Metawars: The Complete Series: Trance, Changeling, Tempest, Chimera (34 page)

Gage pulled into an underground parking garage, casting the dim vehicle into darker shadows. I leaned against the dash, watching every corner and cranny, expecting a trap. None sprung. If this was bait, Specter didn’t seem to know we’d taken it.

As we walked, Psystorm’s eyes never stopped moving, as if he expected an attack at any moment. On some level, I understood—he’d been imprisoned for a long time, and now he was back in a world with no walls around it, about to betray a former ally. Not conducive to a sense of personal safety.

We found the landlord’s office—a white door next to the first floor elevator with a manager sign and separate opening at the top. Gage pressed the buzzer, and it screeched angrily on the other side of the wall. Footsteps shuffled.

“If it’s rent,” a voice shouted, “just slip it under the door.”

“Mr. Milton?” I said.

“Who is it?”

“We’re following up on the tip you gave to the police this morning.”

A latch turned. The upper half of the door swung out, almost clipping Renee’s forehead. Andrew Milton stepped into the half frame, a tall and overweight man with the lingering build of a retired linebacker. His bald head and lack of beard did nothing to hide sagging jowls and liver spots.

He stared at Renee first, either shocked by her blue skin or admiring her black leather uniform, and then at me. He dismissed Gage and Psystorm with a flicker of his eyes, and went back to staring at Renee.

“Hey, over here,” I said, snapping my fingers to get his attention. “You have a tenant named Marcus Spence, correct?”

“Yeah, up on the fifth floor,” Milton said. “Why?”

“You tell me, Mr. Milton. When you called the police, you seemed to think Mr. Spence fit a particular profile. Why?”

Milton shrugged, less interested in the conversation than in the cleft between my breasts. “He looks like the guy, is all. I’ve been here twenty years, you know, I know my tenants. This guy Spence hasn’t left the building in three years.”

“What about rent?” Gage asked.

No acknowledgment, still talking to my cleavage. “Pays in cash every time. I never see him, but someone slips the envelope under the door. Utilities are included in rent. He’s got no phone lines or Web connections up there, so I don’t know who he talks to. None of the neighbors complain, though, so I leave him be as long as he keeps paying on time.”

“Does he ever have visitors?” I asked.

“None I ever saw, but I don’t watch the front door all the time.”

“So he could have left without you knowing.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Did you run a credit check on him?”

Milton snorted. “In this neighborhood? People don’t have credit. He gave me three months’ rent up front, lady, so I was inclined to give him the apartment. Wish all my tenants were so good to me.”

Gage produced a folded photograph from his uniform pocket and held it up. “Are you sure this is the man who’s been renting from you?”

“Yep, that’s him, only older and in a wheelchair.”

My hand jerked. “Wheelchair?”

“Yeah, sucker can’t walk. Said it was a stroke or something. Apartment wasn’t good for handicaps, but he didn’t seem to care. Just wanted someplace quiet, he said.”

He’s telling the truth,
Psystorm said in my head. I looked at Gage. He nodded; his senses said the same.

“What room?” I asked.

“Five E,” Milton said. “Fifth floor, end of the hall. Look, you people aren’t going to start up trouble, are you?”

I let the “you people” comment slide. “We’ll do our best to question Mr. Spence quietly.”

“Good, ’cuz I don’t know if my insurance on this place would consider you an act of God. I don’t have insurance for superpower destruction, you know. After the War, everyone dropped that from their premiums.”

“They may want to think about adding the clause again,” Renee said.

Milton blanched.

“Look,” I said, “contrary to recent events, I have no intention of burning your building down, so relax.” Still, it didn’t hurt be prepared. “How many people live here?”

“Eighty or so. Six floors, five apartments on each floor.”

“Are most of them at work?”

“In this neighborhood? A lot of them work out of their homes, if you get my meaning.”

“Loud and clear, but we’re not the police and not here for them. I just want an idea of who might or might not be home right now.”

Milton hung his head and groaned. “You’re going to burn the place down, I know it.”

I rolled my eyes. “Mr. Milton—”

Bells clanged, thundering so loudly I couldn’t concentrate, and the sprinkler system spat tepid water from the ceiling. Gage must have been extending his hearing to get an idea of the number of people in the building, because he cried out and dropped to his knees, palms over his ears. He could control the level at which his senses operated, but getting caught like that had to hurt like hell.

“You see!” Milton shouted. “I knew it, I knew it. Act of God, I tell you, it was an act of God.”

He yanked open the bottom half of the door and stormed past us, his feet squishing on the rapidly soaking carpet. He raced down the hallway, toward the front door, still cursing and complaining about insurance.

“I do not believe this,” I said.

“Could someone have set off the alarm by accident?” Renee asked. Water rolled down her face and plastered her hair to her back and shoulders.

“No,” Psystorm said. “No, he knows we’re here. It’s a distraction.”

Gage dropped his hands and looked up. Pain was etched across his face, but he seemed to have his senses under control. “Do you smell the fire?” I asked as I helped him stand. He stepped away as soon as he was on his feet.

“It’s above us,” he said. “Second floor, I think, and getting bigger by the minute. If the sprinklers don’t stop it, we’re going to have an inferno on our hands.” The sprinkler system slowed from a spray to a trickle, and finally stopped altogether.

“Hell,” I said.

“Give it time,” Psystorm said.

Far away, someone screamed, audible even over the blare of the alarm bell.

“We split up,” I said. “Psystorm and I will head for Spence’s apartment. You two make sure people are getting out of this building, and then call Dahlia. Maybe she can get down here and do something with the fire.”

“She’s still green, T,” Renee said.

“She’s strong and we need her.”

I turned. Someone caught my wrist and pulled me back. Gage’s mouth opened—no words tumbled out. We really needed to talk when this was over. “I’ll be careful,” I said.

After he and Renee disappeared down an adjacent corridor, I turned to Psystorm. He was hard to read, showing no outward signs of fear or concern, just a weary sense of duty.

“Let’s find the stairs,” I said.

B
y the fourth-floor landing, I realized what was bothering me: no one else was in the stairwell. Even with the alarm ringing on every floor we passed, I hadn’t seen a single person evacuate the building. Milton could be wrong about so many folks working from home, but I doubted it, and it made me wonder how many times a week someone pulled a false alarm.

I pushed the exit door open.

“This isn’t the fifth floor,” Psystorm said.

“I know, but I don’t think people realize this is a real fire.” I pounded my fist against the first door I saw. “Hey! Get your ass moving, this isn’t a drill, there’s a fire downstairs!”

The door whipped open with a rush of cold air. A teenage girl stood there in too-tight clothes, a toddler balanced on one hip. She had a bruise on her jaw, another on her bare ankle, and aimed a revolver at me with her left hand.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked.

I twisted the gun away from her with ease. Safety was off—great. “Get anyone else who’s with you outside right now. The second floor is on fire.”

Her round eyes widened. She put the toddler down with a terse “Stay here,” and bolted back inside. Psystorm went to the next apartment door. The girl returned with an infant in her arms and a bag slung over her shoulder. She grabbed the toddler’s hand and yanked the child toward the stairwell.

We didn’t stop until we’d banged on all five doors. Only three opened; the others remained silent. Ten people raced into the stairwell. Psystorm and I followed them in. The air had heated a few degrees; the fire was moving quickly. Up we went, to the fifth floor, banging on doors as we moved down the hall. Two opened, two didn’t, and we found ourselves in front of 5E.

Psystorm put a hand out to stay me and closed his eyes. The alarm seemed impossibly loud here. I’d be hearing it in my sleep for days. He dropped his hand and looked at me.

“Something’s wrong,” he said. “It feels like Specter, but also not. His power is missing.”

My stomach fluttered. I didn’t like the sound of that. “Could his conscious power be elsewhere?”

He shook his head. “Even if it was, I’d still get a sense of it inside of his physical body, something linking the conscious power to his bodily form, like a tether. All Metas have it.”

“And now there’s no tether.”

“Right.”

“Shit.”

“Right again.”

My Vox beeped, and then, I grabbed it. “Cipher, Trance, go ahead.”

the second floor. Looks like most of the residents are out and the fire department’s on the way.>

“Copy. We’re about to go inside.”

“Sounds like he had help,” Psystorm said. “He might still be in one of the tenants, Cipher, so watch your backs down there.”

Once the Vox was tucked safely away, I turned to Psystorm. “So? Do we knock?”

He looked at my hands, and then quirked an eyebrow. The gesture was cute, sort of cocky, and it made him look ten years younger. “How about I let you knock?”

“You’re sure this is Specter?”

“Positive.”

I grinned. “Okay, I’ll knock.”

We backed up a few paces, and with Psystorm behind me, I pushed two apple-size orbs at the doorknob. They hit above and below the hardware and shattered the cheap particle board with a sound like snapping celery. A few chunks flew our way.

We surged through the door and into the worst odor I’d ever experienced. Rot and human waste, bottled up together for weeks, if not longer. I stumbled backward, into Psystorm,
gagging on the fetid air in my lungs. He coughed, hands on my waist, holding me upright. In the dim light of a half-open window, I saw my archenemy in the flesh for the first time since I was ten years old.

His wheelchair sat across the small living room, next to a dusty sofa. Huddled under a stained cotton blanket, the fragile old man didn’t move or acknowledge our presence. Red spots, likely sores of some sort, lined his lips and chin. Liquid leaked from his rheumy eyes and half-open mouth. His hair was pure white, face lined with age and abuse. Frail hands clutched the edge of the blanket, skin marred with liver spots, bones gnarled from arthritis. An oxygen tank was hooked to the back of the wheelchair, and a yellowed nasal cannula wrapped around his head. The urine bag attached to his chair had overflowed, leaving a dark puddle on the frayed carpet.

Tears stung my own eyes—from the smell or the sight of this neglected old man, I wasn’t certain. Crying over Specter. What would William have thought?

“Is he even alive?” I asked, surprised at the quiver in my voice.

Psystorm slipped around me and took a few steps forward. “He’s alive, but no one’s home. Just like I felt in the hallway, the tether is gone. He’s powerless and if he’s in there somewhere, he’s down deep.”

“Can you reach him? Get Marcus Spence to come out and talk to us?”

“I’ll try.” He crouched in front of the old man, allowing an arm’s reach of distance, and closed his eyes.

I did a quick sweep of the apartment. The bed was neatly made, not slept in for a long time. Thick coats of dust covered most of the furniture, including the kitchen counters. The toilet had backed up, which accounted for some of the smell. I located a can of room freshener, sprayed liberally, and closed the door tight. All the food in the fridge was spoiled or a day from it, and a small family of roaches scurried out from under the garbage can when I kicked it.

Someone had kept an ailing old man prisoner in this apartment for an unknown length of time, living in his own filth, with no food or filtered water. In spite of myself, and in spite of the horrors he’d done fifteen years ago, I felt sorry for him. Specter was a shell, barely alive by all rights. He couldn’t have been the one responsible for the hell we’d lived through this week.

I returned to the living room. Psystorm sat on the floor in front of Specter, hands folded in his lap. A single tear rolled down one cheek, and it told me everything I needed to know. I stopped, afraid to intrude.

Psystorm turned his head. Grieving eyes met mine. “I’ve never felt anything like this. Such despair. Eagerness to simply die and let it be over with.”

“Did he tell you anything?”

“I could glean a few things, mostly images. He didn’t surrender with the others on Manhattan. Someone else was collared in his place. He escaped west, hid out. Had a stroke a few months after the War ended and has been wheelchair bound ever since. He had a second stroke four months ago. A hospice nurse used to come twice a month to check on
him. He’s had other visitors, but I can’t see them clearly.” He blanched. “The catatonia is recent, very recent. Days, maybe a week.”

The timetable fit with the recovery of our powers.

“It’s incredible, Trance. It’s like someone ripped out his soul and left a wailing animal in its place. He just wants to die.”

I shivered, despite the stifling air. “What can do this to a person?”

“An extremely talented telepath.”