Emergence Read online

  Oh yeah, ‘labs’ is a not-so-PC colloquialism for ‘labrat chimerics,’ by the way, or folks who’ve been changed, hastened, or otherwise customized on purpose. The results are rarely for the better. It’s one of those don’t-ask-don’t-tell things the Feds and the TCA don’t really want citizens knowing about. Unfortunately, we’re the ones who have to deal with their screw-ups.

  Anyhow, the abandoned church’s stained glass had long since been shattered. It was dark in this rundown district, so I wasn’t too concerned with the city lights announcing my presence. I hovered inside, floating amongst the shadows of the upper balcony. I peered past the banister and down, counted a dozen images; six of them stood around and seemed to be in charge of the other six, which I supposed were labs sitting in pews in the nave area. They may be the hostages or new recruits or whatever the hell La Luz had planned for these suckers. Bottom line, they were chimerics. Unpredictable at best. Usually untrained with no idea of their capabilities or limits.

  I reported the War Gods’ numbers and positions in a low whisper. Bombero was among them, standing where the altar would have been had it been there, and glowing like a red gas giant, the big bastard; he’s a pyrotechnic whose manipulation powers were categorized a high Class-B.

  Still, no La Luz. I turned it over for a second in my head. La Luz was a living solar battery, and most reports have him active during the day, so maybe he’s not as active at night? I said as much into my com.

  Director DeAngelo cursed under his breath. “Angelus said he’d be here, dammit.”

  Wasn’t sure who this Angelus was, but DeAngelo’s Intel was usually good. “Maybe he’s underground…” I did a sweep of the basement with my thermal vision as best I could. Nothing.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Artemis voiced in my ear. “Keep an eye out for V, coming through the back. We’re still doing this.”

  “Roger that,” I responded.

  DeAngelo and Artemis had been adamant about no casualties, but Veil and I had been up against situations like this before. I respected what the TCA was trying to do here, working with the DCD’s P.O.N.E division—this mission was about quick, quiet containment; still, sometimes a few eggs got broke no matter how much you tried to kid-glove things. Besides, Bombero had flamed a bus-full of 4th graders on a day trip to Cosmics Stadium a few months ago, the poor kids caught in the crossfire of the emergent gang violence La Futura had become known for in recent years. I was Jonesing to bring the hammer down. It’s why I’d joined the mission. So, casualties or not, I wasn’t going out of my way to spare any War Gods a little pain.

  I squeezed my hands into fists. My knuckles were eager.

  Veil’s familiar outline came up through the floor behind the War Gods. Unlike Bombero, her thermal image was hardly discernible, and she moved with a natural stealth and grace very few had.

  “V’s in position,” I reported. “Now’s as good a time as we’ll get.”

  DeAngelo sighed a small dammit, then his voice grated the simple order: “Go.”

  “Shield your eyes, Hero,” Artemis added.

  Veil went solid, her outline snapping from pale blue to red and orange. She tossed a handful of gadgets. I shielded my eyes, photoreceptors going millimicronial, just as the gadgets flashed white and brilliant, lighting up the church as bright as Easter Sunday. Chimerics howled, screamed, and cursed.

  Shifting out of the thermal spectrum, I proceeded over the banister, swooping down as the front doors blasted inward. Artemis and her entourage of P.O.N.E. officers spilled into the church, back-lit by an array of assault SUV headlights, high-beam flashlights, and helmet cam lights. Basically lights everywhere.

  “Freeze! DCD!”

  “Hands in the air! Now, now!”

  “Don’t move! No te muevas! Manos arriba!”

  I wasn’t waiting for them to oblige. I went straight at Bombero, who opted to get vitriolic right away while becoming a human Roman candle. “Matar a los bastardos. ¡Estos cerdos malditos!”

  Since I could stand a respectable amount of temp extremes, I let him have it with a two-fisted wallop at a hundred miles per hour. And that was still holding back, since even in that small distance, some fifty feet, I could have achieved way more if I’d wanted; it only takes me about a hundred feet to hit Mach 1.2, according to my TCA classification datafile. Which I wasn’t supposed to have access to, of course.

  Bombero whoofed. The impact blasted him through the outer vestry wall. I drew to a stop, hovering a few feet off the floor. “Stay down.”

  My hope was I’d knocked him unconscious, maybe broken a few ribs, snapped his collarbone, gave him one of those Flintstone lumps on his big, meaty head. No dice. Well, at least the unconscious part. The guy must have had more invulnerability than I’d given him credit for; that hit should have taken him down, yet there he was, pushing his way back into the chancel area.

  Sue me for knowing the parts of a church, I used to be an altar boy.

  “Hero…” he grunted through bloody teeth. His shirt was burned away, and I saw one of his big, tatted arms hung limp. Good. I hope it hurts.

  “Stand down!” I heard Artemis yell behind me.

  Then something bad happened. One of the labs shrieked. And I don’t just mean shrieked; they blasted everyone in the church with a shockwave of mind-melting insanity. Glass shattered. Plaster literally jumped off the walls. Everyone grabbed at their own heads, including me. Actually, it was worse for me, because I didn’t have time to protect my senses. I grabbed my ears, totally forgot to control my flight path, and helixed into a column, cracked it, and bounced another thirty feet through a wooden bench and into the wall.

  Gunshots ensued. Screaming. Then the whoosh of Bombero’s flames, and more screaming.

  I hopped up, since the sonic attack had suddenly ceased, and realized I’d landed on top of someone. Or smashed them beneath me, more like. It was one of the labs, a black guy with all-white eyes. He wore a light-colored tank top, now covered in red spatters.

  “Hey,” I said to him. The guy was stone-dead. “Shit!”

  This had gone from ‘gotcha’ to bad to worse…like I said, labs were unpredictable.

  I lifted into the air and headed into the barrage, straight for Bombero, who was wreathed in flames, laughing, throwing long whiplashes of white-hot fire in every direction from his one good arm. The guy just did not give a damn.

  Another lab ran by screaming, clothes and hair burning. A pair of DCD guys dodged out of the running bonfire’s way, and that’s when I noticed the old, wooden beams of the apse were catching alight. This place, and everyone in it, was about to be toast.

  One of the War Gods, a lanky dude in a black vest, no shirt, and long black hair, tried to snatch me out of the air. He ended up hitching a ride on my ankle, and I promptly kicked him toward the far wall. Rather than taking him out, my intended result, he somehow twisted mid-air, hit the wall like a pouncing cat, and sprang to the floor.

  Smooth move.

  He came up grinning, and I could see his tats on his abdomen and arms, jellyfish-like tentacles inked all over his skin. His smile vanished as he shot some kind of noxious residue at me…from his mouth. Disgusting. Even more so when the stuff hit my arm, stinking like sulfur. It immediately started bubbling and began to sting, despite my invulnerability, as it ate through the nanofibrous webbing of my sleeve. I wondered if I was going to have to ask Veil or Artemis to pee on my arm. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for jellyfish stings? Or had I watched too many 4 A.M. episodes of Friends?

  Speaking of friends, Artemis emerged from a bank of dust and smoke. She did a side-springing leap from the corner of a pew, slashed through the air, and fired one of her energy-crossbow-thingies attached to her wrists at Jellyfish Guy. He dodged the first missile, hopping to his right. She’d anticipated the move. Artemis did a forward roll and fired again, coming in low. Her second bolt slammed into his chest. He went down in an explosive mass of braided alloy cables
, hit the ground kicking and gritting his teeth, yelling, “La puta!” to no avail; those bonds would have to be chemically dissolved afterward back at DCD headquarters, and the more he called her names, the less care she’d take with her reagents.

  “Thanks for the assist, Artie,” I shouted over the roar of Bombero’s fire, the yelling, and the thumps, whistles, and pops of odd weapons discharging.

  “No problem,” she said into her com. “Don’t call me Artie.”

  “Roger tha—”

  “Veil! Watch your back!” Artemis yelled.

  I looked right and located V among the pews. Two of the labrats had grabbed hold of her. One of them, a Latina with a choppy mohawk and a red bandana around her face, was glowing, outlined in a spectral purple nimbus. Whatever she was doing was preventing Veil from going intangible.

  V wrestled her arm away from the other lab, jabbed her fingertips into their Adam’s apple. They dropped. She snatched at her utility belt, fetched a retractable stave, and extended it full length in an instant.

  By then, Bombero had worked himself into a bullet-melting frenzy, his flames scorching a good twenty-foot radius all around him. Artemis was on a beeline, hopping pews. There was no time. I zipped through the air as the fiery War God yelled, “¡A la mierda la ley!”

  I kicked through the barrier of pews. I came to ground, grabbed Veil, and turned my back to Bombero just as his flames engulfed us in a wave of blue fire. My damage-resistant red cape came apart in the flames.

  Class B power level, my white-hot ass.

  The glowing Latina chimeric beside me screamed. I squinted at her as the conflagration grew, watched horrified as her flesh charred and began to peel away, then the entire nave area of the church collapsed. Stone, mortar, and burning wood rained down on War Gods, labrats, and DCD alike.

  And still the wailing, burning woman kept a death-grip on V’s arm. Her dampening power kept V from phasing; even more, through bodily contact, the lab’s negation effect started seeping into me. My back heated up fast as my invulnerability drained away.

  Suddenly, Veil dropped her stave and screamed. Her costume was going up in flames, the synthetic char of burning fibers filling my hypersensitive nostrils.

  I growled through clenched teeth, “No!” and fought every instinct to let go of her and fly the hell away.

  #

  I was still in Legato’s office, collapsed back into my chair, gasping at the memory from two years ago. So vivid, like it had just happened.

  Wait, did it just happen? I could still smell an acrid stench. It singed my nostrils, so I dampened my sense of smell.

  “You killed her.”

  I looked at the doctor. She faced me, jaw set forward, lips pursed a little. Controlled rage, but abysmally deep. “You panicked. You used your superhuman strength…and you broke her.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Bullshit. Whatever memories you’re sifting through, they’re wrong. I flew us both out of there.”

  “The power leech’s effect passed through her. It started to affect you, and you lashed out. You just started flailing with your fists, smashing anything and everything in your way. You couldn’t even fly. You ran.”

  “No. Veil is…” I thought hard. Everything was a mess. “She’s alive. She’s overseas…assisting in the, uh…” Last I heard she was in…shit…Italy? Austria? Why couldn’t I…?

  “There was a time I wanted to believe you didn’t abandon her, that it wasn’t your fault, but you did. Artemis’s opinion is that you—in her words—‘ignored the playbook.’ She said you arrived late, refused debriefing, displayed a disturbing lack of knowledge on any of the dossiers, and that you basically had no idea going in what you were facing. You went in guns blazing, your usual arrogant self, impervious, high-and-mighty. She said you could have taken Bombero down right away, but for whatever reason you drew things out, like another one of your schoolyard brawls…”

  An image of Whiplash tackling me, us ramming through buildings. Her fists raining down. Churchgoers. They were all wearing black Biotiq specs, LEDs blinking on the frames, recording us. Their faces weren’t right. Some warped. Some hairy. Some with jaws hanging open, sharp teeth…

  What the hell?

  Director Laws was in the TCA office, sitting quietly in her shades, the tiny light winking at me. “Hi, Noah. Better warn you. DeAngelo’s on the warpath…”

  “…you didn’t care who got in the way, just as long as someone was there to give you a challenge.”

  I was having a tough time taking a breath. Things were spinning. I shook my head to clear it. “You said you thought I was self-destructive. If that’s true, why would I have fled? Maybe you’re right. Maybe I want everything to be over. So, why wouldn’t I have stayed and let them kill me?”

  “Because you’re also a coward.”

  “I’m not…”

  Or was I? Everything in my head was messed up. “How am I here then?”

  She smiled and touched her specs. The image of the duck pond and blue sky vanished, replaced by moving shadows. I adjusted my vision and saw it was merely hewn granite, moving upward…no, actually, we were moving down. We were in some form of descending chamber. An elevator.

  “How far down are we?”

  “Far enough.”

  “Why are you doing this? Who are you?”

  Dr. Legato removed her glasses. The irises of her eyes were strikingly violet and lacking pupils. “I’m doing this for her.”

  “Wha…? Who is she to you?”

  “I’ll show you.” Her eyes lightened, turned milky white. I felt something warm lap against my mind.

  “Nope,” I said. “You’re not getting in.” I tightened my jaw and started toward her, then a hard jolt pushed against my forehead.

 

  My resolve wavered for just one measly second, and that’s all it took. Legato, or whoever she was, oozed into my mind like the sedate wash of a morphine high.

  #

  I emerged from green-tinted clouds over the harbor on some dreamy, hazy evening. The sun was a blood-orange orb hanging over a flat, oceanic horizon. I skewed over familiar strips in patterns along the ground. Port Haven International Airport. I sought an instrument panel…or tried to extend my arms, listening for the flapping of my cape, yet I didn’t control my flight.

  Everything was disconnected. I wasn’t in a plane. I wasn’t even in my body. Just awareness. A mote of point-of-view, controlled by some superior consciousness. I spiraled down, down, down, found myself adrift over the impoverished Santa Lomo neighborhood.

  A girl. Seventeen maybe. She wore her dad’s Army coat, hood pulled up, her cold hands in the pockets. She leaned against the building, sheltering next to a graffitoed, beat-up ice machine.

  I alighted against my will, drew close to her. She looked familiar.

  Legato. Even with her hood up, I knew.

  A downpour started. Just like that, as if someone remembered it should be raining.

  I was drawn in, next to her, closer, then became her. Looked through her eyes. The city lights emitted an especially jaundiced glow through the wetness. She avoided looking at them. Cars were even worse with their halogen lights flashing painful halos. It had something to do with her eyes.

  “Hey, chica,” a black man in a do-rag sat in the passenger seat of a late ‘80s Cadillac, a J in the corner of his mouth. He snatched it out and flashed gold grills. “You moms know you out here?”

  She squinted from her hood, trying to make him out. It was Carone. One of the Sugar Man’s thugs and a notorious banger. About four months ago, he’d killed her friend Leesa’s little bro…over a pug. The kid’s pup had taken a leak on Carone’s Nike Zoom and the bastard shot it, right there in the street. Branden lost his mind, started yelling at the dog murdering bastard. Things escalated.

  Dana couldn’t see the Caddy’s driver. Car
one usually partnered with a big, bald, tatted-up white boy named B-Mac, so she figured that’s who it was. “What you talkin’ about, playa?” she said, her voice sounding too timid in her own ears. She toughened up. “I’m out here ‘cuz of her, yo.”

  “You is, is you? You the one called? Baby girl lookin’ for some chiba down by Kimmi’s? C’mere, girl. Lemme look at you.”

  She paused a second. She had placed the call from the pay-phone by Kimmi’s Korner Store, and she’d intended just to get some H for her mom, but she secretly knew they’d send Carone. She looked in the backseat. Seemed to be just him and his drug-running, d-bag partner.

  Dana stepped away from the ice machine and crossed the sidewalk to the curb. She was still sore from yesterday and walked on wobbly legs. She willed herself not to let it show.

  Carone took a drag and blew his skunk-ass smoke at her. “Them legs are fine. Lemme see yo’ face.”

  Dana pulled her hood back. Rain pelted the top of her head.

  “Dayum, chica. Those eyes…”

  She emitted a wave of the deepest, darkest despair she could muster, which wasn’t hard. She thought of her mom’s downward spiral after her dad split, her newfound love just as fleeting, injected in the blown-out veins of her bony arms or between her scabby toes. She thought of how Leesa’s tormented bro must have felt in those few seconds from losing his pet to Carone shoving the smoking nine in his face. How Leesa must have felt when Carone pulled the trigger.

  She pulsed waves, and the murderous bastard made an expression like he was holding in tears. He pushed back in his seat, dropped his weed, sobbed and covered his ugly face with his hands. “Naw…”

  “The fuck?” said B-Mac, leaning down to look at her, his dumb white face all pock-marked and slack-jawed.

  “Naw, naw, naw,” was all Carone could say, bouncing back and forth. “Get me out of here, man,” he said in desperation and grief.

  “Give me all your drugs and all your money.” Dana sent dark emotions at B-Mac. She was going to clean up Santa Lomo by cleaning out these thugs—one at a time, if she had to.