Mutation (20 page)

Chapter 33

Li went to work on the vortex equipment almost as soon as we arrived, while I debriefed the rest of the troops.  It didn’t take long.

“So they were waiting for you?” Gossamer asked.

“Yep,” I answered, “like they knew we were coming, except we were already there when they showed up.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” said Kane.  “Unless they’re psychic or something.”

Rudi suddenly sprang to mind, and it occurred to me that she could possibly be here as well.  Then I dismissed the notion.

“No, I’ve encountered one of the psychics they use before,” I said, “and if it were her, they’d be breaking down the door right now.”

“But you said they knew that we were in the sub-basement,” Gavin said.

“Yes, but they can’t seem to find us for some reason,” I added.

Kane and Gossamer exchanged glances, simultaneously grinned, and then high-fived each other.  That was the largest display of solidarity I’d seen from them.

“What?” I asked.

“There’s a glamour on this entire section of the sub-basement,” Gossamer said, smiling mischievously.  “Kane and I cast it jointly when we first set up down here.”

“For anyone looking,” Kane added, “the hallways and stairs that lead to this area all look and feel like dead ends.”

Gossamer and Kane started chatting animatedly about how well their glamour must be working, and I used the opportunity to go grab a couple of apples from the fridge.  Gavin, ever the loner, went to the workstation and sat down.

I felt a little sorry for him.  Gavin hadn’t really been involved in any of the missions and there really wasn’t a strong effort to draw him out during conversations.  He was here more by virtue of the fact that he was immune to the virus than anything else.  As Li had said, he seemed socially awkward, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be friendly.  I walked towards where he was sitting.

I didn’t necessarily come up behind him quietly; I think he was just so focused on the computer screen that he didn’t notice me.  For a second, I watched reams of data flying by on the screen he was looking at.  It seemed impossible that he could read that fast, but then I remembered Li mentioning that his power let him connect directly to computers.  I tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention, preparing to just make simple conversation.

He glanced over his shoulder, but when he saw it was me, he jumped to his feet so fast that he knocked over the chair he’d been sitting in.  He seemed to almost cringe, backing himself towards the tiny corner between the edge of the workstation and the wall.  Moreover, I was picking up not just unease or discomfort from him, but something verging on terror.

“Y-y-yes?” he stammered.

“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” I said.  “We really haven’t had a chance to talk, so I just figured now was a good time.”

“Actually,” he said, “I’m kind of in the middle of something.  Maybe later?”

I nodded.  “Okay.  That sounds fine.” I walked away towards the couch and sat down while Gavin picked up the chair he’d knocked over and gingerly sat down, keeping an eye on me all the while.

I finished the apples and then went to the fridge for a bottle of water.  As I twisted the top off and leaned against the wall, I glanced around at our little group and couldn’t help thinking what an odd little band we were.

Li, an android.

Gossamer, an elf.

Kane, a plain old, regular human with magic.

Me, basically a mongrel with alien genes.

Gavin, a super who connected to computers.

Now that I thought about it, Gavin was really the only true, pure meta among us.  The rest of us just got lumped in the same category because of the things we could do.

And just like that, the clouds in my mind parted and the answer came to me like a divine revelation.  It was so startling that I jerked up from the position I’d been in, leaning against the wall, like something had bitten me.

Li had noticed the movement.  “Is something wrong, Jim?”

“As a matter of fact, there is,” I acknowledged as I walked over to where he was sitting at the center tables.  “Gavin, can you come here for a second?” I shouted across the room.

Gavin looked over nervously, then slowly got up and walked towards us.  Gossamer and Kane, who had been talking over by the Exit door, joined us as well.

Gavin stopped when he reached the center tables.  As usual, he had positioned himself in such a way as to keep as much distance as possible between him and me.  It only confirmed what I was thinking.

“Yes?” Gavin said quizzically.

“I just wanted to ask you something,” I said.  “Why aren’t you sick?”

Chapter 34

Gavin looked like someone had handed him a scorpion.

“What???!!!” he asked.

“Why aren’t you sick?” I repeated.  “Why don’t you have the virus, like all the other metas in this school?”

“I-I-I-I’m immune,” he stammered.  “Like the rest of you guys.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” I said.  “You’re not immune.”

“What do you mean?” asked Kane.  “Is he sick?”

“No, he isn’t,” I said.  “And that’s the problem.”

“You’re going to have to explain,” said Gossamer.

“Fine,” I said adamantly, not taking my eyes off Gavin.  “The virus attaches to the metagene.  Gossamer’s not sick because she’s an elf.  She’s not human.  Ergo, she doesn’t have a metagene.

“Kane is a human practitioner of magic.  However, none of his abilities arise genetically because he doesn’t have the metagene.  Therefore, he’s not sick.

“I’m not immune, but I am a biological anomaly to a certain extent, and my body fought off the infection.

“Li,” I said, hesitating, not sure how to say it, “also has a unique physiology so that he isn’t susceptible to disease.  So he’s not sick.

“That just leaves you, Gavin.  A regular super with the metagene, just like all the other infected students here.  So I ask again, why aren’t you sick?”

I felt confident in my analysis, but to an extent I was bluffing.  I didn’t really have any proof of what I was implying, just random data and circumstantial evidence - like the fact that Gavin practically ran away every time I got near him, as if he were scared I’d infect him.

That being the case, I half expected Gavin to laugh it off and call me crazy.  I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he had hotly denied everything, declared I’d besmirched his honor and challenged me to a duel at twenty paces.

But none of that happened.

Instead, Gavin started crying.

*****

Apparently Gavin’s parents had been dissidents in some Third-World country ruled by a harsh dictator.  They had been granted political asylum twenty years ago.  Gray was now threatening to deport them, send them back to their home country - along with Gavin’s brother and sister - where they would all likely face execution.

“When did he recruit you?” I asked.

“About a year ago,” Gavin replied, “when I was first accepted to the Academy.”

“A year!” Gossamer screamed.  Face twisted into a snarl, she drew her daggers, wanting to take his head off.  While Kane physically restrained her, she spouted off a stream of elvish that I am quite sure had nothing but four-letter equivalents in English.

“And the virus?” Li asked.

“They gave vials of it to me right before I came back this year,” Gavin said, hanging his head.

“How did you introduce it into the student population?” Li asked.

“The water system, for most of them,” he replied.

“Of course.” Li nodded in understanding, then began explaining after noting my confused look.  “Each dorm has its own water supply system.  The dorm for the boys, the one for the girls, the housing for faculty and staff.  The main pumps are located in the basement below each building.”

“So all he had to do was insert the virus into the tanks he was interested in and leave everything else alone,” I said.

“Like the faculty and staff,” Li said.  “The control group.”

Gavin just nodded.

“Hold on, you said you used the water system to infect ‘most’ of the students,” I noted.  “Who didn’t get infected that way?”

Gavin looked me in the eye.  “You.”

I frowned, then remembered.  “The cup you gave me.  The cup at the lake.”

“Yeah,” Gavin admitted.  “The guy in charge over here, Schaefer, he’s got a real thing for you.  I mean, he wants you dead.  He personally came to me and told me he wanted you infected first, and he wanted you to have a double dose.”

“Wait a minute,” I said.  “All that was before I got sick – before we allegedly sent for Aldiss and the CDC guys.  When did he get here?”

Gavin made a derisive sound.  “They go back and forth all the time!  They’ve got their own vortex technology.  Sometimes they mask the dimensional signature by traveling at the same time that you guys have a gate open here, but they’ve got free rein in that department.  That’s how they could afford to blow the vortex gate at the school here.  They’ve got their own way back home!”

“
They
blew they gate?” Kane asked, having calmed Gossamer down.  “They said Adam did it!”

“They say a lot of stuff!” Gavin shouted back.

“So how much have you told them?” I asked.  “About us and what we’re trying to do?”

Gavin lowered his head.

“Jeez!” Kane cried.  “He’s told them everything!  All the time we thought he was on the computer playing games, he was spilling his guts!”

“That certainly explains how they knew when we were after the modeling software,” Li said.  “And when we were coming to the conference room in Magnavolt’s office.”

“But they were late getting there both times,” I said.  “What’s the story there?”

“I don’t know,” Gavin sighed.  “The messages got held up somehow, like they hit some kind of wall.  I guess Kane and Gossamer’s glamour acted like some kind of barrier or speed bump.”

“So, what’s their plan now?” Gossamer asked.

“I don’t know,” Gavin said.

Gossamer pulled her right blade out and put it to his throat.

“I don’t know!” Gavin wailed.  “Please!  I don’t know!  All I know is that something’s happening on the other side - back on Earth - so they’re calling an abort.”

“What?!” I yelled.  “When?”

“Right now,” Gavin answered.  “That’s what I was reading when you first came over and tapped me on the shoulder.”

“So they’re just going to leave?” asked Kane.  “Just give up and leave us here after all this trouble they’ve gone through?  What do they think will happen when we tell people back home what happened?”

“You don’t understand,” Gavin said.  “Schaefer’s going to fully activate everyone’s metagene – even the dormant ones – before they leave.  There won’t be anybody left to say anything.”

“What are you talking about?” Gossamer interjected.  “There will still be us, if no one else.”

Gavin shook his head.  “There are at least two dozen students here with a power level equal to Adam Atom’s when their metagene is cranked all the way up.  At least five of them might have the power to split the planet.  This school – maybe this whole world – will be a smoking pile of rubble by the time anyone else from Earth gets here.”

Chapter 35

I spent about two minutes randomly teleporting to different areas of the school before returning to our hideout.

“He’s right,” I said of Gavin, “they all seem to have pulled out.  No guards, no CDC, no Estrella, no Schaefer.”

“How’d they move out so fast?” Kane asked.

I shrugged.  “Probably Estrella.  She’s a teleporter.”

“So why is
he
still here?” asked Gossamer, nodding in Gavin’s direction.

It was an excellent question.  I turned to Gavin, who sat morosely in his chair, eyes red from crying, and asked him.

“Pace and Schaefer mentioned something before about tying up loose ends when they finished here,” Gavin said after a moment.  “It didn’t sound like they were talking about paperwork, and as far as I can tell, I’m a loose end.”

“And you still kept helping them?” Kane asked.  “Even though they were going to kill you?”

“They have a noose around my family’s neck!” Gavin screamed.  “I had to help them!  And it doesn’t matter anyway - I’m dead if I go with them, I’m dead if I stay with you!  I’m dead, dead, dead!!!”

Gavin dropped his head into his hands and started crying again.  We went back to trying to figure something out.

“So what now?” asked Gossamer.

“We need to find out where they went,” I said.  “Right now, they’ve got the only bus pass home.”

I looked at Gavin, who was still sobbing.  Li followed my glance.

“He insists he does not know where they are,” Li said.  “He states that they did not tell him where they set up their vortex gate.”

“And the full campus – including all the replicas of residential areas, warehouse districts, and so on – is the size of a city,” Kane said.  “They could be anywhere, setting up their vortex to leave right now.”

The mention of the vortex brought an earlier conversation to mind.

“Gavin,” I said, turning to him, “you mentioned something earlier about Schaefer and his crew coming over at the same time we did.”

Gavin looked up, eyes puffy, and nodded.  “Every vortex creates an energy signature.  Traveling at the same time as you guys allowed them to mask theirs within the one created here.”

“Well, we don’t have a vortex for them to hide their signature in now,” I said.  “What’s changed?”

“They’ve continued to work on improving the vortex technology over the past few years,” Gavin said.  “The supers haven’t.  And they had a breakthrough recently, so now, I think they know how to effectively keep their comings and goings secret.”

“We have to locate their vortex gate,” Li said, “or we are doomed.”

“How?” Kane asked.  “We don’t have a clue where to start looking.”

I smiled.  “Maybe we do.”

Then I told them what I’d seen on my trip through the vortex.

*****

I had thought Aldiss looked familiar.  Now that all the pieces of the puzzle were in front of me, I knew why:  he had been one of the people I’d seen traveling through the other vortex tunnel.

I told Li and the others what I’d seen through the vortex gate that Aldiss and his people had been going through:  the letters
A
-
K
-
A
in a window of the building.

“Of course,” I said, reflecting back, “the
K
had been backwards.”

“Understood,” said Li.  “The letters were painted on the other side of the window.”

We were in Magnavolt’s office, with Li sitting at the principal’s computer and the rest of us –
sans
Gavin (who was in the bullet-riddled conference room) – huddled around him.  With all the bad guys gone, there was no need to stay down in the sub-basement.

At the moment, Li was pulling up a list of all the areas of campus that used real-world replicas for training.  Although what I had seen had the appearance of a business, Li was pulling up residential listings as well as commercial and industrial.

“I am sorry,” he said.  “There is nothing containing the letters
A
-
K
-
A
.  Are you certain that is what you saw?”

“I’m positive,” I said.  Still, I closed my eyes, concentrated.  I could see the guys moving through the tunnel, including Aldiss…the equipment they had…the room they were headed into.  There was the window, the letters, the broken glass…

My eyes snapped open.  I started pulling open the drawers of Magnavolt’s desk, maniacally looking for what I needed.

“What are you looking for, Jim?” asked Gossamer.  “Can we help?”

I didn’t answer, just kept looking until I found it in the bottom of the left-hand drawer:  a pen and pad of paper.  I put the pad on the desk and drew a large letter
R
on it.  I put my hand over the top part of the
R
.

“Imagine that the top part of the
R
is gone,” I said, “from the vertical line on the left to just before it curves into the loop on the right.  Does that look like a
K
to you?”

“Sort of,” said Kane.  “I mean, if you’re in a hurry and glance at it, you could mistake it for a
K
.”

“Well, when I saw the window in the vortex, some of the glass was broken out,” I said, “including a piece near the top of what I thought was
K
.  I think it wasn’t a
K
but an
R
instead.”

Li could already see where I was going with it and had revised the search before I even finished speaking.

“One item shows up with the letters
A
-
R
-
A
,” he announced.  “Manny’s Garage.”