Zosma Read online

  “He’s lying to you, he has to be.” Allister trekked to her, rapt in her amethyst skin’s smoothness. He took her hand, traced her fingers. “Please,” he pleaded, “listen to me. Stay here. We can help you. I can help you break free.”

  Her slanted eyes straightened. The mean grey color in them, the cloudy grey belonging to Dr. Giro’s power, dissolved. She blinked at their mingling anatomy and guided his coarse, soiled palm to her face. “I fear I am not myself.”

  Though poisoned by Dr. Giro’s influence on the inside, her intoxicating scent had endured. The chemicals in Earth’s atmosphere interacted with Zosma’s epidermal cells to produce a blend similar to warmed honey, lemon, and ginger.

  Thumping boots on the pavement broke their embrace. Zosma pushed him out of harm’s way and a thin field reflected plasma blasts back at the charging U.S. soldiers. Darkness and frustration returned to her brow. “I come to kill the heathen who seeks to sabotage their survival and they attack me?” she bellowed, hovering higher. “I suppose even the ungrateful must be saved.” At sonic speed, she ditched lowered altitude and vanished beyond the afternoon’s blue.

  “Look what you did!” he snarled at the soldiers. “She was telling me about C20!” He squatted on his toes, hands together in faux prayer and pressed to his lips. Deep breaths cooled his body and returned him to center. “I was so close.”

  “Were you?” A deep, sarcastic voice asked.

  Veiled in none other than Hunter Steele’s burly shadow. “Yeah, I was,” Allister snapped. “Surprised you’re here. Last I heard they fired you.”

  “Last I heard they put you in time-out.” Hunter’s glare dissolved into a painful grimace. Metal crept across his knuckles, twisting up to his biceps. Fully equipped, his arm peeled back.

  Allister thrust his chest out and pulled his arms back, preparing for the detective’s swing.

  “Hey, mate, leave ‘im alone,” a man said in an Australian accent.

  “If it isn’t my favorite CEO, Bazzo Sparks. How you been ole’ buddy?” Hunter asked, never taking his eyes off of Allister.

  “I’ll be better when Dr. B tears you a new one,” he spat.

  The Belladonna’s defense jet purred as it descended to the street, where it was welcomed by a sea of upended vehicles and military personnel. Down the hatch Florence marched, sword hitched to her waist, doing her best to hide irregular strides in a leather one-piece. Allister and Hunter sidelined their brewing physical altercation.

  “Detective Steele, what’s going on here?” she asked. “I have orders from the president—”

  “I have orders too, sweetheart,” Hunter jeered, “from the director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs.” He motioned to the soldiers and their weapons aimed to injure. “You coming the easy way or the hard way?”

  “I make one call and you’ll be on Cynqued jobs by morning.” Inches from his face Florence poked his metal chest. “This can’t be your jurisdiction.”

  “Really?” His hands spread to the destruction around them. “Superhuman sightings? Alien refugee gone rogue? C20 on state soil? I think it is. Let’s face it; you three already look like shit. So how about just surrender.”

  Armed air tanks aimed at them. A good hundred troops, decorated in varied ranks, ached to prove themselves. A two-mile-wide perimeter barricaded by the Coast Guard hadn’t allowed civilians, media, firefighters, or law enforcement to breach it.

  “We’ll go!” Allister said. “We’ll go with you. As long as I get a private meeting with President DeVries.”

  Florence twirled around and whispered to him, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “And you can escort us,” he continued, cracking his neck, then his knuckles. “But we take the jet.”

  “Are you loony?” the man named Bazzo protested too loud.

  “He’s smart.” Hunter smiled. “Smarter than both of you, at least. You heard him ladies and gents, we’re heading to Chicago.” He pointed two fingers at his eyes and at them. “I’m keeping an eye on the hardware.” The detective retreated to a squad transport utility helicopter and hollered, “You’ll get your meeting, kid. Don’t you worry!”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing Allister,” Florence mumbled.

  “I have no idea. I’m just taking a page outta your book and playing by their rules.”

  U.S. Airspace

  Padded yellow leather cushions made the ride a tad more comfortable than the cabin’s stuffy atmosphere. Allister slouched in a rear-facing seat, adamant about existing in silence. Bazzo’s back was to him. Florence rode in the cockpit, unwilling to discuss the fallout.

  Zosma’s initial reaction to his arrival stung something vicious. A black hole opened in his heart, and upon its collapse, he crumpled the chair’s arm. “Sorry,” he muttered to no one. He loosened his grip, attempted to reshape it, and gave up in the absence of Florence’s outrage. The aluminum had been crinkled beyond repair.

  The nerve, asking why he’d looked for her when the reasons were clear as day. Because they’d spent two weeks traveling across Europe living in sexual bliss and emotional freedom. Because they’d learned about the Earth and its beauty in unison. Because during their last encounter she underwent a traumatizing transformation from human (Leesa) to Uragonian. Because he’d transported them to space, to save her and the Earth. Because he’d lost her and felt responsible. Because her eye color haunted him.

  Brandt didn’t lie to him during their skirmish in Cumberland Falls. Zosma was alive. Not just alive, she was living, breathing, speaking, flying. To inhale the smell of hot tea on a winter morning, to perceive the cosmos through round shivering windows, to feel ten thousand degrees of desire, and to hear words spoken with otherworldly inflection. Proof Brandt didn’t lie. When her white cape became undistinguishable among Florida’s puffy cumulus clouds, he knew he’d given up too soon. He could’ve done more to make her stay, or at least done more to help her remember Dr. Giro’s treachery. But what better way to make Earth her new home than to help power the generators and save the planet? Dr. Giro had given her purpose, and it occurred to Allister that she craved purpose more than pleasure.

  Cheeks tickled by the brief instant where her touch was all that mattered, his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat and tinkering fingers agitated the disfigured metal. His hand yanked to his lap.

  “You must be Allister, heard a lot about ya,” the Australian man said. “Name’s Bazzo.”

  Turning his head at snail’s speed, Allister replied, “Yeah. I know who you are.” His elbow fastened to the window sill, and he wedged his chin between his thumb and forefinger, peering down at deteriorating Midwestern states.

  Bazzo hastily switched chairs to sit beside him. Though his right eye had been decorated in purples and blacks, he seemed intent on staring a hole through Allister’s temple.

  “What?” Allister asked.

  “She was sent here to off me, ya know.” Bazzo unveiled an ice pack and pressed it to his eye. “Doctor’s orders.”

  “Why would Dr. Giro want you dead?”

  “I know heaps about C20. And I’m telling my business mates not to invest in his technology.” He wiped scum off his brown dress shoes and squashed his tousled hair against the window. “They took Bridg. Guess we both got skin in the game.”

  Allister rotated the hoodie strings in his dry fingertips. “Guess so,” he said.

  “You knew her well?”

  “Well enough.”

  Florence swept past them and took the chair opposite Bazzo. “Bridget’s one of the strongest superhumans I’ve ever treated, she’ll hold up alright.”

  “Whatever ya say, Dr. B.”

  She kneaded her hands, pulled at the armpits of the skintight jumpsuit, and tapped the psiborg metal; Allister hadn’t seen her nervous before.

  “Ya can ask me anything,” Bazzo said.

  “Don’t know where to start,” she mumbled.

  The Aussie did. Two year
s into a gig at an investment firm, he’d been pitched an acquisition by well-known business vulture Giovanni Belladonna. Some artificial intel startup he had been trying to offload. Bazzo, whiz that he was, ran the numbers and voted “strong pass.”

  “So, he did the psychic thing, and, long story short, I don’t like blokes in my head.” He chuckled, then moaned. “Must’ve liked the fight in me, ‘cause he gave me an offer a week later.”

  “Adorable story, however...” She bent her head and let hair fall over her eye. “I was referring to our recent investments and your position at Belladonna Corp.”

  “Ah... the Andromeda Project and C20. That’s a tale if I ever told one.”

  Bazzo’s tale was as informative and action-packed as promised.

  The Andromeda Project’s operating output had surpassed available cash flow and Giovanni’s silent partnership in 2047 plugged holes in a capsized ship. An embarrassing detail, considering the organization pooled its initial funding round from six founding countries and began their quest somewhere around 2030.

  “Yeah, Mr. B was late to the game, but after fifteen years they had a lead on the Transporter gems. And the payout on those... whew. I never seen so many zeros.”

  “Pfft. Why’re they worth so much?” Allister asked, plucking one. “They don’t do anything.”

  A defensive lie. He didn’t know how to do anything with them. There were endless applications of drawing on such power: deconstructing matter and sending it elsewhere, voyaging to other worlds and galaxies, eliminating human waste off world. Varied use cases for the same eventual outcome: humanity’s exodus from their dying planet.

  All promising notions had been thought through and discussed in real time. According to Bazzo, the Transporter gems became a pipe dream. C20’s directors, Aleksander Karjavine of Russia, Jane Wenyin of Korea, and Chung Tae-Won of China, were working both sides of the coin, and approached Giovanni to head off the Andromeda Project’s impending failures. They believed Rabia Giro would be the one to save humanity, and he’d do it using the Z-energy. Bazzo advised his boss not to put all the eggs in one basket, when said basket (the Andromeda Project) was sinking.

  Allister reversed his posture. He leaned over the aisle, buried his other elbow in the knee farthest from the window, kept his arm upright, and wedged his chin between his forefinger and thumb. “Hmmm, what else?”

  Bazzo tossed a hand in the air, waving it to and fro. “It was a free-for-all, no rules, no commitment. I sent the first wire, I reckon twenty million? Pennies in the grand scheme. A month passes, these dipsticks are going on ‘bout wanting to build another base, wouldn’t tell us where. Asked for more zeros, exclusivity, non-disclosure, non-compete. We said no.” He sat up and lowered the ice pack. “They pushed and pushed. Me being me, I set up a where-the-fuck-is-my-money-going meeting. Mr. B wanted to know the end game.”

  “My father and Dr. Giro met in person?” Florence asked.

  “Right-o. Twelve weeks ago? Irony, I tell ya. A scammer getting scammed.” Bazzo scratched his head. “Point is, Mr. B wasn’t keen on the plans to quote, ‘rescue humanity,’ and he... ” He tapped his temple. “... Dr. Giro’s mind.”

  “I don’t think anyone knew he was a telepath.”

  “They still don’t. He took that one to the grave.” Bazzo shook his head solemn-like, and added, “Ya dad came back shook up, swore on your life about a deeper meaning to the Z-energy.”

  She leaped to the seat’s edge. “Where’d it leave the company? And the contract? And you?”

  “The old man’s noggin’ never recovered. The contract, handshake deal, wasn’t solid. I took over as CEO, found you and told as many peeps as I could the U-generators are a fraud.”

  “You don’t know that,” she muttered.

  “I know he wouldn’t’ve lied to me.”

  “You’re one of few.” Florence flipped her hair and hurried to the cockpit.

  Allister stood, chained to the airline seat by his own hand and hesitation, wondering whether to comfort her or let the tantrum run its course.

  “Think you know who to trust?” Bazzo called at her back, “Ask DeVries about the meeting in Milan with ya dad.”

  Bridget Sparks

  C20 Prison

  Warmth escaped Bridget’s bones like secrets she couldn’t keep. Her knees curled to her forehead. She wanted to be whisked to the safe place under her bed, a beloved hiding spot whenever her parents argued over whose turn it was to make dinner, or whose fault it was they’d had superhuman children. Her esophagus twisted in knots, and she evoked her more pleasant childhood memories.

  Running through fields on their parents’ farm. When Bazzo had taught her how to swim. When he’d taught her how to surf. Their first family road trip. Dry and stinging, her eyes popped open for the fifth time.

  “Baz...” she whispered.

  Snippets from their short reunion redrew the purple-skinned woman’s vivid silhouette and replayed her unwavering aggression towards Bazzo. She wondered if he was powerful enough to hurt her, or if she’d laid waste to him and the U.S. military in one fell telekinetic swoop. She called me the electric goddess.

  Once upon a time.

  She dabbed her palm on the splitting headache’s obvious culprit, the gash in her skull. The absent Cynque meant she didn’t exist and couldn’t be located, and as each hour passed, the cell felt more and more like a coffin bolted shut.

  Confronting lower body numbness and upper body shivers, she trekked toward light penetrating a peephole. If she yelled someone might hear her. If someone heard her it was probably an enemy. Wheezing, she collapsed. Ice-cold chains writhing beneath her pants’ fabric compelled her to scoot away.

  The door unlatched and opened. Russell Ashur entered, his arms entangled in a thick blanket, his snow pants tucked in his boots. Attempts to grow a beard had resulted in random patches on his round cheeks and the C20 logo on his parka divulged his allegiance. Too cold to shout, powerless to punish him, she stared, waiting for him to speak.

  He pointed to her forehead. “Dr. Giro says he’s going to fix it.”

  “Te-tell ‘im I-I’m not a f-fan of m-mad sci-sci-science.” Her stomach flipped, and rising body temperature paused hypothermia’s advance. The thought of the doctor’s stubby, hairy fingers coming within a centimeter of her face. Detestable.

  She traced the unguarded injury, stewing over what she’d done to Russell and what Russell had done to her. They’d spent months together entwined in a casual sexual relationship. Russell, infatuated by her beauty and electromagnetic awareness, fueled a case for her importance as an Andromeda Project member, not a time bomb to be detonated in battle. Right before the relationship caved in they were on the same page, working toward the same goal. Getting each other’s rocks off.

  She, snarling like an injured lioness, watched him with a skeptical glare as he dropped, edging closer on his knees. Pinching the blanket’s corners, he tossed it on her, then clambered to get up as if she might pounce. Twenty degrees warmer and electrically charged, Russell would’ve been a crisp carcass.

  Eighty degrees of an authentic Outback summer beamed under the blanket, and though wrapped in a cocoon inescapable for her or the heat, not an ounce touched her chilled skeleton.

  “I wouldn’t stick around to see me warmed up.” Her jaw hardened. “I’m planning to slit your throat for what you did.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Russell said.

  “I meant every bloody word, you bastard.” Her brow fell, the shivering returned. “Do you feel important now? Is Rabia bowing at your feet for your genius?”

  Russell’s remorseful brown eyes flinched behind circular lenses. He rubbed his gloves together and looked every direction except at her.

  “What gives? Bringing me here anyhow, my powers shorted out.” Her tongue ran across her numbed lips. “I’m sure ya knew that much.” She sucked her teeth and kicked the blanket away, hollering, “This thing is shit!”

  “I was scared.” He bent
to meet her at eye level, fought to say his own words, and not someone else’s. “You opened up to me, and I got scared.”

  “G-get out.”

  “I came because...” he choked. Syllables fluctuated as the words sputtered out. “Because I haven’t been myself for a long time.”

  “Get out!”

  “Your powers aren’t gone, they’ve evolved,” he muttered, distant, foggy. “He’ll be here soon. Fight the influence, if you can. It’s everywhere. He’s everywhere.” Russell scanned open the door. “Thing is, I thought you’d help me get back to who I was. But it’s who I was.”

  Dimness returned. Boots crushed ice between his long strides. An elevator dinged. He’d be back. And she’d repay him for the cold, sharpened statement he’d drilled through her two months prior, “You’re nothing to me.”

  Her heart beat so slow she swore it had stopped. Her body temperature, not a tick above water’s freezing point. Halfway to standing, palm flattened against the metal interior, she wailed and fell against the door, seizing and foaming at the mouth like an epileptic. A winter morning’s frost spread over her limp arms and legs, and the convulsions lessened to shudders. The elemental outburst distributed ice along the walls, decelerating the air’s molecules to a perpetual cloud of condensed moisture.

  Breathing returned to normal. Movement belonged to her again. She put her hands up in disbelief. Crystals embedded in pinkish-blue skin refracted even the faintest light.

  Her iced soul welcomed patience as she snuggled to one of the prison’s corners. The transformation wasn’t a secret or a surprise. Russell knew. Dr. Giro knew. A destination for her neural pathway had formed.

  Zosma Caster

  C20 Base

  Soaring the heavens to and from her mission, Zosma witnessed the perilous truth of human existence. Children born into poverty; starving nations; mass migration to lands less susceptible to a dying world’s wrath; and, yet, didn’t carry an ounce of sympathy. Appalled by their inherent brutality, she reconsidered saving a people who refused to welcome her. They weren’t capable of welcoming each other.