Ivy

by William Dickstein

The notebook had asked him about the notes he had on recruiting Reed, as it often had before he’d stopped taking notes in the field; the software designed not just to target older notes for deletion, but also notes it had on record as having already been transferred elsewhere as well. Lochlan liked to keep the notes on his personal notebook because the notebook almost never left his side, and when he began to wonder whether or not he was calling upon the memory with accurate levels of detail, he could refer to his notes and prove himself to be correct. Lochlan hadn’t thought about Reed since he’d arrived in Choudrant, where he had become so totally taken away from the norm and his regular activities. Even though it had only been a little over a day since he’d left, he was already worried he wasn’t remembering the subtle colors of the mountains correctly, and that he might be forgetting about a prominent mole he’d spied somewhere on Reed’s smooth skin.

  After selecting a much less important set of notes for deletion, he combed back through the words he’d written on Reed as he walked, paying little attention to the world around him. He was quickly glad that he did, re-reading what was probably his favorite exchange with the woman, which had actually been a conversation he and Reed ended up having with one of the aides who had been out with Lochlan during collection.

  Aides aren’t a standard offering any more, since the program was originally designed as a way for underprivileged children in poverty-stricken areas to find entry-level World Government positions. The program lasted about a year, and Lochlan had gone through two separate aides over that period of time—Lyssa and Erich. He’d had Erich until funding ran out and wasn’t renewed, his recruitment of Reed one of the last excursions Lochlan and Erich had gone on together. As an aide, Erich’s job had primarily been to drive Lochlan around—self-driving vehicles weren’t quite standard-issue at that time. Erich had learned to pilot a helicopter for the position, simulation software back then just as good as it is now, but had gained notoriety among the other aides in his region for having remarkably shaky landings. Lochlan will say that he never minded, but I think when he mentions that he’s just trying to be nice.

  We agree. Lochlan speaks very fondly of Erich.

  Yeah, seems like they got to be pretty close.

  The exchange between the three of them in Lochlan’s notes started at the landing.

  “That was a bit rough,” Reed said.

  “Pretty normal,” Lochlan replied. “But even if Erich always lets us down hastily, he hasn’t failed us yet!” Lochlan smiled, a big proponent of puns back then before his upgraded mood module had made them less appealing.

  Reed snickered, and Erich offered a quick, “Yeah, you can feel free to drive next time,” to no one in particular.

  “Oh, you did fine, Erich,” Reed broke in. “Much better than I could have done, anyway. After the day I’ve had, I was really ready to crash, you know? But this is good. I’m thinking I’ll just wobble the whole way to bed before I touch down for the night.”

  Erich turned to Reed as he opened the door to the recruitment hub, his fingers rubbing the bridge of his nose as he mumbled to himself. He looked up at Lochlan as he entered, searching for something.

  “What?” Lochlan asked his aide.

  “Nothing. Just wonderin’ how you managed to find a Cape who is as goofy as you. I thought they only made one of you, man. Now I gotta deal with another?”

  “Oh, Erich,” Lochlan replied, stepping to the side as Reed walked back to listen. “You’ll miss me when I’m gone. I just know it.”

  “I can definitely tell he will,” Reed piped in.

  “You think so?” Erich asked.

  “Absolutely,” Reed fired back. “You can’t picture it?”

  “Not really,” Erich said flatly.

  “Let me help: Envision the opposite of what you did with that wind shear on the way down. It’ll be like that.” Reed smiled, confident in her ability to play with Erich in spite of having just met him. She looked to Lochlan, still wearing the smile, and the Agent couldn’t hold it in.

  Lochlan burst out with laughter, his old mood module no match for the times he felt pure joy. “Oh snap!” he yelled. “She burned you almost as badly as we may burn to death on one of your landings!” With that, even Erich began to laugh.

  “You guys are terrible,” the aide said that day with a smile on his face.

  Lochlan came to the end of his third time reading over the conversation as the Agents stepped on to the high point of a ridge. The younger Agent waited for Khard to catch up, and the two of them surveyed the area, seeing the field of flowers in the light of the moon, the colors just as beautiful in the still of night. The Agents stepped over and started their descent, the grass going from brown to a healthy shade of green, the rows of carefully cultivated flowers beginning as they reached the bottom.

  It was Lochlan who spotted him first.

  A hundred yards or so away, coming from the opposite direction, was a shambling form covered in matted fur. Lochlan’s enhanced vision focused on the face of the form to see that it was a bloated and busted-up O-Rell who was making his way to the Halley’s residence. Lochlan could see that most of the man’s claws were missing, surmising that the natural weapons had likely fallen out of their sockets. O-Rell looked like he was ready to burst from radiation poisoning—as if the man’s body was attacking so much of itself that it was ready to explode from the effort.

  Khard quickly caught up to Lochlan, and the Agents walked in unison, their steps falling into line. They each prepared for the confrontation, Lochlan touching special places on his body, activating custom modifications in various locations on his mechanic limbs as Khard began to do the same. Lochlan could hear Khard’s legs become powered up once again, and in the quiet that had taken hold of the field, he sensed the swishing of a liquid coming from the older Agent. Apparently, the reservoir of caustic substance had filled itself back up inside of Khard since leaving the warehouse. Lochlan eyed O-Rell as he and Khard grew closer, the broken Specian seeming to appear worse by the second.

  Khard called out to O-Rell. The Specian turned to face the Agents, patches of fur falling to the ground with the movement like feathers bursting free from a pillow to float down in a manner that made them seem slowed by the tension in the air. The Agents stopped walking when O-Rell turned, both of the mechanical men ready for whatever the shambling Cape was going to do. Khard thought at that moment that O-Rell was going to run.

  But he didn’t.

  I’m getting to that!

  O-Rell took two steps forward and the Agents positioned themselves to deal with whatever attack was coming. Khard had his favored leg ready to deflect or riposte a frontal assault from the Specian. O-Rell swayed on his feet, a large boil on his face bubbling to the surface and then quickly popping, the yellow liquid inside dribbling freely down O-Rell’s cheek.

  Lochlan relaxed then, instinctually taking a step forward, understanding he had misread the situation. Khard seemed to relax as well, and called out again to the walking corpse of a Cape.

  O-Rell called back to Khard with an animalistic grunt, showing great effort in forcing the air through his vocal cords as he leaned forward to get the sound out of his mouth. O-Rell’s voice cracked as he yelled back, his throat in worse shape than either of the Agents could see. Lochlan looked over at Khard, and the older Agent motioned with a quick nod of his head for Lochlan to follow, the two of them making their way to O-Rell. The man clearly needed help before he could give either of them any answers. Lochlan switched on some of his internal devices as he stepped forward, sweeping the area of harmful substances and radiation. Even from a distance, the younger Agent could tell that O-Rell was highly radioactive; Lochlan’s readings measured the man to have enough radiation coming from him that he shouldn’t have been able to function at all. O-Rell was a public hazard at that point, radioactive enough to harm anyone around him who wasn’t wearing a suit or mostly made of non-organic material.

  A small compartment on Lochlan’s shoulder p
opped open and he pulled out a collapsible stretcher. The new car they had called would be arriving soon. Lochlan figured that he and Khard would need to get O-Rell somewhere with the right medication to ease the man’s suffering and, if he could find the strength, tell the Agents the things they needed to know for their post-mission reports. If O-Rell could survive another few hours, Lochlan expected that he and Khard could have their reports written and sent to headquarters, and then both of them would be on their way back to what was familiar before the end of the next day. O-Rell stepped back to catch his balance as Lochlan drew close enough to reach out to him, and Khard hopped forward to catch the falling Cape.

  As Khard’s hands touched O-Rell’s skin, they pulled away little tufts of fur for the effort. The fur was slimy, covered in the pus of previously popped boils, and stuck to the Agent’s skin in spite of his soft touch. Khard tried to pull away as gently as possible, but O-Rell shifted on his feet as the fur released itself from his body, O-Rell practically falling onto Khard. Khard kept his footing, catching O-Rell when oversized man lost his balance completely, and the Agents could hear some of the brittle bones inside of O-Rell’s body snap under the weight of themselves. Lochlan tried his best to help the situation, tossing the stretcher into position so that the Agents could lay O-Rell down onto it and carry the broken man back to the road. It wasn’t much longer at all before the car would be there, maybe a little over ten minutes.

  As Lochlan and Khard turned O-Rell over, the Cape coughed, sitting up to force whatever had caused the fit out of his body, spraying blood each time he opened his mouth. The arms of Khard’s suit were quickly colored with O-Rell’s uniquely tinted internal fluid, and O-Rell rapidly lost the strength to continue, his body convulsing on top of the stretcher on the ground as he began to suffocate.

  Khard worked fast as O-Rell’s pallor turned from bright red to a much deeper shade, making its way toward a blue that looked truly strange underneath the patches of fur on the man’s face. O-Rell’s pronounced brow began to recede as well, and his entire structure audibly changed in the areas that the Agent’s couldn’t see, as if he were reverting back to the state he had been in when his Ch05En gene had activated. Khard had his fingers inside of O-Rell’s mouth, the mechanical appendages working to open O-Rell’s airway manually, but the man’s throat simply wouldn’t budge. Khard had a breathing tube ready, but he couldn’t gain any purchase as he tried desperately to separate O-Rell’s trachea from itself.

  Lochlan flipped back the top of his index finger, revealing a sharpened scalpel underneath. The younger agent weaved his hand in between Khard’s arms and made a small incision in the middle of O-Rell’s neck. Then, his middle finger flipped back to reveal a hard tube small enough to fit inside of the wound. Lochlan placed the tube inside of the open hole he’d just cut, expecting to hear the sound of air entering the Cape’s lungs. Whatever liquid O-Rell had been trying to cough out of himself began to bubble up the straw, something appearing to be a mixture of pus and other bodily fluids working into a flow from the top of the straw. Khard pushed on O-Rell’s stomach to force more of the liquid from the dying man’s body as O-Rell’s skin fully embraced the dark blues and purples of asphyxiation. The liquid ceased its flow and O-Rell’s body began to shut down, more of whatever mixture of things was inside of him still needing to come out before O-Rell could breathe. Khard got up and lifted O-Rell by his ankles—a maneuver he was hoping would cause gravity to finish the work for them. The puss and blood began to flow anew, and Lochlan attempted to press on O-Rell’s stomach some more, although the small tube he had placed inside of O-Rell became dislodged on the third press. Lochlan popped another tube from his finger and attempted to place it back inside of the hole he had carved in O-Rell’s throat, but was met with a torrent of the radioactive liquid as he did, the substance flowing with much greater intensity than it had been before. O-Rell’s eyes popped open and his frail, bloated body kicked itself free of Khard’s grip, the Cape immediately back to his feet after landing on his back. O-Rell stepped away from the Agents, who were stunned at the sudden burst of energy from the dying man, and he turned to face them both.

  Lochlan looked directly into O-Rell’s eyes as they changed from the scared, practically crazed state they had been in to become calm and intelligent once more. The liquid inside of him continued to flow from his neck and O-Rell turned away from the Agents. The misshapen Cape ducked down onto all fours as his spine cracked into a position that would allow him to run as a quadruped. Lochlan and Khard stepped forward simultaneously, but it wasn’t enough, and O-Rell dug what claws he had into the earth, then zoomed away from the Agents.

  “What the hell!” Khard screamed as his powered legs jumped him forward. He flew far enough and fast enough that he nearly caught the Specian, landing in a spot that would have been on top of O-Rell if the running Cape hadn’t taken a hard cut in his sprint. Lochlan looked on as Khard tried one more time, failing again to catch O-Rell as the man ran away on all fours, the older Agent crashing down on top of a row of plants with bright blue petals.

  Lochlan wiped the sweat from his forehead—it was going to be a hell of a report.

  And the mystery continued.

  CHAPTER 6—IVY AT TESTING

  Even though my rib had healed much quicker than expected, the policy at the academy kept me on bed rest an extra week. We were approaching graduation and I hadn’t managed to do much of anything. The thought of being unable to train made me physically ill.

  Everyone’s exit exam is a little different. The Global Heroes Society has a few standards they like to ensure new Capes can hold themselves to, but with nearly every recruit having different abilities and focuses, individualized testing is the only real way to ensure proficiency. That’s what they tell us, anyway.

  I’d begun to go a little stir-crazy, taking my chance more than once on trying to escape from the hospital wing so that I could train, especially during the middle of the night. I had tried to get a run in twice and was caught both times by the nurse who, by my estimate, never sleeps.

  Maybe that’s why she’s so mad.

  Mad is exactly the word I’d use.

  With so little else to do while working through recovery, I’d managed to read nearly every report that I had been keeping in my room; Tristan had been kind enough to bring them over to me in between sessions spent working on his device. At first I read through the archives of the Senior Capes, working my way through Hunter and Fibre’s sometimes combined histories. This became difficult to do the farther back I went, especially for Fibre. I think it was because the system the GHS had used had a massive switch at some point, where all of the records were transferred to a new physical and digital location. The few missions of Fibre’s that were available were so full of intrigue and deception that it felt more like reading a spy novel than a mission report, and I was thankful for the departure from the dull reality around me. When that came to an end as the available missions evaporated, the dullness of my situation caused each passing minute to hit me full force, not a single second escaping my attention. If time flies by on some occasions, it was dead on the floor as I sat in the recovery room.

  Hilly came to see me at one point, early on. She didn’t apologize, but she was nice. It had felt like she and I were going to have the conversation where we both talk about how dumb things had been since arriving, but we didn’t. She came, we talked about the mission reports, and then she left. Tristan mentioned how hard she’d been training, running at least a state over as quickly as possible each afternoon. Her time was good, from what I heard—a respectable speed. I had no doubt she’d graduate and find a good team to be on.

  Tristan brought his device by at one point as well. He had built this sort-of-metal, sort-of-hard plastic headband with about a million wires flying in every direction from three points on the back of it. A lot of the wires led right back into the device, which I thought was strange. There were four little pads on the device that Tristan hooked up to differen
t parts of my head and neck. He had the headband plugged into an electronic notebook as it was on my head, and he asked me to speak with the voices.

  We talked about the bed. You hated being there, even though we thought it was okay.

  We did. He’d said to talk about whatever.

  I could feel the little pads on the back of my neck vibrate as the voices and I spoke to each other, but I couldn’t see his electronic notebook. Twice he had me take the headband off so that he could open it and tinker around some. That was the first time I had ever seen Tristan actually work on something, a show I was thankful to have keeping me from the boredom. Tristan’s hands moved almost as fast as Hilly’s feet when he worked, his portable workbench propping up from the floor each time he was ready to change something with the device. He was very fluid as he worked as well, creating visual ripples that followed his hands moved too quickly for my eyes to follow. At one point during testing, he had added so many additional parts to the headband that some of them swung over in front of my eyes—the device felt like it weighed twenty pounds or more as I put it back on. He laughed at the readings that time, shaking his head at a normal pace as his hands darted around like little hummingbirds, which created an almost dizzying effect. He stayed with me about two hours, his company more than welcome, before he decided he had gathered enough data. The time in between visits quickly turned into days and I grew somewhat anxious waiting for him to come back. I asked the nurse if there was something keeping people away, maybe a surprise week of intense physical drills, but she wasn’t much help with her permanently bloodshot eyes and otherwise angry disposition. She snapped at me the second time I asked her, and was loud enough to give the voices a cause for concern.

  Some people hit when they yell.

  The nurse was fine, of course. I made sure the voices didn’t do anything. But it was a good opportunity for me to try and ask them what they were planning on doing. At least, I thought it was, somehow figuring that even though we’d had the conversation many times before, their answers would be different.