Ultraviolet (3 page)

“Okay, Dom, I guess I’ll head down there and try to find a shady spot to sit tight. I’ll call you later. Thanks.”

“Watch your butt, Car.”

So I turned around and headed back west a few blocks and went into the market. Lexington Market was basically what it had always been, according to my dad. It was one long building with glass ceilings and about a hundred little delis, stalls, restaurants, food carts, food trucks, produce stands, noodle stands, butchers, and everything else food-related you could think of, all in miniature and crammed together like one huge cafeteria to feed the west side.

And it was crowded as hell.

It smelled like every food imaginable, all cooking together in every sauce imaginable, all at once. Beef, lamb, chicken, Old Bay, crabs, lobster, rockfish, corn, General Tso’s, sweet and sour, barbecue… ugh. Five minutes inside and I had a small migraine thumping away right behind my eyes. The stink of the people jostling all around me didn’t help either. Apparently bathing was one of those antiquated things that only my mother still believed in.

I meandered into the market, shuffling along with the flow of the crowd, trapped between a large woman in tight pants and a large man in baggy pants, looking for a place to sit, somewhere quiet, out of the way. But if there had ever been tables or benches in the market, there weren’t any more. Every last inch was filled up with shops. So I kept shuffling.

Halfway through the building I realized how hungry I was. Six days of noodles and two hours of running and walking apparently made for an unhappy stomach. I still had a few dollars on my card, the remnants from my feedstock shopping spree, and without really thinking, I bought a couple Berger cookies and shoved myself into a little gap between two stalls to stand still and eat.

The fudge was perfect, as always.

It made me crave a glass of milk, as always.

After a couple minutes standing still, feeling the energy of the crowd and the white noise and the smells and the sugar in my stomach, I felt a little better. At least a little calmer. There was only one person looking for me, not an army. And he couldn’t track me down, as long as I didn’t do anything stupid. You know, beyond all the stupid things I had already done.

So I started walking again, shuffling along with the crowd in the general direction of the doors. I had hours of daylight left, plenty of time to walk south past the harbor and get to my parent’s house. Sure, it was an obvious place for Frost to come looking for me, so I’d have to be careful. But there were ways around that. I could hang out nearby and catch my mom on her way to the store, or catch my dad on his way home from work. I didn’t need to actually go near the house. Easy.

Too bad I never got near the house.

When I left the market, a handful of people walked out with me, most of them clutching shopping bags full of meats, cheeses, and vegetables I didn’t recognize. But there were also two young guys. Tall guys wearing shiny clothes and talking really loud about some game. I ignored them.

Half a block later, everyone else who had left the market with me had crossed a street or turned a corner, but the two guys were still behind me, still talking really loud and laughing at everything each other said.

I walked faster. It was light out, lots of people on the sidewalk, lots of bikes going by, lots of stores open, but still… I walked faster.

They walked faster.

“Hey baby! Hey, where you going?”

I didn’t turn. I just kept fast-walking down the sidewalk, hoping that if I crossed the next street, or got into a crowd, or went by a cop, they would get tired of following me.

They crossed the street right behind me.

“Hey, I’m talking to you. Talk to me for a sec.”

A hand tugged on my coat sleeve. I glanced back and saw a skinny moron in need of a shave, a bath, a breath mint, and some clothing that fit properly. I couldn’t think of anything to say, because I just wanted to tell him to get away from me, so I sort of shook my head and faced forward again.

I kept walking.

“Hey, what’s your problem?”

And suddenly I wasn’t anxious anymore, I wasn’t scared. Suddenly I was pissed. Really pissed. I spun around and glared at the two of them. “My problem? You want to hear about my problems? You want to hear about me losing my job, or my parents freezing in a house they can’t heat, or the asshole who broke into my apartment today and shot at me, or the fact that I’m dead broke, or the fact that I’ve got two jackasses following me around, yelling at me when I just want to be left alone? Which problem do you want to hear about?”

The skinny one laughed and hit his friend’s arm. “Man, this bitch is nuts.”

“Lux, sword.” I pointed my gloved hand at his face as a dozen focused lasers sculpted a long black blade spearing out toward his eye. The weapon glowed with a violet haze, like it was smoking. Like it was on fire.

“Holy shit!”

Both guys jumped back. In fact, everyone on the sidewalk jumped back, and I saw a couple phones pop out as people stopped to watch me. A taxi veered around a rubbernecker in the road. It was too much attention, way too much, but I didn’t care. I was mad.

“Call me a bitch again.” I pointed the sword at his friend and then back at him. It was a copy of the sword my paladin used in
Demon Age 3
, except without the spirit crystals or the… nevermind. It was a big sword, but since cold photons don’t weigh anything, I could hold it in one hand and never get tired.

They glanced at each other, straightened up, and jerked their chins at me like they hadn’t just pissed themselves. “Psh. Whatever.” They turned and started walking back up the street toward the market.

And that’s when the glove made a little hissing sound, the sword flickered, and then it disappeared.

“Lux, sword!”

Nothing.

The two guys stopped and looked back at me. The skinny moron grinned. I didn’t like the look of that grin. I spun and started walking again, even faster than before. I was in the shadow of a tall building, and I shivered as a cold breeze blew out of an alley to my side. I strained to hear whether the two guys were following me, but I couldn’t tell over the street noise.

The shadows! I’m such an idiot.

I yanked my gloved hands out of my pockets and hurried to the end of the block so I could get the webbed material into the sunlight.

Dead batteries. Moron. I could have been charging them this whole time, and instead… ugh, idiot.

Within seconds of being in the light, a dull red light appeared on the back of my gloved hands.

Charging. Okay. So now—

“Hey girl, what’s the matter? No more light show?”

The voice was right in my ear, so close I could feel his breath on me as he leaned forward to grab my arm.

“Get off!” I yanked free and ran, ran as fast as I could, crashing my shoulders into nearly every person on the sidewalk as I tried to stay in the sunlight. Now I could hear them following me. Their shoes were pounding on the concrete and they were shouting and laughing as they crashed through the people behind me. And I mean
right
behind me.

The dull red light on the gloves turned yellow.

Good enough.

“Lux, shield!”

I spun around as the lasers built the circular shield on the back of my arm and I shoved my fist at the two guys just as they crashed into me. Except they didn’t exactly crash into me. They both hit the shield and slid off to either side, one running face-first into a No Parking sign and the other one slamming into the side of a building. But I didn’t feel the impact at all.

Just like the bullets on the roof.

The two guys were both clutching their faces and groaning, and I glanced around myself, seeing yet another ring of silent gawkers pointing their phones at me, taking my picture, recording me and my black, violet-glowing shield in broad daylight.

“Lux, off.”

The shield vanished and I dashed into the nearest alley. At the back I had to squeeze around a delivery truck and got some strange looks from a couple guys unloading some boxes, but when I stepped out onto the street again, no one was looking at me or following me, and I started walking toward my parents’ neighborhood again.

With each step I took, the pounding in my chest slowed and my breathing calmed down. I wiped the sweat off my forehead and made sure I kept my gloved hands in the sunlight.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s over. I’m safe. I’m alive. I’m free. I can figure this out. It’s going to be fine.

My phone rang. It was Dom.

“Holy shit!” he yelled into my ear.

“Hi, Dom. How are you, Dom? I’m fine, thanks for asking, Dom.” I rolled my eyes.

“Is this really you? This is awesome.”

“Is what me? What are you talking about?”

“This clip online. Girl fights pervs with lightsaber. It sure looks like you.”

“Girl what?” A horrible cold feeling started twisting in my gut.

“That’s the name of the video. It just popped up in my feed. How did you make that sword appear and disappear like that?”

I froze.

It’s online already. People saw. And more people will see. Damn it!

“Oh wait, there’s a second one?” Dom paused, and then laughed hard. “Wow, you really nailed those guys!”

“Is that the shield?” I asked with a wince.

“Yeah, that was awesome!”

I started walking again, now with my eyes darting around for signs of people pointing their phones at me. “Stop saying the word awesome, please.”

“Is this that hologram thing you were talking about? But they’re real, they’re solid? You’re a genius.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “Thanks.”

“Wow. A hundred thousand views. One fifty. Two hundred.”

“What! Are you serious?”

“Yeah, it’s blowing up. You, my friend, just went viral. But don’t get too excited. You’ll be ancient history by the end of the hour.”

“I hope so.”

No, I won’t. At least, not for Cygnus and their bloodhounds. I’m going to be very popular with those guys for a long time at this rate.

“Hey Dom, what do you think would happen if I told the cops, the real cops, that a Special was shooting at me?”

“Uh, they’d probably arrest you and turn you over to the Special.”

I sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I need to talk to my dad. He’ll know.”

“Why don’t you just call him?”

“Are you kidding? He’s a dad. He doesn’t know how to scramble his phone, and he probably wouldn’t do it even if he did know. Besides, he never answers his phone at work, and he won’t be off for another hour or so.”

“Okay. Well, let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks, I will. Just keep an eye on your feeds and let me know if you see anything else about me, okay?”

“Will do.”

I hung up and checked the gloves just in time to see the yellow power light fade to green.

Nice. Good.

I kept walking.

It took over an hour to get down to my parents’ neighborhood, and by then the afternoon was really more like evening, which worked out well for me since I didn’t want to have to wait around too long to see them. As I got closer to the old row house, I got more and more paranoid. I kept checking inside the cars I passed, not that there were many cars, but I saw a few that made me nervous. No vans or trucks though. The bicycles all looked civilian enough. I watched the windows of the houses I passed too, but most of the shades were closed so I couldn’t see anyone or anything.

But no matter how quiet and safe it looked, I couldn’t stop thinking that there were Cygnus agents hiding behind every tree and corner, watching me, waiting to grab me and wrap a bag around my head and throw me in the back of some company car.

I stopped at the end of my parents’ block where I could see the house. I didn’t dare get any closer. My mom’s green bicycle was locked up in front of the house, but dad’s gray one wasn’t there, so I backed up half a block to a spot where I thought I might see him go by on his way home, and I waited. I didn’t have to wait long.

A big black car rolled by me a few minutes later, one of the sleek new sedans with blacked out windows, and the only reason they didn’t see me was that I was already hunched down behind a recycling bin in an alley.

If I’d been ten minutes slower getting here, they would have seen me.

The car turned down my parents’ street, and I was looking in that direction so I didn’t notice when my dad rolled by on his bike on his way home from work. By the time I recognized him, he was already making the turn onto his street. I jumped up and waved my arms violently over my head, trying to catch his eye, but he didn’t see me and he disappeared around the corner.

I ran to the end of the block and peered around the corner after him, not daring to yell, not daring to breathe, and I got there just in time to see my mom and dad standing together on their front stoop, talking to a man in a dark suit.

Frost.

I hunched there behind some kid’s bike and a rusty lawn chair on the sidewalk and watched.

First they talked, tired citizens dealing with the overly professional suit.

Heads nodded and shook. Hands gestured politely.

Then I saw my dad’s face change, all wrinkled like how he looks when he’s angry, and I knew something was going wrong. He took my mom’s arm and started steering her back into the house. Then Frost held something up, something I couldn’t see, and suddenly my dad looked scared. He tried to move in between Frost and my mom, and I heard a little popping sound muffled by the distance, and my dad collapsed, and before I could even stand up there was a second popping sound and my mom fell down beside my dad.

I froze.

I just couldn’t process it.

Were they dead?

Did I just watch my parents die?

Part of me wanted to run over there, screaming my head off, waving a solid light sword in the air, calling the police, roaring at the neighbors to come out and watch me kill the man who had murdered my parents.