“Because,” she said, “I want to know why I’m different. If I’m different.”
While Sean’s face was a mixture of emotions, Gemmel just grunted.
“Works for me,” he said as he threw the hummer into gear.
DataLog Text-MemxJourn: Kepler-Madison, Margaret. / 22-04-24
/DataLog Text-SUPPLEMENTAL: Doyle, Sienna A.
“Mr. Rove.”
“Yes, Madam President?”
“Dr. Harvey has informed me the unconfirmed variable is heading west. You have successfully finished with the purge of the rebellious element in the city, correct?”
“Yes, Madam President.”
“Excellent. You may have to intercept them in Nashville. I can’t have some unknown entity or even fledgling Mancer setting up a base of operation so close to my city. I’ll keep you apprised.”
“Very good, Madam President.”
DataLog Text-MemxJourn: Doyle, Sienna A. / 24-04-24
“Wow, and I thought Sigma-8 was a shithole,” grumbled Gemmel.
The outskirts of Nashville looked like they had been hit with a flood, tornado and earthquake all on the same day. Random fires raged in isolated pockets everywhere and there wasn’t a single building in site that remained whole. Streets were barely passable due to all the debris that littered the landscape, everything from broken walls of brick and bent steel girders to mangled bicycles and bizarre pyramids of decaying shoes. Graffiti covered large expanses of any available surface, some it even carved in. Here and there, the trio caught sight of animal motion, some possibly human, but none of it seemed furtive or suspicious.
“This might have been a bad idea,” Sienna mumbled from the passenger seat.
“What?” Sean called down, his head and shoulders through the roof with a XM8.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t think we’re going to find any vitals here,” said Sean.
“No, no vitals,” repeated Sienna weakly.
“But we might find some answers,” said Gemmel, don’t looking at her.
The huge man stiffened when Sienna laid her head on his shoulder. He was five years older than her, two older than Sean, and had always been just as much a big brother as her own flesh and blood. She knew his gruff exterior was just for show.
“Damn,” swore Sean from above.
“What?” she asked.
“I see it,” said Gemmel.
Up ahead, a sizable dump truck hauling tires had careened off and smashed into a T-Net tower kiosk. Its cargo had come spilling out the back, filling the road. A dozen of them were still smoldering, the acrid stench of burning rubber hitting Sienna in the face. Growing nauseated, she peered around for a detour. Gemmel slowed down.
“What, just go over them!” Sean yelled down.
“Nope. If one of them burning pieces get caught up in the undercarriage, we could be walking.”
Stopping and climbing out, they surveyed the situation while trying not to choke on the fumes. There weren’t terribly many, not even a hundred by Sienna’s estimate, but they were bigger sized for a truck or utility van. The bulk of them could be rolled off or pushed to the side in about ten minutes.
Sienna examined the area as she peeled off the stinking thermal sweater she had been wearing since they first left Sigma-8. Her utilitarian grey cargo pants still had a week’s worth of wear to them, but she rooted around for another shirt to put over her stained white tank top. She found a thin blue jacket and opted for it and the raggedy scarf she had owned since she could remember. Checking her clip, she felt that familiar pressure below her stomach and swore.
“Now what?” Sean called back, Gemmel staring at her.
“Just take point for a minute. I’ve got to pee.”
“Damn it, Sienna.”
Social niceties took a backseat when you rode with an encampment Quartet, and privacy was rarer still. Her brother didn’t care about her bodily function, only the dangers it might present. Anton had once remarked that it was convenient that so many plastic bottles had survived the apocalypse. Poor, dead Anton.
Slipping around the edge of what used to be a restaurant, Sienna could still clearly see the other two through the blasted outer shell of the building. Undoing her belt, she considered that it wasn’t the act of urinating that was a cause for concern, but those moments of vulnerability. She had heard of people who had attempted to bypass the physical necessity, only to find themselves stricken with advanced jaundice.
Finishing and re-buckling, she heard a cough behind her, almost polite in nature. She spun on her toe and brought up one of the M&P’s, its sights trained on a man leaning out of a doorway’s alcove. Tall and thin, he was older with long dark hair that had gone mostly to grey. A smile played at the corner of his lips, shined even brighter in his blue eyes.
“Out of the shadows, move!” barked Sienna.
“I’m not sure if I can truly ever be ‘out’ of the shadows, my dear. Once one has gazed into the abyss and all that,” he replied amused.
“What? Get out here!”
“Sienna?” she heard Sean yell.
“No need for that, my dear,” he said, gesturing to her gun. “I’m not a threat, not to you I would theorize.”
Sean and Gemmel rounded the corner, her brother’s shotgun aimed directly at the stranger’s head. His left hand kept twitching, and she glanced over long enough to see he had burnt it on one of the tires. Sean, however, was currently far more concerned with the man strolling nonchalantly towards them.
“Stop, or I’ll take off your head,” he growled, Mossberg in hand.
“You’ve injured yourself. Best see to that.”
“Stop!”
He did. Almost as tall as Gemmel, he was only half as wide. With the hint of stubble on his chin, his greying locks brushed the collar of the ratty black blazer he wore over a faded red polo. Slightly mussed charcoal trousers and scuffed shoes completed the look of absent-minded professor. He even adjusted his small, wire-rim glasses before placing his hands behind his back.
“Who are you? Why were you watching us? Was this supposed to be a trap?”
“Such delightful questions!” he said. “Always, the human need to quantify and qualify their reality.”
“Answer me!” roared Sean. “Are there more of you?”
“How can it be properly deduced if there are ‘more of me’ if you have not fully extrapolated an answer for who ‘I am’ yet?”
“What?”
“Exactly!”
“He’s a looney,” murmured Gemmel.
“That, young man, is a valid possibility,” he concurred. “But for the sake of analytical description theory, you may refer to me as Jean-Baptiste Camus. You should really attend to your hand, young man. This area is particularly notorious for a variety of microbial infections.”
“What, don’t want your food pre-cooked, wacko?”
“If you are implying anthropophagy rites, I assure you that it is not the case. And while I would dearly love to stand here and discuss the issues of moral relativism, I’m afraid we may not have the time.”
Causally, one of his hands reached out, waist high and he proceeded to make a series of complicated hand motions, the final more abrupt. That last one made Sean stumble backwards, his hand jerking violently away from his gun. Now, instead of blistered, it was smooth pink flesh again.
“You’re… you’re a fucking Mancer!”
“A distinction, yes. Hmmm… should I also inform you that I was born in Rochester, never bothered getting a drivers’ license, prefer brandy over scotch and have an intellectual aversion to the later works of Karl Marx? No? Then you should follow me — quickly.”