Wild Cards
The sharp, intoxicating aroma of freshly brewed coffee enticed me out of a deep, dreamless sleep. I woke slowly, curled on my right side, one bare leg draped over the edge of the mattress. A blue porcelain mug hovered directly in my line of sight, and I followed the attached hand up to Ethan’s face.
“Good morning,” he said.
I grunted, still trying to form coherent thoughts in my sleep-deprived mind. Light streamed in through the single window, pale and low. It was definitely morning; good or not remained to be seen. And the person they’d sent to rustle me out of bed was the one most likely to succeed.
It wasn’t any one thing that had cemented my fast friendship with Ethan. He’d been horribly injured by a collapsed ceiling when we first met, so we hadn’t spent a lot of time together until I’d been with the team for a month. Maybe it was that he would never make a romantic overture, and he didn’t play the part of the overbearing big brother. He didn’t judge me like Renee did. He was just Ethan—funny, understanding, good friend Ethan. The guy who had advice for any problem, but never dumped his own stuff on me.
And sometimes I really wished he would. All of the bright smiles and sunny conversations couldn’t completely hide the shadows in his eyes or the weight of the secret he still hid from the others. I knew he trusted his friends with his life, and he had his own reasons for keeping that secret from them.
Ethan swayed the coffee mug back and forth in front of me. “We’ve got a big pot going downstairs, and a mug waiting for you. After a shower, because, my dear, you reek.”
I blew a raspberry and sat up. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.” He made it halfway to the door before I called out with a question: “Anything new on Teresa?”
“She’s still unconscious, but her vitals are strong.” Ethan glanced over his shoulder. “You know, I always thought of you as more of a lacy thong type of girl.”
I stared blankly until I realized I was sitting there in an orange tank top and pale yellow panties, and nothing else. “Out!”
He laughed and closed the door behind him. Lacy thong, indeed. I worked hard enough to find panties that didn’t ride up my butt; I wasn’t about to purposely spend money on ones that did.
I rolled out of bed and into my robe. The custom-made bathroom was conveniently across the hall, and empty. A three-basin sink and long mirror covered the wall on the right, and a curtained entry at the very end hid a row of toilet stalls. On the left, across from the center sink, was another curtained doorway. I stepped through, ignoring the mirror and my reflection. I didn’t want to know how bad I looked.
The shower unit had four separate stalls, each with a small changing area and bench. The design was better than what I remembered from college. Those dorm showers didn’t have a separate spot for drying off and dressing. We’d agreed on this style, instead of several private baths, on the off chance that our resident numbers increased in the future.
I kept my things in the last stall, nestled together in a plastic basket. The cloying odor of smoke washed away quickly with my shampoo, and I took care to scrub every single inch of skin with the body wash. I wanted to linger beneath the steamy spray for hours, allowing the heat to soothe tired muscles and comfort the hurts, only there wasn’t time.
I ran the lathered sponge down my left leg, over a pattern of small bruises. Two more dotted my right, just behind the knee. Bruises popped up all over the place lately. Teresa was pushing me hard in my physical training, helping me develop my self-defense skills. Bruises came with the job.
Hair wrapped up in a towel turban, I padded back to my room to dress. We were officially on a case, so I pulled on a fresh pair of black pants and orange tank and swept my wet hair up into a tight bun. Jacket tucked under my arm, I headed downstairs, refreshed and somewhat energized.
I approached the kitchen by way of the dining room, but found both empty. The coffeepot was half full, so I poured a large mug, added sugar, and grabbed a slice of wheat bread from the open package on the island. With breakfast in hand, I padded down the second hallway to the War Room.
Voices drifted toward me. Ethan and Renee were hunched over a pile of printouts, their own coffee mugs nearby. Only Ethan raised his head to acknowledge my arrival and wave me over.
“What did you find?” I asked.
“A lot on Arnold Stark,” Ethan said. “Pascal e-filed us what he had on Stark, which was enough to get our own search started. So far we’ve got quite a profile going, but irritatingly, not a thing that connects him to Jarvis or Ortega.”
“Besides the fact that Ortega arrested him,” Renee added. “We can’t discount John Doe until we identify him.”
“So who is Stark?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the table and biting into my slice of bread. Should have put some butter on it.
“Freelance journalist,” Ethan said. “He used to make a living doing security at music galas, while writing on the side.”
Renee slid a paper toward me. It was a photocopy of a letter. “Seems Stark has amassed quite a few enemies by writing about those galas under a pseudonym,” she said. “Even earned himself a few death threats, and he was definitely fired from the gig when he was found out. He’s got a thing for raking celebrities over the coals in his articles, which could explain why he was at the fire yesterday. Maybe he was looking to throw some dirt at us.”
“But it doesn’t explain why he shot at us,” I said.
“Why he shot at you,” Renee said. “He’s got no history of violent behavior, no recorded anti-Meta statements, nothing to indicate he’d do what he did.”
I nodded, glancing over the scrawled words on the page, and silently told him to perform an anatomically impossible action on himself. “So we’re going on the assumption that the Skin Walker is the one targeting us, not Stark.”
“Looks that way, Dal,” Ethan said. “And whoever this Skin Walker is, he or she knew exactly which host to pick in order to get close enough to shoot.”
“But why? Why try to kill me? How could I have possibly made someone hate me this much this fast?” I desperately wanted to find the son of a bitch and lock him (or her) away for a very, very long time. Stark was, in the end, as much a victim as we were, another pawn in someone else’s sick scheme.
“If he’s picking hosts at random,” Renee said, “it’s going to make tracking this guy, or thing, that much harder. He knows we know he’s in Officer Ortega, which means he’ll dispose of Ortega pretty quick.”
“And kill Ortega in the process,” Ethan said.
My stomach tightened, the bread no longer sitting well. Another in a long line of victims, drained of his insides and left as nothing more than a sack of skin and fingernails. Dead because he was doing his job. Did he have a family? Would they mourn him when he was gone?
“Where’s Marco?” I asked, refocusing my thoughts to something a little less (but barely so) depressing.
“Telephone,” Ethan said. “Gage called a few minutes ago, and Marco is filling him in.”
“So do we have a plan for this morning?”
Renee shook her head. “So far, we’re doing it.” Her attention darted over my shoulder, prompting me to turn around. Marco stood in the doorway, phone in hand, mouth drawn into a tight line. Worry bracketed his eyes.
“Gage had to hang up,” Marco said to us, words clipped. “Teresa had a seizure.”
Dread washed over me. I nearly dropped my coffee mug when Renee slammed her fist down on the tabletop near my hip. Ethan reached for her arm, but she yanked away from him.
“We should get to the hospital,” she said. “We should be there.”
Marco took a step toward her. “Renee—” The phone in his hand rang, its shrill tone cutting him off like a warning bell. He looked at the receiver’s display, frowned, but pressed Receive. “Headquarters, Onyx.” We watched in curious silence as his expression changed from confusion to surprise, and finally annoyance. “Fine, we will be there in twenty minutes.” He hung up.
“We’ll be where in twenty minutes?” Renee asked.
“Weatherfield,” he said. “Dr. Kinsey has something more to tell us about Jarvis and the person who may have killed him.”
“What?” Renee stalked toward him. She stopped an arm’s length away, apparently realizing Marco was not her enemy. “He was lying to you the first time you spoke?”
“Es posible,” Marco replied. “Or he was carefully omitting details. We will not know until we speak with el bastardo.” He narrowed his eyes at Renee. “Are you coming with us?”
She hesitated. Shaking her head no, she said, “Someone needs to be with Gage. You guys go.”
I guzzled a few gulps of scorching coffee—thankful it didn’t seriously burn the inside of my mouth—plunked the mug down on the table, and followed Marco out, Ethan on my heels. Anger built with each step toward the front door; anger directed entirely at Dr. Abram Kinsey. For lying to us before, and for dragging us away from Teresa’s side when she needed us most.
We were at a disadvantage during our second visit to Weatherfield. With Gage otherwise occupied, our lie detector was out. He’d either missed something during the first interview, or Kinsey was an accomplished liar who no longer distinguished reality from lies. We would get the truth from Kinsey if I had to force it from him with pliers.
He didn’t meet us in the lobby. A different desk guard pointed us toward the elevator and said we were expected in Dr. Kinsey’s office. We found it easily, the corridors as empty as the first visit. I was tempted to stop at the treatment ward, just to see if everyone was “in treatment” again. The entire building gave me the creeps.
Tempest banged his fist on the closed office door. A terse “Enter” gave us permission, and he yanked on the knob, maybe too forcefully. I walked in behind him, Onyx bringing up the rear. He hadn’t been with us the first time and was taking in the scenery, making his own observations.
Dr. Kinsey sat behind his desk, hands folded flat on top of each other. His lab coat hung on a rack behind him, and he was dressed in a simple suit and tie. He indicated the two chairs with a sharp nod. Tempest and I sat down, mirroring the way Trance and Cipher had sat just twenty-four hours ago. Onyx stood behind my chair, hands squeezing the vinyl material.
“I hear you’ve had a change of heart, Doctor,” Tempest said, his voice dripping with ice and anger. “Care to tell us what you couldn’t elaborate on yesterday?”
Kinsey’s eyes narrowed, taking time to study each of us in turn before speaking directly to Tempest. “I will, of course,” he said. “But first, I want to convey my sincere condolences about Trance. I do hope she pulls through.”
Tempest’s jaw flexed, and I wondered if he was holding back a sarcastic response. My first words would have been along the lines of You don’t know her and you don’t care about her, so shut the hell up, you patronizing ass. Something in Kinsey’s tone kept me silent, and likely also kept Tempest on his best behavior. The icy façade Kinsey had displayed yesterday was gone, replaced by fatigue and concern. Genuine concern.
“Thank you,” Tempest ground out. We hadn’t heard back from Gage or Renee since leaving the house and could only hope the seizure was under control and Trance was stable again.
“I apologize for my manners yesterday.” Dr. Kinsey reached across his desk, toward a black box the size of a baseball. He touched a button and a gentle, whirring sound filled the room, quickly melting into the background. White noise. “I was under direct orders from my superiors not to discuss Ronald Jarvis.”
“What changed their minds?”
“They haven’t,” Kinsey said. “They think you requested this interview, hence the white noise. I don’t want them to know what we’re about to discuss, and I couldn’t risk meeting you in public. They’re probably following me now, outside this building.”
“Why?” I asked, sitting up straighter in my chair. “What do you know about the person who killed Jarvis and at least three other people?”
“Three?” Dr. Kinsey paled, something I had never actually seen a human being do before. White as paper, just like that.
Tempest nodded slowly. “Our John Doe, a man named Arnold Stark, and when he’s finished with the body, Officer Ortega of the LAPD.”
Dr. Kinsey squeezed his eyes shut, pinched the bridge of his nose. “I never expected them to go this far, I swear I didn’t.”
“They?” we said in unison.
“Yes.” He pulled open a desk drawer, removed a sheet of photographic paper, and slid it across the desk. “They.”
I picked it up. It was a picture of three people, teenage boys by the looks of their clothing, standing in a cluster, as though mugging for the camera. But they couldn’t be, because they had no faces to mug. I brushed my finger over the image. Had their faces been smudged out? Altered in some way? No, certain features like the brow ridge and slight bumps where eyes, nose, and lips should be still existed. Holes appeared where ears and a mouth should have been. No hair anywhere I could see.
“What is this?” Tempest asked.
“Your suspects,” Dr. Kinsey said.
“Is that some kind of joke? Those aren’t people, they’re mannequins.”
“I assure you, they are as real as you and I.”
“Why don’t they have faces?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.
His gaze flickered up to Onyx, and then back down to me. “Because they are Changelings, Ember. Hybrid Changelings without faces of their own.”
He said it as though it explained everything; instead, it left me mystified. I didn’t know what a Hybrid Changeling was, and judging from their silence, Tempest and Onyx didn’t, either.
“You’re going to have to explain what that means, Doctor,” Tempest said.
Dr. Kinsey eyed the white-noise box on his desk, and then began to speak. “When I was hired twenty-five years ago, it was for their Recombinant-DNA project. For decades, like several other companies at the time, they tried to dissect, understand, study, and re-create Meta powers. They failed, so they went another route with Recombinants. It took countless trials, but we were finally blessed with five healthy infants—two girls and three boys. This was twenty years ago.
“They were all Changelings, born with no physical features of their own. For some reason, the girls’ DNA was less stable than the boys’. They were often sick, and they both died within days of each other at age five. But the boys were strong and capable, and they learned fast to use and control their powers.”
I listened with a strange mixture of shock, awe, revulsion, and fascination. I’d heard rumors of DNA experiments before, from all over the country. Never in my career as a journalist had anyone ever confirmed those rumors and admitted to participating in their creation. Scientists playing God, trying to re-create what nature had blessed us with, and the results were . . . well, loose. And murdering people.
“Tell us about their powers,” Tempest said.
“As Changelings, they have no identities of their own, but possess the ability to mimic others. With just a touch, they can perfectly reflect someone’s outward appearance, from height and weight to hair and eye color. Everything external is re-created to the last detail. They can pass as anyone, and as teenagers, often did, and got themselves into trouble.”
“Everything external,” I said, thinking of the skins. “What about other things, like voice? Could they mimic that?”
Dr. Kinsey’s face darkened, coloring with anger. “No, not with just a touch. We discovered this ability the hard way, I’m afraid. If they choose to, they can physically possess the body of any person they touch. Their own body becomes one with the host, but in that moment of possession, the host . . . well, two souls cannot coexist in one body, and the stronger of the two is always the Changeling. The possessor absorbs the memories, knowledge, and life experience of the host, down to voice patterns and food preferences. The host doesn’t die, exactly, but he’s no longer an individual. The Changeling can exist this way indefinitely if he chooses to assimilate the host, rather than fight his personality.”
Onyx growled low in his throat. “So when the Changeling is finished with the host, he moves out and leaves an empty shell behind. They are the skins we have found.”
“Essentially, yes, I’m afraid you’re correct. It was a difficult ability to test, because there was no going back for the possessed victim, and we discontinued its practice very early. The boys were taught never to use that particular talent against another person.”
“Looks like someone forgot a lesson or two,” I said. “So, how many of them escaped, Dr. Kinsey? Just one, inside Ronald Jarvis?”
Kinsey shook his head. “No, all three are missing. It would take only one complete possession, that of Jarvis, to get them out, which is what our security cameras picked up. Him leaving with two of our janitors, who were later found tied up in a utility closet.”
Three Changelings, out there taking over bodies and killing people. The journalist in me was salivating at the story potential. The hero in me was just plain pissed. “So let me guess,” I said. “This breakout occurred the night Jarvis died? Once they were out, he wasn’t needed anymore?”
“Yes.”
This just kept getting worse and worse.
“You said they were Hybrid Changelings,” Tempest said. “What does the hybrid part mean?”
Dr. Kinsey pursed his lips, seeming to weigh his answer. “Each of them also possesses a secondary ability, one that sets him apart from his brothers.”
“Which are what?”
“Ace possesses telekinesis. He can move objects with his thoughts. Joker is telepathic, which is fairly self-explanatory. He can listen in and place suggestions in your mind but only has two-way telepathy with his brothers. And King is fast. He can run upward of eighty miles an hour given an open space and lots of room. The ability also gives him a slightly denser muscle and skin mass, to protect him from wind pressure, so he has increased strength and endurance.”
Just like William.
The thought came unbidden and with it, the guilt that never completely went away.
“Ace, Joker, and King?” Tempest said.
“Yes, their sisters were Queen and Deuce. My Wild Cards.” He spoke so fondly of them, he could have been a doting father bragging about his child’s seventh-inning, game-winning home run.
“Why would they break out, Doctor?” Onyx asked. “If they’ve been here for twenty years, why leave now?”
“I have no answer for you,” Dr. Kinsey said. “Perhaps they no longer felt safe. Perhaps your reappearance made them feel unimportant to the world. Recombinants were meant to aid you, understand, and then replace you after the War took away your powers.”
Tempest snorted. “Well, running around killing people is not the right way to prove your worth.”
“I do not believe blind murder is their motive, Tempest. Please understand, I worked with these boys their entire lives. They are not violent by nature, and they do not kill for sport.”
“Have they contacted you since they escaped?”
“Why would they?”
“You just said you raised them, Doctor. Why wouldn’t they? I can’t imagine they were prepared for living in the outside world without any sort of guidance.”
“They are more well equipped than you think.”
“Why would they want me dead?” I asked.
Dr. Kinsey blanched, stared. “What?”
“You know about yesterday’s shooting?”
“Of course.” His confusion concerned me.
“Arnold Stark was the one who pulled the trigger, aiming at me and hitting Trance instead,” I said, measuring his reaction with every word I spoke. So far, he was following, just not comprehending. “Stark was our third victim. He was possessed by one of your Changelings at the time of the attack.”
The man actually grew paler. His hands clutched into fists so tight his knuckles popped. “That’s impossible,” he whispered.
“Really?”
“Look, I’ve already told you more than is safe for me to say. How you extrapolate the data is up to you, but those boys are not murderers. Not in cold blood, not like you think. They are trying to survive, and we are trying to bring them home. I told you all of this so you might help me do so.”
“Not happening,” Tempest said. “If we catch them, they’re going to jail to face charges. They don’t get to run around killing people in our city, and then go home like nothing happened, so you can forget that fantasy right now, Doctor.”
Dr. Kinsey’s eyes narrowed. “If you take anything I’ve just told you to the police, I will deny it wholly and under oath. This is a good-faith interview, Tempest, not a confession.”
Tempest glared. “My only concern is for the safety of the people left in this godforsaken, rotting city, Dr. Kinsey. Saving your job and your precious Recombinant project is nowhere on my list of priorities. Just so you know where we stand.”
“I am asking you, please—” Kinsey tried again.
“No.” Tempest stood up. “Unless you have some other information for us that will be useful in apprehending three suspects now wanted for murder, I think our interview is over.”
Dr. Kinsey also stood, nostrils flaring. “You’ll be able to tell them apart by their birthmarks,” he said. “They are absorbed by the host body, sort of like a fail-safe switch in case we lose one of them. It’s a brown mark, about the size of a quarter, located in the small of the back. It’s shaped like Australia.”
Of all the random shapes . . .
“Thank you, Doctor,” Tempest said. “We’ll be in touch.”
“I appreciate that.” He switched off the white noise and silence settled back over the room. “Good day.”
“Fat chance,” I muttered.