Tempest

Four

Altitude




We’re going to be working together for at least the next three days, so at some point you’re going to have to talk to me,” Aaron said. He had an annoying ability to sound both condescending and completely reasonable in the exact same sentence.

Which, naturally, made me feel about five years old. I hadn’t ignored him for the last three hours on purpose. I simply didn’t have anything to say in the way of polite conversation. The questions I wanted to ask—What’s it like for your brother sharing space with my kind-of-best friend? How can Marco learn to cope with having all that extra noise in his head and not go crazy?—would only start a fight. And us getting into it at thirty-thousand feet was a very bad idea.

I was also too busy keeping my own shit together to bother entertaining Aaron. Not just because of our destination, which was stress-inducing enough. I simply wasn’t a fan of flying on man-made aircraft. Flying on my own, using the wind currents and my Meta powers to guide me, was something I had total control over. Sitting inside a giant metal tube going five hundred miles an hour was out of my control, and it meant keeping a tight lid on my emotions. The last thing I needed to do was get upset and cause unexpected turbulence.

The jet’s main cabin had three rows of seats in front and a small lounge in the back. After takeoff, we’d silently moved to opposite ends of the lounge’s long faux-leather sofa, and then proceeded to ignore each other. A few minutes ago, Aaron had discarded his tablet in favor of staring at me from his end of the couch. And then he spoke.

“Fine,” I said. I put down the tablet I’d been reading—a predeparture gift from Teresa, full of information on the ex-Banes already registered and in our database. “What do you want to talk about?”

If Aaron noticed the challenge in my tone, he didn’t react to it. “Tell me about Manhattan. About the prison, I mean. I don’t know a whole lot about it.”

At least he’d chosen an easy topic—kind of. I’d never forgotten those horrifying hours I’d spent in Central Park as a thirteen-year-old Ranger trainee, being chased by a group of Banes intent on murdering us. Over the years, I’d devoured every additional scrap of information I could find on the prison they’d created out of the skeleton of Manhattan Island, including security protocols and street maps. As a teenager, I’d entertained ideas of getting inside and taking out Jinx. Now all those years of studying should help us do our jobs that much faster.

Still. . . . “What have you been reading about this whole time?” I asked, pointing at the tablet next to Aaron’s knee. We’d been given identical information, and everything he needed to know about the prison was on his tablet.

“Official documents and government reports, mostly. Suspected hiding locations for the people we’re searching for, as well as a rundown of their powers.”

“Did you get to the part with the map of the prison and all the specs?”

“First thing.”

I resisted the urge to pull a face. “So why are you asking me about it?”

“Because you’ve been there, and I never have.”

Sweat prickled across my forehead. “I haven’t been there in fifteen years.”

Aaron tilted his head to the left, like a bird observing a potential worm in the grass—or a killer sizing up his next victim. Same difference.

Okay, so that wasn’t a very generous description, but give me a break here. Maybe he could dispute that he wasn’t a killer by the basic definition of the word, arguing that the consciousness of the host remained inside him in some vague capacity, but it didn’t change the fact that bodies had been left behind. Or parts of bodies. Four people—Ronald Jarvis, Joel Stevenson, Arnold Stark, and Miguel Ortega—were no longer among the general population, mingling with their friends and loved ones, because of choices made by Test Subject 0982, aka King.

Now alias Aaron Scott. He insisted the peaceful amalgamation of King and Aaron was the person we interacted with, and he was the person he’d chosen to become. How that supposedly worked with four other consciousnesses floating around in his head was totally beyond me—and it was why I just didn’t trust Aaron.

Working together this week was going to be an extra-special treat.

At least he was easy on the eyes. Not that I was ogling or anything, but Aaron’s dark blond hair and green eyes (a darker green than mine) were a definite win in the genetic lottery. In my more reckless youth, my type was usually defined by “available” and “male.” This past year my type had been completely nonexistent, for a variety of reasons, but Aaron was—no way.

I was so not letting my brain go there.

“I read a little about that final battle you were in,” Aaron said. “You were pretty brave for a bunch of kids.”

I wanted to laugh, but didn’t. Bravery hadn’t factored much into it at the time. We were running from grown-ups who wanted to kill us. There’s nothing vaguely heroic in trying to save your own ass. Four of my friends died in front of me. We’d have all died if the government hadn’t initiated a measure that stripped all of us—good guys and bad guys alike—of our powers in the world’s biggest deus ex machina ending ever to a major battle. Why we twelve got to live when everyone else we loved had died was a question no one had ever been able to answer for me—or me for myself.

“We weren’t brave,” I said. Aaron could never understand what that final battle had been like. The cold and rain and smoke. The screaming and blood and the odor of charred human flesh. Fear so strong you thought you might explode from it, if it didn’t drown you first. “We ran and we hid. We were just trying to live.”

“Because the Banes wanted you dead?”

“Yeah.”

He arched an eyebrow at me. “Because of something you couldn’t help being?”

“I—” Well, shit, he had me there. My situation in Manhattan and his situation as a lab rat at Weatherfield weren’t anywhere close to the same—but we’d both acted in our own best interest. And survived.

Not that I’d admit out loud to having that in common with him.

“You what?” Aaron wasn’t done poking me yet.

“We were at war,” I finally said, too stubborn to acknowledge the point he’d made. “Things happen in wartime that you just don’t do in real life.”

“Uh-huh.” He didn’t say it, but “like what?” hung off the end of his sentence, and damn it if he wasn’t really good at baiting me, the bastard.

If he wanted to hear about Manhattan, I’d tell him some of the fantastic details that still occasionally came to visit in my nightmares. Maybe then he’d shut the hell up. “I watched a Bane named Mayhem melt the face off my friend Mellie. Melted her skin and muscle down to her skull. She was twelve years old, and she died like that right in front of me.”

Sweat kept beading on my forehead, and more broke out across my back and shoulders as Mellie’s scream shot through me like an icy wind. Even in the cold and rain, her skin had sizzled. I’d been close enough to smell it. Sometimes in my nightmares, I got caught in that blast and felt every fractured second of heat and fire and pain—and in those nightmares, it was Jinx who’d killed me.

“What happened to Mayhem?” Aaron asked.

Despite his cautious tone, I didn’t censor my withering retort. “We went out for ice cream sundaes on her dime, Aaron. What the hell do you think happened to her? I hit her with a small cyclone of wind and rocks and slammed her headfirst into an old metal sculpture. Broke her neck.”

Aaron looked away, and something in his demeanor changed. The smug challenge he’d started the conversation with disappeared, and he just looked . . . well, sad. It kind of freaked me out. I didn’t want his sympathy, his pity, or his condescension, and I was so over this conversation anyway—

“You killed her,” he said. Not a question, either.

If he’d said it any other way, I’d have probably walked across the cabin and punched him in the eye for drawing a comparison between the life I’d taken and the lives he’d taken. But it wasn’t an accusation. Just a statement. So, instead of hitting him, I sat still and glared across the space between us.

“Yeah,” I said. “I killed her.”

I might be tangentially responsible for six of us dying back in January right after our powers came back, but Alice “Mayhem” Stiles was the only life I’d ever deliberately taken.

So far.

“You were only thirteen,” Aaron said.

I shrugged. “It was war.”

He watched me like he expected more, but I had nothing left to say on the topic. We were done talking about Manhattan unless it had something to do with city maps or the ex-Banes we were preparing to hunt. No more “This Was Your Life, Ethan” today. Aaron wasn’t very good at keeping his thoughts off his face—and I was mildly curious whose quirk that was—because he shifted between curious, concerned and . . . upset? Nah. But something, and his intent silence was getting annoying.

I wrote the conversation off as over and reached for my tablet.

“I get it,” he said.

“Get what?”

Instead of explaining what he thought he got, Aaron picked up his own tablet and started reading. The jerk.

And like the first three hours, we spent the last forty minutes of the flight ignoring each other.

• • •

Simon Hewitt met us on the tarmac. He stood next to an official-looking black car, hands in the pockets of his slacks, with the look of a guy pretending he doesn’t know he’s being watched by the entire airport security staff. I had no doubt at least a dozen sets of eyeballs were observing from windows and monitors, making sure the Metas didn’t destroy anything during the simple process of disembarking. The urge to do something petty—like stir the breeze and knock over a luggage cart—was almost too strong to resist.

I was here to do a job, though, and to make our team look good. Petty shit like that was out.

I hadn’t seen Simon in about a month, not since his last visit to the West Coast. The first time I met him, he’d reminded me of a man coming off a six-month drunken bender who desperately needed a good meal and a hot shower. Teresa had plucked him out of Manhattan to assist us in capturing an old Bane pal of his, and in doing so, he’d earned both her trust and his freedom. Granted parole, he’d been working with us ever since, dividing his time between Manhattan and our headquarters, and freedom had done him good.

Today he stood straight-backed and self-assured, like someone who’d worked for the federal prison system for years and was comfortable in his position. It was a mirage, of course. Government agencies used us to control our own kind, but they had no qualms about letting us hang if it served their needs. Simon was too smart to not know it, too. He played their games because he had a five-year-old son named Caleb to protect.

“Tempest,” Simon said as we approached the car. “Good to see you again.”

“Likewise.” I shook his offered hand, then stepped to the side so I could perform my part of the preplanned script and introduce him to my traveling companion. “This is Scott Torres.”

Obviously “Scott” was Aaron wearing a different face. The Changeling’s ability to create a glamour—a new appearance, without any actual defining characteristics, like voice and smell—had been used to generate a new identity for Aaron, based on a young man he’d touched back when he was inhabiting the life of Officer Miguel Ortega. Aaron couldn’t very well run around wearing his own face, and no one would believe he was Gage or Marco.

Scott Torres was actually designed a few weeks ago, but Aaron refused to assume another false identity while hanging around Hill House, so this was Scott’s first test run. On paper, Scott was twenty-four, of Mexican descent, and had worked for two years as a stockroom coordinator at a major retailer in Austin, Texas, before discovering he was Meta. With a little money (thank you, Dr. Kinsey) and a lot of computer know-how (thank you, Marco), getting Scott Torres into the system wasn’t a huge problem. The first name made it easier for us not to screw up and call him the wrong thing. We’d even given “Scott” the glamour abilities Aaron actually had, except that unlike Aaron’s seemingly endless supply of stored faces, Scott could hold only one at a time.

The difference between Aaron and his disguise were pretty physically striking. Where Aaron had dirty-blond hair and green eyes, Scott had black hair and dark brown eyes. Scott appeared the same height as Aaron, but was a bit bulkier, with more muscle tone. Not that Aaron was a skinny wimp or anything, but prior to being taken over by King, he’d been a drugged-out meth addict on the verge of killing himself via overdose. While otherwise healthy now, Aaron was still getting his body into proper physical form.

If I ever had to choose between the two, I definitely preferred looking at Aaron over Scott—even if Aaron’s personality left a lot to be desired.

Simon hesitated a split second before offering his hand to shake. “Simon Hewitt.”

“Hola,” Aaron said, affecting a perfect accent. Miguel Ortega, floating around in Aaron’s subconscious from when Aaron took over Miguel’s body, had been fluent in Spanish. This gave an extra authentic edge to Aaron’s performance and a good excuse to talk as little as possible. He gave Simon a polite half bow, but didn’t shake his hand.

I gotta admit, the subtle exchange impressed me. Simon had made it a point to avoid touching Aaron since discovering what he was, and not just because he didn’t want his face borrowed. Simon was telepathic, and with line-of-sight contact, he could get into your mind and manipulate your thoughts and actions. I bet the melting pot of identities that was Aaron’s brain was a scary mess no sane telepath would really want to visit.

“How was your flight?” Simon asked.

“Quiet,” I replied. “This our ride?”

“Yes. We can stop by my place first to drop off your bags, and then head over to Ellis Island to get started.”

“Sounds good.”

A somber man in the uniform of a corrections officer started up the engine as soon as we got inside the car, his attention firmly on the road, not on his passengers. He drove without getting any orders from Simon, so this was either a consistent arrangement, or he’d gotten our itinerary ahead of time. My money was on the latter.

Simon lived in Jersey City, in an old part once known as Communipaw. Once a moderately historical area, it was now a prison town. Most of the people who resided there worked for the prison, or worked in a job that supported the prison and its employees. The driver pulled up to a three-story house on Communipaw Avenue, nestled between a redbrick industrial building and a smaller garage-type shack. None of the three buildings looked occupied, and ours was the only car on the street.

The old house had iron bars over every one of the windows and the front door—to keep intruders out, or to keep Simon in?

“The middle floor is mine,” Simon said as he led us up a steep, narrow flight of stairs.

Aaron followed behind him, while I brought up the rear, my bag slung over one shoulder. The stairs were clean, the walls freshly painted, and the faint sounds of music drifted from somewhere in the building. At the first landing, Simon used a key to open the only door, which led us into a short hallway with two more doors. The door on the left was open, and the music was coming out of it. The right door was locked, and Simon reached past Aaron to hand me a key.

“That’s the empty apartment you two can use,” Simon said, pointing at the closed door. “I put two air mattresses and some blankets in there. I’m sorry it’s not furnished beyond the bare essentials.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s not like we expected anyone to cough up a five-star hotel stay while we’re here.”

“Daddy?” A familiar child’s voice shouted the question. Then the music went silent, and small feet pounded across the floor toward us.

Simon’s face lit up in a broad, genuine smile, and he turned to catch Caleb as the gangly boy launched himself at Simon like they’d been apart for weeks. Caleb clung to his father like a spider monkey, all thin arms and legs, and laughed like they’d just shared a funny joke.

“I’m only home for a few minutes,” Simon said. “Remember I said we’re having guests for a couple of days?”

“Uh-huh.” Caleb nodded solemnly as he eyeballed me and Aaron. He had Simon’s nose, but everything else about the boy was from his mother—whose name we’d never confirmed, but had narrowed down based on the fact that Caleb was half Chinese, and so was only one female ex-Bane. He’d been through all kinds of hell from the day he was born (under God knows what conditions) and spent the next five years living in squalor, his existence undetected by the prison guards, only to have a psychotic murderer invade his brain for a few minutes last January.

It was amazing he could still seem so . . . adjusted.

Oh yeah, he also once stopped a bullet with a thought, which pretty much made him the strongest telekinetic person alive. Not bad for a midget.

“Do you remember Ethan?” Simon asked. “From California?”

Caleb blinked at me a few times, then smiled and said, “Wind Bag.”

Aaron snorted laughter.

Thank you, Renee. “Close enough,” I said.

“This is Scott,” Simon said, nodding at Aaron. We’d agreed to keep up the charade in front of Caleb, because you really never knew when a kid might blurt out a secret.

Caleb’s face twisted into an epic frown as he considered Aaron-as-Scott, who shifted from foot to foot, squirming under the scrutiny of the pint-size Meta. Interesting. Aaron didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. There was apparently no fooling Caleb, because he leaned forward a little and stage-whispered, “Are you in disguise?”

Aaron’s eyebrows shot into his hairline.

“I won’t tell,” Caleb said. He made an X over his heart with one hand.

“Um, thank you?” Aaron said. He’d dropped the accent, but the glamour didn’t so much as flicker.

“Luisa is making grilled cheese for lunch,” Caleb announced to his dad. “Can you stay?”

Simon glanced inside the apartment door—at a nearby clock, I assumed—then shifted Caleb to his other hip. “I think we can stay for lunch.” To us he said, “If you don’t mind?”

“No, it’s fine,” I said.

“Great. You can drop your bags off next door, and then come on over.”

“Okay.”

Simon carried Caleb into the apartment. He left the door open, and a female voice shouted out a greeting. Probably the aforementioned Luisa, who I guessed to be Caleb’s babysitter. I don’t know why that connection surprised me so much. It’s not like I assumed Caleb was left alone all day to fend for himself. Obviously he had a caregiver while Simon was working.

I unlocked the other apartment door and was slapped in the face by the unmistakable smell of stale air recently sprayed with cheap deodorizer. Simon wasn’t kidding when he said he didn’t use this place. The large front room was empty of everything except two inflated air mattresses, each piled with linens, and two ancient beach chairs. The kitchen had no cabinet doors or appliances, and I was a little scared to check out the bathroom. Everything was clean, though, and I didn’t see any obvious signs of bugs or other creepy-crawlies in residence.

Aaron dropped his bag next to one of the mattresses and started laughing.

I let him go for a few seconds, then asked, “You gonna let me in on the joke?”

“Sorry.” He sobered up, his amusement shifting to something sadder. The glamour flickered, and for an instant, I caught a glimpse of the real Aaron underneath of Scott. “I was just thinking that Simon should have pitched a tent in here, since we’re practically camping as it is.”

“Well, if you want a tent, I’m sure we can scare one up.”

“No doubt.”

“You’d have to pitch it, though. I’ve never been camping in my life.” Now, why had I just said that? We weren’t friends, and we sure as hell weren’t going to start bonding.

“Really?” Scott’s face melted away and left Aaron looking at me with open surprise. “Our parents took us camping all the time when we were kids. Me, Noah, and Jimmy.” His expression froze, and grief picked at the edges. Jimmy Scott, the youngest of the three brothers, had been killed two months ago, and his death was still an open wound for the family. Killed by Ace and King’s own psycho sister, as a matter of fact.

I guess grief and murderous family members are two things Aaron and I actually have in common.

I also felt like I needed to say something to fill the awkward silence. “Sounds like you’ve got some good memories of when you all were kids.”

“Yeah, I do. Aaron has a lot of good memories.” He didn’t slip into speaking about himself in the third person very often, but I understood why he did it this time. With so many other consciousnesses buried inside his mind, he surely had other childhood memories to compare Aaron’s with. Not even counting the life King the Changeling had led within the stark walls of Weatherfield—Aaron’s life had probably been a picnic compared to growing up as a science project.

Aaron’s life had also gone off the rails at some point, because up until permanently joining forces with King, Aaron had been (according to Dahlia and Aaron himself) a selfish prick who abandoned his younger brothers in search of the next party and the next big fix. No one hits rock bottom for the fun of it, but the skeletons rattling around in his closet weren’t any of my business.

Knowing that didn’t stop me from asking, “So what changed?”

He opened his mouth, then shut it just as fast. The glamour of Scott Torres crept up until Aaron was hidden again. “I did.” He punctuated the statement with his exit from the apartment.