Envy

by Lana Pecherczyk

  “Don’t say anything,” he said. “I know we’ve just met, and I’m not expecting you to feel the same… yet.”

  “Evan,” she said softly. “I care for you, I do…” she left the but, hanging.

  But she wasn’t ready. Not quite there.

  He wasn’t fazed. He smiled knowingly, no doubt thinking of the picture he’d drawn of them in his sheets. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Evan took Grace on a detour to his loft apartment. He needed to get out of the leathers and into something suitable for stealth reconnaissance. Having some weapons and a car would also be good. He’d stashed his Katanas on a rooftop somewhere before heading to the docks, so had to re-supply. Definitely worth the delay.

  When they arrived by cab, he decided to leave Grace downstairs in the tattoo studio. Despite complaining that morning, Josie had left the place neat and tidy. Being in her second year of employment, she was used to his random disappearances by now.

  “Might be quicker if you stay here,” he said and showed her a seat behind the reception area. “I’ll be right back.”

  Taking the stairs out the back two steps at a time, he then jogged to his door, unlocked it and went inside. Like Grace’s place, his was a mess. Worse. Clothes littered his bed, art supplies covered the side table and small kitchenette bench. Charcoal sketches were taped to all four walls. Behind the taped artwork, graffiti plastered the walls. It smelled like adhesive fixative—a substance he used to stop the charcoal smudging—and residual spray paint. He gave the cluttered space a hard stare, feeling nostalgic for his old apartment at Lazarus House. That had multiple rooms: an art studio, a living space, fully equipped kitchen, luxury en-suite with a Jacuzzi. It also had a housekeeper that visited a few times a week and kept the place from turning into a dump. He wasn’t averse to cleaning, he just didn’t have time.

  Right. Clothes. Shit. Mary had his alternate Envy leathers, and the one he’d worn last night was disgusting. Sweats and a hoodie it was, then. He dressed in record time, and strapped a knife to his ankle, slipped a pistol into the back of his waistband and put on a black baseball cap.

  “And I thought my place was small,” Grace said from the doorway, glancing around.

  Evan jolted. He’d never get used to her holding no envy. She could sneak up on him at any time. “I thought you were waiting downstairs.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t like waiting on my own.”

  That woman. Didn’t do a thing he asked, and it drove him mad and wild for her at the same time. He just hoped she had the sense to follow his lead if they got into trouble. He glanced around nervously.

  “So,” Grace started, “why are you here and not in the same home as the rest of your family?”

  He kicked a few stray items under his bed to clear some room. “I got into a fight with Wyatt a few years ago. We had separate apartments, but after the way he spoke to me after the bombing, I didn’t want to breathe the same air as him, let alone live in the same building.”

  She silently moved around his bed, inspecting the sketches on the wall. “Because you told him about Sara and her envy, and they didn’t believe you?”

  “It was more than that. I’m the youngest. I’d just come off our seven-year training program. Hadn’t seen most of them for years.”

  “Wait.” Grace held up her palm, gobsmacked. “Seven years? How old were you?”

  “I started when I was fifteen.”

  “You’ve really had no choice in your life, have you?”

  “Mary always said that after we completed our training, we could choose whatever path we wanted, and encouraged college. The training wasn’t just physical, it was mental and tactical. She wanted us to be fully equipped to handle whatever came our way. I looked up to all of them because they’d already been fighting for the city while I was the last to come home. I should have said something about Sara earlier, just didn’t think they’d believe me. As it was, after I told them, most of them didn’t anyway.”

  “I’m sorry, I can imagine how that felt.”

  “Like I’d never be good enough for them. Always the green one, the less experienced. And now… I’m the first to unlock my powers. I’m the first to find my balance”—his eyes locked on Grace—“all because of you.”

  She smiled shyly and dipped her head. “I may be the one who triggered it Evan, but you’re the one saving the world.”

  Something like pride glimmered in his eyes and he kissed her briefly on the lips, then sighed. He picked up a duffel bag and stuffed it with more weapons and surveillance gear. “You’d think that would be enough to earn some respect, but I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough for them.”

  “That’s not true. You’re gifted Evan, and I’m not just talking about the electricity thing. Which, speaking of, I’d love to investigate more. It’s fascinating to think how—” She cut herself off by biting her lip. “Sorry. Doctor speak. But the gift I’m talking about is your art.” Grace gestured at the sketches on the wall.

  It was enough to make Evan laugh. “The pretty pictures? They’re a wasted talent. Parker’s built an empire around his big brain. Griff’s got a mind like Pythagoras. Wyatt is a renowned chef. Liza’s the youngest female detective on her squad. Even Sloan has mad tech skills. She can hack into any computer system in the country. And, do I really need to mention Tony?” No son-of-a-bitch should look good in tights, but when his latest action film came out, jeez, Evan was so green. He had an ass like Alcatraz.

  “Well, I think they’re beautiful.” Grace traced her fingers over another sketch on the wall, then paused. “Hold up. I think… I think this is me.”

  “Probably not. I drew that before I met you.”

  “I’m certain of it. That boy in the cap is Taco. He sells papers on the street corner. I’m the woman he’s handing the paper to.”

  Evan frowned, squinting at the picture. “Taco?”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s an unusual name.”

  “No, I think you’re right. I recognize that kid. He’s the one who found me dressed as Envy in the alley after I got dumped. He was standing under a rusty fire escape ladder, throwing a baseball into the air and catching it, but the ball hit the ladder and it fell. I pushed him out of the way, and that’s how I hurt my shoulder.”

  “That’s why you had the stab wound? Because you saved a kid?”

  “Maybe. Why are you smiling? Do I get a reward?”

  She grinned and stalked toward him. The kiss she gave him was all heat, and promise of what’s coming later. He couldn’t wait.

  “I have the day off work,” she said. “I can reward you later for as long as you want.”

  “Now, that’s the kind of rest and relaxation I’m talking about.”

  “Yeah, I—” she cut herself off. “Wait. Evan. The sketches on the wall.”

  “I know. I put them there.”

  She swatted him. “I mean, they’re like the ones at the gallery, and this morning.” She blushed, probably because she was thinking of being in his bed one day. He liked that. “It’s not a wasted talent. It’s prophetic. Can you, I don’t know, sketch something now and find out what Sara’s plan is?”

  “I forgot about the gallery. That one where Sara was standing before the painting, and then it actually happened. Now this—you’re saying the one with you and Taco is real?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  “That’s too many to be a coincidence. I’ve never tried to force a sketch. I usually dream and then sketch the scene when I wake otherwise I think about it all day. Drives me nuts.”

  “Oh.” She slumped. “Then I guess, we need you to have another dream somehow.”

  “In the meantime, we need to go. It’s almost four.”

  “You’re right. We need to go.”

  Evan took Grace to the garage where his car waited. It was a newish black Mustang GT Coupe. Perfect for stealth night missions. Sexy matte paint, dark-as-fuck tint, bullet-proof windows. Everything he dreamed
of in a partner, and then some. But that was before he met Grace.

  He hopped in the driver side, stowed his duffel bag in the rear, and then reached across to pop the passenger door open. “My lady, your chariot awaits.”

  She snorted and slid into the front seat, clicked her seatbelt on and turned to face him, waiting for further instructions.

  “What now, Evan?”

  “Right.” He faced the front. “I’ll put the coordinates in the nav, then we’re off.”

  “AIMI, it’s Evan,” he said. “Engine on.”

  The engine roared to life. Blue lights lit up the dash, and a female voice came through the speaker. “Good morning, Evan. It’s early for a drive. Where would you like to go?”

  “Oh my God,” Grace murmured. “Your car is Kit from Nightrider.”

  “Not even close,” Evan said. “It’s AIMI. Our Artificial Intelligence Management Interface. It’s just something some of the fam created. It won’t make me coffee or anything. That’s the next model.”

  Grace gaped.

  “Just kidding. AIMI, this is Grace. Say hi, Grace.”

  “Hi,” Grace said.

  “Good morning, Grace.”

  “AIMI, I want you to authorize Grace as a user for this car.”

  “Not a problem. Please can you repeat this sentence after me, Grace? I need it for voice activation identification.”

  “Oh. Okay. Sure.”

  “My voice is my password.”

  That sounded ominous.

  “It’s fine. It’s just for AIMI,” Evan assured.

  Grace repeated the sentence and then had to do it again another three times. AIMI logged her as a user. Evan told AIMI the address, drove out of the garage, and down the road. According to the nav, the destination was about ten minutes away.

  “So,” Grace said after a minute or two. “You still talk to some of your family then, if they made you this car?”

  He shrugged. If you could call it talking. “Flint, yes. Mary, too. It’s really Wyatt who I don’t get along with, and that’s understandable. But I haven’t given up on him. Not yet. Sara’s been lying to him the entire time he’s known her. I can’t imagine how it would feel if the woman I loved wasn’t who I thought she was.”

  Grace placed her palm on his forearm in a comforting move. “He’s lucky to have a brother like you.”

  Evan’s heart stopped, and he turned to Grace. Her genuine expression led him to believe her words were the honest to God truth. He couldn’t love her any less in that moment, and he couldn’t despise Sara more. He turned back to the windshield, watching the road.

  He mulled over Sara’s motives.

  “Sara felt deadly levels of envy,” Evan said, tapping the wheel with a thumb. “Both before the bombing, and yesterday. I know she’s envious—deadly envious—but of what? If we can identify her reason, then we have a better chance at getting to the root of her vendetta against us.”

  “That’s a good question. I never thought to get to the root of her envy.”

  “You know how I told you I spent time living in different countries learning the art of war? One place was in Japan and at a compound managed by a Zen Buddhist Master. We learned to stay calm and vigilant in the face of death, and to take control of our mind in extreme situations. I never really did catch onto the whole detaching from material possession thing though. That’s something Griff excels in. You should see his apartment. Anything that doesn't serve a purpose is out.” Evan smiled. That guy was a hardcore control freak, but he was someone to look up to. If Evan only had half the control he did, then he’d be doing great.

  “You really miss them, don’t you?” Grace said softly. “How close you used to be, I mean.”

  A pang hurt in his chest. “Yeah. I do.”

  She squeezed his forearm. “So you were telling me about your Zen Master?”

  “Oh yeah. We learned about mediation and observation to help us master our sin-sensing capabilities. One training exercise was to guess who stood behind a wall based on our sixth sense. I had to spend the day paying attention to other people in the compound and listening to how their individual envy levels fluctuated. People have minute differences in sin. It’s like a fingerprint. I can tell who is standing nearby without looking at them. I can also work out what’s causing their envy by the way it fluctuates near a certain person or object. The point is, Sara’s envy doesn’t fluctuate. She feels the same amount of envy around all of us.”

  “Even your parents?”

  He’d never thought to include Flint and Mary in his observations.

  “You might be right,” he said. “I think she felt the most amount of sin around me and my siblings.”

  “Are there any identifying factors specific to you and your brothers and sisters?”

  “Like, hair or eye color?”

  “No, differences between your siblings as a whole compared to your parents. Like, the sin-sensing for one. Or maybe she’s jealous of your entire family unit?” Grace knew she missed having a family, maybe Sara was the same.

  “We’ve also been genetically enhanced, and our parents aren’t. Don’t know about the family thing, I never thought she liked me at all but maybe it was just me she wanted out.”

  “Do you think Sara wants special powers?”

  “No. Mary’s psychic. So if that were the case, Sara would feel envious around Mary too. Mary’s also a better warrior than us. She used to be an assassin of the highest order which means it can’t be our fighting skills. So if it’s none of those, then what is it?”

  “Anything specific about your DNA makeup that Mary and Flint don’t have? Apart from the sin-sensing part. I find it hard to believe someone would actually want that skill if it makes you feel so uncomfortable.”

  “Advanced healing and regeneration.”

  “Regeneration? As in, regrow a limb? Wow. Now I really want to run some tests on you.”

  Evan shirked back, unable to hide the distaste on his face.

  Grace’s eyes widened. “Oh, I’d never do it to share your data with a covert government organization or anything like that. It would just be for me. And maybe to help you make sense of it all. Plus, I’m a cutter. Well. I was. I like getting inside to see how things work. It’s weird, I know. You can tell me to shut up any time.”

  He shook his head. “Yeah, I really don’t like the idea of you cutting me open.”

  “Say no more. Okay, maybe just one more thing. You said your birth mother was the one who knew the most about it, but she’s not around? And she spliced your DNA with other animals to give you skills like regeneration? I’d love to help you and your family somehow. But it’s up to you, I won’t pressure you, and I won’t blab.”

  Evan relaxed a little. He’d always been concerned with letting anyone know his secrets, but with the Doc, he was learning to trust. This was the first time he realized she had his fate in her hands. She could sell his hospital scans and any other data to the highest bidder if she wanted. The work his mother did on them had never been replicated thanks to her destroying all her research in the fire that claimed her life, and the laptop they had of hers was incomplete, so any scientific information coming to light today would be valuable.

  “None of us have tested the regeneration theory, but it was hypothesized. It’s why Mary broke us out of the lab when we were little. The boss wanted to test the theory out.”

  “Oh my God. That’s horrible.” She shook her head, eyes wide. “You were children.”

  “Yeah. But this is why I fight now, so someone with a twisted God complex never gets in a position of power again. I mean, thinking you can control someone’s health is… holy mother of shit. That’s it! The Medical Examiner said Sara’s body had some sort of heart disease, right? Now she’s fine. Someone’s worked on her, genetically.”

  “But she died. The records, and the ME said he saw her body cremated… but, now that you mention it. Some things aren’t adding up. She looks different. Her skin is smoother, she has b
loodshot eyes. After the incident yesterday, I examined all the attackers. Each of them was either sick or deformed. Maybe someone is promising these people a new life if they commit crimes for them, or maybe they’re the byproducts of testing gone wrong.”

  Evan turned a corner, pulling the car into a dark street in the industrial part of town. “I think you’re right. It’s the best explanation we’ve got. We’re still missing a piece of the puzzle, though. Something to connect a dead, sick body to a live healthy one. Maybe we’ll find it here.”

  “You have arrived at your destination,” AIMI said.

  “AIMI, activate stealth mode.”

  The engine noise lowered to a whisper, and the headlights shut off. The front windshield lit up green with night vision capabilities, allowing Evan to see clearly where he drove. The external shell of the car would have darkened to an almost invisible, hard to see shade at this time of night. They were like a shadow.

  “Wow. Does everyone in your family have a car like this?”

  “Something like it. That must be the place.”

  They pulled up in front of a large warehouse protected by high chain-link fencing with barbed wire across the top. Evan coasted the Mustang past the front driveway, taking note of the sign. Global Organization for Disease Control. Guards and cameras at the gate didn’t notice the dark shadow creeping silently along the road, but he kept driving.

  “High security for a lab this time of night,” he murmured.

  “And busy.” Grace pointed to a truck coming toward them down the road and turning into the GODC driveway, now behind them. “I guess it could be one of those twenty-four-hour places.”

  “Doesn’t smell right.” Half a mile down the road, Evan parked in a vacant, dark lot belonging to a closed tire shop. “Wait here,” he said and reached into the back seat to retrieve his duffel bag.

  “Wait here?” she squeaked.

  “I’m just taking a quick look. Won’t be long.”

  “Absolutely not. We already spoke about this. You need me. It’s a lab—I’m a doctor. I might understand things in there that you don’t. I’m not waiting.”