XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation

by Brad Magnarella

  A mysterious entity pays a king’s ransom for all of the homes in Oakwood. Shortly after, the neighborhood closes. Some sort of flood-control project, so the story goes. Levees erected on both sides. Then this Blue Sky Realty sells every home for a big fat loss. Where’s the sense in that?

  But maybe it had made sense to someone. Scott wondered what else had been done to the neighborhood during the year it had been barricaded…

  “She mentioned that we weren’t the first to ask for all of the records for Oakwood,” Chun said.

  “Huh?”

  “The old lady in archives. She said someone came in asking for the same thing.”

  Scott’s pulse quickened. “Did she remember his name? Did he have to sign out the records?”

  “How should we know?” Wayne interjected. “She just said he was a ‘colored fellow.’ Came in a number of years ago.”

  “Colored? Who says that anymore?”

  “Welp, gotta run. A new Dr. Who airs in T-minus twenty minutes.” Wayne began packing the comics into his backpack. “And I’ll expect that movie poster by Friday. Oh, and…” He pulled something from the small pocket of his backpack and tossed it toward Scott.

  Scott bobbled the plain box before catching it. He turned it over in his hands.

  “Your descrambler,” Wayne said.

  * * *

  Scott set the tape player, descrambler, and headphones across the workbench in a line. An open spiral notebook and mechanical pencil sat beside them. Scott connected the equipment so the tape would play into the descrambler with the output going to his headphones, the last requiring a bit of jerry-rigging. His breaths sounded loud when he placed the plastic cups over his ears.

  “Here goes,” he said and pressed PLAY.

  The tape whispered. Then came a clipped male voice. The quality wasn’t perfect — squibs here and there — but the voice was intelligible now. And vaguely familiar. “Known movements for two, two, eighty-five.”

  Two, two, eighty-five… Scott rubbed his mouth. The date! February second, nineteen eighty-five.

  “Standing by,” said a gruff male voice.

  “X-zero-two will depart solo at oh-eight-forty. Destination, JC. Duration, eight, then direct return.”

  Scott paused the tape and wrote down, “X-02, 8:40, JC? 8 hours.” He tapped his eraser on the X-02. He’d seen that somewhere before.

  “Will X-zero-two require escort?” the gruff voice asked.

  “Negative.”

  “Next known movement…”

  “Standing by.”

  “X-zero-three will depart with guest at approximately eighteen hundred,” the clipped voice said. “Destination, Mr. Han. Duration, two hours, then direct return.”

  “Will X-zero-three require escort?”

  “Affirmative. Escort of one.”

  Scott paused the tape and jotted down, “X-03 + guest, 6:00 p.m., Mr. Han, 2 hours.”

  The code “X-03” looked familiar, too. And then Scott had it. They had been entries in the logbook he’d found in the Leonards’ basement, beneath the monitors. Code names. But what about the rest? He pressed the eraser into his chin, then drew an arrow from the JC to a pair of parentheses where he wrote “JC Penney?” Margaret had worked there since her sophomore year of high school. Scott remembered an incident two years earlier when his mother had plopped a pack of boys’ underwear down at Margaret’s register, telling Scott to be sure to keep this set clean. In the rightmost margin of the page, he wrote, “X-02 = Margaret Graystone.” If that turned out to be accurate, then these people knew her schedule.

  Wow, creepy.

  Scott reread the second line. He returned to the right margin and wrote, “X-03 = Janis?” Mr. Han was a Japanese restaurant past the mall. And wasn’t February second Janis’s birthday? Six o’clock would mean dinnertime. Two hours to get there, eat, and come back sounded about right. But who was guest? And what did “escort of one” mean?

  He thought of the cars that had been tailing Jesse’s Chevelle in the mornings. Had those been “escorts of one”?

  Scott pressed the PLAY button. Following the sound of the voice-activated recorder clicking off and then on again, a woman’s voice said, “X-zero-two departing.” Margaret departing.

  “Affirmative,” replied the gruff voice.

  Who were these people? And how hadn’t he seen them in the neighborhood?

  Several minutes of silence followed. The voice-activated recorder hadn’t shut off, apparently. The devices weren’t known to be perfect, though Scott also wondered whether Wayne had known it was defective when he sold it to him the year before.

  “Delivery vehicle incoming,” said the woman’s voice again.

  “Stand by,” the gruff man answered. “Checking with the front.”

  The tape played static for several seconds.

  “The numbers check out,” he said.

  Numbers? License plate numbers?

  Another pair of clicks sounded before the woman’s voice said, “X-zero-two returning.” Margaret returning.

  “Affirmative,” the gruff voice answered some seconds later. “X-zero-two home.”

  The next exchange announced X-03’s departure with guest. Janis and… Blake? An exchange followed, discussing their return.

  A pair of clicks. “X-zero-three home?” the gruff voice asked.

  “Negative,” the woman replied. “Still in parked vehicle.”

  A pair of clicks. “All right, X-zero-three entering home solo. Guest departing.”

  Scott paused the tape and removed his headphones. He ran both hands through his hair, his thoughts whirring like a microprocessor. He pushed himself from the bench and paced his hidden workshop.

  “All right, all right,” he whispered and took a breath. “Mr. Leonard wasn’t acting alone. He was part of something bigger. Proof’s right there. Janis’s intuition was spot on. But who in the hell are they? Where in the hell are they? Think, Scott.” He looked at the recorder. “That phone was hardwired to five others. Five houses, probably. And all of them monitoring the Graystones — their goings and comings, delivery vehicles, other cars, maybe.”

  He thought about cameras in streetlights. He thought about a hidden switchboard. Why hadn’t his traffic surveillance picked up any strange vehicles? He’d noticed strange patterns, sure…

  A cold understanding dawned on him.

  The neighborhood isn’t being watched. The neighborhood is the watcher.

  He clamped the headphones over his ears again. Judging by the size of the tape roll, a few minutes still remained.

  “Say,” a male speaker said when Scott unpaused the recorder. The clipped voice was the familiar one from earlier. “Were any of yours at Delta-one’s last night?”

  “Negative,” the gruff voice answered.

  “Thought I heard some noises. The shed door was locked.”

  Scott bolted upright. The voice! It was him! It was the man who had tried the shed door that night! Scott rewound and played the segment back, scribbling in the right margin.

  “We’ll send someone to investigate,” the gruff voice said.

  Scott pressed the cups until the fast whumps of his heart echoed in his ears. Between the time he had planted the recorder and the time he returned to retrieve it, someone had gone down into the basement to investigate his intrusion. The double click of the recorder sounded again.

  “Delta-one’s has been searched,” the gruff voice said. “No evidence of entry.”

  Scott exhaled. They hadn’t seen the recorder.

  “All right,” the familiar voice answered after a pause. “With Delta-one still AWOL, I’m just—”

  The snap of the recorder sounded through the headphones. No! The voice activation had fudged again. It had turned off prematurely. Scott watched the sprockets roll, willing the voices to come back, but all he heard was the steady hiss of blank tape. He thought about that last line.

  With Delta-one still AWOL…

  Scott shuddered, his gaze
sliding to what he’d scribbled in the right margin:

  “D-1 = Mr. Leonard.”

  18

  In the computer programming section of Janis’s seventh-grade enrichment class, her teacher had had the students write a simple function that would divide a number by zero. “Nothing can divide by zero,” the teacher said, “not even a computer. It’s a mathematical impossibility. It defies reality. Don’t believe me? Watch what happens.” And sure enough, when the dubious students punched in the divide-by-zero function and hit enter, their lab computers began to freeze.

  That’s what Janis’s brain felt like now: a frozen computer, a computer ordered to divide a number — to divide reality — by zero.

  He’s dead. He’s alive.

  A mewling sound crept from her lips.

  “Shh…” The skin over Mr. Leonard’s palms was pale yellow and lined with grime. “I know what you must be thinking. But I’m not going to hurt you. You have to let me explain.”

  He advanced slowly but with long, reaching strides, like a spider’s. He wore a khaki coverall that appeared too small for him, its hems drawing up his shins and down his bone-thin wrists. Occasionally he reached out to touch a passing tree. And then his long fingers rested against one of the trees that had anchored a corner of her and Scott’s old fort.

  Janis staggered back another step, but she was only hemming herself deeper into a corner. Beyond the creek stood the six-foot-tall levee. “Stay away,” she managed to whisper.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeated, his brow creasing over his wide eyes.

  Where have I heard that before?

  Janis blinked and blew a strand of hair from her vision. She sank into a half crouch, her brain beginning to reboot. For the past months, she’d been telling herself that she was less traumatized by what he had done than by his warning. Under the present circumstances, that felt like a pile of bull crap.

  He took a long stride nearer.

  Her eyes slid to the right. Too dense. Trying to flee in that direction would be like running into a web. Her eyes touched his, then slid to the left.

  Janis had grown up playing in these woods, her mind developing an implicit understanding of the spatial relations between the trees, of how to move among them. The aptitude was embedded in the gyri and sulci of her brain. She spotted a seam, one leading to a path that would deliver her to her cul-de-sac. If she hit the seam at a sprint, she might lose Mr. Leonard in the twists and hairpin turns. She wouldn’t have to slow much. Her body would make the adjustments of their own, gray matter and muscle fibers working hand in hand.

  Leaves crackled like cellophane under Mr. Leonard’s next reaching step, thirty feet away.

  Janis’s body tensed. But before she could break for the seam, she caught a ghost image of Mr. Leonard darting laterally, arms outstretched, cutting her off. And he was carrying that device in his pocket, the one that looked like an electric razor and hummed when he flicked his wrist. He would pin and incapacitate her before she could make a sound.

  Janis felt her mind beginning to lock up again. “Stay away,” she repeated.

  The creek bed seemed her only choice for flight, but she had no advantages there. Her shoes and socks would sop up the sandy water and weigh her down. The steep banks would muffle the sound of her screams. Could she summon the same energy she’d used to blow the Leonards’ bathroom door to pieces? More crucially, could she summon it in time?

  Janis knelt for her branch and gripped it with both hands.

  “Wait,” Mr. Leonard said, holding his palms out again. “Look look look.” He lowered himself until he was sitting cross-legged. “You can keep back as far as you like, but I need to talk to you.”

  Twisting her fists around the thick end of the branch, Janis circled to the left until she had enough of a lead that, were he to try to stand, she could outrun him. She chanced a glance toward the seam.

  “You’re in danger,” he said.

  Janis looked back at him. He held his outfacing palms at his shoulders as though to say, I’m at your mercy.

  She could run, scream, escape…

  “H-how did you get here?” she asked.

  “I never left, Janis.”

  “But…”

  “I’m dead?” Mr. Leonard nodded. “For all intents and purposes, that’s still true. Everything in the name of Thomas G. Leonard is gone. Somewhere, a death certificate bears his name.” He spoke without emotion.

  “Then you didn’t hop a semi to Florence, South Carolina…”

  “No, Janis.”

  “Didn’t hang yourself in a hotel room.”

  He hadn’t stopped shaking his head.

  “What about the other crimes?”

  “Fictions.”

  She squinted toward him in the fading light. Without his yellow-tinted glasses, his eyes looked small, the skin around them pale. Was this Mr. Leonard? “Who are you?” she asked.

  “My birth name is Michael.”

  “Just like your wife’s name is Colleen?”

  His smile looked like a grimace. “I did let that slip, didn’t I? Except she isn’t my wife.”

  “Then who is she?”

  “She is… she was my junior agent.” A shadow passed over his pale brow. “We worked together.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Look, we’re not safe talking in the open like this. There’s a place below ground—”

  “Doing what?” Janis repeated.

  “Watching you and your sister.”

  A flu-like chill shuddered down her spine. What are you still doing here, Janis? Run! Run! Run! She cinched her slick grip. “How long?” she asked. “How long were you watching?”

  “Seven years.”

  “Seven…?” The word years stuck in her throat. “Why?”

  “To safeguard you, Janis. You and your sister.”

  “Safeguard us from what?”

  “I was never told. The assignments are highly compartmentalized. Everything beyond our assignment was off limits, doled out on a need-to-know basis. But after so many years, you start piecing things together.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like why two normal kids would need our protection, for starters. The only answer that made sense was that you and your sister weren’t normal. So we started looking more closely, Colleen and I. We saw your sister’s talent early, at her job. There’s upselling and then there’s upselling.”

  Janis caught her head making small nods.

  “You took longer to figure out. You didn’t appear to have the same abilities as Margaret, so we decided it must be something else. And then I saw you in our shed late one night. An apparition. Staring up at me one second, gone the next.” He made a noise that sounded like a chuckle. “Scared the crap out of me, if you want to know the truth.”

  Scared the crap out of you? She remembered sprinting from Mrs. Fern’s class that first day of school, the specter of Mr. Leonard’s face looming over her.

  “But the real proof was your saving deflection at the soccer game. I think you know the one I mean.”

  “You were there?”

  “I was on the visitor’s side as I was for most of your games, an interested spectator you would never have thought to look twice at. Except that game, I was able to see you play. It took some doing, but I had your starter decommissioned.”

  Janis remembered Theresa Combs lying face down, blood across her broken jaw. “Wait, you did that?”

  “Indirectly, yes. It’s sobering what a few folded-over bills pressed into one’s palm can accomplish. In that case, the opposing coach’s.” Mr. Leonard frowned. “But you have to trust me when I tell you it was in your best interest. The sooner I could ascertain that it was indeed your abilities they were interested in, the sooner I could warn you and your sister.”

  A blowtorch ignited inside Janis’s head. “And I suppose stabbing me was in my best interest, too.”

  Mr. Leonard peered over his shoulder. The woods had grown dim around them.
“Janis, we’re not safe out here.” He started to get up. “There’s a door in the embankment…”

  Janis stepped back. “You have two seconds to park it, or I’m gone.”

  Mr. Leonard sighed and lowered himself. “That morning was never supposed to have happened the way it did. I put that on myself. You have to understand, to even ask questions of the assignment is forbidden. But I was taking it one further, trying to position myself closer to you both. And I was running on fumes by then — three, four hours’ sleep on the better nights — trying to figure out how to get you and your sister out of this while keeping the rest of my surveillance team in the dark. And then I’m called to a subbing job at a school I’ve never been to. My first thought is they’ve got it in for me. The security on this thing…” He peered around again, his face drawn and gray. “And then I’m convinced they’re coming for Colleen. By the time I returned and found you in the house, I was in a bad state.”

  Janis remembered Mr. Leonard aiming his finger at her across the kitchen table. Who put you up to this?

  “It didn’t calm me to discover that someone was also snooping around the basement.” Mr. Leonard leveled his gaze at her. “Scott, right?”

  Janis kept her face as expressionless as she could.

  “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I just want you to see what happened from my point of view. I was standing there, holding you in my arms, thinking, ‘How in the hell can I convince this kid of anything after what Colleen and I have put her through?’ But most important to me was your abilities, that you not let them be seen, not let them be exploited. I’d witnessed their power…”

  “Tipping a soccer ball isn’t exactly power.”

  “Maybe not, but vaulting a person into the air from fifteen feet away qualifies in my book.”

  Janis nearly dropped her branch. “You were at Dress-up Night?”

  “Just a curious neighbor out walking his dog.”

  Janis suddenly remembered the lone person she had spotted as she and Scott made for the greenway that night. She recalled the sound of tinkling dog tags. Was there anywhere he hadn’t been?

  “Anyway, if I hadn’t convinced you to conceal your powers — because I wasn’t sure I had convinced you — my only choice was to incapacitate you. It was a split-second decision, using that piece of ceramic. A decision that’s troubled me ever since. But a wound would force discretion on you, Janis. No more soccer or softball — for a time, anyway. Long enough, I’d hoped, for me to reach you.”