GEN13 - Version 2.0 (15 page)

The sudden appearance of the wind would have been surprising enough. But the most bewildering thing about it was that it had originated indoors.

“Cavalry’s here,” said Burnout. He leaned his head toward Rainmaker and, as an aside, added, “No offense.”

Sarah replied without taking her eyes off Gen
¹⁴
. “On behalf of the entire Apache nation,” she said, “none taken.”

The four heroes stood near the entrance to the outer office. Usually, the group had an upbeat air about them, but there was no sign of that now. Burnout and Rainmaker stared grimly at the remaining Gen
¹⁴
kids, each poised for battle. Freefall was still clearly shaken, standing huddled in Grunge’s arms. And Grunge just looked mad.

The air was filled with a low-pitched roar as Reverb hurled a blast toward them with the speed of sound. But they were ready for him now, and scattered to get out of the way of the offensive a split-second before he let it fly. The vibrations sailed past Gen
¹³
and reduced a bank of computer terminals to high-tech dust.

Even as he ducked, Burnout released a ball of fiery plasma that shot toward Reverb. But Reverb was also on the move, so the attack set fire to a bulletin board instead. As Rainmaker summoned a small rain cloud to extinguish the blaze before it grew, Reverb was running toward Sidestep and the shimmering portal that she had created.

“Don’t even think it!” Grunge growled, charging after him. Grunge took a running jump toward the fleeing figure, but with inches to spare, Reverb and Sidestep slipped through the portal and were gone. The portal vanished with them, leaving Grunge to slam headfirst into a nearby desk.

Rainmaker stepped cautiously over to the broken window, holding her injured side, and looked down. As she had expected, the super-strong Knockout had survived the fall. Apart from the caved-in roof of an unfortunately parked panel truck, there was no sign of her on the street below.

“They’re gone,” Sarah said, finally letting her shoulders droop wearily.

“Good thing, too,” Burnout replied. “No way are we up for another fight so soon.” He drifted gently down through the hole in the floor and landed beside Kat. She was on her feet now, and slowly recovering. She thanked the man in the glasses as he handed her a paper cup full of water.

“You okay?” Burnout asked.

“Wonderful,” sighed the man in the glasses.

“I was talking to her.”

Kat swallowed the water. Gingerly, she probed her swollen lip with a finger. “Yes, I think so,” she replied. “My head’s killing me, but I’ll live. Thanks for the save.”

“Sorry we didn’t get here sooner. We had to track down your employment agency to find out where you were.”

“You didn’t have to do that. I left my schedule in the apartment.”

“Yeah, well, that’s a whole other story. You’re just lucky they only sent the ones who were assigned to take you out. They must not have expected the rest of us to show in time.”

“What do you mean? Who were those kids, anyway? Where’d they get so strong?”

“The questions are going to have to wait,” said Rainmaker. The papers that had been scattered in Kat’s fall started to swirl around the office as Rainmaker descended with Grunge and Freefall on a cushion of wind. “The rest of them could be back any minute. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“ ‘Rest of them?’ There’s more?” Kat asked.

“Come on,” Rainmaker said, wincing as she handed Kat the shoulder bag that she had retrieved from the office above.

“And what happened to you?”

“Later,” Sarah replied. “We’ll fill you in after we get somewhere safe.”

Sarah took her arm, and started to lead Kat toward the exit. Kat craned her head around to stare up through the hole at the Girlsworld.com office with helpless longing. “But.. . but. ..,” she pleaded.

She didn’t bother finishing the sentence, though. She recognized that her friends knew more about the situation than she did. And she knew they were right.

Kat’s heart sank with the realization. The opportunity had seemed so perfect for her. She wanted it so badly. But it looked like a normal life just wasn’t in the cards for her right now.

Or maybe ever.

CHAPTER 10

Manhattan’s East Village was one of the city’s more eclectic neighborhoods. For decades, the area did not have a name of its own, and was simply considered part of the Lower East Side, a slum neighborhood that was home to a true melting pot of Asians, Latinos, Jews, Italians. and any other immigrant group that couldn’t afford better living conditions elsewhere. However, as space grew scarce in the neighboring, bohemian neighborhood of Greenwich Village, spiky-haired hipsters with multiple piercings began to spill over in search of more affordable rents. The irony, of course, was that, over time, the increased interest in the East Village led to gentrification and bargains becoming as scarce as in Greenwich Village proper.

Still, thanks to rent control laws that kept the cost of living reasonably affordable for long-time residents, the rising rents didn’t drive out the older generation completely. The result was that the neighborhood had become a quirky blend where white-haired old-timers walked the streets side-by-side with teens and twentysomethings sporting leather outfits and dyed purple hair.

In the heart of the East Village was the Hometown Tavern, a small, dingy bar that was located just below street level in one of the apartment buildings on Saint Mark’s Place. Sandwiched among used record stores and alternative fashion salons, the smoky bar was clearly intended to cater to an older crowd. In contrast to the strobe lighting and molded plastic that characterized the sur-

rounding establishments, the Hometown looked like nothing more or less than a typical low-end neighborhood bar, with a few simple wooden tables, a dart board, and a jukebox whose selections ran the gamut from big band oldies to more recent hip hop hits.

Bobby glanced casually around the room. “Not exactly our usual kind of hangout.”

“That’s pretty much the point,” Sarah muttered. “These kids know way too much about us. We can’t risk going to any of the places where we usually hang.”

Grunge fingered his glass with distaste. “Or risk ordering a brew? C’mon, we’ve gotta be able to do better’n ginger ale.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t think to grab your fake ID from the apartment when we were running for our lives.”

Gen
¹³
huddled around a table in the back of the Hometown Tavern, looking deflated. The day hadn’t been one of the team’s greatest triumphs ... and it showed. Thanks to a quick stop at a nearby drug store, Kat had been able to help Sarah tape up her damaged ribs in the ladies’ room, and some aspirin helped to dull the pain a bit. Still, Sarah was hurting. In fact, everyone was hurting, to some degree, from the injuries they’d sustained in their battles with Gen
¹⁴
. No one looked comfortable in the hard, wooden chairs that the bar had provided, and all of them wore facial expressions that showed just how demoralized they felt. None of them had been given the chance to take a shower or tend to their bumps and bruises. Only Kat had changed her clothes, replacing her shredded suit with an “I V NY” t-shirt and a pair of biker shorts that she had bought from a sidewalk vendor and put on in the Ladies’ room at the bar. It wasn’t a look that would win her any fashion awards, but it would draw less attention than the tattered remains of an outfit that looked like it had been through a war.

“So, what now?” Bobby asked. “We just try to stay out of sight? We never go back home, or to anyplace we’ve set foot in before?”

“Not never,” said Kat. “Just until we get this thing settled.”

“Yeah, but how long’s that going to be?” Bobby heaved a disgusted sigh. “Same old, same old.’’

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What it sounds like. After all that time on the run, we finally get to stop hiding from I.O. We get a nice place, a little downtime. And then, just when we’re starting to chill... Boom! Here we are, right back in the same kind of place all over again. This gig is getting old.”

“I can’t believe we got whipped by a bunch of kids,” Grunge mumbled.

“This is
not
the same place all over again,” Sarah said to Bobby. “This isn’t like running from I.O. Things are different now ...”

“Yeah?” said Bobby. “Like how?”

“Like we’re older now. We’re more experienced than we were when we started out. And this time, at least, we’re not stuck fighting someone with the resources of the whole U.S. Government.”

“Really? How do you know?” Bobby challenged. “We don’t know where those kids came from. Maybe we
are
fighting the whole U.S. Government.

“All I know is that here we are again, back on the run. Adios, New York. Next stop, Montana!”

“Look,” said Kat. “Nobody’s going to Montana. We are not running away. But we’ve got to face facts. Those kids outnumber us. They’re much more powerful than we are. They’re well-organized. And so far, they haven’t shown any hesitation about hurting us or anyone who gets in their way.”

“Plus,” Sarah added, counting off her points on her fingers, “they know who we are. They know where we live. They know so much about us that they already planned out who was going to fight whom before they showed up.”    .

Kat picked up the line of reasoning. “And we know zip about them. That gives the other side a significant advantage. We can’t afford to ignore it.”

Bobby thought that over for a bit. What they were saying made sense. He shrugged and let his attitude drop away. “Yeah, I know. You’re right. My bad. I was just...”

“You’re upset, you’re exhausted, and you’re not looking forward to any of this,” Kat .said, nodding. “I understand. We all feel that way. This thing’s taken a lot out of all of us.” She reached out and laid a hand on Roxy’s arm. Roxy flinched away.

Roxy wasn’t ready for physical contact with Kat just yet. Now that some time had passed, Roxy realized that everything she had seen was just a hallucination. Hallucination or not, though, it had hit too close to home. Her head told her that the people around her were her friends and that they loved her. But it was going to take a while for her head to get back in charge.

Even though Roxy wasn’t about to say any of that out loud, it was obvious to everyone that, whatever Roxy had gone through, the trauma had left its mark. Roxy was still unusually quiet. She still sat with her arms wrapped around herself for security. Her color still wasn’t quite back to normal. And her eyes still carried a slightly haunted look.

They were concerned about her, but there was only so much they could do about it. Until she was ready to open up, they couldn’t address whatever was bothering her directly. In the meantime, all they could offer was quiet support.

“So what do we do next?” Bobby asked.

Kat straightened up in her chair as she stepped into the leadership role with an easy confidence. It wasn’t difficult to see why Lynch had named Kat as the field leader of Gen
¹³
without any real protest from any of the others. “Well, eventually, we’re going to have to find a place to stay for the night,” she said. “Out of all of us, I’ve probably got the most cash on me, but even that’s starting to run low. We’ll have to decide whether we want to risk using a credit card or ATM. If they’re tapped into the computer networks, that could give our position away.

“In the meantime, though, I suppose the easiest thing would be to try to close the information gap a little. Let’s begin by putting together whatever we do know about these guys,”

Kat reached down and pulled a pen out of her shoulder bag. She grabbed a couple of bar napkins from the center of the table and prepared to write. “All right, what do we know?”

“They whipped us good,” said Grunge.

“Besides that.”

“They got this weird Stepford Kids thing going on. All, like, zombiefied or something,” said Grunge. “No emotions.”

“Could they be robots? Androids?” Sarah offered. Bobby shook his head. “I don’t think so. I got
real
up close and personal with one of them.” He suppressed a shudder at the memory of Growing Boy in his mouth. “He didn’t feel metal or synthetic or anything. He felt like flesh and blood to me.”

Kat wrote on the napkin:

NO EMOTIONS—HUMAN?

“Okay,” she said, “that’s a start. What else?”

“They call themselves Gen
¹⁴
,” said Bobby.

“Good. That implies a couple of things right there.” “Assuming they didn’t just take the name because they thought it sounded cool,” Bobby replied. “But it could mean they’re gen-actives.”

“From the generation after us,” Sarah added. “Like Roxy said before, you’d think it would mean thev’re our kids.”    '    '

“Whoa!” Grunge said again. “Don’t look at me!” Sarah smiled indulgently. “Relax, stud-boy. They’re too old. You would’ve had to be an incredibly precocious five-year-old.”

Grange looked miffed. “Yeah? You saying I wasn’t?” “Still,” Kat said, chewing thoughtfully on the top of her pen, “something like that would fit with their being so much stronger than we are. Y’know, like we’re more powerful than our parents from Gen
¹²
.”