Chapter Seven
Jack found Parker exactly where he always was: staring out at the DC skyline, letting Jack do all the real work. He got straight to the point. “These guys are idiots.”
“They need training. You’re meant to train them.” Parker didn’t even turn from the window.
Jack gritted his teeth. “These guys are too stupid for training. Why they lived through the change, I have no idea.” They fit the age range. Most of the people who survived Solvimine were between sixteen and twenty-five. But all of the new guys were geeks. Hardcore gamers. One guy was into LARPing. What the fuck? Jack had nothing in common with them. Even the kids from Glory weren’t this dorky.
Those stiffs… Luke, Blue, Kitty…they were all with the military now, with a bunch of soldiers who survived the drug. Him? Stuck with a bunch of tools who won the superpower lottery.
Parker sighed. “You’re too concerned with outside appearances. These people survived the change. They are like you.”
He snorted. They weren’t like him. They were starry-eyed, full of idealism. Like they were going to get capes or something.
Jack had seen too much. He was no hero.
Worse was the idea that these guys survived and his family didn’t. The girls? If these guys deserved to live, so did his sisters.
“It’s not our place to decide who makes it and who doesn’t,” Parker added mildly.
Jack snorted. “Please. It was our choice to give them the drug in the first place. These douches wouldn’t have ever come in contact with Solvimine if it weren’t for us. Don’t pretend you’re not playing the role of God here.”
Seriously, that shit wasn’t a costume you could wear one day and take off another. Not after what they had done.
“I’m not a god.” Parker spun, his brows lifted in challenge. “If the world is full of people who use arbitrary things as power—wealth, fame, property—then we will give the world people who are legitimately powerful. We will allow the truly gifted among us to craft our reality. Because whatever we offer will be better than what is already out there.” He waved his hand toward the window. Jack assumed he included all of Washington, DC, but maybe he meant the entire world.
He couldn’t argue with that. Jack didn’t keep up on the news or what was going on in the rest of the universe, but his family had worked hard to get by. If he hadn’t gotten a football scholarship, he’d never have been able to afford college. And when he’d gotten to college in California, some of the kids he went to school with had been so clueless. Rich, pampered, light-years from the desperate and overworked people he’d grown up with. The people in Glory worried about money like it was a part-time job they didn’t get paid for.
Did that have to stop? Sure. Since being on this roller coaster with Parker, he’d been all over the country and into Mexico. He’d seen rich, powerful corporations destroy people who couldn’t fight back. He’d seen Armani-wearing assholes in DC driving overpriced foreign cars, talking too fast on their overpriced cell phones about issues that they obviously didn’t have to worry about. They didn’t get it. They didn’t get him, his family, or any of them.
But did these new guys? Just because they managed to live through Solvimine didn’t mean they were better able to run anything than the idiots he currently saw in charge.
Who was he to say?
“Enough, Mr. Barnett.” Parker’s face had gone stormy, like it always did when he was pissed. “This was what we planned, was it not? We would change those who were worthy, and you would train them. You relished the challenge, wanted to be on the front line of the development of the new order.”
He was right. When Parker sold him this plan to begin a new wave of evolutionary progress, he’d wanted a role in that vision.
That hadn’t included babysitting.
“These guys are a mess.” Jack rolled his shoulders, crossing his arms over his chest. “You need to get me better recruits.”
“Well, you’ll soon have your chance.” Parker moved to the table where his notes were fanned in a messy heap. The guy was physically unable to stay tidy—said that disorder was the mark of a creative genius. That sounded like an excuse. More, it drove Jack nuts. “We’re going to schedule a few more meetings.”
Jack’s stomach roiled. Unwelcome images from the last gathering boiled up. They’d had to wait after they administered the drug. To see who lived. He hadn’t paused to consider that waiting for some to live would mean watching while others died.
He shook his head. “A few?”
“Five.” Parker glanced up from his pages. “You need to sort through the recruits, come up with the ones who are most likely to motivate others. We’ll need them to take the lead on some of the meetings.”
“You want me to christen some of them leaders?” That group of idiots might have one or two leaders. Enough to man five meetings? Enough who would have the stomach to stand by and wait for survivors? Doubtful.
“Yes.” Parker’s gaze pierced him. “That’s your job, Mr. Barnett. To train the new recruits. That’s what we agreed.”
“This is a mistake.”
The words left his mouth before he could consider the consequences. Jack had gotten into the habit of checking his internal monologue since he’d signed on with Parker. The guy could read his thoughts, and Jack preferred some things to remain his own. When he figured out the extent to which he could be manipulated by Parker’s ability, he’d taken greater pains to keep his innermost thoughts to himself.
Maybe he’d gotten so good at burying what he thought that he even kept it from himself.
“A mistake?” Parker’s tone was deceptively mild.
Time to pay the piper. “I don’t trust these guys to lead meetings. Hell, I’m not confident they can tie their own shoes. They’re a bunch of geeks and dorks. They don’t have the stomach for this, and when they fail, they’ll turn us in, call the cops. We don’t need that kind of trouble.”
That was a start. It still didn’t begin to cover the fuckery that was going on here.
“Then you better work harder to get them there.” Parker rounded the table, stepping closer. His voice remained low, patient. Chilling. “I’m surprised I have to remind you that you’re too far into this to back out now.” As he closed the distance between them, Jack was surprised again that Parker wasn’t really that tall. Nowhere near his own six and a half feet. But his personality was huge, and what he could do… It made him imposing in a way that Jack couldn’t ignore.
He wouldn’t deny that he was afraid of him.
“You are wanted by the federal government. You’re linked with deaths, Mr. Barnett. Do you believe that if you left, you’d be able to escape punishment? Do you think you’d be able to run and hide now?” Parker chuckled. “Maybe you could run to the beach in Mexico last year, but you can’t do that now. They will find you.” He paused, meeting Jack’s gaze. “And if they don’t, I will.”
He turned then, purposefully giving Jack his back, as if to prove that he wasn’t afraid of him. He could hear Jack’s every thought, every move, after all. His behavior said, again, that Jack couldn’t do anything to stop him.
And he was right.
At the table, Parker glanced at his notes, letting that all settle over Jack’s skin. After a pregnant pause, he said, “Get them ready. Pick the most promising, and have a care with it. If the recruits fail, law enforcement will find us.” He lifted an eyebrow. “And if they do, keep in mind that one of us is more likely to go down with the ship than the other.”
With that, he returned his gaze—and presumably, his thoughts—to his notes, dismissing Jack entirely.
Turning, Jack left, pulling the door closed. He strode down the hall of the building Parker had rented for their use. Parker had a way of hiding whatever he wanted to hide, including the fact that they hadn’t paid a cent for the place.
As Jack descended into the pit of the building, he took in the group of men—and one woman—that had survived the drug.
Parker was asking for a miracle, and Jack wasn’t sure it was something he could give him.
He was sure, though, that even if he could, he didn’t want to. Not anymore.
…
The screen in front of Luke blurred. He’d gotten so used to reading the metadata of the internet that he almost couldn’t see it anymore, but tonight he was having a hard time concentrating. Countless times he’d gone back to reread something because the information hadn’t stuck in his head.
Rubbing his eyes, he leaned back, blinked hard, and stared at the fluorescent lights above him for a long moment. He kept hearing Beth’s voice from yesterday.
I’m attracted to you.
Verbal bombs like that were hard to forget.
He hadn’t seen it coming. How had he not noticed? She’d never let on, that’s how. Which led him to the only possible conclusion as to why she’d never given him a clue: she knew she shouldn’t be attracted to him as well as he did.
Because he was a grumpy asshole.
The old him? That version of him had cared for his hermit father, a computer hacker who lived by his own laws. Luke had been proud of that guy.
He used to have a sense of humor. Now, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed. Not much of a catch.
Glancing down, he tried to see himself through her eyes. He’d finally filled out his six-foot frame. Where he used to be gangly, he had become muscular. All those late-night runs, probably. After his change, he’d stopped needing his glasses. Whatever pathways that opened in his mind had also fixed his eyesight. One of the other guys had even stopped being color blind.
Bet Dr. Fields hadn’t anticipated that side effect when he’d developed Solvimine.
Maybe that was all this was. Straight up physical attraction. No one could control that. Didn’t mean she was into him as a person.
If it were him, he’d steer clear of his sparkling personality, too.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Kitty Laughton sank into the desk chair next to him, glaring at him.
“I wasn’t talking, Kit.” He grinned. There was something about Kitty. She didn’t have a malicious bone in her body, so when she sat there with her mean face on, it amused him.
“No, but that stuff in your head is toxic. Worse, it’s complete garbage.”
“Which part?” He lifted his eyebrow at her. “The part where I’m suddenly not as dorky and awkward as I used to be, or the part where I’m Captain Personality?”
She sighed. It came out exasperated, but the effect was ruined by the softness in her eyes. “You are neither of those things.” She blushed. “I mean, your personality is fine. And, your, the rest of you…” She waved her arm toward him, the color on her cheeks high. “You’re fine, too.”
“Aww, Kitty. Thanks. You say the nicest things.”
She scowled, but ruined it by laughing. “You’re awful.”
He smiled back. “I got what you meant.” He might be okay to look at now, and he might function well enough in normal situations, at least compared to his dorky, high school self, but the person he’d become since Solvimine had changed him? He wasn’t okay with that guy. Not at all.
But he would be. Once he stopped Jack and Parker, undid some of what he’d done… Then maybe he’d be able to breathe in his own skin again.
“You’re too hard on yourself,” Kitty whispered, low enough that no one would hear her. Around them, there were three other computer guys, all keeping their eyes focused on their screens.
“You give me too much credit,” he whispered back.
Grabbing his arm, she dragged him from his seat. He should put up a fight. They needed everyone searching for any sign of Jack and Parker. But he didn’t mind the break.
In the hall, she shoved him. “You aren’t a monster.”
He squirmed under her too-knowing eye. Maybe he shouldn’t have come out here, after all. “Kitty…”
“Before you say anything else, yes, I do know what happened. I was there, remember? Besides, I’ve seen it all in your head dozens of times.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You’ve made this into something that it isn’t. You’ve made yourself into a monster when you aren’t.”
“I left you behind, Kitty.” He bit off the words. “I left you and ran away like a chickenshit to Mexico. Then, when I came back, I brought Jack and Parker with me.” He stared her down. “I should have guessed they were up to something awful. There had been signs. I brought them anyway.” Maybe she could forgive him for the soldier in La Junta, even if he couldn’t. But she couldn’t overlook that. Maybe the soldier in La Junta had been an accident, but Luke’s reactions and his choices since then? Those hadn’t been.
“We all got thrown into this, Luke.” She managed to sound both censorious and sympathetic at the same time, something only Kitty could do. “None of us were prepared for it.”
It wasn’t that simple.
She shifted closer. Kitty wasn’t tall, but her eyes were such a clear blue that she arrested attention. Now, she trained that icy gaze on him. “It isn’t simple. But, I know. You think you’re the only one who felt responsible for things? The only one who regrets things?” Her eyes narrowed. “I was kidnapped because I didn’t pay attention to Blue, to Seth. They warned me that Jeremy wasn’t a good guy. I ignored them. It was a mistake.”
“You can’t be held responsible for that. Jeremy’s an…”
“Jerk. A complete jerk.”
That wasn’t what he was going to say. But he’d never heard Kitty swear, so he imagined that was as close as she’d get to what he intended. He nodded. Jeremy was a user. He’d sold Kitty out to get a job at the defense contractor in charge of creating Solvimine. “Jerk” didn’t cover it.
“Nick came to get me, and he could have been killed. When I went back to stop Fields, I forced the rest of you to follow me.” She shook her head. “I could have gotten you all killed. That was probably a mistake. People make mistakes. I made mistakes.” She squeezed his hand. “You made mistakes. It happens.”
It wasn’t the same. “You mistakenly trusted people. Going back for Fields… You were acting for the greater good. I let people down. It’s different.”
“The greater good.” She snorted. “What is that, anyway?”
He didn’t want to talk about this anymore, so he changed the subject. “Did you know?”
Wariness bled into her features. “Know what?”
“Oh my God, you did.” She’d known that Beth was attracted to him and hadn’t said anything.
“Oh, goodness, Luke. Seriously.” She rolled her eyes, smoothing her long ponytail on her shoulder.
He exhaled. “Kit, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?” Her brows popped up. “That the girl you’ve thought was amazing for months now liked you back? I expected you’d figure it out.”
“I didn’t think…”
Kitty lifted her hand. “Don’t even try to tell me you haven’t noticed her. How she looks, how she walks. How smart and interesting she is. How good you feel when she’s around.” She dropped her hand. “Because, please—I’ve listened to you both. I know what’s going on.”
“I don’t… I mean, I do, but…” He sounded like an idiot. “I do think she’s great, but not like you think…” In mid-argument, he paused to think about what he was saying.
Beth was all the things Kitty said. With her curls and her glasses and her smarts, he constantly caught himself looking at her. She was small, and when she was close, he wanted to be closer, to pull her against him. To curl himself around her.
“Beth would be great for you,” Kitty offered, “if you gave her a chance…” Her voice trailed off at the end. Her eyes cast around, and she didn’t look at him.
People did that when they were lying.
“You can’t believe that.” No one was going to be able to deal with his mess. He couldn’t even deal with his mess. And even if she was good for him, Kitty couldn’t possibly think he would be good for Beth. “You can’t think we’d work out. I’m not a good fit for Beth.”
Kitty stilled, her eyes closing.
That’s when he noticed Beth, standing around the corner behind Kitty. Today’s T-shirt, peeking out from between the open sides of a bulky cardigan, showed two atoms. One said, “I lost an electron,” and the other said, “Are you positive?” He would have laughed at the nerdy science humor any other time, but right now, nothing was funny.
“Kitty.” Though Beth’s eyes were broken, her voice remained strong. “They need you, in the infirmary.” Her back was straight, her mouth tight and pinched like she suppressed pain.
Maybe she did.
His stomach twisted. How much had she heard? He’d been saying they wouldn’t work out. How bad did this look to her?
“Beth,” he started. “I didn’t mean it like you heard…”
Her smile squeezed his heart. “It’s okay, Luke. No problem.”
Apparently, it looked really bad.
She turned to Kitty, then, dismissing him. “I came to tell you that another survivor from Parker’s meeting died.”
The words halted everything in him. Not another one…
Kitty’s head dropped, and her lips pinched together.
“There was too much damage…in his brain,” Beth offered, as if the silence hurt too much. “He wouldn’t have regained consciousness even if his breathing hadn’t stopped.”
That meant only one survivor remained, and she hadn’t awoken yet. “The last one…”
“She’s hanging in there. We need to get back.” She motioned toward the infirmary and talked to Kitty as if he wasn’t even there “You need to listen to her, to make sure she keeps her spirits up.” Kitty could place ideas in others’ minds. If anyone could keep the survivors alive, it was her.
Kitty glanced between them, her mouth opening and closing. He recognized the look. It was the one that said she heard everything they were thinking but had no way to fix it. Finally, she closed her mouth, her eyes sad. Spinning, she hurried down the hall, her head down.
Beth followed, her chin up.
“Beth,” he called out. “Wait…”
She lifted her hand without pausing. A moment later, she was gone.
He should go after her. Every decent fiber of him screamed for him to do so, to apologize. To tell her that he did admire her, that her huge brain turned him on, that her lower lip drove him crazy. That he wished that he was a better man, the kind of man that deserved her attention and attraction.
But he wasn’t. So he stayed where he was.
He leaned his head back, banging it against the wall behind him. He squeezed his eyes closed.
“Luke.” The voice broke into his mental flaying.
He swallowed hard, gritting his teeth, doing what he could to pull his shit together. It took a long moment before he opened his eyes and answered Sayan, one of the other guys on his computer research team. “Yeah.”
“We found something.”
Luke pushed off the wall, catching the door before it closed, following him.
Sayan and Dave hunkered over one of the computers. A second later, they had the screen projected onto the smartboard in front of them. Sayan turned to Luke, explaining what he was seeing. “It’s a link between five different posts. We connected it using the underlying metadata. But the posts are all similar. They all reference the same main points as the original meeting’s post—an invitation to come and get superpowers.”
The screen split into five. Sure enough, the posts were comparable. Not the same but close enough that he could see the parallels. “Where did you find these?”
“Two are on different gaming forums. One is on an apocalyptic forum.” Sayan glanced at him from the side. “You know, the guys who think the U.S. is better than everyone else.”
“Yeah, I know them.” There had been a few outlier, end-of-days groups situated near Glory, off the grid. Preppers.
“Another is a paramilitary enthusiast site, and the last is a comic book forum.”
All of the groups were different, but he could see why Parker chose them. Each audience would find something valuable in the idea of superpowers.
“Get Martins on the line. And round everyone up. ” They’d need everyone who was changed, as well as all their support staff. “I’ll find Beth.” He might have fucked things up with her on a personal level, but they would agree on this.
Sayan nodded, turning to the phone. Luke swept out of their conference room, heading for the infirmary, breaking into a run. He tried to calm his mind, to focus on the positives. They had intercepted this early. They had time. The meetings were scheduled for this evening. They could prepare.
His fists clenched at his sides. Parker and Jack weren’t going to get away. Not again.