Time and Chance

by Jeff Mariotte

  Two of the copters took to the air, their pilots unwilling to face the Atomizer.

  Carlo took aim.

  * * *

  "Kill him!" Frank shouted into his collar microphone. "He's just one punk with a fancy gun!"

  "You kill him, then!" someone retorted in his earpiece. "I'm outta here!"

  Frank emptied the clip of his Mac-10 at the Lincoln, even though he could see his bullets bouncing harmlessly off its armored hide. He saw the guy turn and point the tube at him.

  Behind him, the Buzzer he'd arrived in kicked into gear and lifted off the ground.

  As Frank hit the pavement, he saw the gunman raise his sights. The white blast of light flew over Frank's head, enveloped the Buzzer. It vanished, and Frank darted across the dark parking lot toward another Buzzer.

  "I'm coming!" he called into the mike. "Move out, move out!"

  The Buzzer's blades started to whir. When Frank reached it, it was almost off the ground. One door was hanging open, and he hurled himself through it. "Go, dammit, go!" he screamed.

  The Buzzer lurched once and lifted off. From across the parking lot, Frank saw the burst of light that meant another one had been vaporized. Just this one left, and the one that had gone after the Range Rover.

  He didn't breathe until the Buzzer was miles away from the Bay.

  Samuel Perrine sat doubled over in the front passenger seat of the Land Rover as bullets slammed into its tail and punched out its rear window. Lead whizzed over his head.

  He was sorry he'd ever come here.

  Lindsay had been a professional NASCAR driver, and Perrine had hired him for exactly that reason. He put all his skill to work now, threading the Rover across the parking lot, around the occasional lamppost, heading for the street beyond. Once there, it was just a short hop to the Shore Loop Parkway, and Perrine figured the helicopter wouldn't try to gun them down on such a populated road.

  He figured wrong. Traffic was light, this late, and the copter stayed above them, blasting down at them with its guns.

  "Larry," Perrine finally said. "Do something about that."

  Larry reached back into the cargo compartment. The crate was still open, and he removed one of the AE-4s. "Hold 'er steady," he told Lindsay. He thumbed the window open, stuck the AE-4's end out, located the copter against the dark sky.

  He locked it down, fingered the trigger.

  The pursuing helicopter vanished.

  For twenty minutes, no one spoke. Finally, when Perrine thought he could trust his voice again, he looked at Lindsay and at Larry.

  "I gotta get me a new trade," he said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Roxy stared at the phone in stark disbelief. Sitting in her room, alone on her bed, she moaned imploringly at the impassive black receiver.

  Then she slammed it onto the cradle, nearly smashing it.

  Hugging herself, she rocked back and forth, feeling vulnerable and small, wounded and frightened. Her Malibu 8 tee-shirt—one given to her by Grunge, a memento from a visit to the set of one of his favorite buxom-blondes-with-guns-on-the-beach TV shows, was stretched down to her ankles, and her bare feet were cold.

  Mackey had told her to call. She had.

  The number he had given her was bogus. The people on the other end had never heard of him.

  She'd never called him before, never been to his place. They met at clubs, they snuggled at the apartments of his friends and band-mates. Roxy had never questioned this. Things had been moving along at a nice comfortable pace between them. He had been sexy and sweet, tantalizing and wise, and he had treated her the way she had always wished Grunge would. He had shown her respect and desire. She had even wondered if they were falling in love.

  "Just a mistake," she chanted as the first rays of early morning sunlight stole over her. "Wrote down the number wrong or something, that's all. It was crazy there."

  She clutched her knees and rocked harder, fighting back the tears. The room surrounding her seemed to engulf her with its vast spaces. She'd never had this kind of room when she'd been growing up. Never. Her mom's entire trailer could fit in this place.

  God, she wished she were home right now. She felt like such an—

  "Idiot!" Grunge shouted at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. "Miserable butt-lickin' good-for-nothin' idiot, that's what you are!"

  He stood naked before the glass, his hands curling into fists, his long hair dripping wet from his steaming hot shower. He hadn't slept. Hadn't been able to stop thinking about what had happened with Therese at the club.

  Snarling with rage, he drove his hand toward the mirror and somehow stopped the blow just in time. The skin of his largest knuckle touched the glass and his out-of-control emotions did the rest. The change came swiftly, numbing his brain, sending his heart racing out of control and causing every nerve in his body to explode with a shocking energy.

  He saw his body turn to glass. He watched as he became completely transparent, his skull and bones, his organs and nervous system entirely exposed.

  The door opened and Bobby gave a stunned bleat of surprise at the sight of the amazing transparent man.

  "Get out!" Grunge shouted.

  Bobby moved so fast he nearly burst into flames. The door slammed. Grunge reached down and locked the door. Then he looked down at his hand.

  You can see what I am, he thought. No hiding. No secrets. You can see everything.

  He pictured Therese staring at him in horror. Thought of what she had called him. The things she had said.

  Freak.

  He wasn't normal. Couldn't be normal, not ever again.

  Shuddering, he forced his body to take on the appearance of human skin and tissue once more.

  As he stared at his flesh, he wondered if it was real.

  He had taken on the molecular composition of so many things since he had become Gen-Active, it was possible that he really wasn't human at all anymore, that he had no true face or form, just the memory of it. And if he forgot—

  If he forgot—

  Grunge squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. He wouldn't forget.

  He wouldn't.

  No way would he—

  "Forget it, I'm telling you," Sarah said.

  She sat at the table of the hotel suite's small kitchen, Bobby in his oldest, rattiest robe across from her. He called it his comfort robe, and had clutched at it tightly ever since he had returned from the bathroom. Now he was seated, and staring at the soyburger she had made for him as if it contained worms.

  "Really," he said. "I should have been with you. I was a jerk to go off with Grunge like that."

  She took the plate away from him and pretended not to notice his sigh of relief. "I'm worried about that girl. I called the hospital and they said she's getting better, but there are things I could feel about her and her life that no amount of western healing can fix. These kids are in trouble and there's no way to help them."

  Bobby was still staring down at the table, at the blank space left by his plate.

  "Hello?" she prompted.

  "Sorry. Distracted a little." His lips curled up in distaste. "Ever get an image in your head and you like, just can't pry it out, no matter how hard you try?"

  "Well—"

  He shuddered again. "No. Hard was a bad word to use. Makes it more difficult to get rid of that image."

  "Can't be that bad," Sarah said. "It's not like you walked in on Grunge in the shower or something."

  "Right…"

  She sat down and went to work on the soyburger, sipping her herbal tea between bites. "The image I can't get out of my head is the look that girl gave me. The hatred in her eyes."

  Bobby was looking at her now. He really seemed to be interested, to be listening.

  If only I could trust that look, she thought.

  "I know being Gen-Active doesn't mean we have the right or even the responsibility to use our powers to put an end to things like gang warfare or the oppression of the poor," Sarah said. "But as a person,
I feel like I'd sleep better at night knowing I had done something. That I had made some kind of difference. I just felt with her last night that nothing could make a difference."

  Bobby covered her hand with his. She felt something within her melt.

  "Do you think it's possible?" Sarah asked. "Do you think there are some people who are just beyond hope, past all helping? I mean, if that's true—"

  "It's not true," Bobby said. "People give up. They lay down and they tell themselves they're ready to die. But they're not. Anybody can be brought around."

  "You really believe that?" Sarah asked. She was impressed. Bobby had that same fire in his eyes that normally only shone after he had been talking with Mr. Joe at the shelter.

  "You bet I do," he said. "It's not exactly—"

  "Brain surgery," Caitlin whispered, surveying the web site she had called up. "Now that's a possibility…"

  She had been up for hours, thinking about her "date" with Russell and the battle at the club. The fight had been good in a lot of ways—they had saved innocent lives, and she had been able to get rid of the rest of her pent-up fury at that royal jerk.

  Yet…

  It had left her feeling empty. Was this what she wanted to do with her life? She was twenty-one years old. She would be in her senior year right now if she hadn't left college. Gearing up for graduate school.

  There were so many areas that interested her. Theoretical physics. Medicine. Sociopaleontology. The possibilities were endless.

  Only—they weren't. Not for Caitlin Fairchild, "leader" of Gen13. She looked at herself in the mirror by her vanity.

  What about for Caitlin Fairchild, normal person? she wondered.

  There was such a thing. Or, at least, there could be. She was certain of it. I.O. was history, despite what they had seen last night. No one was chasing them anymore.

  It was time to really think about what they were going to do with the rest of their lives. Running around in a butt-cheek baring skin-tight battlesuit and fighting bad guys was one thing for now, but what about when she was thirty? Or forty-five?

  Or sixty?

  What if she wanted to get married? Have kids? A normal life?

  The here and now, she thought, just try to live in the here and now.

  But her eyes had been open. She had been asleep. Dreaming. And now she was wide awake. Thinking.

  And now that she had started, she wasn't about to just—

  "Stop!" Roxy hollered over all the screaming.

  The other four members of Gen13 turned to stare at her. They were in the living room and every member of the team was in a foul mood.

  Roxy was suddenly aware of four very intense stares that had been turned on her. Everyone was dressed and everyone was acting like they had just mainlined a triple mocha-chino. Caffeine city. Jeez.

  "We need to come up with a plan," Sarah said.

  "Yeah, that's it," Grunge said, sprawled on the couch, the wide screen TV's remote in his hand, a lite beer in the other. He was flipping through their 103 channels so fast it was impossible to tell what was on. "We need a plan. 'Cuz we're Gen-freakin' 13 and we gotta put an end—blah, blah—to this horrible evil—blah, blah—that's like overtaking the city—blah, blah…"

  Sarah gestured and a thunderclap sounded inside the hotel. A torrent of rain fell, soaking Grunge and the couch.

  "Yeah, very mature," he said, taking another sip from the can. "You can explain all the water damage."

  "Sarah!" Caitlin yelled.

  The tall, raven-haired beauty growled and made the rain cease. "We are Gen13 and yes, we need a plan."

  Roxy sighed. Ever since Sarah had heard about the incident at the club she'd been going crazy. She was certain there was a link between the armored guys she and the others had fought, and the I.O. weaponry that had gotten into the hands of the gang members last night.

  And then there was the way Grunge was acting. Totally un-Grunge like. It was kinda creepy. She couldn't remember ever seeing him like this.

  "I don't think I.O. is reforming," Caitlin said. "This is something else. Fallout from the organization's demise. We should have seen it coming. All that equipment and weaponry had to end up somewhere."

  "It's ending up in the hands of children," Sarah said. "And those children are killing each other with it!"

  Caitlin put her face in her hands and said, "We should ask Mr. Lynch. He'd be able to tell us how to handle this."

  Roxy cleared her throat. She'd had about enough of this. "Mr. L. said it was time for us to start running our own lives. Thinking about our futures. If we go running to him every time there's a problem, how are we going to ever learn to deal with things on our own?"

  Bobby came forward and finally spoke up. "Roxy's right. Maybe we should get involved, maybe not. I dunno.

  I don't even know if there's anything for us to get involved with. Right now all this stuff seems pretty random. No clear connections. Even if we wanted to do something, where would we start? And if we decide to get involved, it should be because it's something we all want to do."

  Sarah looked up sharply. Her gaze narrowed. "So, as usual, you think we should do nothing. Just party and look the other way?"

  "That's not what I'm saying. Just—look at us. The last week, has there been one single thing the five of us could agree to do together? Even one?"

  The room fell silent. A hiss of static rose up to fill the vacuum and everyone looked over to see that Grunge had put the TV on a dead channel. He stared at it with a strange mix of contentment and disgust.

  "Hell'd they ever do with test patterns?" Grunge asked. "I used to love test patterns when I was a kid."

  "That's it," Roxy said. "Some fresh air. Now. It does a body good and there are five of us here that could use it."

  The other team members reluctantly followed Roxy's prompting and prodding, and before long, she had them out on the street.

  "See?" Roxy said. "There's something we all agreed on. Bobby's argument is dead in the water. Case closed. So—is this a deal Gen13 should be handling or not? What does everyone think?"

  No one replied. They all looked like they were having one of the worst "morning afters" in history and she knew that it wasn't from drinking.

  "I think maybe the world don't need no stinkin' Gen13," Grunge said in his best John Belushi, Killer Bee voice. Only there wasn't even a trace of mirth in his tone. "And maybe none of us need it, either."

  Roxy couldn't believe she was hearing this. No Gen13? What would they do with their lives?

  What would she do?

  "Something to think about," Caitlin said, looking away.

  Now Roxy was doubly stunned. My own sister—half-sister, really—is going along with this?

  "Waitaminute. So some of us had a bad night," Roxy said. "That doesn't mean we have to start talking about hanging up—"

  A scream tore through the cacophony of honking cabs and swearing residents on Fifth Avenue. Roxy looked up and saw a young woman in a black skirt and gray sweater running after a guy who was racing away with her purse.

  "Help! Somebody help me!" the woman yelled.

  The guy was across the street, weaving through the mix of yuppies, darkly clad "artistic types," and flat-out wackos lining the sidewalk. A few looked over from cell phones. Most ignored the situation.

  Roxy focused her power. It would be easy enough to pluck that guy from the crowd and leave him hanging in mid-air until he dropped the purse. God, if he wasn't dressed the part of an early morning purse-snatcher. Bulky jacket. Ski cap. Rollerblades. Stubble. A rat-like little face.

  Yeah, taking care of this creep would be just the release she needed right now.

  Energies surrounded her and she held out a single gloved hand—

  Only to see a short, long-haired, muscular guy in a black mesh tee with torn jeans race across the street, leap over the hood of an oncoming cab, and tackle the creep.

  "Grunge?" Roxy said, stunned. The other team members were silent, but staring in
equal wonder.

  Grunge leveled the guy with a single punch to the jaw and jerked the purse out of his hands. He walked over and held it out to the woman—who bypassed him completely and kicked the purse-snatcher right in the face as he was getting up. He crumpled and rolled into the gutter.

  Then Roxy saw something she had wished she could have brought about.

  Grunge smiled.

  The woman whose purse had been taken came over to him, shaking her head. He gave her the purse and turned to leave. She slipped something into his hand and then hurried off.

  Grunge came back, grinning ear to ear. "Huh. Didn't even have to use my powers. And check this out!"

  He held out the woman's business card. "She said to call her and we could have lunch. It was the least she could do. Pretty classy, huh? And I loved the way she kicked that guy."

  "It's great." Roxy said.

  "I'm going to the shelter," Sarah said.

  Bobby hurried after her. "I'll come with."

  Grunge sauntered off, happily checking out his reflection in the window of every shop he passed.

  Roxy turned to Caitlin and said, "I was thinkin', there's some new shops open in the Village, maybe we could—"

  "I'm gonna hit the library and a couple of the universities," Caitlin said. "I've got some stuff to sort out."

  Don't we all, Roxy thought. "Sure," she said. "I understand."

  Caitlin kissed her on the cheek and gave her a hug. "Thanks."

  Roxy watched her blend into the crowd—as much as Kat ever blended anywhere. It took a while, but finally she disappeared from view, leaving Roxy alone…

  And wondering if Grunge may have been right.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Joe felt like he'd won the lottery. At least, that's how these people were treating him. They'd taken him from the lab where he'd been tested right into a stretch limousine. Inside the car, he'd been toasted with champagne. Suzanne, the statuesque woman with the short silver hair sat next to him in the back. On the seats facing them were Raymond, a barrel-chested guy with small hard eyes and tree-trunk arms that strained the sleeves of his sport coat, and Lee, the slender and bespectacled doctor who had administered the blood test.