GeneSix (35 page)

Yet as he reached out, Quentin found there was no mind to grab hold of. It was as though there were no entity for him to read the mind of. Simply an empty room.

He then realized his mistake. He had released his grip too much on Scott and Jake. Scott pulled free of Quentin’s control, literally taking a step backward. Jake was also free and began to stir, consciousness quickly returning to him. Scott pressed a button on his belt and a force field was generated, enveloping himself and Jake.

“We’re safe from you,” Scott said. “This force field operates on a modulation you can’t penetrate.”

“Of course,” Quentin said. “You recorded my brainwaves while I was at your complex a year ago. You created your force field to operate against the modulation of my brainwaves.”

Scott nodded. He then looked off toward the center of the room, where the dark humanoid silhouette seemed to stand.

Scott said, “Don’t challenge this being, Quentin. He’s a meta-human, I believe, but I know little about him.”

The voice said, “Do not interfere, Scott Tempest.”

Scott said to the being, “I know very little about what you are. But I can’t let you simply wipe the mind of this man.”

“You defend him? Even after he was holding you prisoner?”

“He did what he believed was right. Despite everything, I believe him to be a good man at heart.”

As Scott spoke, he was working the controls on his wrist band reconnecting with the central computer at the mountain complex, giving it his and Jake’s current coordinates. The girl Chloe had neutralized the connection, but not fully disabled the wristband. “Whoever you are, you can be stopped. All we have to do is gain an understanding of your ability.”

“It is not I who need to be stopped, Tempest. I am the protector of the innocent. I tolerate no violence. No abuse. This is my town, and you will both stand down. I have in fact been watching all three of you for some time. I have been convinced you and Jake Calder mean no harm. I am still deliberating about the telekinetic.”

“You operate out of New York, also?”

“Indeed. I can travel from one city to another instantly.”

“You have speed, also?”

“I move with the speed of darkness, Tempest. I
am
darkness. Remember that. Both of you. And remember, I am always out there. There is no place that is beyond me. I am letting you off the hook this time, Jeffries, but I have very little patience. Remember.”

Quentin said, a little indignant, “No need to be so cryptic.”

“I am what I am. Heed my warning.”

And with that, the humanoid figure seemed to fade away, and the darkness the room had been submerged into began to dissipate. Quentin realized the overhead lights were still on. This Darkness person had not shut off the lights, he had merely drowned out their luminescence.

Quentin said, “He speaks very melodramatically, doesn’t he?”

“I would take him seriously,” Scott said. “His ability must be to generate some sort of energy field that drowns out light.”

Jake was now on his feet, and had heard the entire exchange. He said, “Sort of like the reverse of April’s ability.”

“So it would seem. Which is fascinating, because darkness isn’t really energy like light is. It’s actually the absence of energy. Or so I thought.”

Quentin said, “Regardless of what he is, though, he seems to be very powerful. And so it would seem a truce between us is being enforced.”

Scott let down his force field. “I would hope you might realize we’re not the evil creatures you seem to think we are.”

Jake said, “The first thing Scott did, when he was free of your control, was to try to defend you.”

Scott said, “Our mission is not to conquer. We’re explorers. Discoverers.”

Quentin shook his head. “I never said you were evil. It’s simply your power, which between the two of you is nearly absolute. This, combined with the human weaknesses we all have, is what makes you so dangerous. I never said you would intentionally harm anyone. But with your power, even accidentally you could wreak irreparable havoc. Look at the damage you have already caused, accidentally, both here and in the neighboring universe.”

Scott did not know what to say. He thought he had worked all of this out in his own mind. Yet as he stood here, listening to Quentin, he found it difficult to argue.

Quentin continued. “I was trying to set myself up as the opposing force to you. The yin to your yang, so to speak. But I have had enough. I am clearly in over my head. You are on your own. And God help the human race.”

Quentin strode across the floor to the warehouse door.

Scott said, “Quentin, where are you going?”

Quentin stopped, but did not look back to him. “I really don’t know. For the first time, there is nowhere for me to go.”

And he stepped through the doorway, and out into the night.

Sammy quickly triangulated on the signal coming from Scott’s wristband and contacted them, as well as the team waiting at the hospital in Boston.

Sammy’s voice came through the audio field now surrounding Scott and Jake. “You mean you actually just let him walk out the door?”

“What were we to do?” Scott said. “It has been made very clear to me by this Darkness being that there is to be a sort of truce between Quentin and us. And I don’t want to risk opposing this being until we know more about his darkness power.”

Jake said, “So, we’ve got to live under an Organian Peace Treaty.”

Scott chuckled. “Apparently. You know, the very fact that you know what the
Organian Peace Treaty
is qualifies you as at least an honorary geek.”

“I’ve been living with you too long. I’m becoming infected.”

Sammy laughed. Scott found that to be a good sound. Sammy was adjusting to life as a humanoid quickly. Much moreso than Scott had anticipated.

Scott said to Sammy, “Beam us back home, my friend.”.

“Booting up now. It’ll be a few minutes before we’re powered-up.”

“Roger that.”

At the mountain facility, Akila was sitting on a stool by a lab table, her ankle swelling. Sammy had gotten an ice pack from the kitchen, but it was doing little good.

Sammy, once again seated in the computer alcove, looked over his shoulder at her and said, “As soon as I get the okay from Scott, we’ll put you in a regen field, and get those ankle bones to mend. Should only take a couple hours.”

“You would do that for me?” she said. “Even after we invaded your home?”

Jeff stood in the middle of the room, not daring to actually touch anything. He was still powered-up, and he was not quite sure how to power-down. He didn’t know the limit of his own strength, and didn’t want to break anything.

“We’re the good guys, Akila,” Sammy said. “We’re really not your enemy. What happened to your world was an accident. We thought we were saving lives by taking out that giant asteroid, or whatever it was. It never occurred to us, despite my photonic brain and Scott’s over-the-top IQ, that we might be wiping even more lives out of existence.”

Akila and Sammy had compared notes regarding the alternate Earth. Akila now understood how much her Earth had been altered, and that the home she knew now was no longer there. As for the apocalyptic world she and Hasani had visited briefly, Sammy could only speculate. When it came to alternate realities, the speculations could be infinite.

Chloe was sitting at the lab table across from Akila, drinking a Coke. “All we knew was what we were told. Quentin Jeffries painted a pretty convincing picture of just how dangerous you people all were. But he was wrong, and Mandy is clearly out of her mind. I see that now. I’m so sorry for what I did to you, Mister Sammy.”

Shortly after Mandy and the others had beamed out, Sammy had begun rebooting. A fail safe Scott had built in that Chloe had not found. Within a few seconds, he was again conscious.

“Please,” Sammy said. “No harm, no foul. And it’s just Sammy. No
mister
. Which brings to mind,” he turned to Jeff, “I’ve been thinking about taking a last name. One of the really good ball players of the past eras was Sad Sam Jones. How about that?”

“You want us to call you Sad Sam?” Jeff said.

“Actually, hearing it that way, perhaps not.” He glanced at a digital readout on the computer console. “Teleportation field now at forty-two percent.”

“I could just zip out there and get them all, you know. Have everybody back here in just a few seconds.”

“Not powered-up like you are. Zeta energy would interfere with your teleportation power. That’s probably why Akila’s friend Hasani had such trouble trying to stabilize a teleportation field of his own when they were escaping.”

“All right,” Jeff said, trying to wrap his mind around everything he had been bombarded with over the past couple of days. “Let me see if I have this right. I was born with the same abilities as my father.”

“So it would seem. Even inutero, you were generating extremely strong zeta energy. And please, remember, you are powered-up to a fairly high degree right now. Speak carefully and easily, so you won’t blow out anyone’s eardrums.”

Chloe said, “Zeta energy is what gives Jake his strength, and stuff?”

“Precisely. And Jeff, when you were a newborn, which was just a few months ago by our time, Scott planted a small device in your head. It emitted a continuous pulse preventing you from powering-up. For your own safety as well as ours.”

Chloe said, “That was the tech I found in your head.”

Jeff nodded. It was all making sense. “When it was disabled, the powering-up process started. But” he looked at Sammy, “why’d it start up on its own?”

“According to Jake, controlling the powering-up process is something of a learned skill. He can help you with that once he’s back.”

“I have another meta ability, too. The ability to bend time and travel through it, and also to teleport from one place to another.”

“Three abilities?” Chloe said. “That’s practically unheard of. Strength, teleportation and time travel.”

Sammy said, “One ability, actually. The zeta energy is not the result of the genesis gene. It’s the result of a DNA mutation caused when Scott’s zeta generator blew up. Jake was caught in the blast and his DNA was altered, apparently right down to its foundation. You inherited this from him, Jeff. Your father isn’t actually a meta-human, at least per Scott’s definition, because he doesn’t have the genesis gene. As for your other abilities, I don’t believe what you do is actually teleporting. I hypothesize you’re actually bending time and reality, removing yourself effectively from one location and landing in another, a microsecond later. A true teleporter would be able to transform the mass of his body to energy, beam it to another location, and then reassemble it. The reason I hypothesize this is because of the sudden influx of tachyon energy when you went from Boston to this complex. Tachyon energy wouldn’t be present in true teleportation. The same might be true of Hasani’s ability.”

Jeff said, “Teleporting sounds kinda like what April can do.”

“In effect, yes. But with her, it’s sort of a by-product of her ability to transform into pure quantum energy.”

“So, if I want to use my ability again, I’ll have to make sure I’m fully powered-down. I won’t be able to use them both at the same time. I kind of wonder if instead of removing that implant, maybe Scott can just adjust it so I can turn it off and on at will. It’d be kind’a nice to have a sort of fail safe.”

Sammy nodded thoughtfully. “I’m sure that could be arranged. We can discuss it with Scott once he’s back.”

Chloe said, “My head is spinning. I mean, I’ve been around meta-humans for years. I mean, hell, I
am
one. But you guys study this like, what, scientists?”

Sammy shrugged. “In essence, this is what we are.”

“Okay,” Jeff said. “That crazy woman who was with Chloe. What did you say her name was? Mandy Waid?”

Akila said, “And the other is Hasani. A friend from my own world. From before the timeline was altered.”

Chloe said, “Mandy claimed Scott Tempest had taken her baby from her, and one of the things she wanted to do here was get it back.”

Jeff said, “But there’s no baby here.”

Sammy glanced again at the digital readout. 68%. “I believe the baby she was looking for, Jeff, is you.”

Jeff said, “Come again?”

“Keep in mind, by our perspective you were an infant until yesterday. You beamed out as an infant and then beamed back seconds later the age you are now.”

Chloe said, “My head is
really
spinning now.”

But realization suddenly struck Jeff. It suddenly all made perfect sense to him. “She’s my mother.”

Sammy nodded. “I’m afraid so. Yes. I was hoping to let Jake tell you.”

“Son-of-a-bitch.”

Sammy said, “I’m hoping you can help us find her. Her mental condition seems to be extremely erratic. I’m concerned she might hurt someone. But I haven’t been able to find a trail. When they beamed out, the tachyon energy seemed to just spread out, and then dissipate. Maybe once Jake has got you powered-down enough, you’ll be able to help us trail them.”