by Jobe, David
Julian stared at the card. “You didn’t have to do that, man.”
Mac smiled. “I did. Plus, I remembered when you first jumped into the house how Lanton pulled you aside and said to be careful just showing up at places like that. How our society tends to shoot first in and all that.”
Julian laughed. “That man doesn’t know how to whisper. But, you are right. Is why I won’t ever wear a mask. But, don’t you think a suit is overkill? And two is definitely too much.”
Mac laughed as well. “It is, and it isn’t. One of the things my father tried to teach me is that the clothes do make the man. I took that to mean that I needed a great costume, but the more I think about it, the more I think we should go with suits.”
“And two?”
Mac sighed. “My father has a saying. A man needs two suits. One to change the world. And one to wear when the world changes him.”
“One for the grave.” Julian nodded.
“Which brings me to the next thing. Here.” He handed Julian a smartwatch.
“This is nice. But you’ve already given me too much.”
“Think of this as an investment. I am under house arrest. You are hunted by your stepfather and some creep. I think you could use a shield generator more than I could. I was going to give it to Lanton since he’s the spearhead of this operation, but his power, I think has him covered.”
“This is a shield generator?” Julian blinked as he realized he was being loud. “Really? It’s not a smartwatch?”
“Oh, it’s a smartwatch too. Will even track your steps.” Mac gave a chuckle. “Not that I used that part. Oh, and it links to this.” He handed Julian a smartphone.
“Oh, I can’t take this.” He tried to give the phone back, but Mac refused to take it.
“Again, this is an investment. You are the man that can jump from one place to another in the blink of an eye, but how can any of us reach you if you are having a picnic in some mountain valley? Might be we need your skills to pull us out of a jam, and we won’t be able to reach you.”
Julian nodded, pocketing the phone and putting on the watch. “Anywhere you want to go, man. You say the word I’ll take you there.”
“Well, let’s wait until they take off the house arrest first.” He lifted his leg to show the bracelet around his ankle. “One last thing.” Mac reached into his pocket and pulled out another phone. It wasn’t the top of the line smartphone he had just given him, but a more streamlined version. “This is for your mom. That way she can get a hold of you, and you can get a hold of her in case you miss curfew or decide to binge-watch movies with us.”
Julian laughed and pocketed the phone. “What’s your excuse for this one?”
Mac smiled but couldn’t look Julian in the eye. “A family that cares about you is worth everything in this world. I’d kill to have someone who frets if I miss curfew. What you are doing is dangerous, and like you said, you won’t wear a mask to hide your identity. If I could do something about helping you protect your family and didn’t, I would be a horrible person.”
Julian wiped tears away from his eyes. “I knew there was a reason when I asked to be taken somewhere safe, God took me here.” He clapped Mac on the shoulder then thought better of it and brought him in for a hug. “I appreciate it, and I will repay it somehow.”
Mac laughed and shifted uncomfortably. “Just take your portal crown and get home.”
Julian laughed. “Halo.” With that, he vanished.
Mac felt himself wrapped up in arms, the sweet scent of Allison filling his nose. “That was so sweet, Mac!”
Mac coughed but held her close. “You heard that?”
Allison giggled into his neck. “The whole room heard it. Lanton isn’t the only one that doesn’t know how to whisper.”
Mac’s face felt like it was next to the sun. He peered over Allison’s shoulder to see the whole room smiling at him. Elanor wiped a tear from her eyes as Lanton put an arm around her.
“You know I’m a police officer too, right? People shoot at me.” Grimm had his arms folded again, but Mac thought that the officer’s eyes appeared glossy. “I mean. I could have used that shield.”
Chapter Ten
Mini Game
‘Lil Golem,' as Drew had decided to dub him, wriggled as he tried to escape the space between the mattress and the slat boards underneath it. Echo had squirreled him away here, next to a flashlight with weird bumps all over it. After he heard her footsteps retreat, he began to move again. His initial purpose had been to serve as a homing beacon for the one Drew called The Knight, but after overhearing the women talk about blowing town, he knew he would have to act. Or rather, Drew, who controlled him, knew he would have to act.
With a thump that sounded far too loud for his comfort, he landed on the wooden floor under the bed. For a moment he marveled again at the world from the eyes of such a small creation. It reminded him of a game he had played a long time ago where he was one of those green plastic soldiers trying to navigate a child’s room. A feat that had been far more dangerous than it should have been. Drew, back at home, felt giddy with the challenge this afforded him.
“Stop crying!” One of the Henchwomen from downstairs yelled.
He guessed they were in the basement, as when he had been spirited into the house, he had seen that the whole building appeared to be one story. He dashed across the floor, making for the open door that lead to the rest of the house. He heard them mention cats at one point and was convinced that he would end up in the crunching maw of some feline. “Stealthy like a ninja.” He peered around the corner. One thing they got wrong in the game was that you couldn’t see as far as a normal person could. From his vantage point, he could see what he guessed was about five feet. “Just a higher difficulty rating is all.” He moved away from the sound of sobbing and muffled talking.
The first room he came to, he decided was the living room or some gathering room. Though he could only see the back of a sofa, it loomed like a mountain range in his view. He stood there staring at the enormous thing before deciding that there wouldn’t be anything in the living room that he could use. He padded on, making his way to a room more white than the previous. “This is either the kitchen or the bathroom.” He stepped in, trying to get far enough to get a feel for the scope of the room. “Bathroom,” he said as he stared in wonder at the towering white toilet bowl. “Oh Porcelain God, we beseech you. Please take our shit from us.” He gave a chuckle and moved back the way he had come.
“No! We are not taking the cats! You’ve heard the term, herding cats, right?!” The rest returned to muffled arguments.
“Poor kitties.” Lil Golem chuckled and moved on. The next room had a sick brown flooring and tan walls with crumbling flower wallpaper. From the doorway, he could see the back side of a refrigerator towering into the sky. “Good.” He began to run now, slipping around the fridge until he stood in the center of the room. The edge of a table appeared in the distance, like those hulking monsters in video games that would one day have to face. To his left, he saw what he had been looking for. Marching over to the side of the faded white oven, he began to inch down the side of it toward the back. Even with his small size, the towering canyon served to be narrow enough to make him have to slide in sideways. “Oh god, please no cockroaches. My mind can’t deal with something that nasty being so large.” He crept on, inching along and feeling himself panic that at any moment some six-legged monstrosity would come clicking over. After a few tense minutes, he emerged behind the stove to find that luck was on his side. A silver gas line ran from the back of the stove to the wall, looking like the largest coiled serpent he had ever seen. “Now we’re cooking with gas.” A quote from his grandfather, who had said that a lot. He said this even when they weren’t cooking at all. He’d been an amusing old man.
“How to unhook it.” A tiny finger tapped his tiny chin. “I could get a knife, but that means going back through roach canyon a few more times. Plus, I’d have to figure out a wa
y to climb to a drawer or the sink at least. No. Have to work with what I have.” He looked around, easing closer to the silver serpent. After a few feet, he found a thumbtack resting against one of the legs of the oven. Looking up, he imagined that there was a pegboard high in the heavens. Probably plastered with spells on how to boil children’s fat to fly. He gave a nervous chuckle and picked the silver tack up in his hand. It was one of the silver dome types with the single long pin. In his hands, it felt very much like a shield. “I am Captain Kitchen.” He laughed and moved toward the end of the snake that came from the wall. It sat lower than the other side that plugged into the kitchen. Plus, he saw a roach motel trap covered with dust and cobwebs close by. The webbing gave him pause, reminding him that spiders were even more creepy if you saw them through a magnifying glass. “Please, no spiders.” He walked over and tugged on the box that was nearly half his size. He could see webbing that rose like ropes up and out of view. He prayed that the tugging was not alerting some spider that he was down there and ready to be webbed up. Granted, the spider would break its teeth on his metal skin, but still, he had no desire to relive one of the scariest scenes from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
As he managed to untangle the box from the webbing enough to drag it, he heard some odd noise from above him. Sure enough, when he looked up, he could see a spider hauling ass down toward him. “Oh god oh god oh god.” He back away, dropping the box and scooping up the shield tack.
The spider landed with a small puff of dust; its grey legs curled up to the heavens. At first, he thought the spider had simply fallen on its back, but as he waited for it to flip over and attack, he realized that it was just the corpse of a spider, long dead. “Probably tangled in the web himself.” He shivered and went back to the box, still casting an eye over his shoulder at the large spider corpse. The thing may have been small by human standards, but it looked like the six-legged corpse of a great dane to him.
Placing the box at an angle against the wall, he returned and got the tack. Climbing up, careful not to stick his feet in the large openings, he managed to climb atop the coil. As he moved along it, he felt himself start to smile. He could feel it flex under him, though it was as wide as one of those rope bridges. “Oh yes, you are just flimsy enough.” He stabbed the material with the tack. A gush of foul air assaulted his face. Again and again, he stabbed until he felt the bridge start to buckle under him. He jumped and jumped until the thin skin of the silver snake ripped and severed, unleashing a torrent of foul-smelling gas into the area.
He landed on the floor with another thud that he feared would cause a spark and undo his work too quickly. He hot-footed it around the dead spider and back into cockroach canyon. He wasn’t sure how long it would take the gas to fill enough of the house to find an open flame, but he had an idea. An idea that made him laugh loudly as he darted across the kitchen floor. He continued the opposite way he had come, streaking down the now carpeted hallway to another looming door. This one appeared to lead to the garage, as he could see through the edges of a cat door into what looked like a stained concrete floor. “I bet they are in there.” He pushed past the plastic flap and dropped down a step onto the concrete floor. Looking around, he found what he had hoped would be here. Tucked under what looked to be a bench he could make out a wooden crate that had the word “grenades” on it. “Oh, I have reached the promised land, Moses!”
He bolted to the leg of the workbench, using attachments holes to get him high enough to stand on the edge of the crate. He could see eight large green eggs resting in individual little stalls. “Oh, look at all these little Facehuggers!” He walked across the edge to the closest one and began tugging on the silver ring there. It took about ten tugs to get the pin to pull loose. He worried that the grenade’s spoon would pop out, but found that the little area they rested in was tight enough to keep it held in place. “Oh, we’re having fun now.” He made his way across the rest of them, pulling each in turn and using the pins as necklaces.
Once done, he jumped down to the concrete and jingled his way back to the cat door. It took him some effort to climb the step, but after a while he was able to make it. He returned through the kitty door and began marching once again to the kitchen. Now all he had to do was find something to create a flame. By now the gas would have filled enough of the kitchen to make a large blast and hit the grenades in the adjacent room. As he stood in the doorway contemplating what to do, he heard the thunder of someone coming. “Too late now.” He muttered and stood absolutely still.
“What’s this?” One of them boomed, scooping up Lil Golem. “How did you get out of my room? And what’s all this around your neck?” She turned and marched down the hallway toward where the rest of the voices continued to argue. She pushed open a door that led to a set of rickety wooden steps leading down.
The strong odor of cat piss and sweat assaulted his senses.
“Is this someone’s idea of a joke?” The giant Henchwoman bellowed.
Though the speaker remained out of his vision, he suspected they could see him clearly enough. “YOU DUMB BITCH! YOU’VE KILLED US A-”
Drew blinked away the whiteness that had overcome his eyes and sat up in his father’s chair. He had returned here after the mock conversation with the fake pizza man. Across from him, the Knight stood in the center of the room. In his powerful arms, he held the one he had come to understand was dubbed Foxtrot.
She hung limply in the embrace of the stone guardian, though he could tell she was awake by the sobbing. Her voice came out in low ragged breaths. “You killed them. You killed them all.”
Drew stood up and walked across the room. “No. By my count, there are three left.” He gazed up into her face, looking at her tearstained cheeks.
Foxtrot shook her head. “Two. The pain of all those deaths took Delta too.”
Drew shrugged. “It was what she wanted. I tried to feed her.”
She sobbed heavier. “I can’t help you find Alpha. I don’t know where she is.”
“I believe you, but I think you and I can get creative enough that we can bring her out of hiding.”
“You’re a monster.”
“I’m what you made me.”
Chapter Eleven
Warning Shots
“Time cop?” Grimm asked. He lifted a white can to his lips and downed the last of his energy drink as they walked by the receptionist’s desk. A bored looking man wearing street clothes waved them on, gesturing to the double doors to his left.
“Are you about done? You’re digging in to really old movies now.” Lanton pushed the squad room doors open and stepped inside. He let the doors swing closed behind him, not waiting for Grimm to walk through. His gaze fell over the large room filled with the stench of stale coffee, the din of muted voices, and the clatter of keyboards. A few eyes turned to regard him but dismissed him just as quickly.
Grimm slipped in sideways, trying to be smooth but the door slammed him in the stomach, one of the door handles landing dangerously close to his crotch. “So, am I glowing?” He held his arms out and did a circle for Lanton.
Lanton shook his head with a grunt. “No, and now people are really going to notice your horrible fashion sense. No one wears corduroy anymore. And that wasn’t even the right drink.”
“But that was the last kind they make. How about we skip the middleman, and you meet me in the closet. Wouldn’t be the first cop on the down low.” He stepped into pace beside Lanton as they both walked through the long room.
“I didn’t think you swung that way.” Lanton watched the faces of those he passed, looking for anyone that might hear something they shouldn’t. Most were deep in conversations themselves, not even acknowledging their presence. Lately, Lanton had become less of a brother in arms and more an outcast, just a rung below Internal Investigations. Everyone knew that the Altered situation needed a handle on it, but no one wanted to get their hands dirty. In some ways, it reminded Lanton how his father had spoken of the time when discrimina
tion ran rampant against folk of his skin tone. It made the bile in his stomach rise.
“I don’t, but a superpower is a superpower.” He put his hand on his stomach. “You sure there’s no glow? I don’t feel so good.”
Lanton stopped, putting his hands on his friend's shoulder to stop him. “No. How many have you had today?”
“Um, six maybe?” He leaned against a desk, despite the owner’s protests. Officer John Johnson, an unoriginal name as had ever been created, glared at them both, his gaze settling on Lanton since Grimm’s back was to him. Lanton glared back. Officer Johnson was a bit of a neat freak, and that was putting it kindly.
Lanton sighed. “Sweet Sons of Jesus, man. Go to the break room and get something to eat. I have to check in with the Chief. No more of those drinks for the rest of the day. Having a power won’t do you any good if you drop from a massive coronary.”
