The Infected [Books 1-6]

by P. S. Power

  The question decided the man, who turned and drove to the local police station.

  "They are a splinter faction of the military, not too large, I think. They want to put General Butta into power, which would be a mistake. The man is a fool and worse than that, seeking only the best for himself and those that aid him, rather than looking towards the benefit of all our people." He glanced at Brian in the passenger seat for a second when he said it.

  "My people. I was unaware that aid would come from the Americans. I thank you. I promise you I will not forget this. I owe you my life, and that of my son." He sounded a little afraid as if there might be strings attached to his help or something.

  Brian looked out the window, ready to leave at any moment, wishing that he'd taken a weapon from the fight, rather than just his knife. It was a stupid mistake to make, since there was no way he could tell what they'd be facing in the next few moments.

  "We have to pull together, Ambassador. It isn't about countries anymore, this is about so much more." Then as if his power or subconscious mind had decided that was enough of him trying to make speeches, he switched back out, into the common room, knife tucked to middle at the last second so it wouldn't be left behind, struggling to roll, since he was traveling at about thirty-five miles per hour. That meant he ended up passing the dining room and stopped in front of his own door. Conveniently so, since he wanted to wash up and change before lunch.

  Technically he was supposed to tell someone about things like what had just happened first thing, so he stopped and walked back down the hallway to Christian's frosted glass office and knocked on the door.

  "Chris?" He waited, not knowing if she was even in at all. The voice that came back sounded a little annoyed, but the answer was polite enough.

  "Come in please Brian. I'm on the phone."

  She was, it turned out, and her face clearly told him she didn't really want to be. After a few seconds he understood why that was too.

  "I'm very sorry about all this Mr. Cooper. It was felt that telling you that Penny was Infected and couldn't communicate with you... Yes. I understand that you dislike the Infected sir. Yes, I am..." She held the phone away from her face as the yelling started. The only thing he heard was something about "filthy Infected" and how they ruined his daughter. He sounded a lot more angry than a man finding out that his son and daughter were both alive and safe should have been. Brian thought so anyway.

  Christian gritted her teeth.

  "I understand that you feel strongly on this issue sir, but perhaps you could..." What he could do she didn't get to, since the phone conversation ended with a loud click.

  Pointing gently Brian grinned. It was a fake thing, but he was making an effort not to be cold to the woman, since it was clearly going to be a hard day for her, over something that wasn't her fault. She didn't make the rules after all. Or if she did they weren't ones that were all that stupid.

  "Thank you for that Brian. I do appreciate the effort."As her attention turned to him her eyes went wide though, instead of squinting in pain like she normally did.

  "You seem much better! So much... Is that the healing from yesterday?" She said it almost like they'd talked about it already. Then, she was buddies with the ghost that lived in his head, so maybe it wasn't that strange. She didn't read his mind if she could help it. He knew that for a fact.

  "Yeah. That's pretty great, I have to say. Dangerous for the woman that did it, I think. Hobbs seemed worried at least. Anyway, I have a report. Got a few minutes? This will probably take up the rest of your day."

  The whole thing didn't take a long time to get down, since she just recorded what he said, instead of writing it long hand. Then she looked at him for a minute and sighed, her pretty face looking a lot more relaxed than it normally did around him.

  "You know Brian, I think you should look into having this Carlie woman do more of this for you, if she can without harming herself. I know that you have to think of her first, but remember, you not being in pain is also good for me. I can almost bear being in the room with you this way." She grinned, both teasing him and not. Her fingers found the silver chain on her neck and after a few seconds she nodded.

  If there was a reason for it he couldn't tell.

  "I may have something for you to do after your afternoon session. Is that all right? I understand if you don't want to be seen in public right now. The thing with Karen and Rob..." She growled then, her lips pursing in a fashion that he'd never seen on her before.

  "That was so stupid. Robert knows better than that too. It was found out almost instantly as well, a reporter with a news crew sneaking onto the first floor spotted him leaving her room, still fixing his clothing. If he was just a little more discreet the whole thing could have been covered up easily enough, but it hit the tabloid news and now we have to just roll with the press on it. I could just slap them both."

  It seemed a little over the top, but Brian had heard that Christian might have a little knowledge about such things, having had several "leaked" sex tapes from before her time at the IPB. He'd never thought about it a lot himself, but it probably meant she was kind of an expert on the whole thing. Maybe he should get her advice on how to spin it all for best effect? He certainly couldn't think of anything himself that way.

  Thinking that got a slightly strained grin from the Team leader and she placed both hands on the sides of her keyboard and stood, her pink skirt looking smoothed and pressed still. The cream colored top had a single wrinkle, but that happened when you worked, no matter how you tried to stop it.

  "What we need to do now isn't really your responsibility. The hard part is that the press might question you on the topic and there isn't anything helpful or good you can say at all. Not giving a statement will look cold and anything else you say will be spun into you being hurt and bitter, or used to make you seem weak. There really isn't any way around it." She sat again, looking tired suddenly.

  He took it as a sign that he should leave her alone. Her first mode made it really hard for her to tolerate most people for long time periods and he wasn't on the top of the list for people she really wanted to try that with anyway. She had her friends, but even they kept things to short bursts of "Chris time" for her.

  "I'm off to shower again and then lunch." He wasn't even late yet, though there wasn't a lot of time before the meal would be ready. The big difference that day was that instead of Mark making the sandwiches and salads they normally ate, or even something more elaborate, he sat at the table with Penny and Jeremy, as Denis busily did something in the kitchen.

  It smelled pretty good too. Some kind of spicy meat, Brian thought.

  He sat down to wait, since that seemed to be what everyone else was doing, Penny waving to him excitedly, holding her brother by the arm like she didn't want him to escape. He didn't seem to notice it, looking pretty relaxed about the whole thing, to tell the truth. A lot of people couldn't feel when Penny touched them. It was part of her power.

  "I have to go to the other room to talk to him, but I don't want to leave him alone." She didn't explain why that was, but also didn't need to. He was her family after all. Her little brother.

  "I'll bring you a plate of whatever we're having when it's ready. Go ahead, I'll stay here with Jeremy. So will Mark."

  "Thank you!" She ran from the room and less than a minute later a voice came across the intercom they had set up just for that purpose. It was just an off the shelf unit, but they had a special table for it off to the left side of the room. Right now it was covered with a nice red cloth, to try and hide some of the damage that had been done to the wall behind it. Bridget had done that, trying to save her "boyfriend" Clark from being killed. In the end Denis had stood up for the guy and gotten him locked up instead. Brian had been about to take him out when that had happened. The guy had been sleeping with Bridget after all. She was under age and would be for months more. Half a year? He really needed to learn her birthday, didn't he? He'd been at her last party, but that
had been late and he couldn't remember the date.

  Scott's too.

  Damn... he owed him a lot of presents. All of them.

  He worked the numbers out and figured that it would take about one hundred and thirty three in all, not counting multiple presents for Christmas, of course. That didn't include what he'd need to get everyone else either. After all it wouldn't do to just get Scott and Bridget things and leave out the others, Rachel and Charlot. Mary too.

  He chuckled a little, but pretended it was about Penny leaving.

  Her voice came in clearly though and he wasn't really required to be part of the conversation. Jeremy was a class two it turned out, and a bit too young for the IPB, so no one was thinking he'd have to stay. His father wasn't huge on the whole idea of having kids that were that different, so it meant going back to his mother, who, Penny assured them all, was doing much better now that her kids were both alive and well.

  "She freaked when she heard why you took off. I can't believe that Aunt Faun tried to kill you."

  Brian could, because the woman had clearly had issues, but he kept his mouth shut and just waited for the braised beef strips with tarragon to be served, resting on a bed of steamed couscous with a side of tender asparagus. It was even arranged neatly on the plate with a bit of sauce drizzled on it for decoration, like restaurant food.

  While the rest of them ate like normal people, Mark analyzed the food pretty harshly.

  "The meat's a little tough. You should probably tenderize more next time. The asparagus... doesn't really go with the dish. A bit too acidic. That could be in the preparation. Maybe something with a bit more color? The plate's a little beige for television this way. Something with beets and carrots?" He ate it though and Denis didn't seem that put out by the analysis, so Brian added his own.

  "You should add a contrasting element to the couscous too. It doesn't have to be strong, but something slightly sweet would really offset the tarragon." The words got a funny look from everyone but Jeremy who nodded a little.

  Mark smiled gently.

  "True. Make a note of that Den. It's a little surprising coming from Brian, but right is right."

  Taking another bite of beef Brian smiled himself.

  "What? I watch a grand total of one television show, "Steinberg and Friends". You didn't think I'd pick something up?" He almost made a comment on that, but Jeremy got up and walked out of the room suddenly. It was completely without warning, so Brian did the same thing, following along with him to the elevator, which had everyone else in behind him before the doors could close.

  It was a little crowded, and the box moved fast, going to the first floor. Not the lobby level, so the kid wasn't leaving. He also didn't say anything at first. Finally he looked at Brian and pointed at the door.

  "Um, someone needs help?" It wasn't a lot to go on, and it definitely wasn't something that Brian was picking up on. Penny got it though, her voice sounding a little amused.

  "His power. It's... different. A kind of sense of what he needs to do to keep things calm around him. It's probably why he keeps getting into situations that you have to go to. Bad things attract him, so they can be repaired. I don't know what this will be about. We should probably be ready to fight someone." Everyone else just stood there, not hearing her, except for Denis, who had one of the special ear pieces in that allowed him to get her words on time delay.

  He always made a point of doing that now. The rest of the team should be too, Brian decided.

  The door opened on a gentle chaos, with Bridget holding someone by the arm, not letting them go, but not hurting them either, it was a man with curly hair and a big mustache, but no one Brian recognized. Jeremy did though.

  "Hey, it's the gossip guy! From the really seedy channel for women." He smiled and moved forward hand out as if to shake, the camera man behind him looked uncomfortable, but trained the camera on Brian directly. Apparently he recognized everyone on sight.

  "Proxy!" The curly haired man yelled at him, too loud for the few feet of space that was between them, as if he was trying to get his attention in a crowd.

  "Proxy, how do you feel about Lady Glory having an affair with Torque? Do you feel hurt? Betrayed? Do you want revenge?"

  Instead of answering he turned to Jeremy and whispered, knowing it would be heard anyway.

  "You came to protect him from Bridget? I don't think she was going to hurt him."

  The kid just made a face.

  "He needs help. Otherwise this gets all out of control and becomes something bad. For him. Go ahead and talk to him, it will be better that way I think. You can keep him from having some pretty bad troubles later if you do."

  It wasn't what he wanted to do, but it was kind of important to protect Karen and Rob, wasn't it? What could he say though, that everyone would understand?

  "Um, well, they didn't. I mean, an affair implies that they were sneaking around or that it wasn't part of the relationship, Karen and I have been pretty open about the fact that we were both allowed to see other people." They hadn't been, not in the press, but the man didn't seem to find it that hard to believe.

  "Why did Robert try to dodge our questions about it then?"

  Brian smiled and then sighed, letting his hands go out a little, with a shrug.

  "Because he's a good guy, that's why. He thought it might hurt my feelings, and didn't want to make a big deal out of the whole thing. So he tried to protect Karen and I. It wasn't needed, but that's what happened. Of course the fallout from this isn't great, because now Karen has broken up with me, but it wasn't over that, just the coverage of it. Kind of silly really, but her compassion is legendary and she feels pretty much like she's let everyone down, which isn't true at all. Maybe if you apologized to her? For the press, I mean. I know she won't expect it, but it might let her feel better and not think she's going around destroying other peoples' happiness. That would be really good of you, showing that you care about people and all that." Then he walked away, not wanting his lunch to get cold.

  The man kept calling out questions, even as the door closed on the box again. This time Bridget was in with them, cuddling up next to Penny. Brian couldn't tell if she knew she was doing it or not.

  It turned out that his afternoon practice was only half of what it was supposed to be, because he had to go and fight again, this time against an Infected woman that was just standing in a street ranting when he got there. It was weird, since she didn't seem to have been attacking anyone before that and she addressed him by name the second she saw him.

  Not "Proxy". She called him Brian.

  "I'll kill you, Brian!" She flew at him, literally, if only at about head height, moving about forty miles per hour. Her anger was clear and she kept calling him names, but again, she hadn't done anything before he got there as far as he could tell.

  He just ducked and punched her on the chin as he stood up and she flew over him, then tugged her foot hard enough that she smacked into the ground about fifteen feet away. He didn't really want to let her recover, but had to wait for her to wake up so he could try to ask questions. This didn't seem normal at all. She didn't seem to have been attacking until after he'd gotten there. He knelt on her face with one knee, figuring it would be hard to fly away that way.

  She didn't even try, going with scratching instead.

  "Kill you! She told me that if I killed you now this would all end! I can be normal again. They have a way, but you're stopping it. Die!" She struggled hard enough he had to hit her twice in the head to slow her down.

  "Who said that?" Brian had an idea, but didn't want to give her any ideas.

  "The woman with the braid. She said that her plan would save us all, and that we could control the rage, the "first mode". Then I can just fly and not feel like this all the time. I hate you! I hate everyone! Die..."

  He had to punch her for a while until the lady stopped moving, but didn't bother killing her. It didn't feel right. He was tempted to try and get more information from her, b
ut didn't get the chance, coming back to the base just in time to make his practice with Marcia. She looked at him funny, noticing his clothing was messed up it seemed.

  "Another one? It seems... Faster than usual. You normally have more time between events." She stared directly into his eyes, as if daring him to claim otherwise.

  "This one was different. Braid set it up... I think. She couldn't have meant for that woman to kill me, I'm pretty sure she was a class one, so it's probably some kind of distraction. I think the last few things might have been, really. Set up by her, I mean. It's complex, but if that's the case..."

  If it was the case she could probably kill him at any time. Just get him to go somewhere and set off a bomb for instance, she had the means to do that after all. It had to be easier than genetically creating a giant cat creature to try and eat him. Way simpler to pull off. As it was, that exercise had cost her an asset. Unless that was part of her plan too? Bind the others to her more tightly, using him as the outside threat that will kill them if they don't do exactly what she says?

  He didn't know enough to even guess at that part, but if she wasn't being that complex then it didn't really make sense, did it? Not at all. Her power drove her to complexity like that and beyond it.

  Marcia didn't cut him any slack, attacking when he was thinking, causing him to have to defend against her without processing what she intended to do very well, meaning two things.

  First, he really hit her, just as hard as he could, lifting the woman up bodily and throwing her to the floor.

  Second, it didn't hurt her at all. She was back up and on him with superhuman speed, which he couldn't match. What he could do was pop his right hand out and palm her face as she rushed him. It nearly worked at least, her hyper-fast reflexes letting her nearly dodge the whole thing, until he changed the direction of the move in mid-flight, bending his arm and twisting, pulling the back of her head towards him. It looked cool enough, but didn't stop her.