Courtesy of amateur video, Max watched as a brown-haired young man in jeans and a denim jacket — surrounded by Seattle police officers — suddenly sprang to life.
A straight kick to the groin dropped the cop in front of him and, even before that one fell, the young man did a back flip that took him easily eight feet into the air before nailing a landing behind the officer who a moment before had been facing him. When the officer turned with nightstick raised, the young man hit him with a straight right to the throat that dropped him.
One of the remaining three rushed at the rebel with a Tazer, and the young man leapt out of the way at the last second, so that the cop shot one of his fellow officers. As the officer who had fired the Tazer stood in astonishment, the young man spun and kicked him twice in the face before the officer fell.
The remaining cop drew his service pistol and emptied the clip at the young man, whose response was to cartwheel, spin, and dodge until the officer’s pistol was empty. When the last round missed him, the young man stepped forward and hit the cop with half a dozen alternating lefts and rights, before he mercifully let the public servant drop to the ground unconscious.
Max sat as wide-eyed and amazed as the boy’s victims.
Even though she’d only eaten a tiny amount of her breakfast, the food began to roil in her stomach. She had just witnessed superhuman feats that few on the planet could have accomplished: and the only humans she knew of capable of such things had been bred and trained at Manticore...
The video was grainy, shot from a distance, and she was reasonably sure it wasn’t Zack; but the young man who took out the five cops could definitely have been one of her sibs. He looked vaguely like Seth, but Seth hadn’t made it out that night... had he? The picture was so lousy, even with her enhanced vision, she couldn’t tell much of anything, for sure.
This gifted guy just had to be one of her sibs... didn’t he? Who else could do what they could do? Or were there other places like Manticore, turning out supersoldiers?
“Max. Max!”
She turned to look numbly at Fresca. “What?”
“Why... why are you crying, Max?”
She blinked. She didn’t know she had been, but those were tears, all right, running down her cheeks; the streaks of moisture felt warm. “It’s nothing, Fres,” she said. “How you doing with your chow?”
“I’m gonna blow up soon.”
“Then why don’t you stop eating?”
“After you treated me to this feast? I would never insult you that way, Max!”
She couldn’t help but smile through the tears. As she sat watching the boy shovel in the food, she knew her course was clear: a girl had to do what a girl had to do.
But she knew when she left, she’d miss Fresca most of all. “You ready to go then, waffle boy?”
He slurped down the last of his second chocolate milk. “Yeah, yeah, I’m ready to blaze... And thanks, Max. I haven’t eaten like this in days... You sure you’re okay?”
“Just somethin’ in my eye,” she said. “I’m great, now.”
“You’re always great, Max.”
The waitress came over as they rose and Max paid their bill, including tip.
“Be sure to come back,” the waitress said; it seemed vaguely a threat.
As they walked back to the theater, with considerably less urgency, Max’s mind was nonetheless racing.
She’d always wondered how she’d go about finding her siblings, and now, at breakfast, one of them had practically dropped into her lap. How long would it take her to get to Seattle, and how would she get past all the checkpoints? What would Moody think about her leaving? He had all but suggested it before, hadn’t he?
Or had Moody wanted her to stay with him?
The bike’s gas tank was full, more or less; but would she be able to get fuel on the road? Even if she could, the price of the stuff would eat through her bankroll. The questions engulfed her like swarming insects.
As they neared the theater, Fresca again asked, “You sure you’re okay, Max?”
She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek, taking her good sweet time, the smack of her lips like a sweet slap. When she let him go, Fresca flushed red, his thousands of freckles merging into one big glowing blotch. She knew instantly that he was thinking the same thoughts about her that she’d been thinking after Moody’s lingering kiss on the cheek... only Fres didn’t seem weirded out like she had been: he seemed pleased, even... excited.
Uh oh...
Her motivations had been purely innocent, which made her wonder if maybe Moody’s had been, too...
Mann’s was slowly coming awake, Clan members stirring and lining up to use the bathrooms, the smell of breakfasts cooking on hot plates wafting pleasantly. Max deposited the still-beet-faced Fresca next to his concession-stand berth and headed into the auditorium in search of Moody.
The sloping floor was scattered with sleeping bags and beds appropriated from the Roosevelt wreckage, while blanket “walls” were draped from clotheslines. Despite the breakfast odors, the smell of stale sweat and unwashed souls hung in the air; and yet very faintly lingered the olfactory memory of buttered popcorn.
It was a motley crew Moody lorded over, but they were a family — Max already was viewing them with a sort of nostalgia — and they loved the old man.
Moody’s second-in-command, Gabriel — an African American in his late twenties — was rousing the kids when she came in.
“Moodman in his office?” she asked.
Gabriel had a shadow’s worth of black hair, brown eyes, and an ostrich neck. He cocked his head toward the movie screen. “Yeah, and he’s happy as a clam. What the hell you pull off last night, Maxie?”
“Little score. Same-o same-so... save-the-day kinda thing.”
He harrumphed, but grinned. “Ain’t it the truth. Don’t know what we’d do without you ’round here, girl.”
Max felt a twinge of guilt.
Gabriel was looking down at Niner, a sixteen-year-old newbie girl who’d been with the Clan for about a month.
“Get your scrawny ass outa the sack,” Gabriel growled. “There’s work to be done in the real world.”
Continuing on toward the looming screen, Max thought about Niner. Nice kid; reminded her a little of Lucy. Max hoped that once she was gone, maybe Fresca and Niner could hook up. Might be good for both of them.
Max took a doorway to the left of the screen, into an area where a single guard, Tippett, blocked the hallway that led to Moody’s quarters. Six-four, maybe 240 pounds of tattoos and piercings, Tippett had been a linebacker back in the pre-Pulse days. Now, nearly fifty, he still had a black belt in karate and was the only person in the Clan who could hold his own with Max. When they’d sparred once, he’d lasted eight seconds, easily the record for a match with her. Only now that Max knew the man’s moves, he’d go down in five.
“Hey,” Max said.
Tippett smiled, showing a thin line of tobacco-browned teeth. Big and pale with an incongruous Afro, he scared the shit out of everybody... except Max and Moody. Even Gabriel gave Tippett more than the average amount of space.
“Cutie pie,” he said. “Wanna go a few rounds?”
“No. You?”
“Hell no. You must wanna see the man.”
“I need to see the man.”
“Girl whips my ass don’t have to ask me twice.” The guard stepped aside.
The hallway had an incense odor, always pleasant to Max after the fetid sweat smell of the auditorium. Moody’s office was the second door on the left of the pale-blue cracked plaster walls, an unmarked one just after another labeled MOODY — OFFICE. The latter led into a tiny empty room; but the important part of that “OFFICE” door was the four ounces of C4 wired to it.