Ivy

by William Dickstein

  Lochlan liked being able to do that for people.

  He didn’t mind the work he did behind a desk, but when he was promoted he had accepted that the most rewarding years of his career, until he reached the upper echelon of The Control, were over. And when people he recruited followed the plan he envisioned for them, when they went on to save people and do good in the world, it reaffirmed what he’d always known about field work. Agents weren’t looked down upon when their recruits defected, but that didn’t stop him from feeling relief that he was going to be chasing a Cape he’d hardly heard of.

  The defector’s name was O-Rell, a man whose gene had activated four years earlier. Originally named Raene, O-Rell had been held up at gun point while working the overnight shift at a store he owned. According to the information that was wirelessly broadcast onto Lochlan’s electronic notebook, playing directly in front of his eyes, O-Rell had been a tough person to recruit.

  Some people don’t want to be recruited. Not everyone sees the value in becoming a Cape, and O-Rell just wanted to be Raene and keep running his shop. The Field Agent’s report listed the conversation he’d had with Raene, and it read to Lochlan like it had taken a much longer time to convince the man to come with him than it should have. Lochlan wouldn’t have been surprised O-Rell had defected if he hadn’t waited four years before doing so. Most people who put up that much resistance before heading to the academy often found a way to run off long before the bus stopped to drop them at the hub. O-Rell hadn’t just gone through the program, he’d been on a couple dozen missions already, while stationed in a small town not unlike the one he’d run his shop in. Lochlan began to ponder on which of the details made the least sense to him, a tactic he’d picked up from one of the standard-issued Control manuals regarding bringing in defectors. Many people broadcast what they’ll do long before they run, the manual said. All you have to do is let their actions leading up to the defection point the way. As Lochlan finished gathering his things, he decided he’d wait to read the full briefing Khard had said was waiting for him in the car outside. Lochlan glanced at the clock just above the exit to the building as he walked out. He had five days to bring O-Rell in before protocol demanded that he partner with as many Capes as it took. Agents are only called in to catch defectors after three teams of Capes have failed. If the Agent fails, or takes too long, they’re allowed access to whomever they need to complete the task. Lochlan figured he could get the job done in eighteen hours, with time to read his report twice before sending it in. The moment he stepped out of the door the electronic notebook in his pocket started a timer, counting down how long he had left in the field before further resources opened up to him and he had the potential to lose points in The Game for taking too long.

  The car that was waiting for him was a slightly upgraded model from the standard-issue one that Field Agents normally rode in. All black with two long doors on either side, the self-piloting vehicle had new tires and a fully upgraded suspension. Lochlan could see the propeller on the bottom and the weathering peeking out of the sides of the door which told him that, in a pinch, the car could be fully submerged and piloted underwater. Lochlan’s own eye enhancements also told him that the windows were laser proof, bulletproof, and capable of withstanding a direct hit from up to ten thousand pounds of force before they would shatter. They glimmered slightly as the waning light of the evening reflected off of them, an effect standard human eyes couldn’t perceive. The Control had long ago done away with any kind of flying transportation for Agents. They were simply too heavy, the materials too costly for the drones that once carried men like Lochlan to their destination which were so frequently the target of an errant missile or Chosen who had only recently gained the ability to fly. That was all right with him, though. The car seats never messed up the creases on his clothes like the wind could.

  The car door opened as Lochlan approached. He ducked down inside and saw Khard sitting in the seat next to his. The older Agent had a manila envelope in his lap, and he greeted Lochlan warmly as he sat down.

  “Hello, hello. Hurry up and sit down please. I’d like to make a stop on our way, and I’m sure you have some unrealistic goal in mind for how quickly you’re going to bring O-Rell in.”

  “You didn’t tell me you would be coming.” Lochlan’s mood module tingled as his nerves threatened to jumble. He pressed the part of his elbow that steadied his speech.

  “The boys listening in weren’t meant to know. Officially, I’m using some personal time that’s set to expire. But yes, it will be you and I on this mission.”

  “I read O-Rell’s file. I don’t understand why you would need to accompany me for the retrieval.”

  “Here,” Khard replied, handing the manila folder to Lochlan. “This was taken by one of our drones on a low fly-by.” The automated seatbelt snaked its way around Lochlan’s limbs and torso, securing him to the seat, and he began to thumb through the pictures in the folder. The first two pictures were of O-Rell, marked with a timestamp of two weeks ago. The man appeared as he always had–thin, somewhat misshapen, as if whoever had designed the man’s arms had accidentally made them too long for the rest of his body. O-Rell slouched when he walked. If he had been muscular, he might have looked more like a gorilla than a man, as his gene likely intended. O-Rell was a Specian, someone whose gene gave them animalistic traits. In O-Rell’s case, his body had modified itself when his gene activated and lengthened his arms, and had given him sharp canines as well. Specians with stronger genes often became much more animalistic than O-Rell, who appeared more human than anything else. Lochlan noted that in the picture, the man’s Cape uniform looked as though it had been freshly laundered. That was almost unheard of among Capes, who were expected to be out on missions as frequently as every other day.

  Lochlan flipped to the next picture and saw a man who looked like O-Rell, the facial recognition software in his eyes recognizing the man immediately as the former shopkeeper-turned-Cape, but whoever was in the second picture seemed to be a different animal entirely, with a much stronger Ch05En gene. The slight gorilla had become an extreme… something. An abomination.

  “These pictures are both of O-Rell?” Lochlan asked.

  “As far as any of us can tell.”

  “He looks completely different. He’s got fur, and claws.” Lochlan’s eyes zoomed in just a little. “And much more muscle than before. What happened?”

  “Truthfully, no one is sure just yet. What else do you notice about the second picture?”

  “Looks like he’s running away. Whoever took this caught him mid-stride. He’s got a cut on his foot. Did we get anything from that?”

  “Headquarters has a sample now. Early readings are…”

  “What?”

  “The blood is irradiated.” Khard said. “Sort of, they think. I’ve got a guy in the lab who told me they’re running more tests. Double checking themselves. But so far, they’ve been able to determine that O-Rell was hit with a high dose of radiation.”

  Lochlan turned to look at the last photo, which was also of O-Rell, though obviously from before his transformation. In the picture, O-Rell was standing with his team. O-Rell still had the same team members he was originally partnered with, the team itself a product of pairing software that was at least five versions out of date. O-Rell was stationed in a small city called Choudrant, though, with a population under ten thousand. There was so little crime there that the improper partnering meant very little. The worst O-Rell and his team had ever had to deal with were a few serial bank robbers who had made their way through the area. The other Capes in the picture were people Lochlan wasn’t familiar with at all: a woman named Frikshen, with a Bodymod gene, and a man named Gil, who was an Elementalist. From the write-up that Lochlan had read in his office, it seemed Gil was the clear leader of the three, as he had the strongest Ch05En gene and, by all rights, should have never been paired with O-Rell or Frikshen. Gil was an Elementalist, the name given to Chosen who can control fire, water
, air, or the earth beneath their feet. Gil’s gene was strong enough that he could control all four, though he couldn’t combine them in any meaningful way. It was the one distinction that kept him from becoming a Changer.

  If the team had been founded with a more updated version of the pairing software, Lochlan was certain Gil would have been in a major city somewhere else. The disparity was where Lochlan’s analytical tools were suggesting the cause of any conflict might have stemmed, and before seeing the picture of a very different O-Rell, he imagined that Gil could have been the reason O-Rell had defected. Lochlan assumed that someone so powerful might grow angry with being underutilized, and that Gil had perhaps grown tyrannical.

  Still, looking at the photo of Gil, it was clear the man had a confidence about him that Frikshen and O-Rell didn’t. Frikshen appeared to be normal in the picture, but she could grow calluses at will. Before becoming a Cape, she’d worked in high-temperature environments. Her last job was at a bagel and donut shop. She was leaving work one morning and wound up walking right onto the scene of an active disaster. There was a building on fire and help had yet to arrive. Out of instinct, since temperature had never bothered her before, Frikshen ran inside. She saved eight people before she collapsed from smoke inhalation, not a burn on any part of her body, though some singed hair had been rightfully earned. Lochlan understood she made the paramedics quite frustrated when, in her barely conscious state, they couldn’t puncture her skin to administer fluid. The next morning, Frikshen was brought to a GHS hub for processing and was recruited as a Cape.

  Even though her gene gave her the ability to make it through most situations without harm, and she was possibly capable of withstanding common gunfire, Cape training hadn’t seemed to have made much of an impact on the personality profile that The Control had on file for her. Each of the non-verbal cues Lochlan’s software marked for someone with a lack of confidence was present in the photo–she slouched, her legs were clearly tense like she was fighting back the urge to fidget, her hair was unkempt, and she looked physically uncomfortable smiling. It was like Gil had been in a completely separate photo from Frikshen and O-Rell, or even a different world, and someone had spliced the two images together. Lochlan had to thumb back mentally in his electronic notebook to double check that it was indeed O-Rell who was team leader, but sure enough, that’s what the paperwork said.

  “What will we do first? Question the team?” Lochlan asked.

  “Well, we’ll need to, but I’m not sure we’ll get much. It was the two of them who reported that O-Rell had defected. The photo of O-Rell running away was caught on a local security camera, but they both sent it in to headquarters. Hopefully they’ll at least have an idea on what changed O-Rell’s appearance so drastically.”

  “Do we have any other leads?”

  “No,” Khard replied, sinking into his seat to get comfortable. “Security camera was on a private system, too, so we’ll need to ask around.” Khard pushed the button to recline. Then he reached over and pulled on the curtain hanging behind him, moving it to give them both some privacy before finishing with, “But this’ll be easy. I’m going to catch a nap on the way—mysteries always give me such a headache. Oh, and one more thing,” Khard leaned up a little to peek his head out and share the last bit of information. “There weren’t any teams of Capes sent after O-Rell. This went directly to us.”

  Lochlan had already surmised as much given the timeline. “Do you know why?”

  “Nope.” Khard finally laid fully down, closing his tired eyes.

  Lochlan looked once more at the photo of O-Rell mid run and tried to process it through as many internal scans as he could. The processor attached to his brain worked frantically, the cooling system in his skull overclocked to ensure he didn’t overheat. A few minutes later, he was certain there was nothing more to be gained until arriving and poking around. He glanced at the curtain, then pushed his own button to recline. Sleeping on the way didn’t seem like too bad of an idea at all. He set an alarm to wake up ten minutes before arriving so that he could properly compose himself. It truly was already a mystery, just as Khard had said. The Control had skirted completely the Rule of Three, and they sending an extra Agent than they normally would directly at the Cape who had defected. Lochlan figured if nothing else, his approaching time in Choudrant was going to interesting.

  When he slept, he dreamt of nothing.

  CHAPTER 2—IVY A DECADE LATER

  Oh good, we’re going to talk about us now.

  Not us. We’re going to talk about me now.

  Shortly before Khard and Lochlan were set out on their way to Choudrant to look for O-Rell, I was finishing up my last few weeks as a cadet at the academy for the Global Heroes Society, where new Capes are trained. As happens with so many other people Lochlan meets after their Ch05En gene activates, I was recruited, even as a little girl, to become a Cape. I became a ward of the World Government almost immediately, staying in World-Government-maintained orphanages, switching as I aged out of each one. The houses I stayed in were also my school, where I learned to read, write, and fight. I quickly became very passionate about grappling, once I felt alright being touched again. My test scores usually say that I’m fairly good at it, too.

  Each time I was moved to a new location, there were at least two or three other kids that came with me who had also aged out of that house. When I went to the place I lived before coming to the academy, I actually met back up with two of them. Only one of them was brought to academy at the same time that I was–Hiltrude.

  Hilly and I were close before we were separated at the middle house. She understood that I needed to stay focused if I was ever going to find my brother again. Honestly, her being so set on becoming stronger helped me to keep myself moving towards doing the same. Everyone knows that the strongest Capes basically do whatever they want when they’re not on a mission. I knew that would be the only way I could find my brother.

  When Hilly and I met back up as teens, we tried to be close again, but it didn’t really work. We were both still focused, but it seemed… like our goals were too different. I had hoped whatever was stopping us from being close again would dissolve when we got to the academy, but it had only gotten worse. Even though we shared a living space, and spent most of our days in the same classrooms at the academy, Hilly remained cold and distant.

  For example, long before Lochlan and Khard were on their way to Choudrant, I was finishing up a run. Like most runs, my chest was on fire, my stomach felt like it was going to fall forward right out of my body, and I was seriously lacking for air. I don’t have asthma, at least not any kind a doctor has ever been able to treat with an inhaler. I’m just not good at running. I’ve tried everything I can think of to help alleviate the lag that I feel when running. Nothing has ever made it any easier.

  Hilly’s gene makes her very good at running, and she has to eat a lot before she does. She regularly finishes runs almost twenty minutes before I do and can go five times the distance. To be somewhat fair to me, she’s a Fast One. Her gene isn’t particularly strong—she can only run a little over two hundred and fifty miles an hour—but she has a lot of endurance. And a punch from a fist going that fast is still strong enough to kill most people. If she grabs any kind of weapon, there’s not a lot anybody can do to keep her from taking them out. For a few weeks, I had been looking for little ways that she and I could try to spend time together. She was open to it at first, and then she was busy, and eventually I just gave up and decided I’d spend my downtime reading. My theory is that she lost a little respect for me when she realized I came in last on the runs every time. There was one day where I almost didn’t—they made the guy who can turn his body into stone run with feet made of rock… but he caught up at the end.

  I also gave up on Hilly because, aside from her all but telling me to kick rocks, I wanted to make sure I was paying enough attention to the academy. I had spent a decade waiting to be sent there, so I didn’t want to waste the training,
or worse, flunk out. The latter doesn’t happen often, but it isn’t an impossibility. When you grow up as a ward of the World Government, you get used to people you don’t live with—especially other government officials, warming up to you. There were times as a little girl I could have gotten away with anything. I expected the same sort of thing to happen at the academy, out of instinct or habit, but it didn’t. The Senior Capes don’t do favors and they don’t cut slack. Recruits have to work hard.

  And you’re better for it.

  Yes, that’s what they say.

  That was another reason I wanted Hilly and me to go back to being friends: She was never afraid of the voices in my head. I stopped telling people around age twelve about the specifics of my gene. Even though no one has ever really given me a hard time about it, the people who know… well, it’s hard to describe. It’s like they’re never sure what they can say to me. I don’t know really know, I guess.

  How would you put it?

  They’re afraid of us. Not you, Little One. Just us. But that is to be expected.

  Either way, I don’t tell anyone any more. If the Senior Capes here know, they haven’t let on. Hilly is the only person at the academy who is aware that I don’t just have pretend arguments in my head like everyone else does, but that sometimes I’ve also got someone else weighing in with their opinion.

  We think that new reggae song is excellent.

  I don’t.

  So, this one day, still a while before Lochlan and Khard were making their way to Choudrant, I was struggling to catch up to a man with rocks for feet, about to come up at the five-mile marker. My chest was so tight I could barely move it, and my stomach sloshed around like I had a barrel of beer inside. I only had one more mile to go, but I was almost certain I was going to pass out. What little air was coming in felt like I was sucking it through one of the tiny straws people use to stir their coffee. I’m actually not certain I wasn’t holding my breath for the last half mile at that point, my legs continuing to swing themselves forward out of the momentum I’d built rather than through any conscious action. Some people get a runner’s high, but I just get bloated and dizzy. The Senior Capes were certain that, because I had no identifiable medical reason to be such a terrible runner, I would eventually get better. But after weeks of daily post-lunch runs that mirrored the runs I went on while I was a ward, with literally no improvement, I was starting to think that if I wanted to make it as a Cape, I might need to find something to ride. I thought about replacing my legs, but the voices didn’t like that.