by P. S. Power
Carl nodded.
“I’ll be here, then. Oh, I’m Carlton, by the way.” He waved a bit, at everyone, though the insect woman chittered at him a bit. It was, he thought, a giggle.
“Gift. We know who you are. You’re really going to help though? That’s cool of you. See you then. Oh! I’m Grasshopper.” She said it like it was her given name. It fit, and he didn’t think he’s confuse her for someone else with a similar name any time soon.
“Nice to meet you, Grasshopper.” Then he took his tray, followed by Pam a few moments later. Everyone else followed her, settling around her as if she were in charge. Which wasn’t totally wrong.
The trick there was that he doubted she understood what was going on that way. Their little group had a total of one person who could be called a leader. That she was a seventeen-year-old blonde girl was interesting, but didn’t make it less true.
There were eggs, all of them scrambled that day, sausages, sliced fruit and pancakes. They had syrup and what seemed to be heated strawberry jam, as well as melted butter to go with it. The food was decent, actually. Not inspired, perhaps, but it was not worse than what the Army had fed him when they’d held him against his will for all that time.
Pam stopped talking about him working with her, and just looked around, carefully. There were about sixty or seventy people there that morning, with a few more trickling into the open space as they sat and ate. Across the room, moving almost as a group, Nero, Mindy, Complex and Seven all came in. They got food, and then, interestingly enough, moved to sit at the same long table that their group was at. Not at the other end, either. Nero moved directly next to Pam and on the far side of himself, Mindy settled.
She wasn’t old, or at least didn’t look it. She also didn’t seem like she belonged there at all. Really, if he had to guess, he would have placed her as being in her late twenties. Maybe a very well presented thirty-something. Her hair was well done and she looked very highly made up that day. Mindy normally did, of course.
Glancing at him, the woman shrugged.
“Gift. We have a problem and were wondering if you and your friends would help us with it?”
Pam blinked and looked past Carl toward the lady.
“What do you have in mind? We’ve all been contributing our share and more, haven’t we?”
Carl knew that wasn’t the case, really, Pam pulled her weight, but the rest of them kind of sat around inside, maybe walking from place to place, talking to friends. That wasn’t the same as actually doing anything important.
Dan did more than that, of course. He didn’t get a choice, most of the time. Hopefully Carlton could use the new list to change that a bit, now that they had such a thing.
Everyone looked at Mindy then, since she was kind of compelling. That, the unnatural attraction everyone felt for her was a big portion of why she was in charge there. Yes, they had a group, but she was the leader of the Underground.
Which meant that they were probably going to be helping with whatever it was she wanted, if they were asked. It wasn’t like being commanded to do things, but you kind of really wanted to help her out, if she bothered to speak to you. Plus, she was good looking enough that most people kind of wanted her to like them.
When she spoke, the words were a bit strange.
“There’s an attack coming, and we were hoping that you’d help us prevent it. If you’re willing to. We can win the battle, but it would be better if we didn’t have to.”
After a moment, he nodded, so did Pam and oddly, C. C.
The girl, the younger one who looked to be about fifteen, spoke first.
“What can we do? I can make some pretty rocks, if that will help buy them off, so they go away?” That was her power, after all. Making gems of various types. Though Carlton was almost certain that she could produce more than that, if she were guided correctly. It wasn’t a biological process after all. She was good with gems, but did any type, including cut stones and opals. Pearls even, which weren’t gems at all.
What stayed the same was that she never made a lot at any one time. No more than a few ounces worth of rocks at any one time.
Seven looked at the cute girl and nodded.
“Thank you, C. C. We were hoping that Gift would be willing to invest one of us with the power to control minds, so that we can simply have them leave. They’re government, so if we’re clever enough with it, that might be enough, at least for the day.”
Pam laughed then. It wasn’t gentle sounding or kind.
“Here we were just planning to get a buttload of cash in for us all. I guess we can try that tomorrow, if you want Gift? Or we can tell these jag offs to go pump themselves in the corner? Whatever works for you.” She seemed to mean it, even if telling the man she was literally sitting inside of to do anything of the sort was probably a poor plan. Even if he just complied with her. Maybe especially then.
Carl shrugged.
“We can do that. We need to go over the wording first. People tend to get sloppy and if we do this right, it should be a lot more effective than just giving one of you unfamiliar mind powers.” He felt a bit nervous, because, while he knew how his powers worked, more or less, almost no one else had ever really used them very well.
If he showed them how and one of the people there turned on him, he might never be free again.
Chapter three- Nero
Mindy, using her power to influence Gift was making his skin crawl. The woman was pretty, on a level that could be distracting to a lot of people. It was in a normal way, but she always made an effort to look good, which was probably enough to get attention, even in the outer world. She also clearly had a real power that allowed her to influence the others. For some reason that didn’t work on Nero. A thing he guessed was due to how he saw the world. His eyes didn’t pick up visible light. Instead he saw things in x-rays, and even microwaves. It meant that his vision wasn’t as good as most people, since the world seemed dim and colorless to him.
It also meant that people using light-based abilities on him seemed very different to his perspective.
Mindy was pulling out the stops at the moment, trying to get one of their people to help out. The problem he had with that wasn’t her using her power, but in how she was doing it. Hitting the poor man instantly, instead of just asking first. The goal was to protect them all. A thing that Gift was probably going to be willing to do, if he could.
The man was a good guy, as far as Nero had ever noticed.
Instead of speaking up, he just sat there, even after Pam-Pam and Gift fell into line. The others around them, including Complex and Seven did the same thing, nodding along as if the very best idea in the world was going to be whatever Mindy suggested at the moment. The problem with that was, simply, that the woman was, at best, a rather normal person when it came to intelligence. Her plans tended to be filtered through her overconfidence however, which was her first mode, he thought.
He’d known her long enough to pick that one up. Nearly three years. At first, she’d seemed angry all the time, but that had mellowed a lot, over time. Now she just seemed a bit ego driven. As if she could do no wrong.
Their leader stood up, touching Gift on the shoulder to steady herself, as if she and the other man were fast friends, instead of virtual strangers. Then moved away, leaving her half-eaten tray of food in place, for one of the others to take care of. As if they were her servants. Again, he didn’t mention it while she was in ear shot. She wasn’t evil, but once you understood she was influencing what everyone thought of her and her ideas, it was kind of clear that the lady was massively entitled.
He turned to look at the others, his glowing white eyes taking in each of them as they all subtly turned to watch Mindy walk away. To be fair, Clover and Dan were probably just checking out her behind, which wasn’t a horrible view. The others had more of a feeling of hero worship in their gaze. He thought so at least, until Gift spoke, his voice cheerful.
“Well, she was working us pretty hard ther
e, wasn’t she? Still, I don’t have a better plan. At least she wasn’t trying to get us to kill, yet.” The words weren’t dismal or even sad. Really, the man just seemed calm about the whole thing.
A few of the others gave the pudgy fellow baffled looks. Especially C. C., who seemed as if her head was about to fall off for a moment, due to the motion.
Nero nodded.
“I’d noticed that, myself. She doesn’t affect me, for some reason. You as well, Gift?”
The man blinked a few times, then shook his head.
“No. I can feel her doing it and then think past things, later, but her power works with me, pretty strongly. What I don’t get is why bother? I mean, is she working on something else? To use me for her own purposes? There’s no reason to use her powers to get me to help out everyone like this.”
Nero kept his voice smooth and cultured sounding. That was important to him. Early on, when he was younger, he’d tried to do that sort of thing, so that he wouldn’t sound like he was from the hood. More than once he’d taken a beating for doing that. Acting white hadn’t been a popular trait where he’d grown up. When he’d popped Infected, at nineteen, his attempts to speak and act as a cultured person would had ramped up to a level that truly sold the role he was playing. Except for the all black skin and slightly glowing white eyes. He’d been a bit dark skinned before, but now he actually drank light from the world around himself. At least that was what others claimed. He looked vaguely gray to his own eyes. Then, it wasn’t as if he could see himself in most mirrors to check on the idea.
Those reflected visible light, after all. The normal light that regular people used. He did it differently, meaning they didn’t work for him correctly. Other things acted to reflect what he saw, so it wasn’t impossible, in theory. He just didn’t have the means to make a mirror that would work for him. Not at the moment.
No one had ever screamed and run from him, so he figured that he looked good enough. He wasn’t ever going to be hiding that he was Infected, of course.
Still, thinking about what Gift had said, he shook his head.
“You know, I don’t think so? It’s heavy handed of her, but I think she’s just worried you won’t want to help. I can’t see any reason for that, but you two don’t know each other well.” Honestly Nero didn’t know that to be totally true. He thought it was the way of things, but he mainly worked the night shift. They could be friendly, only meeting during the day, when he wouldn’t see it, normally.
Gift just sat for a bit, then nodded, his glasses flat and opaque in the gray of the world around them.
His words were gentle, though.
“That’s just true, of course. I tend not to think that women will want to be around me. My power added the padding here and…” He stopped and then sighed. “My wife divorced me after that. She literally took one look at the artificial gut, plus the lack of hair up top and was out of there. I hate to say it, but that really got to me. I tend to assume that all women will kind of feel the same way, now. It’s not fair of me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel that way, you know?”
He nodded, since it wasn’t that odd of a story, really. Nero had simply not bothered trying to meet women, after the first few years. It was, probably, harder for the men, but a lot of the more exotic ladies there in the Underground had the same basic problems in life. Having a sparkling personality wasn’t enough to win even other Infected people over, for a lot of individuals.
Still, stewing on such things aided no one. Nero got back on task, smiling genially at the others there.
Pam-Pam didn’t.
“Fu-…” She glanced at C. C. and cleared her throat halfway through the word. “Fudge! She was mind tricking us? I didn’t know that was a thing she could do at all. I just went along with it, too, didn’t I? That’s… Pretty screwed up.” She was pissed by the act, of course.
Dan, sitting across the long white table, a thing that would have looked at place in a high school cafeteria, seeming almost like a normie, smiled.
“I didn’t notice it either. I should get one of you to order me not to be influenced by that kind of thing. Except that it won’t undo my mode and power, so I’m stuck that way.” He shrugged, then kept eating, since no one had told him not to.
Everyone else seemed more or less fine with what was going on, though Seven, looking like an older man at the moment, instead of one of the others he or she could be at any given time, winked toward Gift. He was down the table, so had to catch his eye first, to make it work.
“The question then is, are you still in to help us? The attack coming, well, it’s more of a raid. Police, we think. Not IPB, thankfully. We can probably hide well enough, or even fight, but if we do that too well…”
Pam-Pam growled then.
“No shit. If we kick their asses too hard, then the big guns get brought in. We can’t take out even the c-team that the government would bring in. I don’t know who it would be, in that case, but the only hope we have would be running, if that ever happens.” Her face was hard in its expression. Her hair was light gray, as was her face, probably meaning she was white. Maybe Hispanic.
That was fine, since he wasn’t a racist. Pam-Pam and her work had been a good part of keeping them all going, on more than one occasion. There had been several months, not long before, when most of the food that they’d collected had come directly from the funds she’d provided for them. To his mind that meant she was one of the inner crew there.
Even Complex thought that. No one knew how Seven was going to role at any given point, being different people like they were. That part was interesting, since as far as Nero knew, they’d started out as Seven different people, when one of them had popped and absorbed the other six. They simply traded out, at random, now. Interestingly, they’d all agreed to be called Seven, instead of using their old names.
It made them easier to deal with.
He agreed with Pam-Pam though, and let his eyes narrow a bit at he turned to look at her.
“I know. We all do. Pod came up with the information about the attack, last night, so the data is solid. It isn’t them. The Feds. Just the local PD, coming at us to harass us. They don’t even have a reason for it, other than that their beat cops refuse to come into the zone to hunt us. I don’t have a better plan than getting them to not come, either. Anyone else have anything?”
He didn’t expect much from them, being people who tended to just hang out, most of the time, except for Pam-Pam. Interestingly, Gift nodded.
“I have some thoughts? When I was in Iraq, one of my handlers there, the first one, set himself up with a good area denial power using his daily wish, once. Instead of controlling minds, it just made it so that the jihadis couldn’t really find the protected area. They didn’t even think of it as an attack, it was like the whole place just wasn’t there. The thing is, it didn’t seem like an attack or powers being used on them at all. If I write up what he said at the time, one of you could do the same thing? It won’t take direct mental control, which is what I think Mindy means to do. Is that…” The other man waited, as if he needed permission to use his powers that way.
Complex, finally, rubbed at his bearded face and huffed a bit.
“Yeah. That sounds good, really. Can we add in something about not blaming us for it? The Police get touchy when you use powers on them. We don’t want them coming back harder every three days or anything.”
Nero noticed that Gift smiled then, and nodded as if trying to catch attention.
“We can do that. Really, as long as the wish is worded correctly, there’s a lot we can do that way. We need to write that out, first. My power isn’t exactly a lawyer, but if you want specific things to happen you have to suggest them. So far no one has ever gotten too complex that way. Then, most people just grab me and say a few words. I want a car, or a million dollars. That pretty much doesn’t really work.”
Nero thought he understood what was going on then. Gift was, rather politely, informing them that
they’d been using him incorrectly. His power didn’t allow him to use it himself, so he needed a good partner or two who could operate his abilities in a more efficient fashion. So far, none of the command group had even suggested that these others needed to work for them in particular. Not until Mindy had done so that morning. That was about desperation though, not greed.
In general, it was a good thing there when people were willing to help out. A lot of them really couldn’t manage it though. When that took place, no one rode them very hard about the idea. Interestingly, Gift seemed to be in with them, even after figuring out that he’d been manipulated toward that end in the first place. It was just possible that Nero had been underselling some of the people there, given that signal. He didn’t want to be an anti-infected bigot, so decided to work a bit harder in that regard. Accepting everyone else and trying to get to know them all.
There was food in front of him, which smelled pretty nice, really. Eggs, pancakes and butter. It was the kind of food that people ate on television. At least it would have been if they’d used plates there instead of composite trays and bowls. The things worked, so he didn’t complain about it. He didn’t need to eat massive quantities like some there did, but putting away five thousand calories a day was about right if he didn’t want to lose weight. To that end he dug into the golden disks, dipping them into a bit of syrup with each bite.
Otherwise they’d get soggy and he hated that kind of thing. Limp food was fine, if it was all you had. If you got a choice though, it paid to make a little extra effort. Someone had gone out of their way to make good things for them, so he, at least, was planning to make the most of it.
Most of the others there just ate, like it was normal and not a treat to have something that didn’t come directly from a package. Most of the way through the food on his gray tray, Seven spoke, directing his comment toward Pam-Pam. The older man, who was always a bit of a flirt, was checking her out a bit more than was strictly appropriate. Not that Nero said anything about that part of things. After all, some people were like that. Infected people couldn’t afford to take offense at every tiny slight, either. Not if they were going to coexist with one another.
