His practiced macho grin still held a question, as if something about her wasn't quite computing. "You parked outside?"
"No. I, um, walked."
"Then allow me to be your personal chauffeur."
He held out a cocked elbow. Jamie smiled and placed one hand carefully in the crook of his elbow. What a gentleman. She barely resisted the laugh that was building in her throat.
Greg led her out to a classic old-school aqua-blue Chevy Blazer. Vintage 1972, Jamie thought. She only knew because Dennis had salivated over their neighbor's for two long years before finally convincing him to part with it.
"Nice ride," she said as they climbed aboard.
"Really?" He shot her a look of mild surprise. "I'm used to having to explain this is actually a great car instead of a old wreck to girls."
"My husband had one." Jamie frowned. "Ex-husband."
"A man of taste." He cranked it up. "Anyhow, I know a happening bar..."
"Why don't we just take a drive? Maybe go somewhere private."
"I like the way you're thinking. I know the perfect place."
They rumbled out of the parking lot and then out of town, following a rocky dirt road up to a tree-shrouded turn-out. From there they had a view of the mountains on one side and the sprawling green residences of western Colorado Springs. Jamie gazed down at a small house nestled in among the elm, maple, and cottonwood, a thin stream of smoke rising from its chimney.
Horner joined her, offering her a frosty can of Budweiser he'd dug from the cooler in the back seat, which she accepted.
"I always keep some hand," he said, as they clicked. "For moments like these."
"You're so romantic."
"Heh." He cocked his head at her, an uncertain edge to his smile.
"Nice view."
"Just what I was thinking." His eyes traveled down her body, lingering on her buttocks. "I couldn't help noticing you got a rock-hard rear assembly, speaking purely as a car aficionado."
Jamie gave him a thin smile. He raised his hands.
"Don't mean to be crass. But I got a pair of eyes. You obviously work out."
"Not with weights."
"One of those natural body resistance types, huh? Well, hell, it's workin' for ya."
"Uh, thanks."
He glugged down his beer and flattened it with one hand. Jamie did the same – except she squeezed the can into the size and shape of a golf ball. Greg's eyebrows shot up.
"Neat trick," he said. "How did you do that?"
"Brute strength."
Greg Horner's appreciative laugh sounded a bit forced. He set his crushed can on the hood of his car and stepped in front of her, smiling at her and narrowing his eyes in a way that made her think "Okay, done with the games. Now it's time to be the man you know you want." But like his laugh, it struck her as somewhat forced. This probably was his modus operandi – she didn't doubt he enjoyed plenty of success with women – but his military instincts were kicking in, she guessed, and he was sensing something not quite right.
But Horner wasn't going to let a little uncertainty shake his macho confidence. He eased in closer to her, his hands snaking around her waist.
"Baby," he murmured. "You got one hard..." His fingers froze as they gripped her behind. "Ass...?"
Jamie saw the startled amazement in his face shading toward fear as he confirmed the unique hardness of her "ass."
"Easy, Sergeant." She gently removed his hand.
"Huh? How did you know I'm ex-military?"
"Lucky guess."
He backed off a couple of steps, his jaunty smile vanishing. "You're not like other girls, are you? You're different somehow. Special."
"Why thank you, sir."
"Military? Ex-military?"
"Ex, I guess. Not exactly military. A militarized branch of a law enforcement agency."
"What agency is that?"
"Department of Augmented Regulation and Enforcement."
His grin returned, tentative. "Never heard of it. Come on, you just made that up now, didn't you?"
"Nope."
"Okay. So what does the 'Department of Augmented Regulation and Enforcement' do?"
"DARE deals with individuals who have augmented abilities."
"What does that mean?"
"People whose physical abilities have been altered by an alien nanovirus. Abilities like enhanced strength, telekinesis, telepathy, and unaided flight, to name a few."
"Oh, I get it." He was grinning again. "X-men, in other words?"
"And women."
"And your job was to keep them in order?"
"More or less."
"Funny, never heard of any augmented people. Except in that movie. And me, of course." He flexed a large, vein-encrusted bicep.
"That's because they don't exist here," said Jamie. "But they exist in my world."
"Your world. Like on the planet Klingon or something?"
"No. What they call a 'parallel' or 'alternative' world."
"Oh...yeah. Alternative world. Right."
"And I'm one of them. An augmented person."
"Heh, well, you look pretty augmented to me."
Jamie backed away, smiling. She hadn't especially enjoyed her demonstrations with Dennis, her daughter, Cal, or even Zachary. But now she was looking forward to watching Greg Horner's smug smile implode.
She stooped and reached under the front bumper with one hand, gripping the tow hitch while keeping eye contact with the former soldier. Still smiling, he straightened up, the blue classic SUV rising like a small circus elephant balancing on its rear legs.
Horner's inverted smile didn't disappoint. His mouth flopped open with a gasp, and he bent a bit as if he'd been punched in the stomach. Jamie lowered the Blazer to the ground.
"Want another beer?" she asked.
Greg closed his mouth, opened it, and closed it again. Jamie extended her hand and a beer hopped out of the backseat cooler through the air and hovered within his reach. He jumped back. The can followed him.
"Take a breath, Sergeant," said Jamie, seeing the wild, near-feral look growing in his eyes. "You're not hallucinating. There's a perfectly rational explanation."
Greg closed his eyes, and sucked in a shuddering breath, releasing it slowly. After a moment, he opened his eyes, and appeared crestfallen that Jamie was still standing there. Jamie lowered the beer can to the ground by his feet.
"You're probably wondering why I'm here – why this is happening to you," she said. "In my world, you and I served together in a special unit within the Department of Augmented Regulation and Enforcement..."
Jamie gave him the basic explanation while Horner stood staring at her like a zombie.
"No way is this real," he said in a flat, lizard voice when she'd finished. "You slipped me some DMT or something."
"When? You never even drank your beer?"
Greg stooped suddenly and snatched up the beer can at his feet, popping it open and guzzling it in one swift motion.
Jamie was surprised by a wave of maternal feelings for the big lug.
"You just had a hard workout," she said. "You might feel better with some food in you. Feed those muscles of yours."
Horner stumbled back to the car, keeping his distance from her.
"Why don't I drive?"
"No." He shook his head sharply. "I'm good."
Once he got behind the wheel, some of his aura of masculine confidence returned. He punched on the radio. The Beach Boys were playing "Wouldn't It Be Nice." He flipped through the stations until he came to a Country Western song. Blake Sheldon singing about a girl who almost surely would do him wrong. Horner drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and nodded along, as if he'd shut out everything that had just happened and was anchoring himself back to normal reality.
He rolled into a Burger King drive-through.
"You want something?" he asked.
"Maybe a cherry coke? I'd buy you dinner if I had any money."
"You don't have any money?" He extended his
hand to what appeared to be an electronic pad on the order stand. Some beeping ensued, and then they drove on.
"And I'm not chipped."
"You're a chip protestor?" He didn't sound surprised.
"No. As I mentioned, I come from another world. Another United States where things never got this bad."
Horner didn't acknowledge her comment as he retrieved two bags of food and two drinks. He steered the Blazer to a quiet, shadowy corner of vacant lot a few blocks away.
"How do you get around if you're not chipped?" he asked, ripping open a hamburger wrap.
"Fly. Sometimes walk. So far only one person has tried to arrest me. Maybe your wonderful surveillance state isn't all that effective."
Greg chewed away at his burger and fries. From what Jamie could tell – and she wasn't at all sure she was reading him correctly – he seemed to be in some strange state of denial. Maybe it was his standard coping method? But how could you have a standard coping method for this?
"Are you okay, Greg?" she asked.
He glanced at her, a glint of calculation in his eyes that he glossed over with a bland smile and a shifting of his gaze.
"Just trying to get a handle on things," he said.
Jamie slurped her cherry coke while Horner disposed of his food. "Disposed" was how it struck her, since his speedy efficiency seemed to transcend mere eating. Then he was wiping his fingers with delicate care and stuffing everything into one bag, which he lowered to the floor and reached under his seat.
He straightened up with a large pistol in his right hand, which he jammed into Jamie's temple. She was afraid to react or move or even think a hostile thought for fear of evaporating him.
"Now you're going to tell me who you really are and what you really want," he said. "Or I will blow your 'alternative world' brains all over the seat."
"Quite a mess on your newly upholstered seats."
"You want to joke?" He clicked back the hammer. "You sure about that?"
"You want me to tell you the truth?"
"Right. And none of this alternative world bullshit. I felt your ass. It's synthetic. You're not human. You're some kind of advanced research project – an AI, right? Is it because I turned down that DARPA experiment? Is that it?"
"What DARPA experiment?"
"Don't play innocent with me, bitch. I've heard rumors. A friend told me they even have an android that could pass for a human female. I thought he was shitting me."
"That's interesting, but sorry, I'm not an android."
"Whatever the fuck you are. I'm gonna ask one more time, and if you don't want your silicon brains splattered, you'd better give me a fucking straight answer."
"I wouldn't fire that gun, Horner. The bullet might bounce back and hit you."
"Final warning."
Jamie willed the pistol into dust, careful to avoid Greg Horner's right hand in her thought. Dematerialization, as the DARE techs called it, was one of the most advanced and difficult telekinetic skills – much harder than merely breaking stuff up. She was glad now she'd taken the time to master it.
"What the fuck!..."
"I'll tell you the truth, Greg," she said. "The truth is that I'm here from another world, not from DARPA. I arrived here through a special kind of teleportation. And my mission is exactly what I told you: to defeat an alien threat. I came to you because you're one of the people I worked with before and you were very good at what you did."
Horner stared at his empty hand and then at her, his broad features contracted to the point of being nearly unrecognizable.
"It's real, Sergeant." Jamie hardened her voice. "Stop being such a fucking pussy and deal with it."
He blinked at her. He raised a fist as though contemplating slamming it into her face. She smiled. After a moment, he lowered his fist.
"Wise choice," she said. "You probably would've broken your bones on my face."
"You can't convince me you're human," he said. "No person could do what you've done."
"As I explained, the Object rearranged my body. It rearranged yours, too, on my world – along with a lot of other people. And by contact with me, you're probably going to be rearranged here. That doesn't mean we're not human. We're just physically altered."
He studied her face with a hard "Do I look like a fool?" smile.
"Do you really think DARPA or any government agency could make your gun disappear like that?" Jamie asked.
"I wouldn't put it past them."
"What would be the point?"
"When I was in the military, just after Doomsday, my commanding officer and some spook made me an offer to join an experimental program. Something about enhancing combat performance. Super soldier bullshit. I turned 'em down." He gave Jamie a pointed stare. "But looks like they got the job done."
"So I'm here, because...?"
"To convince me to sign up by showing me what I could become?"
"If that's true, why wouldn't I just tell you that instead of what I have been telling you?" Jamie struggled to rein in her mounting exasperation. He was like a bulldog clinging to the bone of his reality.
"Didn't you just say by having contact with you that I would change?"
"I was talking about infecting you with the nanovirus which I assume I still carry." A frustrated breath hissed out between her clenched lips – with enough force to snap the turn signal rod in half.
"Hey!"
"Sorry." Jamie sighed. Carefully. "I guess this is pointless. Maybe after you change, if you change, we can talk some more."
Greg Horner set his large jaw, but his eyes, Jamie thought, had gone thoughtful. Maybe she had reached him and he just wasn't ready to acknowledge that?
"How would I change?"
Jamie paused with one hand on the door handle, turning back to him. "I don't know. You might get a lot stronger. You might develop some other superpower. If you feel sick suddenly, that could be the nanovirus. You should know in a few days."
"Any chance you can make my gun rematerialize or whatever? That set me back more than seven hundred bucks."
"No. Maybe you should consider yourself lucky I didn't make more than your hand disappear with it."
JAMIE FLEW back to Duluth in a disgruntled state. Her dad did his best to console her, saying everyone would come around sooner or later, ordering in a nice Chinese meal which she didn't need but enjoyed as comfort food, and more importantly giving her a laptop and a pre-paid cell phone he'd picked up at Walmart.
"I'm sorry it didn't work out with your friend," he said.
"He wasn't really my friend," said Jamie. "We were more coworkers. Or comrades at arms. We learned to respect each other." She slumped on his threadbare couch. "I don't know what I was expecting, Dad. Cal. I don't think I really thought this through."
"If your goal is to change people so they might be able to help you, why bother with the introductions and explanations? Why not just show up, make up some excuse to hang around them for a short time, and move on? When and if they change into something, then they'll have more proof of your story and might be more receptive."
Jamie stirred her wonton soup, staring at the spinning noodles as her dad's suggestions sank in.
"That makes sense," she said. "I feel sort of stupid for not thinking of it. It's not as if they could help me without special powers, except for moral support."
"It's been more than two days, and I'm not feeling anything. Maybe your nanovirus isn't contagious any more? Maybe none of us is going to change?"
"That could be true."
"With your powers, maybe you don't need anyone else."
Jamie shook her head. "We were barely able to defeat them as a group. In fact, I can't say we did defeat them. We persuaded them to change their minds."
Cal shrugged as if he was helpless to say more. Jamie ate her soup, telling herself to not be so negative. She was familiar with the feeling of being overwhelmed and out of place and acting out a role that was more theater than reality. She was a schoolteacher, after
all, not John Rambo. Yet, somehow, she'd faked it until she more or less made it. She'd become a leader of men and women. A kind of warrior. To her surprise, she was actually pretty good at it. Maybe she could be good at it here?
They soon settled, at his insistence, on her making his place her home until she found something better. If she was going to stay, they also agreed, she'd have to find a way to fit into their society. Every cop these days was armed with a PLED detector. So were most streets, transportation venues, and shopping centers. Cal was confident she could obtain a fake Personal Location and Enabling Device, and he was willing to donate some portion of his meager savings to that task, but he had only vague ideas about obtaining one. The "Dark Net" – a part of the internet that attempted to function outside the prying eyes of the government – was one theoretical way, though it was a dangerous and difficult place to navigate. Some people made a living of sabotaging or profiting off the surveillance state, but Cal had no idea who or where they were.
Jamie's mood didn't improve when she called Dennis and he said Haley, Kylee, and he were spending the next few days visiting Haley's mom in Southern California.
"Would you consider," Jamie said through a constricting throat, not sure if she wanted to make the request, "letting me hang out with Kylee at your place? Then you and your...girlfriend can have some privacy?"
She waited, trying not to feel too desperate, while Dennis weighed her suggestion.
"All right," he sighed. "I know Kylee would like that. And you deserve it. But Jamie...please be careful."
"I will."
"And please don't leave her alone in the house for long if you have to go out."
"I won't." She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting tears, and nodded to herself. "Thank you, Dennis."
"How are your meetings with people from your team going?"
"Not all that great. I guess we'll see how that turns out."
DENNIS WAS loading luggage into his pickup when Jamie drove up in the old Ford van her father had bought for her at a used car lot near his place. It barely ran, but Jamie could move it along on the ground or in the air easily enough. She just needed something for show that explained how she got from point A to point B.
Haley Lingstrom stepped out with one arm draped protectively over Kylee's shoulder, wrinkling her nose at the brown exhaust-spewing van which continued to hack and sputter for several seconds after Jamie turned off the engine.
Super World Two Page 5