You’ll have to do it, Little One. He’ll recover if you don’t. We can’t hold off the others for much longer.
What do you mean he’ll recover? People can come back from this?
Not others, no. Only those who are like us.
Wait… he’s… you mean he’s like me?
Yes, Little One. He is like us. He is like you.
O-Rell looked up at me as I approached, myself and the monster finally face to face. I held the scalpel out to the side, my body seemingly decided while my mind processed everything. I locked eyes with the monster, determined to do my duty, but stopped short once I was in range. The information I’d just been given froze me in my tracks as it all clicked together. It came to me suddenly.
Rodney?
O-Rell’s eyes opened wide as I called out to the voices, and he snapped out of his delirium, a snarl escaping his lips so suddenly that it jolted me from whatever state I was in. I can’t speak for him, but we both seemed to act on instinct in that moment. He swung wide, much slower than any blow he’d thrown before, his claws aimed for my eyes. It was so slow that I ducked under easily.
Now, Little One! You must do it now!
Then, in one fluid motion, I brought the Agent’s sharp blade across O-Rell’s neck, a river of blood falling from the cut. The monster of a man fell to his side, his hand clutching the wound as more of the deep red liquid fell through his fingers. His eyes softened then as he looked up at me, his breaths accentuated by bubbles while he choked on his own fluids. We connected silently one final time. In a moment that seemed to stretch on forever, the dying man before me gave me the slightest nod before closing his eyes, a tiny smile pulled across his fangs. It was a warrior’s nod, admitting defeat. It was the acceptance of a mission failed, an agreement that it was time to meet your maker. And it was more than that.
It was an answer to a question. Confirmation of the impossible.
Here, in a nowhere town full of the forgotten, a place that should have marked the beginning of a quest for answers proved to be the opposite. Lying dead at my feet was everything I thought I’d never find. An impossible idea, fueled by hope, and destroyed in an instant.
My first proper action as a Cape was to kill my baby brother.
Chief Rainch turned back and looked at me, her face asking me through the pain of her lost arm if it was me who had caused O-Rell to fall. I nodded, knowing it would be impossible for her to truly grasp the depth of the situation, and she laid back, her eyes closing as she stared up at what little stars were out.
Frikshen came running from the GHS house, paying no heed to the pain in her ribs, a blowtorch in one hand and a roll of heavy gauze in the other. She began the process of applying the proper dressings to Gil before he finished bleeding out on the lawn. The Elementalist had already tired of screaming, issuing only a whimper as the flame struck his veins, arteries, and bones. Lochlan had made his way to see to Chief Rainch’s wounds, and Khard had begun hopping over to collect the part of his leg he’d broken off.
A massive pool of blood continued to pour from Rodney… from O-Rell’s throat, turning his silver hair an awful brown color. I stayed where I stood. It was only a few minutes before Gil and Chief Rainch were stable, and to everyone’s surprise, the car I’d arrived in still had power. Khard went and opened one of the doors, then pressed a button on the dash. A short while later, a helicopter landed at the end of the block. Lochlan quickly carried Gil, Chief Rainch, and their three limbs over to the medical team. Khard boarded as well, obviously in need of repair, and Frikshen rode along, not wanting to leave Gil alone. Only Lochlan and I stayed behind.
Lochlan and I watched the helicopter fly away, moving quickly towards a facility with the means to patch everyone back together. We felt the sun beginning to rise behind our backs.
“Well, you made it,” Lochlan said. “Day one of being a Cape is officially over. How do you feel?”
I breathed in deep, properly smelling for the first time the new place I was going to call home. I looked around, from O-Rell’s corpse to the torn-up lawn and broken house, and then at the other dilapidated buildings. I looked back at Lochlan. There was no point in explaining.
“I feel some kind of way, I guess. Mostly like I have a lot of work to do,” I said.
Things moved quickly the following day, with Khard returning by mid-afternoon. Lochlan and I had set up in Chief Rainch’s office—it seemed like the best place to get some work done. It was mostly Lochlan working, the Agent making one call after another, a mixture of calling in favors and issuing orders. Most of the property damage had been fixed before lunch, and the whole city gathered at different spots throughout the day to collect food or other sorely needed items. I had asked Lochlan at one point what the long-term plan was going to be, and he told me to come and sit by him. Chief Rainch’s computer screen was old and covered in dust, but the lesson was easily taught through the grime.
Choudrant had plenty of money.
It had been the lack of a mayor that caused the town to starve. No locally elected officials below that position can access city funding, and Choudrant’s calls for an election had gone unnoticed for so long by the World Government that they’d stopped filing.
“We’ll stay here until Syndi returns, but I think at that point, a quick election might secure Choudrant over the long-term. One of the benefits of having an Agent in town—we can act as an official witness.”
“As in, Chief Rainch would get to be mayor?”
“I have a feeling she’ll run unopposed. It’d give her the ability to do the things she was trying to without having to operate in secret. I’m thinking about sending a few secure emails to some higher ups as well, to tell them about Choudrant’s Station. There’s definitely utility in its design. If Syndi can show someone else how to build it, there might be some real money in that, too.”
“You said whoever was in there could see the whole city, right?”
“Just about.”
“Sounds like a good place for me to post up, then. Not sure I can live with all the dirt in that house the others stay in.”
You would have been fine, we think.
“Then there’s the rest of your answer,” Lochlan said, a wide smile on his face. “I’ll be out of here soon enough and you can settle into the day-to-day with your new team.”
“Will you be going back to the same field office? There must be a mountain of work waiting for you.”
“Actually, I’ve been thinking about something O-Rell said. It has me wondering if there isn’t something better for me to do.”
I might have been concerned by what Lochlan was saying, but my brain was totally fried—I hadn’t gotten any more sleep since arriving. “What do you mean?” I asked as I yawned.
“He made it sound like he was working for someone,” Lochlan said. “There’s got to be something there. Might need to put in a request to form a task force.
“Oh? Yeah, that sounds… I mean, that’s probably a good idea.”
Lochlan smiled. “I’d want you on it, Ivy,” he said.
“But I thought we just said I’d be staying here…?” I asked.
“We were able to make some quick moves today, but those were emergency services. Even with a quick election, it could be a year or more before Syndi is mayor. It’ll take longer than that to get approval for a task force. Plenty of time for you to get enough experience as a Cape, and as a leader of a team, to request a transfer. If you wanted to, that is.”
“Right now, what I want to do is sleep,” I replied. “I’m going to go check one of the holding cells out.” Lochlan laughed. There was a pillow in the cell, but no blanket, and that was alright. The AC didn’t seem to be running in the cell, and the midday heat had returned in full force, making my eyelids even heavier than they already were. It seemed like the best time to get away from Lochlan, who was insistent that I call him Loch. He kept going back to his electronic notebook anyway, sending text messages to someone. I would later find out
it was Reed.
Sleep well, Little One.
I did my best.
The Journal Of Gerald Roupell–Entry #366
It is only with these paternal shackles fixed around my wrists that I realize, for the first time in my life, I am free.
This is my last journal entry. It’s weird to write that down—to look at the words as they string themselves along the page, letters appearing with each press of my fingers. The habit of writing is the only good thing I took with me after I left the Global Heroes Society behind.
Finding Ven had proven harder than I’d anticipated. She had gotten herself placed onto a team with Secret status, her missions sensitive in nature. The woman I loved had become a spy. Ridiculous—to me at least—that spies were still required in a world centralized underneath a singular government. I spent six months traveling around countries with names I’d never be able to properly pronounce, catching the first flight before my identification was flagged and bumming rides where I could from locals after that. I burned through all of my credits in the first four weeks, and I started doing odd jobs just to get by. It was the food that did me in.
I couldn’t get enough of it.
And I couldn’t make enough money not to starve to death. The body of a Strongman doesn’t work like the average person’s. So, I did what anyone else in my position would have done, and gave up.
Returning home was difficult. I’d never had to sneak onto a commercial airplane before, but I made it work. Having the strength to pull myself up along the wheels and into the bottom of the plane definitely helped, as did my natural warmth in the cold space underneath the plane’s passenger area. I chipped a tooth when the plane landed. The wheels hitting the ground did nothing to wake me from the slumber I’d fallen into, leaving me to land face-first on the runway when the plane touched down. The air back home is burnt—that’s the only way I know to describe it, a miasma that clings to every inch of the city, harsh with each breath and utterly inescapable.
Finding work worth real credits proved to be much easier at home than it was abroad. I had beaten up enough of the right people as a Cape that I knew exactly who to talk to. Though I will say that I was surprised to see such strict methodology when it comes to forming a team of Freelancers. I hadn’t expected to have to try out, or to take a written test. Can’t say that I blame them for the latter, of course. If you’re going to break the rules with a team, it’s a good idea to feel secure that they’re competent.
Less than a week after I’d returned, I had a new outfit, a new place to live, and a new moniker. I was Base, Strongman and Freelancer in a group called Totem. The other men were okay-enough fellows, as far as criminals were concerned. But my time as a Freelancer is not what I want to talk about in my last entry ever into this journal.
I want to talk about Cosimia—the woman who cleaned our apartment. She was a humble woman, quite homely, and she had grown up in a level of poverty where child mortality rates run rampant. The simple fact that she had survived her adolescence spoke volumes about her strength of will, and I don’t believe any member of Totem was surprised when, after only a few months of cleaning up after us, she had decided she would move in, upgrading herself from casual cleaner to full-time maid. She did more than clean our space, cooking delicious meals from the first night her suitcase landed on the other side of our front door. She had a dinner ritual that, through what I now believe was clever design, would have the four of us on the edge of our seats for the meal to come.
Cosimia refused to cook anything quickly. She could scramble an egg for an hour and it would be the fluffiest, most delicious omelet you’d ever eaten. Each night when she began to cook, she would light a small cigarillo, smoking it a millimeter at a time on our balcony, coming back inside in between puffs to stir or fluff or flip her food. The cigarillos were sweet, the smoke much different than the stench the city was drenched in. Their aroma a welcome reprieve from the normal air we breathed. And all the while, with each slow puff of the sweet stick in her mouth, we would become more and more invested in the dinner she was cooking. She never called us when the food was ready; we simply waited for the sound of her throwing her cigarillo away, its tightly rolled base smacking hard against the metal side of the bin. Each night, as her small cigar hit the trash can, dinner would be ready.
Before long, Cosimia began to remind me of my mother, and thus, remind me of Ven. Whatever biological process occurs, whatever switch flips in the male brain, it happened after a few months of enjoying a spotless apartment and delicious dinners—after many long conversations outside on our patio, staring out at the lights of the city from the fifty-fifth floor of the building we called home.
I remember the exact moment things changed, many nights after Cosimia had shared the most intimate details of her youth with me, long after we’d become comfortable enough to sit in silence.
It was a January evening, and snow had just begun to fall. Cosimia sat still at first, continuing to look out at the city, the chills only settling in after the snow had blanketed nearly everything we saw. I heard her chair scratch against the floor of the balcony, and looked over as she leaned herself into me for warmth. When I looked down to make sure she was comfortable, she had already fallen asleep.
We started sharing a room in February.
She was pregnant by May.
Eight weeks after the damage was done, as the new life inside of Cosimia was quickly becoming something more than a nest of cells stuck to her uterine walls, Totem took a job that would yield our largest payout ever.
I’m talking, of course, about The Gun.
Even though I grew up in a world with amazing things, full of people, including myself, with spectacular abilities, I doubted that such a thing as The Gun could exist. CRISPR was something I had heard of, and I knew that means to manipulate genes was readily accessible. One of the other men in Totem had told us a story once about how he’d messed with the programmable transcription factors in a chicken embryo to turn it into something that looked much different than its mother. But my understanding of the whole thing was very minimal. When we were told that we were being hired to steal something that could, in real time, alter the genes of a living organism with near-perfect accuracy, it seemed too good to be true.
And yet, there it was, exactly where the people who had hired us said it would be. We were almost stopped when we fled the building that night. Hunter and the younger Capes I called his Green Team had shown up. These kids with Hunter were so poorly trained, the one with the little marbles nearly broke The Gun as we carried it away. Hunter fought so hard that night. If there’s anyone who was born to be a Cape, it was that man. Whatever gene he’s got inside of him, I’m comfortable saying now, it was frightening.
I’d never told anyone, but by that point, he and I had fought so many times that I wasn’t even trying to hit him anymore. It was all I could do just to keep him away from me; his batons always seeming to strike their mark, which was so often the side of my head. We managed to escape, eventually. It was a hard-earned retreat, and our prize was secure when we stepped back into our apartment. We were at the drop point the next day, standing with the new case that held The Gun and waiting for the credits to be deposited into our group account. They never came, and after a few hours of sitting on a chilly park bench, the four of us went home.
Five weeks later, Cosimia had started to show, the bump in her midsection undeniable, and her legs and face already beginning to plump as well. It was fate, Cosimia had said to me, tears in her eyes. The store had run out of her cigarillos weeks before that night. She only drank when she smoked, so she hadn’t been doing that either. To her, the universe knew we were meant to stay together, to bring a child into the world.
I disagreed.
Five weeks was long enough that we had experimented with The Gun. According to the only one of us actually familiar with gene alteration, it didn’t operate in a way that made objective sense, like when he’d experimented with CRISPR in his
garage years earlier. The jargon proved too much for me after only a few moments, but his explanation was ultimately clear.
There were three small chambers on the handle of The Gun. The first was for blood, which The Gun used to identify the genes you wished to alter. The second chamber was for The Gun’s special liquid, which made everything possible. The third chamber was still a bit of a mystery to us at that point, but we had figured out that whatever was placed inside of it directly affected the genes we attempted to alter. We had gotten more chicken embryos, and had placed a grape inside of the third chamber when targeting the genes that controlled the formation of the chicken’s feet. The egg never hatched, and there was a monstrosity waiting for us inside only a few days later when we cracked the shell: to see a small chick with vines for legs.
I had collected the blood sample easily. Cosimia was prone to nosebleeds—she seemed to get one every day. It only took a moment for The Gun to distinguish between her cells and the baby’s. We were running low on liquid, but had more than enough for what I wanted to do. To keep things easy, I had scraped some of the mold from the corner of the shower and placed it in the third chamber. The bump grew larger as I waited for the perfect time to prick Cosimia with The Gun—she was nearly thirty weeks pregnant before I was home at a time when she was asleep. More work had started coming in, and Totem was stuck on overnight jobs for so many nights in a row that I lost count. Then, finally, the time was right, and I pricked Cosimia, The Gun targeting the small lifeform inside. She was completely asleep, unaware of what I’d done, or that when the baby was due it’d likely slip out of her with little effort. My mind’s eye envisioned something even more gruesome than the tiny chick from before. This was my way of solving the problem that the baby created.
Turn it into something else and be done with it.
Instead, Cosimia got sick. The sickness came slowly, manifesting first as a cough and then, weeks later, as something much worse. I watched the best maid on the planet die at the hospital, nurses ushering me out of the room so that the surgeon could step in and try to save the baby. One of the nurses slapped me when I told her not to bother. She hurt her hand more than my face, and apologized. I just walked away.
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