by Shawn Keys
Ms. Clarke rubbed along her tummy, as if cradling an unseen child that they might have just created. “I hope I will, too.” She tossed her head for the door. “Now, go on. Before your friends start to think you’re in trouble. I’ll see you soon, alright? Go have fun, but not too much fun. And be careful. The world needs you very much.”
Kyle felt a small weight of responsibility fall on his shoulders. Up until now, this gift was a dawning horizon of sex. But she reminded him that he was something more. Different people would see him in different ways. A resource for the country and the world? Nothing more than breeding stock? It was all getting muddled together, and he had to be aware of that.
He also remembered her warning to his classmates: don’t tell everyone. Some people would not take it the same way. Jealousy. Anger. He could be in real danger if he met the wrong person. Sure, the murder of a ‘fertile male’ was perhaps the only crime currently on the same level as sexual violence, but that didn’t necessarily make him safe.
With more seriousness, Kyle said, “I think I understand. I’ll be careful.”
She smiled back at him. “Good.” She let out another sigh. “Don’t make me wait too long.”
Another surge of confidence rose inside him. “That… well, there is no chance of that. I’ll see you soon. Very soon.” He leaned in, kissed her once more, and then got the hell out of there before ‘soon’ turned into ‘now’.
* * *
It was fortunate that the FDPC didn’t cheap out on the vehicles it provided for its agents. Agent Jill Niles didn’t care about the sound system or creature comforts. It was the shock absorbers and intelligent-four-wheel transmission that proved most useful from day to day. The agents served most of their visits inside the city limits, but their office mandate stretched into a lot of the back territories along the southern border of Washington state. The mud in spring, dust in summer and mountains of leaves in the fall were bad enough. Bring in a few feet of winter snow and the roads quickly became impassable to less capable vehicles.
The worst of the spring run-off was gone, but enough muck was clinging to their tires to make this trip into the woods adventurous. From the driver’s seat, her partner Jack Lawson asked, “How much further?”
Jill checked her arm computer. The uplink had better speed than the car’s onboard navigation system. “Another two hundred feet from the look of it. Not much longer. I’m seeing three distinct buildings. Main house. Chicken coop. Barn. He’s in the house, according to his implant.”
“Roger. I’ll aim to park us at the front door. Is he alone up here?”
“Yes. Only his marker is on the scope.” Jill huffed. “Glad we don’t have to track him down in the forest. Maybe this can be quick. Can’t believe it had to be today that we had two negatives show up in our area in one day. When’s the last time that happened?”
Jack grunted non-committedly, not remembering and not about to guess. He pushed the SUV through a couple deeper puddles, then coasted into the clearing. He rolled them slowly, giving them a few long seconds to appraise the house and the surroundings. The forest crowded in on them in every direction. This wasn’t an open farm. The main product was probably the chickens and a few other penned-up animals. Not much land for grazing. The house itself looked old, weathered, but firm enough to last a few dozen more seasons before it would be at risk of falling down. He crawled the vehicle up to the front steps and killed the engine.
Jill cracked her door…
As soon as the sound-proofing on the vehicle’s cabin was broken, they heard it. A woman’s labored screaming. Weak. As if she barely had any strength left to cry out. It ended in a defeated sob.
Instantly, the two agents went on alert. Jill pulled her 9 mm service pistol while Jack reached behind the seats and came out with a heavily modified service equivalent of the AR-15. Chambering rounds, they darted their eyes around, looking for the source of the cry.
Jill called out, “FDPC! Agents on scene! Call out if you need help!”
A frantic male voice shouted back at them, “You ain’t wanted here! Get the hell off my property! Go! I’ve already had my test! They came earlier today!”
Jack thundered back, “Not an option! Don’t make this any harder than it has to be!”
The answer came in the form of gunshots. Three of them punched through the front door and hammered into the right side of their armored SUV. Jill bolted from the exposed passenger side, running behind the cover the SUV gave, far more than a normal car would provide.
Jack snorted in disgust. “Guess he’s going for the grand prize.” Another couple of shots ripped into their truck.
Once more, Jill was happy the FDPC didn’t cheap out where it counted. A little armor went a long way when things went bad. “Need covering fire to take a shot?”
Jack nodded, clearly unhappy that it had come to this so fast. But neither of them was about to die because the idiot inside wasn’t willing to talk.
Jill broke cover and fired a few times into the front of the house. She didn’t expect to hit anything with her pistol, just wanting to make the sniper think twice about shooting.
Jack followed her, leveling his far more powerful gun at the front door. He homed in on the bullet holes that the sniper had caused and emptied a rattling burst on automatic, spraying a tight grouping right back through at the attacker.
They heard a cry of pain and the sound of a man hitting the ground. The two agents charged. Jack hit the front door with his shoulder, smashing it open to gain them entrance. Jill was on his heels. Catching sight of a man scrambling on the ground, crying in pain and trying to get to his dropped rifle, Jill leapt right onto his back and wrestled with him.
Dragging his arms one-by-one behind his back, Jill used her advantage of leverage and training to muscle his arms into a crossed position behind his back, then flicked handcuffs over him. Her long-training paid off: the attacker wasn’t a small man, but Jill had trained hard to build strength that few women her size possessed. She was merciless, not caring at all that she was grinding against the bullet wound in his arm.
Jack didn’t pause, trusting her to handle the attacker. He swept through the house, checking corners and clearing spaces. He called out each one as he went. “Kitchen clear! Dining Room clear! Heading for the bedrooms!”
As he said that, the man under Jill went crazier, in a panic to get free. The cuffs made it impossible, but that didn’t stop him from screaming, “Let me go! Don’t you touch her! I’m warning you!” He wasn’t showing pain from his injury at all.
Jill pushed down hard, crushing his body down into the old carpet. “Are you Bret Herald?”
He snarled back at her in wordless fury.
She snapped a quick jab of her elbow into his lower back, then barked, “Are you Bret Herald? Talk to me or this gets unpleasant!”
“Yes! Let go of me, you fluffer!”
Jill hated that term. Mongrels who didn’t get the FDPC’s mission saw them as little more than sex traffickers. They conjured up the term from the porn industry for people who got the actors ready between sets. Keeping her emotions tightly under check, Jill decided one more elbow to the ribs was well earned.
Realizing she hadn’t heard from Jack in a while, Jill called out, “What’s the report, Agent Lawson?”
For a few more scary seconds, he didn’t answer. Then, Jack came walking back into the central living space. He punched the radio button on his arm-computer and spoke into the speaker, “Dispatch, this is Team 1.” Of course, their office didn’t have a ‘team 2’, but that didn’t stop Lawson and Niles from playing it precisely by the book.
Stan Rothmire’s concerned voice came back over the radio. “Go ahead, Team 1.” As casual as the man was around the office, he was curt and professional over the broadcast. Jill could be thankful for that, at least.
Jack went on, his usually hard shell a little cracked. “Need a rig sent to this location. Unidentified woman. Appears to have died in childbirth.” He shook h
is head in somber mourning. “Baby looks still-born. Get the ambulance moving. It’s not an easy drive in.”
Stan sounded shaken as he answered. “On their way.”
Jill asked, “A pregnant woman? That’s not on the files. What the hell? Who is she? Are you sure she’s dead?”
Jack raised his arm computer. “Your reader wasn’t wrong. He’s showing up on the display, but she isn’t. She was the one we heard screaming. She was died before we could get in here. No pulse. Nothing. Maybe if we had an EMT right here, but…” He shook his head.
Jill repeated, “Who is she, Jack?”
He was rattled, but fought past it. “Give me a second, then I’ll check her. It’s ugly in there, Jill. The baby is…” He exhaled deeply a few more times. “Alright, I have this. Just keep that guy under wraps. He has a lot to answer for.” He went out of sight.
Jill pressed Bret’s face down into the carpet. “What did you do?”
He growled back, “Nothing! You’re the reason she couldn’t get help, Fluffer!”
Jack came back fast enough to break up the argument. “Her implant is dug out. The wound is old but deep. You can see the scar. Probably stitched shut about eight months ago. Right around when it might have started to pick up her pregnancy.” He shook his head. “I ran her fingerprints. Her name is Brenda Spalding.”
Jill said, “There has to be more to it.”
He had checked her records. “She’s his cousin.”
Jill cursed under her breath. “So stupid. Why isn’t she reporting as dead if her implant is out?”
Shrugging, Jack guessed, “I’ve heard of life-support tech that can keep an implant thinking the host is alive.” He grimaced. “Pretty sophisticated for these two. They must have bought it. No way these two built that sort of thing.” He entered a few requests on his arm computer, then nodded. “Here it is. I have her reading as alive and well in Seattle. Downtown apartment.”
Jill rustled Bret a little, making him squirm as she prodded his gunshot wound. “Who are you buying your tech from? Who set you up with the gear?”
Bret barked back, “She’s dead! We lost the baby! Isn’t that enough for you? I couldn’t even take her to a hospital to save her because of you people!”
Jill answered grimly, not compromising in the least. “And you could have slept with any other woman on the planet except one of your own damned family! You had the gift!”
“I didn’t know! The odds…” He drifted off, sounding helpless.
Jill cursed again. Two stupid kids messing around because they thought the disease made it safe. She grumbled, “Oh, yeah, like this sort of thing was so acceptable before Persterim.” She glanced up at Jack. “So much for the talk. He’s already done the stupidest things he could do. What now? He’s guilty of more than a few crimes here.”
Jack shrugged. “He’s still viable. Do we run our own baseline? See if this is worth covering up so he can get another shot?”
Shaking her head, Jill said, “No way he’ll pass. Look at him. Short, dark and ugly. The baby did us a favor by not making it.” Neither of them wanted to do an infant sterilization in the field.
Jack agreed. “Pass or fail, he’s too dumb to be allowed to procreate.”
Bret snarled from the ground, “Hey!”
Jill thought about it. “Waste a CRAGG shot on him?”
Jack grimaced. “50% success rate. And we’ve only got two left. I think he’s ready to join the pool of statistics.”
Jill nodded. “This incestuous asshole already shot at us. I’m happy with that.”
Jack tugged his rifle back into a shooting position. “Makes this easy.”
Bret was getting a little nervous now. “Wha’d’ya mean? Hey, what are you doing?”
Jill rolled him to the side and flexed her hips, half-throwing him up against the wall across from the door. She backed away fast, getting far enough to avoid the splatter zone.
Bret let out a groan as he smashed into the wall even as Jill screamed, “Now!”
Jack leveled his weapon and put one through the farmer’s head. The blast of the rifle echoed around the room.
Jill sniffed, shaking her head. “Damned waste.” She bent down to take the cuffs off him, inspecting to make sure the bruises weren’t too noticeable.
Jack opened his radio again. “Dispatch?”
Stan replied quickly, “Rig inbound your location, Team 1.”
“Copy. Confirm with them if they can carry two to the morgue. We’ve got a deviant here who fired on us coming in. We did what we could, but by the time we got to him, he was dead too.”
There was a long pause while Stan collected himself on the other end. A tragic note clung to his voice as he answered, “Understood, Team 1. Sorry to hear we lost a viable.”
Jack added, “We’ll need an investigation team from the local police sent up to lock down the scene and collected evidence for a post-shooting incident. Follow the procedure.”
“Absolutely. They’ll be in-bound shortly.”
Jack signed off, then took stock of the surrounding scene. “Everything looks right enough.”
Jill nodded. “With that scene in the other room and the deliberate implant put on life-support, no-one will think twice. They were hiding an illegal pregnancy that ended badly. Take your bullet casing and drop it outside in the dirt near where you first fired. I’ll find the holes he punched in our car so the investigators don’t miss them.”
Frowning, Jack griped, “We’re not going to be done up here until supper. We have the in-town interviews to do after that. Especially the other viable.”
Jill didn’t even think about suggesting to delay those until the next day. They couldn’t let another breeder run around unchecked. They needed to get to him, and soon. This whole incident proved why.
Chapter 4
Kyle roamed into the college gym, not really watching where he was going. He walked out into the central area, arrowing across to where the two permanent badminton courts were set up. So far, this gift has been amazing. But what Megan said is no joke. I mean, my life is going to change. I need to figure this out. He was debating with every step whether he was going to tell his friends. Dazz already knew, of course. But would she let him figure this out?
A girl’s voice called out, “Heads-up, moron!” A fist-sized, rubber ball smacked into his arm with bruising force.
Kyle jumped, more in surprise than any real pain. He had taken far worse in his jiu jutsu classes. He looked around to find himself standing in the middle of an ongoing game of floor hockey.
Trevor from his class, dressed in gym gear capped with hockey gloves, tromped up to him with an arrogant smirk. “Smooth move, loser. Mind if we keep playing?”
As irritating as the guy could be, Kyle had to admit he was interrupting. “My fault. Sorry.” He jogged outside the borders that the hockey players had set out for their game. He focused again on his friends, wanting to get over to them. He wasn’t totally sure what he was going to say, but he was impatient to get on with it.
From behind, Kyle was jostled again, hard enough to make him stumble. He spun around with an annoyed look.
Standing there was Frederick Noble. If Trevor was the hero of hockey for the school, Fred lorded over football and rugby. The two of them were the acknowledged big-dogs of the school; the ones you didn’t piss off if you wanted to stay on the happy side of life. Fred was the stoic image of what popular culture often pushed as the perfect man: well built, broad shoulders, square jaw, sandy-blonde hair, bold green eyes and pushing past the halfway mark between six and seven feet tall. Fred chortled at him. “We said get off the court, asshole.”
Deep breaths. Don’t do it. Not worth it. Kyle was hovering right on the edge of dropping this fool like a bad habit. His chosen martial art wasn’t exactly known for advocating self-control and zen-like attitudes. He hadn’t had any particular desire to get into full-contact fights, but right then he was having images of a few minutes in the ‘octagon’ with
Fred or Trevor. Or both. He was fairly certain he could handle them. Especially with the element of surprise on his side.
His cooler side prevailed and he let it go. “Have fun with your game, Fred.”
Fred looked ready to lay into him again.
Danielle Nyqvist unexpectedly intercepted him. She flowed in from the side, looking admittedly sexy in her short-skirted cheerleader outfit sporting the school colors of red and white. Flipping her blonde hair flirtatiously at the football star, she patted his chest to distract him away from his target. “What’s the matter, hotness? Let’s keep the game going!”
Kyle glanced around again. He had missed the nature of the game going on. There was a ‘guys vs. gals’ theme going on, with the best-known stars of the hockey team playing against the cheerleaders. Most of them were dating each other, so no doubt there was a lot of teasing and fun mixed in. The whole idea appealed to Kyle, actually. Not that he would ever be invited to join in. He laughed at the insanity of that. How can we not be past this sort of stupid posturing?
Still spoiling for a fight, Fred wasn’t quite talked down by Danielle. “Since when are you on the side of the hang-downs, Babe?”
Danielle swatted him playfully on the chest. “Because I don’t want to see you shooting fish in a barrel. I want to see how you’re going to stop me on our next charge!” She threw on her most playful smile.
Chrissy hovered nearby, looking pissed that this hadn’t ended up in a fight. She egged Fred on for no reason other than to amuse herself. “I dunno. Might be more fun to watch Fred re-arrange this pretender’s face.”
Kyle knew it was time to walk away. A crowd was gathering, and this was not going to get calmer. “I’m not looking for trouble. I’d rather see Danielle kick your butt with her friends. Looks like a good game.”
Fred smirked. “I’m sure you would. Only chance you’ll ever have to see up her skirt, isn’t it, loser?” He patted Danielle on the behind, laughed, then turned back and gestured for everyone to get the game going again. Chrissy flashed a snarky pout, then stormed away.