Erin pulled a heavy-cased smartphone from her pocket. “Know anybody who can hack a phone?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Hello, Allison.”
When she heard Israel’s voice, Allison let out a startled yelp and dropped the computer tablet she’d been holding. It clattered to the floor dully and she turned toward the voice. Israel and Erin were facing her from in front of the window that looked out over Peachtree Center Avenue fourteen stories below. Outside the window, night had its full grip on the city and the electric lights glowed like multicolored stars.
“Hi, Doc,” Erin said. “Sorry we scared you.”
“That’s okay,” Allison stammered, kneeling to retrieve her undamaged tablet, “but how did you get in here?”
“I guess you haven’t talked to Warburton¸” Erin said.
Allison shook her head.
Israel stepped forward and said with an easy smile, “It’s okay. We’ve got a lot to tell you, but we didn’t want to use the front door because we weren’t sure if the DGRI was watching your door or not.”
Allison nodded. “You can pretty much count on that. Still, though, how exactly did you get in here?”
Before Israel could respond, Erin disappeared and then reappeared a few feet from Allison. This produced another short, shocked yelp from the doctor. Again, the tablet dropped to the floor. Erin stepped forward and picked it up, handing it back to her.
“It’s cool, Doc,” she said. “I figured it was quicker and easier to show you.”
Allison stared at her with wide, bewildered eyes. “You teleported,” she said. “You freaking teleported! That was what happened that night wasn’t it? We considered invisibility and some kind of in-substantiation, even a dimensional shift to the Inner Dark, but teleportation…” she drifted off as her thoughts went from a verbal format to a mental one.
“Like I said, we’ve got a lot to tell you,” Israel said.
“And you,” she turned on Israel, her finger pointed at his chest. “What happened to you? We went to the meeting place we told you about and you never showed up. Then we heard about some cops picking up a guy who kicked a car door off its hinges. That was you, right? What happened to you?”
“Look, I swear I will tell you everything that’s happened. Right now, though, we need to talk to Michelle. We’ve got a cell phone that we got off a couple of Progeny guys that we hope might give us an idea what they’ve been up to, but it’s encrypted.”
“Progeny guys? You ran up against the Progeny?” Allison turned her head and shouted, “Michelle! Get over here!” A few seconds later, Allison’s twin came into the lab and stopped short when she saw the group gathered there.
“When did they get here? No, scratch that. How did they get here?” Michelle asked.
Allison looked at Erin. Erin shrugged and repeated the process she had gone through with Allison a few moments before. To her credit, Michelle’s eyes grew wide, but she didn’t make a sound or lose her assessing gaze for even a moment. She stared at Erin. “Organically based teletransportation,” she said in awe. “But that’s not possible because the amount of energy required to do… what? De-materialization then Re-materialization? Space-time manipulation? Some kind of dimensional shift? Assuming a thousand other variables as positive, not the least of which is ludicrously large power requirements, none of these would be theoretically possible just through force of will alone with no supplemental technology.” She looked at her sister in abject confusion.
Allison gestured at Erin. “And yet, there she is.”
Michelle looked from Allison to Erin. Her face slowly broke into a thrilled grin. “You,” she said to Erin. “I think I love you. We have a lot of work to do before we get the Nobel.”
“That’s going to have to wait, Michelle,” Allison said. She looked at Israel and said, “We’ll start with you. Tell us everything starting from the last time we saw you. Spare no details.”
So, Israel started talking. He told them about the DGRI team he’d encountered after they had released him, he told them about waking up next to the dead deer, and everything else up to that moment. When he got to the fight with the Screed brothers, Allison stopped him.
“Wait, they were Paragons? Like you?”
“Well, not exactly like me, but Paragons for sure. The big one, Carmine, was strong enough to break bones like they were sticks and the smaller one- his name was Jordan -was nimble and fast. I’m talking Spider-Man nimble and fast.”
“And this Seer? Did they say anything else about him?”
Israel shook his head. “No, but I definitely got the impression he was the guy in charge.”
Allison and Michelle exchanged a worried look.
“What?” Erin said.
“Nothing,” Allison said, “let’s hear the rest, Israel.”
“Bullshit, nothing,” Erin said. “That’s the kind of shit that made me want to leave before. If we’re going to work with you guys you need to tell us everything.”
“And I will, Erin, I swear,” Allison said. “But I need all the facts in front of me first. Otherwise, I might make a flawed conclusion and tell you the wrong thing. Please, just bear with me.”
Erin glanced at Israel and he nodded. She settled herself onto a stool while Israel finished his story. When he was done, they all looked at her. “Your turn,” Israel said.
Erin and Israel had already decided that no one needed to know about any of the violence that Erin had been through since leaving Silversky. Instead, she told them a story about appearing in the desert and bouncing around while she explored her abilities. The bruises on her face were attributed to a close encounter with a large boulder. It was a television in a diner that had alerted her to Israel’s problems and what had prompted her to puzzle out how to get back to Atlanta. The sisters seemed to believe the story without reservation.
While Allison and Michelle discussed the details of the stories and the possible scientific reasons for much of it, Erin walked over and stood next to Israel.
“A deer?” she asked in hushed tones. “You really ate a whole deer? Raw?”
He grimaced. “I wasn’t myself. I don’t remember any of it.”
“Yeah, but still, man. You took down Bambi barehanded and chowed down on him. That’s pretty hardcore, Izzy.”
“Shut up,” Israel said. Erin didn’t miss the smile playing at the corners of his mouth, though.
Allison and Michelle turned to them. “Okay,” Allison said, “first things first. Where’s this phone?” Erin handed it over to Michelle, who took it and headed back to her own lab without a word.
When she was gone, Allison said, “If that thing can be cracked, she’ll do it. Now, I want to talk to Israel some more and then we need to bring Olivia up to speed.”
“How’s that going to work?” Israel said. “The DGRI has got to be watching her.”
Allison nodded. “I’m sure every cell phone signal and hard line communication device in that place is being monitored. Silversky itself, though, should be relatively safe since I know there’s no way Olivia would knowingly allow them to put men inside. That said, I also know there is at least one DGRI agent embedded in Silversky because that’s how they found out about you in the first place, Israel. We need to get you guys directly into Olivia’s office without alerting any of the staff.” They both looked at Erin.
She smiled and said, “I got that.”
“Good,” Allison said. “Michelle and I can just drive up and go in the old-fashioned way like nothing has changed. First, though, I want to hear more about what you’ve gone through, Israel.”
He shrugged. “I told you pretty much everything that happened.”
“That’s not what I mean. I want to know what kind of changes your body has been going through. What kind of things you’ve felt. What you can do that you couldn’t before. Things like that.”
So Israel started talking again. He talked about sprinting with no fatigue and jumping higher than should be possible. He told her about t
he damage his body had taken without any pain. He described the way he could see in the dark and how his senses seemed more sensitive than they had ever been before. He told her how sunlight hurt his eyes. Mostly, though, he told her about the hunger and the way it gnawed at his body and mind when he exerted himself too much.
When he was done, Erin nodded thoughtfully. “I was right. Undead Captain America.”
Israel gave her a look that could have frozen falling rain. She gave him a sweet smile as a reply.
“You’re not dead,” Allison said. “Okay, well, that’s not completely accurate. By most medical standards, you are. No pulse, no respirations-”
“Wait,” Erin said, “how do you talk? You need to breathe for that, right?”
“I do breathe,” Israel said. “I just don’t think I need to.”
“Muscle memory,” Allison said. “Your diaphragm spent three decades moving air in and out of your lungs, so it’s just running on autopilot now. You’re right, though: You don’t need to. Running like you did without getting out of breath pretty much proves that.”
“Okay, so, not breathing, heart not beating equals dead, right?” Israel asked.
Allison shook her head. “Not totally because- somehow -your mind is still functioning. To any layman, sure, you’re dead. Scientific death, though, is brain death. Your brain seems fine. In every report of Necrophage infestation that I’ve read, the subjects were either mentally incapacitated to the point of becoming mindless, instinct-driven eating machines or they possessed some higher cognitive function but never really more than, say, a very clever jungle cat. Either way, they were predators solely focused on feeding this hunger you talked about. In you, though, the hunger seems to be kept in check by a steady supply of animal proteins. If you are deprived of those, then the instinctual nature takes over.”
“Poor Bambi,” Erin said.
This time it was Allison who gave her the cold look. Erin held the doctor’s stare for a second and then held up her hands in surrender. She leaned against a lab table and made a zipping motion across her mouth.
“That’s what everyone’s afraid of,” Allison continued. “If you lose control and kill or infect other people then they will rise without your cognitive abilities and go on a killing spree and then more rise and so on and so on. Classic zombie apocalypse.”
“What about the deer? It wasn’t moving or anything. Shouldn’t it have been infected?”
“Was it decapitated?”
Israel thought back and then nodded.
“That’s something the movies got correct. Whatever the nature of Necrophage DNA, it relies heavily on neurological tissue. Do enough damage to the brain and the spine and the subject stops functioning even though the tissues are still a viable infection vector. We’ll definitely need to get a Sentry team to sweep the forest for those remains, regardless.”
Israel remembered Carmine standing over him with a long piece of metal poised to shatter his skull. “So they could have kil- destroyed me,” he said.
“No, they could have killed you. Look, Israel, this is the take away from this: You’re not dead. You are an aware and reasoning creature that requires sustenance to continue existing. It’s just that you are a form of life that we don’t completely or even partially understand. To my knowledge you are one of a kind.”
“But not human.”
Allison shook her head. “No, not anymore. Neither of you are. You are a human based life form, I suppose, if that helps. It’s like if you were to equate human DNA to a house then your human DNA is merely the foundation on which the rest of you is built, while it’s everything to someone like me or Michelle. You, Israel, you’re going to have to be very, very careful. I will find a way to suppress the infectious nature of your Necrophagic DNA, but it will take a lot of time. Until then, you need to avoid crowds or anyplace else where you might inadvertently leave a sample behind.”
Israel looked into the doctor’s soft brown eyes. A surge of emotion that had been building in him rose up, but he pushed it back down. It was a useless feeling. “So, no dating, then,” he said with a smile.
He expected her to smile back, but a sad shadow crossed her face. “Sharing a meal with a friend isn’t out of the question,” she said.
Erin said, “Wow. I would tell you two to get a room, but that’s probably not the best idea, all things considered.”
Allison turned and glared at her.
“Hey, don’t get mad at me. It’s the undead babe magnet who brought it up. I’m just looking out for you.”
Allison’s gaze softened a bit. “She’s very direct, isn’t she?”
“She is,” Israel said. “I’m just glad she didn’t call me an effing undead babe magnet.”
“Fucking, Israel. The word is fucking.”
Israel nodded and gestured toward Erin. “And there you have it.”
“All right,” Erin said, “now that the science stuff and the Twilight moment is out of the way, let’s get back to my question from earlier.”
“Which was?”
“Why you and your sister were looking at each other like the world might be ending when we told you the ass-hats in the parking lot were Paragons. What’s the big deal about that?”
“Oh, that. Well, the bottom line is that we were under the impression that you and Israel were the only two Paragons currently active. Finding out that there are two- potentially three -working for the Progeny is simultaneously alarming and somewhat amazing. Paragons are extremely rare, like one every few centuries rare.”
“Well, then why aren’t they in the history books? Why haven’t we heard of these people?”
“There are a few in history. In the modern era, though, they were subject to the same laws as any other Awakened, so the Council of the Veil kept them and their activities out of public light. Needless to say, having five of you active at once is… historically significant.”
“Historically? That sounds-”
“Hey, guys,” Michelle said, coming into the room a tablet computer in her hand. “I think we hit a gold mine, here.”
“That was quick,” Allison said.
Michelle nodded. “Yeah. Whoever owned this phone needs a primer on electronic security. The password was just a stream of sixes and nines, which is both stupid easy to break and really immature.”
“Anything good on it?” Israel asked.
Michelle smiled. “Oh, yes. This guy didn’t bother deleting anything. The reason it went so fast is that I didn’t have to dig through it looking for traces of erased data. There are months of texts and call logs here. I’ve already bypassed the copy protection software and made a duplicate of the data. I scrubbed that for Trojans and the like, then uploaded it to Pythia for collation and analysis.”
“Pie-what?” Erin asked.
“Pythia,” Erin responded. “It’s a data analysis program that I named after the Oracle of Delphi. It uses a series of information-gathering matrices to collect and collate input data against known behavior patterns, known goals, current newsworthy situations and past events to-”
“ Chelle,” Allison said, holding up her hand, “let me.” She looked at Erin and said, “We put information into Pythia and it compares it to all the information that Sentry has collected and basically spits out possible objectives of whoever the subject of our inquiry is. In this case, that’s the Progeny.”
“So it can tell you where they will be and what they will be doing?” Erin said.
“Not exactly. More like where they’ll most likely be and what they might be up to. It’s not infallible by any means but it has given us more leads than not. It’s how we found the Oceanside place.”
“Not infallible yet,” Michelle said.
“I’ll be damned,” Israel said.
“What did Pythia find?” Allison asked Michelle.
“It’s still running; there’s a lot of data to compare. While it started, though, I took about a dozen texts at random that all contained names and addresses. I
manually ran those and each of them matches one of the missing persons Sentry has been looking into.”
“Well, Jordan told me they snatched me so that confirms that, I guess,” Israel said.
“Yeah, well, that’s the thing. There are hundreds of names in this phone, guys. Hundreds. That’s way more than we have in our databases. They’re up to something on a big scale.”
A series of beeping tones sounded from Michelle’s tablet. Israel thought he recognized it from one of the robots in the Star Wars films. Michelle picked it up and said, “Pythia’s finished.” She ignored them and started reading the display in silence.
After a minute of this, Allison said, “Chelle, you aren’t sharing.”
Michelle looked up at them. Her eyes, while still controlled and calculating, were wide with fear. “We need to get this to Olivia,” she said with a slight waver in her voice. “We need to do that right now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Erin tried to convince them to just let her teleport everyone to Olivia’s office, but the idea was rejected based on fact that they couldn’t be sure who was in the office with the head of The Sentry Group, plus the fact that the idea seemed to terrify Allison. So, they all agreed that Allison and Michelle would go by vehicle while Erin and Israel took the less conventional route. Once on the grounds, Allison would signal from the window in Olivia’s office that it was clear for them to make their entrance.
Plans made, Erin took Israel and moved them to an adjoining rooftop. He looked around in confusion when they materialized. “Again with the roof,” he said. “I thought we were going to Silversky.”
“Here’s the thing,” Erin said. “I can’t just go anywhere I want. Like, if you were to ask me to pop us over to the middle of Times Square, I couldn’t do that because I’ve never been to New York. If I can’t see where I want to go then I have to have some memory of the place, some feeling of it. That’s the biggest reason I keep taking us to rooftops because I can see more from up high and because I’m a lot less likely to make some Joe Six-pack crap himself when I appear out of nowhere.”
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