Different Strong Read online

  Activities: Followed Target 18: Male Beta Heat Absorber. Identified Target 19: Female Gamma Energy Producer. Administered Cocktail Revision 4 to test subject Male Beta Energy Producer.

  Target Notes: Target 18 exited the Slug Line 37 Colfax Avenue stop at 7:55PM, which is within his established 7:40-8:05 window. He entered Culver Gym as he has every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, for the past two weeks. His pattern is established. I will eliminate the Target in two days. Also identified a possible Target 19: Female Gamma Energy Producer. Likely works in the area. Will continue to monitor.

  Money Man Plan Attempt 4 Notes: Friend on the Force administered cocktail to the Heater. Aggression was at proper level, but the loss of mental acuity in the test subject diminished threat potential. Subject lacked the ability to combat OEC agents. Remain skeptical that the proper combination of drugs can be found. Media results were the opposite of desired. Mostly positive press for the OEC and The Beast Slayer specifically. Money Man remains determined. Even said something about having to get this batch from ancillary source involving Friend on the Force. Do not want to know more.

  Personal Notes: Met with Money Man. Provided $1,000, but half of that was meant for Friend on the Force. Will deliver the money. Argued with Money Man that the increased risk of exposure and low probability of success made the drug plan a mistake, but would not listen. Endured another rant about the “Devil Spawn” and divine duty to expose evil. Continue to question his ability to stay rational on the subject of Differents, but there is no other source of funds. Wish I hadn’t given everything away to charity.

  Mental State: Went by the diner yesterday. Previous plan to avoid proved futile. We ate there in that beginning time when we couldn’t be apart. Had a game in Los Angeles and she came too. Rest of the team made fun of me for being whipped so young, but I didn’t care. Memories got me depressed, lowered my productivity for the day. That’s why I avoid the place. Will redouble my efforts.

  7

  Log of Notable Nita/Ultracorps Activity Week 210

  Intercepted HAM radio communications that referenced reports of earthquakes near old St. Louis. Odd because there are few fault lines in the area and few quakes historically. Location is quite close to a large series of Ultracorps-owned copper mines.

  Theory: The Ultracorps mines are actually an underground facility designed to house dangerous off-the-grid Differents. Need to investigate mine output reports to be sure.

  Ben smiles the massive grin of self-satisfaction as he approaches the Ultracorps-owned office building. His toothy joy is spurred on by his latest in a running series of epic disguises. He added chin putty to his usual complexion-based facial obfuscation, which could not have worked any better. Ben’s normally round chin is transformed into one with a steep bone-based peak, making him look like an entirely different person of Anglo-Saxon descent.

  Ben’s genius disguise is not limited to his face; his entire ensemble sells his new identity as an Ultracorps-employed exterminator. He donned the stereotypical grey coverall this morning, sporting the red embroidered letters “Richard.” That flair was added by Ben over two frustrating and expletive-filled hours with many needle stabs. Along with the uniform, Ben wears gloves, a tattered Lakers hat, and work boots. He carries a metal canister on his back that looks like it is full of vermin poison.

  Ben has the pièce de résistance on his hand, his fake Mark of Differentiation. He hand-altered his original tattoo with a tiny paintbrush with such incredible precision, one would need a microscope to spot the difference between it and a real machine-made tattoo. To all the world Ben is now Richard Gladstone, GAMMA, Enhanced Senses.

  The disguise should work perfectly to get Ben into the building. That is, assuming the fake work order he created on think.Net went through as planned. Ben tries to avoid using think.Net whenever possible. He’s excellent at manipulating the imaginary mental world generated by a series of Telepaths and Big Brains. He should be; he used to be the administrator of the whole network. The problem is that while Ben is excellent, Nita, the new administrator, is near perfect. Any time he goes on think.Net he could be walking into a trap, but sometimes great risk is needed to net a high reward. He made thousands of dummy accounts before he had to go on the run. There’s no way she has found all of them. The work order went through, Ben is completely certain… pretty completely certain.

  Ben needs to check some records that lie within this office building. Ultracorps is up to something new, near old St. Louis. He obtained this information from an ancient source, a HAM radio. The radio network comprised of nerds is much smaller than it was Pre-Plague, but there are still enough enthusiasts to cobble together a dorky underground news network comprised of curmudgeons too stubborn to use the much more easily accessible and affordable think.Net. The advantage is that some of these enthusiasts live in the Non-Assisted Area, the sparsely populated swaths of the nation that exist outside the eight Metro Areas. One of those individuals, CardinalFan4Life, lives outside one of a handful of small towns constructed near the ruins of old St. Louis. He reported a slew of unusual earthquakes that hit the area a few days ago. Ultracorps operates a series of copper mines in the area. It could be some new mining technique, but maybe it’s something else. Maybe they aren’t copper mines, but rather experimental research labs full of dangerous and unreported Differents.

  Ben has long suspected Ultracorps of keeping Differents outside the Metro Areas and using them for their own devices without the legally required testing and training from Section 26. The mines would make the perfect cover for a combined secret prison and research lab. There is the slight possibility that Ben is wrong about his conclusion, and in case he is, he’d rather not schlep all the way out to St. Louis for no good reason.

  Ultracorps records could help prove or disprove Ben’s theory. Of course, the records aren’t going to be labeled “secret research lab,” but accounting records can be telling to the informed eye. It’s too dangerous to try to access those files on think.Net, but the government requires hard copies of every document in case think.Net has a critical failure. Many of those files are held in the clean and pristine building Ben walks into.

  A mousy young secretary sits at a desk lost in the think.Net stare. Ben approaches, but before he can perform the customary fake cough to get her attention, the secretary speaks.

  “Can I help you?” the secretary asks without ever looking at Ben. Awareness of the real world while on think.Net is a rare feat.

  “Umm,” Ben stammers, thrown off by her stare. “Maintenance got a call about a roach infestation. I’m here to sniff ’em out and get rid of ’em. I swear there are more of them bugs now than before the Plagues.”

  “I’m sorry,” the secretary says, finally signing off think.Net and looking at Ben. “You must have the wrong office. I don’t remember seeing any work orders on the docket. Haven’t seen any roaches either. Sorry to disappoint.”

  “Not again,” Ben moans. “Dispatch is always screwing up. Still, do you mind checking to see if one of the floors called it in? This thing weighs a ton. I don’t want to haul it back to base to get told to haul back here.”

  The secretary disappears back into the think.Net stare. “Wait. You’re right. It came through from the night guard late last night.”

  “Yep, that’s when the little bastards come out. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of ’em,” Ben says and starts heading down the hallway, towards the elevator.

  “Tenth floor. You’re lucky the Strong-Man just came in,” she yells after him.

  Ben hits the call button, which lights up an LED that tells the Strong-Man to lower the Maceo Steel room by way of a ForteSilk cable. The doors open and Ben steps inside the elevator, hits the button, and waits for the person on the top of the shaft to turn the crank, which requires thousands of pounds of force, and lift the elevator.

  On the tenth floor, Ben walks past a few horrified employees. No one likes seeing an exterminator in their office. The funny thing is that they’re
scared of the usually harmless vermin instead of the consistently dangerous fellow human being, especially one walking around with a backpack full of poison. As Ben walks, he lifts up his nose and sniffs deeply, acting as if he’s following a scent like a bloodhound on the trail. His olfactory bulbs supposedly lead him directly towards a room that just so happens to be labeled “Records.” What a coincidence. The room is full of nearly a dozen men and women transferring pieces of paper from one folder into another folder inside Pho-Plastic filing cabinets.

  “Attention, employees!” Ben yells, “There was a report of a cockroach infestation in this room. My nose is telling me that there are thousands of the little buggers living in the walls in here. I’m going to need you all to clear the room and stay out while I gas it. This is for your own safety.”

  Some of the men and women let out shudders and groans of horror, but despite their disgust and obvious desire to get out of the soon to be roach-motel office, they carefully close whatever files they have open before filing out of the room. As soon as the last employee leaves, Ben goes to work. He’s a man on a mission, hunting through the rows of filing cabinets. They are arranged by industry, and Ben lets out a little excited gasp when he spots Copper. He opens the filing cabinet and rifles through the various mines around the nation until he gets to the records of the mines near old St. Louis.

  There are a half-dozen mines operating in that area. Each of them was producing between one and two tons of copper a month. That is a substantial haul in this day and age. Cabot’s Plague that destroyed copper was one of his most effective. The bacteria he created spread easily and were able to survive in virtually any condition. They propagated in rain water around the globe, and when they met with any exposed copper, the bacteria consumed the metal and left behind useless copper compounds. Only the most deeply buried copper deposits were spared.

  Ben goes through the records. There are hundreds of pages of daily output records, but Ben needs merely one second to look at each sheet and memorize every number. There isn’t any evidence to support his theory about a secret lab, the mines are in fact producing copper, but there is another interesting anomaly. A few weeks ago, the most productive of the five mines simply stopped producing any ore at all. There was no slowdown, no gradual decrease like one would expect from a mine where the supply had run dry. One day it was producing as normal, and the next day it gave nothing and hasn’t produced a speck of copper since.

  Jumping to conclusions can be one of his weaknesses, and Ben knows it. He needs to consider all possibilities, including the not all that unlikely chance of a Plague outbreak. That area had been clean for years, but Cabot’s little bugs are nothing if not resilient. To eliminate that possibility, Ben runs over to a different filing cabinet, labeled Containment. In the event of a Plague outbreak a team is sent out, including a Heater Different who fries the bacteria and sterilizes the area. Ben searches for the dates in question, but finds nothing. No teams were anywhere near the area at the time.

  Ben’s theory on the mine being a lab is shot, but something else is going on there. Before he can postulate a full range of theories, he hears the door open and sees a large man in security uniform step into the file room. Ben ducks behind a cabinet before he’s spotted. The guard starts looking through the room, and his eyes hone in on the open cabinet drawers.

  “Hey, exterminator! You in here?” the guard yells.

  Ben considers his options for a moment, before deciding his best plan of action is to bluff through whatever is going on here.

  “Hey! You shouldn’t be in here, man. I’ve already started gassing the room. It’s dangerous,” Ben says waving his arms as he steps out from behind the cabinet.

  “That’s funny. I don’t smell anything,” the guard says.

  “The poison is odorless to you. You need my enhanced sense of smell to detect it.”

  “You don’t say. Then how come you’re in here breathing fine? Something else is funny. They said that I was the one who called in the infestation report last night. Now I’ve been pulling double shifts all week so I might be a little tired, but I’m pretty sure I’d remember doing that. And what about all these open files? Everyone who works here knows leaving your files open gets you fired, gas or no gas.”

  Ben opens his mouth to spin more yarns, but then decides the jig is up. He hits a release on the top of his “poison” tank and thick, harmless white fog spews out and fills the room almost instantaneously. The milky cloud blocks Ben from the guard’s view, giving Ben the opportunity to escape. He can’t see any better than the guard, but his memory of the room is perfect. He steps around cabinets he can’t see and through an invisible doorway.

  The hallway is filling with smoke, but Ben’s tank is running out of juice. It’s creating more of a smoke haze than a blanket. Another large guard at the end of the hall spots Ben through the mist and charges towards him.

  “Hey! Stop!” the guard yells.

  Ignoring the guard, Ben drops the tank off his back and takes off running down the hall, away from the guard and the elevator down to freedom. He tries to follow an exit sign to a stairwell, but another guard steps out from behind that door, cutting off another escape route. Chased from both directions, Ben’s one option is to step into an uninhabited office. He slams the door behind him and locks it.

  The guards pound on the door and scream threats, but Ben is confident the door will hold for at least a minute. His confidence is shattered by the jingle of keys. He reaches into his pocket for a save from a piece of technology, a plastic door stop. He wedges it under the door, which should buy him a few more seconds.

  Luckily for Ben, the employee who works out of this office is a successful one who earned himself or herself a room with a window. Unfortunately, the window is old-fashioned plate glass. Ben’s best efforts to smash through it with a chair prove embarrassingly fruitless.

  But Ben is a strict adherent to the Boy Scout motto to always be prepared. He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a small electronic device. The impressiveness is diminished by the fact that Ben built it out of an old Pre-Plague Walkman. He holds the recycled device to the window and pushes a button. The device starts to vibrate, emitting a high-frequency sound wave that rattles Ben’s teeth. It picks up steam until the glass explodes in a hail of shards.

  Ben retrieves the device and looks out the window. He spots a rooftop a few stories down that should be the perfect landing spot. He pulls down the flaps he sewed into his uniform, under his arms and between his legs, revealing strips of extra fabric. Thankful that he’s wearing work gloves, Ben clears the glass from the bottom of the window frame and then lifts himself up, balancing on the edge. The door behind him smashes into splinters and the guards charge in, but before they can grab Ben, he jumps. As he leaps, he spreads his arms and legs and the billows of fabric fill with air, giving him the appearance of a flying squirrel. The makeshift glider slows him down just enough so that he lands on the roof with a painful thud instead of a deadly splat. He stands up and dusts himself off. He needs to figure out what’s going on with that mine, and he’s going to need Gavin’s help to do it. Good thing the boy will be at the Governor’s press conference tomorrow.

  8

  The position of Governor was given the power of the veto for precisely this situation. The Metro Area council made a grievous mistake. At a time when unemployment continues to plague the Metro Area and hard working families are struggling to survive, the subcommittee decided to award yet another contract to Ultracorps. While Ultracorps can and does do great things for the Metro Area, they unfortunately employ few individuals in pursuit of these functions. We need thousands of jobs, not the tens that Ultracorps would create. The contract to manage this Metro Area’s water system should be awarded to a company that will be able to give back to this Metro Area through employment opportunities.

  Los Angeles Metro Area Governor Robert Hayes’ statement upon Vetoing Metro Council Bill 24678

  “He’s going to be on t
he shelf for two months they tell me,” Captain Murphy says.

  We’re standing over Victor, who is laying in a hospital bed under a medically induced coma. He looks terrible. His skin is peeling off in sheets, and his eyebrows and hair are completely singed off. Two months sounds like it might be optimistic.

  “Burns are a tough injury. Heal-Blood doesn’t help much. They’re going to have to scrape off his dead skin every day so healthy skin can grow. It’s an excruciating process,” I explain.

  “How about you? You look a little overcooked there yourself. How long you going to be on the disabled list?” Captain Murphy asks with concern that seems more about my ability to perform my job than my health.

  “I should be fine in a few days. They set the bone in my leg so I’ll have that healed up soon and they gave me a brace to keep me on my feet until then. I know my skin looks bad, but my burns weren’t as bad as Victor’s. The pain is the worst part, which is why they’re keeping him in a coma. I don’t have to deal with that. Infection is another big issue, but my mastery over my immune system helps me cope with that too. I can also accelerate the healing process, because I don’t need anyone to pull the dead skin cells off of me. I can direct my body to absorb—”

  “A few days,” he interrupts, “That’s great news. Focus on healing your face first. We’re getting bombarded with interview requests for you. You guys did it. We finally got a big one. That should shut up all the Aldermen who want to close down the Field Office Program.”

  “Any word on the Heater? Are we going to find out what drugs he was on? When I was a food tester, I was taught to identify potential harmful additives, which included most narcotics. If I could get some of his blood I could figure out what drugs he had taken,” I say.

  “That isn’t how it works Gavin. You injecting his blood or whatever you’re suggesting isn’t going give us evidence that is admissible in court. Besides you don’t even know if it was drugs, maybe he had a mental breakdown,” Captain Murphy says and waves his hand dismissively.