by Red Harvey
A struggle of emotions crawled across her face. Rather than respond, she changed the subject. “Does Darcy have...powers?”
“None have manifested, but they will. The women of our family always come into their powers in their early adulthoods. For that reason and others, women in our family also display a wider range of abilities, much like yours.”
“What can Moretz do?”
Now that the ball was rolling in an entirely new direction, Ada had touched on a tough question.
He chewed thoughtfully. “Manipulate electronic devices. As you can see, it’s made him very successful.”
She drank more wine. Even wine from the food modulator was better than none, as he had read about the last orchards drying up a decade before. She re-filled another glassful of the near-wine from the carafe before making her request.
“I want to see him. And no bullshit lies this time.”
Kressick nodded for her to pour him a glass as well. “That’s just the request I was waiting for.”
~ * ~
Mother and father had been arguing for hours. They didn’t fight often, but when they did, the whole house shook. Darcy was not over dramatizing the anger, as objects in the house actually shook or even broke during their arguments. Sometimes their anger was like a living thing. Her interface was apt to flicker if her parents exchanged heated words. She did her best to ignore their voices: her father’s a deep boom, and her mother’s a shrill harp.
Instead, Darcy focused on the image the mirror reflected back to her. “Let me see the purple skirt.”
The machine reacted. Over her underwear-clad body, an image of a purple mini skirt filtered to fit her form. She turned to the side and back again. She looked fat.
“Eww, no. How about the purple slacks?”
The skirt disappeared, replaced by the slacks she ordered. The quality of the projection was high. She appeared to be wearing actual pants.
“Much better.” She nodded to her reflection. “I would like the slacks now please.”
A steel clothing rack extended outward from a wall panel. On the farthest end hung a pair of purple slacks. She grabbed for them.
“Thanks.”
While she slid her legs into the pants, she heard bits of her parents’ latest argument, even though their room was two doors down from hers.
“My daughter...!”
At that, Darcy came to attention. She grabbed a random shirt from her bed and pulled it on. She hurried to the hallway, tip-toeing to the door of her parents’ bedroom. Their voices could be heard clearly through the particle barrier.
Her mother was talking: “Think of what people will say. You’re supposed to have one, not two!”
“My scandal began a lifetime ago. There is no denying her. I won’t do it. I’m sorry, but that’s over.”
They can’t be talking about me. A mistress then? Illegitimate baby?
“I can’t do this,” Chancelin said.
“You’re going to have to.”
“I can’t.”
“Too fucking bad!”
The light bulb in the ceiling of the hallway gleamed to an extraordinary glow before going dark and exploding. Darcy covered her scream with her hand.
“God damnit, Brontes. You broke another one. Control yourself!” Her mother’s voice hovered closer to the door.
Darcy bolted. Halfway down the stairs, she heard footsteps crunching on the broken glass by her parents’ bedroom. Either Mother or Father picked up the mess. She picked up her pace, fairly flying to the first floor.
In the sitting room, she found Phennell. He spoke in a hushed voice to a woman with dark hair and thin lips.
“Weren’t you here for dinner a couple nights ago?” asked Darcy.
Phennell twisted his head in her direction. “Darcy, this is—”
“What are you doing here?” Ignoring her brother, she fired another question.
Things were starting to come together. The woman was familiar, but not because she had been in the house before. Her eyes.
“Her name is Ada. And she’s your sister,” said a voice from behind Darcy.
She had missed the British accent over the years. “Grandpa?”
Kressick hugged her tightly. They were both tall, and Darcy’s mouth was close to her grandfather’s ear.
She whispered, “How can she be my sister? She’s shorter than me!”
He chuckled. “She didn’t get my genes, it would seem.”
“Hi.” Ada extended her hand to Darcy. “I know we’ve already met, and I’m sorry it had to be under false pretenses.”
Darcy narrowed her eyes without taking Ada’s hand. “Yes. Why did you do that?”
Ada put her hand away. “I wanted to meet all of you. I wasn’t sure a meeting would happen if I openly claimed Moretz as my father.”
She ran out of time to analyze Ada’s words. The Congressman came down the stairs right after she spoke. He was running.
“Ada?”
Darcy’s eyes widened. He knew she was Ada, the daughter, and not Mali the lobbyist.
“Yes, it’s me.” Ada sounded indifferent.
When he reached the sitting room, Moretz looked every part the concerned parent. His eyes were wide, his hair out of place, and his tie was crooked. There was little of the composed congressman before them. Darcy thought he made for an excellent actor. The performance was complete when he enfolded Ada in a hug.
She did not put her arms up to reciprocate. She looked very Prominent all of the sudden.
Darcy’s arm hairs stiffened, and she could sense the same weird charge in the air that had emanated from her parents’ bedroom. The energy subsided when Moretz let go of his firstborn.
Phennell cleared his throat. “Dad, do you two want some privacy?”
Moretz put a hand on his stepson’s shoulder. “I think it would be best, son.”
“Yes,” Ada said slowly, “I think it would be best, too.”
Nineteen
Darcy protested. She said she deserved to know more about the stranger, and had a right to stay. Her father disagreed. Phennell pushed her out of the room.
“Daddy!” Her squeal echoed across the foyer hall.
“Later, honey. I’m sure Ada will stay for dinner.”
Moretz glanced at her for confirmation.
Reluctantly, she nodded. The room was empty, except for Kressick. He closed the sitting room doors.
“What are you doing?” Ada asked, voice sharp.
“Staying, of course.”
Quite casually, he draped himself over the nearest chair.
She planned to say a few words and levitate a few threats, but Moretz cut her off before she could begin.
“He stays.” He stared hard at her. “We both know why.”
She glared at Kressick. He shrugged.
So, Moretz knew of her homicidal plans. And he was afraid of her, that she could tell by the anxious looks he kept shooting her way. Gone was the concerned-parent shtick. At the moment, Moretz’s only concern seemed to be for himself. With his father around, he acted more confidently, and of course he would be because any move she attempted would be mentally blocked or reversed. Suddenly, she wondered if she had been lured there and what for. What did Moretz have to gain from her presence?
“Why did you bring me here?”
“No one forced you to come,” he said, but his anxiety increased with his answer as evidenced by the static charge that fried the air, and she wasn’t the source.
“Yeah, that’s true.” She took a breath. “I’ll re-phrase—why did you lure me here?”
“I wanted to meet my daughter.”
Amazingly he didn’t choke on the words.
“You could have called me. Having my grandfather pose as my mother’s boyfriend is a bit above and beyond the call of a worried parent, wouldn’t ya say?”
Moretz nodded, appearing like a boy who had been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. He sat on a velvet settee and looked
up at her with anguish. Fake anguish.
“I wanted to keep an eye on you. An even closer eye.”
An even closer eye. The bastard meant to say— “There were others before Kressick?”
Kressick pretended interest in his interface.
“Not like Kressick. Not boyfriends or friends of your mothers, but yes, there were others,” Moretz admitted.
“Why?”
“Because I had to know if you changed. For your safety, and for the safety of others around you. I had to know when you came into your powers.”
“Lot of fucking good that did,” she snapped.
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “My agents watched you from a distance. Then you turned twenty-five, and they still reported no changes.”
She cracked her knuckles—going down the row of fingers one time, two times, three times. She may be projecting calm, but spikes of electricity crackled from her elbows and on down.
“What’s so significant about twenty-five?” Ada hid her hands behind her back.
Kressick answered her. “By that age, most powers manifest to their full potential.”
There are gaps in Kressick’s and Moretz’s answers, too many, a voice cautioned.
“Where do these powers come from? Why can I do this?”
She pointed a finger at the overhead light in the room and shot a blue arc of electricity at it, turning it off.
The room was dark until a ball of light glowed in the palm of her hand. She manipulated the weak metal at the base of the bulb, calling it to her. It hovered in between her palms, the light flickering at first, but growing strong until she powered it directly.
“Where do these powers come from?”
Again, Kressick answered. “No one knows really. There are rumors and myths, but all they amount to is guesswork from people who cannot fathom a great phenomenon like the one we carry.”
“Tell me one of the myths.”
Her impatience caused the bulb’s glow to increase. Moretz shielded his eyes with his arm, but Kressick seemed unaffected by the blinding light as he spoke.
“One of the oldest, and I believe most ridiculous, myths is the one claiming our bloodline is a diluted dissemination from Greek gods.”
The temptation to laugh was strong, but she held it back. She saw a reflection in a mirror on the drawing room wall and barely recognized herself. The glowing light in her hand, the intense look on her face, and sapphire eyes that literally sparkled with energy...well, she certainly looked godly. There could be something to Kressick’s myth.
“What I believe,” he continued, “is that we are a part of nature. We are a mutation, nothing more, nothing less. Life evolves, finds new paths. We’re just another new path. There are no gods involved, just the simple and steady march of progress.”
“Progress? We’re not a progression. We’re—what do you Brits say? Cock-ups?”
The bulb flared a mix of white and red, then burst.
The two men put up their arms to prevent flying glass from harming their faces. Three pieces of glass cut through Moretz’s suit jacket, burying into his arm.
“Christ!” he yelled.
Ada was only cut once, near her cheek. Her fingertips came away with a tiny smear of blood.
The other lamp switched on, and she realized Kressick had done it, without touching any of the switches.
Gingerly, he bent to retrieve the broken pieces of glass on the floor. “Perhaps we’re both. All I know is I’ve had to hide out for a good portion of my adult life after the rise of the State. They’re looking for people like us, talented people who can do things others can’t. To what end, who knows, but our family hasn’t been safe for decades. Safety is another reason your father and I needed to watch you.”
His reasoning sounded legitimate. Until she looked at her father, his face twisted by a frown. He removed glass from his arm, muttering to himself. The words weren’t audible, but she picked up the word “bitch”. When he noticed her attention, he stopped complaining and tried smiling at her. His sore smile resembled more of a snarl. Safety had not been part of his motivations for sending Kressick.
“And now? Do I join your Justice League of heroes?”
Kressick laughed, while Moretz grimaced.
“Hardly,” her father said. “We want to help you. Let you know you’re not alone. I know you might be averse to trusting me. Your mom probably told you things—”
Skipping over the “things”, Ada went straight for the source of why she really despised Moretz.
“I know all of the things you did to me, you bastard. You want to help me now?”
Silence. She repeated her question. Moretz blinked rapidly.
“My childhood was shit because of you, and my husband is dead, but now you’re going to help me? Now you’re a caring person, there to make sure I don’t accidentally hurt anyone? Now, thank my lucky fucking stars!”
After each “now” she advanced on Moretz.
He stood and stumbled backward. “No one was at fault. I can see why you’re mad, but—”
She threw one arm out in his direction, and he flinched. “All your fault!”
When no lightning bolts hit him in the chest, he relaxed. “If I had known about my power, I could have learned to control it. Don’t you understand? You killed my husband!”
The lamp Kressick turned on glowed brighter and brighter, Ada made sure of that. The wall panel in the room sparked, emitting smoke. A titanium pen from a nearby desk flew like a missile through the air and punched Moretz into the leg. He yelled at her, but she was busy concentrating. She had meant to hit him in the heart, but her power of levitation was still new. Full control over metal objects was not an easy task yet. He tried to pull out the pen without much luck. Even through her rage, she caught his nod at Kressick.
A black curtain descended over her eyes.
~ * ~
Ada crumpled over, the settee catching her fall.
“Thanks, Dad. She was ready to fry me.”
Moretz hung back from approaching his daughter, as if he were afraid she might wake up and finish what she started. Two more tugs, and he removed the pen from his leg.
Kressick knelt to assess Ada’s condition. No bumps or cuts from the fall, thank goodness. She had already been through enough with the re-wiring and subsequent after-effects. He righted her body and put a pillow beneath her head.
To the small hole in Moretz’s leg, he gave a curt nod. “It’ll heal.”
Moretz sputtered over the dismissal, and Kressick pretended he didn’t hear it.
“She wasn’t wrong. The disaster was partly your fault, and mine. We could have told her she was a time bomb— readied her with purge rituals.”
Moretz got down on his uninjured leg to look his father in the eye. “Do you want me to live?”
“Of course,” he replied slowly, unaccustomed to the savage intensity emanating from his son.
Moretz put a hand on Kressick’s shoulder, grunting from the pressure put on his other leg to rise then looked down on both of them as he spoke.
“Then don’t ever let her fucking hear you say any of that.”
Twenty
What was that smell? Ada hovered in the in-between of sleep. She could smell and hear, but she wasn’t willing to open her eyes to the morning yet. There was the faint aroma of burnt hair, which was confusing. August didn’t use a hair straightener, though sometimes she did. Maybe he was cooking breakfast, but he was hardly the one to burn food. Burning food was, again, her territory.
Ugh. To figure out the source of the stench, she needed to open her eyes. But she was too tired. Eleven p.m. had slipped into one a.m. because she had stayed up reading. And one a.m. at her age felt like four a.m. She couldn’t help staying up. Her bad habit developed from teaching. Except the classes had become more dependent on student and screen interactions, making observers out of teachers. The students talked to her when their tech was glitching, or when they didn’t understand a prompt pr
esented by the interface. Basically, she was babysitting a group of cattle, waiting to remind them to move on to their next class. She wasn’t bitter, just disappointed at what her career evolved into.
At least August was thoughtful enough to get up and make her breakfast. Ada stretched. As she reached out, she felt his arm. Oh. He was still asleep. Then what was the smell?
“Wake up,” she murmured.
He didn’t move. She nudged him.
“Do you smell that?”
He failed to tell her what he did or didn’t smell. August had never been a morning person. Most of the time, she had to come back into their bedroom, warning him on multiple occasions when he’d be late for work.
“Get up!” She punctuated her words with a shove, a hard one, which rolled him onto his side.
The charred hair smell clogged her nostrils. She wrinkled her nose then opened her eyes. August’s back was rippled with strips of burnt flesh. His skin was scorched black as if he’d been lashed with a fiery whip.
Horror-struck, she gasped. Where had the heat source come from? With trembling hands, she felt around the sheets, the pillows, but they were cool to the touch. A nightmare. August’s condition amounted to nothing more than a nightmare. Yes. Any moment, she would wake up, for real this time, and bury the dream under a large cup of coffee.
She pinched her thigh, and when sharp pain followed, she accepted the reality of what was happening.
“August!” Her voice cracked.
It was hard to see much through her thick veil of tears.
Sobbing, she shook him, harder and harder, desperate for a response from him, any response. Finally, Ada turned her husband’s body over a second time. Scorch marks lined the rim of his mouth. Where his blue eyes should have been were the equivalent of dried up prunes. She screamed.
And screamed. A slap to the face cut her off. Though the slap barely hurt, she planned to retaliate, until she opened her eyes. The first person she saw was Darcy, watching her with revulsion. Phennell stood, eyebrows together. Grandpa—ha, Grandpa—waited in front of her. And Moretz... God, he was holding her sweaty hand as if he cared.
Ada ripped away from her father’s touch. From the gasp, her action offended Darcy. Meh. Ada was too groggy to pretend consideration. Moretz moved away from her, and Kressick was the only one to stay by her side.
