James Moore - Subject Seven

Hunter shook his head. “Are you serious? Who the hell called the cops?” His voice cracked as he spoke and Gene couldn’t decide if he was laughing or crying as he raised his hands above his head.

“Silent alarm, buddy. This floor is off-limits.” The first policeman moved closer as he spoke and reached for a pair of handcuffs fastened to the back of his belt.

Everyone tried speaking at once. Kyrie said she wanted her father. Gene started trying to argue that they were supposed to meet someone at that location. Tina used enough profanity to make a whole crew of construction workers blush.

Hunter shook his head and got a strange look on his face. His face twitched and the shape of his jaw warped slightly, growing broader. His eyes grew darker, then flickered for just a moment toward Cody, and the other boy let out a soft grunt that would have been ignored completely if Gene hadn’t watched the silent exchange.

Hunter just shot a look and Cody made a noise. Gene stared harder, not resisting as the officer cuffed him. He stared hard at Cody and then understood. No, he thought. Not Hunter. Joe. Joe’s maybe different from the others. He just woke up Cody’s Other. Gene looked toward where Hunter had been standing and saw that he was right. Joe had taken the other boy’s place.

Sure enough, Cody doubled over, his face twisted by the sudden pain of growing. Every teenager gets aches and pains, a good number of them caused by bones growing longer fast enough to cause discomfort. That means in a few months the teen might grow a whole inch or maybe two. Cody’s entire skeleton grew, as it did every time the transformation took place. All of them grew when they changed, but the one who had the biggest difference in size was Cody.

His small groan became a growl and the cops who were in the process of restraining people looked his way, not understanding what was happening.

Cody’s eyes were aimed at the ground and he laughed, his normally soft voice much deeper than it should have been, his face twisted into a strange smile.

“They aren’t cops. Look at their shoes. These assholes aren’t cops!” Cody’s voice was a harsh barking laugh.

Gene looked down at the feet standing behind him. The uniform was right, but the police officer was wearing loafers. They weren’t standard issue with any police officer he’d ever seen, especially since they were the wrong color.

“You shut your face, kid. You’re in enough trouble already.” The man behind Gene spoke with a sharp, stern warning in his voice.

Cody grunted and laughed and fell forward, catching himself on his hands instead of falling on his face. His hands were too big. His arms were heavily muscled. His hair, always a little longish, fell in front of his eyes but wasn’t long enough to hide the broad face. Cody was a thin boy. The boy standing in his place was anything but skinny.

Gene fought off that strange nausea that hit him every time he thought about the impossible changes and felt his knees grow weak.

Behind him the man cuffing him let out a squeak of surprise. “What the hell?”

“I’m in enough trouble already?” His voice was a deep rumble of thunder in comparison to Cody’s usual squeak. He stood up and the man behind Gene let out a watery moan. “You ain’t seen trouble yet.”

Another of the cops let out a scream, and Gene turned just in time to see Joe Bronx flip the uniformed imposter through the air. The man slammed into the floor hard enough to rattle his teeth, and Gene got a look at the stunned expression on the face. The man had the wind knocked out of his sails.

Half a second after that, the giant that had been Cody reached past him and grabbed the cop’s face like a pro would grab a basketball. His fingers completely covered the man’s upper face and head and Gene could see the muscles in Not-Cody’s hand flex and strain even as the guard screamed.

Not-Cody lifted the man off the ground by his face. He didn’t even break a sweat. His arm didn’t show any strain at all as he hefted the guard-a good 185 pounds of meat and bone-into the air and pulled him closer.

“Tell me about the trouble I’m in. Go ahead, tell me!” Not-Cody looked at Gene, and the eyes that scanned him seemed to take his measure and decide he wasn’t a problem. Gene was okay with that. He figured if he didn’t get the monster’s attention, he might be okay.

Joe moved fast, slapping aside the one who’d handcuffed Tina like he was wrestling with a toddler. The man staggered back and flopped to the ground, still breathing but very obviously unconscious. Joe wasn’t smiling this time. He seemed dedicated to getting this done as quickly as he could.

The Cody monster used his free hand to pull the keys from the fake cop’s belt buckle and a moment later dropped the man to the ground. A second after that, he was behind Gene, and despite his best efforts to be brave, Gene’s whole body shook. The last thing he wanted or needed was for the bruiser to decide he didn’t like Gene. He knew he wouldn’t survive the encounter.

Instead of killing him or breaking his arms, Not-Cody patted his shoulder. “Free as a bird.”

Gene managed to get a shaky “Th-Thanks” out of his mouth despite the dusty dryness caused by panic.

Not-Cody laughed and patted his shoulder again. “ De nada, hombre. ”

Gene shook his hands out and felt where the cuffs had pressed for a moment as he looked around the room.

Joe had dropped the other guards and was uncuffing Tina. Impossible. The whole thing was crazy. What had been Cody looked around with a dark, twisted expression. Gene knew the expression and understood it: back when he was younger, he’d hung around with a kid named Mike Berrington. Mike had been, well, he’d been a sick freak. He liked to burn bugs with a lighter or with a magnifying glass or whatever he could find. He’d watch them burn and he’d get a look on his face that meant he was enjoying it.

Not-Cody wore that expression. Gene wasn’t conscious of rubbing his arms in an effort to get warm, but that was exactly what he did. The look on Not-Cody’s face chilled him that much.

Joe looked his way and grinned. The gesture was cheerful enough, but there was still that underlying sense of threat.

“You okay, Gene?” The voice was completely different from Hunter’s. It wasn’t just the face or body, it was everything. He heard Joe speak and that, as much as anything else, made it clear. He wasn’t Hunter on steroids or Hunter under the full moon. Joe lived in the same physical space as Hunter. Only one of them could occupy that space at a single time, but he was no more Hunter than Gene was.

“She’s not here.” Joe looked from one of them to the next. “Evelyn Hope decided to cut her losses and run.”

“Why? You think she’s running from us?” He was looking right at her, but it took Gene a moment to realize Tina had spoken.

Joe shrugged his broad shoulders. “Don’t know. She might want to run from us or she might want to put together a better team for taking us down.”

“Wait a minute.” Gene held up his hand. “You think she’s the one behind all of these guys?”

“Who else?” He looked around again and frowned at Not-Cody. The other oversized boy looked at him for a second and dropped the fake cop he’d picked up. Not-Cody looked like a kid who was told he had to wait until Christmas morning to unwrap the presents he was looking at under the tree.

“Listen, Evelyn Hope has answers. She may not want to share them, but she has them, and if any of us would like to have a normal life, we need to confront her.”

Joe was talking, getting into the subject, and he didn’t notice as the door behind him opened. The door led, according to the light above it, to the stairs. One figure stepped out, dressed in black and toting two police-style billy clubs.