Those Who Walk in Darkness so-1

by John Ridley

  That was lost on Rysher."I know what a revelation is. What does it mean? In this context, what does it mean?"

  No one had an answer.

  Metcalf did his best guessing."A code word of some kind. Has to be."

  Tannehill: "For?"

  Bo: "Must have some kind of significance. The telepath wanted Fiero to tell us."

  "Does it matter? For Christ's sake, we got freaks passing around coded messages—"

  "But if it was some kind of a code, I don't think they woul—"

  "O'Roark, just take notes," Rysher directed.

  Metcalf weighed in anxious."Whatever the meaning, coded information is being exchanged among these things, and far as I care that amounts to subversive activity. We need to gear up."

  Tannehill: "Let's think about this."

  "We need to gear up now!"

  Bo pressed a palm to his forehead, slid it up and over his hair, slicking it back with his own sweat, his hand trembling through the move.

  "Is that what you want, David? Every paper, every TV station screaming about a terror network of freaks?"

  "That's what it is: freaks teaming up with each other."

  "We'd have panic in the streets."

  Metcalf ignored that, sputtered on: "We… we need to mobilize the military."

  "The law doesn't allow the military to—"

  "The law?" Metcalf cut Bo off."They changed the laws after May Day, they can change them now. Let's have a talk with the White House, tell them what the hell's going on out here and see what happens. What you don't do is let words on paper keep us from doing the job."

  Rysher didn't agree."A president hasn't put federal troops on the streets since when? Since the fifties? Since Little Rock? No sitting politician is going to fess up to a freak crisis. This is our problem. It's ours to solve."

  "And ours to take credit for when it gets solved?" Tannehill asked/said very pointedly.

  Soledad noticed, on the wall, the picture of her and Rysher. Gone.

  "… I'm not even thinking about that. My primary concern, as always—"

  Tannehill waved off the rhetoric."My primary concern is what if we can't solve the problem? Telepaths have a way of putting together a body count."

  "We can handle it."

  Again, all eyes to Soledad.

  "We know the territory, we know what we're up against. There's no group better trained for this." The words stomped out of her mouth full of confidence."Whatever the muties throw at us, MTac can handle." Soledad said what she said with pride and presumption. She said what she said without regard to the fact that whatever MTac did next it would be without her services.

  Tannehill did some considering. A lot in a very little amount of time."All right. For now we keep it local. Bring in this freak and do it fast. MTac or the army; I don't care who gets to wear the medals, I just want these monsters off my streets."

  Tannehill stood. He walked out of the office. He patted Soledad on the shoulder as he passed.

  Little gesture as it was, it made Soledad feel good. Feel proud. It made her feel like not quite the whole world was against her.

  The feeling went away when Rysher said: "Go type all that up, O'Roark."

  Julie was always the most nervous just when she was closing up her bodega. She knew, from three previous incidents, when she was closing up was most likely when someone—an addict or a banger or just somebody who'd gotten hold of twenty dollars' worth of gun—was liable to push their way into the store swinging their piece, demanding some of what little she'd been able to earn over the day. They wouldn't have to demand hard. She'd hand it to them. They could have it. It was just money. More than just money, really. It was food on the table, medicine, it was the difference between paying the electric bill and sitting nights in the dark. But even at that it was still, really, end of day, just money. So they could have it. Jorge wasn't so easy. He hadn't risked his life, the life of his family, to cross the border, take whatever crappy, demeaning work he could scrape up standing on street corners soaking in all the sneers and looks and pejoratives that got thrown his way daily, saved his pay and bought a bodega where he'd still be earning just enough to barely, barely get by only to pass it off to whatever punk wanted to get his by shoving a gun in someone's face. So when guys with guns came around, Jorge didn't give up the dough. Jorge got shot. Got shot four times one night. Lived. Lived, but didn't learn. Guys with guns came around again, and again Jorge didn't give up the green. He got shot. Once. In the head. He died. For all his bravery Julie was now alone with the store, with their son and daughter and with all kinds of bills for all kinds of things. She did not remember Jorge fondly. When she thought of him, which was every night when she closed up shop fearful of the guys with guns, she cursed his name.

  Vaughn sensed all that sitting in his loft six or seven hundred feet away. The city was at ease, Aubrey was sleeping—a sleep Vaughn had put him in. The night was still. It was effortless for Vaughn to read Julie's story, her emotions. He could even see the night she watched Jorge take a fatal bullet through his occipital lobe. That clear it remained to her, and was to him.

  He said, in his mind: It's pointless. It really is pointless.

  Quiet.

  I know you're here. Quit hiding.

  Across the loft the shadows seemed to part, a curtain opening to reveal a man and a woman; a black guy. An older guy. Late forties, and, like Vaughn, very lean. Lean, and at the same time imposing. The woman—young, twenties—looked angry. Her fisted hands looked like they were always curled tight.

  The black guy started to say: "Vaughn—"

  I'd tell you it's good to see you again. But it's not good, and you never much come around anyway. I know it's slumming for you.

  "You're the one who chose to live like you do."

  You mean live like I am, instead of pretending to be something I'm not: one of them; normal.

  Never mind the rising tones, Aubrey stayed asleep.

  The girl stayed quiet, the fingers of her fists twisting on each other.

  "What you are, what you've become, is a murderer. And all you're going to do is get people, more people, killed. Us and them alike."

  I can hear you fine. No need to talk. Or what's the deal? Gotten so used to faking like you're normal you don't remember how to—

  The black guy, ignoring Vaughn, using his voice: "And what you've let happen to Michelle—"

  "Don't you tell me about my wife!" The base emotion of rage made Vaughn scream.

  Aubrey rolled over.

  The girl's hands made anxious twitches.

  The black guy: "We're sorry for her misfortune."

  Mis— My wife getting shot; bleeding out in the street? That the misfortune you're talking about?

  "Believe it or not, Vaughn, we are sorry. All of us. But hurting them'll only hurt us."

  We're not being hurt, we're getting killed! They're trying to exterminate us, then use the law so they can fake like it's okay. Call themselves normals, and they call us freaks and muties. We're the superior ones. The minute they turned on us we should have wiped them out! Killed every one of them!

  And for a moment the black guy said nothing. Vaughn could sense what he was feeling. What the black guy was feeling was pity.

  "I know this is hard for you."

  You know?

  "Do you think you're the only one to lose somebody? Do you think you have a claim on pain? You don't, Vaughn. You do not. So, yes, I know this is difficult. I know you have anger. But what you're saying now… now you're just talking insane."

  The girl cracked her knuckles. They crackled back with a bluish energy.

  Anger, fear, straight defiance. Vaughn showed none of that. From Vaughn the black guy could sense nothing.

  You can't stop me. I was aware of you long before you got here.

  "The only thing you're aware of is what I want you to be."

  A hand slammed into the back of Vaughn's neck, slammed hard, slammed him senseless for a sec. The hand took
Vaughn's neck tight, the hand on an arm that stretched allll the way across the loft and into the darkness. Fingers bit into Vaughn's throat, cut off his air. Thought, difficult in coming, was starting to disappear. The metanormal in the dark contracted his limb, dragged Vaughn for him, reeled him, reeled him in.

  Vaughn fought, jerked, swatted at the arm. Useless. Always physically weak, lack of O2 was stealing the little strength he owned, was passing him out.

  The black guy, the girl: they moved toward Vaughn, the girl's hand alive with the blue energy. And she was, since first showing herself, displaying expression. A nasty look that said all this ends here, ends now.

  Vaughn:… Aubrey…

  Vaughn's mind, becoming as weak as his body, was barely able to touch Aubrey's.

  The black guy: "Didn't have to be like this."

  Vaughn's heels kicking against the floor, trying to bite it, trying to get hold, just leaving skid marks for all the effort.

  … Aubrey…

  "We'll fight, but not your way. Revelation is coming…"

  The edge of Vaughn's vision went soft. Blackness closed in. At the center of it, a hand that burned blue.

  "The truth will set us—"

  "Aubrey!"

  Aubrey's eyes came open, were vacant. His mind was Vaughn's. Vaughn reached out Aubrey's hand. Vaughn touched Aubrey's hand to a play thing, to metal. At the moment of contact the metal expanded, shot forward: a slicing blade that cut clean the metanor-mal's extended arm.

  From him, in the dark, a sick, sick wail. The hand kept squeezing at Vaughn's neck—spasms before it fell to the ground, thudded on the floor.

  Vaughn changed focus, reached into the angry girl's mind. Her anger: her mother killed by cops before her eyes.

  And she still picked protecting normals over joining Vaughn? Vaughn turned the girl's hand, touched it to the black guy.

  A vicious pop of electricity, the stink of burnt flesh. The black guy got launched across the loft, bounced and slid over the floor.

  Aubrey awake, babbling something.

  Vaughn ignored him. The angry girl had his attention. He said to her, using his voice, digging the sound of his voice: "All that energy just raging inside you. Pumping in you, pumping in you. Your energy's like your anger, isn't it?"

  Her irises, on their own, the only part of her free to do as they pleased, dilated with fear.

  "It's gotta be so hard to keep it all in you. Sometimes you must feel like you're losing control. Sometimes you just gotta feel you're gonna…"

  Vaughn didn't finish the thought. Not out loud. But he shoved it into the girl's mind.

  Small lines, fissures, raced up and down along her flesh, bulged as she was rent from the inside. Energy seeping from her, then pouring from her, then…

  A howl.

  A flash. Blue.

  And then she was gone. Totally. As if she never existed.

  And Vaughn looked to the black guy.

  Aubrey, babbling: No, Vaughn. Please, Vaughn. Don't, Vaughn.

  A thought put him back to sleep.

  Vaughn, to the black guy, in his mind: You wanna hide, you wanna be the bitch, that's on you. But they don't murder my wife and walk from it. They get what they give. All that, and worse. And hey: I'm not the one who's insane. You are.

  The black guy screamed, grabbed at his head. His eyes rolled back into their sockets where he saw himself grabbing at his head, eyes rolled back in their sockets, screaming, looking at himself, grabbing his head, eyes rolled in their sockets, screaming as he looked at himself with his eyes rolled back…

  He'd be looking at that for the rest of forever.

  Night was Bo's favorite part of the day, the part he looked forward to. It was his part. Most of the day, the regular clock-punching hours, belonged to MTac. They were hours and hours of endless sitting-around-doing-nothing boredom. Occasionally they were broken up with moments of pure terror. But mostly there was boredom. So an MTac cop had time, lots of it, to think. What owned his thoughts: the next call, which would be completely different than the last call. He always had to think about the next call because for an MTac the next one could real easily be his final one. No two metanormals were alike. Even M-norms with similar fetishes could use them in different ways. Thinking, planning, considering: That's how an MTac spent his downtime.

  Beyond that?

  For Bo, beyond that was his family. A wife, two kids. That's what dominated his evenings. His children, ten and thirteen, were past the constant-attention phase of growing up. His wife had her late-in-life career as a law clerk to fill her time. Still, there wasn't an evening Bo didn't make his presence felt among them.

  It was a lack of presence that had almost wrecked things for him previously. It was a lack of presence that almost sent Kathy, his wife, skipping off with Oliver and Benny in tow.

  Not that Bo wasn't physically around. He was. He was there. He'd never been into hanging out at a bar swilling beers and swapping cop talk with the boys. Every evening, soon as he was off duty, home's where Bo was.

  Physically.

  But his head was still on the job. His head was still thinking on freaks and how to hunt freaks better and how to hunt freaks without getting himself, his element, killed. And while his head was on that, his kids grew up around their dad but without their dad. His wife dissipated in a homebound, unfulfilled life spent watching her husband wrestle nightly, alone, pondering the incredible, the unbelievable and the deadly. Daily they became less of a family. Blissfully self-absorbed, Bo saw none of the decay. Typical MTac. There was a cushion that came with keeping people at a comfortable distance. The philosophy: Our lives have only slightly intersected, so if anything ever happens to me, and something probably will… well, you don't know me, you can't miss me. He'd seen the same philosophy applied by other cops. He'd seen a lot of it applied by young Soledad. It was the way they lived, and they took the way they lived for granted.

  It was Kathy in the doorway, bags packed, kids already in the car, that slapped Bo awake to the reality of things.

  He woke up fast.

  From then on Bo made it a point to be a part, an active part, of Kathy's and the kids' lives. And he shared his life with them. Most of it. He still didn't talk much about being an MTac, and when he did, he edited out things like a telekinetic crushing a couple of cops under a semitrailer, or an intangible reaching into a cop's chest and squeezing his heart till it burst. Other than stuff like that, Bo shared his life. And when Kathy went back to school, then started working, that helped out a lot. When she had other things to do and to worry about, it pulled some of the pressure off Bo. At the end of the day Bo and Kathy were one of the few MTac couples to make something out of their marriage.

  And Kathy was among a select group of MTac wives not to be a widow.

  So those hours after work belonged to her. To the family.

  That only left the night for Bo; his time.

  Not even.

  With chores, with errands, with all the things that living takes from your life, his time, really, was those very few moments in bed, before sleep came, in the still and the quiet and the dark. His time was those few moments free of family and work and responsibility.

  Bo was no different from any guy who had obligations pulling him every single way. Most men live for their freedom, to be able to do as they please, be it running wild in the streets or dumping dirty clothes in the middle of the floor. Whether they ever really had that kind of freedom or not, it's a fond notion. And when the reality or illusion of it's been hacked and hacked and hacked away by every other commitment, a man's kingdom is reduced to a few blessed moments between waking and sleep, when he can think about the should've-beens and what-ifs, sort out the what-have-becomes and the what-will-bes.

  Then he sleeps, wakes, starts the cycle of obligation all over again, each day living just a bit more for the night. For what's left of the freedom he probably never even had in the first place.

  And even that, the night, Bo didn't own an
ymore. It belonged to a cop named Fiero. A cop who got dead tangling with a telepath. A couple of times Bo had watched the confiscated news tape of Fiero walking into Valley Bureau, regurgitating the little speech he'd been force-fed, then sticking his gun in his mouth and sending a slug through the top of his head. What Bo had seen was unshakable. It was waiting for him when he closed his eyes at night. He couldn't figure why it got to him so bad. Getting killed was something that sometimes happened to cops. With MTacs it was staying healthy that was unusual. Bo had managed to stay healthy and active and alive longer than any other MTac on the LAPD. The department's very own iron man. Bo was a natural, and it wasn't just glad-handing to say so. When it came to going after muties, when things got hectic, Bo had the ability to move with thought but without thinking. Pure instinct. It'd been that way for him for nearly a decade.

  Things changed.

  He'd felt them changing for a while. He was sure things had changed in that alley when he turned and saw the shape-shifter, chameleoned into the form of a wall, moving toward him, and too late raised his weapon. He would've been killed if it hadn't been for the sharp eyes and quick triggers of the rest of his element.

  That was one of those stories that got edited for his family.

  At first Bo chalked the incident to losing a step with age. Who doesn't? Maybe he was a hair slower than his best days, but that's all he was: just a hair slower. He had a lot more good years before he had to sweat over being too old for the job. But truth: It was more than age that had planed his edge. The tremor in his hand was an indicator, but it took what happened with Fiero to convince him of facts.

  Bo had crossed paths with Fiero more than a few times and found him as solid an MTac as there's likely to be. Three times BAMF in two years. In the history of the department only Soledad was on track to bust that record. But as good as Fiero was, he was no good against a telepath, against a freak that could crawl into your mind and make it its own. And once Fiero was being puppeted, he was nothing but a sweaty, frightened creature marking time until it put itself down. When Bo saw that, when he felt the torque in his gut as Fiero's husk sank from the picture frame and thudded on the floor, he knew it wasn't age that was slowing him down. He'd lost a step to fear. A small step. A minuscule delay that comes when, before the body moves, the mind asks: Am I going to make it? Am I going to see my wife and kids again? And it was just when the mind's asking questions, during that nanosecond's worth of inaction, that a cop, especially an MTac cop, got himself, got a member of his element, killed.