I know you're here. Quit hiding.
Across the loft the shadows seemed to part, a curtain opening to reveal a man and a woman; a black guy. An older guy. Late forties, and, like Vaughn, very lean. Lean, and at the same time imposing. The woman—young, twenties—looked angry. Her fisted hands looked like they were always curled tight.
The black guy started to say: "Vaughn—"
I'd tell you it's good to see you again. But it's not good, and you never much come around anyway. I know it's slumming for you.
"You're the one who chose to live like you do."
You mean live like I am, instead of pretending to be something I'm not: one of them; normal.
Never mind the rising tones, Aubrey stayed asleep.
The girl stayed quiet, the fingers of her fists twisting on each other.
"What you are, what you've become, is a murderer. And all you're going to do is get people, more people, killed. Us and them alike."
I can hear you fine. No need to talk. Or what's the deal? Gotten so used to faking like you're normal you don't remember how to—
The black guy, ignoring Vaughn, using his voice: "And what you've let happen to Michelle—"
"Don't you tell me about my wife!" The base emotion of rage made Vaughn scream.
Aubrey rolled over.
The girl's hands made anxious twitches.
The black guy: "We're sorry for her misfortune."
Mis— My wife getting shot; bleeding out in the street? That the misfortune you're talking about?
"Believe it or not, Vaughn, we are sorry. All of us. But hurting them'll only hurt us."
We're not being hurt, we're getting killed! They're trying to exterminate us, then use the law so they can fake like it's okay. Call themselves normals, and they call us freaks and muties. We're the superior ones. The minute they turned on us we should have wiped them out! Killed every one of them!
And for a moment the black guy said nothing. Vaughn could sense what he was feeling. What the black guy was feeling was pity.
"I know this is hard for you."
You know?
"Do you think you're the only one to lose somebody? Do you think you have a claim on pain? You don't, Vaughn. You do not. So, yes, I know this is difficult. I know you have anger. But what you're saying now… now you're just talking insane."
The girl cracked her knuckles. They crackled back with a bluish energy.
Anger, fear, straight defiance. Vaughn showed none of that. From Vaughn the black guy could sense nothing.
You can't stop me. I was aware of you long before you got here.
"The only thing you're aware of is what I want you to be."
A hand slammed into the back of Vaughn's neck, slammed hard, slammed him senseless for a sec. The hand took Vaughn's neck tight, the hand on an arm that stretched allll the way across the loft and into the darkness. Fingers bit into Vaughn's throat, cut off his air. Thought, difficult in coming, was starting to disappear. The metanormal in the dark contracted his limb, dragged Vaughn for him, reeled him, reeled him in.
Vaughn fought, jerked, swatted at the arm. Useless. Always physically weak, lack of O2 was stealing the little strength he owned, was passing him out.
The black guy, the girclass="underline" they moved toward Vaughn, the girl's hand alive with the blue energy. And she was, since first showing herself, displaying expression. A nasty look that said all this ends here, ends now.
Vaughn:… Aubrey…
Vaughn's mind, becoming as weak as his body, was barely able to touch Aubrey's.
The black guy: "Didn't have to be like this."
Vaughn's heels kicking against the floor, trying to bite it, trying to get hold, just leaving skid marks for all the effort.
… Aubrey…
"We'll fight, but not your way. Revelation is coming…"
The edge of Vaughn's vision went soft. Blackness closed in. At the center of it, a hand that burned blue.
"The truth will set us—"
"Aubrey!"
Aubrey's eyes came open, were vacant. His mind was Vaughn's. Vaughn reached out Aubrey's hand. Vaughn touched Aubrey's hand to a play thing, to metal. At the moment of contact the metal expanded, shot forward: a slicing blade that cut clean the metanor-mal's extended arm.
From him, in the dark, a sick, sick wail. The hand kept squeezing at Vaughn's neck—spasms before it fell to the ground, thudded on the floor.
Vaughn changed focus, reached into the angry girl's mind. Her anger: her mother killed by cops before her eyes.
And she still picked protecting normals over joining Vaughn? Vaughn turned the girl's hand, touched it to the black guy.
A vicious pop of electricity, the stink of burnt flesh. The black guy got launched across the loft, bounced and slid over the floor.
Aubrey awake, babbling something.
Vaughn ignored him. The angry girl had his attention. He said to her, using his voice, digging the sound of his voice: "All that energy just raging inside you. Pumping in you, pumping in you. Your energy's like your anger, isn't it?"
Her irises, on their own, the only part of her free to do as they pleased, dilated with fear.
"It's gotta be so hard to keep it all in you. Sometimes you must feel like you're losing control. Sometimes you just gotta feel you're gonna…"
Vaughn didn't finish the thought. Not out loud. But he shoved it into the girl's mind.
Small lines, fissures, raced up and down along her flesh, bulged as she was rent from the inside. Energy seeping from her, then pouring from her, then…
A howl.
A flash. Blue.
And then she was gone. Totally. As if she never existed.
And Vaughn looked to the black guy.
Aubrey, babbling: No, Vaughn. Please, Vaughn. Don't, Vaughn.
A thought put him back to sleep.
Vaughn, to the black guy, in his mind: You wanna hide, you wanna be the bitch, that's on you. But they don't murder my wife and walk from it. They get what they give. All that, and worse. And hey: I'm not the one who's insane. You are.
The black guy screamed, grabbed at his head. His eyes rolled back into their sockets where he saw himself grabbing at his head, eyes rolled back in their sockets, screaming, looking at himself, grabbing his head, eyes rolled in their sockets, screaming as he looked at himself with his eyes rolled back…
He'd be looking at that for the rest of forever.
Night was Bo's favorite part of the day, the part he looked forward to. It was his part. Most of the day, the regular clock-punching hours, belonged to MTac. They were hours and hours of endless sitting-around-doing-nothing boredom. Occasionally they were broken up with moments of pure terror. But mostly there was boredom. So an MTac cop had time, lots of it, to think. What owned his thoughts: the next call, which would be completely different than the last call. He always had to think about the next call because for an MTac the next one could real easily be his final one. No two metanormals were alike. Even M-norms with similar fetishes could use them in different ways. Thinking, planning, considering: That's how an MTac spent his downtime.
Beyond that?
For Bo, beyond that was his family. A wife, two kids. That's what dominated his evenings. His children, ten and thirteen, were past the constant-attention phase of growing up. His wife had her late-in-life career as a law clerk to fill her time. Still, there wasn't an evening Bo didn't make his presence felt among them.
It was a lack of presence that had almost wrecked things for him previously. It was a lack of presence that almost sent Kathy, his wife, skipping off with Oliver and Benny in tow.
Not that Bo wasn't physically around. He was. He was there. He'd never been into hanging out at a bar swilling beers and swapping cop talk with the boys. Every evening, soon as he was off duty, home's where Bo was.
Physically.
But his head was still on the job. His head was still thinking on freaks and how to hunt freaks better and how to hunt freaks without getting himself, his element, killed. And while his head was on that, his kids grew up around their dad but without their dad. His wife dissipated in a homebound, unfulfilled life spent watching her husband wrestle nightly, alone, pondering the incredible, the unbelievable and the deadly. Daily they became less of a family. Blissfully self-absorbed, Bo saw none of the decay. Typical MTac. There was a cushion that came with keeping people at a comfortable distance. The philosophy: Our lives have only slightly intersected, so if anything ever happens to me, and something probably will… well, you don't know me, you can't miss me. He'd seen the same philosophy applied by other cops. He'd seen a lot of it applied by young Soledad. It was the way they lived, and they took the way they lived for granted.