Liberty

by Niall Teasdale

‘Oh, I’ve spent plenty of time around Twilight and Cygnus. I can plan things fine. When it comes to executing the plan, let’s just say that Twilight can throw me around just like Master Niigaki does. And even she says that you can always get better. We’ll sort out Brian, somehow or other. Don’t you worry.’

  New Millennium City, MD, 9th May.

  ‘That is not a happy family,’ Andrea stated over breakfast.

  ‘In what way?’ June asked.

  ‘Well, the daughter asks about her brother and when he’s coming home, but not where the father can hear. I get the feeling that last bit is learned behaviour. The mother is stressed to Hell and back. I only have observation to back up my feelings, but I think she’s worried about both her kids and her husband. She’s hurting. The father… I spotted him just staring at a picture of his children on Sunday night. Outwardly, he’s pretty verbal about thinking Ultras are bad, if not actually evil. Inside, I’m not so sure, and he’s missing Brian too.’

  ‘He’s chased his son away. Men can be pretty fixated on having a son to carry on the family name and stuff.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘To think I saved that asshole’s life,’ Penny said.

  ‘He blames you for the aliens coming in the first place,’ Andrea said. ‘And if you say he’s right, I’m going to punch you in the nose.’

  ‘I won’t say it then. I do know they’d have turned up at some point anyway. My first reaction is to blame myself, that’s all. Interesting thought: Brian’s father might lose both his kids if he doesn’t change his attitude. Brian’s an Ultra. There’s got to be at least some chance that his sister could start exhibiting powers, especially if she finds out Brian has them.’

  ‘She’s fourteen and she hasn’t yet. Or, if she has, she’s been keeping it really quiet. Mind you, she’s a skinny thing and she’s obviously still got some development ahead of her.’

  ‘So it’s possible. I’m not sure what to suggest. Maybe we should ask the Union if they’ve got a way of dealing with this sort of situation. It has to have come up before.’

  June nodded. ‘I guess that’s a good idea. Otherwise we’re waiting for a miracle.’

  ~~~

  Josie pushed open the back door of her apartment block and heaved a black plastic trash bag out after her. It was her turn to take the trash out, and she knew that if it was still there when Brian got home, he would steal the chore out from under her nose. Tempting as that was, Josie refused to allow him to become her servant. She grinned: maybe a little role play along those lines later, but not for real.

  Getting to the dumpster, Josie levered open the lid and then prepared to sling her bag of non-recyclables in. Sorting garbage into the appropriate categories had turned out to be a far more complex task than she had first realised. If it’s cardboard with a glued-on plastic window, is it paper or plastic? Maybe the plastic should be torn out. Was the plastic then recyclable? The waste disposal people seemed pretty picky about their plastics. These were things her mother had not mentioned before sending Josie out into the wild to fend for herself. Okay, so Josie did not generally call for advice; she ran over to Bethesda in a minute or less. ‘In the wild’ was a relative term when you could run faster than sound.

  With her task completed, Josie turned back for the door and heard a noise. She barely heard it, a soft ‘thup’ from somewhere nearby. Too soft to localise really, but she was immediately more concerned with the impact she felt in her right thigh. She looked down and blinked. There was a dart of some sort sticking out of her leg. Reaching down, she pulled the needle free and looked at it. Some part of her mind was screaming at her to move, get inside. The dart had to have delivered a drug into her system and she needed to get out of there. Unfortunately, the functional part of her brain which should have responded was busy shutting down. The dart fell from Josie’s fingers and she joined it on the tarmac a second later.

  ~~~

  Cygnus landed on the balcony outside Fleet’s apartment and Zap was there almost as fast as the speedster could have been. ‘I don’t know where she’s gone,’ he said, the words coming out in a rush. ‘I got home and she wasn’t here. I tried her cell, but it goes straight to voicemail. I called her parents, but they say she hasn’t been over there today.’

  ‘Calm down a little, Brian,’ Cygnus said, interrupting the tirade. ‘When would she have got home?’

  ‘Four, or just after.’

  ‘Two hours is not a long time to be “missing.”’ Cygnus added the air quotes for emphasis.

  ‘It’s not like her to turn her phone off. And the trash bag’s missing.’

  ‘You’ll need to explain that last bit.’

  ‘It was her turn to take the trash out, but I checked when I got back because she forgets sometimes. She never forgets to put a new bag in though. There’s no bag. She must’ve taken the bag down, but then she didn’t come back up to put the new one in.’

  It was thin evidence, but it was obvious that Zap thought it was conclusive. He had been frantic when he had called the house, which was why Cygnus had flown over. This was actually calmer than he had been. ‘Alright, we’ll see what we can find.’ She tapped her ear. ‘Denny, would you ask Jacob to come over here? We need his detective skills. Maybe get in touch with Heather too.’

  ‘Andrea will be delivering both in a few minutes,’ Denny replied after a short pause. ‘I will begin checking hospital admissions and request any information NMCPD have. I have a location for her earpiece, but that is in the same location as you.’

  ‘Thanks, Denny.’ Cygnus decided that she would not mention the hospitals part to Zap: he was worried enough. ‘Is there any reason she might have gone off by herself for a while?’

  ‘No. Not that I can think of. I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong in the last day or so.’ Zap’s brows knitted as he tried to think of something which might have chased his girlfriend away.

  ‘If you can’t think of it immediately, it probably doesn’t exist, Brian. Josie’s the kind of girl who confronts problems.’ Cygnus looked up as Jacob, Heather, and Andrea walked out of the apartment’s bedroom. ‘We seem to have a missing girl.’

  ‘I’m not going to be too much use until after dark,’ Andrea said. ‘I took a quick look in Bethesda. There was no sign of her at her parents’ place.’

  ‘Okay. Jacob, Heather, could you do your detective thing? There’s not much to work with. She seems to have taken the trash bag out and not come back.’

  ‘Not asking much, are you?’ Heather said. ‘I’ll go take a look outside.’

  ‘I’ll check up here then,’ Jacob said. ‘Brian, isn’t it?’ Zap nodded dumbly. ‘Okay, you come with me. We’re going to go over the whole apartment and see if anything’s out of place.’

  ~~~

  ‘Her bag is still here,’ Jacob said, ‘with her earpiece in it. No phone. If a woman has a purse like that, she takes it with her if she’s going somewhere. There’s no sign of a longer trip. She didn’t so much as pack underwear.’

  ‘Slim, but you’re probably right,’ Andrea agreed.

  ‘I got… not much,’ Heather said. ‘I checked the dumpster and there’s a bag on top that’s probably from here. There were a couple of scrape marks on the tarmac which might be from running shoe heels. It’s not exactly a sure thing, and they might not be Fleet’s shoes, but they’re there and fairly recent.’

  Andrea pursed her lips. ‘How lucky were you to spot those marks?’

  ‘Um, fairly lucky.’

  ‘Right, so someone took her.’ Andrea glanced over to where Astraea was sitting with Brian, trying to come up with a list of places Fleet might have gone to if she had gone under her own power. The idea was that Andrea would look in those places when it got dark. It sounded reasonable, though Fleet had a pretty wide range available to her. The girl could run across water for God’s sake; she was not even restricted to this continent. ‘I’ll tell him.’

  The two ex-agents nodded. ‘He already suspects it,’ Heather sa
id. ‘He can take it, and he knows we’ll be hunting for her.’

  ‘Yeah. Not that we really have anything to go on, but we’ll be looking. I’ll put the Court on it. Unless I locate her tonight, or someone sends a ransom demand to her parents, I’m not sure what else we can do.’

  ‘Who would want her?’ Heather asked. ‘That’s partially rhetorical. I know we don’t know, but if we can figure it out…’

  ‘If,’ Jacob said. ‘Her family isn’t that wealthy. I don’t think this is for ransom. I’m not sure I can think of someone who would want to kidnap a teenage Ultra.’

  Andrea shrugged. ‘I can think of several possibilities. I’m not sure which one’s worse.’

  Iron Cap Black Site, WA, 10th May.

  Josie gasped as her eyes snapped open and she sat up with a jolt and… She felt weird. She felt clumsy and uncoordinated, which was simply not what Josie Shelley ever felt like. Her skin felt weird too. It was like it was too tight for her body. She was dressed in an orange jumpsuit which did not suit her at all and there was something heavy around her neck. An orange jumpsuit, like they gave you in prison dramas.

  The room she was in might have been a cell. White walls and ceiling, grey floor. Metal toilet against the wall and a washbasin beside it. Metal framed bed and that was bolted to the floor. One of the walls had a solid-looking metal door and a big mirror which looked horribly like one of those one-way mirrors you also saw on police shows. Well, the door might be metal, but she could probably smash through it anyway.

  Getting to her feet, Josie squared up to the door and readied herself. Then she frowned and reached up for the weight around her neck. That was something else you saw in cop shows: neurotronic restraints to contain Ultras. She could not see the metal collar, but she could feel it.

  ‘Yes, Miss Shelley,’ said a voice, old and carrying a German accent, ‘your powers have been suppressed for the time being.’ The mirror cleared to reveal the speaker who was an old man. Josie had never seen him before. ‘My name is Kopf, Herman Kopf. I am a scientist specialising in Ultrahumans.’

  ‘Where am I? What are you going to do with me?’

  ‘Where you are is unimportant. A government facility which almost no one knows exists. Your government. They wish to turn you into a useful member of society.’

  ‘I am a useful member of society.’

  ‘Not in the way they want. They want a weapon, a sentient battering ram.’ Kopf sniffed absently. ‘An unsubtle use of your abilities, but I am, to some extent, as much a prisoner here as you. I do as I’m told, and they allow me to continue my research.’

  ‘I will never–’

  Kopf raised a hand to cut off the statement. ‘I am afraid that you will, Miss Shelley. I have spent decades gathering the skills I need for my work. I will strip away your mind. I will reconstruct a new identity for you. You will be happy to do as your country wants. You can resist. You will resist, I am sure. But in the end I will win.’

  ‘You can try,’ Josie said. She put as much confidence as she could into spitting out the words. It was more than she felt.

  ‘Yes,’ Kopf replied, a little sadly, ‘I can.’

  New Millennium City, MD, 12th May.

  The insistent buzzing from the door intercom dragged Brian out of a fitful sleep which had taken far too long to achieve. He had been in the NMCPD HQ until midnight, filing a missing person report with Josie’s parents. There had been a lot of questions. When he had got back to the apartment, he had gone to bed, got up, failed to watch TV for an hour, gone back to bed, tossed, turned, and generally failed to sleep until after four in the morning. At some point, he had drifted off, but it was eight o’clock and someone was leaning on the buzzer.

  Brian hit the response button. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mister Woodford? Mister Brian Woodford?’

  ‘Yes. Look I’ve–’

  ‘This is the New Millennium City Police Department. We need you to come in and answer some questions with regard to the disappearance of Miss Josephine Shelley.’

  ‘Now?’ Brian shook his head. Whatever it took. ‘Okay. Just let me get some clothes on. I’ll come down.’

  ‘Thank you for your cooperation, Mister Woodford.’

  Cooperation, yeah, right. What the Hell did they want to ask now that they had not asked the night before?

  ~~~

  ‘A UID vehicle is approaching the house,’ Denny announced.

  Penny glanced at the clock in the corner of the wall screen, which was showing the approaching town car through some of Denny’s multiple cameras. ‘Nine fifteen,’ Penny commented, getting to her feet. ‘At least they waited until after breakfast.’

  ‘It’ll be about Josie,’ June predicted. ‘Brian and Josie’s parents reported her officially missing last night. Do you want Astraea?’

  ‘No. The less they associate her with here the better.’

  Andrea walked out of her apartment as Penny left the room. ‘UID?’ Andrea asked.

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ June replied.

  ‘Well, we’ve got nothing to tell them. I can’t find her anywhere in the city.’

  ‘Yes, but they probably have to ask the questions.’

  Andrea gave a grunt of displeasure and settled onto one of the sofas. It took a couple of minutes before Cygnus walked into the lounge – clad in one of her emergency sweater dresses – preceding two UID agents, both of whom were known to the trio of women. Special Agent Caldwell was generally dark in colouration and pleasant as far as his attitude went. Special Agent Halliwell was more or less the precise opposite. Andrea noted that he had upgraded his sidearm since she had last seen him: whatever was under his dark suit, it was bigger than before by quite a lot.

  Caldwell did the talking. ‘Ladies,’ he said, ‘I’d imagine you’ve worked out that this is concerning the disappearance of Josephine Shelley.’ Halliwell stood there with a look on his face which suggested that he had been told, very firmly, to keep his mouth shut. Which was interesting.

  ‘We had,’ Cygnus replied. ‘I’m not sure what we can really tell you that isn’t on the memory stick we provided. We’re continuing to look into it because–’

  ‘It’s a police matter now,’ Halliwell said. Caldwell turned and glared at his partner.

  ‘Because Josie is a friend,’ Cygnus continued, ‘and an associate member of the Union of Ultrahumans.’

  ‘We… did not know that,’ Caldwell said.

  ‘Then you haven’t read the information we gave you. Which would have been a good idea before you came out here to ask questions. Is the UID handling this, or the NMCPD?’

  ‘It’s being run as a joint operation. We’re taking an advisory role and we’ll handle any federal aspects should it be determined that Miss Shelley has been taken over state lines.’

  ‘That’s a given,’ Andrea said. ‘I personally checked every location she might have gone in Maryland. I also checked a few places I know of she might have been taken.’

  ‘Would that be why three sex trafficking rings were forcibly shut down over the last forty-eight hours?’ Caldwell asked.

  ‘She’s a very attractive young woman. Honestly, I didn’t think that was what happened to her, but I’ve tried all the locations I know of. Several of them were already out of business, but I found three still operating. Now they aren’t.’

  ‘Good. What about the boyfriend? Mister Brian Woodford? Do you know him?’

  ‘Through Fleet,’ Cygnus said. ‘He’s a good kid.’

  ‘But you don’t know him as well as Miss Shelley?’

  ‘If you’re looking at Brian for this, you’re going entirely the wrong way, Special Agent. Aside from my personal opinion of him, he called me for help when he discovered she wasn’t at home. I took Astraea with me. If he was lying, if he was responsible for whatever has happened to her, Astraea would know about it. Brian had nothing to do with her disappearance.’

  ~~~

  ‘So, you have arguments?’

  Brian was tired and his wits wer
e fried. He figured he had had far less than four hours of sleep, and the cops were asking him dumb questions. He was pretty sure they were dumb, but not absolutely sure, because he could not get his head around what they were asking. ‘Of course we have arguments. Everyone has arguments.’

  ‘Maybe. What do you argue about?’ The guy asking the questions was Detective someone-or-other; Brian had forgotten the name as soon as he was told it. Special Agent some-guy was watching from the side of the room. He was UID. The cops from the night before had said they would be calling in the UID since Josie was an Ultra.

  ‘Stupid stuff.’

  ‘Give me an example.’

  Brian sighed. ‘Recently, it’s been whether I should get a job.’

  ‘She wanted you to get a job?’ There was a hint of something like pleasure in the man’s tone, like he had found something. Maybe. Brian was not really sure.

  ‘No. I want to get a job to help with the rent and the bills. She says it’s not necessary. Says I should focus on my courses.’

  ‘I see.’ The pleased note was gone. ‘Have any of these arguments ever become serious?’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘Violent.’

  Jerked out of his half-stupor, Brian looked up into the cop’s eyes. Was he serious? Yes. Yes, he was serious. ‘Is that what you think? You think I killed her and dumped the body somewhere? Are you fucking nuts? If I tried to hit her, she could be a mile away before the punch landed. She’s that fast. She’s the most incredible woman I’ve ever met. Except maybe Cygnus.’

  ‘Calm down, Mister Woodford, we’re just–’

  ‘Trying to make this easy for yourselves. Blame the boyfriend. Well, when I called Cygnus to help look for Josie, Astraea came with her. She’s a walking lie detector. She sees guilt. If I’d done something to Josie, she would know. You wouldn’t need to ask all these stupid questions, because she’d have arrested me herself.’

  ‘Mister Woodford, these are just routine questions. You want to find Miss Shelley, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Brian felt his anger growing and bit down on it. With the anger, his power was also rising. He could feel the energy in the air, though the cops seemed not to have noticed yet. ‘I didn’t hurt her, so I want you to get out there and find out who did. I’m not answering any more of your questions. Let me go or get me a lawyer.’