Wired

by Francine Pascal

  The doorknob turned and the door slid open to reveal his mother’s beaming face. “Ed, dear, you have a visitor. Are you up for it?” Wide, watery eyes told him she expected that he would be. She turned her head away, speaking now directly to Kai again. “Go on, dear, he’s in there. Just resting.” She all but patted Kai on the head and drifted off in the direction of the kitchen, humming to herself.

  Kai’s petite frame filled the doorway as she entered the room. Her hair was tied up in two braids and secured with ribbons. Her T-shirt bore the logo of a Nickelodeon cartoon—The Wild Thornberrys, maybe? It fit her snugly, in direct contrast to a pair of enormous red cargo cords that threatened to slip off her hips.

  Ed found himself fleetingly wondering where Kai shopped. Assuming she was interested in going to the prom with him, he hoped she’d have something a little more grown up to wear. Reality, Fargo, he reminded himself. “Hi,” he offered. One moment more of silence and Kai would have wondered what was wrong. And Ed was incredibly determined that nothing actually be wrong. He was just a guy, asking his girlfriend to prom. Girl. Friend. Platonic. Casual. Cool. “Thanks for coming over,” he choked out.

  “Of course.” She smiled. “We had to celebrate your emancipation.”

  She was so good-natured. Christ, was that the problem? Did he need someone who was utterly unschooled in basic human niceties?

  “Okay” he agreed, “but no more cookies. I think you may have caused serious intestinal damage with that first one.”

  “Liar,” she teased. “I’ve seen you put away lots more than that.”

  He couldn’t argue with the logic. “Yeah, true. But let’s give it another day or two.”

  She nodded. “Fair enough. What are we going to do, then, to celebrate? You’re all healed and everything. We should party.” She peered at him, her face open and trusting. Ed knew she wasn’t trying to manipulate him at all. She was genuinely happy to see him in recuperation mode, wanted the two of them to be friends. She was great.

  “I know about a party,” he said.

  She giggled. “Oh, yeah? Where?”

  “Huge party. King, queen, cheesy themes, lame, watered-down punch. People dressed in outfits that will cause them to cringe when they look back in their yearbooks twenty years from now.”

  “Now, that does sound like a party,” Kai agreed. “I might even have some baby blue eye shadow.” She laughed.

  “That would be perfect,” Ed said. “So you’re game, then? You’re saying that you’d still like to be my date for the prom?”

  She nodded. “Definitely. Remember? You’re my Clyde. We’ll have fun.”

  He quickly crossed the room to where she stood and hugged her tightly. “Excellent.” He kissed her forehead. “That’s the best news I’ve heard since I’ve recuperated.”

  Her embrace was so sincere that Ed all but gave into it, burying his head in her neck and taking in her clean scent. If his parents had walked in, Ed was sure they would have been relieved—finally, their son had been restored to red-blooded, daredevil, heartthrob status.

  But they would have been mistaken. He was going to go to the prom with his hottie girlfriend, simply and without complications. He was going to rent the corny tux and buy her a cheesy corsage. He was determined to enjoy himself… determined to suppress the nagging feeling that there was someone else he’d rather go with—as a friend or as more. Now that he’d asked and Kai had answered, Ed intended to do platonic prom the way it was supposed to be done.

  With his determination firmly screwed in place, Ed figured, it couldn’t be too long before his emotions fell in line as well. Right?

  Scientific Fun Park

  OLIVER RUBBED AT HIS EYES AND gazed back at the computer screen for what seemed like the umpteenth time. He had some of the world’s most skilled hackers in his network of partners, and once again they had not let him down. His operatives had uncovered the computer report that outlined plans to procure “more” samples of Gaia’s DNA. “More” meaning they—whoever “they” were—already had “some.”

  And he was pretty sure he knew how they had gotten it.

  With a flash of anger he thought back to his interaction with Gaia near St. Vincent’s. She had turned her back on him, shutting him out for what he suspected was truly once and for all. She had thought she was being secretive, but he knew. He knew she was up to something.

  It was Loki who had originally given Gaia the gift of fear, some time ago. But Loki’s gift had come in the form of a serum that emulated the chemical composition of fear. It had been false, smoke and mirrors, and Gaia had seen through the facade. But there must have been a new procedure—one that involved gene manipulation.

  Loki had fears of his own. Namely that Gaia’s genetic makeup—her unique, invaluable genetic makeup—had been altered irreparably.

  His plants and hackers had recently discovered word on the cyberstreet of research for powerful new anti-anxietals. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Just at the same time that madmen were cutting into his niece, treating her biochemical background like some kind of scientific fun park. Just at the same time that the local burnouts were buzzing on a new drug called Invince.

  A new drug that dulled the effects of fear.

  He didn’t think it was coincidence.

  And he couldn’t allow it to continue.

  Unexpectedly Normal Impulse

  THE FIRST THING GAIA NOTICED WAS the light The light was wrong. As in, it was dark. Growing dark. Dusk She squinted and shook her head slowly, as if clearing out cobwebs. Ow. Okay, that was a bad idea. Shaking her head—however slowly—drew attention to the undeniable fact of sharp stabs of pain banging against the inside of her skull. A headache, she assessed. Do I have a headache?

  She reached up to touch the spot on her forehead that seemed to be the nexus of the problem area, only to be greeted with a nagging soreness in her arm. Okay, more than just a headache, she realized. With great care she eased herself to a seated position, taking mental stock of every last twinge of discomfort. She was alarmed to find that there were quite a few and that they were manifest in most of her body’s various extremities. What happened? she thought blearily.

  Logic—and, of course, history—suggested that it was the postfight hangover she almost always experienced after a major physical exertion. It was rare for her to be so completely wiped as not to remember the fight itself, but she supposed it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Given the throbbing baseline of pain that thrummed through her skeleton insistently, anything was possible. More than possible. Likely.

  She glanced around. Indeed, the light was wrong. It was nighttime. Think, Gaia, she commanded herself. What’s the last thing you remember?

  The last thing she remembered was daylight and Ed’s hospital room. Having a conversation with Ed. Wishing him well with Kai. Crying, she thought, filled with contempt and self-loathing at the memory. And then…

  Walking home… and seeing the boys. Three of them. They had been breaking into a house. And in a moment of what was either supreme bravery or the most inane act of foolishness in which she had ever engaged, intercepting them.

  Gaia had always suspected that she was at heart a coward. People mistook her willingness to go to bat as bravery, but she knew, intrinsically, that the opposite of brave was not fearless. Fearlessness allowed her the luxury of avoiding bravery; to her, bravery meant putting aside fear and leaping into the fray. Through her fearlessness Gaia actually managed to avoid actively choosing bravery. It was almost ironic.

  Today, not once but twice, Gaia had managed to be brave. Either that or deeply stupid. Possibly both. She had deliberately thrown herself into conflict on two separate occasions this afternoon. Despite being terrified at the moment of intervention.

  Only now it was this evening. She took a deep breath and found that when she inhaled, even her ribs hurt. Fabulous. Now that the details of the fight were flooding back to her, she peered more closely up and down the street.

  She
was sitting in the gutter.

  Literally, the gutter. Her pants were torn at the knee, and the skin visible through the frayed cloth glistened wetly with sticky blood. Her palms were caked with dirt. Tangled snarls of hair curled around her face where they’d fallen loose from her ponytail.

  She’d been passed out in the gutter, for chrissake. Like some crack addict who didn’t even know what day it was. Was that bravery?

  Gaia shivered. She looked at her watch and saw that it was later than she’d even first thought. She’d been out cold for at least an hour. An hour that she’d been lying in the gutter, helpless, practically begging to be jumped, mugged, raped, dismembered…. She hugged her arms to her chest, lost in thought.

  She was going to have to find a balance. She was relieved, on a certain level, to discover that even in the face of true terror, she was capable of bravery and low-level heroism. The fact that she was able to rationalize through the fear and kick ass was not insignificant. But she would be putting herself in danger, time and again, if she didn’t learn to manage the exertion, to get herself to safety. Teenage girls couldn’t go passing out in the gutters of New York, she knew. This was a fundamental truism.

  She saw a dark spot hit the pavement in front of her before she realized she was crying. She pressed her palms into her eye sockets and willed herself to stop. This was, what, the second? third? crying fit today. That she even had to think back and count was a serious problem.

  She rummaged through her messenger bag in search of a tissue, knowing it was a futile effort. She wasn’t a portable-pack-of-Kleenex type of girl—which was funny since lately she was the prone-to-random-fits-of-crying type of girl. Her fingers brushed against her cell phone, buried deep within the recesses of the bag, and she paused.

  Liz. She wasn’t totally sure whether or not she could or should give Liz a call. True, Liz had been totally normal with her this afternoon at school, so she was probably over Gaia’s weird behavior at her father’s party. But probably still left room for self-doubt, which Gaia seemed to have in spades these days. Still, she wasn’t ready to go back to the boarding-house, that was for sure. So she wouldn’t even call Liz, then, she’d just go by and see. Surprise Liz.

  Seeking out company—seeking out comfort when shaken or stressed—this was the normal reaction to being upset. Gaia was glad she recognized that. Suddenly stopping by Liz’s apartment just to say hi seemed like a very regular-girl thing to do, and Gaia was going to act on this unexpectedly normal impulse. She didn’t need to collapse in Liz’s arms in disarray or even to tell Liz what she had been up to these last few fun-filled hours—though Liz might, of course, wonder why she was so banged up—but that wasn’t even why she was going to head over. She just wanted to hang out for a bit, relax, unwind, and perhaps consume obscene quantities of junk food with her girlfriend. Something of the cookie-dough variety, she supposed.

  And if her girlfriend’s cute, wise, and attractively confident older brother happened to be home as well, Gaia was willing to endure his company. She didn’t mind.

  She didn’t mind one bit.

  sloppy

  far more interested in costly electronics

  Tricked Out 007

  THERESA’S WASN’T THE TYPE OF diner that did a brisk business on a weekday after school. The space was clean enough, with a bright, French door facade the staff kept propped open during all but the most humid days of summer, and the menu was typical diner fare and extensive. But it had no cachet—there was nothing to distinguish it in a neighborhood where each new restaurant that opened had a hook more opulent and unexpected than the next. It was populated but by no means bustling. Completely nondescript. Which was, of course, what made it a desirable meeting place by Oliver’s standards.

  He’d been waiting for Jake for nearly ten minutes now, nursing a muddy cup of coffee and tapping his fingers against the tabletop. He glanced again at his watch, displeased. Twelve minutes and counting.

  Jake’s tardiness was disappointing. Oliver needed the boy to be impeccably reliable, to be on the ball and ready for whatever information he had most recently uncovered. The boy was immensely eager and ready to take on even the most mundane tasks with aplomb, and as Gaia’s boyfriend, he had unparalleled surveillance access, but if that wasn’t the case, Oliver wasn’t sure Jake would be long for this assignment.

  He knew that to some, tardiness was a negligible issue. But it wasn’t negligible to him. He had important information to share today—he was finally ready to pass along at least the crux of his theory to the boy—and he wasn’t prepared to deal with any uncertainty or dithering. With each moment that ticked by, Oliver’s impatience increased.

  The waitress, a chubby, weary-looking blond with a thin growth of hair above her upper lip, reached over to refill his coffee. He flattened the palm of his hand over the rim of the mug, cutting her off. It would take more than a refresh to save this cup of diesel fuel.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Jake gasped, sliding into the seat across the table and grinning. He didn’t look especially sorry. “Subway. Freaking track fire.”

  Oliver didn’t crack a smile. “Don’t let it happen again.”

  Jake returned his gaze evenly.

  Oliver did have to admit to himself that the boy’s confidence was impressive—albeit in this case foolish. He paused, drawing out the importance of the information he had to offer. “Gaia was in a fight this afternoon.”

  Jake’s eyes widened, but he certainly wasn’t hysterical. This was Gaia, after all. Half the reason he’d even fallen for her was because of how ridiculously physically capable she was. Hardly a day went by that she didn’t kick ass. “Yeah? So? Gaia fights all the time. What was so special about this one?”

  “She passed out afterward.”

  This, too, came as no surprise to Jake and wasn’t a cause for concern. He had seen her pass out several times, and she always came out of it quickly enough. It was the price she paid for her superhuman Strength, he knew. “Did something else happen?” he asked, a slight tinge of impatience creeping into his voice.

  Oliver cleared his throat, unimpressed with Jake’s challenging tone. “She passed out afterward,” he continued, “and spent the better part of two hours in a gutter, utterly vulnerable.”

  That got Jake’s attention. “Two hours? And you didn’t help her?” he demanded, eyes narrowing.

  Oliver shook his head shortly. “She didn’t require any help. She was on a residential side street and was left to herself. Had I intervened, she would have, of course, been tipped off to our surveillance. This is not what we want. Rest assured, though, that had she been in danger, she would have been well protected.”

  Jake nodded. He might be cocky, but he was also bright enough to know that Oliver meant what he said. If he said he’d have jumped in to help Gaia if necessary, then Jake knew that to be true. So he wasn’t really sure what the issue was. “So what now?” he asked, toying with a sugar packet.

  “You’ve been keeping a close eye on Gaia? On her habits, her friends, her moods, et cetera? Correct?”

  “Yes, correct” Jake confirmed quickly.

  “And Gaia has been more emotional than usual of late, correct?”

  “Also true,” Jake said, nodding. “What do you think it is?”

  Oliver inhaled deeply. He seemed to be considering how much to say to Jake. “My boy,” he began slowly, ceremoniously, “as Gaia’s boyfriend, you’ve no doubt noticed that she is, as a rule, exceptionally brave. Always jumping into the fray, always seeking out trouble, looking to help out those weaker than herself.”

  “Yeah, that’s Gaia.” Jake grinned.

  “What you may not have realized is that Gaia’s take-no-prisoners attitude is more than just a personality trait”

  Jake squirmed in his chair, his face a wash of confusion. “What are you saying?”

  “It’s possible,” Oliver said, hedging slightly, running an index finger along the rim of his coffee mug. “It’s possible that there is
a genetic component to her personality—you know, in much the same way that, say, a genius has a different genetic code than a person of average or even above-average intelligence.”

  Awareness dawned on Jake. “And you think someone is after her to try to understand this genetic pattern.”

  Oliver nodded shortly. “Indeed. But more than that,” he continued, “I think that of late, her genetic code has been tampered with. I think the behavior Gaia has demonstrated that has seemed so out of character is the result of a genetic modification. We’re going to get to the bottom of it,” Oliver said, his voice a study in self-assurance.

  “God, that’s crazy. How can you be so sure it’s genetic modification?” Jake asked, not impudently. One of the boy’s more positive qualities was that he was able to act unfazed even when presented with highly unusual information.

  “For the same reason that you’ve suspected something is amiss. My agents have reported that she’s demonstrated erratic behavior. For example, this afternoon she had a fight and expended more than the typical amount of energy diffusing the incident, which resulted in a longer time spent unconscious. Her typical postfight blackout lasts approximately thirty minutes.”

  “Good point,” Jake said, shrugging. He didn’t like the thought of Gaia lying somewhere, unconscious, for a long period. He was glad that he trusted Oliver to keep watch over her and intervene if and when necessary.

  “Further, I’ve managed to uncover some medical documents that detail a procedure to stimulate fear through genetic manipulation. I can’t imagine any scenario other than Gaia’s that would call for such a procedure. Taken in conjunction with the research I’ve found on anti-anxietal compounds, I can’t help but think that somehow Gaia—and her DNA—are involved. The question is how. Now, given all of this background—which, I should warn you, makes you highly vulnerable as a source of information—I must ask you again, and I expect you to be as honest and comprehensive as possible: Have you noticed anything at all unusual in Gaia’s world of late?”