Lost Souls: Imperfection – Episode 2 (3 page)

“I’m hurt you’d ask that,” Sam said.

“I didn’t mean you!” Eugene defended, his tone almost pleading for immediate forgiveness.  “You know I didn’t.  It’s just that…well, we’d better get inside and I’ll tell you all about it.”

As Eugene led the way, Sam cast a glance at Ben.  She quickly caught up with Eugene.  “You having trouble with the Changed?”

Eugene bridled.  “Nah.  Those bone heads.  No.  They can’t get through my security.  Haven’t figured it out, you know.”

“I didn’t think they would.”  Sam walked through the door of the abandoned broken-down house, following Eugene.  Christian and Ben did the same.  “So, what is it?”

Eugene rubbed his chin and scratched his dark head.  “Lots of things.  Lots of things are happening.  You guys stirred up quite a wasp’s nest.”

Sam grinned.  “You know us.”

“That stunt you pulled with the Changed.  It’s all over the ghost waves.  All the souls are talking about it.  Did you really do it?  Did you blast the crap out of it?”

Sam nodded.  “Remember?  I was telling you my theory about the Changed being pure energy.  They are at their peek when they make the jump.  So, what would happen if you pumped them full of more energy?”

Eugene nodded in agreement.  “Brilliant.  Brilliant.”

Ben shrugged.  “Daniel wasn’t too happy.”

Eugene rolled his eyes.  “To say the least!  He is pissed.  There’s talk of quarantining you.”

“They already tried that,” Sam whispered.

Eugene grinned proudly at her.  “There are lots of Souls who agree with him.  But there are some who don’t.  You’ve caused something of a state of tension, to say the least.  Like a dissension.  Those at the top don’t like.  Not one bit.”

“How come you live in this rundown shack if you have so much technology?”

All three turned to Christian.  Sam sighed softly.  “Sorry,” she said to Eugene.  “He’s new.”

“What?” Christian demanded.  “What did I say?”

“Freshie,” Eugene muttered in disdain and sank through the floor.

“I’ll faze you down,” Ben told Christian.  He put his hand on Christian’s shoulder.

Sam fazed, disintegrating and reappearing on the floor below, beside Eugene.  They stood in his pre-base.  A simple room made of four iron walls.  Thick iron.  Impenetrable iron.

“Wait until you see my new test to get inside.  It’s right out of a James Bond movie.  But it works really well for us.”  Eugene led her over to one of the walls where the only break in the four iron walls and floor was a black panel.  Christian and Ben came down together.

After glancing around, Christian whispered, “I’m still unimpressed.”

“Unimpressed?” Eugene demanded.  He pointed to the ceiling.  “If one of those Changed freaks got this far, which would be a miracle in itself, that ceiling will close and trap him.  Seamlessly.  For good!  Not impressed?”  He shook his head.

Sam laid a hand on Eugene’s shoulder.  “It’s okay.  Show us your new test.”

Eugene nodded.  He leaned close to the black panel.  The front of the panel slid aside and Eugene leaned his forehead against it.  A light scanned his eye, moving from right to left.

“You got a retinal reader that reads ghost eyes?” Ben asked, coming around Christian to stand beside Eugene.

After the process finished scanning his eye, Eugene stood up.  “I made it myself.”

Sam grinned as the door to his inner sanctum opened.

“You expect a Changed to put their head in there for an eye read?” Christian asked in disbelief.

Eugene looked at him coldly.  “It’s for Souls.  To make sure they haven’t changed.  Duh.  Eugene step forward toward the sanctum.  “Wow, he really is a freshie…”

Christian shook his head and followed them into the room.

Sam moved across what had always looked to her like a living room.  A blue couch lay perpendicular to the opposite wall.  Sam knew a television lowered from the ceiling.  She also knew that it wasn’t always just for entertainment.  Eugene had set up devices in certain complexes around the world to spy on the other Souls.  Behind the door to their left was a regeneration bed she had personally used on two separate occasions to restore her energy.  Behind the door to the right was Eugene’s lab.  She was sure there were more rooms he hadn’t shown her.

As Eugene followed her, he gently and lovingly stroked a dismantled alarm clock on a table.

Sam sat on the couch.  “Why’d you call us?”

Eugene’s face melted into uncertainty.  “Well, there’s this Soul…  I don’t want you to think…”  He cleared his throat and picked up a piece of the alarm clock, turning it over and over in his hands.  “You know that there are a select few Souls that I work with.”

Ben crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned against a chair near the table.  “We know.”

He looked quickly at Sam.  “But you, of course, are my favorite.”

Yes, Sam knew she was his favorite.  He hadn’t made a car for any other Soul.  He hadn’t dropped everything for anyone else except for her.  Even his precious technology came second to her.  She knew.

“One of the other Souls – Becky –”

“Rebecca?” Ben asked, straightening away from the wall, dropping his arms to his sides.

Sam glanced at Ben.  They had worked a case with Rebecca a long time ago.  If Sam remembered correctly, Rebecca was a thin woman with cropped brown hair who could hold her own in a fight.

“Yes.  Yes.  Becky was working on a case.  A boy.  She thought he was a Soul and she was looking for him.  She stopped in to say hello and ask if I had any information.”

“Which, of course, you did,” Ben said.

Eugene bridled as if the comment offended him.  “Of course.”  He reached forward and took a folder off of the table before him.  He handed it to Samantha.

“A folder?” Christian wondered.  “Kind of low tech, isn’t it?”

“I prefer to call it
old school
,” Eugene countered.  “I like the tactile feel of paper in my hands.  Almost makes me feel human again.”

“Ryan Johnson,” Sam read from the label on the folder, ignoring their banter.

Eugene turned back to Sam and nodded.  “Star basketball player.  Young boy.”

Sam opened the folder to see the grainy image of a boy in a basketball outfit, holding a basketball.  She read from the file Eugene had created.  “Senior in High School.  Parents, a sister.”

“Died suddenly on the basketball court during a championship game with his team’s rivals.”

Sam’s lips closed.  Could be a lost soul.  Might not be.  “Why would Becky think he wouldn’t pass?”

Eugene pointed to the folder.  “He went down in the middle of the game.  Some sort of heart irregularity.  Star player.  He might feel he had to finish.”

Ben nodded in agreement.  “He might not know he was dead.”

Sam stared into the brown eyes of the young boy, hoping he had passed.  Hoping he hadn’t stayed, hoping he wasn’t trapped in the world of Lost Souls as they were, never to move on to the next life.  He was so young.

“He might not have wanted to let his teammates down,” Christian added.

Sam, Ben and Eugene turned to Christian.

Christian shrugged.  “I wouldn’t.”

Damn it.  He was right.  They all were.  “What did Becky say?  Did she find him?”

“That’s why I called you.  Becky is missing.”

Dread peppered Sam’s shoulders.  Missing.

“I haven’t had any communication with her for a week now.”

“That’s not like her,” Ben said.

Eugene shook his head.  “She’s almost as meticulous as I am.”

Sam chuckled as she looked back down at the file.  “No one is that meticulous.”

“Was she working with a partner?” Ben wondered.

Eugene nodded.  “Me.”

Sam shuffled through some of the papers in the folder.  “Where was she looking for…”  She flipped back to the front page.  “Ryan?”

Eugene smiled.  “I knew you’d help,” he whispered, running a tender thumb over the piece of alarm clock he held.  “You never let me down.”

His gaze was full of a worshipfulness that made Sam uneasy.

“2231 Cheshire.  You’ll find a map there at the bottom.”

~ ~ ~

Sam, Christian and Ben stood before Ryan Johnson’s house.  It was a typical two story suburban house with a white picket fence.  A basketball hoop hung on the garage, the backboard thoroughly scuffed from use, the netting starting to show frayed edges.

No one said a word.  But they all knew the danger that always surrounded the first appearance of a freshie in their world.  If Ryan truly had turned into a Soul, there was a good chance that a Changed was here, too.  Even Christian knew that.  The Changed were damned monsters who hunted new Souls for their energy.  Ryan would have been in danger.  But Becky was no freshie.  She’d been around for centuries.  She would know how to handle herself and what to do if a Changed attacked her.

“She’d go right in,” Ben said.

Sam nodded.  The family wouldn’t have been able to see Becky, so it wouldn’t have mattered if anyone were home or not.  Sam scanned the area; there were no cars in the driveway.  It was midday and the sun beat down on the house.  Perhaps the parents were at work, the sister at school.

Ben started forward.  Sam moved after him and Christian took up the rear.

The boy would have been comfortable here.  This is where he would have returned.  Instinct was strong in all Souls to return home.  It was always the starting place when they looked for a new Soul.  They had found Christian in his home right after he had become a Soul.  It was the place the other Souls had found Sam and Ben.

They passed through the front door, simply moving through the wooden door, and into the entrance of the home.  It was clean and neat.  Coats hung on pegs on the wall; shoes were lined up on a shoetree.  Right past the foyer, stairs rose to the upper floor and a hallway stretched to the back of the house.  It was a lovely home.  Warm and inviting.

Ben paused to scan the area.

Sam moved into the house, looking for Ryan.  He wouldn’t be hiding.  He’d be out in the open.  This was a place of safety for him, his home.  She walked down the hallway to find a kitchen and family room.  Both were empty.  She turned to Ben and Christian and shook her head.

Ben glanced toward the stairs and started up them.  Christian moved down the hallway toward her.

A door stood open to Sam’s right, with stairs leading down.  Most likely toward the basement.  Daylight shone from the bottom of the stairs, probably through a window.  She slowly walked down the stairs.  The basement stairs as well as the floor was carpeted.  She lifted a hand to run it against the wall and descended the stairs.  She rounded the corner and froze.

Ryan was on his knees, his body a mere ghostly wisp, transparent and fading.  He was almost completely invisible, just a mere outline of what he should be.  Standing before him, with his fist in the kid’s chest, was a Changed.

Sam jerked forward, reaching for her sword.

The Changed pulled away from the kid and turned to her, a crooked, dark smile on its pale lips.  Its form wavered, shimmering.  Electricity snapped around it.

Sam’s teeth grit.

The Changed’s lips twisted into a wicked smile; tiny bolts of electricity ran across his teeth.  “Hello, Samantha.”

Sam hesitated for a fraction of a second as she recognized the bastard.  She knew his dark eyes.  She remembered his short blonde hair, hair so blonde it was almost white.  But it was the shape of his lips, the familiar cocky taunt in their line, that made Sam’s lip snarl in a grimace of hatred.  She lifted the blade and rush toward the monster in a burst of speed.

The Changed vanished before she reached it.  She spun, looking for it.  Her gaze blasting right and left, up and down, until she spotted the kid where he had fallen on the floor.

He was so light that his form was almost invisible.

“No, no, no,” Sam whispered.  She dropped her sword and bent down to the kid’s side.  He was so light, his body so translucent.  His eyes were completely white, as if he had cataracts.  Her heart twisted.  Too late.  She was too late.

“What’s happening?” Christian asked as he hurried to her side.  “Who the hell was that?”

Sam looked up at Christian.  “Get Ben.  Hurry.”

Christian disappeared instantly.

Sam touched the kid’s forehead, wiping dark hair from his eyes.  “Come on, kid.  Concentrate.”

The outline of his being, his very essence, was fading and disintegrating beneath her hands.  “Ryan!” Sam called.

The boy’s eyes opened wider under her command.

She winced at seeing how completely white his eyes were.  She stroked his forehead, but her fingers moved through him.  Her chest tightened.  She was losing him.

“Mom?” he called.

“Concentrate, Ryan,” Sam whispered, half begging.  “Give me a few seconds.”  But she knew there was nothing she could do for him.  She couldn’t faze him to Eugene’s regen bed; he’d be lost in the process of being transported, fragmenting over the distance.

“Sam,” Ben called from behind her.

“Get Eugene.  He’s got to have something –”  Before she finished the sentence, Ryan grew fainter, his body dying, his energy evaporating, until he completely disappeared, leaving Sam leaning over the shag carpeting.

Sam stared for a long moment at the beige carpet where Ryan had just been.  She would never get used to that, never get used to having a Soul disintegrate right before her.  She clenched her jaw on the sharp stab of pain and guilt rising inside of her.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Ben said kindly from behind her.

Sam shook her head stubbornly.  “If I had been a little faster.  If –”

“No,” Ben said firmly.

She shot to her feet and whirled on him.  “He was just a kid, Ben!  How could he have known about the Changed?  How could he even hope to defend himself?”

“I know, Sam.”

“You don’t know!  It was Scala.”

Ben’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.  Then he slowly furrowed his brow and shook his head in disbelief.

“Who’s Scala?” Christian asked.

Sam paced back and forth across the carpet.  The rage wouldn’t fade.  It churned inside her, a tangible thing, trying to consume her, trying to take over.  She clenched and unclenched her hands, fighting the fierce rage seething within her.  “We nail him.  You hear me, Ben?  I want Scala dead.  We find him and blast the crap out of him.”  She shook her head.  “He was just a kid!”