by Greg Logan
He was standing in a small alley between the FBI building and the one next to it. The official smoking area. At one time you could smoke at your desk, but now he and others like him had been relegated to the alley ways.
A door opened and a man stepped out. A little younger than Tomkins, in a charcoal gray pinstriped suit. His jaw was square and his hair was a chestnut color, parted on one side and swept aside. He wore no sunglasses.
Great jaw, great hair. He was squinting in the sunlight, but the squint gave him a sort of rugged, outdoorsey sort of look. Like maybe a cross between Nathan Fillion and Clint Eastwood. God, Tompkins hated him.
“Hey, Tompkins,” the man said, reaching into a shirt pocket and pulling out a pack of cigarettes.
“Davenport,” Tompkins said.
“I just talked to your flunkie, Kirkpatrick.”
“Kincaid.”
“Yeah. That guy. Whatever his name is. He said you were out here.”
“So, you came all the way out here just to talk to little old me?”
Davenport pulled out a Bic lighter and flicked his cigarette to life. “Well, that, and I want to indulge my old habit. You know?”
Tompkins nodded. How well he knew. He had tried to quit more than once, but somehow had been unable to. Probably the stress of the job. So many agents in here smoked. It couldn’t be coincidence.
“Hey, listen,” Davenport said. “I was just wondering how things were going in your pursuit of those two freaks. Tempest and Calder.”
Tompkins shrugged. “They’re going. Not much else to say about it.”
Davenport nodded, and pulled the cigarette from his mouth and flicked away some ash. “I know the official reports, and such. I keep tabs. But what’s really going on?”
“Nothing really outside the reports.”
“Nothing, except you’re pissed.”
Tompkins looked at him.
Davenport said, “Of course you’re pissed. To let not only those two freaks get away, but also they pulled the girl right out from under your nose. If it was me, I’d be ready to knock some heads together.”
Tompkins said, “Like I said, not much to say about it.”
Davenport nodded.
Tompkins said, “We’re just maintaining surveillance. It’s like they just up and disappeared, but they’re out there. Somewhere. And they’re bound to show up, eventually. We have cameras and bugs at the university and all the places they hung out throughout the city. Anywhere there might be a connection.”
Davenport said, “I’m in about the same place in my pursuit.”
Tompkins snorted a chuckle. “No, you’re not. The one you’re pursuing doesn’t really exist.”
“The Darkness? He doesn’t exist?”
“You’re chasing the Easter Bunny is what you’re doing.” Tompkins took a drag off his cigarette, and then tapped away a small length of ash that had been growing on the end of it. He saw Davenport was looking at him like he was waiting for Tompkins to say something more.
Tompkins said, “One agent, investigating a kidnapping, goes all space happy and says he saw some sort of ghost or something materialize out of thin air, and now the department has an entire task force assigned to finding him.”
Davenport nodded. “A task force I’m heading.”
“What are they going to do next? Assign you finding Bigfoot? Believe me, Davenport. There is no Darkness. You’re pursuing the figment of someone’s imagination. A hallucination, at best.”
Davenport shrugged. “Maybe so. But it’s a job. An assignment. I don’t question it, I just say yes, sir.”
“It’s a waste of department funds, is what it is. I could use you on my task force. At least Tempest and Calder are real. There wouldn’t be a White House cabinet position dedicated largely to them if there weren’t.”
“A what?”
Damn, Tompkins thought. He had said too much. “Forget it. Forget I said anything.”
Davenport nodded. He could read between the lines and didn’t want to get a fellow agent in trouble. “Totally forgotten.”
Tompkins finished his cigarette and tossed the butt toward a bucket placed on the pavement especially for catching butts. Tompkins’s missed the bucket by an inch and it landed on the ground. He made no effort to retrieve it.
“I’ve gotta go in,” he said. “Get back to work. Can’t leave Kilpatrick by himself for too long. He’ll crash the computer.”
“Kincaid,” Davenport corrected.
“Yeah. Whatever.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mandy Waid was thinking of getting her name changed legally to Kimberly Stratton. Everyone at the paper called her Kimberly. Everyone except the middle-aged guy with the beer gut who didn’t get enough, and who covered the sports beat. He called her Kimmie-baby.
Every morning, it was, “How ya doin’, Kimmie-baby?”
She would roll her eyes. “Good morning, Roger.”
Mandy was in one of the business suit/mini skirt combinations she was making her trademark. This morning she was in a gray pinstriped version, with a blazer over a white blouse, and a matching skirt that covered her to mid-thigh. She had great legs. Hell, she worked out hard to retain these legs, and she wanted to show them off.
Mandy was also four months pregnant due to her weekend with Jake Calder. Not that she hadn’t been careful. She had used a sponge. However, when it came to Jake Calder, everything was uncharted territory. It didn’t surprise her that this man’s sperms, high on what Scotty-boy called zeta energy, could eat through a sponge. Hell, they could probably eat through a brick wall.
Actually, she liked Jake. She didn’t mean to think badly of him. If she hadn’t liked him, then she wouldn’t have spent the weekend with him, story or no. Though there was no denying the story she had gotten had changed her life. Within merely days she had gone from Many Waid, college kid, to Kimberly Stratton, star reporter. Hell, a couple months ago she had signed a book deal with such a whopping advance that she wouldn’t have to work again if she didn’t want to.
She had talked to Jake a couple times since.
“Look,” he had finally said, exasperated after two conversations that simply drifted from one irrelevant topic to another, “what do you want from me?”
That was a good question. What did she really want from him? A relationship? No, not really. The kind of thing most people wanted—a partner to share a home with, to raise children with, to get regular sex from and to grow old with, had no appeal to her whatsoever. She was young and wanted to be on the move. She didn’t want to just wait for life to come to her. She wanted to pursue it. Relentlessly, if possible. She wanted to see the deserts and climb the mountains. She couldn’t do any of that with a husband and a home tying her down.
Child support? She supposed this was what most pregnant women would be after. But she was going to be a millionaire a couple times over once the publisher deposited the check in her account, and she was making top salary here at the paper. Jake had no money at all, as far as she could tell. Ever since he and Scott had gone AWOL from the University, hiding from the government in some remote mountain hide-away, Jake’s paychecks from the government had stopped. The only money he might have access to would be whatever funds Egg-head Boy had hidden away.
She supposed, being truly honest with herself, what she wanted was to be friends-with-benefits. Jake was easy to talk to and his benefits left her eyes rolling back in her head. But the problem was he cared. He cared in a way that would have been a burden to her.
He had asked her what she wanted. She said, “I don’t know.”
“Well, I know what I want. You’re carrying my child. I want to be a part of the child’s life. I want the kid to know me as its father. I want to help raise it.”
That didn’t surprise her. “You wouldn’t be the big boy scout if you felt any differently.”
This meeting had been a week ago, at a café in downtown Boston. She had treated because, well, Jake might now be world famous, t
hanks to her, but he was also broke.
Funny, she thought, how in the comics and movies most of the superhero dudes all seem to be rich in their private lives. But with Jake, all he did was follow Egg-head Boy around.
She had left that meeting with no definite promises. After all, having the kid spend half its time with Daddy Jake would free her up to pursue the life she wanted. And yet, did she really want a child of hers spending so much time at that mountain retreat with the people Jake associated with?
Mandy had been there once. It was a spacious place, filled with lab equipment and all sorts of weird devices. They could actually teleport to different dimensions and such. Scott was working on a device that could allow them to travel through time.
Scott could think in multi-dimensional calculations, yet found minuscule household tasks to be strangely puzzling. And Jake did nothing at all to earn money. Sure, he was a hero, and he was following Scott to the edge of scientific discovery, an edge far beyond what the rest of the scientists in the world could even dream about. But was it the proper environment for a child?
These thoughts raced through her head as she sat at her computer. She glanced down at her abdomen, pleased she was not quite showing yet. Soon, though. And then it would be time to hang up these hot looking outfits and go into maternity clothes.
The intercom on her desk buzzed. A woman’s voice. “Kim?”
It was the receptionist downstairs. Mandy reached over and pushed a button. “Yeah, Sally?”
“I’ve got three guys here to see you. They say it’s about superhero business.”
Mandy rolled her eyes. “Not another guy in a strange costume?”
Sally laughed. “No. They look normal. Well, relatively speaking.”
Mandy shrugged. What the hell? The day had been slow, anyway. “All right. Send them up.”
She went to the cafeteria and got a quick cup of coffee while she waited for the elevator. According to Scott Tempest the fetus was already emitting zeta radiation, which meant she could feel free to have a regular cup of coffee without feeling guilty about the caffeine. Not much on Earth could harm this kid.
She was standing with a styrofoam cup of coffee in her hand as the elevator chimed and the doors slid open.
The three walked out and introduced themselves. Rick Wilson—her immediate take was boring. Quentin Jeffries, who struck her as freaky in a dark way. And Chuck Jeffries, who was looking at her like he wanted to bite into her.
She didn’t like men who were boring, or who were freakishly dark. Or too obvious with their desires—she liked a little cat-and-mouse game playing, rather than going straight for the hail-mary.
She shook hands with them and escorted them to her desk. She had one visitor’s chair at her desk, and a couple more were grabbed to accommodate her guests.
“So,” she said, “what can I do for you?”
“We need help,” Rick said.
Quentin rolled his eyes. “What Mister Wilson means to say is that we need the help of Scott Tempest, and we know of no one else who can contact him.”
“Well, gentleman,” she said, “I’m a reporter. I’m not really a contact person. Yes, I see him from time to time, but..,”
Her coffee suddenly rose out of her hand and hovered in the air in front of her face. Wide-eyed, she forced her gaze from the coffee back to the three. Quentin smiled, and then with a wave of a finger, the coffee descended back to her desk.
Mandy quickly regained her composure. “That’s pretty good. Can you do pet tricks, too?”
“Please, I merely try to make a point.”
“What, that you think you can intimidate me?”
“No, no, no,” he said, pulling a handkerchief. It was then that she noticed a drop of blood rolling from his nose to his lip.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Indeed.” He mopped up the blood. “I merely wanted to show you we’re not crackpots. We’re the real thing. And this,” he help up his handkerchief, “is why we need help.”
She sat waiting, still not getting what he was intimating.
He said, “We each have an ability. We are each what you identified in your article on Jake Calder as a meta-human. But we each have something holding us back from reaching our full potential.”
Wilson said, “I can run fast. Really, really fast. Blink-of-an-eye fast, if I really turn on the speed. But the air friction burns me. I have burn scars on my chest and back from it. I can catch my clothes on fire if I move fast enough.”
Burroughs said, “I can generate cold. I could take that cup of coffee and turn it into iced coffee in seconds. I could even freeze the entire room in less time than it takes to talk about it. But I can’t take my own cold. If I put the room into a deep freeze, I’d kill myself in the process. I’ve given myself frostbite more than once.”
“And I,” Quentin said, “well, I think it’s obvious. I have telekinesis. I can also start fires from a distance, and can even project my own thoughts into someone else’s mind to an extent, and read theirs. But the effort causes hemorrhaging. I went so far so to push myself into a small stroke once. My hand was numb for a week.
“What we seek is whatever help Scott Tempest might be able to give us. After all, he’s probably the only one in the world who could.”
She said, “Why do you want to use these abilities? I mean, what do you have to gain from them? Do you work for the military, or something?”
“Good gracious, no.”
Wilson said, “We want to help mankind. To do what’s right. Make the world a better place.”
“Quite. All of that,” Quentin said. “Can you contact Doctor Tempest for us?”
She shrugged, not sure what to do. She hated to say no, as they seemed to have a real need. And they were right. Egghead Boy was probably the only one in the world who could help them. And yet, she didn’t want to set herself up as some sort of liaison between Scott Tempest and the rest of the world.
She was about to say, “I’ll think about it,” but the first word simply hung in her open mouth as she was struck with a sudden pain in her lower abdomen.
“Are you okay?” Wilson asked.
“I...I don’t know.”
The pain seemed to pass. Then it was there again, like something stabbing into her. Below her navel, between her hips.
She gasped. She couldn’t get any air. She involuntarily doubled over and fell from her chair onto the carpet.
Wilson was suddenly at her side. Burroughs had risen to his feet, not sure what to do.
“My desk,” she breathed the words, barely a whisper. “My desk. Top drawer. Communication device.”
Wilson pulled the drawer open and fumbled through the jumble of pens and paper clips, and found a rectangular object. “This thing?”
She nodded. She tried to speak, but it was all she could do to even breathe. She noticed blood streaming down the inside of one thigh from under her skirt.
“We need help over here,” Burroughs called out.
Others came running. Sharon, a temp mainly there for data entry. Skip, an assistant editor. He said, “Someone call nine-one-one.”
Mandy forced the words out. “Open the device. Call Jake.”
Wilson pushed a button at the side of the device and it flipped open. “Hey. Just like on Star Trek.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
One thing Jake Calder didn’t think he would ever grow tired of was soaring through the mountain air. He was in his aqua and blue battle suit.
He intended to get Scott to design him a battle suit that didn’t reflect 80’s coloring patterns. Maybe a solid blue, or blue and black or something like that. Maybe get April to do it. Scott might be the most intelligent creature to ever walk the face of the Earth, but if you wanted something done right, you asked April.
At the moment, Jake was in the sky, using technology developed by Scott to override and manipulate the Earth’s gravitational forces. But Jake had little patience for scientific chatter. Technobabble. All h
e knew was, My God, I can fly.
He was powered-up enough so he wouldn’t freeze in these temperatures. His altitude was easily ten thousand feet, if not more. He was also powered-up enough so he didn’t have to breathe. A good thing, because at this altitude the air got a little thin. But he could feel the wind in his face, catching his hair. He shut his eyes and spread his arms out as though he were a human plane.
He changed direction, did a loop-de-loop, and then came in low over a series of snow-capped mountain tops.
Further down, below the tree line, he could see ponderosa pines forming a sort of green blanket stretching along the side of each mountain.
His vision grew unusually acute when he was powered-up to this degree. On a mountainside below, he could see a ram running about. He could see a bird in a grove of pines a mile away from the ram take flight.
“Hey, Captain,” Scott’s voice came over the comm-link in his wrist band.
“What’s up?” Jake asked.
“I’m running some tests on April, and it’d be nice if you were back here for this.”
“What kind of tests? Is she all right?”
“She’s fine. I just had a theory and we’re about to see if I’m right or wrong.”
“And you know how I love to hear all about your theories.”
“You think you’re funny, don’t you?”
“I’ll be right in.”
The mountain looked just like any other from the outside. Trees, rocky ledges. Above the treeline it was all rock. But underneath, there was a facility unlike anything else on Earth.
Jake flew toward one particular ledge. As he drew nearer, a section of rock beneath the ledge seemed to fade from view. In reality, it had never been there at all. Or, it had been until it was removed by Jake months earlier when he was hollowing out the mountain top so they could build this facility. The section of rock was now nothing more than a solid holographic projection that served as an entryway to the hangar deck. As he approached, Scott’s central computer read the code transmitted from Jake’s comm-link and the hologram shut down long enough for him to fly through the entrance. When it was activated, it would even feel like rock if you were to climb outside and touch it. Another piece of technology created by Scott.