“Meaning?”
“Meaning that we may still have time to cauterize this wound. Though I am loath to take direct action, we must have options available. Assemble the troops.”
“How many?”
“Everyone available in the region. If we must strike, we must be prepared to strike hard and do what is necessary.” He watched the man playing with the dog. “Sometimes, mine is not an enviable job.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Did you hear the one about the mutant that you could depend on? No? Well neither did I. [Canned laughter] As you may have guessed, my cohost, Recall, is missing in action again today. He hasn ’t called in or anything, so we don’t know what’s up. Me, I just figure he’s discovered girls.” [Canned laughter]
—Walt Norman Walt and Recall radio program
Jono followed her as she speed walked toward the girls* bathroom, “Give me the phone, Luv.”
“Don’t call me iuv,’ Jono, and no, I won’t give you the phone. I’m locking myself in the bathroom, turning the sink on full-blast to drown out your noise, and I’m calling the X-Mansion. I’m going to send the X-Men to rescue the guys, and that’s final. Yes, we swore we wouldn’t tell, and we won’t any more than is necessary, but I’m not going to just sit here on my hands while our friends are in trouble.”
Espeth appeared in the infirmary doorway, leaning heavily oil 'the door frame, but looking much stronger than the last time Paige had seen her. “I wouldn’t do that,” said Espeth. “You can call them, but where will you send them? South Carolina is a big state, and the lab where they’re being held is well hidden.”
Paige stopped a few feet in front of her and stared. She hadn’t considered that. Espeth had been so forthcoming, it hadn’t occurred to anyone that she’d left key pieces of information out. “The X-Men have resources. Wolverine can call some of his old intelligence buddies. Cerebro can search for mutant biosignatures if they have to.”
“This is the Hound program, remember? Mutant tracking is their business, and if you don’t think they have a way to shield their captures from Xavier’s scanning devices, you’re wrong. It can be done. The Genogoths do it all the time. And yes, your friend Wolverine or one of the others would eventually find where they’re being held. But how long will it take? Weeks? Months? How many times have the X-Men ‘lost’ someone and been unable to find them? Even Xavier himself has disappeared on a number of occasions. Meanwhile, you can’t even imagine what sort of things they have in mind for our friends.”
Paige stood her ground. “But even so, you’d deny us the information we need to save them?”
“FU take it to my grave.” Something in Espeth’s facade seemed to slip for a moment, a sliver of vulnerability showing. “You don’t understand the position I’m in, Guthrie, not just between the rock and the hard place, but between the unstoppable force and the immovable object. I’m trying to reach the impossible compromise here, and it can only happen on my terms.”
The phone in Paige’s pocket rang, and the sound made both of them jump. Paige looked at Espeth. Espeth looked back.
Paige took out the phone and opened it. “Hello.” She listened for a moment. “Nothing much. We’re just hanging out and watching TV.” She tried to put on a brave face. “Nothing happening here at all.”
Recall opened his eyes, then closed them again. It wasn’t right. He opened them again. No, it didn’t seem like a dream at all.
The cell walls seemed to be made out of some sort of plastic, or maybe fiberglass. Every surface of the little room— walls, floor, ceiling, the sparse furnishings that flowed into the floor and walls as though the entire thing had been molded in one piece—all were a uniform, glossy white. Two benches along the walls, one of which he was lying on, a small table, a sink, a lavatory, all melded seamlessly into the rest of the room. In fact there were no corners at all, as floor swept smoothly into wall and wall smoothly into ceiling. These were the first details that Scooter McCloud, better known by his nickname “Recall,” took in as he awoke.
It also hadn’t escaped him that he wasn’t alone in the cell, that his two college friends and fellow mutants, Peter B. DeMulder, a.k.a. Chill, and Willy Gillis, a.k.a. Dog Pound, sat on an identical bench across the room. They were dressed in utilitarian green jumpsuits. He glanced down, and saw that he was dressed in one as well.
“We were wondering,” said Chill, a look of controlled anger on his face, “if you’d ever wake up.”
It took Recall a moment to realize that Chill wasn’t mad at him, something totally out of character for his cool-headed friend and sometime roommate, but rather angry at their unseen captors.
“Of course,” continued Chill, “you’re the smallest of the three of us. It’s possible whatever they doped us with hit you harder.”
Recall grimaced. He didn’t like being reminded of his small stature under the best of circumstances, even if it was true. Chill’s beanpole frame was at least a foot taller than he, and the Pounder was not only a bit taller, he was built like a human-Rottweiler, thick and muscular. Feeling generally self-conscious, Recall tried to sit up and discovered that not only was it a difficult proposition, but it caused his head to spin.
“Hey,” Pounder leaned close and put a hand on his shoulder, a frown of concern on his wide face, “take it easy, spud. That’s some rough stuff they used on us. We both took it pretty hard too.” He glanced over at Chill, who seemed distracted, then snapped his attention back to his cellmates.
Chill smiled nervously and ran his fingers through his close-cropped, white hair. “Sorry, short stuff. Don’t mean to be cruel. This is a shock to all of us.”
Recall managed to push himself into a sitting position. He slumped with his back against the wall. He turned his head, and the cool smoothness felt good against his cheek and forehead. He still felt doped up, disoriented. “Last thing I remember,” he said, “I was—”
“In Chicago, taping your show,” said Chill, “last we heard anyhow. And Pound and I were in Seattle, getting ready for graduation and turning over the M.O.N.S.T.E.R. chapter there to the new president. Last we remember, Pound is helping me pack up my office. We were hauling some boxes out to the car, and then it gets fuzzy.”
Pound shook his head. “I don’t even remember that much. I can’t even remember leaving the chapter house.” He put his hands on his bald scalp and let out a deep, slow breath. “Like I said, bad stuff.”
Recall tried to remember. At first, even the last week in Chicago seemed a jumble. Then he focused, tapped into his mutant ability to find lost things. He’d learned early on that this ability extended to his own memories, at least when he consciously applied it. Images and memories snapped into neat piles, like the cards in a game of computer solitaire.
He remembered a marathon taping session of the Walt and Recall radio show, then the daily live broadcast, plus two taped episodes to be inventoried as fill-in while he was back at school. By the end, Walt Norman had been irritable and difficult to work with, hardly unusual.
Then Recall had gone down the elevator in the downtown building where the studio was located. His contract called for a car to take him to and from his parents’ home in the suburbs, allowing him extra time for studying. The car had been there as expected. No, a car.
“I remember,” he said. “I was going home, and I saw what I thought was my car. Then this woman gets out of the front, not one of the usual drivers. A guy gets out of the back, a big man, and holds up what looks like some kind of pistol. I’m thinking, they must be car-jackers or something, when he pulls the trigger. I don’t even have time to react, but there’s no bang, just a hiss and a smell kind of like honey and paint-thinner mixed. I realize that he’s sprayed me with something. Then it’s real hard to think, or stand, or anything. I fall over and he’s pulling me into the car.”
“I told you,” said Chill to Pound, “that he’d remember more than we did. They probably nabbed us the same way and were waiting at my car.” He looked back at R
ecall. “That all?” Recall pondered for a moment. “No. One more thing. I woke up a little, not all the way. I felt shaking, heard voices, sounds, then that smell again.” The voices had been unfamiliar, so he focused on remembering the sounds. “Jet engines.
thunder, the creaking sounds a plane makes when it hits turbulence. Maybe they flew me to Seattle?”
Chill pursed his lips. “Not unless we’ve been out longer than we think. Meteorology is my major, you know. Jet stream was hauling all the Pacific moisture south, and a big high-pressure system was controlling the Midwest. Clear sailing all the way. Could be south though, or east.” He shrugged. “What am I talking about? I just know we’re not in Kansas any more, Toto. We could be in Genosha for all we know.” Pound’s eyes went wide. “You don’t really think—?”
“Just a joke, really. We don’t know where we are really, or why.” He grinned. “We should be honored. I figure, normally this kind of mystery treatment is reserved for the X-Men or the Fantastic Four.” He glanced to his right, and pointed in that direction. “By the way, say hello to our viewing audience.”
- .Recall saw that he was pointing at a small black circle high in the far wall. It was smooth and flush with the otherwise unmarked white surface.
“We think there’s a camera back there,” Chill explained. “Probably a microphone here somewhere too.” He dropped to a stage whisper. “Don’t talk in front of the toilet.”
Despite himself. Recall chuckled. Cheer up the troops. It was in Chill’s nature, part of why he’d made such a great chapter president these last three years.
Recall looked again at the hidden camera. Maybe there was something he could do. He stood up, reeled slightly as the blood seemed to rush from his head, then walked closer to the far wall.
“Look,” he said, “whoever you are, maybe you don’t know who you’ve got here. My name is Scooter McCloud, but my air name is Recall, of ‘The Norman and Recall’ radio show. We’re carried on seventy stations across the country.”
The black circle on the wall just stared at him. “I’m famous. People will be looking for me, not just the authorities, but the show has lots of fans.”
Nothing. “The staff sends out a hundred autographed pictures of me a week. Our web page takes over a thousand hits a day."
The circle just looked at him. Suddenly something inside him seemed to shatter. He slammed his fist against the wall. “Let us out of here! I’m famous. Let us out!”
Chill was suddenly behind him, trying to calm him down.
He pounded the wall again. “Let us out! I’m famous!” His head was spinning. Suddenly it was hard to stand. He slumped against the comforting support of the wall and slid slowly down it. “I’m only sixteen years old-—”
As Black drove into the parking lot of the Snow Bird Motor Court he saw that it was almost entirely full of black vehicles. They were drawing attention to themselves. Genogoths were supposed to travel alone, or in small groups. Twenty-five was considered a major gathering. Attention was inevitable in bringing such a large force to such a small town.
He found an open space and edged the Jag carefully into it. As he climbed from the car he saw an employee watching him from the door of the motel’s office, a woman of fifty or so, dressed in a baggy, loud, fioral-print muumuu. Rather than ignoring her, he stopped and made a point of staring back. The woman froze, like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck. Then finally she dashed back inside the office. As he turned away, he caught a glimpse of her peering at him through a set of blinds.
It was part of the Genogoth philosophy, to hide in plain sight. Someone attempting to conceal themselves will always be found out eventually. By not concealing themselves, by dressing strangely and acting intrusively, they became, in a strange way, invisible. The trick was not to avoid being seen. It was to be seen, and then make the watcher turn away.
Doubtless the locals would talk, rumors would circulate, of cultists, Hollywood people scouting for a movie location, traveling rock bands, and a thousand other things, none of which would remotely resemble the truth. The Genogoths, each and every one of them, were soldiers; trained, determined, dedicated, and ruthless. He had assembled a small army under the townspeople’s very noses, and they would never know it.
He stepped up to the door of room sixty-six and tapped on the door, two soft, two hard, one soft, two hard. The door opened and Black stepped inside without a word.
The room was like a thousand others of similar vintage that Black had seen. There were two beds, a small table with two chairs, a combination dresser and writing desk, an end table between the beds, a cracked mirror on the wall over the desk, and a few ugly lamps. An ancient window air conditioner was mounted in a box near the door at the front of the room. The wallpaper peeled in the comers, and in some places had been stuck down with cellophane tape. The carpet was avocado green where the original color showed through the stains.
', There were two men in the room, sitting in the chairs by the table. One was in his late twenties, tall, slender, muscular. He wore no shirt under his black leather vest, and displayed an impressive assortment of tattoos and body piercings. His blonde hair was shaved on the sides exposing more tattoos. The hair in the center of his head was long, pulled back in a ponytail. He also had a single tattoo on his right cheek, a tiny, stylized section of a DNA molecule. It exactly matched the silhouette of the silver pendant that Black wore around his neck. The man paused just a second too long, then stood and offered Black his chair.
Black took the chair. “Thank you, Leather."
The man who sat across the table from him was older, and much more massively built. He was muscled, the build of someone who did heavy work on a regular basis, not someone who honed themselves in a gym. His hands were rough and callused, the fingers thick and strong. His hair was red, streaked with gray, and hung half-way down the back of his black Van Halen tour shirt. His jeans were tom in places, and his sandals were heavily worn. On his right wrist, he wore a hand-made pewter bracelet. Woven into the design of the bracelet was the same double-helix design that Leather and Black wore. He would have looked at home as the head roadie on any concert tour in the country.
“You,” said Black, “I don’t know.”
“Name’s Styx. East coast head of Covert Information and Surveillance.”
“What happened to Pit?”
“Took a bullet from a rogue Genosian Magistrate, protecting a mutant in Florida.” He shrugged. “Not his job, ya know, but he was in the right place at the right time.”
Black nodded. “He was a good man, Pit. We all do what we must.” He looked up at Leather, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest. “Status?”
“We’ll have patrols along all the roads and in the woods around the school by nightfall. If they attempt to leave by air, we'have modified Gulfstream interceptors stationed strategically at three nearby airports.”
Styx continued the report. “We’ve got an RF monitoring and jamming van in place, and my roadies are working to tap the incoming phone and data lines. We’ll shortly be able to monitor communications in or out, and to cut the lines at a moment’s notice.”
Black leaned his elbows in the table and pressed his fingertips together. The gesture was at once thoughtful, and an opportunity to engage in isometric exercise. Black liked everything to do double-duty whenever possible. “So, we have them contained, and when we’re ready, isolated. Young Espeth has been quite resourceful in evading us so far, but in coming here for help, she’s created her own trap. All we need do is slam it shut on her.”
Scattered around the western part of South Carolina are the various patches of woodlands, hills, and low mountains that collectively make up Sumter National Forest. Within the boundaries of one of these patches, at the edge of the Blue
Ridge Mountains, was a separate plot of government land not listed on any map.
Originally, it was the home of a secret radar site guarding against missile attack by Soviet submarines in the
Atlantic. A huge tunnel had been drilled into side of the mountain, visible from the outside only as a huge concrete portal sealed with steel doors. Passages were drilled out into the mountain and expanded into chambers, where a dozen men could live and work, and where tons of bulky radar and communications could be stored and operated against the threat of nuclear attack. But the technology on which the station was based had become obsolete long before the Cold War ended, and it had been gutted and sealed.
The locals took little notice when the site was years later leased to a “mining operation” which began to haul in unmarked trucks full of heavy equipment, and haul out truckloads of rock. Nor did the fences and signs, warning hikers and hunters who might consider trespassing against the possible danger of lost explosives and blasting caps, cause much disturbance. When, in time, the flow of trucks turned into a trickle, most assumed that the mining venture had been unsuccessful, or that whatever vein of whatever ore it had been mining had merely played out.
None of them could have suspected that the “mining company” was actually the cover for a secret government operation, or that the trucks had been hauling away not ore, but the tailings resulting from a massive expansion of the underground tunnels and galleries of the original installation. Nor did the trucks coming in carry mining equipment, but rather advanced equipment once associated with a now-defunct black operation known only as “Project Homegrown.”
Project Homegrown had been under the direction of General Macauley Sharpe, an effort to study, and replicate in humans, the powers of non-mutant super-humans. Mistakes had been made. The super-human vigilante “Spider-Man” and the government-sanctioned mutant group X-Factor had become involved. The project’s primary laboratory, known as “Shad-owbase” had been destroyed.
Sharpe had been made the scapegoat, court-martialed, and stripped of his rank and honor. Then, quietly, the very people who had taken everything from him offered him a new position, one with even less sanction, one for which he was ideally suited.
Generation X - Genogoths Page 4