Page 5 of Empowereds
5
E nzo adjusted his tie and strode into the Center for Defense building. He hated wearing suits, and really, since his job generally involved breaking into places or chasing criminals through garbage-ridden backstreets, it seemed ridiculous to make police officers dress up to talk to their superiors. But when headquarters summoned you, you wore what they wore.
He didn’t know why they’d called him in. Hopefully, this was just an overly formal way of assigning him a new partner, and he wasn’t being hauled here so more people could yell at him for the hijacked flying squad car fiasco.
He’d been in Merkley’s hospital room when Lt. Johansen, chief of elite ops, came to take their statements. Not their boss, their boss’s boss. That’s how badly the mission had gone. Perhaps if Merkley had been sufficiently conscious before the man descended on them, they could’ve come up with a convincing lie to cover their mistakes, but Merkley was on pain meds and not completely coherent. Nothing Enzo said to him stuck.
LT Johansen was in his sixties, balding and wrinkled, and yet still looked like he could bench press a couch. He stood in the room, oozing disapproval, and demanded to know how they’d lost control of the telekinetic.
Merkley spilled the whole story in what sounded like broken English but was still surprisingly detailed for a man whose brain had been shaken around like a snow globe.
“Let me get this straight,” Johansen said when he finished. “You knew the criminal had control of the car, and you willingly unbelted yourself and climbed in the cage with him? What did you think would happen?”
Merkley blinked, not quite understanding. “I thought I would punch him. A lot.”
Johansen turned to Enzo. “Has your partner always been an idiot?”
Sometimes. “No, sir.” Enzo tucked his arms behind his back. “That’s the concussion talking.”
Johansen’s gaze traveled over Enzo, taking in his bruises and bandages. “And what about you? Are you going to blame your idiocy on head trauma?”
Well, that depended on what idiocy Johansen was referring to.
Johansen didn’t give him time to ask. “Why didn’t you stop Merkley from unbelting? You could’ve prevented his injuries.”
Enzo had asked himself that question a dozen times. Granted, junior officers weren’t supposed to challenge their senior partner’s decisions, but that had never stopped Enzo before. The truth wouldn’t make him look good, though.
He swallowed hard. “We were trying to come up with solutions to a dangerous situation we hadn’t anticipated. We weren’t thinking clearly.”
Johansen’s mouth thinned. “We pay you to handle dangerous situations. You’ve been trained to deal with the Empowereds, have you not?”
“Yes.” Enzo didn’t say anything else. There wasn’t a point. Everything Johansen said was true. Enzo had let his partner make a near-deadly mistake.
Johansen tucked his hands behind his back and paced across the room, his eyes never leaving Enzo. “Spectators recorded you leaping onto the roof of a building and pulling your unconscious partner with you. They’re calling it a daring escape, and now reporters want to talk to you. Unfortunately, I can’t let them speak to you because I can’t admit to the public that you needed to be rescued due to your own incompetence.”
Merkley’s eyebrows dipped. “Oh, we needed to be rescued even before we got incompetent. The scrapper wouldn’t put the car down. He was going to kill us all.”
Enzo cleared his throat to bring Johansen’s attention back to him. “The telekinetic was stronger and more resistant than any I’ve heard of. Either he was a forte as well as a telekinetic, or… is it possible the mutants are growing more powerful?”
So little was known about Empowereds. Anything might be possible.
Most people blamed genetic tinkering for causing the initial mutations to crop up thirty-three years ago. During the two decades preceding their arrival, scientists had worked on ways to increase intelligence in the general population. They created an injection to increase a baby’s IQ by ten points in hopes that a smarter population would come up with more inventions and better innovations.
The plan seemed to work at first. The next generation cured a host of illnesses. Industry saw its share of improvements, including more fuel-efficient cars and better solar chargers.
Then random people began to have empowered abilities. They weren’t more intelligent; they were more powerful, and they trailed crime and destruction like the wake of a boat.
Only four years passed from the time Empowereds showed up until the psychics sold out their countries. They auctioned off information to the highest bidders, including missile codes, thus starting the Third World War. Over the span of two years, billions of people died. Satellites were shot from the sky like fireworks. Cities went up in flames.
Terrorists killed so many of the United States’ leaders that the national government all but ceased to exist for a while. The Western states brokered individual peace deals with warring countries, leaving the rest of the country to take the brunt of the fighting. And even now that the war had been over for twenty-six years, the breakaway states still claimed illegal sovereignty.
Any sort of genetic manipulation had been outlawed long ago, but the remaining Empowereds still caused trouble.
“I doubt the mutants are getting more powerful,” Johansen said. “It’s more likely our policemen are making stupid mistakes.”
It was one criticism too much. “What should we have done, sir? What was the correct course of action after the injection and the shock collar didn’t work? Stay buckled in our seats and wait for the tank to blow us out of the sky?”
Johansen stopped pacing and glared at Enzo. The man obviously hadn’t expected to be called out and didn’t have an answer. Which told Enzo his assessment of the situation was correct—the tank would’ve shot down the car, regardless of who was in it. And Lt. Johansen had the nerve to criticize them about taking off a seatbelt.
Johansen lifted his chin, glare still going full blast. “You’re out of place, Vasquez. Your conduct is under investigation, not mine.”
Merkley shut his eyes. “I wish I’d stayed put. My head feels funny now.”
Johansen only cast him a glance before returning his attention to Enzo. “Fortunately, you were too far away from the spectators for their cameras to clearly record your features. The public still doesn’t know who you are, and it’s going to stay that way.
“Two fictional officers were involved in the event, and unfortunately, both died from injuries sustained during the hijacking. More tragic victims of the Empowered.” Johansen turned to Merkley. “When you return to the force, you’ll be demoted. Get used to being a junior partner again.”
“Demoted?” Merkley moaned. “A pay cut just for taking off my seatbelt?”
“Keep complaining,” Johansen snapped, “and you’ll find yourself pulling a stint at the breakaway border.”
Border work generally consisted of a lot of patrols. Sometimes a skirmish would escalate to the point that cities had to be evacuated. Treaties prevented large armies and the use of any weapons more deadly than tanks. But no one wanted to be sent out to a tent somewhere to fight over a patch of wilderness in Oklahoma.
Merkley went silent.
Johansen turned to Enzo. “And you… Don’t think that rescuing your partner absolves you of your earlier idiocy. You’re on probation. Don’t mess up again.”
Enzo was about two breaths away from resigning and telling Johansen where he could shove his probation. He managed to clamp his lips shut instead. He hadn’t taken this job for the pay, which never offset the danger. He’d abandoned his freshman year of college and enrolled in the police academy for one reason: to get rid of Empowereds.
And so here he was at the Center for Defense, resentfully reporting to the director of special ops.
The first time Enzo had seen Philip Schmitt was five years ago at his father’s funeral. Schmitt had been the deputy police chief back then, there as the department’s face to assure his mother that the authorities would do all they could to bring his father’s killers to justice. Enzo had believed it, not because his father was important, but because his father’s boss was. Two senators and the governor were also killed in the blast. The newscasts covered the story for months.
Enzo’s mother still kept in contact with Director Schmitt, considered him a friend, even. About once a year, she invited him to dinner and had Enzo over as well.
Enzo had never let the other officers at work know that he personally knew Schmitt. He didn’t want them to think he had an in with the director’s office. He didn’t. Although, Enzo had never been sure whether he’d been granted special ops status based on his own merits or whether his mother had persuaded Schmitt to pull some strings for him. The force only trained a select group of police officers to bring in Empowereds.
An assistant showed Enzo into the director’s office, a spacious, well-lit room with a view of the city spreading out below. From this high up, the city looked orderly, clean almost.
Enzo made his way to a chair in front of a desk so large it could’ve passed for a table. Schmitt was middle-aged, with receding brown hair and a bulbous nose. He carried more than a little extra weight around his middle. If that didn’t prove he had money to blow on food, the bowl of chocolate candy sitting on his desk hit the point home.
Schmitt saw Enzo glancing at the bowl and gestured to it. “Care for some?”
Chocolate cost a lot, and the fact that Schmitt offered his private stash meant he wasn’t about to yell at him for the way the mission had turned out. Enzo felt his shoulders relaxing.
It had been ages since he’d eaten chocolate. He took one and sat down.
Schmitt surveyed Enzo. “You’ve recovered nicely from the shrapnel. You’re lucky you were looking down when the explosion happened. Completely missed your face.”
“I was lucky not to be shot down by a tank.”
“And I was lucky not to have to explain your death to your mother.” He steepled his fingers together in a philosophical manner. “But you know what’s at stake when we deal with Empowereds, and you know the risks. The mutants are bombs waiting to go off, and we’ve got to disarm them any way we can. I wouldn’t have made the same call Lt. Johansen made, but I understand why he made it. Despite that, you handled the situation impressively.”
Done with that assessment, Schmitt took a folder from his drawer and set it on the top of his desk. “Do you know why I called you here?”
“I assumed to assign me a new partner.”
Schmitt shook his head in disappointment. “You didn’t come up with a better guess than that? I could’ve assigned you a partner without bringing you here.”
Enzo took the wax paper off the candy. His grandmother had told him they used to come wrapped in gold-colored foil. It was hard to imagine using metal on something people threw away. “I assumed there was a problem with my partner that required personal instruction from you. You know, something along the lines of, ‘He’s a great guy and an ace shooter, except when he drinks, so it’s your job to make sure he stays off the bottle.”
Schmitt smiled. “No, something better.”
“Something better than an alcoholic partner? That’s good news.” Enzo bit the candy in half. Chocolate tasted as delicious as he remembered.
“I’ve got a solo mission for you. I want you to go undercover to locate a psychic.”
Enzo finished chewing. “I don’t think you understand the concept of ‘something better’.” Catching psychics was best done in groups. You needed a large team that closed in and continued to shrink the psychic’s options until you cornered and trapped them. “What is one person supposed to do against someone who can predict the future?”
Schmitt reached into the candy bowl and took a piece for himself. “Initially we had a lot of success fighting psychics with large special ops units. If the mutant avoided or deflected one section, ten more threats came their way. Their visions are sporadic, so they can’t plan for everything.” He popped the chocolate into his mouth. “But that method isn’t working anymore. Do you know how long it’s been since we brought in a psychic?”
Enzo wasn’t sure if that was a rhetorical question. “Two years,” he said.
“Nearly three.”
“The media thinks we got them all.”
One would’ve thought the psychics would be the hardest to eradicate, but they had a fatal flaw. Whenever they had a vision, their eyes glowed white. Since they didn’t control when their visions came, people discovered their identities sooner or later. Usually sooner.
“How do you know there’s another one out there?” Enzo hadn’t heard any chatter in the special forces unit that a psychic might be manipulating markets or peddling classified intel.
“At least one of them was clever enough to go undercover and not try any heists for a while. I’ve received some information from the farming sector that’s concerning.” He opened the folder on his desk. Apparently, the information was so confidential, he wouldn’t risk logging it into a computer.
“These are reports of the last alfalfa harvest in Christian County.” He pointed to a list of data and a calendar. “All the alfalfa farmers in the area planned to cut the crop around the same time because the weather forecast was clear that week. Mr. Ramirez cut his early. Turned out, the forecast was wrong, and a storm drenched the ground, destroying the surrounding crops. Ramirez sold his alfalfa for a record-high price.”
“That doesn’t make him a psychic. Some farmers are better at predicting the weather than the meteorologists.”
Schmitt flipped a paper over. “Here’s a tomato crop in a nearby area. Mr. Napier harvested his crop the day before a hailstorm ruined his neighbors’ fields. Different farmer but same phenomena.”
Not much of a connection. “So the weather is unpredictable, and some farmers get lucky.”
Schmitt pulled out another paper. “Pay attention, Junior. We’re not talking about the weather.” He pointed to the numbers on the paper. “This rancher moved all his cattle to high ground hours before a flash flood turned the bottom part of his ranch into a river.”
“Are you sure we’re not talking about the weather? Because it seems like we are.”
“People talked about how lucky Ramirez, Napier, and the rancher were. Word gets around. We started checking into it. All three people employed the same land workers: the Sunshine Co-Op.” Schmitt leaned back in his chair with an air of triumph. “Turns out the farmers didn’t instruct the group to harvest when they did. The Co-Op leader claimed it was a miscommunication, and after the storms, the farmers were so happy that instead of withholding pay for botched instruction, they gave the harvesters bonuses.
“The rancher didn’t order the group to move the cattle. The co-op just moved them. All three men told us how grateful they were because, otherwise, they wouldn’t have had money to pay their bills, let alone their workers.”
Enzo considered this. “So you’re saying a psychic is working as a harvester?” That didn’t fit their usual MO. The Empowereds figured out ways to game systems and take wealth. They didn’t do manual labor. “And nobody has seen their eyes glow white and reported them?”
The reward money for turning in an Empowered was more than most people made in a year.
“If the psychic is working outside,” Schmitt continued, “no one would question if he or she wore sunglasses. I think this psychic is hiding, biding their time. Maybe we’re even looking at somebody who is patient enough to wait until the government gets rid of the other Empowereds and disbands the Empowered Affairs Department.”
“If that’s the case, their belief is touching. I’ll be surprised if we get rid of them in my lifetime.”
Originally when the government had formed the Department of Empowered Affairs, they predicted less than twenty of the mutants existed, and they’d be apprehended within five years. Thirty-one years and one hundred and forty-two captures later, some still evaded the authorities. But not many. So few existed now that, most of the time, Enzo did regular police work.
Schmitt pursed his lips at the idea. “We’ll eradicate them. This country won’t be able to return to normal until we do.”
“Maybe the harvesters just knew what they were doing,” Enzo said. “My mother’s people lived off the land and read the weather long before meteorologists posted ten-day forecasts. How much do you want to bet the group has a Native American guy working for them? Have you checked that?”
“We tried to track the Sunshine Co-Op, but with harvesters, it’s never an easy task. After we began looking into them, the whole group disappeared. No more recorded hirings or purchases. Then last summer, Mr. Napier told us the same people came back to his farm in search of work, only they called themselves the Here and Done Co-Op. Napier recognized them because one of the workers is a young blonde woman, and he liked watching her work.”
“Ah, a source who is observant and lonely.”
“I can see no benefit to changing a co-op’s name except to throw off an agency that started keeping track of them.”
“Or maybe,” Enzo suggested, “they talked to someone who knew about marketing and realized that Sunshine Co-Op was a stupid name. Absolutely no branding. Could be a group selling sunscreen or lawnmowers.”
“We figured Here and Done would be in the Fayette area next, so we sent people to the market to wait for them. We wanted to question a few. They stopped going to that market. When we checked with the nearby farming compounds, we found out they had taken their wages early and moved to Missouri. They claimed some of their people had business to attend to there.”
Schmitt tapped the papers on his desk. “That’s the problem with harvesters. They come and go. Farmers are supposed to require ID, but they look the other way, barter for goods as partial payment, and give the rest under the table.”
Enzo nodded. Regulating country folk had always been a problem.
“We’re not positive,” Schmitt said, “but we think we’ve located them under a new name. Three weeks ago, the Nightshade slavers attacked a marketplace a couple of hours southwest from here.”
The Nightshades were one of the worst raider gangs in Kansas and apparently getting bolder. They’d taken on an entire marketplace?
“The market’s security saw them coming, but the Nightshades had somehow gotten ahold of heavy ammo. The security team held them off for long enough to evacuate everyone. Unfortunately, the sellers had to leave quite a bit behind, and the Nightshades killed four of the security team in the process.”
“Scrappers,” Enzo muttered.
“The Nightshades left eight of their men and a dozen slaves at the market to load the supplies. What do you suppose happened next?”
“Probably more theft and slavery.”
Schmitt smiled, enjoying being the narrator of this story. “A group of ex-captive refugees arrived in Kansas City, and they gave us interesting intel about what happened after that.” He shuffled his papers back into his folder and pulled out three photos. “Slavers captured these harvesters when they came in to trade. The three were disarmed, and one was shot in the hand. The slavers even uploaded their pictures on the dark market slave site.”
He slid the photos over to Enzo.
Enzo hated looking at these sorts of images. He’d seen too many of them. Fear and hopelessness always radiated in the captives’ eyes. There just weren’t enough police officers in the country to keep up with the slave market or the trafficking. Enzo’s gaze stayed on the director.
“None of the sources saw what happened,” Schmitt said. “They heard an explosion behind a tent, then gunshots, and within minutes, three hick farm kids had killed so many slavers that the remaining two got in a truck and fled rather than fight them. No one knows how the three harvesters managed to escape and kill that many slavers. The harvesters wouldn’t talk to the captives about it.”
Quite the surprise ending. Enzo picked up the pictures. What sort of people took on armed slavers and won? The first photo showed a blond man in his twenties with a clenched jaw and a smear of blood on his cheek. His blue eyes squinted in pain and anger.
A Latina woman scowled in the second photo. Fire was in her eyes, and a snarl perched on her lips. Fighters by nature. And despite what the director thought about hick farm kids, anyone who’d ever been around harvesters knew they were half muscle.
The third was a beautiful blonde woman whose blue eyes, wide with shock, had an innocent look to them. She made him think of a deer. Something graceful and incapable of violence.
He stared at her picture for a moment longer before returning the picture to the table. “Let me guess, our farmer with too much time on his hands and a thing for blondes, IDed these three as belonging to the Sunshine, Here and Done, whatever name they’re using now, land workers co-op?”
The director took the pictures and slid them back into the file. “He did. Tell me how three unarmed people managed to defeat a group of slavers and drive off with two trucks filled with their stuff?”
Enzo shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like the work of a psychic. If anything, one of them is a telekinetic and turned the raiders’ weapons on them.” And for once, he didn’t hate a telekinetic.
Schmitt nodded. “That’s a possibility. Wouldn’t be the first time two outlaws worked together. We don’t know what’s going on with this group, but I want to find out.”
Enzo straightened. This conversation had changed from the suspicions of the director to an actual mission where he’d have to go up against Empowereds by himself.
Man, the director wasn’t nearly as worried about telling Enzo’s mother of his death as he’d professed. “Ok, if a couple of Empowereds teamed up and are living incognito among farmworkers, how am I supposed to go undercover and fool the psychic for even one second?”
Schmitt slid the folder into his drawer and locked it with an old-fashioned key. “There’s a new theory floating around the department. Psychics notice big guns, big movements, and big threats. One person who just joins the group to find work and observe—a psychic won’t be watching for that.”
“I’ll only be observing?” Enzo asked.
“We won’t give you any specific details about your mission until you’re embedded. No firm plan that might ring warning bells in a psychic’s mind. You’ll be there for weeks without any support or instructions from us.” Schmitt gave an unconvincing shrug. “Maybe we won’t even ask you to do anything at all. As of now, you’ll just be another farm worker who’s getting up close and personal with Mother Nature.”
Enzo would need a way to protect himself. “What weapons will I have?”
“An empty gun and a backstory about being fired from your job. That way you’ll seem more authentic.”
No weapons. And he’d be going to a group that might have two Empowereds. If the harvesters had taken truckloads of goods from the slavers, they’d certainly have both weapons and ammo. “What if they have truth serum? My backstory won’t do me a lot of good then.”
Schmitt settled back in his chair in an unconcerned manner. “The government has a tight control on all of that, and none has gone missing recently. But if you’re worried about it, make sure no one touches you.”
That might be easier said than done. Granted, shaking hands had disappeared from society a decade ago when the government first developed truth serum. Now people considered unwarranted touching as intrusive, aggressive even. If one person had it on their hand and touched the skin of another person, the second person would be compelled to answer any question put to them by the first. And nearly as important, the interrogator remained unaffected by the truth serum’s effects.
Enzo didn’t know anything about harvester culture or customs, though. Perhaps things were different there. Since they worked as a cohesive group, they might see someone who refused to touch anyone as suspicious.
“I’ll add,” Schmitt went on, “if this goes well, it’s the sort of mission that gets an officer promoted off the street and into a safe, high-paying office job.”
That was the carrot. What was the stick? “What if I don’t want to go and rub shoulders with the proudly illiterate?”
“You’re on probation. You don’t want any more black marks by your name.” He gave Enzo a pointed look. “Besides, what would your father have said about you passing up the chance to bring in a psychic?”
That was low. His father had been killed when a psychic told a terrorist breakaway group the location where the Kansas senators were gathered. The entire building had been reduced to rubble.
“I don’t know about my father,” Enzo said slowly, “but I can tell you what my mother would say if I took the job. In fact, I bet you she’ll tell you herself.”
Schmitt leaned forward and threaded his fingers together. “You’re the best one for the job, Vasquez. You’re smart, brave, and can think on your feet. And the icing on the cake—you’re a ladies’ man.”
Enzo’s head snapped back. Where had Schmitt gotten that idea from? Certainly not from his mother. “I’m definitely not a ladies’ man.” He had a no-dating policy. It’s what kept him sane.
Schmitt waved away his protest. “Well, you could be if you wanted. I hear the women in your precinct practically swoon when you walk by, and they have pet names for you.”
“They … they what?” No one had ever told Enzo this. Was it true?
“They call you Endzone because they all want to score with you.”
Enzo bit back a groan and rubbed his forehead. Now the way some of the guys razzed him made sense. Endzone. Sheesh. They’d told him they called him that because he’d played football in school. He would feel so awkward the next time he went to a precinct meeting.
“If one of the trio is a telekinetic,” Schmitt went on, “chances are two out of three it’s a woman. Both of them are beautiful. If I were a younger man, I wouldn’t mind taking the job myself.”
“You’re not that old, sir. And women take to a distinguished man like yourself.”
“I think you should accept the assignment,” Schmitt said with firmness. His gaze trained in on Enzo. “You know, I see Luciana Hodges from time to time. I would hate to tell her that you turned down an assignment to bring in a psychic.”
Enzo drew a sharp breath. Since Schmitt’s attempt to guilt him with his father’s memory hadn’t worked, he’d played a trump card. Luciana would’ve been his mother-in-law if Kitra hadn’t been killed in the building with their fathers that night.
Enzo would probably end up dead, but Schmitt was right. Enzo didn’t want Kitra’s mother to ever think he’d given up hunting Empowereds.
“Fine,” Enzo said. “I’ll go.”