Dante

  The alarms on my phones sound simultaneously but just barely out of synch, filling my room with an eerie echoing musical sting.

  “School day, Dante,” Lyrica calls out.

  I sit up, turn, and start getting dressed. “Updates?” I ask as I pull on my pants.

  “The world is on fire,” Taproot says mournfully.

  “The Web certainly is,” Legios snaps. “Though I’ve turned those flames into a firebreak anywhere they get too close.”

  “And while he was playing scorched earth,” Foresight observes, “I was insuring none of the threats we’ve encountered so far are showing their heads anywhere near us.”

  “It’s not the enemies we see, it’s the ones we don’t see that should concern us,” Legios snarls back.

  “Which is why I can see them, and you can… do whatever it is you do.”

  “Your mind and body have largely recovered since last night,” Lyrica cuts in, “aside from your memories. Again suggesting a non-physical intervention, given present data.”

  “So hypnosis, psychological trauma, or something along those lines,” Logos observes. “Not drugs or a knock on the head.”

  I nod as I pull on a shirt. “Good to know.” I think. “Any way to fix it?”

  “Not knowing the proximate cause makes that tricky,” Logos admits. “But we’re working on it.”

  “Waycross is surrounded by elite biomedical research facilities, though,” Lyrica advises, “and the labs and university have ties to other researchers around the world.”

  “And everything that isn’t a lab, a school or a bedroom community is a giant AI data center,” Logos adds.

  “Or the solar farms and fusion reactors out in the desert, powering all of this,” Foresight says.

  “Plus, there’s a lot of research on campus into hypnotherapy,” Lyrica continues, “so if there’s a non-medical reason for what happened to you, they may be able to help.”

  I sniff the air, and smell coffee. “Do an analysis,” I tell Lyrica. “Don’t share my identity or exact circumstances, but find out if anyone here might do anything which could help with whatever that was.” The hole in my memory is stranger still because I know it’s there, and even some of what I’m missing, but it’s not like a blank spot. More like something in plain view your brain keeps ignoring, in spite of you.

  Eventually you may trip over it, know you’re stumbling on something, but still not even sense its outline.

  I smell coffee again, and decide to think about all of this with caffeine.

  I stuff Lyrica in a pocket, pull on Foresight, and head for the kitchen, wondering if some of Barry’s staff has let themselves in.

  I find a cup of coffee, freshly poured on the counter, and just the way I like it. Absolutely black.

  “So,” a deep voice says behind me. “You’ve had quite the weekend.”

  I turn, and lock eyes with the intense, piercing gaze of my uncle. The man who knows everything.

  One of the most-dangerous, and most-powerful, people in the world.

  Keiron.

  A black man in a gray suit, Keiron is muscular and imposing, but his eyes hint at a fathomless intelligence. And now, those storm-gray eyes are turned towards me.

  He nods towards the mug. “Take your coffee. You’re going to need it.”

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  I take the cup without a word and sip it, watching my uncle the whole time. There’s a pause as we regard each other.

  “Morning, uncle. How can I help?”

  “Dante, we need to talk.”

  Those are chilling words. I know the cliché – no teen wants to hear an authority figure saying ‘We need to talk.’ But it’s different with my uncles, and completely different with Keiron.

  But a lot scarier. Keiron doesn’t lecture. He drops hard truths, blunt facts, and lets me figure out my next moves from there. He has advice if you ask for it, but Keiron has been treating me like an adult for years, and an adult worth listening to – consulting with – for nearly half a decade. Ever since the Island.

  Maybe it’s my own abilities, or those of my superhuman cousins, but Keiron doesn’t just expect great things from me. ‘Great things’ are already baked into his calculations.

  Unfortunately, with the kinds of threats Keiron deals with, being dealt in is a lot scarier than being kept in the dark.

  And yet… here we are.

  “I’m ready,” I tell him.

  Keiron regards him. “You’re not.” He turns towards another door. “Take the coffee, leave the AIs. This is for your ears alone. Compartmentalization protocols.”

  Wordlessly I leave Lyrica and Foresight on the counter and follow. My AIs know Keiron also, and know better than to trifle with him.

  Here’s the thing to know about Keiron. My generation isn’t the first to be Enhanced. Not at all. It’s just that researchers were working blind a generation ago, and they looked hard at any combination of methods – including genetic and epigenetic – which had a shot at making people a lot better.

  And then they worked on getting those techniques to work.

  And then they worked on finding which ones combined synergistically – creating a whole far greater than the sum of its parts.

  And one thing they found is that while people who were average or below average benefited enormously from any serious enhancement, if you really wanted to impress your funders…

  Starting with someone who was already a borderline superhuman helped.

  So once they had the basics nailed down, not just in animal testing, but with humans, they went after the most-gifted subjects they could find both able and willing to be enhanced.

  Because, for those subjects, it was a matter of life and death.

  People who also started with the discipline to undertake and continue difficult training like it was life and death.

  So… Tier One special forces, in practice. Which is where Keiron’s old team, SEAL Team 6, came in, among others. Eventually others were included in the project, including intelligence agents, elite scientists, and anyone else who was already incredibly valuable, and whose worth would skyrocket if you enhanced them further.

  But in the meantime, the top performers were almost entirely special forces and a few fanatical human-enhancement researchers.

  And of them all, Keiron was one of the best. Maybe the best.

  Years passed, and while I’ve never been read in on most of the secrets relating to him, it’s obvious Keiron did exceptionally well, even compared to other Enhanced Tier Ones. And then there was his late wife, his children, his extended family…

  Suffice to say, Uncle Keiron became close to most of the known Enhanced on the right side of the law, or good enough at skirting it the government gave them a pass. He’s especially familiar with those with the greatest abilities – the Anomalies.

  The people so far off the charts they were effectively so longer quite human. And capable of doing the impossible.

  Keiron created a network for the ones we knew about… and at least a few were his blood relatives. When the Federal government needed something done, there was one man could pull off almost anything, if he made it a priority. And that included a lot more than just, say, killing people.

  Again, there are secrets I simply don’t know. But his star rose fast and far. And he’s gotten a lot of leeway in dealing with other Enhanced.

  Especially other Anomalies. Especially when the world is at stake.

  And wherever I fell on that power scale, that left us here… with my most-ominous uncle stalking through the house of my happiest uncle. The contrast isn’t lost on me, and it would look funny, except most things involving Keiron never are.

  We walk through the resplendent rooms of Barry’s spare mansion, until we’re finally in a slightly more utilitarian section – no, make that a more-public wing. Like a mini-convention center Barry’s bolted onto his home. We eventually reach an enormous kitchen capable of feeding dozens, maybe hundreds, and go from there to a loading dock and then to an immense garage.

  Inside the garage sit a few black SUVs and a single semi-truck. The back end of the semi’s shipping container is open, with two gray-suited men in mirrorshades flanking it.

  Keiron nods to them and silently walks up the semi’s ramp into the container. I follow. The rear of the semi smoothly closes behind us, leaving us in a small airlock at the end of the structure.

  Keiron pauses at an internal door, glancing into a retinal scanner and laying a hand on a pressure plate. The door unseals and opens. Keiron strides in, with me in his wake.

  The door seals behind us.

  The room within is brightly lit. A table with a few comfortable swivel chairs stands before us.

  There are no electronics, of course, and no documents, and Keiron doesn’t move to retrieve anything.

  Whatever’s going to be said next, I’m just going to be told, not shown. But Keiron’s memory is as photographic as my own, and if anything, my uncle will boil down whatever he thinks I need to know into its essence, and let me proceed from there.

  I look around at the sealed room. “A mobile SCIF.” A sensitive compartmented information facility. The structure you need to discuss the most-sensitive national intelligence. Keiron has incredible pull… but to pull in one of his Gifted relatives, that move was probably approved by someone far above his official position.

  This won’t be a casual conversation. Then again, conversations with this uncle rarely are, anymore.

  Keiron pulls out a chair and pushed it towards me, before taking one of his own. “You’ll want to sit down.”

  I sit, carefully, as if the chair is a landmine. Because once I’m in it, I know the floodgates will open. I wouldn’t be in here if they weren’t about to.

  Keiron looks me in the eye.

  “The world is ending. The only question now is how many of us make it to the new one.”

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