by Mark Gardner
A large, bald man emerged from the water dragging a body with him. He laid it on the low riverbank and others joined to help him pull the man to safer shore. A lady put her finger against his pale, wet neck and then shook her head. He was dead. And judging by the still-pooling blood around his face, it hadn’t been a pretty death.
“Are there others?” someone asked, but the bald man still in the water shook his head. Joaquin took a mental note. His chaser had been only one of the agents. Had the other one stayed with Andy?
He pulled his hood over his head and turned away from the ever-growing crowd. Sirens wailed a badass orchestra with blue and red flashing in the dark.
Joaquin went on his way. He had a single bridge to cross and then he was going to learn Miles Jensen’s secret.
Paper Window
This night felt like the longest one Globe had ever experienced. In his brain resided a constant storm and no drink quenched his thirst. He needed answers, not alcohol. The waiting was impossible, his eyes glued to the phone, to the cameras.
Why was Joaquin so impossible to find? In a world photographed and videotaped every second, how did he remain gone?
The failed experiment with Kristof and Peter was stabilized, but recovering the lost data would take weeks. Globe desperately needed Joaquin. He sat cross-legged in front of Bree and helped her braid a doll’s hair, but he was clumsy, having never had a daughter to practice on. He was lost in thought.
“You’re doing it wrong.” Bree flashed him a stare that told him to take away his numb fingers from the doll’s blond hair.
“Bree, can I ask you something?” His breath stank of whiskey, but Bree seemed unimpressed by that and awarded him with silence. Globe took his chance in the settling quiet. “Do you think you can find Joaquin? Remember him, the boy with the impervious skin? The one from the cabin in the forest?”The little purple comb wedged into a particularly messy snarl, and Bree paused. She tilted one way, then the other, and continued to work out the faulty braid so she could start a new one. Globe was about to give up and leave when she finally spoke.
“People sometimes don’t want to be found. They get lost on purpose to try and find something they think they’ve really lost. It’s their destiny to be there, and it’s their destiny to come back when they are ready.”
Bree’s words ricocheted in Globe’s head. “All I want to do is give this world back to those it belongs to. People like you, Bree. I want to awaken humanity from the lethargy it’s been comfortably sitting in for centuries, reinvigorate it. But to do that I need to remove all that is left of the old. I need to strengthen the DNA, rewrite what made humans so special all these eons ago. I want to bring us all into a new century of supers. Nature culls the weak and rewards the strong.” Globe had heard that phrase somewhere, but he couldn’t recall where. He furrowed his brows, suddenly aware that he was speaking honestly to Bree and not understanding why he did it.
Globe backed out of the room, rubbing sweaty hands on his pants. If Joaquin wanted to stay hidden because of some destiny, there was no rule saying that his resurface couldn’t be forced.
He rode the elevator to another floor of the underground compound and walked the circular white corridor to a locked door. He put his eye against the scanner and allowed the blue beam to scan his retina. He blinked away the gathered tear and went through the door, delving into the cold darkness of the room, stepping over cables without incident. He’d gotten used to their pattern: solid red, black and yellow snakes crawling down the walls and pooling on the floor.
“You reached out to me. Have you found Joaquin?”
Globe stood beside the chair of his pet hacker, Sindi, drumming his fingers on the red leather. Her words came with her usual pauses, her voice was synchronized with the computer. Globe often wondered whether she even opened her mouth to speak or was it all a trick of the surround system. “Someone...found...the videos,” she declared.
That was not the answer he had expected. Globe loosened his tie. It was too hot near the super-computer. “That was the point, remember?”
“Someone...found...they were...fake,” Sindi replied.
Globe circled the chair and lowered himself to be at eye level. He’d insisted she remain at her workplace until Massey was found, and then until Joaquin was found; but the exercise had taken a toll on the poor girl. Her face was pale, her eyes glass-like inside the dark rings. She was malnourished. Perhaps he had gone too far keeping her immobile to the real world and active only in her specialty of ones and zeroes. Globe’s eyes traced the thick cables running into her skin, bulging and pulsating like artificial veins inside her neck and her arms. Sindi did excellent work, but the process of connecting and unplugging her was messy. Until he figured out how to improve the process, he had to compromise. That was the price she had to pay for her power. A child of the New Age. The entry points oozed pink pus now and then. Globe pulled out a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and dabbed at the exposed socket on her neck.
“How is that possible?” he asked, “We took extra care so no one would know they were fake.”
“Someone....was....clever. I...took...care...of...him.”
On a previously blank screen, code formed ones and zeroes into an image, and the image cleared, adding color. It showed through her digital eyes, what she’d seen in her transcendental explorations of the sphere. A young man was staring at his computer screen in sheer disbelief. He spoke to someone on his right, but Globe couldn’t see who. When he opened a file Sindi had tossed at him like bait, his machine malfunctioned. An explosion followed, and the screen returned to black.
“I...burned...him. Did...I...do...good?”
“Who is he?”
“Database says....Andy Kitz....creator of the Last Regiment.”
Globe stood up to his full height. His mind calculated the possibilities, the connections, the chances.
“Did...I...do...good?” Sindi asked again.
“Yes, yes. You’ve eliminated the problem. But make sure that after the FBI receives the files, there should be a media leak. No one can compromise the videos, not now. Now play me that video again. Can you extract audio? I want to listen.”
Her eyes closed and her mind worked its magic. The screen reversed the explosion back to the beginning of when the room on the other side of the screen was still there, and the man Andy Kitz was still gawking at the screen.
Just as Globe was about to sit down, his phone buzzed.
The first thing Massey did was watch Anne’s hair flow in the brief wind, the color catching light from the street lamps and turning auburn.
She was buzzing with anger.
Globe had called. She smiled when she realized she messed up again. The Major wanted Joaquin found and brought to him. For what reason Anne didn’t elaborate, and Massey didn’t inquire. They had things under control. There was reassurance, a plan set to be executed. So they went their separate ways, each with their own role to play. The next thing Massey did was to spur into action without thinking, dodging traffic to reach Andy’s place, praying to whatever totem brought luck to cops that Anne had enough strategy to stall Globe’s lackey and slow down the search. Then they’d be good. Then they could start their attack against Globe’s rising power.
He tried to call Andy’s phone a dozen times, but no one picked up. A feeling of dread settled in Massey’s gut. The windows on the street were all ablaze. They cast brilliant white stars on doors and windows overlooking the street. Flashing reds and blues confirmed his fears as he turned onto Andy’s street.
A fire truck was parked horizontally, blocking the street. The hose wiggled on the asphalt like a python struggling in the heat of the still-smoldering air. Once released, the water rained like silver crystals against the black skyline full of smoke and desperation. The night-lights were gone, choked in the background of the death curtain.
Massey stepped out of his cruiser, hand pressed against his mouth to cut out the smoke from entering his nostrils. By instinct,
his dry mouth tried hungrily to inhale the ashes floating in the air. He recognized the apartment that was the sole attention of the crisis. The charred shape on the façade reminded him of a giant moth, a nuclear shadow imprinted on the side of the building. The notion made him dizzy—one monstrosity atop another. He elbowed through a growing crowd of odd-lookers. They stood around, mouths agape in their bedclothes, tightly hugging large frames and small frames in robes both tattered and luxurious. No one seemed to care how he or she looked or even who they were. They just wanted to see the dead and burned, the destruction that always followed the flames.
Outside of the crowd and into the danger zone, Massey quickened his pace and ducked under yet another yellow police tape. His pace turned to a near jog to the ambulance and the body being loaded into it.
“Is he going to live?” Massey heard himself ask, looking down at Andy’s bleeding face. He didn’t dare look around for a second body, his mind instantly questioning whether Joaquin was impervious enough to survive a fire or explosion, but then he recalled the duplex fire that was the source of him tracking the youth. He sighed.
If Joaquin hadn’t tried to carjack him, he would be one of the sheep bleating to the favor of Major Jacob Globe.
The paramedic pulled himself into the back of the ambulance, grabbing for the doors. “He has sustained a few more serious injuries, but he’ll live. He was lucky your colleague pulled him out before he suffocated.” A gesture of the head made Massey swivel.
He stared at a middle-aged man standing by one of the police cruisers covered with a blanket to scatter away his shock. He measured how much bloodied and bruised his face was. The blanket slipped and uncovered his black jacket emblazoned with the yellow FBI letters. Massey breathed in deep, ignoring the warmth in the air, close to sweltering in the proximity, close to catching a swift drive down his throat. He had to get away before the agent saw him.
“Was there someone else injured?” A shake of the head was the proffered response. That was all Massey needed to know. Joaquin was in the wind for better or for worse.
“You can follow in your car, but it’ll be some hours before you can question John Doe here.”
Massey’s mind was astray for a moment, his darkest thoughts orbiting his heated head. He felt like he had a brain tumor, noises and voices brimming at the top of his consciousness, none of which he could or cared to hear clearly. He was in deep shit. Anne was in deep shit. And Joaquin was gone.
“I’ll catch up,” he managed to mumble.
He walked away, maneuvering past firefighters quenching now-invisible flames. Possible gas leak someone muttered, but Massey waved his badge and pushed his way through. The stairs to Andy’s apartment hadn’t caught the fire that had destroyed his home, but Massey focused on his work and saw the bullet holes dug in several places on the wall. His brows furrowed, the fire becoming a murder scene; a purposeful attempt on someone’s life, possibly Joaquin’s.
There was nothing to see in the tiny apartment past the broken down door and the signs of struggle, the dents in the wall, and dappled powder burns. The desk with the computer was an elephant’s foot without the radiation, a melted sculpture of gray and black smelling like a gutter in the summer. Pieces of paper were scattered on the floor. Most of it was burned beyond recognition. Others, however...
Massey picked one unburned triangle, large letters spelling the abbreviation “SPD.” The file was in tatters and the proof... Well, the proof, whatever it had been, was gone in the fire, or gone with Joaquin. He’d need to be some kind of literature detective to gain any information from the pieces no larger than filthy flakes of ash. Was all the important information going to disappear with Andy? Massey’s hands balled into fists. If Globe got to him first just out of spite, just out of curiosity, he would learn what he needed, and he would end Andy’s life. Anne wouldn’t be able to intervene. The path ahead felt hopeless.
Massey knew he had to get to Andy before they did. He had to be one step ahead if they were to have any chance of stopping Globe. Any last chance to save humanity from a madman.
Anne blinked away her scowl like she’d been on a long road trip, the sleep threatening to stop her for the night. On the way to the address provided by Major Globe, Anne sat in macabre silence, trying to figure out how to warn Massey of the impending danger. Their world was slowly crumbling beneath them.
“The report on this Andy Kitz guy that Sindi sent is fascinating. He’s the typical obsessed-over-supers nerd, it seems. Nothing unusual in his resume, minor jobs, part-time journalist, lame blogger. But the cherry on top is that he’s weirdly enough, creator of this Last Regiment thingy. Do you think Joaquin was Last Regiment-ing himself to see where’s he on the freak-o-meter of powers?”
Silas’s chuckle was dry. He apparently thought of himself as a kindred spirit. Anne held her tongue as Silas amused himself with talk that Anne didn’t register, but kept her red leather gloved hands firm on the steering wheel. She refused to show weakness in front of Globe’s lackey.
When they arrived, there was no sign of Massey. She hoped he came, saw and left. The old dog was smart enough to steer clear of FBI agents, all of them Globe’s men. She was glad the presence of the task force cut out any sidewalk viewers. For once, they’d be free of the conspiracy hounds jockeying for attention that for some reason Globe refused to keep at bay. The crime scene was all theirs to investigate. She smiled. They were almost there.
Kristof opened his eyes and sighed. He breathed in the smell of the Canadian forest. A low-hanging fog blanketed the serene winter landscape. Pain radiated from his wrist. He looked down but could find nothing wrong with the troublesome joint. He tried to push away from the tree, but he was unable to move. A flush rose on his cheeks. The wooded scene before him was oddly familiar. A little girl in a pink dress skipped through the woods, singing a silly song.
“Too cold,” he croaked, and a shiver ran down his spine.
The little girl in the distance stopped singing and skipping and stared at him. Kristof blinked, and then the girl was kneeling in front of him. There was something about her eyes that made Kristof shiver again.
“No chance of reign,” the girl declared.
Kristof blinked. Her words were eerily familiar.
“Mister Puss doesn’t like the fog,” she declared. “Too many clouds against his fur.”
Kristof cringed as the fog slowly dissipated. He knew what he’d see would still his soul.
The little girl smiled a lopsided grin and tilted her head to the side.
He saw in his mind’s eye the devastation of Seattle burned to the ground. Broken skyscrapers like missing teeth rotted from the inside out. Bodies everywhere. He tried to lift his arm to block the torrent of sticky red rain, but like the rest of his body, his arms refused his commands. He knew the sight should scare him, but the corner of his mouth quirked up. He was disappointed when the fog lifted, and all he saw was the Canadian wilderness.
“That simply won’t do,” the girl declared. A murder of crows cawed overhead. He looked up and saw their black sightless eyes. The scent of death from them burned in his nostrils. He tried to hold his breath, but the stench was so overpowering, he was helpless to do anything about it.
“Please...” he croaked, the smell forcing its way into his mouth. He gagged and tried to vomit, but he felt as if something forced his lungs to expand. The pain in his wrist flared and his eyes felt heavy.
“Sleep,” the little girl commanded.
Kristof fought against it, but sleep overruled his commands. The last thing he had heard before sweet oblivion embraced him was the little girl.
“Soon,” she said, and Kristof’s world was darkness.
“I’m telling you the kid was fast and strong like he wasn’t human. He threw Fields down the stairs and knocked me back inside the fucking furnace to burn. It was like some sort of nightmare, Ma and Fields moving in a kind of sleepy slow motion. Fields and I both landed punches, I even shot him in the leg, but h
e just kept going. I swear if I get my hands on him...”
Anne’s anger resurfaced and drove her hand fast to the agent’s throat. Her fingers were slender, but her gloved hand dug at the soft part of his double chin. She tightened her grip. “You shot at him?!”
“Major Globe didn’t issue specific orders! Batiste said the kid had to be dealt with and the stolen documents secured. We didn’t know who he was! Our mission was to observe, learn and act when given the signal but the whole place started to fill with smoke and—”
Anne released him and the agent slumped to his knees, panting. None of his colleagues moved to offer him a hand. Their eyes were stoic, indifferent to the scene.
“When did you call Major Globe?”
Silas narrowed his eyes at her but if he had intentions of interrupting her he remained silent.
“Just after I dragged the other guy out of the apartment. Did we screw up?”
Anne ignored his inquiry.
“Where did Joaquin go?”
“I don’t know. He managed to escape in a shitbox Civic. Fields followed him. I couldn’t keep up.”
“Did Fields call back?”
The man shook his head.
“Track your partner’s GPS and call me when you have results.”
Silas caught up with her, his movements fluid and cat-like in real time just as they had been in the reverse of his power.
“You think Massey got a hold of Joaquin?”
Anne entertained the possibility for a heartbeat, but her instinct drove her elsewhere. Searching for Joaquin would be precious time wasted. Talking to Andy, however... In a time where no lies or tricks would work, Anne had to speak the truth.
“No, he would have gone to the hospital. He has a witness there, and so do we.”
Hot Dog Heaven
Anne played her part masterfully. She pulled in contacts, set meetings, offered a cash reward. They would find Joaquin soon, she assured Silas and Globe. They just had to wait for word to roll through the dents and cracks filling the city. Information always presented itself for the right amount of green. It really was all about the benjamins.
