Gather here what will help them and then disappear.

  Reginald thought about what Director Halstead had said about Specials being a generational phenomenon. What was he supposed to do for the next twenty years?

  Become patient, she whispered, as though hearing his thoughts.

  “Patient,” he repeated. He remembered the morning he had left her alone at the safe house. “You told me not to go,” he whispered into the vibrating air. “You told me to wait.”

  Shhh, love. You could not have helped me. But you can help the next ones.

  “What about our son?” he asked. “Is he…?”

  A caress descended the length of his arm and found his hand. She pressed his palm, then held it to the warm swell of a stomach. The movement beneath Reginald’s palm felt like a celestial tide, strong and rhythmic.

  Remember this, Reginald. Nothing is lost.

  “That’s our son?” he asked in amazement.

  It’s our love.

  “God, Madelyn.” His lips trembled. “I miss you so, so much.”

  Something brushed his cheek as the contours of their rapport thinned and glimmered out. Reginald opened his eyes. The motel room was empty. A cold blanket encircled his feet.

  He stepped from the blanket and walked to the bathroom. Hands propped on the counter, he stared into the rust-streaked mirror at the glowing whites of his eyes. Madelyn was gone, as was the rapport they had once shared. But the sensation of a faraway tide continued to move through him.

  Nothing is lost.

  “I’ll listen to you, Maddie,” he told the mirror. “I’ll find the next ones. I promise.”

  For the first time in weeks, something like peace enveloped his heart. By the time he climbed into bed, he had an idea what would help the future Champions: the answer to what had happened to the former Champions.

  One like us.

  Tomorrow he would revisit an old friend, someone who might have told him more than Reginald had realized at the time. Much more.

  Reginald experienced a moment of déjà vu as he pounded on the door, his face assuming the lines and liver spots of the aging black man who had spent a week at the same address.

  “Who is it?” a harsh voice called from the other side.

  “The police,” Reginald answered.

  “I done told you everything I know.”

  The instant the door cracked open, Reginald threw his shoulder into it. His former landlord stumbled backward, robed arms flapping like a giant bird’s, and landed in a pile of brown shopping bags. He sputtered and blinked his yellowing eyes. When he saw Reginald standing over him, his mouth flew open.

  Reginald aimed his pistol. “Not a word.”

  “I-I knew you was crazy,” he babbled. “Telling people to stay out your room and—and away from your bodies.”

  “Your tongue is making a real tempting target.”

  The landlord clamped his mouth closed.

  Reginald’s gaze roamed the room, which looked even more miserable in the light of day. A riff-raff of greasy newspapers, magazines, and stuffed brown bags lined the walls. A rotten odor rose from the kitchen, where caked dishes crowded the sink and fat roaches wallowed in grease. Beside the window, a wingback chair leaked orange stuffing. Reginald’s gaze returned to the landlord.

  “The last time I came up here, I asked you a question,” he said. “I asked if anyone had been around my room that night. You said you hadn’t seen anyone except me. Do you remember that?”

  The landlord’s desperate, protuberant eyes rocked up and down.

  “You can open your mouth to answer.”

  “It was the truth, I-I swear to the good Lawd!”

  “Where did you see me?”

  “In—in the alleyway.”

  “What time?”

  “Nine-thirty, ten o’clock.”

  When I was finishing up at the White House. “What was I doing?”

  “Looked like you was messing with the window. Couldn’t see on account of the angle from up here. A couple minutes later you left. Didn’t see you again till you came through the front ’round midnight.”

  “How’d you know it was me?” Reginald asked.

  The landlord’s lips began to shake. “You’re gonna shoot me, ain’t you? Just like you done that white boy.”

  “Not if we get through these questions.”

  Ochre-colored mucus bubbled from the landlord’s nostrils, and he sniffled and drew his sleeve across the bottom half of his face. “You had the same hair, the same build, and you was limping along.”

  Reginald nodded and tucked the gun into his pants. From his pocket, he drew his billfold. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t kill that white boy. So you’re not going to do the police any favors by telling them I was back here.” He stripped off a twenty and held it up. “Do we understand each other?”

  The landlord licked his lips and nodded fervently. “So you know who done it?” he asked. “Who kilt him?”

  “I’m getting an idea,” Reginald said, handing him the bill.

  Which means it’s time to clear out of Arlington.

  Between U Street and his taxi ride back over the Potomac, he became a photographer again. Inside his motel room, he reverted to his natural form. When he turned the bolt behind him, he was only half surprised to see a man in a black government suit separate from the shadows of the bathroom. He was even less surprised to hear a sudden chuff-chuff: two shots fired through a silencer. In Reginald’s shrinking vision, the room performed a violent sideways cant.

  His black shoes polished to a high shine, Kilmer strode toward him.

  29

  Gainesville, Florida, Sunday, August 18, 1985

  2:58 p.m.

  Janis found Director Kilmer leaned forward in his chair, using a shine brush to beat the lacquered surface of the shoe he was holding in his other hand. He frowned with his whole face, as though he were delivering punishment. Janis closed the heavy door behind her and heard the magnetic lock engage. Kilmer raised his eyes, the brush pausing mid thrash. The same light that gleamed from the black shoe revealed a strenuous field of perspiration at his temples.

  “Miss Graystone,” he said.

  “Thanks for seeing me on short notice.”

  He nodded toward the black-padded chairs in front of his desk, then made a final inspection of his shoe. The silence in the room felt enormous. Janis took the same seat she had the last time. Director Kilmer placed the brush in a desk drawer and the shoe on the floor. As he pushed his foot into it, he fixed her with a serious gaze. No offer of a Coke this time. Not even a smile.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  Janis’s eyes blinked involuntarily. “What do you mean?”

  “Your trip to Tallahassee.”

  She remained silent.

  Kilmer allowed a tight-lipped grin. “Our agents are good at what they do. You broke several rules, of course, but I figured if it ended up sating your curiosity, what was the harm?” He squinted forward. “Though judging by that knot on your head, I’d say it wasn’t all harmless.”

  Anger flashed hot behind her eyes. Is he taunting me?

  “I told you it would be a dead end, didn’t I?”

  “You knew I would go there. You knew I’d try to talk to him.”

  “Talk to who?”

  “To that freak—to Trips.”

  Kilmer shook his head. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”

  “We had a nice little conversation with one of the hotel guests. He told us all about Agent Steel dropping in with her hired muscle and taking Trips away. All so I couldn’t learn anything, right?”

  Kilmer’s brow remained a bed of lines.

  Janis felt around him, but his thoughts and feelings were still behind the sterile field that chip was throwing out. Tyler had scheduled a meeting with Director Kilmer to take place right after her own. At that moment, he was on the other side of the door, building an electromagnetic sphere around the office—one just strong enough to disrupt Kilmer’s chip.

  But the field remained impenetrable.

  Kilmer’s watch beeped. He read something on the watch face then leaned forward, forearms on the desktop.

  “Tell me about this Trips.”

  Janis stopped herself from sighing. Go along with it. Buy Tyler some more time.

  “I ran into him this past spring. He’s about my size, but thinner, almost cadaverous.” Janis thought of his bulging red eye and infirm leg. “He looks like someone took him apart then put him back together, but badly. And when he focuses on you, he can get inside your head, make you see things that aren’t there.” For a moment, Janis heard the rapid fluttering of cockroaches.

  Kilmer watched her with his black eyes.

  “Ringing any bells?” she asked.

  “Does he have scars?”

  “I don’t remember,” Janis said. But then she recalled a network of what had looked like worm trails on the bald side of his head. “Yeah, maybe. Why are you asking me anyway? Your guys have him.”

  He stood slowly. “And you thought he was a former Champion?”

  “Why else would you remove him?”

  “We didn’t remove him, Janis.”

  “Oh, okay. So right after our last talk, an assault team just happens to show up at Hotel Sinclair in full gear, shooting lasers. And who might they have been? The lost crew of the Battlestar Galactica?”

  Director Kilmer pulled at the skin of his throat as he watched her. Whatever he was thinking remained beyond her reach. The field should be disrupted by now. She glanced about, wondering whether more than just the door to the office was magnetically sealed. Director Kilmer walked around his desk, his polished shoes coming into view. They looked like a pair of bullets.

  “Being a Champion is the highest honor this country can bestow,” he said, “made more so by the fact the work is so secret. That, in my mind, elevates it to a higher plane of honor. A holier plane. You’re like the demigods of the Greek myths, Janis. Immensely powerful but also tragically fallible.”

  What in the world is he talking about? Janis sat rigidly as his shoes clicked over the floor behind her.

  “It’s why we watch you. Why we follow you. Not only to protect you from the Outside, but to protect you from yourselves, which is the more pervasive threat. Think about it for a moment. You’re in your own head all the time, contemplating, cogitating, coming to conclusions that may or may not be true. That’s being mortal. But you’re beyond mortal, aren’t you, Janis? You’re an enhanced human. And when an enhanced human acts on a false assumption, why, the consequences can be disastrous.”

  Kilmer completed the circuit and stood with his back to his desk, arms folded.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” she asked.

  “You’ve come to the conclusion that we’re out to harm you, and now you’re acting on it. Much like Agent Leonard once did.” The quiet menace in Director Kilmer’s voice made Janis want to draw her legs onto the chair. He tapped a finger against his right temple. “You’re trying to get in here, aren’t you?”

  The muscle in her right eyelid spasmed. “No.”

  “Janis, I received a message a moment ago.” He glanced at his watch. “It seems your new friend Tyler was caught attempting to penetrate my office using his electromagnetic abilities. The only thing he succeeded in, however, was breaching his contract. He’s been detained.”

  Janis shot to her feet. “Leave him alone.”

  When Director Kilmer grinned, a spasm of fury and fear erupted inside her. Threads of light burst forth, linking her to the room. The computer on Kilmer’s desk began to shake. Glasses clinked in the cabinet. Kilmer stood inside a pale halo, unaffected, the ends of the threads fluttering infirmly around him.

  “The detention is standard procedure, Janis. We’ll review the breach with him and reevaluate his level of commitment to the Program. From there, we’ll take appropriate action.”

  “Haven’t you done enough to him already?”

  He frowned before smiling faintly. “Ah, I see you’ve reached another false conclusion.”

  “Oh, choke on it.” Janis swept her arm through the air. The phone flew from Kilmer’s desk and clanged against a wall. The computer, which was bolted in place, swayed until something inside the housing cracked.

  Kilmer retreated to the far side of his desk, arms held out as though to prevent anything else from flying away. She could trash the office. Trash him. A part of her was already anticipating the maelstrom. Instead, Janis spun and strode toward the door. It wouldn’t open.

  “Let me out,” she said.

  “Not until we settle this disagreement.”

  “Let me out, I said.”

  The place where the board had struck her that day began to throb. Her control was slipping. She needed to leave before she did something she would regret. She tugged the locked door a second time.

  I’ll get us out, a voice whispered. Just submit to me.

  She needed to center herself but found it impossible to concentrate.

  Through the growing whumps in her head, which were concussing to the backs of her eyes now, Janis became aware that the entire room was shaking. Something crashed to the floor. When she turned, the cabinet was on its side, brown liquid leaking from the small refrigerator. One of the two black-padded chairs had toppled. The other tottered in a drunken circle.

  Director Kilmer shouted something, light from the computer console flashing red against his face.

  Go away, Janis thought to her other self. Go away, go away, go away.

  Kilmer stumbled as he opened a desk drawer and jammed his hand inside. When his hand reappeared, Janis thought he was holding his shine brush, though she couldn’t understand why. His back bowed forward, Kilmer extended an arm toward her. No, not a shine brush. He was aiming a gun.

  30

  Scott lay on his back in bed, staring at the metal vent where his model spaceships had once swung back and forth. Misery roiled his stomach. It wasn’t that Janis had gone to Tallahassee without telling him. It wasn’t even that she had gone with Tyler, which Scott deduced when Creed appeared at his front door that morning, demanding to know where his pissant brother had taken his truck. No, Scott’s misery came from the knowledge that he had failed her.

  Several times in the last week, he had been on the verge of telling her it was back on, that they would go to Tallahassee together. But then he would remember Director Kilmer’s deal.

  You agree to forget this business with the last Champions team, and I’ll agree to forget the name of the person who gave up Agent Leonard.

  And he had clammed up.

  Scott turned toward his cluttered bedside table, his gaze landing on Janis’s gift to him from last Christmas: Uncanny X-Men #137, the issue where Scott Summers fights to save Jean Grey’s life. All of the times he had projected that character and those qualities onto himself, and now look at him—as gutless as ever.

  He flipped the comic book over, pushed himself to his feet, and plodded to the window that looked out over the front yard. He thought he had heard the Bast’s truck rumble by some thirty minutes earlier, but when he’d gone to check, Janis’s street had been empty.

  Like now.

  What if those men got to her this time? he worried. What if Trips drove her insane with fear?

  He was dragging both hands through his hair when the Champions console to his left launched into a series of ear-splitting blaats. Scott jumped-spun toward it. He had only heard the particular alarm once, when the technician was demonstrating the different settings. Scott fumbled to straighten his glasses. “URGENT MESSAGE!” the red-flashing screen read.

  He hit a key to silence the alarm and pressed his thumb to the ID pad. A message scrolled out:

  ** LEVEL 1 ALERT **

  REPORT TO THE STRATEGY CENTER IMMEDIATELY.

  THIS IS NOT A TEST.

  Scott felt the bile in his stomach rising to his throat. This was exactly what he had feared. Seizing a yellow jumpsuit, he sprinted to the elevator inside his parent’s closet, hammered the lower button, and waited an eternity for the stupid thing to start moving.

  If anything happened to Janis, I’ll never, ever forgive myself.

  When Scott burst into the strategy center, Director Kilmer was sitting at the far end of the conference table, Agent Steel beside him. They raised their faces toward the door, their expressions pale and strained.

  Scott looked around, his body heaving for air. “What’s going on? Where are the others?”

  “They’re on their way,” Director Kilmer said, rising.

  “Where’s Janis?”

  Director Kilmer glanced down at Agent Steel before clearing his throat against his fist. “There was an incident, Scott.”

  For a moment, the entire room revolved. Scott thought he was going to drop straight to the floor. He staggered forward until he could hold to one of the chair backs, all of the worst scenarios he had envisioned for Janis exploding in his mind. The hotel. The bloodthirsty men. Trips.

  “Where is she?”

  “Janis’s powers got out of hand,” Kilmer replied. “I’m afraid I had to subdue her.”

  “Wait… you?”

  Kilmer opened his mouth, then raised his eyes past Scott’s shoulder. Scott judged by the footfalls that Margaret was entering the room, followed by Creed and Jesse. He could identify footsteps almost as well as he could car engines. On their heels came the trotting cadence of boots. Scott glanced around. Agent Steel’s assault team entered in two columns, separating at the door. They took positions along the room’s circumference, gazes hidden behind black visors.