Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ All I Have ❯ What's This? ( Chapter 5 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

: What's This? :

There were black vehicles running everywhere, just as Jensen had said. Their heavily tinted windows hid the number of occupants they held inside. Most of the sidewalks were clearing, as if the civilians on ground had an extra precautionary sense to incoming danger. Felicia flounced on ahead, her long hair loose against her bared back and her white dress fluttering with the night air and the slipstream of vehicles running on the crowded streets. Larson followed close behind her, Adam taking his time, not wanting to be goaded into something that would distract him from anything that'd happen.

Feeling eyes upon them, knowing that they were coming from the black vehicles, Adam felt his body tensing automatically, readying for a firefight of some kind. Glancing around himself, he could see that civilians were darting about, their faces full of caution and concern. Store owners were already pulling protective shields over their windows and doorways, and lights were flicking off in the living areas in the buildings around them. The police were on their radios, as if sensing the change in the air, clearing the area so that they could be accessed by the military.

Felicia stumbled, one of her heels slipping through a grating on the sidewalk. With a curse, she slipped her foot out of the shoe and examined the damage. She looked at Larson. “Get it for me, please.”

“Why can't you?” he asked, giving her an exasperated look.

“Because I will Britney my underwear to everybody on the street.”

“Whatever,” he said on a heavy sigh, bending to wrestle the heel out of the grating. Felicia looked at Adam.

“Well? Where are they?”

“Call them.”

“Can't.” She withdrew her cell, showing him. “Battery's dead.”

“Oh, that's real convenient. Dallas head talks. Get him through that,” he snapped at her as Larson continued to grunt and yank at the shoe.

“I can't,” she said, shrugging a bared shoulder. She gestured out at the street, where several of the black vehicles had taken advantage of the confusing street parking spaces. “Someone's blocking the head talker. One of them thingies, you know? Peeps tend to do that when they wanna cause some trouble.”

Adam frowned, but it took some pressure off of him. At least the girl had a clue as to what was happening, or what was about to. She looked calm and nonchalant about it.

“CAREFUL! That's Christian Loboutain! That shoe alone costs more than your taxpayer paid paycheck,” she said, using a foot to nudge Larson's shoulder.

“Will you get your rich girl cooties off of me!? I'm doing a service for you here, and you're abusing me!”

“Is that shoe stronger than you? Aren't you people equipped with special suits?”

“It's stuck in there good! If you weren't so damn fat, it wouldn't have sunk in this far!”

“Get on the Fast-Trac back onto the East Side!” Adam growled, gesturing at the underground station entrance.

Felicia opened her purse, pulling out a coin purse. The rolled money she pulled out made her pout theatrically. “I only have hundreds. Got change?”

I could kill her, Adam thought, giving her a disgusted look. I could kill her and do the world a favor.

She looked at him again. “Dallas said he heard that.”

“You said he couldn't talk to you—!”

“Says you look sexy all furious.”

Calming himself with a deep breath and deeper exhale, Adam closed his eyes momentarily. He recognized that Felicia Passage was comparable to a pitbull; once she had her teeth in someone, no one could escape the slow suffocation. Her goading him was the pitbull jumping for the throat, and he wasn't going to give in.

Larson hit the sidewalk as he finally succeeded with pulling the shoe out of the grating.

“Just kidding. I still can't hear him. But it was so obvious, I knew exactly what you were thinking,” she continued, snatching her ruined shoe from Larson and jamming it back onto her foot. She tossed a hundred at him. “You were thinking, If only I had the balls to shoot her. You're jealous of my gazillions. You want everything that I have.”

“Will you just shut up? Do everyone a favor and shut the fuck up.”

She smiled at him, pulling out a compact and examining her reflection. Larson gave Adam a strained look, tucking the hundred away quickly before she could change her mind. “Cooney said we have to make sure she gets with Dallas and Vegas. Let's get her on that train.”

“Cooney, we're escorting civilian onto the Fast-Trac,” Adam said, snatching her arm and jerking her along as Cooney responded.

“Not that we're a bodyguard service, or anything,” Cooney said. “Just make sure that girl gets to where she should be going. Merrick will throw a hissy fit if she takes off again while under us.”

“Why isn't he here to watch over her?” Bridgette demanded. “If she's so much trouble, why release her onto the world!”

“He's too busy with his empire to bother with such a nuisance. Gives her money and expects her to grow up this fantastic human being. What a waste of money that is,” Adam muttered.

“Adam, don't be mean. She's just a kid,” Ian said.

“Shut up, Ian, you bastard.”

“I heard that!”

“Don't I get a choice?” Felicia whined, stumbling down the stairs as Adam yanked her along. Larson followed cautiously, noting that the occupants in the vehicles parked nearby hadn't made a move. “What if I wanted to go by myself?”

“We just want to make sure you're there,” Adam said, jerking out his card and swiping it through one of the stations. He pulled himself and her through before the bar could lower, Larson following through another station. Rushing down the stairs, some of the occupants standing on the platform glanced at them with vacant stares before recognition dawned on them. Some of them grew tense and panicked as they found the situation startling.

Larson went about reassuring those that looked ready to bolt, while Adam studied the monitor for the closest train heading onto the East Side. Felicia rummaged through her purse once more, withdrawing her compact and attending to her hair with a nonchalant air.

Once the train arrived, Adam shoved her in. She caught herself, and then turned to give him a wave. “Hey, man, thanks! I got it from here! We'll have to do this again, sometime! Over drinks! Or we could meet at Jimboy's again!”

Without saying anything, Adam stepped back, practically willing the train to leave at that moment. The doors closed after a minute, and it left with a loud clang of wheels on track.

Larson exhaled heavily. “Well…there she goes. At least until the next stop.”

“Which isn't until she gets to the East Side,” Adam muttered, turning away to move back up the stairs, Larson following. “Since when did we turn into some bodyguard service? I didn't sign up to watch over people like that.”

“You signed up for something,” Cooney said.

“How's it look up there?”

“The cars are clearing out,” Sam answered in a wondrous tone.

“The guards here are settling down,” Jensen reported a moment later. “One of them got some kinda signal and told the others to stand down.”

Once they walked out onto the top of the stairs, noting that most of the black vehicles were missing from their earlier parking spots against the sidewalk, Adam felt that change in the air. Larson murmured a sound, scanning the area for activity and finding that the civilians were now venturing out from their previous hiding areas, continuing on with their earlier purposes. Drunken shouts and laughter erupted suddenly from nearby, as a group of party-goers stumbled out from a previously closed shop.

“Think it was because of her?” Ian asked moments later.

Andy made a face as he covered his nose, the smell of death causing his eyes to water. Paul used his assault rifle to push at the pile of rotting corpses, flies and maggots oozing around them. Their group had discovered the grisly scene while patrolling outside a set of warehouses that had been closed months earlier due to drug activity conducted by out of country cartels. Stains outside a parking lot had Jefferson curious about their nature. A closer investigation had yielded recent vagrant activities within one of the warehouses, several homeless groups shooed away so the squad could investigate.

The wide, empty room was splattered with various stains, but there were evidence of campsites in the far corners; empty cans and liquor bottles littered the cement, and the boarded windows yielded various symbols and names created by graffiti artists. The pile of corpses looked neat and concentrated; every body littered over another like a Jenga tower.

Ken was crouched nearby, frowning intently at a corpse that lay separated from the pile. He used his gloved middle finger to prod at the mushy mess of its skull, where multiple gunshot wounds made sure that it would never walk again. “This one tried to run. But it died. See here, its little arms? Reached out like it was gonna stop somebody from shootin' it.”

“A pile of dead Greys. How unusual,” Jefferson said in a bored tone. “Little bastards, anyway. Everybody's still upset over the way they treated us humans back in the day. They got enemies all over the place!”

“They were slaughtered. Real good, too. Like someone was cutting down chickens an' shit,” Paul said, turning away from the corpses to investigate the area. He pulled his goggles over his eyes, scanning. “And they ain't even had the chance to get out of the way.”

“No sign of bullet casings anywhere,” Ken said, shoving his back atop of his head, Paul looking at him with a frown. “Whoever it was picked up after themselves like a real pro.”

“Forensics could figure out that shit.”

“I'm already dissecting them virtually,” Andy murmured, studying the information on the inside of his goggles. Equipped with the necessary technology he would need in locating injuries, he was able to witness a precision breakdown of one corpse's fatal injuries. “Head trauma. All of them. Their head hemorrhaging bled right through their skin. Once a Grey dies, its skin loses its strength and elasticity, making it as brittle as paper.”

“So what?”

“So why is that one the only one with gunshot wounds?” Andy asked him impatiently, flipping his goggles back up onto his helmet.

“By the way, even if forensics picks it up, they'll find nothing inside of them. Cleaned that up as well,” Barry said with a sigh, scanning the body. “You can't examine the make and model of gunpowder. I smell Underworld.”

“Isn't that a surprise?”

“What sorta head trauma?” Ken asked with irritation, over Paul's annoyed tone.

“Basically, their brains were squeezed like lemons. Psychokinetic energy happens to be one of the main causes of such deaths.”

“So we got us a psychokinetic murderer. Add that to a list of billions,” Ken muttered, rising and walking over to join them.

“I've informed base of our find,” Barry said, her weathered face scrunching slightly. “They're sending a team to investigate, so we'll remain until forensics arrives.”

“Since its all abandoned labs, ya think it all might be because of that?” Ken asked. “Drug related?”

“It's too soon to tell. Right now, it's just a pile of dead Greys,” she said. “Spread out. Look for something else. Pairs of two.”

“What we lookin' for?” Paul asked in annoyance, automatically taking his brother's side.

“Anything unusual. See any homeless, kick them out,” Barry said, hitching up her weapon. “Jess, take Paul. Andy, go with Ken.”

“Let's go look in the other building,” Andy said, pointing out the back exit door.

“I want to go look in the parking lot.”

“We're looking in the parkin' lot,” Paul said quickly, rushing off with Kurt, who flashed Jefferson an exasperated expression.

“Why don't we just leave this for forensics?” Ken asked in disgust. “It ain't our job to search out clues on whodunit. We just make sure shit ain't happening, and pound faces in when something gets all outta hand! I ain't takin' no classes on detective work!”

“Get to it before your brother gets back, and no more of that whining. You sound like some stupid civilian with that laziness of yours,” Barry said, signaling for Nathanial to follow her. Jefferson slunk away, retracing their steps back into the main entrance area while Ken gave a loud sigh.

Andy looked at Ken, shifting to walk without him. “Let's go.”

“Well, fuck.” With a heavy sigh, Ken adjusted his belt and withdrew one of the submachine guns, pressing his naked thumb and forefinger into the safety register screen on the trigger guard. With the safety-off, Andy winced, hoping the other man wasn't anticipating shooting anything that moved. He followed the other out the back exit, where the smell of the ocean swept into them, along with a harsh wind that pushed various trash along a narrow dirt path that separated the two buildings. The street lights weren't enough to light their path, Ken pulling his goggles over his eyes and adjusting them for night vision. Andy followed suit as well, both of them climbing the short set of stairs up to a boarded door.

Ken ran his fingers over the frame before he pushed his fingers under a board missing a screw, finding that tugging on the board pulled the entire door open. It swung with a slight creak, silenced the wider it opened. They were then creeping into the receiving area of the building, smelling moisture heavy air and the creaks and groans of an abandoned room. The floor was covered in plastic and trash, insulation lying in ruined strips throughout the floor. Abandoned pallets, rows of empty boxes and various bags of shredded paper littered the wide floor.

It didn't take long to look through the building for anything that caught their attention, and it was only after Ken tossed out a band of homeless that were taking refuge in the back office area when they received the tones in their earpieces. A call-out onto the West Side's border into the South, where a firefight was taking place between South Side members and a local gang.

“Finally! Some real action!” Ken crowed, plowing past Andy to race outside to meet up with the others in waiting for their ABAV. Andy caught himself and started to hurry after him when something shifted out of the corner of his eye. The diminutive figure with the overlarge head startled him as it peered at him from behind an empty open locker, expressionless eyes causing his stomach to flop before he reminded himself that he wasn't in any danger.

“Hi,” he said, lowering his weapon slightly. “Can you come out, please?”

The Grey left his sight, hiding for a few moments before peering back out at him.

“Barry, I found one,” he then reported, giving his location.

Before Barry could speak, the Grey hurried over to him, surprisingly nimble as it reached out for him. Unsure of what would happen, Andy quickly scooted back, grabbing onto his weapon with both hands and issuing a sharp command for it to back away. It continued forward, grabbing onto the barrel with one hand and lunging at his face with the other outstretched. It took a moment to realize it was trying to give him something, Barry and Ken's voices buzzing together within his earpiece as a voice filled his head.

It is what they want, the Grey said, mouth unmoving as it communicated telepathically. Before Andy could even ask what it meant, a wet, squishy sound filled the air, as if someone had dropped something heavy into a thick pool of mud. The Alien hit him forcefully, his arm sweeping out to knock it away from him, gun lifting as he backed away.

Staring down at the limp form, Andy caught his breath and settled his nerves, realizing the thing had been struck dead while in the middle of its leap. Analyzing its injuries, he found that the Alien had died in the same way as the others had; someone had rendered its brain into mush. Matter crowded and pooled within its overlarge skull as Ken reached him, looking pissed that he missed the action. It had taken only a matter of seconds; Andy doubted that the other man had even stepped outside the building.

As Ken demanded to know what had happened, moving around the room with his submachine guns in front of him. Andy glanced around himself, looking for the object that the Grey had tried to give him. Spying it, he crouched and picked it up, furrowing his brow at the sight of a tightly folded receipt form. In typed print, it registered the sale of multiple `crates', the price for each crate, and the total amount. The seller and the buyer was marked only by a series of x's and numbers. Just as he processed the numbers, the receipt curled inward, blackening, the smell of sulphur touching his nose. Before he could drop the burning item, it was ashes. Mystified by the action, Andy stared at the pile of charred grey in his gloved hand.

A scrape on wall scratched at the quiet. Both of them looked up at the sight of a homeless man, eyes glazed with some drug or liquor ingestion, walking into the room with a stumble. Upon catching sight of both of them, he quickly backed out. Ken hurried over to make sure that he left the building, watching the man stumble around in a drunken manner while muttering to himself. Andy dumped the ashes, wiping his glove upon his flack pants. As he did so, the receipt seemed to flit away from his memory before he could even remember why his gloved hand came up with the blackened smear. Staring blankly at his glove, Andy thought over the moment, replacing the Alien's purpose with nothing more than a surprise attack that produced nothing. The receipt was long gone from his memory.

Barry was there before Ken could even notice what he was doing. Andy quickly explained what had happened, still staring at his glove in mystified action.

She sighed heavily, Ken frowning at him. “That's it, then. You all sure, now, that the building's empty? You didn't even run through the proper procedure in closing out the search, Powers.”

“Look, we were done. There was nothing there, I looked for anything and everything that could possibly—!”

“The very fact of the matter is that you left your partner behind, Powers. Now, let's go over this area one more time. Let's be sure that it is empty.” With that, Barry started to walk, focused intently on all the nooks and crannies of the area.

“Why didn't you say something?” Ken hissed at him, causing Andy to frown at him. The other man grabbed his hand, jerking it up to eye level as he examined the black and gray ash that had been left there. “What is this? What'd you touch?”

“I don't know. You took off before I could even call your name.”

“You could've said something! Now I went an' looked like a fool!”

“Nothing new, Powers.”

“Fuck you, you stuck-up bitch. Damn,” Ken cursed, taking up the rear and scanning the area intently with his thermals once more.

Saying nothing, Andy wondered, for what felt like the millionth time, what Adam was doing at that very moment. He had to wonder if the other man even thought of him platonically; wondering if they were going to hang out, or if, by some chance, Sam had mentioned him to Adam in some way. That need to have Adam's attention made his stomach flip-flop, mouth tightening in a thin frown. He wanted to see him again, somehow; but Andy had to think of a way to do so without looking as if he were much too happy to see him. Or behaving like some stalker. With a low sigh, he followed after the others with a zombie-like action, trying hard to concentrate on what was happening now.

Hearing Barry discuss what had happened with her own superiors over their earpieces, Andy wondered why the Grey had attacked him. Glancing over at Ken, who was busy ranting over his mistake to Paul, he figured he must have looked less threatening. Zoning out as he found himself wondering what Adam would have done in the situation, he tilted his head back and tried to find any sign of the stars in the light polluted skies above them.