Category: Novels

Sixty-Two

“It’s off, for the moment,” Ryan said with a gasp, collapsing back in his wheelchair. “And not a second too soon.”

“Oh?” Mikaela asked.

“Yeah. Because we just intercepted a message from the Attorney General. He was instructing Stacey to start using live rounds.”

“Jesus,” Tucker whispered.

“We stopped it over the phone, and over their radios. We’re playing whack-a-mole with their digital signals, but the message will get through; it’s really only a matter of time before we miss one channel. Then we’ll be back at an invading federal army willing to use kids and their parents for live-fire target practice. Then it’s kill or be killed, fucked as that sounds.”

“And what did you mean by, ‘for the moment?’” Tucker asked.

“Yeah. This device is more sophisticated than the one that they used at the campus. For one, it’s hard-wired into the power-grid, so without taking that down or disconnecting it, it’s going to have continuous power. Two, it’s not supposed to turn off electronically, so it will keep trying to fire itself back up until the physical keys used to turn it on are all inserted and turned- it’s similar to the old nuclear setup.”

“How long can you buy us?”

“Best-case scenario, taking turns tag-teaming it? Hours. But if the feds start encroaching, or worse, shooting, all bets really are off. I meant what I said, it’s kill or be killed, and I’m not sure they’ll let us leave even if we try to.”

“What can we do?”

“I don’t think we have a lot of options,” Mikaela said. “But I’m not going to let them turn us into the monsters they say we are; I won’t let them make us murderers.”

“You sound like you’ve got an idea.”

“Not a great one,” Mikaela said. “Same one as before, really. I pull out as many dupes as I can, and we get everyone behind me. I can buy time. They’ll get their body count, and maybe America will finally stop letting them treat us like-”

“Puerto Ricans.”

“I was going to say second-class citizens, but I guess that’s kind of a crowded field right now in this country.”

“I’m not sure how to feel about you creating a huge pile of dead Mikaelas,” Tucker said. “No; that’s not true. I don’t like it. But I don’t know if I could handle it if you were one of them.”

Mikaela cupped his cheek. “I am one of them- and they’re a lot of me.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. But right now we don’t get to have a tearful maybe-goodbye. Because I need to concentrate on timing this right; and you need to coordinate everyone to get back, and start filing away. We may only get the one shot at this. And I don’t-”

“Wait,” Ryan said, holding up his hand. The federal agents, to a man, stopped what they were doing. They set their weapons at their feet, turned, and left. The sole exception was Stacey, who paused a moment, speaking into his phone, before setting down his sidearm and walking away. 

“What happened?” Mikaela asked.

“Play it back for me,” Tucker said, “and I’ll broadcast it to our people. Give me a sec.” “This is Tucker,” Mikaela felt the thought, a warm sensation in the back of her head. “The feds were just given an order to stand down. It came directly from the Oval Office.”

Sixty-One

“Looks like you’ve lost your tanks,” Rox said, as the two remaining tanks opened and their crews crawled out, “and since the helicopter’s down I’m going to assume Oleg’s out, too.”

Raif rolled forward, knocking Rox flat on her back, and standing, drawing a holdout pistol from an ankle holster. “You aren’t winning; you understand that, right? All you’ve done is make us look weak. We look like the world’s crappiest tin-pot can push us around, get away with it, and then have us scurry over one another to lick his boots. You’re guaranteeing that he isn’t the last bigot to try something like this. All you’re doing is sending your own people to the gas chamber.”

“My own people?” Rox asked incredulously. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Because you’re sure as hell no one I’m laying claim to. I have wasted my youth trying to blunt the damage of extremist monsters like you. My friends have sweat, and bled, and nearly died to keep you from making life harder for people like us. You are the opposite of our people- and maybe you don’t understand this, but you’re worse than people like Drump- because you enable them to do what they want to us. You make the mild, moderate middle so terrified of us they cheer when he puts Breed kids in camps. But I agree. We haven’t won anything. But maybe, we lost less than we were going to, and I think that’s the best outcome that was on the table, thanks to people like you.”

“I have you dead to rights. And I’ve been working on something, though I don’t honestly know if it will work. I’ve always been able to strengthen other Breed abilities. I spent some time, working with Mira, and I think I figured out how to do the opposite, how to dial them back. I don’t want to kill you. But I will shoot you; I’m betting man enough to try it, if you don’t let me through.”

“You’d never make it. There’s an all but literal army between you and Drump.”

“That’s the difference between us; I was a soldier, and I will complete my mission, even if I have to lay down my life. But you want to try your luck, I can live with giving you a bullet.”

“Something men like you don’t ever seem to understand is there are kinds of luck you make yourself,” Rox said, and on instinct his finger began to curl around the trigger.

He heard the snap of a twig behind him and started to turn. A hand caught his arm just below shoulder, then another grabbed his forearm just below the elbow and twisted. He cried out in pain, and the next moment was lying on the ground, his arm twisted in an unnatural direction. “You broke my fucking arm.”

“And I’ll break the other if you don’t stand down,” Mira said.

“Oh, Mira,” he whimpered, “never could remember to keep your eye on the prize.” He rolled, firing from the hip.

The bullet struck her between the eyes, knocking her off her feet. Raif took off towards the White House as Rox ran to her, and rolled her over. She looked pristine, save for a bleeding hole in her forehead. “Goddamnit,” Rox yelled, pounding her fists into Mira’s limp torso.

“Ow,” Mira moaned. She touched her finger to the wound in her forehead. “Damnit, I bet that leaves a mark.” With the blood smeared away, the wound was visible as a small gash.

“I thought,” Rox said, having to stop to take in a jagged breath. “I know,” she said with a smile. “But right now I’ve got a bullet’s worth of kinetic energy to give back to that son of a bitch.” She leapt to her feet, taking increasingly longer steps as she gained speed far past regular human top speed, closing the distance with Raif in no time at all. At the last instant she leaned her shoulder forward, carrying all of her remaining momentum into him through it. He flew a dozen feet, landing face first in the grass, plowing a trench with his mouth. “You stay on the ground this time,” she said, “or this time I’ll put you under it.”

Sixty

“What’s the plan?” Demi asked, as a police baton bounced painfully off her skin. “Tuck?” she glanced back, and realized Mikaela and Tucker were gone. “Mai?” she asked, turning back towards the fed line.

“The plan is crumbling,” Mayumi said, holding both hands over her eye, but she couldn’t hold it tight enough to keep blood from seeping out between her fingers.

“You can’t heal that?” Demi asked.

“No. Like before, as the school, when that militia took over. You can’t feel it?”

Demi held up her hand, and electricity arced between her fingers. “I didn’t feel it,” Demi said, “not then or now.”

“That’s curious,” Mayumi said, “but it’s also a mystery for another time. This is going badly. We’re being routed. Either we change the dynamics, or people are going to die.”

“I could change them,” Demi said. “I could electrocute them ten at a time, relatively safely- you know, as safely as you can electrocute someone.”

“I somehow think killing a few feds will make things worse.”

“You two look like you could use some help,” Laren said, touching Demi’s shoulder.

“See,” Drake said, “I told you it wasn’t just me. Everyone’s abilities are off again.”

“I know,” Iago said, “I’ve just been sitting on that erectile dysfunction joke since the last time it happened.”

“I think there’s a joke in there about you sitting on something erectile- but I’m too preoccupied to figure it out.”

“You guys,” Demi said, scooping Drake up.

“That your phone in your pocket, or you just happy to see me?” Drake asked.

“I’m too much of a classy lady to tell you to push my buttons and find out,” she said, putting him down.

“We figured you needed an army,” Laren said, motioning to a whole new group of protestors filing out of buses. “Turns out Drump’s been recruiting and radicalizing one for you for years.”

“So these were the refugees they broke out of Gitmo. I thought we just smuggled them out of his grasp…” Demi said.

“We needed to buy a little time. We got them student visas, and have them set up as official students at your newly expanded school; it’s going to function as an academy with on-site housing, and courses for students from kindergarten through whatever college courses it offers- with talks about expanding into doctorate programs.”

“That’s… that’s huge.”

“They’re the future. It’s our job- the closest we have to a sacred duty- to safeguard them. I’m just pissed off at how long it took for enough people to stand up to get it done. You three,” she pointed to Drake, Iago and Mayumi, “coordinate, we need to reinforce the line and push them back.” She held back while they walked towards the gathered refugees. “Saw your zapper’s still zapping,” Laren said discreetly to Demi. “I think we can use that. The feds are using earpieces. That means power supplies. If you can fry those remotely, they stop being a unified occupying force, and become a bunch of lonely fascists alone in a sea of people- fascists we can isolate and contain.”

“That’s… an idea,” Demi said. “Might result in some burns.”

“Anything this side of fatal seems more than warranted, under the circumstances.” A fed tried to hit Laren with a baton, and she rammed her shoulder into his chest, then rolled him over her back, stripping him of his radio and the baton at the same time. She handed the radio to Demi, who keyed the radio and raised it toward the sky. Lightning fell from the clouds, passing through the radio, and into her hand.

The sound and feedback traveled through the radios, causing officers to tear their earpieces out, some screaming. Several radios burst into flames and had to be removed.

“That’s our opening,” Laren yelled, shoving forward. She was immediately flanked by Iago, Drake and Mayumi, with a line of refugees stepping in front of the beaten protestors.

Stacey raised a sidearm at Laren. “Not one more goddamned step!” he yelled.

Demi grabbed his arm at the wrist, and pushed the gun into the air. “Drop it,” she said, “or I roast all the skin off that hand.”

“Bull-” she sent a jolt of electricity into his arm, and his finger squeezed around the trigger.

Fifty-Nine

The Oval Office had been deathly still since Rox and Anita left. Mahmoud had shut down every electronic in the room, just in case there were any hidden panic buttons or bugs that might cause troubles- but also, because he needed the quiet, to be able to think. “I’ve been wondering, since I got here, if you recognized me,” Mahmoud asked.

“Should I?” Drump asked, the question dripping with contempt.

Mahmoud chuckled quietly. “You know? Yeah.” He turned, glaring at him. “Because I sure as hell remember you. Remember you calling for me to be put in Guantanamo, or deported. All because the racists at my school couldn’t tell the difference between a time piece and a bomb. I was one of the three racist pillars that began your Presidential run: Obama birtherism, Mexicans all being rapists, and me.”

“Oh. You’re that kid,” he said dismissively.

“And I’m not saying you should remember my face, but when condemning a child, I think it’s only fair you remember them. Then again, you’ve condemned a lot of children on your watch, haven’t you? First there were the camps, where kids got emotionally and sometimes physically abused. Then when the virus hit, your genocidal brown shirts started moving them around, just to make sure more of them got sick and spread it through the camps. Then you deported them anyway, and disappeared the Breed kids to Gitmo, because apparently the concentration camps just weren’t cruel enough for you.” Mahmoud slammed his gun onto the corner of the Resolute Desk.  

“You threw me in the deepest, darkest scariest hole you could. You treated me like a monster, and I’d be lying if I told you didn’t want to become one, to breath fire and snarl when I finally got loose. But that would make it easy on you. You’d get to justify your fear, and hate.” Mahmoud pulled up his shirt, revealing the scar from his feeding tube. “I stopped eating in Guantanamo. I lost all hope I’d ever leave that place. I just wanted to die. It wasn’t,” he breathed out raggedly. “I wasn’t doing it for change, or to get access to lawyers, or win back rights for my fellow detainees. Maybe that could have happened, too, but I was done. And they couldn’t even give me that freedom, to give up, so they violated my body to force me to stay alive.

“I was wrong, by the way. I’m breathing free air again, and I kick myself every time I realize I nearly lost that. No. I nearly let you take that away from me. You can’t hold a man’s head underwater and then blame him when he succumbs to drowning. That would have been a tragedy. But understand, I’m only here because of the heroic defiance of people like my friends out there. Whether you live or die today depends on people you have persecuted standing between you and harm. If your stochastic terrorism had hurt even one of the people defending you here today, it would all fall apart. You’d have killed yourself, and have no one to blame for it- though I imagine you’d try anyway.”

“Are you going to save me? Or did you come all this way just to watch me die?”

Mahmoud sighed. “I saved you before I started talking.” He closed his eyes, and the television came back on, and the phone started ringing. The muted television showed the two disabled tanks on the White House lawn. “I know you don’t apologize, and I’m not looking for you to be sorry. Maybe after this you’ll see people like me as more human than you did. We’re more human- and more decent– than you ever learned to pretend to be. But you’ll forgive me if I’m not holding my breath.”

“Get the fuck out of my office.”

“Don’t get comfortable. It won’t be yours for much longer.” He started towards the door. “Oh, and my friends and I are going to need pardons.”

“Like hell. You won’t make it off the lawn before my people grab you. I hope this was worth it, to lose your freedom all over again.” “You don’t understand,” Mahmoud said, turning around. “I have everything. The contents of your computers here. At your tower. In Florida. And the one Putin’s keeping for you; not smart keeping a back door into it in the Oval Office. And I don’t just have your tax returns, I have every skeleton you ever committed to paper, which is more than enough to find the rest. You help my friends, I might even wait until after the election to release it all. You know with one phone call I could get a much better deal, five months removed, from the next administration. Besides, you’ve pardoned far shadier people- and these ones just saved your fucking life. You owe them.”

Fifty-Eight

“You think this will work?” Tucker asked, nervously eyeing the advancing federal force.

“This is a metro area,” Mikaela said with a smirk. “Do you have any idea how many reflective surfaces there are? I could pull ten thousand dupes without having to think hard about it.” Mikaela reached out for her reflection in a nearby car’s side mirror. Her reflection didn’t reach back. Mikaela turned to Tucker. “You still wear that locket I gave you.”

“Uh…”

“It wasn’t a question, and I don’t have time to be delicate.” Mikaela felt around his collar, and fished out the chain, with a locket attached. She opened it, revealing a mirror on one side. She couldn’t pull a duplicate out of the locket’s reflection, either. “My ability isn’t working.”

Tucker closed his eyes. “Mine either,” Tucker said, frowning. “I thought I was just caught up, in the moment, when you grabbed me, but the world went dark for me, too.”

“For all of us, or nearly all,” Stephen said, tapping on Mikaela’s shoulder. “Come with me.” He turned back towards the crowd, and started wading through. Huddled in a small alleyway were several students Mikaela recognized, including Ryan. They were standing in a makeshift circle, all with their eyes closed, struggling to concentrate. It reminded her of her physics class, where the instructor brought a device that passed enough current to painfully seize the hand of everyone in a circle. She couldn’t remember what the lesson had been, only that it hurt, and quickly became an endurance test.  

“Hey,” Ryan said, opening his eyes for a moment before closing them again, his lip twitching with effort.

“What is this?” Tucker asked.

“I’m not a technopath,” Stephen said, “so this is all second-hand, but apparently they’ve been working to reverse engineer the device the militia used on the campus, the one that shut down our abilities.”

“And definitely came from the Federal government in the first place,” Tucker said.

“Yeah. Part of what they were studying was whether or not they could counteract the device, especially remotely. Resisting its influence, essentially.”

“And the verdict?” Mikaela asked.

 “Bit of a mixed bag,” Ryan said, opening his eyes. “We’ve been able to keep it from completely shutting down our abilities, but it’s like tensing a muscle- you can’t do it indefinitely, and it gets harder with each passing second to keep it up.”

“Can you shut it down?” Mikaela asked.

“I don’t think it’s that simple. It’s like I’m already fighting every cell in my body. I don’t just taste blood, I smell it, see it,” a bloody tear wept from his eye. “Trying to disable it remotely might kill us.”

“Faster than they will?” Tucker asked, pointing at the police line, now stampeding towards them through the vulnerable protestors as their defensive lines crumpled. The loud report of a gunshot rang over even the yelps of pain and the cacophony of the protestors and the rioting federal agents.

“We’ll try,” Ryan said. “But you might want to start working up a plan B, for if we all start stroking out.”

Note: Shows what yesterday me knew. The instant I posted about struggling to finish this monster chapter… it came together. So here it is, on time. I’m as surprised by that as you are.

Fifty-Seven

“Nita?” Rox called out from behind cover. “We seem to be missing some of our playmates. If Oleg’s here-”

“Then there’s a good chance that the rest are skulking around, yeah. Give me some cover while I flip through the drafts.” She closed her eyes, as Sonya threw a timed bomb near to Raif to keep him off balance. “Shit, they’re-”

“Behind you,” Juana said, dropping out of one of the trees, close enough Rox felt the movement of the air she displaced. Rox drop to one knee, then rolled to the next tree in the stand as Juana fired several shots from an energy gun in her wake.

“Appreciate the not-very-early warning,” Rox said, diving at Juana, hitting her in the hip and knocking both of them into a tree. Juana slid around the tree to avoid several shots from Anita, who kneeled beside Rox.

“No problem. But you need to take Raif.” Anita grabbed her head and forced it down, behind a root as a bullet struck where she’d been. “There’s too much open ground between him and us; any of the rest of us get shot in the face if we try to make it. I can handle the spook.”

“The spook?” Rox asked.

“Oh, right, sorry, skipping ahead. I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise. But she’s going to keep me tied up for the duration. And you’ll have to keep an eye on Ben, or he’s going to make a mistake he won’t be able to live with.”

“I hate when you start in with this cryptic bullshit.”

“Yeah, well, bitch to the assholes who mutilated me that I can’t see far enough into the future with enough clarity for your liking. But do it tomorrow, when we’re not in the middle of a fucking gunfight.”

The sound of the cannon on the tank firing shook Rox out of the conversation. She glanced in the direction of the three tanks, and saw that the two Oleg had struck had fired on the third tank, severely damaging its armor. “Sonya,” she yelled, “can you run interference? Rui looks like he could use a hand.”

*             *             *

“Sure,” Sonya said, sprinting across the open field, “I’ve always wanted to race at a pair of tanks, hoping Secret Service agents wouldn’t shoot me in the back.” She spun in mid-air, flinging a timed explosive in the direction of Raif, landing facing the tank and beginning to run again.

As she approached, she noticed the nearest tank’s turret turning towards her. At first she assumed it was just a coincidence, that it couldn’t be tracking her, but it overshot the stand of trees, and the Secret Service, and was getting ever closer to sighting her in. “Oh, well that’s just dickish,” she said, diving out of the way. She wondered, as she fell towards the nicely manicured grass whether the tank were using any kind of an explosive shell, in which case it wouldn’t matter if it missed, because close enough would still catch her with fire and shrapnel; at least then her last word would be ‘dickish.’

She landed hard, rolling savagely as she heard the tank’s shell fire. She seemed to keep going, and for a moment she wondered if the shell’s explosion had thrown her. Finally she came to a stop, and when she opened her eyes she could see the nearly clear sky, populated by a handful of small, puffy clouds. “Looked like that hurt,” Rui said, offering her his hand.

“I thought you were fighting the guy in the helicopter,” she said.

“Was,” he said, shrugging. “But I was having a bit of a problem; if I’m tangible, he can zap me; if I’m not I can’t hit him. I needed something to help me break the impasse.”

“Wait,” she realized as she took his hand that he was already transmuting his arm into a plasma again, and used it to swing her ballistically at the helicopter. As she reached the top of the arc and felt gravity tugging at her again, she realized the landing gear was in front of her and swiped to grab it. “Not cool!” she yelled, hanging from the bottom of the helicopter by one hand.

“Sorry about that,” Rui said, floating next to her. “I was worried you’d catch a bullet if I was trying to fly you slow-mo up here.”

“And if I hadn’t caught myself?”

“I’d have caught you eventually… just further down the arc.”

“You’re going to wake up with so many boomlets in your pants,” she said, as he helped her up onto the landing gear. “We have a plan?”

“You go left, I’ll go right. And remember that there’s a pilot or two in there; so try not to violently crash the thing.”

“I’m also on the thing,” she said.

“All the more reason not to violently crash it, I’d think,” he said, and flew around to the other side. Sonya crept along the landing gear, aware of how precariously she was balanced. When she reached the cockpit door, she leaned across. Oleg was standing in the middle of the cockpit, between two pilots strapped into their seats; he was distracted, between controlling the helicopter and the two tanks, and didn’t see her, or Rui smiling at her from the opposite window. He pantomimed a three, then started holding up one finger, then two, and on the third, he opened his door wide. A column of electricity emanating from Oleg slapped him in the chest, and he fell.

Sonya opened her door, tossed in a boomlet, and slammed it shut. Oleg turned slowly, trying to figure out what was happening. Just as he saw her, the boomlet’s field dissipated, and the anti-matter inside reacted violently with the matter in the air. The explosion knocked Oleg into the back wall of the cockpit, where he slumped.

Sonya opened the door, and poked the nearest pilot. He was unconscious, at least, still smoking from where Oleg electrocuted him. “Uh,” she jabbed the copilot, who was similarly nonresponsive. “This is going to be a problem,” she said, looking at the complex panel of controls, and the gas gauge hovering near the red line.

“Don’t know how to fly?” Rui asked, entering the far door. He sat on the copilot’s lap and took the stick, easing the helicopter slowly down. “I… may have cajoled our pilot to show me how to.”

“Your family had a pilot?”

“Still does, so far as I know.”

One of the tanks fired again, this time the round penetrated the armor of the tank enough to stop its treads from moving. “Um, that shouldn’t be happening, right?” Sonya asked.

Rui lifted up Oleg’s hand then dropped it, and it clanged loudly on the metal floor. “Well… he’s not conscious… but maybe part of his unconscious is still in charge of the tanks?”

“Either way,” Sonya said, “we need to get the personnel out of there before they get hurt.”

“Agreed.”

*             *             *

Anita wiped blood from her mouth. “I know who you are, why you’re here, and I can state unequivocally we don’t have to do this,” Anita said, putting up her hands.

“And if I’ve been looking forward to this since the last time I kicked your ass?”

“I’d say that sounds like an odd, internally-inconsistent revision of history; if you kicked my ass, why would you care if you got to kick it again? Sounds more like a revenge fantasy, but you need something to venge, which doesn’t make sense unless you lost. But if you’ve been fantasizing about me kicking your ass all over again, I’m happy to indulge you; might even have a set of stilettos that would make the kicking more pleasurable for you, if that’s part of your kink.”

“You’re a horrible woman, you know that?”

“Given the company you’ve been keeping, Juana, I think the lady doth protest too much.”

“Plus, this time, you’re gunshot. Kind of gives me an unfair advantage; on the other hand, I never really planned to fight fair, anyway.”

 “Me, neither,” Anita said, backing around the tree.

“Running alrea-” Juana stopped, as a bullet impacted her shoulder, pushing her back into a tree hard enough to knock the wind from her lungs. “Fuck,” she said, sliding down the tree and sprawling.

“Hit you in the armor,” Anita said, “but there, now we’re both gunshot. Now, I assume you’ve been briefed on what I do. So you could take my word for it that you lose this fight, all over again, and all you get to show for it are a couple of the not sexy kind of scars.”

“That’s wrong; all scars are sexy.”

“I’m mostly inclined to agree, but I’m not usually a taste-maker.”

“And I know you well enough to know you’d bluff if you weren’t going to win this fight, so your ‘insight’ is worthless to me.”

“Okay,” Anita said, removing the Kabar she wore at her hip from its sheath. “If you’re inclined to do this, we can do this. But I’ll tell you how your first attack is going to go; I’m going to stab your through the forearm, in the space between the radius and ulna; I could cause you permanent disability just by twisting it, but things are going well for us, so I don’t think I have to. I’ll leave it where it is, because the serrated back of my knife,” she held it up for Juana to see, “would shred the absolute shit out of your arm if I did. You’d think that would give you an edge, right? It won’t.”

Juana advanced, forming her pistol into a long Bowie knife. She feinted, first left, then right, then reeled back to slip the knife in Anita’s guts, only to throw the knife at the last second into her off-hand for a thrust from above her head. Anita caught the strike with her hand, then buried her Kabar in Juana’s forearm. Then she kneed her in the thigh, putting her off-balance enough to roll her over her shoulder, landing painfully on her back on the ground.

“I’d stay down,” Anita said. “You only end up with another cut. Oh, yeah, and then one of the Secret Service shoots you. This one misses the vest. I’d give you even odds of bleeding out, though that’s always hard to know. Apparently whatever message you tried to pass them through discreet channels didn’t find them- or the agent who shoots you is as bigoted as his boss and doesn’t care who you really are.”

“You really are a cunt,” Juana said, nursing her arm as she dropped her blade.

“I know; my mom always told me that was one of my better qualities.” 

Juana narrowed her eyes. “Did you just manipulate me? Make me use a knife, psychologically hint at how and why you’d win to nudge me into getting there?”

“Huh. I don’t think that’s how my ability works,” Anita said. “But it’s an interesting theory. No. I’m pretty sure you just didn’t listen to reason because you’re stubborn. You can lead a horse to water, but sometimes you can’t stop a donkey from stabbing itself in the dick.”

“I am so depressed right now that I lost to you.”

“Most tend to be. I try not to be insulted by it.”  

*             *             *

Rox waited until Raif’s rifle clacked on an empty chamber. He was overwhelmed, coordinating a fight against them and the Secret Service, all while trying to remember how to be a soldier and use is ability to amp up his comrade’s abilities. He reloaded quick, but the Secret Service kept him pinned enough he didn’t see Rox circling around until it was too late. He tried to spin, aiming the barrel at her, but she was already too close, and blocked the movement of his arm, so all he could do was fire a few rounds near over her shoulder.

She raised her knee, and he moved his leg to protect his groin, only to find too late that it was a feint, and she drove her raised foot into the knee where he was holding all of his weight. It popped out, and he howled in pain, dropping his rifle into the dirt. He tried to stand, but couldn’t put weight on it. “You remembered,” he said from the ground, a hint of tenderness in his voice.

“Because I’m not a sociopath. Though back then, I thought I was learning about my friend’s limitations, not a foe’s weakness.”

He managed to get himself propped against a tree, with his knee at least in the right position. “I never wanted us to be enemies.”

“Then maybe you need to reexamine your life choices,” she said. “Like declaring war on the dominant species on the planet. Even if we were the victors, there’d be so many people dead- on both sides; there’s no winning a genocidal war, you absolute prick.” She leaned in close. “And know, if anything happens to my friends today, it will not matter what hole they toss you in. I will fucking come for you, and they will never find all the fucking pieces of you.”

He grabbed her hair, but she wrapped her forearm around his throat, cutting off air through his windpipe. “You are such a predictable asshole,” she said.

*             *             *

Ben heard the noise, the one from his brother’s last message to him. It wasn’t the first time he heard it outside of the message; that sound haunted his dreams, and any moment he let himself focus too much on what happened to his home. But this wasn’t in his head. This was real, vibrating through the air.

He was running towards it before he ever realized- past a swarm of Secret Service agents who were more focused on the tanks they’d lost control of than him. The noise was coming from the far side of the lawn, around back of the White House- but coming towards him, fast. At the last-minute he stepped to the side, and managed to latch on as the source of the noise flew past. The noise was louder, hanging onto the spindly man’s back, enough that Ben had to forcibly calm the movement of its waves through the air to keep it from deafening him.

Even with Ben in tow, they were still gaining speed, heading towards the rest of the fight. Ben knew he needed to slow, and clocked the man in the head. That threw him off-balance, and the pair of them went rolling through the grass, coming to the stop against one of the tanks.

Ben’s world was spinning. He never expected to hear that sound again- both wanted it more than anything and was terrified of what he’d do if he did. And here the source was, stunned and at his feet.

“You,” the man said, although now that he was moving slower, Ben could see he likely wasn’t older than seventeen, “you look familiar. I think I might have met your brother.” Ben kicked the boy across the face. “Certainly kick like him,” he said. There was something in his voice he recognized from childhood that reminded him of a childhood friend.

Ben covered his face with his hand and said, “You’re deaf, aren’t you?” He didn’t respond, didn’t even seem to acknowledge the words. Ben removed his hand, and repeated it, and he nodded. An instant later, and he was standing behind Ben, and he heard the noise again, this time too loud and fast for him to mitigate. He felt it in his skull, in all of his bones, like he was being microwaved. 

“It’s harmonics,” the other man said. “Breed physiology is ever so slightly different from vanilla human. To a human, this would hurt, excruciatingly, but not do any lasting damage. To a Breed, at this intensity, it can be fatal. I don’t want it to be; I don’t want to fight at all. I just want to put things right again.” 

Ben was dizzy; there were moments until he passed out from the pain. He concentrated, trying to isolate the phase. He’d done it before as a party trick, but never attempted anything like this in a fight. Suddenly the tone was gone, that sound that had haunted him barely perceptible, like music heard through a wall. “I canceled out the tone you use,” Ben said, “using an antiphase wave of the same amplitude.” He punched the other man in the face. “So while you contemplate your powerlessness, why don’t you tell me why you killed everyone in my home town.” Ben hit him again, his lip burst from the impact, blood trickling down his pale skin.

“I’m Colby,” he said. He was trembling; they both were, and only some of it was related to their abilities. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that… Raif said- I was supposed to scare them, maybe hurt them, just a little, get them to see that the broader struggle was their struggle, too- that just because they were relatively safe and comfortable on the reservation didn’t mean that they could sit this out. I’d never tried to use my power on more than one person at a time, and when Raif boosted me… it caused a chain reaction. I was horrified, when your brother died; it was like I lit a fuse, and after it burnt through him, it started in on the next person. I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t. I just had to sit and watch as they died, one after another.”

Ben hit him again, and again. “You killed everyone I grew up with. Everyone who knew me as a kid. I don’t care if it was a fucking accident. Because this sure as hell won’t be.” He grabbed onto Colby’s head and squeezed. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, but everything in him told him to push, put his thumbs through his eyes, his fingers through his windpipe and shake the hole thing until his scrambled brains dribbled out of his ears.  

*             *             *

“He’ll kill him,” Raif said around Rox’s forearm against his trachea.

“Not sure we’ve had a Native American genocide of the kind this century; seems like he’s got it coming.”

Raif swallowed around her arm, then let out a wounded sigh. “It was my fault. I didn’t tell him I was going to augment his attack on the tribe. He was a scared kid, kind that will go out of his way not to hurt flies, let alone a human being; I didn’t think he was going to push it far enough, really scare them like we needed. I though I had to push him. I didn’t realize what would happen.”

“I’m not Mira; I’m a lot less inclined to give you anything close to a pass.”

“I’m not asking for me. Colby doesn’t deserve to die for my mistake. He’s a kid. You were all kids. I’ve done a piss-poor job or protecting you. I don’t want his death on my head, too.”

“Goddamnit.” Rox drew her gun.

“I can make the shot if you can’t,” he said.

“Quiet, or I’ll put a round in you first,’ she said. She tossed the pistol over her shoulder without glancing back to aim, and it struck Ben in the side.

“Ow!” he yelled. “What the fuck?”

“I’m pretty sure he’s down, dickhead,” Rox yelled back.

Ben looked at Colby, limp in his hands, and recoiled.

“Ow,” Colby moaned from the grass.

“Oh, thank God,” he said, tears welling up in his eyes.

“Wasn’t expecting that response,” Colby whimpered.

“I’m not saying I’ve given up completely on the idea of killing you- just that I’d feel bad if it was an accident.”

“I’m sorry,” Colby whispered.

“Yeah, well, maybe if my brother were here, he’d accept that. He was always the better man. It’s your fault you’re stuck with me.”

Note: The next update is a whopper, more like 3-5 updates in one; as such it might be late, but I’m hoping to have it up no later than Monday (and hoping further to have built up a cushion this weekend, too).

Fifty-Six

Stacey counted down from five on the fingers of one hand, then picked up a bullhorn. “This gathering is unlawful, and has been hereby designated a riot. Anyone remaining will be dealt with harshly, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Law-abiding, human citizens are encouraged to leave the premises in an orderly fashion; those remaining will receive the same treatment, regardless of status.” Stacey threw the bullhorn over his head, where it was caught by a subordinate, and started to swagger forward. The police line followed his lead, inching towards the protestors.

“Defensive use only,” Mikaela reiterated loudly, and Tucker broadcast the thought to the entire crowd.

Every twelfth man in the advancing line fell back a few paces, shifting to raise grenade launchers that had hung from slings, and fired. The grenades didn’t exit the guns, and instead stayed within the barrels, where they started to leak tear gas into the police line. “Masks!” Stacey yelled, and they quickly covered their faces with protective gear.

“Nice work, EMKs,” Mikaela said.

“Batons,” Stacey yelled, pulling his off his belt. He was within striking distance of the students’ line.

“Defenders!” Mikaela yelled, with Tucker amplifying it telepathically.

Mayumi stepped from between them, with Demi on her side, part of a front line extending the length of the protest. Some of the Breed now standing between in the way of the advancing federal agents carried improvised shields or barriers, some made from trashcan lids, others formed from ice; one of the EMKs had built his out of a stop sign, with the lettering pointed at the feds. The big man Mayumi called earlier brought his baton down on her shoulder, and it shattered into splinters. “Metal bones,” she said, staring up at him angrily.

Stacey swung at Demi, who ducked, then snatched the baton from him and broke it in half in her hands. She handed both pieces back to him, and he hit her on either side of the head with each piece. She glared at him as lightning struck the street a block away. “Tougher than you look,” he said.

“Funny,” she said, “I was thinking the opposite; you act a lot tougher than you are, and your insecurities are definitely justified. Probably inadequacies, too.”

Stacey screamed, reeled back to throw a punch; Mayumi stepped into it, and his wrist made a wet snapping noise when his hand hit her head. “Says she’s got metal bones,” the big man said to Stacey.

A defender on the other side of Mayumi took a beanbag round to the chest, and fell to the street, hacking up blood. “This isn’t working,” Demi said. “Their sadism more than matches any potential shame that might curb it.”

“What do you think?” Mikaela asked Tucker, ducking a chunk of Stacey’s broken baton hurtling through the air.

“It’s a powder keg,” Tucker said. “The students and their family want to hit back; it’s infectious– it’s all I can do not to crawl over Mayumi and start kicking. And the feds are itching for any excuse to take the gloves the rest of the way off. Seriously, you look at the wrong one of them cross-eyed and they’re going to start firing rubber bullets at point blank range- Christ, and they’ve been practicing aiming for the head with them. Can I turn a few of them off? I probably can turn them back on again when it’s over.”

“That might just give them the excuse they need,” Mikaela said, as another defender down the line fell under a barrage from a baton. “But we’re getting overwhelmed here. This is bad; we don’t have the numbers to passively resist, and our defenders are getting beaten to shit. Your brother?”

“Still not answering his phone, which could mean nothing, because he regularly either forgets to charge it or leaves the ringer off, or could mean the cavalry never made it into the country.”

“Drake?”

“Same. Except he’s marginally better about answering his phone, usually.”

“Can you reach out to them telepathically?”

“Generally, no. Trying to find one head a hundred miles north is… it’s more like a bunch of piles of spilled toothpicks, rather than a haystack. But not while coordinating a peaceful- duck.”

Mikaela didn’t move fast enough, and caught Stacey’s elbow in the face. Blood streamed down her face from both nostrils. “I can beef up the numbers,” Mikaela said.

“They aren’t exactly expendable,” Tucker said.

“Yeah,” she said, sniffing to suck back in some of the blood, “but they don’t know that.”

Fifty-Five

“Anything?” Rox asked, tapping her foot nervously.

“That doesn’t help, actually,” Anita said, smothering Rox’s foot with her own. “And there’s a lot of variables; too many moving pieces. We could all be wiped out or not, based on whether an airman at NORAD drags toilet paper out of the bathroom on the bottom of his shoe.”

“That’s distressing.”

“And that’s factoring in your insane luck abilities. Trying to find the right sequence, where we don’t all die or go to jail or get sold to an oil sheikh like I’ve always fantasized…”

“Ahem.”

The door behind them cracked open, and both women spun around, trying to keep their gun arms down to maintain a veneer of normalcy.

“I can handle things here,” Mahmoud said. “And it sounds, from the radio chatter, like they could use the luck out there.”

“Bad?” Rox asked.

“Tanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Anita said.

“And a helicopter.”

“Can you shut them down?” Rox asked.

“Not without compromising their security response. They’re going to need them to take on Raif’s guys- you just have to make sure they don’t kill any of ours in the meantime.”

“You sure you’re okay alone with him? God knows, I’d have trouble not at least winging him for my own amusement.”

“He’s not going to shoot him,” Anita said, before noticing Drump was listening intently, “unless the saggy tub of moldering racism does something stupid, like try to talk. And I’m not being funny. Every goddamned ignorant thing that plops out of his mouth like a half-formed turd is disgusting to anyone with an intellect, not even a high one, one qualifying as sentience. So even to some plants.”

“That seemed at least a little funny, in an insult-comic kind of way.” Anita pantomimed being shot in the heart, then blood spraying out of the hole, before dropping to the floor. “Too mean?”

“Nah,” Anita said, wrinkling her nose. “I like it when you’re a little mean to me.”

“Ew.”

“No, it just means I don’t have to feel bad about all those times I was mean to you.”

“Fastest route out of here?” Rox asked.

“Window,” Anita said, rolling out of the window Rox had previously opened.

Rox tucked her gun in the bag and then leapt out feet first. She landed gracefully beside Anita, who was brushing grass off her knees. “You even take gymnastics?” Anita asked, exasperated.

“I joined a team for a while,” Rox said. “But it wasn’t challenging enough to be fun. Besides, I prefer contact sports.” Rox ducked, as a Secret Service agent rolled around the wall, aiming a pistol. She bladed her fingers and jabbed him in the throat before taking his gun. “Listen to me,” she said, pushing him against the wall and holding him there with his gun pressed into his stomach.

“I won’t help you,” he said defiantly.

“Other way around,” she said, “we’re here to help you.” She turned his gun so the handle was facing him. “But I’d appreciate if you’d listen first, so I don’t have to take it from you again.”

He narrowed his eyes. Raif fired a spray of bullets, some of which struck the side of the White House. “We’re not with him,” Rox said. “In fact, we’re the reason his attack on Moscow failed.”

“I’m listening,” he said reluctantly, “but that window’s closing.”

“Even if you can’t trust us, just don’t shoot us in the back; the enemy of my enemy can be an ally, at least temporarily.”

“What do you have in mind?” he asked, holstering his gun.

“Our friends are by the treeline, pinned down, unarmed.”

“I thought you said you weren’t with the terrorists.”

“We did, we aren’t, but there’s two different groups there.”

“And he can shoot earthquakes, he shoots fire, and the girl can create explosions. They’re hardly unarmed.”

“Except in the literal sense,” Anita said, “wherein they aren’t carrying armaments.”

“She’d know; she’s an English teacher.”

“You’re from that school, aren’t you?”

“Does dropping out count?”

“Or abandoning your teaching post after less than a full school year to gallivant with a bunch of juvenile-at-the-time delinquents,” Anita said, before adding, “unless you mean maturity-wise, in which case they’re all still quite juvenile.”

“The plan.”

“I want you to give us a little pocket to operate in,” Rox replied. “It’ll look to Raif’s people like you’re corralling us and them into the same spot; they assume we’ll work together, at that point, rather than be killed or captured- but that’s when we turn on them. We time it right and we might even be able to stop them without anyone getting seriously hurt.”

“And how are you going to coordinate your plan with your team?”

“Text,” Rox said, taking her phone out of her pocket and unlocking it.

“How? All outgoing calls that aren’t ours get routed through us; you shouldn’t be able to so much as post on Facebook or send a message.”

“Our people have skills yours can’t match.”

“You’ll have to show me how that works.”

“Given who your boss is, and his general stance on the existence of people like me, I’m going to take a hard pass on that.”

“Fine. We’ll try a pincer move. But your people are on the tip of the spear, and I can’t guarantee things go well for you there.”

Rox stepped out of the way to let him leave, then waiting until he was out of earshot to ask, “You think he’ll turn on us?”

“Well,” Anita said, wrinkling her nose,  “on the one hand, the drafts are starting to converge on a single reality, and it isn’t one where most of us end up dead.”

“And what’s the reason you don’t seem happy about that?”

“I’m really bad about dropping the soap. You’d think that would be less of an issue in a women’s prison… but you’d be surprised.” Anita stopped, reluctant to leave the relative safety of the White House’s shadow. “What do you think the odds are that he plays nice?”

Rox leaned away from the building. “Oh, I’d say pretty good,” she said. Already, fire teams of agents were peppering the two Breed teams with gunfire in an attempt to drive them into a section of the lawn where a line of trees would inhibit flight to the west. “Shit,” she said, “they’re moving too fast; we need to run, or we won’t be in position.”

Anita burst past her, pumping her longer legs. They ran, staying as close to the building as they could until they could hook at the last second across the field, meeting up with Ben, Rui and Sonya sheltering behind a tree.

“This an okay spot for an ambush?” Rui asked. “Because I feel like Bugs Bunny in a cartoon where it’s wabbit season.” Several rounds burrowed into the bark of the tree near him.

“Unfortunately for us, we’re sitting on their backstop,” Anita said. “Just stand behind Little Miss Bullet Repellant and we’ll probably- shi-“ Anita spun on one heel, then flattened into the grass. Blood was seeping out of a wound in her arm as she lifted her head off the grass. She squeezed her hand, then tensed the muscles in her arm. “Just a through-and-through,” she muttered testily from the ground. “Jinxed myself, that time.”

“It’s about time,” Rox said, dropping to one knee and taking her gun out of her bag. “You want to give Sonya your gun?”

“I can handle it,” Anita said. “Fact, I do some of my best shooting prone.”

Anita rolled over, and aimed down the sights of the gun.

“On two, one,” they fired together. Anita’s shot went wide, but Rox’s struck Raif’s rifle, sending it bouncing off a tree.

“Anybody catch that?” Rui asked.

“What?” Sonya asked.

“Hearing… it works a little bit different when I’m gaseous, I can feel the vibrations through all of my molecules. There was a subtle change to the helicopter’s engine, it- aw, crap.”

“The Russian with the electric arm,” Ben said, pointing to the young man hanging off the side of the helicopter. “What the hell is he doing?” Tendrils of electricity arced from his electric limb, plunging into the cockpit and its controls.

“Seems like nothing good is the general answer,” Sonya said.

Electricity leapt from the front of the helicopter, striking both tanks in turns.

“We should really stop him from doing anything else,” Rui said.

“Well?” Sonya asked. “You’re the jackass who can fly.”

“Crap,” He said, and kicked off the ground. An instant later a bullet whizzed through him- but passed harmless through the gaseous cloud of his atoms.

“We should probably cover him,” Anita said, firing a few rounds near enough to Raif he hid back behind the tree.

Fifty-Four

“I hope I made the right decision,” Aishah said, shifting nervously in the bus seat beside Mikaela.

“There isn’t one,” Mikaela replied, bumping her shoulder into the younger woman’s arm. “You stay home, you’re unhappy, you come here, you’re unhappy. It’s an impossible, and crappy, situation. It’s unfair this country, this administration, this short-fingered, thin-skinned, bigoted man has put you in it. But you’re in good company, and with work, and a little luck, maybe the next generation doesn’t end up in the same crappy situation. Hell, that may be thinking too big, maybe we just don’t have to come back here four months from now.” Aishah slumped in the seat and sighed, looking out the window at pedestrians as they passed them.

“We’re only a couple of blocks away,” Tucker said anxiously. “You want to rally the troops?”

“I think you just volunteered to,” Mikaela said.

“Could I get the mic?” Tucker asked the driver, who handed it to him. “All right, everybody, this is going to be intense. If you were in Seattle for the last protest, you have some idea, except that in that case the police had a vested interest in not spilling blood on these streets, because they live here, too. Federal goons don’t. This is an invasion. But, it’s also public relations. They claim they’re here because we’re out of control, threatening not just the people of Seattle but any Federal building within the city’s limits. Our first job is to prove them wrong. Our second, is to show that we won’t be intimidated. But it’s not to intimidate, this time around. Because these fascists have the big, swinging dick of the Federal government at their backs; until they see us tear a tank in half they aren’t going to be intimidated- and if we do that, every pearl-clutching suburbanite in the country will wet themselves at the thought of us remaining in their country twelve more seconds. So we have to be calm. We have to be reasonable- docile, even, if we can swing it. That means we treat abilities- all abilities- like they’re a use of deadly force, because they will likely be met with it. And- I’m not prying, but it’s there, on your faces- I know some of you are scared. Well, we all are. This isn’t something any of us have ever faced down. But we can get through this, together. Because scared as we are, they’re even more scared. Not because of what we can do to them. But of a future where new, better people are the norm, where you can’t just wear your bigotries on your sleeve and expect no pushback. We represent a better world- let’s go make it a reality in front of their eyes.”

The bus came to a rough stop, causing Tucker to grab the hand rail to catch himself. “How was that?” Tucker asked, handing the driver the microphone back.

“Give it a B plus,” Mikaela said with an amused smile.

“Only a B?”

“I thought it was great,” Aishah said. “I almost forgot how scared I was… until you reminded me.”

“Oh. Yeah. Oops.” Tucker led them off the bus, then pivoted to keep people near to the bus so they weren’t lost in the crowd already gathering on the sidewalk.

“Wrangling them could be challenging,” Tucker said. Mikaela didn’t understand, until she turned to see a sea of parents, siblings and other family and friend rolling towards them. Her father, smirking, stood to the side, propping up a nearby wall.

“Kept us waiting,” Demi said, hugging her from behind. “I was beginning to think you decided to just stay at home and watch Rick and Morty reruns. The buses are good, actually,” she knocked on the one they’d just left, “might provide some protection if things get too hairy.”

“Or you could fling it at the troops, if things got too hairy,” Tucker said with a smile.

“I’m trying to think happy thoughts. I think I get testier in direct correlation to how bad I think things are going to go. But we should file over here. It doesn’t matter if people mill around a bit back here, but we need to get to the front line. Excuse us,” Demi lightly touched a woman’s shoulder, and she stepped to the side to let them through. They emerged at the front of the protest, to see a line of agents without any identifying insignia beyond Velcro strips that said, “Police” on them.

“We know if these are even cops or feds?” Mikaela asked.

“I followed the shit we released last night,” Mayumi said from behind them. “Spent most of the day in the FBI offices. I’ve still got his scent, he’s third from the tall one in the middle holding the riot shotgun. If things do go off, I got dibs on that one.”

“The big one?” Mikaela asked.

“Or did you mean the one you got the scent of?” Tucker asked, not sure whether to ask follow-up questions about that.

“You meant both, or do now, if you hadn’t then, right?” Demi asked. Mayumi nodded vigorously, with an ever-widening but still grin.  

“So at least one of them is a fed,” Mikaela said, closing her eyes. “This is fucked up. We don’t even know if he’s here on official business, or is just a bigot willing to hide behind his badge, and use it to cover for other bigots- which is increasingly possible because organized bigots have been pushing for 20 years to infiltrate law enforcement.”

“I think that’s the point,” Tucker said. “Muddy the waters to the point that you can’t resist anymore, because you never know when you’re resisting lawfully or not.”

“So what do we want to do?” Demi asked.

“We came because we can’t cower,” Mikaela answered. “If they think they’ve beaten us, that’s the end; they’ll be so emboldened we’ll never have another moment’s peace. They’ll harass and harangue us, until we’re all either dead or driven out of the country.”

“You think everything’s an existential threat,” Tucker said with a smirk. “Maybe we could negotiate them down from genocide, if we agree to put a Confederate monument in the middle of the school plaza.”

“I forget that when your brother’s not around you work to keep our jackass quotient stable,” Mikaela said with a smile. “It’s about the only thing that makes you two seem like siblings.”

“That and their nose, in profile,” Demi said.

“Their scent, too,” Mayumi said, “not that I expect either of you to be able to corroborate that.”

“Have we heard from him and Drake?” Mikaela asked.

“Last they texted they were waiting at the border.”

“You think they’ll make it?” Tucker shrugged.  

 A man in black camo and body armor standing at the police line pointed with two fingers at Mikaela, then beckoned for them to come forward. “Moral support?” she asked Tucker.

“Seems only fair. And I got the last one.” Tucker followed her towards the police line.

“Go home,” he said coldly, from behind a set of dark sunglasses.

“Respectfully, sir, this country is my home.”

“Unless you live outside of this courthouse, you’re trespassing.”

“This is a public street. And a public sidewalk. You’re claiming authority you don’t have.”

“My authority starts and stops where I say it does,” he said, bristling. “In two minutes, my men are going to clear this street. We’d prefer if it was clear already.”

Mikaela glanced back over her shoulder. She was proud to see an army of parents and students, some not yet old enough to drive, all standing shoulder to shoulder.

“They say children are the future. Looks to me like the future is pissed off, unafraid, and coming whether you like it or not. You can’t beat it back. All you can do is prove just how antiquated the way of doing things you represent is.”

“I think you’re wrong. Just as soon as they get those cameras set up, we’re going to beat a hundred different shades of shit out of your little friends. And I got news for you: beating up people the folks at home are scared of is as American as apple pie. My grandpops had to buff ni- black blood out of his boots; dad’s came home caked in blood and spit from sp-” he paused a moment. “Cute. Keeping me from calling a spade a spade won’t carry the day. You and yours are just one more minority needs to be put in their place; my President will put a goddamned medal on me for this.”

“You know you’re going to die alone, unloved and unmourned, right?” Mikaela asked.

“Trying to tell me you’re some kind of psychic now.”

“No, I can just tell from assholes. You’re wrong about people. They can be scared, even bigoted, some of the time. But you don’t beat children on TV and have your wife and daughter look at you the same way after.”

“How’d you know I have a daughter?” he asked, a ragged edge creaking in his voice.

“Tucker is psychic.”

“Though she should stress,” Tucker said, with his hands up, “there’s no threat in that revelation, overt or implied. Your wife and daughter are just too good for you. You’ve known it for a while, now Stacey; keeps you up at night, wondering if today will be the day they figure it out, too- or if they’re smarter than you, like you fear, and have known longer than you. Today will be that day; there’s no coming back from this- this isn’t something you’re doing for your country, but in spite of it, spiting its ideals. Of course, you could prove yourself wrong, right here, right now. I just read people, not the future. You can be the kind of man your family wants- they kind they deserve. But not if you’re coming home with kids’ blood on your boots.”

He looked at his watch, then pantomimed a yawn. “Hope you ladies had as much fun as I did.”

“Ladies,” Mikaela said, raising her fists.

“No,” Tucker said, raising his hand as the agent turned. He stopped a moment later, and back towards them, as his groin moistened noticeably through his pants.

“You bitch,” he said, his hand starting towards his holstered sidearm. His arm stopped, and shook violently, before going limp.

“I might have made him forget how to control his bladder. Probably temporarily. And put his arm to sleep.”

“I love you more than I should, given our circumstances.”

“And who could blame you?” Tucker asked.

“What happened to treating our abilities like a use of lethal force.”

“They just watched their commander wet himself in front of a couple of college girls. That was worth getting shot over.”

“I hope you still feel that way in two minutes,” Mikaela said with a wince.

Fifty-Three

“I’m beginning to worry we got stood up,” Rui said into his radio. A moment later, a bullet struck the wall behind him, sending flecks of wood and paint into his hair. “Crap, I’ve been spotted.”

“I got you,” Ben said, shaking the agent with the rifle off his feet. “Maybe they got spooked. We made a lot more noise than we intended.”

“I hope not,” Rui said. “Otherwise we’re all going to spend the rest of our lives doped up in Guantanamo- and not even the fun kind of doped up.”

“Why so moody? We can just run away again. I think I might prefer life on the road.”

“You just enjoy subsisting on a diet that’s 90% burrito.”

“I do.”

“Yeah, but it’s not kind to those who live downwind of you,” Sonya said.

“And I’m moody because I can fly, you yutz,” the barrier around the lawn collapsed under the tread of a tank, “and knew that was coming.”

“Apparently he got his parade of tanks after all,” Ben said, swallowing hard as two more tanks rolled up beside it. “Why does it always have to be tanks?”

“I hate to sound defeatist but we might- just might– have bit off more than we can chew this time,” Sonya said.

“Okay, we needs to stop talking,” Rui said, “because the more we talk the worse it gets.”

“I know you’re going to blame me for this, but I could hear it even before you said anything,” Ben said. Then they heard it, too, the sound of an attack helicopter in the air. “I assume we’re still not willing to use lethal force, right? Cause if not, our options are becoming surrender or run- and that second window is shutting quickly.”

“I-”    

“Down!” Sonya yelled, and tackled Rui to the ground as a rocket flew overhead, striking the side of the tank.

“You do know that he can turn to a gas, and the rocket would have passed through him, right?” Ben asked. “Meanwhile here I am, all distressedly damsely.”

“I might as well just run myself into a brick wall, for all the good I’d have done,” she said, pushing herself off Rui.

“Hey, it’s the thought that counts,” he said, as Ben helped him off the ground. The sound of gunfire brought them back to the seriousness of the situation. “They, uh, don’t seem to be shooting at us.”

“They’re not shooting, period,” Ben said.

“No,” Raif said, emerging from a stand of trees. “They’re being shot at.”

“I’m a little conflicted,” Ben said.

“He’s not,” Sonya said, pointing at Raif’s crotch. “In fact, he seems downright thrilled to see you.” There was a noticeable- and growing- bulge in his pants.

“Oh, shit, Sonya,” Ben said, and hit him with a concentrated vibration that sent him rolling backward. He came to a violent stop, and the explosive shredded his pants.

Sonya doubled over, chortling. “What? That was a scream.”

“It wasn’t funny when you did it to me, either,” Ben said. “Though it still hurt less than waxing; after the first day, anyway.”

“It was a tiny amount of anti-matter. It just wasn’t a small force field.”

“You bitch,” Raif said, struggling to his feet.

“Maybe I should have used more boom boom,” Sonya said.

Raif sprayed a burst of fire over their heads. “Little help,” Ben asked.

Rui set fire to the stand of trees Raif was near, forcing him to leap out of the way of a burning branch as it fell. He kept firing prone. Ben sent more shockwaves through the ground, but ducked when a round flecked him with bark.

“Okay, now the Secret Service is shooting at us,” Sonya said.

“They’re shooting at us from both sides,” Rui said. “Maybe we didn’t think this through.”