Day of Reckoning

by Micah B. Edwards

  Day of

  Reckoning

  Book 5 of The Experiment

  Micah Edwards

  - Copyright -

  Cover art by leolintang via http://www.shutterstock.com.

  Copyright © Micah Edwards 2018.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Basically what this boils down to is that if you steal my stuff that I worked hard on, I’ll be sad. And I’d rather not be sad. So help me out on this one, would you?

  First printing, 2018.

  ISBN-13: 978-1983537592

  ISBN-10: 1983537594

  Want to talk to the author? I want to talk to you! Send me your thoughts at baronmind@gmail.com. I accept all manner of thoughts, whether they are related to the book or not. If your thoughts are particularly weird or rude, I may delete them without responding. C’est la vie.

  The production of this book was made possible by CreateSpace (http://www.createspace.com), an Amazon company.

  - Table of Contents -

  - Prologue -

  - Chapter One -

  - Chapter Two -

  - Chapter Three -

  - Chapter Four -

  - Chapter Five -

  - Chapter Six -

  - Chapter Seven -

  - Chapter Eight -

  - Chapter Nine -

  - Chapter Ten -

  - Chapter Eleven -

  - Chapter Twelve -

  - Chapter Thirteen -

  - Chapter Fourteen -

  - Chapter Fifteen -

  - Afterword -

  - About the Author -

  - Prologue -

  Life’s a roller coaster sometimes. You’ll be ticking along with everything steadily improving, and then all of a sudden you realize there’s nothing beneath you and you’re screaming downwards, rocketing lower than where you started. It’ll throw you for a loop, whip you violently from side to side, and make you sick to your stomach. And just when you’re thinking, “Well, at least I’ve got this safety harness to hold me down,” you hear a quiet click as the lock disengages. Up ahead, you see another loop coming, and you’re scrambling desperately for anything to hold onto, but the car’s been greased and the edges are razor sharp and also it’s on fire.

  Sorry, that got a bit out of hand. I’m feeling a little low right now. Being in jail will do that to you.

  I wasn’t in jail this morning. Flashback to then: there’s me, Dan Everton, ticking my way up that metaphorical coaster track. Everything looks like bright skies ahead. For a year now, I’ve been afflicted with intermittent superpowers. Yeah, yeah, scoff if you like, but it’s not a great situation. I get hit with the power, but it doesn’t come with any instruction manual or anything. I don’t even know what it does or how to use it until I stumble into it, usually through a painful accident of some sort.

  And if that weren’t enough, every power comes with a nemesis—some other person who gets powers at the same time as I do, and also gets a burning desire to wipe me out of existence. So I end up in the same pattern over and over again, fumbling to stay alive long enough to get my power together and come out ahead.

  They say lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place, but it sure does when someone’s directing it. And I don’t just mean that in the case of Regina, one of my early nemeses who could control the weather and static charges in the air. We hang out now, we’re cool. Kind of a long story there.

  Also, lightning does strike twice in the same place even naturally. Something about paths of ionization, I think. Plus if you’re the highest point around, you’re going to get struck pretty much every time lightning comes through. So I don’t know why they say that in the first place.

  Anyway, back on the subject of metaphorical lightning, I’m definitely not the tallest point around. I’m pretty much your stereotypical average white dude: six feet tall, little bit of extra pudge, short hair, a little slow on the uptake sometimes. Maybe that part’s not stereotypical, but it’s definitely true of me. There’s no reason why something like this would be seeking me out, is my point.

  Or rather, there wouldn’t be, except for Ichabot. Ichabot’s the name I’ve given to the spindly-limbed mad scientist who’s decided that I’m the perfect target for his experiment. It turns out that the superpowers occur because I’m chock-full of nanomachinery which can be remotely programmed to have a whole host of effects. Things like enhanced strength, durability, healing, or intelligence, but also weirder stuff like magnetism, pyrokinesis, charisma, and matter construction or deconstruction. They’re activated through emotional triggers. Honestly, the whole setup’s pretty cool, and if I weren’t being treated like a bacterium on a slide I’d probably be excited about it.

  It’s been a rough year, is my point. But this morning—which we’re still flashed back to, remember; sorry about the digression—things are finally looking good. We’ve got my current nemesis, in the form of my good friend and local EMT Brian King, sedated and under the care of Dr. Simmons, a trustworthy and capable doctor. We’ve tracked down Ichabot’s lab. I’ve got Officer Peterson with me, a police officer who actually believes what’s going on and is working to help me. And then, just as I kick down the door, the track drops out from underneath me and I’m plummeting down another hill, screaming.

  So instead of Ichabot getting hauled off to jail, he strips me of my powers and uses his own nanos to convince Officer Peterson that I’m the one who’s causing problems here. So the next thing I know, I’m in handcuffs in the back of the squad car. I get hauled back to the temporary station at City Hall, processed in with mug shots, fingerprinting and all, and then chucked in the drunk tank while they figure out what to do with me.

  Flashback over, coaster bottomed out and approaching an unlit tunnel at a high rate of speed. That, or it’s just a black spot painted on a cliff up ahead. We’ll find out shortly.

  It really stings that Peterson turned on me so readily. I keep telling myself that it’s not his fault, it’s not personal, it’s just what happens when nanomachinery writes new thoughts into your head. But this isn’t the first time I’ve had the suggestion nanos used against me. In fact, I’ve been dealing with the fallout from a large-scale campaign against me for a couple of months now. So I’m pretty familiar with how they work, and the thing is, they can’t make ideas stick if the recipient knows that idea doesn’t make any sense.

  If I were to use these nanos to tell you that bacon tastes gross, for example, it would work if you’ve never had bacon. But if you have, that dissonant thought would meet up with what you already know to be true—that bacon is delicious—and would fall apart in the face of overwhelming facts and supporting experiences.

  This metaphor doesn’t work if you don’t like bacon, of course, but if you don’t like bacon you might already be mind-controlled. Get that checked out.

  My point is that when Ichabot told Peterson that I was deranged, dangerous and causing a scene, it would’ve been nice if Peterson had shaken that off, declared his absolute or at least relative confidence in me, and popped the cuffs on Ichabot. Instead, he took those new thoughts, compared them to what was already in his head and found it to be a close enough match to be worth believing. And that doesn’t speak well of his opinion of me.

  This is the sort of situation where it would be nice to be able to distract myself with my phone, but obviously they took that away from me when they put me in here. There are three other guys on the benches in here, but they’re all pass
ed out from the indulgences of the night before, so I can’t even make conversation to pass the time. I’m stuck here with nothing to do but twirl the plastic booking-information wristband around my arm, waiting to see what comes next.

  I guess what comes next is a phone call. I feel like they have to give me that at some point, so I can let someone know where I am. That, or they have to let me go? I learned most of this stuff from police procedurals, which means I am woefully in the dark as to how it actually works. I’m sure that they can’t just keep me sitting in the holding cell forever, though. That’s un-American. The police here may not like me, thanks to that previously-mentioned smear campaign, but I don’t think it would sit well with most of them to just keep me caged indefinitely.

  It occurs to me that I actually have no idea who to call when I do get the opportunity. Yesterday, my go-to for a situation like this would have been Officer Peterson, but given that he’s the one who put me in here, that’s probably not going to work as well as I might hope. Next down the list would probably be Regina or Brian, but Regina was there when we tried to corral Ichabot, and she caught the mind whammy, too. She seemed a little less certain about this whole thing than Peterson, but she still didn’t speak up for me, so I think she’s off the list, too.

  Brian, meanwhile, has been wanting to kill me for a week or so now, thanks to the nemesis wrath. He’s doped up on tranquilizers and antidepressants to try to mellow that out, but I think he likely still doesn’t want to hear from me. That said, he’s been fighting through a homicidal rage to maintain our friendship, so that suggests he’s got a higher opinion of me than either Peterson or Regina. So, drug-addled frenemy goes to the top of the list. List is looking great, Dan.

  I could call my mom and dad. They’d be on my side; they’re good parents, and the good parent handbook says that you get your kid out of jail when he calls. Even if your kid is in his thirties and the arresting officer says he’s delusional and broke into a medical building. The handbook might then go on to say that you take your kid straight from jail to an asylum or rehab clinic, but I feel like that’s got to be a step up from a holding cell with three other guys, one of whom has just thrown up in his sleep. It’s puddling on the floor, and the smell is not making me feel better about my life.

  I’m covering my mouth with my hand, pinching my nose and trying to take shallow breaths, when an officer I don’t know comes by the cell.

  “Everton?” she asks, glancing at her phone before making eye contact with me.

  “Me,” I say, standing up.

  “Got a lawyer you want to call?”

  “Lawyer? Not r— well, yeah, sure, someone who can get me a lawyer.”

  “All right, come on. Walk with me.”

  She opens the door and stands back, wariness in her posture. When I just exit normally, she relaxes a fraction and points down the hallway. I try to walk casually, which is harder to do than you’d expect when someone’s walking two steps behind you with a hand on a taser. I wonder what she’s been told about me.

  “Phone’s here,” she says, motioning to a phone on a desk. “Make your call.”

  “Do I get privacy?” I ask. She barks a short laugh, which I take to mean “no.”

  I pick up the phone and dial.

  - Chapter One -

  As the phone starts to ring, I’m already reconsidering my choices. Maybe I should be calling Mr. Steele, my boss at the construction site. He’s been remarkably understanding in the past about me skipping work for vague reasons, and he didn’t ask any questions about my involvement in cosmetically destroying the construction site. So if he didn’t judge me for that, probably he won’t for this, either. Also, I haven’t actually let him know I won’t be at work today, although he’s probably figured that out by this hour. I wonder if I’d be the first person to call in sick to their job from jail?

  This train of thought comes to an abrupt end when the phone is picked up on the other end.

  “Hello?” says a woman’s voice, sounding vaguely irritated to have been interrupted.

  “Doc!” I say with relief. “Good, hi. I didn’t know if you’d be up. Um, have you talked to anybody today?”

  “No one out of the ordinary. What’s going on?” asks Doc Simmons. Of the people I could have called, she’s not the most likely to get me out of this immediate situation, but she might be my biggest asset down the line. With Peterson and Regina both under the influence of Ichabot’s suggestion nanos, and Brian sedated to keep down the fury of the nemesis, Simmons is the last person who knows what’s going on with me and is on my side. Plus, she’s taking care of Brian, so I need to keep her in the loop to make sure he stays safe.

  Also, she’s brilliant, so that can’t really hurt here. If I’m very lucky, she’ll have a solution to my immediate predicament as well.

  “Iiii’m...in jail.”

  There’s a short pause, in which I can basically hear the doc’s brain assembling the scenario that must have led to this. She wasn’t at Ichabot’s laboratory to watch it go down, of course, but she knew that we were going after him this morning. So if I’m in jail, clearly things did not work out as planned. The details, while interesting, are irrelevant to the current situation. I can practically hear her saying that exact phrase.

  “Okay,” she says. “How bad is it?”

  “Bad. Ichabot’s got Tanger’s power and he whammied Peterson and Regina. You’ve got to steer clear of him.”

  The police officer who led me over here clears her throat and looks pointedly at a clock on the wall.

  “Um. Also, I need a lawyer, I think?”

  “Right,” says the doc, almost absently. She’s clearly working on something else, and I can only hope it’s related to getting me out of here. “I mainly know medical malpractice lawyers, but they should be able to recommend someone. I suppose that the odds of you having any money are low?”

  “Yeah, I just spent my reserves on a car. They haven’t set bail or anything. I don’t even know what I’m charged with. Ichabot told them I’m deranged!”

  “Wrap it up,” says the cop, hand on her taser.

  “You’re at City Hall?” asks the doc.

  “Yeah, City Hall,” I confirm. The policewoman motions curtly to the phone, and I add, “Gotta go. Thank you. Avoid—basically everyone, I guess.”

  I hang up the phone, and the officer raises an eyebrow at me.

  “So did you get a lawyer out of that?” she asks.

  “I think so, yeah. Hey, what am I being charged with?”

  She shrugs. “Don’t care.”

  Way to protect and serve, I think, but I don’t say it. She still has a taser and has been told that I’m deranged, and I’m not interested in getting shocked. I’ve been hit by lightning before, and it’s probably not nearly as bad as that, but I really don’t want to be able to do a compare and contrast.

  I return to the communal cell, take an uncomfortable bench seat and attempt to plan out where things go from here. I’m not always great at following plans, but I like to have them so at least I know exactly where things started to go off the rails.

  Phase one: stay in jail until lawyer comes. I’m already succeeding at that! Off to a good start.

  Phase two: explain situation to lawyer, get out of jail. Actually, if I explain the real situation to the lawyer, it seems unlikely that he’s going to believe me. “I was hunting the mad scientist who gave me superpowers when he suddenly mind-controlled my friends” is not a compelling argument against being deranged. Especially when you add “I can’t show you the superpowers, he took them away” as a follow-up. Even if it happens to be true.

  So, stepping back a bit, I’d better add in a phase one-A: make up a believable and internally-consistent story before the lawyer gets here.

  Okay, so what’s irrefutable? I went with Peterson to an office owned by Rossum Medical Supply. While there, I opened a door—well, dissolved it, but we’re avoiding mention of superpowers, so we’ll stick with “opened”—
to a laboratory in which a scientist was working. That scientist, most recently referred to as Dr. Argute, has also been known to go by Dr. Amun, Dr. Acharya, Dr. Amici and probably a bunch of other A-names, but I call him Ichabot. I broke some stuff in his lab, he called me deranged, and here we are.

  That’s a relatively true explanation, even if it does leave out some massively important parts. It’s reasonable, though, and that’s what I’m going for here. I don’t know what they’re planning on charging me with here, but from the scenario I’ve outlined, it doesn’t seem like it could be much worse than destruction of property. In the worst case, maybe they could go as high as breaking and entering, though I think that’d be a reach. Even in that case, though, it’s nothing where they wouldn’t let me post bail, so that’ll get me to the end of phase two.

  On to phase three, then: get Peterson and Regina back on my side. All I’ve got to do is force them to think about the parts where Ichabot’s suggested ideas don’t match up with what they know to be true. Given that Peterson has watched me summon fire and disintegrate objects with my hands, not to mention helping cover up the aftermath of a fight with a guy who could grow living flesh out of inanimate objects, it shouldn’t be too hard to push him out of “derangement” camp and back into “weird though it is, it must be true.”

  And Regina actually had a superpower herself, even if they did try to talk her out of believing it in the hospital afterward. She’ll either have to convince herself that I’m pulling her into a massive folie a deux, or admit that I’m not crazy.

  The real trick with phase three will be getting close enough to talk, but I can probably manage that with a phone call or an email if I have to. I’d remark here on the wonders of technology, but I suppose I could do the same thing with a handwritten letter slipped under a door, too. So: the wonders of literacy!