They skipped town upon Rob’s return. Ben rode shotgun with him, while Olivia got the full back seat of the truck to herself. Even after Miya popped her wing back into her socket, her wing still ached with every bump and pothole in the road. Chris, Miya, and Amanda, none too keen on riding dead hooker in the back, took the backup vehicle they’d stolen from Fort Bird on the drive to Houston. North would retrace their steps, South would swiftly bring them to a hostile Mexican border, and East would drag them through Houston proper, so exhaustion and nightfall brought them West to another motel, on the Texas-New Mexico border.
Despite the lingering ache and discomfort in her back, along with stuffing her seven limbs in the back of a car, Olivia managed to catch some sleep for most of the drive. At first, she found herself confused during her waking moments when her neck got too sore or the driving brother had to hit the brakes, finding nothing but dry brown scrubland outside the tinted window. Where are the mountains? There aren’t even hills. It’s all the same. The road and hours stretched on and on just like the horizon hundreds of miles out, broken only by bathroom and gas stops until night fell.
They crammed their group of six into one room at the Red Sun Motel. Amanda looked like she’d been nodding off sitting on one of the twin beds. Those are some dark rings under her eyes. The screen of the computer on her lap let out a soft glow at a regular interval. She scooted over a couple inches for Olivia to sit down next to her and stretch her injured wing out. Olivia rested her good wing on Amanda’s opposite shoulder. I hope she doesn’t mind. Chris, by the window, kept an eye on the outside. Rob leaned against the mini-fridge with a grin. Grumbling, Miya threw herself down face first on the other bed.
Ben grinned. “You feelin’ alright?” he asked her, finally able to talk now that she wasn’t sleeping or running.
Olivia nodded. “Yeah. I’m kind of sore, but not bad.”
Ben grinned and gave her a light punch on the shoulder. “Good to have you back. Got borin’ without you.”
Olivia simply ducked her head down. “Thanks,” she mumbled.
Ben took a seat with his back against the night table by the edge of the bed. “So, how was your visit with Billy Science?”
“Huh?” Olivia’s head tilted to the side a few degrees as she stared at Ben in bafflement.
“Research place. With the science nerds.”
“Oh, well, you know. It wasn’t great. I really missed you guys,” she mumbled to the bedspread below her.
“Hey, we won’t let that happen again,” said Chris.
Olivia gave him a small smile, then continued, “There were guards everywhere and stuff. A lot of testing, too. I haven’t gone outside in a while.”
“Testing?” said Miya, a dark look on her face.
“No, stuff like memory tests and eyesight tests. And I learned some stuff. About me. It wasn’t all bad,” replied Olivia.
“Like what?” asked Amanda.
“Well, um, they think I’m fifteen years old or so.”
“Oh, wow, we were right,” said Amanda. “I guess that makes sense. That’s about the average age for triggers.”
“I’m supposed to get taller, too,” added Olivia.
“By how much?”
“I, um, I think they said between five and ten, no, fifteen inches,” replied Olivia. “And some medical stuff.”
“Any bad medical stuff?” asked Chris with concern.
“No. Well, maybe. I just have to watch out for a couple magic diseases. And cancer.”
Ben stopped smiling. “What?”
“Yeah,” said Olivia, averting eye contact again. “That’s a problem for ferals, apparently. I mean, I don’t have it right now, but that’s still, you know.”
Amanda wrapped an arm around Olivia’s waist. The room grew quiet for a minute. Thanks guys.
Olivia spoke up again. “Dr. Ruskov was nice. And Dr. Sullivan.”
“Was Dr. Sullivan the psychologist?” asked Chris. “Heard the name before.”
“Yeah. I liked her.”
“Really?” asked Miya.
“Yeah. She, you know, she listened to me. And stuff.”
Rob laughed, “Well, we gotcha outta there. No need to be scared of that no more.”
“So what happened to the doors?” Chris asked Amanda. “We were running for our lives from ferals”
Amanda threw up her hands in exasperation. “That’s what I’ve been working on this whole drive. I went over what I did about ten times on the drive. There’s no reason that should have happened. Did you notice anything weird while you were pretending to work?”
“No. Everything was behaving exactly as it did in the past week. None of the guards commented on anything strange with the systems.”
“Did you see or notice anything else? Anything at all.”
Chris shook his head. Well, it’s not technology stuff. Maybe I should say something. Maybe it’s stupid, but Amanda looks really upset. “There was that weird guy with metal eyes we saw,” said Olivia, nudging a confused Chris. “And those people in suits.”
“Metal eyes?” repeated Rob. “Suits?”
“We saw three people in suits waltzing through the chaos without a care in the world,” explained Chris. “They mentioned following an Overlord signal to us. I don’t know about metal eyes though.”
Olivia spoke up, “That creepy guy we met. Dr. Grey. He has metal eyes, not normal ones.”
“Fucking what?” asked Chris.
“You didn’t notice?”
“I noticed he was weird.”
“That sounds exactly like something Overlord would make,” explained Amanda. Oh. “We were cover. Overlord’s agent got out with whatever he could during the chaos, and as far as anyone knows we’re to blame.”
“How did they know what we were doing?”
“I don’t think they did. Or maybe he noticed me monkeying around. But the extra release commands came a minute after I opened Olivia’s cell.”
“How long was Dr. Grey working there, do you know?” asked Chris.
After a few keystrokes, Amanda replied, “Just over a decade. 2002.”
“Wasn’t there for ‘liv’,” said Ben. “Shit, that’s before the invasion. That’s a long con right there.”
“Invasion? Siberian?” asked Olivia. Is that a dumb question?
“No, Overlord puppeted the local dictator of Iraq in the nineties. It took a while for everyone to figure out. Officially the US invaded in 2004 for entirely humanitarian reasons to dislodge him,” said Chris.
“Yeah, from all those oil fields he was sittin’ on,” laughed Rob. Oh, oil, like what the robots smell like.
“Ok, we should have done this a month ago.” said Chris with a deep breath. “The moment we get our feet under us, we’re getting that tracker out of Olivia’s neck. Amanda, Miya, that’s you two. Rob, I know it’s a long shot but if you have any techie expertise to add, do it. If we keep jabbing his minions in the eyes, Overlord is going to notice us at some point.”
“I hear you,” said Rob. “I wanna live.” Miya nodded.
“I don’t think there’s a way to do it safely,” protested Amanda.
“Then find one. Even if it’s less than safe. We are not some forgotten minor project, god knows he has enough of those.”
Amanda bit back a retort and nodded.
“Sorry,” mumbled Olivia. I shouldn’t have fought that robot.
“You’re alright,” said Ben. “We just gotta problem solve.”
The conversation moved on to lighter small talk, saving Olivia from having to field too many questions herself. And stuff. Why am I so bad at talking? Ben reached behind him without looking and groped around for the TV remote on the nightstand. “Let’s turn our brains off for a bit. Objections?” he asked.
With no objections, he flicked on the TV and settled back. Everyone is so tired. With the murmur of the late night TV providing background noise, the group dozed off over the course of an hour. Just before Olivia lost consciousness, she heard a soft, deep snore from Chris, and Amanda leaning against her.
***
They took turns showering and ignoring the smell of mildew while the other five shared a gas station breakfast of muffins and energy drinks come morning. Olivia rolled her shoulder and wing, testing the much improved joint. She couldn’t fully stretch it without smacking Ben as he and Rob locked eyes and crumpled their empty cans on their foreheads. Why on Earth would you do that? she thought as they laughed.
Chris spoke up as they finished, “We’ll need a place to go. They’ll be expecting us if we head back to Westward, and they’ll be combing all of Texas for us as well.”
“I,” began Miya. She stopped and bit her lip. “Well, I was thinking.”
“What?” asked Ben.
Miya grimaced. “There were things I wanted to do in Arizona, Phoenix specifically. I figured if we needed a place to go, we’re already halfway there.”
“What do you mean by ‘things to do’?” asked Chris.
“I’ve got family there. I want to see if anyone else I know is still kicking around. And I’d like to see my old mentor.”
“Ok,” said Amanda. “When you say ‘see’?”
“I want to find out how and why Overlord came for me. I want to find out who is responsible, and if I can, get good old classic revenge,” she said, far calmer than Olivia would have expected.
“Mentor?” asked Olivia.
“Guy named Don,” said Miya.
“It’s as good a place as any. Do we have any problems with going to Phoenix?” Chris asked the group.
“Sure, no problem,” said Ben the instant Chris finished. Everyone looked at him. “What? Gotta stick out for each other.”
“OK, said Olivia.
Rob and Amanda shrugged. “Sure,” they said simultaneously.
Chris nodded. “Alright.” His gaze moved on to Olivia, who simply smiled and nodded. I’m just happy to be here. I’ve never been to Phoenix. I hope it’s not humid. “Phoenix it is.”
***
Can I do a roll like this? Olivia tucked in her right wing and rolled, relaxing her left wing. Wheee!
She rotated as she plummeted, the twinkling light of the city of Phoenix twisting around her. After reaching a decent speed, she snapped her wings back out and righted herself. Woohoo! It’s been forever since I could do stuff like this. I haven’t flown this long before, either. She circled over where she’d last seen the others on the last leg of their all day drive.
It took her a few minutes to find them parked at a dusty brick building, its roof pitted with corrosion. Beyond it lay heaps of twisted cars, old appliances, and other scrap lay in piles in a large stretch of dirt and gravel. Outside of the fence and barbed wire, wiry shrubs clung to life in the dry and rocky brown soil.
I wonder how fast I can stop. She tucked in her wings fully and dove headfirst towards the ground. The wind rushed past her face as she picked up speed. Once she got close to the ground, she snapped her wings back out as far as they could reach. Her wings yanked on her back once opened, and her neck jerked at the sudden deceleration. The wing joints in her back screamed in protest. Ow. That was stupid. No doing that again. She drifted the last few feet down, flapping her wings as she landed close to the cars and Chris.
“Hi, Olivia,” said Chris as he tugged a large backpack out of the back of Amanda’s car.
“Hi Chris! Need any help?” asked Olivia, lumbering over.
“Nah, this is the last thing. Amanda could yell at me to get more of her stuff later, but let’s ignore that. Oh, I think this last bag in here is yours. How was your flight?” he asked as he slung his pack over his shoulder.
She grabbed the small bag of her things they had packed before leaving Westward and followed Chris inside. “It was nice.”
“No trouble?”
“No.” Soon after leaving their motel, they hit mountains in New Mexico, keeping Olivia staring out the window until night fell and she could fly again. They discovered she couldn’t fly quite as fast as a car on the highway, but it beat more cramped hours in the back of a car. No, no more tight spaces. And flying is so much more fun than just sitting in a car. “What is this place?”
Now on ground level, she could make out the sign by the road which read “Cucaracha Recycling” with a smiling cartoon bug waving with a wrench. Another, on the roof, read “CASH 4 CANS”. Two colors of vertical bricks made up the wall, forming a zig zag pattern up and down with red and brown.
“And what’s that tree?”
“The tree?” asked Chris, squinting off into the dark. “That’s just a palm tree.”
“I’ve never seen one. It’s so weird,” Olivia replied.
“An old scrap yard. It looks like it’s out of business. Rob scurried off to the back the moment he saw it all,” explained Chris, tugging the metal door open. “I have no idea why, all this old scrap steel that wasn’t worth picking over. I also have no idea why Miya wants us here, or why she knew where the key was hidden.”
Inside, Olivia and Chris found the others, save Rob, dusting off old cots and getting settled in. The whole place was like the warehouse of their hideout back in Westward. Rubber feet of metal cot frames squealed as they rubbed against weathered concrete floors. The air conditioning shuddered to life, filling the room with a dull roar. The only difference Olivia noticed was the smell of different metals, rather than automotive chemicals.
“How did you know about this place?” Chris asked Miya as he set his backpack down.
“It’s safe. I used to crash here sometimes,” replied Miya.
“Not the only one,” observed Chris as he looked over the dozen cots against a wall, prodding her to elaborate.
She shrugged. “No one else is here now.”
“Clearly,” Chris grumbled.
Olivia studied Miya. She’s barely saying anything. Her neck and arm muscles seem a little stiff. Why is she so angry? I thought she wanted to be here. It’s home.
***
“Hey Olivia,” said Amanda the next morning, waving her over.
Olivia finished off the last bite of her breakfast sandwich. “Yes?” she answered.
The only other person in the building at the moment was Miya. While Olivia would have normally avoided disturbing Miya’s sleep, she’d heard her grumbling for the past ten minutes. Rob spent the entire night out back, and Chris and Ben had driven to a local gym, more for the showers than a workout.
“I’ve got something for you to see.”
“What is it?” asked Olivia, walking over to where Amanda had her laptops set up. She kneeled down next to her to get on eye level with the computer screens.
“I got all of that data they had on you in the research labs organized.”
“Oh. Wow. So,” Nothing bad, I hope. No tumors or anything, right?
“That includes the stuff on where you came from. They’ve got two lists. Missing persons and people off the grid.”
“Aren’t those, you know, the same thing?” Am I missing something?
“No, but there is overlap. Missing persons are people reported as missing. Off the grid means that the government doesn’t know their whereabouts. A couple girls on the off the grid list are from survivalist families or cult members. Those kinds of people wouldn’t tell the government that one of their own was missing.”
“So, who are they? I mean, the people on the lists.”
“There’s a lot. About twenty, and that’s just in the state of Colorado. They also considered people in neighboring states, though they are lower on the priority list. Other than that, I’m not quite sure on how they’ve assigned priorities.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hang on, let me pull up a random one from the missing persons,” said Amanda.
She scrolled through a list of files, then opened a folder. After taking a moment to look through the files within, she opened a picture. The girl in the picture glared back at Olivia and Amanda. She kind of looks like me. I guess. A little bit. But I don’t think so. From what Olivia could tell, the girl had short, greasy brown hair and some acne scarring on her cheeks. On another laptop, Amanda opened a document.
“This is Samantha Weiss. Runaway. Fifteen years old. Left home for a month before you woke up. Last seen four days before, reported missing by a friend the day of,” said Amanda, reading off of the second screen. “Cops said the friend checked out, no hidden motives or anything. Haven’t had any trace of her since. Not quite sure why she’s number two, that seems pretty indicative.”
Olivia reconsidered the picture. She looks so angry. Kind of reminds me of Miya, actually. She could be me. But, maybe she’s not.
“So, um, why is she number two? She doesn’t really look a lot like me.”
“Time frame fits rather well. Near perfect, actually. As for the physical thing, that can change, right? I almost guarantee you weren’t seven feet tall before. That, and hair color and eye color can change for anyone. Eye color is a bit irrelevant for you, and hair isn’t really meaningful in any way. My hair used to be lighter when I was a kid, for example.”
Olivia blinked and stared at the picture of Samantha. Eye color? Oh right, mine are silver. I know, I’m weird.
Amanda continued. “Her nose is long. You’ve got more of a button nose. And…” Amanda leaned in towards the screen. “Pull back your bangs, let me see your hairline,” she said, motioning towards her own forehead.
Um, OK. Where are you going with this? Olivia pulled back her hair.
Amanda took one look and said, “She’s got a distinct widow’s peak. You don’t. OK, I see what they’re doing now.” And that is?
Amanda returned her attention to her computer and typed something. After a moment, Olivia said, “So, um, what? Widow’s peak?”
“Hm?” said Amanda. She took her eyes off the screen to face Olivia. “Oh, that’s just an accentuated pointy bit in the middle of a hairline. But look at this.”
Amanda tapped the other screen. Olivia thought she was looking into a mirror for a second. The girl looked like she’d just finished a basketball game, if the uniform she wore, court behind her, and teammates in matching jerseys were anything to go by.
“This is Jaime Alsworth. Cops have her pegged as number one on the could-be-you list.”
Olivia opened her mouth, trying to think of something to say. She found her words after a moment. “She looks… she looks a lot like me.”
Amanda nodded. “Not a perfect match, but really close. She’s fifteen, and tall too. She’s a basketball player, in case you didn’t notice, just over six feet. Kidnapped four months before you popped up, a couple weeks before Christmas. No ransom demands or anything. Hadn’t been acting strangely before, remarkably little evidence as to what happened to her.”
“Four months? That’s a long time.”
Amanda pursed her lips for a moment. “Could have triggered because of captivity. Wouldn’t be the first time that’d happen. Kidnappers may have dumped you on the streets rather than deal with you.”
Olivia nodded. Wait, just thought of something. “I thought appearance wouldn’t be a good indicator. Because, you know.” I’m a big monster thing.
“The odds of taking someone’s face, adding dragon, and getting someone else’s face, to that extent?” Amanda pointed to the picture. “That’s rather unlikely. And she’s not an exact match. Her cheekbones are less pronounced, her face shape as a whole is a bit more round, and those are some substantial eyebrows she’s got. Little differences. There’s one more they’ve got flagged as possible matches.” But she could be me! Wow, that’s kind of weird to think about.
The first was a small, mousy girl. The picture of her was from when she was eight, but they didn’t have a more up to date picture. Her parents had joined an anti metahuman cult in the mountains, and she hadn’t been seen since. However, the aging estimate the police had used also looked similar enough to warrant her being on the list.
“Her name is Judy? Fuck those parents. That’s an old lady name,” commented Amanda. “So we’ve got three names to go off of for now. Samantha, Jaime, and Judy,” said Amanda. “Once we get back, we can start whittling down the list.”
“Wow. Um, thanks! Thank you so much, Amanda!” She wrapped an arm around Amanda’s shoulders.
Amanda grunted as Olivia hugged. “No problem.” I didn’t come close to breaking any bones. See? I’m learning.
Olivia heard an insistent grumble from Miya. Eventually, the grumbling clarified into intelligible words. “Too early for cheery-ness. What time is it?”
“Nine o’clock,” answered Amanda.
“Fuck that. Be quiet,” said Miya, raising a middle finger in their general direction. Someone is grumpy.
“You’re the one who wanted to be here,” Amanda pointed out.
Miya grumbled as she sat upright and ran a hand through her black hair, finally growing out a few inches. “Need a haircut,” she said. “Get it styled at least. I miss my old one.”
“You used to have it grown out?”
“I didn’t shave my head. I used to have it down to my shoulders. It got to be too much of a pain when it got longer.”
“Even then I don’t know how you two stand it,” said Amanda. You two? Oh, me. “That much hair drove me insane.”
“You shove your head in that helmet. Of course it would,” said Miya.
“That, and burning hair smells awful,” said Amanda.
Olivia and Miya looked at her. “Um,” began Olivia. Why would your hair light on fire? That’s not a good thing.
“What? I kept it long once, and it always got caught in soldering irons whenever I was trying to concentrate when I was working. That’s why I keep it to a couple inches. And besides, why is your hair always messed up?” Amanda asked Olivia. “Don’t you ever do anything with it?”
“I comb it, like you showed me,” replied Olivia.
“Nothing else?”
“Well, why? It will just get messed up when I fly.”
“But doesn’t it get in the way?” asked Miya.
“Um, maybe? I never noticed it before.”
“Braids are easy. Trust me, it’ll keep it much more organized even if you fly.”
The front door opened, and Chris and Ben walked in. Chris nodded to the three of them. Ben waved and said, “Hola.” They tossed their towels and bags to their own cots and joined the girls around Amanda’s setup.
“What’d we miss?” asked Ben.
“Girly girl talk. Hair and boys and stuff,” grunted Miya.
“So nothing,” said Ben.
“Yes,” confirmed Miya. She looked longingly at her cot. But… we did talk about stuff. Not nothing.
“You just wake up?” asked Ben.
“Yes. Fuck mornings. Why does everyone else wake up so easily?”
“Damn it, that reminds me, forgot to shave,” said Chris, running a hand over the stubble on his face.
“Sucks to suck. I shave maybe once a week,” said Ben.
Miya smiled. “I don’t have to shave. Sucks to suck.”
Chris sighed. “I hate you all. I have to shave. Even this stubble is too itchy. I had a real beard once,” Chris continued. “Didn’t take that long to grow.”
Olivia, Ben, and Miya all blinked simultaneously. “You? The boy scout? Really?” said Miya, first to recover. Ben grinned at Chris as Olivia tilted her head to the side a little. I’m with Miya. Really?
Chris smiled. “Yeah. I lost a bet with a couple of my buddies. I couldn’t shave or trim it for two months, no matter how stupid or scraggly it turned out. I’d never grown it out before so we had no idea. The color of my beard was brown for some reason,” he said, motioning towards his blond hair. “But the best part was in the last week before the bet ended, my barber, some Vietnamese lady, messed up my order and just shaved my head. I looked like a psycho murderer for that whole week.”
“Please tell me you got a picture of that,” said Ben, bouncing in his seat in anticipation.
Chris sighed, the smile still on his face. He leaned back in his chair and dug out his phone. “Yeah, give me a second.” He tapped a couple buttons. “Here it is.”
He passed around the phone. Miya and Ben snorted in laughter when they saw it. Olivia looked. In the picture, Chris smiled at the camera. He had about half an inch of hair on his head, maybe half the length of the thick brown hair on his face. Olivia smiled. He looks kind of funny. I barely recognize him. Olivia passed Chris’s phone back to him.
“Academy let you get away with that?” asked Ben, still with an incredulous grin. The what?
“No. God no.” Chris shuddered. “Instructors would have beat the shit out of me for that. No, that was in high school.”
“Um, excuse me? Academy?” asked Olivia. Is this a dumb question?
“School for powered kids,” explained Ben. “Expensive, but I’ve heard it’s good.”
“Yeah, basically,” said Chris. “They help you figure out what your power does and how well it would fit in a field of your choosing. It’s basically a less militaristic ROTC. Find one in almost any college. I went through the MHU training course they run. Full year of modified basic training, really. Power is fucking with your vision, here’s what you do. Golem attacking? Here’s what you do. Had to take a couple classes too.”
“Amanda, you do that too?” asked Miya.
She shook her head. “A bachelor’s in computer science and a master’s in physics. Academy is accredited for everything.” Ben whistled.
“Well that’s not fair, your power is basically electrical engineering on crack, right?” asked Miya.
“Pretty much.”
Ben nudged Chris with a grin. “Where’s your degree?”
Chris shrugged. “I don’t pretend to understand, I just shoot things.”
“I didn’t think they’d have stuff to help powered kids like that,” said Olivia. That sounds really cool, actually.
“Powers don’t matter. Gotta help people. Supers’ve been ‘round since the dawn of time,” said Ben.
“Yeah,” said Chris. “You go to the old places of the world, like Egypt or Turkey or Iraq, there’s some strange, strange stuff there. And when I say old, I mean when humans were first figuring out putting seeds in the ground makes plants grow kind of old.”
“Like what?”
“In Turkey, there’s this strange time warp thing. Throw something through and it comes out five thousand years older on the other side. No one knows where it came from, but archaeologists and historians say it’s been shrinking, thank god. In Pakistan they found a perfect sculpture of a human brain carved sometime before the Pyramids were built.”
“Oh yeah, like Stonehenge?” said Ben.
“Um,” began Olivia. I’ve seen the Pyramids mentioned in other places. Never heard of Stonehenge though.
“Stonehenge is a sort of stone circle,” Chris explained to her. “It’s been untouched for thousands of years. Anyone who goes in the outer circle freaks out for at least a week. The rocks aren’t weathered, they practically look brand new, and the altar in the center glows during certain celestial events. There’s two others in France, right?”
Miya and Ben shrugged. “Hell if I know. How do you know so much about this stuff?” asked Miya.
“I took some history of meta-human classes in the Academy. I thought it was interesting, at least.”
The conversation trailed off. After a moment, Ben said, “We have stuff to do today?”
“Miya, you know the lay of the land better than anyone else, you have an idea of what we need to do?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you OK?” asked Olivia.
“Just thinking. I should probably visit my family here, see if they know anything. Not looking forward to it.” Why not? Or is that a bad question?
“Do you want someone to come with you?”
Miya shrugged. “If you want. Probably won’t take long.”
“Oh. I’ll come with you if you want,” volunteered Olivia.
Miya shrugged again. “Sure. If you want.”
“I’ll drive,” said Chris.
Stone Burners 