by Russ Linton
Ingram looks startled. He recovers quickly, and a smug expression spreads to all corners before he starts speaking into the wrong end of the phone. "Well, hello and who may I ask is this?"
"Sorry but that's classified," says Eric. "I need you to hand the phone back to Spence."
"Classified? Really now? Are baseball matches top secret, hmm?"
Silence. Ingram thinks he's gotten one over me, but the dead air only tells me that Eric is busy typing and scanning whatever monitor he's glued to at this particular moment.
"Professor Reginald Ingram, right?" Eric says.
It's started.
The Prof purses his lips and gives me a nod as if he's ready for what's coming. Ready to show up the impudent freshman and his buddy on the talkie box. I almost feel sorry for him.
"Yes, my reputation proceeds me."
More silence.
"Oh boy," says Eric. "You give that lecture on sexual deviancy yet?"
There's the first sign of confusion from the once game professor. "Are you a student? Because if you are—"
"Nooooooo! Noooooo!" Eric's shock warbles over the tinny speaker. "Woah, Spence, you might want to warn the others in the class. Too late to drop?"
"Professor, really, just give me the phone back," I say.
He narrows his eyes, the scraggly brows sinking behind his glasses. "I demand to know who this is."
"Man, no way I'm telling you. Not after seeing your porn downloads. Holy shit! I mean actual Scheizers, prof, you are one sick dude."
Ingram goes pale. "I don't...never..."
"Eric, stop," I say.
A few giggles spread across the room but mostly there's a stunned silence. Eyes flick back and forth like a hungry lizard's between me and the spectacle. This isn't how this was supposed to be. I walked away from the crazy in my life so I could be who I am—normal—and forget my Dad was an indestructible, weaponized human. Forget I spent the better part of my high school years in an arctic bunker hiding from a psychopathic supervillain. I'd made a new identity and created accounts all the way from banks to a brand new Steam profile. We'd even hacked the social security office to issue a worry-free card complete with a non-grave robbed number. Spencer Alexander, not Spencer Harrington, had enrolled for the spring semester at GWU. Spencer Alexander had a job in the microbiology lab. A future.
But Eric had mentioned Mom. I'd sworn to never forget about her.
The professor raises the phone high, his arm trembling.
"I'm sending someone to get you." Eric rushes his explanation, auctioneer style. "Like I said the phone's already—"
Crashing into the tiled floor. Dammit. I'd seriously considered a military grade phone case given my previous life experiences.
Light wraps the room like colored cellophane. It crawls through different shades of green and gold in wispy streamers until it ribbons into a form. She? He? is standing at the front of the auditorium next to the remains of the phone. Ingram staggers into the podium and falls straight on his ass but continues to stare.
The newcomer is the light. Translucent wisps smoke from the body and trail the head as they scan the room.
"Spencer?" the form asks.
Peter cringes and points at me.
"Thanks, Petey."
"I need you to accompany me," says the glowy person.
I know a lot of Augments, but I don't know this one. I used to track them back in the day after I found out my dad was one. In the lead-up to the insanity of my "event" last year, Eric and I went through his files on every known Augment. They'd all been rounded up by the Black Beetle, who, turns out, might've been doing the world a favor. Had he not been the one that kidnapped my mom, maybe history would have been written differently.
I don't want to relive those events. I can't. But what could it be about Mom? I'd already tried to save her and failed. She was nothing but a psychic afterimage. Over a year in school and my promise to find a way to release her had hit a major roadblock. A lifetime, two lifetimes, of study might not be enough.
"Do I have a choice?" I ask the Augment.
They wait before answering, their voice a strange mix of reverb and the distant sounds you hear at the bottom of a pool. "I was not told to give you one."
This is it. Not even two years of normal. Whatever this even is, Dad's behind it. His bullshit is always more important than my life.
I climb over Peter who is frozen in his seat. Everywhere else, the once-banned smartphones come out. People stare into the screens toward the front of the room as though what they might see will be different, more real than what's actually there. Soon they're all tapping and mashing power buttons with confused looks.
At least I wasn't the only one short a phone. Eric better have backed up every byte.
Chapter 2
ONE MINUTE I'M IN CLASS watching Eric derail a professor's carefully laid tenure track and the next, I'm under towering trees which shoot high into a cloudless sky. Something seems familiar about this place, and I want to get a good look but the world is spinning on the wrong axis. All I can do is close my eyes and search for my balance. Not my first choice with the mystery Augment standing so close.
Eyes closed, the other senses take over. Pine. A clean scent, I totally get why people try to soak it into paper trees and hang them from their rearview. Much like checking that road I've left behind, I'm hit by a rampaging semi-truck full of memories, or more like a rampaging robot.
I flew above these very trees on the back of a robotic mantis killing machine I'd named Cuddles. Where exactly we'd launched from had been this blank spot in my memory which is filling in, fast. A top-secret Augment holding facility disguised as a retirement home. A toothless grin in a windswept face. A cranky veteran and his cyborg ward.
I open my eyes slowly and the world ripples to a standstill. The Augment regards me with a blank visage that's nothing more than a sheen of green light.
"What are you?" I ask.
He? She? Doesn't answer my question, they just start walking through the trees.
Ahead, two metal crosses are planted in the ground. Bent from the thin, chrome tubes of an IV tree, the green light from the passing Augment warps along their pitted surface.
More memories. These sting.
I drop to one knee beside the graves. A carpet of needles covers what was once freshly turned earth. I scoop a handful and run them across my fingertips. Brown and dried, the needles no longer have that cleansing scent.
Martin Alexander is buried to my right. A guy I'd assumed was a world class douchebag until I let myself get to know him. Of all the so-called heroes I've met, he was the biggest. Buried next to him is Hurricane, a senior citizen with more heart than he ever had power. As one of the originals from Augment Force Zero, his inhuman speed was off the charts. Somehow though, unlike so many of the others, he never stopped caring.
"You knew these men?"
I'm never going to get used to the sound. The Augment's words come from everywhere. It reminds me of more things I'd rather forget.
"Not long enough," I reply.
"I see. This way when you are ready."
The Augment lingers. I watch their distorted reflection on the makeshift crosses as they turn and walk away. I let them disappear into the woods.
"Martin," I say quietly to the grave on my right, "I hope you don't mind, but I took your name. Well, my latest and now useless cover ID took your name." After that scene of getting dragged out of class, Spencer Alexander is gone. A couple years was too much to ask. Anger burns in my chest and I fight it down. Martin never seemed to get angry. He always kept his cool, even after he'd been stuffed in a padded cell at a compromised top-secret lab. Even when he threw himself in front of Dad to protect Emily. Tears sting my eyes. "I'm thinking Spencer Martin next time, huh? A guy with two last names can spare both, right?"
I want to mention Emily out loud but can't. That's too painful, too raw. Martin died for her. Another fact I need to face is that I may not see her again. I
should be showing up to work in the lab right about now. She got me a job to keep me out of trouble and help forget all this insanity.
Those tears threaten to fall. I've got to look at the other grave for some levity, as messed up as that sounds.
"'Cane, you one-legged son of a bitch." Crying isn't optional now. "I think I'm closing in on a buck fifty. Turns out I can put on a few pounds outside a steady diet of cardboard rations."
I'm not sure what else to say.
"Thank you. Both."
I stand, scrub my eyes and release a deep breath. No sense meeting the old man with a tear-stained face. I need to confront whatever the hell he's dragged me into.
That's right. The parking lot is only a short walk from here. More details penetrate the haze as I get closer. The Whispering Pines Retirement Community, once home to the most dangerous senior citizens on the planet, had been a waypoint for those Augments who voluntarily decommissioned. Those that didn't go so gracefully? Eric and I had figured out the Black Beetle had been rounding them up. None were aware of their ultimate fate.
Beetle'd been providing his services to the government for over a decade. But his employers were more interested in finding ways to control their toys than peacefully retiring them from service.
The roundup and Beetle's evil super villain shtick was all a cover for yet another unofficial government program. Unofficial because at least in the days since, nobody has completely fessed up to what went down. A covert base codenamed Killcreek in nowhere, Montana, got obliterated and a whole army of Augments once thought dead or decommissioned were set loose on the world once more.
I may have had more than a little to do with that.
About the insanity of a near-apocalypse at Killcreek, I've always been able to recall every detail. Martin's death. Hurricane. My encounters with a brain-invading Augment called Charlotte. What I can't seem to figure out is why this place is causing me to wander through a fog of memory.
Shouldering through the trees, I see the squat brick structure ahead hasn't changed. Whispering Pines looks like any other institutional building constructed circa 1960. Aesthetics thrown away for riot-proof walls with high, narrow windows, one completely unique feature dominates everything else. A massive, round platform studded with glass chambers occupies the roof, almost as though a UFO has crash landed there. Had the retirement home not actually been a reinforced prison, the weight alone would have crushed the building. The metal is weathered, the glass foggy. My recovering memory says something is missing, but what?
Torn from the cavern below Killcreek, this platform had once been a prison for captured Augments. It had ended up back here after the shit hit the fan at Killcreek. What seemed like the whole of the U.S. armed forces responded to the breach. Dad, the Crimson Mask, most powerful Augment to ever walk the face of the Earth, had flown them all to safety, riding atop their once prison. Not even I knew he was that damn strong.
Someone has adjusted the position since Dad dropped it there, sitting at an angle. An antennae array protrudes from the middle. Cycling through more emerging memories, an image of the operating table which used to be there materializes. No table now. Last I'd seen, something else had been there.
No. Not quite right. Someone had been there.
That's why my memory is so patchy.
She had stood in the center, jacked into the main control interface through a web of hoses attached to her head. The metal structure had gone from being a handy getaway vehicle to an array which amped her abilities. Charlotte, the psychic government experiment meant to control all those captured Augments, the one who invaded my dreams, tortured my Mom, had used her mindfuck powers to cloak both the retreating Augments and Whispering Pines. Inexplicably, she'd hidden it from sight, sound, memory.
Eric thought the cloak was a gift. She was only protecting her family, right? Only he wasn't the one who'd been pulled into Charlotte's psychic snow globe. Or had to leave the ghost of his mother there, trapped.
Now Charlotte's seat is empty. A standard satellite dish fills the void. What the hell is going on?
"Spence!" Eric trots out of the building.
He's still got that ungainly stride, a bit of a waddle, but he's lost serious weight and isn't nearly as translucent as the last time I'd seen him. He'd gone full-on basement troll and spent months trying to track us down after I was dragged off to the Icehole. I never forgot his devotion. What I'm questioning today though, is his judgment.
"What's going on?" he says. I accept his hand. The grip is strong, and I let him pull close for a hug. When I don't return the bro slap, he steps away. "No love?"
"Where the fuck is she?"
His face is back to near translucent. Broken syllables tumble out. "Well...I...who exactly?"
"Don't mess with me. You could've told me more on the phone."
He shakes his head and examines the ground. "No, man. Not this." Eric guides me toward the building. I should resist, but I've known him a long time, and somber is never a word I'd use to describe him. Whatever is happening has shaken him up enough to dampen my panic.
Glass doors have been replaced with reinforced metal plates. They slide open into what used to be the reception room. The new occupants have cleaned out the trashed desk and most of the remnants of the battle that took place here. A gouge still mars the floor where Hurricane was nearly skewered.
"This is our kill box," says Eric, going into tour guide mode. The inappropriateness obviously doesn't strike him. His memories are triaged by an accumulation of time mine didn't have. "Anyone dumb enough to barge in the front door gets stopped here. All about facility access control," he says authoritatively.
He's been spending way too much time with dear ol' Dad, the Crimson Mask. Sounds terrible, but I'd been happy to leave him on the other side of a mind-erasing barrier.
"You said this was about my mother. How is that possible?" Maybe they found her body. God, please say they didn't.
Eric quickens his pace and steers me down a familiar hallway.
"This hall hasn't changed much. We first met Hurricane and Hound here, remember? Since this was the wing for the more cooperative residents, we've changed it into our barracks."
Some doors are closed, and those left open are furnished and have added bits of decor. Snatches of memory return, and I recall being here after Killcreek. More of these rooms were occupied then. We pass one with a simple bed and green trunk stenciled with "Cpt. Arnold E. Raffens".
"Hound is still here?"
"Of course," Eric says, and I detect a hint of annoyance. "He's on perimeter duty. Probably smelled you when you landed."
"You're no master of hygiene." Despite all he's put me through today, it's hard not to fall back into the banter of better days. "If I recall, your basement smelled like old cheese and ass."
His smile widens, and he points at a room as we pass. "Still does."
Blue light washes the walls. It's being emitted by the LED bling on Babe, a liquid-cooled beast of a desktop we put together from scavenged parts years ago. There's his Medic Droid poster on the wall and beside it, the one of Candlestick Park. One corner is occupied by the Throne, our dumpster dive recliner plucked from a pile of moldy mozzarella. He's completely checked-in to this asylum.
"Eric, you've got two minutes to either tell me what the hell is going on or arrange my ride back to campus."
His relaxed tour guide posture deflates and the uncharacteristic soberness returns. He waves an arm, waddling faster down the hall.
We pass another open door. This one has the stock stripped-down retirement center amenities with its wire frame bed, a particle board dresser, and a rickety bedside table. A black guy sits on the bed holding a steaming styrofoam cup. He's already locked on, watching me walk by.
"Sup, Danger," Eric says as he passes. The intense eyes never leave me, and he doesn't respond. I keep moving.
Eric pauses with one hand on a set of double-hinged doors at the end of the hall. He waits for me to catch up,
flashes a grim countenance, and pushes through. Head held low, he crosses the room and leaves me at the threshold.
What lies beyond is astounding. I barely catch the swinging door before it crashes into my face. From the looks of it, this used to be a rec room. There's even an old foosball table against one wall. But only Eric and I would call this recreational now.
A floor to ceiling arc of screens mounted over a broad console dominates the center. Widescreen monitors pipe in everything from live news coverage to security feeds to interactive data displays. A holographic globe which hosts a constellation of pulsing dots rises from the middle of the control panel.
Dad stands hunched over the panel, another person next to him. She's small with a shock of orange mohawk cresting her head. Ember. We met once before. In the darkness of the room, beside Dad's hulking form, she looks fragile, but I've seen the instant replay. If you absolutely, positively need to burn some motherfucker to a crisp, she's your girl.
"Spencer!" Dad turns, his mask draped over the back of his neck and his dark, form-fitting suit rippling with the slightest twitch of his muscles. He crosses the room with bold steps which give the sense the world could fold in on him and he'd forge ahead. He sweeps me off the ground in a hug, and I'm forced to stare awkwardly over his shoulder.
Ember regards us with a pained expression. Eric fades into silhouette as he approaches the bank of screens and a high-backed chair that's straight from the bridge of the Enterprise. Another figure rises to let him sit. A tangle of hoses break up the humanity of Polybius' profile. Instead of a greeting, he trundles to the side in a chorus of whirs and clicks.
"Okay, okay. Hi." Dad lowers me the foot and half I've been hoisted off the ground. Beyond the awkwardness of having onlookers to our little reunion is the fact I can't remember, mindfuck or not, the last time Crimson Mask hugged me. "Good to see you and all that, but what's going on? Eric says this is about Mom. And Charlotte's missing. Why? Where is she?"
Anger surfaces again as the words spill out. Dad doesn't step up in front of the torrent. Amazingly, he shrinks, and that unbreakable confidence evaporates. All eyes are on me. My stomach sinks.