by Alex Ziebart
“That explains a lot about Bernice. So what does it mean if Joel hired me instead of her?”
Kristen chuckled. “It means you like tabletop games, don’t have any felonies, and might make a good drinking buddy.”
“And suddenly I feel inadequate.”
“Hey, don’t knock it. Being drinking buddies with the boss is good job security.”
He side-eyed her. “Not much of a consolation with people like Tara around.”
“You know you’re dead, right?”
Jack turned back to the screen. For nearly a full minute, he’d just been pushing buttons. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, I knew that.”
Kristen shook her head, a smirk on her lips. What a terrible liar. She knew he’d been stealing glances at her the whole time. She stepped back from her controls, letting her character die. “You’re pretty bad at this game.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been awhile. You’ve seriously never played this before? It seemed like you knew what you were doing.”
“I never said I’d never played it before. I said I’d never been to Chuck E. Cheese.”
“Actually, you said you were there once for a birthday party.”
She eyed him, mouth quirked up in amusement. He seemed alright after all. “So you only listen to what I’m saying half of the time?”
Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “I should probably get back to work.”
“Oh, come on. You’re that beat up about playing so bad? Don’t worry about it so much. I know my way around a joystick.”
Jack squinted at her, saying nothing.
“That was a corny nerd flirt. Do you want to hang out sometime or what?”
His brow remained wrinkled with skepticism. “Really? You’re not still mad?”
She turned toward him and looked him in the eyes. “Let’s be clear about that: I’m not asking you if you want to hang out because of the messages you sent me. I’m asking you despite them. Doing what you did wasn’t cool. If I told Bernice or Joel about it, you’d be screwed. But other than that, you seem alright, so let’s hang out. Just don’t be a creep again.”
He gave a firm nod. “Understood. When?”
Kristen left the arcade and gestured for him to follow. He did so dutifully. She strode across the store to the front counter, reached over it, and grabbed a pen and a pad of sticky notes. She scribbled her number down and pushed the pad over to him. “There. Now I gave you my number. Call me and we’ll figure it out. Cool?”
“Cool.”
Chapter 6
Kristen went to work that night. Despite her relic-hunting adventures, she was, in fact, expected to show up four nights per week. It was a small matter for Jane to cover any absences that came as a result of Kristen's real role with Temple, but appearances had to be maintained. Dressed in a blue uniform that could’ve easily been mistaken for a police uniform, she sat at a desk in a dark office illuminated by a bank of monitors. Being mistaken for the police was the intent, she supposed. Kristen tried to imagine the office and its many monitors as some sort of grand control center, but the room being the size equivalent of a walk-in closet ruined the illusion. She took a water from a mini-fridge beneath the desk, reclined in her office chair, and put her feet up.
Kristen yawned and checked the time on her phone. Just after midnight. She'd been sitting there for four hours already. “Just six more to go,” she grumbled.
For what must have been the millionth time that night, she swept her gaze over the monitors. Each displayed a different camera feed featuring every conceivable angle of the bank: lobby, front counter, front doors, security doors, night deposit, parking lot, and so on. She moused away from the web browser—currently displaying search results for cool symbols—and switched to the security control panel. An array of buttons let her switch between feeds. She clicked the lobby camera—the one she guessed was least important in the middle of the night—and dragged her mouse cursor in circles. The feed followed the cursor on a full second’s delay, a delay that grew worse the longer she did it, the camera trying in vain to pan to her commands.
After thirty seconds, she was bored again.
Kristen flipped through the short stack of comic books on the desk. Did she want to read her pull list for a third time in one night? She didn’t. She shoved them away and grabbed her phone instead. Texts from Jack and Emma were waiting. Kristen’s eyebrow rose and she wondered how she’d missed them while doing nothing at all. For the moment, she ignored Jack’s message and checked the one from Emma.
If I’m moving in with you, we need a rule.
Kristen tapped her reply. What rule?
The phone dinged Emma’s answer almost immediately; Kristen assumed Emma was back at her own apartment, taking refuge under a blanket with her phone. Warn me before your nerd parties.
Nerd parties??
Yes. Listening to dorks squeal about their DnD characters takes preparation or I start punching myself in the face.
Kristen rolled her eyes. She messaged Bernice instead. You awake?
For a bit.
I’m bored. Entertain me.
Eat a dick.
Kristen tilted her head sideways as she considered her reply. The boredom was mind-numbing; she couldn’t remember what she wanted from Bernice in the first place. She tried to think of a joke, but motion on one of the cameras drew her attention.
Just a car cutting through the parking lot. She considered calling it in just for something to do. Using a parking lot to avoid an intersection was illegal, after all, but the car was long gone before she even finished the thought.
She tapped her message to Bernice. Tell me about Jack.
What do you want to know?
Is he a creep?
Seems alright. Nice guy. Good with customers + kids. Tries too hard to be cool sometimes.
More movement on a camera feed. This time, the outdoor night deposit box. Kristen watched as a white SUV pulled up to the box in the wrong direction. The driver hesitated briefly before getting out of the vehicle and circling around to deposit box, disappearing behind the SUV.
A flash of light off-camera illuminated the feed's bottom corner. Kristen looked up, curious. There was a second flash immediately after, brighter than the last—or closer to the camera's field of view. Kristen’s eyes flicked from one monitor to the next. She tried to dismiss the flashes as headlights or a flickering streetlamp, but it felt wrong. Before the SUV pulled up, there’d been no activity at all. A man appeared on one of the monitors. Another burst of light and he was gone. Her eyes flicked to the next camera—there he was. Flash. Next camera. Flash. He appeared next to the SUV.
After a final flash, he materialized in the driver’s seat of the SUV. The vehicle tore out of the parking lot, leaving the SUV’s driver stupefied at the night deposit.
Kristen’s heart raced. What do I do?
Call the police? Call Jane? A carjacking was a job for the police. But that man was capital-G Gifted. That was a job for Jane, right?
Right?
The entire scene had played out in seconds. Kristen shook her head, snapping herself out of her awe.
Stop thinking. Just go!
Kristen leapt from her chair, leaving it spinning behind her. She tore off her security uniform, revealing her black workout clothes underneath, and pulled the wig from her head. She sprinted down the short hallway from the security office to the bank’s back door. She punched a code into a digital pad beside it to disable the alarm. The cameras would pan away from the door for five seconds after disarming the alarm. It sounded counterintuitive; one would think the best time for the cameras to be on the door would be after disabling the alarm.
But Jane had given her the job. A modern bank branch didn’t need night security. And when Kristen had to leave, she had to do it unseen.
Kristen burst through the door, yanked it shut behind her, and ran like the wind from view of the cameras. She stopped at the roadside, turning in place to take stock of her position.
Temple Financial stood at the corner of one of the busiest intersections of Milwaukee’s south side, but that was during the day. In the middle of the night, the traffic lights all blinked red as if to say you’re on your own, figure it out yourself. Which way had the truck gone? She envisioned the camera and the night deposit, oriented herself, and settled on south. Kristen set her feet, preparing to run.
Don’t be an idiot, Kris. He’s in a car. He’s long gone.
A cloud of owls soared past on silent wings, low and fast. They flew south.
Uh, sure. Owls. Okay. Just follow the owls.
Kristen launched forward at a run, tearing down the crosswalk. The owls pulled ahead, the cloud shrinking into the distance. She pushed herself harder, arms and legs pumping, the wind whipping her short hair. Veering from the sidewalk, she took to the road. Streetlamps flickered past. The owls gained no more distance, and soon, she started to overtake them. Her feet were thunder on the concrete. The wind howled in her ears and the fabric of her shirt flapped violently at the waist.
She ran among the owls and was certain she could feel tangible hatred rolling off them. Whether it was real or imagined, she didn’t care. She just ran. Rare was the opportunity to just run, and she wondered just how fast she was. How fast did an owl fly? She cursed the lack of cars on the road—they’d be able to give her an accurate estimate. Kristen had no idea what her limits might be. Track had given her an inkling, but she’d never pushed. After all, high school girls didn’t run the 100-meter dash in under six seconds. No one did that. After that, she’d never given 100 percent. She only felt free when alone, and even then, there wasn’t a treadmill in existence that gave her the freedom to just run. She wanted to pull away from the parliament of owls, to see just how far ahead she could get, but that wouldn’t help. She had to follow them, be behind them if not among them.
Her heart drummed its quickening beat against her ribs and the wind chilled the growing moisture on her brow. Kristen drew deep, hard breaths, but still she wanted to run.
The roadside signs of restaurants and hotels flew past too quickly to read. In an instant, the owls changed direction, cutting east at a street corner, mimicking the flow of ground traffic. Ahead, Kristen saw her chance. A bridge overpass crossed over I-94. The SUV—she’d nearly forgotten what she was following to begin with—laid sideways, its front end having broken through the concrete to jut over the highway. She pushed harder, pulling ahead of the owls an inch at a time. Before long, she’d left them far behind.
Kristen skidded along the concrete as she finally slowed. Underestimating her own speed, she thumped into the side of the SUV to come to a stop. Rebounding off of it, she caught her balance and kept moving, circling around the vehicle, peering in the windows. Empty. She spun in place, gaze sweeping over the road. The street lamps cast a dull orange glow over everything. No sign of anyone. The owls would be on her soon.
She peered over the barricade and examined the highway below. A man in jeans and a white undershirt stood in the middle of eight lanes. A leather strap across his chest showed something was slung over one shoulder, but she couldn’t make out what it was. He faced the bridge, stiff and expectant. The Doppler report of a car horn started on one side of the bridge, growing louder as it appeared on the other side. The vehicle swerved to avoid the man. With a flash of blue light, the man moved from one lane to the next, appearing just behind the car. It peeled away from him, swerving across the lines, and the man screamed obscenities in rumbling bass.
What’s he doing?
He’d jumped toward the car, not away from it. Why?
Setting her hands to the barricade, Kristen vaulted over the top and plummeted forty feet straight down. She touched down like a thunderbolt in a three-point landing. She rose on shaking limbs. “Hey, you!”
The man whirled to face her. He was tall and thick—the sort of build Kristen associated with a lumberjack, a tree unto himself—and had a beard that, at least in the low light, appeared well-groomed. Joel could take a lesson from this guy, she thought. His eyes went wide an instant, betraying the moment of recognition. “What do you want from me?” he demanded in a deep rumble.
“What do you think?” Kristen advanced on him. She found herself short for breath and tried to keep her voice even anyway. “What the hell is going on here?”
“Stay away from me!” The man shuffled back. His hand jerked the leather strap across his chest. It swung a hunting rifle over his shoulder. In one smooth motion he snatched it out of the air, set the rifle’s butt to his shoulder, and took aim. “Come any closer and I swear, I will blow your head off.”
Panic pulled Kristen’s chest tight, making it even harder for her to catch her breath. Fighting against her nerves, she forced a bluff. “You don’t think anyone’s tried that already?”
He took another step back and kept the weapon level. His step put him in the center of a lane. Another car swerved to avoid him, the driver laying on the horn. He didn’t seem to mind. “I watch the news. I know you’re with Temple and I won’t give you a goddamn thing.”
He knows about Temple?
She stopped advancing. “I’m not with Temple. You stole a car, there’s a flock of birds chasing you, and now you’re playing in traffic. That’s pretty weird. I just want to know what’s going on. That’s all. Maybe we can talk somewhere else. You know, where we won’t get run over.”
He jerked his rifle up. Kristen winced at the crack of gunfire, and an owl fell dead between them. The rest of the flock swooped down. In the blink of an eye, the owls vanished. In their places, a circle of men and women stood as naked as they day they were born.
Changelings.
They caught her off guard. Two tackled her together, forcing her to the ground. She saw others grab the man, tearing the rifle from his hands. They tried to grab him, too. He disappeared in a flash of blue, but when he reappeared, the changelings were waiting. He caught a double-fisted hammer blow across the jaw. He stumbled, then fell.
One of the changelings threw himself on top of Kristen. He set his forearm across her throat, cutting off her ability to draw breath. Her lips drew back in a snarl and she grabbed him by the throat. She straightened her arm, lifted him up, and squeezed. When something popped, she cast him aside. Kristen kicked up to her feet and whirled to face the second who’d driven her down. The creature’s face elongated into a muzzle, sprouting coarse fur. Kristen leapt into action before the transformation could take hold. She threw all of her strength behind a punch that sent the creature tumbling down the highway in a tangle of limp limbs.
Kristen settled into a close approximation of a boxing stance, arms up to guard her face, and took stock of the situation. The highway became chaos. She couldn’t count the changelings for their transformations, some mundane and others downright insane. Bears. Wolves. Tigers. Werewolves. Serpents. Things she couldn’t even describe. Not one of them seemed to care she was there. Other than the two who’d tried to pin her, none so much as looked her way. They wanted the lumberjack. Bleeding from the mouth, he teleported rapidly to escape them. It was useless. The changelings spread out, seemingly aware of just how far he could go at one time. When he jumped, one of them were there, grabbing at him or striking out, bouncing him between them.
Of course, there was the traffic. Kristen guessed it was one or two in the morning, the hour of the trucker and the drunk. Though a far cry from rush hour, the traffic still tore around them, driving faster rather than slowing down. From where she stood, it all seemed like a strange dance—or a bad game of Frogger. They dodged cars while cars dodged them, all while trying to catch the lumberjack.
Kristen eventually waded into the thick of it, and immediately punched a bear in the face. When it fell down and didn’t get up again, she concluded punching bears was a pretty awesome use of superpowers. “Hey! Pay attention to me, assholes!”
They did.
Though many continued their pursuit of the leaping lumberjack, the rest turned on her. She let instinc
t guide her. She put faith in her strength and speed, and just fought. Kristen fought with a fury, pummeling the array of creatures into the ground. Any who rose against her broke against her fists. How long did it last? Seconds? Minutes? She didn’t know. The longer it went, the harder her heart beat in her chest. Her lungs burned for air.
From the corner of her vision, she caught a glimpse of the lumberjack on his knees, beaten and bloody. A serpent loomed over him, poised to strike.
Kristen leapt. Whatever was in her way, it didn’t matter. She struck like a viper herself, lunging forward and smashing the snake down with a thundering blow. She stood over the creature and drove her heel down into its skull. The changelings fled like rats from a sinking ship. They formed a distant circle, suddenly wary.
Holy shit. They’re afraid of me.
Kristen raised her fists again and took a defensive stance beside the lumberjack. The changelings didn’t move. They looked to each other, seemingly unsure.
Silence, save the thump of helicopter rotors overhead. Spotlights snapped on, illuminating the two Gifted. The changelings shifted at once. They became human again, and then owls, dispersing into the night. Distant police sirens joined the thrumming of helicopter blades. Kristen lowered her fists and grabbed the lumberjack by the shoulder and the seat of his pants, heaving him to his feet. When he seemed stable, she tugged her tangled shirt back into place as she spoke. “We need to get out of here. I still want answers.”
Head bobbing from the blows he’d taken, the lumberjack watched the highway ahead. “What do you want to know?” he slurred.
Kristen followed his gaze up the highway. They stood in the path of a coming semi-trailer. She grabbed the man around the waist and hauled him into the next lane. “First, we get out of here. Where can I take you?”