The Infected [Books 1-6]

by P. S. Power

  She was a plump girl, round of face and behind, with a thick middle that wasn't fat as much as... plush. Smaller than she used to be by a few pounds. Her hair was a strawberry blonde that should have been cute, but wasn't, resting as it was over a perpetual scowl. Her face was lost at the moment, like a confused child, not angry. It would have been easier if she'd been angry.

  He didn't even get to say her name before she looked up, her face tightening into a more familiar scowl.

  "I did that to you, didn't I? I made you Infected. Doug too. I ruined him and made him something evil and bad. You too. Infected you both without even knowing it, while watching a stupid movie..."

  He didn't remember that part.

  "A movie?"

  "The Puppeteer? I got scared when the clown puppet started walking on its own, carrying that kitchen knife. I mean, it wasn't a huge thing, but it made me feel funny. I didn't know what that meant. I don't want to believe it, but it's happened to too many people. I know it's me. Those men that grabbed me earlier... I hurt them..." She looked down at the floor her face set for a bit, then she shook her head. "I made you Infected and I hate you for it. I hate everyone, even though I shouldn't. Isn't that insane? I don't know how Doug managed to put up with my bitching for so long. What do I do now? Live here for the rest of my life? I... don't think I can do that."

  Brian nodded, which got her to cringe a bit.

  "I know. It isn't fair. Not that I love you or anything, but you don't deserve to be locked up forever, not just for being a bit unpleasant. We have to do something." He didn't want to mention what. It was too hard and besides, she'd want a sane way out, right? Not something as dark and final as what he was thinking.

  "The thing is Carla, if they can, the government is probably going to use you to Infect people on purpose. They almost have to. If they do that, it's going to make even bigger problems. We can stall for a while, but we can't hold them off forever. I mean, I know it doesn't seem like it, but right now I'm a prisoner here too. If my power forces me to leave, I could be killed for it." How did he say what he needed from her? Could she see what it was at all, or did it just all seem like some kind of bad dream still, her very worst fear made real?

  Not only was she Infected, but everyone she met that wasn't would be in danger from her. If they waited too long, the whole world could be in danger, because no one could be certain what she'd cause other people to become.

  She shook, sobbing quietly, her hands shaking even as she grabbed the side of the cot.

  "I... Could you tell Doug that I missed him? I don't know if I'm capable of love at all, but he was always my favorite person. Well, not after he broke up with me, but that was my fault. Did those police hurt you too bad?"

  He could have lied, tried to make it easier on her, but didn't bother. There was no time for games now, was there?

  "Almost killed me, more than once. I think one of the cops was turned by you that night too. An anti-Infected bigot. With our luck that was probably the part of his behavior that got accentuated. That would have to be horrible for him though, especially if he's figured out that he popped." It wouldn't help her now, to spare the truth.

  "What do I do Brian? I don't want them to force me to make more... Infected scum. More people like us. I... Help me." It didn't sound plaintive at all, just like she didn't know what else to do.

  "OK. I can do that." Then, in a fluid motion that he'd practiced tens of thousands of times over the last months, he drew the firearm from under his shirt and shot her in the head until the last round was gone.

  Then he put the weapon away and walked out of the cell, feeling worse than he thought he would. A lot more. For very nearly the first time he felt dirty for having killed someone, wrong.

  The agents boiled out of the booth, not knowing what was going on most likely, afraid that she'd attacked him, even though that was ridiculous. Lancaster stood back, letting the actual guards go in first, looking over their shoulders, both hands on his own pistol. After a few seconds he put it away and nodded.

  "She came at you? With her power?" It wasn't a real question. It didn't matter if she had, he couldn't be turned again. Or if he could, he was almost certain his abilities and first mode would be identical to what he already had. He didn't know how he knew that, but he did and it was right. He felt that way at least.

  "She did. It had to be done. We had too many personnel in danger from her. Her ability wasn't stopped by glass or walls, whatever it was." Then he stood back and cried. Not because he'd killed her, though that too, but it was mainly that he couldn't save her. There had been nothing else to do, except prevent her from being used against her will to do evil things. To make it so she wouldn't have to live forever as the one thing she hated most in all the world.

  Brian didn't feel good about it, but got into the elevator and made his way to the second floor, finding Marcia waiting for him, her face stony and hard looking.

  "I saw the feed already. Crap Brian, I'm sorry, I know that she was... a person from your past. Do you want to talk about it?"

  "Would it make a difference if I did? I have to feel bad about this and no amount of talk will stop that. I need to... I should tell Doug. This isn't going to go over well, is it?"

  Marcia hugged him and didn't let go for a long time, her body warm and solid against his.

  "Probably not. He's a good guy though and I know that you did it for her. If anyone asks, remember that she was using her power on you. It could have gotten back to the Agents if it was strong enough. You had to act." Her tone was conspiratorial and a bit too smooth, so he shook his head and spoke with a raw voice.

  "Marcia, she was. The whole time I was with her. It grew stronger as I talked and there actually was a chance that Lancaster and the prison guys were going to be Infected. People on the twelfth and fourteenth floors too. They might be Infected right now. I don't know if I acted soon enough." It was true, but not why he'd done it at the time. That had been all about helping her. If she'd gotten a chance to get really scared, or maybe agitated... Well, he didn't know if anything would have been enough to stop it, whatever it was she did.

  Marcia blinked and shook her head in return.

  "Really?" It sounded too skeptical by far.

  "Yes, really. It wasn't a good thing, but it was what had to be done." He wanted to get away then, but there was a lot more to talk about. A job left undone with officer Shaw and an even more important thing with Hooper. She patted him on the back and sighed then.

  "Good news, bad news then, Brian. Bad news first? There's more of that than the other, like always."

  "Sure. Might as well." Even to his own ears he sounded miserable, but she went ahead anyway, being old enough to know that hiding facts from people almost never helped.

  "Well, you're still confined to base. The Congress is looking into the whole thing, but it could take months to clear up. As for Shaw... Well, Jeffery Shaw has vanished into the wind. We don't know what kind of power he has or his first mode, but he's a dangerous person and was even before he popped Infected. There are also at least six more Infected created by Carla Morrison out there somewhere too. Most of them have gone off the radar, that or killed themselves. All of them are staunch anti-Infected bigots. That kind of hate, amplified like it might be... Even if they have a first mode that isn't so bad, they're going to be trouble. Well, unless it cancels out bigotry, then they might be fine. The odds for that aren't great." Her words felt almost bland to him, but he nodded. It wasn't really his problem personally. Shaw was, but only after a fashion.

  After all, when he'd gone after Brian the first time, he'd just been a cop. A bad one that hated people for being different. Then he'd done it again later, which meant that he certainly wasn't fixed now that he was one of the Infected. The guy was guilty and Brian had a Death Warrant for him. He'd put it out on the wire, which would mean anyone could kill him with impunity. There was no reward for it, but nothing was ever perfect, was it?

  "You promised good ne
ws? Was that just a red herring to keep me hooked while you talked?"

  She tilted her head just a little.

  "On the good side, while you have to stay at the base, you won't be instantly killed if you trade places with someone else. They apparently agreed that making your life contingent on something you don't have control over was a little cruel, even for them."

  Well, it was something. He decided to take it and make a call to Mary later. Maybe she'd want to come and visit soon? They could have a sleepover.

  He moved to head back to his room, feeling oddly good about the whole thing, the story starting to tie up in his mind a little. For all that it wasn't perfect, they had Hooper on the ropes, he knew that Braid probably couldn't see him in the future, and even though it hurt to have done it, he knew that Carla would never turn another person. He'd also stopped Earthling. It wasn't perfect and it was far from being over, but it gave him something to point at when the Director came back and told him how bad he was for not having done things the way Kevin would have.

  In the mean time, he decided, Brian was going to make a point of spending time with his family. He had a son and a granddaughter, both things he hadn't even bothered to dream about. He could look them up and maybe see if they wanted to try a game of catch?

  Laughing, he went to set that up.

  After all, it was what real people did in the evening wasn't it? Play catch with their kids? He had a lot to make up for there in lost time.

  Laughing, he wondered for a second what was going to happen next. His mind was blank on the subject, so he just climbed the stairs and hoped that whatever it was, he could actually handle it.

  He whistled a little, almost happy for some reason. He was a prisoner, but maybe that wouldn't be enough to break him? It was a strange thing, but he felt good for once and really wanted to let everyone know about it.

  The weight of the world was still there, right on his shoulders, the heavy sense of Carla's death and the hundreds of others along with it, but it didn't dim his mood nearly as much as he thought it would. He had friends now and people that would stand by him when things got tough.

  Who could ask for more?

  Cellophane

  P.S. Power

  Chapter One

  Penny lined up the shot and squeezed the trigger gently, lovingly even. Caressing the metal smoothly and letting the explosion that happened take her by surprise, just like she'd been taught by Conroy and the others back at the base. The trick to killing a man, she'd learned over the past weeks, wasn't in the act itself. No, any kid with videogame sharpened reflexes could do that, and nearly as well as a professional. The real skill was in convincing herself that it didn't really matter after it was done. That, and not hesitating beforehand. Everyone else had thought that part would be some kind of huge problem for her, taking a life. They were wrong.

  When the man in the crosshairs went down she knew her job was done. She could see the damage through the scope and knew what it meant. This time she'd stayed back and actually acted like a real sniper, setting up on the top of a building and everything. Normally she would have just walked up to the man and done it from about ten feet back with a nine millimeter handgun. That wasn't right for the situation this time, so she'd picked to use real skill, instead of just her power. Plus it was a bit more interesting, since it was the first time she'd taken out a human target from that far away. It left her feeling professional, rather than just a bit shaky.

  She didn't hurry as she packed up though. There was no reason to. After all, even when the police got there, which would take about ten minutes, maybe even up to an hour given how far away the shot had come from, they wouldn't find her. Almost no one in the world could.

  That was, like it or not, her ability. Her curse.

  Which sounded way better in her head than it probably would if anyone could hear her talking about it. That thought got her to smile, just a bit, even if she had just blasted the front of a man's head out the back of it.

  She was profoundly invisible. She couldn't be seen, even by a camera, but she had other layers and levels of built-in tricks to keep her from being noticed too. Even things she carried seemed to vanish, so what she did around people just blended with the scenery. If they did notice anything at all, some special part of her power made them forget it. For a long time it had almost been too much, nearly driving her mad. Or, as she knew was probably the real case, it actually had and she was just a wee bit too far gone to know the difference anymore. She felt normal, but then she'd just killed a person and had to stop herself from whistling as she walked away. Because that was what a sane person did.

  It was better now at least, in some ways. The whole part where she had to go and kill people occasionally wasn't that brilliant, but, as her trainer had pointed out several times, there were a lot of people that simply needed killing, and very few people that could see it done without facing prison. So she just had to strip down and man up. Or, in her case, woman up. Girl up? She was almost twenty, so decided that she could still claim that, if she wanted. At least until her birthday. Nineteen was still a girl. All the internet porn sites said so.

  Not that the floating gun case wouldn't give her away if she got caught on camera, it would, if people watched it later after she was gone, but she wasn't the only invisible person in the world. No one knew how many there were, because... invisible, but if she were careful enough no one would even bother to think that it had anything to do with her at all. After all, it was completely illegal to shoot people in the head like that. As a government agent, she was kind of not allowed to do that sort of thing. It put her a little lower down on the list of potential suspects, because she obviously could do no wrong, being with the Feds like she was. That was the idea she was working with for the day at any rate.

  That thought got another grin, as she padded through the hotel lobby naked, moving along the walls like she'd learned to do over the last few years, since that would keep her from being run into. For the most part. An old woman with a large case managed to bash her left thigh pretty well, but the lady didn't even react to the strange forces pushing it back. That was part of her "thing" again.

  People just didn't notice her. Half the time if she hit someone hard enough, they thought they were having a seizure. The human mind just couldn't get what she was doing, for the most part. Making her perfect for a few rather specific jobs. Assassinations, robberies, and spying, of course.

  Also watching people in the shower, or while they had sex. She hadn't exactly bothered to mention those skills to anyone, but for a long time it had been really hard for her to interact with actual flesh and blood people, so... She kind of helped herself that way. Mainly to other's lives. It was kind of a sick fantasy thing, sure, but if they didn't remember what she did to them, did it count? No one had told her otherwise yet, so she decided it didn't. Not really. You were only guilty if you got caught, right? No one could catch her, so she was a total innocent, by that logic.

  Her first mode made her pretty shy in groups, and it was a fight to talk to even one person at a time, but she could touch them anywhere she wanted without blushing at all, if they didn't know she was around. It wasn't a real relationship, but she'd managed to be intimate with about half the guys on the base, and a few of the women. That part was mainly by accident however. Not that she wasn't a fun loving modern girl, but she liked men. They just happened to like to see their women, more or less, or at least be able to feel them. Not her fault, so she'd worked with what was available.

  It was easier on her to be unknown, but lonely too. That kind of "alone on a desert island" type of thing that made you talk to volleyballs while you rambled on about your love of Mac and Cheese. Now they had the earpieces though, and that meant people were able to hear her speak, in almost real time. It had changed her life, but made it harder at the same time. Now she had to answer people, talk about feelings and connect with them. It had been a lot easier when they could just shower together and no one was the wis
er. Not that she couldn't do that now too, but there were moral implications she hadn't considered before. Like... should she ask first?

  Penny had to be very careful not to speak inside the hotel, since everyplace had cameras now and all the footage would be used to search for clues. They might not notice a stray voice, but she didn't want to risk it, not with this kill. Instead she padded out the front door, a nice glass thing with a brass handle and then moved down the street, walking for a long time. The pavement was a bit rough on her bare feet, but it was part of the new job. Not that anyone insisted on it, but shoes showed too, if people looked that low. Later, on camera.

  She could see herself, and her body wasn't too bad. Not at all really. She easily would have turned some heads on the street, she thought, if they could see her. Then again, she would have been hiding or insisting on being clothed if that was the case, so it wasn't that big of a deal. She grinned a bit, feeling wrapped in a cool cocoon of not being noticed at all. Most of the time at the base she wore clothing, since Brian had come and started being able to see her at least. It took part of the fun out of her day, but she couldn't really explain it to anyone, could she?

  The real her didn't answer to anyone after all. She could kill people and sleep at night without being too troubled, or break a thousand laws and not have to even think about it. That stopped when people spoke to her, or worse, saw her. She just... froze. Part of the time at any rate. Penny Cooper suddenly became the same spaz she was in high school, hiding behind her bangs and acting like she planned to follow the rules, even when she knew that was a crock. This was the real her. The killer that sauntered from the scene, the thief that took your things while you were in the room and sometimes stayed to make out with you as you fell asleep. OK, that part was a bit creepy, she got that, but since no one knew about it, who cared? Not her, that was for certain.

  It was her first mode, that fear of people. Large groups were the worst, but even one person made her seem so different, if she got too much focus from them. She relished the attention, but also hated it at the same time, wanting it to end instantly. There wasn't a lot she could do about it either. Some people could fight their first modalities, but that took practice and training. They'd barely figured out how to teach her sniping and wouldn't have gotten hand to hand combat done at all if not for Brian.