Action Figures - Issue Three: Pasts Imperfect (32 page)

Wait.
Other kids?

“Hold on. There’s a
reference number for an earlier report from this address,” Rosie says. Type-type,
click-click. “Huh. At fifteen-oh-three hours, a woman identified as Isaac’s
at-home tutor called to report an assault. Three juveniles, one male, two
females — victim says one of the females grabbed her from behind, she passed
out, she woke up to find Isaac and the juveniles gone.”

“When did the assault — er,
the alleged assault take place?” I say. C’mon, God, give me this one.

He gives it to me.
“Approximately thirteen hundred hours.”

One in the afternoon.

Bingo.

“Please tell me we have something
to go on,” Sara says as we leave the station.

“There are still some
missing pieces, but I think I know what Joy’s up to,” I say. “I think she’s
recruiting.”

“Recruiting?” Matt says.
“And how did you arrive at that conclusion, Mr. Holmes?”

“Elementary, Watson,” I say
humorlessly. “You said you’ve known Isaac since kindergarten. All the news
stories I read about the Roxbury High Massacre said Joy was a Roxbury native.
That means they didn’t know each other, yet Joy shows up at Isaac’s house
yesterday, and then Isaac disappears.”

Matt cocks his head in
thought. “Isaac was a test subject,” he says, “and Joy used the Project Moreau
database to find him.”

“A theory that’s supported
by the fact that, a half-hour after Joy knocks on Isaac’s door, Stafford gets a
hit on an unauthorized flyer over Kingsport.”

“But...recruitment?” Sara
says. “How do you know Joy didn’t kill Isaac?”

“Kill Isaac but leave the
sole eyewitness alive? Unlikely. Besides, the police report said there were no
signs of a struggle,” Matt says, “and Isaac isn’t the type to go down without a
fight.”

“Unless he was overpowered.
The report also said there were two other kids with Joy,” Sara counters.

“Exactly,” I say. “She’s not
a solo act anymore. I think she’s been using the Project Moreau database to
find other kids like her — and I don’t just mean kids with super-powers.”

“Why would Joy want to put
her own team of bad guys together?” Matt says. “I doubt it’s because she’s
lonely.”

“If you were a crazy superhuman
who’s pissed off at the world,” I say, “what would you want?”

“If it were me?” Matt
shrugs. “I’d want to get back at everyone who ever pissed me off.”

Stuart goes ashen. “Like,
someone who’s kicked your ass in a fight twice?” he says, and that starts the
mental dominoes falling fast and hard.

Someone who also happens to
be the daughter of the man you blame for
making
you a crazy superhuman?
Who happens to live in Kingsport, which you’d know because her name is also in
the Project Moreau database?

Oh, crap...

TWENTY-SEVEN

Missy takes her time walking
home.
Dad’ll be fine until I get there,
she tells herself.
He’s an adult.
He’s a genius. He can take care of himself. He doesn’t need me.

He doesn’t need me.

Whatever. I don’t need him.

As she trudges up her front
walk, Missy sends her mother the briefest of texts: Home now. She pauses at the
front door, hand on the knob, and reads the response: Thanx, take care f yr
dad, c u 2nite.

Mom, jeez, learn to type
.

She steps inside, into an
assault on her every sense: a miasma of smells ranging from the tangy sting of
body odor left unchecked for days, so pungent she can taste it on the air, to
the subliminal scent of pheromones, male and female; the susurrus of multiple
sets of lungs at work, some at a normal rate, others chugging along in an
anxious pant; the almost palpable tingle of emotional energy, like an
electrical charge; and the gentle brush of air as someone skulking behind the
door pushes it shut.

Strangely, the visuals are
the last to register. Buzzkill Joy and her father anchor the scenario. They sit
in Dr. Hamill’s easy chair, Joy sprawled across her father’s lap in an obscene
parody of a tender moment between parent and child. A boy, tall and heavy with
muscle, looms behind them, his hands curled into fists. Three boys, one of whom
looks passing familiar, and two girls stand, sit, and sprawl across the living
room. All of them look ready, even eager to fight.

“Hey, cupcake,” Joy says,
“how was school today? Learn anything new? I sure did. Imagine my surprise when
me and my crew here break in so’s we can throw you a nice little surprise party
when you get home, and I find Daddy Frankenstein walking around all alive and
crap,” she says, giving Dr. Hamill a pat on the head. “He’s a lot tougher than
I gave him credit for. Is that something you inherited? Or was that how he made
you?”

Missy catches movement at
the edge of her vision. She dares to glance back. Ivy slides into position,
making of herself an impenetrable barrier between Missy and the door.

Eight against one, her
father a hostage, and her friends nowhere nearby to affect a timely rescue. There
is no way this ends well.

Screw it
.

“Why don’t you come find
out?” Missy says.

“That’s why I like you,
kid,” Joy says. “You’re scrappy. Ivy?”

The floor disappears from
beneath Missy’s feet. A crushing force drives the air from her lungs, pins her
arms to her sides. Her will to fight remains strong but an odd euphoria swiftly
overcomes her, causing the world to sway and spin. Her father calls out her
name. His voice is soft, tiny, as if he were shouting at her from across a
great distance, but the anguish in his voice is painful in its clarity.

“Daddy,” Missy squeaks.

Darkness falls.

“How much longer is she
going to be out?” someone says.

Missy resists the impulse to
open her eyes and instead puts her other senses to work. The distinct funk of
unwashed bodies is still there, but it competes for dominance with less
biological odors: dust, mainly, along with a hint of wood and a smell not
unlike that of a new car. The acoustics are different as well; murmurs of
conversation have a hollow, echoing quality, making it difficult to determine
exactly where anyone is by sound alone.

“What do you care?” another
boy growls.

“I don’t, but I used to go
to school with her.”

Missy identifies Buzzkill
Joy immediately. Few people always sound like they’re sneering when they speak.
“Yeah? Did you know she was a super-hero?”

“No. Wait. She used to hang
out with that weird Steiger kid, and that girl everyone said was a junkie...are
they super-heroes, too?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised.
We’ll ask her when she wakes up.”

“I think she is awake,” the
growling boy says. “Her breathing’s different.”

Footsteps approach. Missy
maintains her ruse until a hand grasps her by the hair to haul her upright,
onto her knees. The pain shocks her fully back into the land of the living.

“Good call, Kurt,” Joy says.
“Wakey-wakey, cupcakey.”

Missy looks around, at first
wondering if she’s been taken to the school auditorium. A second look reveals
unfinished wood paneling, exposed framework, rolls of carpeting waiting to be
laid. From her vantage point on the stage, Missy can see piled against the back
wall, haphazardly stacked between the two rear exits, rows of theater-style
seats awaiting installation. The one who bear-hugged her into unconsciousness,
Ivy, grabs a set of the interlocked seats and effortlessly carries them to the
front of the auditorium floor. She sets them down on the bare concrete, about
where a front row of seats would belong. Her companions excitedly fill them in,
jostling and shoving each other to grab the prime seats in the center. Missy
carefully notes each of Joy’s companions, starting with the skinny boy who, she
decides, must be Isaac, because his is the only familiar face in the crowd. The
muscular thug with the animalistic glint in his eyes — Kurt, Joy called him — sits
next to Isaac, and next to him, a boy with comically wide eyes and short, bushy
hair. The fourth boy, whose hands twitch uncontrollably, completes the boys’
side. The next seat becomes a buffer zone between them and the girls. One of
them is thin and wiry, the other unremarkable in any apparent way — until she
snaps her fingers, a nervous tic, and a small puff of flame leaps from her
fingertips. Ivy chooses to stand at the end of the row rather than sit.

Kurt. Isaac. Bug-eyes.
Twitchy. Skinny. Flamey. Ivy.

And Joy makes eight.

“Missy, are you all right?”
her father asks. She throws a quick glance his way. He too is on the stage, on
his knees, his wrists and ankles hogtied behind his back by duct tape. Missy
tests her own bonds. There is no give, no resistance, and they feel cool and
hard against her skin — chains, if Joy has half a brain.

“I’m fine,” Missy says.
“Where are we?”

“Izzy says it was supposed
to be a fancy theater, but the money ran out and they never finished it. Cool,
huh?” Joy says.

“Oh, yeah, real cool. What,
is this your new secret super-villain lair or something?”

“We ain’t sticking around
long enough to get comfy. We just got one piece of business to take care of, so
you sit tight. I have to address the troops.”

With that, Joy whirls around,
spreading her arms like a circus ringmaster welcoming her eager young audience.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” she
crows. “I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called you all here today. We got
some real important stuff to talk about, so keep your mouths shut. Looking at
you, Wyatt.”

Twitchy shrinks in his seat.

“When I recruited Izzy
yesterday, he said something that got stuck in my head. I told him he was
nothing but that son-of-a-bitch’s freaky science experiment,” Joy says, jabbing
a finger at Dr. Hamill, “and you know what he said to me? ‘So what? Not like we
can do anything about it.’

“Well, you look at it one
way, he ain’t wrong. We are what we are, and there’s no changing that. We’re
always going to be freaks of nature. But then I got to thinking, and I
realized, there
is
something we can do about it: We can make damn sure
the people who made us never want to make that same mistake twice.”

“Killing him isn’t going to
make any difference,” Kurt says, nodding toward Dr. Hamill. “You said this was
some government project. They’ll just hand it over to some other guy. We sure
as hell can’t kill every scientist in the world.”

“We can try,” Ivy rumbles.

“Or we can be smart about
it,” Joy says.

“That’d be a first,” Missy
says.

“Hey! I’m not an idiot! I
know how the world works. We’re part of a secret government project, right?”
Joy says, sweeping her hand in presentation over her followers. “So what would
happen if the secret got out? What would happen if the entire world knew what
they did and saw what kind of messed-up psychopaths they made? The government
would be so embarrassed, they’d bury that project in the deepest, darkest hole
they could find and pretend it never happened.”

“That’s your master plan?
You’re going to snitch on the government?”

“And while they’re running
around trying to cover their asses, we make a run for Mexico and spend the rest
of our lives on the beach, drinking cheap beer and smoking primo weed.”

Missy snorts. “Sounds
great.”

“Glad you think so, cupcake,
because I’m giving you a chance to get with the winning team.”

“Y-you...you’re what?” Missy
stammers.

“I’m going to give it to you
straight, girl,” Joy says, hunkering down to better look Missy in the eye.
“Your daddy’s not getting out of here alive. He’s going to pay for what he did
to us — to
you
, and you got two choices: Die with him, or come with us.
It’s not a tough choice, I think. Way I see it, you belong with us, not with
daddy, and not with your super-hero buddies. You’re one of us.”

“I’m nothing like you. I’m
not crazy.”