by Lan Chan
He made a small squeaking sound in his throat to clear it. “I don’t know who posted the job. We were supposed to kill or capture the boy. They...” He swallowed hard. “They never said nothing about an alpha EK.”
Suddenly, it wasn’t his words that I was paying attention to but the very specific images flashing through his mind. First was a scene from a camera drone of a Department of Human Development tech car driving through the Melbourne City checkpoint. The image blurred as the car was set upon by gunmen. The attackers struggled with a man inside the car for a briefcase. One of the attackers, a man with hollow pockmarked cheeks, drew his gun and shot the passenger. The passenger’s arm went lax. He released his grip on the briefcase. His head lulled against the headrest. I almost vomited. It was Dad.
23
I was at the all-terrain vehicle before I could formulate a plan. When I went to open the driver door, an arm reached out and held it closed.
“Going somewhere?” Zeke said. His voice was hoarse from smoke inhalation. Blood was crusted on his lip. He’d lost his cap somewhere along the line. His hair looked like a matted lion’s mane.
“My dad.” It was all I needed to tell him. He yanked the driver door open.
“I’m driving,” he said.
“No, you’re not. I know where I’m going.”
“You’re not in any state to drive.”
I was about to tell him I didn’t care, but we were wasting time. So I sprinted to the passenger side and hopped in. Zeke had the engine on and was reversing to get around the bus before I even had my seat belt on. It didn’t question where he’d learned to drive underage.
Teachers jumped in the way, trying to flag us down. Zeke hit the horn. They dispersed. He gunned it down the highway. We were still half an hour from the checkpoint at the beginning of the highway out of Melbourne. Even though this was a petrol car and should have been faster, it still felt as though we were crawling along.
Neither of us spoke. My hands ached from the manacle grip I had on the side of my seat. I tried repeatedly to establish a connection to Dad, but it wouldn’t take. Zeke might not have had a licence yet, but he wasn’t exaggerating about his driving prowess. I had the distinct feeling he’d taken a few joyrides in his time.
The closer we got to the checkpoint, the busier the highway became. I didn’t know whose bright idea it was to bottleneck the only usable highway into Melbourne with a checkpoint. Right now, it was really pissing me off.
We reached a point where both lanes were bumper to bumper. Zeke had to slow down with traffic. This just wouldn’t do at all. There was no way I was going to wait.
“Hold on,” I said. I closed my eyes and began to part the two lanes of cars. Most of them were electric cars, so they were a breeze to move. I barely had to tap them, and they veered towards the outer edges of their lanes. The petrol cars were a bit more difficult. I wasn’t very good at pure magnetic control, but I had strength behind my commands, and they moved just like the rest. Albeit a lot less smoothly.
Zeke cottoned-on real quick. He manoeuvred the car slowly between the lanes. Despite himself Zeke, let out a whoop of joy.
“Holy shit!” he said. “I’ve met other alphas before, but seriously, what the hell? None of them could move a fleet of cars!”
I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m odd.”
“Yeah, no kidding!”
We grew quiet. The checkpoint was coming up. Zeke eased the car back into the spot I left open for us behind a truck. If we wanted to, we could blast right through, but then we’d have the Academy on our tail. That was an inconvenience we didn’t need. Without identification, I wasn’t sure how we were going to get past.
“Any ideas?” Zeke asked as the car in front of us was waved off by the guards. It was our turn to pull up at the inspection booth. I shook my head as I surveyed our surroundings. The checkpoint was heavily guarded both on the ground and in the two control towers sitting above us. Hovering around the towers were a dozen camera drones taking twenty-four-hour surveillance footage. These were the new streamlined disc drones with a single propeller on the top. They spun around at super-speed, giving them a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view. Perhaps I could use that to our advantage.
I tapped into half a dozen of the drones and started to fidget with their commands. Moments later, their alarms went off. They alerted the guards to potential terrorist activity happening further down the line. I felt a little guilty about this but not so much that it stopped me. When the alarm of the car a few lengths back started to go off at a deafening decibel, I felt Zeke get ready to put his foot down once more.
As I’d hoped, the guards all spilled out of their booths to intercept the threat. A current whispered across the skin on my forearms as the checkpoint went into automatic lockdown. We had seconds until the metal claws ascended. If we drove over them, it would shred our tires. I eased the boom gate up with my mind at the same time as I commanded the lockdown to halt.
Zeke rolled the car forward then stepped on the gas as we crossed the checkpoint threshold.
“That was seriously almost too easy,” Zeke said. I waved him quiet as I telepathically wiped any footage of us off the drone’s databanks. Not for the first time, I thanked the heavens I was an EK.
“Where to now?” Zeke asked when the highway officially ended and branched off into a number of busy arteries.
“Take the Hume Freeway and then turn left into Cooper Street. From what I saw, Dad was on Cooper Street on his way to the Department’s laboratories in Epping.”
We made great time. I gave us every green light I could without endangering anyone’s life. In less than fifteen minutes, we rounded a corner. There was the tech car. It sat alone on the street. Both front doors gaped open.
I wasn’t sure if someone had raised an alarm or if they were too afraid. That happened a lot in this city. Unless you were part of a street gang or could afford the protection of one, a lot of people were scared to report crimes.
I shot out of the car before Zeke could pull up the hand brake. Even from behind, I could still see the sleeve of Dad’s tweed blazer jutting out the door.
He was slumped in his seat. A blossom of crimson leached slowly from a dozen bullet wounds in his chest.
“Dad?” I whispered, not daring to hope. Not in this city. He didn’t stir. His eyes stared vacantly past me. No! I fell to my knees and buried my head in his lap. My chest heaved with sobs. I couldn’t breathe. It didn’t matter. I felt a warm hand on my shoulder but I didn’t move. Everything outside of this car seat was irrelevant. My world had shrunk to the wet patch I was making on Dad’s knee.
I stayed there for what I thought must have been forever. My heart thudded loudly in my ear at the same time it felt like somebody had reached into my chest and ripped it out. Finally, my tears subsided. I doubt there was any moisture left in my body. Zeke was beside me when I lifted my head. The pity in his eyes had me blubbering all over again. I could tell he didn’t have the faintest idea how to console me. In the end, he pulled me into a hug and I howled like a baby.
I’m sorry, he thought. I clung on even tighter. I read in the underlayer of his mind that he was overwhelmed by my attachment to my dad. Something he’d never had because he was an orphan. His parents had left him on the steps of St. Matthew’s Church when he was a baby.
When I’d soaked through Zeke’s shirt as well, I eased myself away and wiped my nose on my sleeve, not caring if it was disgusting.
I took a long, shuddering breath. Only then did I allow her voice to take hold of me.
“There is no place for emotion on a mission,” I heard Mum say in my memory. “Learn to push the feelings aside, or you’ll fail every time.”
I couldn’t help wondering if she would be able to push this aside. There were a few instances in my childhood when Mum let her emotions cloud her judgement. When she did, it usually resulted in mayhem.
They were both gone. I was an orphan now, too. The thought caused an iron curtai
n to slam shut in my chest. The muscle in my jaw flexed. Someone would pay for this.
I closed my eyes and took a shuddering breath. I gave myself a second for composure before snapping them open again. I scanned the car. It was only then that I even noticed the driver wasn’t inside or around the car.
Suspicion overcame my guilt. It brought with it the welcome embers of fury. I strode to the driver’s side and checked for signs of duress. There were none –no stray drops of blood, no torn items of clothing, and no marks or scratches on the car itself. The driver had either pulled off a miracle and gotten away clear, or he was part of the heist.
“What were they after?” Zeke asked me when I came back around. I had wondered the same thing. When I opened my mind and allowed myself to see the image of Dad fighting with them for the briefcase, I knew the answer.
“They wanted the Psi-Q test scores,” I said. “They either want to recruit or eliminate the next generation of espers.”
I should call the Academy and report Dad’s death. The very idea caused my muscles to freeze. Zeke did it for me using the phone in the stolen car. I thought of Aunt Jenny, oblivious in her office, and wanted to shove my fist through a wall.
This shouldn’t have happened. If Dad and I had just gone home together, even if we were attacked, I could have handled it. I’d trained with Mum all my life to deal with this type of thing. Yet here I was at crunch time, crying like I was back in preschool.
No. I wasn’t going to let it go down like this. I wasn’t going to let my dad be gunned down and his work stolen. My thoughts shifted to the other kids whose information was on the files in the briefcase. Dozens of kids who had no idea that their abilities made them a target. Kids like Zeke who had stuck with me despite all the crazy. I thought then of my own scores. Maybe they had let me off because, officially, I was only beta class. I highly doubted it. If they were rounding up kids, then they would eventually come for me.
Unless I got to them first.
24
“Zeke,” I said. “I’m giving you the option to get out now. I’m going on a bit of a chase, and it could lead to places we shouldn’t be.”
He straightened up and rolled his shoulders. His answer came without hesitation. “Are you kidding? You didn’t bail when those guys came after me. Let’s go.”
I stood and stared at Dad’s still figure for as long as I could without feeling light-headed. I didn’t want to leave him. Maybe if I stayed, he’d somehow revive. If only I could reach his mind. Seconds stretched into long minutes. Dad remained undisturbed. Time was running out.
In my mind, I placed walls all around the memory of the scene of the crime. One day soon, I’d unpack it and grieve. Right now, I needed to focus.
We got back in the car. I tapped into the closest hover drones. Once upon a time, there were such things as CCTV cameras in some cities in the world. During the Reset, they were used to coordinate the mass EMP attacks. Afterwards, the government, with the help of Hoffman Industries, came up with a new system. The internet, smartphones, automated banking services, prison buildings, and weapon silos — anything that involved complex or heavy electronics was torn down. The Technology Restriction Act was passed. Hoffman Industries worked to create the hover drones, fully self-contained little units working in tandem with the Academy’s supercomputers. What they couldn’t account for were espers like me.
I used them all the time to make sure I wasn’t walking into a trap. To spy on people if necessary. Erasing images was child’s play. I only allowed shots of myself that displayed the right picture. One of a flighty teenage girl without a care in the world. Not the one who stalked the darkest corners of the city, waiting for an opportunity to take down the most dangerous King of them all. The Shadowman killed my mum. I couldn’t get to him at this point in time, but I would get to whoever killed Dad.
The vehicle we were in had one of those nifty television screens embedded into the dashboard. These kinds of electronics were now highly illegal, but we were in a hotted-up car, so I didn’t quibble. I directed the footage from the drones onto the screen and flipped through stream after stream of images. From them, I managed to piece together a hasty getaway with about four assailants and, just as I suspected, the tech car driver. They veered off the highway and turned into a warren of side streets. Eventually, they disappeared into what looked like an abandoned warehouse.
I directed Zeke towards it. A heady feeling of anticipation flooded through me along with the usual hollow feeling in my stomach. Despite the enormous lunch I’d had, I was suddenly starving. A tension headache pinched the corner of my eye. If I didn’t replenish soon, it might turn into a migraine. Just perfect.
Zeke drove more carefully now that we were no longer on the big streets. Primary school children were outside playing in their yards as their parents sat on broken lawn furniture drinking and smoking.
We made it through the urban area and then out onto a smaller highway leading towards the scarcely populated but heavily worked industrial area. Smoke from the factories plumed and coloured the sky a distressing shade of black and grey. That it was allowed to be so close to a residential area was beyond me.
Navigating through the industrial area was difficult. They had no concept of proper waste management. The Academy had probably given up policing the streets here too. Every surface had been tagged with graffiti in the emblems of all the most notorious gangs. There were broken walls and fences lying on the ground.
“Is it too late to mention that this seems like a really bad idea?” Zeke asked. “Not that I’m suggesting we go back. Just a mild observation.” He inclined his head. I turned to see what had his attention. My head snapped the other way again. One of the factories wasn’t set up for manufacturing but for more fleshly goods.
“You’d think they would be able to afford curtains,” I said. It was impossible to burn the image of that guy’s hairy white butt from my mind.
“Now you’re talking crazy,” Zeke laughed. “Why have curtains when you can tape some newspaper to the window? Problem solved.”
I spotted the building we were after and signalled for Zeke to pull over a hundred meters down the road. We covered the rest of the distance on foot. Zeke was quieter than I’d anticipated. Though if he was an orphan, I didn’t doubt he’d had to do some questionable things to survive, even if he had the support of the church.
The nondescript square factory blended into its surroundings with ease. The only thing that might have suggested something was off was that the smoke puffing out from the chimney was more white than grey. That and the couple of goons casually standing guard out front. Cigarettes perched precariously between their lips. Handguns brazenly hung out their pockets.
“What’s the plan?” Zeke asked. To be honest, I didn’t really have one; save running in there with figurative guns blazing, there wasn’t much else we could do. Did we have time for any recon? Mum’s rules of engagement allowed for nothing less. But this wasn’t one of her carefully prepared missions. I didn’t have time to spend days making sure everything was in place. I could call the Academy, but what if these people were already tapping into the Psi-Q information and trying to locate more espers to eliminate?
“How far does your telepathy reach?” I asked. I was sure he was almost as strong as I was, but it was nice to ask. Zeke grinned. Not out of arrogance but a sense of pride. He may have been a castaway orphan, but being an esper made up for that. Would his parents have tossed him aside so easily if they’d known what he was capable of? I highly doubted it. Espers were a proverbial pot of gold. Most didn’t manifest any powers until they were in their early teens.
“Do you get any side effects from using your powers?” I asked. He frowned.
“You mean like getting tired? Only if I use too much too quickly. I might pass out if it’s sudden and huge, but I can usually replenish pretty quickly. Why?”
I mentioned my headache and asked if he could do a scan of the building. We drew a crude map on the gro
und and positioned people with sticks and rocks. Besides the two men at the front, there were about a dozen inside. I could feel the hum of electronics as distinctly as if I were right beside them. It made me think this was less a headquarters and more a safe house. Somewhere they hid when they knew someone was on their tail, and it just so happened that there was equipment inside that shouldn’t have been there.
“How do we feel about calling the Academy?” Zeke asked.
We tried it. Two minutes later, we were still on hold for the emergency line. Sirens wailed in the lower city. “Shit,” Zeke spat. His grey eyes clouded. We were both thinking about what happened on the bus. The city must be in chaos.
“I can create a distraction while you go around the back,” I said to Zeke when we’d both memorised the layout of the building. “Or, you can stay here while I storm in.”
“Are you kidding? There are a dozen guys in there! How am I going to let you go in alone and not look like an asshole?”
“I can handle myself,” I said offhandedly. Though, to be honest, it was a relief he was still intending to help me. There was a big difference between roughing it out in the desert or taking on an assailant in a haphazardly constructed boxing ring, versus a warehouse full of thugs with guns.
The headache was steadily reaching a painful crescendo. That weird feeling from after the Psi-Q test still hadn’t subsided. I was so not on my alpha game.
“After what I’ve seen today, I’m sure you could take care of yourself,” Zeke said. “But being a hero and getting yourself killed probably isn’t how your dad wanted this day to pan out. Enough talk. Let’s go. I’ll take care of these two. You go in the back. We’ll meet in the middle.”
I was all set to run off when he caught my hand.
Remember my thought signature, he sent me. I don’t want you going off half-cocked and blowing me to kingdom come.
I rolled my eyes at him but did as he said. It wasn’t likely that I would mistake the strength of his mind with anyone else’s anytime soon. Alphas as powerful as he was were rare. Those who survived their initial manifestations didn’t often survive the world at large.