Fearless Leader (Juxtapose City) (30 page)

It happened in an instant. One moment Calyx was watching the dirty, scarred buildings whizzing by and wondering what would happen if he jumped out of the craft. The next moment his head was bouncing off the side window so hard the glass nearly cracked.

Calyx clutched his head. "Damn it, Cole!"

The other man groaned as he turned off the engine. Not that it mattered; Jake had driven them into the corner of a shoe store and the front end of the electro-craft was crushed.

Calyx felt his all of his limbs -- he was surprised at how difficult it was to discern old injury from new -- and decided he hadn't been hurt too badly. He rounded on the other man who was unbuckling his seatbelt with shaky hands. "What happened? You were driving just fine until you freaked out."

"Something -- something pushed into my brain." Jake was wide-eyed, looking out the cracked front window.

Calyx recognized the hysteria he saw in the sergeant's face: fear of the telepath. No one wanted a stranger reading the awful things that filled your head. Even more frightening was the possibility that a telepath could crawl into your mind and begin controlling your actions. Telling people that there wasn't a single telepath on the planet who could manage something like that was pointless.

Besides, Calyx wasn't so sure it was the truth.

"What did you feel, exactly?" he demanded, grabbing Jake by the arms. "Explain it!"

Jake jerked free and scrubbed at his face, trying to get a grip. In a calmer voice he said, "I don't know how to explain it. I just know it wasn't anything I'd ever felt before. It was like an invisible finger was massaging my brain but it wasn't really a finger, more like -- like words running across my head."

Calyx kept his face purposefully blank. "What words?"

Jake's golden eyes held fear. "
Come to me
."

There was only one man alive who Calyx knew could send thoughts to other people. "Genesis," he said grimly.

"What?" Jake's eyes bulged. He dug around furiously in his jeans. "You're telling me that what I just felt was fucking Genesis? How? I thought he'd gone crazy. I heard someone shot him."

"He's alive and he's sane," Calyx replied, trying his door to see if it would open. It did. "We need to get out of here."

"Fuck that, I'm calling the captain and then we're waiting for back-up."

"No! Don't call!" Calyx made a dive for Jake's PRU but Jake jumped out the other side of the craft. In a second, the man had Dickerson on the screen.

"Sir, we've found Genesis!"

If he weren't so concerned about their predicament, Calyx might have been amused by Jake's hysterical reaction. But Jake was right to fear: Genesis was no one they needed to play around with. Especially when it was just the two of them. He only wished Dickerson didn't have to know about it.

Jake was nodding. "Yes, sir. We'll locate him and hold for the others."

Calyx almost laughed as Jake put the PRU away. "Locate and hold? Surely you're joking, sweetheart? What's to stop our dear Genesis from hearing your thoughts as we creep up on him?"

"Who says he won't hear yours?" Jake retorted defensively, drawing his gun and checking the clip.

Calyx ached for his faze whip. Without it he was weaponless. "I'm a psypath. First thing you learn is to block yourself from other psypaths. A professional courtesy, if you will." Calyx stepped off the street, edging towards an alley. "Besides, I suppose it won't matter anyway. Genesis already knows you're here. He called to you."

"Fucking great." Jake backed with Calyx into the alley, gun held ready. "What would he want with me? He doesn't know me." His eyes rounded. "Or is it because of you?"

Calyx glanced to the sky, willing the blackness of night to descend faster. "Mmm, try me
and
JC2. We seem to be Genesis' current obsessions. We're both in some deep shit, Cole."

Jake turned to face the empath, his manner all business. "What are you trying to say -- that we don't stand a chance? I refuse to believe that. He's just a man."

"No, he's not," Calyx stated. "He's a telepath." Over Jake's shoulder, a flash of blue crossed the street. "Someone's coming."

Jake pulled the slide on his gun, chambering a round. "Let him come."

Bee normally drove JC2's big utility craft when they responded to missions but in his absence Black made Sola take the wheel. If anything it would distract the man from asking questions. Or from looking at Black with the same dark suspicion he'd aimed towards Black when they'd geared up.

Black had suffered it stoically. It was the best he could do until he could come up with an explanation for why he'd been sitting amidst a pile of illegal drugs with every intention of ingesting them.

He'd already called Bee and Haney and informed them of the situation, instructing them to suit up at home and wait just in case. He used Sola's PRU again to call Jake.

His second-in-command's face flashed on the screen. Relief momentarily replaced the severe expression Jake was wearing.

"Black! Thank God, you're okay, baby."

He couldn't even be mad at the endearment. The enthusiastic response made Black feel a little better. It was easy to forget sometimes that there was someone like Jake who honestly cared about what happened to him.

"Where are you?" Black asked.

Jake looked up from the screen. "'C' and about a block south of 21st." He frowned at something off screen. "Black, it's Genesis."

"I know. Just hold on--"

"Oh, shit!" A sound like firecrackers filled Black's ear clip. Then the screen went black and 'No Signal' ran across the screen.

Black nearly crushed the PRU in his hand. "Sola, how far are we from 21st and 'C'?" he shouted to the front.

The craft suddenly swerved with a screech of tires that would have sent Black flying face-first into the wall of the craft if he hadn't been buckled in. "Thanks to that we're just a block away," Sola yelled back.

Black checked his equipment: tightening the straps on his flak jacket and slapping on his helmet, testing its headset with Sola. With Jake and Starr helmet-less and without a PRU there was no way to contact them. He hoped they weren't far from their original location.

He hoped they were still alive.

Sola brought the craft to a shuddering halt. Before the vehicle came to a complete stop Black threw open the back doors and jumped out. Sola similarly launched himself from the driver's side.

Black hadn't had the opportunity to train with Sola yet. He didn't know how well the sergeant knew their hand signals and maneuvers. Sola hadn't chosen his mission handle yet either. Black decided to risk communication using the man’s real name.

"Sola, Wide Scatter, three and four."

Beside him Sola moved to the right, gun swinging to cover the street.

The sky was purple and edging into indigo. Street lamps came on, most of them sputtering within broken casings. No one was on the sidewalk and traffic was slow. It would become even slower as soon as the neighborhood realized what was going down. This far into the heart of the city residents knew to keep under cover when the cops showed up.

Sola moved in a wide circle to Black's left. Black watched him approvingly from the corner of his eye. Cautiously, the two men made their way up the street, eyes trained for furtive movement. They came upon Jake's electro-craft crashed into the side of a building. Black didn't waste time checking to see if the other men were inside it. His eyes scanned the buildings for one that had the grey metal siding he'd seen behind Jake's head in the PRU.

"Alley, three o'clock," he said into the headset.

As Sola kept cover Black moved into the alley. Midway through he spotted Jake's PRU. Black toed it with his boot. The unit was destroyed, hit by a bullet. Black studied the asphalt and the walls of the buildings on either side. No blood.

He raised his head to call Sola but something blue flicked at the edge of his vision. He started to turn when a hand reached inside his head and twisted.

Starr limped into the darkest corner he could find and dumped Jake into the boxes of trash. The empath followed him right down, sinking into moldy produce from the nearby grocer.

"Ow, fuck!"

"Do you always whine this much when you're shot?" Starr muttered. He flicked a limp banana peel off his arm with a sneer of disgust. "I thought you were a bigger man than that, Cole."

"Screw you; something just stabbed me in the ass." Jake lifted up, grimacing as his bloodied arm took the strain, and yanked up a browned ear of corn. "If I end up getting killed while lying in this stuff I'm gonna be really pissed off, Starr."

Starr spared him a wry look. At least Jake could still find it in him to joke about the situation. Jake thought he was taking things pretty well, all things considering.

"So that was Genesis, huh?" Jake lay back in the garbage and began ripping off part of the hem of his shirt. "That was some creepy shit."

"Mmm, he does have a rather intimate way of getting to know a person, doesn't he?"

Right after the shooting had begun Genesis had sent Jake another message, telling him to drop his weapon. Jake had been so startled he'd staggered backwards, nearly shooting Starr as he reflexively pulled the trigger on his gun. One of those errant shots must have come too close for Genesis' comfort for the telepath had stopped sending, allowing Starr to drag a stunned Jake into another alley.

"It felt like his fingers were sinking into my brain." Jake shuddered at the invasive memory. He allowed Starr to tie the strip of shirt around his arm wound. "I really hope I don't have to see that guy again."

Starr looked down the alley pessimistically. "Don't hold your breath, sweetheart."

Jake followed the gaze, worried for Black. "The others are going to be caught off-guard. Damn, I wish I hadn't lost that PRU. There's no way for them--"

(I'm so happy you could make it. I put in quite an effort to get you here.)

Jake gasped, scrambling back in the garbage as the words slithered into his mind. Even Starr looked upset, standing up in a rush of movement. Jake looked around wildly, searching for the telepath. The alley was empty.

(Why aren't you happier to see me? I've missed you so much.)

Jake shook his head like a dog trying to fling water out of its ears. "What's going on?" he panted. "Where is he?"

Starr touched his head, distracted, as he looked down the alley. "He's not talking to you. He's not talking to either of us."

"Are you nuts? I hear him! So do you."

Starr shook his head looking troubled, which Jake did not like at all. Until now the empath hadn't been rattled by Genesis. "He's not sending to us. He's sending to someone who's trying to block him. Genesis isn't strong enough to narrow his powers to affect one person. The harder he strains, the more his power diffuses. He's using a lot of power right now if even I can hear him."

"We're getting the overflow, you mean. But who's he--" Jake jumped to his feet, his heart somewhere behind his tonsils. "Black!"

"We've got to find him," Starr agreed, breaking into a run.

(Remind me what I've been missing, won't you? Open your jacket.)

Jake slowed to a walk, his hands unbuttoning an invisible jacket. Ahead of him Starr skidded to a halt and then turned and ran back to him. He grabbed Jake's hands.

"Break it! It's just a compulsion. Don't listen to him. Sing a song in your head. Recite a poem."

Jake was scared. He hadn't been in control of his actions just now. Genesis could have made him walk off a bridge. And Christ --
he
wasn't even the one who was receiving the brunt of Genesis' power.

"This is bad," he breathed shakily, running forward again.

(Stop fighting. Undo you shirt.)

Jake nearly tripped over a cardboard box as his mind began to focus on unbuttoning his shirt. He looked up only when he realized that Starr was holding his hands again. "Shit!"

"He's strong," Starr confirmed, staring into Jake's eyes to be sure he was lucid. "Genesis may be stronger than he was before. It feels like it."

"But why is he doing this to Black?" Jake asked. "Genesis is making it sound like he's a long-lost buddy or something."
Or more than that.
But he really didn't want to think about that possibility right now.

Starr though, had already made that leap. "I think it's very obvious that Genesis is enamored of our fearless leader. I don't think that's a good thing, sweetheart."

Suddenly a vision flooded both of their heads:

Black with his hands tied behind his back, being lowered onto a man's hard, swollen cock. He groaned as each inch slowly filled him.

"Fuck!" Jake spat, sickened by the hard-on that filled his pants. Jake grabbed the other man's arm. "Enough of this shit. We need to find them."