Time and Chance

by Jeff Mariotte

  She turned to leave.

  "You think you can just hit someone and walk away?" he hollered.

  "Things will be a whole lot better for you if I do just walk away," Caitlin said. "And I didn't hit you. That was a tap. If I'd hit you, you wouldn't have a face."

  He lurched forward, his hand on her wrist. Blood soaked the white silk cuff of her jacket.

  "You're not walking away from me, you slutty little tease!"

  She froze him with a glance. "What did you call me?"

  Russell didn't let go. "Come on. Lookin' like that. Dinner. Daddy's Visa. A special occasion. Strange attractors."

  She yanked her arm free with enough force to make him yelp in surprise.

  It was still nothing compared to the force she could have used…

  "So this is why you do all the talking," she said. "If a woman's got something to say, it better be something short and simple. Like, 'yes.' And if a woman's got an opinion, you'll tell her what it is."

  He took a step back. "Fine. Just go."

  She shook her head. "Oh. Now it's all right. Because you say so."

  "Someone should put you in your place."

  Caitlin smiled. "I was just thinking the same thing about you…"

  This time when she struck him, she was airborne.

  Fifteen minutes later, Caitlin stood on a dock overlooking the East River. Her jacket was ripped in three places, the seams shot.

  Crap.

  The bridge hadn't looked so sparkling and romantic up close and personal. Graffiti was scrawled everywhere, and many of the lights had been shot out or shattered by rocks thrown from moving vehicles. She'd had to duck one of them on the trip back down.

  A shrill voice cut above the gentle wind. And a figure kicked and screamed as it dangled from one of the bridge's highest struts. Drivers honked and hollered.

  All was right with the world again.

  Caitlin turned away, allowing Russell's plaintive cries to fade as she turned up 63rd and hailed a cab. Getting in, she heard sirens and saw the flashing lights of rescue vehicles.

  That was quick, she thought. Then she saw that the lights were heading the other way.

  Well, they'll get to him. Eventually.

  The driver either didn't notice or didn't care about the blood on her sleeve and the rips in her clothing. Part of her uniform peeked out from a gash that had gone clean through her blouse. A metal spike near one of the bridge's many struts. It hadn't broken the skin.

  He asked for a destination—and it made Caitlin pause. What was her destination, anyway?

  She gave the name of the luxurious hotel in which Mr. Lynch had leased a suite for the team and settled back. The cab smelled of old cigars, newspapers, and half-eaten sandwiches. The driver had his radio tuned to a fire and brimstone radio station. A nearly hoarse preacher screamed that damnation waited for the sinners who played any Lotto numbers with more than two sixes involved. Outside, a couple of street kids shouted at the passing cab and a hooker flashed the driver.

  She tuned it all out.

  What was her destination? Where was she heading with her life?

  As much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, she'd enjoyed those hours with Russell, and with his friends. They were a beautiful lie, of course, and the way it had all turned out would make the evening stand out as one of her less fond memories in the city.

  But for a short, wonderful span, she had felt like her old self. A science nerd lost in the wonders and complexities of theory and discovery.

  Russell may have proven himself to be just another groping, sex-obsessed jerk, but he had woken something in her, a part of her that had lain dormant for far too long.

  She could take classes. Maybe I'll even get a job at one of the labs—

  The sudden blare of the driver's horn made her jump.

  Caitlin looked up to see that they had caught up to the police and rescue vehicles. Some major league ruckus had broken out at a club about a block down.

  A sharp beam of golden ivory energy ripped from the side of the building and put out three windows in the building across the way.

  She only knew of one weapon that left a trace signature like that one: an I.O. Decimator model 3-aught-3.

  "Let me out here," she said, fishing a twenty out of her purse.

  She was out of the cab, standing on a sidewalk where a handful of cops scrambled to put up a barricade, when it occurred to her that she had nowhere to change and hide her purse.

  "To hell with it," she said, walking around the officers, toward the mass of screaming yuppies and Goth club hoppers flooding from the front door. She didn't give great odds for any part of her ensemble surviving the coming battle…

  But at least she'd worn flats.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Roxy Spaulding ducked as another blast from the I.O. Decimator seared the air above her. It struck the back wall of the club, scorched it, and released a torrent of destructive energies into the night.

  Around her, dozens of leather-clad twenty-somethings screamed and scrambled. They had come to The Trench dressed like extras from The Matrix, looking for a fun night out. Instead, they'd gotten caught in the crossfire between a bunch of Mafia-types right out of the Sopranos and another crowd of creeps wearing high-tech armor and carrying weapons Roxy had hoped she'd never see again.

  The band had been between sets when the first shots rang out. The extended dance mix of Madonna's Ray of Light thundered from the speakers linked to the DJ's booth. Dry smoke filtered through the air while strobing multi-colored lights spun crazily from above, lighting up one pocket of bad guys, while dimming down on another batch of potential victims. The place smelled of sweat, blood, nicotine, whiskey, and fear.

  "Get down!" Roxy screamed as a hail of bullets from a Mac-9 reached for an orange-haired couple who'd run directly in front of one of the armored warriors.

  They didn't get down. They couldn't. There was no time.

  Roxy felt time slow and all but stop. These people were going to die unless she did something. They were going to be cut to pieces!

  Focusing her power, Roxy felt her head go light as she reached out and took hold of the bullets, altering their gravity just enough to change their trajectory. They showered directly in front of and behind the fleeing couple, missing them by centimeters.

  Two bullets bounced off one of the armored warriors. One struck the thigh of the orange-haired guy and spun him around. His girlfriend grabbed him and hauled him out.

  Roxy studied the maddened crowd. Somewhere in that terrified, soon to be trampled or fried mass, was her date.

  "Mackey!" she hollered.

  The drummer didn't respond. Nor did she see his long panther-like jet-black hair or the shock of the purple tee he'd worn tonight to honor her.

  Roxy brushed her matted magenta bangs from her eyes and took in the battleground. The Trench had once been an old church. A balcony ringed the huge dance floor. The Sopranos had come pouring in from the kitchen behind the stage, guns raised, several sporting bloody wounds already. The Battletech guys had entered through the front door. The two groups had taken up positions on the right and left flanks of the dance floor, leaving the way clear for some people to escape. Others had been pinned down and were using tables for shields. A small group had escaped out of the back.

  There were still way too many civilians for comfort.

  Roxy looked down at what was left of the major-league hottie outfit she had bought for tonight. The soft black lace over her leather corset had been sliced in four places. Her mini-skirt now had a slit up one side all the way up to her hip. Her Donna Karan original boots were stained with beer, grease, and some stuff she'd just as soon not think about.

  So much for a simple night out with her boyfriend in the band…

  The petite fighter floated up to the balcony, where she found at least a dozen more party-goers huddled and pressed against the walls. Stray bullets and sizzling bolts of energy riddled the walls, pinning everyone in pla
ce.

  So far, so good. None of the combatants had taken the higher ground.

  A couple of guys with cute goatees argued in one corner.

  "I'm tellin' ya, man, it's a quantitative study kind of thing—who's more boss, Puff Daddy or Jigglypuff?"

  Roxy frowned. She actually had an opinion on that and was kinda frustrated that she couldn't voice it.

  She looked down and tried to spot Mackey.

  He was on the dance floor, his skinny tattooed arms over his head. Two people who'd been grazed by bullet fire had fallen over him and weren't moving.

  He was all right.

  For now.

  Another sizzling white bolt of energy struck the wall beside Roxy as she hovered above the action.

  "Time to go Carrie White on your backsides," she whispered, corralling her power as she looked around at what items she might use to put an end to this craziness.

  Percival Edmund Chang's first indication that maybe, just maybe, something was up at The Trench wasn't the sight of terrified people fleeing out the rear entrance. Nor was it the sound of sirens and screams and gunshots in the distance.

  Nope.

  "Hey, it's a party night and this is a party town and things get a little crazy in these parts, no big," he said to his date Therese as he ushered her from the back alley into the club's fortuitously unguarded kitchen entrance. His big meaty hand slipped down her bare back and grazed her amazingly round and perfectly shaped butt as he guided her ahead. She glanced over her shoulder at him, her smoldering dark eyes and thin smile letting him know that he hadn't crossed any boundaries she wasn't down with when he touched her like that.

  Oh, I am having a biochemical reaction, yes I am, he thought. Looking around, he made sure he didn't touch anything else, like brick or concrete or steel. Normally, he had complete control over his Gen-Active power to absorb and replicate any complex molecular structure he touched. But there was something about Therese that made him feel like he could lose that control, lose all control…

  That was something he wanted. Desperately.

  And something he secretly feared.

  "Yeah, just let the door hit me in the face," Bobby said behind him.

  Grunge looked back. "Dude, don't be so uptight."

  Bobby frowned. His hands were sunk into his long coat and his shoulders had been pointed due south for the last six blocks. Sulking didn't look good on the man.

  "Okay, so passes for Gargantuan Sweetbread turned out to be bogus," Grunge said. "Doesn't mean the night's like a total loss or nothin'."

  Bobby nodded in the direction of the dark-haired, sultry wannabe model who swayed and sashayed before them. She was tall, thin, and stacked. The top half of her dress consisted of two strips of red satin crisscrossed and tied around her neck like the bow of a Christmas present Grunge was dying to open.

  Damn.

  "Maybe not for you, studboy," Bobby said. "But I could have been with Sarah."

  "Yeah. Trying to stay awake." Grunge waved his fist in the air. "Save the canned ham! Porpoises have purpose!"

  Bobby shook his head and smiled. "Jerk."

  "Loser."

  They laughed and cut through the kitchen. In moments they emerged at the outskirts of the dance floor, where all hell had not only broken loose, but was literally bringing down the house.

  It was at this moment, looking at the gangsters on one side of the club and the goons in the I.O. gear on the other, that Grunge conceded to himself that bringing his date here maybe wasn't the smartest thing he could have done.

  Better late than never.

  A sudden warmth came from beside him. A brilliant burst of golden flame flared and Bobby "Burnout" Lane flew forward, the fires that were his to control having incinerated his street clothes and exposed his costume. He scooped up a young, heavily pierced bald guy and flew him out of harm's way as the baddies exchanged fire.

  Next to Grunge, Therese was frozen. Behind her, the lights in the kitchen flickered and flared out.

  "Listen, babe, just go back out the way we came in, just turn and run."

  She didn't run. She stood, staring at Bobby as he circled back and attacked two of the I.O. armored guys. She looked transfixed. Transcended.

  Way turned on.

  Grunge raised an eyebrow. "Hey, you think that's something, check this out!"

  Crouching, Grunge put his hand on a fallen microphone stand and felt the change overtake him. He was too excited at the thought of Therese becoming excited to more than barely register the feelings racing through him, the tingling, the racing of his heart, and so much more.

  He stared into her eyes as his flesh changed into steel.

  Her lips parted.

  Slightly.

  They were moist.

  "Got yer motor runnin', huh, sweetheart?" he asked. "Wait'll you see me in action against these losers!"

  He waited for her to respond, grinning ear to ear.

  His grin faded as she began to scream. "Hey, what?" he asked.

  Her arms crossed over her chest. She shuddered and stumbled back. "Freak… You're a freak and I let you touch me and I was gonna—with you—and—"

  She cupped her hand over her mouth, turned, and ran into the shadows. Grunge moved to follow her, when tremulous shapes from the kitchen emerged and came flying at him. He barely had time to get out of the way as knives, frying pans, cooking pots, and huge chunks of metal shorn from ovens came flying toward him.

  It was Julia Child meets Bedknobs and Broomsticks]

  He stood back as the possessed cutlery went sailing over the dance floor, the knives striking I.O. weapons with surgical precision, slicing at trigger fingers, jamming firing mechanisms, while the rest of the debris flew in the opposite direction, clobbering the badly dressed Godfather types.

  Only one person he knew of who could do that.

  "Roxy?" Grunge said, looking up.

  Sure enough, there she was, hovering like an angel. A good kid. Smart, too.

  "Get that stinkin' witch!" one of the I.O.-looking guys hollered.

  Grunge saw the uninjured, unimpaired soldiers train their energy weapons high on his floating teammate and sometime girlfriend.

  "No!" he yelled, launching himself at them.

  But he only covered a few feet before they had opened fire.

  Caitlin burst through the crowd and saw Bobby and Grunge heading from opposite directions at the armored mercs. She also saw Roxy—Freefall—hovering above, arms open wide, eyes squinting, a sparkling field of energy surrounding her.

  And she saw the beams of light rip upward before she had any time to react.

  Roxy flew like hell, narrowly escaping the barrage of sizzling power that punched a dozen holes in the wall where she had been, collapsing it and letting in a view of the stars outside.

  "Grunge, Burnout, keep those guys busy!" Caitlin shouted, instantly taking on her role as team leader. "Freefall, the others must have some kind of dampening or disrupter field, it's the only way they could have survived this long considering their firepower. Take it out and help me get these people to safety!"

  Caitlin grabbed at an overturned table and hauled it off a small group of terrified club-goers. Her skintight green and purple outfit gleamed as a spotlight struck her at random, turning her and the people she had just loosed from cover into instant targets.

  She tossed the metal table at the closest of the I.O. guys, taking a definite satisfaction in the crunch of their armor plate as the table hit. The spotlight moved off and she hauled the cowering club-goers to their feet and shoved them toward the door.

  "Move! Go!" she shouted.

  Not one of them hesitated.

  Caitlin tore through the dance floor, grabbing at people, getting them to safety. From the corner of her eye, she took in Burnout releasing a burning tide upon the mercenaries while Grunge took several on in hand-to-hand. Gathering up a couple of wounded, Caitlin saw Roxy using her gravity power to haul their guns from them, then to levitate the entire
group of plainclothes gunmen and spin them around as if they were trapped in the rinse cycle of a washing machine.

  She heard a group of thuds coupled with groans of pain. Then Roxy was pushing past her to put her hands on a skinny tattooed guy who was hugging the floor.

  "Mackey!" she yelled. "Mackey, come on!"

  He looked up. "Rox?"

  She grabbed his arm and led him toward the front of the club.

  "This isn't over!" one of the armored guys hollered. He was one of the few to still have working artillery. He aimed his Decimator at the ceiling and fired in a wide but controlled arc.

  "Oh, damn," Caitlin whispered.

  She hated when they pulled this.

  There was a loud creak, then a snapping, and suddenly the ceiling and the walls of the club were collapsing! Screams sounded as the balcony fell.

  "Grunge, Burnout, Freefall, we've got to protect these people!" Caitlin yelled.

  She saw Grunge beating an l.O. guy so hard that his visor had nearly cracked. His teeth were clenched, his eyes wild.

  "Grunge, I mean now!"

  Debris rained down. Caitlin caught a few of the largest pieces and tossed them aside, then smashed others to kindling. Roxy used her powers to levitate a collapsing wall. Bobby blasted huge pieces of falling wood and stone into cinders and slag. Grunge happily covered a trio of huddled, wounded young women with his steel encased body as a rain of stone covered them.

  When it was finally over, the building looked as if someone had used a wrecking ball on it. Caitlin unearthed Grunge, who was unhurt, and helped the others sift through the wreckage to aid those who could be rescued.

  Of course, not one of the gun-toting gangsters or the l.O. armor-plated mercs turned up. They had all escaped.

  "So what was that all about?" Caitlin said, shaking her head as Grunge and Bobby flanked her.

  "No clue," Bobby said.

  "Maybe someone welched on a bet," Grunge murmured. He looked distracted, miserable, and not at all himself. "You never know how people are gonna react to things…"

  Roxy was standing with her drummer. He smiled weakly and introduced himself.

  "Look, you guys have stuff to sort out," he said finally. "Rox, you give me a call."