by P. S. Power
After a few steps it was clear the Brian wasn’t done though.
“What? Stop doing what? Telling the truth? Pointing out that the police might not be perfect all the time? Sorry if no one wants to hear it, but it doesn’t make it false. I didn’t sign up with the IPB to lose my right to free speech, if that’s what you’re saying then…” He didn’t finish the sentence. Probably because Tobin had worked his way to his side and patted his arm lightly.
“I think she means stop going for your gun. Warren is our friend and a good person. You should listen to him, even if you don’t agree with him totally. Just like he should listen to us when we talk about the things the police have done. But mainly it’s the gun thing.” The little froglike man sounded small and meek, but the words were decently clear considering how large the group was.
Proxy looked at his right arm and brought it around in front of him with a sharp jerking motion.
“Oh, sorry. I hadn’t realized I was doing that. It’s just, well, all the things I’ve done, I guess. I tend to get ready for a fight instantly anymore. I wasn’t…” The words stopped and he just walked for a long time, no one saying anything at all.
When he spoke again, they were nearly at the restaurant door. It wasn’t a huge place, but had a nice blue neon sign out front and looked clean. The door was solid though, not glass, a nice painted deep brown which looked good against the white textured walls of the place.
“I’m… It’s just that they always get away with what they do. Those police back home that beat and tortured me, tried to kill me… they got away with it. Who knows how many others they’ve killed since. The ones from the base that attacked us all, they’re being let go with no more than a slap on the wrist. Someone has to show them that they aren’t above the law. The law should count for them more than everyone else, not less. They’re supposed to enforce it, not break it over and over again. I just can’t see why no one else thinks that should matter. It’s like everyone is just saying that it’s OK to hurt me, to try and kill all of us and you people don’t seem to even care.” He held the door open as everyone filed in. Wisely, no one answered him.
Nothing they said would help, would it?
The inside of the place was nice, at least as good as the restaurant at the base on floor one. It wasn’t busy, or hadn’t been before they got in, but others were behind them and two news vans pulled into the parking lot as Marcia headed through the door. She covered her stomach self-consciously, aware that she might be a bit out of place, since no one else wearing bullet distressed clothing as a fashion statement.
Well, maybe it would start a trend?
After a few seconds a slightly goofy looking man of about thirty, light skin, light brown hair and a funny white smock thing on, came out to greet them, beaming.
“Warren! You came! Wonderful. You brought friends I see? Very good, Indeed. We can seat you all now, if you would like? I…” The man looked worried for a second, scared even as he glanced around at the people that had walked in. After a few seconds the man froze, then whispered directly into Warren’s ear leaning close. Marcia couldn’t hear him, but from the look on everyone else’s face some of the others got the situation before she did. Better than average hearing wasn’t that odd for a group like this after all. She had good hearing, but Bridget and Scott could hear everything said clearly, no doubt. Ink too, Marcia thought.
It was a study in facial expressions though, watching Warren, she decided as his friend spoke. First he just went blank and tilted his head to the left about thirty degrees, after a few more seconds he frowned and that warped into anger from there. Swallowing he turned and looked at everyone else and shook his head. It didn’t take a genius to understand something was wrong. Christian closed her eyes and sighed, turning half away from both the men, as if trying to deny they existed at all.
Warren took a deep breath and looked at the ground.
“Apparently… Enrique doesn’t wish to have Infected individuals in his establishment. I can’t really believe it, but… I…” He blushed, looking ashamed for some reason, even though it wasn’t his fault.
It was illegal to refuse to serve people just for being Infected, but it still happened regularly. Given everything that had happened she wondered who’d kick the crap out of Enrique first, Brian or her, but the owner stepped forward, speaking quickly.
“It’s not that I dislike anyone, but having obviously Infected people here… It will hurt business long term. I hadn’t realized that Warren intended to bring…” A hand got waved in their general direction, but clearly meant to cover Lauren, Peggy and Tobin. Maybe a few of the others, but it was too vague to be certain.
She was about to step up to the man and offer to beat him down when two things happened. The first she kind of expected, which was that the agents, led by Lancaster, moved forward as a group, looking ready to arrest the man on the spot. The second thing was the odd one, the outlier. Denis stepped to the front of them all first and squared off with the man.
Instead of reading him the riot act, he whispered to the man, very gently.
“Alright. If you’re too fucking moronic to serve our friends, we’ll just leave and take the cameras that are following us along with us. You know what? Screw it. I’m leaving anyway. I’d rather starve than eat here now for some reason. I think I’ll just go out and share that with the local and national news.” He spun and walked out, not even looking to see if anyone else was going to follow him. Brian did, which got Karen to as well, even if she had to be feeling conflicted, given her first mode. Marcia shrugged and followed. She had to eat like everyone else, but it wouldn’t matter to her if they hit McDonald’s instead of eating at this place.
A voice came into her ear then.
“I’m out of here too. Not that anyone will notice, but just so you all know. Someone should go and tell the news crew out front about this like Denis said. Several someone’s. I’d do it myself, but…”
It was a good plan. Too often Infected people just got pushed around, refused service or given treatment clearly designed to get them to leave as quickly as possible. Someone really should say something. It probably wouldn’t help, but it might point out to a few people that some behaviors were illegal.
“I agree Penny.” Marcia said as she hit the door, which was being held open by Denis for everyone else.
“We should say something about this right now. Prime, Charlot, would you two arrange that for us?”
The angry brunette had a tight look on her otherwise pretty face and her right hand was in a fist, glowing slightly, a white aura around it about an inch from the flesh.
“With pleasure dear. With pleasure.”
Marcia stood back, grabbing some of the others as she did, just so the cameras wouldn’t focus on them too much. It wasn’t that she wanted to bother hiding the “uglies”, like Peggy or Lauren, that wasn’t her point at all. What she really didn’t want was for Brian to be seen out in the open. He was just in a weird position in the world at the moment, being both loved by a large part of the population, especially women, and feared by those that viewed him as the most dangerous killer ever. She also wanted to keep Bridget off the screen if she could for much the same reason. People loved her, and thought she was darling and clever, but that would only last until they came to understand what she could really do. So for the time being it would be best to hide her a little.
Plus, it gave Marcia a reason to stand back and watch what went on.
It was fascinating to watch Charlot work when she was pissed and thought she could get away with a little more than would be normally allowed. She had Warren do the speaking, since he wasn’t Infected, and had Tobin stand next to him, not getting any help from Denis, which left him looking scared and shy, as the head chef spoke about how ashamed he felt about what had happened. Then they cycled through most of the famous people and included Lauren, who sounded so sad about the whole thing it nearly brought tears to Marcia’s eyes.
“How can w
e live in a world that insists we don’t?”
It was poignant for sure. The whole thing went on for about ten minutes and a crowd gathered. It wasn’t a big deal but one of the people in the audience, standing back behind the others, looked vaguely familiar to her. It could have just been a coincidence, because she’d known a lot of people over the years, but the man had the feel of covert ops about him. He wore it like the villain of a bad spy novel, standing with his eyes on her directly. She turned to close with him a bit, not just look, when there was a commotion behind them. A single police car pulling up with the lights on and siren blasting.
It nearly got the men in the car shot, she noticed, but Brian stopped himself in time. Bridget was halfway to the vehicle when it stopped though. Impulse. Marcia sighed and made her way over as well. If this was about them using the parking lot to complain, well, they could move on. Probably leaving a couple of police bodies behind, but it was probably fair for them to show up and send them on their way, wasn’t it? They were kind of disturbing the peace.
Instead the officer that stood up waved to her directly.
“Excuse me, are you Marcia Turner?” He spoke calmly, that bored expression that the police had on their faces about half the time locked in place.
He shouldn’t have known her name though, not just by seeing her face. She wasn’t high enough profile for that.
“Yes.” A few more steps brought her nearly into striking range. Her ideal distance at least. From here, about ten feet back, she could hit the man before he could even get to his side arm. It was just a difference in raw speed. Bridget was right along with her, providing her own miniature version of backup.
“How did you know?” Suspicions aside, sometimes asking a simple question would throw people off guard. The police were used to being in charge, which meant they were easily put off their game by asking things they weren’t ready to answer. It was normally a bad plan, but if this was a set up or an attack, she was just going to kill the men, bad press or not.
The man outside the car pointed toward her stomach.
“The bullet holes from the exercise earlier. I’m supposed to let you know that the sniper you caught earlier has been identified. Morton Sims. Kind of a local boy. We don’t think there’s any real threat, but the District Attorney has already decided to press charges, since Mort isn’t allowed to own weapons here. Just keeping you in the loop.” He looked around and saw the cameras, then smiled. It wasn’t very convincing, but then no one was getting footage of him in particular.
“Since we’re always more than happy to help out the IPB.” He blinked, but at least this guy didn’t seem to be lying about anything. Not hiding secret bigotry or anything. Not more than was probably prudent for his job.
“What’s the situation here? People don’t seem overly happy.”
Bridget took another step forward, a little too close to the man for his own comfort, instinct forcing him to pull back just a little, weight shifting back, feet sliding on the asphalt just enough to show he really didn’t want to be there.
The girl looked up at the man, her face serious.
“We were invited to diner here by the owner, but when we came, he decided that he really didn’t want any Infected in his place. Not ones that could be noticed at least. As if being pretty means the same thing as being worth common courtesy.” She growled the words, but they were still a bit high pitched. She was just too small for that not to happen. Like a young girl.
The words were too adult for her to be using, so it was probably part of a planned speech or something similar to that, given who her mom was, but the officer just nodded.
“OK. Well… I could call the IPB in on it, but it looks like they’re already here. Do you need any backup? I could talk to the owner if you want, see if we can’t straighten this out. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. No one wants this much bad press.”
Bridget snorted, which sounded almost like a hiccup for her.
“No thanks. I’m too hungry to wait around here anyway. We should all go and get some real food, not this fake-fusion-French-Cuban or whatever it is. Thanks though. We’ll be leaving I think.”
Marcia nodded, it was a good call. She tried to find the man in the crowd again, but it looked like he’d left. That was too bad, since Christian could have told her if he knew anything about her missing friends at all or if it was just happenstance. As it stood, the woman had probably ignored the people gathered completely. She really didn’t want to have others around much and crowds were a mess. Luckily it wasn’t very strong, as first modes went, so she could put up with people if she had to. Otherwise she’d be locked in her room at the base all the time.
“Alright, let’s go get some food. People getting too hungry won’t help the situation at all.” They had several big eaters after all and they were a good hour late getting that taken care of.
Blissfully nothing much happened for the next two hours, except what should have. Food, a few camera flashes on the walk back to the hotel and a few hard glares from the people behind the desk at the hotel, since to their minds they’d caused the scene earlier. So about what she’d have expected. It was only just turning Ten-thirty when they got in, so that meant there’d be plenty of time for a hasty sweep of the room and to change clothes before the meeting in the bar. If she hurried at least.
She wanted to get to the meeting point early after all. By about an hour ideally, so the room search would have to wait, even though it shouldn’t. That just pointed out that she needed to get some of the others trained up on that, so that they could do it too. Changing could be done though and she climbed into a loose pair of slacks and a blouse that was bright red. Her hair was short enough she didn’t need to do much with it, just comb it quickly. It wasn’t about looking good this time, just not so out of place anyone would notice her. The place was a bar after all and there was a convention starting, so at least some of the people would be dressed like she was. Close enough that no one would notice, she hoped. It would be a pain if she got hit on too much. Not that she didn’t like men; she really did, occasionally even the drunk ones, but turning guys down in a bar tended to get them to remember you and depending on how this went that may not be ideal.
It was a crap shoot though. This could end up being anything from a bit of a reunion with some old buddies to an all out military assault or even a bomb. Hopefully not, because it was a nice hotel and she had fragile people hanging around. Ones that she kind of liked.
Before she got to the door Penny stopped her, speaking into the ear bud that she’d put back in out of habit. That or Penny had done it for her. That was slightly creepy if it was the case, because she hadn’t noticed it at all.
The voice sounded normal though. Like a woman in her early-to-mid twenties.
“Where are you headed? I mean, we’re supposed to be on the buddy system or something, right? I can go with you, if you want. Watch you pick up guys or whatever.”
It was a great idea, if one slightly hard to coordinate normally. She smiled and gave the room a nod. She didn’t want to say it all out loud, in case the room had been bugged again, but it was really almost never a mistake to have someone ready to go that no one else knew about.
“OK, I’m off to work, so Bridget, will you and Warren stay here for a while? I don’t know when I’ll be back. Leave me the bed closest to the door?” She sounded happy enough about it, since there were two beds that would mean that she’d probably end up with Warren in with her, but that was fine.
“Wait, you didn’t mention me, does that mean you want me to go or not? Are you afraid the rooms bugged again? Oh!”
Something made Marcia’s right hand move on its own, she was just about to shake the spasm out when the invisible girl spoke again.
“Squeeze code, once for yes, twice for no. That way no one can hear us and probably wouldn’t catch on even if they saw it on film. Do you want me to go with you?”
She tightened her hand once, lightly.
“OK. Um, do I need to bring a gun for this? Brian packed one for me, just in case. I can kind of shoot it even. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be in a gun battle, but if it comes to it, I can hit someone from a few feet away.” She laughed gently as she said the words, but that stopped when Marcia squeezed her hand to signal yes again.
“Oh? Um, OK. I’ll get it then, give me a second here.” It took longer than a second, and Marcia made small talk with the other two, who were settling in to bed already, Bridget was in hers, but Penny didn’t mention it as being a problem, so she decided to ignore it for now. For all she knew that was what turned the girl on. She might not even know that the man was strictly gay, not bi or anything. Come to that, Marcia didn’t really know it either. It didn’t really matter, not in the moment.
“Got it. Am I supposed to watch for anyone in particular, or… Oh, right, um, right hand…”
The answer was yes, but by playing twenty questions Marcia felt they got to a relatively good understanding of what was needed for the operation. Penny would hang back and watch for anyone that seemed to be paying too much attention to her or the people she was with. If they started shooting, she was supposed to stop them. Preferably alive. It was hard to question dead people after all. That part was hard to convey, but the girl wasn’t a hardened killer Marcia didn’t think. Not that the concept had ever come up in conversation. She was a thief though, and a good one.
The only fight Marcia had even noticed her being in had ended with Denis being laid out on the floor, unconscious. The woman had hit him with a chair. That indicated she was willing to take action, at least in an emergency.
They separated a bit, just in case someone started shooting at her as she entered the Blue Boat, which was populated with more people than she would have expected the night before the convention was to start. Some of the people were a bit too pretty for real life, being television personalities and hookers most likely. The rest were mainly dressed up as tourist and businessmen. She grabbed a corner table by the far wall so she could see both the front door, which was made of glass and the solid wooden one that led to the back room. The employees looked right for the job, but that could just mean that the operatives in place were well trained, so she made a point to keep an eye on them too. There were at least two people, both men, that were giving her way too much attention for comfort.