Kat picked up the line of reasoning. “And we know zip about them. That gives the other side a significant advantage. We can’t afford to ignore it.”
Bobby thought that over for a bit. What they were saying made sense. He shrugged and let his attitude drop away. “Yeah, I know. You’re right. My bad. I was just...”
“You’re upset, you’re exhausted, and you’re not looking forward to any of this,” Kat .said, nodding. “I understand. We all feel that way. This thing’s taken a lot out of all of us.” She reached out and laid a hand on Roxy’s arm. Roxy flinched away.
Roxy wasn’t ready for physical contact with Kat just yet. Now that some time had passed, Roxy realized that everything she had seen was just a hallucination. Hallucination or not, though, it had hit too close to home. Her head told her that the people around her were her friends and that they loved her. But it was going to take a while for her head to get back in charge.
Even though Roxy wasn’t about to say any of that out loud, it was obvious to everyone that, whatever Roxy had gone through, the trauma had left its mark. Roxy was still unusually quiet. She still sat with her arms wrapped around herself for security. Her color still wasn’t quite back to normal. And her eyes still carried a slightly haunted look.
They were concerned about her, but there was only so much they could do about it. Until she was ready to open up, they couldn’t address whatever was bothering her directly. In the meantime, all they could offer was quiet support.
“So what do we do next?” Bobby asked.
Kat straightened up in her chair as she stepped into the leadership role with an easy confidence. It wasn’t difficult to see why Lynch had named Kat as the field leader of Gen13 without any real protest from any of the others. “Well, eventually, we’re going to have to find a place to stay for the night,” she said. “Out of all of us, I’ve probably got the most cash on me, but even that’s starting to run low. We’ll have to decide whether we want to risk using a credit card or ATM. If they’re tapped into the computer networks, that could give our position away.
“In the meantime, though, I suppose the easiest thing would be to try to close the information gap a little. Let’s begin by putting together whatever we do know about these guys,”
Kat reached down and pulled a pen out of her shoulder bag. She grabbed a couple of bar napkins from the center of the table and prepared to write. “All right, what do we know?”
“They whipped us good,” said Grunge.
“Besides that.”
“They got this weird Stepford Kids thing going on. All, like, zombiefied or something,” said Grunge. “No emotions.”
“Could they be robots? Androids?” Sarah offered. Bobby shook his head. “I don’t think so. I got real up close and personal with one of them.” He suppressed a shudder at the memory of Growing Boy in his mouth. “He didn’t feel metal or synthetic or anything. He felt like flesh and blood to me.”
Kat wrote on the napkin:
NO EMOTIONS—HUMAN?
“Okay,” she said, “that’s a start. What else?”
“They call themselves Gen14,” said Bobby.
“Good. That implies a couple of things right there.” “Assuming they didn’t just take the name because they thought it sounded cool,” Bobby replied. “But it could mean they’re gen-actives.”
“From the generation after us,” Sarah added. “Like Roxy said before, you’d think it would mean thev’re our kids.” ' '
“Whoa!” Grunge said again. “Don’t look at me!” Sarah smiled indulgently. “Relax, stud-boy. They’re too old. You would’ve had to be an incredibly precocious five-year-old.”
Grange looked miffed. “Yeah? You saying I wasn’t?” “Still,” Kat said, chewing thoughtfully on the top of her pen, “something like that would fit with their being so much stronger than we are. Y’know, like we’re more powerful than our parents from Gen12.”
“Don’t tell me you buy the Li’l Grunge and His Homy Pals ’n’ Gals’ theory . . . ?” Sarah said, with a skeptical look.
“No, of course not,” Kat replied. “But we’ve seen stranger things than these kids turning out to be ours. Theoretically, there are ways it could work.”
Bobby pointed at her, getting it. “Time travel!” “Theoretically.”
Sarah was unconvinced. “Isn’t that just a little too Twilight Zone?” '
“What isn’t, these days?” Kat replied.
“It would explain why they know so much about us ...,” Bobby said, mulling it over.
Kat looked to Sarah for confirmation, which came in the form of a half-hearted shrug. Kat wrote on the napkin: Gen14—OUR KIDS? TIME TRAVEL?
“There’s a much simpler answer, though,” Sarah said. “What’s that?” Kat asked.
“I.O. They know a lot about us. They’re the ones who activated our powers. Why not these kids’, too?”
“For one thing, there is no I.O. anymore,” Grunge said. “I.O. bit the big one, remember?”
“Sure,” Sarah replied, “but who knows when the kids were created? Besides, we know there’s old I.O. weaponry floating around on the black market. Who’s to say whether some of their other tech might be out there, too?” “It’s possible, but that’s not the kind of equipment most people off the street would be able to operate,” Kat said. “With a gun, no matter how sophisticated it is, you basically just point it and pull the trigger. The kind of equipment that activated our gen-factors is way trickier. You’d need the knowledge to make it work, too.” Still, she added I.O. TECH? to the napkin anyway. No point to ruling out possibilities just yet.
“All right,” Kat said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to nail down too much more about their origins yet, but at least we’ve got some ideas to think about. Let’s turn to the more practical side now. How many of them are there?”
Bobby fingered his goatee thoughtfully as he searched his memory. “I dunno .. . Maybe, like, ten?”
“Sounds right,” Sarah agreed. “Unless there are more that we haven’t met yet.”
“Always the optimist,” Bobby said with a smirk.
“It’s a good point,” Kat said. “For now, I guess we’ll just stick with the ones we know about. Who are they? What can they do?”
“Growing Boy,” said Burnout. “Shrinks down tiny and grows to giant size. Sometimes in the most inconvenient places.” ,
“I can think of a more inconvenient place, dude,” said Grunge with a grin.
“Up yours.”
Grunge threw up his arms. “Ding ding ding! That’s right! Would you like to quit now or go for the million dollars?” ' '
Kat wrote down the information on Growing Boy and smiled to herself. At least her teammates were starting to act more like themselves again, Being proactive was working wonders.
“And Riptide,” Burnout added. “Turns into a jet of water.”
“Strong?” Kat asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Burnout replied.
“There’s Reverb,” Sarah added. “At first, I thought he hit me with telekinesis, but from his code name, it was probably some kind of sonic blast.”
Kat nodded. “You mean that boy with the curly hair? I’ll go along with that. My ears are still ringing from whatever he did inside my head.”
“So he can control it,” Sarah said. “Big, explosive blasts, like with me, or more targeted, pinpoint attacks, like when he hit you.”
Kat wrote it down.
“Rave,” Sarah said with a shiver. “She scrambles your senses, so you can’t even tell which way is up.”
“For free? Cool... ,” said Grunge, with a wistful smile.
“Oh, really? Then I’ll let you fight her next time,” Sarah turned back to Kat and placed a finger on the napkin. “Add in Sidestep. She’s a teleporter. She can send parts of her body to other places. She’s also the one who helped Reverb escape after they blew the attack on you.” “She probably handles transport for Gen14 in general,” Kat said as she wrote.
“T
hat’d make sense.”
“My turn!” said Grunge. “Okay. There’s Slash. Dude turns his arms into blades. No big deal. But Override can take over your bod, which is really whacked. And Knockout’s all, like, superchick. She’s gotta be as strong as Kat.” ' ~
“Stronger,” Kat said, still writing. She completed her notes and looked up. “Any others?”
“There’s that blonde girl. The leader,” Burnout said. “I didn’t catch her name, though.”
“Anybody get it?”
There was a brief pause. Then, looking down, Roxy mumbled something.
Kat turned gently toward her sister. “I’m sorry, Roxy,” she said in a kindly tone. “I didn’t hear. What did you say?” ' '
“Highwire. Her name’s Highwire.”
“Great. What does she do?”
“She’s an acrobat,” Roxy said quietly. “She’s also .. .” Roxy paused, remembering the reaction she’d received in her hallucination. “She’s ... really fast.”
Roxy braced herself for the ridicule, but this time, there wasn’t any.
“Okay, thanks,” Kat said. She added HIGHW1RE: Acrobat—agility, speed to the napkin. “Are there any others you want to add?”
Roxy didn’t say anything for what seemed like a very long time. All eyes watched her with concern, until she said, in a very small voice, “... Bogeyman.”
Kat nodded slowly. Judging from Roxy’s reaction, Kat assumed that Bogeyman must be the one who’d affected her so badly. Kat couldn’t imagine what he’d done to her. Softly, she asked, “And what’s his power?”
Again, there was a pause. Roxy glanced at her friends, then back down at the floor. “I...” She held herself a little more tightly. % .. I don’t want to talk about it.”
The others exchanged worried glances. Grunge’s jaw set and his eyes narrowed in anger.
Kat stretched out her hand to stroke Roxy’s arm. “I understand,” Kat said. “It’s okay.”
She started to move on to address the others, but stopped herself. “Listen,” Kat told Roxy, “I know you know this, but I’m going to say it anyway. We’re your friends, Roxy. I’m your sister. We love you. You can do anything, you can tell us anything, and nothing’s ever going to change that.
“Nobody’s going to make you talk about anything that you don’t want to talk about. But you need to understand that whatever that kid did back there, that’s on him. It doesn’t affect how we feel about you.
“If you can bring yourself to tell us about him, it’ll help us prepare. That way, hopefully, he won’t be able to do it to anyone else next time. But if it’s too much for you to talk about right now, that’s fine. No one’ll hold it against you. It’s totally your call.” .
“No pressure,” Bobby agreed.
“Whatever you want,” said Sarah.
Grunge draped a brawny arm around Roxy’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze.
Roxy was quiet for a long time. She chewed on her
lip, her brow furrowed, as she faced the memories. Then, finally, she spoke.
“He ... showed me things,” she said.
“What kind of things?” Kat asked quietly.
“Scary things.”
“You mean, he cast illusions?”
Roxy nodded.
“But you didn’t know they were illusions.”
Roxy shook her head.
Kat continued to stroke Roxy’s arm. Her sister seemed on the verge of tears. Kat didn’t know what Bogeyman could have shown Roxy to scare her so badly, but she decided against prying further. Roxy would tell her at some point, if she felt the need. To affect her this deeply, though, it obviously had to have struck a nerve. Kat suspected that Bogeyman had preyed upon some deep-seated fear that had already been lurking in Roxy’s psyche. Roxy wasn’t the type to fall apart like this otherwise.
She didn’t say any of that to Roxy, though.
“That’s really helpful,” said Kat. “And it was brave of you to share it. I know it wasn’t easy. Thanks.”
Kat lifted her pen, wrote BOGEYMAN: Fecir-based illusions, and took a deep breath.
She then proceeded to run her pen lightly down the list, and looked around at the group. “Okay, that’s ten. Are we missing any? Is that all of them?”
There was a chorus of shrugs and tentative nods.
“Good. All right, we’ve got a list of the bad guys, and a list of their strengths. Now, how about weaknesses? Anybody spot any weaknesses?”
The others shifted uncomfortably in the silence. The jukebox continued to play. No one spoke up.
“Hmm. Yeah, me either,” said Kat.
Bobby shrugged. “They’re short. ..,” he offered.
“Well, never mind. Let’s put our heads together,” Kat said. “Maybe we can figure out some strategy.”
“Strategy? Oh, man,” Grunge said. “Geez, where’s Mister L when you need ... ?”
Grunge’s voice trailed off as his eyes grew wide—and so did everyone else’s. They sat there for a moment, stunned. Then, as one, they all said the same word: “Lynch!”
Everyone started talking at once.
“Where’s ... ?” "
“Mow’d we forget. .. ?”
“What if he went back... ?”
“Could he be a target... ?”
Bobby got up with a grim look on his face. “I’m going to call his cell.”
He walked to the back of the bar and dropped a quarter in the pay telephone that hung on the wall. He waited, tapping his foot impatiently, as the phone rang once. Twice.
Halfway through the third ring, someone picked up on the other end.
“Dad?” Bobby asked anxiously.
“Robert Lane?” said the voice on the other end. Bobby’s eyes widened in shock. Whoever it was, it wasn’t Lynch. The voice was younger and higher in pitch. It was calm to the point of being almost monotone. “Who is this?!” Bobby demanded.
“Mister Lynch meddled in affairs that he should have left alone.”
“If you’ve hurt him ...”
“There is no need for empty threats. Mister Lynch has, perhaps, seen better days, but I assure you that he is still among the living.”
“You assure me ... ?! Put him on the phone!”
“To allow him the opportunity to pass on a cleverly coded' message? No.”
“Then how do I know he’s alive?”
“We could send you a finger. A pathologist could tell you that it came from a living person. Would that be sufficient?”
“Now, you listen up,” Bobby hissed. “I am going to
give you one chance to let my father go! After that, I’m going to—”
“No. You have only one chance to secure his release. Listen carefully.”
Bobby listened. Two minutes later, he slammed the receiver back into its cradle and stormed back toward the table.
“Uh oh. That doesn’t look good,” said Sarah.
Bobby came to a stop in front of his friends. He didn’t sit. The muscles in his face were taut with tension. “They’ve got him.”
“Ohmigosh,” said Kat.
“But he’s not the one they want. The kid on the phone said they were willing to make a trade. My dad ..
.. for the five of us,” Kat said.
“You got it.”
“It’s a trick,” said Sarah.
“Dude,” Grunge said quietly, “you gotta know they’re not gonna let him walk outta there.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Bobby. “I spent most of my life without a father. I’m not going to lose him again now.
“The trade’s happening in one hour. I’m going. You guys can decide for yourselves.”
The rest of the team looked at each other.
Kat was the first to break the silence. “If it wasn’t for Mister Lynch and his training, we’d have been dead a long time ago,” she said. “I’m going.”
“Count me in,” said Sarah.
“I’m down,” said Grunge.
They watched Roxy with
sympathetic, tentative expressions. None of them could be certain about what her answer would be.
Roxy raised her head. Her face was pale, her eyes bloodshot from tears. But her jaw was set, and a determined fire burned in her eyes.
“Let’s get ’em,” Roxy said.
CHAPTER 11
Night had fallen by the time a yellow taxicab pulled up to a curb on West Fourteeth Street. The air was cold and crisp, although the snow from the night before had begun to melt, dissolving into dirty, brown goop.
The Gen13 crew clambered out of the cab. They stood on the curb and waited as Kat paid the fare.
“I’m sorry,” Kat said to the driver. “I’d give you a tip, but this is the last of my cash.”
“Yeah, right,” the driver replied. “Lousy club kids.” The driver pulled away in a sweeping U-turn that sprayed them with the dirty slush.
“I hate this city!” Sarah said, trying in vain to clean the slush from her clothes.
The far west end of West Fourteeth Street, down near the river, was taken up primarily by wholesale butchers and meat markets. There was nothing fancy about these buildings, which were designed for function over form. Many of them seemed to consist of little more than loading docks, with slanted metal awnings above them to protect the workers from the elements when they had to load the meat onto trucks in bad weather. The long tractor trailers parked outside the loading docks stood in mute testament to the thousands upon thousands of pounds of meat that these suppliers sold to restaurants, hotels, and retail stores on a daily basis.
The day typically began early here. Some high-end chefs preferred to select and buy their own ingredients fresh, before preparing morning meals. As a result, the suppliers had to be ready equally early, and open for business.
The flip side to the early openings was that these businesses tended not to stay open too late at night. Apart from an occasional car heading down toward the West Side Highway, the street was deserted. There was none of the neon and bright lights that could be found in so much of the city. The only substantial illumination lay in equally-spaced pools of light that were thrown by the streetlamps overhead to break up the heavy shadows. “Good place for an ambush,” Sarah whispered “Stay sharp, everyone,” Kat said in an undertone. “They could be anywhere.”
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