Underground Page 16

  Timon tensed then, trying not to show it. After all, the man didn’t look that way at all. It was going to be hard to explain, really.

  He played that part off.

  “A bit short, though you’ll grow over the course of a year or so. About a foot. You’re faster than you were. By about five or six times. Better endurance, too. Stronger, but not on a level that you’ll really notice, I don’t think. You were decent that way before. Um…” He grimaced, then waved at his head. “Your face… I kind of made a mistake there. I was arguing with the Infection about your powers… Well, if you don’t like it, I can do the work over again. Sorry there.”

  There was, oddly, a small nod then.

  “A bit ugly? That’s no big thing. I mean, I can feel it. A regular nose, two eyes… one mouth. This is pretty normal. I don’t look like a rat, do I? Even if I kind of do a bit, that’s no big thing. I mean, I look human? My eyes aren’t empty orbs or anything? I look a bit light, skin wise. My family is Greek, so a little more tan than this. About like you?” His left arm was held out, as if to demonstrate.

  They needed a mirror, which, interestingly, meant going back to Pam-Pam’s room. Not that Timon couldn’t have made one, if he wanted. It was that he was trying to buy time to explain the mistake that he’d made. It was embarrassing, after all.

  Ryan knocked on the door to the shared living space, only to have Clover come to the thing to open it. The goat man looked at Tim, then down at Ryan. He smiled, his thick lips warping grandly.

  “Ryan? You look incredible! Everyone, come here.”

  Timon waited to be mocked. Probably by Clover, since it seemed to be in his personality to do such things. Instead they were pulled inside and C. C. moved in. Giving Ryan a hug.

  “Okay, I wasn’t expecting that! We should… Pam, can we borrow your mirror? We could use the one in my room, but I’m a slob and don’t want the hot boys to see how I really live.”

  There was scurrying then, with the slightly heavyset man he hadn’t been introduced to moving along with the rest of them this time.

  When they had Ryan sitting in front of the mirror in Pam-Pam’s space, he gasped a bit. Timon tensed up. It was clear, standing there next to the man that he’d given the smaller fellow his own face. The work was otherwise well done, but other than the size, in both body and visage, the man was clearly him. He waited for the jesting to commence.

  No one even mentioned the likeness to him. Ryan was too busy crying. Fat tears moved down his face.

  “This is perfect. I… I’d thought that, you know, I might be stuck, looking like I did before. Forever. I even look young. I mean, I popped at twelve, ten years ago or so, I’m not old or anything, but I look, what, maybe nineteen? Twenty?”

  That was about right, since it was about where Tim kept his own apparent age.

  C. C. moved in behind the sitting man, the former King Rat and hugged him from behind.

  “This is pretty much a miracle. Your power is amazing, Tim. We should take Ryan out and show him off to everyone. Grasshopper is up next?” She ducked her head then. “Do you need to eat, or rest first? You’ve been doing this all day, already.”

  Timon nodded, since food, at least, was a good idea.

  “We should get an update as well, if possible?” He was about to explain himself, since many people missed obvious things like that from time to time.

  Instead, Pam-Pam, dressed in a costume of stretchy black fabric that hugged her shapely new form, merely grinned.

  “We can do that. Come on. I know just the people we need to see about that.”

  Then, as if it made any kind of sense, they all traveled as a group, to the main office space.

  Chapter thirteen- Renner

  “We have orders to drop it. Pull everyone back. Immediately. This comes from the very top.”

  The general sounded defeated. Sad and a little annoyed. Pissy, since he was pretty much a soft office type. Sure, once he’d been hard, like the rest of them were. Twenty years before, when they’d done the early work on him and those like him.

  Trying to make them into super-humans, in case they needed to take on the Infected someday.

  The freaks of the world, given too much power to fit in with the rest of them.

  Captain Renner scoffed a bit. He’d never gone in for biological updates, as they called them in the Fifth Armored. By the time he’d been drafted for the unit, it had become rather clear that trying to use genetic science, drugs or even advanced training protocols could only do so much. Sure, they could make a man three times stronger than he should have been. That still only put them at about what the top weight lifters could do.

  They had guys in the unit that could run faster than the best normal sprinter, thanks only to drugs. They even had psychics who could cheat at poker and clear a table without too many problems. He was one of that last group, having been given a complex drug protocol and training that boosted his empathy to a level that was well inside the psychic range. He could read a person at a distance and all that. It hadn’t helped him at all, over the years.

  In short, they’d failed. At least if the goal was to be able to take on the Infected, head to head. The closest they’d ever gotten that way was Project Lamp. A single Infected freak with powers that they could tap, against his will.

  Until the freak managed to escape on them. That had been Renner’s fault. He shouldn’t have let him off base until he’d used the man to power up for the day. That was the protocol for using Carlton, after all. One that he’d helped to develop, so there was no excuse for his failure. He’d wanted to make good time, so had pushed things. Gotten the man controlling the armored vehicle to speed a bit. That meant that they’d driven right into the IED, outside of Kandahar.

  He really hadn’t been hurt too badly. Knocked out hard, but he, unlike their driver and the A-driver for the day, had gotten up ten minutes later, with a brain injury, but alive. Carlton, their captive, had walked away though. Run, more like it. Then he’d simply vanished, without a trace. Until nearly a year and a half later, when the man had been seen on a tourist’s camera, in a low rent district in Portland Oregon.

  The hippy-dippy capital of North America.

  Renner had spent half a week trying to get the man and his buddies to come outside. The General had been with him on the idea, wanting their man back. The idea had been to capture some of the others as well. Then to either blackmail them or trick them into working for them, if force wouldn’t work.

  He nearly growled at the old man, feeling like hitting something.

  “What the fuck happened, General? We have this one. They just need to make one mistake and we’ll have them.”

  That probably wasn’t going to happen. Not that easily. He hated to say it, but the freaks were actually doing a good job defending themselves. The reason the Fifth Armored hadn’t gone in yet was simply due to the fact that they would have been running into a meat grinder if they’d tried it.

  It was probably down to one of them having the right power, instead of half a brain in their heads. It was how that kind, the Infected, operated. They got by on their abilities, instead of learning and thinking their way around problems. A thing he was counting on, if they’d really been given a stand down order.

  Getting that he was in a poor mood, the General growled back. The man did not take insubordination lightly. He also didn’t get his panties in a bunch every time someone snapped a bit in a high stress situation. It was probably why he got to be in charge.

  “One of the subjects managed to get word out to the IPB, over the internet. That had their asset, Proxy going in with another Operative… Eh… Lobo. Instead of the targets fighting or running, which was our projection, they called in reinforcements and now we have two Senators, a governor and three house reps breathing down our necks. The orders came from the Commander in Chief himself, so we can’t go in. Not unless we want some nice long prison sentences. That man offered to come and kick our asses himself. Which is ridiculous,
but at least he isn’t a pussy, like the last guy.”

  Captain Renner nodded, holding a rather normal looking cell phone to the side of his head.

  “Understood. We can’t do an insertion, then. I have one more thing to try. We weren’t ordered to leave or anything? Or to not approach at all?”

  There was a dead silence for a minute. Renner nearly asked if the phone had gone dead, when the old man spoke again. His voice crusty and rasping more than it had been.

  “No, no we didn’t receive orders for that. Just not to launch an attack. You have something in mind, Captain?”

  He did. Smiling a bit, he told the old man his clever plan. It got a laugh, but the General didn’t tell him not to try it.

  That was enough for him. It would take a while to get into place, so he packed up the sniper rifle and sent that back with the other guys from the unit. Either his plan would work, or the Infected would kill him for trying it. If that happened, with the IPB involved, then the unit would just have to eat the death. No one loved that part of things, but it was simply true. The Infected freaks were too powerful for anyone to mess with. Not all of them, not all the time. The IPB wasn’t a thing anyone was going to mess with, however.

  Not just on his account.

  That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try for Carlton anyway. He missed the sense of power that the man’s abilities had given him. Instead of making a big production of going in alone, he called an Uber, then with Rick, his driver for the afternoon, got uneasy about the neighborhood, got out and walked the rest of the way. Armed with nothing more than a manila folder and some papers.

  Grinning, a bit meanly, he walked directly to where the door to the hidden warren was supposed to be. Then, instead of acting baffled that it was gone, he started to pound on the red brick wall. There was a bit of graffiti on it. Of a human eye. One with a radiation symbol in the middle of it. That kind of thing had been all over the area. No doubt to mark the territory. He’d seen that kind of thing before, in different parts of the world.

  He didn’t plan to stop making a racket until someone answered him.

  Chapter fourteen- Nero

  Complex, looking tense and a bit mussed, even if his grooming was normally sufficient enough, grunted. Then, a moment later, he did it again. Finally, Proxy looked at him like he was concerned for the man. Nero was across the room, and could understand the idea, of course. He wouldn’t have simply asked about it though, in case it was something the man wanted to keep to himself. Digestive issues or the like.

  “Are you doing all right?” Brian, the killer, seemed to actually mean the question.

  As if he were honestly concerned with how the large biker looking man was doing. Seven, looking like a teen girl, was watching them all closely. She didn’t speak, however. That one never did. She just watched, intently.

  Nero waited, not having the answer at all. Complex was a friend of his, but he’d never seen or heard of him grunting in particular. No more so than anyone else ever did that kind of thing. It seemed slightly pained.

  The man sounded gruff when he spoke.

  “Someone is knocking. I can’t see who, but they aren’t going away. They’re kicking my outer wall, near the normal main entrance. I can feel them, but that isn’t the same as seeing. One person. A man, I think. Um, probably regular? That or an Infected who can pass really well.”

  Nero didn’t know what to do, since they were in lockdown.

  “Well, if I were trapped outside, I might do something similar, attempting to get in. Should we check on the situation?”

  He was actually asking, wishing that Mindy were there. Not because she made better choices than he did, simply due to the fact that if he let her make them, no one would directly blame him for it, when it failed or fell apart.

  That was a bit weak of him, so rather than let the idea stand, he moved toward the door of the office, the others moving along behind him. They were stopped by a collection of people in the doorway. He didn’t recognize all of them.

  The taller new person was, of course, the man from another reality who had been brought in to do magical work on them all. He was standing next to C. C. with Dan in between them. Protecting the man, it seemed, from the angle of his body and the fact that he kept watching the girls like a hawk. As if they might be a threat. Martha was there, but so was a different young lady. A rather shapely one, who smiled at him. The face was familiar, but it was in black and white, or more honestly speaking, different gray tones and shades, so he was missing some of the detail, he knew. She was still rather attractive.

  Just not anyone that he’d let in.

  Toward the back stood Clover and Gift, so at least the new people there weren’t being left unguarded. After a moment he noticed that the other new person, a small man, was identical to the larger one. It took him a bit to understand the basic idea.

  “Pam and… Ryan?”

  C. C. clapped her hands, her face fresh and pleased looking.

  “Exactly. I’m planning to get some of the others in with Tim, before he leaves, if at all possible. We need an update first. Are we running away or…”

  The tiny girl, Bridget, who was still leaving Nero feeling like he might die at any moment, did her own clapping then.

  “All clear. We do have someone at the front door, but other than that, we should be good now. The President told the Fifth Armored to stand down and it seems like they actually did, for once. They left, about half an hour ago. We need to hold here for a bit, I mean, I do, to make sure no one bugs you too much, but you should be good now.”

  He looked at the others, each of whom nodded. Including Keith and Brian.

  Complex groaned again, or rather, grunted, as if someone was kicking him in the stomach. He didn’t complain about it. Brian waved at the man.

  “We should go and see what’s up? Bridget, you can lead us up. The rest of us will cleverly hide behind you.”

  That sounded like a joke, the girl being no more than four-six or seven, but everyone did it, with Complex waving his right hand to make the door to the stairs reappear, when they got there.

  “We still have to open it from the inside, at the top of the stairs.”

  They also had to walk in pitch black. Nero could still see, like always, so he went first. It was interesting, since the darkness was such that most had to go by feel or use flashlights to navigate the obstacle. When they did that, provided light for themselves, or to Nero at any time, it looked like a hallway. It had good handrails on either side and was a bit narrow, being only three feet wide. Other than that, it wasn’t remarkable in any way.

  At the top of the steps the small girl valiantly moved forward. Visibly feeling up everyone on her way past. She wasn’t being shy about it either, managing to grab the behinds of everyone perfectly as she did it. Except for Brian, who got a rather normal pat on the back. None of it was probably needed, since people weren’t that bunched together.

  When she got to him, the girl looked up into his eyes, and winked.

  “I’ll open this up. It’s probably a salesman.” She sounded playful about the idea. As if that was going to be real, in the area they lived in.

  It wasn’t. No one did door to door sales in the old warehouse district. The population density was too low. It would be a waste of time, even if they were brave enough to get past the guards. Which, at the moment, they didn’t have out at all. When the door opened, the red headed girl burst out, suddenly seeming ready to fight. Nero did the same, even if he wasn’t in her league that way at all. Everyone else followed along behind them, almost as if they knew what they were doing. That meant, five seconds later, they were facing a man in a military dress uniform. That was a green color, he thought.

  Gray to him, so he might have been wrong on that part. It had been a long time since he’d seen anything in color.

  Before anyone else could speak, Gift actually hissed. Given he was normally sweet and polite, that was a bit odd.

  “Renner!” Gift didn
’t try to run or anything, even if it was clear that he wanted to. There were several steps back toward the safety of the Underground.

  The military man laughed then. It was the most sinister thing like it that Nero had ever heard, outside of a cartoon.

  “Carlton. I’ve come to take you home. Before any of your friends get any ideas about slapping me around, the paperwork I have here means that you don’t get a choice in the matter.” He waved something then. A paper folder of the sort that no one had used in the last ten years. No one in the civilian world at any rate. Even he had heard about how slow to adapt the military was, so it made some sense, that way.

  Without missing a beat, Impulse moved in and held her hand out. If the military guy understood who was standing there, it didn’t show on his face at all. He didn’t give her the papers, at least. No, those were handed directly to Carlton, who looked at the things and blanched.

  The slightly heavyset wishing machine of a man looked half panicked.

  “Crud.” That was all he said. Then, moving in, Nero looked at them for himself.

  “Crud indeed. This isn’t good, is it?”

  That, he was afraid, was an understatement.

  Chapter fifteen- Pam-Pam

  The papers weren’t what she expected when she took them from Nero. Really, she’d kind of expected a warrant for Gift’s arrest, given how smug the military guy was acting. As if he had her friend dead to rights.

  Instead, she wasn’t even certain what she was looking at when she finally had the things. There were a lot of them and they were signed and initialed several times on most of the pages. By Carlton Marx. Whoever that was supposed to be. Not being an idiot, she got that it was Gift’s real name, of course. Pam truly just didn’t get it, until Impulse moved in next to her, pressing up against her side, as if they were close friends.

  It was freakishly frightening, though Pam didn’t let herself tense up. Instead she fought not to seem like she was going to wet herself. It would have been slightly less worrying if a tiger had decided to be her buddy, suddenly. Impulse could kill her instantly and there was very little she could do about it, if that was going to happen. Not that the tiny girl couldn’t have done that at any time. She’d been around all day without even threatening anyone, so far. She tried to remind herself of that point. The girl could have taken her life, but so far hadn’t, for some reason.