Ability (Omnibus) (16 page)

“Kenzo—” his wife said, but he cut her off with a look.

“Go to your room,” he said, his voice quiet but commanding.

Neither protested, but Ayaka attempted to hold on to her husband’s arm while they walked down the hallway, only to be shrugged off. Kenzo stepped behind his wife, forcing her to walk in front of him again. His boss opened the door to room 3159 and looked back at Kenzo. Kenzo waved his hand, ushering them into the room.

“So, wife,” Kenzo said bitterly, the door clicking shut behind him, “how long?”

“Husband, I’m so sorry,” she said, but his face was stone.

“How long, Kiyoshi,” he asked his boss instead.

Kiyoshi hung his head in shame and muttered, “Almost two years.”

“Two years!” Kenzo screamed, the two adulterers shrinking back further into the room as he marched toward them. “Two years?”

“I’m sorry!” Ayaka wailed, falling to her knees.

“Enough!” he told her, his sharp tone cutting off her sobs. He gestured to both of them. “Undress.”

When neither moved, he commanded them again, this time crawling within their minds to find the parts of their personality that followed orders. It had only been six hours since he’d watched the video at his cubicle, but he’d practiced on an unsuspecting policeman, as well as two shoppers at the gift store in the Coulter-Yokami building where he worked.

The policeman had died, unfortunately. Kenzo hadn’t wanted to kill the young officer, but he’d had very little time to master his strange new ability, and he’d used too much force. He’d done better with the mother and her daughter. Both had danced for him like puppets on a string.

His wife and her lover stood before Kenzo, shivering even though it was warm enough in the room to bring out a light sweat on all three of them. Kenzo squinted, crawling around in their brains for a moment until he found what he was looking for. They began to paw at each other like puppet lovers, kissing each other awkwardly, trying to touch each other’s body with hands that weren’t under their control. They were breathing heavily as if in the middle of foreplay, but the expressions on their faces showed terror.

“You want to fuck each other?” Kenzo asked, sending a mental command to force them onto the bed. “You will fuck each other until you are dead,” he said with finality.

Both of his victims tried to scream, but he wouldn’t let them. He tortured them for a while, making them moan in pleasure, even making his wife orgasm multiple times against her will. He refused to give his boss that pleasure. For three straight hours, Kenzo forced them both to perform every sexual act he could think of. For three hours, Kiyoshi Takamura and Ayaka Kawatami experienced fear that never seemed to lessen, only grew until insanity began to consume both of them.

Kiyoshi died first, most likely from heart failure or a stroke. Ayaka tried to scream as the dead body fell on top of her. She looked at her husband with terror-filled eyes, pleading silently to him to let her live. He gave her a smile, then a mental push with his mind that collapsed every major blood vessel in her brain. Both died with their eyes open. Kenzo didn’t bother to close them as he let himself out of the room.

Boston, Massachusetts - January 4, 2046

Phil Diamond was on the prowl again. He’d been good enough to avoid getting caught for the last twelve years, but now thanks to Ability, he had perfected his talent. He blended into the darkness near the door that led into the parking garage, waiting as men and women exited the elevator and walked to their cars. The first two women were blonde. He didn’t like blondes. The next one was a redhead, which he liked, but she was with three men, probably her coworkers. Phil was sure he could kill the three men without any trouble, but he was a firm believer in cautious moderation.

The ability to kill men and women was a power that every human had, but his ability to do it was something extraordinary. He knew he had to be even more careful now, even though he could be more brazen. No more hunting the shadows, stalking a woman for a week or two only to have it all fall apart just as he was about to make his move… as long as he didn’t let his new abilities fool him into overconfidence. If he was this powerful after dosing and watching the holo, others were sure to be as well.

Phil Diamond was never going to be denied again. He could have any woman on any night, but he was smart enough to realize that if he used his power responsibly, there would never be the interruption of police, judges, jails, a hail of gunfire, or some kind of crazy battle with another person that had abilities. He’d watched dozens of holos that began popping up all over the net, holos that had humans doing unexplainable, unbelievable things. If Phil hadn’t juiced himself, he definitely wouldn’t have believed any of it.

A woman in a blue business skirt was the next out of the elevator. She had black or brown hair. He couldn’t tell because of the shadows. She had a nice face with full lips. He walked along the wall, then peeled off and followed behind her for ten seconds until she reached her car. He’d blended in with the background so well that she never heard or saw him. As she unlocked the door of her Ford, he pounced, one hand on the back of her neck, the other on her forehead. She crumpled into his arms without a sound. Phil opened the door, flipped the switch that unlocked the rear doors, and began loading her into the back seat.

“Hey! Hey, what the fuck are you doing?” a man’s voice rebounded off of the concrete walls.

Phil looked up to see a man in a suit and tie running straight at him, mobile comm in his hand as he tried to contact 911. He slammed the Ford’s door and blended into the background, going down to his knees and working his way around the front of the car. When the suit arrived at the car, he looked through the window into the back seat at the woman before walking around the vehicle three times, unsure how the man that had just been standing there had disappeared.

He cursed his mobile as the mechanical voice in his earbud relayed apologies for the unusually heavy network congestion and inability to place the call, a problem that seemed to be plaguing the entire country over the last few days. As he lowered the mobile to hit redial, he felt a presence behind him and tried to turn around. The comm slipped from his lifeless finger, clattering on the ground, the noise echoing from every direction as it reverberated off the bare concrete walls.

Tehran, Iran - January 7, 2046

Jamari crouched against the desk that barricaded the doorway. The new Ayatollah’s Revolutionary Guard battered at the other side, demanding to be let in, taunting him with how they’d raped his wife and his two young daughters. Jamari cried at the words, knowing them to be true. The taunting and banging on the doors suddenly stopped. Jamari’s shallow, panicked breathing sounded as loud as a jet engine to his own ears. He jumped in fright when the door blasted off its hinges, flying outward. Jamari cried out as he stood up and backed against the far wall.

“Come, Jamari, we need to talk,” the commander said to him. Within seconds the room filled with Revolutionary Guards. Most pointed their AK-49’s at him, but none of them had fingers on the triggers. Alari wanted him alive, no doubt.

“Come, this is foolish,” the commander said, taking a step forward, as if Jamari were frail and needed support.

“No!” Jamari screamed, and the world around him blew apart in a wave of fire, flattening buildings for a hundred meters in every direction.

NBNLA Studios, Los Angeles - January 9, 2046

“David, we’ve heard that the word from the mayor is that martial law is about to be declared,” Robin Anora, NBNLA’s multiple award-winning evening news anchor said to the face in her monitor.

“That’s right, Robin,” David Pearson answered from the steps of City Hall. “Mayor Guillartez has just issued the order, which goes into effect at ten this evening.”

“I know you’ve already uploaded the order for net viewers, but can you tell viewers who might only be listening to the audio feed what the order entails?”

“I sure can, Robin,” David said, his voice suddenly different than the one twelve million nightly viewers recognized. “I’m going to tell you that I want you to reach down to the shelf under the news desk. I’m going to tell you that I want you grab the pistol I left there for you. I’m going to tell you that I want you to put your thumb on the hammer, and pull it back until it locks into place. I’m going to tell you that I want you to put the barrel of the gun into your mouth and smile for the camera.”

Seven million viewers that still had power and still believed that the chaos would die down soon, that the news would inform them of what to do, how long to wait, and where the outbreaks of anarchy were taking place, watched in shocked silence as Robin Anora reached below the desk. She brought the gun up to to her face, thumbed back the hammer, then put the barrel in her mouth.

Most viewers who lived long enough to relay the tale told others that the most horrifying moment wasn’t when David Pearson told Robin Anora that he wanted her to pull the trigger on live holo. The vision that haunted them until the end of their days was the way Robin smiled, and held that smile for a full minute before the muffled explosion of the gun ripped the back of her skull off.

It was even more haunting than the men and women that lined up around David Pearson, and his cameraman Telly Hadžić, each waiting their turn to retrieve one of the pistols David had handed out to the crowd from the dead hand of the previous victim before turning it on his or herself. For over an hour, the parade of
suicides
went on and on, David calmly explaining to each person that he wanted them to pick up the gun, thumb the hammer back, and put the barrel in their mouths before pulling the trigger.

Whenever the gun was empty, he would toss the next victim a fresh magazine at first, later individual bullets, instruct them to load it, then use it. He began to vary his commands after the tenth suicide. Some victims put the barrel of the gun in their mouths. Some next to their temples. Some under their chins. He had a fat woman put the gun to her left eye and pull the trigger. When a teenage gangbanger didn’t finish the job with the first shot, David told the boy to quit crying, pick up the gun, and do it again.

Calls, texts, and social media messages flooded the station, viewers angrily demanding that the studio cut the live feed. An hour earlier, David had instructed everyone in the studio except Robin, the studio cameraman, and Jerry Martin, NBNLA’s award-winning evening news producer, to kill themselves in one fashion or another, the last test for David before he decided to reveal to the world his supernatural abilities. Before he command that everyone in the greater Los Angeles basin bow down to him.

What he hadn’t counted on was a group of six young Hispanic men, all of them juiced, all looking to pay back David Pearson for “Chilo” Solis, their gang mate that they’d just watched put a gun to his own face and pull the trigger twice. If any viewers were still tuned in when the six young men arrived, they witnessed a frightening, chaotic fight that ended quickly as the young men decimated David Pearson and his depleted army of mind-zombies.

One viewer commented to his wife, before both of them slipped into quiet death forever after overdosing on her pain medication, that if “Mr. Pearson hadn’t made them people under his spell kill themselves, he might have had a chance against those damn Mexicans.”

CHAPTER 13

Clinton, Indiana - April 16, 2046

Derry crouched down below the window, listening to the men outside. Their banter and hearty laughter frightened her. They knew. Worse, they’d cut her off from her ability somehow. She’d barely begun to get it under control, learning to ignore its constant presence. Now she felt empty inside. The men outside erupted in laughter again, and Derry felt tears beginning to form in her eyes. She wanted to scream from the frustration of not being able to focus her mind enough to do something, anything, to escape her situation.

“Come on now, girl,” a man’s voice called to her from outside. “We know you’re in there, and we know you’re a pretty little thing.”

Derry guessed that there were at least fifteen, maybe twenty men outside, based on the howls of laughter, the whistles, and a few catcalls she heard. She decided that if it was inevitable she couldn’t escape, she would do whatever it took to kill the man speaking.

“We also know you’re a witch,” the man announced, followed by a chorus of boos mixed with laughter. “Darrin says not only are you a witch, you’re like some kind of super-witch.”

More laughter and exaggerated cries of fright almost covered the sound of footsteps on the wooden porch. She knew it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to assume every human she came in contact with would have taken the drug and watched the holo. The assumption had saved her life at least three different times, only her reaction time and her control of the ability keeping her from joining millions of others who had already died. Derry was disturbed that one of the men could detect the strength of her ability. It was a distant worry compared to the panic building inside of her because she couldn’t focus enough to use it.

“We aren’t gonna hurt you,” the man called out. “But we can’t let you do anything foolish.”

She heard more laughter, along with the creak of wood less than a meter from where she crouched. Two seconds later, the flimsy door of the manufactured home blew inward from a heavy, ability-enhanced kick. Two men were in the living room instantly, a third joining them as they fanned out. Derry stood up from her crouch and began backing toward the corner, wary of where each man was, her mind teetering on the edge of a complete breakdown. She knew what these men would do to her. Without her ability, it would be easy for the three of them to overpower her, regardless of how much close-combat training she’d flashed and practiced. She tried to stall the inevitable when she felt her back touch the wall.