Chapter 4:
The Whispering
Titus crossed the Canadian border like a ghost, somewhere far between checkpoints or highways. He'd been traveling on foot for weeks, following a trail that started in the now-empty home of the people he'd always thought were his parents — boarded up, dusty, as if no one had ever been there, a "for sale" sign on the lawn, faded and tilted, going to seed — that led him north, always north, through old mill towns and campgrounds, across forests close enough to primal that they felt as if no one had ever walked there before.
Those forests brought something out in Titus, a racing heartbeat, a shared memory of running on four legs, driving prey before him, howling at the moon.
By day he looked like any other hiker, an expensive backpack slung over his shoulders, an orange wool hat he stole from Emily's vast collection pulled low over his ears. He hated the puffy, overpriced coat he'd brought as well, but it kept him warm when he needed it and was more weatherproof than anything he'd owned before.
His parents' house. The Talbots, who'd raised him, who had him declared deceased in absentia when he first transformed into a werewolf and ran off into the night. The things Rose, the assassin and hunter so determined to kill him last year, had said during their fight, all twisted in his head like combating lizards.
"So what pack are you from?" Rose had said. "The Winter Walkers up in the north? The Dust Howlers? You might be a Dust. I thought you were all dead. You can't be one of the Whisperings. You're too American to be from the Whispering pack."
There were others. Not just other werewolves, but families of them, packs somewhere. Someone who might tell him where he came from, and what he was supposed to be.
So Titus traveled home to ask the Talbots if they'd known what he was, and he found them gone, long gone, as if they had never existed. But in their place he found signs.
A scent, like his own, dangerous and quiet. The scent of a monster. Claw marks, often hidden but clearly designed to mean something, deep gouges in wood or plaster made with long werewolf nails. He couldn't read them, but somehow instinctively knew he had to follow them. Knew he had to go north.
Titus hitchhiked for a while, mostly without incident, but the further he traveled the fewer roads he had to travel on, and eventually he took off on foot, jumping out of the back of a pickup truck and wandering into the woods. The last driver looked at Titus like he was wandering off to die, on some suicide trek into the unknown.
That afternoon Titus discovered scoring on a tree trunk that told him he was still on the right path.
He walked by day as a human being, knowing that he needed to be as logical as possible to figure out the tougher clues. In the evening, he'd transform into his werewolf form for warmth, or to hunt, for survival. There was no way he could have packed enough food to carry him through this trip, so he let the wolf take over and keep them both fed. He still possessed an aversion to the sensation of hunting and eating raw meat, so Titus let his consciousness sink deeper down during these excursions. He knew there was a risk the wolf might do something he might otherwise stop, but he needed the rest. He'd been alone for too long, and the quiet was beginning to drive him more than a little mad.
When he caught a hot trail — a strong scent, a clear marker — he would assume the wolf form as well, but remain in control. He could cover incredible distances as a werewolf, miles melted away beneath his claws feet like snow.
And he confronted snow eventually. Soft clumps of it struggling to melt, protected by direct sunlight under high canopies of trees.
Eventually, he smelled the fire.
He tore through the woods, greenery blurred past him like an illusion, until he came close enough to hear voices. He reverted to his human body, adjusted his clothes, untied the boots he looped onto the backpack when he transformed, and approached the campsite, cautiously, keeping to the brush.
Two men sat by a fire. One was short, stocky, his thickly lined face framed by a red and silver beard and a mop of curls. The other man, tall and lean, pulled his straight black hair into a neat ponytail. He continued to sharpen a long, curved knife the length of his forearm.
"Come on over, boy," the redheaded man said, never looking up. "Took y'long enough to find us."
Titus paused, holding his breath. The redheaded man sighed irritably.
"Titus, just get over here. We've got stew cooking and you smell like you haven't had hot food in weeks."
Confused, Titus uncoiled from his crouch and walked toward the fire. The red-headed man poked at the flames a few times with a stick then stood up, wiping his hands on his pants. The dark-haired man stared at Titus appraisingly, not speaking.
"I'm Finnigan. That's Gabriel," the redheaded man said.
"How did you know my name?" Titus said.
"Long story, kid," Finnigan said. "Easiest to just say we knew your parents. The real ones."
"The Talbots were…"
"They were always on your side, Titus," Finnigan said. "They had a job to do and they did almost all of it."
"Almost?"
"You ran away from home before we could find you," Finnigan said. "And when we did find you, you were on TV fighting some chemically-enhanced monster. Good job on that, by the way, thanks for proving to the world werewolves are real. Been trying to not do that for a couple thousand years. Congratulations for being the first one to be caught live on national TV."
"Sorry about that," Titus said.
"Well, it could've been worse. If we were going to be publicly outed, at least you were the good guy."
Titus shrugged.
"So you're both?"
"We are," Gabriel said, speaking at last. "As is — "
All three men turned as one at the sound of padding footsteps approaching. They mirrored each other, the hunching stances and ready arms, preparing to transform. Then both older men relaxed as they saw who had approached to join them — a werewolf, an incredibly tall, lean wolf, with jet black fur and pale green eyes. The newcomer didn't seem like a typical werewolf, exactly, Titus thought. More like the Egyptian god Anubis, with that long, narrow face and high-set ears.
When the newcomer reverted to human form, she became the single most beautiful woman Titus had ever seen. He would have felt awkward no matter the circumstances, but the fact she did not wear a stitch of clothing made the experience so much worse.
"Kid, meet Leto," Finnigan said, his voice tinged with laughter.
Titus didn't know where to look, not at all, so he decided to just make extended eye contact with Leto. It seemed the only option available to him.
She scooped up a loose wrap from beside the fire and tied it around herself like a summer dress as she approached Titus. She smiled, not unkindly. It was a warm smile, even thankful, and it turned the uncomfortable butterflies in Titus's stomach into something else. He felt welcome.
"You made it," Leto said.
Her voice was laced with an unidentifiable accent, as if she spoke some language long gone from this world. She reached out and touched his face with both her hands, looked at his eyes, and ran her thumbs through his hair. She tilted his head and laughed.
"You're going gray already," she said.
"Yeah," Titus said. "I'm a little concerned about that."
"Don't be," she said. "All the Whisperings turn gray before they're twenty. It's a sign of who you are."
"What's a Whispering?" Titus asked.
"You are, kid," Finnigan said.
"You're the last one left in the entire world," Leto said.
Chapter 5:
Dog day afternoon
Billy Case and Sam Barren exchanged worried glances as Emily returned to their table with her second Iced Entropy Emi-latte.
"You're not going to drink two of those," Billy said.
She cannot drink two of those,
Dude said. Even the alien's quiet and steady demeanor seemed shaken by the idea of Emily on eight shots of espresso.
Her system cannot handle it. She will go into toxic shock.
"I'm representin'," Emily said, sitting down across from Billy making googly eyes at him like a Muppet. She tried to put her straw in her mouth without looking but kept missing, so she chased it around with the tip of her tongue until she poked herself in the nose. Finally she grabbed the straw firmly to take a sip.
Sam took all of this in with a weary but honest smile. Billy was worried about him. The old agent was looking thinner and more worn out every time they saw him. They all realized he was sick, but nobody was comfortable enough to ask him about it. To ask made it feel too real.
"So where's Barney the Dino boy?" Emily asked.
She had deliberately picked a stool that was too tall for her so she could kick her feet while they chatted, her neon blue hair hidden by a home-knit yellow, orange, and red hat, complete with ear flaps and a pom-pom on the top, about which she said, every single time she wore it, "a girl walks down the street in this hat, people know she's not afraid of anything." Billy laughed until he almost vomited the first time she said it, but no one else got the joke.
"Cretaceous has been transferred to the Labyrinth," Sam said. "Which is sad, because none of it is really his fault, but we don't know where else to keep him. He's a danger to himself and others until we can try to reverse his condition."
"Dinosaur DNA," Billy said. "Where the hell did they get dinosaur DNA that worked?"
"Have you not read Jurassic Park?" Emily said. "Clearly they got it from a bug trapped in amber."
"Oh."
"I'm kidding. That was proven scientifically impossible. I have no idea where they got it."
"Wherever they got it, he's locked up for now," Sam said. "He'll be kept at the Labyrinth indefinitely."
"First of all, could you have named it anything less threatening?" Emily said. "Was 'Thunderdome' taken already?"
"It's designed so you can't find the way back out," Sam said. "The name was deliberate. You want us to rename it?"
"Emily's Funhouse Emporium."
"No," Sam said. "Next question."
"Is holding him there a human rights violation?" Billy asked.
The question is, is he human,
Dude said.
Billy mentally waved him off.
Let me hear Sam's answer, Dude, Billy said silently.
"Let me tell you honestly — it bothers me," Sam said. "It bothered me back when I was with the Department of What. Doc's team took out a lot of creatures we couldn't communicate or reason with. Were they animals? Sentient beings who deserved a day in court? I tended to lean toward thinking they deserved a fair trial, but can a half-man, half-dinosaur who can't speak and tries to eat the face off anyone who walks too close to him even get a fair trial? Who are his peers?"
"So we just . . . cage him," Billy said.
"Want to help rectify that situation? Help me investigate how to turn him back," Sam said. "For all we know there's a scared fifteen year old kid beneath that T-Rex muzzle who just wants to go home. We just don't know."
Billy nodded, not entirely convinced.
I feel like we owe dino-boy a better option, Billy said.
We will do our best, Billy Case,
Dude said.
Emily hit the bottom of her iced coffee, sucking the air loudly to get to the dregs.
"Well I guess we have ourselves a moral obligation to find empirical proof of his mental capacity," she said.
"You are still the strangest girl I've ever met," Sam said.
* * *
Sam Barren felt himself getting old.
Watching those two walk away, looking like kids in their street clothes, not like the heroes who'd stopped a sentient hurricane a year ago, instilled a great deal of hope, yet they made his age all the more apparent. He felt like he'd never been that young. Emily turned back and blew him an exaggerated kiss, and Sam, always the old gentleman, tipped his fedora and smiled.
He wished Doc Silence hadn't done whatever he'd done to help with the victory over the storm last year. The kids were self-sufficient enough, but they had no institutional memory, they had no history, they had no contacts. Sam was doing all he could to help, but Sam had never been a superhuman. Just a guy in a suit and tie on the sidelines, a third base coach cheering on a team of heroes.
I can't keep these kids safe, Sam thought. But then again that wasn't his job.
Over coffee he and Billy and Emily had talked mostly about their most recent public fight, but Sam had pressed them a little about how Kate was doing. It was funny how they'd given up on Sam's old rule about not knowing anyone's real name. The Indestructibles found it almost impossible to not call each other by their first names around him, and after he learned Billy's name and Jane's by accident, everyone simply let it go. Sam used to say this was to keep himself apart, to keep secret identities safe, but the fact is, he'd been at this a long time, and heroes ultimately die. They die all the time. It's easier if you know them as Solar and Straylight instead of Jane and Billy.
Kate surrendered her real name least willingly, but in quiet moments she sought him out more often than any of the others, to talk about heroes long gone, villains locked away, the way things used to be. Kate wanted the institutional knowledge. She needed a sense of history and her place in it.
As a result, she was Sam's best student.
Lately, though, everyone had witnessed her withdrawing. At first they joked that she was just angry that Titus had left town, but five minutes with Kate told you she wasn't the type to give a boy that much influence over her. Sam could see the real culprit of her angst, because he knew how it felt himself.
She felt vulnerable. She, like Sam, was a mortal among gods. And Kate knew she had to be better than all of them to survive.
Sam noticed the man tailing him almost immediately. The guy was good, but Sam had been tailing people for almost fifty years. He knew all the tricks. So Sam let him follow him for a while, until he saw the second tail join him, across the street, casually maneuvering through the ebb and flow of the foot traffic that made up the City's blood flow.
Then he saw the car turn the corner. There was no reason to know it was coming for him, but something about it, the smoothness of the right-hand turn, the gleam of its surface, marked it as something different.
His tails herded him toward the car. Sam stopped at the curb and waited for the car to pull up. A window rolled down, and a woman, with dark, utilitarian hair and hard eyes, spoke.
"Sam Barren," the woman said.
"The one and only."
The door opened. Sam looked at the two men who had been tailing him — big guys, no one who would give you pause walking past them in the street, but more than he wanted to try his luck against. He slid inside. One of the men closed the door behind him.
"I was wondering when you people would come around," Sam said as the car pulled away from the curb.
"You've gone off the reservation, Sam."
"The Department was shut down years ago. There's no such thing as going off the reservation if it no longer exists."
"Well we're bringing it back online," the woman said.
"Good. The kids can use the support."
"That's why we're bringing you in from the cold, Sam. We're going to rein those kids in. We can't have a bunch of hyper teenagers running around without some sort of checks and balances. Look at what the Dancer just did in the City."
"The old crew didn't have a government mandate."
"The old crew was too powerful for us to control," the woman said. "We're not going to let that happen again."
Sam laughed.
"Good luck with that," he said.
"I think you're misunderstanding me, Sam. You're going to help us," she said.
"The hell I will."
"We know you're sick."
A long silence stretched out between them. Sam looked out his window, watching the City's streets roll by.
"I won't."
"You don't have a choice."
Sam stared her down. Sick or not, he had been face to face with worse people and things in his life than this agent, trying to tell him what to do.
"I'm a telepath, Sam. I can just take the information I want from you."
"So do it already."
"We can help you, Sam."
"Yeah," Sam said. "We've all heard that before. Where are we going?"
"Where else?" the woman said. "To the Labyrinth."
* * *
"He doesn't look good," Billy said. He and Emily were taking the long way home from the coffee shop, on foot because Emily insisted. She clung to that strange affectation, where walking and taking the bus made her feel more normal. Billy still loved flying too much.
"We should be able to help him, right?" Emily said. "We live in a space ship. We have to have some future doohickey or thingamabob that can help him."
He may simply be reaching his time, Billy,
Dude said.
But, Billy chose not to relay Dude's thoughts to Emily.
"Nobody's looking good," Billy said. "Kate looks like the job is eating her alive and Jane looks like she's so worried all the time her face is going to get stuck permanently in that expression."
"The one where she does the thing?"
"With her eyebrows?"
"Yeah."
"That's the one," Billy said.
They strolled on, hands in their pockets, in the friendly silence of siblings.
"We could use some help," Billy said.
"I was just thinking that."
"An intern or something."
"We need sidekicks."
"Aren't you my sidekick?"
"Hell no," Emily said. "You're my sidekick."
"I am not your sidekick."
"Says you," Emily said. "Speaking of sidekicks, any word from Titus?"
"He's not Kate's sidekick. More like bodyguard or something. And not since he crossed into Canada."
"Who goes to Canada on purpose?" Emily said.
"Canadians?"
It was then they heard the noise, a horrible high-pitched yelp of pain. They looked at each other.
"You hear that?" Emily said.
Billy was already running in the direction of the cry. What they found made him angrier than he'd ever been in his entire life.
Three boys, no older than ten, had something — a dog, from the sound of the cries of pain — wrapped in a bed sheet. The boys were sharing possession of two pellet guns and took turns firing at the small critter inside the sheet.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Billy yelled.
You have my permission to obliterate them,
Dude said, his voice calm but his tone indicating he might not be exaggerating.
Emily caught up and came to an abrupt halt next to Billy.
"What is wrong with them?" Emily said.
The boys looked at them, pellet guns still in hand, assessing the newcomers as if to decide whether or not the age difference was sufficient enough to demand respect or allow for snarky commentary.
One of them shrugged and turned back to fire another pellet at the dog.
Emily and Billy reacted in unison, Emily's gravity powers stopped the pellets mid-flight while Billy's light blast smashed the gun to pieces in the boy's hand. The kid gasped in pain as the toy crumpled.
"Are you serious?" Billy strode toward them like a madman now. He attempted to blast the other gun into a million pieces but Emily beat him to it, somehow controlling gravity to break the weapon down into is basic components and dropping the pieces on the ground.
Billy stormed past the boys, scooped up the sheet and unwrapped it. A tiny dog's face, gray and brown with one ear sticking straight up and one flopping over lazily, popped out looking terrified and confused.