Zero Rogue

by Matthew S. Cox

  Anna handed him his ice water. “Drink this; you’re sweating.”

  He drained the cup in one pass and took a moment to gather his breathing. “They say it’s easier to resist an implanted compulsion to harm someone you love. Spouse, parents, your children… I heard myself shouting ‘no’ over and over, but my arm moved to aim at her. The harder I tried to fight it off, the more desperate I became.” His reflection in the silver vase had turned cherry red. Tears fell from his eyes. “She just stood there. She didn’t expect me to…”

  “I get the idea.” She gripped his hand again. “You don’t have to go through it again.”

  Aaron wiped his face. The waiter stopped at the table.

  “Is everything all right?”

  Anna flashed a broad smile. “Oh, the soup is just so exquisite it’s moved him to tears. His late grandfather Marley used to run a chive farm out of Oxfordshire.”

  “Wonderful! I shall let the cook know.” He zipped away.

  “Oh yes,” whispered Anna. “He can’t resist a good chive. Gets quite emotional about watery potatoes and green bits.”

  Aaron cracked up, though he still sniffled. “You’re insane. Do you realize that?”

  “How is your grandfather, anyway?”

  “I dunno. I came along rather late. The old man was wheezing and bedridden before I was walking.” He stirred the soup, almost ready to take another spoonful. “I remember seeing the shot. She fell. The screaming in my brain got so loud, I thought my grey matter had split in half. It felt like an explosion in my head.”

  Anna stabbed at her salad. “I think Archon may want to hear this. You might’ve cracked at that point.”

  “You think I’m a nutter?”

  “Not that kind of cracked. Though”―she tapped a finger on her cheek―“a man who cries over chives might be.”

  “Now you’re reaching. I appreciate you trying to cheer me up, but… I killed my wife. She didn’t deserve it. Allison was the sweetest, most loving… innocent.” He dropped the spoon against the bowl. “When I came to, the place was a hames. Two of the walls were open to the outside, they said jewelry’d flown a quarter mile. They found sixteen cars in offices across the way. Two of the sales clerks are still unaccounted for. Six customers were crushed to death.”

  Anna gasped.

  “I was in the hospital for a few days. They thought I’d gone murderous and wanted to know why. I tried telling them it just… happened. I figure it was the display of extreme power that kept me alive, on account of their curiosity. Cop killers usually get the summary. Cops who turn traitor don’t last too long either.”

  “But you didn’t… right?” A bit of tomato burbled out of her mouth as she bit down.

  Aaron found a smile. “No. It happened again in the casino. One of their security people tried to use a suggestion on me, and it set me off like a bomb.”

  “That’s why you almost shat yourself when I sent you a telepathic message.”

  “Yeah… I didn’t know if that would have the same effect.” He held up a hand. “Before you go running off to tell Archon about this amazing new weapon, it hurts like hell. Worse than two hangovers wrapped up in a car crash. Leaves me in bed for a day.”

  “He could probably suss out how it works.”

  Aaron took a few mouthfuls of soup. “He could also set me off and… well… I don’t want to be responsible for ending your little uprising.”

  She made an indignant face, despite looking about ready to laugh. “Little uprising? Are you serious? We’re not ‘uprising,’ we’re leaving. Archon doesn’t want to hurt anyone; he’s trying to protect us.”

  Over the next few minutes, he finished the soup in silence and stared at the bowl.

  Anna leaned closer. “What’re you thinking?”

  “Those chives were…” He sniffed, dabbing at his cheek with the napkin. “If only grandpappy Marley could have been here.”

  “Stop.” She laughed. “Why don’t you come with me after, and you can meet the others?”

  “I can’t. Not until I find Talis.” His expression hardened. “I don’t care what else I do, that bitch is going to have a reckoning.”

  “Are you so sure the same thing won’t happen again?”

  “I’m planning to go alone.”

  “Oh, so she’ll just tell you to jump off a bridge then.”

  “She won’t see me coming. You don’t need psionics to handle a psionic. A firearm works wonders.”

  “Archon…” She half-rolled her eyes, grinning. “As he likes to remind everyone, he’s a rather powerful telepath. He’s also quite good with suggestion. You’re far less likely to run off and get yourself hurt if you have help.”

  “That earnest look you’re giving me makes you look like a schoolgirl.” He chuckled. “Truth is, I never much cared about coming back. I just had to try.”

  “Why all the womanizing?” She glanced off to the side, fighting the urge to scowl. “Something to try and deaden the pain?”

  “You’ve been talking to Darwin, haven’t you?” A moving white blur out of the corner of his eye stalled his words. He leaned back, allowing the waiter to clear the table and walk away. “No. I… suppose I’ve blamed women for everything. For being too trusting not to duck, for being too painful to lose, for being so evil to make me do that. Whenever I laid eyes on a girl, I’d see my wife dying all over again and hate the one in front of me for still being alive when Allison was dead. Sometimes, they’d remind me of Talis, and I’d regard them as something less than human.”

  Anna blinked, her expression blank.

  “This is going to sound corny, but I didn’t get the same feeling from you.”

  She refilled her glass. “You’re right. That does sound corny. What kind of feeling did you get from me?”

  “Well, first I was wondering if you were old enough to be in the bar.”

  She coughed on the wine. “I’m not that damn short.”

  “Of course not. As soon as I saw your face I knew, but you also looked ready to kill someone.”

  “Aurora insisted I be the one to make contact with you. Made me miss a damn live match.”

  “Don’t like replays? You know they have these things called video recordings now. Full 3D, you could be at any angle, even on the field.”

  “Terrence would have ruined it for me.”

  “Who?”

  Anna waved her hand about. “One of the unfortunates that’ve joined our little ‘uprising.’” She chuckled. “He’s a telekinetic, not Awakened. Been in a shit mood since he got out of jail.”

  “Jail?” Aaron raised both eyebrows.

  “He got picked up for attempted luring of a minor.”

  Aaron glared.

  “No.” She swatted at the air. “It wasn’t like that. The ‘minor’ was a girl we were trying to recruit, but she’d run off. She’s a healer and a telempath. Terrence tried to grab her on the sidewalk, but she made everyone in the area all sorts of panicked. They took one look at the little sprog, she had this ratty little half shirt on and a skirt made of scrap leather that barely covered her, and assumed the worst. Poor Terry got quite a beating.”

  “Oh, I think I heard about that one. They set up an outpost in the Badlands. At first, they tried to be picky about who they approved to know about it, but when no one volunteered, their selectiveness diminished. Almost wound up there myself, but Allison was afraid of leaving the city, so we passed.”

  The waiter returned with a friend and the entrées. Aaron’s looked like a work of modern art. Three pieces of meat, each bunched up at one end of a long, narrow bone formed a teepee in the center of the plate. A colony of tiny egg-sized potatoes drizzled with a reddish-orange sauce surrounded them. Anna’s plate was more active; chunks of meat and vegetables sizzled and popped in a metal-in-Epoxil tray.

  After an obsequious insistence on checking to make sure everything was perfect, the waiter left them to eat in peace.

  “I’m not sure if you should eat that
or charge people admission to look at it.” Anna grinned. “Anyway, the girl’s confused. Her entire life, everyone’s been cruel to her. She assumed all we wanted from her was to exploit her power, so she kept running off. I don’t know where the devil she got this augmented oaf from.” Anna stumbled over her words, near to crying. “He almost killed James.”

  “She evidently found the police…” Aaron angled over his plate with a knife and fork, looking for the least awkward angle to start. “They set up a veritable colony out there all to watch her.”

  Anna couldn’t speak for a moment and held her hands over her face as if trying to push tears back into her eyes. “Aurora’s convinced the next time that girl and James are in the same place, he’s going to die. So far, he’s been content to let her stay behind, not that he’s fond of leaving her to the machinations of the government. Her healing ability is beyond anything that’s been documented. He’s got it in his head that she can alter the brain structures of ‘normal’ psionics and turn them Awakened. James is trying to protect us, but if someone’s too daft to understand that and wants to suffer here on Earth, we’re not going to force it.”

  “What do you think Aurora meant by dominoes?”

  “Little bits of plastic that people set up in lines and tip over?” Anna’s shrug turned into a cringe as her food emitted a loud snap. “Cripes, it’s trying to assault me.” She poked at it with a fork while leaning away.

  “That looks hot.”

  She winced. “It’s not spicy.”

  He waved his hand about while he finished chewing. “No, I mean thermally hot.”

  “Oh… right.” Anna ate for a moment in silence.

  “So, what about this Aurora person? She paid me a visit the other day. Said something about dominoes.”

  “The woman’s quite strange sometimes. Your guess is as good as mine what she means.”

  “I see.”

  A few minutes passed where the food absorbed most of their attention.

  “Aaron… did your parents have a fit when your gift manifested?”

  “Not really. Mother thought I’d just gone into a phase that would pass. Still does. Father thought it ‘brilliant.’ The whole frictionless tweaking thing was his idea, if you must know.” Aaron lowered his voice to a whisper. “He’s a betting man.”

  Anna’s jaw hung open. “Are you taking the piss?”

  He shook his head due to a full mouth.

  “Well, you’re still a cheater since you did it.”

  “Aye.” He dabbed a napkin at his lip. “What about yours?”

  A shiver took her, as if a burst-into-tears moment was imminent. She collected herself and went steely. “CSB killed my Mum when I was two or three. I don’t remember her at all. No idea where my father is, or if I even have one. For all I know, he was a petri dish.”

  “Sorry.” He tilted his head, wondering how the exotic dancing bit came into play.

  “What?”

  “Oh… I don’t want to pry. Was just confused about what you said earlier, ’bout the wings.”

  “The stripping?” She gestured with both hands. “Might as well be out with it since we’ve gone this far. CSB had a watcher on me. I thought he was my dad, but the bastard wasn’t what you would call a kid friendly person. My little habit of emotion equals fried electronics got expensive. Add a constant flow of beer to that… Screaming turned to slapping, then beating. He came after me bad one night when I was twelve, and I must’ve thought he planned to beat me to death for torching the holo-bar. Fried the sodding thing right in the middle of a frictionless match. He got awful cheesed off he’d miss the rest of it and came after me worse ’an ever. I panicked and killed the son of a bitch by accident. Wound up on the street.”

  “No social―”

  “Ran away. Didn’t want to get found out as a psionic. My little monster makes electronics freak out if I’m not perfectly calm. Emotions, good or bad, make it play… and right after that night…”

  “Ahh, right. Ahhh…” He shot a guilty look at the table. “I didn’t ask for special treatment, honestly, I…”

  “Oh, it’s not the same climate when they found you as it was back then. The business with Lord Thompson was two years past by the time you had your ‘injury.’ Moderates were already backing off on ‘The Directive.’”

  A shadow drew Aaron’s glance to the right, at a pair of augmented thugs in long, black coats. “Well, look at that.”

  “What?” She perked in her seat, indignant. “Little me changing the course of British history?”

  “No, those big bastards pointing rifles at us.”

  A beep at floor level drew his attention to a silver canister about the size of a synthbeer, bouncing and rolling at them. The charge detonated before his brain could react. An ear-splitting bang cracked the air as a concussive wave threw him, the table, and Anna onto the angled window. Aaron’s world became a haze of white accompanied by a constant high-pitched tone. She hit the glass face first, not moving. Shots rang out, jarring him back into reality. Bullets punched holes in the inch-thick glass on either side of his head, spraying him with silica dust. Despite the stun grenade, he found enough presence of mind to push their rifles to the side and up.

  The crunch of bullets chewing on window turned into clanks. A metal band between two transparent panels gave out like a noodle under the barrage. High-pitched squeals ran with cracks zigzagging in the glass beneath him, adding a spike of fear to Aaron’s telekinetic yank at the rifles. Neither lost their weapon, but they did stop firing. He cocked an eyebrow, impressed by the strength of the boosted thugs.

  Shattering preceded a blast of cold air from the side, which shoved him off the angled window to the floor. Napkins went flying from the force of the gusting wind. He looked on in horror as the square of glass supporting Anna broke away from the mangled spar and dumped her out like a trapdoor. The thousand-pound slab of glass slid out of its socket and followed her, spinning like a gargantuan shuriken.

  His primal want to pull her close resulted in a brief release of telekinetic energy and a dull clank below the level of the gaping hole where a window used to be. She screamed. A strip of tablecloth material snagged on the spar went taut, as if it supported weight.

  “No!” he roared, scrambling to crawl at the hole.

  Aaron flattened himself as another burst of gunfire rang out behind him. Metal rattled outside, almost lost in the howling gale.

  “Anna! Hold on.”

  Her answering scream sounded close. He flipped on his back ready to kill, but a second concussion grenade landed on his chest. Panic, quite similar to the way one might react to a dinner-plate sized spider appearing out of nowhere on one’s testicles, manifested in a telekinetic launch of the stun grenade. It detonated a few feet away, plunging him into a world of white light filled with a horrible blaring screech. He thought he flailed, though he couldn’t tell if his arms moved for real or if he only imagined it. Reaching out with telepathic feelers pinpointed several minds in his vicinity. Two contemplated murder, the rest occupied various states of fear or panic.

  Aaron projected random surges of telekinetic force in the direction of what he believed to be their assailants. With all the grace of a blind man fumbling in the dark, his mind latched onto the inconsequential mass of tables, and flung them. A few seconds later, the squeal in his ears lessened enough to allow in the screams of the wait staff as well as Anna’s terrified cries.

  “Aaron!” she shrieked. “I’m slipping. Help!”

  He found himself lying on his side under the broken remains of several chairs. Guns went off, tiny pops sounding far away and under water. Above and behind him, more glass exploded in fist-sized plumes of glittering dust. Aaron rolled on his back, twisting his head around to search for the source of the terrified screaming.

  The tablecloth ripped, unraveling and sliding a few inches out. Her cries for help turned into a wild scream as every light in the ceiling exploded in a shower of plastic bits and sparks. Bot
h men shooting at them gurgled and howled; lightning crackled around their faces, lapping from their implants to any nearby metal surface.

  Aaron dove across the metal radiator strip at the base of the ring window, landing flat on his chest with one arm over the edge. Anna dangled five feet down, her two-handed grip failing in a slow, continuous slide down the length of imitation cotton. She half-heartedly kicked at a narrow walkway ringing the restaurant, which probably hadn’t seen boots since the place was first built. A colony of pigeons watched her with disinterest.

  Time seemed to stall as she lifted her head to scream at him. He didn’t hear her voice or comprehend any words coming out of her. Anna’s face had the same expression as Allison’s.

  Blind-fired bullets peppered around him, shredding furniture and shattering another piece of glass to the left. Less concerned with gentleness than success, he telekinetically jerked her closer to the building. She slapped into the metal beneath the window and crumpled onto the narrow catwalk.

  “Pull me in, dammit!” She howled, clinging to the thin superstructure.

  “Minute, luv. They’ve got guns.”

  Aaron sat up at the same moment the backup lighting painted the room crimson. He let off a war cry and focused his power at the man on the right. A vicious surge of telekinetic force hurled him at a still-intact section of window, feeding on the rage summoned at the ‘I’m going to die’ look in Anna’s eyes. The leg breaker smeared into a streak of black as if fired out of a rail gun. Glass disintegrated to shrapnel on contact; the metal-infused body hit a spot between two panels, where a bracing strut acted like a blade and sheared a leg off. The free limb vanished into the fog as the man careened in an arc for the ground more than two thousand feet below.

  Ignoring Anna’s alternating pleas and angry demands, Aaron stared death at the remaining assailant, but tempered his killing urge with reason: he had to know who sent them.