by Jeremy Flagg
She leaned into the image and closed her eyes. “They are still empty.”
Lillian sat on the table, staring at Jacob. “We sent two Barren to execute the Warden. His control on the Facility was absolute. It was too much power for a single human.”
“I assumed they were killed.”
Salvador rubbed his two-day stubble. He made a slight gesture with his hand. The time stamp on the video feed sped forward. He let it continue playing.
“It’s not going,” Jacob said, watching the man behind the desk sitting rigidly. He looked back at the stamp and noticing time passing by. His eyes flicked up to the man again. Instantly he knew the man was physically sitting at his desk, but his mind was elsewhere.
“He’s a telepath,” Lillian said, eyeing Jacob. “I’ve seen you do the same thing when you’re focusing.”
“What the hell is he focusing on?” Had he been in the same room, Jacob might be able to get a sense of what was happening. Dikeledi was more likely able to pick up the emotional echoes of everybody in the room. Both of them at this distance, and with this much time passing, could only get faint hints of what might have happened.
“Wait for it,” Salvador said.
A black circle appeared in the side of the room and a man stepped through. Jacob watched intently as a fight ensued between the young man and the Warden. His jaw dropped as the kid reached into the portal and pulled out what looked like a still-beating heart. As the Warden fell to the ground, Jacob was certain a Child of Nostradamus had murdered the Warden.
“A Child of Nostradamus killed him,” Salvador said.
“That’s not what I’m interested in,” Jacob said. “There’s another telepath in that room.”
***
He stepped out of the void. The light of the street didn’t reach into the alley; only a cloud-covered moon offered any peak into this dismal space. The space between the buildings was just wide enough to allow access for a garbage truck. To one side, scaffolding reached four stories high. It appeared as if there were renovations being done to the outside of the building. It surprised him that anybody cared enough anymore to make improvements. Lately people merely tried to survive. Perhaps it was the remnant of a more hopeful time yet to be destroyed by this new world.
A call had come in over the police scanner. There were so many to choose from it became an endless game. Each night he woke, exhausted, and as he shook away the nightmares, the look on the murdered man’s face, he’d start his penance. Dav5d had given him a police radio accessing New York City’s emergency network. It had started with strikes against the synthetics, systematically removing them one at a time.
It was ironic, waking from the terror of killing a man and wanting to do justice by inflicting harm. It didn’t slip by him. Destroying machines was all well and good, but there were times in which he wanted to feel his knuckles connect with something soft for a change. The mention of thugs in an alley told him he could teleport in and out as necessary. No synthetics. It wasn’t his safety he was concerned with, it was the rush he got from ruining the lives of two men.
The call came in to dispatch. “They’re terrorizing that poor girl in the street. I yelled and yelled, but it didn’t stop them.”
He stepped out of the portal. They had her on the ground next to a dozen trashcans behind a small restaurant. The call had been made less than a minute ago. In sixty seconds they had pinned her to the ground and one of them was pulling at the fly on his jeans.
Conthan scuffed his foot against the ground. He wasn’t sure if they heard him over her whimpering. He prepared to do it again when the man on his knees spun around.
“What do we have here?”
The man stood from between the woman’s legs. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a butterfly knife, and flipped it open. “I ain’t into dudes, but maybe I’ll make an exception this once.”
The other guy laughed. They were like animals, terrorizing anybody they deemed weak. Conthan took another step closer, leaving only a few feet between them. He didn’t move, instead waiting for one of them to attack.
“You some sort of freak?”
When he didn’t answer, the man with the weapon started to signal to his buddy. “I think we have some sort of fucking idiot here.”
The other guy laughed as he reached down to his boot and pulled out a long knife. Conthan wasn’t impressed. With a single thought he could tear them apart and leave limbs of strewn across the alley. He could easily end this fight before it started, but that wouldn’t give him what he sought.
The man shifted his weight to his rear leg. As he lunged forward, attempting a stabbing motion with the blade, Conthan responded. Moving both hands in a circular pattern, he caught the man’s forearm and smacked the palm of his hand against the wrist holding the knife. The pressure caused the assailant to drop the blade.
“What the fuck?” said the second man.
Two knuckles extended, Conthan slammed his bony joints into the throat of the man. The guy fell backward, stumbling over the woman’s legs, trying to scurry further away from Conthan.
The second man swung wildly, his right fist, then the left. Conthan leaned back, dodging the blows. Then he reached out and grabbed the man by the jacket. Conthan slammed his forehead into his nose. Pain seared through his forehead and reached down to his chest, staggering him. He shook his head, trying to remind himself his teacher had thicker skin than him.
“Grab him,” the man said, spitting the blood out of his mouth.
There was no tingling as he accessed his abilities. The portal open and he reached through. His arms emerged behind the standing man’s legs. Conthan grabbed his pants and pulled, sending the criminal to the ground. The thud from his boot didn’t compare to the crunch as his foot connected with the man’s jaw. He didn’t need to see to know teeth had gone clanking to the ground.
“Had enough?” he asked calmly, trying to keep his breath under control.
The man with a bloody nose reached into the waistband of his pants and pulled out a gun. He readied the trigger and raised it to eye level. Conthan took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. He eyed the gun, then the man, and then the gun again, all while trying to keep the smirk off his face. He failed. “Are you showing it to me? Or are you going to pull the trigger?”
“What?” the man asked. “Don’t think I won’t do it, man.”
“If you pull the trigger—” Conthan let out a slight laugh—you’re going to get hurt.”
“Says the man with no gun.”
Conthan knew the speed of the bullet at this close range only gave him so many options. He could fall through a portal and land behind the guy. He could open a portal in front of the weapon and redirect the bullet somewhere else. Hell, if he was feeling particularly whimsical, he could open a portal under his newfound friend and make the thug land on his buddy.
“So many options.” The idea of having a bullet tear through his jacket and bore into his fleshy bits didn’t make him smile. The thought of ruining this man’s life, that, however, made it impossible to hold back laughter.
The hammer landed on the gun. His powers reacted before he knew what happened. Dav5d said the automated reaction was the part of the brain controlling the fight or flight response. Conthan’s powers did the work to protect him if they could.
The portal opened in front of the gun, enveloping the bullet. Time slowed for a fraction of a second. Sound vanished and the world turned into a blur as he looked for a spot to open an exit portal. The knee. As the thug’s kneecap blew apart and he fell to the ground, Conthan closed the portals.
“I didn’t think I stuttered.” The gun scraped along the ground as he kicked it away. The disabled thug’s partner ran from the alley. As he cleared it, a metallic hand lunged from around the corner, grabbing him and hurling him against a wall. The bricks crumbled from the impact and the man slumped to the ground, at best, in a coma, at worst, dead.
“Shit,” Conthan said.
“It�
��s going to kill us,” the woman cried.
“Ma’am, I didn’t just go through all that to have a can opener kill you.”
Conthan didn’t break eye contact with her. He held out his hand toward the synthetic and opened his fingers. Pain seared through his head, drilling into the base of his skull. A hiss escaped his lips. The portal opened inside the metal of the robot, consuming the top half. A portal off in the distance expunged the head and torso, leaving two standing legs.
“What just happened?”
He dipped down to one knee, taking steadying breaths, and then toppled to the ground. The pain continued to shoot through his skull, but lessened to a dull roar. He had used his abilities enough for the night and they gave him the cue that he needed to rely on more human-like skills. The woman crawled toward him. Holding his head up, she checked his bruised forehead.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” he lied.
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
“A citizen with nothing better to do than save damsels?”
“A Child.”
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, that too.”
“Are you a hawk?”
He grabbed her hand, squeezing it gently. “What did you just say?”
“A hawk? You’re one of them?”
He didn’t realize his deeds were widespread enough that a random woman would know him. He assumed the president had the media in her pocket. Each time he wreaked havoc, the media found some new and interesting way to make it seem like a common occurrence. Nobody outside of the bar knew the name Nighthawks.
“There,” she said pointing to a billboard on top of a building across the street.
Conthan slowly got to his feet as he saw the symbol. The billboard had been tagged by a street artist. Nearly half was covered by a large circular tribal pattern with the head of a hawk at the start. His mind started to race through the list of people who would have been this daring. If he had been at the warehouse, he could ask Sculptee. He knew nearly every street artist in Manhattan.
“Gretchen,” he mumbled. It couldn’t be a coincidence. He thought he saw her earlier today and now some rogue artist took up the hawk moniker. It wouldn’t surprise him if this was part of Eleanor’s grand design; she could have sent a letter with the symbol to an artist to take up the cause. For a moment, he thought about returning to the warehouse to see who remained. But he couldn’t deny the danger following him these days. A pair of metallic legs reminded him of who he dealt with. There wasn’t any chance he could endanger the people in his former life.
“Can you get home?”
She nodded as he helped her stand. “I live right there,” she said, pointing to a building at the end of the alley.
“Be careful,” he said.
She motioned to the remains of the synthetic. “I should say the same to you.”
He started deep breathing, trying to ignore the pain. The tingling was buried beneath a searing hot poker being prodded into the base of his skull. A portal opened and he stumbled into it, leaving the woman and the mystery of the hawk behind.
***
Dwayne let the electricity hum on the surface of his skin. The buzz of the current distracted him from the cold enveloping his body. If he discharged, his core temperature would rise for a few minutes, but then he’d feel the cold even more as he crashed. Instead, he focused on containing his abilities as he leaned against the cold stone of the church.
It had been almost two hours since Conthan woke him. He heard the kid yelling in his sleep through the wall separating their rooms. It was like clockwork, Conthan crying out in his sleep. With the frequency, he’d be concerned if it didn’t happen now. Despite it becoming a nightly tradition, Conthan didn’t confide in him, or anybody, as to what was happening. The kid’s world changed in the blink of an eye, everything he knew torn out from under his feet. When it came to nightmares, there were plenty of things it could be.
The first few nights Dwayne had run to Conthan’s room to check on him. He had thrown open the door ready to see a synthetic climbing in the window, but he found the space empty. The kid’s jacket was missing. It took Dwayne a few days to realize he was teleporting away from the hotel and coming back a few hours later. He waited for him, concerned for the kid’s safety. Conthan’s face was bruised and he had a nasty gash across his forearm. Conthan blew off his worry. He wanted distance, and now instead of returning his quarters, he’d teleport to the church balcony.
Dwayne waited. The world was an eerie gray moments before the sun rose over the horizon. He admitted there was something impressive about watching it, trying to understand the world through Conthan’s eyes. There was a part of him that longed for the innocence the kid clung to. Unfortunately he had packed away those feelings years ago and accepted that somebody had to do the job, no matter how dirty.
He didn’t turn around as he heard the thud of a boot on the stone behind him. The kid stumbled as he fell against the rock wall surrounding the balcony. Dwayne wanted to greet him and make sure he was okay. Instead, he held fast, staring at the sun as it broke the horizon. He pulled his hoodie closer around his body. Conthan didn’t mutter a word as they stood there.
The light began to change colors as the sun pushed through the fog. Dwayne turned and walked away, never looking at Conthan.
“You’re not going to say anything?”
Dwayne didn’t turn around. Things had been different ever since Conthan discovered what he had done to Jasmine when they first captured her. Even Jasmine had come to terms with what happened, saying she would have done the same if the tables had been turned. It was Conthan who had been most upset at the realization. Dwayne hadn’t understood it at first, why the boy was so angry with him. It wasn’t until Vanessa had a heart-to-heart with Dwayne that he realized the boy looked up to him. His anger stemmed from discovering his idol was less than perfect.
Other than Skits, it had been years since he felt affection for another person. He admired his team, even respected them and their hard work, but he had difficulty letting them in. For a short time, he thought Conthan might be a friend. The solitude made his heart ache and left him wallowing in memories of best friend and first love, Michael.
It pained Dwayne to know he disappointed the kid. His head hung low as he continued walking. “Whatever demons you’re dealing with...” He paused and let out a sigh. “I wanted to make sure they didn’t win.”
Chapter 5
1993
“When are you coming home?”
He stared at the picture on his desk. Elizabeth Davis, the ideal of beauty with her brown hair falling around her shoulders. Her turtleneck sweater hid her long, slender neck. She had red sauce smeared across her face and her expression was a mix between shock and laughter.
Sitting across from Elizabeth, his nearly one year old son, Raymond Valentine Davis. His high chair was covered in a mixture of sauce and spaghetti pieces, as was his naked chest. He had a phase of throwing his food, which slightly overlapped with his phase of wearing food. The two of them were the happiest people in the world. He missed the sound of her laughter and more than that, he missed the sound of her reacting to his laughter.
“What was that?”
“You’re being a bonehead.” She gave a slight chuckle. “When are you coming back to us mundane folk?”
She was anything but mundane, but if he complimented her now, she’d giggle at him. “I’ll be home in two days. It’ll be nice to be somewhere without white walls and so much radiation.”
“Are you following your diet?”
He looked down at his stomach. “Yup.”
“Liar.”
“Guilty.”
“I’ll make sure to go grocery shopping before you get home. Need to make sure you’re eating right. I like my man with a little meat on his bone, but you’re no good to us if you have a heart attack.”
The pager on his belt buzzed. He looked down, eyeing the small screen with several numbers. H
e didn’t want to cut the phone call short. The sound of her voice eased the tension between his shoulder blades and for a moment he felt rejuvenated. He wanted nothing more than to feel her nuzzled against his chest. He let out a long sigh.
“I know the sound of that,” she said in a playful manner.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Mark Davis,” she scolded. “I am proud of you, we all are. There aren’t many men who see injustice and stand up for what’s right. You’re making a world I want our son to grow up in.”
“I love you, hon.”
“Right back at you, champ. Now go save the world. I have a grocery store to conquer and an infant who thinks the cat is a squish toy.”
They both hung up. He pulled on his t-shirt and grabbed his shoes by the door. He had the most lavish quarters in the center and it really only meant he had a living room, small kitchen, and a separate bedroom. The communal quarters shared living space. He appreciated having time to himself, not that he spent it doing anything but working. On a TV tray next to his recliner an open book rested face down, holding the same spot for the last three months. Eventually, he thought, eventually I’ll learn to take a moment to myself.
The research center was built for long term occupancy. Within the building, the outer rooms closest to the exterior were open for the public, giving a slight glimpse into the more mundane projects they worked on. The windows had been removed to help shield them from radiation. In their place, massive televisions, showed a lush green vista that had once been around the building. As a person moved toward the interior of the complex the security measures increased exponentially.
In the middle, an elevator descended to the most important research being done at the center. Only two men had security clearance to the inner sanctum. As Mark rested his hand on the button, a biometric scanner checked for his thumbprint. The elevator shifted downward, journeying forty feet beneath the surface.