GeneSix (13 page)

The three were traveling together, seeking the same destination in Boston.

And the three of them were unlike most humans, in that each of them had an unusual ability, something setting them apart. For instance, Chuck Burroughs had the ability to generate coldness, but he was vulnerable to his own cold. In other words, he could drop the room into a deep freeze with little more than a thought, but he would freeze himself in the process. And Rick and Quentin had similar problems.

They hoped to find help in Boston. Or rather, they hoped to find someone who could steer them to the one person who could help them.

Quentin glanced at his watch, and said, in a gentle British accent, “Chuck has been gone a while. How long does it take a man to do his business?”

With a nod of his head, Rick indicated the other side of the aisle, three rows ahead. “See that empty seat there? Remember the girl who was sitting there?”

Quentin raised a brow at him. He had little patience for clever jumps in the topic of conversation.

Rick continued anyway. “She got up and headed to the restroom just a minute after Chuck did. And I don’t see her down the aisle, waiting.”

Quentin let out a long sigh. “Just what are you getting at?”

“She and Chuck were flirting back at the airport, and were tossing smiles back and forth ever since we took to the air.”

“The poor girl can’t be held accountable for her taste.”

“Well, I think Chuck is busy joining the mile-high club.”

Quentin rolled his eyes. “My God. The ice man cometh.”

“Hey, at least one of us is having a good day.”

With a disbelieving shake of his head, Quentin returned to his book.

A man in the seat ahead of Rick suddenly stood, pulling an automatic pistol, and holding it in the air for all to see. “Don’t anybody move!”

“Good God,” Quentin said with annoyance, looking up from his book. “What now?”

The man aimed the pistol directly at him. “Don’t move, longhair! Don’t say a word!”

A stewardess hurried down the aisle at the sound of commotion, but then stopped suddenly when she saw the gun. “Who are you?” she said. “How’d you get that on board?”

“We’re going to turn this plane around,” the man said, ignoring her question.

Rick rose to his feet, and the man aimed the gun directly at him, the end of the barrel not three feet from Rick’s face.

“Don’t try to be a hero!” the man shouted at him, “Or you’ll be a dead one!”

Quentin said, bored, “Will you just take the gun from him and get it over with?”

The man glanced to him questioningly. “What are you..?”

Rick’s hand suddenly darted forward, a blur of motion, and the gun was snatched from the man’s hand. Rick said, “I don’t think you’re going to be hurting anybody.”

The man stood, stunned, his empty hand held before him. “How did...how did you..?”

“I’ve always had fast hands. Now, sit down.”

Another man shouted from behind them, near the back of the plane. “Don’t anybody move!”

Rick turned to see him also holding a gun. The man he had just disarmed said, “You didn’t think I was alone, did you?”

Quentin said, “I’m not going to get any reading done at all, am I?”

He flicked one finger upward by a mere inch. The man holding the gun found his gunhand suddenly arcing upward, and the gun smacking him in the face. He was knocked into the wall at the back of the plane.

The first gunman was standing, staring.

“Telekinesis,” Quentin said. “Fun thing to have at parties. Now, why don’t you turn around and sit down?”

He made a spinning motion with his finger, and the man found himself twirling around, and was slammed down into his seat.

Rick charged down the aisle, moving with speed the fastest Olympic sprinter could only dream about, creating a breeze that ruffled the hair of passengers, and he pulled the pistol from the second gunman’s hand. He then handed both pistols to the stewardess, and the passengers of Flight 324 to Boston began applauding.

“Call ahead,” he said, “and have the police waiting for these two. My friend and I will keep them under wraps until we land.”

Rick returned to his seat. Quentin had pulled a handkerchief, and was dabbing blood at one nostril.

“An annoying side-effect of my ability,” Quentin said. “I am hoping the man we seek can find an answer to it.”

Motion caught Rick’s eye, and he looked up to see Chuck making his way back along the aisle. His face was beaming in a broad smile. “Hi, guys. Did I miss anything exciting?”

Quentin said, “Comparatively, probably not.”

Agent Tompkins stepped outside for a cigarette. He wore a dark blue suit jacket and matching pants, and a red power tie. His hair was in its usual slicked back fashion, accentuating his widow’s peak. He wore wrap-around sun glasses, and in one hand was a smoldering cigarette.

He was standing in a small alley between the FBI building and the one next to it. The official smoking area. At one time you could smoke at your desk, but now he and others like him had been relegated to the alley ways.

A door opened, and a man stepped out. A little younger than Tomkins, in a charcoal gray pinstriped suit. His jaw was square and his hair was a chestnut color, parted on one side and swept aside. He wore no sunglasses.

Great jaw, great hair. He was squinting in the sunlight, but the squint gave him a sort of rugged, outdoorsey sort of look. Like maybe a cross between Nathan Fillion and Clint Eastwood. God, Tompkins hated him.

“Hey, Tompkins,” the man said, reaching into a shirt pocket and pulling out a pack of cigarettes.

“Davenport,” Tompkins said, rolling his eyes at the man, knowing the gesture was hidden behind his sunglasses.

“I just talked to your flunkie, Kirkpatrick.”

“Kincaid.”

“Yeah. That guy. Whatever his name is. He said you were out here.”

“So, you came all the way out here just to talk to little old me?”

Davenport pulled out a Bic lighter and flicked his cigarette to life. “Well, that, and I want to indulge my old habit. You know?”

Tompkins nodded. How well he knew. He had tried to quit more than once, but somehow had been unable to. Probably the stress of the job. So many agents in here smoked. It couldn’t be coincidence.

“Hey, listen,” Davenport said. “I was just wondering how things were going in your pursuit of those two freaks. Tempest and Calder.”

Tompkins shrugged. “They’re going. Not much else to say about it.”

Davenport nodded, and pulled the cigarette from his mouth and flicked away some ash. “I know the official reports, and such. I keep tabs.”

“Nothing really outside the reports.”

“Nothing, except your pissed.”

Tompkins looked at him.

Davenport said, “Of course you’re pissed. To let not only those two freaks get away, but also they pulled the girl right out from under your nose. If it was me, I’d be ready to knock some heads together.”

Tompkins said, “Like I said, not much to say about it.”

Davenport nodded.

Tompkins said, “We’re just maintaining surveillance. It’s like they just up and disappeared, but they’re out there. Somewhere. And they’re bound to show up, eventually. We have cameras and bugs at the university, and all the places they hung out throughout the city. Anywhere there might be a connection.”

Davenport said, “I’m in about the same place in my pursuit.”

Tompkins snorted a chuckle. “No, you’re not. The one you’re pursuing doesn’t really exist.”

“The Darkness? He doesn’t exist?”

“You’re chasing the Easter Bunny is what you’re doing.” Tompkins took a drag, and then tapped away a small length of ash that had been growing on the end of the cigarette. He saw Davenport was looking at him like he was waiting for Tompkins to say something more.

Tompkins said, “One agent, investigating a kidnapping, goes all space happy and says he saw some sort of ghost or something materialize out of thin air, and now the department has an entire task force assigned to finding him.”

Davenport nodded. “A task force I’m heading.”

“What are they going to do next? Assign you finding Bigfoot? Believe me, Davenport. There is no Darkness. You’re pursuing the figment of someone’s imagination. A hallucination, at best.”

Davenport shrugged. “Maybe so. But it’s a job. An assignment. I don’t question it, I just say
yes, sir
.”

“It’s a waste of department funds, is what it is. I could use you on
my
task force. At least Tempest and Calder are real. There wouldn’t be a White House cabinet position dedicated largely to them if there weren’t.”

“A what?”

Damn, Tompkins thought. He had said too much. “Forget it. Forget I said anything.”

Davenport nodded. He could read between the lines, and didn’t want to get a fellow agent in trouble. “Totally forgotten.”

Tompkins finished his cigarette and tossed the butt toward a bucket placed on the pavement especially for catching butts. Tompkins’s missed the bucket by an inch, and landed on the ground. He made no effort to retrieve it.

“I’ve gotta go in,” he said. “Get back to work. Can’t leave Kilpatrick by himself for too long. He’ll crash the computer.”

“Kincaid,” Davenport corrected.

“Yeah. Whatever.”

Mandy Waid was thinking of getting her name changed legally to Kimberly Stratton. Everyone at the paper called her Kimberly. Everyone except the middle-aged guy with the beer gut who did not get enough, and who covered the sports beat. He called her Kimmie-baby.

Every morning, it was, “How ya doin’, Kimmie-baby?”

She would roll her eyes. “Good morning, Roger.”

Mandy kept in decent shape, and was still able to wear the business suit/mini skirt combination she was making her trademark. This morning she was in a gray pinstriped version, with a blazer over a white blouse, and a matching skirt that covered her to mid-thigh. She had great legs. Hell, she worked out hard to retain these legs, and she wanted to show them off.

Mandy was also four months pregnant, due to her weekend with Jake Calder. Not that she hadn’t been careful. She had used a sponge. However, when it came to Jake Calder, everything was uncharted territory. It didn’t surprise her that this man’s sperms, high on what Scotty-boy called zeta energy, could eat through a sponge. Hell, they could probably eat through a brick wall.

Actually, she liked Jake. She did not mean to think badly of him. If she had not liked him, then she would not have spent the weekend with him, story or no. Though, there was no denying the story she had gotten had changed her life. Within merely days she had gone from Many Waid, college kid, to Kimberly Stratton, star reporter. Hell, a couple months ago she had signed a book deal with such a whopping advance that she wouldn’t have to work again if she didn’t want to.

She had talked to Jake a couple times since.

“Look,” he had finally said, exasperated after two conversations that simply drifted from one irrelevant topic to another, “what do you want from me?”

That was a good question. What did she really want from him? A relationship? No, not really. The kind of thing most people wanted – a partner to share a home with, to raise children with, to get regular sex from, and to grow old with, had no appeal to her whatsoever. She was young and wanted to be on the move. She didn’t want to just wait for life to come to her, but to pursue it. Relentlessly, if possible. She wanted to see the deserts and climb the mountains. She couldn’t do any of that with a husband and a home tying her down.

Child support? She supposed this was what most pregnant women would be after. But she was going to be a millionaire a couple times over once the publisher deposited the check in her account, and she was making top salary here at the paper. Jake had no money at all, as far as she could tell. Ever since he and Scott had gone AWOL from the University, hiding from the government in some remote mountain hide-away, Jake’s paychecks from the government had stopped. The only money he might have access to would be whatever funds Egg-head Boy had hidden away.

She supposed, being truly honest with herself, what she wanted was to be friends-with-benefits. Jake was easy to talk to, and his benefits left her eyes rolling back in her head. But the problem was he cared. He cared in a way that would have been a burden to her.

He had asked her what she wanted. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Well, I know what I want. You’re carrying my child. I want to be a part of the child’s life. I want the kid to know me as its father. I want to help raise it.”

That did not surprise her. “You wouldn’t be the big boy scout if you felt any differently.”

This meeting had been a week ago, at a café in downtown Boston. She had treated because, well, Jake might now be world famous, thanks to her, but he was also broke.

Funny, she thought, how in the comics and movies most of the superhero dudes all seem to be rich in their private lives. But with Jake, all he did was follow Egg-head Boy around.