"No!" His right foot took a step. He begged: "Fiero…!" Fear spilled from him. Panic raced his heart.
"Adetuyi!"
"I can't…" Two steps. Three. Moving quicker."Help me!"
Jenkinson: "What is going on!"
Adetuyi too far away to be stopped. Moving at a dead run. Mov-ing for the window like it was a long-lost lover. And just the same he opened his arms to it.
"Jesus Christ, help me! Hel—"
He leapt for the window. He crashed through the rotted wood that separated inside from out. Adetuyi embraced the open, empty air. He tumbled and spiraled. Flew downward. At the end of his plunge he crashed onto and into and through the roof of an Olds-mobile parked on the street below. The alarm played his taps.
Fiero stood, edged for the window. Martin and Jenkinson trailed, tried to make sense of the senseless.
Jenkinson offered up his own analysis of the situation: "He went crazy! You see that? He… he went out of his mind, and—"
Fiero: "No…"
"Goddamn out of his mind."
"It's a telepath."
"Oh, shit…" Martin swung his HK around looking for something, someone, who could just as easy be a quarter mile away as standing right next to him.
"Move!" Fiero got to giving orders."Move! Let's get out of here!"
Martin was staring at Jenkinson. He said: "Your nose is bleeding." Anxiety in his every word.
Jenkinson dabbed at his nose. It was bleeding."Must've smashed it when I took cover."
Martin figured things different."The telepath, he's puppeting you."
"No, I… I jammed my nose, like I said."
Martin brought his HK around quick, leveled it at Jenkinson."Put your weapon down."
"Martin!" Fiero stepped in.
"It's just a nosebleed."
Martin wouldn't convince."Put your weapon down now!"
Instead of putting it down, Jenkinson brought it up. Squared it at Martin."You're the one getting puppeted."
"Goddamn it, put it down, Jenkinson!"
Fiero saw things spinning out of control fast."Stand down, both of you!" Smoothly he traded his SG for his Colt.
Confusion. Words came like barks from a gang of stray dogs.
"Lose the weapon!"
"I'm warning you!"
"Listen to me!"
A finger twitched on a trigger.
"You're not taking us out!"
"LISTEN TO ME!"
"YOU'RE NOT—"
"PUT IT DOWN OR I SWEAR I'LL—"
"LISTEN!"
Chaos, paranoia, they mixed at high speed. Twin bangs: the crack of auto fire, the boom of a shotgun. Jenkinson and Martin swapped wounds. Jenkinson took it in the chest, Martin one to the face. Their bodies, instantly empty of life, dropped to the ground like they were in a race to see which would get there first.
Tie.
After that it was quiet in the apartment building. Outside, the car alarm kept ringing. Fiero was by himself. But not alone.
He gave a nervous clutch to his. 45, backed for the door with a game plan playing in a closed loop in his mind: Get out, get away. Get out, get away.
Fiero was cop enough to feel wrong about leaving Martin and Jenkinson even if they were dead. But he was father enough to his children to logic out there was no fighting a telepath. All trying would do was get him dead along with the rest of the element. All trying to go against a telepath got you for your trouble was a bullet to the head courtesy of yourself. So sorry, boys, no hanging around. Be back for your bodies later. Right now? Get out, get away. Get out, get away.
Get on the floor.
Fiero did that, just like he was told to make himself do. He got on the floor; got down on it just as far as physics would let him. He pressed down against the warping wood as he was overcome with an uncontrollable desire to grovel, to truckle, to supplicate himself. He was a worm. He suddenly and instinctively knew he was a worm, and wanted more than anything to crawl wormlike over the floor. So he did. Not against his will. Didn't have any will to struggle with. It'd been replaced by something else that was completely new to his psyche and just as much a part of it.
I'm a worm. I am a worm.
Uniform soaking with perspiration, Fiero slithered and inched and crept until he came to a boot in his path. He looked up. He was allowed to look up. Above Fiero was Vaughn.
Vaughn stared at Fiero; at what he'd reduced Fiero to. He dug what he saw. Even at that it gave him little pleasure. He turned his head and his attention over to the bodies of Martin and Jenk-inson.
He said: "Know what's funny? I wasn't controlling either of them. That's real funny to me." Vaughn didn't laugh."The other one… that's how Michelle died; fell from the sky."
Fiero was treated to a private showing, courtesy of images extracted from Aubrey's head and planted in his, of Michelle tumbling to her death. Experience so real, when Michelle hit the ground, Fiero hit the ground. What she felt—the impact of a body dropped two hundred feet onto pavement—he felt.
"Ahhhhhhhh!"
"That hurt? 'Cause honest, man, it's only gonna get worse."
Sweat ran from Fiero. Tears poured from his eyes."Puh… please… m-my wife… I–I have—"
Fiero's need to be wormish got jacked up. He tried hard as he could to screw himself further into the floor.
"Please, Jesus, don't…"
No sympathy came from Vaughn."I'm gonna give you something to remember, 'kay? Then you're gonna repeat it word for word."
"Ye… ye…"
"Understand that?"
To Fiero's thinking compliance equated a stay of execution. He couldn't comply enough."I'll repeat it. I'll repeat everything you say. I promise. I promise I will. I won't forget what you tell me."
"No," Vaughn said."I'm not gonna tell you anything. What I've got to say, I'm just gonna put it in your mind."
Valley Bureau was going crazy with itself. Cops worked phones, manned radios. Cops—plainclothed, uniformed and Tac—were running all over with no place to go. A bunch of blue gerbils going round and round on a wheel. The trickle of information that made its way back from the outside was like a slow leak of gas onto a flame.
First report: shots fired at an abandoned apartment complex.
A squad was rolled. The call came back: officer down. Down and in and through the roof of a car. Later, much later, the body fused with the vehicle would be determined to be MTac officer Rob Ade-tuyi.
Quick duty check. MTac serving a warrant at that twenty. SWAT rolled as backup. They fanned the building. The call from SWAT: two more bodies. Two more MTac making for three total. The fourth, Fiero, was unaccounted for.
Question: How did the others get killed?
Obvious: It was a freak.
Yeah, but what kind of freak? Where was it? Where was Fiero?
The information kept on trickling in. The panic kept on brewing. Valley Bureau tried to keep a lid on it. They did a bad job. People talked. Word spread. Reporters got wind. Channel 9 was first on the scene. Thirteen was next. The rest of the numbers started swarming en masse.
All of a sudden Deputy Chief Metcalf had one job: keep things calm, don't let the public know there's a killer mutie on the loose. Not yet.
Questions got shot at him. Denials got made: Yes, some officers were incapacitated, but at this time we don't know the extent of their… For the moment we have no way to determine if it was a metanormal they made contact with or… We have every available MTac element in the LAPD ready to respond if this is indeed a homicidal metanormal we're dealing with, but let me stress again that for the moment, at this time, to our best estimation…
Denials were a hard sell when every other blue in the joint was like a headless chicken with their delirium. Stonewalling wasn't easy when you had three cops on a slab and one missing.