XGeneration (Book 4): Pressure Drop

by Brad Magnarella

  Janis looked from Scott’s blazing lenses to the bonfire, a log-crammed affair whose flames were still growing in the center of the dirt parking lot. The night cap to Thirteenth Street High’s annual homecoming celebration. Only minutes before, an effigy of the opponent’s mascot—a giant bobcat—had been hurled into the flames to the screaming delight of the thousand-odd students in the parking lot.

  “When isn’t it plan B with us?” she asked. “You’re taking the bigger risk, though. It’s your call.”

  Scott bounced his back against the fence in thought. Janis scanned the crowd once more. She and Scott had reasoned that if Mr. Shine had chaperoned the spring dance, he might reprise his role for homecoming night. In the confusion of the crowd, Scott would be able to talk to him while Janis used her abilities to give them “psychic cover.” But there was no Mr. Shine.

  Her gaze came back around to Scott, who had stopped bouncing. He pushed up his glasses. “Let’s do it. I’m not sure when we’ll get another chance. How many on surveillance tonight?”

  “Just two,” Janis said. “The Axelrods.”

  “How much time can you give me?”

  “This shindig only goes for another hour. Just as we’re gonna need the crowd to get you out of here, we’re gonna need them to get you back in.”

  Scott started to set the timer on his watch, but Janis cleared her throat.

  “Oh, right.” He removed the Champions-issued watch behind his back and nudged up against her. Janis felt the watch being slipped into the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. “For safekeeping,” he whispered.

  “For non-monitoring, you mean.”

  Scott lifted the backpack he’d set beside his feet and slung one of the straps over his shoulder. “Listen, if you can’t come, no worries. I contracted Wayne to build me a hand-held laser for just in case.” He patted the bulk of his pack. “Sort of like Iron Man’s.”

  She gave him a kiss. “You may not see me, but I’ll be there.”

  Scott smiled crookedly, then set his sights on the gate that led up to the school. “All right, just tell me when.”

  Janis shifted her focus to the energetic plane, the one that supported the physical world. She created a blur around Scott. To anyone’s eyes, he would become hard to see, a blind spot in their vision. It was a technique Agent Steel was having her employ more and more in their simulations.

  When, she thought toward him.

  Scott slipped off, his backpack bouncing against his jacket. Janis descended into the crowd of students, the fire like hot breath against her cheeks. She stood behind and to the right of a young man who would pass for Scott from a distance. The Axelrods’ attention followed her. On the far side of the bonfire, a rigged-up sound system blared “The Heat is On.”

  Yeah, in more ways than one, Janis thought.

  On tiptoes, she peeked over in time to see Scott disappear between two buildings.

  He was away.

  On the far side of campus, Scott skidded to a stop at a bike rack, exhaling to find its lone occupant safe and sound. He’d ridden his 10-speed Schwinn to school that morning, then caught the bus home with Janis.

  Wasting no time, he popped open the chain lock and wrapped it beneath the seat. He ran alongside the bike before throwing his leg over the fork and gliding out through the senior parking lot.

  East side of town, Mr. Shine had told him. ’Crost from that old Primitive Baptist Church.

  For the next two miles, Scott zagged south and east. He stuck to dim back roads. At Sixth Street, his tires bumped over a pair of train tracks embedded in the asphalt, and the world around him changed. The simple homes he’d been zipping by degenerated into wooden shacks, cinder blocks stacked beneath their leaning frames. Banners of Spanish moss shrouded rusted tin roofs. From front porches, crowds of dark faces watched him pass.

  Scott stood into his pedals and began looking for the church that would be coming up any block now. He turned a corner, startled by a group of teenagers spilling from a wooded lot into half the street. Swerving hard to avoid them, his bike wobbled. Scott cut his handlebars the other way to regain his equilibrium but overcompensated. The bike tipped over. The gravelly road hammered his left knee and elbow.

  Good thing I didn’t land on my pack, Scott thought, stunned, then realized he had bigger problems than his gear.

  The hooting and laughter that tumbled over him was sudden and lawless. Scott swept an arm around for his glasses, thankful to find them on the first pass. He fumbled them onto his face as he used his feet to shove the 10-speed off him. The teenagers crowded forward, several bouncing with laughter, fists to their mouths. Scott pushed himself up to his good knee.

  A guy with a steep flattop and oversized jacket cleared a space with his arms. “You see that? You see that? That boy be like…” He mimed like he was riding a bike, eyes bulging as he swung his arms back and forth, then made like he was going over. That revived the laughter, several of the crowd clutching one another’s jacket sleeves.

  “No, no, he done this!” A young man with lines shaved into the side of his fade took Flattop’s place. He performed the same routine but let out a girlish squeal at the end. The crowd enjoyed this new interpretation even better, though Scott was pretty sure he had not screamed—at least not like that. There probably wasn’t anything to be gained from arguing the point, though.

  He rose to his feet as a third performer stepped onto the patch of road, a dim streetlamp for lighting, and tried to outdo the first two. Scott took a gingerly step to test his left knee before stooping for his bike.

  With any luck, I’ll be blocks away before they realize I’m gone.

  “Hey, where you think you’re going?”

  Or not.

  Scott watched heads turn from the performer to where he was placing a leg over his bicycle. The laughter fell off. Smiles disappeared. Through the parting crowd, someone strode toward him. “I asked you a question, homeboy. Where you think you’re going?”

  “N-nowhere,” Scott said.

  The young man who appeared was older than the others. And bigger. Much bigger. A black T-shirt stretched drum-tight across his chest. Huge biceps threatened to split the shirt’s sleeves, while the collar struggled to contain what must have been a twenty-five inch neck—just shy of Scott’s waist size.

  “This is our neighborhood,” Bull Neck said. “What’re you doin’ here?”

  “Nothing.” He wasn’t ready to announce that he’d come to find Mr. Shine or, in the event the man wasn’t home, to snoop around his house. “I mean, just passing through. I was trying to get from, um, Main Street over to, uh, Depot Road, and I thought this might be a short cut.”

  “A short cut?” Bull Neck didn’t sound convinced.

  “So I’ll just…” Scott started to walk his bike backward.

  Bull Neck unfolded his arms from pecs that looked as if they could crush a Coke can and grasped the Schwinn’s handlebars. The bike stopped cold, cracking Scott’s coccyx into the pointed seat. Bull Neck’s pitiless black eyes cut to where Scott’s backpack hung from his shoulders.

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Oh, odds and ends.” Scott tried to swallow, but the moisture had evaporated from his mouth. “Nothing, really.”

  Say, Janis, if you’re here, I could use a little help.

  “You selling?” Bull Neck asked.

  “Selling?” A light went on in Scott’s head. “Oh, you mean, like, drugs?”

  “No, Mary Kay,” Bull Neck said. “’Course I mean drugs. Been having problems with that ’round here. People like you coming in, selling to these kids and messin’ up their heads. All for a little coin.”

  “No, no, I’ve never touched the stuff, much less sold it.”

  The muscles in Bull Neck’s shoulders bunched up, and the bike jerked forward again. Scott found himself staring up at a pair of hard, flaring nostrils. Christ, he’s even got muscles in his nose.

  “Mind if we take a look, then.” It wasn’t a question.r />
  “Sure.”

  Hands began pulling the straps from Scott’s shoulders. He extended his arms in a show of cooperation, but this wasn’t good. This was not good. His thieving tools were in the bag. How in the world was he going to explain those?

  The backpack came free and made its way over to Bull Neck. He unzipped it and pushed a hand inside. Scott watched the slabs of his upper arm shift around as he dug deeper. The slabs froze. Bull Neck looked from the bag to Scott, his brow clumping up.

  “What in the hell is this?” he asked.

  Um, Janis?

  Though the bonfire continued to rage, it was diminishing, the teepee of logs slowly collapsing to cinders. Janis shuffled forward with the crowd, keeping the Scott look-alike within arm’s reach. She blurred the space around them a little more to deceive her minders, then let her eyelids droop.

  It’s been fifteen minutes. If Scott’s not there by now, he should be close.

  She reached, shooting her consciousness across the lines that connected them, assuming her out-of-body form. The fire’s heat faded from her cheeks, replaced by whooshing vibrations and the cool rush of night. When she slowed, she found herself drifting over a part of town she didn’t recognize. Sprawling oak trees revealed slivers of tin rooftops and gravely roads. Off to her left, she could make out the distant lights of the Seagle Building, downtown.

  The air hummed and crackled around her.

  Where are you, Scott?

  A jolt shot through her: a distress signal. Swooping beneath the branches of an oak tree, Janis sped toward the signal’s source. Out ahead of her, the situation took chilling shape. Scott was on his bicycle surrounded by a mob. The person in front of him, holding what appeared to be Scott’s backpack, looked big enough to give Jesse Hoag a run for his money.

  Janis? came Scott’s desperate voice in her head.

  Don’t worry, I’m here, she thought back.

  I’d kiss you to death if I could. Any ideas?

  Janis took a quick survey of the energetic lines. I can hit Muscle Man there with a mind blast and push the others back, but I’m not as powerful in this state. You’re going to have to clear out fast.

  You’ll think I’m Greased Lighting. Just give me a countdown.

  All right, ready? She concentrated toward Muscle Man. Three … two…

  Back at the bonfire, someone grabbed Janis’s shoulder. All of her sensations rushed back to her body, while the scene around Scott receded away, as though down a long tunnel.

  “No!” she cried.

  Scott shot a hand forward before realizing Janis had never reached one. Bull Neck jerked the backpack out of his reach and hammered his arm down, the blow numbing Scott to his shoulder.

  “I asked you something,” Bull Neck said. “What in the hell is this?”

  Scott massaged his forearm. Janis, you still there?

  The crowd began to mutter.

  “Hey, be careful with that,” Scott said when he noticed Bull Neck lifting the car battery from his pack. The hand laser he’d set atop the battery slid off, coiled-up wire unspooling behind it. The laser hit the pavement and shattered with a hollow pop. Scott’s shoulders sagged.

  So much for my protection.

  “You tryin’ to set a bomb off or something?” Bull Neck asked. “You aimin’ to blow up our church?”

  Scott followed the nod of his chin. A block and a half away, beneath a street light, stood a leaning sign. The sign was too distant to read, but something told Scott it was the marquee for the Primitive Baptist Church. Which meant the dark lot across the street from it belonged to Mr.—

  A thudding fist collapsed Scott’s stomach.

  “You one of them skin heads I keep hearin’ about?”

  “Nun-unh,” Scott gasped from his handle bars. “Pretty sure … they shave … their heads … hence … the name.”

  The crowd preferred physical humor, apparently, because no one laughed. Bull Neck set Scott’s backpack down and clenched his fists. Scott could feel how badly this man wanted somebody to maul, and now he suspected that the accusations of dope-dealing and bomb-planting were excuses to do just that. Scott’s eyes shot in every direction.

  “Wait, wait,” he gasped. “What’s that?”

  Heads swiveled toward the streetlight that cast a cone of brown light a half block away. But Scott didn’t mean the light. He was pointing past it to where a row of sagging power lines entered a gray cylindrical transformer.

  “The hell you talking about?” Bull Neck asked.

  Scott didn’t reply. He was already inside the transformer, gathering his energy…

  “A’right, look,” Bull Neck announced, balling up the front of Scott’s shirt. Scott imagined the man’s other fist, with its ridge of glistening knuckles, drawn back like a piston. “We gonna waste this freak and toss him the other side of Sixth Street. Teach him to—”

  Scott released his energy.

  For a second, the space in which they stood lit up brighter than midday in July. The ensuing detonation was less a sound than a force, compressing reality, freezing everyone in place, their eyes wide, mouths agape, before blowing it out again. Boom! The crowd scattered. Jackets and sneakers slapped off in every direction. Above them, the transformer bloomed giant flames.

  Bull Neck backed from Scott, hands held out, then turned and fled into the wooded lot.

  Scott exhaled and pulled his shirt straight. For blocks around, the streetlights had gone black, along with the windows and front porches from which bulbs had been shining. Scott stooped for his pack, zipped it closed, and drew it onto his back. He began pedaling toward the marquee, the knee and elbow he’d landed on protesting with stiffness.

  A block later, the shouts and hollers falling off behind him, Scott craned his neck forward and squinted toward the sign. Its white letters glowed pale in the light of the full moon.

  “As the Serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray” 2 Corinthians 11:3

  He continued past the church and peeked to his left. A small white house sat back from the road, a pair of sandy tracks for a driveway. The tracks ended in front of a shed. At the end of the block, Scott doubled back. This time, he examined the mailbox that stood roadside. The street number matched the address Wayne had obtained. It was Mr. Shine’s house.

  Empty driveway, no flashlight beams or candle glow in the windows…

  Scott coasted into a patch of trees, tall weeds battering his spokes, and leaned his bike against a scrub oak. At the edge of the tree line, he surveyed Mr. Shine’s lawn. Unlike those in the rest of the neighborhood, this yard was well tended: mowed St. Augustine grass, trim bushes. A vegetable garden grew near the side door in neat rows. The house was in better shape, as well, its broad boards recently painted, the tin roof reflecting clean moonlight.

  Janis, you around?

  The idea had been for her to scout ahead, to tell him what he would be walking into. But her end remained silent.

  Scott crossed the lawn at a stooped run, gaining a grassy ledge on the far side of the garden. Ducking beneath a window with security bars, he aimed for a set of cinder-block steps that led up to a side door. The hinges of the screen door peeped twice when Scott drew it open. He rapped softly, then held his breath to listen. Scott counted to thirty and rapped again. He swung his pack around to the front of him to retrieve his thieving tools before deciding to test the knob.

  It turned. The door creaked open. A musky smell, not unpleasant, seeped past Scott’s nose.

  Well, that was easy, he thought, swapping his tools for a penlight.

  He stepped into a small kitchen and drew the door closed behind him. The wood floor creaked beneath his sneakers. An old Westinghouse refrigerator stood to his left. The sink to his right was clean, the counters wiped down. Above, a cast-iron skillet and several pans hung from hooks. A peek inside a pantry revealed plastic tubs of dried oatmeal, shelves of jarred preserves, a giant can of Crisco.

  Beyond the kitchen, off to
the right, a small table sat inside a nook. After ensuring the curtains above it were drawn, Scott shone his light down on a folded section of newspaper—that day’s Gainesville Sun. A brown ceramic mug, coffee grounds at its bottom, sat beside it.

  Doesn’t look like he’s been back since leaving the house this morning.

  He paused to listen for the rattle of a station wagon, but the street outside was quiet. The fact that the wagon’s signature was loud and distinct reassured him. Should Mr. Shine return, Scott would have plenty of time to slip into the side yard, steal into the woods, and bike from the neighborhood.

  As far as stealth missions went (and, yes, as much as Scott hated the idea, that’s exactly what this was), the risk on this one felt small.

  Don’t get cocky, pal.

  He swept the penlight into a living room that appeared as unremarkable as the kitchen. A couch and two chairs bracketed a plain coffee table with a single book on top. Scott aimed his penlight along the book’s spine: King James Bible. He flipped through the pages—the smell of musk stronger where he stood—but discovered no notes or scribblings.

  Exhaling through his nose, he set the Bible back in place. Either Mr. Shine had done a tremendous job hiding anything that might lend insight into who he really was, Scott thought, his light roaming the small room. Or he really was the simple man he appeared to be.

  Scott shone the penlight’s beam into a hallway that opened onto a bathroom and bedroom. A third door was closed. Inside the bathroom’s medicine cabinet, his light flashed over rows of brown vials. Some kind of medicine. He closed the mirror on them, and crept into the neighboring room.

  The bed Mr. Shine presumably slept in was made, its covers tucked sharply around a full-sized mattress. Scott stepped around a clothes rack draped with socks and boxers, picturing Mr. Shine hand-washing the articles at his bathroom sink. In a vertical dresser, Scott found more clothes. The small closet was another miss. Scott knelt and swept the light beneath the bed. A row of work shoes ended with a pair of shiny leather two-tones.