GeneSix (27 page)

Quentin glanced down the street to see the headlights. “THE POLICE AGAIN?”

Cosmo nodded. “YUP. I CAN SEE THE LIGHTS ON THE ROOF.”

He ducked back into the shadows as the car approached, its headlights falling fully on Quentin.

This time, the car pulled to a stop and the passenger-side window slid down. It was the same two cops.

“Hey, buddy,” the officer said. “You waiting for somebody?”

“I am waiting for this miserable evening to finally pass.”

The officer apparently did not appreciate Quentin’s attitude. “All right. Let’s see some I.D.”

“You don’t need I.D. In fact, what you really need is to keep driving, and to stop circling this block.”

Quentin focused his thoughts, penetrating the skull of the officer, and doing the same with his partner.

The officer turned to his partner. “We don’t need his I.D.”

The other cop said, “What we really need to do is keep driving. And I think we’ve circled this block enough.”

As though Quentin no longer existed, the cop rolled up the window and the cruiser moved along.

Cosmo crossed the street to stand beside Quentin. Cosmo said, “Jedi mind trick.”

Quentin rolled his eyes. “Good God. Can you please refrain from movie references?”

Cosmo put on his best Bogart. “Sure thing, kid.”

Cosmo’s Bogart was not very good. And neither was Quentin’s patience. Quentin said, “I am about to give up our vigil and return to headquarters.”

There was sudden motion from the darkness behind them. And a man’s voice, gravely and harsh. “Don’t go anywhere yet. I understand you wanted to see me.”

Quentin said, “I thought you’d never show.”

The man stepped into view. A long, tattered coat, and a slouchy hat with a wide brim. “I had to wait for that cop car to go away. Now what can I do for you? And make it quick. I have to find Mother. We have a guy who’s really bad off, and if I don’t find Mother soon, he’s gonna die.”

“I will indeed make it quick, then. You are a good man for information. Information regarding people like us.”

“You ain’t like me,” the man said.

“I am a meta-human. Like you.”

The man lifted his head so the glow from the street light could slip under the brim of his hat. The skin of his face was rough, scaly. Reptilian. The pupils of his eyes were long and thin, like a cat’s.

He said, “There are two kinds of meta-humans, jack. Those who can live with normals and not be noticed, like you, and those who gotta live in the shadows. Like me.”

“Indeed. My apologies.”

“Skip the apologies and tell me what you want. And remember, information ain’t free. In this world, very little is.”

Quentin could have demanded the information first to see if it was worth paying for. But this man, who Quentin knew only as Snake, usually provided worthy information and Quentin did not want to alienate him.

Quentin pulled a fistful of fifties from his trench coat pocket, and handed them to Snake.

Snake said, “What-cha need?”

“There’s a girl. I hear she’s quite young. She has a way with technology. Computers, to be specific.”

Snake nodded. “I know who you mean. What you want her for?”

“I was thinking about interviewing her for possible recruitment into our merry little band. Her abilities, if they are what people say, might prove to be very useful.”

“What they say is true. She can talk to computers. Kind of the way you can get into people’s heads. She can do the same thing with a computer. Any kind of computer.”

“Would she agree to meet with us?”

“I doubt it. She’s a product of the State. An orphan. Bounced around from one foster home to another. Abused. Kicked around. She ran away a couple years ago, and has been livin’ on the street ever since. We all kind’a take care of her.”

“Well, if she won’t agree to meet with us, where can I find her?”

“Come with me. I’ll take you to her.”

Chloe’s hair was dyed a jet black, and she had a tattoo of a dragon that began at one shoulder and trailed down her back to the opposite hip. She had dated a guy a year earlier who was living in an abandoned building, and did tattoos to help pay for food and occasionally a bag of pot. He had done the tatt for free. He liked to draw on her, and the dragon was the result. He also liked his pot a little too much, and sometimes mixed it with other stuff that would induce a serious trip. She left because she felt if you were going to survive on the streets, you needed your wits about you, and a guy like that could quickly become a liability.

She never had to worry about starving to death, or resorting to whoring like some of the other girls did, because she had a unique ability. She could make a computer sing or dance just by looking at it. This came in handy at ATM’s.

She stood in front of one now. It was after two in the morning, and a cold drizzle was falling from the darkness up beyond the streetlights. The concrete was slick and wet, and the breeze was cold.

She wore a leather jacket that totally covered her tatt, and a scarf was wound about her neck. Her black hair was wet, and lying flat against her skull.

She faced the ATM.
Come to Mama
, she thought. Maybe a few twenty twenties. She didn’t want to carry too much money, as such a thing could make you a target on the street. She needed only enough to eat on. And there were a few others like her, people with abilities, living under a bridge on the other side of town. She would help them out. Spread the wealth a little.

She reached out with the power of her mind. She really didn’t how she did it, just that she aimed her thoughts at the computer and sort of turned a switch on in her head, and wrapped her mind around the computer’s programming. For a few moments, it became a part of her.

Commanding it to spit out the twenties was a simple thing. However, she needed to reach in a little deeper to make sure there was no record of the transaction, so anyone inclined to watch security footage would have no idea of what time of night the money was taken. She also wanted to make certain the money didn’t come out of anyone’s account. Simply from the bank itself.

The ATM spit out twenties. Twenty of them, all crisp and new. She grabbed them, and said, “Nice doing business with you.”

That was when she became aware of three men standing behind her. She turned suddenly, thinking,
Oh crap oh crap
oh crap
.

But they weren’t cops, and they didn’t look like they were gang-bangers. Trench coats. A baseball cap. One guy had a slouch hat. That one she thought she knew.

“Snake,” she said. “That you?”

He nodded. “These two guys, they want to talk to you.”

“Who are they?”

“They’re like us.”

She looked to the one without the cap, somehow sensing he was the one in charge. “What do you want with me?”

“Perhaps,” he said in a gentle British accent, “to offer you a job. Is there somewhere we can talk?”

The baseball cap guy said, “Around here? This time of night? We’d be better off takin’ her to headquarters. Get out of this rain.”

Chloe said, “Look, I’m not going anywhere until I know who you guys are or what you want.”

“It’s okay,” Snake said. “I vouch for them.”

Headquarters
was a building on a side street in a forgotten corner of Boston. It had been erected in the 1920’s during better times, but was now falling into disrepair. The brick siding was cracking and crumbling. Painted on the side in faded letters was the word FOSTER’S. It had once been a hardware store with apartments on the second floor, when this part of Boston had belonged to the middle class. Times change, and now this area was mostly low rent housing and condemned buildings.

Quentin knocked on the door. Behind him stood Chloe, and behind her was Cosmo.

“Who is it?” a deep baritone boomed. Peter LaSalle.

Quentin reached with is mind to touch that of the neanderthalish LaSalle, who liked to call himself Power Man. “IT IS US.”

Quentin waited while tumblers clicked, and the door was pulled open.

They stepped into what was once the back room of the hardware store. A table stood in one corner with mismatched chairs. A living room set, which had long since seen better days, filled the center of the room. On one old wooden stand was a television.

“So,” Peter said, a bottle of Coors in one hand. “This her?”

“No,” Quentin said. “I am in the habit of bringing home teen-aged runaways when we can barely afford to feed those already here.”

Peter stared at him. Deadpan. It was not that he did not appreciate sarcasm, it was that he simply did not understand it.

“Yes,” Quentin said. “It is she.”

“Pleased to meet you, dude,” Chloe said. “Man, you’re a big one.”

Peter smiled and nodded. “Strong, too.”

She said to Quentin, “Can you make this quick? This place kind of gives me the creeps.”

“It’s not much, but we call it home.”

“You guys all live here?”

Quentin shouldered out of his wet trench coat, and tossed it onto the table. “Us, and one other.”

“You all like me?”

Cosmo said, “Yep.”

“You all live pretty well. Electricity, and everything. Most of us have to live in old, condemned buildings. A few of us live under a bridge.”

Quentin said, “The electricity is pirated. And the city water is, also. It is only a matter of time before that matter is rectified.”

She was growing impatient. “All right. Let’s have it. What’s the deal?”

“First, let me make formal introductions. I am Quentin Jeffries. I have the power of telekinesis. What that means is..,”

“I know what it means,” she said.

“Yes. Well, behind you, the gentleman filling the room with second-hand smoke is Cosmo Setter.”

“Flame Thrower,” Cosmo said.

“The huge man guarding our door and drinking all of the beer is Peter LaSalle.”

Peter said, “I like to be called Power Man.”

Quentin rolled his eyes. Oh, how far he had allowed himself to sink. But the cause was worth it. He had to keep reminding himself of that.

“So,” she said. “What do you all do here?”

“This building serves as our headquarters, where we plan our operations. Subject to change, of course, at a moment’s notice. There is one other member of our merry little band you have to meet. Follow me.”

She followed Quentin up a rickety flight of wooden stairs. The plaster on the walls at either side was crumbling, falling entirely away in some places. The smell of old, rotting wood and cat piss was in the air. Something about these old places – they always seemed to carry with them the smell of cat piss.

They topped the stairs, and Quentin knocked at the door. “Mandy?”

There was no answer.

“Mandy, it is I. We have found her. I would like you to meet her.”

Mandy Waid sat on a small couch in one corner of her room. The couch had tattered upholstery and had been rescued from the city dump. She had, just a year earlier, a bank account worth over a million dollars. Advance money from her book about Jake Calder. The book she had never finished. The publisher had attempted to take back the advance money, but Mandy had disappeared. Fallen off the proverbial radar. The publisher had gone to court and filed injunctions, and done all the things civilized people do to crush one another, and froze her assets. Now she owned little more than the clothes on her back.

She held a beer in one hand and was staring at the bottle when Quentin opened the door.

“I knocked,” he said.

“Did I say come in?” She did not take her gaze from the bottle.

Quentin stepped in without waiting to be asked. Chloe followed.

Beer bottles littered the floor. Maybe ten of them. And from the smell of the room, Chloe figured they had all been opened and finished within the past couple of hours.

“This is she,” Quentin said.

Mandy finally turned her eyes toward the girl standing beside Quentin.

She was sloshed, Chloe realized.

“Oh,” Mandy said. “The one you were talking about. Carrie, or...something.”

Quentin nodded. “Her name’s Chloe.”

Mandy nodded. “Pleased to meet you..,” and she let her gaze drift away from Chloe toward the other side of the room.

“So,” Chloe said. “Is she, like, all right?”

Without waiting for Quentin to answer, Mandy said, her eyes fixing on the bottle again, “He’s a year old now.”

Quentin said, “I think we should go.”

“A year old,” Mandy continued. “My child. And you know what? I don’t even know his name. Or what he looks like.”

She turned her gaze back to Chloe. “Have you ever had a child ripped from you?”

“No,” she said tentatively, “Not exactly.”