“See? You weren’t even hurt,” she explained.
“Yeah, I’m hurt. That hurt a lot. Get me some water, quick,” I yelled to the hiding Garm, who had her pistol out and was peeking over a chair. She hesitated a moment, probably waiting to see if Jyen was going to fry anyone else, then she backed up and warily fished around in my cupboards.
I pulled at my crusted jacket, trying to get it off my skin. Anything metal had fused and melted completely.
Garm came in with a cup, still eying Jyen.
“I’m not thirsty. Get me some water.” I took the mug and splashed it on my chest, where there arose a sizzling.
There was some banging in the kitchen, then Garm finally returned with a pot of water and doused me.
I got to my feet as Jyen backed away, seeming confused.
“But you’re a level ten,” she said miserably.
I took a deep breath before answering. I didn’t want any more unnecessary electrical discharges in my apartment, especially directed at me.
“Jyen. I’m a level four. That’s it. A destroyer shooting me would kill me and everyone I’ve ever known without breaking a sweat. That…lightning thing you just did was very painful. Was that some kind of device?”
“No, I’m a mutant like you. The Colmarian government has categorized you as a ten, though. I saw the report.”
Garm and I have known each other for a while. We talk all the time. We’ve been doing deals as a matter of necessity, and yes, friendship, for a fair number of years. She had that look.
I reached out my hand and grabbed her hard on the collarbone.
“What did you do?” I asked her.
“No one reads that report,” Garm said weakly.
“What report?”
“Look, each Adjunct is allocated funds based on population and infrastructure and military conditions and…mutant population.”
“What?”
“They figure, it takes more credits to look after more mutants. A pretty reasonable assumption,” she said nonchalantly.
“Go on.”
“They just total it all up and we get money based on that. You’ve been around so long there was no record on you. They probably wrote it down on stone tablets. So I figured we could get some more money if I bumped your level up a little.”
“You made me a ten?” I yelled.
“But no one reads that.”
“I did,” Jyen said helpfully. Garm scowled at her.
“Has there ever been a level ten?”
“I think so,” Garm said sheepishly. “But they died kind of quick. Hank, if I had known anyone was going to care about that number, obviously I wouldn’t have used it. I figured it was like population. We have eighty thousand people here and—”
“I thought there was 100,000,” I interjected.
“Yeah…,” Garm said, looking at the floor.
“So that makes sense,” I began. “The Dredel Led got a copy of your stupid report and they figured they had to kill this guy who might have the power to sneeze their race out of existence. Jyen, what are you, like a level six? Seven?”
Jyen had a thoughtful expression and snapped out of it.
“Me? No, I’m a level four.”
I almost hit Garm I was so angry.
“She can shoot lightning and she’s a level four. What do you think a level ten can do? No wonder the robots are here.”
“And that’s why they came out when you were there and we haven’t been able to find them since,” Garm said.
“Right, it was like, ‘Oh, hi, we’ve been looking for you, dumbass,’” I said with no amount of joy.
“Though how did they know it was you?” Garm asked.
“I don’t know, maybe because you kept calling me ‘Hank’?”
“Still, it’s kind of a good thing. Because now we know if you go out there, the last one will probably come and we can kill it again.”
“We? They’re after me. I killed it. And even if I do destroy it, what makes you think they’ll stop with just these two?”
Everyone was quiet, the only sound being water dripping off me.
“I don’t want to have to move to another space station,” I said, contemplating the terrible concept.
“I’m Hank! Hank is me! No one here but ole Hank!” I yelled to the empty street.
I stood in the center of the road far out in Western Belvaille. Garm and her men were five blocks away, armed with scoped rifles. Some were positioned in upper windows.
This was the fourth stop we’d made and I was getting bored. The immediate tension and nervousness had worn off hours ago. Now my knees hurt and I wanted to sit down. So I sat down.
“Stand up, Hank. What if you have to run after it?” Garm radioed to my ear.
“I’m not going to catch anything that has a jet pack. Or that has two legs, for that matter.”
Yeah, I was grumpy. I was bait for a Dredel Led, the twin of a machine that had practically knocked me into a weeklong coma.
We were going on the assumption that what Jyen said was true and these things were here to kill me because of my mislabeled mutant level.
I held my plasma pistol on my lap. I hadn’t actually checked it since the last fight but I didn’t notice any scratches. Presumably it had to be fairly sturdy considering its beam sliced up buildings.
We waited around for another hour, with me periodically yelling to the sky. We then drove to another location to try it again.
After an hour there, Garm and her men walked up to me.
“Let’s go,” she said, her eyes still scanning. “Nothing’s happening here.”
In the car we talked. I had put off food for as long as I could, I think partially because I didn’t want another story to be about me eating. But I was really hungry and stuffed my face as we drove.
“See, you’re doing it again,” Garm chided, unbuckling her equipment.
“What?” I answered, irritated. “I just stood outside for seven hours tensed and ready for a Dredel Led to come kill me.”
“It was closer to four hours and you sat half the time,” she countered.
I ate in silence.
“It might have known it was a trap. It might be laying low because its partner was destroyed. We have to think how we’re going to flush it out,” Garm said.
“If it’s after me, what more can I do? Walk out there blindfolded?”
“We’ll try again tomorrow. This time we’ll stay ten blocks away from you.”
“Make sure you use guys with good aim. I’m going to be pissed if you shoot me.”
Later, I exited my bathroom and my tele was sounding. It was Jyen and she wanted me to come over. She sounded worried, but she always sounded worried. Or giddy.
I took my time, poured myself a drink that I only sipped, cleaned the trash from my living room and moved it into the kitchen, and basically did everything I could to put off visiting electric Jyen and her loopy brother.
I buzzed their door, and once open, Jyen motioned me inside.
There was still no furniture. The pile of drugs was gone, or at least relocated. The small bit of clothes and belongings were stacked neatly along one wall, and her brother Jyonal was slouched un-neatly against another wall.
Jyen locked the door behind me. She had dropped her traditional-style clothes and had on a slinky little getup that was pure Belvaille. I’d never gone clothes shopping here for women, but I had to imagine the selection was categorized along the lines of waitress, bartender, hooker, dancer. And Garm. But she had her own clothes.
Jyen looked good though.
“Hank, thank you for coming. I want to ask you seriously if we can trust you,” she said.
I shrugged.
This was apparently not the answer she was looking for and she was crestfallen.
“What? I mean I bought you guys some drugs and you shot me with lightning. That’s about as deep as our connection goes.”
Jyen pondered this intently as her brother slid to the floo
r with a plop.
“Jyonal and I crossed twenty-six states to get to Belvaille,” she began.
“Why?”
“To meet you. A level-ten mutant living what seemed to be a normal life.”
“I’ve explained that I’m not a level-ten mutant.”
“Yes, I know. But when Garm said there were no other level tens because they had died, she was wrong.” Jyen’s eyes were staring straight into mine. I could tell she wanted me to ask her to continue. Push the story along.
But I was completely happy to not do so. I knew. I was certain this story was going to suck—at least for me. I looked at my shoes. How did I get the tread worn out differently on each one? Maybe one leg is shorter than the other?
Jyen had just blue, blue eyes. Her skin was nothing compared to her eyes, which were like crystals. I sighed.
“So. Level tens, huh?”
“Yes,” she seized. “My brother!”
My brow furrowed and I looked at Jyonal. I was pretty certain he had no idea where he was. The idea that anyone was a level ten was pretty far-fetched. The idea that they were on Belvaille was even more so. The idea that one was embodied in the blob of organic matter that was Jyonal was almost too insulting to bother thinking about.
Yet. This was a gal who had known Garm did in fact classify me as a level ten and who was a mutant herself of no small ability.
“And…,” I began slowly. “What’s he do?”
“Anything.”
“Like,” and my head bobbed around a bit searching for words, “what specifically?”
“Anything.”
“Yeah, you said that. But what’s his mutation allow him to do that is out of the ordinary?”
I was again at a different junction than Jyen, which seemed to happen whenever we spoke. I was assuming she was being defensive about her brother, saying in short, “despite his vegetable-like nature, he is capable of being a productive Colmarian.”
“He can do anything, that’s his mutation,” she said emphatically.
“So he can arc electricity like you?” I asked.
Jyen thought about this.
“You said he can do anything,” I jabbed like a prosecutor, while motioning to the drooling demigod in question.
“Yes. He can,” Jyen said defiantly.
“Fine. Let’s see it. Not at me.”
I crossed my arms and waited for the show. I wasn’t entirely sure what Jyen was getting at. She was a strange bird alright. I couldn’t figure out her angle.
She went over and crouched by her brother and began whispering to him. She had her arm around him and seemed to be cajoling.
Jyen reached over to a pair of shoes along the wall and pulled something from inside it. She handed it to Jyonal. From my experiences in Deadsouth, I knew it to be a drug whose name escaped me.
Jyonal then took the drug injection and applied it to his arm. After using it, he sat bolt upright.
“You’re kidding?” I said. Of course he thinks he can do anything when he’s high. What was this?
And then Jyonal’s eyes glowed.
Not like bulbs, but like spotlights. And he was on his feet though I hadn’t seen him stand.
Then the room changed, the bare surfaces inexplicably gone. It was now carpeted with lush fabric. There were shimmering works of art on the walls. The ceiling had a chandelier.
But I noticed this all took place in kind of a fish-eye perspective. The center of the eye was gorgeous and new, at the edges it started to blur, while outside it, the old room with exposed metal was everywhere.
Then I realized the fish-eye was centered where Jyonal was looking at the time. As he moved his head, the room morphed.
“It’s an illusion,” I said. “A mental—a mental thing.” I wasn’t sure of the term, but I had heard of mutants being able to make you see things. He had to be in my head. Or warping light around.
“No, it’s not,” said Jyen, standing next to me now, and she held my hand as if to prove it.
“Jyonal,” she said. “Show him.”
And the thing that was once her brother howled. A booming wail that made me cover my ears. The floor began shaking and I was thrown to the ground off balance.
As I was wondering if the building would collapse, Jyen rushed to her brother, whose eyes were like laser beams, and soothed him, stroked him, and gradually his eyes dimmed. The shaking stopped and the walls ceased undulating.
But even after it was done, I was still lying on carpet, the carpet that hadn’t existed when I came in. I could feel it. Pluck at it. The walls were painted and held artwork—albeit amateur ones. The chandelier was there, but half-fused and twisted. The fish-eye effect remained. It was frozen into the apartment.
I got up and touched the walls at the edge of it. The very metal held ripples on its surface; the color bled and faded as you moved further out.
It wasn’t the Dredel Led who had messed with the station, it was this guy, this druggie. He had shaken all of Belvaille with just his mind, or his spleen, or whatever he used. I couldn’t imagine how much energy that took. Thousands of buildings. An entire city. And it came from one man! After soaking all this in I finally spoke.
“Why…,” I began weakly. “Why the drugs?”
“It’s what he needs for his mutation,” Jyen said as she stood over her brother, who was now resting on the floor. “If he believes it, it exists. Anything.”
My tele went off and with trembling hands I took it out of my pocket. I saw it was Garm. I was about to answer when I looked up and saw Jyen coated in her patina of crackling electricity.
I dropped my tele as my forearm and hand were scorched.
“Hey, what are you doing?” I yelled.
“I asked if we could trust you,” she said, now only mildly charged. “You can’t tell anyone about this.”
“Why?” I said, spitting on my sizzling hand. “Don’t you know what he can do for us?”
“That’s what everyone says. That’s what the government said. But they just wanted to use Jyonal as a weapon.”
“Well…yeah,” I answered.
“He can do anything. Do you think the Colmarian Confederation is going to let him be just a regular citizen? This is him in recovery,” she said, pointing at the man lying on the floor.
“With a new body he had to create for himself after they practically destroyed his natural one.”
So that’s why these siblings looked so different.
“Why did you come to me? You don’t need me to stand up to a destroyer, you can just have your brother think it away.”
“He might be able to do that. But he can’t forever and they’ll keep looking for him. The drugs will eventually kill him, you know that. We just want to be left alone. Like you.”
I looked around the room and weighed what Jyen had just said. If I was a boss, like a galactic one, and there was a tool that could unmake everything I had done, I could see not wanting anyone to have it. And definitely not wanting it to have its own free will and decision-making ability.
And then it hit me.
“The Dredel Led are here for him. Not me.”
Jyen looked guilty.
“When I escaped with my brother, we tried to cover our tracks as best we could. But he can only make things he understands. Making a new body was hard enough,” she said, looking down at the wasted man. “But all the passports and clearances and permissions, they’re too complicated. Microscopic. We used my identity for a while until we could get forged credentials. I believe they may have tracked us here.”
“So,” I began awkwardly, “you guys going to leave now?”
“We need your help,” she said.
And I laughed. I realized it was a pretty bad move snickering in front of a twitchy level-four mutant and one of the most powerful entities in the galaxy—who also happened to be an addled drug user. But the concept was simply ludicrous.
“How can I possibly help you two? I should be asking you guys for help.”
It was heartfelt. Those blue eyes were streaming tears. I didn’t know what to tell her.
“Jyen, I haven’t left this station in about a hundred and forty years. You probably know more about the galaxy outside Belvaille than I do.”
“Why have you stayed so long?” she asked, obviously not so enamored with the charms of the city.
The question threw me.
“I suppose I’m scared to leave.”
There was an ugly silence.
“Can you help us?” she asked.
“What can I do that he can’t?”
“Look at him,” she said. “It takes all his concentration—all his drugged concentration—to be able to change things. It’s really difficult for him.”
“I just don’t know what I can do for you guys,” I explained.
“Can you get us fake documents? And transport?”
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Yeah, I can get all kinds of stuff like that. I was thinking…I don’t know, you wanted me to take on the Colmarian military or something. You came to the right place for forgeries.” I was quite relieved.
Jyen jumped up and buried her face in my chest, her arms around me. Which was considerably more pleasant than being hit with an electric jolt.
“Thank you. Thank you,” she bubbled.
I was back in my native environment. Sort of.
“Documentation, egress, ingress, orange stamps, R.O.M.s, no problem. We can also book some fake passage for your existing identity and place it in some other part of the empire while you guys move. We’ll have to think of a good place for you to migrate.”
Jyen held her hands clasped and the tiniest squeal of joy escaped her. When she wasn’t blasting people or wearing sexy clothes she really seemed like a little girl.
“Let me make some calls. I’ll get back to you tomorrow, okay?”
“That’s perfect.”
As I was about to leave, trying my best to ignore the smeared metal walls, Jyen reminded me:
“Please do not say anything of what you saw here.”
Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy Page 8
