GeneSix (6 page)

“Because, Catherine zeta-Jones is
hot
. Of course, z
eta
was a term used in early nuclear fission research, but who cares, right?”

Jake shook his head wearily. They had seen
Zorro
a couple nights earlier for the umpteenth time.
God save us from eccentric geniuses and mad scientists
.

Jake had made the mistake of asking just how the zeta energy reactor worked. Without going into the mathematics of it, which might have taken all night, Scott explained he had tapped into a multi-dimensional energy source. He did not fully understand it himself, but it should be able to create clean energy with no waste to pollute the air, and with no radioactive core to cause an environmental disaster when it came time for disposal.

Of course, the whole thing blew up, and Jake was caught in the explosion. Ground level. Should have been vaporized, and Scott could not explain why he was not. Jake was found in the wreckage, unconscious but not visibly harmed.

He was unconscious for four days. During this time, his body temperature fluctuated from eighty degrees to over one hundred, and finally settled on the normal ninety-eight point something on day four, when he finally woke up.

Scott did not tell anyone he was secretly monitoring Jake for zeta radiation emissions. Much of what he did he kept on the proverbial down-low, telling the Secretary only what he thought the Secretary needed to know. He found there seemed to be a continual reading, low but steady, and it seemed Jake was now generating the stuff. At one time, on day two, a nurse had attempted to draw some blood from Jake, and broke three needles trying to get them into his arm. During that time, the zeta radiation was spiking. Later, when it returned to its normal low, she was able to get the blood easily.

When Jake awoke, he seemed fine. He did not climb to consciousness slowly, like someone who had been comatose for four days. He simply opened his eyes, yawned and stretched as though he had merely been asleep and it was time to start the day.

It was shortly afterward that he discovered his ability to increase his output of zeta energy simply by desiring to do so. Powering-up, he called it, because the higher the emission of energy, the stronger he seemed to become. His tolerance for pain rose dramatically, and he seemed to heal more quickly.

Scott set up some equipment in one of his labs, and they began a series of tests to measure the fluctuations in Jake’s strength and toleration of pain in comparison to the levels of energy he was emitting.

Scott called it
super strength
, and he used terms like
healing factor
and
invulnerability
. Terms, Jake explained to Mandy, he took from comic books.

“He really reads comic books?” Mandy asked, as they walked along.

Jake, despite his mood, could not help but crack a grin. “Yes. The smartest man in the world reads comics. And I’ve found out the hard way when your life starts resembling a comic book, you know you’ve done something wrong.”

She gave a short laugh. “Oh, it can’t be all that bad.”

“No, I suppose not. Not for the most part, at least. When it gets bad is on nights like this, when I would like to go out like a normal human being. Have some beers like a normal guy.”

She shrugged. “Well, you had some beers. Got into a fight. And now you’re walking a girl home. Not bad, I would say.”

He had to smile at that. He looked into her laughing eyes. “I suppose you’re right.”

“So,” she said. “Doctor Tempest was trying to measure your maximum power limits.”

“Yeah.”

“What were the results?”

“The results were everything seemed to be off any scale he could concoct. Hell, he even theorizes I could survive in space.”

“Yeah, he said that earlier. Did he mean, like, without a space suit, or anything?”

Jake nodded. “Yeah. Of course, all of this is classified. I really shouldn’t be talking about it at all.”

She traced an X over her chest. “Off the record. Cross my heart.”

They walked a bit further, and she asked, “So, can you fly? And do you have X-ray vision, and all of that?”

Jake chuckled, and shook his head. “No, nothing like that. X-ray vision can’t really happen, at least according to Scott. Physiologically impossible. And flying can’t happen unless you can somehow control the gravitational field. So, Superman couldn’t really exist.”

“Aw,” she said, with mock disappointment. “Don’t burst my bubble. I
am
glad about the X-ray vision, though.”

“Oh?” His mood was beginning to lighten considerably. “And why is that?”

She gave him a sidelong glance. “A girl likes to keep a little suspense.”

They reached her apartment, after walking for a couple hours. Mandy fit her key into the lock, and said, “So, would you like to come in for a glass of wine? Maybe you can power-down and let yourself enjoy it.”

He smiled. “Sure. That sounds great.”

She lived in an efficiency. One big room, essentially. A double bed against one wall, a kitchenette against the other. She found room for a small stand that held a television and a DVD player. On her kitchen table was a laptop.

She said, “It’s not much, but I call it home. And I manage to make enough money to pay for it myself, so I don’t need a roommate.”

She gestured toward a wicker rocker on the uneven wooden floor next to the bed. “Have a seat. Make yourself comfortable.”

He pulled off his jacket and let it drop to the bed. Then he lowered himself into the rocker, powering-down more. There were times when he simply did not know his own strength, and thought the wicker looked a little fragile.

He asked, “What do you do for a job? I mean, writing for the school paper and attending school full-time can’t leave you much time for a job.”

She had pulled the fridge open, and was now inserting a cork screw into a wine bottle. “Want to know a secret? I moonlight by selling articles freelance to the Boston Press Herald.”

“I thought you weren’t allowed to write for the school paper if you were professional.”

She glanced at him with a smirk. “That
is
the rule. I use a pen name in my articles for the Press Herald.”

“Not exactly legal, is it?”

“Hey, a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do. I mean, it’s a tough world out there, and if you play by the rules you’re going to be one of the many.
This
girl wants to stand out. I won’t settle for anything less than excellence.”

The cork slid out of the bottle with a small popping sound, and she filled two long-stem glasses. “Well,
this
is a little less than excellence. Chardonnay, six dollars a bottle. But I’m just getting started. Wait a few years.”

She handed him a glass, then sat at the edge of the bed and kicked off her shoes. They were low-heeled flats.

Jake took a sip of the wine. He was not normally a wine drinker, but it was nice to be away from the lab. Away from the intensity and the adventure that came with working for Scott Tempest, and to at least for a few hours forget he was something other than just a normal man, enjoying a normal evening with a pretty girl.

“So, tell me,” she said. “Do you have something like kryptonite? Something that’s a weakness to you?”

Jake did not find the question as exasperating as he would have a few hours ago. The surliness he had been experiencing at the bar had dissipated. And yet, it seemed all they had talked about during the entire walk to the apartment was himself and his freakish meta-human abilities. “Don’t you want to talk about anything else?”

She shrugged. “Curiosity. A natural state of being for an investigative journalist.”

“I suppose. Okay, I’ll answer this question, and then we talk about something else, okay? Like maybe, you.”

She nodded. “Deal.”

“No. There’s no such thing as kryptonite, or anything like it. No substance that can just make my strength or endurance go away. At least, we’ve never found any, and Scott theorizes there is none. And with Scott, his guesses are usually better than most people’s facts. Though I’d never admit this to his face,”

She took a sip of wine. “Ever have a bullet bounce off you?”

“No, and I don’t want to try. And that’s two questions.”

“Sorry. Your turn.”

Jake took a sip of wine. “So, do you date a lot of football players?”

She gave a frown. “No more than I have to.”

“So, what kind of guys
do
you date?”

“I like guys who have half a brain. I mean, conversation is entirely underrated.”

Jake nodded. He took another sip of wine.

“Drink up,” she said. “There’s more where that came from.”

“So, tell me. What pen name do you write under when you’re breaking the rules and selling articles to the Press Herald?”

“I call myself Kimberly Stratton.”

“Kimberly Stratton. I’m trying to remember if I’ve seen that name in the paper.”

“I sold one that went national. The expose on Senator Watterson.” She took a sip of her wine.

“That was you?”

She nodded. “Not bad, huh?”

“Not bad at all.”

She leaned back on her elbows and crossed her legs, and kicked her foot a little. “Can I tell you a secret? Some day, I’d like to write a novel. That was my ambition when I was a kid. And I still think I might want to pursue that someday.”

“Then, what got you into investigative journalism?”

She shrugged. “When I got to college, I decided to major in journalism so I could have a way to pay the bills and still work with words. That was when I discovered just how incredibly thrilling it is to get that story, to dig beneath the surface to find the real truth. Because that’s where the truth usually is. Hidden. Sometimes deeply. Things are almost never the way they first appear.”

She sat up and dropped her feet to the floor. “Did you ever notice if someone has a certain reputation, and we all do, that reputation is almost never an accurate description of who we really are?”

He shrugged. He had never really thought about it. “Then, what
are
reputations?”

“Reputations are usually based on someone’s first impression of us. Usually a peer – maybe someone we work with. And that first impression sticks, because it’s easier to perceive someone based on reputation than to really get to know them. Like, with Senator Watterson.”

Jake nodded. “You exposed that affair he was having with his assistant.”

Mandy nodded with a smile, and brought her wineglass to her lips. “That may not have him cost his career, but it sure did a lot to enhance mine.”

“But I have to ask you, what’s really to be gained by doing that? I mean, is any career so worth it that you have to build it by tearing down someone else? I don’t mean to condone a married man having an affair, but shouldn’t the public be more concerned with his voting record in the Senate? That’s how people like Senators and congressional leaders shape the nation.”

“I disagree entirely.” She did not seem at all insulted by his apparent attack on her tactics. Instead, she seemed to appreciate the challenge. “When you’re a public leader, you help shape the country not just by voting, but by the very way you conduct your life. Even, sometimes by the way you dress. Look at the way many of Bill Clinton’s personnel went the office, back when he was President. In jeans, with pony tails. No tie and jacket. What kind of example did they set by that?”

Jake shrugged. “Freedom of expression?”

“How about disrespect for the White House and what it stands for? You want freedom of expression, then write an editorial to a newspaper. But when in the presence of the President, you should conduct yourself as such. And when a Senator is boffing his assistant in his own office after hours while his wife is at home, just what kind of example is he setting for the country? In any given situation, it has been proven that leaders set the collective personality for any group they lead.”

“I don’t know about collective personalities and reputations,” Jake said, “but I do know you look kind of lonely sitting over there all by yourself.”

“I was wondering when you’d notice.”

He left the chair, and slid onto the bed next to her. He did not know if it was the wine, or that he had been celibate much longer than he cared to think about, because serving as assistant and body guard to Scott Tempest was often a twenty-four/seven job, but he found Mandy looking way too desirable as she sat at the edge of her bed. Her micro-mini was tending to ride up as she sat, the way micro minis do, and she had nice legs, curved gently at the thighs and with ankles tapering down gracefully, and covered in fishnets. She tended to flip her hair away from her face as she talked, and to make an unintentional pouting sort of motion with her lips when she formed certain words. Her intensity as she talked about her career and her philosophies on life, though Jake did not entirely agree with them, gave a sort of fire to her eyes that somehow enhanced the whole picture.