Emergence (53 page)

There was a large mound in the center of the natural auditorium. We moved toward it, keeping watch all around as we moved further out of the cover afforded by the narrower cave.

As we got close, I realized the raised area had once been a stalagmite the thickness of a city bus. It had been cut down, leaving a stump maybe fifteen feet high. A throne-like seat had been carved in what remained. The area around the throne looked odd. As we got closer, I could see why. Dozens of skeletons littered the area, scattered and torn and tangled together. Strips of flesh still clung to some, and blood streaked them all, pooled around the edges of the mess. Fresh.

“Looks like we got here too late,” said Bill.

“No sign of the scum who did this,” said Ken. “And it looks like all the people taken from the resort are dead.”

“Let’s have a quick look around, then we’re outta here,” said Marissa. “I’ll contact White and arrange our extraction.

#

There was nothing left to find in the cavern. No survivors, no-one to save. It sucked. I got out of the army for that exact reason.

An hour later we were climbing aboard a Navy Pave Hawk chopper to go home.

AFTERMATH

“Well, Mister Stoner. You’ve seen what we do. It’s time for you to make a decision. Now that you know what sort of
freaks
are out there, do you stay and help? Or do you hide your eyes and pretend it doesn’t exist?” Mr. White leaned back, steepling his fingers without taking his eyes off me.

Wanley had made me another perfect coffee, and I’d been shown all the cutting-edge equipment I’d have access to if I decided to stay. I felt like Bruce Wayne, with all his wonderful toys. The avenger in black. The bane of all rogue chimerics.

“I’m in,” I said. “But I want a damn Bat Copter.”

Mr. White laughed. “I’ll see what I can arrange. As a norm, you’ll need a certain edge when it comes to fighting chimerics. I have a few friends that may be able to help.”

Bring It On, Hero

J.M. Martin

From about three miles out, my telescopic vision revealed a military chopper and an ops team. I zoomed closer until I saw a familiar face. Marissa Gullan. Codename: Blackout. I stopped in mid-air, a few hundred feet above the ocean. I saw Wild Bill and Katana getting into the copter, and a few more I didn’t recognize. Marissa by herself was not one to be trifled with, so if I was going to approach them, I’d need to be real careful. I was no longer TCA’s poster boy, after all. Some folks took that as open season.

“Did you know Wild Bill was with the Varangians?” I said.

A voice crackled in my ear.
I’d heard a rumor.

“I’m confirming it.”

Huh
, the voice responded, more tinny and garbled than it had been earlier.
Well—

“You there?” I hyper-focused inwardly, shut off my telescopic vision and probed through the spectrum with my hearing.

—actively recruiting…not a good—

Lost him again. “You’re breaking up on me,” I said.

The reply’s electromagnetic warble buffeted my inner ear and caused me to shake my head a little.

I peered again at the chopper. It had lifted and was veering northwest, slightly in my direction. I remained still in case they had advanced detection systems on board. They turned north, leaving the island, back toward the US. That told me either Dornasian had fled, or White’s super-powered ‘A-Team’ had managed to take out this world’s best impersonation of the Antichrist since Adolf.

Or maybe Dornasian had never been there at all? Maybe Thrasher’s Intelligence was faulty.

Yeah. How often did that happen?

On cue, Thrasher’s voice cut back in, sonorous, rumbling. —
there?

“I’m here.”

They must have a decent scrambler…had to engage an ionic baffle and re-calibrate the Bird’s transmitter to a sub-frequency. I’m surprised you can hear me this low.

“Yeah, well. It’s not all that pleasant, to be honest.”

You sound like James Earl Jones talking through a hazmat hood, so…

“You mean like Darth Vader.”

Thrasher’s laugh rumbled.
Yeah, but not as cool.

The chopper was quickly moving away. I decided to let them go. For now. I could pour on the speed and catch them easy enough, if need be. Instead, I flew toward the island. “I’m checking things out. I’ll hail you if anything comes up.”

Sure it’s a good idea? Give me two hours to get Artemis and we can be there.

“I think whatever happened here is over. I don’t want to waste your time. I’ll have a quick look and decide whether or not to go after the chopper.”

Okay. Be careful, Hero.

“Not my name anymore. I keep telling you.”

You mean you keep telling yourself. I’ll keep my ears on.

“Thanks.”

Within seconds I was sweeping low over a crimson-blanketed mangrove forest and toward the executive resort. I did a full circle around the place. It was empty. Just some nesting cormorants and a few small lizards basking in the afternoon sun.

Toward the beach, I spied some Varangian handiwork. I touched down to study the corpse of a costumed female, more blood outside her body than in it. A lump of blonde hair caught my eye beneath the drooping fronds of a banana palm. I hovered over and retrieved her head. She looked familiar, even in this gruesome state, but I couldn’t place her name.

I’d told DeAngelo more than once he needed to rein the Varangians in, but obviously this Mr. White—who I hadn’t the pleasure to meet but was really looking forward to it very soon—had some form of arrangement with The Chimeric Agency. Somebody had leverage on someone else, and DeAngelo made a habit of turning any kind of conversation about ‘damage control’ back on me.

I laid the head down next to the body and retrieved my TCA communicator from my belt buckle. I’d kept it after breaking ties—the communicator, not the buckle. Thrasher ran some of his tech on it, descrambling and unlocking the device. I used it to take a couple images of the body, sent them to my secure cloud, then levitated away.

Further reconnaissance of the island revealed destroyed buildings, more body parts—big body parts, for that matter—and a cave that reeked of death. I took some aerial shots, then flew back down.

“Christ,” I muttered. The corpse outside the cave was a bloody mess, looked to me like some kind of bruiser-class chimeric. Obviously not impervious to bullets and grenades. Two lizards were lapping at the body. One of them hissed at me, and they both fled into the jungle.

I looked at the yawning opening of the cave, switched to thermal vision. No heat signatures to speak of. Nothing appeared to be lying in wait near the entrance. I gave the huge dead fellow another glance, his chest a gaping hole of charred meat, the top of his head seemed to be missing. Flies gathered and buzzed all around.

I took a couple images, stored them.

“Sorry about your luck, big guy,” I said, then lifted about six feet off the ground and proceeded inside the cave.

#

I used to think I looked a little too grandiose in the white cape and red tights. I’d never really gotten comfortable in those duds. The cover of a month-old edition of
Entertainment Weekly
read:
Where Is He Now?
and, in the recirculated photo, I held a young woman in my arms, her sundress torn, her long legs revealing a hint of shapely tush, long dark hair all wind-blown in perfect disarray to match my billowing cape.

I remembered that one. It had been a staged shoot. One of the various contractual obligations for The Chimeric Agency.

The model had her head tucked in tight, the side of her face against my chest. Wreckage sparked and smoked behind us.

I shook my head, tossed the rag on the empty seat next to me, peered at the clock on the wall. To me, the minute hand sounded like someone chambering a bolt-action rifle
inside
my head.
Chik-clack. Chik-clack. Chik-clack!

“Excuse me, sir?”

I looked up at the peroxide blonde, her brown eyebrows knitted together like she’d called for me more than once already. Funny how I missed the obvious when I went all hyper-focus.

“Sorry. I was, uh…” I just shook my head.
Listening to the clock ticking…

“No problem,” she said. “Can I get your number?”

They’d had me login with a number rather than my name. I fetched the slip of paper from my pocket and handed it to her.

She took it, but didn’t bother looking at the number, just clipped it to her clipboard. “Follow me, please.”

She must’ve taken a bath in a tub of Eternity for Women. Yeesh.

I tuned my senses down, focused on touching feet to floor. Never can tell how folks will react when one starts floating around the room, and flying had become second nature for me. I tried to pass for a norm when I could these days. Or a mundane. Or whatever they were calling non-PwPs now. At least I didn’t have alligator skin or thorny appendages instead of arms and legs. That would definitely make things tougher.

“Room three.” The blonde indicated the door to our left and stepped back, clutching her clipboard to her chest. She peered at me, looking me up and down. I heard her heartbeat increase.

I nodded a polite smile and entered the room.

“Just have a seat. Dr. Legato will be right in.” Perfume Girl closed the door.

Heh. Perfume Girl.
I tagged the alias on blondie in my head, then immediately thought back to this pheromone-producing chimeric I’d run across in Motor Hills who’d managed to get me in the buff before a monster-hunter called Wild Bill showed up and put a couple scatter-slugs in her leathery posterior. Still gave me the heebie-jeebies thinking of that crocodilian witch.
What was her name—?

I heard the biometric lock slide through a trough as the security latch glided into place. It broke me from my meandering. Unless that door was made of solid metal it wouldn’t slow most of the good doctor’s clients down more than a second or two, I would imagine. I thought it was odd they were locking me in the room, but shrugged it off. It’s not like I’d ever been to a facility like this before.

I looked around, wondering if all the offices were furnished this lavish. Lots of cherry and faux-leather and a large, tinted, plate glass window overlooking a small lake teeming with ducks and geese. I walked over and placed my fingertips on the glass, a simple tactile analysis. I counted three layers of thermoplastic-threaded polycarbonate. You could empty a .44 at this window with nary a scratch. I was tempted to test it with a punch, but that would just be mean.

The ‘Old Me’ was more reckless. I liked to think I’d gotten wiser since the world had become rife with what
National Geographic
had dubbed ‘Humanity 2.0.’ Now you had watchdog organizations like the DCD and more so-called ‘chimerics’ than ever before. Couldn’t blame a shrink for us meta types for being careful.

I removed my fingers from the glass. It made a strange warble and rippled like a small stone hitting water. I cocked my head. That was odd.

My bewilderment was broken by the beeps of someone on the other side of the door keying in a code. The security lock swished, and Dr. Legato came in.

“Hello,” she said, a slim woman, showing white teeth with an attractive gap in the front. She had brown skin a shade or two darker than mine, and her hair was a mere hint, not much longer than the stubble on my jaw. Some tech-looking, ceramic spectacles hid her eyes, the earpiece read Biotiq on the temples—a mega-corporation here in Port Haven, though I had no idea they made cool shades. Rather than slacks, blouse, and a lab coat, she had on a dark blue bodysuit that hugged her hips and left little to the imagination. My super senses reached out and caught a subtle sweet floral scent with a touch of beeswax, nowhere near Perfume Girl stage.

I nodded in greeting before realizing she couldn’t see; she touched the edge of a side table to navigate around it.

“Please,” she said, indicating one of the recliners.

I waited for her to sit, then lowered myself cautiously into the chair. Next to her, on the side table, was a decanter of filtered ice water and a pair of clean glasses. She filled both of them halfway and handed one toward me without asking.

“Thanks,” I said, leaning forward to take it.

A brief smile came and went as she straightened in her chair. She put the glass to her thick glossy lips and took a small sip, then set it on the side table and looked in my direction. She reached up and tapped her finger against the side of her specs, then spoke: “Wednesday, March 11th. Patient TCA-dash-zero-two-two-eight-A, commencing session one.”

She paused a moment, smiled, then, “I understand this is your first session since you came online?”

“Came online?”

“Do you prefer another term? Manifested? Activated?”

“I don’t have a preferred term. ‘Came online’ is fine. And, yes, this is the first time I’ve been
ordered
to therapy. I’ve had you types in my head before, so forgive me if it takes me a while to warm up to this. Which kind are you?”

“Empath.”

“An empathic shrink. Does that make your job easier or more difficult?”

She gave another fleeting, butterfly smile. “I received a TCA-ordered prescript:
anonymous client submits to psych eval pursuant to conditional agreement following a classified incident
…neither of which I am even remotely briefed on. So, as I understand it, you didn’t initiate being here?”

I thought I was done with DeAngelo’s Agency.

“Guilty as charged.”

“But you’ve come unescorted and compliant?”

“Unescorted?” I smiled, shrugged, and realized she couldn't see me. “I try to play by the rules.”

“I get the impression you’re a bit…
aggravated?
”

“Aggravated? Nah. Not at all. Inconvenienced maybe. When I get aggravated, people tend to know it.”

“Fair enough.” Long pause as we sat in silence. Then she said, “Perhaps we can start with you telling me why you think the Agency wants my evaluation.”

#

Confusion. Something in my head.

Whispers in the distance.

Something’s coming.