GEN13 - Version 2.0 (3 page)

Just then, a passing cab sped by. It bounced through a nearby pothole, spraying their legs with the icy muck that had accumulated inside. Roxy’s fishnets afforded little protection.

“Ewwwww!” she squealed. “I
hate
this city!”

Sarah zipped up her down parka with a shiver. “Well, I’ve got to side with Roxy on the weather thing,” she said. “A lifetime in Arizona and La Jolla didn’t exactly leave me loving the cold.”

She thought for a moment. “Hey, ‘walking radiator,’ ” Sarah added, “don’t you think you can do something about this?”

Bobby shrugged, “Sure,” he replied, “if you’ll keep the snow off us.”

“Deal.”

Bobby started to raise his body temperature, careful not to go too high. Higher temperatures wouldn’t do him any harm, but the gang was in civilian dress right now and the sidewalks were crammed with passers-by. Somehow, he suspected that transforming his body into a mass of living flame would probably blow their cover.

At the same time, Sarah concentrated, subtly manipulating the weather patterns around them. You’d have to look closely to spot the change, but even though the snow was still falling, not a single flake was landing on any of them. Fortunately, it wasn’t likely that many people would be watching them all that closely. Many of them were keeping their heads down because of the snow. And besides, this was one time when the city’s “no eye contact” rule worked in the group’s favor.

“Mmmm .. .’wayyyy better. Toasty warm,” Roxy said, rubbing her hands together. She called over to Grunge: “Hey, Grungie—come get in out of the cold!”

Grunge was standing some distance away, near the entrance to the theater. He was staring at a poster for the movie they had just seen.

“Yoo hoo,” Roxy called again. “Earth to Grunge?” Grunge jumped a bit, startled, as though he’d been off in a world of his own. He turned toward his friends with a leer. “Man,” he said, “that Michelle Yeoh’s a hottie! Did you see the way she was moving in there? All those tricks with flipping around and running up walls and all? Just imagine what she could do under ... ahem ... other circumstances, if you know what I mean ..

“Dude,” Bobby replied, “we always know what you mean.”

Grunge continued, undeterred. “Yup, yup, yup. Talk about your zero-gravity lovin’. Mm-hmm!”

Roxy gave Grunge a look that made the winter weather pale by comparison. Bobby rubbed his eyes, looking pained. Sarah simply wasn’t amused.

.. What?” asked Grunge.

Roxy’s eyes narrowed. “So you want gravity tricks, huh?”    '

“Uh oh,” muttered Bobby.

“Well, maybe what you
really
need is a good, cold shower!”

Suddenly, the slushy snow hanging off of the marquee above Grunge doubled in weight, instantly becoming far too heavy to stay in place. Grange shouted in surprise and indignation as the watery slop splattered over his head and shoulders, covering him in the dripping mess.

“Y’know, I don’t think it’s so cold after all,” Roxy said, an edge in her voice. “I’ll see you all at home.” She spun on her heel and stormed off.

Sarah looked at Bobby with a resigned air that testified to the number of times they’d done this before. “I’ll get her, you get him?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Sarah hurried off after Roxy. “Roxanne! Wait up!”

Bobby casually strolled slowly over to where Grunge stood, still dripping wet.

“What?” said Grunge, honestly baffled.

Bobby sighed. He draped an arm around his best friend’s shoulder. “Grunge-man,” he said, “you’ve got a lot to learn about women.”

Grunge looked genuinely surprised, and more than a little offended. “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis? I know plenty about women! Hey, I read
Penthouse Letters
every month. Even wrote a couple ..

Bobby sighed again. “Listen, you and Roxy’ve been going out for, what, a month or two now?”

“Yeah.”

“And how do you feel about her?”

“How do you think I feel? I dig her. She’s my sweetie.”

“And she digs you.”

“Damn skippy. I’m the man.”

“Well, ‘the man.’ how do you think it makes Roxy feel when she hears you going on and on about Michelle Yeoh?”    '

Grunge pondered that for a minute. He scratched his head in confusion. “But I thought chicks are always after us to be honest. Share our feelings, and all that bull. So I was just being honest about my feelings about Michelle Yeoh ..'

Bobby shook his head. “Dude, there’s honest, and there’s honest. You’ve got to choose your subject matter a little better. You want to talk about your love of kittens and puppy dogs, that’s cool. But they don’t want to hear about you having the hots for somebody else.”

Grunge nodded sagely, taking it all in. “Guess that figures.”

“Guess so.”

“Guess I should go apologize, huh?”

“Guess you’re catching on.”

By the time Bobby finished talking with Grunge, Sarah had already caught up with Roxy. The two of them were standing halfway down the block, having a conversation of their own.

“... I mean, it’s not like I don’t know how he is. I know how he is. I knew that before we started going out,” Roxy was saying. She paused for a moment while she lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. She held the smoke in her lungs for a long moment, then released it all at once. The swirling tendrils of smoke mixed with the vapor from her breath in the chill air.

“It’s just...” Roxy looked around as though searching the buildings around her for the words she needed. “Well, it’s bad enough when it’s some eight-foot-tall supermodel with pneumatic boobs bigger than her head. At least then I know what’s missing about me.”

“Roxanne, there’s nothing missing about you ...” “Oh, get real. ‘You’ve got a good heart, and that’s all

that matters, and besides, you’re cute as a button, blah blah blah.’ Look, I know I’m not built like you, and I’m sure not built like Kat. And it’s cool. I accept that.

“But Michelle Yeoh? Michelle freakin’ Yeoh?! She’s, like,
my
size! If he starts liking
her
better than me, then, well, what’s up with that? What am I supposed to do about it?”

Sarah opened her mouth to answer. But before she could say anything, Grunge came running up to join them. Bobby followed behind. “Hey, Rox! Hey! Hold up!” Grunge came to a stop beside Roxy. She turned away. “C’mon, baby, don’t be like that,” he coaxed. “I’m dirt. I’m pond scum. I’m a horn dog who hasn’t thought with his brain since puberty.”

“I don’t believe you’re hearing me disagree.”

“But I’m sorry, okay? I’m really, really sorry. That stuff doesn’t mean anything. My mouth just works faster than my brain sometimes. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings or anything. Y’know? I just get like that around hot chicks.”

“Oh, good. It makes me feel soooo much better knowing that you didn’t do it on purpose. You just get like that around
hot
chicks.”

“C’mon, I’m trying here, okay? Just cut me a little slack. You mean a lot to me.”

Roxy didn’t say anything.

“There’s gotta be a way I can prove I’m serious about this ...” Grunge said.

He thought for a second, then snapped his fingers. “I know! I know how I can prove it to you!”

He raised his hand solemnly—or as solemnly as he could. “From now on, I, Percival Edmund Chang, will never talk about another woman, or sex, or anything like that in front of you again!”

The others stared at him in stunned silence.

Then they burst into howls of laughter that left them barely able to stand.

“What?” Grunge asked. “What’s the joke?”

Roxy wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes. “Oh, Grunge, sweetie, that’s really sweet of you. Really. But..She broke off the sentence as another fit of laughter seized her.

Grunge looked around at the hysterical trio, a little offended. “What, you don’t think I can do it?”

Bobby stopped coughing barely long enough to catch his breath. “Shyeah. Dude, no offense, but you couldn’t stop talking about sex long enough to microwave popcorn!”

“No, huh? Shows what
you
know! If I put my mind to something, then it’s a done deal! I’m all about will power! I’m the very model of will power! I’m the mack daddy of will power!”

The only response was a gale of laughter that dwarfed the first one.

“O ... okay,” Bobby said, struggling to get himself back under control. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll..He fought off a giggle. “I’ll bet you a hundred bucks .. . that you ... that you can’t go a whole week .., without talking about sex.”

Grunge shook his hand with a slightly-too-firm grip. “Money in the bank, dude. You’re on!”

Sarah wheezed and clutched her aching stomach. “Oh, now I
really
wish Kat was here. She shouldn't miss this.” She took a deep breath. “Where is Kat, anyway?”

“Don’t know,” Roxy replied, snuggling back up against her boyfriend. “All she said was she had stuff to do.”

In another part of the city, Caitlin Fairchild made her way through the crowded streets, heading nowhere in particular. Kat wore only a light jacket over her turtleneck and jeans, but she barely noticed the cold or the snow around her. Part of the reason was her super-tough skin that made her impervious to all sorts of things, not the least of which was the cold. Mostly, though, it was because she was lost in thought.

Apart from the cold, Kat also barely noticed the stares she got from virtually every man she passed. Only a couple of years ago, Kat had been a mousy teenager with glasses who rarely elicited a second glance from the males on campus. But that was before she’d gone gen-active and transformed into a six-foot-three amazon with striking red hair and a figure that made Pamela Anderson look like Olive Oyl. Since the big change, she’d grown so accustomed to the stares of astonishment and naked lust that they just became part of the baggage that came with the deal.

In fact, Kat had been spending a lot of time lately thinking about those days before her time with Gen
¹³
. Back in the day, Kat had been a promising student at Princeton University. A’s didn’t come easy at Princeton, but that didn’t stop her from earning more than her share. She’d majored in computer science back then, and dreamt of a bright future in which she’d dazzle the world with new and daring innovations that would make people’s lives better.

And if she earned a small fortune along the way, well, that wouldn’t be so bad either.

However, everything changed one night toward the end of Kat’s sophomore year, when she was awakened by a late-night knock on the door of her dorm room. It was a team of men in dark suits, agents of the National Security Committee. They’d come to tell her that she’d been accepted for an internship connected to a highly classified government program for unusually talented young people.

In retrospect, Kat should have realized that something was funny when they told her that she would have to leave school that same night to be processed into the program. At the time, though, it was all happening so fast, and she was so grateful and flattered to be chosen, that she never stopped to think about it.

By dawn, Kat found herself in a high-tech facility in the heart of Death Valley. The place was run by a covert group called International Operations, or I.O. for short. It was quite a change from Princeton, what with its halls lined with electronics and guards dressed up in sophisticated cybernetic armor.

It was here that Kat would meet the four people who would soon become her closest friends:

Sarah Rainmaker, a full-blooded Apache with a self-righteous passion for causes ranging from women’s rights to saving the environment to helping the homeless.

Bobby Lane, who’d been bounced from foster home to foster home for as long as he could remember. The experience had left Bobby bitter and angry in those days, but even back then, his more sensitive side occasionally peeked through in his love of music.

Roxanne Spaulding, a chain-smoking party girl whose in-your-face attitude masked a genuine sweetness underneath.

And Grunge, who was ... well, Grunge.

The days at I.O. quickly blurred into an endless series of mental and physical tests that went far beyond anything Kat had ever experienced in college. After two years at an Ivy League school, Kat was used to pencii-and-paper exams and computer assignments that challenged her mental abilities. But here, she also found herself pumping iron and running on treadmills—not to mention being poked and prodded every which way by mechanical sensors built into the glass walls of what looked like giant test tubes while she was suspended inside, wearing nothing but an embarrassed expression. There were times when Kat felt more like a lab rat than a “talented young person.”

Of course, Kat hadn’t known the real reason why she and the others had been selected, any more than she knew the real purpose of the program. She didn’t know that she was part of the thirteenth generation of the Genesis Project, whose hidden agenda was to create super-powered operatives under the control of Ivana Baiul, the ruthless leader of I.O.’s Sci-Tech division. She didn’t know that, like her new friends, she’d been chosen because her father was one of the successes of the twelfth generation of the program—a member of a covert, super-powered strike force that was given the code name Team 7. Most important, she didn’t know about the drugs that were being slipped into her food at every meal, or the treatments that were being administered while she was “under examination” in the tubes. All of them added up to a regimen that was designed to activate her latent powers ... if they didn’t kill her first.

In fact, Kat and her friends were far from the only test subjects at the facility. There were at least a half-dozen other groups of teens who were undergoing the same brutal regimen of tests they were. Over the weeks they spent training, however, each of the other groups would either wash out of the program or disappear.

That destiny wasn’t in the cards for Kat, though. She still held vivid memories of the night when her gen-factor kicked in. The nausea. The headaches that wouldn’t go away and just kept getting worse. And then, the white-hot pain that coursed through every inch of her frame. It felt like her body was tearing itself apart—and, in a sense, it was. The very strands of her DNA ripped apart and reformed as Kat’s body expanded and morphed until she couldn’t even recognize herself anymore. She gained nearly a foot in height, not to mention enhanced speed and the strength and durability of a small tank.