*****
Later, early evening, I stood outside an enormous building looking up at its towering, glittering mass. It was one of four. The neighbourhood in which it resided was aggressively upper class, having the cleanest sidewalks and most perfect green grass it was possible to conjure. Oddly having lots of money also seemed to mean that no one walked unless it was absolutely necessary. The result was an eerily silent neighbourhood. Only an occasional vehicle drifted up the road behind me, and even these managed to be ghostly silent. Apparently granted the power of stealth by being unreasonably expensive.
“Are you up there?” I muttered.
There were at least a hundred residents in each of the four mammoth structures. And probably enough security to isolate, restrain and vaporise a cockroach in a kilometre radius.
“She’s a beauty, huh?” a voice said.
I jumped, flabbergasted. The dark haired young man was beside me, the same from Global Net. His eyes followed my line of sight. His posture was relaxed and oiled black hair glistening in the fading sunlight.
I stared. Then composed myself.
“Yes,” I replied evenly, “It’s a nice building.”
“She’s not in here, Jet,” he said. “She is not in this building.”
He turned and made eye contact, smile revealing teeth that equalled the cost of his expensive suit. My heart began to race. I jumped back and swung my head round, eyes probing the dark. Certain I would be surrounded. But the area remained deserted.
“There’s no one here, Jet,” he said, “Just us.”
“Who the hell are you?”
He looked me up and down and chuckled. “Unbelievable. I had sensors installed in the God damned air vents. Do you realise that? Do you know how much that costs?”
I waited. My eyes again drifted into the shadows.
“It costs a butt load, I’ll tell you that much, a God damned butt load. And yet here you are again, stumbling up the street like a blind imbecile.” He paused to shake his head. The greased hair flickered. “They really had me scared. I actually lost sleep, so convinced was I you would be tearing your way in through the walls. Or blasting down the front door and marching in like some mythological colossus. ‘Jet God damned Clarence’, the prodigal son; the guy who got offered it all and took a big squatting dump on it.” The smile faded and he took a deep breath. “Know why you’re not dead already, Jet? I could’ve done it at least a dozen times by now. I wanted to look you in the eyes and see your expression when I asked. So that maybe, possibly, I could understand how a creature like you is born.”
“Ask me what?”
His face turned to steel. “Why, for the love of God, would you turn down what Genevieve Starling, I’m sorry, Fran Clarence, offered you? Why? I guess I should be grateful since your refusal offered me the opportunity. But still, I’m curious.”
My mind went back to an offer made by my grandmother in the kitchen several months earlier. Grand words had been used. Big things offered. I glanced down and realised one of my hands had begun massaging the wrist of the other.
“You want to know why I refused the offer,” I muttered.
“Yes. I’ve worked it over in my head. Looked at it from every angle. And the only thing I can imagine is that you didn’t understand. Is that what happened? Did you not understand?” His eyes studied me. The question was genuine. My heart slowed. A gust of chilled evening wind swept down and tousled my hair.
“I understood,” I replied, “I understood enough.”
“Then why, Jet?!” His voice rose. “Why would you choose this?! Why would you spit in the face of change and choose clawing and scratching around in a world of garbage? Are you so obsessively attached to sucking filth and suffering, surrounded by fools?!”
“She killed my father,” I said, “tried to kill me…”
“She killed your father?” His mouth popped open. “He wasn’t your real father, Jet! For God’s sake, the man wasn’t related to you in any way! And in case you’re forgetting he tried to kill Barbara! Half choked her to death! It was self defence!” There was a pause. He smoothed down the lapels of his blazer and looked mildly embarrassed. “It wasn’t even supposed to happen. That man was not supposed to die. It was an accident and they improvised, changing the implants up there,” he pointed to my head, “to take advantage of a bad situation. An experiment. And it failed, clearly. Here you are.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Franco Starling. Barbara Starling is my mother.”
“Liza?”
“Yes, Liza Clarence. Like you, my biological parents are long gone. Genevieve and Barbara raised me as their own.”
“You know the truth. About the children. About you. You’re serving them willingly. Why…?”
“Serving them?” He chuckled. “I thank my unbelievable fortune being given the opportunity to work beside them.”
“You know what they do.”
“What they do? Yes, I know what they do. And God bless them for it. If they weren’t brave enough to stand up to the garbage flung at us by the world, who would?”
“Us?’
“All of us, Jet. Magic users. Doesn’t it piss you off? How we’re treated? Made to shrivel and obey like half-humans? Those with the most potential made to bow to those with the least? Or have you been hammered into believing its okay? Like the rest of the sick world.”
An image of a skeletal Linda flashed through my head. “Yes, it pisses me off.”
“Well then? Things won’t change by themselves. Too many people have gotten used to sitting on our shoulders. And they cling to that. But people will only live so long in injustice. It’s been coming. And I can’t tell you how blessed I feel to be able to witness the revolution from this position. The world moves forward. Change is inevitable.”
My eyes narrowed. “And Linda? Judy? Collateral damage?”
“They were dead already, Jet. Living corpses wasting away in a bed. Like hundreds across the city. I gave them a voice in their last moments. They would thank me.”
“I was in their heads, Franco. I saw the nightmares. They would spit in your face.”
The wind gusted again, turning up the hem of my shirt. Then the dimming street was ablaze with Spirit. It crackled and twisted off young Franco in enormous bullwhips that licked the sides of the building. He extended his palms and my world turned into a tunnel of rushing light. I braced, grimacing, and the Spirit was channelled down through my legs into the ground. The torrent subsided.
“Round two,” he said, smoothing back his hair.
“Where is my mother?”
“You’re obsessed.”
His body tensed and eyes widened. Then black tendrils were plunging into my Place of Calm, shattering defences like glass. Leonard Delaney would have been disappointed. I realised my legs were being absorbed into the ground. And looking down saw angry red quicksand where the sidewalk should be. It sucked at me hungrily and closed over my knees.
‘Focus, focus, it’s not quicksand. Remove the liquid and mud becomes…’
The quicksand solidified and halted my descent. I snapped my head back up ready to return the favour, but Franco was no longer in front of me. His attack came from my right, catching me square on the cheek and sending my body rocking. Part of the energy was absorbed. The second blow I ducked and it whistled over my head, leaving him exposed. My counter was enthusiastic. Too much so, I realised, hearing twenty percent of the mammoth building’s windows burst, showering us with a million stinging fragments.
Franco took the hit squarely. He channelled a portion and it thumped into the ground. But I did not relent. More and more Spirit was poured in his direction in an endless stream. The street glowed and flickered like a Christmas tree. Eventually his concentration wavered, and with a grimace of horror the young fool fell back on his remaining alternative. Crossing his arms over his face and taking the impact.
“Fool me once…” I muttered to myself.
First his f
lashy suit jacket burst open, sending buttons shooting like bullets and whipping his tie into a windsock. This was followed by the fabric on his arms shredding and fluttering away. Only then did he stagger and hit the cement, pushed along for several meters like a leaf in a stiff breeze.
I halted the barrage. There was a pang of satisfaction that his greasy hair now resembled a mop. I glanced down, confirmed I was no longer in quicksand, and stepped forward.
“You’re not level 5,” I said, “You’re hardly level 4, Franco.”
He gaped up. A young boy, barely out of high school. His reeling mind yielded in seconds…
From beneath his body four inch-thick steel rods erupted from the cement and impaled his shoulders and thighs. He was drawn into the air and suspended three feet off the ground. The scream pierced the night sky.
“Where is Liza Clarence,” I asked.
“Oh God!” he shrieked, “How did this happen?!”
“I’ll find her anyway, Franco. Tell me and I’ll stop hurting you.”
Gravity began pulling him back to Earth. Ever more of the glistening steel emerged through flesh.
“Oh God!” he wailed, sucking breath through gritted teeth, “it hurts, oh shit, it hurts!”
“I can protect you, Franco. Tell me and I’ll protect you from them.”
His eyes closed and breath slowed. He attempted to focus. But his body again slipped, coaxing a shriek like nails on a blackboard. Only a matter of time before he cracked. But the headlights of a black van appeared, bathing the scene in a pasty light. The traditional red and blue lights followed a second later.
Balance - Book 2 Page 57