by Greg Logan
Scott said, “Be careful, Jeff. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
“They don’t either, I’m sure. There’s no one else like us in this time period. And there’s no one else like Dad or me anywhere.”
Jeff drove his fist into the door, and was met again by the energy crackle. The door didn’t budge.
“Okay,” he said. “They asked for it.”
And he began to accelerate the powering-up. After a few moments, the gravitational field of the Earth seemed to lessen its hold on him. The ground itself began to feel brittle. His need for oxygen faded away.
“Stand back,” he said. “This could get messy.”
Jeff punched the door again. There was a shower of sparks and a large crackle of energy. He cut loose with a second punch, continuing to power up as he did so. His fist hit with a loud concussion, sounding something like a thunder clap.
He shot a third punch into the door, and the energy field collapsed. The door, made simply of wood, exploded inward.
“Gentleman,” Jeff said, smoke from the burned out energy field drifting about them like land fog. “Follow me.”
He started in through the doorway. Scott followed, his tricorder in his hand. Sammy brought up the rear.
Scott said, “With the energy field down, I can get thorough readings now. I can easily get a fix on April’s wrist band. It’s feeding me her bio readings. She apparently has been knocked out with a powerful sedative, but doesn’t seem to be hurt. She seems to be down below.”
Sammy’s eyes were on the tricorder in his own hand. “From beneath this floor is the source of the heavy ionic readings. They very clearly have an ionic generator.”
Scott nodded. “I’m getting that, too. Much more powerful than a nuclear generator.”
Jeff smiled. “Well, they’re about to meet something even more powerful than an ionic generator.”
Scott turned his readings onto Jeff. “My God,” he said, with surprise. Jeff was now powered-up to a further degree than he had ever gone before, at least as far as Scott knew. Jake himself had only reached this level a few times.
“Jeff,” Scott said. “Be careful.”
Jeff nodded. “Stand back.”
Scott and Sammy did so.
Jeff then drove his foot down through the wooden floor, and the floor boards and timbers gave way, snapping as though they were no more than match sticks. When the debris had stopped falling away, there was a hole in the floor large enough for a man to climb down through. Jeff dropped through it to the dirt floor below.
Scott called down. “My readings indicate there’s another level beyond that one. About ten feet below. There is a layerof concrete, maybe three feet thick. Don’t ask me how they ever built it. in this era, without being noticed.”
“Speaking of being noticed,” Sammy said, “all this noise is bound to attract some attention. We should move as quickly as we can.”
Jeff found some tools in a locker against one wall. Among them, a shovel. Within seconds, he had cleared the dirt away to expose the concrete floor.
He broke through the concrete with one punch, and dropped down, and beyond Scott’s and Sammy’s line of sight. They were still up in the main barroom, looking down through the hole in the floor.
Scott glanced about quickly for a door and in the darkness could see only one, which was behind the bar. He and Sammy tried it, and ran down the rickety steps to the cellar.
Down below, they could hear the hum of energy blasts, and concussions shook the ground. Flashes of light brought brief luminescence to the cellar.
Before they had left their own time, Scott had removed the belt from his battle suit and was wearing it under his shirt. He now reached into his shirt and activated a force field.
Sammy said, “The only way down, I am afraid, is through that hole. And from the sounds of things, they’re having a whale of a battle.”
Scott said, “Way ahead of you.”
And he jumped feet-first down into the hole.
With one hand he adjusted a belt control, which created an anti-gravity field and allowed him to land lightly on the floor below. The same way he and the team were able to fly when in their battle suits. Sammy followed, the enhanced strength of his android body allowing him to land easily, as though he had just jumped down from a step stool.
Jeff stood toward the center of the room. His jacket and shirt were hanging from his shoulders in smoldering shreds. At the other side of the room, behind an overturned lab table, energy blasts were being fired at him. These blasts were missing him, hitting the floor or the wall beyond him. But apparently at least one had hit him, and while they were harmless to him, powered-up as he was, it had wreaked havoc on his jacket and shirt. Fortunately, they weren’t rentals.
And then, Jeff did something Scott had theorized Jake should have been able to do, but for some reason never had. From his eyes, he fired twin zeta blasts. They were the color of a car’s headlight beams. They tore into the lab table and sent two people flying back. One of them was a woman, who screamed. There was a small explosion and sparks flew. The wall behind them broke apart and came down on them with a rumble that shook the floor and filled the room with a cloud of dust.
And then all was quiet. Smoke and dust filled the air.
Scott glanced about quickly for April and found her strapped to a table. He and Sammy ran toward her. She was still unconscious.
Sammy said. “I can get these straps off her in a second.”
“And we will still have to counteract the sedative,” Scott said, coughing on the dust. “But I have a better idea.”
With his tricorder, he sent a command to the computer in her wrist band, which sent an electronic pulse to her brain, giving her the command to go quantum.
She disappeared in a flash of light. Then, the blink of an eye later, she reappeared standing beside Scott.
“What the hell is going on?” she said, now fully conscious. Scott knew that when she recoporealated, any effects of the sedative would be gone.
“I’ll let you know, as soon as I can figure it out.”
“The last I remember, I went quantum to get out of all those layers, just to cool off for a few minutes. And to make my feet feel better. Then I wake up here, going quantum again.”
He said, “You had been captured. Jeff just had a battle with them.”
“Is Jeff all right?”
Jeff had walked over to where he had been fired upon, and was sifting through the wreckage. The room was filling with smoke.
Scott said, “He’s his father’s son.”
Scott and Sammy walked over, along with April. She was barefoot,and stepped carefully through debris from when the beams from Jeff’s eyes had hit the lab table.
Scott had his tricorder in one hand and began checking for life signs from the side of the room that had been firing on Jeff, and that was now largely buried under debris. There were none.
“Jeff,” Scott said, “what did you do?”
“Dad said you thought he ought to be able to fire zeta energy through his eyes.”
Scott nodded. “He’s never been able to do it, though.”
“I’ve been experimented with it on my own. Never had the result I did just now, though. Maybe you just have to be really powered-up to do it.”
Jeff cleared some of the debris, and uncovered one of the two who had been firing ion beams at Jeff. Scott recognized him as the bartender from upstairs. He was lying on his back. Scott ran a scan and realized the reason he had found no life signs was because he was looking for human life signs. This man now registered as being still alive. Barely. But his life signs were far from human.
Beside him was a woman. Though, it was apparent she was not human. The skin on part of her face was gone, revealing a metal alloy skull. A hole in her chest showed circuitry and it was throwing off sparks.
Scott went to kneel beside the man to see what he could do to help, when the man suddenly began to transform. His head began to elon
gate and take on a grayish color.
“My God,” Scott said, jumping back.
The woman spoke, her voice sounding like a radio that wasn’t quite tuned properly to a station. “He is not human. And as it should be obvious, neither am I.”
“What are you two?” Scott said.
Sammy said, “It’s obvious she’s an android.”
She nodded. “You are correct. Though, we prefer the term synthetic organism. On our world, synthetic life has gained full acceptance and been accorded all of the rights of organic life.”
“On your world?” April said.
“It should be obvious we are not from your own.”
Scott glanced at the man who had now transformed even more, his head losing all human shape. It was becoming cylindrical. The nose had flattened out, and the human mouth replaced with nothing more than a slit. The eyes were black and spherical. His hands had changed into tentacles extending three feet from his sleeves.
“My companion,” she said, “my love, is a shape shifter from a world of shape shifters. You would never be able to pronounce the name of it with your human tongue.”
April said, “You’re really from another planet?”
The woman nodded.
“Why are you here?” Scott said.
“We are here, to..,” she hesitated, as more sparks flew from her.
“Is there anything we can do to help?”
She shook her head. “I am dying. As is my love.”
She drew a breath and said, “We are here to serve as an advance scouting force.”
Scott didn’t like the sound of that. He glanced at April and Sammy.
Scott said to the dying synthetic organism, “An advance scouting force for what?”
“For an invasion.”
EIGHTEEN
“An invasion?” Scott said. “From where?”
“From the other side of the galaxy. A galactic empire, made up of worlds with life forms your primitive imagination would never be able to conjure up. I am violating a dozen laws by even telling you this, as you are from another time. I am risking polluting the time line. However, you have to know. I have to tell you. We have worked too hard to see it all come to nothing.
“You see, the shape shifter and I—I call him Alexander—are part of an underground rebellion. We oppose the totalitarian rule of the Empire.”
Sammy said, “So, they intend to conquer us?”
She nodded. “They intend to strip your world of its resources and to use your world as an internment camp for prisoners of war. Your world is at the extreme perimeter of the range of space they consider their own. What they consider the frontier.”
Scott said, “How did you and Alexander hope to stand against them, masquerading as humans?”
“For the past sixty years, we have been planting a gene in random people. A gene he manufactured in his laboratory. It can cause a human to mutate into a superior being, once the gene is activated. You must be aware of it. The woman among you has the gene.”
Scott nodded quickly. “We’re aware. Are you saying it’s the two of you who have been planting the gene in people?”
She said, “It was Alexander’s idea. The plan is to activate the gene worldwide, once invasion is imminent. The Empire would then be met with a world of super beings. Something they are not expecting.”
“Isn’t that plan a little radical?”
“There is no other way. This must be done covertly. There are other agents among the human population, even now, serving as spies for the Empire. If we were caught trying to train humans to form a resistance, we would be stopped.”
April said, “But how would you possibly activate the gene in everyone? We’ve found it take severe trauma.”
The android said, “The trauma doesn’t have to be severe. When invasion is imminent, when the invasion force is close, we will activate an energy field that will create a molecular trauma in all organic life forms, worldwide. It will not cause any discomfort, but it will activate their abilities.”
Scott said, “We come from the future. We have traveled one hundred forty-seven years into the past. There has never been an invasion.”
She said, “It has not happened yet. You have to understand beings from the world of the shape-shifter have extremely long life spans compared to those of your world. Or, you have extremely short ones, compared to them. And of course, I could continue on almost indefinitely. We both fully intended to be here to activate the gene worldwide before the invasion begins.”
A sudden series of sparks flew from the hole in her torso, and she shuddered. Smoke began drifting from the hole as well as from her mouth.
The shape-shifter, reminding April of a gigantic, grotesque squid, was not moving, and there were no longer any signs of breathing.
Scott said to the woman, “Where is the invasion fleet now?”
“They have been on their way for almost eighty of your years. At the speed they are traveling, we expect..,” she shuddered again as a series of sparks once again flew. “We expect them to arrive..,”
And then she became still. Her eyes were open, her mouth fixed on the word she was forming. The sparks stopped flying. Smoke drifted from her.
“When?” April said. “When is it coming?”
“Too late.” Sammy’s eyes were on his tricorder. “She has ceased to function.”
Sammy’s and Scott’s tricorders each gave a warning beep. Scott looked at the digital readout. “The tavern up top has burst into flames. The whole building’s on fire. Probably a fail-safe, to keep this lab downstairs from being discovered. They didn’t want to pollute the time-line.”
Scott looked to Jeff. “Maybe you should start powering-down. We have to get out of here. We have no reason to remain in this time anymore.”
Jeff said, “Give me a few minutes to fully power-down, and I’ll have us out of here.”
NINETEEN
2017
Cosmo woke up to find himself in a dimly lit room. Plaster on one wall had fallen away, and the air was heavy with dust. He was lying on a bed, his hands bound behind him.
He realized he was in one of the old, condemned apartment buildings scattered throughout the city and sometimes used by the Society.
His head hurt. He had vague memories of being taken to Mother. The former jewelry shop where she hung out. His skull had been fractured by a punch from Snake. He remembered Mother saying he had internal bleeding. Concussion. She did her healing thing on him, and now all he had as a reminder was a small headache. Quentin then reached into his mind and rendered him unconscious so he could be transported here. Cosmo supposed he should consider himself lucky they hadn’t let that Darkness freak wipe his mind.
He sat up. It felt like duct tape binding his wrists. Stupid, he thought. That stuff is not fire proof. He engaged the mental trigger to start a fire. He would just burn the tape off, and get the hell out of here. If they thought they could hold him..,
But he found he couldn’t engage the fire. Quentin, that bastard. Or that other one. The blind guy with the dog. One of them had placed some sort of mental restriction on him, essentially handcuffing him. He couldn’t engage his firestarting power.
For a moment, he felt like everything was caving in on him. He was sure Snake and Quentin would meet with Mother, and the three of them would decide what to do with him. They often ran a sort of kangaroo court, playing judge and jury. They presumed they knew best and it never occurred to them that they might be wrong. And all of the others living here just went along with them mindlessly.
Quentin and Mother and Snake were nothing more than a little band of dictators. Dictators who told the other metas how to live. And how to die. Quentin had been trying to protect the world from Tempest and Calder, but who was going to protect the world from him?
Cosmo decided he was not going to sit here and wait for their verdict. He had survived on the streets of Boston. He had survived on his own, using his own wits, long before a car had hit him one ni
ght, years ago, and somehow activated his firestarting ability. He had done too much surviving to just wait here for Quentin and the others to deliver him their death sentence.
He got to his feet and walked over to the window. The blinds, old and dusty, were down. With his teeth, he gripped the cord and pulled, and the blinds snapped up in a small cloud of dust that left him coughing.
It was sunny outside. He found he was on the second floor. Below was a two-lane street and cars were leisurely passing by. A kid on a bicycle peddled his way along. Across the street it looked like another apartment building. He was in a residential part of Boston. Maybe the south side of the city. What residents called Southie.
He needed something sharp, he thought, to cut through the duct tape. And he needed not to make too much noise doing it.
Broken glass would do it, but the window panes were all intact. He could raise a foot and break some glass, but he didn’t know if there would be a guard outside the room. He decided not to underestimate Snake and Quentin. If Cosmo were in their place, he would have posted someone outside the door.
There was a second window in the room, and he decided to check it. Bingo. In one section of the window, only half the glass remained. He turned and pushed his wrists onto the jagged edge of glass and began sawing away at the duct tape.
It didn’t take long for him to cut into the tape, and then, once duct tape has been cut into, it’s quite easy to tear away.
He was soon dropping the balled-up piece of tape to the floor. Now, to get out of here.
An old chair stood quietly in one corner. It was of the wing-back variety. A sort of faded brownish color as most of the finish had worn away. He picked it up and then called out. “Hey, out there! Is anyone there!”
Someone called back. A male voice. “Hey. Quiet in there.”
“I need some water. Come on, man. You got any water?”
Even through the closed door, Cosmo could hear the man audibly sigh. Then the door swung inward and the man stepped in.
It was Marty, who appeared totally human from the cheekbones down. However, he had two compound eyes, like a fly. Each eye was maybe the size of a soft ball. This caused him to have an extra tall head. One of the metas who would never be able to walk among normals.