Soda supreme, p.19
Soda Supreme, page 19
“Move in time to just before the wall of white.”
That was interesting, since Hannah had never even considered doing that before. She’d looked into the future, or the present, but never the past. She saw it, anyway. The man, who was older, and Japanese looking, was in his lab. The same one that Hannah had seen before. To the side of the room was a device or machine, a thing of plastic and metal, that caused the wall of white, as soon as he tapped a button on the front.
Debbie gasped.
“He can block psychic perception? With a machine? I’d ask how, but he’s Hitoshi... Still, what do we do now?” It was clear that the room was being asked, not Hannah.
Which was good, since she didn’t have any idea at all.
Kate, Wisp, spoke then.
“Hannah, find him. Find where he has to be, in that blocked area. Then we’ll go and get him.”
That didn’t work, even if it was a great plan. Hannah could feel a zone where she couldn’t look and even go to it, before that. It was a forest. It looked like... A bunch of trees. When she went to the nearest town, some distance to the west, she eventually managed to read a single sign.
“Eagle Creek Lumber?”
She wasn’t the one speaking, having had to trace out the letters, one by one, in the air, with her hand. The right one, even if she normally used the left for that kind of thing.
The next trick was, even after getting a map, neither of their two teleporters, Kate or Devya, could move into the area. In the end they had to get with Red Cape and Green Running Guy, to try to go in. If that did anything at all, no one bothered to tell Hannah about it.
Then she stood up, as everyone left. One by one. She nodded, understanding the idea.
“To protect the cities.”
Devya, who was staying there with her, nodded.
“I need to get to Houston, speaking of that. They lost half their police force. We’re hoping that a strong early presence of people in uniform on the streets will stop rioting. Not everyone is upset that half the cops are dead. Some groups are already online saying they need to capitalize on this.”
She nodded, since it was the kind of thing that super types probably had to deal with, given the situation.
Hannah sighed, and opened her eyes. Feeling useless.
“Go. I’ll, sit here and do nothing of any real use?”
Devya glanced at Terry, and shook her head.
“She honestly thinks that being the only person able to find Hitoshi is nothing? This isn’t a problem we can fix with punching, Hannah. You two work out what’s needed to save lives and make it happen? People are going to be freaked out right now. To a lot of people, the police are the only thing keeping them safe. Now most of the bravest are gone. Their families are alone and may not even know that their dad, brother or wife is dead. I can’t do a thing about any of that. I have to focus on doing what little bit I can do something about. We all do.”
Then, slowly, she set up for a movement, and vanished.
Hannah noticed the feeling of it. It was like what Kate did, but not as quick. Every part of her was claiming to be in a different place, the sense of that growing more powerful, until it clicked, and the woman suddenly was.
When people moved objects, it was actually the same thing. Hannah had felt it happen before, a dozen times or more. There was a sense of movement, of an object being in a different place, only in a more constant and linear fashion. So the object followed its instruction, and moved to where it was told it was. It wasn’t a vast power, except that she couldn’t do it.
At least, she didn’t think she could. That, not believing in herself enough to really try, might be what was stopping her, of course. A lot of life was turning out to be like that.
Only she and Terry were left. Hannah wasn’t hungry, but she nodded, and stood up, her legs stiff as she moved off to the kitchen, piled a few slices on a plate for herself, then did the same for Terry.
There were also plastic two liters of generic soda in the kitchen. So she had a glass of something clear, and provided one for her friend as well, making two trips to get it all done.
Terry, for her part, sighed.
“So, we just make stuff up and fix the world?”
That got a grin, even if a lot of people had died that night. Probably the people who had attacked her, as well. Which, if that was the case, meant that she could go and fix her arm, as well as all the bruising, from the fight in the van. No living people meant no court case. At least she thought that was how it worked.
“No? I know what Devya said, but I have nothing for this. This isn’t something that can be fixed with food banks, or by telling people it’s all right. Even if it was, no one is going to listen to us about it. We need to get ready for social unrest, I guess? That, the idea that people may riot, that sounds real, doesn’t it? That Hitoshi is behind this also seems real, but... Why? He was never a mass killer before.”
Her friend, a fellow socialite, didn’t know. It wasn’t easily found in a Google search, either. Hitoshi wasn’t online at all, as far as they could work out. The only thing listed for that name was a brand of toasters out of Japan.
So, after a bit, they sat and ate, then Hannah stood up, and tried to think about what she needed to do. A thing that was obvious, once she worked on it for half an hour.
“Duh. I have a team.” She kind of did, even if they didn’t have a clever name.
“Numbers, Terry. We need to call our peeps.”
That got her stared at, but the woman grabbed her phone, gamely enough. Using phones to get things done simply made sense to her. Probably to their entire generation.
“Who? Lara? Verthala and Candice?”
That made no sense, but they were friends of theirs, so it got a nod.
“Yeah, them. Also Reese, Gregory, Tara, The Rook, Marxist... Alex Darius. You know, all our pals?” She grinned, since it wasn’t a real thing, being more of a thing to do than anything else.
Terry had to look up one of the numbers, but had it in her phone.
“Uncle Alex? It’s Terry.”
That wasn’t a real thing, just a sign that Terry Lamond’s family was close to the man.
Enough so that the girl didn’t have to give her last name.
“No, we’re good here, for now, but we might have to move people to your bunker. I’m calling to check in with you. Hannah is getting with all her special team. That’s you, some social butterflies and a bunch of kids, so far?” Terry grinned, which showed in her voice.
There was an audible chuckle, on the other end of the line. Then some words.
“We think that it was Hitoshi. No one knows why. Anyone with that Supreme stuff in their system is dead or dying. If they can get inside a faraday cage, that might block the signal. Hannah found that for us. The kill order is electro-magnetic in nature. Probably a low-frequency radio signal. That’s just a guess, though.”
They made plans, to stay in touch, as well as an offer to have the entire team, and their families, in at his compound, if it became needed.
Hannah, a bit awkwardly, dialed Reese.
“Hello?”
“Reese? It’s Hannah. We have an update on what’s going on.” She spelled it all out, not caring if the bad guys knew what she did, at the moment. They already did, most likely.
When she was finished, the voice that came back, sounded hard.
“Standing by. Let me know what we’re doing.”
“As soon as I have a real plan, I will.”
Gregory was at The Society’s headquarters, since he lived there. They, of course, had tried to get him to go to bed, as if it wasn’t way too early for that, being before ten, on a Friday. At least she thought it was Friday. She honestly wasn’t certain.
“Well, you don’t take orders from them. You take orders from me, and then June, in that order. Right now, you’re running errands. Inside the building there, unless it’s an emergency. Make sure everyone has coffee, food, and that messages are passed if it’s needed. Don’t get clever. If a problem comes up, pass it on to the adults, if at all possible. If not, get with me, directly. Are you in touch with Alistair?”
There was no real pause, just a gasp.
“I haven’t been, but... Al!” The phone hung up then.
~I’m with Greg now, Hannah. Nothing much new. I’ll keep you updated?~
“Do it. Thanks, Al.”
Kara was already with The Underdogs, having figured that being at the food bank with a bunch of people with powers was probably safer than being at home. Her entire family was there. She was put to work, doing up food, drinks and organizing a watch for the building. Just with regular people outside. That, and four of Tinner’s golems.
So far, the neighborhood seemed to be fairly quiet. The news was talking about the deaths, but had only just started to notice how many of them were police officers. A lot of the rest, it seemed, were gang members.
The weird part for Hannah was calling The Rook, Marxist and Meathead. They seemed shocked to hear from her, and even more so to get an update with real information. Still, Marxist picked things up the fastest, and made a considering sound.
“We need to get word out that people are picking up the slack, with the cops down like this. Who do we have who can get with the press?”
Hannah froze for a moment, thinking he might mean her, but then she shook her head.
“Liberty and Superion X, from The Society... Wisp from The Requiem...” They were all public figures, so could do the work, and leave the others hidden. “I can see if The Defiant have someone who can do that? I have a contact that way at least. Um... I can see if The High Command are available, too. Let me put a call in?”
He tapped something. It sounded like a keyboard.
“Okay... I can generate some talking points. We need something simple. Stay calm, work together and that the various teams are out on the streets, to back up the police?”
It was a better plan than she’d come up with on her own, so she nodded.
“The Underdogs, too? I’ll set things up here. You get twenty minutes to put that together.” She hung up. Leaving Terry to call the other boys.
Hannah had to find press resources, as well as getting in touch with the various people they wanted and telling them where to be, when, and sending the speech along. It wasn’t a lot, really, as much as it felt like she was busy, constantly, until nearly two in the morning. There were faces, ones with masks on, and some police officers, on all the news channels, constantly. They sounded reassuring, if worried.
Then... Nothing happened, for the rest of the night. Terry was still there, and they both managed to sleep, but even the next morning, no one was all that into getting with Hannah de Peyser to save the world. Which was kind of a relief. Not that she’d thought anyone would be doing that, but she literally had nothing going on that way at all.
She exercised, practicing against bots in VR, for both guns and knives, then after working on meditation and holding a trance state, tried to move a ball of paper on her coffee table. Largely out of boredom. That took a while, and since she had her eyes closed, and was in a very deep state, she didn’t notice anything happening.
All she was doing was trying to shift the paper to the right, about four inches, then to the left. It felt like it was taking place, if very slowly. She was, she thought, making the needed connection, but it took forever for the sense of movement to grow in strength to a level that there was a sense of flow.
She didn’t stop until some time later, when she heard clapping.
That got her to snap her eyes open, to find Kate, dressed as Wisp, with her mask off, and brown curly hair pulled back, to show her smiling face.
“You did it!” She pointed at the paper, which was, clearly, a few inches to the left of where it had started.
Hannah laughed.
“Ha! Who has superpowers now, bitches? I can, very slowly, move a tiny piece of paper. Oh, yeah, I’m good...” Her voice trailed off at the end, seeming chagrinned.
Her friend moved in and hugged her.
“Sure, but if you can do the paper, you can do the table. If you can move it to the side, you can move it straight up. The field needs to be stronger, but practice will help with that. How did you figure it out?”
She pointed at the table as if Hannah might miss what was meant.
“I learned it from watching you!” She was pretending to be dramatic but it was actually true, really. “More to the point, from watching you and Devya do things, while I was in a trance. Lashondra told me once that there was only one human psychic ability, which is basically observing tiny things. So, I wondered if I could use the bit that I have to change the location information of something. So far it seems really slow. That... Well, I don’t have a real power, so...”
Kate shrugged.
“Who defines what a power is? I mean, you just made an object move, with your mind, at a distance and did it on purpose. It isn’t flying, yet, or teleportation, but put even what you just did, paired with your ability to find things and to act in the future and you might be able to do a lot of things that I can’t. I mean, sure, if it takes you three days to move a knife ten feet, that won’t do a lot, but do that in a minute, and get it onto the floor, in the right place for the bad guy to step on, or even avoid, and it might change things a lot.”
She smiled at her friend.
“That... Sounds almost impossible.”
“So? It was just one idea. There must be a lot more. Plus, how many times have you tried this before? Moving stuff?”
“This was the first. It hasn’t really come up. Well, once, but I wasn’t used to being in a trance them. When Lash tested me? Nothing happened.”
That got a snort.
“So, you can probably do at least a hundred times more than this, in both speed and power, with practice! Maybe a lot more than that. The power I have isn’t unnatural, just an extreme version of what anyone can do. Most powers are like that, really. Honestly, here, move the table. No flaking out, either. Focus on the field, the sense of movement.”
That meant her closing her eyes, and going a lot deeper than she had been. It wasn’t fast, either. About fifteen minutes later, Kate clapped again.
“Boom! There we go. You have the feeling for what’s needed now? Just go straight to that, each time.”
That made it seem easy, and it wasn’t, at all. Still, she was, after a few hours, able to make the table move around, slowly, with her eyes open. Terry came out about then, having just gotten out of the shower.
“I need to go to work. Are the streets safe enough for that?”
Kate waved.
“I think so? I’m heading that way anyway, so I can take you? I got sidetracked. Hannah was moving things with her mind and that’s kind of my area, so, you know, training. We just need to get you up to speed that way Terry...”
The slightly plump girl rolled her eyes.
“Sounds good. I’ll get right on that, after I learn to make my own drones. Tyler has me on that, today. I can do the hardware, since that’s just plug and play stuff, but he wants me to program the thing, too. That’s harder. Anyway, I’ll check in, if I hear anything?”
Wisp, putting her mask back on, nodded.
“Do that. So far things seem calmer today. There were a few small riots, last night. Nothing big. Tonight should be fine, given that?”
Hannah thought, held up a finger, then went back into a deep state. Then she tried to see what would be happening. It was hard to get her conscious mind out of the way, knowing the question already. She did that though, eventually.
“New York City, Chicago, Miami, Seattle, Portland... All of them will have a lot of fire and shooting going on. Starting at about dark, for all of them.”
Wisp made a frustrated sound.
“Crap. Call all of that in then, Damsel? With everyone. It’s not great, but being ready for it is better than not.”
Then, taking Terry by the hand, they both vanished. Almost instantly. It made a popping sound.
Hannah just sat there for a moment, in wonder at the show of power. A thing that suddenly meant a lot more to her than it had before.
Then she started to make those calls. People needed to know what might be coming, after all.
Chapter thirteen
Feeling a bit frustrated, and a little useless, Hannah made a call that she had to look up the number for. The hard way, using a fantastically deep trance state. Zero One, from the Khan Collective wasn’t listed anywhere, after all. He had a land line, wherever he was, but that was connected to satellite relays and something like four people in the whole world actually had the means to contact him. One of those was a woman whose entire job was to collect information from other people and call it in to the man, four times a day.
Thankfully, even if Hannah had used the trick before, the man kept a copy of the thirty-six-digit code in his safe. She had to work that out carefully, since there was no one available to help her get it, but it only took about half an hour.
She grinned, since that was a long time to find a phone number, really.
Still, she had information and no one else was willing to even talk to her about it. She’d tried to call the CIA, but no one had picked up for her. Liberty had snorted at her and basically told her to go bake some cookies...
As if Hannah could do something that complex in a kitchen. Also, it had clearly been meant to be rude. June was stressed, so she got it, but she’d picked up, and then researched, some real information. A thing that would possibly impact millions of lives. Maybe even save hundreds of thousands.
It just had nothing to do with the United States.
So, using her burner phone, after heading out into the city, she dialed the number carefully, from the half sheet of paper it was written on. It took a while to go through the relays, and didn’t ring for nearly three minutes. When it did, a man’s voice came after no more than two cycles.
“Hello?”
“Grab a pen. Paper, too. Message incoming.”
The man, head of a secret crime organization that pretended to be revolutionaries, or possibly a group of revolutionaries who dabbled in crime, simply listened to the strange voice.
