It's not real, Soledad told herself.
It, the freak, Vaughn, fired the gun.
She told herself: What's not real can't hurt you.
The bullet struck Soledad in the chest. The pain it ignited consumed her body. She looked at herself, saw the wound. Not too big. Not hardly big at all. How could something so small hurt her entirely? Sky and earth traded places. Soledad went into an ugly tumble for the ground; in turn the sun speeding away and the street rushing closer. No way to judge the distance and no way to prepare for the impact. No time for either.
She hit.
She hit the ground hard. Sounds poured into her ears: The slap of a body on asphalt. The endless crackle of shattered bone. The slurping of punctured lungs as they filled with blood. All this gift-wrapped in a new and complete agony that shoved the comparatively small hurt of her bullet wound from Soledad's mind.
The cop walked for Soledad. As it did, its uniform faded back into civilian wear. The street melted and turned to floor. The people, the gawkers, first became transparent images then dissolved to nothing. Soledad was back inside the building at the salvage yard, on the floor; back where she'd always been. The only thing that stayed the same was the pain.
The telepath squatted down in front of Soledad. She craned her neck to look up at it. The rest of her was useless. Bones, maybe not really broken, felt, acted that way.
Vaughn said: "All those people. Michelle didn't know them, but she cared about them. That was her obligation. It was for all of us. We made a gift of the things we could do, and you made us criminals."
"No one…" — fighting her hurt with every word spoken—"… aahh—asked you to be our saviors. No one tuh—told you to."
"Tornados, floods, earthquakes. Crime and terrorism. Every disaster, natural and man-made… every senseless, useless death: You'd rather've suffered all that than let us help you?"
"… You thought you were gods… acted like we were peh— pets. Oughta… ahhh… be thankful while you did Jesus work." Soledad rested her head on the floor, her body wet with the sweat that it shed."… Didn't save us. Made slaves out of us."
"If you saw a rabbit getting torn up by dogs, you wouldn't do anything? You wouldn't save it, wouldn't try to help? Is what we tried to do any different?"
"That wha—what we are… animals for you to protect?"
Just below the virtual pain, Soledad could feel the telepath crawling through her mind, fire ants, getting ready to control her.
Vaughn said inside her: Jesus, you've got some hate in you. I think there's nothing to you but hate.
"… Goddamn right I hate you…"
I try to tell you about my wife, I try to make you feel something, and you don't… No. Know something, I don't think you can feel a thing. I think if you had the chance, you'd kill us all.
"F-fucking right!"
That's a chance you're not gonna…
The ants stopped scurrying.
She couldn't see it, but Soledad could feel the telepath's lips twist. A smile.
The question at the end of a snide laugh: Don't even know, do you? You got no idea.
He must have been figuring things.
Soledad's rage wasn't going to keep secrets hidden much longer. She had to force the issue."Got an idea… How ahhh—bout I blow your head off… Give me baah… back my arms. Juuust for a second. Juhh… just long enough to put a bullet in your lousy freak head."
Quietly, very much in control of himself, not sounding like a killer freak or a husband out for vengeance, Vaughn said, thought: No.
Pain disappeared. Sensation returned to Soledad, but it was not her own. Her body rose, but not of her doing. A consciousness inside her forced her to kneel.
Vaughn, again: No. Then: I don't think that's how things is gonna end. And it's what I'm thinking that counts. So I think you'll lift up your special little gun…
Soledad's right hand curled up guided, manipulated, puppeted by Vaughn. She struggled. She fought. Internally. Physically she did as controlled. The freak was in her now. The freak was her. She was nothing but a bystander in her own body, like one of those dreams where you're awake in your mind, but you won't respond to yourself.
You're gonna take your gun and you're gonna push it against your head.
Vaughn giving a play-by-play to Soledad's action.
Hand shaking, she jammed the muzzle of her piece to her temple. Vaughn was going for the signature kill of the telepaths. He was going to make Soledad empty her own skull and, better, he was going to make her do it with one of her special, freak-killing bullets.
"Y-you fucking…"
And now…
No way to stop him. Soledad's eyes teared. Her breath came in frantic huffs that shot spittle from her mouth.
You're gonna…
She felt her finger curl. She felt the trigger of the gun slide back. The snap of falling timber; she could hear the scrape of metal on metal as she millimetered toward her own end.
Die.
The trigger full back. The gun fired. A simultaneous flash-bang. Soledad's head jerked. It lurched on her neck like a smacked pinata, a spray of red splattering from her temple. Her body swirled and twisted and hit the floor and…
And lay there.
And…
And Vaughn didn't feel anything. He'd expected to feel good. Maybe victorious. At least relieved or satisfied. All he felt was empty where Michelle had been, and killing a cop did nothing to fill the hole.
Gods.
That's what the cop, Bullet'd said: Vaughn and his kind thought they were gods. And because they thought they were gods, because they thought they were above man, they didn't deserve to live. That way of thinking got the cop killed.
And yet here was Vaughn, having ended a life, and he felt nothing. Wouldn't a human feel something? Couldn't only a god take a life and feel nothing in return? Maybe the woman was right. Maybe Vaughn and his kind were gods. And maybe gods had no place on earth.
Vaughn muttered: "Michelle…" It came out as a quiet plea for help. Now what? the name asked. Now that I've done this for you and to them, the normals, and now that I've done this in spite of the other metanormals who are too scared to do anything… now what?
No answer from Michelle. No direction.
Vaughn decided then, lacking any better ideas, to go kill the remaining, wounded MTac cops.
Vaughn had a very good and logical reason for wanting the two cops dead, for wanting to kill them. He thought about it walking the hall to the back room where they were laid out. He would kill one of them and he'd feel remorseful for it and would thereby prove he wasn't a god. Just a man. He'd prove to the dead cop, Bullet, the one he'd murdered same as clipping a nail, just how wrong she was. And if killing one of the cops didn't make him feel… wrong, then he'd kill the other and he would keep killing until something like compassion or guilt or regret flowed back into him. Until something like humanity was part of him again. Because a man who could kill and be carefree about it, whether it was with an ax, a gun or his mind, a man who could kill without pause was nothing short of insane. Vaughn was not insane, or inhuman, or nonhuman. He'd prove it no matter how many bodies he had to stack.
Ahead of him, the door to the back room. Vaughn felt, sensed, nothing from the other side. Of course not. The cops were unconscious, so he couldn't control them, so he couldn't make them kill themselves. Vaughn looked at his hands, clenched and unclenched them. Well, wouldn't this be interesting.
Vaughn smiled.
He moved for the door ready to take back his humanity. The man or the girclass="underline" Which should he kill first? The girl probably. More guilt associated with killing a woman. Should be. If he killed her, felt something, he wouldn't have to waste time with the man. But then… what the hell? He was already there. Why not just kill them both?
Hate and rage racing; he sensed them racing up behind him. Vaughn turned. He started to gear up his mind, stoke it like a hot fire ready to do some damage. But his flowering psychosis slowed him down. He was slowed down a step more by shock. Behind him, leveling her freak-killing gun, was Soledad. The one they called Bullet.