Daughter of Zeus

by Red Harvey

  She walked through every room again. For a second time, her search yielded no one. She sat in the dark of her grandfather’s bedroom. Could she go home and face her mother and brother? They wouldn’t understand how the world was a new place now. Everything had changed for her, yet for everyone else, everything stayed the same. Ada’s anger didn’t seem misplaced anymore. There were plenty of things Darcy could forgive her sister for. In a random flood of affection, she wished Ada were awake and next to her, able to explain things.

  Through her intense stare into the abyss of the dark bedroom, Darcy detected the gleam of the household interface. Of course!

  “Hello, house.” She sniffled.

  “Hello. How may I help you?”

  “Where is Kressick?” She kept her voice steady, but inside she quivered.

  “In the house.”

  Her sadness disappeared instantly.

  “He is? Where?”

  “He collapsed in the bathroom approximately four hours ago.”

  Four hours. Either Grandpa’s sleeping, or— Her thought remained un-thought. “Why didn’t paramedics arrive?”

  A high-class citizen like grandpa was assured a two-to-four minute response time by medical teams in times of distress. Something or someone had seriously delayed his access to medical care.

  The house told her, “I have been programmed to never alert response units of any kind.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Darcy asked her question more to herself than to the machine. Still, the house responded with a long- winded speech, one she ignored. The droning electronic voice masked the steps of another person in the house.

  Shylar was able to grab Darcy’s arms for the second time that night and pin them behind her back. She thrashed, yelling curse words. Her anger fueled her dormant ability, and blue currents ran in jagged lines over her skin. When his grip remained tight, she stopped struggling.

  “What the hell?” Emitting sparks drained her, but she kept trying anyway.

  She was amateur, but even she knew the shocks to his skin should have dropped him hard.

  “Rubber gloves.” She heard the creak of the rubber as he tightened his grip. Darcy looked at his arms for confirmation. Yup, his arms were protected up to the shoulder by a thick rubber coating. “How does rubber...”

  He picked up the rest of the question and answered, “Rubber’s an insulator with no free electrons.” He spoke as though Darcy knew what he meant. “These gloves weren’t meant to use against you.”

  She licked her lips. Her upper lip was bleeding from when she’d bit it while trying to fight off Asshole.

  “They’re for Ada?”

  “Kressick was more worried about your father.”

  Shylar threw the past-tense casually, but Darcy couldn’t process. “Was” meant the past. “Was” meant you were, but aren’t anymore. She focused on a less ambiguous topic to keep her sanity for the moment.

  “My father can do what I can do?”

  She heard his smile in the dark. “His powers are at a more advanced stage, but yes, he can.”

  She couldn’t think of anything else to ask. The rubber gloves dug in, cutting off the circulation to her arms.

  “Let me go, you’re hurting me.”

  “I can’t trust you,” he said.

  Carefully, he nudged Darcy to stand, leading her to the bathroom door. He spoke the command to dissipate the barrier.

  The bathroom floor was Kressick’s mausoleum, his body lying face down in his own excretions.

  “Hello, house!” Shylar yelled.

  “Hello.” The female voice sounded startled.

  “Is he dead?” Darcy whimpered.

  The answer seemed obvious.

  “There is no heartbeat,” the interface confirmed.

  She buried her face in Shylar’s shoulder, not caring that he acted more like a robot than a human being.

  ~*~

  Time was short. His commander—had he been alive—would have reminded Shylar of that straight off. Then he would have berated Shylar for allowing himself to be bested by a teenager, thereby creating adequate conditions for his charge to be taken. When he awoke in the car, he had been the only one inside. After seeing Kressick’s empty apartment, Shylar guessed Ada was in State custody.

  “Congrats,” he said, marching Darcy to the car. “Your actions led to the kidnapping of your sister.”

  Through her tears, she asked, “Huh?”

  He tossed her into the car without elaborating. Shylar’s tranquility was slowly ebbing away, drifting out to sea. He wanted something to grab, something to hold on to. He didn’t know what to do. His whole world had been dependent on orders from Kressick; Kressick’s orders had been law. Now there was no law. Total anarchy would have appealed to the old Shylar, but it frightened the new Shylar.

  I have no purpose.

  Yes, you do. Your mission is the same as it ever was. He imagined Kressick’s responses and was comforted. The same as it ever was. Yes. Waves of tension melted, and Shylar could feel the tranquility return. Kressick was in his head; he had always told Shylar what he needed to know without actually telling him. Death didn’t have to change anything.

  He got inside of the car. Before he inputted coordinates into the car, he turned to face Darcy. “Hello, car.”

  “Hello.”

  Still looking at Darcy, he said, “If Darcy has any change in temperature or an increase in heartbeat, please alert me promptly.”

  “Yes, sir. Monitoring passenger Darcy.”

  She smirked. “How will that help you, asshole?”

  “It’ll give me warning to use this.”

  From his coat, he took out Kressick’s laser gun. Her apprehensive look communicated her new compliance.

  “Passenger Darcy’s temperature increased to 99 degrees, and her heartbeat has quickened.”

  He smiled. “Thank you, car.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Satisfied, he turned back to input his coordinates. He hoped he could get to Ada before the Sammies did too much damage with their litany of testing.

  Twenty Eight

  Erma watched Ada through the dissipating wall. There wasn’t much to watch because the girl was still out cold. Her nude body sprawled on a lit panel that continually scanned her exterior, while simultaneously scanning her internally. Every two minutes, the device updated the woman on Ada’s state.

  So far, she had learned little about the subject she’d stalked for eight weeks. Her superiors were expecting to know the full mechanics of Ada’s abilities, but the computer had not found any palpable anomalies.

  DNA, organ scans, blood work...every scan came up despairingly normal. She was beginning to think the Congressman had lied to save his own ass. He had been willing to sacrifice his daughter, therefore lying wouldn’t really be a stretch.

  “Zero anomalies were detected at the genetic level,” the interface announced as part of its routine report.

  The woman swore softly. “However,” the machine went on, and she held her breath, “the subject’s body temperature is elevated far above the norm.”

  “What’s above normal?”

  “110 degrees Fahrenheit.”

  Things were getting interesting.

  “How is the subject still alive?”

  “I have not yet discerned how the subject is able to maintain a high body temperature without a failure of her internal organs. Her body seems accustomed and even engineered to sustain the high body temperature.”

  All of the information was fascinating, but impatience twitched within Erma. She wanted details, and answers, because soon she would be forced to supply her superiors with details and answers.

  She took off her glasses to wipe a smudge. That done, she asked, “How?”

  “Unknown.” Erma let her breath out in an angry burst. The machine knew jack, and it definitely knew shit. There seemed no way to figure out the mystery behind the girl’s spectacular powers. Time for a new approa
ch. Tech was smart, but only because humans engineered that intelligence. The interface was limited in certain ways, but one could get around that limitation by asking more direct questions.

  She rested her palms on the desk in front of her. Her hands were sweaty, and one of them slid on the polished surface, making her stumble forward and almost fall on her face. “Is there any way to make it known?”

  “Once the subject is conscious, different angles of study will become available.”

  A different kind of question had yielded a different kind of answer. Getting information was a presumably easy fix. “Wake her up then!”

  “Subject is unresponsive.” What to do? She was convinced Ada was the super-freak Moretz promised, but the girl was like a treasure under heavy guard. She had been in the sterilized surveillance chamber for an hour with little result. All she had done was sleep. A peaceful sleep too, as if she planned to never wake up or couldn’t wake up.

  Erma dismissed her summations. Ada’s tox-screens had come back clean, hence she had not been drugged into her comatose state. The shutdown could be a defensive mechanism...no, because when she’d taken Ada, she had already been unconscious.

  “Moretz?” Erma wondered. He claimed his eldest daughter possessed power unimaginable, but that could have been yet another lie from the ever deceitful politician. If Ada’s companions had been taking her away from Moretz, there had to be a reason. He had hurt her, or put her into this coma. Most likely, he was the one who knew how to wake her up.

  Erma had experienced how uncooperative the Congressman was in the past. He would not come in willingly. Although, if her theory was correct, he was more valuable than the Snow White he tried to pawn off on the State.

  She spoke into her wrist. “Bring me Moretz.” Another female voice replied, “We’re supposed to leave the guy alone—he’s a Congressman.”

  “I don’t give a soaring fuck who he is,” Erma cut in. “He gave us a defective subject, so he’s liable for the damages. Bring him in.”

  Her glasses slid from her face and onto the floor. She picked them up, considering her mission as she did so. Eight weeks for an unyielding subject.

  “Ms. Julane?” Erma took a moment to right the underwear that had gone up her ass when she bent. When she was done, she answered the team member. “Yes?”

  “Power in the southeast part of the building has failed.” The information was further verified when the lights around her went out. “You don’t say.”

  A power failure. Had to be Moretz. He had made Erma’s job easier by coming to her, but why he had come was another issue.

  “Ma’am?” Her team member needed orders. In the pitch black room, she felt around for the emergency illumination sources or ELS. In the process, she hit her knee on the desk in front of her. “Fuck.”

  “Ma’am?” Sometimes she hated being in charge. “Rally to me. It’s Moretz, numb-nuts. He’s here.”

  “What does he want?” The team member’s question was on Erma’s mind as well, but it didn’t matter.

  She found a pack of ELS in the desk drawer. “Turn on.” The six-inch tall cylinders lit up the room with a bright white glow. Out of the dark, she felt more in control and able to answer her team member’s inquiries. “Whatever he wants, he’s not getting it. We’re taking him alive.”

  “Understood.” From a locker near the door, she removed a laser pistol. Small, but designed to burn a hole the size of a softball through its victims. Even if she had to use the weapon on Moretz, his wounds would be healed by the medical interface. She wasn’t worried. She only hoped her aim was as good as she thought it was.

  Twenty Nine

  Moretz lifted his hand from the grey electric box.

  He had made sure to kill the power systematically throughout the building, section by section. Sammies were easily confused. The systematic shut down of power might distract them, enabling him and Phennell to reach Ada with little resistance.

  The location was an easy one to find, owing to the fact Moretz had wrestled the information from a Sammie weeks ago. He wanted to know which part of town to avoid, but he was glad his need for self-preservation had been so forward thinking. Without that former selfish strain of his, he wouldn’t have known where to look for his daughter.

  Phennell watched his stepfather’s display of electrical power without comment. When he said, “Dad,” his tone stopped Moretz from walking through the door of the building. His son was a few feet from him, looking as if he didn’t want to go inside.

  “Yeah?” They couldn’t stall for long. Sammies would be moving to the exits, checking for the source of the power outage.

  “What are we doing here?” Moretz looked around the parking lot, then behind him. “Getting Ada out. I told you this.”

  “You’ve told me nothing!” He threw his arms in the air to intensify his burst of animosity.

  Moretz had rarely heard Phennell shout given it was unnecessary because he always got his way. At the moment, he was out of his element, and the discomfort made him irate.

  “A couple of weeks ago, you told me to keep Ada busy until you were ready to get rid of her.” Phennell paced. “Now we’re going to risk our lives for her? Doesn’t make any fucking sense!”

  The reminder of his duplicity made Moretz cringe. “She’s my daughter. I can’t leave her to become a State pawn.”

  Phennell backed away. “Why the hell not? What changed for you, Dad?”

  Moretz was unaware of why he changed or how. In fact, the change was taking over so completely he had almost forgotten what his personality felt like only a day before. The orders he gave Phennell to keep Ada busy were words he didn’t remember saying. His life had been separated into before and now. He didn’t have the vocals or the time to explain his new worldview to his son.

  “Your grandfather inspired me to be better,” was how Moretz put it, “and I’m gonna start on that path now instead of later. Can you understand that?”

  Phennell took a few steps forward. His mouth opened to speak, but then it closed. He stared at his father. Moretz was confident his son would do the right thing.

  Then Phennell backed away again. “No, I can’t understand.” He shook his head. “I just don’t care that much. Good luck.” He ambled to the car.

  Moretz was confronted with fatherly disappointment handed down generation after generation. Phennell was his stepson, but after raising him for so many years, he thought of him as his own flesh and blood. For countless years, he had disappointed his own father, not only with his bad choices, but with his moral ambiguity.

  He expected too much from Phennell tonight, a boy he raised to be a despicable man. One night was insufficient to redeem a despicable man—he could see that now. To repair the damage Moretz had inflicted would take years, decades. Ada herself might never forgive or forget.

  A warmth filled up his hole of doubt. His own need for catharsis was irrelevant. Self-fulfillment was a selfish pursuit, and Moretz was done living for himself.

  The sound of Phennell speeding away in the car spurred him to action. He went inside the unlit building to save his unforgiving daughter, even if she came to hate him more for it.

  Inside the building, the dark was an oppressive force. Moretz had killed the power to hinder the Sammies, but the dark hindered him. He groped along the walls of a corridor, blinking rapidly. With every blink, he hoped to see light. Of course. Light.

  He activated the flashlight feature on his wristlet, the one he hacked and made better just by touching the small machine. The interface then led the way. Light was a bad idea, making him a beacon in the dark. Yet, without the light, he would be lost, so he kept moving forward.

  Soon he passed several rooms, all empty. Beyond the dark abyss was a small red light. Instinctively, he ducked. A thermal blast flew above his head, missing him by a slight margin. A plethora of other red dots danced up ahead.

  Idiots. They brought electronic guns to the fight. Obviously, they had forgotten the extent of
his power. He concentrated on the crackling sounds up the corridor. Four men convulsed from the overloads he sent to their weapons. He waited for their bodies to hit the floor, and he continued walking.

  A voice from his interface halted him. “Congressman Moretz, what can I help you with?”

  Erma Julane. He knew her voice from having spoken with her before. The first time, she had apprehended him and her superiors forced her to release him. That had been ten years ago. The second time, he brokered a deal with her, guaranteeing his safety in exchange for Ada’s capture. That had been months ago.

  Both of the meetings were losing their color in his mind. However, Erma’s voice was distinctive, and it tugged at his memory.

  “I want my daughter back,” he whispered.

  “You can’t afford to be so fickle.”

  “Where are you? Let’s talk without the tech in the way.”

  Her location uploaded to his screen. A holographic map leapt from the wristlet with a green dot marking Erma’s place and a red dot marking his. Moretz followed the map to the blinking green dot. Eventually, the corridor became a dead end. The green dot was to his left, and he went left into an unknown room.

  Small cylinders brought light into the large space. Erma stood near a desk holding multiple panels. Their clear surfaces were like glass as they were useless without electricity. By her side was a pistol, but she held it casually. Even as he approached, she didn’t raise the gun to threaten him.

  Beyond Erma’s desk was Ada. She was in a room adjacent to the monitoring station, naked on a clear slab. He wanted to run to her, scoop her up, and flee, but Ms. Julane would never be so accommodating as to let that happen.

  “What did you do to her?” He scanned Ada’s brain and found no response.

  It was good the State was unable to break through Kressick’s command, but it was bad because he wasn’t sure if he could break through it either.

  Erma shifted her stance. “Nothing save stripping off all her clothes and laying her down. The real question is why are you breaking our agreement? You aren’t the regretful type, or even the fatherly type.”