GeneSix (29 page)

“I saw things as he does. I saw what four dimensional perception is like.”

“What is it?”

“I have never really been able to put it into words. It was like asking someone to describe the taste of chocolate. There is no way to accurately do it, other than to say it tastes like chocolate. And I saw how fast he can think, and the depth of his memory.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “So he’s real smart.”

“Oh my dear, he is so much more than
real
smart
. He can effectively change the course of civilization, should he be left unchecked. And unchecked he is. The government was keeping a tight leash on him, but he and Calder escaped and have since gone rogue.”

“I don’t see what the problem is. If he’s that smart, maybe he can do a lot of good.”

“Have you ever heard the expression - absolute power corrupts absolutely?”

She shrugged. “I guess.”

He took another sip of tea. “Scott Tempest and Jake Calder are each more powerful than any human who has ever walked the face of the Earth. Together, they are even greater than the sum of their parts. And yet they are flawed, as much so as any human. They are as fallible as any of us. They have the power to alter the course of civilization, but I believe a civilization must follow its own natural course, directed by its members. To have one or two super beings simply step in like gods is antithetical to healthy development.”

Her brows rose. “Like gods? Isn’t that maybe overreaching a bit?”

He shook his head. “Not in the slightest. Not if you knew these two and what they are capable of.”

She took a couple gulps of beer, and stood the bottle on the table. “And you intend to stop them?”

He nodded, and reached again for his tea.

“Do you mind if I ask how? I mean, look at this place.” She glanced at the room about her. “Look at all of you. You give new meaning to the saying
operating on a
shoestring budget
. How do you even hope to be a threat to them?”

He let out a long, weary sigh. “It has been slow going, to say the least, trying to build up a force capable of holding them in check.”

Peter LaSalle came striding through the doorway. He said, “Just get me into reaching distance of Jake Calder,” he held up a fist, “and
pow
!”

This invoked another weary sigh from Quentin. “LaSalle, you already tried that approach. It resulted in you having a fractured skull and in your capture by the government.”

LaSalle continued on his way to the fridge, and pulled out a beer. “That was because I gave him time to power-up. I was stupid then. I know how his power works, now. I’m gonna give him a good right cross before he can power up. Knock his head clean off’a his shoulders. Besides, he’ll find it harder to knock me out this time. You hit me, I get tougher. I always been like that.”

He gripped the bottle cap between his thumb and forefinger, and without bothering to twist it off simply snapped the cap from the bottle. He then tossed a wink at Chloe. “Hiya, cutie. He treatin’ you okay? He can be a little dull sometimes.”

And without waiting for a reply, he strode back out to the television.

Chloe said, “He gives me the creeps. I really meant what I said about no one touching me.”

“No need to worry,” Quentin said. “I have the power to stop him.”

“You better have or this deal’s off.”

“He’s not very gifted in the mental department, but he is strong. He can stop a car with one hand. He
is
necessary. Believe me.”

After the beer, Chloe said, “Well, I gotta go. It’s getting late.”

“If you’re going to be part of the team, you can stay with us. There are rooms upstairs.”

She shook her head and rose to her feet. “Not a chance. Not with that loser out there.”

“I assure you, I can hold him in check.”

“Thanks,” she said, “but I haven’t stayed alive this long by taking chances.”

He also rose to his feet. “How will we know where to find you?”

“Go to the bridge on Worcester Street. A few of us live under it. And then there’s the abandoned shoe factory on Waverly. I’ve crashed there a few times. If I’m not there, the people there will know how to find me. And there’s the old jewelry store where Mother stays a lot. I check in there regularly.”

He nodded. He knew the place. “I should at least walk with you. It’s not safe for a girl on the streets at this time of night.”

“I’ll be all right. I’d be surprised if Snake wasn’t outside waiting for me. He’s very protective.” She shouldered into her jacket. “Later, dude.”

She strode across what passed for a living room. LaSalle was sitting in one chair, which all but buckled under his weight. Cosmo slouched in another. They each had a beer in one hand, and as Chloe crossed the room, their gaze went from the television to her tight jeans and the way he hips swished from side to side as she walked.

Once the door was shut, LaSalle said, “I’d like a piece of that, man.”

Cosmo snickered. “Like you’d have a chance.”

“Hey,” he said, suddenly indignant. “I do okay with the women.”

“In your own mind, maybe. Come on, Pete. I’ve known you for a year now. I ain’t seen you have one date.”

Quentin stood in the doorway to the kitchen. “Gentlemen, as usual, your conversation astounds me.”

Never quite sure how to take the Englishman, LaSalle said, “Whatever, dude.”

“Believe me when I say – the girl is entirely off limits. No one is to touch her.”

Peter said, “Maybe you ought’a let her decide that.”

“I’m not joking, LaSalle. And believe me, you don’t want to piss me off.”

Peter held out his hands. “All right, all right. Don’t get your panties all twisted.”

Quentin, ignoring him, went to a window and pushed aside a tattered, dusty curtain. Chloe stood across the street. There was no sign of Snake, but Quentin doubted he was far away.

Chloe was standing alone, but she seemed to be talking. She would wait a moment, as though she were listening, and then speak again. It was like she was having a conversation with someone who wasn’t there.

She began to walk away, and Quentin saw something swirling about her. Like a fog, but dark colored. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, and then looked again, and the dark fog seemed to be gone. Chloe was simply walking alone down the sidewalk. He must be more tired than he thought.

He stepped away from the window. “Good night, gentlemen. Shut off the lights when you retire.”

“Why?” Cosmo said. “We ain’t payin’ the bill.”

“No, but I’m not sure how strong the wiring is in this place.”

The stairs creaked as Quentin climbed them. He started down the hallway, but paused at Mandy’s door. Oh, how perceptive Chloe was, he thought. He wondered how she could have so easily seen what Mandy herself did not?

He had been impressed with Mandy from the moment he first met her, not that he was given much time to talk with her that day, as all hell had broken loose. But the more time he spent with her over the past year and a half, the more his feelings had grown. Something about her eyes, the way she tilted her head when she spoke, a sort of adorable way her mouth made a rather puckering motion when she formed her words.

A few weeks after he had recovered from his injuries and returned to Boston, Quentin visited the site of the former Boston Press Herald building. Rubble was still there in random piles, and the entire area was sectioned off with yellow police tape. Never one to let inane rules hinder him, Quentin stepped over the tape and to a stack of concrete and dirt. He stood in a long coat, the wind moving his hair. The day was cool and the sky cloudy, threatening rain.

He suddenly heard a voice seeming to come out of nowhere. A woman’s voice. “I come back here sometimes. It’s where the life I had ended.”

The voice seemed to come from somewhere toward his left. He looked in that direction and saw Mandy Waid seem to fade into view from thin air.

She said, “This is where the woman I was died, and what I have now become began.”

“You’re a meta-human,” Quentin said, startled.

“Kind of obvious, isn’t it?” Her hair was long and hanging loose, the wind catching it. She was in jeans and a long black coat with a gray, fur collar.

“When did you find out? Or did you always know?”

“You mean, did I know when I wrote that article on Jake Calder? No, I didn’t know then. I had no idea. I found out only after I came back to Boston from their facility in Colorado. Egghead Man – Scott – theorized that a meta-human gene might be triggered by severe trauma. And what I experienced here can certainly qualify.”

“Severe trauma,” Quentin thought, thinking back to events in his own life. “That could seem to answer a lot of questions.”

“You had some trauma in your life? I mean, before you met Scott and Jake?”

“Some. Yes.”

“You don’t wish to elaborate?” She shrugged. “It’s your business. Certainly none of mine.”

“Maybe sometime over a cup of coffee.”

As they stood there, it struck Quentin that his initial impression of her had not been wrong. She was indeed one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. Something about the curve of her cheekbone, the gentle shape of her jaw. The sort of green color of her eyes. Her hair gently moved with the breeze, and that somehow added to the breathtaking image that was Mandy Waid.

“So,” she said, “what is the extent of your ability?”

“Now that I have the nullifier made for me by Egghead Man, I don’t really know what my limitations are.”

He glanced to a chunk of broken concrete he estimated to be maybe two tons in weight. With but a thought, he caused it to rise into the air.

“Impressive.”

He allowed the concrete to descend back to the dirt. “You?”

“When I was lying in bed in Colorado, recuperating, I found out I could make my hand go transparent.”

“Did you tell Tempest?”

She shook her head. “I don’t trust that freak. And I sure as hell didn’t want to say anything that would make them think I was like them. Though I had to admit, as much as I hated to, I was. Like them, I mean. Once I was back here in town I started experimenting, to see how far I could go. I found I can turn completely invisible. And I can walk through walls. And I can do both at once if I want.”

“So what now? Do you go back to being Kimberly Stratton?”

“After what happened I don’t think I could ever go back to the life I had. I am not the same person. I left my child behind. In a way, I left a part of me behind.”

There was something sad about her. Something angry. Something maybe a little scary. But Quentin found he could not take his eyes from her.

Then she said, “You mentioned a cup of coffee earlier. It’s kind of cold out here. A hot cup of coffee might just hit the spot.”

He nodded, and allowed himself a smile. “I know a little café just down the street.”

Thus was the beginning of what had become their little team, to somehow protect the world from Scott Tempest and Jake Calder. And it was the beginning of the love Quentin felt for Mandy.

She did not love him in return. He doubted she could love anyone in the state she was in. While his motivation to stop Tempest and Calder was simply an attempt to the do the right thing, he did not delude himself into believing hers was anything other than pure and simple revenge. He was fully aware of the monster revenge can turn a person into, and yet his feelings for her were in no way diminished.

As he stood in the hallway of their headquarters he allowed himself one more glance toward her closed door, wishing for just an instant he could be in there with her. Holding her. Consoling her. Making love with her. And then he continued on to his own room at the end of the hall.

“Good night, Mandy,” he said quietly, and started down the creaky floor to his own room.

The Darkness heard a gunshot. It had gone off in Chelsea. He had escorted Chloe back to the abandoned tenement where she was sleeping tonight, and now he was on his nightly patrol, moving through the city with the speed of darkness. This brought him to within hearing distance of where the gun had been fired for only a millisecond, but for him that was enough. He turned his course, and followed the sound of the gunshot.

Before the roar of the shot had fully faded, the Darkness was there. It was a liquor store, in a small seedy neighborhood. A woman stood behind the counter, looking scared to death. Two perps, white guys with baseball hats on and guns in their hands, stood facing her.

The Darkness was having to be more careful, these days. The authorities had set up some sort of trap for him a few months ago. As soon as those painful strobes began going off, he had gotten the hell out of there.

This was all due to his mistake. Revealing his existence to Sondra and her family in front of the cop. Now they knew about him. Mother had always said if knowledge of his existence became public, the authorities would hunt him down. And this was what they were apparently doing.