by Mark Gardner
Joaquin scowled. “Anne.”
The crowd parted as Anne sauntered toward Joaquin. She would stop and place a hand on the arm of a gang member. She appeared to judge biceps like selecting a cheese or piece of jewelry. She smiled with every action – lipstick that matched her dress and heels. Her hips swayed back and forth with each step. As she approached, Joaquin detected the faint odor of perfume. Gangbangers swayed in her wake.
Her arm waved loosely and in one hand the red hand cannon seemed more an accessory like a purse rather than the dealer of death anyone who was familiar with guns would know it to be. The brilliant red shine of the Smith and Wesson 460 revolver matched the rest of her outfit perfectly. Her other hand held a pair of matching red-rimmed sunglasses. The lenses of her sunglasses, the grip of the S&W and the soles of her heels were the only things not matching red.
“You need a lesson on doing this properly,” she purred. It could have been a question, but sounded cryptic like a declaration.
Joaquin smirked and waved his hand at the room. “I think I have this under control.”
“Control?” Anne looked around the room. “I don’t see control. I see children playing war.” She ran a finger along the jaw of one of the gangbangers. “Scared little boys pretending to be men.”
Joaquin spread his arms, the knife he killed Lil’ Cee with still dripping his blood. “I’m not interested in what you got, yo.”
“No?” she asked, feigning offense. “You’re still doing it wrong.”
“How so?”
“You gave them a choice.”
“Choice?”
She leaned in close to Joaquin. “Consider this an abject lesson,” she whispered. She raised her handgun and pointed it at the nearest gangbanger and pulled the trigger.
She spun on her perfect pumps and pulled the trigger a second time, then the room erupted.
“Better get in there.”
The Kings’ lookout gaped at the entry to the warehouse, echoes of twin gunshots still hanging in the air. His eyes were drawn to a red handbag lying in the door. A woman with a perfect body and an excellent taste in clothes had passed him only minutes prior. Her escort was urging him inside, and his gut screamed that something was wrong. He turned toward the warehouse but didn’t step forward. He felt a hand on the back of his neck. The hand was cold and his body reacted by duplicating the same cold. The hand seemed to drain all the warmth from his body. His joints ached and he was unable to maintain his balance. His hair and fingernails grew and the pain was unbearable. Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe and his left arm felt as if it was burning from the inside. His heart beat rapidly in his chest and then stopped.
Justin released the body and it slumped to the pavement. The sagging tattooed flesh was comical. Justin doubted many of the ‘bangers reached this age. Usually, a brief touch was enough to show someone he meant business, but this time, it felt personal. As he watched Anne sashay into the warehouse, he felt a rage build. He was Anne’s plaything. He was at her call regardless of his desires or needs. She had a voracious appetite. When he was unable to fulfill her lust, she mocked him before casting him aside and continuing with whoever she could find. Male or female, it didn’t matter - anyone would do to try to satisfy her cravings.
It wasn’t as though he received nothing from her. The ability to touch another human being appealed to him. The problem was that his appeal resulted in people dying. Eventually, he knew Anne would kill him. A bullet or a kiss – they were both equally as deadly.
Justin stepped over the body and walked toward the open warehouse door. He looked over his shoulder, and the thought wormed its way to the front of his mind: I guess someone else could kill me just as easily.
Anne bit into the neck of the body directly on top of her. The spraying blood made a comical parody of her red lipstick. She spit a mouthful of blood into the snarling face of another gangbanger. As he staggered back, she raised her S&W and pulled the trigger again. Another obstacle waylaid, she thought, grinning like a fool in love. The next thing she thought as she felt a blade pierce her shoulder blade was, this dress is ruined. She reached behind and grasped the knife and pulled it out. Her arm went limp and she brought the S&W up to her chest and pulled the trigger for the fourth time.
Anne’s eyes snapped open and she reached down and pulled one of her kitten heel pumps off and drove the three-inch heel into the thigh of someone standing over her. The thug bellowed and staggered back clawing at the lovely red shoe. She rolled over and found her S&W. She raised it and had Joaquin dead to rites. She saw the horror in his eyes and turned the weapon toward another body, smiled and placed it on the floor. She grabbed a pistol from a fallen ‘banger, pointed it instead of her S&W and pulled the trigger, cackling with glee.
She kicked off her other shoe and it impacted with another face in the crowd. She dropped the ‘banger pistol and picked up a knife lost in the melee. She leaped to her feet and drove the knife to the hilt into the neck of the thug she kicked with her shoe. There was absolute finality as Anne spun to see the room littered with bodies. The only people left alive were her, Joaquin and the final member of Lil’ Cee’s gang. He pointed a pistol at her.
Anne turned to Joaquin. “You’ve got a fifty-fifty chance,” she said and sprinted toward the ‘banger. He shrugged and fired twice, both bullets striking her in the face.
Joaquin watched as the ‘banger he humiliated on the sidewalk fired his pistol twice. Both projectiles reached their target and Anne collapsed on top of one of the bodies. Tee ran up to her and towered over her body, pointing his pistol at her.
Joaquin watched her body convulse and he knew the moment she died: Tee fell over and landed on top of her. She rolled the bulk off her and sat up. She looked at Joaquin, who hadn’t moved since the ordeal started.
Anne rose, facing Joaquin. She smoothed her tattered dress and walked up to Joaquin. During her leisurely stroll, she retrieved her handgun, ejected the cylinder and eyeballed the final remaining .460 bullet before pulling it out. She reached out with her bloodstained hand and grabbed Joaquin by his belt. With her other hand, she pushed the round into his pocket, kissed him on the cheek and whispered, “I hope you learned your lesson.”
Winning Strike
Contrails streaked across a sky reflected in aviator sunglasses: golden from the inside out, surreal and beautiful. Can you see them, man? Fuckin’ glorious wouldn’t they be?
Andy Kitz stared and rubbed the back of his head diffusing the tension that gathered there.
Ain’t it man? Just imagine – all of them! Can you see them?
Andy shuddered at the voice. It had been a constant companion for as long as he could remember. He leaned against the door of his gray Civic and puffed out a blue trail of smoke. Each inhalation clouded the voice – made it more manageable. His eyes followed the tendril above his head, slipping one hand into his pocket; the other tightly clasped his camera bag. He killed the butt between his knuckles and threw it into a trash bin with a “NO SMOKING ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT” sign.
A group of students walked past him laughing loud. It sure hadn’t been yesterday that Andy was in university, but he was sure the fake pass he photoshopped and printed earlier was going to do the job. Girls had every so often told him he had a boyish charm about him. Clean-shaven he could pass for early twenties. The scenario he imagined collapsed as he reached a finger and rubbed his cheek feeling smooth skin.
Andy jogged toward the lecture hall. He hung the pass around his neck, an old picture of him grinning from black and white print. The main building was a vast dome of shining glass, gleaming metal, and modern art installations. It had two large staircases zigzagging three floors up. A glass elevator ran in the middle, a silvery spine in the heart of the Alma Mater. Andy spotted a loner scrutinizing a laptop, back against one of the stately trees in the commons, headset on and head bobbing. He approached the kid and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey man,” Andy asked when the headphones slid off,
“where’s the Genomics lecture at?”
“Uhh...” The loner blinked a few times. “Room three-oh-six. You better hurry, the lecture starts in like five minutes.”
Andy thanked him and hurried up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Room 305 was already full, but Andy squeezed himself into a vacant seat at the end of a row at the far right corner of the hall. He put the camera bag at his feet and unzipped it taking out a small camcorder from the side pocket. He held it carefully just above the head of the student in front of him and zoomed in on the desk at the focal point of the hall and the man sitting on its edge.
“Good morning,” the man said. “I’m happy to see so many faces so soon after the break. If you have any questions about this semester, fire away now, or remain silent till the end of the lecture.”
A few students giggled. Then Andy shot his hand up before anyone could have spoken.
“Yes?” The professor pointed at him.
“This is a Genomics class, right?”
The professor took his glasses off and squinted against the light to catch Andy’s face. He chuckled.
“It is though you should know that since you’ve decided to attend. Was that your question?”
“No. My question is: Do superpowers exist? Superhumans?”
A bunch of the attendees laughed louder this time.
“Stand up please.”
Andy obliged, his camera still rolling from a lower angle.
“Well, to answer you scientifically, yes. We are all mutants. We inherit mutations through our parents, others we develop throughout our lives. Every time our cells divide, the D-N-A in all six billion base pairs in that cell need to be copied so each of the daughter cells can have another copy. It’s difficult to tell the rate of mutation yet, but such errors causing mutations are speculated to be between 5 and 10. Some of those are quite dangerous.”
The hall had grown quiet, waiting for Andy’s response. The professor returned his rectangular spectacles back on his small nose.
“Not my point, professor.” Andy shuffled his weight from one foot to the other. “What I’m asking is whether there’s a possibility that superpowers, emphasis on the super, have been encrypted in our DNA since birth, possibly since creation, and if so is there a reason they had been lethargic until now?”
“I’m sorry, what you’re asking is whether a human can develop inhuman abilities at a fundamental genetic level, correct? Abilities such as increased strength, speed, vision... flying?”
Andy thought about that.
That’s it, man. Imagine them up there. Imagine them everywhere. Can you see them?
“Yes,” he replied slowly, quieting the tiny voice with the power of his own. Then he quickly added, “And no. Not develop. Inherit. Yes, inherit. Also, I’m curious if superpowers apply for any number of people or to a specific group only.”
Most of the students had turned in their seats and were watching Andy. Others whispered among themselves with raised eyebrows.
The professor hushed them.
“Please, remain quiet. What do you think? How would you support your theory?”
Andy shrugged his shoulders.
The professor leaned against the desk, and Andy continued. “I do believe some people can tap freely into a fully developed resource of power, passed to them through generations, encoded in the structure of their DNA. I’m not a hundred percent sure about flying or turning invisible, but I’ve spent a significant amount of time researching the subject and I’ve found that there is an above fifty percent chance that there are people with enhanced vision, strength, perception, speed, the whole package. Their condition might appear as a small mutation error, but in reality with each copy of the cells, one pair would remain undisturbed - the one that carries the mutation genome.”
“A pair that doesn’t divide, eh?”
“Correct. It doesn’t mutate like others, like a disease would, it just copies itself on and on, strengthening the bond and infecting the entire DNA structure. Purely on speculation professor, but what if there are people right now who have unlocked these abilities?”
“Why now? If your theory of ‘mutation lineage’ sticks, why would a superhuman person wait until today to manifest? Surely we would have heard of others by now.”
Andy shrugged again. “Call it a hunch.”
“Interesting theory, but an unlikely one. We don’t deal in hunches, only with facts, no matter how delicate and fragile they are. I can tell you’re not taking this class. I won’t make a fuss about this, but my advice to you would be to lay off the comic books and video games for a while. Science cannot exist purely on speculations no matter how alluring those are. The human D-N-A would need another lifespan for changes to take place. It would be impossible for your super-gene to exist in a constant loop.”
The professor turned his attention away and clapped his hands.
Andy cleared his throat. “What if there was proof?”
The man looked at him from his desk, a patient smile dancing on his lips.
“Then we’d owe you an apology. But until then, I think we’ve said enough.”
Andy stopped the recording and closed the camera. He got up from his seat and walked toward the door.
You gave it up too quickly. You can find proof, come on man, pull yourself together! You can still see them, can’t you?
Back at his apartment, Andy lay in bed staring at a moldy spot on his ceiling. His stomach grumbled so he rolled off of his bed and tiptoed around empty pizza boxes and take-out leftovers. Printouts and clipped newspaper articles crunched under his feet. He opened the small fridge and frowned at the cold emptiness gaping back at him. He pulled out a sparkling water bottle and a sandwich expired three days prior. He sat on a chair and booted his laptop.
Keep looking, man, keep digging. Don’t give up.
“Shut up!” Andy hammered his fist down on the desk, knocking over the bottle of water. He cursed under his breath, drying the mess with a dirty t-shirt.
I can see them.
Andy closed his eyes at the small echo of the feminine voice. He took a heavy breath and continued chewing on the cold sandwich, washing down the dry chunks of food with the remains of the sparkling water. His last search was loaded and again he clicked page after page searching for a clearer image snapshotted off of the security camera at the restaurant. The face of the man that had stopped the robbery was obscure in every shot and as hard as Andy tried adjusting the images; the features of the “hero” remained blurry.
Andy spun in his chair, grabbed the remote and turned on the television. It started playing the newscast from that day. He watched it carefully, again and again. It eluded him who this guy was, what was his deal and how he did what he did.
A hero they called him...
Andy paused the video at the moment he had memorized from continuous rewinds – the moment when the unknown hero grabbed the hand of the robber and in one swift move crushed it. It looked like the culprit’s hand was paper thin, his bones snapping inward, fingers twitching inside that clenched fist.
“Super-like,” Andy murmured, and with lazy eyes scanned the carpet layered with articles his chosen search terms gleaned. Most regarded robberies and petty assaults. Andy wasn’t sure they were connected at all, but according to one media outlet the police were looking for the same suspect in more than one case. But this particular suspect stuck out as something more, even with the little information there was. Andy was infatuated. He had seen pedestrians deal damage to robbers, but nothing like this. The man in the restaurant hadn’t been an ordinary one.
Turning back to his laptop, Andy loaded the video from the morning at the University. He watched surprise color the professors face; then doubt creep in, and with that doubt came mockery. Andy’s ears burned. He felt like a schoolboy, embarrassed that he had gone there. He didn’t understand genetics and reading off the internet scrambled his understanding even further. He had to do this the old fashioned way.
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He unplugged his camera from the USB and carried it into the narrow bathroom. He aimed it at his reflection in the mirror.
“My name is Andy Kitz and I will be the first person to film a super in action and prove their existence.”
Andy stopped the video and studied the puzzled look he gave himself. Could he really film one, let alone a hero?
Andy took his jacket, car keys, and the camera and left the dingy apartment.
With an unsettling feeling, Andy drove aimlessly through the city. Newspaper headlines proclaimed that crime statistics had skyrocketed in past months. Something or someone was ruffling their feathers. People had missed things, but Andy wouldn’t. His camera sat ready on the passenger seat. Andy parked outside the restaurant at the corner of Seventh and Riverside where the mystery man had done his extraordinary deed. There was still a big ‘THANK YOU’ poster hung on the door.
Andy lit another cigarette. It was late afternoon and he had already gotten scruffy. He could feel the dark circles under his eyes: eyelids heavy with darkness, then heavy with sunlight. “Why was this mystery hero still hiding?” he wondered out loud.
Surely anyone remembered and thanked so vigorously would show his face.
“Anonymous bastard,” he spat and flicked his still-burning butt at the restaurant.
For the rest of the day, Andy filmed at random: he caught the entire monolog of a homeless man who preached the coming of Jesus. He filmed one of the waitresses from the restaurant as she left after her shift was over. At one point his cigarettes ended and Andy made his way to a small convenience store.
He scanned the counters as the cashier counted back his change. His eyes focused on the drawing of a African-American teen with a piercing in one eyebrow. Andy nearly dropped his wallet. He had seen the face somewhere else, somewhere recent. He had the original picture from which the drawing was done. It was at his apartment hidden below the layers of useless papers.