by J. A. Giunta
Lee tapped his foot on the floor, his fingers twitching.
She started to ask what was wrong with him and remembered where they were. For all his faults, Lee was basically a good kid. She was the one who’d been in trouble before, who found the surroundings, if not quite familiar, at least not completely alien. Unlike him. She flexed her fingers, forcing herself to act relaxed. She was still worried, but she wasn’t about to let a cop know she was afraid.
Lee’s breathing got funny and she reached over to pat his arm. “It’s all good,” she said. “I told Jen to get hold of mom. She’ll take care of it.” He seemed calmer. Then he stared at her hand. It must have seemed kind of weird to him. Too big-sisterly a gesture. She pulled her hand back.
“Don’t worry. They can’t hold us. We didn’t do anything wrong,” Ember said, raising her voice on the last part so the officer in the front seat could hear. Her body buzzed with adrenaline, but she tried to keep the fear from her voice. No sense in getting Lee worked up again.
She stared at the back of the driver’s head. Suddenly, she felt a zing of energy as warm fingers wrapped around her cool ones. She glanced over at her brother, but instead of pulling away like she normally would have, she gripped his hand in hers.
It didn’t seem weird to be sitting in the back seat of a police car, holding hands with her annoying younger brother, until they reached the station and he let go, and an odd sense of emptiness washed over her.
Inside, the building was crowded. People talking. Phones ringing. Cops rushing around. Lee seemed distracted, his eyes darting around the room, like he was looking for something only he could see. She was about to reach for his hand when the officer stepped between them, pointed to a chair, and told her to sit.
She would have argued, but their mom had always told them to be polite with the cops. “We have friends on the force,” she’d say, “but they won’t be able to help if you go foul-mouthing the wrong people.” Ember had learned the hard way the time they broke up the spring cut party at Pebble Cove. Teens cutting school wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but they didn’t much care for all the alcohol they’d busted them with. Not to mention a little herb. Mom hadn’t found it at all amusing when Ember had gotten smart with the cop who’d hauled her butt in, and her Mom had let her spend most of the night in a rank-smelling cell.
So, she sat. She looked at Lee. He shrugged and followed the officer through the crowded room and disappeared into a hallway.
The room was filled with frightened people. Not the usual criminals, but ordinary looking people who, like Lee, probably hadn’t ever been in real trouble before.
The cops were nervous, like they were afraid something bad was about to go down. They were doing a good job of covering, acting confident, solid, but there were signs. Mouths held too tight. Tiny muscles in their faces that twitched almost imperceptibly. The room and the noise drifted away, and Ember found herself honing in on the minute details of each officer. The tilt of a badge not exactly lined up with the pocket. A few stray white animal hairs dusting the lower edge of a pant leg.
Ember gasped and the details slipped away, the room coming back into full color and sound. How the hell had she seen that? The pet owning cop was all the way on the other side of the room from her.
Craptastic. It wasn’t just Allison and Lee.
The kitchen, her phone, the fork at the diner. And now this? Worry ground into her nerves. Where had they taken Lee? What was taking so long?
She wondered if Jen had managed to get hold of their mom. Ember would have given just about anything right then for the ability to communicate with her mother over long distances, like Aunt Maureen could.
The small magics Ember had were mostly useless, except for entertainment value. Party tricks mostly. When they even worked. But even if she had been more adept, she would have had to keep hiding it from the world.
And from Lee.
Sometimes she thought Jen suspected, but she had never said anything. At least not to Ember.
She watched as they brought in an older woman with bandages over her eyes. They guided her to a chair beside an empty desk and left her sitting there. Ember tried not to focus in on the woman, but the room seemed to fall away again, and it was like she was suddenly right beside her.
The woman was crying, the bandages over her eyes damp, and she kept sobbing and repeating the same words over and over. “How could this happen? She’s a good girl. She didn’t mean it. She would never hurt anyone. I don’t know how this could happen.” Her bandages turned pink with blood and tears.
Ember forced her mind away from the woman, tried not to think of Allison and what she might have done, what the cops might be doing to her right now.
She needed to see Lee, make sure he was okay. She started to stand, but one of the suits across the way shook his head at her, so she slumped back into the stiff chair.
Come on, mom, she thought. Where are you? I can only stand the rules for so long.
Gunshots rang out and she jumped. Somebody screamed. People fell to the floor or ducked under desks. More gun shots. Ember dropped down and crouched in front of the flimsy chair. She was on the wrong side of the desk to crawl under it. Besides, the cheap metal didn’t look bulletproof. She peeked around the edge of the desk, trying to see what was going on.
Uniformed cops rushed around shouting orders. Men and women in suits swarmed into the room. Noise. Screaming. The smell of gunpowder and blood.
Crap! Where were their so-called friends in blue now when they needed them? The building shook and walls cracked. Windows shattered, sending shards of glass into the room.
Ember felt the palms of her hands warming. No, not now. I won’t be able to control it here. Not without help. She squeezed her fists into tight balls and willed herself to stay calm.
“Ember!” She peered up over the back of the chair. Lee barreled across the room, shouting her name.
“Lee! Get down!” She tried to signal him to hit the deck, but he just ran right at her. Beyond him she could see the wreckage of the room. Bullet holes. Blood.
“Ember! Are you all right?”
Ember kept her hands balled up as he came closer.
“Are you hurt?” His face was tight with worry.
The heat subsided from her hands and she reached out for him, but he jerked away. “Don’t touch me.”
She dropped her hands and stared at him. They both ducked as more gunshots rang out.
A uniformed body flew out of the hallway and slammed into the wall with a loud thud, then tumbled to the floor amid a shower of dust from the destroyed wallboard.
A girl, about the same age as Lee, maybe younger, her brown bangs dusting her eyes, walked out and glared at the cop on the floor. Her head snapped up and she glanced over at them, then dusted off her hands and quick-stepped away.
As soon as she was gone, some guy came out of another hallway, holding another man by the neck. “This is insane,” Ember said, watching as the man’s face turned red, his legs kicking at air as the guy holding him lifted him off his feet and tossed him across the room, like it was nothing. She heard a sickening crack and knew in her gut that it wasn’t the furniture he’d landed on that had broken. “We need to find Mom and Allie. Get the hell out of here.”
“No.” Lee shook his head. “We need to stop this. We can’t just do nothing while they kill people.”
Ember looked at the big guy who’d just crushed and tossed the other man away like he was a disposable water bottle. The guy’s shirt was filled with holes, like he’d taken a stroll through a shooting range, but there was no blood. She swallowed. She’d faced off with some pretty dark things, but never without her cousins for back-up. And nothing like this. “That’s what the police are for. It’s their job to protect people.”
Lee was staring at the guy. Ember could see his mind working. No way was she going to let
him go up against an annihilator like that. She grabbed his arm, but he yanked away from her.
“Damn it!” he yelped. “I told you not to touch me!”
“Geez, Lee. Stop being such an ass.”
The guy was kicking over desks, swatting computers across the room like they were made of foam. They didn’t bounce like foam, though. One slammed all the way through a window and landed on a car in the parking lot, setting off a howling alarm.
“We need to find Mom. She can do more here than we can.” Ember started to creep toward the hallway.
“Wait,” Lee said. “I need your help to stop this guy. He’s killed a lot of people, and he’ll kill more, if we don’t stop him.”
“You don’t know that,” she told him. “Besides, not my circus...” she eyed the big guy destroying the room and everything in it. “And that guy is sure as hell not my monkey. Plus, we need to find Allison before she gets hurt, too.”
“Trust me,” Lee said, “I know what he can do. I can feel it. And, Allie can take of herself. You saw her at Finley’s. She has powers. But this one...” he indicated the guy, who was still doing his best Godzilla versus Tokyo impersonation on the furniture.
An officer tried to sneak up on him, taser at the ready, but the guy spun around and grabbed him. He held the cop up with one hand and started poking him in the chest with the other, screaming obscenities at him. The cop tried to get his gun out of his holster.
“We can’t let him kill anyone else.” Lee sounded desperate.
“Look at him, Lee. How the hell do you propose we stop him?”
“We rush him,” Lee said. “I just need you to grab hold of him, anywhere, but you have touch his skin. Don’t just grab onto his clothes. Understand?”
“Seriously? And while I’m getting grabby with this deranged serial killer, what the hell are you going to do?”
“I’m gonna take care of him.” Lee looked into her eyes the way he always did when he was dead serious.
There was an ugly ripping sound and a garbled scream.
“I can feel your heartbeat,” Godzilla said. Then he let out a malicious laugh.
“Now,” Lee said, “while both his hand are full.”
“Wha—” Before she could stop him, Lee charged forward. Ember followed without thinking. No way was her little brother going up against this thing alone.
Once across the room, Ember managed to get her hands wrapped around one of the guy’s forearms. She forced herself not to look where his hand was and squeezed with everything she had.
Ember swore. Why couldn’t she summon the magic now? If she’d had any real control over her power, she’d have fried him, but by the look on his face, except for him lowering the cop’s body, all she was doing was pissing him off.
“Get the hell away from me.” He tried to shake her off. “You’re killing my buzz.” Blood spattered her face and arms, but she hung on.
Suddenly, Lee was there, shoving a gun in the guy’s eye. He fired. Three rapid bangs. Right into the guy’s eye.
Ember let go and shrieked like a little girl. Under normal circumstances, she’d have been embarrassed. But there was nothing normal about seeing her little brother shoot anyone. It wasn’t like in the movies. Except maybe the ones by that Tarantino guy. This was real. And it was real ugly.
The officer slid off the guy’s gore-covered arm in slow motion and landed in a heap on the floor. Godzilla collapsed beside him. Blood puddled around them.
“You killed him!” It sounded stupid, even to her. But at that moment, it was all she could think to say as she stared down at the body of the guy her brother had just murdered. “What is wrong with you, Lee? You just put a gun to the guy’s head. And shot him. While I was holding onto to his freaking arm.”
“It was the only way.” Lee set the gun gently down on what was left of one of the desks.
People started moving. Men and women who’d been hiding crawled out from under desks.
Lee was still talking, his words tumbling out, like he was trying to convince himself. “He would’ve gone on to kill hundreds, even thousands, and no one would’ve been able to stop him. But I knew how. Every person he killed, if I’d allowed him to leave, would’ve been on me.”
“Who are you to decide that?”
“It wasn’t a decision.” He glared at her, his eyes hard. “It was a necessity.”
Four
Wed, Aug 24, 7:28pm
- Lee -
The entire area was a bloody mess. Cubicle walls were broken, scorched from smashed computers, torn down over splintered desks and crushed chairs. Files and papers littered the floor, where cabinets had been bent and forced open, one sticking out from a wall like a projectile. The painted concrete walls had been broken through by fists and thrown furniture. The ceiling was mottled with missing tiles, where blue and black cables let out occasional sparks.
The people looked even worse. Most were officers in blue uniform, detectives in business casual and agents in dark suits. The rest appeared to be civilians, probably there against their will. No one was left unmarked, with clothes ripped and dirtied, bloodstained from a wound—theirs or someone else’s.
Lee felt seventeen unmoving bodies in the immediate area, either dead or soon would be. Another twenty-three were injured, with bruises, scrapes and fractured bones. Nine were badly hurt, with crushed and pierced organs, suffering severe blood loss. He didn’t know if there was enough time to help them all or if he even had that kind of strength.
Ember was still angry and afraid, looked around as if searching for a way out. She was a bit frantic and rightly so. Still in shock from the gunfire, she caught sight of the blood spattered across her front and arms then turned her eyes on Lee like he was a stranger.
“We are so very screwed,” she said and grabbed him by the shirt, started pulling toward the leftmost corridor. “You just made me a damn accessory to murder! We have to go. Now!
Lee looked down in surprise at Tompkins, the one who’d done most of the killing.
“He’s not dead,” Lee said, and it didn’t relieve him the way it did his sister.
Three bullets in the brain, and it didn’t kill him. What the hell was it going to take?
His mind began to race, reasoning out any other means.
The police chief entered with three agents, two men and an older woman. Lee recognized their sense as the ones from behind the glass.
“You two,” the agent in charge said to Lee and Ember, “stay right there.” Early forties, short dark hair and blue eyes, he had a commanding presence and a permanent frown that brooked no argument. “No one goes in or out. Thompson,” he said to an agent with a hand over a side wound, “get this building secured. Isolate the Affected.”
Their comms must’ve been damaged. Emily came in with a teenage girl Lee didn’t recognize and motioned for her to take a seat on the bench. Emily caught sight of him and smiled, came over and touched his shoulder. Her injuries had been completely healed.
“I’m so glad you’re all right,” she said with a warm smile. Lee was confused by the genuine affection and concern. “When I woke up, I was worried you’d been taken.”
Mmkay, he thought. Something is very wrong here.
He could tell she wanted to stand closer but was aware it would seem inappropriate to the other agents who were watching.
“Who the hell is this?” Ember asked Lee.
Emily was a bit terse but introduced herself as Agent Taylor without looking away. She only seemed interested in Lee.
“Uh-huh.” Ember gave Lee a suspicious look then rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She asked the agent in charge, “So, what’s going to happen to us now? Are we being arrested?”
When Lee focused on Emily, he realized all the bits he’d duplicated were still inside her. She was healed, but they hadn’t left her like he’d expec
ted. What were they exactly? He could feel that his body had been changed by the Rumbling, the same as Tompkins and Ember.
But the bits of himself that floated around him like an aura, his sensory bubble that glowed blue like fireflies when he was upset? Tompkins and Ember had them as well. They were part of a new, separate and stronger immune system. Lee’s was much different, however. His extended outside his body, and he could control where they went, use them to sense others, feel what they felt. He could communicate with each cell, as if they were intelligent beings, and direct them into people, use them to heal.
“Detained,” the lead agent replied to Ember, like a judge delivering a sentence. “You and the other Affected are considered threats to national security, a danger to yourselves and others, by direct order of the President. You’ll be taken into protective custody and quarantined, until such time as the CDC can determine the extent of change in your bodies,” he paused and looked as if he had a bad taste in his mouth, “and whether or not you’re contagious.”
Emily had moved closer to Lee, stood protectively beside him. Was this an effect of his cells within her? Was it gratitude or something else? Lee had a suspicion his cells were acting as a hive, and he’d inadvertently brought her into the fold. He could have withdrawn all the cells from her, used them to strengthen his sensory bubble or direct them into others, but he liked the idea of having her on his side. Lines were being drawn here, and he needed an advocate.
“We just saved you!” Ember said, a bit of growl in her voice.
It made him wonder, though. What would happen if he did the same to everyone else in the room? If he forced the cells already in them to replicate, could he influence their emotions? Turn them to his side as well?
If I made them let us walk out of here, he thought and inwardly sighed, we’d be fugitives the second we stepped out of range.
“It’s true,” an officer said nervously, forced himself to look away from the bloodied mess that may have once been a friend. He then glared down at Tompkins, looked as if he wanted to kick the unconscious killer. “They took him down when no one else could.” To Ember and Lee, he said, “Thanks for that.”