The Next Chronicle (Book 2): Damage (6 page)

In an astoundingly short span of time the scene around the body changed. Rapid phone calls were exchanged with several federal agencies, all by Archer and ending with an establishment of jurisdiction by the OSA. Ray watched and listened, taking in the efficient transformation of the scene from simple body dump to potential ground zero.

All nonessential personnel were asked to leave, though Archer asked Ray to remain. In short order there were only a handful of people inside the enclosure, and no one within a hundred yards who wasn't under Archer's command.

Dr. Nunez, head of research and development and the smartest human being to ever live, had taken command of the crime scene technicians. Ray had never heard of Nunez doing field work, but given the circumstances, he wasn't terribly surprised.

Ray was standing near the door when a flash of bright light flared through it from the outside. The flaps parted seconds later as Kit and Christjansen entered. She glanced around the enclosure before spotting Ray, who waved her over.

“What's the situation?” she asked, her eyes taking in the handful of bodies working a short distance away. Archer was still engrossed in a phone call.

Ray nodded toward the body, now surrounded by half a dozen pieces of equipment. “Nunez is doing a bunch of tests, but the early evidence points to the dead guy having been moved through time.”

Kit swore. “Blue Box is the code for it,” she said. “I had to do some training about how dangerous time travel is supposed to be, and I had to sign a mountain of non-disclosure papers about it. Damn.”

Ray ran a hand through his hair. “So this is for real? There are Next out there who can time travel?”

Kit pursed her lips. “Yeah, but as far as I know it's only happened once.”

“Once? Why is there an entire protocol in place for it, then?”

“Because the result was the 2004 tsunami. The one that killed several hundred thousand people,” Kit answered grimly.

Ray gaped in horror. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Kit said. “The really scary thing is that no one knows who did it. The leading theory is that time travel isn't something Next can really do, but is actually a by-product of teleportation gone wrong or some other malfunction. Since it's so destructive, logic says it doesn't happen often.”

“You are quite right, Director Singh,” said a smooth voice.

Ray jumped. He had been so intent on listening to Kit that he hadn't heard the doctor move in behind him.

“Fortunately,” Nunez continued, politely ignoring Ray's reaction, “this does not appear to be a case of time travel, merely bad teleportation.”

Ray's eyebrows drew down. “But the evidence...”

“Was not what it appeared to be,” Nunez said. “An easy mistake to make given the circumstances, and one we should be thankful for.”

“What evidence?” Kit asked.

Nunez waved a hand at Ray. “I should get back to work, actually.”

Kit turned her attention back to Ray. “What evidence?” she repeated.

He pointed at the branch sticking out of the skull. “That was the first red flag. Most teleporters essentially open a gateway between two places. That stick is fused through the skull, though, as if the body had been broken down into energy and reformed.”

Kit nodded in understanding. “That's what happened with the earthquake that caused the tsunami. Somehow a huge chunk of foreign matter materialized right inside the weak spot in the crust, which set off the quake.”

Ray shrugged. “The other thing was that the body looks like it's been in the ground for a long time since most of the flesh is gone, but we found a smart phone in his hand that only came out four days ago. Oh, and the weird patterns of Surge energy I saw are apparently some kind of marker for teleportation and time travel. Nunez said matter that has been dematerialized always has predictable readings.”

He had listened to the techs chatter to each other as they studied the readings on their scanners. It was amazing how much you could learn by simple observation, so long as you kept quiet and listened.

“Do we have any idea whether this was intentional or not?” Kit asked.

Before Ray could form a response, Archer's voice cut across the makeshift room.

“The bad news is, this looks like a murder,” he said. The room fell silent except for the gentle hum and low beeps of busy machines. “The good news is that we already have a suspect.”

Half an hour later, Ray sprawled on the couch in Kit's office with a company laptop nestled beside him. While Archer remained at the site to oversee the removal of the body and every molecule of dirt touched by it, Ray had ridden back with Kit to get a head start on researching their suspect. Kit had given him use of her laptop while she darted off to shower, and Ray found himself fascinated by the hastily-gathered dossier.

The suspect's name was James Shane, though the idea of him merely being a suspect was deceptive. According to Nunez even the very small number of Next capable of teleportation had proved enough of a population for serious study of their abilities, and every one of them was different. The strangely geometric nature of the residual energy Ray had seen was like a fingerprint, every pattern unique to the Next who had done the teleportation. While the scanners used at the scene didn't interpret the pattern visually as Ray did, they were able to distinguish properties specific to records which matched James Shane.

Ray's interest didn't lie with how efficiently the analysts in Ops had put the file together—though they had done so in minutes—but instead with how unlikely a suspect Shane appeared to be at first glance. The man had only been registered with the OSA for two months, had no criminal record, and was apparently an artist of some note. A summary of his public online activity, complete with screen shots of conversations on social media, painted a very clear picture.

He was a nice guy. Then again, Ray had been much the same before his powers erupted in Fairmont.

The major difference was that Ray's powers had to be tightly controlled, while James Shane, like all other teleporters, had to focus to make his work. Which meant the location of the body and its partial dissolution was at least partly intentional. It was possible Shane had teleported the man beneath the ground on accident, causing his death by the accidental collision of two separate forms of matter trying to occupy the same space, but Ray had his doubts.

He heard Kit walking down the tight spiral stairs leading up to the small sleeping quarters and bathroom attached to her office.

“Anything new?” she asked as she entered the room, toweling her short hair as she walked.

“Let me check,” Ray said, backing out of the document and refreshing the file. “Looks like it,” he said, glancing at the new icons in the folder. “More background information, looks like some more recent stuff from the locals.” He opened that one, another summary report compiled from multiple sources.

Ray read through it quickly. It was ten pages, but much of that was reference material. Photos, documents, citations, and links to outside sources.

“Shit,” Ray said when he was finished. “You definitely need to read this.”

“That bad?” Kit asked.

“Yep,” he said. “Looks like our dead guy and James Shane had some pretty serious beef.”

“In what way?” Kit asked as she made her way to the couch.

Ray frowned. “The wallet we found with the body identified him as Robert Lile. The report here says James Shane moved back to Kentucky three weeks ago to help take care of his sister, who had been assaulted by three men at a party.”

Kit plopped onto the couch, shaking the whole thing. Ray smiled; he sometimes forgot that Kit outweighed him by a fair margin even though she was tiny and slim.

“Sexual assault?” Kit asked as she reached for the computer.

“Not according to the charges she filed,” Ray said, a sour feeling growing in his stomach. “But the pictures are pretty conclusive that she was at least attacked.”

He watched Kit as she scanned the files one after another. It took her far less time, and Ray wondered whether Kit realized how quickly she was changing. Their friendship was still nascent, a handful of months old, but even in that short time Ray could see the acceleration in Kit's powers. Four months ago she would have needed twice as long to read through all those documents, something he had seen firsthand many times as he sat in this very spot while they worked together.

If he were to put money on it, Ray would have guessed she knew even if she never talked about it. There were other signs, both obvious and subtle. Increases in strength were easy to spot if you knew to look for them. Noting the less and less frequent appearance of any sort of fatigue was harder, but Ray had caught that, too.

“Well,” Kit said after finishing the file, “at least Shane did the right thing and notified us when he moved here. It'll make our job a little easier.”

“I can understand where he's coming from,” Ray said. “His sister gets hurt so bad she needs help taking care of herself, and the guys who did it get out on bail.” Low anger boiled in the back of his head, but like his powers he kept a firm leash on it.

“I don't like it either,” Kit said with a sigh. “We don't have much of a choice, here. James Shane might not have meant to kill Robert Lile, but he had motive and we know his powers were involved. We have to err on the side of caution, even if it means protecting these assholes.”

Ray's mood darkened at the thought. “Just because it's the law doesn't mean it's right,” he muttered.

Kit's mouth drew into a disapproving line. “Innocent until proven guilty.”

“Funny,” Ray said as he stood to leave the room. “I never got a trial for Fairmont.”

He took a moment to catch the rare appearance of surprise on her face before leaving, letting the door swing shut silently behind.

Being in charge was a sword with many edges. Kit's natural instinct was to micromanage, though she didn't see it as such. She wanted to be out in the field going after James Shane. Had the man been a bigger threat, she would have. As it was, Shane was only likely to go after the men accused of brutalizing his sister. He wasn't much of a threat beyond that.

Being stuck at the facility meant she didn't have to personally safeguard the men who had, according to the excellent police work done by the Louisville department, almost without a doubt beat a young woman unconscious, breaking several bones in the process.

Ray's words the night before struck a chord in her, a deep sense of unease she had long suppressed. With Helix she had operated in a morally clear but legally murky area. Going after terrorist cells backed with reams of data proving the guilt of her targets was the right thing to do, even if using Next to do it required exploiting several loopholes in international law.

Ray was right, to a degree. Since taking over as one of the two facility directors she had been forced to reevaluate her views on how the law dealt with the Next, and why. One of the larger drivers for that introspection was also her ten o'clock appointment.

Right on cue, he knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Kit said.

John Franklin entered the office. Just shy of sixteen, Kit wasn't sure the kid hadn't grown an inch since last week's appointment. She checked that thought and gave it another pass through her brain. Given the wide variety of Next powers and physiology, it was possible he
had
grown an inch in a handful of days.

Lean and getting broad in the shoulders, John was beginning to look less like a rough sketch of his father and more like a finished product. The anger Kit had been working mightily to temper and shape was nowhere to be seen; that was good. John had spent the first two months worth of meetings furious at the outset. Given what the boy had lived through recently, she couldn't blame him.

But someone with his power couldn't walk around with a chip on his shoulder, no matter how well-deserved it might be. That, too, factored into Kit's evaluation of the Next as a group. People who could bend space-time or punch through a brick wall had to be held to a higher standard. Practicality—and the base fear of normal humans, historically known for raising pitchforks when needed—demanded it.

“Good morning,” John said with a slight smile, his voice light.

Kit cocked her head at him slightly. “You're in a good mood,” she noted. “I'm guessing it's a girl.”

John managed to look affronted, though it was gone in a flash. “That's a pretty stereotypical assumption to make about someone my age.”

Keeping her face straight with serious effort, Kit put up her hands in supplication. “You're right, that was rude of me.”

“I mean, I could be happy because my dad bought me a car,” John protested.

“Very true,” Kit agreed.

“Or for a bunch of reasons,” John said. “Maybe I just had a really good morning.”

Kit let that hang in the air for a few seconds, then nodded. “So, is it any of those things?”

John wrinkled his face sourly. “No,” he said, before the smile crept back on his face. He mumbled something, though he knew full well how strong Kit's senses were.

“What was that?” Kit asked sweetly.

“Her name is Kristen,” John said with a grin.

The air outside was brisk but tolerable. Kit had been training John indoors until now, owing to the weather. Today would be a test for both of them. For John, it would measure how much control he had learned, for Kit, how effective she was as a teacher.

They stood just outside the main building, the office space which served as the tip of the massive iceberg that was the facility itself. Interlaced with lessons on meditation and channeling negative emotions, Kit had spent time teaching John how to use his abilities effectively.

To gain a real understanding of how far the boy—the young man—had come, she'd have to teach him their limits.

“Strip off your gear,” Kit said, motioning to a bare patch of dirt next to the office. “Take all the stuff out of your pockets, and remove your disruption watch.”

This elicited a surprised grunt from John, who shrugged and did as he was told. The watch had always remained on during their sessions, a safeguard against him losing control of his temper. Kit usually kept a small activation fob in her hand as they worked. Not today.

She threw off her coat, tossing it to the side.

John  stopped cold when he turned back to her, his eyes dropping to her torso.

“Why are you wearing your gun?” he asked.

“Scared?”

“I'm invulnerable,” John answered. “Unless I trigger my watch, and even then you'd have a hard time hurting me. You've never used a gun with me before. I was just curious.”

She slid the sleek weapon from its holster, showing it to him. “Just a pulse gun,” she said. “No bullets.”

Kit didn't need superpowers to notice the gears turning in his head. Teenage boys were not known for their subtlety.

“What's on the schedule, then?” John asked. “What are we doing?”

Kit holstered her gun and glanced at her watch. “Waiting.”

“For what?”

The distant rumble of an engine, faint but audible, washed over them. It was a few seconds before John heard it. The vehicle was visible for a good long while as it navigated the narrow road leading to the facility, and it was a car both were familiar with.

John turned pink when he recognized it. “What is this, Kit?” he asked, voice cracking slightly.

Peep parked the car and hopped out, hauling a large basket of food and drinks with her.

John's skin deepened from pink to red. Though he pretended otherwise, Kit knew the boy had a serious crush on Kit's friend and roommate. Kit needed stress to get a good read on him, and there was no more sure way to fluster a boy of sixteen than to make him perform in front of an older woman he fancied.

“Hey, hey,” Peep said, pulling a small blanket from the basket and tossing it to the ground. “Heard I was getting a free show.”

The look John Franklin gave Kit was fire and ice, and though pangs of regret slapped against her mental defenses, she had a job to do. She smiled at him, and raised a hand to beckon him forward.

“Come at me,” Kit said.

John moved forward hesitantly, then in a rush. Kit understood the pause; she had spent months teaching him in a structured manner, instilling him with caution. Comparatively, this was chaos.

Kit amped up her time perception as she spoke, slowing the world down enough to keep pace with her student. She stepped to the side, turning her body just enough to be out of harm's way but close enough to hip check John as he sped by.

The young man careened to the side—his momentum sent at a wild tangent—and tripped. He tumbled and came to a stop sprawled across the ground.

“What went wrong there?” Kit asked.

John rose to his feet. “You're heavier than me,” he said. “By a lot. I was running, which meant my strength wasn't a factor.”

Kit nodded approvingly. “Right. One of your first lessons, and you remembered it. Too late, but it's good you can see your mistake. Physics is something most Next can bend, even break, but for you the fundamental laws of the universe still apply.”

She turned and walked away from the building, coming to a stop nearly a hundred feet from John. “Again!”

John was a blur as he carved a path through the dead grass. Kit stood motionless as he rocketed toward her. She caught the telltale moment when he reached his limit, slowing down by necessity. Kit launched herself forward with no warning at all, body flying toward John even as his burst of super speed cycled down.

Kit was curled nearly into a ball, steel muscles tightened to full power. Two feet from collision, she lashed out in the air with both feet, pumping a double kick into John's chest with enough force to shatter concrete.

The boy flew backward, skipping across the cold earth and sending up small puffs of dust each time he impacted the ground. Kit, her inertia mostly spent and what little was left reversed, landed lightly on her feet.

She had kicked incredibly hard, and it felt like she might have done some damage to her ankles. Nothing showed in her stride or on her face as Kit closed in on John.

“I want you to hit me,” Kit said as she walked. “Don't stop trying until you manage it.”

John sprang to his feet, this time moving at a normal speed. She smiled tightly as he circled her, watching for an opening.

“Good,” she said. “You know moving quickly isn't the best way for you to attack.”

It was true. John Franklin was a Black Band, and the classification was usually—but not universally—reserved for Next who had extremely strong abilities in two or more power aspects. John had four, one of them being speed. But it was a flawed power. Through testing, the OSA knew he could move at insane speeds, demonstrated by a bunch of complex reflex tests. That was on paper. In practice, John couldn't move any faster than Kit's own limited enhanced speed.

It was, Nunez explained, a defense mechanism put in place by John's brain. While his body might be capable of moving past the speed of sound several times over, the brain locked him out of using more than a fraction because John's perception of time didn't change.

Without that mental block, it was nearly unavoidable that John would turn himself into a human bullet moving so fast the world would seem to be a smear of light and color. With his invulnerability, that scenario would inevitably lead to disaster.

John raised his hands, holding them loosely in front of his body with palms facing the ground. Kit had been teaching him how to fight a little, and the boy thought he was being clever by having a few other agents do the same. As if Kit didn't know.

His movements were measured, though his face was red with barely-checked anger. Kit danced back twice as he probed, hands darting toward her. She never looked away from his eyes; in an older and more experienced opponent, this might have been a mistake. In someone as young as John, every movement and intention might as well have been splashed across a billboard.

The third time, he committed to strike. Kit saw the decision in the set of his jaw, the lines of his forehead. Her hand flicked to the pulse gun at her hip, firing at the lowest intensity as she surprised John by stepping into his swing instead of away from it.

A weak electromagnetic pulse washed over him, invisible but directed well enough to leave Kit untouched. It was about the same strength as the bracelet John wore, which disrupted his powers enough to make his sense of touch normal. It was a solution that lightened the boy's spirits, as it meant being able to enjoy a hug from someone he loved or a girl's kiss.

And while it didn't make him much more vulnerable to actual injury, it
did
make him able to feel pain.

Kit's gut punch bent John over, the sudden rush of nausea making him vomit. Kit walked away casually, heading toward an astonished Peep, who was gaping at her roommate.