The Next Chronicle (Book 1): Next (15 page)

Glancing at the Kit-sized divot in his front yard, Bill nodded. “That sounds like a good idea. I was just telling Mr. Carlton that we can be ready to go in twenty minutes.”

Kit blinked. “You want to come with him?”

Bill looked affronted, his wife mirroring the expression. “He's my only son. Of course we're coming with him.”

Kit and Ben shared a look. Inwardly, Kit sighed. Outwardly she gave no sign of her exasperation. “Sir, I'd like for you to think about this. Your son is a target, not you. We can keep him at our facility until the situation calms down, but the truth is that if something happens, your son's abilities make him far more likely to survive than you. You would be putting yourself in needless danger.”

Suzanne put her arm around her son's chest, pulling him close. “We don't care about that. We're going to be there for him no matter what happens. Bill has people to run things, and even if he didn't, there isn't anything more important. We couldn't sleep knowing John was out there alone.”

This time Kit sighed. It wasn't deliberate, but a result of a long morning and nearly being killed. Her defenses were weak.

“
I can't refuse if you want to come,” she said. “But you should know that our facility is, among other things, a prison. It may not be the most comfortable place.”

“
Then throw us in a cell together, if that's what it takes,” Suzanne said. Bill nodded.

Kit shook her head, then surprised everyone with an impish grin. “All right, screw it. If you guys want to stick together, I won't argue.” She winked at John. “We have a lab, which I can't let you into, but in the lobby there are banks of computers if you want to spend the next few days playing video games.”

John smiled, though it was small and weak. Kit's heart broke for him. She imagined the guilt he must feel for accidentally killing another boy, even a bully. That, combined with the near-certain responsibility he felt for the trouble his family was going through, was enough to crush any spirit. That he managed to smile at all was encouraging, but Kit couldn't help imagining the damage the weight would do to him.

“
Go pack some clothes,” she told the family. “We leave in twenty minutes.”

The family was safely packed into the backup unit's SUV and on the road well before the time was up. By then the fire department was on the scene, along with police and a road crew. The last group surveyed the enormous disc of missing road with mystified expressions.

“
Stop grinning, Kit. They're going to think you're laughing at them,” Archer admonished.

“
I
am
laughing at them,” she protested. “They just keep looking at it like it's a crop circle.”

Archer, sitting next to her in the Mustang, huffed. “It's unprofessional.”

Kit tore her gaze away. “Fine, I'll be good.” Her tone was light, but after the Franklin family left for the facility, dark thoughts had begun to invade her mind. The needs of the moment had forced every other consideration away. Now that John and his parents were away and all was calm, the implications of the day began to unfold.

“
We're kind of fucked,” Kit said.

From the back seat, Ray grunted an agreement. He held an icepack over his entire face.

“You're not wrong,” Archer said. “How much do you want to bet one of these neighbors hasn't already called the news to tell them a story about a crazy telekinetic little boy nearly killing three adults?”

“
No bet,” Kit said. “I'm sure the talking heads are already on it. This is a nightmare.”

“
What do you think happened to the kid?” Ray asked in a pained voice.

Kit had been thinking of little else. Archer was the face of the agency in Kentucky. He was the one who considered the politics of their work, the larger impression it left on the population, both human and Next. Kit was beginning to think along those lines, but her focus tended toward the impact on the actual human beings they dealt with.

“Honestly, I think it's pretty obvious he killed his family,” Kit said.

“
That wasn't what I meant,” Ray replied.

“
I know,” she said. “But that's the thing we have to keep in mind. Whatever else happened, Thomas Maggard killed his family. He killed Towney. He tried to kill all three of us, and since he showed up here, I'm assuming he intended to do the same to John Franklin.”

Ray sucked in a painful breath. “Why, though?”

Kit shook her head. “I don't know. Maybe there's something in his records. We didn't look, because we assumed he was the victim. The cops did the investigation. Our job was the killer—or rather, who we thought was the killer.”

“
But if you had to guess,” Ray suggested.

Kit mulled it over. “Given the circumstances, the most optimistic possibility is that Thomas was a little like you. He didn't know what he was. Probably hadn't used his powers. Maybe the family was having an argument and he had a tantrum, causing him to use his abilities for the first time. Can you imagine what he must have felt? He must have known it was his fault. I think he saw them dying, and it broke him. He ran. I think he sees Next as the enemy. It's possible his mind is messed up enough that he's putting the blame on them instead of himself.”

She stopped talking, noticing Archer's appraising stare. “What?”

“
That's a pretty good analysis, given the facts,” he said. “I'm impressed.”

Kit shrugged. “It's just a guess. I took a lot of elective psychology classes in college. I'm probably talking out of my ass.”

Archer cajoled the Mustang to life, the engine thrumming. “We'll see. I've got Deakins working with the police to find every scrap of information about Thomas Maggard and his family. Anything that can help us figure out where he might show up next.”

“
What are we going to do when we find him?” Ray asked in a small voice.

Kit's stomach went cold, but she held the dread in check. “We're going to help him any way we can,” she said. “But we're going to stop him, too.”

Those words echoed in her head for a long time after.

The news spread fast enough to beat them back to the facility. Archer had the radio on during the twenty minute drive, which almost immediately changed from the normal daytime chatter to more breaking segments about John Franklin and Thomas Maggard. The journalistic kid gloves had come off; there was no longer a pretense of hiding John's name. Kit was certain the only reason Thomas Maggard hadn't been named in the incident outside the Franklin residence was because the vultures hadn't learned it yet.

John's story had grown in a very short time into international news. Speculation about the fight raged between hastily interviewed pundits reputed to be experts.

Kit made a disgusted sound. “As if anyone can be an expert on insane superhuman children,” she said.

The actual events at the Franklin house had been exaggerated and distorted. One anonymous source claimed the road had been destroyed for hundreds of feet in a fight between two Next. Another informed the news that three bodies were quietly removed from the scene. The last was technically true if deliberately misleading. The bodies in question belonged to the Franklin family, who were very much alive.

By the time Archer pulled onto the access road and the facility itself came into view, the shit had hit the fan. Kit was busily scanning every social network and news source she could find on her phone. “This is going to get a lot worse,” she said. “There are already people going out of their minds all over Facebook and Twitter. Blog posts are being thrown together so fast I can't catch a fraction of them.”

“
How bad is it?” Archer grunted.

Her eyes darted across the screen as her fingers opened window after window. “Really bad. People know a little kid tried to kill us. One small but vile group started a page to protest the Next. It's full of awful shit. They want us deported, they want us locked up. They say that even our kids are threats to 'normal' people.” Kit shook her head. “That's the tip of the iceberg. There are people on the other end of the spectrum saying we need to treat him like any other mentally ill person. They're making a big human rights argument. It's fairly broad. They're just using Thomas as a cause. They seem to think we can just ask him to come in and take him with no fuss. They aren't even acknowledging that he poses a danger.”

“Figures,” Archer said. “Both sides fight over their ideologies while we have to worry about the actual problem.”

“
How do we even move forward from here?” Kit asked. “He can fly around freely. He broke into one house already just because he was hungry. What happens when he wants something else? He could be anywhere and attack anyone.”

Ray spoke up. “Call in all the Next in the city,” he said.

Archer glanced back. “Why?”

Kit's eyes widened in understanding. “That's brilliant! We make it public. As public as we can. We put out all kinds of interviews and memos, send them to news stations. We're operating on the assumption that he'll go after Next, because so far he has attacked only us or the people directly helping us.” She hesitated. “Not counting his family, but I still think that was an accident. Anyway, we start by asking the local Next to come in. We do it in waves, have them move along predetermined routes. That way we know every place he could show up, and we can have teams standing by.”

The Mustang came to a stop at the rear of the office. Archer put it in park but left the motor running. He turned to her, face serious.

“
You're talking about turning every Next in this city into bait,” he said.

“
They're already targets,” she said defensively. “This way we can at least manage the situation. And honestly, we need to protect them anyway. We won't be lying, Archer. We really should bring them here while Thomas is roaming free. If they happen to attract him...”

Archer grimaced. “You really think he'll come after them if we do this?”

Again, Ray spoke up. “Of course he will. He came after John, didn't he? Kit is right. Either way you're going to deal with him showing up again. This way you get to pick your battles. People are going to be terrified, Archer. The longer this goes on, the worse it will get.”

Silence followed. This was not the sort of decision Kit or Archer could make without the other. It was, she mused, so dangerous and morally questionable that it was possible Robinson would veto the whole idea. She watched Archer gnaw on it, working the situation out in his head. Kit said nothing out of fear she would push him in the wrong direction, but also because she wasn't absolutely certain of her own moral compass.

It was a long time before he spoke.

“
I would say give me time to think about it,” Archer finally said. “That would be great if we had time to spare, but we don't. As soon as we go through those doors, we're going to have our hands full and we need a game plan.” He caught Kit's eyes, then turned his gaze on Ray. “It's borderline irresponsible and I don't like it, but I don't see a better way. We'll have to run it by Robinson. The old man would hang us if we did something like this without his approval.”

Kit agreed. “And we'll need Ray to make it work. I think he's the only way we can see Thomas coming.” Archer was less than pleased at that, but kept silent.

The three of them left the car and went inside to face the onslaught.

“
Director Singh?” Nicki said over the intercom.

“
I'm here, Nicki,” Kit replied without pausing in her work.

“
Secretary Robinson is on the line.”

Kit froze. “He's on hold?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Nicki said. “He wanted me to make sure you're behind your desk.”

“
Uh, yeah. Yes. I am,” Kit confirmed, puzzled. Rather than transfer Robinson to Kit's phone, the flashing blue light that signified Robinson's office was on the line went solid for a few seconds, blinking one last time before going dark.

Five seconds later Kit was nearly blinded by a burst of light. When the spots cleared from her eyes, two men stood in her office.

The first she glanced at, then ignored. He was young, younger than Kit herself, and familiar. His name was Wes, and he acted as the personal transport for Daniel Robinson, Secretary of the Department of Superhuman Affairs, who stood directly to Wes's left.

“
Sorry about that,” Robinson said in his gravelly voice, a souvenir from a nine-month stay in a prison camp where his throat had been the plaything of evil men. “That can be a hell of a light show if you're looking right at it.” The old man turned to Wes. “That will be all, Agent Christjansen.” The young man nodded and stepped back, vanishing in another flash of light. Kit managed to squint this time.

“
What are you doing here, sir?” Kit asked.

Robinson smiled. “Blunt as ever, aren't you?”

He walked toward the desk and folded himself into the guest chair. No matter how many times she spoke to him, the old man was never what she expected. Everyone knew the stories about him, of course. Held captive in Vietnam only to come out alive and request to go back after recuperating. The brief stint as a congressman before graduating to the senate. Four years as a special aide to the president much later, an adviser known for shrewd and accurate assessments in a wide range of areas. He was the sort of person stories are told about, but never very loud and never in public.

For all that, he had the grace and physique of a much younger man. Rather than the rigid, chest-protruding stance of an old war dog, he looked more like a track star going slowly to seed. He was a shade over six feet and slim, though Kit knew from the occasions when he rolled up his sleeves and hit the mat at the Helix compound that there was iron beneath the business suit.

And a hell of a brain under the three hundred dollar haircut.

“
I'm sorry, sir,” Kit said. “I'm just a little surprised. Archer told me you gave us the green light. I've been working on logistics all morning.”

“
Oh, you've still got the green light. But things around here have changed dramatically in the last few weeks. Did you know I had to speak to the president
and
a closed session of the National Security Committee when Ray Elliot woke up? I told them I gave authorization for your...creative idea to change his appearance, and that I allowed him to roam around the city.” The warmth bled from his voice with every word. “Now he's going to be an integral part of your plan to capture Thomas Maggard. I would rather be here to make the actual decisions I'm being raked over the coals for, if it's all the same to you, Agent Singh.”

“
It's Director Singh,” she said. The words were out of her mouth before she knew she was saying them.

Robinson jerked as if she had slapped him.

In for a penny,
she thought.

“
With all due respect, sir,” Kit said, “You picked me for this job. You trusted my judgment and threw me to the wolves without even telling me where I was going. If you have a problem with the calls I've made, then remove me. Until then I plan to continue making them. If you would like me to call you every time I have to make a decision like the ones we've had to deal with lately, you're going to be a very busy man.”

Robinson raised an eyebrow, but Kit continued before he could interrupt.

“As for Ray Elliot, maybe you should talk to him. He spent
years
awake inside his own head, stuck there because you convinced him to stay alive. He figured out how to control his powers because of it, and I'm convinced he's no longer a threat. In fact, I think he's an asset.”

Robinson held up a hand. “You're not wrong, Kit. This has been a lot for you to take in, and I understand you've done the best you can, given the situation. But we're dealing with an entire American city in a panic because of one little boy.”

Kit nodded. “I know. And as I said, I'm working through the logistics. We should be ready for the first wave of Next by tomorrow. We've got the space for them, supplies. The hard part is getting it all ready and coordinating the teams who will guard them as we send out transports.”

Rubbing a hand across his forehead, Robinson blew out a breath. “You're dedicating most of your resources to this. You won't have field teams doing anything else. That's risky.”

Kit glanced at the sprawl of papers on her desk and snatched one up. “This is the duty roster for the guard units,” she said. “We're keeping a small crew on standby for emergencies.”

“
I trust your ability to allocate resources,” Robinson began.

Kit smiled sweetly as she cut him off. “Then please let me get back to doing it, sir. We're short on time.”

He stared at her for a few seconds, then laughed. “I always liked your attitude,” he said. “That's part of why I gave you this job. Archer needs someone who can stand up to him.”

There were two major consequences following the bombardment of announcements from the OSA that the entire city population of Next would need to report to the facility. The first was an outcry from the Next, fearful for their own safety and wary of putting themselves in the power of the OSA. The counterpoint was the outpouring of approval by a sizable minority of the locals, certain that this was the first step in taking very dangerous people off the streets. Kit identified with both groups, though the attitude of the second, while ostensibly rooted in very rational fears, stank of prejudice.

The second consequence came as a complete surprise; nearly half of the Black Bands in the city volunteered to work security for the operation. Though the press releases had been vague on the details, none of the Next were idiots. They knew that for them to be called in for security purposes, something big had to be going on. The Black Bands were no different, except most of them were incredibly hard to kill. Kit's respect for the group went up several notches. For the first time she felt a sense of community with other Next. She could identify with people willing to stand up and defend their own.

Kit was writing a new draft of the duty schedule to include the volunteers when Archer walked into her office. He had a file in one hand, a taco in the other, and plopped down into the chair vacated by Robinson a few hours earlier.

“
Where have you been all day?” she asked.

Archer took a bite of his taco—fish, if her senses didn't deceive—and took his eyes away from the file. “After you got done talking to Robinson like he was raw recruit, he came to talk to me.”

Kit's eyes snapped to him. “You heard?”

Archer laughed around another mouthful of food. “Oh, yeah. Nicki had your speaker on and put it through to me. Good job.” Kit tried to kill him with her eyes. It didn't work.

“Anyway,” Archer said. “He yelled at me for a little while then went to meet with Ray. Who, by the way, is getting a brand new identity. It's not even fake since the government is spinning it from whole cloth just for him.”

“
Why?” Kit asked.

Archer shrugged. “Robinson said if we were going to do it, we had to do it right. Which means paperwork and even more time with Sophie. The old man told her to make sure Ray's own mother wouldn't recognize him. By now the new information will be in the system, and Ray Elliot should be Ray Cassidy.”

Kit sat back in her chair, rubbed her eyes. “This is an insane amount of work,” she complained. “I delegated as much as I could, but the whole thing is still going to be an organizational nightmare.”

Archer nodded in agreement. “Yep. But you were right. It's the best way to go.”

“I don't see how we can get this done by tomorrow,” Kit said.

He pulled out his phone and shook it, grinning. “With lots of coffee.”

Peep arrived later a few hours later, and she did not come alone.

Kit was in the main office going over the finalized plan with Deakins when the smell of heaven itself wafted in from the front of the building. Peep appeared with two drink carriers in each hand, followed by a group of people wearing aprons from The Bean. They pushed carts laden with pastries, cakes, and an entire cappuccino machine.

The overworked agents poked their heads up like so many meerkats, hopeful faces hovering above cubicle dividers. Kit waved them forward.

“We're going to be at it all night,” she said. “The good people at The Bean have blessed us with sweet, sweet caffeine. Go nuts.”

Peep handed Kit a cup and gestured toward the heaping piles of food. “You can thank Director Singh, everyone. She's footing the bill.” She gave the crowd a dazzling smile and nodded for Kit to follow her.

“I appreciate the helping of goodwill you just earned me,” Kit said when they were away from the crowd. “But Archer didn't mention who would be paying for it.”

Peep laughed. “Oh, don't worry. I'm paying for it.”

Kit frowned. “That's not necessary. I can afford it, if we can't charge it to the facility.”

A puzzled expression stole over Peep's face, then another bright smile. “Oh, yeah. You wouldn't know. I own The Bean, but I'm not dependent on it for income.”

“Really?” Kit asked. “Why not?”

The other woman's smile didn't falter, but a small sadness fell across her eyes. “Uncle Rowdy and I were the only two people in our family left after Fairmont. We had a big family, and after it was all sorted out, their finances fell to us. That, plus life insurance and the ridiculous money the government paid out to the families of the victims means neither of us really
needs
to work. I thought about not accepting any of it, actually, but in the end I figured my parents and the rest of them would have wanted me to have some security, you know?”

Kit nodded, then stopped. “Wait, then why are you looking for a roommate?”

Peep's eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled widely. “I get bored,” she said.

The first floor continued to be a hive of activity through the evening and into the night. Though it was only obvious on the surface, much like an anthill, there was a tremendous amount of work going on below ground as well. Nunez had his people working on production of pulse guns and grenades. Several of his subordinates had ideas for new and innovative designs using the technology, which Kit summarily tabled. With the limited time available, they needed to focus on what they could reliably produce.

The hope was to catch Thomas with a shot from a pulse gun. Kit operated on the assumption the weapons would work on him. It was reasonable considering the volumes of research the facility had on the subject, as well as the more practical aspect in keeping several hundred angry superhumans from breaking out by the same means. If they could short the boy's powers out for even a minute, it would be enough time to subdue him. What came after was beyond her control. Robinson refused to speculate, and it was his call to make.

Kit napped at one point during the night, she and Peep leaning against each other in their chairs. Archer never seemed to run out of energy, waking her when he found a problem with one aspect of the program or another. Kit only rested in fits and starts, half an hour here, fifteen minutes there, and never enough to sate the deeper need to truly sleep. Robinson reappeared as well, though he demonstrated his rank by supervising in the modern sense; he drank coffee and looked important.

Kit knew better than to give in to the assumptions the rest of the staff were undoubtedly making. Robinson was shrewd, and would step in at the first sign of a mistake. If anything, his hands-off approach was a compliment to the work ethic and thoroughness of Kit's team.

An hour before dawn, the alarm from Tucker's post in the lobby sounded, a deep buzzing sound easy on the ears but unmistakable. Kit ran for the door, pointing at three agents as she passed them.

“Follow me,” she said.

The little man was in his cage when Kit burst through the gate. The laconic expression she had seen on his face during their first meeting had not changed. At least this time he wasn't playing a game on his phone.

Dozens of people filled the lobby. They were of every size and shape, a few of them with obvious physical abnormalities like Deakins. There were black people, a few Asians, a clutch of Hispanic men and women, and more. It was as wide a swath of humanity as Kit had ever seen in one place. With a little interest on top since a few of them were of designs and colors generally not found in nature.

A black man of medium height stepped forward, extending his hand. Kit shook it.