by Jobe, David
Another figure stepped forward, but before they could shoot, they flew backward, slamming into the side of one of the SUVs. The passenger side door window shattered, and the whole side of the vehicle dented in. They slid down into an unmoving crumpled mess on the ground.
Mac then lifted his right hand this time. The undamaged SUV rose into the air about five feet off the ground. The driver side door flew open, and a young man in camo fatigues scrambled out and crawled away. Mac made a fist with his hand, and the SUV crumpled inward as if a giant were crushing it like a beer can. After it resembled a large metal ball, he lowered his hand, and the metal sphere floated to the ground to land lightly on the driveway.
“Anyone else?” Mac sighed. He could feel himself getting weak from all the exertion. His forehead now beaded with sweat.
They all stood there, unmoving.
He heard it too late. The crunch of boots behind him. He tried to turn, but before he could, he heard the shotgun blast. The blast hit him full in the back, sending him sprawling across the grass center area. Pain raced up his whole body, and he rolled to see his attacker.
Another black clad figure stood there. He should have known they would send someone to flank him. The figure raised its shotgun, pumping another round into the chamber. Just as Mac was sure he was about to die, the figure’s glass visor exploded in a shower of glass. One eye stared out from behind, the other side a ruined mess of blood and bone. The figure, a male perhaps, dropped the shotgun. Then he dropped to his knees and fell face forward. Mac could see a quarter sized hole in the back of the helmet.
Mac rolled again to take a look at the line of soldiers that had been standing before him before he had gotten shot. All appeared to be taking aim to unload their entire arsenal at him.
“Soldiers, stop!” A voice boomed from behind him.
The figures stopped. They stood there, still as statues.
“Soldiers, drop weapons.” Asimov faded into view, hovering a few feet back from Mac.
Weapons clattered to the ground, leaving them all unarmed.
“Asimov? How are you doing that?” Mac tried to sit up, but his back sent fire down his side every time he moved too much.
“I have been analyzing Mr. Holger’s speech patterns. I found something under the normal human hearing range that I believed to be the essence of how he manipulates people. I am still working out the subtle nuances of giving commands, but I thought this would be sufficient.”
Mac blinked. “Why didn’t you do this before they started shooting at me?”
“You said observe only.”
Mac laughed and laid his head back on the grass. “Then why did you help?”
“Because Miss Knox intervened, so I took that as leave to do so.”
“What?” Mac’s head hurt.
“He’s saying because I stopped taking your orders, he felt he could get away with it. You really have to learn how to accept help.” Allison walked into view, holding a rifle that looked like a replica of the one he had stolen from his father.
“Precisely,” Asimov added. “On both accounts, sir.”
“How did you get that? Was it in the panic room?”
Allison smiled, kneeling down. “Nope. I made it with my power.” She grabbed his shoulder and rolled him over. “Looks like your vest stopped the slug. So, you can be taught, handsome.” She gave a chuckle. “Asimov. Can you tell them to go back to where they came from? Make them believe that they succeeded in their mission or something?”
Asimov whirled for a few moments. “I believe I can construct something that will work. But, in the interest of safety, perhaps you and the master could get out of hearing range?”
“I don’t think I can walk,” Mac admitted.
Allison made a disapproving noise. “You can fly.”
Mac blushed. “Oh yeah. Grab hold of me.”
Allison shouldered the weapon and embraced him. Together they floated up and back over the wall top of the building. “You did good, if a little heavy-handed.”
Mac laughed. “Was that a pun?”
“Perhaps.” She kissed him.
“I need to work on watching my backside though.”
“That’s why you have me, darling.”
Chapter Sixteen
Making Plans
The room smelled of jasmine, fresh coffee and old books. A pleasant mixture that helped Chris forget that he was a prisoner in a mental hospital. He lay on his bed, hands tucked behind his head as he did measured crunches. He had taken his shirt off as it had started to try and choke him when he began his exercises.
Seated on a chair from the break room, Silvia pretended to be writing something down on her clipboard. Her well-toned legs peeking out under her nurse’s uniform as she crossed them to adjust her position. “Why didn’t you tell Lanton about your latest vision?” She didn’t look up from her clipboard, but Chris could see her cheeks redden.
They had decided to test the theory just once. There were only so many chances you take before you are found out. “Well, the main reason,” Chris explained between reps, “is because I would have to explain how I managed to get a vision in here.” He threw her a sly grin. “And I don’t think he would believe me. Not with someone as pretty as you.” She rewarded him with a deeper blush. “Besides, he’s the head of that new division. With just the little he felt comfortable sharing with me, I can tell he’s having a hard time finding the line between what is just and what is vigilantism. I don’t think he has it in him to make a preemptive strike like what is required.”
“You’re really serious. This is what you want to do?” Her eyes peeked up from behind long lashes.
“I don’t want to. I have to. The whole world is at stake with this one. I think this is what this has all been leading up to. This is for all the marbles, as they would say. Fifty.” He laid back, wiping sweat from his brow and pulling hair out of his face.
“Who says that?”
Chris laughed. “Old people.”
“Chris, do you believe in God?” She scooted her chair a little closer, wincing as it made a loud whine in protest. Like the stupid chair was trying to tell everyone to look at them.
He rolled over on his side to look at her. “I did. When I lost my badge, I kind of lost everything. At the time, it was who I was. The badge was the center of who I was. It was always the first thing I told people about myself, no matter what they asked. It wasn’t that I was bragging, just that I thought it summed me up more than anything. I was there to help, to bring justice and to guard the streets so others could sleep peacefully. But when they stripped that from me, everything went with it. I became a shell. After awhile it was just the booze and then the drugs. Now, I am not so sure what I believe. I’m sorry. I’m babbling.”
She laughed. “No, please don’t ever feel as if you can over-share with me. I grew up in a family that valued silence over anything, and in the end, when they were gone, I realized that I didn’t know anything about them. I’m asking because I have been thinking about your power. Why do you think it showed you these people? There are murders and suicides almost daily in this city, yet the visions picked these particular people. Why do you think that is?”
Chris rubbed his chin, feeling the bristles of a beard coming in. “You know, I’ve been thinking about that. I think it has to do with this next one. I think that maybe each serves as a tumbler in the lock that leads to this situation. I don’t know what the first few people might have done, but I think with the fire thrower on the freeway, maybe saving her would have saved the flying kid on that overpass or the girl they arrested. Lanton says that the girl almost killed herself. I’m willing to bet that if I look into the lives of the first two, they will have a hand in someone connected to him. That if I had succeeded in stopping one of them, I would have stopped this from happening.”
“But didn’t you say that the first time you saw him dead, it was from being beheaded?”
Chris nodded. “I think maybe my stopping the gir
l from dying of hanging may have been the catalyst for stopping that, or I guess modifying it. Now he dies by opening some vortex on the surface of the planet. I’m betting that he’s talking about his girlfriend dying as being the reason he goes all postal.”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “And in all the others you talked to the dead person. The person you were supposed to save, right?”
“Yeah. Well, except for you. Of course you had to make it more of a puzzle.”
She laughed. “I like to think I was forcing you to realize you are a great detective. But that also makes me wonder. Why me? I doubt very highly that I’ll have anything to do with this guy or his girl. Why did the vision show you my death?”
“Because I need you. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’m not trying to be sappy. In a truly serious sense, you’ve helped me understand my powers, and you’ll hopefully help me once I am on the outside.”
“You know I can’t be working when you do that, right?” She glanced at the door to his room nervously. Trip was hanging out by the door as a lookout, pretending to read with his back against the wall.
“Yeah. The plan is to go tomorrow night.”
She smiled. “So, back to the vision. You talk to everyone in your vision that you were supposed to save, but in this one, you talked to a statue or something, but now you think it was telling you to kill someone. I just don’t know.”
Chris sat up, leaning in closer to speak. “I think that’s why I was talking to no one really. I think that the statue may have been the leftover of someone that died. Like Frankenstein’s monster after Frankenstein had died. He was just there to point me toward what I needed to stop. I mean, if my job was to save everyone on the planet, would they have all stood in a long line to speak to me?” He gave a soft chuckle.
“Yeah, I guess you are right.” Her eyes didn’t look like she believed that, but Chris decided not to push it. “I have my father’s old hunting rifle you can use. I’ll go dig it up when I’m off tomorrow.”
Chris shook his head. “No. I don’t want anything to lead back to you. Besides, I still have a rifle tucked away that I can use. I got it from a SWAT guy after he retired. It’s a thing of beauty. Hopefully, it’s still in the storage shed where I left it, and it hasn’t been auctioned off on one of those shows.”
“What do you want me to do?”
He smiled. “Go on like nothing has changed. Once I have done this, if I manage to pull it off, then I’ll come to you. You will help me turn myself in so I can finish out my time.”
“In the morning after, of course.”
He laughed. “Of course.”
Trip made a noise that sounded like a dying cow.
Silvia laughed. “I don’t know if that is a warning or just his reaction to what I said, but I do need to start my rounds. You be careful. And go to group before. Promise me.”
“Promise. And I haven’t forgotten your promise about coffee on the outside.”
“Good,” she said with a smile. “Be safe.” She slipped out past Trip as another nurse walked by.
Trip got up and strolled in, clutching his book to his chest. “I want to go with you.”
Chris looked at him for a moment, considering it. “What did you do to get in here, Trip?”
Trip smiled. “I killed a man for not taking me out on the town with him.” His tone, completely deadpan.
Chris blinked.
“He was a very handsome man, too. The world lost a model; I’ll say that.” Trip continued. He looked up at the ceiling as if remembering something good.
“Um, thanks?” Chris felt a shiver run down his spine.
“I’m not talking about you.” He paused and looked Chris straight in the eyes. “This time. Take me with you.”
Chris nodded. “Sure, but I think you’re joking. Or else I think my last vision would have been about you.”
“Or maybe you never say no to me, so it never becomes an issue.” Trip sprawled out on his bed made of books.
“You are one scary dude, Trip.” Chris decided he needed to go to group after all. He got up.
Trip smiled at him as he curled into a fetal position around his book. “It’s my superpower.”
Chapter Seventeen
Shifting Sands
Brian sat in a brown bean bag chair, staring at the television screen mounted on the wall before him. It still hurt to move, the entire left side of his body healing from various puncture wounds, so each jerk of the controller as he tried to avoid oncoming cars on the screen sent fresh pain lacing up his body. Doctor Patton had gone on and on about what that meant for his puncture strength, but Brian had been in too much pain to make any sense of it.
The door slid open as the screen informed him that he had died. Being thrown from a moving car into a building would do that for you. Well, maybe not him, unless it had a point on it, apparently. Brian looked over, wincing at the pain.
Nurse Lindell shuffled in, looking the worst he had ever seen her. Her eyes had black bags, and mascara ran down her cheeks. She hustled over to the mirror that Brian now knew to be a two-way mirror. “Please. Please. Don’t freak out.” Before Brian could assure her that he was fine, she shifted form before his very eyes. She shifted from a slightly overweight middle-aged woman to a thin model that looked a great deal like the doctor that was always helping Doctor Patton.
“That’s pretty cool.”
“Thank you,” she said with eyes downcast. She walked across the room to kneel before him. “Are you a good person, Brian?”
She was the first person that had addressed him by his first name here, despite him asking them to countless times. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Do you want to be?” The corners of her lips twitched upward.
“Sure. Who wouldn’t?”
She glanced over her shoulder at the mirror behind her. Turning back, she gave a sigh. “I need help, and I didn’t know who else I could turn to.”
“Doctor Patton won’t help?”
She shook her head. “Not with this. Not in the best manner. Sometimes he tends to go the scorched earth method if you get my drift.”
Brian nodded, thinking of Officer Wolfe. “I understand. What’s going on?”
“My daughter is missing. And. And.” She started to sob. “She’s not well.”
Brian frowned. “She’s got an illness?”
She nodded. “Of sorts. Her life hasn’t been the most…” Again, she seemed to struggle with words. “It’s been a bad life. I had hoped that Doctor Patton would let us go once he finished the experiments, but he doesn’t let people go, Brian. At least not in the sense that they want to go. The only way people leave here is toes first.” She sighed. “And I’m afraid that as soon as he finds out she is missing, he’ll respond badly.”
“He can’t be that bad.”
She shook her head so violently that the blonde hair danced in a dizzying array. “Oh no, no Brian. That man doesn’t see the rest of us as people. Even less so his family. No, if he finds out she is missing, she will go from a test subject to liability. And liabilities he definitely goes nuclear on.”
Brian frowned. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to help me escape, so I can go find her. I’m not allowed outside of the site. Not ever. I’ll need your strength if I’m going to make it to the surface.” Again, she glanced over her shoulder. “And we’ll have to hurry. He’s almost done, I think. I think you were the missing piece to his puzzle.”
“I don’t follow.”
She gave a twitch of a smile, fast and then gone. “That thing on his arm. He calls it The Gauntlet. It lets him modify his DNA to whatever ability he has cataloged. There are only one or two abilities he hasn’t been able to replicate, but what he wants most is to unlock the ability to use them all at once. And that is where you come in. He believes that you are key to unlocking that. That somehow you’ve managed to overcome the one ability per person limitation. He’s got your DNA sequence,
so it is only a matter of time before he isolates what makes you special.”
“Then why all the tests for puncture strength?”
She shook her head, frowning. “So he knows its limitations when he uses it. That’s the only reason any of us are alive. Because he’s not satisfied with what he knows about each power, so he tests the original owner in as many ways as possible until he’s absolutely sure he understands the full implications of what the power can do. Once he’s done that, either you stay alive as one of his pets, doing odd jobs for him, or you suddenly fall victim to a test that goes too far.”
“Wow.” Brian just stared at her. He found he had no reason to distrust her and he had seen Doctor Patton using his Gauntlet just as she said. “When do you want to do this? I’m still healing.”
