Time and Chance

by Jeff Mariotte

  To Caitlin, it stank of desperation. The end of hope.

  There were a dozen people inside, in a space meant for three or four. They sat on a worn-out couch, on the floor, in the corners. A couple of them barely looked up when Gen13 came in. One woman got up and tried to run, but tripped over her own feet.

  The two healthiest-looking guys pulled shotguns. A quick burst from Bobby melted the barrels, and the guns were suddenly too hot to touch.

  When they tried to sprint out the door, Caitlin caught them both by the collars, one in each hand.

  'The money," she hissed. "Where is it?"

  "What money?" one asked. She bounced him off the apartment wall and caught him on the rebound.

  "No games," she said.

  They reached into their shirts and drew out stacks of bills. Sarah opened a cloth bag with RECYCLE printed on it in soy ink, and they put the cash into her bag. When they were done, she asked, "That's it?"

  "That's it for today," one said. "It's early, you know.

  More of 'em come by later, but that's all so far."

  "Okay," Caitlin said. "What you're doing here is wrong. I want you to stop it, and if I come back here and this is still happening here someone's going to be hurt, you understand me?"

  They both nodded.

  "The money we're taking from you will go to a good cause. We're not taking it because it's yours, I want you to be clear on that. We're taking it because you're going to give some of it to Wager. Anyone who deals with Wager will lose his or her money. Anyone who pays tribute to Wager is making a big mistake. Spread the word."

  "Consider it spread, mama," one of them said.

  "Now get out of here, all of you," Bobby said. As he spoke, he allowed low flames to dance about his body. "This place is going to get very hot in a minute if you don't clear out."

  They cleared.

  "Officer Golden, Officer Gonzales," Butch said when the two police officers walked into his bar. "Get you a drink?"

  "We're on the job," Gonzales said, touching the bill of her cap. "How fresh is the coffee?"

  "Just brewed it," Butch said. "Coming right up."

  'Thanks," Golden said. He scraped a stool across the floor, lifted his bulk onto it. The bar was nearly empty; one serious drinker sat at the far end, striving for oblivion. There were three booths along one wall, nine stools at the bar. Butch's was little more than a hole in the wall, and Butch was its sole employee.

  "You want these to go?" he asked.

  "We've got a lot of stops to make today," Gonzales said. "Can't stay in one spot."

  Butch poured coffee into tall stryofoam cups, wrapped napkins around them, and set them on the bar.

  "Thanks," Golden said.

  "Yup," Butch replied. He reached under the cash register, came out with a sealed brown envelope in his hand.

  He put the envelope on the bar next to the steaming cups.

  Golden slid it across the bar, tucked it inside his jacket. "See you next month," he said, climbing down off his stool. He picked up one coffee and handed it to Gonzales, then took his own.

  They were heading for the door when the little bells hanging from the knob jingled.

  Five young people dressed in outlandish spandex outfits walked in.

  "You old enough to drink?" Gonzales asked.

  "I'd show you my driver's license," Caitlin Fairchild said. "But I don't exactly have a lot of pockets in this outfit."

  "Looks fine from here," Golden said, eyeing her voluptuous form.

  "Keep your tongue in your head," Gonzales told him. "Excuse us, kids. We're off to keep the streets safe for fashion disasters."

  "We'll take the envelope," Grunge said. "Then you can go—"

  "What envelope?" Golden asked. "We're in a hurry, people, so step aside."

  "Let's not pretend anybody's stupid here," Grunge said.

  Roxy punched his shoulder. "Though if we were going to, you'd be a good starting point," she said.

  Grunge shot her a look, then reached out and touched the brick wall near the door. He felt the transformation come over him, an inch at a time, until he was a Grunge-shaped brick wall standing in front of the brick wall.

  "The envelope," he said.

  Golden and Gonzales both dropped their hands to their weapons.

  "Don't," Sarah Rainmaker said. "There's no need for violence."

  Roxy gestured toward the officers, floating them off the floor. As they lost contact with solid ground, their balance shifted and they forgot about their guns, throwing their arms out to maintain their equilibrium instead.

  "Hey!" Gonzales said. "Put us down!"

  "Freakin' superheroes," Golden muttered.

  "The envelope," Fairchild insisted, holding a hand out.

  Golden reached into his jacket, drew it out. He put it into her hand.

  "That's better," she said.

  Freefall lowered them to the floor.

  "One more thing," Caitlin said. She tossed the envelope to Butch, who caught it with a broad smile. "You shouldn't be shaking down small businesses for insurance money. You're cops. You're supposed to be upholding the law."

  "Yeah, that totally sucks," Grunge added as he allowed himself to revert to his fleshy state.

  "I wouldn't want to see this happening again," Caitlin said. "But I'm not going to turn you in this time. I just want you to realize that I know Wager was going to get a cut of this. No more. Wager is done for, and anybody who's on his side is going to have to answer to us. Tell a friend."

  "Let's scram," Bobby said. "Sight of crooked cops makes me sick." He pulled the door open, jingling the bell.

  "Hey, I'm thirsty," Grunge said.

  "When we finish," Roxy told him. "Come on, big guy. You're like a camel. You can wait."

  As the sun dipped below the buildings, the wind off the East River picked up and day turned colder. Fairchild, Freefall, Burnout, Rainmaker, and Grunge, in full costume, stood on the sidewalk looking at a block of brownstone houses. They looked abandoned; windows were boarded up, doors had planks nailed over them. Everywhere was peeling paint, graffiti, dunes of drifting trash blown against the houses by the winds.

  "Okay, rousting all those crooks made for a fun day."

  Grunge said. "But tell me again what good it's supposed to do. And what are we doing here?"

  "This is Wager's headquarters, according to Mr. Joe," Bobby explained. "We're bringing the fight to him."

  "His whole deal, Mr. Monteleone said, was bringing New York's underworld under his control," Caitlin added. As she spoke, she touched a zippered pocket in her uniform, reassuring herself that it was still there. The antidote, safely ensconced in a steel tube. And something else—a back-up weapon. She didn't want to think about "just in case," but better to prepare for the worst than not to. "He wants their respect, he wants their obedience, and he wants their money. What we were doing, I hope, was cutting into all three of those areas. Without them, his power structure is lessened. And by doing that, we'll be making him more and more angry. He's already a little nuts, it sounds like. If we get him mad enough, he won't be thinking straight."

  "And then we can mess him up?" Roxy said.

  "That's the plan," Bobby replied.

  Caitlin looked at her teammates. The wind whipped her red hair around her lovely face, stung her eyes. She blinked, but held her gaze.

  "We've faced a lot together," she said. "We've put our lives on the line a thousand times, and we've always come out ahead. But based on what Mr. Monteleone's told us, it's possible that we've never gone up against someone as powerful as Wager is."

  "Even though we've been sniping at him all day?" Grunge asked.

  "We've been going after his supporters, his troops," Caitlin answered. "It'd be nice to think we've hurt him. But he still has personal power, and we really don't know of what type, or how formidable. It's a gamble." She took a deep breath. "Anyone want out?"

  There was silence for a moment. None of them had ever asked that question before,
not out loud anyway.

  "No way," Grunge finally said.

  "I'm in," Bobby declared.

  "Same here," Sarah echoed.

  "Couldn't keep me away," Roxy said.

  "Shouldn't we hold hands, like the Fantastic Four or something?" Grunge asked.

  "I think that'd be taking things a little too far," Caitlin said. "Let's go in there and kick Wager's butt."

  The team turned toward the brownstones.

  "Uhh, one thing," Grunge said. "Which door?"

  "From what Mr. Joe said," Bobby replied, "It doesn't sound like it really matters."

  "Then let's drop in," Grunge said.

  They climbed the nearest stairway. Grunge paused long enough to touch a rusting banister, taking on the molecular composition of wrought iron. "Allow me," he said. He raised both fists over his head and brought them down against the door, clubbing it in as if with a battering ram.

  Sticking his black iron head through the cloud of dust he'd raised, he grinned a manic smile and announced, "Luuuucy! I'm hooome!"

  The inside was a trash-filled mess, graffiti on every surface. There was no sign of the kinds of security they expected—it just looked like someone's house that they left years ago, which squatters had moved into since. Following the directions Joe Monteleone had given them, they worked their way back toward the center. The walls were no problem—Caitlin smashed holes through them, or Bobby burned through with controlled flames, or Sarah blew through them with powerful winds.

  After they'd moved through several rooms this way, Roxy stopped before yet another wall, half-covered with strips of faded pink wallpaper.

  "Okay," she said, "interior decoration disaster. But not scary, can I point out? Are we sure we've got the right place? This is almost too easy."

  "You're right," Sarah said. "But I don't read it like you do."

  "I'm with you, Sarah," Caitlin said. "We are in the right place. Which means there should be some kind of security, cameras, booby traps, soldiers, something. Since there's not, it makes me think that maybe Wager isn't worried about us."

  "But we're Gen13," Grunge said. "He better be worried."

  "Unless he doesn't have anything to worry about," Bobby said. "Which means we didn't do him any damage today at all."

  Almost as if Wager had heard them—exactly as if he had, in fact—the strips of wallpaper unrolled themselves, falling to the floor and revealing a flat video screen. It crackled for a moment, and then a picture spread across it. On the screen, the team saw a gang of punked-out kids robbing a small grocery in Koreatown. They ran out of the little store carrying a paper bag full of cash, which one of them held up toward the camera.

  "This is for you, Wager!" the tattooed, pierced young man shouted.

  "Whoa," Grunge said. "A TV built into the wall! Cool."

  "There were no screens in those other walls," Caitlin pointed out. "Odd that there happened to be one here."

  "What I was thinking," Roxy agreed.

  Just as suddenly as it had appeared, the screen vanished and the wallpaper was just as it had been. But a noise from behind them alerted them, and they whirled to see another screen appearing against another wall—the wall they had just destroyed to come into this room.

  "No flippin' way," Grunge said.

  On this screen was an image of an uptown bank branch. The angle was like that of a bank's security camera, but the picture was in color, and high quality. Masked robbers with shotguns filled sacks with cash from the teller windows.

  "Okay, I'm seriously freaked," Bobby announced.

  As if in response, that screen blinked from existence and another one appeared, this one a flat panel floating in the center of the room. The image on this screen wasn't a moving one, but a still picture. Filling the screen was the head of Big Tony, resting in a pool of blood on a silver tray.

  "I think we all are," Caitlin suggested. As the floating screen disappeared from sight, she looked around for the camera or viewing device that she was sure must be there. He's watching us, she thought. "Wager!" she shouted. "Gen13 is here! You might as well give up now and come on out!"

  From nowhere—from everywhere—a chuckle sounded, growing into deep, ringing laughter that filled the room, the building.

  Finally, the laughter ceased and Wager's voice echoed from all around. "Give up?" he asked. "Did it ever occur to you that you're right where I want you?"

  The team members glanced at each other.

  "That's not exactly surrendering, is it?" Grunge asked.

  "If it's a fight he wants," Sarah said, "I'm happy to give it to him."

  Caitlin turned, about to respond to Sarah's proclamation— and her teammates were gone. No, more than that. Her surroundings had changed completely.

  The walls were steel, with strange, oversized lines of circuitry running along them, crisscrossing, their glowing color changing from aqua to orange, from blue to green, from violet to crimson. The floor and ceiling had become a steel grating with a dull white light radiating from above and a shimmering field of energy below. She was in a central chamber with a dozen branching corridors. The ceiling was high, at least thirty feet, and huge machines, some simple in design, others unfathomably complex, rose up all around her. She had no idea what purpose, if any, the machines fulfilled. One looked like it might have been a vast Victorian-styled steam-powered computation device; another some type of air processor or purifier, with its many tubes and vents.

  She started as two of the machines sprouted legs and casually walked across the chamber right past her, sauntering down opposite corridors. One hissed mildly while the other clunked and clattered.

  "Rox?" she called. "Grunge? Sarah? Anyone?"

  No response.

  It's all in my head, she thought. Wager's playing head games with me, that's all.

  She closed her eyes and willed the illusion away.

  When she opened them again, a machine with huge mechanical claws stood in front of her.

  It struck with enough force to send her hurtling across the chamber, and flying down one of the many corridors.

  Bobby stood with Sarah on a small hill. The sky was red, the earth beneath them a blighted amber. Streaks of gold and silver drifted over the bleak, barren landscape, along with dark, cancerous clouds. There was no life, no hint of civilization, in any direction.

  "Where are we?" Sarah asked.

  "Wager's place," Bobby said. He hoped the uncertainty didn't tell in his voice. "Has to be."

  Sarah tilted her head. "Try to use your powers."

  Bobby didn't question. He held out his hand and allowed a small orb of flame to come into existence.

  In seconds, it flickered and died.

  Sarah raised her hands and attempted to summon a wind. A breeze lifted her hair and quickly fell away into nothingness.

  "This land is dead," Sarah said. "And the elements, the forces we command, are out of balance."

  In the distance, a doorway appeared. A single black opening.

  "It's a trap," Bobby said. "Has to be."

  Sarah nodded. "So let's go."

  They walked down from the hill. The earth at its base was more like gently shifting sands. It clung to their boots and sank beneath their weight.

  "We're strong enough to make it out of here," Bobby said. "We just have to stay focused."

  Sarah was about to reply when a shape burst from the sands at her feet, grabbed her, and pulled her under. Bobby leaped at the slight indentation that marked her passing, digging frantically until something grabbed him from behind and pulled him into the hungry, burning soil.

  Grunge and Roxy knelt behind a row of metal carts bearing medical apparatus. They watched as armored guards led a small group of teenagers to a round table fitted with steel chairs that jutted outward. Cuffs and restraining straps waited near the arms and legs of the chairs. A man and a woman wearing long white lab coats followed the teens. They carried needles filled with the Gen-Active serum.

  Grunge didn't wonder exa
ctly what this place was or how he got here. He took in the situation before him, felt his flesh burn with anger, and grasped a titanium scalpel laying on a nearby tray. The change came quickly, heady and intoxicating, then he was on his feet, smashing at the chestplates of the guards, cracking gauntlets before weapons could be pulled, punching faceplates and feeling the satisfying snap as shattered helmets broke open and the sweating, frightened faces of little men appeared. His opponents fell beneath his attack while the teenagers stared at Grunge in shock.

  He turned, his titanium covered body shining in the harsh fluorescent glow from above, expecting to see the technicians radioing for help or running like hell.

  Instead, they floated near the ceiling, whimpering helplessly.

  "Good job, Rox," Grunge said. He turned back to the teenagers. "Listen, we're gonna get you out of here. All of you. No one's experimenting on you. No one's gonna do to you what was done to us."

  Roxy called his name. He turned quickly, worried that some new threat had appeared. But there was none. He relaxed—until he saw the armor-piercing handgun in Roxy's hand.

  "What—?" he began.

  It was all he could say before she fired and the pain became his world.

  Sarah struggled as inhumanly long fingers closed on her, wrapping themselves in her hair, clawing at her body, dragging her down while the fine earth threatened to suffocate as well as blind her. She heard the chattering of sharp teeth and felt wet, huge, sluglike bodies pressing up against her.

  All her life, she had been one with nature. One with the earth, the sky, and the wind. This nightmare was almost too much for her. She had been taken into the body of a corrupted world. She couldn't breathe—and didn't dare open her mouth for fear of the hot, poisoned soil entering her body, and somehow changing her, taking her life by giving her a new one, one that would bind her to this place for all eternity.

  She had been wrong about this place. It wasn't lifeless. Far from it. But whoever, whatever had resided her had been changed. Mutated. She could feel it.

  And that's what would happen to her, if she couldn't find a way to fight back.

  Sarah marshaled her power. She called to a place deep within her, feeling the rush of her blood through her veins as if it were the flowing tides upon an ocean from her world; she drew upon the air trapped in her lungs as if it were ancient winds raging through valleys in some far-off land; she felt the thunderous beat of her heart and told herself it was the sound of a gale smashing against windows in Manhattan.