Collateral Damage

by Steve Beaulieu

  He shook his head. “No, that isn’t all of it.”

  She swallowed, then took another step closer. “You need to come with me. We’ll figure it all out. We just need you with us. In the future.” The look in her eyes was wild, almost feral.

  He saw it now. As she spoke, her words betrayed her thoughts. With his mind, he could see what had happened the last time they spoke.

  “Remington woke you up. Brought you back to your own time. Then he told you the truth. He told you that bringing me forward in time wouldn’t work, didn’t he?”

  “I...that’s not true.”

  He kept backing away, pushing a trash bin in between the two of them. She kept slowly walking forward. When she reached the garbage can, she silently put her hands on it and closed her eyes for a few seconds. There was a concussive blast and the trashcan disappeared. A small crater was left in the concrete pad, but Kina appeared unharmed.

  “What the hell?” Bryon exclaimed.

  She smiled, in a way that suggested she’d just eaten a canary. “Oh...your three months? Been three years for me. Three years of re-learning my abilities. Three years of figuring out who I really am, of who I was really meant to be. I can travel through time, but there are limitations. Consequences. You’re just one of those consequences at this point.”

  Bryon kept backing, but he also knew the noise would bring stadium police. He needed to keep her talking.

  “What did Remington tell you?”

  She spat. “Remington was a fool.”

  “He was just trying to stop a war,” Bryon said, pulling from her memories.

  “We didn't join up with The Remembered to stop a war from ever starting. We did it to end it. I bring you with me and we’ll have the advantage we’ll need.” She seemed too confident. Her voice was steadier that he wanted, but she was still talking. Somehow he knew if she even touched his skin that it was all over.

  “But that explosion...that’ll happen if you take me, too, won’t it?” Bryon said, pointing at the concrete divot behind her. “But it’ll be worse because there’ll be two of us vanishing at the same time.”

  “I don’t understand the physics…”

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” Bryon prodded.

  She glared at him. That was all the answer he needed.

  “And Remington found out when you take me with you, there was...will be an accident. The stadium implodes and thousands die. Aren’t I right?”

  He heard footsteps and saw four blue uniforms with four police officers filling them emerge from the darkness behind Kina. She never turned around.

  “That’s what he said. I don’t buy it. He’s wrong. You’re the answer. I know it.”

  Something peeked through the tumbleweeds of her mind. Bryon was shocked, but after what he’d seen in the last few minutes he couldn’t say he was surprised.

  “You killed him. You killed Remington.”

  The guards cautiously approached them. One of them shouted toward Bryon, “Mr. Stonemill? Is everything okay? We had a report of a potential explosion in this area.”

  Bryon waved toward them. “I’m fine at the moment, but this woman might be a problem. Stick around, but let me talk to her.”

  The lead officer nodded, his hand on his hip holster.

  Bryon turned his attention back to Kina, who was a couple of feet closer to him than before. “You didn’t answer me.”

  She blinked but didn’t pause. “He was in the way. Trying to control me. Trying to always tell me what to do. I had to get back to you. Just come with me and we can fix everything together.”

  He remembered he still held his trusty bat in his left hand. It had always been used to hit home runs, but now...he didn’t think he had a choice. He put his right foot behind him and swiveled his left toward Kina. The smile he’d once had while hitting the ball in the early part of his career threatened to creep back onto his face, except for the lives that hung in the balance.

  “I don’t think so. You need to stop, Kina. I’m not going.”

  She didn’t stop. She stepped close enough and Bryon swung, his bat connecting with her left arm. He heard a crack, but it was almost as if she didn’t notice. A small spritely thing like her should have gone down with one swing, but she still advanced. He swung again and she grabbed the wide barrel with her right hand and held on. A split second later the bat slightly vibrated and then disappeared with a loud pop. No crater this time, but Bryon’s hands felt the brunt of the blast. He stumbled backward and fell to his back, the concrete cold on his arms.

  He saw her mind. The fragility of it was dangerous for anyone, but with her abilities she was reckless. Her laser focus on Bryon would be the destruction of the baseball stadium and would bring about a war that would last for decades. He shouted and put his arms up.

  One of the officers rushed forward and gripped Kina’s arm. She put her other on him and a second later, his eyes rolled back in his head, right before his head exploded. Bryon didn’t know, but he suspected she transported his brain to a different time and place. He turned his head as blood and bone flew everywhere. Kina had been closest, so she was covered in the red liquid. When she turned back to Bryon, she looked like death, ready to claim him.

  “Are you ready?” she asked. “It’s time.”

  Before Bryon could even answer, he heard a series of clicks. A shout from the lead officer. Bryon couldn’t even comprehend what the voices were saying. Kina reached toward him, and suddenly the bullets flew. He threw an arm over his head while the bullets riddled Kina’s back. She touched him and briefly he saw it. He saw the future—dark, desolate, devoid of happiness. As he watched, a brightness appeared and altered what he saw. The future changed—became brighter without him and Kina. A second later, he was back in the present and Kina’s bleeding body lay next to him. Her mind was blank. She was gone.

  Through it all, he couldn’t help but feel for the girl. He reached up and stroked a piece of hair that had fallen over her eyes. “I’m sorry, Kina, but Remington was right. I wish you were still here. I wish none of this had happened, but look—together, we helped stop the war.”

  A Word from Will Swardstrom

  Pastime is a story that I actually started working on probably two or three years ago. The idea of a baseball player who concealed special abilities appealed to me, but I never really finished. In its first iteration it was simply going to be an excerpt from his memoir, released posthumously. While the idea still resonated when I took a look at it a few months ago, I knew I wanted to kick it up a notch. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did while I was writing it.

  Pastime is one of many short stories I’ve written over the past four years. Many of those stories appeared first in The Future Chronicles, curated by Samuel Peralta, or Tales From The Canyons of the Damned, by Daniel Arthur Smith. In addition to my short stories, I’ve written four novels, including Blink, which I co-wrote with my brother, Paul.

  I don’t have the luxury of writing full time, so I spend my days teaching high school social studies, from government, to economics, to world history. I live in Southern Illinois with my college sweetheart, Sarah, and our two kids. Our family also includes two cats, and a very high-maintenance dog.

  FUSE:

  ON THE STREETS

  BY DAVID NETH

  FUSE: ON THE STREETS

  BY DAVID NETH

  IT’S COLD. So cold that the only sign of me in the darkness is my breath. That and the lightning bolt running from my chest down the right sleeve of my Fuse suit. I’ve got a real scar along my arm from when I got electrocuted a couple months ago. Lightning struck the top of the building just as I was clumsily plugging in a computer into the main power system at work.

  Anyway, my recovery was unusual because my body wasn’t harmed by the strike, it mutated. I woke up after a week-long coma with the ability to shoot lightning out of my hands. The Fuse suit helps regulate and control my charges, which means I’m no longer randomly zapping people. So I guess that’s a win.r />
  Some people have told me that I’m lucky, but based off the things that have happened to me since then, I would have to disagree. I’ll spare the details, but the following words really sum it up: fear, deception, and death.

  It really comes as no surprise, after the hell I’ve been through, that I need some time away from my life as Ethan Pierce. I need to spend more time perfecting my skills as Fuse, the vigilante alter ego I’ve taken on. I’ve been working out in the gym with a friend, but weightlifting and core training will only get me so far. I need to develop an instinct, need to build up my street smarts.

  Which is why I’m out here in the middle of a cold November night, running around in tights looking for trouble. I need thugs to practice on. Up until recently, I haven’t been able to focus on the little guys. The easy targets. Circumstances dictated that I move right to the big guns. Somehow, through all that I managed not to die—still got my ass kicked, though. Now that I have a little bit of time to catch my breath while the dust settles, I’m determined to take advantage of it.

  Besides, home is the last place I want to be right now.

  Hopping over to one of the last remaining historic buildings in the Ashland neighborhood, I perch on the roof and take notice of the encounter going on below. Two men face each other on the street. One has a gray hoodie with the hood up, the other a ratty flannel jacket. Flannel Jacket looks twitchy. Tweaky. They look around and exchange something slyly. Clearly, neither of these guys is up to any good.

  Just what I’m looking for.

  Actually, Ashland isn’t the worst district in the city. That’s Hopman, which has been cut off by expressways and heavy industrial buildings and long forgotten by the city leaders—well, most of them. Hopman is where I’ve had two attempts on my life in as many months. It’s too dangerous of a district for me to learn my street smarts in.

  Ashland, on the other hand, isn’t completely lost. It’s certainly not an up-and-coming neighborhood, and it’s had its share of scars—most notably when the city tore out most of the beautiful historic buildings to put up industrial warehouses in the hopes that it’d attracted businesses (it didn’t)—but Ashland is still pretty decent. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have problems. Clearly, Gray Hoodie and Flannel Jacket’s drug deal proves that.

  They both talk for a while after the exchange. Probably negotiating the next deal. Either way, it’s illegal, so technically I have a reason to interfere.

  Running to the back of the building, I jump down to the first platform of the fire escape and race down the stairs as quickly and quietly as I can. This is definitely something I need to work on: stealth.

  Racing around the side of the building, I stop just before I get to the sidewalk. Peering around the corner, I weigh my options. Run out like a moron and scare them both off, strike them with a surge of electricity so they convulse like they were hit with a taser, or—

  Damn, they’re moving!

  I send out a streak of lightning, but it misses both of them and strikes the building they were in front of instead. Gray Hoodie takes off down Sage Street, but the blast from my strike makes Flannel Jacket lose his footing and fall to the cracked sidewalk.

  Picking him up by his ratty jacket, I pin him against the wall and bellow in a voice as deep and intimidating as I can make it, “What’s your name?”

  “Hey, come on, man! It’s just a little pick-me-up. No big deal!”

  I shove him back against the brick wall again. Harder this time. “What’s your name?”

  “What about you, Halloween?”

  Lightning zaps around my fist and I bang it against his chest lightly. It does the trick.

  In a flash, Flannel Jacket’s on the ground convulsing from the trickle of electricity I hit him with. Taking extra precaution, I pull off his jacket and use it to tie his hands up behind him around a street sign. By the time I’m done, he’s done shaking, though his body is weak.

  I press the com on my ear to call the police station. As I run in the direction of where Gray Hoodie went, I tell the police about the drug deal and that there’s someone waiting for them on the corner of Sage Street and May Place.

  With the I-23—or the Wind Tunnel, as Olympians call it—cutting through to the west and the well-traveled Ashland Avenue to the south, there’s only one way for Gray Hoodie to go. After a few minutes at my fastest pace, I consider giving up, but something up to the right catches my eye. Gray Hoodie makes eye contact with me and then passes through a door into a warehouse, slamming the door behind him.

  When I approach, the door is locked. Luckily, that doesn’t stop me.

  Opening my palm, I hold it out to the door handle and zap it with enough energy that the metal is blasted away. When I lower my hand, though, I feel myself weaken. Definitely need to be more careful. I only have so much electric energy to use before I need to rest and let it build back up again.

  Hesitantly, I swing open the door and step through. The last time I walked into a foreign building, things didn’t turn out well. Hopefully, this time will be different.

  When I step inside, though, I’m surprised by what I see. Or rather, what I don’t see. It’s empty, not a sign that anything had been properly built here. There are a few windows letting in light from the streetlights outside, but otherwise, it’s pretty dark.

  Which is why I don’t see someone come from the shadows until they’re on top of me.

  Falling to the floor, my breath is knocked out of me as a black man with two teardrops tattooed on his face pins me to the concrete with his hand pressed against my throat.

  Struggling for breath, I knee him hard between the legs. He crumples beside me, but someone else comes from the shadows and throws a punch at me. I dodge it and deliver one to his gut before quickly getting to my feet.

  Another man comes up behind me, wrapping his arm around my neck and pulling tight. With a concerted effort, I manage to flip him over to the concrete in front of me and back away.

  Two more men come out of the shadows, followed by a third on the other side. I let the electricity trickle around my fingers to warn them to stay away. My chest is burning from the run and lack of air, but I don’t want them to know. I need to come off strong.

  I see Gray Hoodie lurking a few feet away, but my attention is drawn to Tear Drop when he speaks.

  “So what? You gon’ call the cops or summin’?” he asks. With a grin, I notice he’s breathing heavy too.

  “Where are you getting the drugs from?” I ask.

  “None of your damn bidness,” he says. The rest of them nod in agreement. He must be their leader.

  “Michael Bello?”

  The sound of approaching police sirens grow louder.

  “It’s the cops!” one of the guys shouts.

  Tear Drop reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a pistol, pointing it right at me. “Why don’ you go see if someone else got candy for you, Trick-or-Treat?”

  Another costume joke, how clever. Still, the gun makes me nervous so I stop the sparking between my fingers and take a step back. Besides, if the police really are on their way, I need to get out of here.

  “Okay, I’m going. Just put the gun down.”

  “Not ’til you gone.”

  Stepping backward, I inch closer to the door. When I reach it, I turn and run, just in time to miss the gunshot Tear Drop fires.

  • • •

  Another reason why my world is a mess lately is my recent unemployment. The lack of a paycheck sucks—as does the judgment from my brother, who is also my roommate and has to make up my half of the rent—but the time off is nice. Not that I’m really enjoying it this week with everything else going on. In fact, the drug deal I spotted yesterday gives me the perfect distraction from my problems and helps justify not going to work.

  The company I was recently let go from is Wyatt Industries, the biggest employer in the city of Olympia. Probably one of the most progressive alternative energy companies in the country, even. The coolest thin
g Wyatt’s been doing is rolling out their solar roadways project where they’re actually installing solar panels over the asphalt on the roads to soak up solar energy that powers the city.

  There are other benefits to it, too, but that’s the gist of it. Since the project was introduced, other solar companies have popped up and a lot of the rooftops in the city are sporting tech to take advantage of greener energy sources. Solar panels everywhere means no need to burn fossil fuels. The city is also taking advantage of wind energy with the wind turbines by the highways. It’s how the Wind Tunnel got its name since it’s lined on both sides with them.

  Anyway, all of this is to say that I have a background in tech stuff. Coding, mostly, but computers in general. Since becoming Fuse, I’ve been thinking about creating a software that would allow me to take a freeze-framed image of someone from a security camera or something similar and search it through the city police’s database.

  It’s limited, I know. What if a psycho is from out of town? What if they’ve never been arrested? What if it doesn’t work?

  It’s a start. I’m already pretty much a pro at hacking into the Grid, the city’s electronic network. Through the Grid, I can access basically any security camera or street camera. Some have additional firewalls to work through, but I can get through most times.

  To get out of the apartment, I’ve been coming to the clinic in Hopman to work. After I was electrocuted, my doctor opened a free clinic in the city’s poorest neighborhood to help people. She and her colleague, Wes—the one who designed my Fuse suit—were the ones who figured out that my reaction to the strike was…unconventional.

  Anyway, they don’t really use the basement of the clinic and since it’s right in the heart of Hopman, it’s perfect. You never know when you’re going to have to chase down a crook, so it’s better to be right around the corner from where they’re most likely to be. That’s the idea, anyway.