GeneSix (28 page)

“Well, I have. Ripped from me and taken from me. By that evil Doctor freaking Frankenstein. First my child was made into a freak, and then he was ripped from me, and then taken away.”

Chloe saw that Mandy’s arm, the one holding the beer bottle, seemed to be disappearing. Within seconds, her arm was simply gone, as though it now ended at her shoulder. The beer bottle was hanging in midair, suspended where Mandy had been holding it.

Mandy smiled. It was not a smile of happiness. It was the smile of a cat ready to go out and kill a mouse. “You think that’s impressive?”

Mandy got to her feet, her arm returning to full view. She turned, and stepped through the wall, and was gone. The wall was fully solid – Mandy had simply stepped through it like it was made of fog.

“How..,” Chloe was staring with disbelief. “How did she do that?”

Quentin said, “It’s her ability. She’s a meta-human like the rest of us.”

Chloe nodded. “I figured that. She wouldn’t be here otherwise. It’s just that I’ve never seen anything quite like that.”

“Our Miss Waid is quite unlike anyone else.”

Mandy said, stepping through the closed door behind them, “You got that right.”

Chloe knew she probably should not ask this question, that she should probably turn and get the hell out of here while the going was good. But the question was there, and had to be asked.

“Who took your baby? Who’s Doctor Freaking Frankenstein?”

“The scientist who lives in a secret hideaway in a mountaintop, somewhere. And when I find him, I am going to kill him. I am going to reach my hand into his chest, just like I passed through that wall, and pull out his heart.”

She returned to the couch, drawing her feet up to sit in the position Chloe called
Indian style
. Not politically correct, she knew, but who cared? Not her. She lived under a bridge on the other side of the city with a dozen other meta-humans. She figured political correctness was one of the least of her worries.

Quentin said, “We had better get out of here. Leave her alone.”

Mandy was once again staring at the bottle, as though Quentin and Chloe were not even there. They turned and left the room, and Quentin gently closed the door behind them.

Snake stood outside the dilapidated building that served as a headquarters for Quentin Jeffries and his screwy little band. The cold drizzle had picked up a bit, and he pulled his slouch hat a little lower to keep the rain from his face and neck. He had been human once, but he fully accepted the fact that he was now no more than a humanoid reptile, and as such was cold blooded. Standing around here in the cold rain was not good for him. Yet he would not leave as long as Chloe was in there.

It was not that Snake didn’t trust Quentin. He did, at least to a point. It was that he didn’t trust the people Quentin allied himself with.

Snake realized the nearest streetlight was beginning to grow dimmer. He knew what this meant.

“Hello, old friend,” he said into the night, his voice its usually gravely self.

The familiar and yet kind of scary baritone seemed to come to life from all around him. “Hello, Snake. It’s a cold wet night to be standing around. Especially for you.”

Snake gave a hissing chuckle. “That’s the truth. I’m just waiting for Chloe. She’s in there with Quentin Jeffries. He’s trying to recruit her for his team.”

“There is a search on for Mother. Is someone ill?”

Snake nodded, and explained about the woman he and Nate had found at the biker bar, and the man with her who was near death. “I was taking part in the search, but then Quentin sent me a mind message saying he needed to meet with me. He wants Chloe to join his team. Finding mother’s important, but keeping Chloe safe is more important.”

“She is like a daughter to you.”

Snake nodded.

The voice in the darkness said, “Mother is at the warehouse on Bay Street. I was just there. She’s helping some of the sick. I would appreciate it if you could go escort her back. It’s a long trip by foot. I’ll stay and watch over Chloe.”

“Thank you.” And Snake took off into the night. Crossing the city would take some time, but he found if he kept moving he could handle the cold weather a little better. He didn’t have to worry about Chloe’s safety. With the Darkness there, she would be safer than she would be with anyone else.

Once Snake was gone, the Darkness settled into the night, swirling about the condemned building Quentin used as a headquarters. Listening. Waiting to protect. After all, this was what he did.

Quentin led Chloe to the kitchen. A battered table stood in the center, with mismatched chairs surrounding it. The finish was peeling from the table and a crack ran down along the center. Quentin motioned for her to deposit herself in one of the chairs.

He went to a fridge. “Would you like something to drink?”

“A beer would be good.”

“A beer? How old are you?”

“None of your business, longhair.” Impatience suddenly rose to the surface. “Look, you wanted to talk to me. You invited me here. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure you want me to join this little group of rejects of yours. Now, get me a beer or I walk. I don’t really care which.”

He shrugged, and reached for a beer. “Coors is all we have.”

“That’s fine.”

He set the bottle on the table beside her, and then filled a kettle with water and placed it on a burner. “I never quite got used to this business of drinking beer as though it were water, the way you Americans do.”

She twisted off the cap. “Yeah, I kinda figured by the way you talk that you weren’t from these parts.”

He took a chair across the table from her. “Now a good hearty stout, that is a drink to cherish. But this watered down stuff you people call beer, why it’s hardly beer at all. So in the absence of a good stout, I’ll settle for tea.”

She took a swig. “What brings an Englishman all the way across the water to Boston?”

“I had a problem and I needed it solved. And I figured Doctor Freaking Frankenstein, as Mandy so aptly calls him, could probably help. Which he did.”

“That baby she was talking about, did any of that really happen?”

“Indeed. Though, it was not quite ripped out of her. The good doctor teleported it out to save her life. ”

“And the life of the child?”

“I really doubt there is anything on Earth that could harm that child.”

“So, is she, like, your cherry bomb?” she took another hit off the beer.

“My...what?”

“Your squeeze. Your lover. Come on, dude. You’re English. Don’t you speak English?”

“I thought I did. Until I came to these lovely shores. But no, Mandy and I have never been together. Why would you ask that?”

“I can tell by the way you look at her. It’s kind of obvious.”

“What’s obvious?”

She smiled. “You’re in love with her, dude.”

He raised a brow. “I most certainly am not.”

“Sure you are.” Chloe took another pull from the beer.

Quentin sighed with indignation.

Chloe shrugged. “A woman knows. Besides, you’re telling me right now that you are, without even realizing it. You’re protesting too much. If you weren’t in love with her then the suggestion would just make you laugh.”

Quentin frowned. “Just how old did you say you were?”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, you obviously are quite the student of human nature.”

“So tell me about her. Who’s the baby daddy?”

“Jake Calder. Ever hear of him?” But he could see by her reaction she had.

“
The
Jake Calder? The one caught in that explosion a few years ago and turned into a meta-human?”

“One and the same.”

“She doesn’t shoot small, does she? And the kid must have the same bizarre abilities he has.”

“Quite. She walked away from the child because there was no way she could raise it. But then I think she found walking away from it took more out of her than she realized. I think something inside her just snapped.”

“Dude,” Chloe said, “I think it’s obvious something inside her snapped.”

Quentin nodded sadly. “It’s worse when she’s drinking. But it’s never good.”

“All right.” Chloe set the beer on the table. “We gotta have some ground rules if I’m going to work with you. One – you stay out of my head. If I catch you messing around in my head even just a little, for any reason, and the deal’s off. And I might just kill you on top of that. Two – those goons out there, none of them touches me. No one does. It’s hands-off-the-girl or I walk. Got it?”

“But I haven’t told you what we do.”

“What you do is obvious. And it wasn’t exactly like I hadn’t heard of you. Word gets around, in our little community.”

“You haven’t even inquired about pay.”

She shrugged. “I don’t figure there’s going to be any. If there was, none of you would be living like this. Besides, I have my own source of income.”

“Then, might I ask, what it was that sold us on you before I could even really begin the sale’s pitch?”

“That woman upstairs. I guess I kinda identify with her.”

“With
her
? She’s drunk and out of her mind. I can’t see how she made any kind of positive impression.”

“It was something she said. About the baby being taken away. You might say I know how she feels.”

The water kettle began screaming. Quentin removed it from the stove and filled a cup, and then dropped in a bag of Earl Grey.

“Tea must be brewed to an amber color,” he said. “Another quirk of you Americans I cannot quite fathom. You people drink it black as though it were coffee.”

“Then why don’t you go back to England if you prefer life there so much?”

“Because,” he dropped the tea bag into the trash, “the people I am preparing to go to war against are here. Hence, I must be here.”

He returned to his chair, cup in hand. “Now, must I ask for an explanation of your rather cryptic statement? About somehow identifying with Mandy and her baby?”

“I don’t talk about it much.” She gave a shrug and a sigh, as if to say
what-the-hell.
“When I was fourteen, I was in foster care, and I got pregnant. And they just took the baby and it was given to adoption. I had no say in any of it. I saw the child only once. Seeing that woman upstairs - I kind of know how she feels.”

Quentin took a sip of his tea. “I am continually amazed at how a supposedly civilized society can treat its people so barbarically.”

“So, tell me about her power. Her ability. She seems to have two of them. She can walk through walls, and she can turn invisible?”

“I am not a scientist. I know very little of the genesis gene, aside from what I gained from my brief contact with the mind of the aforementioned Doctor Freaking Frankenstein.”

“You find that name amusing.”

He smiled. “Suffice it to say, Mandy has a way with nicknames.”

“Do I dare ask what she calls you?”

“To my knowledge she calls me nothing.”

Chloe raised a brow. “She doesn’t know how you feel about her?”

He shook his head. “No, and neither does anyone else here. I would like to keep it that way.”

“All right. Then, tell me about this Frankenstein dude.”

“His name is Scott Tempest. He is a meta-human like us. However his ability is his mind. His intelligence level is off the scale in any kind of test devised by mankind. He thinks in what he calls four dimensions.”

“And what is that?”

“He never really defined it, but I touched his mind once and got a glimmer into what such a thing is.”

“So, you can reach fully into someone’s head and read their thoughts?”

He nodded. “The problem was, when I engaged my ability, I began to hemorrhage within my cranium. He determined the cause was related to my cranial blood pressure. It increases drastically whenever I use my telekinesis. He created a device to prevent this from happening.”

“Sounds like he helped you out.”

“Indeed. He helped me greatly.”

“So what did he do to Mandy?”

“He saved her life, actually. The child she was carrying, Jake Calder’s, was tearing her up from within. Scott removed the child from her, and then used advanced technology to heal her.”

“Then what’s your beef with him?”

“My
beef
, as you say, comes from when I touched his mind. You see, I had to use my telekinesis to hold Mandy’s uterus together until the teleportation could be affected. I am no biologist, so Tempest invited me to reach into his mind and tap into his knowledge, so I could effectively reach into Mandy telekinetically and find her uterus and hold her together. And what I saw when I touched his mind,” he took another sip of tea, “profoundly frightened me.”

“What did you see?”