by Nat Kozinn
Linda looks ridiculous in her life-preserver bullet proof vest. She’s too old for combat. I don’t think the National Guard is going to accept her surrender if I come out fighting. She could end up caught in the cross-fire, or best-case scenario, charged as my accomplice. Why should I get to decide that for her?
“You guys stay back,” I say and walk out towards the door.
“What do you think you’re doing? I can’t let them catch me,” Ben says.
“It sounds like there’s half-a-division out there, we don’t have another option,” I reply.
“Yeah, maybe we don’t,” he says with the emphasis on we. Then he runs to the storage room to hatch whatever scheme he’s got in mind.
“I’ll help him accept his fate. We’ll have a minute while they put you in whatever chains they’ve made for you,” Linda says.
“Thanks. And when they ask, tell them I made you help me.”
I lift off the Maceo Steel rails that Ben put in place across the iron door. I take a deep breath and open the door. There’s a blinding glare from spotlights.
“I’m coming out! I surrender! Don’t shoot!”
#
Two sets of footsteps heading my way. The first one is easy to identify, Rolly Polly. I could recognize his big boots coming from a mile away at this point. I don’t know about the second set, it could be Twinkle Toes, but it’s a little early for a shift change, and I had No Rhythm as the next man up anyway. I think the footsteps belong to someone new. Goodie.
They open the Maceo Steel door on my Maceo Steel cage, where I’m shackled by Maceo Steel to a wall. More than a little over the top if you ask me, I had several opportunities to escape from the helicopter ride to the car ride to here, but I suppose it makes them feel better.
They didn’t go to such extremes that last time I was here, in LA Metro lock-up. Some of the police officers who guarded me after my fight with The Beast even let me read the newspaper. No more niceties like that now that the facility has been taken over by the National Guard. But I suppose they aren’t calling me a big hero this time.
Rolly Polly walks into the room, and approaches me. What is he going to do? He reaches up and pulls off my blindfold, revealing the world to me. I haven’t been able to see for three days. I can finally see Rolly Polly in all his heavy-set glory, although to be fair, I did peg him as about twenty pounds heavier in my mind. I guess he just walks like an oaf.
The other guy doesn’t look like an oaf at all; he looks like G.I. Joe, only about sixty five. He’s got close cropped hair and a thick grey moustache that could support his own body weight. His army uniform is covered in medals and rank insignias, a General.
“Mr. Stillman, my name is General Wallace Reeves, and I’m here on behalf of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I’d like to ask you a few questions,” he says to me in an unconvincingly friendly tone.
The General nods and Rolly Polly undoes the shackles at my wrist. I drop down about six-inches to the ground. They were suspending me in the air, I suspect to make me engage my muscles and burn through my calories quicker, in order to make me more docile. It was a smart plan.
“Leave us,” the General says to Rolly Polly, who salutes and does just that.
“What happened to Colonel Graves?” I ask while rubbing my wrists for some instinctual reason. They don’t hurt.
“Colonel Graves has been relieved of command and faces a court martial for insubordination. He was ordered to take you into custody and he failed to do that. I knew Jim and he was a good man. Let me ask you, was subverting him in the scope of your mission or was it just for fun? I imagine you could have gotten away without involving the man and costing him his career and his freedom.”
“If this is going to be an interrogation, don’t I have to be read my Miranda Rights and then I get to demand a lawyer? I knew this one guy once who said he’d pay for any lawyer I wanted, maybe I could track him down,” I say with a smile. I don’t care for this man’s attitude.
“I heard you had some sort of perfect memory but apparently that’s not the case. You worked for the OEC Gavin, the Office of Exceptional Cases is a branch of the Department of Defense and ultimately reports to President. You took an oath to perform the duties of your office. When you break that oath, you face military justice.”
“I still have rights. I saw a movie on this once; you’re supposed to assign me a lawyer. It should be some kid officer and it’s his first case. At first he doesn’t believe me, but I slowly convince him of my innocence and his passion wins the day in court,” I say, old men like this always hate sarcasm.
“Do I look like I am in the mood to joke around son? You have whatever rights I tell you have. Now answer my question. Were you ordered to target Colonel Graves in particular or was that an improvisation on your part?”
“No, it was not part of my mission to subvert Colonel Graves because it was you guys who gave me my mission. I was there to help secure a supply depot that had been taken over by outlaws. A mission I succeeded at by the way.”
“All right, progress. You’re responding. You’re trying to feed me a pile of horse crap, but at least you’re in the kitchen. We know the supposed CIA spook who brought you out to the depot was a fraud. Or are you going to pretend you didn’t know that?”
“I did not know when I first agreed to go out to the depot, but I figured it out eventually.”
“And then you alerted one of the hundreds of military personnel around you right?”
“No instead I just fought a gang of dangerous Differents in order to secure fuel for your tanks, and bullets for your guns.”
“You were hoping that after demonstrating your value we’d let you back into our good graces. Then you could act as a spy working from the inside, feeding intel back to Nita,” he says with a smug smile. He thinks he’s got it all figured out.
“My God, you people don’t stand a chance against her. You think she needs me to spy on you? Do you understand who this girl is? She’s the head of think.Net. That means every conversation, business transaction, and official record in the country went through her head. She doesn’t need me to tell her what’s going on. She already knows.”
“That was months ago. She doesn’t have any way to watch us now. That’s why she needs you.”
“What the hell does she need to know about what you’ve done? You already deployed your secret weapon, the Cognitive Wave Scrambler, and it took her less than a few days to beat that, from what I heard.”
“Yeah, thanks to a monster you were supposed to have killed. Seems like you’ve been a fraud a long time,” Reeves says and wags his finger at me.
“And you’re an idiot. Nita has been playing all of you for fools for years. She didn’t do this on a whim, she planned meticulously. She doesn’t need my help. In fact, I might be the only one who can stop her. But then you had to get in my way. How did you find me huh? Who gave you the tip? Some anonymous source that you don’t understand and you never asked questions about because capturing me would be good for you. Nita wanted you to catch me. Now I’m not the military strategist but I’m pretty sure you don’t want to do whatever it is that your enemy does want you to do.”
General Idiot opens his mouth to answer but tongue-tiedness overcomes him. He heads out of the room, hopefully to check on the source of his intelligence on me. The door closes, and locks, but now that I’m unshackled, I can move into position in front of a small tempered glass window. I feel just a little bit of sunlight, exactly what someone who’s trying to teach himself photosynthesis needs.
#
Success! Well success for Plan B anyway. I just absorbed the first calories I ever produced with my own body. I’m happy with the decision to run the duct work straight from the cells on my back into my stomach. I don’t know if I can stand the thought of putting something that came out of me into my mouth, even if it is chemically identical to the Manna I happily ate my entire life.
I’m not crazy about the look of the patch of Manna produc
ing cells on my back. I fear I’ve taken on more of a high-school science project solar car look than I was going for, but I didn’t have any other choice. There was no way to integrate the photosynthetic cells into the rest of my body. Instead, I hybridized the new cells with Regenerator cells and made a solar patch with the resulting creation. Now not only am I a brand new person that embodies some sort of ungodly genetic chimera, I’m more than one of those at the same time.
There isn’t enough sunlight coming it to test the limits of my newfound calorie creating skills. Still, a trickle of Manna is nothing to scoff at; I’ve already started regrowing some of the muscle tissue I had to harvest to pay the caloric cost of my latest science experiment.
I may have solved my personal energy crisis, but I’ve got nothing to do with my newfound strength. I’m trapped behind unbreakable walls. I wish I had kept samples of some of the other Differents I fought, I could use this time growing even more new abilities. Is that what I’m going to have to do, start collecting blood from every Different I fight? There’s something about that feels it is almost like The Beast and his cannibalism.
I finally turn my attention away from my inner world, and I hear a whole lot more commotion than I expected. Footsteps are marching past my cell and heading outside. I focus on my hearing. A shocking amount of the auditory process is performed in the brain. The ears pickup all sorts of vibrations from the air but it is up to the brain to make sense of these vibrations and match them up to known sources. This is an automatic process in most people, but I get to see the feed, I get to hear the far off repetitive sounds and hone in on them, turning what may just sound like a din in the distance, into sounds I can process. They are gunshots, and there are a whole lot of them.
Not just regular army rifles, there are large caliber weapons, grenades and even artillery shells. Something is happening right outside LA lockup. Did Ben make it out and now he’s running a rescue mission? Much more brazen than I would have pegged him for.
Whatever is happening, I’m in no shape for a prison break caper. My muscles have been harvested to the point of frailty. I hope Ben isn’t counting on too much help from me on the way out of here.
The sounds of battle continue drawing closer until they are coming from the hallway outside the door. If it is Ben, how is he planning on getting through the Maceo Steel door? I hear Rolly Polly charging forward to meet the attacker, and then I hear Rolly Polly gurgling like a man who just got his throat slashed. Is Ben killing them?
“Stand back Gavin,” a voice growls from outside. That wasn’t Ben, it is familiar though… No!
There are a couple of barely audible swipes, and then a panel of the Maceo Steel wall comes flying in. How did he cut through that wall?
“Come on out,” the voice yells.
I’m pretending I don’t know who it is, or that I at least have some uncertainty, but as soon as I walk through the hole my ability to practice denial is shattered. There he is, The Beast. Only now he looks like a gladiator from the Roman coliseum. He’s got a ForteSilk shirt on to protect his vital organs, a large shield on his left arm, and his missing right hand has been replaced with a knife. I think I know who gave this arsenal to him.
I experience a powerful mix of emotions that are borderline crippling. Fear, anxiety, rage, all boil up to levels that the brain cannot handle simultaneously. If I was normal person, I’d be frozen in place by this emotional cocktail, or maybe I’d go smash his face in like I should. But instead I have to do the rational thing and hear him out before I deliver justice.
“You look different, more powerful. The Lord blessed you with my strength. How’s it feel? It’s wonderful, ain’t it?” The Beast says.
“A miracle? You call having your hand surgically removed a miracle? Most people would damn God after that.”
“He was testing me and I rewarded the faith He showed in me, in turn He rewarded me for my sacrifice,” The Beast says and holds up his new blade hand.
Is that my Maceo Steel knife!? That explains how he cut me out of my cell.
“God didn’t give you that. A thirteen year-old girl who thinks she’s God did. And now she sent you here for reasons I can’t understand but I promise you her motivations were not divine.”
“The two of us are here together, sharing the same air, sharing the same blood, and you still can’t see how this is the Lord’s work? If you don’t want to learn, there is no way to teach you.”
“And what did ‘God’ tell you to do with me after you broke me out of here,” I ask.
“The Lord wants you to be free, that means not in a cage that humans stuck you in and also that you’re free to use your mind Gavin. He gave us this world, we get to choose what to make of it. Now if you choose wrong, you’ll have to answer eventually, but for now, the Lord only told me to get you out of here.”
“You did your job, I’m out. Now I have to do what I think is right.”
I lower my shoulder and charge, catching The Beast off guard. I push him out of the hallway leading to the cells and into a main area that serves as the office. I land on top of The Beast, and he uses his good arm to throw me off to the side.
“Haven’t we fought enough already boy? We’re supposed to be brothers you and me. Instead all we do is beat on each other, which I suppose isn’t that far off from brothers really. I never had one.”
We both get to our feet and circle each other. He’s got weight and strength on me. I’m still emaciated and he’s been fed his fill. Still, I’ve got a skill advantage on him; he doesn’t know how to fight like anything but an animal. I know how his nervous system works now, it’s all impulse.
I seize the initiative and throw the first punch, which turns out to be a terrible idea because it’s even slower and weaker than I had imagined, I need calories. The Beast steps around my punch and hammers me with his own cross, which cracks my jaw. I’ve got to get more Manna flowing to regrow my muscles, which means I need some sunlight.
I fake a right cross towards The Beast face, and when he moves to protect himself I leap up over him and run past him, heading straight towards the door. I make it outside and I’m greeted by a sky full of sun. It’s a lovely day.
But the sun is not the only thing out. There are also a few hundred soldiers who’ve taken up position outside the facility. Lots and lots of guns pointed right at me.
“I surrender,” I yell, but the bullets are already coming before they could have possibly heard the words.
The idea of dodging the bullets is a laugh, not only am I too slow to even make an honest attempt, there’s nowhere to go. I’d escape one bullet just to run into the path of another. Instead, I throw my hands over my head and let myself get torn apart like a pin cushion.
My dense tough muscles are no longer that dense or tough so the bullets tear through me almost like I’m a normal person. Muscles are shredded, bones are shattered, and organs are pierced. Everything bleeds. My new cells perform their rapid replication, but I’m low on calories and my solar power cells are going to need a few minutes to catch me up on my deficit. Unfortunately I won’t last a few minutes. They’ve got more bullets than I have nutrients to use to heal.
A roar erupts from the lockup building behind me and 800 pounds of fury comes charging out the door. The Beast leaps as soon as he sees day light, pushing off from my shoulders to arc a fifty feet into the air. He lands in the middle of the front line of troops, taking ten men down with him as he hits the ground. He’s up and moving again in an instant, tearing human beings in half with his Maceo Steel knife-hand.
It’s a truly horrific sight, the blade cuts so cleanly, it takes a moment for their bodies to show the damage, they come apart like human paper. It’s isn’t something that happens in real life, it’s something that belongs in an over the top Kung-Fu movie, but here it is.
There is something beautiful in the way The Beast moves, even through this sea of horrors. There is no wasted motion. He jumps from target to target without a moment’s hesitatio
n. I’ve always thought I’ve had an advantage on him when we fight because I’m well trained, and can execute a plan. But The Beast doesn’t have a plan, so he doesn’t have to stop to think about it. All he does is jump from murder to murder like it’s some sort of base instinct and he’s faster for it.
My ability to manage my emotions may give me the tools to appreciate talent regardless of its use, but I have to remember those are human beings he’s tearing through. Young men who joined the National Guard, burdened by their parents’ hope that their boy won’t be the one coming back in a body bag. The Beast is making nightmares into reality with every movement of his limbs.
One advantage to this horror is that it took all the attention away from me. Everyone’s either firing their guns at The Beast, or fleeing for their lives. I turn my back towards the sun so the photosynthetic cells can produce as much Manna as they are capable, enough to help my start rehabilitating my pincushion of a body. I gather up a portion my small intestine that is hanging out a hole in my chest, then heal the tissue around it, locking it back inside me where it belongs.
It doesn’t take long to repair the organ damage and move on to my muscles and skeleton. I get back on my feet, keeping my eyes locked on The Beast. The soldiers need my help. But I’m not strong enough to take him out. Maybe if I got myself a big gun, I’m still strong enough to rock a machine gun like an action hero.
There’s a small group of soldiers, struggling to get a .50 cal machine gun turned around so they can fire at The Beast. I can lift that. I approach slowly, with my hands in the air.
“Hello, please let me help you. If I can have that gun, I can stop him,” I say.
The group of five young men all turn and look at me, their jaws go slack. One of them pees his pants.
“It’s okay. I’m The Beast Slayer. I know I don’t look like my pictures anymore, but trust me, I’m one of the good guys,” I say still with my hands up.