Residue

by Steve Diamond

  It was all the time I needed.

  I dropped the bubble and grabbed Alex’s gun. I raised it and pulled the trigger without thinking. The weapon was just an extension of my hand, like Alex had taught.

  The monster’s eyes widened, and it tried to redirect its energy.

  Far, far too late.

  The first bullet hit it in the leg, and the next its arm. My aim wasn’t any better, but at this range it was hard to miss. The Leech screamed in pain.

  I let my psychic aura surge again, copying the way it had tried to feed on me. How it had fed on Barry. I fed off the Leech’s fading aura, drinking in the energy until I thought I might burst.

  It tried to fight back, but I swung my very real fist at its face, and felt the monster’s nose give beneath the punch. Red blood spurted, mixing with the psychic energy it was losing like crazy.

  With the psychic hand not holding the gun, I reached out to the Leech’s throat and squeezed its aura until every bit of the monster’s energy snuffed out.

  I brimmed with power, intoxicated. This is what the Leech felt every time it killed someone. It was this feeling it hungered for.

  The Leech collapsed like a rag-doll, dead. I’d finished what my grandfather had started. He’d let it live, but I couldn’t. Not after everything it had done.

  And yet I had a hollow feeling in my gut.

  I looked down at Alex. Psychic energy bled from her still. A gaping psychic hole bled from her chest.

  A sudden thought hit me. What if I could close the hole? Seal it up? What if I could fill it back up with what had been lost? Like…like a blood transfusion, but with psychic energy.

  It was a stupid, crazy, awesome idea that had an outside chance of working.

  I quivered with power. Power that would make me hunger for it every time I saw another’s aura.

  I knelt down and brought Alex’s head into my lap.

  The wound was ugly, though only I could see it. To everyone else, the cause of her harm would be a mystery. I held my hand over the wound and willed my aura to drip into her.

  Drip. Drip.

  Nothing. Please, Alex. Please come back.

  Drip. Drip.

  She took in a breath.

  I almost choked in relief, but kept letting my psychic energy drip into her. At the edge of my vision, black began creeping in.

  Just a little more.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  Just a little more.

  Drip.

  I couldn’t see anything, and soon I swam in darkness.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  A hospital bed. Here I was again. Only this time the hospital was a lot quieter than before.

  I blinked a few times, then brought up my arms to look at them. No sign of any wounds, psychic or otherwise. My head pounded.

  It took three tries to sit up, but when I did I was surprised to see the sleeping form of Alex in a chair next to my bed. She looked fine. Beautiful. Alive. Holy crap. My crazy, stupid gamble worked.

  A cup of water sat on a tray next to me. Apparently I was still pretty weak, and discovered this as the water cup fell from my fingers.

  Alex jumped awake, hand reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. Her eyes blinked in confusion, then she broke into a huge smile. “You’re awake!” She flew across the room in a blur and hugged me. This was way better than the last time I woke up in a hospital.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer right away, just kept on hugging me. I was only too glad to return the sentiment.

  Alex finally pulled away, her eyes were wet. Geez. Twice in just a couple days. I was a bad influence on her. Well, at least I thought it had only been a few days.

  “Alex—”

  She held up a hand to interrupt me. “Don’t say anything. Not yet. Just give me second.” She took a long series of deep breaths. She wiped off her eyes and laughed in relief.

  “I thought you were done,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Done?”

  “The doctors thought you were a goner. After the fourth day—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” It was my turn to interrupt. “Fourth day? How long have I been out?”

  “Ten days.”

  Geez. No wonder I felt like complete garbage. For that matter, I probably stunk like garbage.

  “A little,” Alex said with a smirk.

  Awesome.

  “They had no idea what was going on with you,” she said. “I didn’t either. I woke up on the floor of that cabin, and you were unconscious next to me. It was hard to even tell if you were breathing. I made a litter and dragged you to the car, then drove you to the hospital.”

  Her eyes widened a bit as she read my memory of saving her life. I shrugged uncomfortably at her expression.

  “I told them I had found you on the side of a road,” she continued after a moment. “And insinuated you may have been a victim of the violence at the dance.” She shrugged and curled back up in her chair. “It wasn’t hard to lead them there. That’s all anyone has been thinking about.”

  “It is that bad?” I asked. “I know a lot of kids died…”

  “People are picking up and moving,” Alex replied. “Not just one family here and there. Everyone. In a couple of weeks no one will be here. Helix is closing this location.”

  “Where are all the employees going?”

  “Wherever they want. Helix is offering paid-transfers to anyone who wants to stick with the company.”

  The important question. “Where are you going?”

  She reached over and pulled an envelope from her jacket lying on the room’s table. The envelope the Insider had given us. “I’m going to our branch in Sacramento.”

  She tossed the envelope into my lap. “The Insider said my dad was in Sacramento,” I said.

  “What a coincidence.”

  “You read the letter?”

  “Yep,” she said. “You’re going to want to read it too.”

  I didn’t open the letter. Instead I set it aside and looked at Alex. “It might be lonely in Sacramento for you.”

  “I won’t know anyone,” she agreed.

  “I suppose I should be a good…friend…and make sure you have someone to talk to,” I said. She smiled at me before I could verbalize my next thought.

  “Plus,” I said. “I promised you a date.”

  Epilogue

  The room was dimly lit and sparsely furnished. A round, polished oak table in the center of the room surrounded by high-backed expensive chairs was the only furniture. Six chairs, every one of them filled but one.

  It’s like those movie clichés Jack always talks about, Alex thought.

  Despite being in the presence of four other people, her mind was silent other than a low buzzing. A tiny orb rested on the table. A dampener. More like a silencer. As Alex gazed at it, the sphere seemed to writhe just beneath the surface. The movement pulled an involuntary shiver from her. As long as that…thing…was here, no one’s abilities would work. Besides, no one wanted their minds read in this setting.

  Especially not the person whose seat was still empty.

  As if summoned, the door to the room slid open. The brighter lights from the subterranean halls of Helix cast the newcomer as a silhouette. He was always the last to arrive at these meetings. Always make them wait, he told her once.

  He took his seat. Arthur Gaines. President and CEO of Helix.

  Alex’s father.

  Suddenly Alex was grateful no one—not her or her father—could read minds here. She didn’t want her father to know any more than she gave him.

  “Give me an update,” Gaines said.

  “All our assets are being moved to our Sacramento facility,” the man to her immediate left said. His name was Richard Path. Her father had often referred to him as a manager of perception. He could make a person perceive him as whatever he wanted. A deputy. A teacher. A manager. Whatever.

  “How many of our…normal…employees will be comi
ng with us?” Gaines asked. The briefest flicker of distaste crossed his face, likely unnoticed by the others.

  “Five-percent,” Path replied.

  “Well done,” Gaines nodded. “It is so much cheaper to hire new people than move existing ones. What of public perception?” This last question was directed to the man on her right, Mel Smart.

  Smart smiled as only a lawyer could. “They will believe whatever I tell them to believe.”

  “Is that what I asked?” Gaines said in a low voice.

  Smart’s smile faltered there, and Alex took a bit a satisfaction from it. The man was…greasy. “The high school attack has been blamed on some rabid animals,” Smart answered. “We bought some wolves, killed them, then passed them off as the source of the attack rather than some of Whyte’s Hounds. Then we burned down the gym to get rid of any actual evidence. The world will believe we are moving our facilities simply as a further result of Daniel Bishop’s made-up ineptness, and the terrible tragedy at the school. They’ll believe anything the media says.”

  Her father nodded at that, then turned his eyes to her. “Speaking of the Bishop’s, how are things progressing with Jack Bishop?”

  “He’s set to move to Sacramento as well,” Alex replied. “I’ve already set him up with a job and his classes like I did here.”

  “Good,” her father said. “We want him comfortable so we can continue to observe him. Martha, I trust you will be going with Jack?”

  Sitting to Gaines’ right was Jack’s aunt, Martha. She nodded her head, saying nothing. Alex was convinced Martha was the only person here—besides herself—who genuinely cared about Jack.

  Jack had no idea how much of his life was monitored and directed. Even before his dad had been taken.

  Alex had been officially observing Jack for years now. She manipulated his scheduling to match her own every school year. She made sure he saw her when he worked at Helix. Went to the theater when he did. Ate at the same restaurants. Shopped at the same stores. Most of the time he never knew.

  For the longest time she had no idea why her father had tasked her with surveillance of Jack. Alex simply did as she was told. It was safer that way.

  Then she’d received the call from the Insider about Project Sentinel. Careful searches on the company server had yielded quite a bit more information.

  As far as Alex could tell, Jack was just one of a series of teenagers and adolescents being observed under the scope of Project Sentinel. Her father hadn’t objected when she’d asked to be more involved in his surveillance.

  Her father probably thought she was doing her job, but it was far more than that. Alex was smart enough to realize her feelings for Jack were strong. They were real. She wasn’t about to let anyone—or anything—hurt him.

  That desire to protect him and be close to him made her heart beat a little faster. It felt…fantastic.

  The other man in the room, to her father’s left, was Alexander Jones. He never went by “Alex”, to her relief. Always “Alexander”. Or “The Doctor”. She wanted nothing to do with the small man. His was currently in charge of all the…experiments. Hand-picked by her father.

  “In fact,” her father continued as he pushed himself up to standing, “it’s time to get things moving forward. We are officially cancelling all other experiments. Project Sentinel is now our only priority.”

  What?

  Everyone appeared as shocked as she. All except The Doctor.

  Gaines pulled a small remote from his pocket and tapped a button. The wall behind him shifted and slid apart to reveal a huge screen. It blinked to life and immediately showed images of Jack.

  It then shifted to images of other teens unwittingly in the program.

  “Effective immediately,” her father said, “all surveillance on Subjects One through Six will be terminated. We will focus all our attention on Jack Bishop.”

  “What is going to happen with the other Subjects?” Martha asked.

  “What do you think will happen?” Gaines asked sharply. “They will be educated and taught how to use their powers for the benefit of Helix. If they become a danger, they will be eliminated. Like usual. However, I always have backup plans. Officially, Jack is Subject Seven, and admittedly I was most keen on Subjects Four and Five. Some information recently came to my attention that put things into perspective.

  “Hounds have been reported at the locations of all our Subjects,” he continued. “That, in itself, is worrying. It screams of inside information. However, that is not related to the information I received.

  “I tracked some requests on our servers,” he said. His eyes met Alex’s. She kept her face calm, but inside she panicked. He knew! Worse than that, he’d followed Alex’s queries to come to the answer. She should have been more careful. What have I done? “Piggy-backing on these requests was a spy program. We have to assume we have been compromised. Whyte knows everything.”

  “How can you be sure?” Smart asked. “It could have been anyone. How are you so sure it was Janison Whyte?”

  Gaines’ smile was cold. He pressed another button on his remote. Another picture replaced all the others on the screen. “Because he was in town personally observing Jack Bishop.”

  Alex blinked several times, trying to clear her eyes. They had to be mistaken.

  The photo was from a surveillance camera—one of hundreds Helix covertly installed around the city. It clearly showed The Insider.

  Janison Whyte.

  “He shifted again,” Alexander Jones said. “Our facial recognition software didn’t pick him up until he made contact to gloat.”

  “He made contact?” Alex forced herself to ask.

  Gaines nodded. “He left a message on my personal phone.”

  A recording began playing over the speakers in the room. She recognized the voice of The Insider immediately.

  Hello there, Arthur. It’s been a while since we last spoke, hasn’t it? I trust you are doing splendid, and that your preparations to move your headquarters to Sacramento are progressing efficiently. You’ve yet to make that knowledge public, but when has that ever stopped me before?

  I’m just calling to congratulate you on Jack Bishop’s progress. He is indeed the key to Project Sentinel. Who would have thought that after all these years the project catalyst would be right there close to you? It’s just like you dreamed it back when I was your terrified assistant. Those were interesting times. Before I’d come into my own abilities…

  Ah, but I digress. I just wanted to let you know I personally made sure Jack survived all those Hounds I sent. Truth be told, he didn’t need much help from me. Between your incredible daughter—give her my regards and best wishes—and Jack’s developing powers…well, let’s say my field test of your “Subject Seven” went perfectly.

  Oh, Arthur! If you could have seen the battle he had with the Leech. It was exquisite! For a minute there I was sure I was going to have to intervene, but he did so much better than his grandfather.

  Do you miss Wyatt like I do? Do you regret what you did to him the day he died? The day Jack was born?

  Arthur, you may have killed Wyatt that day, but I’m almost positive he is still around.

  I’m sure you know what I mean.

  I look forward to our meeting again in Sacramento. I’m sure it will be…explosive.

  See you soon, Arthur.

  About the Author

  Steve Diamond founded and runs the review site, Elitist Book Reviews (www.elitistbookreviews.com), which was nominated for the Hugo Award in 2013, 2014 & 2015. He writes for Baen, Privateer Press, and numerous small publications. RESIDUE is his first full-length published work. His is also the editor of the Horror anthology, SHARED NIGHTMARES.

  Steve lives in Utah with his wife and two kids. He's a bit (a ton) fanatical about the New Orleans Saints and Oakland Athletics. He also thoroughly enjoys having his likeness killed off in other people's novels.

  Author Website: https://thestevendiamond.wordpress.com/


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