by Murray, Dean
Telekinesis was a fairly common ability. Normally there wasn't much need for additional genetic samples, but Roberts was apparently displaying a depth of power far and away beyond the norm. The analyst who'd briefed Jerome had been all but drooling over that last piece of information. Exciting or not for the whitecoats, it hadn't exactly been something designed to reassure the operative actually tasked with bringing in Roberts.
Exiting the freeway, Jerome down shifted again, feeling the bike buck beneath him before the slipper clutch kicked in and let the back wheel resume moving. It was amazing how quickly the real estate in LA could change. Less than four blocks from the exit and already he was seeing burnt out cars and boarded up shops.
Things went progressively downhill as he closed the last little distance to the address he'd been given. The few people on the street as he finally arrived at his destination either had the fearful scuttle of victims or the confident swagger of street tigers.
There was one fairly prominent exception to those two categories and Jerome slowed to a stop just in front of the half-naked, twenty-something, who had to be a whore.
“Kind of early still to be working isn't it sister?"
“Hell yeah. Still, a girl's got to eat."
Jerome let his eyes, safely invisible behind the wraparound shades, linger for a heartbeat or two. He wasn't about to go further than that. Not with someone who was probably carrying half a dozen STD's, but he wasn't going to catch anything by looking. And there was plenty to look at, and even review later if he wanted.
She seemed to sense his scrutiny. “You want to give a working girl a job?"
“Sorry, sister. I'm on the clock right now. Actually I'm looking for a white guy that's supposed to have shown up around here pretty recently. Heavy guy, running towards fat even."
Prostitutes always seemed to make the best sources. This one was probably sleeping with half the neighborhood, and the johns were all probably confiding various secrets to her in an effort to create an illusion of intimacy. Not that Jerome had anything against the oldest profession, but he was at least smart enough to keep love and sex separate.
She was sizing him up now, trying to decide if he was a cop, or somebody that was otherwise going to cause the kind of trouble that would eventually end up complicating her relatively simple existence.
Jerome flashed a lazy smile that revealed gold caps and waited for her to decide what exactly to tell him.
“Snowman came rolling in a couple of days ago. Must know somebody because he hasn't been around since that first day. Dis-appeared."
She accepted the fifty he pulled out of his jacket with a nod. “I'll put the word out to leave your bike alone."
Another fifty and then Jerome was off to the nearest apartment building, one that looked particularly close to being condemned. Every third step was missing from the stairwell and it looked like you could easily catch something contagious just by breathing the air. Of course the leprous feel to the wall probably had something to do with that. Decades worth of graffiti attested to just how many different people had at some point claimed this piece of real estate as their own.
Undoubtedly a few of the urban artists had gotten out of the game and gone on the live more or less productive lives. Most of the rest were probably dead. Too bad they hadn't fallen in with the Company. Grabs, hits, extortion, it was mostly the same kind of work, but the pay was better and Jerome never spent more than a couple hours in jail on the rare occasions when he was stupid enough to get caught.
There was no answer to his first few knocks, but that wasn't anything to worry about. The kinds of people who were most likely to know where the target was, were the same kind of people who were constitutionally unable to pass up a chance to talk to someone. Sooner or later someone would answer. Even if they didn't, it wasn't really much of a loss. A call back to headquarters would have a regular grab bag of assets deployed to this area.
Since that bitch Coffee had defected, things had gotten pretty sparse in the manpower department. Back in the day a random lead like this would have at least gotten a two-man team. Now, between the operatives she'd taken out and all the people who'd been pulled off of normal duties in an effort to find her, the staff pukes were really scrapping the bottom of the barrel. Still, it meant that Jerome got out more frequently.
Of course all things considered, Jerome would have much rather been back down with the whore on the street than sweating his way through the building. His patience was starting to run thin by the time he knocked the first two floors without any kind or response. The second-to-last door on the third floor proved to be exactly what he was looking for.
“Who the hell are you?"
The resident of the apartment looked like he'd just come off the set of some rap video. Sagging jeans, boxers prominently displayed and footwear that had to have set him back at least a couple of Benjamins.
Jerome interrupted before the kid could really get himself worked into a fit. “I'm looking for a white guy that's been seen in the area."
“Eff off dog, I ain't no nark."
“Listen, you obviously know something or you would have just told me to go to hell, so why don't you just save us both some trouble and tell me where he is."
The kid flashed a couple of meaningless gang signs which he finished off with a very obscene gesture before trying to slam the door. Only the door didn't move.
Jerome felt his lips draw back in a smirk as the punk threw his weight into the effort. It should have been impossible for anyone to hold the door open with one arm and still retain such a relaxed pose, but Jerome hadn't moved any more than the door had.
“Who the hell are you?"
“Just tell me where Roberts is. You know, the white guy. One way or another you're going to tell me. It's just a matter of time and pain. My time and your pain."
The kid went pale behind the gang colors that normally lent themselves to mindless bravado. Jerome could almost see the thoughts splintering against the inside of his skull before reforming and racing off in new directions. The instant when the kid went for the gun was as inevitable as sunrise. Jerome was already moving into the apartment when his chip finally kicked in and slammed the door into the kid's hand, knocking the gun free.
The exquisite pain of having a baker's dozen of his bones shattered pulled an animalistic scream of pain from the ganger, and Jerome didn't bother suppressing an immediate surge of pleasure.
“Told you son. Eventually you'll speak up. They always do, it's just a question of exactly how much I'm gonna have to hurt you before you decide to play."
The gun had bounced off of a wall and then fallen less than six feet from where the teenager had collapsed cradling his arm. Jerome pretended not to notice as his victim started awkwardly crawling towards the weapon.
Jerome waited, savoring the heightened awareness as the threat of immediate death ramped the chip up as far as the governors would allow. Jerome practically hummed with energy now. He brought his foot down on the kid's remaining good arm even harder than he'd intended to.
“Upstairs, dog. He's upstairs. Fifth floor, apartment R, man. Just don't kill me."
The word seemed to vibrate in the air, sending out little ripples of possibility. His bare hands, the kid's own gun, a chair from the kitchen. There were so many different ways he could do it. There wasn't anything quite as addictive as the euphoria of being fully chipped, but killing was a close second.
For a heartbeat that stretched out longer than any normal person could understand, Jerome thought about doing it. It would mean he'd have to go to ground. Have to hide from the Company, from those who'd given him this glorious power. He couldn't go back with another murder stored in the chip's video memory.
There were rules. Broader rules than the rest of society worked by, but rules all the same. It was the tiny red dot in the corner of his vision that finally brought him back down. It blinked at him, a steady reminder that everything he heard, did, or saw was all being recorded
for later analysis. Luckily they hadn't figured out how to record thoughts yet.
“You never saw me. I was never here. If you ever breathe a word of this to anyone, no matter how quietly, I'll come back and finish what we started. Do you understand me?"
The kid was sobbing now, a spreading patch of wetness revealing the fact that somewhere along the way he'd lost control.
Jerome kicked the gun all the way to the other side of the living room before leaving. In a few minutes he'd come back down. The chip had already started trimming back his strength and speed, but the mental high would last a bit longer. Until then he could just glory in being something more than human.
Of course he was just about to confront a rather powerful potential, and that usually managed to get the old chip racing. Punk kids with guns were one thing, potentials were actually dangerous.
The door to 5R exploded off of its hinges, but it didn't even have a chance to fall before Jerome was inside the apartment, 9mm in one hand, taser in the other as he swept through the apartment with blinding speed.
Roberts was curled up on the bedroom floor. He hardly blinked as Jerome entered the room with enough violence to send a wall-mounted mirror sliding down to the floor where it shattered into hundreds of razor-edged shards.
The taser discharged with the smooth precision only found in machines. Jerome was chipped enough to see the wires uncoiling as the electrodes flew unerringly towards their target. Only they stopped less than a foot from their target, falling to the ground where they discharged their electrical cargo in a hiss of futility.
“You shouldn't have come."
The words came out from between clenched teeth, and for the first time since entering the room, Jerome actually took in the appearance of his target. Roberts had been fat in the pictures from his briefing, but the man crouched in the corner looked like he'd put on at least fifteen percent more body fat.
“Leave now while there's still a chance." Roberts seemed to be talking in slow motion. Jerome had plenty of time to finish realizing the staffers had been wrong. Roberts wasn't uncommonly gifted. Or rather he wasn't just uncommonly gifted, he was also much farther along in the process of degenerating than anyone had realized.
Still, Jerome had his orders. He pulled an injector from his pocket and started towards Roberts. He never saw the shards of glass lift themselves from the wreckage of the frame and go streaking through the air. The barest whisper of sound alerted him just enough to spin around as they arrived, but there were too many to dodge. The bitter edges sliced into the unprotected flesh of his face and neck in a shower of blood.
Jerome's brain was already entering a state of oxygen deprivation by the time he hit the floor. Most likely he never saw Roberts begin shuddering with something only a shade less violent than outright convulsions.
Seconds later he just might have been aware enough to wonder in amazement as his hand began moving without conscious effort on his part. The chip had just enough autonomous control to line the sights up and squeeze the trigger.
It was a good shot, well beyond what the chip's programmers had realistically expected it to achieve. The bullet left the gun traveling at just less than the speed of sound and should have crossed the intervening distance between Jerome and Roberts in less than a hundredth of a second, perfectly aimed for an instant kill shot to the head. Less than a thousandth of a second before the jacketed hollow point should have blown through the front of Robert's skull, it came to an abrupt stop.
The chip had never been intended to continue long-term operation after its host had been killed, and emergency subroutines quickly shut down its access to main power. Deprived of the power stores necessary to activate the synthetic fibers for further action, the chip sat passively recording data from Jerome's one undamaged eye. A human observer would have been horrified to see Roberts' convulsions redouble. A few seconds later the chip calmly classified the thing arising from the wreck that had been Roberts' body as a flesh beast. An alert was sent out via an encrypted radio signal, and then the chip melted away to nothing as the security protocols took over.
It took less than twenty minutes for the flesh beast to work its way through the building, killing all three hundred tenants who happened to be home.
When the containment team the radio squeal had called for finally arrived, they had to arrange a very large, very spectacular gas leak. The resulting explosion ensured there wouldn't be enough left for anyone to have a hope of putting together what had really happened.
--THE END--
Dean started reading seriously in the second grade due to a competition and has spent most of the subsequent three decades lost in other people's worlds. After reading several local libraries more or less dry of sci-fi and fantasy, he started spending more time wandering around worlds of his own creation to avoid the boredom of the 'real' world.
Things worsened, or improved depending on your point of view, when he first started experimenting with writing while finishing up his accounting degree. These days Dean has a wonderful wife and daughter to keep him rather more grounded, but the idea of bringing others along with him as he meets interesting new people in universes nobody else has ever seen tends to drag him back to his computer on a fairly regular basis.
Keep up to speed on Dean's latest projects at http://www.deansonlinefiction.com/
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Table of Contents
Beginning of Collection
Scent of Tears - Cover
Scent of Tears
I'rone - Cover
I'rone
Absence - Cover
Absence
Beginnings - Cover
Beginnings
Backlash - Cover
Backlash
