Balancer

by Patrick Wong

  Nicole threw out the rest of her toast, drained her juice glass and crammed her schoolbooks into her messenger bag. Once more, she had used her superpowers to extraordinary effect.

  Nicole would still have to wait for Amy’s next checkup at the hospital for confirmation. And she’d still stay silent to avoid giving her best friend false hope in the face of something as serious as leukemia. But she had a gut feeling that the medical reports would tell her what she already suspected — that her best friend was in remission.

  Nicole exited her house to find a sight she never thought she’d see: Amy and Ben standing united, waiting for her, arms folded.

  Neither was looking particularly pleased with her.

  Nicole figured they had seen the news and would have a barrage of questions. Even so, she thought, she had just saved Amy’s life, and given Ben the proof he needed that Balancing could be done in different degrees. She can dial it low for a small cold, or dial it high for something more substantial.

  Beat that!

  As she moved forward to meet them, they shepherded her toward her Nissan. The drive to school would be the first of many interrogations she would face that day.

  As Nicole’s car pulled out of the driveway and set off on its journey to school, the FBI tracker team in the black Suburban rolled off like the Nissan’s distant shadow.

  “Suspect is on the move, heading northeast onto toll road.”

  “Roger that. The tracker is armed, and we have a clear signal. Keep your distance.”

  I’m Actually a Fan

  The phone calls, emails and texts were hitting like fireworks on the Fourth of July, which was doing nothing for Bishop’s migraine. The minute the call had come in from the CDC, the agents had holed up at a hotel on the outskirts of Reston. It was time to step away from the plush, state-of-the-art suites at P.R.E.S.S. and get their hands dirty with fieldwork.

  Two solid days without much sleep, and Bishop knew he looked like a nightmare. Carter, on the other hand, was sleek and honed like a lion stalking its prey. Though Carter was younger and leaner, this kind of work also suited his character better.

  They were currently looking at fifty or so statements logged by the CDC of patients at Evergreen Hospital and surrounding clinics complaining of flu-like symptoms. Homeland leapt on such patterns, fearing mass poisonings and bioterrorism. Thankfully nothing major had been found, other than, of course, the date, the time, the place and the fact that Nicole Aaronson and Amy Madigan had indeed gone to the Jenna Kidd concert that night.

  Just like they had said they would, much to Carter’s chagrin. Truth was, Bishop found the girls funny, and they reminded him of his niece who was about their age. He was fond of her, and she sent him long emails to keep him up-to-date with family news. He was such a workaholic that he was always missing family gatherings. She’d probably have graduated college by the time he next saw her.

  The yellow and gray hotel room, which was the best they could find, was large at Bishop’s request. They had rented out two adjoining rooms for their temporary field office, one for sleeping in and the other to act as the operations room. Carter had spent the past twelve hours buried in research. The twin beds in the adjoining suite, however inviting, would not see use for the next few hours of daylight.

  The operations room was covered with pictures, maps of the Patriot Center and grainy shots taken of Nicole and Amy. Piles of reports corroborated their hunch: Once more, Nicole had turned up somewhere, and some kind of odd biological attack had taken place where life forms had suffered miserably at her hands.

  That was the theory, anyhow. But so far the surveillance team had only established that she had been unnecessarily still during the last song, which, in Bishop’s view, could easily be explained away. There was no evidence that she had had anything at all on her person that was achieving this result — no gas, no bomb, no ray, nothing discernable. This stumped Bishop, especially now that three of his best new agents had been watching her movements closely throughout the concert and had logged every one of her actions. Not one of them reported anything particularly suspicious.

  Just then, Carter threw his tablet in front of Bishop to show him a new message.

  “Tech says they’ve got something.”

  “On the concert?”

  “No. The hospital. Let’s watch.”

  He pressed Play. It was the video of Nicole and Tim Geller on the bench outside of the hospital moments before he died. The audio was pulled up loud, and the crackle of the sound, with the ambient noise of traffic and pedestrians removed, gave the whole piece an almost disembodied feeling. At the point where Nicole sat back and Tim Geller spoke, the audio was quite clear.

  “Thank you.”

  Bishop paused the video and stared up at Carter.

  “Thank you?”

  “It must be some sort of glitch.”

  “He thanked her before she killed him,” Bishop said quite plainly. He played the section again.

  Sure enough, once again, at the moment at which Nicole broke away, the man uttered the mysterious words.

  Bishop stopped the video and stood up.

  He paced. This was his one requirement for any hotel they rented for staking people out — he must have his pacing room. It helped him think.

  “No, no,” Carter protested. “It’s a tech glitch. I’ll send it back to another audio lab. That makes no sense,” he said in his deadly calm way. When his partner got like this, Bishop sometimes felt like hiding behind the couch. He had the drive of an animal stalking its prey, and it wasn’t wise to get in his way.

  Nevertheless, Bishop also had an irrepressible hunch building, and he had to share it.

  “So she rescues a crushed child and a burnt dog from a wildfire and kills animals and fish to heal them. She takes away a man’s life to save his dying son.”

  Carter stared at him. “You make her sound like a saint.”

  “We don’t know that she’s not.”

  Carter scoffed at this, but Bishop was keen to pursue his instinct.

  “Look at the swaps. In every one of them, there is always like for like. Our investigation is looking for a terrorist, and our suspect — this teen — is taking lives, but she’s also saving them.”

  “So you’re saying she’s some miracle healer. Why is she doing this? Who asked for her help? ”

  “Tim Geller did. He thanked her.”

  “Or he could’ve been thanking her for her kindness and the hug before she killed him in cold blood!”

  Bishop rolled his eyes, but Carter was relentless.

  “OK, where was the swap at the Patriot Center then? Tell me that.”

  Bishop chewed his words. He could tell Carter wanted to win this argument and would twist things to achieve that.

  “We don’t know yet. We’re just beginning to find out. What about the friend? Was she ill?”

  “We can pull up the files,” Carter offered reluctantly.

  “You’re so set on exposing a demon. Have you stopped to think you might be persecuting an angel?”

  “An angel of death, maybe.”

  “Carter!” he exclaimed angrily. “You’ve got this between your teeth now and you won’t let go. But I need you to think plainly.”

  “I am. You’ve had your say — now let me have mine.”

  It was a standoff of sorts — the reddened fury of Bishop and the icy vehemence of Carter.

  “OK, OK.” In an attempt to placate his partner, Bishop held up his hands. Of course he needed to permit Carter to let his emotions cool down. No sense in fueling the fire. He just didn’t want him to get hysterical and end up arresting an innocent kid because of some “instinct” that had been wrong before.

  Carter took a sip of bottled water before speaking.

  “Here’s what I see. Here is a girl who, for whatever reason, can ignite forests, burn animals alive, murder a man in cold blood and spread an undetectable virus through a crowd of innocent people. And she can do all of this without a
trace of evidence against her. Hell, I’m actually a fan of her style. To me, she is basically the perfect undercover agent. She flies under the radar! What you and I do agree on is that evidence places her in these events every time. Agreed?”

  Bishop nodded.

  “Now, you or I might produce theories about why she did it, whether she killed the father to save the son. But who gave her the right? I’ve got a dead father, 50 sick concertgoers and enough exploded wildlife to get Greenpeace mobilized. There’s collateral damage here. In a court of law, someone who wields a gun or a knife like this ends up punished, and rightly so. It’s why you and I exist, Bishop. It’s why we wear these badges. It’s why we’re proud to uphold the law.”

  Carter’s reasoning was impassioned and also highly logical.

  “You’re right, though,” Carter continued. “We can’t know why she’s doing this. I think for bad; you think for good. But what if she takes to using her powers to punish others, and we had the knowledge to stop her? What then? For the public’s sake, we have to bring her in now. We need to ask her all the questions we’ve asked ourselves. Maybe she can tell us why.”

  Bishop let everything his partner had said filter down. He nodded and picked up the phone.

  “Division. It’s Bishop.” Bishop waited and held Carter’s gaze. “It’s me. We go to code red on her. We need permission, permits — whatever you have to get to bring her in. Also — exhibit caution. The suspect could be dangerous.”

  Carter smiled and grabbed his coat.

  He was ready.

  X Marks the Spot

  Nicole, Amy and Ben were back in the car heading to their respective houses. It was the end of one of the longest school days Nicole could remember.

  Ben had been dropped off first, and he had promised to email when he had heard back from Professor DuBois about the flu symptoms. Both he and Amy had reacted as though their worst fears had been realized when Nicole admitted to Balancing at the Patriot Center. Ben had wanted to know whether there were any lasting effects from Nicole’s Balancing and hoped DuBois could help.

  In a moment of Nicole-esque articulacy, Amy had described the Balancing as “morally defunct.” (Both Nicole and Ben had been lost for words.) Nicole hoped the hospital results would change her best friend’s mind, especially given the fact that the audience members were actually recovering from their flu symptoms.

  Deep down, Nicole was annoyed that they didn’t seem to trust that she knew what she was doing. She was supposed to be Ben’s crush, which surely meant he should cut her some slack. Instead, he had been angrier and more forthright than she’d ever seen him, which made Nicole all the more uncomfortable. Ben had been mad because the girls needed to cover their tracks and stay off of people’s radars, and their latest YouTube clip had given away too much information. They may as well have produced a treasure map with “X marks the spot” surrounded by neon lights, Ben had said. “Here’s where you’ll find the miracle-worker! Come one, come all!”

  With Ben gone, hopefully the level of drama in the car would go down, too.

  Next was Amy’s house. With a quick parting shot and a promise to call later, Nicole heaved a sigh of relief as she watched her best friend head up her driveway and be greeted by her mom at the doorstep. With a honk of her car horn, Nicole drove away from Amy’s house and began her five-minute trip home.

  She smiled at the familiar sight of the trees lining her road. Her house was now in sight, and, as usual, she’d grab herself a soda and some cookies, head up to her room and bury her face in a pillow.

  Yet as she pulled up in her driveway, she noticed three large black SUVs parked nearby.

  This wasn’t something she could easily shrug off.

  When she brought her Nissan to a stop, her attention drifted to Mrs. Truman, who was standing in her newly overhauled front yard, her hands on her hips. Her expression, at first unfathomable, changed the moment she made eye contact with Nicole.

  The old lady’s face cracked into a satisfied smile, and she turned and went indoors.

  A shiver ran through Nicole’s bones.

  As much as she wanted to put her foot down on the gas and get out of there, there was no time to turn back. She had been seen, and by the looks of those vehicles, she could also be outrun.

  Preparing herself for what might come next, Nicole got out of her car and shut the door. As normally as possible, she walked up to her front door. She may have looked calm, but inside, she was frantically praying that those cars and the men inside them weren’t there for her.

  The moment her key reached the lock, a clear, smooth voice stopped her in her tracks.

  “Nicole Aaronson?”

  She hesitated before turning to greet the owner of the voice.

  He was a tall man, about her dad’s height, with fair hair and sparkly brown eyes. She couldn’t tell whether he was friendly; his manner was of pure professionalism.

  He held up a badge, and Nicole’s blood froze in her veins.

  FBI.

  “I’m Agent Carter, and this is my partner, Agent Bishop. We’re from the FBI, and we have some questions to ask you. May we come in?”

  Nicole observed the short, bearded and exhausted-looking older man who joined Agent Carter. She half wondered whether he’d been at the Patriot Center dancing to Jenna Kidd, he looked so terrible.

  “What about?” Nicole asked.

  “Perhaps it would be better if we talked inside?” he replied evenly.

  Not knowing what else to do and instinctively feeling that her home turf may be safest, Nicole nodded. “Uh, sure …”

  She opened the door further and let them inside, desperately wishing that Amy and Ben were still with her.

  Moments later, she’d provided the agents with coffee and was sitting down, still preparing herself for what was to come. She wanted to appear as normal and casual as possible to throw them off the scent.

  “I think my mom has some coffee cake. Let me cut some pieces for you.” Nicole glided into the kitchen, hoping to buy herself some time. She was about to text Amy when Agent Bishop joined her in the kitchen to “help out.”

  Nicole cut the cake in silence and returned to the living room.

  Agent Carter sipped from his mug and set it down.

  “What happened at the wildfire, Nicole?”

  “I rescued a little girl and her dog. We found them while we were running away. I thought she was injured and he was burnt, but the vet told me that he was fine and was just in shock and had singed fur. When the fire crew cleaned him up, he looked pretty good. The doctors don’t really know what happened with Elise. Just got lucky, I guess.”

  “What about the dead animal trail?”

  “Dead animals? Oh, I saw them on the news. I was too busy running to see them then.”

  “I didn’t ask that. Did you have anything to do with them dying?”

  “Why would I? Unless I accidentally stepped on them.” Nicole directed her stare back.

  The balding, grumpy one whose name was Bishop opened his reporter’s notebook and took over questioning.

  “What about the ditch? You carried Elise through the water, right? That’s what you told the paramedics,” Bishop said.

  Nicole gazed at him vacantly. Out of the two, Nicole preferred this agent, however gruff and unkempt he was. The other one had a nasty tone to everything he said. And everything he said was deliberate.

  “Yeah. I mean, what else could I do? She seemed really badly hurt.”

  “Quite the little hero, aren’t we?” Agent Carter said.

  It was a lightening-fast comment, and in that moment, the atmosphere in the room changed completely. It was like someone had turned down the thermostat to zero.

  Nicole sensed this was about to get ugly, and she was scared. Her throat was suddenly parched, and she took a large gulp of coffee. She wondered whether the agents could hear her heart, it was so loud in her ears.

  Agent Bishop didn’t flinch and simply flicked over the pages
of his notebook. Apart from her heartbeat, that was all that could be heard in the room now, steeped as it was under a loaded silence.

  “The Geller family.” Agent Bishop sat back. “Would you like to tell us about them?”

  Nicole took a breath and began. “Well, my mom, she works in the ER at Evergreen Hospital. She heard that Mr. Geller’s son, Ethan, was a fan of mine. I was on the news a lot and got called ‘SuperNix’ from all that other rescuing stuff. Anyway, Ethan Geller was dying and I went to see him a couple of times. To cheer him up. Which I think I did. Anyway, his dad died from a heart attack.”

  “So sad,” Carter said pointedly, sipping his coffee.

  Nicole nodded dumbly. She had been trying to explain it with facts that an outsider would know, but the words stumbled thickly out of her mouth. With each new sentence, she could feel herself getting deeper and deeper into hot water.

  “Ethan Geller was the boy who made a full recovery?” Agent Bishop checked this out with his partner, who nodded. “Bit like Elise?”

  “You were with Mr. Geller when he died, right Nicole?” He turned to her.

  “No, I talked to him outside for a bit, then I had to go. My mom told me about his heart attack.”

  Silence in the room again.

  Nicole felt like someone had punched her in the chest. She struggled to keep hold of herself. They must have seen the security footage. She cursed herself.

  Agent Bishop closed his notebook.

  Agent Carter set down his coffee cup.

  They knew she was lying.

  Nicole realized that the tangled web she had weaved had now caught her. She understood, in that second, that these men didn’t need her to tell them the facts.

  Whatever she said now would fall on deaf ears. She couldn’t think straight any longer; the panic screaming in her head would not leave her alone. She was cornered.

  “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I don’t want to answer any more questions until I talk to my mom.”

  “Oh, she left us a message that she’ll meet us at our offices. She was busy when we first tried to call her,” Carter said.

  Nicole tried to register this. Her mom had been told? They were going to meet up with her? Why hadn’t her mom told her?