She felt relaxed here, but could feel waves of discomfort flowing off Titus. It had nothing to do with judgment or disgust; it was sensory overload. He could see and smell and hear infinitely better than a normal human being, and the sights, the scents, and the sounds in this place were a cacophony even for Kate’s normal senses. Titus was being battered by the input.
“You going to be okay?” Kate asked.
“I just need to adjust,” Titus said. “I couldn’t walk through a mall if I hadn’t learned to adjust to situations like this.”
She glanced over. His face was pinched, and his eyes squinting. He’d pulled his hood up as a barrier for his ears.
Kate saw a familiar face, a girl with eyes so green they seemed to glow in the dark.
“Mara,” Kate said, and the girl turned her attention their way. Kate knew “Mara” was a fake name, but this was a place where you called yourself what you needed to be, not necessarily what you were born with.
“Hey, Dancer,” the girl said, sidling up with comic swagger. She looked taller than the last time Kate saw her. She’s grown, Kate thought. She’s been on the streets since before she finished growing. “Who’s your sidekick?”
“Partner,” Titus said. “Why does everyone think I’m the sidekick?”
“This is my bloodhound,” Kate said.
Mara pointed at him and smiled.
“No way, this is the werewolf dude?” Mara said.
“Everyone knows all of our codenames except mine,” Titus said. “I’m always the werewolf dude.”
“That’s because you keep changing your codename,” Kate said. She handed a photograph to Mara, who hesitated.
“You know we respect privacy down here, Dancer,” Mara said.
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think something bad happened to him,” Kate said. “You know that.”
“That’s the only reason I’m looking at this photo,” Mara said. She scanned it. “Yeah, I think I’ve seen him. Follow me.”
Mara led Kate and Titus deeper beneath the bridge, where it grew so dark they had to rely on sound and feel to move around. She could hear voices in the darkness. Sighs of sadness and pain, but also laughter between friends, the chatter of storytelling. This is the part of the City nobody talks about, Kate thought. Maybe I should change that.
Mara flagged down a pair of teenagers, a boy and a girl, and gestured for them to come over. They both hesitated, and Mara chided them.
“Come on, it’s fine, don’t be so sketchy,” Mara said. “This is the Dancer and her sidekick.”
“Partner,” Titus said again, sighing.
The pair joined them. Mara introduced them as Bobby and Jackie, but didn’t specify which was which.
“You were hanging out with this kid, right?” Mara said, showing them the photo.
“Little bit,” the girl said.
“He disappeared for a while. Think I saw him earlier, though. I said hi, but he ignored me,” the boy said.
“It happens,” Mara said to Kate. “Sometimes people just change. They move on.”
“I get it,” Kate said. “Where did you see him?”
The boy scanned the tents, thinking. He gestured to follow.
“Not like he’ll still be there, but I saw him over near the riverside,” the boy said. The far side of the tent city bordered a river that flowed into the city parallel to the interstate. The Longfellow River had once been too polluted to swim in, but City officials had made it a priority to make the river useable again, and in the past decade, people had begun sailing and fishing in it. A fringe benefit meant that the residents of the tent city could bathe in it without worrying they’d grow a third eye.
The ground along the water was a dicey blend of mud, swamp grass, and sand. The tents themselves stopped a good ten to twenty feet or more from the water to avoid getting wet, so when they reached the end of the makeshift housing, they had a clearer view of the area. Moonlight created a bluish half-circle where the sky leaked in. Out on the water, Kate could see a few straggling private boats making their way up the river, and beyond that, city lights like fireflies in the distance.
“Hey,” the younger girl said, pointing. “There he is. What’s his name? He never told us his name.”
“Kevin,” Kate said.
“Hey, Kevin!” the girl yelled. “Hey, you okay?”
Kevin was hunched over by the water, squatting on his haunches, the hood of a dark sweatshirt pulled up over his head. The white piping of his sneakers gleamed in the dark. He didn’t respond at first, and appeared to just stare into the water.
“Weird,” the girl said. “He was pretty nice before.”
Kate and Titus exchanged a worried glance and started walking to the water’s edge. Kate put a hand lightly on Mara’s shoulder, asking her silently to stay back. Before Titus could do the same to the others, though, the boy broke out ahead of them.
“Hang on,” the boy said, trotting toward the figure by the river. “Kevin? Is that you? Remember me? I’m Bobby, we were talking the other day—”
Kevin looked up from the water then, and the face that hid beneath the hood was no longer remotely human.
His skin was raw and reddish; one eye, gleaming yellow, was larger than the other. His mouth was a hard line of grimacing pain.
“Kid, get back!” Titus yelled, but it was too late. Kevin lashed out with a hand. From the sleeve of his sweatshirt, a tendril uncoiled, tipped with a single, bone-colored claw. It raked across Bobby’s chest, knocking the boy backward. Kate caught him with one arm and lowered him to the ground.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Bobby said, clutching his chest. His hands came back bloody.
“Can you stand?” Kate said, looking over her shoulder as Titus charged past them.
“I can,” Bobby said. Kate helped him to his feet and gave him over to Jackie and Mara.
“Then run. All of you. Go!” Kate said.
At the water’s edge, Titus transformed, fluidly changing from unassuming young man into massive werewolf. It always looked like torture to Kate—watching his face elongate, huge fangs bursting forth, fingers stretching into long claws—but this time, she was glad for it. Kevin lashed out with the tendril, which hooked into the meat of the werewolf’s shoulder. He roared in pain, but immediately slashed the fleshy tentacle with his claws, separating it from the rest of the lost boy’s body. The limb twitched, splattering blood everywhere as it dropped to the ground.
Titus closed the gap between him and the boy; Kate ran toward them both, suddenly realizing that Titus was not going to pull his punches. Don’t kill him by accident, Kate thought, don’t kill him…
But before Titus could get to him, Kevin jumped into the river, body moving with grotesque, serpentine motions as it plunged beneath the water. By the time Kate reached the water’s edge, Titus was knee-deep in the river, his massive head turning left and right searching for the boy.
“Down, boy,” Kate said. Titus whipped his head around at her, his eerie golden eyes seemingly not recognizing her. Her heart skipped a beat; it had been a long, long time since she’d seen such an unrecognizable look in that monstrous face.
“Titus, it’s me,” she said. “Come on back.”
The werewolf huffed, moving with almost comical daintiness as he clamored back onto the shore. He began to shrink, muscle and fur disappearing silently in the moonlight. A moment later, Titus looked down at his now soaked pants and torn shirt, the wound from the tendril already nearly fully healed.
“So, we found Kevin, huh?” Titus said. “Is the kid okay?”
“Let’s go find him,” Kate said, walking in the direction Mara and the others ran. The tent city had grown eerily quiet. During the fight, she’d not noticed the denizens fleeing en masse, but they were survivors, all of them—they knew how to get out of a bad situation fast. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Titus said.
“You didn’t seem okay for a second there.”
“I got fish-hooked
by the hangnail from hell,” Titus said.
Kate nodded.
“Any idea what that was?” Kate asked.
“You’re not going to like my answer,” Titus said. “But if we found evidence of magic in the flophouse…”
“I don’t want to call Doc,” Kate said.
“We should call Doc,” Titus said.
Kate looked out at the black waters of the Longfellow River, looking for signs that whatever Kevin had become was still alive. She wrinkled her nose.
“We’re going to have to call Doc,” she said.
Chapter 11: The Lapines, formerly of New Orleans
Doc dragged Sam out of a magical portal just outside the arrivals gate at the airport. For some reason, two grown men appearing out of thin air didn’t attract that much attention from travelers and their families; one woman in a particularly loud dress looked at them as if they’d said something offensive rather than teleported in from nowhere.
“You can’t just magic us into the airport!” Sam said. “This is how I get in trouble. There’s rules about these things.”
“As far as I know the TSA has never acknowledged the existence of magic,” Doc said.
“How would you know? When was the last time you took a regular flight?” Sam said. “You just poof yourself around the world, no respect for things like borders or passports…”
“Where are they detaining her?” Doc said, cutting Sam off.
“The resident? Hang on,” Sam said, rummaging inside his coat to pull out his ID and badge. He flagged down the nearest police officer and flashed his credentials.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” the officer said.
“Trust me, you want us here,” Sam said. “We’re going to make sure we keep the weirdness off the property.”
“If the Department is here, I already know the weirdness is on site,” the officer said. “I used to be a beat cop. I’ve seen you guys before.”
“Then you probably want us out of your hair as soon as possible,” Sam said. “Can you radio us in?”
The officer got on his walkie, summoning two plainclothesmen who led Sam and Doc through the gates and deep into the bowels of the airport proper. They buzzed them through multiple security checks until they found a very drab, off-white corridor. One of the plainclothes officers knocked on a door. It opened. Inside was a man in a suit—either an administrator or another plainclothes officer, Doc couldn’t tell—and a middle-aged woman, road-weary and bedraggled, sitting at a table clearly intended for interrogation and not comfort. But she had been given tea and a blanket to drape over her shoulders; a tray of uneaten food sat pushed aside. This was a woman who was here because she had nowhere else to go.
She turned her attention to them and her demeanor immediately changed, from a woman defeated to a woman enraged.
“You,” she said.
Sam almost back-peddled out of the room, but bumped into Doc.
“Um,” Sam said. “Hello. I’m—”
“Why am I still here?” she said. “I need to get home. Do you know what I just found out? I found out my husband had a heart attack a few hours ago, while I was in the air. I’m just finding this out now, and this means my daughter is out there alone and I don’t know where she is and my husband is in some hospital—”
“Mrs. Lapine, we’re here about your daughter,” Sam said. “We weren’t aware about your husband.”
“What do you mean you’re here about my daughter,” she said. “Where is she? Who are you? What is this?”
“Ma’am, my name is Sam Barren. I’m the director of the Department.”
“The Department of what?” she demanded.
Sam looked at Doc with tired eyes.
“This is why we need a damned acronym,” Sam said. Returning his attention to the woman, he continued. “My department investigates super-powered and supernatural activities primarily in the United States. We have reason to believe something of that nature has occurred in your town. What have you been told?”
“They told me that it wasn’t safe to go back to my house,” she said. Her voice cracked. “What does that even mean? That’s all they told me, that it wasn’t safe.”
Doc brushed past Sam and sat down at the table across from the woman. He put his hands on the table’s surface.
“I’m going to be blunt with you,” Doc said. “More blunt than I should be, but you seem like someone who doesn’t need to be lied to. Am I right about that?”
“Is my daughter okay? Who are you? Wait, I know you, I’ve seen you. You’re…”
“Yes, I am,” Doc said. “I’m one of those guys. My name is Doc Silence. And all we know is that something very strange has happened to your whole town, and before I go in to look for everyone, I need to get some idea of what I’m walking into. Tell me, was there anything strange going on in town before you left?”
The woman wiped her nose with a cheap paper napkin.
“No. Nothing. We live in the most boring town in the world,” she said. “We moved there because it was boring. What do you mean strange though? A gas leak, or were people sick?”
“Anything out of the ordinary at all,” Doc said. “Anything you can recall.”
“No,” she said. “But I’ll be honest… I don’t like my neighbors. I don’t really talk to anyone. We’re all kind of in our own heads, my husband and daughter and me. I know it’s not flattering to say, but that’s just how it is.”
“I understand,” Doc said. “I can relate.”
Doc rubbed his eyes beneath his sunglasses then looked over at Sam and shook his head. I’ve got nothing, he tried to say. Sam got most of it.
“Okay,” Doc said. “Let’s get you on the road to your husband, at least. Someone from the local police can get you there right now.”
“Thank you,” the woman said. “You’ll look for my daughter?”
“I will, and I’ll bring her back,” Doc said. “What’s her name, Missus…?
“Lapine,” the woman said. “I’m Becca Lapine. My daughter’s name is Alice.”
Doc felt a creeping tingle run down his back. The name. Alice Lapine. He knew that name. But it couldn’t be, he thought. Not here. How old would the girl be now, anyway?
“Mrs. Lapine, you said you moved to Westwick?” Doc said. “Where did you live before, if I could ask?”
“Becca,” she said. “And we lived in New Orleans when Alice was little, but it’s too much city. We wanted something quieter. I got a job in California. We thought this would be better.”
“New Orleans,” Doc repeated. “Thank you, Becca. We’ll tell the officers outside you’re ready to see your husband now, unless you have any questions for us.”
“Find my baby girl, Doc Silence,” she said. “That’s all.”
Doc’s heart ached at the request. It wasn’t the first time someone had asked him to find their lost daughter. It would not be the last. Doc and Sam stepped out of the room and Sam relayed to the nearest officer that she could be taken where she needed to go. Then Sam focused on Doc.
“You know something,” Sam said. “I know that look. Why did you ask if they moved from somewhere else? New Orleans meant something to you when she said it, didn’t it? I could tell.”
Doc took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes again.
“I think I screwed up, Sam,” Doc said. “I think I really screwed up.”
“How?” Sam asked.
“I need to check my files in the Tower’s archives,” Doc said. “Hopefully Henry and Emily have those up and running. Come on.”
Doc opened another portal. Sam hesitated.
“No,” he said. “You’re not dragging me over international lines when I don’t even have a change of underwear.”
Doc gestured impatiently for Sam to step through the portal. Sam trundled forward.
“I’m only going because you admitted you screwed up,” he said.
“Relax,” Doc said. “Emily fixed the air conditioning.”
“
My relief knows no bounds,” Sam said.
Chapter 12: There were always others
Jane sat on a countertop and watched the surreal comedy show that was Emily and Henry. The oddball pair stood arguing in front of one of Henry’s old Coldwall armored suits, which was opened up to the guts with wires and cables hanging out. Between them, the sad figure of Neal, trapped in his little trash can of a temporary body, seemed to stare up at them as if they were arguing parents.
“You’re limiting your thinking!” Emily yelled.
“I’m thinking like an engineer, which I am, because you can’t just make things up as you go along!” Henry yelled back.
“You’re just saying this because you’re afraid of things you don’t understand,” Emily said.
“No, I’m saying that we shouldn’t install anything into the suit I can’t fix, because it’s just taking up space that would be better used with things I can actually work on to improve his functionality,” Henry said. “Why would I put technology into the suit I can’t actually do anything with?”
“Because Neal can,” Emily said. She turned to the AI. “Right, Neal?”
“If you install the bio-processors and memory gel-packs into the framework, I will be able to connect the two myself, Designation: Entopy Emily,” Neal said. “It’s not dissimilar to how I integrated myself into the Tower when I first found it.”
Henry stared at Neal, then at Emily.
The Indestructibles (Book 5): The Crimson Child Page 6