34.
Jamal
The sirens didn’t fade as we pulled out of the parking lot, still reeling from what had just happened. There was red-spotting in my vision, an afterimage of Ray Spiegel dying beneath the onslaught of whoever had thrown that boulder at him. My blood was pumping, pounding through me, and part of me wished I was at the wheel instead of my brother as we turned out of the parking lot and into the streets of Washington DC.
Rush hour was going all around us, a steady traffic flow down this surface strip of commerce. We were in Alexandria, Virginia, and I had a feeling everyone was going to be looking for us.
“Where do we go?” Augustus asked, clenching the wheel, his knuckles stretching against his skin.
“Just get us away from here while I think this through.” I was already working, creating a direct line to someone else. We needed more eyes on this than just me, more people working it than myself and the unreliable Arche, whatever she might be doing.
I sent a surge through the net, creating a direct connection to a phone in Minnesota, my voice exploding out of the speaker as I activated it, the camera, and the microphone all together. “J.J., it’s Jamal. I need your help.”
“Whoa!” J.J. erupted out of his chair as he nearly tumbled over with it as went over backwards. He was in his boxers, eyes the size of his computer monitor—which was huge, Kerbal Space Program playing on it in the background—as he jerked away from the sudden, unexpected stimulus of his phone roaring to life.
“That’s … a neat trick,” Abby said from a little behind him, not nearly so taken aback by it as he seemed to be. He’d almost ended up in her lap, their computers set up at a right angle to each other in a corner of their living room. Her hair was pink again, bubblegum color, and she had on glasses, a tank top, and boy shorts with a pattern only a geek would understand, N7 screen printed down them over and over. “Also, an incredible invasion of our privacy.” Her mouth was set in a thin line, her brow furrowed. “I hope you have a good reason to—”
“Augustus and I are in DC and we just got framed for murder,” I said, unable to hold it in any longer. “We’re running from the cops right now.”
Abby just blinked. J.J. was standing there, still, like he thought things would go back to ten seconds ago if he just didn’t move. “That’s … a pretty good reason,” Abby said, and clicked off the game that had been on her screen. “What do you need from us?”
“The Custis family,” I said, channeled right to them. Sirens were still blaring faintly in the real world I was tuning out, and I heard my brother’s muttered curse. “We were in a Walmart parking lot, after a meeting with a reporter named Ray Spiegel. We followed him to a meet with Charles Custis and—”
“I thought Reed sent you guys to Ohio,” J.J. said, choosing this moment to come back to the conversation and, possibly, life. “What are you doing in DC?”
“Long story,” I said. “Well, maybe not that long—this Custis family? We think they have evidence that Sienna’s innocent.”
“Yeah, that’s not a very long story,” Abby said, tapping away at her keyboard. “You bullet-pointed it pretty well in like two seconds.”
J.J. picked up his phone, which had been sitting in a charging cradle at a slight angle, giving me an impeccable view of the two of them. “So, uhm … what do you need us to do? You’re kind of a wizzier wiz-kid than we are on this stuff.”
“I need you to look into how this happened,” I said. “They set us up, the Custis family. I think it’s the family, anyway. They’re all metas like me, Thor-types with data control precision, and they work for some pretty high-juice people here in Washington. We walked right into what they had set up—surveillance cameras recorded us as we arrived, I’m sure. They used some kind of non-earthen boulder thrown by a meta as the murder weapon to make it look like Augustus did the deed.” I froze, and something occurred to me. “I bet Charles Custis zapped Spiegel right before it hit, too, locked him right in place with muscle paralysis.”
“That’s some pretty deep shit you find yourself in,” J.J. said, slipping into his chair. “If this family’s like you, though—and I mean, a whole family of them … dude, Abby and I are out of our depth. You, alone, ace us with zero effort. What are we supposed to do against multiples of you?” He frowned. “How many are there?”
“Four, near as I can tell,” I said. Augustus cursed again behind me. “Just do what you can. Alexandria cops had our names, description, car info—seconds after the murder. Someone tossed that to them, even though we were across the parking lot. Just work around the edges, see what you can find. Hell, erase whatever you can find that doesn’t look good, if you can get away with it—”
“That’s a terrible idea, and no,” Abby said, spinning around in her chair. “If these people are what you say, there’s no conceivable way J.J. and I, with our modest, non-electrical interfacing skills, can possibly permadelete something to the point where you or they couldn’t retrieve it. And then they’ll have us on evidence tampering.”
“Shit,” I said. She was right. “Okay, well, find what you can and keep out of trouble. You’re right, no point in anyone else walking into their bear trap and losing a leg.”
Abby stared right into the phone camera. “If the cops are after you for murder, Jamal … there’s a chance you could lose a lot more than a leg.”
I didn’t want to think about that. “I gotta go. Do what you can?”
“On it,” J.J. said, and he was off to tapping away. “Can you leave the line open? Is it secure?”
“As good as I can make it,” I said, “but I’m going to microphone only. Sound and image takes more of my mental bandwidth than I can spare right now.”
“Wait … you were looking at us, too?” J.J. asked as I switched off the visual in my head. “That’s … so rude.”
“Sorry,” I said, but didn’t have the mental juice to mean it much. “And Abby … good choice. I’m a huge Mass Effect fan.”
I couldn’t see her, but I could hear the blush in her voice. “Thanks … I guess. For the compliment. But not for invading our personal privacy. No thanks for that.”
Then I was back in the passenger seat next to Augustus, who was threading his way through surface street traffic. “Yo, I could use some navigation here, bro, if you’re done with your little confab.”
“On it,” I said. I switched the next three lights ahead of us green, tripping their cycle and allowing us to build up some speed. I darted into the police dispatch grid, and realized there was a GPS map of all their nearby cars.
Then I cursed. Loudly. Because they were everywhere .
And swarming toward us, just blocks away.
“They’ve got our number,” I said, trying to figure out how to muddy the waters. I created eighteen false tips, sending them in twelve other directions via text messages sent directly into the 911 dispatch queue.
Every single one of them evaporated before it even reached the main system. And I watched it happen, powerless to stop it.
“Oh shit,” I said under my breath as red lights and sirens flared in our rearview. “You need to up your driving game, bro. Fast.”
“I’m on that,” Augustus said, slewing past a car on the shoulder, jumping the curb and darting back into the lane. Interstate 495 was ahead, only a couple more blocks. It was hardly a guarantee of freedom, especially since we were being bird-dogged like crazy by the Custis family right now, but …
Being on the freeway held a lot greater chance of escape for us than sitting our asses in this traffic, hoping we didn’t caught in a line.
“Uhm, this is really bad,” Abby’s voice came to me. “They’ve got footage of you in the parking lot, all right. It’s in their servers, multiple copies on multiple independent—”
“I had a feeling,” I shouted back. “Cops are closing in, team. The Custis family is directing them right to us, probably using traffic cams and maybe satellite surveillance, I don’t know. The dragnet’s closing on us.”
“Dude,” J.J. said. “These people … their hacking skills are like a wall. This is … it’s beyond Grade A.”
“Yeah, I had a feeling it was bad,” I said, snapping back into the car and the scent of diesel exhaust as Augustus plowed between the lanes, nearly eating the back bumper of a semi trailer before he jumped the curb again. I was gripping tight to the bar and the center console, trying to keep from getting thrown against the window.
“It’s bad all right,” Augustus said, and then leaned down to look out the front window and up—way up.
A light snapped on from overhead. There was a helicopter on us.
“So this is what Sienna feels like every day of her life lately,” I muttered, leaning forward like my brother as he clipped a sign off and jumped a curb as we entered the freeway onramp.
“Yep,” Augustus said, focusing on the road ahead as we shot up the onramp and gained speed. He was pushing past seventy already, probably hoping to outrun the cars behind us before dealing with the helo above us. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was a strategy doomed to fail.
“Bro,” I said as we started to merge, the traffic flow coming to a slow, then a stop, “I think it’s over.” I didn’t have the heart to look at him, either.
We came to a stop about ten yards before we plowed into the bumper of a Cadillac ahead, rush hour traffic stacked up hard in front of us. I looked to its natural conclusion using the traffic cameras, and in a flash I saw—
The cops already had a roadblock set up ahead.
Skipping into the opposite lane—which would require us to jump a concrete barricade with a car or steal someone else’s … another roadblock, a mile down. They had traffic sewn up on both sides, five minutes or less after the murder was committed.
And there were enough boys in blue sweeping in around us that fleeing on foot wasn’t an option, even with our meta-enhanced speed. They’d catch us with cars, swarm us …
“Should have just stayed where we were,” Augustus said numbly as he killed the ignition, eyes glazed over as he stared straight ahead. “Taneshia is gonna be pissed.”
“Yeah, I don’t think Momma’s gonna be real happy either,” I said, and strangely, that was my biggest worry right now.
Augustus looked right at me. “Let’s not tell her.”
My eyes almost popped out of my head. “Dude, we’re about to be arrested or shot, depending on how the next few minutes go. Maybe both. We’re known associates of Sienna Nealon, and we’re getting clipped for murder. I think Momma’s gonna hear about it even if we don’t tell her ourselves.”
Augustus’s mind was racing, and so were his eyes, flitting around the interior of the car. “Oh, shit.” Apparently that got him worse than what Taneshia was going to think of all this. “Let’s go out in a blaze of glory.”
I sagged, looking at him. “Be serious.”
His eyes got wide. “I am serious. You want to deal with Momma when she finds out that not one but two of her boys have gotten arrested after she managed to get us out of—”
I smacked him. Lightly, but still. The red and blue lights were drawing closer behind us now. “Death is not preferable to telling Momma we got framed for murder. Now come on,” I said, opening the door and thrusting my hands out, straight up in the air. “They’re going to be twitchy. So … don’t make any sudden, meta moves, all right?”
Augustus opened his door, putting his own hands out. “We’re two superpowered black guys in DC and the cops are about to bust us. What could possibly go wrong?”
“JAMAL AND AUGUSTUS COLEMAN!” a voice blared over a loudspeaker, the chop of the helicopter prop wash threatening to drown it out. “Place your hands above your head and get down on your knees!”
“Like we ain’t seen this enough growing up to know what to do,” Augustus muttered over the prop wash, and part of me wanted to laugh at the same time I wanted to cry. He disappeared on the other side of the car as he got to his knees, hands tucked behind his head.
“Drop the phone!” The voice shouted, and I realized with a start they were talking to me.
“Gotta go,” I said to Abby and J.J. “We’re getting pinched.” And without time to hear their reply, I tossed the phone aside and heard it clack on the pavement as it slid beneath a car beside me. I looked up and saw a woman staring out at me with wide eyes from the driver’s side door. After a second of looking at me, she glanced at the little lock knob that extended out of her door. It was up. She reached for it, almost comically slowly, and pressed it down, as though locking the door would somehow stop me from getting at her if I was of a mind to.
The voice boomed out of the loudspeaker again. “Lie down on your stomach and place your hands behind your heads! Slowly!”
I took a deep breath, already on my knees, my face burning. I’d been through some shit in my life. Girls hadn’t exactly flocked to the short, geeky Coleman brother, and guys hadn’t exactly been gentle of their critiques of my non-meta physique growing up. This strength, this power … it was all new to me in the last few years. Being yelled at, degraded, bullied, embarrassed, called out …
None of it matched up to having the cops screaming at me with probably a thousand rounds of ammo pointed in my direction as they told me to lie down and wait to be “dealt with” however they saw fit. Suddenly I had a flash of real empathy for all the people I’d helped arrest this last year, understanding why they tended to fight when confronted.
Because putting your life in someone else’s hands when they’re yelling at you and you know they could make you literally dead with the stroke of a finger? Was the most nerve-wracking experience of my life. Worse than killing, worse than nearly dying.
It was the feeling of being on a precipice of uncertainty, and being shoved at by unfamiliar hands, by loud voices you didn’t know, by people shouting at you to DO WHAT I SAY .
Hell, if you had power at your fingertips … listening to someone yelling at you, when you know they could kill you …
No wonder most of our prey fought back.
My face was hard against the pavement, the smell of blacktop heavy in my nose. I could hear the footsteps as the cops approached, the reverberations rolling through my forehead and cheek where they pressed against the road. I held as still as I could, my hands against the back of my head, fingers interlaced.
“Do not move,” a rough voice came from above me. I could feel them looming there, ominously, knew that they had countless guns pointed at me even now.
“I won’t,” I said tightly, my throat against the ground, too.
Someone leaned over me, and it felt like eternity before the jab hit the side of my neck.
Suppressant.
It took a few seconds—long, hellish seconds—before I felt the slow euphoria as it started to work. My mouth got dry, my eyes watered a little because that needle sting was not gently done, and it had hit a nerve or two on its way in and out.
Then rough hands grabbed me, and I let out a breath as they pulled me to my feet, my head swimming.
It was already in effect, I realized as a strange emptiness filled me. The cops dragged me along and I didn’t fight back, just let them carry me. I saw Augustus getting a similar treatment, woozy-eyed, as they pulled us toward a police van back a little ways.
It was a disorienting feeling, suppressant running through my veins, cops dragging me like I was a misbehaving child.
After all these years … now … I felt completely powerless.
Because I was.