Subject 12

by S. W. Douglas

  "Yessir. To the letter." He took half a step back.

  I sighed. My brain was already kicking back into high gear. I must have napped for a couple of hours at least.

  "Was there anything else?"

  "Nosir."

  I rubbed my eyes for a few seconds. When I opened them again they felt better. "What is it, son?" I took a page from Jackhammer's handbook. "Something bothering you?"

  "Sir, no. No. Not really."

  "Son, there's no need to lie to me. We're all one big family, right?"

  He sighed and looked around the room as if to make sure it was still, in fact, empty. "There's a rumor going around. They say you killed all the people in the building you sent the team to."

  I nodded. "Word gets around fast here, I see. Yes, I did. Not every last one, mind you, but enough of them. The rest of them killed themselves or each other."

  He blanched and without word ran from the room. Any thoughts I might have had about this turn of events were interrupted when my Guildphone decided to start ringing.

  "Well, well, well, have you been a naughty boy. Busy, but naughty. We've sixteen official complaints --- no, make that seventeen since I see a new one has just arrived on the fax machine. That's a record for someone who has only been in Guild employ for less than twenty-four hours, you know. The previous record was three. Not only that but we have a member in jail under official and internal investigation, accused of embezzling something on the order of eighteen million US dollars, one in intensive care who will require the attentions of at least one of our badly-overworked Guild healers and a plastic surgeon over the next month --- if he lives --- a lawsuit that was just filed against the Guild by a sergeant in the Saint Lawrence County Sheriff's Department claiming you caused permanent emotional damage to him though I can't see how if the assault took place a matter of hours ago, four official censures from three different police forces, three arrest warrants fitting your description, and a bill for a new car window that I find particularly amusing."

  "You don't sound like you're laughing."

  "That's because I'm not, you dick." Venom didn't sound angry, just a little surprised. "I'm impressed. You have managed, in the last twenty-odd hours, to alienate, attack, kill, vilipend, or war with more people than I'd have thought possible." She sighed. "You really don't do 'subtle', do you?"

  "I can, I just don't see the point most of the time. Are you calling to congratulate me or yell at me? If it's the latter I'd like to get back to sleep, 'kay?"

  "Hold it, Tarzan. I am not yelling at you, alright? What you've accomplished is amazing. I can't say as I agree with some of your methods, but you get results. We want you back here as soon as possible, though. If you've finished your investigation, that is."

  "Oh, I'm done. I even cleaned out the Alpha Zulu enclave in Syracuse and have a team on-site securing it and stripping it of intel. I have a copy of the Canton security footage showing the attack. The techs here analyzed it and managed to ID some of the guys who did it, and the short version of the rest of it is I found out where they were stationed and moved in. Kinsey was not there, however. I did get a flight number, but I doubt it'll lead anywhere. The computer system got scrambled but not blanked, so there's hope for a lot more. The security recorders were untouched, so maybe there's something there that we can use." I had gotten up and had found an unopened, seemingly-forgotten package of generic toaster pastries on a nearby coffee table so I opened it and started to eat one, cold. "I'm pretty much done here, but I do have one problem. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I have no frigging clue how to get back there from here."

  "I can send a jumper. If I put a task in the queue I can have one there before nightfall, though I have no clue whether their clearance will be for the compound or the Edmonton Guildhall. We could pick you up from there easily enough if we had to."

  I swallowed a rather dry and somewhat painful mouthful of the pastry and coughed. "No jumper, thanks. I'd rather not have my molecules torn apart and scattered throughout the galaxy if at all possible. What else you got?"

  "You could catch a plane. Your Inspector ID should get you on the Guild expense account with a nice discount. Someone in Syracuse has to have a flight to somewhere in Alberta in the next few hours, I would think."

  "Pass. I used to drink with a few pilots and they pack away more than their fair share of the booze." The nearest place I could get something to drink was the bathroom, so I looked a little further. My mouth felt like I'd tried to eat a sweat sock. "Besides, I always end up sitting next to some fat guy who brought his own salami. Next?"

  "You could always walk," she said sarcastically. "It'll only take you a few weeks."

  "Gee, mommy, but what would I eat? Next."

  "I told you not to call me that. Alright, I'll see what I can find. How's the battery on that thing? Still got a good charge?"

  I looked. "Still shows as four out of five bars. Should hold up for a little while."

  "Okay, I'll call you back within the hour as soon as I have something. Try not to make any more of a mess, if you would?"

  "Sure."

  "Good. Venom out."

  Something sticky on the carpet caught my boot and made me pause in my quest for water. Some jackass had spit his gum on the carpet and I'd been unlucky enough to find it. Whoever got tasked with getting it out was about to have a hell of a time with it since I hadn't noticed it until I'd really trod upon it. The carpet fibers were rather gummed together, no pun intended.

  "I gotta get out of here," I said to nobody in particular.

  The afternoon sun felt warm against my face.

  Some thoughtful designer had put benches at various locations on the compound's grounds --- including a nice one under a youngish tree, overlooking the bottom of the hill and the highway in the distance. The bottom of the hill was the boundary with the college next door, not that it was really marked as such, so I was treated to a nice view of the women's lacrosse team practicing. After watching for a few minutes I found my gaze drifting over the trees behind them and onto the traffic whizzing by on the highway. I couldn't have told anyone why if they'd asked me, so I was just as glad nobody came to bother me for a while.

  It had been a long time since I could just sit back and watch the sun go down. It really was too bad I wasn't going to get the chance. With the clouds starting to gather in the distance in the southwestern part of the sky it looked like it was going to be a spectacular one.

  I couldn't say where my mind was as I watched the traffic. I didn't even have that great a picture from a detail point of view. I saw the big rigs fairly well and make out the individual vehicles, but while I could tell a pickup from a sedan I couldn't say much more than that besides color. Still, it seemed to be enough I could just watch them go.

  There were times I wished I was normal again. Just a normal guy with a normal life and a normal wife and a normal two-point-three kids. Of course, being a norm brought with it a whole host of risks and problems I didn't have to worry about. Then again, I wouldn't be sitting in front of the Heroes' Guildhall in Watertown, New York enjoying the view. I'd probably be stuck in some office breathing recycled air, worrying some piece of computer code, wondering if the woman in the next cubicle who lived on hummus and cabbage had just farted or if a skunk had crawled into the ventilation system and died.

  At any rate, that door was closed to me before I'd turned twelve. My parents hadn't exactly been normal themselves. My father was an alcoholic, though he managed to function enough to get by. My mother was a whore, though she kept an almost-compulsively clean house and cooked a hell of a pot of tuna noodle casserole. Every night. She had a gambling problem and to make up for the shortfalls with whatever she could steal from my father's pocket and to pay the bills she rented herself out to all comers.

  I never said it was a happy childhood, though I did get to meet all sorts of interesting people. My first two imaginary friends were the Blackie and Red Walker brothers. When I grew up I realized how glad I wa
s that I didn't have any siblings. I had enough of a problem looking out for myself.

  I'd joined the army at seventeen with the full blessing of both my parents. My father got into a drunken rage and gave me a black eye and my mother just wanted to know if I'd be sending home any money.

  When word came to me that my father had killed them both on my twenty-second birthday I wasn't very surprised. I didn't even ask for the weekend off to come home for the funeral.

  Home. I'd thought that dinky town had been home till I'd started to feel something for Magda. We'd made the closest thing to a home I'd ever had inside those spartan walls Alpha Zulu had grudgingly allowed us to dwell in.

  Home. It conjured up images of freshly-baked bread and warm cookies, a dog sleeping by a fireplace glowing with coals as the flames died down, a comfortable bed in a wood-paneled room with a floor covered in teenaged detritus, and a Christmas tree guarding carefully-wrapped presents.

  I remembered backhanded slaps and small bribes to go see movies. Late nights with the door locked, freezing my ass off outside before some upstanding citizen from town let himself out. The phone calls that left my mother scared. My father passed out on the living room floor while faked moans of pleasure came from the bedroom.

  The lacrosse players finished their practice and left the field. I watched them walk back to the college for a few seconds, the sounds of their laughter bouncing around inside my head. I couldn't hear them laugh, but my brain filled in the sounds I could see from their body language. I picked one at random and concentrated on her, letting my eyes focus tighter and tighter till I could see her quite clearly. Her jersey bore the number 13 and it clung to her body wherever the sweat had soaked through. She was wearing a sports bra, but the slight breeze had cooled her skin enough goosebumps had formed on her arms and her nipples had tightened. As I watched she wrapped her arms around another one of the girls, kissed her cheek, then threw her head back and laughed.

  Girls. They were so young. So much of their lives ahead of them.

  I smiled. It was a sad smile, but it still felt good. Life was for living, as they said. Best that it was done by those who could enjoy it.

  "How comfortable are you with the idea of requisitioning a GPS unit from stores and using that to fly to, say, Edmonton?"

  "Not especially. I don't trust GPS units to be one-way-only data streamers and I sure as hell don't trust Alpha Zulu to not have some sort of trace on the whole system at this point. Not that I'd expect them to know what unit I used, but I'm just not comfortable with the whole idea."

  Venom had called a few minutes after the lacrosse team had left my field of vision. I didn't mind the interruption. My moment of peaceful solitude had ended anyway.

  "That's about the best idea I could come up with. Jackhammer told me to get your ass on a plane if you didn't like it, so as far as we're concerned, at this point those are your two options. Unless you came up with something else I think you're stuck."

  "How about this one," I said, tensing my legs for a leap. "I just fly your way and land occasionally for directions?"

  "If you think that's the way to go, then go for it. The GPS would be faster, though. Have fun, call us when you get somewhere nearby."

  I closed the Guildphone and jumped. Wherever I landed was where I'd start looking from. This stage of the game was over. The next move belonged to Kinsey.

  The flight back took longer, in part because I needed to pee more than once and in part because, quite simply, I had to track my way and there were far fewer landmarks than I remembered there being. The heavy cloud cover I chose to fly over instead of under (since through was cold, wet, and miserable) certainly didn't help.

  I arrived with the sun low in the sky and a smug sense of satisfaction tickling a smile onto my face. I landed a short distance from the front door and decided against reporting in. I wanted to see their faces when I just let myself in and sat down at the dining room table.

  The compound was huge. There were three different orchards that must have had a couple hundred fully-mature fruit trees apiece, a field of ripening maize almost as large as the smallest orchard, a goodly-sized herd of cattle, two large barns, a horse stable big enough for twelve, four small ponds, a Zen rock garden fully-enclosed by the main building, two vegetable gardens that looked too big to be tended by only two or three people, a four-bay garage with a hydraulic lift for repairs on-site, a separate enclosure for a group of hogs, an outbuilding for butchering the animals complete with a curing room for smoking and aging the meat, and more area than I'd attempted to see before landing. All this was surrounded by an electrified fence powered by a large cluster of solar panels, a huge battery array, and a backup generator that probably would have powered an aluminum refinery without breaking a sweat.

  I hadn't really taken the time to appreciate it on my way out. Actually, I hadn't taken any time to appreciate it on my way out.

  It immediately raised questions of why and how in my mind. Being a hero wasn't exactly a well-paying job.

  I pushed it out of my head. It wasn't really important to the then and there.

  The door wasn't locked, nor were there any alarm pads that I could see. It made sense. Anyone who could get through the gates and knew where the place was was a guest. Simple.

  The smell of baking pies and quality hardwood washed over me as I pushed the door open. Pumpkin and apple and blueberry pies, to be precise.

  I wiped my feet on the welcome mat and stepped inside. As the door closed behind me I could feel myself relax. No matter what else happened, I was off-duty till the next day. Anything short of an invasion would have to wait.

  I found my way to the dining room table, sat down, and within a few minutes I had fallen asleep again.

  I guess my naps hadn't quite made up for everything I'd put myself through. I was getting out of shape.

  I opened my eyes to see a slowly-shifting red-and-white morass I couldn't identify. It startled me enough I snapped further awake than my brain was prepared for and when I jerked up I felt something in my neck shift painfully.

  "Huh. Looks like he is alive. I guess I owe you five dollars, Vivian." Jackhammer's drawl twanged my ears.

  "I told you. Next time listen to me." Her dulcet tones tickled what Jackhammer had so recently twanged.

  The shifting color blob steadied, as much as it was possible, into several different shapes moving around on Wildcard's mask. A pink tinge suggested that he was pleased about something.

  My head hurt and I groaned as I straightened. My neck throbbed to a different harmony than my head, just to make things interesting.

  "Oorgfle," I said helpfully.

  "Easy now, honey," Venom said, patting the back of my hand. I didn't really see her expression change because I couldn't really see much of anything other than a bright light reflected into my eyes from the sliding glass door leading to the rock garden, but her tone changed subtly. "You've pushed yourself pretty hard."

  My mouth tasted like someone had done something illegal in it while I'd slept. Actually, that was an understatement. My mouth tasted like someone had done something illegal to several people in it while I'd slept and then had wiped his feet on my tongue before closing the door. I say his because a woman would, hopefully, have had enough courtesy to wipe my chin after she was done.

  I moaned quietly as the world decided it was time to intrude on my consciousness despite my brain's best efforts to keep me from remembering anything more complicated than my name. At least it had the decency to tap me on the shoulder first and then worm its way in via my ear rather than violate my mouth all in one rush. I had a hard enough time swallowing the thickened gob of spit I scraped off my tongue with my teeth without gagging.

  "I'll be alright," I finally croaked, wishing I'd either fall back asleep even if I fell out of the chair or would fully wake up. "Jus' gimme a min'."

  "A cup of coffee would do you a world of good," Jackhammer said. "Corrine, would you be so kind?"

  I heard
her bite off something rather tart before her footsteps started to drift away. If she wasn't headed toward the kitchen to get me a cup of coffee then she was leaving out of disgust.

  "Thanks," I said, twisting my neck to see if it would pop. It did, loudly and painfully. The relief, however, was instantaneous and rather welcome. "Oh, that's the stuff."

  I sat there for a minute, breathing slowly, trying to get my thoughts in order. It slowly dawned on me that the three people still in the room with me were watching me with a shared expression that I'd only ever seen on a small dog waiting to see if the larger dog a friend of their owner had just brought over was going to play or try to eat him. Okay, I couldn't see Wildcard's face, but I could feel it radiating off him.

  Oh. Kay. What was that all about?

  "Here," Steamroller barked, thrusting a green mug of black coffee under my nose. "I didn't know how you take it, so it's black. Now, if I hear one complaint about the quality I'll belt you so hard you'll be tasting my wedding ring for a month!"

  "Thank you." I took the mug and carefully sipped it. It was too hot and much too bitter, but the quality was not in question. Nor was the strength of the brew. Most people brewed coffee way too strong in my experience. Spoils the flavor profile when all you can taste is over-roasted, over-brewed bitterness with a hint of motor oil. This would have melted a spoon if one was foolish enough to put one in it. It probably would have improved the flavor. "Is there any way to get some cream and sugar?"

  "I think I can do you one better, son." Jackhammer turned around and fiddled with the large, expensive-looking wooden cabinet behind him. When he turned back he had a bottle in his hand and a broad grin splitting his face. "How 'bout I Irish that coffee up a little?"

  "That sounds good. Really, really good. But, still, some cream? It helps keep the teeth from staining, you know." I held the mug out and couldn't help but notice the white "21" nearly in the middle of the gold-trimmed black label as he poured. Whatever it was he was pouring it was old, expensive, and probably a waste to put it in coffee. I sipped the cup again after he'd finished and I simply marvelled at how good it was. "Fuck the sugar. Just a little cream to even it out, please?"