Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Screw the Galaxy

But I was completely happy to not do so. I knew. I was certain this story was going to suck—at least for me. I looked at my shoes. How did I get the tread worn out differently on each one? Maybe one leg is shorter than the other?

Jyen had just blue, blue eyes. Her skin was nothing compared to her eyes, which were like crystals. I sighed.

“So. Level tens, huh?”

“Yes,” she seized. “My brother!”

My brow furrowed and I looked at Jyonal. I was pretty certain he had no idea where he was. The idea that anyone was a level ten was pretty far-fetched. The idea that they were on Belvaille was even more so. The idea that one was embodied in the blob of organic matter that was Jyonal was almost too insulting to bother thinking about.

Yet. This was a gal who had known Garm did in fact classify me as a level ten and who was a mutant herself of no small ability.

“And…,” I began slowly. “What’s he do?”

“Anything.”

“Like,” and my head bobbed around a bit searching for words, “what specifically?”

“Anything.”

“Yeah, you said that. But what’s his mutation allow him to do that is out of the ordinary?”

I was again at a different junction than Jyen, which seemed to happen whenever we spoke. I was assuming she was being defensive about her brother, saying in short, “despite his vegetable-like nature, he is capable of being a productive Colmarian.”

“He can do anything, that’s his mutation,” she said emphatically.

“So he can arc electricity like you?” I asked.

Jyen thought about this.

“You said he can do anything ,” I jabbed like a prosecutor, while motioning to the drooling demigod in question.

“Yes. He can,” Jyen said defiantly.

“Fine. Let’s see it. Not at me.”

I crossed my arms and waited for the show. I wasn’t entirely sure what Jyen was getting at. She was a strange bird alright. I couldn’t figure out her angle.

She went over and crouched by her brother and began whispering to him. She had her arm around him and seemed to be cajoling.

Jyen reached over to a pair of shoes along the wall and pulled something from inside it. She handed it to Jyonal. From my experiences in Deadsouth, I knew it to be a drug whose name escaped me.

Jyonal then took the drug injection and applied it to his arm. After using it, he sat bolt upright.

“You’re kidding?” I said. Of course he thinks he can do anything when he’s high. What was this?

And then Jyonal’s eyes glowed.

Not like bulbs, but like spotlights. And he was on his feet though I hadn’t seen him stand.

Then the room changed, the bare surfaces inexplicably gone. It was now carpeted with lush fabric. There were shimmering works of art on the walls. The ceiling had a chandelier.

But I noticed this all took place in kind of a fish-eye perspective. The center of the eye was gorgeous and new, at the edges it started to blur, while outside it, the old room with exposed metal was everywhere.

Then I realized the fish-eye was centered where Jyonal was looking at the time. As he moved his head, the room morphed.

“It’s an illusion,” I said. “A mental—a mental thing.” I wasn’t sure of the term, but I had heard of mutants being able to make you see things. He had to be in my head. Or warping light around.

“No, it’s not,” said Jyen, standing next to me now, and she held my hand as if to prove it.

“Jyonal,” she said. “Show him.”

And the thing that was once her brother howled. A booming wail that made me cover my ears. The floor began shaking and I was thrown to the ground off balance.

As I was wondering if the building would collapse, Jyen rushed to her brother, whose eyes were like laser beams, and soothed him, stroked him, and gradually his eyes dimmed. The shaking stopped and the walls ceased undulating.

But even after it was done, I was still lying on carpet, the carpet that hadn’t existed when I came in. I could feel it. Pluck at it. The walls were painted and held artwork—albeit amateur ones. The chandelier was there, but half-fused and twisted. The fish-eye effect remained. It was frozen into the apartment.

I got up and touched the walls at the edge of it. The very metal held ripples on its surface; the color bled and faded as you moved further out.

It wasn’t the Dredel Led who had messed with the station, it was this guy, this druggie. He had shaken all of Belvaille with just his mind, or his spleen, or whatever he used. I couldn’t imagine how much energy that took. Thousands of buildings. An entire city. And it came from one man! After soaking all this in I finally spoke.

“Why…,” I began weakly. “Why the drugs?”

“It’s what he needs for his mutation,” Jyen said as she stood over her brother, who was now resting on the floor. “If he believes it, it exists. Anything.”

My tele went off and with trembling hands I took it out of my pocket. I saw it was Garm. I was about to answer when I looked up and saw Jyen coated in her patina of crackling electricity.

I dropped my tele as my forearm and hand were scorched.

“Hey, what are you doing?” I yelled.

“I asked if we could trust you,” she said, now only mildly charged. “You can’t tell anyone about this.”

“Why?” I said, spitting on my sizzling hand. “Don’t you know what he can do for us?”

“That’s what everyone says. That’s what the government said. But they just wanted to use Jyonal as a weapon.”

“Well…yeah,” I answered.

“He can do anything. Do you think the Colmarian Confederation is going to let him be just a regular citizen? This is him in recovery,” she said, pointing at the man lying on the floor.

“With a new body he had to create for himself after they practically destroyed his natural one.”

So that’s why these siblings looked so different.

“Why did you come to me? You don’t need me to stand up to a destroyer, you can just have your brother think it away.”

“He might be able to do that. But he can’t forever and they’ll keep looking for him. The drugs will eventually kill him, you know that. We just want to be left alone. Like you.”

I looked around the room and weighed what Jyen had just said. If I was a boss, like a galactic one, and there was a tool that could unmake everything I had done, I could see not wanting anyone to have it. And definitely not wanting it to have its own free will and decision-making ability.

And then it hit me.

“The Dredel Led are here for him. Not me.”

Jyen looked guilty.

“When I escaped with my brother, we tried to cover our tracks as best we could. But he can only make things he understands. Making a new body was hard enough,” she said, looking down at the wasted man. “But all the passports and clearances and permissions, they’re too complicated. Microscopic. We used my identity for a while until we could get forged credentials. I believe they may have tracked us here.”

“So,” I began awkwardly, “you guys going to leave now?”

“We need your help,” she said.

And I laughed. I realized it was a pretty bad move snickering in front of a twitchy level-four mutant and one of the most powerful entities in the galaxy—who also happened to be an addled drug user. But the concept was simply ludicrous.

“How can I possibly help you two? I should be asking you guys for help.”

“We’ve been imprisoned for the last thirty-something years,” she pleaded, and my smile immediately vanished. “We don’t know anything. Where would we go? How? It took everything we could do to get here and we were still followed. My brother is all I have. We want to be safe. We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

It was heartfelt. Those blue eyes were streaming tears. I didn’t know what to tell her.