“One more question.”
Ditto shook his child’s head. “One more question. With you kids, it’s all questions.”
“What’s Stefan doing with real flowers?”
“The flowers? Stefan will tell you when he’s ready.”
Cosmo’s heart sank. He was almost part of a group. Almost, but not quite.
The LED on his plexi-cast switched to red, and an alert began beeping gently.
“That’s enough walking around for you today. The cast needs another eight hours to do its job. Are you in pain?”
Cosmo nodded.
Ditto pulled a pain plaster from his pocket. The rumpled tab looked about ten years past its sell-by date. “Here. There’s still a bit of juice in this.”
He peeled off the adhesive backing, slapping the pad onto Cosmo’s forehead. “How’s the heartbeat? Your ticker took quite a hammering.” Ditto placed his hand on Cosmo’s heart, and suddenly the pain disappeared.
“It’s gone. The pain. How’d you do that?”
“Not me. The pad. One of my own concoctions. I get plenty of opportunities to put my medical training to use in this job.”
“And Stefan trained at the police academy?”
Ditto grinned a grin far too cynical from one of his apparent years. “Yes, he specialized in demolition.”
“Tomorrow, do I get to be a Spotter?” asked Cosmo.
Ditto nodded at Mona Vasquez, who was snoring gently, in a deep but untroubled sleep. “No one can teach you how to be a Spotter, kid. That’s what you are. But that little innocent-looking girl there will teach you what to do when it’s time to put your natural talent to work.”
Stefan Bashkir left the warehouse on Abracadabra Street through what looked like a little-used side door. In fact the door was well oiled and alarmed, but to the casual observer the creeping rust and stacks of rubbish made the entrance seem obsolete. Outsiders were not to know that the rust was carefully cultivated and the rubbish stacks were on casters. With the simple push of a button, the entire mound slid aside, revealing an entrance wide enough to admit a large truck. Not very high-tech, but sufficient so long as no one tried to recycle the rubbish.
Stefan opened the door a crack, slipping into the Satellite City dawn. Sunrise used to be orange. But now sunrises were a multicolored affair, as the sun’s light illuminated whatever chemicals were in the smog that particular day. Today the smog was deep purple, so that probably meant pesticides. The air would stink by noon. Still it was better than red. Nobody ventured outdoors without a mask when the smog was red.
The street vendors were busy even at this hour, firing up their mobile braisiers and barbecues, ready for the breakfast trade. It was too early for the gangs though. Hoodlums tended to keep vampires’ hours. The streets would be relatively safe until late afternoon.
Stefan bought a pazza from Carlo’s Kitchen and made his way toward the crematorium. Pazzas were a new fast-food craze—calzone stuffed with pasta shells and various sauces. The perfect food for a person on the move.
Stefan walked along Journey Avenue, keeping his eyes on the pazza. In Westside, people would steal the food right out of your mouth. It was a sorry state of affairs. If this was the City of the Future, Stefan would take the past any day of the week.
Stefan was in a bad mood, and it wasn’t just the smog. In spite of all his efforts, the group had taken on another stray. Okay, so the kid was a Spotter. But he couldn’t be more than fourteen years old, and he had absolutely no experience of surviving in the city. Mona was young too, but she was streetwise and gutsy. Cosmo looked like the streets would eat him alive in minutes. Stefan already felt responsible for the boy, though he had no desire to be. He was barely old enough to be responsible for himself. It was one thing to risk his own life in pursuit of the Parasites, but to put someone else in danger was something else entirely. Especially someone as green as Cosmo Hill.
Five city blocks down, he arrived at the Solace Crematorium. The building was inevitably pig-iron gray, but the manager had made an effort to cheer up the place by having computer graphic angels flit up and down the façade.
Stefan went around back to the Hall of Eternal Rest. He swiped his resident’s card, and passed through the turnstile. His card activated what appeared to be a wall of mirrors but was in fact a ten-story carousel of small glass boxes. The magnetic strip in his swipe card summoned a box from the top level. He followed its progress through the rows, twinkling down the levels to a vacant booth on ground level.
Stefan selected the no-music option on the touch-sensitive screen and entered the booth. The box slid from its compartment onto a velvet cushion.
“I don’t like all this, Mom,” muttered Stefan, abashed. “Velvet and fairies. But believe it or not, there are a lot worse places than here.”
The box was six inches square, transparent, with a brass plate on the front. The inscription was short and simple. Seven words: DEAREST MOTHER. MUCH LOVED. GONE TOO SOON.
Stefan pulled the bunch of flowers from beneath his overcoat, laying them on the cushion before his mother’s ashes.
“Lilies, Mom. Your favorites.”
Stefan’s spiky hair had fallen over his eyes. It made him look years younger.
“We picked up another Spotter, Mom. He’s a good boy. Sharp. He saved Mona tonight. A quick thinker. Definitely Supernaturalist material. But he’s just a kid, a no-sponsor right out of Clarissa Frayne.”
Stefan rested his head in his hands. “But even with Cosmo, there are too many of them. Every day, more and more. They come out in the daytime now, you know. Even if you have the smallest cut on your arm, you’d better watch out. Nobody is safe. Every night we pop a hundred, and the next day there are a thousand new blue demons to take their place.”
Stefan’s young brow creased with the worry lines of a man three times his age. “Am I crazy, Mom? Are we all crazy? Are the Parasites really there at all? And if they are, how can a bunch of kids ever hope to fight them? The others think I’m their leader. I see the way they turn to me, as though I have all the answers. Even the new boy, Cosmo, is looking up to me already, and he’s only been awake for a few hours. Well, I don’t have any answers. There are more Parasites every day, and all we can do is save a few people at a time.”
Stefan rested his head in his arms. He knew what his mother would say.
Everyone you save is someone’s son, or some
one’s mother. When you save them, you save me.
If only, thought Stefan. If only I could have saved you. Then everything could have been different.
Mona Vasquez felt as though her insides were trying to punch their way out of her stomach. She lay on her cot, sweat pumping from every pore in her body. Mona could remember everything that had happened the previous night, but the images were blurry, as though viewed from underwater. The private police had tagged her with a dart. Stefan and Ditto had managed to cart her back here. Literally. And then what?
Then the new kid had saved her. After that she had puked for six hours straight. And if the intestinal gymnastics in her stomach were anything to go by, she wasn’t finished yet. Mona lay still as a statue. Perhaps if she didn’t move, the jitters would go away.
This kind of thing was happening more and more lately. You couldn’t expect to go charging around Satellite City shooting off lightning rods without repercussions. In the past eighteen months, she had accumulated sixty-seven stitches, three broken bones, a slipped disk, and now a puncture wound in her leg. She was lucky to be alive, though she didn’t feel particularly lucky at this moment. The cold truth was that the odds were against her, and were stacking higher all the time.
But what choice did she have? Stefan’s quest was her quest. Someone had to put a stop to the Parasites. Her own parents had died young. Maybe the Parasites had stolen their last few years from them. And the creatures were becoming more brazen by the day. They were attracted to any illness or injury however small, and stalked their victims in broad daylight.
Mona did not share Stefan’s driven hatred of the Parasites. After a night of creature blasting with the Supernaturalists, she had no problem sleeping for eight hours solid. But Stefan could be heard puttering around the workbench, repairing weaponry or rigging climbing equipment. Often his obsession kept him awake for forty-eight hours straight.
The girl sat up slowly, waiting for her stomach to lurch. It didn’t happen. Perhaps she was finally on the mend. She studied her face in the bedside mirror. She was green, no doubt about it. Not a deep green, but there was a definite hue. There were even a few green tendrils in her eyeballs. What kind of poison had been in that dart? If it hadn’t been for Cosmo, she’d be nothing more than a shrub now, with a couple of shriveled leaves.
Mona sighed, stretching the skin on her cheek between finger and thumb. There was a time when she used to worry about being pretty. Her mother used to say she was beautiful like an exotic flower. Mona had always remembered the phrase.
Exotic flower
. Even if sometimes she couldn’t remember her mother and father anymore. They had been lost in a food riot in Booshka.
Mona wandered out into the common area, scratching her head. Stefan, of course, was already at a workbench, pouring cleaning solution on the lenses of his night-vision goggles. His dark eyes were completely focussed on the job. Mona took a moment to study him. Stefan would be a big hit with the girls, if he ever stopped working long enough to bring one out on a date. He had all the right ingredients. Tall, dark, handsome in a
beaten-up-once-too-often
way. But Mona knew that Stefan did not have time for himself, let alone anyone else. He only had time for the Parasites.
Stefan noticed her standing there, and a genuine smile brightened his face. “Hey, Vasquez, you’re back on your feet.”
Mona nodded, the motion causing her stomach to flip. “Just about. Thanks to the new kid.”
“Are you up for some business?”
“Always ready for business, Stefan,” replied Mona, trying to summon some enthusiasm.
Ditto tossed her a lightning rod. “Good. Show Cosmo how to use this. We have an alert three blocks away.”
“Do you think the Parasites will show up?”
Stefan looked at her through the lenses of his night-vision goggles.
“What do you think?” he said.
* * *
Cosmo was halfway through a particularly nasty dream involving two Parasites, Ziplock, and a hair dryer, when Mona shook him from his sleep. He opened his eyes, expecting to see the Clarissa Frayne dorm marshal looming over him. Instead, he saw Mona Vasquez. Incredibly, she managed to look pretty in spite of her pasty, green complexion. “You look pretty,” he sleep mumbled.
Mona thrust out her bottom lip. “Excuse me?”
Cosmo groaned. Had he said that aloud?
“You look pretty . . . green. Pretty green. It’s the virus. Don’t worry, it passes.”
Mona smiled. “I hear you’re quite the medical expert.”
The smile woke Cosmo quicker than an adrenaline patch. “Not an expert, exactly. I was lucky.”
“Me too.” Mona straightened. “Okay. Sentimental moment over. Get your bald head out of bed. We’ve got work to do.”
Cosmo threw back the worn blanket. “I know. Training.”
“Training? You wish. We got an alarm three blocks away.”
She handed Cosmo a lightning rod. “Green button, prime. Red button, fire. Make sure the narrow end is pointing at the spooky blue creature. Got it?”
Cosmo held the rod gingerly. “Green, red, narrow end. Got it.” Mona smiled once more. “Good. Consider yourself trained.”
* * *
The Supernaturalists were strapping on their kits—weird combinations of police and mining equipment. Some instruments seemed like they were held together with duct tape and prayers. Everything looked out of date.
Stefan was shouting as he worked. “The Stromberg Building. Mostly residential units. The Satellite feeds the rotation times to the units. Apparently two apartments got rotated south at the same time. One hell of a collision.”
Mona explained to Cosmo while strapping an extendable bridge on his back. “The Big Pig is a twenty-four-hour city, so factories revolve their buildings just as they revolve their shifts. Everybody gets eight hours quiet and eight hours south facing. For the other eight, you’re working, so you don’t care where your apartment is. The Satellite tried to squeeze two apartments into one space. Nasty.”
Cosmo shuddered. The Satellite had messed up again. This was becoming a regular occurrence.
Ditto handed him large plastic night-vision goggles that covered most of his face and crown. “We all wear these fuzz plates. X-rays bounce off them. If the privates get a shot of your skull, they can computer generate your face. It’s accepted as evidence in court these days.”
“Uh . . . okay,” mumbled Cosmo. He felt as though he were walking toward the edge of a cliff, with every intention of jumping. In the orphanage everything had been predictable as day following night. With the Supernaturalists, every moment brought fresh adventure. Was this the life he wanted? Did he have a choice?
“Everybody strapped?” shouted Stefan. “Then let’s go.”
They squeezed into the elevator, tense and excited. Cosmo could not believe that he was on his way to shoot supernatural creatures. The rest of the crew were performing their pre-engagement rituals. Ditto daubed his arms with camouflage paint, Mona cracked every knuckle in her fingers, and Stefan burned a hole in the shaft wall with his gaze.
Cosmo noticed that they were going up.
“Do we have a helicopter?” he asked hopefully.
“A helicopter? Oh sure,” chuckled Ditto. “Two helicopters and a Transformer.”
“So why are we going up?”
“Because the lawyers are on the ground,” said Mona. “And up is where the Parasites are.”
“Oh,” said Cosmo, not in the least reassured. He hadn’t had a lot of luck on rooftops recently.
The Supernaturalists’ warehouse was in a relatively low building by international standards. A mere one hundred and forty stories high. They emerged on the rooftop into a cloud of grim green smog.
In Westside, all the buildings were roughly the same height, give or take a floor or two. This ensured a clear signal from the Satellite to the rooftop dishes. It also made it easier for vigilantes to move between buildings, provided they were prepared to risk life and limb doing so.
Westside stretched before them like a box of upright dominoes, with only building graphics and neon signs to distinguish between skyscrapers. Overhead, police and TV birds jockeyed for airspace, buffeted by the winds that squeezed through the pig-iron columns.
Stefan unhooked an extendable bridge from his back. Cosmo paid close attention—obviously there wasn’t going to be time to practice this. He had seen the window cleaners at Clarissa Frayne operate these contraptions, running between buildings with suicidal nonchalance, and had always thought,
Never in a million years
. Things change. Circumstances change.
The bridge, in its collapsed state, resembled a steel tray with twin rows of semicircular holes. The was a cable reel attached to one end of the tray. Stefan placed the other end firmly beneath his heel, wrapping his fingers around the reel’s grip. He let out a few feet of cable, then pressed the fire button on the reel’s thumb-pad. The bridge unfolded instantly, powered by a small canister of gas, shooting across the divide. Stefan played the reel expertly, keeping the bridge’s nose aloft until it cleared the lip of the other building. “Go!” he ordered, standing to one side.
Mona and Ditto ran across, careful, yet confident.
“Don’t look down,” advised Ditto, from the other side.
Cosmo took a deep breath and crossed, holding his breath as though he were under water. Crossing a bridge at this altitude is not as easy as it would seem. The wind calls you to jump, the metal creaks below your feet, and time teases you, stretching every second to an hour. Cosmo focused on Mona smiling at him.
He was across, stepping eagerly from the lip. Stefan came behind him, stowing his bridge with the press of another button. It slotted back into its reduced size, hopping into Stefan’s hand like a yo-yo.
On the building’s southern edge, Ditto had already laid down another bridge. No time to think, no time to make decisions. Just time to follow the pack and be scared.
“Keep up!” Stefan advised over his shoulder. “We don’t have a spare second. The Parasites will already be there.”
The Parasites! Cosmo had almost forgotten about them. Would they be waiting? How would he react when they came face to face again?
He trotted across the second bridge; already the fear had diminished. Cosmo didn’t think he would ever be comfortable scooting around the rooftops, but at least he wasn’t paralyzed by terror.
Mona jogged beside him. “Look,” she said, between breaths. “All around us. Can you see, Cosmo?”
Cosmo did see. Dozens of the blue creatures were scurrying across the rooftops, being drawn to a single point like dirt down a plughole. There are so many. His thoughts seemed as breathless as his lungs. There must be thousands. But he kept going forward, in spite of the instinct to turn and flee.
One block south, two penthouse apartments were skewed off vertical, both still attempting to occupy the same slot of the Stromberg Building. Gigantic gears groaned, and electrical fires licked the side of the building. The Parasites leaped effortlessly across the divide, crawling into the residential units.
“We’re going over there?” said Cosmo incredulously.
Stefan nodded brusquely. “Yes. And quickly. The TV birds are closing in, and I hear sirens.”
Cosmo heard the sirens too. The steady
woo-woo
of the police, and the strident
bips
of the legal firms. The
bips
were louder. They had a couple of minutes at the most.
Mona laid down a bridge, stepping to one side.
Stefan drew his lightning rod, priming it. “Okay, everybody, we go in through the roof box. We take one apartment only. Thirty seconds and we’re out of there. I want us all miles away by the time the Stromberg Privates get on this roof. Clear?”
“Clear!” shouted Cosmo, having seen it on TV. Mona and Ditto simply nodded, priming their own weapons.
Stefan laid a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down, Cosmo. Remember, don’t worry about the Parasites, they don’t fight back, so long as you’re not injured. Worry about the lawyers and private police. They fight dirty.”
“Okay.”
Mona punched him on the shoulder. “You’ll be okay, Cosmo. I’ll look out for you.”
They crossed the final bridge. Cosmo could feel his ribcage shudder as his heart beat against it. The only thing that kept him going was a feeling that none of this was actually happening. In reality he was probably lying in a hospital somewhere, heavily sedated, with Marshal Redwood looming over him. Might as well enjoy this dreamworld while it lasted. Think of it as a video game. Go in, blast a few aliens, and compare scores later.
The rooftop’s surface was irregular, buckled by mammoth gear cogs. Steam and hot-oil geysers spouted from rents in the concrete. The stairwell was blocked by mangled steps. Stefan wrapped a length of burn tape around the metal struts. Burn tape had been developed for logging companies in South America before it became illegal to use wood as a building material. “Cover your eyes.”
Cosmo obeyed, a split second too late. Stefan snapped the fuse, igniting a magnesium strip that glowed brilliant white and fuelled an oxyacetylene balloon. The tape cut through the metal struts like a wire through cheese, and Cosmo would have the image burnt into his retinas for several minutes. A section of stairs dropped into the shaft, blocking the lower levels.
“Bridges,” said Stefan.
The team members hooked the instruments over sections of banister, and expertly steered them down to the chaos below. One by one they descended into the unstable penthouse. Cosmo climbed down last on Mona’s ladder, blinking stars from his eyes.
He stepped into pandemonium. People fled in panicked droves to the fire escape, oblivious to the blue creatures clinging curiously to the walls. Not everybody was oblivious. Stefan drew his lightning rod and started blasting. Parasites exploded in azure bubbles, bouncing around the confined space like pinballs. They made no sound and showed no surprise, simply swelled and popped.
Mona began firing with deadly accuracy, also with a stream of Spanish words that Cosmo suspected were not taught in kindergarten. She quickly cleared one wall of any remaining creatures, then shouldered her way through the melee to the displaced apartments.