He seemed to be in a good mood, and I asked him if he wanted anything. He eyed the backyard with hunger, specifically, the flower bed. “If you got rocks, stones, even pebbles, I’m good.” A shrug revealed massive boulder-like trapezius muscles as well as his resignation to the fact of his condition. “I figured out a while back this is how it’s going to be. No changes yet. I’m still me.”
“There may still be a cure,” Joe said as he spun over to say hello.
A deep, rumbling laugh came from Neil. “Yeah, right, tell me all about it. The doctor never told me nothing. All I ever heard were promises she was doing her best, and then there’s me, Mr. Rock Man. So why’d you ask me up here?”
Joe asked, “What are you doing in San Diego?”
Neil took a seat on the grass, the soft turf immediately sinking six inches under him. “I work in a rock quarry. Can you beat that?” He shook his head as if it was the biggest joke in the world. “I help geologists do their searches.”
He’d lost me at geologists. “I don’t get it.”
Rocks, it all had to do with rocks. When his body had changed, he’d also gained the ability to differentiate between different kinds of stone. “I didn’t know it at first,” he chortled. “Yeah, I can sniff out the difference between granite and quartz. I don’t have to see it to know where it is. I just know. I guess I got a nose for it.”
It seemed like an ability people could use. Neil seemed to read my mind. “Like it does me any good. People don’t want to get close to me. I got a really hard grip. One mistake, I crush someone’s hand or if I get angry enough, flatten them, like, literally.” He made the motion of creating a pancake. “So if you think I’m getting rich off this, forget it. I’m still a stone guy. That’s all.”
He then asked us what we’d been up to. Joe jerked his head at me as if to say tell him, so I did. Neil’s eyes widened while I laid out the details. “Are you serious? Some kind of insect thing?”
“It was a toad, and yeah, I’m serious. That’s one reason why we contacted you,” I said, hoping he’d understand.
He didn’t. Just the opposite—his eyes narrowed, and he grunted. It sounded like a truck full of gravel bumping along a highway. “You’re not thinking of putting us three back together again, are you?”
“It was four of us, and yeah, I’m sort of semi-serious.”
It was another revelation—a big one. Prior to the attack by Mr. Toad, I’d had no intention of reforming the group, but after, it made me wonder if we were future targets. Along with that idea was the possibility of working with law enforcement. That way, they’d know we were on their side. “And it would be legal,” I finished.
Neil’s expression, that being of an angry statue, didn’t change. “I’m not so hot on the idea. And I don’t know if I can trust that kid, Cal, or whatever his or her name is.”
Don’t go there.
Too late, though, as Neil continued to spout off about trust. “He didn’t have the guts for it. I saw his eyes. He wasn’t big or strong enough. That’s just bad team-playing. Me, I can’t be hurt. Maybe you can’t either, Mitch, but other people, regular people, they’re not made of stone, you know?”
Point made, but all the same the piss-off-o-meter in me started to rise. Had it been a color spectrum, right now it would have been a dull orange. He continued with, “When I played football, it was team or nothing, and that just ain’t team ball.”
The color spectrum went up to a dull red, and switched to a bright, almost incandescent white when Neil said, “And having that tranny wasn’t good—”
“Neil, shut it right now or leave,” I interrupted. My claws came out, and while I didn’t have a mirror, I felt the shift in my features, a flowing of bone and tissue. My voice, guttural and hoarse, gave the transformation away. “Watch it.”
He stared at me, his mouth working. “Hey, I just got here and what is your problem? You’re changing, and man, this is what I do not need.”
Anger, control it, breathe deeply... and then I felt my features flow back to normal, so I laid it out. “Think about what you said. We went through this before, and we’re going to have it out now, so listen up. One, her name is Callie. She’s a girl. Two, we’re dating. Got it?”
His eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open. “You’re dating?”
Some things had to be set straight. “We started dating the same time I joined up. You saw us together in the truck, remember? You said something then, remember? So maybe you forgot, or you don’t care. But that’s what happened, so if you’re going to talk about Callie—don’t. Don’t call her a tranny or weird or anything.”
Neil continued to stare, but then lowered his head and muttered an apology. He got to his feet and said, “Yeah, fine, I got it. Look, I came here ‘cuz I’ve got nothing to do back home. I work. I get money. I don’t spend it on anything. I’m a living rock, so what else have I got? Maybe I’ll end up as a lawn ornament or something.”
He then walked through the gate. “I’ll stick around for a few days. I promised. But I don’t feel like joining up again. It’s got nothing to do with your girlfriend.”
A sneer or what looked like a sneer crossed his face, but then it just as quickly faded. “Sorry about what I said about Cal, er, Callie.”
Neil then turned away, walked back to the truck, and heaved his bulk inside. “Where are you going?” Joe asked.
Neil started the engine, revved things up, and then swung his truck around in a wide circle, stopping in front of us, engine idling. “I’ll be at the edge of the city, the western part. I saw a nice forest. I can hang out there.” He fished around in his jeans pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “If you want to reach me, that’s where I’ll be.”
He handed the paper to Joe and then drove off. I didn’t regret calling Neil out for his ‘tude toward Callie. Sometimes you had to say it straight. At the very least, he hadn’t done a U-turn and gone back to San Diego.
Joe then turned in the direction of his house. “I’ll see you later, man. That stuff with Neil—I mean, about Callie—let it go.”
Yeah, let it go.
He jogged off, and with nothing better to do, I went inside and scanned the internet for any news articles related to us. Where to find Mr. Lucas, who was in charge of everything—nothing helpful came up.
Before I knew it, five-thirty had made the scene. My mother called and said she’d be late—again—and luckily Joe came over with four bags of groceries in his hands. “Half of it’s for my dad, and half we can eat. Your mom’s going to be late, right?”
How did he know these things? Joe seemed to read my mind as he added, “Your mom called my dad and told him. He has to work late, too.”
Without waiting for an answer, he moved into the kitchen and began banging away at the pots and pans. While he cooked, I checked on the internet for anything, anything at all, related to our group.
Nothing, nothing at all. It was as if someone had decided to erase our past. They couldn’t erase us, although the attack had made me feel otherwise. “Hey, man, dinner’s on the table,” Joe called out from downstairs. “Chili spaghetti with avocado and tuna!”
Suddenly, I didn’t feel like eating. “I’m not hungry.”
“Fine, I’ll wrap it up and take off.”
A few seconds later, the sound of the door shutting echoed through the house. Along with the loss of my appetite was the loss of motivation to do anything else. All in all, it had been a very odd, depressing day, one of old meetings renewed along with bad feelings and more feelings of uncertainty.
The next morning, after my mother had gone to work, Joe showed up with five boxes of donuts in his hands. “Picked these up at the corner store,” he said.
Never mind the corner store was ten minutes away on foot, but not if you spun over. He sat down at the kitchen table, opened two boxes, and began eating in a rapid-fire manner. The way he went through food was frightening at times.
I
managed to hustle out one box of donuts for myself. While munching away on the sole chocolate donut in the bunch, he stopped stuffing his face long enough to say, “So, I know how you stand with Neil, but—”
“You want to know about Callie, right?”
A chastened look appeared on his face. “If we’re going to put the group back together, I have to know. You didn’t want to talk about it the other day.”
As if it was his business to begin with? And who put him in charge of things, anyway? Joe’s face wore a serious expression. Like, when wasn’t he serious? Me, it was hard to keep the elation from showing, and then, okay, the hell with it, he’s my best friend, tell him. “Things are good. We’re back together. That’s all you have to know.”
He nodded. “None of my business, really.”
The telephone then rang. Running to pick up the receiver, I asked who it was. “My name is Agent Dornier,” the voice said. “I’m with the FBI.”
As soon as he uttered those words, I started to get a bad feeling. “Does this have anything to do with the sample?”
“It does.”
That answer caused my stomach to start churning, and it took a lot to make it churn that badly. Dornier continued with, “You’d better come in. We need to talk.”
After hanging up, my appetite had gone, and I informed Joe of the change in plans. He dropped his donut. “Let’s get going.”
An hour later, I landed in front of the hospital and found Joe talking to a tall, slender man in a black suit and neatly knotted dark blue tie. Naturally, he wore the obligatory black sunglasses. Man, that look had died with the movies, but some people couldn’t get the message. Joe made the introductions. “Mitch, this is Agent Dornier.”
“I’m with the FBI, Portland branch,” the man said, doffing his shades to reveal a pair of watery blue eyes that stood out in a very plain, regular-featured face. “I’ll explain things once we go inside.”
Our trip took us to the second floor where Reilly had been conducting his experiments. Once inside the room, my jaw sagged. Everything had been destroyed. The only thing left behind was Reilly’s nameplate.
“One of the staff heard a crashing sound a couple of hours ago,” Dornier said as he carefully wrapped up the nameplate in a baggie. “I’ll take this back to our lab and have it dusted for prints, but I doubt we’ll find anything.”
“Didn’t you know this Reilly guy?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. I got transferred here only recently, five days ago. Before that, I was in Los Angeles. I’d heard about you and your friend.” He nodded at Joe. “But I didn’t think either of you would be involved in this.”
“We are now.”
“Yeah, you are,” he conceded with a nod. “When the lab called our office to tell us this office had been destroyed, I came here.”
Great, more administrative incompetence. “I thought you guys knew each other.”
Dornier let out a sigh. “Apparently, we don’t. I’m not blaming anyone, only us. We should have caught this before anything happened.”
The whole thing confused me and then Joe came out with, “Was there really a person named Reilly?”
In answer, Dornier beckoned us outside and took out his smartphone. After punching in a few buttons, he showed us the information. There it was, plain as day.
Agent Kory Reilly, age twenty-nine, killed in the line of duty. Born, April 14th, 1984, died April 22nd, 2014. Reilly was born in Laramie, Wyoming, joined the FBI at the age of twenty-four...
The information went on to say he’d been a field agent of exceptional skill. Looking at the picture, it was the same guy, the same height along with having the same witchy face.
Truth hit and hit hard. The guy we’d been talking to was a clone. Dornier stowed his smartphone away. “We’ve already put out an alert for this guy, but whoever he is, he’s smart. He’s fooled everyone.”
He then left, after cautioning us to be careful. Not having anywhere else to go, Joe and I went home. “Guess we’re both staying up late tonight,” he said.
The message was clear. Whoever had manufactured that toad creature had also managed to create someone who could pass as human without any smell, unlike that from the toad. What made it worse was the fact those creations had a new target—us.
Chapter Eight: Catching a break
Predictably, my mother flipped out when I told her. Rather, she flipped out on the phone when Chief Sullivan called at ten-thirty that night, intending to talk to me. I was in my room at the time, and my mother picked up the receiver. At first, her tone was quiet, calm and collected. Then it changed to a faster and higher-pitched one, and when she yelled, “What?” I knew this wasn’t going to be my night.
Creeping to the edge of the stairs, she asked only two other pertinent questions. “Are you sure?” and, “Are you saying there’s nothing to worry about?”
Oh, this would not end well. Straining my ears, the sound of garbled words came through. I had super strength and could fly, but when it came to listening ability, call me average at best. My mother’s lips got tighter by the second and then she demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
More garbled words, and then, in a moment of supreme idiocy, I asked, “Mom, who is it?”
In a swift move, she twisted her head around to nail me with a distinctly unmotherly glare. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I could fly, could kick major ass if needed, but against my mother, I was helpless. Mouthing, “Is something wrong?” She stared straight through me and stabbed her finger at the carpet in a get-down-here-now gesture.
As I moved downstairs, her answer to the chief was more than succinct. “No, my son didn’t tell me. He and I will have a little conversation about this.”
Her conversation ended with the slamming of the receiver on its cradle so hard the table rattled. “Mitchell Ryan Kessler, you and I are going to discuss this matter right now!”
Uh-oh, she’d used my middle name. In fact, that was the first time she’d ever used it. We ended up arguing for an hour over the merits of me not telling her the truth, and then as the sixtieth minute rolled around, she asked, “Do we have to be worried about anything attacking us?”
How was I supposed to answer her? Lie and tell her the police were watching our home—they weren’t—or maybe offer the old line of there being only one monster. In the end, none of those answers sufficed, so I said, “I hope not.”
“Thank you for that bit of good news.”
Sarcasm was so not her forte. Since this would get us nowhere, I diverted the conversation to Callie. My mother’s expression didn’t change. It remained the consistency of a stone. “You’ve been seeing a lot of her lately,” she started.
“And I’m seeing her tomorrow. She’s, uh, not going to school, either, so we decided to hook up.”
Something flickered in my mother’s eyes. Maybe it was relief that I’d found someone, or maybe it was fear of something coming in the night to slaughter us both. I couldn’t tell.
The silence built and built to an almost unbearable level until my mother sighed. “This is a lot to take in, but... I’ve always supported you. I haven’t changed my mind.”
She then moved over to the stairs. Halfway up, she paused to say, “Mitch, be careful.”
“I will. Thanks, Mom.”
At least she could get some rest. Me, I stayed up most of the night expecting something to come charging through the window... but nothing happened. Finally, after pacing around the downstairs for three hours, I figured whatever was out there also needed sleep, so I went upstairs to crash and didn’t wake up until ten the next morning.
When that hour came around, I tossed on some clothes and flew into Portland. Callie had said to meet me there. Independence wasn’t the place to get anything done. The law wasn’t really up to it, they had no advanced equipment in their hospitals to run DNA tests, and too many people knew us and disliked us.
Chief Sulliv
an hadn’t helped our case much when I’d asked him to get in touch with the FBI, hoping they could give me more information. They couldn’t. “Mitch, they’re looking into the matter right now. At least, that’s what they told me. The FBI isn’t telling me anything, and no one in Washington is saying anything.”
Yeah, some comfort that was—not. All in all, it was a pot of everyone not knowing or not wanting to know or not caring. Stir well, pour, and we got scalded. I just hoped that whatever was out there wouldn’t come around to our houses. Neil had phoned me earlier on to say he was going back to San Diego. Since we’d heard nothing from him so far, it seemed he wasn’t a target.
Or was he? After pondering the various ins and outs, it all came up to a no-win situation, and we were on the losing end. No point in mentioning that to Callie, though. She had enough to worry about. Put on a brave face. Put her at ease. Be there for her.
Callie met me at a downtown department store at eleven. When I flew in—god, I hated the nasty flapping sound my wings made, not to mention the shocked looks I got from everyone—she gave me a genuine smile and walked over to hug me. A few people made comments about flying monkeys and twisted sisters. She heard but pretended not to. She didn’t care what I looked like. She never had.
“How was your flight?”
Her question made me laugh. Trust her to come up with something to put me at ease. “No bugs in the windshield, a few birds resented the intrusion into their airspace, and a drone tried to kill me, but otherwise, yeah, it’s all good.”
A tiny giggle erupted from her, and she took my hand in hers. “Then let’s have some good. I need to buy a few things.”
Fine, let’s go malling. Central Department Store was crowded, but not crowded enough for the people inside not to make way when we walked by. “It’s because you’re pretty,” I quipped as the crowd parted like the Red Sea.
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