Xenofreak Nation, Book Two: Mad Eye

by Melissa Conway

  After about fifteen more minutes of responding to Marty’s soft, monotonous voice, he realized he felt strangely languid. “What was in that tea?”

  “Nothing but natural theanine,” Marty replied. “Have you ever been hypnotized before?”

  “No, why?”

  “No reason. Except that you’re especially susceptible.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Look.” He pointed to his holoscreen, where there was a completed face with a high forehead, broad cheekbones and heavy-lidded eyes that looked down and to one side.

  “Oh, hey. That’s him. Wow, you’re good.”

  Marty rolled his eyes. “Okay, I think I’ve got enough to work with here.”

  “Great.” Scott stood, feeling like he’d missed something.

  He headed straight for the Op-Prep room, where he met up with Shasta, two com tech operators and two agents he had only a passing acquaintance with. The first, Ryan Boardman, was a few years older than Scott, but as a new agent, had significantly less on-the-job experience. He was blond and blue-eyed and had matching xenografts on each hand - the spiked protuberances from the spiny part of an alligator’s hide, like two scaly sets of brass knuckles. His xeno name was, in fact, ‘Knuckles,’ and he was a hand-to-hand fighting expert.

  The other agent was Tina Lo, a tall, lanky middle-aged woman who’d transferred in from Los Angeles a few months ago. She’d been a helicopter pilot in the Fourth Iraq War. Her xenograft was hidden under her clothing, but Scott had heard it was an unusual one. She’d undergone a double mastectomy to fight breast cancer, but instead of scars, she’d opted to have a porcine strip grafted to her chest. Shasta had chosen her because she was also an experienced amphibious armored vehicle pilot.

  “I wish it were any location other than Coney Island,” Shasta said. “If things go south, it’ll be hard to get a clean-up crew in there.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Scott replied. “It’s the Bungholes we need to avoid, and Bluto’s is a half mile away.”

  Shasta shook her head. “That’s not what I’m worried about. You know I contacted my informant at Edgemere this morning. She said tension was stretched very thin between the Mad Eyes and the XBestia.”

  Scott exchanged a look with her. She’d told him earlier that the informant had managed to pass a memo earbug to Bryn, but that Bryn may not have realized what it was. Even if she had, and had passed it on to Alton, it would be highly dangerous for him to attempt to contact the XIA while he and Bryn were still at Edgemere. Like Fournier, Maddy Singh was hypervigilant about security.

  Scott was taking lead on the op, and once the details were ironed out, he and the other agents inserted their earbugs and conducted com tests with their tech team. A slow-moving hover drone was dispatched to the location in advance to provide a secure connection between the com team and the earbugs.

  Then the agents were outfitted from head to toe with lightweight, level three bulletproof, knifeproof clothing designed to look like normal clothes. They wore ballistic vests underneath that could be inflated at the pull of a cord to become aqua vests. Each of them had inspected and tucked their weapons of choice and extra ammunition into the multiple hidden pockets of their disguises. Scott hoped they didn’t have to use any firepower, but it was best to be prepared in case, as Shasta put it, things went south.

  They left headquarters at eleven o’clock, long after darkness had fallen. It took over an hour for Lo to drive them to the controlled access self-storage facility located southeast of Crescent Beach where their transportation was located. All was quiet in the well-lit, fenced yard when Lo parked on a strip of gravel out front. A security guard escorted them to the unit and waited until Lo held her palm under the holoscanner and the green light lit up, before leaving them to it. The orange corrugated metal door rolled smoothly upward and a light in the ceiling came on. Inside squatted what was, to all appearances, an ice cream truck.

  Boardman laughed. “Is this the wrong storage unit?”

  “No, no, don’t let it fool you.” Lo patted the hood of the vehicle affectionately. “This is a ninth generation Urban Amphibious Armored Vehicle, made to look completely innocuous in order to easily get to and from conflict within the city. See these panels?” She pointed and Scott saw that the entire exterior of the UAAV was tiled like a space plane. Lo said, “Right now it’s in display mode, so you see the ice cream truck graphics, but with a flick of a switch they become adaptive camouflage panels, which change color, pattern, and light to mimic whatever the omnidirectional cameras see in the background, from all directions wherever we happen to be.”

  “Like a cloaking device?” Boardman asked.

  “More like a cuttlefish,” Scott said.

  Lo’s wide mouth curved in a smile. “Yep. Just like a cuttlefish hides in plain sight on the sea floor or a chameleon blends in with the leaves. It’s not perfect technology, but in low light conditions, the human eye can be effectively fooled with this baby.” She stroked the hood now, like a proud mama. “It’s quiet, too. Almost silent engine operation.”

  She slid open the side door and ushered them in. Scott sat shotgun. The seating was typical of the average maxivan, but the gauges and gadgets on the ceiling and dash looked like something out of a space plane, too. Lo drove into the alley before getting out and closing the storage unit door. It was a short drive to the street that paralleled the beach. She took them past several blocks of houses on the landward side until they came to a park-like, forested area. When there were no other cars on the road, she drove up and over the sidewalk onto the sand and went straight into the water.

  “Are we camouflaged?” Boardman asked, as Lo changed gears to convert the UAAV to amphibious mode. “Because if a pedestrian sees an ice cream truck driving into the ocean, that’s going to get us some attention.”

  “No worries,” Lo replied. “If someone sees us, they’ll call the police. Tech team’ll intercept it and advise the locals to stand down.”

  In Scott’s earbug, he heard one of the techs say, “So far no call.”

  The UAAV rocked in the surf before settling low on the surface of the water.

  Lo pressed a button and said, “Watch this.” Exterior screens slowly slid down over the windshield, back, and side windows, but the view outside remained mostly unchanged. She looked at Boardman. “Does that answer your next question?”

  He laughed. “I take it we’re invisible now?”

  “Like ninjas.” She said with a brief widening of her eyes. “Better settle in, it’ll take a while to get there.”

  Scott leaned back in the comfortable bucket seat and closed his eyes. Before he knew it, he’d drifted into a much-needed catnap.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Nearly every able-bodied xeno at Edgemere had been put to the task of readying ‘the fleet,’ which turned out to be a ragtag collection of watercraft housed in one of the store areas. Most of the boats were one or two-man kayaks, but there were a few canoes and inflatables in the mix. Bryn wondered how they planned to get the boats out of the underground mall. The only way in or out that she knew of was the main drainage pipe lined with mushrooms.

  All the efficient bustling around, with the men and women of Edgemere wearing grim expressions and bristling with weaponry, reminded her of the ARA soldiers’ preparation when Kareem Williams had kidnapped her. She’d been terrified then. Now she was scared for a different reason: Maddy quite nonchalantly assumed that Jason - and Bryn - would participate in this endeavor.

  The plan was to launch the boats in the predawn hours and row around the Rockaway Peninsula. Coney Island was northwest of the tip of the peninsula across about three nautical miles of water, and the Bungholes were just north of the beach. Maddy wanted the attack to happen before it got light out and before the Xbestia had a chance to fully wake.

  Bryn hadn’t been looking forward to attempting the trip in one of the small boats. She’d been on the open ocean only once before, when she and Scott had gone out on th
e Wavecruisers to fetch the panda. Even in broad daylight, the ocean swells had made her feel small and insignificant, as if her belly were exposed to some vague but looming threat.

  As it turned out, Maddy had a small yacht berthed in a nearby marina, and since Jason had been assimilated into the personal guard protecting her, he and Bryn had a less up-close-and-personal appointment with the ocean. She hoped the yacht was in better shape than the ‘fleet.’

  As the newest member of the royal guard, Jason was given a private ‘chamber’ within Maddy’s drainpipe lair. He and Bryn retired there soon after preparations for the assault were complete.

  The chamber was a small room built at the back of one of the top-level pipes, with a curtain for a door.

  “God, I need a shower,” she said as she dropped her bag and settled down on the one small cot. “Or at least some clean water to brush my teeth and wash my face.”

  “I can take you to the showers,” he replied. “But the water quality is questionable and I can’t guarantee privacy.”

  She thought about the leering guard from this morning and responded, “No thanks. It’s probably better if I smell like a goat anyway.”

  She hunted through her bag for a clean pair of underwear and ordered Jason to turn around as she peeled off her jeans. After she finished changing, he said, “Be right back,” and disappeared. She sat on the cot and tried not to think about tomorrow. Was Jason really planning on going through with it? Protecting Maddy as she fought her way to the lieutenant’s Bunghole unit? The plan was to capture whoever was inside and torture information out of them, much like Junk had been tortured to admit who’d sent him. Maddy’s goal, a lofty one in Bryn’s estimation, was to find out where Fournier was holed up.

  To Bryn, the whole scenario had seemed more and more unreal as the day went on, but she’d already experienced the lawlessness of xenofreak society and knew that unless something or someone intervened on her behalf, she would soon be thrust into the middle of this conflict.

  Jason should be the one ensuring she wasn’t put in danger, but he hadn’t given her any indication that he had a plan to get them out of this. She’d begun to suspect he was using their inability to communicate with each other here as a shield to keep her from questioning his motives. Surely the danger from whoever else had been involved with sending that FBI agent after them couldn’t be any worse than dragging her into a firefight.

  She pulled her bag into her lap and reached inside. She wanted to take Scott’s stuffed panda bear out and hold it, but she settled for stroking its fake fur and staring sadly into its black button eyes.

  Jason came back inside and she zipped up the bag self-consciously. He said, “Best I could do,” and tossed her a plastic canister. The label read, ‘Saniwipes.’

  She muttered a grudging thanks and pulled a few of the disposable cloths from the canister. They were lemon-scented and intended for a kitchen countertop, but she scrubbed her face and under her arms anyway. After she’d finished, she pulled several more, handed them to Jason and said, “You’re getting pretty ripe, too.”

  He grinned and responded, “I’m just trying to blend in,” but he obliged her, pulled off his shirt, and ran the wipes under his arms. When he was done, she offered to check his wounds. He got the flashlight out of his bag and let her inspect them closely. The scent of lemons mixed with the faint smell of sweat rose from his body. She should have found it unpleasant, but for some reason, it reminded her of Scott.

  “This one still looks bad,” she said, referring to the deep gouge in his trapezius muscle. “But the pseudo-skin is holding.”

  As he reached for his shirt, she impulsively put her fingertips against his Gila monster xenograft. She knew the pebbled orange and black skin was sensitive, knew he didn’t want her to touch it, but something made her do it anyway - perhaps simply the need to get a reaction of some kind out of him.

  She got more than she bargained for. The air left his lungs in a shuddering exhale as his torso curled slightly in on itself. She heard him swallow convulsively before he said huskily, “Unless you want me to throw you down on the cot right now, I suggest you stop doing that.”

  She pulled her hand away quickly and scooted over so she wasn’t touching any part of him. He pulled his shirt on and turned to her, gaze impassive in the green light.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to-”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Her mouth dropped open, but no words came out. She’d be lying if she denied it, and she was a bad liar. She wanted to give him a plausible excuse, but didn’t really have one other than plain curiosity. She’d been intrigued by the way he’d responded in the past; had wondered why touching the graft had such a powerful effect on him. She couldn’t imagine the physiological reason for it, but then again, there was no way for any human being to know how another animal felt. Perhaps a Gila monster’s skin had a part to play in the animal’s mating ritual and that function somehow translated itself to Jason’s nervous system. Just like her quills responded to her arousal by going flat to her head - but her quills were tied to her nanoneurons, something Jason had never had implanted in his brain.

  Regardless of the reason it affected him so strongly, she honestly didn’t know why she’d done it. She wasn’t attracted to him. He was twice her age, and besides, she wanted Scott. Didn’t she?

  Jason sighed. “Maybe tonight we should sleep at opposite ends of the cot. I don’t like to take my shoes off in case we need to leave suddenly, but it’s probably for the best.”

  She nodded and watched as he unlaced his shoes, peeled off his socks and got a fresh pair out of his bag. She followed suit, feeling like a complete idiot. They settled side-by-side on the narrow cot, turned away from each other’s feet.

  Within a short period of time, his breathing became even and he began to snore lightly.

  Unfortunately, sleep eluded her. The shame of having inadvertently made a pass at him faded quickly enough, but she couldn’t stop thinking about why she’d done it, and why she’d questioned her feelings about Scott. He and Jason were superficially alike in that tall, dark, dangerous kind of way. Both were essentially ‘off-limits’ to her because of their jobs, but she didn’t think that was influencing her. As she finally felt herself cross the threshold of sleep, she acknowledged that what was really bothering her was the similarity between her situation now and when she’d first been thrust into the heart of xenofreak nation. Scott and Jason were both in a position to keep her alive - a powerful attractant that she was afraid was beginning to blur the two men together in her mind.

  She finally dozed off, and sometime later, began to dream. Like all dreams, this one had no cohesive substance; it was just a mishmash of images and actions that made little sense. And since dreams occur during REM sleep when the sleeper is close to wakefulness, exterior forces such as sound are easily incorporated into them. When the pleasure hit, just like the fear she’d experienced two nights ago, it had the brief effect of changing the course of her dream. She’d been browsing an open-air market in India for glycerin soap with live, fluttering butterflies embedded inside when she found herself face-to-face with her mother, alive and well and smiling at her with shining eyes. Bryn had never been so happy, so excited, so full of yearning.

  The transition from sleep to wakefulness came directly afterwards, as the sensations shooting through her body intensified and brought her to awareness. She gasped and arched her back and must have vocalized her response because Jason was suddenly a dark shadow in her field of vision.

  “Bryn! What’s wrong?”

  She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move other than to squirm in response to the wonderful feelings pulsing through every pathway in her nervous system.

  “Oh, no,” he muttered, sliding his hands beneath her shoulders and knees and lifting her into his arms.

  She closed her eyes tightly and cried out. He couldn’t possibly know that wherever he touched her, however impersonally, frissons of deli
ght radiated outward like ripples in a pond. She wanted to tell him, wanted to say it wasn’t fear that had taken control, but didn’t have the strength of will to form the words.

  Vaguely, she felt movement as he began walking, carrying her. She heard him say, “We need to get you away from the signal,” but the words had no meaning.

  It felt good. It felt so good, but something deep in her consciousness knew it was wrong, knew it was not real. It was her nanoneurons creating a false sense of exultation, just like Scott had said happened to him.

  The brief flash of insight was dashed away when Jason said, “I can’t take you down the fire pole. Can you do it? Bryn!”

  He released her legs and her feet hit the floor, but her knees immediately buckled. His arms tightened around her to keep her from falling, crushing her to his chest. As if of their own volition, her hands lifted and she turned his support into an embrace, sliding her fingers up his back, savoring the taut feel of his muscles. It seemed impossible for the pleasure to intensify, but when she encountered his xenograft through his shirt and he took a quick indrawn breath, an added dimension of passion joined the equation. She felt each tiny muscle at the base of the quills on her scalp respond by pulling them flat to her head.

  “What the hell are you doing?” His voice was thick and growly, and just the sound of it - the unvoiced response in it - sent an unexpected jolt of desire coursing through her midsection.

  It was too much. In one sane portion of her mind she knew what would happen if she couldn’t stop herself, distract herself somehow, but as if the nanoneurons in her brain wouldn’t let her dwell on the negative, the thought evaporated under the onslaught.

  Her legs were no longer useless. She leaned into him as her left hand dropped to his lower back. Her thumb hooked one of the belt loops on his jeans and pulled him closer. The mere contact of hipbone to hipbone kindled a fierce heat that rushed straight through her. Her head fell back, her lips parted, and she looked into his eyes just as the pleasure abruptly stopped.