The Next Chronicle (Book 1): Next (7 page)

“
Understood.”

Kit's mind moved at light speed. Her brief glance gave her details to fill in the mental map of the room. The Charmer was ten feet from the back door, surrounded by six people. Four men, two women, all armed. Two held handguns, the others carried shotguns.

Must have bought them wholesale
, Kit thought.

She was at least twenty feet away, at a diagonal, and seriously outgunned. There was no way for her to drop in on them, and the slightest nudge of any of the workstations between them would give away her position immediately. The ludicrously advanced body armor she wore wouldn't make an iota of difference if one of their bullets hit her in the head. Purely by the numbers, that seemed almost certain.

“Ten seconds,” Archer said in her ear.

He counted down as Kit holstered her pistol, eased a flash-bang out with one hand, and pulled a small device from a hard plastic case on her vest. Kit crouched as Archer ticked toward the zero mark.

“...three...two...one...”

An explosion of sound from the back door coincided perfectly with Kit's next move. She dropped to the floor, pumping both legs against the wall to her right, and launched herself across the smooth tile.

Pin already pulled and dangling from her mouth, Kit threw the flash-bang early. It didn't matter so much where it landed. Gliding over the tile and into the central walkway between the tables, Kit sighted the enemy and threw her second weapon with the practiced hand of a lifelong baseball player.

The Charmer was looking right at her as she crossed the intersection. Their eyes met over the short distance, a frozen moment of utter clarity. The flash-bang arced high above them, ready to blind and deafen everyone in the room. The second device was only a few feet from her hand, mid-tumble, when Kit saw the Charmer's eyes widen.

A cannonball of pure rage slammed into her brain. She cried out in agony as the sensation of someone else battering her mind transformed into the slippery fingers of a hundred greasy hands. That was how she visualized the attack, as someone trying to dig into her head, but sliding across the surface instead. Not at all gently, either; the force of it was incredible. Kit's thoughts shuddered under the strain. The fabric of her mind, the hundred thousand experiences that made her who she was, began to creak.

Kit focused on resisting the attack and let the outside world fall away. She felt some of the vitality drain from her limbs and her senses dim as the energy flowing through her, which let her create short bursts of phenomenal speed and strength, gathered all in one place.

Just as her mind viciously pushed back against the Charmer, the EMP grenade beeped and activated. Kit felt the wave of electromagnetic energy wash over her, shorting out her abilities and instantly ending the mental contest as it did the same to the Charmer.

The flash-bang went a split second later, but Kit didn't remember that part. Her slide across the floor wasn't quite at breakneck speed, which was lucky; her momentum carried her headfirst into a table.

Kit was only stunned for a few seconds, and she came around all at once. Light and sound overwhelmed her, the room teeming with moving forms.

Men and women in riot gear stormed the building and shouted orders in a dozen voices. The Charmer was on his knees, framed by a huge, jagged hole in the wall, through which poured harsh artificial light.

Kit saw this abstractly. The images and sounds made no sense to her, not even when the light coming from outside was blocked by a large figure. The towering shape raised a weapon and fired at the Charmer, hitting him in the neck. The telepath dropped to the floor.

Archer continued forward, offering her a hand. Dazed, Kit took it and was pulled to her feet.

“Well,” Archer said. “That's a hell of a first day at work, isn't it?”

Kit watched as a pair of men huddled around the prone Charmer. Some deep part of her wondered if the man was dead, if Archer had shot him in cold blood. Another questioned why he had risked himself by moving so close to the building, especially knowing he could be taken over just as easily as anyone else. As her mind cleared, a dozen questions formed, but she voiced none of them. Instead Kit let her instincts take over and kept quiet. Confusion still clouded her mind, and she might be misinterpreting the situation.

“I'm going to need somewhere to sleep tonight. And probably through most of tomorrow.”

Archer let out a tense laugh. “If you're worried about sleeping arrangements, I guess you can't be hurt too badly. I have just the place for you.”

Kit ignored the body as Archer put his arm around her shoulder and walked with her into the night.

The boy stood in front of the mirror and felt despair. It wasn't a word he would choose for himself, despair, as his life hadn't given him the proper context yet to truly understand the feeling that gnawed at the edges of his mind. He only knew the reality before him, that every day he woke up in a house decked with luxuries, showered in a bathroom bigger than some apartments, and dressed in outfits as expensive as some used cars.

He hated it.

He didn't have the deep disdain some people had for wealth, but rather an acquired taste that came with months of dealing with those who did. The boy didn't care about how much money his father made or how the cars had to be imported from Italy. His only concern was how that wealth affected his life on a daily basis.

Since starting at the new school, the boy had endured endless torment from other kids. His father wanted him to attend public school, and the truth was that the boy himself wanted to as well. But on his own terms, in a way that didn't draw attention to the money his parents were so obsessed with.

Every argument ended the same, with both parents telling him that he shouldn't be ashamed. No matter how many times he tried to explain, they never listened. It was another thread in the tapestry of frustration and pain he carried with him every day.

As he stowed his backpack in his locker at school an hour later, a sudden silence filled the hallway. It was a familiar ritual, as predictable as sunrise. He shut the locker and turned, knowing there would be a circle cleared around him when he did.

The boy was small for his age. At fifteen he was only a few inches over five feet and slim, the latter due to obsessive swimming every day after school. Losing himself in the water for hours at a time was one of his few refuges. Facing the three older boys, he suddenly wished he had spent that time lifting weights or learning karate.

Something was different this morning. Normally the bullies had vague dislike on their faces, but the boy saw open hatred. Of the two thousand people in the school, these three were the only ones to give him grief. He briefly wondered what they had suffered through to have such an instinctive hatred of someone based only on one irrelevant factor.

Without warning, the largest of the three drove a fist into the boy's stomach. The force of the follow-through pushed him backward, but relief flooded through him. This was it. This was the worst. The sneers and whispered—sometimes more than whispered—curses and small thefts had become too little for satisfaction. The unreasoned hate reached critical mass, and this was the moment it melted down into physical violence.

At first the boy thought the relief he felt had deadened the pain. Then his head struck the locker and the other two bullies joined in, raining punches and kicks down on him with murderous force.

The boy cried out, but no one came to help him.

Expectation drove the boy's reactions, but after a few seconds his brain caught up with the fact that he was being pummeled and it didn't hurt. At all.

The boy thrust out a hand to catch an incoming foot, but missed. Under the rain of blows, he stood, and it was effortless.

He raised his arms to shield his face and felt punches connect with them. Experimentally, the boy threw a punch of his own, not really aiming. His fist shot forward faster than he could track, and movement was followed by a loud cracking sound, then silence.

One of the bullies lay on the ground clutching his ribs with both arms. The boy stood with his arm still extended, confusion on his face. All around him, eyes stared. Frightened faces, horrified looks. Teachers were running down the hallway shouting for the crowd to part.

They were looking at him like he was a monster. After being attacked by three people,
he
was the threat. The boy dropped his hand and calmly faced the crowd.

Again the relief washed over him. It was over. The worst had come.

He was sleeping, and in his sleep he dreamed.

At first the dreams were happy—sunny skies and smiling faces, picnics in the woods and good friends long missed. Those better dreams were sometimes punctuated by darker moments. The occasional nightmare wandered in to cast sullen clouds and moments of terror on what was, for the most part, a restful slumber.

The human mind can dream indefinitely, lost forever in the endless time between sleep and waking. The dreamer's mind, for better or worse, was not quite human. It was something more.

Over time he began to shift from dreams to memories. Some of those recollections were vague and fuzzy, bare impressions of joy and pain. Others were stark and clear as if he were living the moment again.

Once past dreams and into memories, the dreamer became aware that he slept. Time contracted from the ephemeral fabric of unconsciousness into something closer to real-world time. His internal clock clicked back over into the on position, and the dreamer knew the world outside was moving by while he stayed hidden within himself.

After what felt like (and probably was) more than a year of replaying old memories inside the prison of his own brain, the dreamer stopped. There was one memory he had refused to watch, one moment of his life he couldn't risk visiting again.

He knew watching it all happen again could trigger another episode. It had nearly happened in his cell before they had offered him the option to sleep forever. He remembered
that
well enough, though it hurt to relive the knowledge of what he'd done.

The dreamer wept, then, as he sat alone inside his mind. The simple place he lived in, a recreation of a once-loved home, was empty. At first all he had was the dreams. Then the memories. But though his body lay immobile, he was no longer asleep.

The dreamer visualized that last forbidden memory, not as an experience, but as a physical object. Next to him a projector appeared. The wall before him was suddenly a screen. He couldn't relive that moment for the sake of those who tended to his body's needs, but maybe he could watch it. Separate from the experience, just like a movie.

Certainty flooded through him. A growing sense of unease had built since the dreamer had awakened in his own mind. Those vague memories, and the forbidden one, held some truth he didn't understand. Even in his unconscious state he could feel the pressure building. Something
out there
was wrong. Something had changed. He almost understood it, but was held back.

It was fear, of course. Blind panic that the power would overtake him again, and this time swallow the world. The sense of energy building within his body terrified him beyond words. His mind and body were separate things, now.

He wondered if he would be able to wake in time to stop that energy from finding an outlet.

To do that, he would need to understand. He had to confront what he was and what he had done. He had to see the truth.

The release was coming whether he wanted it to or not. He knew that much.

With a sigh and a trembling heart, Ray Elliot turned to the projector, itself only a projection of his thoughts, and hit the switch.

Showtime.

Archer was not happy without his mess.

He sat at his desk, shooting Kit dark looks as she paced around the office. The file was hard copy, as almost all of their files were, and she scanned it quickly.

In the three weeks following her arrival, Kit hadn't hesitated to make her mark on the place. She had her own office, adjacent and accessible by a door once hidden by an enormous shelf, but she rarely used it for long. Each morning she wandered over to Archer's office and ended up staying there more often than not.

And while he believed in a system of organized chaos, Kit didn't. At first she tried to bring the housekeeping staff in to help her clean, but Archer had flatly refused on the grounds that too much of the mess was classified, or at least sensitive, material.

So Kit made him help her clean. Which went over like cats and lightning bolts.

“Kit, are you going to move out of here? Ever?”

She paused in her pacing, looked up from the file. “If you don't want me in your office, then we're going to have a hard time running this place,” she replied flatly.

Archer waved a hand. “I don't mean that. You're still living in the facility. You make good money here, and I know Helix didn't let you starve. Why not get an apartment in Louisville and leave that tiny cell?”

Kit raised an eyebrow. “I like my quarters here. They're comfortable. And I don't know anyone around here that doesn't work for me—” Archer snorted at that, “—or
with
me. I don't need a place of my own. I lived on base with Helix, too.”

Archer stared at her in disbelief. “Seriously? Are you a robot?”

Kit frowned but said nothing.

“
Come on, Kit! You're more than just your job. You're a goddamn person. Get out there and meet people. Take a three-day weekend or something. Make a friend. If I were your superior, I'd find some way to
make
you have a social life.”

Kit sighed and went back to reading the file. She scanned the pages as she replied.

“I was never very social. Not as a kid, not in high school, not in college. When I found out what I was and left school, my roommate didn't notice I was gone for more than a week. Helix was perfect for me. I didn't have to worry about being different. I didn't have to deal with people. I liked that.”

Archer threw his hands up. “You're still sanctioned by the government, Kit. You don't have to wear an ID ring or anything. You can go incognito all you like. No one out there has to know you're one of the Next.”

Kit finished reading the file and tossed it on the desk. There was nothing in her stance or movements that indicated anger, but her eyes smoldered. “Two things, Archer,” she said. “You can't understand because you're not one of us. It's not fair that I should be able to go out without my ring on while any other Next who gets caught without it lands in jail. Just because I work for the government doesn't make me better. I hate that privilege, and I hate myself for using it. So don't tell me to go out there and have a social life while others have to hide their hands at the supermarket just to go buy milk.”

Archer looked horrified and opened his mouth to reply, but Kit stopped him with a gesture.

“It's not your fault. You are who you are. Unless you've been there, it's hard to understand. The fact is, I like you, Archer. I really do. But don't presume to know how I work. I said there were two things, and here's the other: I was this way long before my powers manifested. You want to know what it's like being raised half Jewish and half Hindu Indian in this country?
And
a woman? I've been treated like shit by my peers my whole life, and being a part of Helix was the first time I ever felt at home.”

Archer suddenly understood. “And Robinson took that away from you.
I
took it away.”

Kit laughed bitterly and threw herself back into a chair. “No, you didn't. Robinson did, but not with malice. He had faith in me, and I'm under a service contract. It's just the way things are. If it bothers me and staying here makes me feel better, then why not?”

Archer nodded. “Makes sense. Look, I'm sorry, I just worried you might burn yourself out. I never thought about how hard this must be for you.”

It was Kit's turn to sigh. “No way for you to, really. I get it. Can we just drop it? It's fine.”

Archer nodded and shuffled papers around until he found what he was looking for.

“
Here's the last entry for you to go over,” he said. “You've seen pretty much the whole facility, but we saved the best for last.” He pushed the papers across the desk.

Kit took them. What lay before her was almost too much to believe.

The facility was huge. Any person who knew it was built in the ruins of Fairmont could see that. Kit understood it in a much more personal way since she had walked most of the halls in the place over the previous weeks. For the first time since her powers had matured, she had blisters.

Spread out on the desk were schematics, lists of figures, personnel files, inventories, and a host of other data about the lab that took up fully a tenth of the space within the facility itself. She didn't understand much of what she saw, much as a layman couldn't see the house waiting to be built from blueprints, but one number jumped out at her immediately.

“Archer,” she said, pointing at it. “Is this right?”

The big man craned forward to see what she was pointing at, then chuckled. “Yep, you're reading it correctly.”

Kit whistled. “You're telling me that half our budget goes to the lab alone? This place costs a billion dollars a year to run.”

It was there in black and white, of course, though she couldn't figure out how ten percent of their building took up half the dollars.

Kit didn't realize that last part came out as a mumble until Archer answered her.

“
Let's have Dr. Nunez explain it himself, since you haven't paid him a visit yet.”

The lab itself was situated on the extreme eastern side of the facility, directly above the underground tunnel and road that allowed hundreds of employees to come and go unnoticed by the outside world. To get there, Kit and Archer took a golf cart through one of the three small tunnels crisscrossing the facility.

Upon entering, Kit wasn't sure they were in the right place. The foyer looked like a frat house, with vintage arcade games dotting the large room, interspersed by picnic tables liberally splashed with old beer and the customary red plastic cups. The sound of artificial gunfire filled the room, almost painfully loud. The noise came from two tables at the far end of the foyer where five young men and three young women shouted obscenities at each other as they gleefully emptied one digital magazine of ammo after another.

Kit and Archer approached the tables, but no one noticed. Archer cleared his throat, the sound lost in the din.

“Oy!” Kit shouted, her voice sharp.

Eight heads snapped to face them, angry at being interrupted. That quickly melted into fear as all of them realized who their guests were.

Kit was about to unload on the group for being unprofessional when a smooth voice filled the room.

“
Ah, Director Singh! So glad you could finally make it down here!”

Santino Nunez ambled from the back of the room, giving the group of youngsters a fatherly glance as he walked past them. He was tall with a svelte build, obvious even under his lab coat. His face carried the deep lines and earthy tan of a man who spent much time outdoors. The first touches of gray feathered the hair at his temples, but Nunez moved with easy grace.

Kit gave a small grunt of appreciation. He was a fine-looking man.

Archer stared at her. “That's just disturbing.”

She smiled at his discomfort. “I have needs, Archer,” she said in a whisper. “
Womanly
needs.”

The big man rolled his eyes but smiled. Though he wouldn't say it out loud, it was a relief. He had begun to worry she was all business, all the time.

“Still, try not to trip him right here in front of everyone, will you? He's not replaceable.”

Kit snorted. “You're a pig, you know that? A woman can't even enjoy the scenery without someone assuming she's going to hop in the sack with him.”

Having finally reached the group, Dr. Nunez extended a hand, which Kit shook.

“
Doctor,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

Nunez gave a bright smile. “Entirely mutual, Director Singh.”

“Please, call me Kit.”

The doctor gave her a small bow. “Of course. It would be my pleasure.”

Archer threw his hands up. “Oh, for fuck's sake. Should I get you two a room?”

Kit shot him a deadly glare, but she was sure the blush climbing her neck showed well even on her dark skin. Nunez only sighed.

“Director Archer,” he said. “I have always wondered why it is you mistake courtesy for base carnality. This is not the first time you have done so in my presence, yes? Do you recall our last conversation?”

Archer, who had been building up an irritated head of steam, suddenly deflated. “Uh. Yes. Yes, I do.”

Nunez nodded, giving Archer an even look. “Then you know you should leave now, don't you?”

Archer glanced around the room as if looking for an escape. “I have some paperwork that needs doing, anyway. I'm sure you'll give Director Singh the full tour.”

With that he turned tail and walked back the way they'd come. Quickly.

Kit caught the amazed stares of the kids sitting at their computers in her peripheral vision—much better than the average person's—but kept her eyes pointed at Nunez. A man who could cow Archer with a glance and a few words? Yes, please.

Nunez turned to the kids and said, “Carry on.” He gestured for Kit to follow and set off toward the darkened rear of the room.

Curious, Kit followed.

“So,” Kit said ten minutes later. “You have a robot.”

Nunez handed her a steaming mug of coffee and sat at the table. “No, it's not a robot. It's a prototype for the government. Powered suit of armor. That's why the robotics team was out in the lobby celebrating last night and into today. The final field tests were successful.”

Kit sipped, glancing at the humanoid armor in its cradle, a setup that filled nearly half the room they sat in. “Pardon the observation, but your team doesn't seem very disciplined.”

Nunez smiled. “It comes across that way, I understand. But those kids spent ten solid days working double shifts putting the final touches on this machine. They had a nice long break coming. And they're just one of many teams of scientists and engineers working here, but then you've seen our reports. You know that.”

“Yes, and it has me curious. I know this facility has many functions, but I was surprised to see so much of the budget being poured into your labs.”

“
And the reports don't give you any idea what we do here, correct?” Nunez asked.

“
I'd be lying if I said otherwise.”

“
You're not the first director I've had this conversation with. So if you'll let me, I can give you the speech. By now I have it down to an art.”

Kit raised her cup, waving it at Nunez to proceed.

The older man smiled again.

“
First and foremost,” Nunez said, “is the budget. I'm sure that was what got your attention, as it usually is with new directors. The short answer is that we get whatever funds we ask for, because over the last several years Section, which is this laboratory's official designation, has produced no less than five hundred patents held directly by the U.S. government. Those patents appear, on record, to be owned by a massive multinational corporation. Said corporation licenses our patents out to other companies for truly ridiculous sums of money, and aside from the cut taken by our front corporation, every penny comes back to the facility as general funds.”

“
What kind of patents?” Kit asked.

Nunez's eyebrows rose. “Archer did not tell you?”

Kit shook her head. “I don't know anything about this place, other than you have a thing for robots. And I've seen too many movies about the rise of the machines for me to be entirely comfortable with that kind of thing,” Kit said.

The older man laughed. “I assure you, young lady, that our machines are friendly,” he said, but paused a beat. “For now.”

Nunez stood. “Come, and bring your coffee. I can explain while we walk just as easily as sitting here.”

He led the way through a door hidden on the other side of the huge cradle, continuing on in a patter as they walked down a long, narrow connecting hallway.

“This next room is our main chemistry lab,” Nunez said as they walked into the second room. “We've had a lot of luck here. Anderson over there and his partner Doctor Ling recently perfected a process that produces protective coatings that prevent corrosion better than anything on the market.”

“
Strange,” Kit said. “I expected some kind mad scientist setup here, not a bunch of people working at computers.”