desire to come home eventually.

  “Hey, Cassidy,” a voice said.

  Ray glanced over his shoulder as Dan set his coat down on the desk butting up against his own. “You're late,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “We're on call this morning, you know.”

  Dan nodded, slightly shaggy red curls jostling. “Yep. Do you know why I'm late, Cassidy?”

  “Um...no?” Ray said innocently.

  “I'm sure you don't,” Dan said dryly. “You know nothing about a naked man on a rooftop, do you? A man my partner told me was persuaded to give up his vigilante ways.”

  Ray's lip trembled as he struggled to hold back laughter. Even Kovacs had mirth dancing in his eyes.

  “I spent this morning convincing the guy not to press charges,” Dan said soberly. “Mostly it came down to me reminding him we could still bring him in for the vigilantism, though thankfully he didn't work out just how little evidence we'd have since someone turned it all to dust.”

  Ray blanched. “Sorry, man,” he said sheepishly. “I was just so irritated. We've done like twenty of those runs this week. I was a little sick of playing nice with these idiots who think dressing up and kicking the shit out of a mugger makes them a hero.” Ray chewed his lip. “That's on me. It won't happen again.”

  Dan studied him for a minute, blue eyes far older than his freckled face. “Don't worry about it,” he said with a sigh. “To be honest, I think you probably did the only thing you could. After talking with that guy, I'm not sure we shouldn't bring him in anyway for a psych evaluation.”

  The words hung between them. In the civilian world—the human world—such a thing wouldn't be much of a concern. For Next, however, psychiatric holds were the next thing to death. Due to the far-reaching powers of the McDonnell act, which took certain liberties with constitutional law, Next who were determined to be dangerous to themselves or others could be held basically forever.

  “We'll keep an eye on him,” Ray finally said. “If we hear anything about a mysterious shadow putting purse snatchers in the ER...”

  Dan nodded, smiling again. “Deal. But next time, wait for me to come with you. I might just be a human being, but I'm still your partner. I should have your back.”

  “That, and Kit will have your ass if anything happens to me,” Ray said. “Archer too, for that matter.”

  Dan laughed. “Archer? Really?”

  Ray put a hand to his chest in mock injury. “Why, Daniel Kovacs! I'll have you know the director has a special place in his heart for me!”

  Just then, the phone on Ray's desk chimed. A soft female voice came from it.

  “Agent Cassidy, the director would like to see you at your earliest convenience.”

  In the background, Archer could be heard shouting. “Screw his convenience! Tell him to get his ass up here NOW!”

  The phone clicked off. Ray glanced at Dan, who grinned like an idiot. “A special place, huh?”

  Ray frowned sourly. “I didn't say it was a good one.”

  He trudged up the wide staircase leading to the second floor. The entire west quarter was occupied by the twin offices of the two directors. Kit was out, probably seeing her shrink, while Archer was very clearly in. Ray sighed in resignation as he passed their assistant, Nicki. The auburn-headed woman didn't bother looking up as her fingers flew across her keyboard.

  “He's expecting you,” she said.

  “I gathered,” Ray replied.

  Slipping into the office was like stepping into a different world. The gleaming metal walls of the hallway outside were gone, replaced by a huge room which could have been yanked whole from decades in the past. The place looked lived in, which wasn't far from the truth. Archer was a big man, and had replaced the couch nestled in front of a massive bookshelf recently. The new one, which bore a distinct imprint of Archer's body, was an obnoxious mustard yellow with thin stripes of orange thread running through it.

  The rest of the room was musty and secondhand, from the nicked and scuffed wooden bookshelves to the thrift-store furniture. It wasn't for lack of money—Archer had plenty—but rather a matter of comfort. The big man enjoyed things which had been broken in first.

  “Sit,” Archer said, pointing at the squashy leather chair sitting in front of his desk. Ray eased himself into it, facing his boss.

  Ray was tall, as far as averages went, but was otherwise well within the norm. He was of medium build and mostly unremarkable. Rowan Archer was not. Even seated he was obviously a big man. He stood half a head taller than Ray, shoulders broad and heavy, his frame packed densely. He looked like a pro football player running to fat, but it was something of a show.

  Archer was, to the larger world, a completely normal human being. In truth he was Next, able to recover from nearly any injury. The cost on his metabolism was extremely high, forcing his healing ability to cannibalize his own fat and muscle cells to work. Ray had seen it in action not long after coming out of his coma, four months prior.

  Big and blond and currently visibly angry, Archer was the sort of boss who gave you leeway so long as yo
u showed him you weren't an idiot. Ray suspected he had crossed that line.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Archer said, his voice dangerously calm. “Do you have any idea how much danger you put yourself in last night?”

  Ray blinked. He hadn't been expecting to hear words of concern. The two of them weren't friendly as a general rule, not the way he was with Kit.

  “I'm sorry,” Ray said. “I know I should have taken Kovacs with me, but the guy didn't seem like much of a threat.”

  Archer stared at him, then threw his hands up in frustration. “I'm not talking about the idiot you went after! Yes, you should have had your partner with you. You're as vulnerable as anyone in most ways. But I'm referring to your use of your powers in a situation that didn't require you to.”

  Ray opened his mouth to defend himself, but came up short. In the heat of the moment, frustrated by weeks of low-level work, he had forgotten.

  Archer, sensing weakness in his prey, stepped into the gap. “You know as well as I do that there are only a handful of people with powers like yours,” he said, each word hammered into Ray with measured precision. “You—the man you used to be—is officially dead. Has been for years. So when you're out there in the world, try not to make it so obvious you're the same guy.”

  Ray nodded. “You're right. I'm sorry. It won't happen again.”

  The big man raised an eyebrow. “Huh. That was easier than I thought it'd be. I figured you'd give me more of a fight.”

  Ray shrugged. “I screwed up. I know it. Doesn't seem to be much point pretending otherwise.” He paused, then smiled faintly. “Besides, I know you went to a lot of trouble to give me the new identity. I'd hate to pay you back by screwing up all that hard work.”

  A vast amount of work went into the Ray Cassidy persona. The details went deeper than he had to know, but on paper this new Ray had been a registered Next for seven years, with an entire lifetime of records going back to birth. Archer had hinted more than once that there were pieces of history added so subtly that they would fool even the most thorough investigators.