The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1) (3 page)

Samantha touched the corner of
her eye. “Cleo, sweetie, we’re all like you.”

Chapter 2

When is a bagel
not a bagel?

Their headquarters was a dump. I
was expecting some kind of high tech, retinal scan, white-and-silver office
building with the three G’s—guards, gates and guns. Instead, Alfonso pulled
into a run-down strip mall in front of a chiropractor’s office. Dawn had hit us
like an axe an hour out of Nashville, and I felt less than sterling. I envied
the people getting out of bed and grabbing a shower and a cup of coffee that
wasn’t from a fast food restaurant.

“Which office is yours, the
chiropractor or the cell phone place?” I fumbled out of the car and tried to
straighten my legs. Alfonso caught my arm before I ate pavement that looked
suspiciously like my parking lot in Chicago.

“It’s good camouflage,” he said.
“Our actual company is named YuriCorp.”

“Oh, it’s a
secret
hideout. I can see why you’d want to keep it that way.”

John came to stand beside me. I
smiled up at him and asked, “Now that we’re here, can you tell me your super
power?”

“This is where you’ll be staying
while you’re in Nashville.” John, ignoring my question, yet again, unlocked the
glass door of the chiropractor and motioned me inside.

Ooooo-kay. I could use an
adjustment after nine hours in the car. I hoped the other clients weren’t allergic
to cat dander. “I want to let the cats out. They need a break and some water.”

I tugged Boris’s carrier with
both hands, my satchel, which weighed nearly as much as the cat/carrier combo,
on top of it.

“I’ll get that and give it a
rinse in the shower.” Alfonso grabbed the carrier and disappeared around a
beige carpeted wall that blocked the majority of the office from the waiting
room and receptionist’s desk.

“Just don’t rinse Boris,” I
called after him. The glass door swung shut behind us with a hiss. Watercolor
prints of flowers adorned the walls; a matching silk arrangement perched atop
the IBM-grey computer console. On the desk calendar, somebody had written “C.G.—si,
1t, by YC” on today’s date.

John blinked in the nearly
blinding sunlight streaming through the glass, not quite awake. “Everything you
need is inside. Food, cat box, change of clothes, and”—John sniffed—”bagels, I
believe.”

“How about a chiropractor?”

“Do you need a chiropractor?”

I pointed at “Dr. Spivey”
airbrushed on the glass door. Dr. Spivey worked from ten to four Tuesday
through Saturday, and it was eight a.m. Saturday. “Won’t the doc be here in a
couple hours? Maybe he could work this kink out of my spine.” I sidled my
ribcage back and forth.

John’s gaze dropped to my cleavage,
where I’d unbuttoned my blouse to get more comfortable in the car. He might
have unidentified super powers, but one of them wasn’t the strength to avoid
staring at women’s breasts.

Well, I did have impressive
ta-tas, and better my breasts than my crazed tangle of mousy hair or the
perma-wrinkles in the ass of my skirt. Some women say they hate being treated
like sex objects. I like it, myself, because those guys lie to me less than the
ones who try to ignore my big chest and bottom.

I noticed Samantha hobbling out
of the car so I halted John’s exhaustion-dazed ogling. “John.” I snapped my
fingers in his line of vision. “Is this or is this not a chiropractor’s
office?”

Samantha kicked the bottom of the
glass, Natasha’s carrier in her arms and a scowl on her face. John hurried to
open the door. Natasha’s low, simmering growl preceded Samantha into the
office.

“If I ever travel with another
cat,” she began, but shut her mouth when she noticed my smirk. Hey, she could
have been next to Boris the pisser instead of Natasha the slasher.

“This isn’t a full-fledged
office,” John explained.

“What if we get walk-ins? Since
I’m, ah, staying here, do you expect me to give them an adjustment?”

Because, no.

“We have somebody to take care of
that.”

Samantha shoved the carrier at
John and stomped behind the beige wall. I followed, John beside me. A short
hallway with an exam room on one side and a file room on the other ended in
what looked like an employee break room. Samantha thumbed the coin return
button on the drink machine, punched the “Diet RC Cola” label, and the snack
dispenser rolled aside to reveal a passageway.

“This is more like it!” I
followed the scent of Boris’s pee down another beige hallway, fully expecting
to see a massive spy hideaway with guys in white lab coats and crazy machines.

Instead I got a studio apartment
with a single, grey-glassed window, a kitchenette the size of my bathtub, a
tightly made bed, and a nineteen inch television with rabbit ears. Alfonso had
deposited a skanky, noshing Boris in the kitchen in front of a bowl of dry
kibble and was trying to rinse the carrier in the shower stall, only he was
almost too big to fit into the tiny bathroom.

“Nice headquarters,” I commented.
“You invested your budget in the revolving snack machine, I see.” If we had the
big meeting to poke and prod me here, where would everyone sit? Or was the tale
of a mysterious boss man with all the answers a true untruth to get me here?

“This isn’t the office, this is
our guestroom. The main entrance is behind the pizza place.” John set Natasha’s
carrier on the ground, opened the latch, and barely avoided the streak of white
that hissed out of the crate and under the bed.

I laughed, but nobody else did.
“Seriously?”

“The pizza’s not bad. We don’t
deliver, though.” Samantha flopped on the bed and spread her arms. Her black
hair fanned out like a half moon. Underneath, Natasha moaned her hatred of her
nemesis, the trip, her new quarters, you name it.

“Do you own the whole strip
mall?” They should do something about the parking lot. I could see the whole
thing through my murky window. Our black car. A minivan and several other cars
at the other end, near the strip mall’s half empty billboard. A moped chained
to a post.

I didn’t remember seeing a window
in the wall beside the chiropractor’s office. Huh.

John shook his head. “The
children’s consignment store on the corner isn’t ours. Neither is the cell
phone place.”

Let’s see, with my experienced
shopper’s eye, I’d noticed the chiropractor, the kid place, the pizza place, a
cellular phone store, a gym, an empty spot, a dollar store, a dry cleaner and a
computer repair shop. None of which I had much use for. I couldn’t imagine
anything I’d want in a dollar store. Maybe a five dollar and ninety-nine cent
store. I had my standards.

“How do you find time to dissect
aliens and chase terrorists if you run all these businesses?” I wandered to the
breakfast bar and opened the baggie on it, hunting for bagels. Several
inflexible buns lurked in the bottom of the sack like poppy-seeded rocks.

“Not the kind of work we do,”
Samantha said in a singsong voice, “and if you say that one more time I’m going
to push a crying jag on you.”

“A what?”

John frowned. “Samantha’s a
pusher.”

I froze. Were they into drugs? “I
won’t get involved with anything illegal.”

“I can shift people’s moods if I
get my hands on them.” Samantha wriggled her fingers at me. “I like your
writing. It’s so vivid.”

“You lied to me?” Nobody had been
able to trick me in person since I’d turned thirteen. She’d used her pushy
power to negate mine. That was so...bad? Good? Terrifying?

“I do like your blog.” She stood,
no shadow around her. “I pushed a sense of acceptance on you so you’d quit
asking so damn many questions.” Around her, a grey haze winked into and out of
existence.

What part of that had been
untrue? “I didn’t give you permission to push me.”

“Do you get people’s permission
to read lies?”

“That’s different.” I couldn’t
help what I did, and she could. All she had to do was keep her hands to
herself, right?

She shrugged. I recalled the
sense of warmth and friendship I’d felt and was almost disappointed it had been
manufactured.

Gal pal material? Not gal pal
material? She was like a pair of Dolce & Gabbana trousers that seemed
stylish on the hanger, but on your butt they widened you like a funhouse
mirror. A good pair of pants to give to, say, your lyingest coworker, so you
could enjoy the way they expanded her butt instead.

Luckily no one around me could
sense when I was lying, because I did it a lot.

“Don’t worry, Cleo.” John busied
himself in the kitchenette, retrieving a tub of cream cheese from the fridge, a
couple knives and plates, and a jug of orange juice. “Samantha’s push obviously
didn’t stick.”

I’d been more at ease, but he was
right. I hadn’t stopped asking questions. “Why didn’t Samantha’s sneak attack
work on me?”

“John stopped me before I gave
you a full dose.” She pointed at him. “You’re the one who tasted her, John.”

“What’s your super power?” I
asked him.

“He’s a licker,” Samantha said.
By John’s expression, I guessed that was a vulgar description of his talent.

“The correct term is a nose. I
have a keen nose and taste buds. One thing I can do is detect whether or not
people have suprasenses. That’s what we call them.”

“Supersenses? Shazam!”

“Supra,” Samantha said
humorlessly. “Suprasenses.”

“What can Alfonso do?”

Samantha exchanged a glance with
John, then said, “He’s an ear. He’s also the head of our security department.”

I didn’t ask what it meant to be
an ear, but one would assume keen hearing. A good thing to know if I needed to
place any surreptitious phone calls to the police to come rescue me from the
loonies.

“So we have suprasenses.” It
sounded better than seeing masks and shadows. Frightened people saw shadows.
“John, can you turn your nose off, or was riding in the car with the cat pee
torture?”

“I can turn it off.” He opened
the cream cheese and pulled off the metallic seal.

Samantha cocked her hip to one
side. “Too bad you can’t always turn it on.”

I took a rock out of the bag to
distract them from each other. “This isn’t a bagel.”

“Yes, it is.” Samantha stuck her
hands on her hips and tapped her foot. She’d kicked off her Manolos and her
toenails were sand pink.

I thonked it on the bar. It
echoed. Poppy seeds scattered across the Formica. “This is a tricycle wheel.”

She snatched it out of my hand
and thrust it in the microwave without a plate. “Nuke it.”

I edged out of her way. Boris had
nearly finished the bowl of kibble, and I enjoyed the sight of Samantha and
John dancing around his huge, yellow, stinky self in the shoebox-sized
kitchenette. The bed wasn’t as hard as I’d figured it would be, but I didn’t
lay down, afraid I’d konk out and miss all the fun. And the so-called bagels,
my stomach reminded me. The donuts we’d gotten at the gas station in Mt. Vernon
had long since been digested.

Something soft butted my calf—Natasha,
creeping along the edge of the bed. She hated traveling. She’d probably spend
this whole time beneath furniture. “When are we going to meet your boss so I
can get back to my normal life?” I asked.

John sliced hot bagels and
arranged them on a plate while Samantha poured juice. “We thought you’d want to
get cleaned up,” he said. “On Saturdays he comes to work around ten.”

“Like Dr. Spivey.” Maybe his name
was Spivey. Dr. Spivey the chiropracting mad brain scientist.

The shower turned off and Alfonso
exited the bathroom. “The carrier is in the shower, and the cat box is under
the sink. Figured that was a better place than the closet.” He motioned toward
two slatted doors next to the television.

Oooh, closet. Did that mean
clothing? I’d bought my current outfit several months ago in a fit of spring
fever, but this was one skirt I’d be happy to shove in the Goodwill bag. I
hoped the garments they claimed to have provided weren’t hideous. Like, slacks
with pleats and a Hawaiian blouse.

I dragged myself to my feet and
opened the bifold doors. A few lonely items hung in the closet—a black pants
suit, a couple T-shirts, a nightgown, a pair of hibiscus capri pants. There
were some unopened packages of underwear, socks and bras on the side shelves,
and on the floor were two pairs of shoes—black kid granny pumps and white
canvas tennies.

Aw, man. Hadn’t they let Samantha
do my shopping? Where were my Manolos?

Maybe she had done my shopping.
At Wal-Mart.

Suddenly I heard the telltale
sound of Boris kakking up the food he’d poked down. It proved they didn’t know
everything about me and my cats. They’d left a whole bowl of food available for
Big Boris. Even my next door neighbor, who checked on the cats during my rare
vacations, knew not to do that.

“Eeew!” Samantha exclaimed. I
looked over, interested to see how she’d react to phase two. Shop at Wal-Mart
for me, huh? She and John stared at the floor. “Oh....oh....oh, God, don’t eat
it! Cleo, your cat is eating—”

She chased Boris away from his
prechewed snack in her mad dash for the small bathroom. Boris ran under the
bed. Natasha yowled and ran out from under the bed, realized she had nowhere to
hide, and made a bee-line for the bathroom. More snarling, a scream, a crash,
and Natasha hurtled back out, wet. I opened the closet, and she accepted the
invitation.

The bathroom door slammed.
Alfonso grinned. John was still mesmerized by what was probably a massive
amount of regurgitated cat chow. It’s amazing how much that stuff swells after
the briefest time in a cat’s stomach.

Suddenly, I felt right at home.

“Bagels ready yet?” I asked. “I’m
starving.”

Chapter 3

In which I meet
Doctor Fronkensteen

John and company deserted me
without cleaning up the cat vomit. They said they’d fetch me for my meet and
greet in a couple hours and I should rest up. Alfonso was the last one out.

“Don’t try to take off,” he said.
He pocketed something small and silver. “I’ll hear you if you do.”

About to polish off a tricycle
tire bagel, I paused. “I thought I wasn’t a prisoner?”

Alfonso smiled. His teeth were
sharper than your average pearlies, accentuating his apelike visage. When he
disappeared down the hallway to the magic RC Cola machine, it clunked shut with
an ominous thud.

I waited five minutes and tried
the drink machine. It opened. There was nobody in the break area and nobody in
the chiropractor’s office. I returned to my cats and slumped on the bed to mull
over my situation.

Three very different people, one
very unusual day. I eyed Boris’s shameful pile and considered removing it
before I stepped in it, but I knew from past experience it would be easier to
wait until it solidified.

The nervous energy that had
jazzed me like six double shots of espresso had worn off. If I weren’t careful,
I’d fall asleep. Samantha and John would catch me drooling and force me to meet
Professor Xavier with spit stains on my shirt. With a groan, I dragged myself
out of bed and did my best to make myself presentable given my limited
supplies. In the bathroom medicine cabinet were a toothbrush, toothpaste, a bar
of soap, aspirin, a washrag, a box of feminine items, and a tube of pinkish
beige lipstick. Not really my color. I had better cosmetics in my satchel.

“What do you think they’ve got in
store for us, Mr. B?” I asked the cat when he followed me into the bathroom.
“Exploratory surgery? Tea party?”

Boris blinked and yawned. I wondered
if Alfonso was listening. When I used the bathroom, I turned on the faucet full
blast in case he was a potty voyeur.

I had trouble believing my new
friends, even though they appeared to be honest. Since they knew about me,
they’d been careful not to say anything untrue. Or much of anything at all. I
was lucky they hadn’t blindfolded me when they drove me to their super secret
spy hideaway in the run-down strip mall. Take away my eyes, and I was one
normal, if better accessorized than average, woman.

At the same time, the big reveal
I’d always dreamed about had finally happened. Why wasn’t I thrilled? All I
felt was tired and slightly annoyed. Maybe my lackluster attitude was
Samantha’s doing. Maybe they wanted me numb and dumb.

I stared at the clothing in the
closet awhile before making my choice. The black pantsuit fit, even if it
wasn’t seasonal. When would they come back? I dragged my satchel toward me with
my toe and sorted through it, careful to check every pocket and fold, but my
cell phone wasn’t there.

How could it have fallen out when
it was so deep I hadn’t seen it in days? Frustrated, I dumped the whole
satchel. Nada. I checked under the bed, in the kitchen, in the bathroom. No
expensive silver flip phone anywhere. The image of Alfonso pocketing something
much like my cell phone swam before my eyes.

“Hey!” I said aloud, feeling
rather foolish. “You’re a jerk, Alfonso. Where’s my phone? I just wanted to
check messages.”

There wasn’t anything I could do
unless I wanted to walk down the road in a pair of frumpy black heels and try
to catch a taxi to the airport. What would I do with the cats? Boris was way
too heavy to lug on the lam, and Natasha—well, maybe I could leave my address
and they could freight her to me.

“I want my cell phone back. Do
you hear me?”

The only response was Natasha
growling softly under the bed.

The guest quarters didn’t have
floor space for me to pace. I threw myself onto the bed. Boris joined me, happy
to add yellow fur to my clothing.

My overextended brain jumped
around like a jar of fleas. If I weren’t careful, the ramifications of my mini-adventure
would hit me, and I’d turn to terrified jelly. I’d been kidnapped by strangers
because of my (dis)ability; discovered I wasn’t unique; and found out,
moreover, there were entire organizations of people like me out there doing God
knows what, God knows how, and God knows why.

I knew what assholes people could
be. How often they lied about such stupid things. Give them super powers, and I
don’t think they’d use them for good. Hell, I didn’t. I’d thought about
offering my services to law enforcement, but I’m scared of what I'd see if I
talked to anyone in a position of power or influence. I don’t vote, don’t go to
church, don’t go to political rallies, and try not to talk to strangers. Too
often I find out things I’d rather not know.

Being in a position of too little
knowledge was a novel one for me. Was it true that John and Samantha’s group—YuriCorp
rang a faint bell but not enough of one that I could remember without the
internet—was the good company and the other group was the Freakazoid Mafia? By
their lack of masks when they’d informed me of their righteousness, they
definitely believed it.

But humans believed all sorts of
untrue things.

Unfortunately, a firm belief in
an untrue thing was a brand of lie I couldn’t detect.

I put the extra pillow over my
face to block the light. There were no sounds, no air conditioning turning
itself off and on, no noisy neighbors. I didn’t like my situation or my lack of
phone. Did they think I’d call the cops? I’d ask them. Several times, until
they broke under the strain and lied.

People always did. I’d been using
my powers to my advantage since I turned thirteen, and it had been...lonesome. Knowing
when people fib made my transition to womanhood rough, I can assure you. Turned
me into a grab bag of insecurities and cynicism.

Like that's any different from
other twenty-nine-year-old single women.

Samantha was spot on when she’d
accused me of wanting to be found out. God, of course I did. Who wants to be
unique? People say they do, but they’re lying. I should know.

As my brain drifted toward
snooze, I spared a thought for my stepfather. If anybody hassled Dan, I’d be
seriously ticked. Besides having me, marrying Dan had been the one good thing
my mother did when she was alive. He loved me, and he hardly ever lied to me. Boris
purred beside me and my thoughts faded. I saw nothing but black behind my
eyelids, comforting, quiet black. The black of every lie in the world, all at
once. The lies I told myself.

~ * ~

“What, huh, who’s there?” I
jerked upright and slapped at the weight on my arm. John, who’d been shaking
me, lurched back, but not before I smacked his hand.

“We’re ready for you.”

“What time is it?”

“After lunch.”

“That explains why I’m hungry.” I
stretched and rubbed my hair out of my face. My fingers stuck in the damp
strands.

Great. The pillow I’d used to
block out the light had caused me to sweat like a Marine. I’d be making a
wonderful first impression on the big boss.

“We’ll get lunch after you meet
everyone.” John proffered my cell phone. “Alfonso said you wanted this back.”

I yawned. “Why did he take it?”

“It wasn’t worth the risk Psytech
would call you.” John frowned. I was beginning to realize he did that a lot.
“Are you ready?”

“Not really.” I slipped into my
shoes and jacket and followed him anyway. Alfonso was waiting next to the cola
machine. When we left the chiropractor’s office, we passed a dark-skinned woman
in a lab coat and nose ring. She was filing her nails at the front desk.

“Hey, Doc,” Alfonso said.

“Yo.” She cracked her knuckles.
“I got a 2 o’clock, but you want me to do you after?”

“Nah, I can wait until next
week.”

She fluttered her eyelashes.
“John?”

“No, thank you.” He turned to me.
“Roxanne is a YuriCorp employee.”

“Plus I do spine manipulation.”
Roxanne cracked her knuckles again, inspected her nails, and held out a hand
for me to shake. “You must be Cleopatra Giancarlo. How’s your back?”

I accepted it. It seemed rude not
to. She had a grip like iron and her palm warmed my hand like a cup of hot
coffee.

“Just Cleo, please. My back is
fine.” Why did she know who I was, and why was she so toasty? If she had a
power, she ought to turn it off when she touched people. If she could.

“This job’ll tense you up and
knock your lumbar out of whack.” The warmth from her grip extended to my wrist.
“You come see me.”

“You bet.” If “you bet” meant “no
way”.

I jiggled my hand as we picked
our way down the sidewalk to the pizza place, creatively titled, “Pizza Man”.
In the short time we were outside, sweat beaded along my hairline.

I wiped, but the sweat returned
undaunted.

Alfonso noticed my gesture.
“Welcome to Tennessee. They recruited me from Canada. It takes some getting
used to. Just wait until this summer.”

“Definitely not a dry heat.” The
air felt as moist as a dog’s mouth.

Inside, the pizza place looked
like any take-out joint—several small cafe tables, a drink machine, and the
smell of grease and pepperoni. A teenager leaned on the counter, concentrating
on something beside the cash register that beeped.

“Can I help...oh, hey.” He raised
a hand, tilting up the brim of his ball cap.

“What can he do?” I asked John in
a whisper.

“Nothing—he thinks the Pizza Man
national headquarters are in back.”

“In the alley? Why would he
believe that?” I glanced over my shoulder at the boy, who returned his
attention to a small electronic game on the counter.

“Because it’s true. Pizza Man
only has four locations, all ours. We also have an eraser on staff who helps
people forget things they shouldn’t know.”

We crossed through the small
kitchen, waving at another boy, and out the back into the alley. Several blue
dumpsters lurked in the nondescript lane that had no graffiti to brighten it,
but then again, it didn’t have any bums in boxes, either. The strip mall lined
one side. Weeds and a metal warehouse lined the other. The sounds of the
not-very-busy road in front of the strip mall barely penetrated here.

“Where is it?” I asked. The smell
of hot garbage wrinkled my nose.

John indicated the dumpsters.
“You can come through any of the stores or the warehouse. Most of us rideshare
so there isn’t an imbalance of cars, but there’s more parking on the other side
of the warehouse.”

Alfonso inserted a keycard into
what appeared to be the side of the dumpster. The blue metal bin, nearly as
tall as John, clanked and rolled aside to reveal a dark, concrete stairway. The
RC Cola machine people had obviously had a hand in its creation.

I rocked back on my frumpy heels.
“Your secret hideout is beneath the trash? This doesn’t bode well.” I covered
my mouth and nose. It wasn’t the pukiest garbage I’d ever smelled, but I wanted
to hide my smirk.

“It’s the easiest access point,”
John said defensively. “No one suspects.”

Gingerly, I followed him down the
dank stairwell, Alfonso bringing up the rear. My heels scraped the concrete,
and I held onto a cool metal rail as we descended. Paint flecked onto my skin.

The thud of the dumpster closing
sounded uncomfortably final. A drippy hallway with a few bare bulbs led
straight ahead. Our direction seemed to lead beneath the large metal building.
How could there be a secret underground hideaway when you had public gas lines
and sewers and utility wires to be considered?

And what did I think I was? A
civil engineer?

We traipsed up a set of stairs
that ended at a metal door with an obvious key slot, which Alfonso activated. I
dropped back so I was third through the doorway.

I didn’t know what to expect
inside. Sterile white? Army bunker? Pizza place?

It was nothing close to what I’d
imagined. It appeared to be, of all things, a shabby office delineated by
cubicle walls. A fluorescent light flickered in a hanging metal fixture, giving
the large, middle-aged receptionist a greenish cast.

“Lou Lampey, Cleo Giancarlo.”
John indicated me. I met the woman’s wide, bulging eyes and smiled.

“I erase people,” she announced
cheerfully. “What do you do?”

This was their eraser? She wasn’t
an ominous, scary man with a crew cut and a large gun. She was tanned, sporty
and substantial, a motherly person surrounded by a sweet perfume odor.

I opened my mouth to answer and
John spoke for me. “She’s a chameleon, Lou. You read the file.”

Lou shrugged, waking her breasts
into independent motion beneath her melon-colored tank. “Maybe I did, maybe I
didn’t. Yuri’s back there. Tell him it’s somebody else’s turn to sit desk, why
doncha? I got work to do.”

We edged between cubicles. Lots
of people were here for a Saturday. They mostly ignored us, immersed in their
computers. I didn’t see anything science fictiony. Nobody levitated or glowed
or bent spoons with their brain waves.

I patted John on the sleeve. “Why
did you tell Lou I was a chameleon?”

“Yuri will explain that.” We
skritched down a hallway carpeted with what appeared to be a giant plastic
welcome mat until we reached a door with a frosted glass window. John knocked.

“Come in.” Inside the office,
noteworthy only because of the lush greenery and rainforest mural against the
back wall, stood an old, bald man whose wrinkles looked like a linen suit after
a day of hard wear.

He immediately advanced on me. I
immediately backed up.

“Cleo!” He extended his hands.

I was through making skin contact
with people who had unknown powers. I retreated until I bumped into Alfonso,
avoiding the touch of the new mutant. The guy crowded me, undaunted, until I
allowed him to take my hands, wondering if his proximity would allow him a
glimpse into my brain.