GeneSix

by Brad Dennison

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Scott stared into a monitor, reading the data on Jeff’s scan. “He’s in remarkable health, considering he has never had a doctor’s appointment. Never received any vaccinations of any kind. And he’s been living more or less on the street all of his life.”

  Jeff was sitting on a stool in front of Scott, chewing on a slice of pizza. “Like I said, Mother’s a healer. She also has the ability to make things grow. She boosted my immune system a couple times. I’ve never been sick a day in my life. Not even the sniffles.”

  Jake was standing by his son, a beer in one hand. “Those aren’t bad clothes for a street person.”

  “It’s Chloe. She manages to get money for us.”

  “So, it’s like you have this sort of extended family among meta-humans. All of you living off the grid.”

  “Yeah. Kind’a like that, I guess.”

  “What about education?” Scott asked.

  “They taught me to read, and do math and stuff. Mother used to be a schoolteacher, before people found out about her healing power and she had to go on the run. Chloe seems to know a lot about science. Physics and stuff.”

  “You know,” Scott said, “I had no idea there were so many meta-humans out and about like that. I had thought the gene was relatively rare. I would like to meet this woman you call Mother, and this Snake person.”

  Jeff shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do. They don’t normally take to outsiders. It’s a sort of closed community. They usually only welcome in the ones Mother and Snake rescue. But since you’re like them, they might make an exception.”

  April said, “So, Mother heals anyone who’s sick. And this girl Chloe uses her ability to provide money for food and clothing.”

  Jeff nodded. “And the Darkness keeps us all safe.”

  This got Scott’s immediate attention. “The Great Darkness?”

  Jeff snickered. “Yeah. Except for the great part. No one really calls him that except the newspapers.”

  “What do you know of him?”

  Jeff shrugged. “Not much. He’s really kinda scary. I’ve only seen him two or three times. I talked to him once.”

  “Describe him.”

  “I’ve never really seen him. I don’t know if anyone has. He’s just the darkness. It’s kinda hard to describe, because I don’t really understand it myself. I don’t know if anyone does.”

  Before anything more could be said, an audio field opened about them, and Sammy’s voice came through it. “Scott? Jake? I need you in the computer alcove. Something’s come up.”

  Jake slapped his son’s shoulder. “Gotta go to work.”

  “It’s okay,” Jeff said. “I’ll be all right. You guys got satellite TV. That’s not something we have on the streets.”

  Jake and Scott met Sammy in the computer alcove.

  Sammy said, “A name popped up on one of my random sweeps of FBI web pages and phone calls. Peter LaSalle.”

  “They found him?” Scott said.

  Sammy nodded. “Once the name popped up and I had a direction to focus on, I knew which files to hack. They found him earlier today, near death. Some sort of cerebral condition. Like a grand mal seizure, but the worst they had ever seen. He’s being held at Boston General.”

  Jake was a little incredulous, considering the man’s strength. “They’re keeping him in a regular hospital?”

  “He’s not gained consciousness. They don’t think he’s going to. He’s breathing on his own, but otherwise his brainwaves are totally flatlined.”

  Scott began to pace. “I wonder if we could be of any assistance? After all, we have diagnostic equipment here that’s light years ahead of anything they have.”

  “I would agree,” Jake said, “if it weren’t for the fact that the DTD is a branch of the FBI, and has caused us a lot of headaches over the years. Including trying to kill us last year.”

  Sammy said, “Agent Kincaid has been removed from duty, pending charges. Turns out he was acting beyond his authority. And when he had the newspaper building destroyed, he killed over thirty civilians. Apparently there’s no active search going on for us right now.”

  “Even still,” Jake said.

  “I agree.” Scott was still pacing. “And yet, here’s a situation where we could truly be of service. And it might give us a chance to learn more about LaSalle, and just how his abilities work.”

  April was stepping through the doorway, her smoothie in one hand. “He’s a meta-human, right?”

  “We assume so. I never have had the opportunity to run a genetic scan on him.”

  “All right, Fearless Leader,” Jake said. “What’s the plan?”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” April said. “I thought you said you were going to start assuming some of the leadership duties around here.”

  Jake nodded. “All right. I did say that. Okay, I say you should go in and offer your services, Scott. Do that genetic scan. I’ll go with you as security.”

  “What about me?” April said.

  “I have a plan for you. And for Rick and Chuck, too. Because, even with Kincaid out of the picture, I’m still not feeling very trusting of the DTD. You know what they say, fool me once..,”

  They teleported into a corridor of Boston General. Jake was now in his blue and black battle suit, and Scott in his gray duds.

  “All right,” Scott said. “According to Sammy and his computer hacking, LaSalle should in room 319.”

  “Lead the way, oh fearsome leader.”

  Three floors down, in a waiting room, a blind man sat. A dog was curled up on the floor beside him. The man became suddenly aware of the presence of Scott Tempest.

  “He’s here,” the man said aloud.

  In his mind, he heard Quentin’s voice. “THANK YOU, NATE. NOW GET OUT OF THERE, JUST IN CASE SOMETHING GOES WRONG.”

  Jake and Scott stepped into Room 319 to find an empty bed.

  “I don’t understand” Scott said.

  “I think we’ve been set up.”

  There was sudden flash of light, and a man stood before them. He was now in jeans and a Red Sox t-shirt, but Jake and Scott immediately recognized him as one of the three they had encountered in the past, on the alternate Earth.

  Before anything could be said, he raised his hands, and they all disappeared in a flash of light.

  Sammy, in the computer alcove, was monitoring the away team closely. He was not in favor of this mission at all. When Jake and Scott suddenly disappeared from the computer’s scans, he was not surprised.

  “Red alert, everyone,” he said.

  April’s voice came out of the audio field around him. “What is it, Sammy?”

  “They’ve both vanished. Some sort of teleportation, I believe, but I’ve never seen an energy wave quite like it.”

  “We’re moving in.”

  On the rooftop of the building across the street from Boston General, April stood, alongside Rick and Chuck. April was in her battle suit, and Chuck in what looked like a space suit. Rick was in a suit of orange with the illustration of a flaming comet on his chest.

  They had teleported there, as Jake thought it might be a strategic advantage to have part of the team ready to act as backup, rather than simply all beam into the hospital at once.

  Sammy said, “Be careful. I have a feeling it might not be the DTD we’re dealing with. I really doubt they have possession of a teleportation device.”

  “Intuition, Sammy?” April asked.

  He said, with a little surprise, “Apparently.”

  “We can talk about it later.” To Rick and Chuck, she said, “Let’s go.”

  She grabbed Chuck by the arm, and in a quick blink of light, transformed them both to living quantum energy.

  Rick, turning on his speed, actually ran down the side of the building and across the street, moving faster than the human eye could follow. Passersby on the street merely felt a sudden gust of wind that lifted hats and skirts, and sent newspapers and litter flying.

/>   He arrived in the room seconds later, to find April and Chuck already standing there. Despite how fast Rick could move, he knew he would never be able to match April. When quantemed-up, she could move at the speed of light.

  Rick said, “Where’s LaSalle?”

  “Not here,” Chuck said, his voice coming over a small speaker at the base of his helmet. “Apparently it was a set-up.”

  April said, “Sammy, talk to me.”

  Sammy’s voice came over an audio field forming about them. “Two different teleportation trails. One going in, and the other exiting. But they’re both fading quickly. And the energy is like nothing the central computer has ever seen before. Nothing I have seen, either. Similar to Jeff’s in some ways, but in some ways much different. As such, I’m having trouble getting a clean fix. And the trails are fading too fast. I think we’ve lost them.”

  April, Chuck and Rick stood in the room. All of this power between the three of them, and there was absolutely nothing they could do to help.

  Jake and Scott found themselves standing in what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse. The floor was concrete, and steel rafters decorated a tin ceiling thirty feet above.

  Standing before them was Quentin Jeffries and the girl they had seen in the alternate universe. She was now in gray sweat pants and a black sports bra, but her feet were still bare.

  “Quentin,” Scott said. “I shouldn’t be surprised. What’s going on?”

  Before Quentin could respond, Akila sprang into motion. She did not really want to hurt this man with the blue and black outfit. Something about the way he smiled at her, something about the look in his eye. But he had stopped the Great Stone, and a such, had altered the timeline and possibly destroyed her civilization before it could even be built. He was, Quentin said, dangerous. She found she could not dispute it.

  Knock him out, Quentin had said. Do it before he had the chance to power-up. He would have to be fully powered-down to teleport. And there was no one among his team who could move as fast as Akila.

  She pushed herself to full speed, driving out a sidekick, and felt her foot connect with Jake’s skull. His legs were knocked out from under him and he landed hard on the concrete floor.

  “Jake!” Scott called out.

  He went to activate his force field, but found he could not move.

  “Sorry, old boy,” Quentin said. “I’m holding you in place.”

  Scott could feel Quentin’s telekinetic fingers curling around his mind.

  Scott said, “What do you want?”

  “We want access to your facility. Complete access to your computers.”

  “You can’t have it,” Scott said, thinking quickly. “Without the proper clearance codes, the central computer will never let you in.”

  A woman’s voice, from thin air, said, “Oh, you’ll give them to us.”

  And Mandy Waid sort of faded into view. She was smiling, and not pleasantly. She said, “And I do hope you try to resist.”

  “No,” Quentin said. “He’s lying. This much I can tell. As long as the defensive protocols are not activated, Hasani should be able to just beam you directly in.”

  Mandy threw him a scowl. “Kill joy.”

  “Quentin,” Scott said. “Mandy. Don’t do this.”

  Mandy said to Quentin, “Hold them here. I’ll take the team and go in.”

  She looked to Scott, “And I’ll deal with you when I get back.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Sammy sat in the computer alcove alone. Jeff stood behind him, watching over his shoulder, as Sammy’s hands flew over the membrane buttons at a speed almost faster than Jeff’s eyes could follow.

  “You have to find them,” Jeff said. “I mean, I haven’t known all of you very long, maybe, but Jake’s my father.”

  Sammy spoke while his hands flew over the controls. “This is a highly advanced tracking system. If they’re still on this plane of existence, and I do mean anywhere on this plane, we’ll find them. Though, I have never seen a teleportation energy wave quite like this, and I can’t imagine where they got the technology for this kind of thing.”

  “Maybe they didn’t,” Jeff said. “Maybe it’s organically generated. Like when mine.”

  “Highly unlikely. From what we can discern, the genesis gene doesn’t seem to duplicate itself exactly between two different people. No two people seem to have the same ability.”

  “Sure they do. I know lots of people who have the same powers.”

  Sammy was now somewhere between curious and astonished, though he didn’t take his eyes from the computer monitors. “Seriously?”

  “Sure. There’s Nate, the telepath. And there’s this guy Quentin. A long haired, kind of creepy lookin’ dude.”

  “Quentin Jeffries?” Now Sammy was fully astonished. “You know him?”

  “Sure. He’s a friend of Snake’s. I’ve met him a couple’a times. I don’t think his and Nate’s abilities work quite the same, but close enough. There could easily be another teleporter out there, something like me. Maybe also a time traveler.”

  “If that’s the case,” Sammy said, “If they have been taken to a different time, it might be almost impossible to trace them.”

  However, before anything more could be said, an alarm klaxon suddenly sounded.

  “Tachyon waves detected,” Sammy said. “Scott had me install an alarm, should anyone else try to enter the facility the way you did. And these waves are very similar to the trail left when Jake and Scott were taken.”

  Jeff nodded. “I can feel it. It’s increasing. Whatever it is, it’s approaching.”

  “There seems to be a fluctuation in the intensity of the waves and the polarity.”

  Jeff nodded again, stepping back away from Sammy’s chair, as though the added space would give him room to better perceive the tachyon waves.

  “It’s organic,” Jeff said. “The waves generated by your machines are artificial and hold to a steady pattern, and are kind of linear. Time isn’t linear. It kind of flows along in curves. That might be why you guys have a little trouble traveling to an exact point in the past.”

  “Interesting hypothesis. I wish we had more time to discuss that possibility, but I’m afraid whoever is beaming in will be here within a few seconds.”

  Jeff turned around, facing the center of the room behind the computer alcove. “Right there.”

  Sammy’s enhanced vision could detect the fluctuations, looking to him not unlike heat waves dancing away at the center of the room.

  Suddenly, they were standing there. A girl not much older than Jeff, with jet black hair. A man who had an Arabic look, with long black hair. A woman, dressed in sweat pants and a sports bra, her hair cut like the man’s. A man in a faded Red Sox cap, and with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. And standing at the head of the pack was a woman in jeans and a sweater, who Sammy recognized all too well.

  “Mandy Waid,” Sammy said.

  “Live and in person,” she said. “But I don’t recognize you. You must be new to this little freak show.”

  Jeff knew the young girl – Chloe. And he recognized the man in the baseball cap, too. He had seen him with Quentin before. He did not remember his name, but knew he knew he was a flame thrower.

  Mandy said, “Akila, whoever this freak is, take him out before he can activate whatever freaky power he has.”

  The girl in the sweat pants suddenly sprang into a run toward Sammy and Jeff.

  Sammy, with a burst of the speed he was capable of because of the accelerated strength Scott had built into him, shot in front of Jeff, to protect him.

  The woman leaped into the air, driving a kick toward Sammy’s chest.

  With his enhanced reflexes and strength and the martial arts training he had received from Jake, Sammy grabbed the incoming foot by the ankle and twisted the girl around, throwing her off and away.

  She slammed her back into a concrete wall. She used her own training to control the collision a little and managed not to
hit her head, but the wind was knocked from her. She landed on the floor, not unconscious, but not quite functional.

  “Wait,” Chloe said to Mandy, realization dawning on her. “He’s tech.”

  “What do you mean?” Mandy said.

  “He’s totally and completely tech. I can feel it from here.”

  “Like, he’s a robot or something?”

  Sammy charged toward them. Best to take them out before they could harm Jeff or further compromise the facility. Take them out now and ask questions later.

  Chloe held out both hands toward him, and he suddenly stopped in mid-motion. He was no longer able to move his legs.

  The battle began. Chloe, her eyes shut, in more intense concentration than she had ever before attempted, reaching out with her mind to the tech that was Sammy, fighting his overrides, shutting him down one system at a time. Sammy trying to dance around the energy field she was shooting through him, trying to redirect his systems to avoid her attempts to shut him down.

  “No!” Jeff shouted. “You have to stop! He’s not like other machines. He’s alive. He’s a living person.”

  “A machine is a machine,” Mandy said. “Hey, who is this twerp, anyway? I didn’t know Egghead Freak allowed children in his complex.”

  Chloe began to quiver, and a drop of sweat rolled down her forehead. But she didn’t let up.

  Sammy fell to his knees, his eyes rolling back in his head.

  “Chloe!” Jeff shouted, stepping between her and Sammy. He didn’t know if his physical presence would disrupt her power, but he had to try. “What are you doing with these people? You were always nice. What are you doing? You have to stop.”

  “Jeff,” Chloe said, opening her eyes and huffing for breath. She felt like she had just run a marathon. When they had first beamed in, she had not recognized the boy because she had not expected to see him here. “What are you doing here?”

  Mandy said, “Chloe? You know this kid?”

  “Yeah. He’s from Boston. He’s one of us. He’s being raised by Mother and Snake.”

  “All right, kid,” Mandy said, “I don’t know how you know the freaks that live here, but we’re going to destroy this place. But not before I find out where my baby is.”