by Nat Kennedy
A sharp wind cruised up from Calvino Park at the bottom of the hill, carrying with it the green scent of trees and river. The sun's final rays lit the western horizon in purples and maroons, but, as he dismounted the endless stairs and slipped into the park, he descended into a darkness cut by a ribbon of lighting that followed the paved path. The trail followed tree-lined Coulee Creek—a small trickle this time of year but a flooding beast in spring—and emptied him out onto a manicured lawn. Park benches sat near the best bento shop in town. Maybe he'd just grab a bento and head back up to his office.
He checked his watch. If he did that, he would have two hours to kill and he didn't warm to the idea of being stalked at his office by his student.
The smell of popcorn brought Reggie's thoughts to the latest superhero movie. Maybe he'd catch it this weekend. A jutting root caught his foot causing him to shuffle to keep his balance. The trip of his body tripped his brain, and he realized: there was no way that strong of a popcorn scent actually came from popcorn out here in the middle of the park. Somewhere someone was force Wielding. It had to be a Tracer—the olfactory proof that anyone, male or female, had bended.
As mind Wielding created sound Tracers, and enhancement Wielding changed the feel of the air around a person, force Wielding produced smells. He sniffed the air like a hound after a raccoon. Perhaps some female students were playing around with their powers; there was no crime against that.
It was probably nothing.
A scream of anger barked from a dense set of juniper bushes towards the edge of the park. Popcorn again.
“Asshole, fuck off!”
Definitely a man's voice. Then a chemical scent—acetone? Reggie pressed the back of his hand to his nose. Another scream, this one pierced with pain.
“Hey, you okay in there?” Reggie cried out, hoping to stop the conflict, whatever it was.
A shadowed figure burst from the bushes and sprinted along the dense line of plants towards the lawn. His terror screams set Reggie on his own adrenaline induced edge. Reggie scanned the runner. The way the thin individual ran, the shape of the body, Reggie guessed it was a man. Reggie struggled over what to do, chase after or find the second individual, unsure of who was even the victim.
“Wait! Do you need help?” he called, jogging after, but the runner dodged into the dark recesses of the park and was gone. Well damn.
He returned his attention to the second individual. Was the other the victim? Or was this the assailant, waiting to attack another?
Reggie stopped second-guessing himself and pushed his arms forward into the juniper. His tweed jacket protected him from scrapes along his arms, but didn't help much when a branch poked his ear. “Ow,” he muttered as he bullied his way through the evergreens.
“Anyone here?” Within the canopy of juniper, blackness smothered everything. No park lights could be seen, no moon, no city luminescence carved a way through the foliage. Reggie pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight feature. “Hello?” No answer. Reggie stilled, listening. The scent of popcorn and solvent blended within the thicket.
Then he heard it. A thumping, scattered and repetitive.
“Are you okay? I'm Professor Reggie Wolfe, of the engineering department. I can get you home, or to the hospital if you need.” No response. Just the thumping.
Then his light landed on legs, clad in tight black jeans. Quaking legs, beating against the soft duff covered ground. Reggie scanned the legs to a hip, then a jerking side, and finally the pale quavering face of a young man.
A man. Unconscious but seizing in the throes of Taint.
Reggie wished he could have followed the other Wielder. That skell. Who would attack another with his power? Only a man who'd gone mad from Taint. Or one of the cultists. He needed to let his sister know. Maybe a popcorn or chemical Tracer was already known to the Bureau of Wielder Services, for which she worked. Maybe the assailant was already wanted.
Reggie frowned. Two male Wielders, fighting in public.
Chapter 2
Reggie dragged the unresponsive man through his front door. By the time the cab had arrived, the shakes left the nameless Wielder's body limp. Though his dead weight proved a challenge to lug about, it was far easier to carry a bag of potatoes than a wriggly hound dog. Reggie wasn't a weight lifter by any means, more of a long distance biker type, but this bag of potatoes couldn't weigh more than Bethany. His sister was a slight thing. He'd tipped the cabby plenty to not ask questions about a professor dragging home a passed out young man. He mentioned the young man in question was his brother, and inexperienced with drink. Last thing he needed was a scandal.
Reggie laid the young man out on his guest bed and pulled off his shoes. He was in his early twenties, maybe late teens. Reggie fished out the guy's wallet: Kyle Landon, 21. Driver's license. Student ID card. A half-full punch card from Live Wire, a college coffee hut. Some cash. Receipts and the detritus of life. He stuffed the wallet back into Kyle's pocket and covered him with a quilt his sister had found for him at a second hand store. Kyle's face had visited a Piercing Pagoda more than once, and he wore dark eyeliner around his eyes. Reggie didn’t recognize him from campus. His short dark hair, though shaggy in the bangs, contrasted against his generally pale skin. He might be one of those goth kids, but goth was a style from decades past.
He dialed his teaching assistant.
“Hello Professor Wolfe,” Bernie said, his typical exhaustion lacing every syllable.
“Hey Bernie. I can't make office hours. Stomach flu. Can you put a note on my door?”
“Oh,” he roused himself, “sounds nasty.”
“It is. I plan on sleeping and drinking lots of fluids. See you tomorrow.”
Reggie leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, and watched his unexpected guest. The shakes seemed a generally benign Taint. Some men just needed to tell lies or eat something sweet. Others grew thorns out of their feet or had the urge to stab themselves with something sharp. The list was long. As the sad yet inevitable tale went, most Taint sent a male Wielder into madness. The last stop on that downward road was the government sponsored Disentanglement Centers, more commonly known as oubliettes.
The oubliette, French for 'the forgotten place', was a place Wielders went and were never heard from again. The Boogeyman of the male Wielder world.
No place existed for a male Wielder. Nobody accepted them. Nobody but the male Wielder cults. Reggie hoped that wasn't what that altercation was about. Was this young man being recruited?
He turned the light off and went to cook dinner and watch a show, certain he'd get little sleep that night.
~~~
“Thanks for letting me use your shower.”
Reggie turned the frying pan full of eggs down and faced his visitor. Dressed only in his jeans, hung low on sharp hips, Kyle rubbed a towel through his hair. Though skinny, Kyle's smooth chest was nicely developed, the kind of physique a martial artist might have. Reggie returned his eyes to breakfast and stirred the hash browns in their pan. “No problem. How you feeling?”
A jaded snort was all Reggie got in response. So, Reggie tried a different approach. “Breakfast?”
“Sure.” That sounded full of interest. “Smells good. And toast?”
“Yeah, got it coming.”
He buttered the toast and slid the over easy eggs and crispy hash browns onto a couple plates, then dashed a little salt and pepper on them. He lifted the milk in the air, silent question, and the man nodded. Reggie poured the milk for his guest and OJ for himself. He carried the plates to his dining nook and set them down on his small table that for months on end had only sat one. He offered Kyle a fork.
“Sleep well?” Reggie had been surprised to find his guest still asleep when his alarm reminded him a new day had dawned, though Reggie's mind had barely dipped into sleep.
Kyle nodded, and with relish he dug in. He ate like an enhancement Wielder, chowing down on forkful of eggs after bites of potatoes, hand over
fist. Reggie considered frying up a few more eggs as he ate his own at a more sedate pace. He caught the scent of his shampoo on Kyle; his lips danced up in a half smile.
“So,” Reggie began. His guest's thin eyebrows spoke more than the man himself, popping up in curiosity. “I'm Reggie. What's your name?” Reggie didn't want Kyle to know he'd already rummaged through his pockets. Wanted to make him feel like he still had control about something.
Those eyebrows danced again, this time high up Kyle's forehead in amused disdain. “As if I'd tell you.”
“Okay,” Reggie drawled, figuring that was the easiest question he was going to ask and getting stonewalled already didn't bode well. In for a penny… “What happened?”
With a shake of his head, Kyle said, “Nothing. Just an argument with a friend.”
Reggie studied him: the lack of eye contact, the stiff line of his shoulders. “No, really, what happened?”
“Why do you care?” Kyle swallowed down a mouthful of milk and continued eating.
“Because, I do. Are you in trouble?” Reggie did not want to see this kid go to the cults, caged by bad choices, funneled down a chute of corruption and crime.
Or end up in a Disentanglement Center.
The overhead light made the hoop in the man's eyebrow sparkle when he flashed Reggie a smarmy grin. “Nah, everything's fine.”
“Hey, just listen.” Reggie leaned forward. “I don't care what you were doing out there in the bushes. I don't care that you're a Wielder.” The guy's eyes dropped from Reggie's. His smirk dropped too. “I just want to make sure you know there are people you can talk to and you have somewhere to go, and to make sure that you aren't in any trouble.”
The other man leaned back in the kitchen chair, his fork gripped in fingers that had gone deathly-white. The chair's creaking frame punctuated Kyle's sharp, “Thanks for helping me and all, but it's not your problem.”
“I know other men in your situation. Wielders with no support. Fighting against their Taint. Listen, nobody wants to go to the hospitals. They're bad news. And the only people out there that seem to care are the cults. You feel stuck between a bad choice and no choice, but I want you to know, there are other options.”
The line of the man's shoulders drooped.
“I can help you, if you're interested.”
Kyle tapped his fork against the porcelain plate. His burning gaze seemed to catalog and measure Reggie's worth. Reggie let him stare, for a while. The intensity of that inspection diverted Reggie's own attention to the man's bare chest; fine dark hair circled his nipples. Reggie looked away again, mentally shaking himself by the scruff. The young man laughed knowingly.
“You can help me, yeah? Well,” Reggie felt a brush of foot against his leg under the table, “what's in it for you, Reggie?”
Reggie pushed his chair away from the table and Kyle's reach and leveled his professorially bland expression at the Wielder. “I expect nothing. Have faith in someone, for once. How about your parents, can you go to them?”
Kyle laughed, a slow rumble of noise that Reggie couldn't decipher. “My parents are great, but I couldn't tell them about—” he gestured at himself, as if there was something innately wrong with his existence.
“There is nothing wrong with you.” Reggie stood, taking his plate to the sink. These poor Wielder men. The power developed in people in their mid-teens. For girls, it was a time to rejoice. In boys, it was a nightmare. Though he was only seven, he distinctly remembered his sister's Emergence party. Their parents had tested Bethany when she was fifteen, and she registered as a mind Wielder. Soon after, her training began. They never even considered testing Reggie. Of course, they were dead by the time he'd reached the testing age.
Reggie sat back down, maintaining eye contact without touring the man's body. “So, you get along with your parents?” Reggie sipped on his orange juice, giving his hands something to do.
“Oh yeah. Like I said, they're great. My dad doesn't even bitch about having a gay son who wears more eyeliner than his wife. I mean, sure, he put me through sports and all that, but,” he shrugged, though it was a feint. He was watching Reggie too closely for it to be anything casual, “he knew I would never be a football star.” He lifted one arm and gave it a half-hearted flex.
Reggie saw the hint of muscle there, but he had to agree, this kid would never tackle a two-hundred and fifty pound running back.
“Are you a student at the university?”
Kyle nodded, his sharp gaze considering. “Comp Sci. Junior. Name's Kyle.”
There. Progress. Reggie relaxed now that he no longer threatened slipping up and calling him by his name. Reggie leaned back in his chair, his own creaking under the change in pressure. “I feed you and you trust me?”
Kyle laughed again. A breezy kind of melody that Reggie couldn't help but respond to. His smile was automatic and his stupid roaming gaze was too. Reggie, you're being creepy, he scolded himself.
“Yeah, well Reggie, maybe I'm like a stray dog. You feed me and I never go away.” He leaned into a lazy posture that suggested he owned the kitchen, the town, the whole world if he chose. Cocky little shit.
“Just don't bite the hand that feeds you.” Reggie wasn't sure when the tables had turned and this kid had taken control of the conversation. He had to regain some footing. “Kyle, I want you to know, you don't have to join the cults. I know—”
Kyle's hackles rose and his studiously casual slouch disappeared. “Oh come on, man. Please, no lectures this early in the morning.”
“I'm not—”
“Besides, I am not a cult member. That guy in the park was trying to recruit,” he drew out the word, “but I was having none of it.”
“Good.” Reggie felt the tension ease from his muscles. “Glad to hear it. And make sure you don't Wield. Your Taint is pretty bad. If you go unconscious—”
“Reggie. Whoa, hey man. Chill.” Kyle's expression darkened and Reggie was afraid he was going to lose Kyle if he kept pushing. “I can deal.”
“Dealing is different than succeeding.”
“You know—” Kyle stood up, “I don't need this shit from you.” He charged down the hall to the guest room. Reggie cursed himself. He could not let Kyle fall. He scribbled his number—the one for the second phone—down on a post-it.
Kyle, fully dressed, marched towards the door.
“Kyle, wait.” Reggie reached out for him; Kyle jerked his arm away. “Just take this.” He stuffed the number into the man's hand. “Call me if you need anything.”
Kyle glanced at the yellow post it, at the single set of seven digits, no name. He crumpled it up in his palm. “You can't help me.” He walked out the door.
Chapter 3
The fall leaves rained down on Reggie's small lawn. It was only one bigleaf maple, but it sure wanted to cover the world. The crisp weather wrapped itself in a blanket of stagnant air; the scent of wood smoke hovered in his neighborhood, filling every nook and cranny. A man walked by with a little terrier on a leash. Reggie waved. The man waved back.
He grabbed a handful of crunchy leaves and stuffed them into an orange bag that sported the face of a pumpkin. A sedate ring rippled from his jacket. He tore off his gloves and fished the phone from his pocket.
Bethany.
“Hey, Beth, I've been trying to get a hold of you for days.”
“Sorry, Reg.” She sounded tired, which was not unexpected. As an agent for the Bureau of Wielder Services, she was always busy.
The BWS policed Wielder crimes and the male and female cults that often organized those criminals. His sister, a mind Wielder, was a top agent who worked in interrogation because of her mind reading skills. She was the one who taught Reggie how to Mind Shield, a skill any norm could learn if they tried.
“How's Melanie?” Reggie asked about his niece as he walked to his porch and sat on the edge of the concrete, surveying his lawn and neighborhood street. He needed to relocate those hostas.
Bethany hmmed, an
ounce of disapproval in the noise that Reggie knew wasn't aimed at Melanie. Reggie wished there was something he could do for his older sister, but her crumbling marriage was her own battle. He secretly thought Paul was a more attentive parent to their daughter than Bethany was capable of being. However, that didn't mean her husband should ditch her.
“She's good. She's got her final ballet recital in three weeks. It's on my calendar and I've cleared my schedule.”
“Great. Can you send me the info, I want to go.” Reggie would also send Paul an email, just in case Bethany forgot.
“Sure. Listen... the Bureau picked up this Albion student last night.”
Reggie's attention snapped back to his sister.
“He had your number, your other number, on him. His name's Kyle Landon. Says he's a computer science student. You know him?”
Reggie's lunch morphed into a solid lump in his belly. “Kyle, yeah. What happened?”
Bethany's voice dropped. “He said he was attacked. He was fairly out of it, pretty singed.”
“I don't know all the specifics,” Reggie said, “but if he pushes his power, his Taint makes him pass out. He was on the run from a cult recruiter. Popcorn or acetone Tracer. He wouldn't tell me more.” Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Reggie wanted to throw the phone into the pile of leaves.
“So, he's a force Wielder?”
He took in a deep breath, then said calmly, “Yeah. Is he okay?”
A breeze sailed down the street and picked up Reggie's neat pile, pulling some of the large brown leaves back over his lawn. The stony overcast sky held the hint of future rain.
“Yeah, he didn't break any laws, but now they've got him on the list.”
“Crap.” The Male Wielder List.
The Bureau's line was that the list allowed them to keep track of how many infractions a male Wielder performed. The truth was it didn't matter if you'd been nabbed for a crime or if they just knew of your existence, you still get on that list. Three strikes—three hits on the list—and off to the oubliette you went.