Tag: Breed 3

“For a while you made me really self-conscious,” Anita whispered as they made their way through a thick layer of brush. “I’d seen you track a man by the distinct tang of his body odor for thirty miles. I couldn’t imagine hygiene that would be good enough for you.”

“I remember that,” Mai said. “And I remember stopping you.”

“You did,” Anita said, nodding. “You told me the smell of blood from scrubbing away so much of my skin was distracting. You kind of sort of implied it drove you crazy, like you were part Great White or something. In the moment, I had to fight a laugh, because I was about 85% certain you were joking… but then there was a 13% chance you meant it, whether or not it was actually true.”

“That doesn’t add up to 100%,” Rox noted from behind them.

“No,” Anita agreed. “The rest was the possibility she was just sleep-deprived or doped up. They really weren’t all that judicious with the pharmaceuticals. Especially not with her. If she started to get loopy, her body would take over and start dismantling whatever they put in her system. On a good day the techs could ride that line and keep her fuzzy. On a bad day they’d pump her full of enough tranqs to kill a whole herd of tatankas.”

“The trucks?” Rox asked.

“I hate the young,” Mai said.

“Yeah, well at least you still get to look and feel vital. I have to hate the young and feel like I’m sixty.”

“You aren’t?” Mayumi and Rox asked at the same time.

“I hate the young-looking just as much,” Anita amended.

Mayumi held up her hand, and her voice became an even quieter whisper. “There’s the entrance. Guard’s been here for hours.”

Through the brush they could see a small concrete building carved into the side of a stone outcropping, noticeable only because of the man in black paramilitary gear standing out front of it and the squared corners where the concrete met the rock. “How…” Rox started.

Mayumi glared at her. “The surrounding air reeks of his bad breath. And his cologne. It’s a cheap Old Spice knock-off; offensively spiced. From the build-up, given that the wind is pretty mild tonight, he’s been patrolling around this area for hours to waft that much of his stink through the air.”

“You see why I got all crazy about hygiene?” Anita asked.

“Yeah,” Rox said. “I’m beginning to wonder if I put on deodorant this morning, just as a first point of self-consciousness.”

“Not enough,” Mayumi said, “but that’s fine. All of you stink. The human baseline is stink. And most of the time, I just tell my nose to be less acute so I don’t have to drown in it.”

“I guess it makes sense you could do that,” Anita said.” Much more sense than either of us trying to Howard Hughes our way to a good smell.”

“It’s pretty much not possible. Even most smells that are pleasant to the human nose are cloying to mine. It’s like having someone spritz perfume directly up my nose.”

“And the kid’s smell?” Rox asked.

“Weaker. But it ends here. We’re probably lucky, that he’s a pretty rank kid, and that the weather’s been mild, or there might not have been a trace of him.”

“Crap,” Rox said. “That means we need to break in there. Which means I should get in touch with Laren, and see if she can get us any intel on what’s behind that ominous-looking metal door. Could be we need a plan. Might even need to wait for the rest of our team to show.”

“No,” Mayumi said tensely, overlapping with Anita.

“We’re not waiting.”

“Yeah,” Rox said. “I kind of figured you’d both say that. So let me make a phone call, and see what, if anything, we can do to make it so we’re not charging in there completely blind.”

“Isn’t blind luck your thing?”

“I don’t doubt that I will walk out of there relatively unscathed. But it’s not a blanket immunity for everyone who shared a bagel with me. The two of you could take a bullet two steps in; hell, my ability sometimes makes that more likely, if the bullets ricochet away from me. So we’ve got to be smart.”

“I’m not worried,” Mayumi said. “I’m very difficult to kill. And I don’t think either of us would miss her all that much,” she said, nodding towards Anita.

“As the most likely woman to die in a fool-hardy, rushed plan, I’m all for us getting our ducks in a row,” Anita said. “Or for just sending Mayumi in to sort shit out.”

“Now where have I heard that one before,” Mai said, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s not my fault you’re virtually indestructible,” Anita said with a shrug. “If I could shrug off gunshot wounds, regrow limbs and just generally not be bothered by getting the hell kicked out of me, I’d volunteer to go in alone.”

“No you wouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t, but I am the kind of person who would claim that as a defense mechanism.”

“Okay. I’m making an executive decision,” Rox said, taking out her phone. “I’m calling Laren. You two don’t kill each other until I’m off the phone.”

“Does that mean we can’t start fighting while she’s on the phone, or just no killing blows until then?” Anita asked. “Don’t tempt me,” Mayumi said.

“I was really looking forward to taking the evening off,” Mikaela said, “soaking in the tub and eating precisely the amount of donut holes that would be decadent but still ladylike.”

“I’ve seen you eat donut holes,” Tucker said with a grin, “it’s all the former with absolutely none of the latter.”

“To be fair, I was eating them off of you, at the time; hard to be dignified when snuffling a donut hole out of your lover’s belly button like an amorous truffle pig.”

“I’m just going to remind everyone that I’m here, a blood relative, then do my best to go into catatonic shock,” Iago said.

“Sorry, little brother,” Tucker said. “I thought she’d take the L, without the tour down Lesbian Lane.”

“That’s what we used to call your-“

Iago jammed his hands over his ears and started loudly practicing his scales.

“That was a little mean,” Demi said.

“But also a little funny,” Drake said. “To me, a good ratio of mean to funny.”

“Can we focus?” Izel asked.

“With this group?” Tucker asked, and shrugged. “But tell them your idea, anyway.”

“Okay. ICE are a bunch of bigoted assholes, right?”

“Are we sure there aren’t good people on both sides?” Drake asked sardonically. “The President did insist that was the case.”

“He also insisted that if his daughter weren’t a blood relative they would definitely be dating,” Demi said. “Which is fucked on every level- all the levels.”

“My point,” Izel asserted, “is that they’re itching for a war. What they want, more than anything, is for an excuse to start shooting- and I don’t think they stop once they startr. They want us to step a toe out of line, so they can kill us indiscriminately, and hide behind either ‘National Security’ or ‘Self Defense.’ So we can’t give them an excuse. Which means we can’t have a direct confrontation. It probably means we need to take a step even further than that, and say that our offensive cannot seem like an offensive.”

“An inoffensive offensive sounds good on paper,” Drake said, “but it’s also linguistic gibberish. What are you actually saying?”

“Deniable operations,” she said, knowingly. “Not just in the sense that we can deny a Breed was involved… but in the sense that we can deny there was an operation at all. So we subtly fuck with their equipment, their logistics- everything.”

“We’ve got some thoughts,” Tucker said. “Ryan and several of the technopaths are already working hard to fuck up their intel streams and communications. The day of, they plan to take down the entire phone grid, to make sure they can’t coordinate or call for back-up.”

“Though the impressive part there is it will be filtered chaos; he thinks they can leave emergency calls intact, and filter out routine conversations.”

“That’s a good start,” Drake said. “Now how can we help.”

“I have some thoughts about that…” Izel said, smiling mischievously.

“It’s cold,” Mayumi said, her breath visibly hanging in the air.

“That’s Canada for you,” Anita said. “Except that weird freak part that’s warm for some reason. The Savage Land.”

“I think you mean the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia.”

“You’re not fooling me. Okanaga is in Japan. I’m pretty sure we ran a mission there once, and crawled from izakaya to izakaya.”

“That was Okinawa and- I can’t do this with you right now. No,” she said, glaring, “I won’t do this with you, ever.”

“Too close to feeling fun?” Anita asked.

“This is weird,” Rox said, turning to Mayumi. “I think you said ten words the entire time we were at school together. And that was, nearly bantering.”

“I’m trying to use my words, instead of my fists,” Mai said. “Anita’s a particular challenge, in that regard.”

“Trust me, I know.” Anita’s mouth dropped open. “But she’s… her heart’s usually in the right place.”

“No,” Mai said. “You’re in the right place. For whatever angle she’s playing.”

Anita stopped, her balled fists shaking. “That’s enough,” she said, louder than she meant to be. She spun around, fast enough she caught even Mai by surprise. “Why are you so goddamned angry at me?”

“Should I?” Rox gestured in the general direction of away.

“No. Because if she makes good on her threats I at least want a witness that I was trying to reason with her. So tell me, Mai. Do you think I had any more idea than you what I was signing up for? Do you think the Canadian government were any more candid with me about the nature of the clandestine, illegal, unethical experimentation they were going to put all of us through? Do you think I was somehow in on the joke that ruined both our lives, or that I was somehow so much less naive than you that I’m responsible for what happened? You were older than me, for Christ’s sake-” her gaze flicked angrily towards Rox, “shut up, I know she’s aging better than I am.” She turned her attention back to Mayumi, and became louder still, “So tell me, aside from being in command of missions slightly more often than you were, what the fuck about me makes you so homicidally pissed off?”

Mai closed her eyes, and took in a long, deep breath, which she held, and continued holding, for what must have been ten seconds. Finally she let it out through grit teeth. She took another, this time shallower. “That’s a fair question,” Mai said. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe why I’m so upset, maybe why I’m training so much of that upset at you, is because you coped a lot better than I did. You joked, you laughed, you found a way to get through the day to day that I couldn’t. Some of that was… me,” she swallowed, “but some of it was what they made me do. They forced me to forget everything. Who I was. What I’d done. How they were able to control my body at the molecular level, or what that felt like- how vulnerable- how violated– that made me feel.” Her voice was hollow, ragged, like a drop of rain would shatter her. “But over time, the process worked worse and worse, like trying to grow scar tissue over an existing scar. It wouldn’t hold. I was remembering more and more, and it was driving me out of my damned mind. And it seemed like the less well I held together, the better you seemed to be coping. Out of all of us, you seemed like you were the one who was functional, if not entirely sane. But I can smell it on you now. See it in the little tremors the stock human eye isn’t sensitive enough to see. You’re a wreck, on the level of the emotional disaster I was then- even now. You’ve just always been better at hiding it.” She took in another deep breath, staring angrily at the ground, before piercing Anita with her eyes. “I don’t like you,” she concluded. “But you’re right. It’s not you I’m angry with. Somehow that doesn’t make me like you more.”

“Still not counting that as a joke.”

“I’ll try harder next time.”

“I feel like I’ve missed something,” Rox said. “Maybe a lot of somethings. But we’re here to track down a kid. So stop sniffing Anita, and see if you-”

“I found him already,” Mai said. “Right where neither of us wanted to find him.” She pointed north by northwest. “Worse, there’s definitely a government installation there.”

“How-”

“Certain supplies. No one would buy them in that combination other than a government purchaser, trying overly hard to get the biggest bang for the public buck. Damn place reeks of government cheese.”

“Is it a brie?” Anita asked. “I’ve got a really nice Okinawan Valley wine that would go great with a brie.”  

“If you kill her, I’m not helping you dig the hole,” Rox said.

“Fine,” Mayumi said, and started in the direction of the boy’s scent.

“That was good work, everybody,” Tucker said, as people were already filing out of the room. “Right?” she asked, more quietly, of Ryan.

“We got everything we needed, and quickly. Whether or not it ends up being useful is another question entirely; I’m not convinced Drump couldn’t get away with molesting his daughter on live television and get a pass; he’s certainly said he wants to in public without consequence.”

“That’s… an awful thought to have shared.”

“I know, and somehow most Republicans approve of him.” He gave Tucker a sly grin. “But we’ve done what we can. Today’s a win. Tomorrow, as per usual,” he spun his wheelchair in a circle, “is more open ended. Let me know if anything else comes up.”

“Of course. And thanks. I can’t stress how big of a help you’ve been.”

“Sure you could,” he said with a smile, “but we’re both busy, arguably important enough people to have better things to do. Don’t be a stranger.”  

Tucker turned for the door, and didn’t see the woman there until she nearly stepped into her. It was clear from the look on her face she’d been waiting for Tucker.

“Can I…”

“Sure,” Tucker said. “Um, it’s Izel, right?”

“Yeah,” Izel said.

“That’s unique.”

“It is… it actually means unique.”

Tucker smiled. “What’s up?”

“I got hassled by ICE the other day. I was in town and… guy was a real piece of shit. I’ve been carrying copies of all of my documents in my pocket since 2015- you don’t forget a Presidential candidate calling people from your father’s country rapists while announcing his run- it’s all downhill from there. But he still took his sweet as time rifling through my wallet, verifying every piece of information on my ID, my birth certificate and my Social Security card. And, well, I know it’s rude, but I kind of found myself rifling through his head while he was rifling through my wallet.”

“Kind of feel like him hassling you sort of pushes you outside of the realm of social niceties, but to each their own. But what did you rifle upon?”

“Well, my paperwork was rock solid, and since they were obvious duplicates he knew I had originals back at my place. And he didn’t feel the need to push it with me because they’ve got something on the books. There’s an apartment complex off campus. Used to house seasonal workers, before the school blew up and student sprawl happened. Now it rents to some of the poorer students, mostly transplants from other countries. The school’s very thorough with paperwork, so they’ve all got student visas, but the ICE team decided they could kill two birds with one stone: not only getting rid of Breed, but brown kids at the same time. Their plan is to sweep up all the students living there, and burn all of their documents. Some of them could probably get duplicates before deportation orders could get through, but how many of them would even bother fighting to stay after that?”

“That’s awful.”

“Yeah… I thought about making him forget his potty training, but I realized that could tip them off about us knowing. And I think… I think they’re really overconfident. I don’t think they recognize that kids that age, some of whom speak very shakey English as a second language, some of whom come from really unstable home countries… they might not just roll over when they kick the door in.”

“Fuck,” Tucker said. “I hadn’t even considered that. That’s just a complete lose-lose, no matter which way it goes.”

“That’s what I thought. And that’s why I came to you. We have to do something. Right?”

“Absolutely.”

Oops. I forgot to update yesterday. So I’ll do a Friday post, instead.

Thirty-Seven

Ben was sitting in the front bus, just behind Sonya. She was trying not to let on how anxious she was driving at night. “You’re doing great,” he soothed. “And remember, slow and steady. Right now we’re ahead of where they’re looking for us. So long as we don’t draw attention, we should be fine. You’ve just got to get us there in one piece.”

“Yeah,” she said, wincing, “I’m not entirely sure this drive shaft is in one piece, but I’m trying.”

“You’re doing fine.” His phone rang, and he answered it without checking the ID. “Excuse me. Hello?”

“Hell of a night you kids have had,” Laren said.

“Where are you? We could have used the help.”

“I am helping,” Laren said. “I’m currently in a caravan of buses, heading towards Mexico- making sure we get enough attention to pull focus off of your merry band. There’s another contingent, from Breed Lives Matter, laying a trail west. There’s some silver-hairs going to lay a trail east, if they can get enough of their VW buses actually rolling at the same time. Maybe if you’d given us a little more advanced warning we might have been able to give you more help- but I can’t fault you for compartmentalizing, either.”

“There was a… degree of improvisation involved,” Ben said coyly.  

“Under normal circumstances, I’d probably kick and scream and otherwise make you feel paradoxically small for your house of a man. But your luck seems to be holding- knock on wood. The flack they had covering PR for that ICE facility didn’t drink enough java before they talked to the press and flamed out, hard– couldn’t answer if it was a jail break or if the kids had help, couldn’t stick to the ‘Breed terrorists’ talking points, especially when trying to explain how there weren’t even any injuries amongst the ICE staff. This went from the kind of story that would be sanitized by the time it hit the national press to truly viral, breaking out faster than the speed of federal deception. Still leaves you in an… interesting position. The good news, is you got a lot of people talking. Eyeballs on this means fewer things will slide- that means better treatment, access to medical care, fewer kids getting molested. Yeah, that one’s been happening… The bad is they’re beefing up security- not just here, but everywhere- pulling in enough backup to where I don’t think we’re going to be able to pull off an encore. But again, this is mostly mitigated by the good. People are paying attention to it, now, and in enough numbers, so the worst of it might just sort itself out. The rest… the rest might have to wait for a regime change. Which means November 2020. Unless you’ve got other ideas about that- which I’m not foolhardy enough to discuss without a lot of liquor in me- and as much plausible deniability as I can have- which would not include a fucking cell phone- not even a pair of burners.”

“Should you be calling me, under the circumstances?”

“You kidding me? I’ve got a half-dozen technopaths back at the school lighting signal flares you could see from Mars; and one making sure the NSA never hears one solitary peep of this call. CBP are half-bright enough they might find a third of those breadcrumbs we’re choosing to leave, and maybe the operational competence to track half of that. They’re going to be so busy focused where we want them they’re not even going to get a chance to start looking where we don’t want them looking.”

“And if you’re wrong?” Ben asked, concern bleeding into his voice.

“I’d give any two of those kids, plucked out at random, even odds of ending any stand-off, if they managed to find you. They were cowed because they’re kids, because they thought the world was good and fair and their parents would be allowed to come back for them. There’s no cramming that genie back in the bottle. Those ICE dumbfucks were sitting on an atom bomb, jerking off over how superior they think they are- the delusion of which being positive proof of just how inferior they truly are.” She sighed, “But the last thing you need is to hear more from my soapbox. It’s going to be a long night. Take care of yourselves, and those kids. I’m not scared for you; I worry for any fool who would try to hurt those kids while you’re watching out for them. Just… don’t take your shit out on somebody else. They might deserve it, but you’ll be the one who carries it. And you don’t deserve that.” “You take care, too,” Ben said. “And be safe.”

The duplicate Mikaela checked her watch. It had been fifteen minutes since the original her left the campus, which meant that whatever else happened, this couldn’t be traced back to her and land her in a jail cell. Through the slightly ajar bathroom door she watched as the guard loped slowly down the hall, swinging a few dozen keys at the end of a retractable chain and whistling softly.

Mikaela turned to the version of her in a bunny suit. She was wearing so much makeup her skin had a flaking, otherworldly quality to it. “You are just a nightmare,” she said.

“Thank you… I think. You ready?”

“Waiting on you.”

Bunny shoved the bathroom door open hard enough it clacked loudly into the rubber stopper that kept it from hitting the wall. The guard frowned, turning slowly towards the sudden noise. Bunny just stood there, staring at him.

The guards eyes went wide, and he spun on his heels. “No,” he said, glancing over his shoulder, “nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope…” he said, as he walked briskly away. Bunny gave her a thumbs up before skipping down the hallway after him.

“Huh,” Mikaela said. “Figured he’d chase her, but…” she shrugged, and started down the restricted hallway. She used Liz’s key card on the door, and entered inside. She could hear a radio at the far side of the room, and two men chatting idly. She looked around the room, for things she might be able to use. The room was a series of corridors of server racks, with a strange floor material she suspected was there to prevent static discharge. There was an extinguisher attached to the wall, which in a pinch she could use as a weapon, but she’d never been much of a fighter, and even if she could win against two men, she’d leave a lot of blood and questions in her wake. No, this called for a greater degree of subtlety. There was an empty desk near the wall, just under a fire alarm, and she thought that could work.

She pulled the alarm, and ducked under the desk.

She heard a chair push out from across the room. “It’s probably another false alarm,” one of the men said.

“Or it’s a drill. And then we spend thirty minutes getting yelled at by the ERT captain again. Come on. We can get a mocha from the cart on the way back. And it’s an excuse to stretch our legs on company time. Besides, we’re sitting on our thumbs until those hard drives get here, anyway.”

The other man sighed for a good ten seconds before saying, “Fine. But you’re buying the mochas.”

“And you’re springing for Danishes. That way my husband can’t complain I broke Keto.” Mikaela counted to twenty after the door shut, before crawling out from under the desk. The door she’d come through opened and she froze, still mostly hidden behind the desk as the guard walked through. The opposite door opened. “Need my coat if I’m getting the mochas. Plus it looked like it might rain.”

“We’ve got to evacuate,” the guard said, stress still evident in his voice.

“You okay? You sound…”

“Having a rough morning…” the guard said.

“Come on. I’ll get you a mocha, too. Always find that calms my nerves.” The far door shut again, and Mikaela exhaled.

She waited behind the desk for another thirty seconds, convinced the moment she was finally in the open there would be another intrusion. Eventually, she came out of hiding, and ran over to the chairs the techs had been sitting in. She looked around, trying to find a node or something to tap into. She’d brought a handful of cables, to cover most of her bases, but if there weren’t any connection to the outside world she was going to have serious issues. Plan B then was to grab as many drives as she could and carry them out- but the risks there were a lot greater.

Then she spotted it, an ancient looking desk phone. She turned it over, and discovered it was so old that it connected with a regular phone line. She followed the phone line to the wall, and replaced the cable with a longer one. She was able to find a jack in the nearest server rack, and plugged in. From there, she plugged the phone into the server, then dialed Ryan’s number.

It rang twice before he picked up. “I was beginning to wonder if you needed us to run digital interference,” he said.

“Had to jump through a few hoops, was all,” Mikaela said. “How’s the connection?”

“Not ideal, in that if I had fiber we’d be done already, but 35Mbps is better than dial up- 618 times better, actually. And I’ve had the telepaths and technopaths here all morning. We worked the kinks out of networking our minds together while we were waiting- we’re essentially the world’s most advanced super-computer- but we are writing to a physical server, too, so we have something to share once it’s over.”

“Shouldn’t you get to it, then?” Mikaela asked.

“Oh,” he said with a chuckle, “like DSL, you can use the phone line while you’re downloading. I’m multitasking. We’ve found all the relevant files. We just need a few more minutes to grab them all.”

“Do I have minutes?” she asked. 

“Well, given that Klaus’s cell phone indicates he’s still standing outside, and he said he wanted a mocha once they let them back in, yeah. You should have plenty of time. And if it’s starting to get dicey I’ll crash the credit card reader at the coffee stand.”

“How does it look?”

“It looks like we’ll get a chance to see if Don is actually Teflon, or if there are limits to his ability to warp reality through the power of massive quantities of bullshit. Actually… when you say it like that, you don’t think he’s a Breed, do you?”

“Given how much he hates us- and anyone else even remotely different from himself, probably not. But that is a question that’s going to keep me up with nightmares. So thanks for that.”

“It’s what I’m here for. That and the wire fraud. You can disconnect, by the way. And exit by the north doorway. That guard is circling back around the other way again.”

“GPS?” “Yep. Anyone with a phone in their pocket might as well be yelling their current location and trajectory to me. Anyway, we’ll see you- or at least some version of you- later. Take care.”

Angela was the last person through the door into the warehouse. She started when Ben began to talk, using his power to slightly amplify the volume of his already large voice. “We’re going to be piling onto 4 buses.” He gestured to 4 decommissioned school buses behind them, their paint fading and their school insignia blacked out. “Anyone with experience driving a big truck, come stand over here. Sonya, you want to coordinate with our possible drivers?

“Sure,” she said, and nodded.

“The rest of you, we raided the local dollar stores, lost and founds and donation centers for clothes. Find something that fit as best you can and dump your uniforms in one of these red, metal barrels. Cris, if you can oversee people getting changed.”

“Happily,” he said, walking towards the piles of clothes spread across the floor.

“Rui? You’re sure we’re good with these buses?” Ben asked.

“The church we borrowed them from was very cooperative. Even set us up some digital footprints, so if the cops ask about the camp we’re busing to, they’ll find social media posts about it. They wanted to do more- but I talked them down. We get to leave town, no reason for them to expose themselves to harassment from Drump’s thugs after we’re gone.”

“That reminds me,” Ben said, turning back towards children. “If anybody asks, we’re congregants of the Church of the Good Shepherd, and we are going to a Campground called Lakawana, just over the Canadian border.”

“Is somebody going to ask?” Sonya asked, sauntering back over to him.

“Hopefully not,” Ben said. “How’s our luck holding?”

“We have five potential drivers. Two of which are underage-and I mean don’t have a learner’s permit kinds of underage. But they’ve driven buses, and in her case,” she pointed at a very short girl about 14, “drove one of the last Kodak runs with her dad. I figure we put the most experienced drivers at the front and back of the caravan, and the others will cope.”

“And who are the most experienced drivers?” he asked.

“One, I think, is going to be me. Drove a tractor a couple of times at my grampa’s ranch in Wyoming. Only hit one fence post, which was pretty good, since I couldn’t see over the wheel at the time.”

“You’re not filling me with confidence.”

“Well… next time maybe we should try and liberate some actual adults at the same time, because we’ve got slim pickings. But I can handle driving stick; the rest is really just about remembering that a bus is overlong and turns like it- and can’t be taken through most drive-thrus.”

“I’d feel better if we had Rox’s luck,” Ben said. “Wouldn’t we all?” Rui said with a shrug. “But the plan’s solid. While we’re still in this state, people will assume we mean the black church we borrowed the buses from. Closer to the border, there’s a different church with the same name- and I gave them a big donation to set up a potluck for us. If we pick up a tail, we stop in for a home-cooked meal. We don’t, and we call and tell them to enjoy the food without us. It’s about as fool-proof as a plan like this can be- you know, without completely co-opting random chance. I never really thought about how much having Rox around was like cheating until we didn’t anymore. But we can do this. We’re going to do this. Because these kids deserve better than to be thrown in another fucking cage  And if it comes to the worse, there’s always plan C: I hop out of the bus and burn the tires off any approaching police vehicle, and damage any choppers to the point they have to set them down.” Ben stared at him, stunned. “I meant what I said. These kids aren’t going back. .”

There was only one locked stall in the women’s bathroom. Mikaela approached the door, and tapped out five knocks to the rhythm of ‘Shave and a Haircut.” After a moment, two knocks came back in reply. “Am I in there?” Mikaela asked.

The door unlatched, and her duplicate emerged. “That would have been a really weird question to ask if I wasn’t you,” Mikaela’s duplicate said. “I assume, from you being here, that the plan went awry.”

“Quite awry. I’m going to lunch. I… think their physicist might come to the school to continue his research.”

“That’s… not the plan as I remembered it.”

“No. It’s a new plan, or at least an additional embroidery to the old one, for which we’re going to need a little more help.” She opened the locket, and the bunny dupe climbed back out of it.

“I kind of expected she’d have changed by now,” the first duplicate said.

“I hoped she hadn’t. Because here’s the plan. We’re going to put up her bunny ear hood, and cake on makeup. Then she’s going to distract the guard. When he gives chase, you can sneak down the restricted hallway and give the technopaths access to the servers. Once Bunny gets far enough away, she ducks into a bathroom and climbs back into the locket,” she handed it over to the duplicate. “If possible, I’d like the locket back- so try to make it to that first bathroom. Otherwise I can probably pick it up later at the lost and found.”

“I’m not thrilled with being bait,” Bunny said.

“I would think of you more as a wascally wabbit,” Mikaela said.

“Which makes the guard Elmer Fudd,” she said, “okay, I’m sold.”

Mikaela put down a toilet seat cover, then guided her to sit down on the toilet. She handed her duplicate her foundation. Then she used some pins to conceal Bunny’s hair, while holding the hood and ears in place. “So what are we going for?” Mikaela’s duplicate asked. “On a scale from one to an extra in Rocky Horror?”

“Oh, we’re giving her the full Frank Furter.”

“Uh… is this the kind of thing you should be asking my consent for?” Bunny Mikaela asked.

The duplicate sighed. “Feety pajamas and blissfully unaware of Rocky Horror… it doesn’t feel like we’re even duplicates.”

“Well, not all duplicates are created equal; not all parallel earths, either. Our Rocky Horror was basically fascist propaganda, so I never saw it, just like I never saw Birth of a Nation.”

“That’s… weird.”

“Apparently otherwise just as transgressive, at least by reputation… but life’s too short.”

“Okay,” the duplicate said, “you need to stop talking. And it’s mostly so I don’t jab out your eye with this eyeliner pencil, and not just because I find your entire reality kind of depressing. Though it’s also that.”

Cris found it strange being behind Angela’s invisible wall. It added a shimmering layer to the world, like looking through a fish tank filled with clear water. He reminded himself that while he could see out, no one could see in as ICE agents streamed out of the warehouse, forming up on the opposite side of the street. Their weapons swept across the gathered children as they searched in vain. When the barrel landed on Angela her breath went out of her, and she swayed.

“What’s wrong?” Cris whispered.

“Can’t… keep it up,” she said, straining. “But I think,” she took in a broken breath, “I can tip over the wall onto them.”

“Wait,” he said. “Don’t. If we let them make us hate them the way they hate us, they win.”

“No,” she croaked. “They only win if we use our power on them like they’ve used theirs on us. I can hate them however deeply I need to get through this sick world they’ve trapped us in- and if I have to a crush a few of them, that’s still me choosing not to crush as many of them as I can.” The anger in her words was undercut by her growing weakness; she was barely on her feet as she finished, and gasped, stumbling forward, nearly falling into the street.

Cris held up his hand, and leaned towards her, whispering in her ear. “Let me try something,” he said. “Can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner.” His hands started to glow- a glow that didn’t penetrate beyond Angela’s invisible wall- a glow that entered her back, and seemed to flicker in her eyes. An instant later her back straightened, and she squared her feet.

“I’m good,” she said. “Now get the show on the road. I can’t hold this all night.”

Cris pointed towards the hole, even though it didn’t look much like one. Cris, or at least a figment that looked like him, peered out through the storm drain.

“There!” One of the ICE agents yelled, shining a light in after him, and firing off a volley of shots.

Cris heard himself yell, “Come on, we’re out of time,” from the storm drain, before the street collapsed inward.

“Get this manhole open,” the agent in charge yelled, and wedged a knife under the cover to lift it enough to remove it. He started to climb down, before stopping abruptly. “Shit. Cave in blocked the tunnels. Call the NSA. We’re going to need to know where the nearest access points are.” He climbed back out, and two agents slid the cover back in place. “Let’s go,” he barked. “We’re going to need to split into multiple teams. Think the sewers here are on a grid, so we’ll need blocks in all of the cardinal directions…” he trailed off as the agents filed back inside.

“How we doing this, boss?” Angela asked.

“If they’re massing at the nearest manholes,” Ben said, “that means we just have to make it a few blocks. We do that, then head diagonally… we should be able to evade them.”

“Can you keep us hidden while we move?” Cris asked Angela.

“I feel like I could bench press a moose right now.” “I’ll keep you juiced up. Ben, take point, since you know where we’re headed. Rui, Sonya, you’ve got the rear; if anything happens, you cover our escape. Angela and I will make sure everybody stays hidden. Everybody, we’re doing great. We’re almost home.”

Mikaela waited for the guard to leave, for him to point to the end of a hall and tell her, “Just beyond there,” and then go the other direction, so she could double back. But he stayed with her as they wended through the labyrinthine halls of the third floor. Half of the labs looked more like vaults, or like they opened into a submarine, complete with heavy, reinforced doors. “Feels like a prison,” the guard said around his gum. “A lot of these rooms are pressurized. One even creates a vacuum inside the lab.”

At the end of one of those halls, Mikaela spotted her duplicate, still winding her way towards the lab herself. “What’s this one?” Mikaela asked, stepping in front of the guard and drawing his attention to a strange looking door.

“Accoustics. Listen.” He tilted his ear towards the wall. Most of the labs they had passed were fairly quiet, but here it went a step beyond that, to a lack of any kind of noise whatsoever. “The entire lab is covered in foam triangles to soak up ambient sound. You’ll never really know earie silence until you stand in the middle of that lab at midnight.”

Mikaela glanced back down the hall, which was thankfully empty. The guard escorted her past another four labs before turning to a door and opening it. He held it for her, then stepped inside behind her. “Got one of your little lost sheep,” he said.

A man with sparse hair buzzed short to mask its thinning and thick glasses didn’t look up from his work, but said, “Ah, I’d heard from a little bird I’d finally be getting some assistance.”

“This is Ed,” the guard said. “See ya, Ed.”

“Edward,” he said, as the guard shut the door. “And he neglected to mention your name.”

“Mikaela.”

“And how do you feel about the militarized application of science?” he asked, again without looking up from his work.

“That kind of covers an overbroad swath. I don’t have a problem with medical science making war less deadly or debilitating. I do have an ethical concern where science makes it easier to kill people.”

He smiled, and pivoted towards her. “Science is apolitical. Aphilosophical. Amoral. All of those with an A. It isn’t ours to grapple with the ethics of how or why or if this technology can be used. We’re here to understand the laws undergirding it, probe the mysteries and answers it leads to.”

“But should it be? Should we ask whether we should, before we grapple with if we can? Because once we do- whatever we make, will be used- Pandora’s box is already irrevocably opened. Not asking the question first is how we become Death, destroyer of worlds.”

“I suppose Oppenheimer would agree with you, albeit in hindsight. Of course, essentially none of us will ever be personally responsible for as much devastation as he was- and that’s ignoring the forever lingering possibility of a nuclear exchange. But I would argue that ignorance is simply another box we open. Pandora’s box opens a slew of potentialities- but they are known– or at least knowable. The other box is filled with Lovecraftian horror, always hidden, always unknown, but nonetheless destructive.”

“That feels like a false equivalence.”

“There’s the rub, isn’t it?” he said with a smile. “We can’t know whether they’re equivalent, unless we measure. We can’t measure without opening the box. But, as a scientist, I take comfort in the idea that what is known can be dealt with, can be worked upon, can be solved. The unknown, by contrast, is always a surprise, always impossible to adequately prepare for. Perhaps I would be better at offering an example of this work.”

He turned toward the chrome object at the center of the room. “This egg is, for lack of a simpler way to explain it, a bridge between worlds. Not one we can traverse, not at present, but one which connects to other parallel worlds. It is, perhaps least messily understood as opening an artificial wormhole. It connects with other possibilities. A side effect, however, is that it has been shown to impact Breed abilities… which has led some of my colleagues to theorize that said abilities are tied to the multiverse. The specifics as to how aren’t understood, but there are some theories- that Breed tap into other realities through micro-wormholes, either drawing on exotic energy from parallel dimensions, or simply incorporating some genetic material from humanoid species with abilities on different but similar Earths. And of course, it could be an entirely mixed bag, too, with different methods accounting for different abilities.”

“You can shut down Breed with this.”

“Just their abilities. Leveling the playing field, as it were. But that’s honestly an accidental side impact. More importantly, understanding the nature of Breed abilities is essential. Because there will be a Breed with something approaching nuclear capabilities. Maybe they’d use that ability for good. Maybe they’d use it for ill. Most terrifyingly, maybe they would not be able to control themselves at all. That box, I’m afraid, is open, whether we care to look inside it; understanding might be the only thing that could save us all.”

“And who qualifies as ‘us’?” Mikaela asked bitterly.

“I mean Breed like you, and the rest of humanity.” He paused, refusing to let any indication of how he felt about the observation leak, waiting to see if she’d react. When she didn’t, he continued. “We’ve already seen Breed abilities that beggar the imagination. It is a mathematic probability that a Breed will be born with the power to tear the planet in half- the timing of it is the only real question. And if one who can is a mathematic certainty, and the Breed population is growing at an accelerated if not yet exponential rate, then it is only a matter of time before we reach someone who might– as in, someone with the power and the will to consider it; in that case, there is still the possibility their better angels save us, in the way that we have not had a nuclear war- yet. But again, as the Breed population does reach exponential growth- which the models suggest it will, and within my lifetime- it is only a matter of time before we have not just an individual who might destroy the world, but one who must– whether by conviction or an inability to control themselves.”

“And what would you do about it?”

“Do?” he asked, pondering. “I’m not interested in making that decision. I also don’t understand the problem well enough to know what possible solutions might look like.”

“And what if the answer was genocide? What if the only way to save humanity was murder on a mass scale.”

“I’ll point out, first, that the increasing growth of Breed populations suggests that, within a hundred years, your people are humanity. But to grapple with the question I think you’re truly asking, you cannot save humanity with inhumanity. If that appears to be the answer… then the answer is wrong, and you need to keep looking. Put another way, if you’re Truman, holding a nuclear warhead, Japanese intransigence at the end of the war might look like a nail to the hammer in your hand. But just because mass death is at hand, does not make it the only, leave alone the best, solution.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, skepticism peeking through her voice. “Because I’m positing the trolley problem, and it sounds like you’re shrugging.”

“No,” he said. “I’m stating that the hill the trolley’s on is of unknown length, and the trolley is traveling at an unknown speed. On a long enough timeline, we will barrel into someone, without question. But that situation doesn’t demand a way to murder only the few to save the many; that situation calls for inventing breaks.”

A smile crept over her lips. “Have you ever thought about teaching?”

“No. Students are, no offense, given your likely age- idiots. My talents would be wasted parroting a textbook to ingorami ninety percent of whom are incapable of understanding it.”

“I think you misunderstand. I’m suggesting something more in a research capacity. The foremost intelligences on the planet are Breed minds- they would be at your disposal. I’m saying you could continue your work- but without having to hand it immediately to jack-booted thugs who would definitely use it to stamp on the necks of people like me.”

“I’m… intrigued. What would you have me do?”

“You and I? We’ll go to lunch off site. Then we’ll go to the school, and you’ll meet some students. If you like what you see, you quit this job and work with them. All the research, none of the atomic bomb.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You come back to work tomorrow, and get back to destroying worlds. But first, where’s the nearest bathroom?”