Integration Read online

  Stander nodded. “Yes, if you like.” He gestured toward the warehouse. “Let’s go inside. We have a lot to talk about.”

  Puzzled, Paul started to say something, but Angela made a shushing gesture by putting her finger to her lips and kept her features composed. Say nothing and do nothing—for now—she seemed to be implying, and she gently inclined her head toward the entrance.

  As they walked back, they encountered a stray dog sniffing around. Mangy and flea-ridden, it started to growl once Angela got within distance. “What’s wrong with the mutt?” asked Stander.

  “Dogs don’t like me,” she said. When it came closer and bared its teeth, her fangs came out and she snapped, “Get!”

  The dog got, howling as it went. “That’s one way to get rid of your enemies,” he observed.

  “It works for me.”

  Once safely ensconced inside the warehouse, they took up their positions around the table. Stander laid his briefcase on it. “Before you say anything, let me start things off by saying that I think it’s safe to say we’ve been watching you and your group for quite some time.”

  “Who is we?” asked Paul.

  “I’m talking about the United States government, of course. Ever since you showed up on the scene a year ago, Uncle Sam has been keeping tabs on you. We knew about your doings in New York, when you relocated to Sierra Madre, up in the mountains, and we knew when you came back here. We know where your sandy friend decided to hang out, and we’ve been very careful to leave you alone.”

  Wonderful, considered Paul. They knew where we lived before. He shot an angry glance at Ooze. “I thought you told me the computer you rigged up couldn’t be traced.”

  His compatriot raised his arms in a helpless gesture. “So I was wrong.”

  A laugh came from Stander. “Don’t feel bad about it. It’s very hard to shut us out. The Rangers, as well as the rest of the armed forces, use satellites to track enemy movements—not that you’re the enemy,” he hastily added.

  “I was tasked by my superiors to find out all about you. The boys from Washington asked me to learn what I could. I’ll admit we had a little trouble locating you at first, but eventually we managed to track down your IP address through the sites you logged onto. It’s a boon to us to have satellite tracking systems orbiting the planet, and everything we have is state of the art.”

  “So you found us,” said Paul. “What happens now?”

  Stander shrugged. “The order came down from up high—meaning the President—to leave you alone. He passed that order to all branches of the armed forces. Personally, I wanted to see you work. Rangers specialize in mobile combat and what you do—what we’ve seen from the news footage—isn’t very different from what we do. You’re experts in urban pacification, whether you know it or not.”

  So they knew everything, but they’d done nothing—yet. Paul tried not to feel too cynical, but he couldn’t help it. This kind of information disturbed him, left him feeling powerless, as if the authorities could shut him and his friends down any time. He did not want to spend the rest of his days in jail.

  “Are you here to arrest us?” he asked. “If you are—”

  Stander waved him off. “No, I doubt we could do that peacefully, and I’m not here to fight. We—that is, the government of this great country—need your help.”

  “For what?” Angela asked, her eyes narrowing.

  In response, Stander reached inside his briefcase and took out a file. He waggled it in the air for a moment before dropping it. It made a soft thwupping sound on the wooden surface. “This is all the information we’ve gathered on what’s happening out in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. Over the past few months, there’ve been a number of murders. The MOs are different, but they all have one thing in common. They couldn’t have been done by any man.”

  “And how do you know that?” asked Angela. She picked up the file to leaf through it, and Paul caught sight of the pictures. Horrid images greeted him—disembowelment, burns and worse. The last picture’s victim looked as though half the head had been bitten off…but by what, he couldn’t say.

  “Our medical examiners and forensic experts have gone over what’s left of the bodies. The pictures you saw were only a taste of what really happened. The first picture, disembowelment… The abdomen was severely slashed and it fit no pattern of any knife or sword in existence. The burns left peculiar singe marks, and as for the third picture—”

  “It looks like someone bit into the head,” Paul said, trying to shut out the image and failing. Another image flashed across his mind. “Part of the brain is missing.” An uncomfortable thought formed in his mind, something out of horror movies he’d seen on television, and he didn’t want to believe it. Nevertheless, it seemed all too believable.

  “You’re right about that,” affirmed Stander. “We found traces of saliva on the victim’s skull, but the DNA strands were”—he paused—“incomplete. What our forensic scientists found was the DNA didn’t correspond to anything we know.”

  Ooze raised his hand, much like a student in class about to ask the teacher a question. “Let me guess. They were mutated cells, and they have about ten different genotypes in them?”

  Stander’s eyes widened. “Amazing,” he said, with a note of distinct respect. “I’d heard you were good, but I didn’t realize you were that good. Would you mind telling me how you knew that?”

  Paul tossed a glance at his two friends. The three of them said simultaneously, “Peterson.”

  In response to their answer, Stander blew out a deep breath. “Okay, you know what we’re up against.”

  “Not really,” Paul answered. “He was pretty messed up when we met him. If he’s alive, he’s probably worse now.”

  It seemed incredible the madman had actually survived their previous encounter. In a battle to end all battles, Paul had tossed Peterson into a transformation chamber. This was after the madman had already gone through a preliminary transformation. “Want to see what happens when you get changed over again?” Paul had asked.

  The result had not been pretty. The mutation left the scientist looking like a cross between a bear with a shark’s head, an octopus’ arms and a whole lot else corresponding to neither man nor beast.

  While musing over the possibilities of near escapes and science gone mad, Ooze piped up. “The man who created us, Dr. Bolson, used his stem cells. He made me, Angela, Sandstorm and CF, but CF’s gone and Sandstorm too.”

  “As I told your friends outside, we know where he is,” Stander put in, scratching his head. “He’s not the problem. There’s another person, and we’re reasonably sure it’s this guy Peterson, but we’ve never seen him or met him before. You have.”

  “Yeah, we have,” agreed Paul. Memories of the scientist floated across the surface of his mind, like garbage on the high seas. It was slick, unpleasant and he shut down the image. “But it doesn’t answer why you’re here. Aren’t the police on the job?”

  Stander let out a chuckle. “The police are good, but you seem to have forgotten what I told you before. We’ve been watching you for a long time. The government is wondering what to do with you. As for the local law authorities, they can’t handle all the crime. They’re short-staffed as it is. Los Angeles proved that. So”—he scratched his jaw—“they’ve kept up a non-engagement policy…until now.

  “However, when the news out West broke about the killings, they contacted the FBI. In turn, the FBI contacted the boys up in Washington. No one was equipped to fight these things, so I volunteered. I have six other men with me, those same six men you saw outside. All of them are battle-tested veterans, and they know what to do.”

  “Can they handle the monsters that killed these people?” Angela posed the question, and she sounded doubtful. Paul wondered if these military guys really knew what they were about to get into.

  Stander fixed he
r with a steely glare. “They can if you help us out. You understand what these things are. You have the training and the talent. We need you on our team.”

  Angela’s back stiffened and her eyes iced over. “Oh, I get what you’re trying to say when you say I understand what they are.” The sarcasm in her voice was unmistakable. “Meaning, I’m the same as them.”

  Ooze took in the confrontation without saying a word, and Paul decided not to intervene—yet.

  “Yes, if you like.” Stander spoke in a calm, steady manner. “I’m not calling you a monster, young lady—or would you prefer I call you Angela?”

  The blue in her eyes grew even colder and a breath of Arctic wind practically swept through the room. Her next words rattled like ice cubes. “Call me whatever you want. I am what I am,” she said through clenched teeth, “but I’m not like those things are. I never was.”

  “And I’m not saying you are,” he countered smoothly. “What I am saying is you have special abilities, and we may be able to use those abilities. Or, you can stay here, catch crooks, and go dancing at those Goth clubs you seem to favor so much.”

  A spark of anger flared in Angela’s eyes at his statement. Paul caught the look. Both of them had felt safe going to the clubs, as no one had ever given them a hard time or even questioned who or what they were. It came as a rather unpleasant surprise to find their one safe area wasn’t so safe anymore.

  “Our reports tell us those are the only places where you feel at home,” Stander said. “I can understand.”

  The angry look in her eyes faded as the truth hit home. Reality bit at times. This was one of those times. “You made your point,” she said, as she leaned back in her chair.

  “So I have,” the colonel grunted. “What you need to understand is there are two sides to every coin,” he said and tapped the file. “What do you know about Rallan, Inc.? And if you don’t mind, I’ll call you Paul.”

  “Yeah, go ahead,” Paul answered, reluctant to get into a name war. He needed to know more and maybe this person had the means to tell him.

  Delving into his memory about Rallan, he recalled that it had been some sort of company engaged in biogenetics research. On the surface, it was supposed to have been breeding hardier fruits and vegetables, but beneath that, other things went on—research on cross-breeding DNA in humans, transgenics research and more. He offered up as much information as he knew. “But I guess that was all on the surface. Ooze had some files on them, but he destroyed the old computer.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Stander as he flipped open the folder. “Like you said, that’s all on the surface. The late Dr. Bolson was into pure research. He didn’t like what the owner was doing and where he was going, so he rebelled and reprogrammed his creations to do some good in the world.”

  His gaze switched to Angela. “Sorry for using the word ‘creations’, but that’s what you are. I’m not being mean, just factual. If you think about it, we’re all creations. We’re all the sum of our cells. Yours happen to be a bit different, but you’re still cells. Does that clarify my position?”

  Paul’s lower jaw dropped half an inch at the colonel’s response. He’d expected some jar-headed Marine talk about duty and honor and country and kicking the alien menace from their shores. Then he remembered that this man was a Ranger, not a Marine. The talk about being the sum of their cells? That came from someone who thought more deeply about things, and the way he’d said it didn’t sound rehearsed. All in all, he seemed to be somewhat more open-minded.

  Glancing at his girlfriend, the icy look had crept back into her eyes, but after a moment, it melted away. “No offense taken,” she replied.

  Stander sighed and tapped the file. “So there it is. Now we come to Andres Peterson. What do you know about him?”

  The question caused Angela’s eyes to ice over again and her face tightened with rage. “He’s a scumbag,” she said in a voice that threatened to erupt at any moment. “He tried to kill me, twice. He deserves to rot somewhere. That’s all you have to know.”

  “I understand.”

  Stander uttered those two words with great sincerity, but Paul knew no one could truly comprehend what enhanced people or lab creations had to endure, much as they tried. He attempted to get where she was coming from, but he was still getting used to being outside the human norm. Would he ever be truly comfortable with his appearance and seeming non-status in society?

  “As you know, Peterson was a scientist and a brilliant one,” Stander continued. “He also happened to be very wealthy. He made his money selling research ideas to other companies, along with investing in real-estate ventures, stocks and other money-making enterprises.

  “Rallan, before its dissolution, was estimated to be worth well over two billion dollars, and that’s just a conservative estimate. They had extensive holdings—mainly warehouses and research centers—not only all over North America but in Europe as well, all opened under false names and accounts.”

  Extensive holdings, Paul mused. It meant Rallan could have hidden its secrets anywhere at any time. Stander seemed to read his mind as he said, “The justice boys, the FBI and the other federal authorities have already identified where most of the physical holdings are. They’ve shut them down, seized their bank accounts and they’ve done it all very quietly. We don’t want to alarm the public any more than we have to.”

  “Everyone knows about us,” Ooze pointed out. “It’s not like they haven’t seen us from time to time. They know where we live, and they know we’re here to help.”

  Stander gave him a blank-eyed stare. “Is that right?

  “It is.”

  “That Matthews woman might think otherwise,” Stander countered. “She can be very persuasive, as can the other members of the media. I’m not much into the press myself. I’ve seen how they twist words and images to fit their agendas—all of them, all over the political spectrum.

  “However, the one thing I’ve noticed is that John Q. Citizen listens to those sound bites. They listen, they respond and they act—sometimes in packs. And let me be honest. I’ve checked the information on your little club. The citizenry is divided over how much they trust you. It cuts across all racial, religious and ethnic lines. When you had that little tussle out in Los Angeles a few months back, there was talk by the police commissioner of building you separate cells and keeping you locked up for the rest of your days.”

  “Did your sources tell you the commissioner out there is corrupt, that he took money and weapons from Peterson and that he tried to kill us?”

  Stander blinked. Being prepared seemed to be his forte, but getting hit with something he had no knowledge of rocked his little world, and his look of surprise transitioned into a scowl. “No… We were, uh, never apprised of that fact.”

  “Intelligence isn’t what it used to be,” burbled Ooze with a watery chuckle. He got up then walked over to a small worktable to hunt around for something. With a cry of discovery, he returned with a disc in his hand then handed it over. “This is all the dirt on the guy. This should prove we’re on the level. Check it out if you don’t believe us.”

  Stander accepted the disc and asked, “If you knew he was dirty, why didn’t you bring him down?”

  “It wasn’t worth it,” Paul said. “They still need someone to take care of the everyday stuff. He hasn’t done anything wrong since. Yes, we checked, but we’re here, and LA’s over there.”

  Stander’s sour look faded and he stowed the disc away in his briefcase. “All right, since your info is just as good as ours is in some cases, let’s just call this a friendly exchange of information.” He brightened and added, “By the way, do you like the equipment we sent? It’s top of the line, the best we could get.”

  So they’d sent the equipment. Paul wondered if it was some kind of a bribe. Before he could say anything, Ooze beat him to it.

  “Love it, love it,” replie
d Ooze, forming a smile on his suit. The power of water was at his command, and he could make a vast array of shapes. Right now, he used his watery essence to form a grin then he contorted his suit into a large thumbs-up gesture. “This is Candy Land time.”

  “Then feel free to use what you have,” Stander said, a look of astonishment on his face at the display of shape-shifting ability. He then switched back into command mode.

  “Getting back to the topic at hand, we’ve shut down most of Peterson’s holdings. However, there are still a few that are off the books, and those are the targets we’re going after.”

  “And what are you going to do if you catch him?” asked Angela.

  “Lock him up for the next five hundred years.”

  “Easier said than done,” Paul countered. The doctor was indeed bad news, and anyone taking him on had to have a game plan. Another thought popped into his head. “What if we say no?”

  Stander placed both hands on the table. “Then you say no, and it goes no further. Neither the military nor the government can compel you to join us. You’re private citizens. However, I should warn you, the news freaks won’t leave you alone. The shock jocks, the general public… They’ll never accept you, not entirely.”

  He stabbed his forefinger at the wall, presumably in a westerly direction and his voice grew passionate. “How do you think they’ll feel if those people continue to murder the innocent? What if they move east? How do you think the average citizen feels when they see you, Angela, soar over the city at night or see you, Paul, skulking around in alleyways?”

  “Threatened,” supplied Ooze.

  Like he had to say it, Paul considered, but Stander continued his mini-rant of the truth, hard as it was to listen to. “Exactly, and if they feel threatened enough, how long do you think it’ll take the police to stop accepting your help and try taking you down? I did some checking myself. Paul, you were born here, but Angela—”

  “Was born here as well,” Ooze cut in. “If you’re talking legalities, since she came from Bolson—who was American—she’s American, too. Try hauling us into court, and you’ll see how far you get. All I need is a tap and I’m out of here. Sandstorm doesn’t even need a tap.”