Emergence (59 page)

“Uh…no…I didn’t know…I assumed…”

“You assumed incorrectly. It is your pattern. Now, I’m afraid that’s all the time I have today. Thank you all for coming here to celebrate the life of my wonderful husband. He would have been humbled, just as I am.”

Kennedy smiled at the rest of the reporters, many of which were grinning. They all loved to see their counterparts taken down.

So predictable.

#

The limo pulled to the front of Kennedy’s home, and the driver exited the car and moved around to open her door for her. She stood and stretched. The last few days since the statue ceremony had been exhausting, yet fruitful.

“Will you need anything else today, Mrs. Ross?”

“No, Jim. But thank you. I’ll be staying in the rest of the day and evening. You can go home for the night.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Ross. I saw you on the news. The ceremony for Mr. Ross.”

“Oh? How’d I do?”

Jim grinned at her. “You gave that idiot from the Herald the what-for.”

She feigned a wince. “Was it too much? I wonder if I was out of line.”

“No, Mrs. Ross. He deserved it. I hear he was so embarrassed by your words that he quit the Herald and skipped town.”

“Did he now? Well, can’t say I’ll miss him. You take care, Jim. Tell your wife, Emily, I said hello and that I love the sugar cookies she made for me. They were absolutely perfect!”

“Will do. That will please her. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mrs. Ross.”

Kennedy watched her driver, making sure he had completely left the property before she went inside. Jim was a good man. Dependable. He’d been with the family for the better part of three years.
And those cookies…
Kennedy licked her lips. She was pretty sure there were still a couple left from the batch Jim’s wife had delivered the day of the ceremony.

She turned and went inside, careful to lock the door behind her. She looked down at her elegant business suit. It truly was lovely. She knew she should change it to avoid getting it irreparably dirty, but she was too anxious to delay any longer.

Kennedy had matters to attend to.

Briskly, she walked to her study. It was fairly ordinary, with the requisite book shelves, chairs, and lamps. Her desk was expensive, but simple looking. All as people would expect should they walk into the room. Sensors imbedded in the walls scanned her features, took samples of her breath and the DNA in her perspiration.

“Verification: Epsilon Psi Iota Lambda Omega Gamma Upsilon Epsilon.”

The sound of a low chime registered as the sensors accepted her voice print and authorization code. Shutters closed down over the windows, blocking out light and any potential method for seeing into the room. The room was already soundproofed to prevent any eavesdropping.

Once the shutters had blacked out the room, internal lights slowly came online, elevating to Kennedy’s preferred brightness. As the same time, the hiss of air announced the unsealing of the passageway opening behind the set of bookshelves behind the desk. They moved smoothly to the sides, revealing a passageway down to a basement unmarked on any of the mansion’s blueprints. It was cliché, but she had loved the idea of a secret passage in the study since she had been a child. She crossed the room to the stairwell, pausing at her desk to take the sole remaining cookie from the plate there. She ate it in two bites. Emily was indeed an
amazing
baker. Kennedy resolved to offer the other woman a position as her cook again. Jim’s wife had refused before, but perhaps the offer hadn’t been made in the…correct way.

She took the steps in measured fashion. She was anxious, yes, but it wouldn’t do to hurry and fall, breaking her neck. Behind her, the bookcases slid closed. Lights at the base of each step made the descent simple. At the bottom of the stairway, a metal door swung open soundlessly.

The room beyond was expansive, and the impression was made even more so by the lack of furnishings. Kennedy had long since removed much of the furniture and other trappings. They were simply too hard to keep clean under the…circumstances.

The room had originally been built by her husband as a place he could tinker with his eclectic projects and inventions. The room also contained live feeds from thousands of cameras inside the various corporate holdings of Ross Industries. The inventions had largely amounted to nothing more than an expensive hobby for Ted. However, his obsession with surveillance had given Kennedy an idea, and a method for watching these so-called “heroes” running around the world.

A bank of monitors lined the wall to her right, all of them coming to life to display different scenes from across the country and the globe. Wires hung down from them, all feeding into various servers that recorded everything. Another set of wires fed from the monitors into a completely different apparatus.

The cords snaked down the walls and across the floor to a chair holding an emaciated man. His name was Rick Charon, and his ability allowed him to locate anyone who had the chimeric DNA. The cabling ran up the chair to the back and top of Rick’s head, where their ends disappeared into holes she had drilled into his skull.

One of Ted’s longest running experiments had been an effort to tap into the human mind to prevent or instigate corporate espionage. He’d been too conservative to experiment on actual humans, but he’d stumbled on a modicum of success seeing into the minds of animals.

After his death…well…Kennedy hadn’t felt very
conservative.

Finding the correct chimeric had been a chore. The research. The false leads. But with Ross Industries, her funds were virtually limitless. It took months. Once she had determined that Rick was indeed the correct individual, luring him to her home had been shockingly easy. A chance meeting in a nightclub. Some bright red lipstick and a low-cut dress.

And here he sat—her eyes spying into the world.

The pictures his mind generated had taken some getting used to. They reminded Kennedy of moving Japanese brush drawings, fluid and all in black and white. Until, that is, Rick found someone with the proper DNA. Those images came through like a masterwork oil painting.

Kennedy had Rick—he hadn’t come up with a clever name for himself before she’d taken him—keeping any eye on the chimerics getting publicity. Through Rick’s unique vision, she’d been witness to the Red Wraith’s killing, a well-placed bullet to the head as he crushed that old sniper’s heart. It had been a decent show, although brief. She’d also enjoyed watching the death of the Wisp, murdered by the jealous, skull-masked Monger who was, in turn, taken down by a chimeric goth girl. She remembered watching Tantrum’s rampage through La Futura with a flutter in her breast. Oh, that one had been a treat! Kennedy had even made popcorn.

But those were all mere research.

Mainly, she had Rick keep his mind focused on one, special chimeric.

“Rick, darling,” she whispered into his ear. Kennedy caressed his cheeks, and she saw his pupils expand and dilate. She’d learned that meant he was listening. She leaned over to a medical cart parked next to his chair and selected a syringe marked NOCTIS.

The drug had originally developed by Ross Industries to help American soldiers in the various sleep study programs at military bases throughout the country. While it had shown promise on animals, the drug had caused massive and deadly spikes in brain activity in humans. Most of the human subjects—whose deaths had been quietly swept under the proverbial rug—survived the early, low doses, but immediately developed an overwhelming addiction. NOCTIS eventually burned out their brains.

But for Rick, NOCTIS enhanced his ability without damaging his brain. And the addiction was easy to exploit.

“Darling,” she repeated. “I need you to look up the Human Shield. You know who I mean. I have some NOCTIS for you if you can do it.”

His pupils shifted rapidly, then expanded until the irises were hardly visible. The screen shifted, and the oil painting image of the Human Shield filled the displays.

The Human Shield.

The one she wanted dead more than anyone anywhere. He saved others, yet couldn’t save her husband.

Since acquiring Rick, she had hunted down the Human Shield dozens of times. Each of those times she had orchestrated his ‘death.’ Every idiot politician, if threatened, hired the Human Shield. It was so predictable.

She’d burned the Human Shield alive. Drowned him. Shot him. Decapitated him. Eviscerated him. Hung him upside-down and cut his throat, letting all the blood drain from him. Detonated an IED next to him. Run a piece of rebar through his eye, and out the back of his head.

He never stayed dead. In a very real way, Kennedy realized she was a serial killer. A serial killer of this one chimeric who death refused to take. She consoled herself in the knowledge that the Human Shield remembered all those deaths, and he was rumored to be borderline insane.

It was a start.

She would figure it out one day. Kennedy had patience. She had money. But mostly, she had an ever-growing number of chimerics who she could study, kill, and experiment on.

There was a groan behind her.

She turned to where Albert Tanner was strapped to a surgical table that had been elevated so he could see everything on the screens, and what she had done to Rick.

Taking him had been simple. He was predictable. Took the same route to work every day. Ate at the same places. Went to bed at the same time. Never changed the codes to his security system. Made people hate him, and so, he had no real friends.

“Hello, Al.” She crossed the room to him, then reached up and pulled the piece of tape away from his mouth. Predictably, he began screaming for help. It hadn’t worked the first few times she’d removed the tape, and it didn’t work now. She sighed and patted the top of his head like he was a dog. “No one can hear you, Al.”

Without warning, she lashed out with a fist, and connected with his nose. She felt it give way with a delicious crunch beneath the blow. Blood exploded outward, soaking her blouse.
Yes
, she thought,
I definitely should have changed first.

Al wept. He didn’t even have the heart to spit blood at her. It was disappointing. Kennedy expected that at the very least.

“What do you want?” Al whined. Blood leaked from his ruined nose and drooled out the corners of his mouth.

“Oh, Al. Honey. I just want you to face the consequences of your words. You tried working with Peter Farnsworthy to discredit me. It was a pathetic and telegraphed play. The best part? No one misses him. Just like no one is missing you.”

“What do you mean…is Peter…is he…?”

“Oh, Al. Sweetie. I cut him to pieces. On this same table. He had more fight though. We had quite a time, let me tell you.”

“Oh no…oh no…”

“Yes. I was going to let you go, Al. You were a terrible reporter—everyone agreed, I’m sure you saw the message boards—but harmless enough. Even plotting with Peter Farnsworthy against me wasn’t enough to ’punch your ticket,’ as they say. But then you questioned me. And you tried to ruin the statue ceremony for Ted.

“So here we are.” Kennedy waved a hand around the basement. “You are costing me valuable study time, Al. The Human Shield isn’t going to kill himself, and I have a lot of deaths to plan.” She smiled again. Her smile was lovely, or so she had frequently been told.

“You are killing…them all?”

“
All
of them? Me? Hardly. That’s a lot of effort, Al, and I don’t have any actual powers to speak of. I’m not like them, and I won’t ever be like them—naturally, at least. But it
is
exceedingly simple to find them now, and give their information and whereabouts to their closest rivals, their enemies. Even other governments. Oh, the right kinds of chimerics are worth a
lot
of money.” She patted him on the head again, then picked up a scalpel from the medical tray attached to the surgical bed.

“But hey,” she continued, her lovely smile never leaving her face. “If I have to kill a few chimerics—or a few hundred, for that matter—to get the vengeance I deserve, that’s just fine by me.”

“But…but…you’re Kennedy Ross…this isn’t you!”

Kennedy took the scalpel and dragged the blade across his throat. Blood sprayed, covered her.

“Actually,” she said to his convulsing form. “They call me Epilogue.”

Stay tuned for more Humanity 2.0!

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