Tap-Dancing the Minefields

by Lyn Gala

  John started the SUV. “Most people aren’t that logical.”

  “That’s one thing about Zhu. He’s always logical. Sometimes painfully so,” Tank said. At one time or another, Zhu had angered all of them with his ability to ignore feelings and say something horribly honest. Ellie had once accused him of having no emotions, and they’d had a vicious fight because Zhu insisted that he felt everything but couldn’t understand how feeling something made any difference in the logical decision that had to be made. Tank wondered if that hadn’t been one of the first cracks in their tight-knit dysfunctional family. Zhu and Ellie were both so smart, and it had been like they couldn’t occupy the same space without rubbing each other wrong.

  Zhu’s expression twisted with pain as he said, “I thought it was because of my demonic nature, but I suppose genetic tampering has more to do with it. For the first time in my life, I envy people who can live in denial.”

  “The modifications always have side effects,” John said. He paused with his hand on the gear selector before he turned in his seat and pinned Tank with an unhappy look. He leaned forward so he was half over the center console and nose to nose with Tank. “Speaking of modifications, you need to listen to me,” he said seriously.

  “Yeah. Aldrich told me I was pretty much assigned to you full-time now, so I think that does mean I listen to you.” John’s eyes got large, and Tank hoped that was surprise and not horror.

  After a second, John’s eyes narrowed. “He said I could have you?”

  “Um, that sounds weirdly slavish, but he said I report to you.”

  “Why?” Zhu asked.

  Tank shrugged. “Something about me not being very good at military stuff. Ducks and fire got in there somehow, but I’m just happy to take orders from someone who makes sense.” Tank had infinite patience for instruction on how to fire a weapon or crawl through mud while navigating an obstacle course, but all the saluting rules and protocol tripped him up every time. That stuff wasn’t important.

  John grunted, which could have meant anything from “good” to “I’m giving you back to Aldrich at the first available opportunity.” Before Tank could ask, John poked him in the chest. “If you put Dr. Underwood in danger like that again, you may not survive.”

  Tank held up his hands in surrender. “I already got this speech from Colonel Aldrich, and he’s pretty convincing. I get it. I fucked up.”

  “You don’t get it. The modifications the aliens made lead to some pretty severe aggression. I get angry, and sometimes it’s hard to control myself. I wanted to snap your neck for putting yourself and Lev in danger, and I didn’t only because I respect your loyalty. But if you do something that dumb again, I’m likely to hit you. I may hit you hard enough that you’ll never get up again.” There was an intensity in John’s face that made chills go up Tank’s spine. He meant every word.

  Zhu grabbed John’s arm. “Hey. Don’t go threatening him.”

  “I’m not.” John jerked his arm free. “When I threaten him, he’ll know it. That was an explanation. The human body isn’t meant to be so strong or fast, and I pay a price for it.”

  Tank reached through the seats to rest his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Zhu, it’s fine. I didn’t even stop to get a weapon before jumping into the fight, and he has every right to be angry.”

  “He’s not angry, he’s threatening you with death.”

  “I’m warning him that death could be the outcome of his stupidity,” John said without any particular emotion in his voice.

  “Zhu, think about it. How many times have we seen Marie lose her temper? How often did she go into the basement to hit something that wasn’t us?”

  “I get that, but she never let herself threaten people. She kept her emotions under control.”

  “Doubt it,” John said. “She probably made sure you were out of the line of fire before blowing off steam. All the mods I’ve known are like that. We just learn to live with it.” He turned to give Tank another look. “So don’t fuck up again.”

  “No fucking up. Got it. Promise. I have seen what Marie could do when she was really angry. I mean, she fractured her hand on a wall. Her hand healed freakishly fast, but the brick wall was broken forever. I don’t want to see your version of a ’roid rage.”

  Zhu’s face twisted up with frustration or rage—Tank couldn’t tell. But when he spoke, Zhu sounded calmer than he was. “These modifications have such serious side effects. What’s the point of doing this? Of creating gladiator matches? Why all the research?”

  “To figure people out? Because aliens are dicks? I don’t know,” Tank said. “And I doubt I ever will.”

  John headed into traffic—but given the way he drove, Tank figured they’d be stuck waiting to pull out of the courthouse parking lot for at least an hour before John would see an opening large enough for his comfort. Tank was honestly surprised that New York traffic plus John’s anger issues hadn’t already led to a few cases of road rage.

  Zhu had his thinky face on. “This is a lot of money they’re investing. I don’t care how good their technology is, the cost of transporting people, supporting the research, replacing damaged equipment—it’s significant. And why would they systematically test all of Marie’s reactions by trying to isolate her, frighten her, enrage her, tempt her, and largely leave me alone?”

  “It sounds like they aren’t leaving you alone, not anymore,” Tank said. “And where are we going?”

  “To talk to the Petersons,” Zhu said absentmindedly. “The first attempt was to isolate me, much the way they attempted to isolate Marie by forcing her mother to move her to a new school. Luck allowed Marie to reconnect with Ellie, whom she had known for years. Later, when I was isolated from the rest of the group, I had Marie. There are definite parallels, but the fact that Marie was a child of fourteen during her isolation and I’m a twenty-one-year-old college graduate should invalidate any comparisons.”

  “I thought you guys went to high school together,” John said.

  “We did my freshman and sophomore years, but even then Zhu was taking college classes.” Tank answered before Zhu could. Sometimes his detailed answers took too long. “Why are we going to the Petersons’?”

  “To figure out if they’re alien avatars,” Zhu said. “I assume one of us would have been able to identify an avatar, but I can’t be sure since the aliens knew we were there and may have used equipment that was more effectively shielded. I’m really upset at the idea that someone I trusted might have been an observer in this test. I trusted Mr. Peterson.”

  Tank sat up straighter. “Wait. What? Why would you think the Petersons would be involved?”

  “If I were setting up an experiment, I would want a way to get my subjects to self-report their inner feelings,” Zhu said.

  “No. No, that’s not—” Tank pressed his lips together. Zhu was giving him that look. Zhu had developed that expression as a fifth grader who other kids wouldn’t play with. It was a combination of pity and exasperation that meant the rest of the world was too dumb to breathe Zhu’s air, but he was going to let you live because he liked you anyway. Roger’s mother had looked at their new puppy with that expression every time it peed on the floor.

  “I’m not being overly emotional,” Tank said.

  “I don’t think there’s a way to be overly emotional here. You could be screaming with tears running down your face as you kicked the windows out of the SUV, and I would call you justified,” Zhu said. “But look at the facts. The Petersons provided a lot of information about demons, and they were perfectly placed to observe us.”

  “And Mrs. Peterson was emotionally destroyed when Ellie died.”

  Zhu nodded slowly. “She was. It’s possible that they aren’t involved. John said he has a device that should be able to tell if these are avatars. We have to engage them in nontrivial conversation that would require an operator to send unique commands to the avatars.”

  Tank’s brain threatened to go off-line. It was one th
ing to question the nature of reality and whether demons or aliens existed, but Zhu was suggesting something even worse. The Petersons had been the closest any of them had to a normal family. Between poverty and demonic interference, none of them had great parental figures growing up. “You seriously want to test the Petersons?”

  John spoke up. “Personally, I want to call them cowardly assholes.”

  “Hold on!” Tank’s voice broke. “No. No, you cannot say anything like that. It’s not true.”

  John grunted. “I talked to Zhu, and I’ve heard some of your stories. It’s enough for me to know that they sent Marie and Zhu to fight instead of going themselves.”

  “Because they were the strongest. Mr. Peterson was there getting his ass kicked with us in at least half the fights.” Tank frowned—it occurred to him that those had usually been the stories where something ambushed them. Mr. Peterson wasn’t someone you planned to take into battle.

  Tank’s defense clearly didn’t impress John. “On the ship, people tried to protect the kids. They took extra fighting rounds so the guards would leave the young ones alone. Instead of doing that, the Petersons sent you out to fight.”

  “When did you start fighting?” Tank asked John. He was guessing it was younger than fourteen.

  John clenched his jaw so tight that the muscle on the side bulged. Tank had enough time to truly regret asking before John answered. “I lived in a real bad slave room for a while, but once I got shifted to a nicer group after an injury, I didn’t fight until I was probably closer to seventeen or eighteen. I got through the lanky stage before I got put in the ring again, and even then, one of the mod women tried taking the fight for me. I volunteered.”

  “The aliens volunteered us involuntarily,” Zhu said. “That said, the Petersons never encouraged us to risk our lives.”

  “No, but they never risked their own in your place,” John said. “That makes them shitty human beings.”

  Zhu shook his head. “It makes them logical. They believe Marie and I have demon blood, and we are the targets. The fact that this is utterly wrong doesn’t invalidate their beliefs. If they took our place, the demons would kill them and then continue to target us.”

  They were at a red light, so John turned to give Zhu a confused look. “I thought you said it was logical that they’d be avatars.”

  “I did. Both possibilities are logical, and until we have evidence for one or the other being more likely, I can argue for both.”

  John turned and looked at Tank with an almost comical expression.

  “This is why he didn’t have many friends growing up,” Tank said. “People avoided me because I ate my boogers. They avoided Zhu because he could argue every side of every argument equally well and leave everyone so confused that they quit trying to think.”

  “People avoid me because they want to wallow in their own ignorance,” Zhu said.

  “Yeah, I’m almost sure I said the same thing. But which of those two possibilities do you think is more probable? Do you think they’re avatars?” Tank wanted to believe that the Petersons had truly loved them and had pulled away not because their love had wavered but because they were hurting too much.

  “I think logically that someone at school is an avatar, but putting two avatars that close to the group would be dangerous, especially when two of us were modified. However, if I’m wrong in that guess, I won’t be surprised. The odds are fairly even.”

  “And that’s why we’ve got to find out,” John said. “The only way to get aliens to go away is to expose the operation. That way they can’t work in secrecy anymore. If these two are avatars, we need to make it clear that we’re inviting them to get the fuck off the planet. If they’re sorry excuses for human beings who let kids fight a war they wouldn’t get involved in themselves, then I’m going to share some of my feelings about that.” The smile that slowly spread across John’s face wasn’t even close to nice.

  Well, crap. Tank had no idea how to stop this coming disaster, but he was almost hoping the Petersons were aliens. Of the two conversations John was considering, the alien one would be less awkward and would probably involve fewer threats.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  THE STREETLIGHTS were on and the sky was caught between twilight and night when John finally parked a good block from the Peterson’s house. The street was fairly quiet—or at least as quiet as the Bronx ever got—and John parked in the shadow created by a broken streetlamp and a large tree.

  “Why are we stopping here?” Zhu asked before Tank had a chance to ask the same thing.

  “I don’t trust you two to carry appropriate weapons.” John got out and slammed his door.

  “Did that make sense?” Tank twisted around to watch John.

  “If he has weapons back there, it does.” Zhu got out, and Tank followed. John had the back of the SUV open, and he’d pulled a black case out of the storage area.

  “Can you shoot a gun?” he asked Zhu.

  “Me? Hell, no. I’d probably shoot my own foot. Do you have a crossbow? A rapier?”

  Tank was seconding him on the “hell no” front. He wouldn’t even trust Zhu with a crossbow, although he was damn good with anything he could swing or jab. The man could calculate trajectories, and he had a good aim when doing anything other than shooting. But the second he had a projectile weapon in hand, he couldn’t hit a brownstone from ten feet away.

  “Here.” John shoved a Taser into Zhu’s hands. “If you shoot yourself, I’ll laugh at you.”

  “At least you’re up front about it.” Zhu tucked the weapon into a pocket.

  “Pick one.” John shoved a box toward Tank. Inside, Tank saw a number of small weapons.

  “I don’t have a license to carry any of those in New York.”

  John took the Glock out and shoved it into Tank’s hand. “Police can see you break a traffic law. They can’t see that weapon unless you draw it, and if you draw it in front of police, it’s because you have something more important than laws to worry about.” John then pulled out a concealed holster and two extra clips. A pedestrian power-walked to get by them faster, so Tank wasn’t so sure about the whole police-not-finding-out thing. However, he shoved the weapon into the holster and slipped it under his jacket as fast as he could. He really didn’t want to end up in Rikers Island. That place scared him more than hell.

  “You’re frighteningly logical,” Zhu told John.

  “Nope. I just grew up knowing that rules mattered less than dying but more than personal preferences. Slave ships were pretty good about teaching that.”

  Zhu’s face twisted with disgust. “I am deeply disturbed that hundreds if not thousands of people are being held in slavery.” Zhu took the knife and ankle sheath John pushed his way. “And I realize that humans are horrifyingly capable of enslaving their own, but somehow the thought of humans kidnapped from their planet and locked into ships to amuse aliens feels much worse. There is literally no chance of escape or rescue for them.”

  Tank got an additional, smaller handgun and ankle holster along with a large knife and what was probably a garrote wire. Tank had never seen one outside of a mobster movie, but he shoved it in a pocket anyway.

  “If you got hauled off to a ship, what tools would you need to get their tech to work for you?” John asked Tank.

  “I have no idea,” Tank answered.

  From John’s glare, that wasn’t the right answer.

  “But I’ll talk to Lev about that and have him give me a crash course on the big stuff.”

  John smiled. “Expect me to quiz you on it later.”

  “And I will definitely be studying. You know, if my math teacher had scared me as much as you, I might have passed it the first time around.”

  “If you had done homework instead of searching cemeteries for a bridled tern that had built a nest over a dead man, you might have passed.” Zhu shook his head. “We spent so much energy on spells and magic. Ignorance is never bliss, but I can see why some people mistake the t
wo.”

  “Talk later,” John ordered as he slammed the back of the SUV closed and started down the street. “I’ll monitor from out here, you two get them to talk. Just remember—if you tell them the truth, the government will never stop watching them.”

  “Mrs. Peterson couldn’t handle that,” Tank said with a grimace.

  “Neither could Mr. Peterson.” Zhu sighed. “He might put on a suit and play at being the German and Latin teacher, but deep down he’s still a hard-core hippy with anarchist tendencies.”

  “A hippy in a suit.” Tank wondered if Mr. Peterson ever regretted putting on a suit or choosing their school, or getting involved with a few troubled students he’d thought needed a sympathetic ear.

  Tank thought about all the years he’d thought of that house and the Peterson’s as his safe place. “I can’t talk to him.” Zhu looked at him curiously. Tank wished he could explain his feelings in concrete, logical terms, but he couldn’t. So much of his childhood had been a nightmarish illusion. Even the good parts, like his friendship with the perfect pentangle of evil-fighting goodness, were stained with all the lies the aliens had woven around them. The Petersons and their willingness to help were one of the few things left.

  Sure, lots of his memories of them were mixed up in magic, but there were other times. Mrs. Peterson had celebrated every birthday with a favorite treat. For Ellie it had been chocolate cake. Zhu always wanted lemon tarts, and Tank got apple pie. Between demonic attacks, the five of them would sit around the table doing homework and watching TV while Mr. Peterson graded papers or Mrs. Peterson worked with her paints. Tank had good memories that he wasn’t willing to give up.

  Zhu was still looking at Tank with confusion etched on his face. “It’s an emotion thing,” Tank said weakly.