Centurion Six: Issue #1, Part 4

Our Story So Far:

Captains Blaine “Centurion Six” Winters and Jacob “Zulu” Mbeke of the New York State National Guard E.F.D. are called out to consult on a multiple homicide in the south Bronx.  However, the case seems like routine “skrag” gang violence until our heroes are attacked by some kind of killer robot mounting an unknown but highly advanced stealth/security system.

Meanwhile, teenaged ultra-human club girl Rebecca uses her Telekinesis to sneak out for a night on the town in Upper West Side Manhattan.  She meets up with her friends, uses her Empathy to talk her way into Pacha, and gets ready to party like there’s no tomorrow.

* * *

Rebecca floated on an ocean of sound.  She let the ebb of dancers wash around her, smiled as their bodies pushed her back and forth, bringing forth a tide of excitement and naked lust.  Strobe lights flickered in time to electronic rhythms, charging the place with energy and giving the whole pit a kind of kaleidoscopic unreality.  Rebecca could feel the people around her—their joy in the music and their freedom to move to it, their freedom from their humdrum, daily lives. 

It was like a drug, that freedom.  Rebecca felt buoyed and sparkly, shiny and alive.

She’d had to Push the bartender to get him to serve her and her friends the first couple of rounds of appletinis, but after that, she’d been able to get by on smiles and unspoken promises.  Her native good looks and her daring outfit had done the rest.  Guys had bought round after round.  She’d been happy to let them. 

Rebecca felt calm with a drink in her hand.  Collected.  After the thing with the bouncer outside and all those angry bankers’ girlfriends waiting in line behind the velvet rope, she was more than happy to drink with the anonymous guys inside the club.  These guys, with their smart silk shirts and their charming smiles, were as much a drug as was the alcohol.  The alcohol helped—helped to loosen her up and lower her defenses—but the guys, they were watching her.  And Rebecca liked to be watched.  Liked to be wanted.  Eventually, she’d gotten loose enough to let Fiona drag her down onto the dance floor, but even then she could feel the eyes on her.  It was on the floor that she’d finally let her defenses down completely and—at last—let the party in. 

She’d let herself fall fully into that ocean of swirling joy. 

After that, it was a blur.  Rebecca lost track of time, lost track of Fiona as well, but none of that mattered.  What mattered was the beat, and the fact that she was part of it.  The sway of the crowd.  The feelings of all these people washing over and around her.  Through her.  Their joy and promise.  Their excitement and desire.  Their wanting each other.  Their wanting her.

Rebecca only gradually became aware of the boy.  Became aware that he was watching her, that she’d been moving closer to him.  He had brown eyes, a nice smile.  Gorgeous white teeth.  And then their bodies were together, moving in time.  She felt him, felt his heart beating.  Felt the raw force of his yearning.  How badly he wanted her.  Her chest tightened.  He smiled, and Rebecca smiled, and although he didn’t know it, already Empathy had their hearts beating in time.

The bass pounded, and the lights flashed, and everywhere there was all this feeling.  The boy, yes, but also all the others.  The rest of the revelers on the floor and all of the other people in the club.  All at once, it was too much.  Suddenly Rebecca wasn’t sure where they stopped and where she started.  Wasn’t sure what it was that she was actually feeling and what she was just picking up through her Empathy.  It was a scary thing.  She’d lost herself, she realized, didn’t know where she was or which thoughts were actually hers.  She grabbed the boy like a buoy in a storm-tossed sea.  Spoke into his ear before she even had time even to know what she was saying.

“I need some air.  Buy me a drink?”

“Sure thing,” he said.  His smile was a wanton thing.  “Come on.”

They never made it to the bar.  If the dance floor was an ocean, then the boy was a flame—one that engulfed Rebecca completely.  Her mind was already addled and open.  Her defenses were already down.  What this boy wanted—and the way he wanted it—overwhelmed her, left her gasping, burning, feeling like she couldn’t breathe.  The next thing she knew, they were in a corner somewhere, tangled like lovers.  She wasn’t sure how they’d gotten there, but she thought it might’ve been her that brought them, might’ve been her who first leaned in close.  Their lips touched, and Rebecca’s mind melted away.  There was only this boy and his electric lust.

Time fell away, forgotten.

At some point, the boy leaned back, smiled his wanton smile again.  “Whoa.  I’ll get us a cab, okay?”

But in that moment, Rebecca came back to herself.  The room was spinning, tipping on its side, but there were fewer people directly around her.  She at least knew who she was.  Confused and drunk, she staggered, felt like she was going to be sick.  Her top, she realized—what there was of it—was all the way up around her nipple-line.  Her hands were on the boy’s pants.  She’d already undone the top button on his jeans and had been working on the zipper when he’d stopped her fingers.

“Oh my God…” she said.

Horrified, Rebecca tried to push past, to get outside and get some air.  To just get away.  The boy grabbed her arm.  “Hey wait!”

“Leave me alone!”

She yanked her arm free and pushed with her other hand, and suddenly the boy was gone.  She turned and ran, only vaguely aware of the crashing sounds behind her and all the raised voices.  Some small part of her wondered how hard she’d Thrown the guy; she hoped she hadn’t hurt him too badly.  Either way, he was gone, and everything was all blurry, and she couldn’t find her friends anywhere.  She still had to get outside, but it was hard.  The room was still spinning, and the floor kept trying to roll up on its side.

Rebecca put a hand to her head and fought back the urge to vomit. 

Oh lord, she thought, how did I get this drunk?

* * *

Blaine lay on his back, trying to force himself to breathe.  He knew he had to get up, but he felt like he’d been hit in the chest with a ball peen hammer.  Still, at some level he already knew that he was okay.  He’d been cut up by the whatever-it-was thing’s knives, but his limited invulnerability was apparently proof against whatever caliber bullets the whatever-it-was was firing from that machine-pistol it had.  Still, he couldn’t just lay there.  The building was on fire, and the police sergeant—if he was even still alive—needed help badly.  Blaine knew he had to move before—

The thing tackled him as Blaine was getting back to his feet. 

Blaine flew backwards again and slammed into the ground.  He head bounced off the cement sidewalk that led up the drug house’s front door, and then the thing, whatever-it-was, was all over him.  Its knives came in at his head and chest.  The one turned on his skull but drew blood that quickly started pouring into Blaine’s eyes.  The blade at his chest went deeper, slicing muscle and glancing off bone. 

Despite himself, Blaine cried out.  He grabbed the thing mindlessly and pushed it away, and then at last he scrambled to his feet.  The thing disappeared again, but Blaine still had his hands on it, could feel that it was just invisible, that it hadn’t actually gotten away.  He slammed it to the ground with enough force to crack concrete.  Around him, Blaine was vaguely aware that people were screaming and running away.  Closer on, the NYPD cops were yelling, too, but they were coming towards him.

“No!” he cried.  “Stay back!”

But then the thing went after him again—after his hands this time—with its knives, and Blaine lost track of everything else but his immediate survival.  However, the attack seemed to have negated the thing’s stealth screen.  Blaine could see it, thought it looked like some kind of monkey—a killer cyborg/robot monkey.  All chrome and orange fur and flashing knives.  Blaine was about to slam it again when a light like the sun flared behind him.  There was a blinding flash, and a pulse of laser-light struck the thing where Blaine was holding it.  And then the chemicals in the drug lab cooked off.  Behind Blaine, the building blew like a bomb.

Blaine dove onto the police sergeant, tried to shield the man with his body.  But he had no idea if that would be enough.

* * *

Note: To read the story from the beginning, click the Centurion Six keyword down below.