One arm before her, Soledad swatted aside the gawkers, their attention having shifted from the victimless sinkhole onto her."Move!" The people moved, not nearly enough."Move!"
Tripping, stumbling out into the open, Soledad saw the woman getting farther away. Soledad fought herself upright, raced forward.
Gun out, she hit an intersection.
A car horn, the skid of tires.
Soledad one-handed herself over the hood of the Ford that almost took her out, hit the pavement, rolled, kept moving. Eyes on the woman, eyes dead on the woman.
Up the boulevard the woman slowed, turned. Still smiling; warm, gentle. Fearless. She had nothing to fear. Hands to her coat, she peeled it open and let it fall away.
Soledad stopped cold. She had thought that in her studies, in her research, in the files and documents she'd poured over year by year, she had seen every metanormal, every freak and mutie known.
She had never seen this.
The woman—white of skin. Somehow golden of tone—free of her coat, spread wide a pair of feathered wings.
The gasp, from Soledad, from the crowd well behind her, was audible.
And then the woman was in the air. She didn't leap up or beat her wings, she quite simply raised for the sky.
Recovered, Soledad gave a final warning: "Police, stop!"
The woman sailed on upward.
With her gun, Soledad took aim. One shot she would get. One poor shot at the flying woman gliding farther and farther away. Two-handed grip, finger on the trigger… Squeeze.
Bang.
In the air the near speck that was the flying woman shook, faltered. Rose again. Then sank.
Soledad marked the trajectory and ran for it as the figure twisted, tumbled, spiraled to the ground. To the hard dirty pavement.
Soledad was there, gun extended, ready to shoot. The scars on her neck were a reminder that muties don't go down easy. She eased up to the woman stretched out on the boulevard. Not dead. Not yet. But in no shape to do damage.
With her foot Soledad rolled the woman to her back, as much as she could with those wings—mangled, snapped now. She was bleeding hard, but with her complexion so naturally white the loss was hard to calculate.
The woman looked to Soledad, still smiling. Different than before. Still warm, but something else now. Forgiving.
Behind her, sucking air hard and dripping sweat, Lesker came running. He looked at the woman, her wings. To Soledad: "Jesus Christ! You shot an angel!"
"She's not an angel. Angels don't bleed. She's just another freak."
Lesker had too much disbelief to hear any of that. He knew what he saw and reported it to Soledad one more time."You shot a fucking angel!"
It's hard at first. Sort of. Balancing the law with what's right. The law tends to be dear. What's right is gray, if it's even in that much contrast.
A guy climbs a fence onto land marked no trespassing, it's wrong. Guy climbs a fence onto land marked no trespassing to pull someone who's drowning out of a lake, he did wrong to do right.
That's the simple version of things.
A guy's walking down the street, crowded street—civvies, old women, kids. And this guy's walking along with a loaded gun; out in the open, finger on the trigger. What do you do? You treat him like the pope? Offer him a foot massage? What you do is you act like he's a potential criminal. A probable killer. You protect those people on the street any way you have to, up to and including putting a bullet in the guy. It's the right thing. Now, let's say this guy isn't just carrying a loaded weapon. Let's say he is a loaded weapon. Let's say he might not just take out a couple of people on the street, let's say he could take out every single person on the entire block, half the city… You going to be any more gentle with that guy than the guy sporting the gun? Hell if I think so. And every freak there is, is nothing but a loaded weapon looking to release. And maybe, sometimes, because you're human, you question: Is this, is what we do, right? Then you think of the guy on the street with the gun. The law says take him out. Common sense says take him out. So what do we do? We take them out.
Thing is, clear as all that is, obvious as it is, you get the liberals and the heart bleeders going on about what's right; about people's rights.
As if freaks are people to begin with.
Declaration of Independence says people are created equal. Freaks are as unequal as it gets. So, no, they don't get treated the same as we do. And while the contingent that's soft on freaks always want to talk rights,
somebody else's got to go out and protect theirs. They've got a right not to get run over by a drunk driver. They've got a right not to get dragged into an alley and raped three times, and a right to fly to Grandma's without the nut of the week jacking their plane. They've got a right not to get killed 'cause one freak that claims it's trying to protect us from another freak knocks over the building they work in. End of the day, only right that matters is the right to life. Sometimes, here in the real world, to keep that right, somebody's got to give up some of theirs. And if you think otherwise… you've never stared down a superhuman who could end your life easy as drawing a short breath. Once you have, right becomes very simple to you. Gray separates into black and white.
Quiet.
Mostly.
Other than the sound of metal scraping metal, like steel leaves rustling—generated by chains that hung from the rafters—the loft, the building, deserted, was quiet. The metal was for Aubrey. Toys. Things to play with. The solitude was for Vaughn. Being isolated let Vaughn think. Freely think. Vaughn picked up thoughts from people without even concentrating. In a crowd, the thoughts of others were always with him—a radio, volume turned low, that could never be shut off. It was constant. Constant. Constant. Enough to drive a guy…
A lesser guy…
And that was the thing. For Vaughn, for the ones like him: They couldn't turn the volume off, but they could turn it up. Standing as much as a mile away from someone, to Vaughn their thoughts became pictures. A book of faded photographs for him to leaf through. Less distance than that, the faded pictures became crystal-clear images. Sense memories, complete with taste and touch and smell.
And Vaughn could touch back. At little more than half a mile from someone he could make subtle suggestions, the mind he touched feeling nothing more than a whim—Gee, I think I'll buy a lotto ticket today. Say, why don't I call my old college roommate? Hell yeah, I'm not going to work; the beach is where I ought to be— to be used or discarded as the person Vaughn coaxed saw fit.
But closer, a quarter mile, less than that… At that distance? At that distance Vaughn could make another mind his own. At that distance suggestions became orders, hints were commands: strong, forceful. Undeniable. At that distance, for Vaughn's kind, there was nothing they couldn't do to someone.
More than that.
Nothing they couldn't force someone to do to himself.
Aubrey was coming.
A minute and a half later Aubrey came through the door. Haltingly. Tentative. Overly quiet. Something was wrong. Aubrey had done something wrong. Vaughn sensed it. Heightened perception wasn't hardly needed. Aubrey carried himself like a kid who'd messed up. Literally like a kid.
Vaughn, to himself: Jesus.
Aubrey was slow. For Vaughn, to put it that way, was being kind. Honest? Aubrey was just about retarded. Always he had to be watched over, minded. Especially in public. Aubrey couldn't help himself from touching, playing with metal. He couldn't help himself from doing things with metal. Things that could get him noticed and things that could get him killed. But Aubrey did, despite, maybe even because of his slowness and his need for attention, make a good companion for Michelle. There was no limit to her patience and affection, and Aubrey could use all he could get. And through Michelle, because of Michelle, because of what Michelle could bring out in him, Vaughn had come to tolerate Aubrey. To feel the need to share the responsibility of taking care of him.