KNOW, page 10
#
We were walking down the street when it happened. Jem stumbled. I'd been thinking romantic thoughts — daydreams, really — about how it would be to hold his hand in public, but I'd embarrassed him enough already that time on the plane, so I wasn't going to try for it today. I was just daydreaming.
Now, however, all such thoughts fled my mind, and I reached for him automatically to steady him. "What's the matter?" I asked quietly.
He cast me a hunted, haunted look filled with worry and something like horror or dread. It was also a quizzical look; he was asking me a question.
Guiding him by the arm away from the street, just in case he stumbled again, I put myself between him and the rest of the world, shielding him. "What is it?" I asked, leaning closer.
With his back to a wall and his hand on my arm, he looked at me, something tragic in his gaze. He searched my face as if trying to understand something.
"I was running the odds," he whispered, sounding shaken, his voice husky. "It's not under ten percent anymore."
I nodded. He asked himself periodically about safety, things of that nature. It was important; using his gift kept him safe, and he needed to stay safe, always. I could only do so much, even at my best. We needed his talent, especially when going into risky situations.
"I'm in danger. You're in more."
"What?" Okay, why would I be in more danger than he was? "I might be going to step into a line of fire or something?"
"No. Let's get out of here. The odds feel all wrong to me. I need to get away and work this out. Please."
"Sure. Of course." The pyrokinesis research could wait. If necessary, the ESRB could send other agents in our place.
We couldn't risk losing Jem. I'd rather not be at risk, either. He seemed decidedly freaked out about the odds, and he wasn't giving me specific numbers, which told me they were not good.
For them to suddenly change like that, someone had to have made a big decision, and it involved the two of us.
"We'll get a cab back to the hotel," I suggested, scanning the street for one. Nothing in sight, but it shouldn't take long. This was an active, cosmopolitan area with a lot of foot traffic, but also a lot of cabs driving by looking for fares. I should spot one any second.
"No," said Jem. "Not the hotel." His eyes moved back and forth as he thought quickly, running the odds. "I — I don't know where." He sounded bewildered.
"How about you give me some numbers here, so I can help? Maybe I should call it in?"
"Yes," he said, relief blooming in his voice. "Call it in. I'll get the cab." He pushed me gently towards the wall and moved to the street, raising a hand confidently towards a passing cab. It ignored him, but the next one pulled right up.
We tumbled in as I was finishing my succinct report. We were scrubbing the mission, heading for safety, would keep them up to date when possible. I hung up as he was giving the cabbie instructions.
"The zoo?" I inquired as he leaned back in the seat next to me, looking wrung out. His face was still pinched with worry.
He shrugged. "Nobody would expect that, right?"
"Does it lower the odds of danger?"
He nodded. His mouth was tight and his eyes were scared, and he still wasn't giving me numbers.
I reached over and caught his hand, down low where the cabbie wouldn't see it if he was looking in the mirror at us (not that he seemed to be), and squeezed. "I'm here, Jem. Talk to me."
He didn't, not for long moments of suspense. I waited. It was hard, seeing him struggle against the fear alone, seeing him struggle with catching his breath and just breathing evenly and not breaking down. Eventually, he mastered it all enough to speak.
He didn't look at me, and his voice was low, controlled. "The odds of you getting hurt are near a hundred percent, Hugh. My odds are closer to sixty percent."
I let out a low whistle. "It's never been that bad for us before."
"No," he agreed quietly.
I felt my mouth going dry. If I could keep from dying, that's be great. If I could just get injured, perhaps, and protect Jem from getting hurt in the process, I'd be happy.
"Okay, let's try to narrow down what's up and how we can improve our odds of survival."
He nodded hard. "I'm trying not to freeze up. I don't want to lose you."
"Same here, Jem. I don't want to lose myself either. Or you. Now, does it have to do with this current case? Odds."
He hesitated a second, then blinked. "Not specifically. Six percent chance."
"That's a ninety-four percent likelihood of something else, then?"
"Yes. An old case?" He hesitated, blinking. "I can't get clear odds on that. We need to narrow it down, word it differently. Think."
I asked questions. "Okay. It has to do tangentially with an old case?"
He hesitated. "Sixty-seven, I think." He cast me a confused look. "The odds seem really messed up. Am I losing my skill? Or are we just asking the wrong questions?"
"You've never lost it before. Okay, something about an old case that didn't have to do with us at the time. Something tangentially related to an old case that now—"
"Yes. Yes, that's it. Something that didn't affect us then, but now does."
"Someone we met? Wishing us ill now?"
"No."
"Someone we didn't meet."
"Ninety-eight percent chance. Yes."
We looked at each other.
"Someone we didn't meet in the past, but had very tangential interest in a case we were involved in. Now wishing us both harm."
"No. Yes. Slow down!" He shook his head and pressed his forehead into his hand, grimacing.
"Shh. Okay." I took a breath, putting my arm around him, trying to offer comfort. He wasn't a machine; he was as freaked out as I was. We really needed to not be doing this through fear and adrenaline. They clouded our thinking. I thought some more. "Someone we didn't meet."
"Yes."
"Someone wishes us both harm."
He hesitated. "The odds are different. He wishes you harm more than me."
"He?"
"Yes."
"A single person, or a group of people?"
"Yes. Both."
I took a wild leap. "Gangsters? Criminals?"
"Yes." He paled. "Hugh, I—"
"Someone found out about your talent, yes?"
"Yes," he said very faintly, his lips tight and growing bloodless. "I — I can't do that again, Hugh. I can't work for people like that."
"No, I understand. I won't let you." I squeezed his hand, hoping I was offering reassurance and wasn't telegraphing my own fear. "I think I need to call this in, what we have so far. Then keep asking questions and figure out how to stay ahead of them. Obviously, we need backup."
"Yes," he agreed faintly.
I hoped he wasn't going to collapse. I looked at him swiftly, but he seemed to be at least partially holding it together. I let go of his hand after another quick squeeze and reached for my phone.
I called it in.
The ride to the zoo didn't take long, so we only had a few more minutes for our quiet conference in the back. Criminals of one sort or another — organized, with a tangential connection to a previous case — had caught wind of Jem and his ability.
They were hoping to take me out and gain control of him for their own purposes. They knew enough about us to know that they'd have to get through me to get to Jem, so there was specifically a target on my back. That's why the odds were worse for me, and that's why Jem was decidedly freaked out.
"We have to be logical about this. We can outrun them, outsmart them, and out-odds them, if we keep our heads," I told myself as much as him.
He cast me a quick, uneasy smile. "We can certainly try."
"There's always a way out, Jem. Even if it's one percent. Remember that, okay?"
"Don't lecture me about the odds, Hugh. If this is our last day together, I don't want it to be all lectures." It was his turn to catch my hand and squeeze hard.
"It's not our last day," I promised, and hoped I was telling the truth.
He didn't say anything in reply.
#
At the zoo, we wandered as far as we could into the exhibits. I updated HQ again, and Jem and I spoke in low tones as we moved through the zoo, ostensibly conferring about the animals.
ESRB agents and officers of the law were on the way to protect us. We (and they) were trying to narrow down both how we'd become targets and how to survive and stay safe. Jem was quiet, thoughtful, introverted, though he still ran through the odds with me when we thought of further questions.
After a minute he said, "Clyde. It has to do with Clyde, although I'm not sure how."
"The people after him discovered you, you mean?"
"Yes. They probably—" He paused, running the odds, but I finished his uncompleted thought.
"A leak in the local police department. Somebody got wind of us through the report." I grimaced.
"Yes."
"Great."
"Yes," he agreed again, wryly.
"At least we know now."
He looked at me bitterly. "That'll be a lot of comfort to us when we're dead, I'm sure."
"Well, we can report that, anyway."
"You do that." He walked ahead of me a little ways, moving quickly, scuffing his feet angrily on the path. He shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders.
I got out my phone again and made the call. It could be investigated as soon as we were safe.
"Jem." I hurried to catch up with him just as he rounded a bend in the path. It looked like he'd gone the wrong way. That was a narrow path, and likely meant for the zookeepers and staff. "Jem, let's—"
I stopped. He had stopped in front of a cage of monkeys and had begun fiddling with a lock.
"Jem, what are you doing?"
It was a side door, held in place by a thick chain and a combination lock. Jem was twisting the dial expertly.
"It increases our odds of survival if I let these out."
"What about them? Are you going to get these monkeys killed for us, Jem? Hey." I moved up to him, putting my hands at his waist, holding on to him. He was slim and tense, his whole body seeming to vibrate like electrified wiring.
"Odds are good for their survival, over eighty-five percent. They'll have a fun adventure. High odds they'll all be caught without harm."
The monkeys were already screaming in excitement, bouncing around their enclosure, hanging near the door. It was a sort of two-door enclosure, with a space between the outer door and the inner one, probably for feeding or trapping.
They were going to draw attention here, that was for sure.
"How are you doing that?" I asked again, mesmerized by his speed.
He wasn't pausing at all as he turned the numbers, or at least only for an instant for each one. It was a pretty high-quality lock, but I would've expected better from a zoo, even so. This appeared to be a feeding door, and I had a hint we probably weren't supposed to be here.
"I run the odds," he said absently as he worked. "Is this digit zero to five? If not, I run through six through nine till I have it. If yes, I run through zero to five. Sometimes I hit it almost instantly." The thing gave a small click, and he had it open, straightening up with a satisfied, "There."
"Help me open it," he said, glancing at me, triumph in his eyes, along with a hint of pleasure that he'd impressed me.
"Used to do that a lot, did you?"
"Yeah, locks are easy," he assured me.
More insights into his unwilling but very skilled criminal past.
Shaking my head, I nonetheless followed his lead, helping him undo the chain, open the outer door, then pull the lever to open the inner door. We jumped back as the first monkey raced for freedom. Some of them hung back, screaming what were probably curse words (or at least alarm warnings) in monkey language and making a racket. But two of them ran off straight away.
Jem grabbed my hand. "Let's go!" We ran the opposite way from the monkeys, continuing down the small maintenance path.
"We're going to be in so much trouble."
"I think you'll live," he said dryly as we ran. Then, quieter, "I hope you'll live."
Behind us, I heard the first of the screams, shouts, and cheers as people discovered the loose monkeys. Some of the screams sounded feminine, the shouts sounded at least semi-official — and those cheers were definitely from little kids. We'd thrown a monkey wrench into the works, I thought with a grin.
"You can't just do that," I said to Jem, still holding on to his hand.
He looked back at me as we ran. "I can do anything if it'll save your life."
"Here." I spied a half-open door to a building and veered towards it. STAFF ONLY, said the ajar door; we ignored it and headed in. "Catch your breath," I told him. "Think."
He was heaving for breath, although probably more from stress than the exertion. I pulled him into the dark room, looking around for problems, but there was nothing; it was just a supply area. It smelled of something food-like, and there were brooms and mops propped alongside tatty buckets and dodgy-looking industrial cleaners.
After seeing the area was secure, I pushed the door shut behind us and moved to stand in front of it, tugging Jem closer to me. I gave him a little shake and then pulled him into my arms for a tight hug. It was a comfort, despite everything. He needed to calm down — and so did I.
"We're running around like nuts. We need to think," I told him, rubbing his back, trying to get us both to focus.
He pressed against me, close, holding on tightly. "You'd better not leave me," he said, muffled against my chest, sounding like he was trying not to be emotional and failing.
Outside, there were a couple more yells, some monkey noises, and the sound of running feet pounding past. Someone tried the door, then quickly moved on. We stayed tense till the footsteps had receded.
"I won't," I told him.
Strangely, being holed up here with him reminded me of the day we'd met. That first mission together. A bunch of ESRB folks storming a building where some talented individuals had been held captive by radical anti-talent activists. Jem had been there to use his talent, to help with the odds of survival. I'd been there as an ex-cop, new to the ESRB game, eager to save some lives in whatever way I could.
I'd seen him around before. I'd had him pointed out to me, his talent explained like the novelty it clearly was. I'm pretty sure I'd already said hello to Jem a time or two, and had gotten his serious nod in reply, perhaps even a "How do you do?" But that day, that raid — we were part of the group, and by the time the raid was over, we were important to each other.
We'd helped save lives together — no talented casualties at all — and that always bonds people together. But it was more than that. It was the two of us, specifically. We'd found each other, and somehow, we had never really been apart since. Not for long.
"Remember the first raid?"
"Yes," said Jem softly, still pressing against my chest like that was the only safe place in the world.
"You seemed to know everything."
He'd been amazing, with his confidence, his clipped speech, his sureness of the numbers. It had been something to watch, to be a part of.
He'd been so beautiful to me even then, before I knew anything of what he was like, really. He'd seemed fearless. Even though I now knew that that was almost always a front, a safeguard, I still found him amazing and beautiful. Perhaps even more so because he got up and did his job every day even when he was freaking out on the inside. And he was brave enough to trust, too. To try. To care.
"I was scared out of my mind."
"I know that now. I didn't then." I rubbed his back a little harder, wanting to comfort him, even though there was still so much wrong in his world.
I thought of the things he must've endured when he was young, the things he'd survived. Would he ever want to discuss any of them with me? Somehow, I doubted it. He wanted the past to be behind him, and from what I knew of it, I couldn't blame him, not one iota.
"I don't think less of you for it," I added.
"I know."
Memories replayed for me, spooling out like slim lines of thread connecting us to the past. "After a bit, you moved closer to me, like that was where you belonged." I smiled at the thought. Because he did.
"My odds of survival go up every time I'm near you. That was the first time I realized it." He hesitated, as if he wanted to say more but wasn't sure how to put it. "You make me feel safe. That day was the first, but just the first. It's not only the odds. It's you. I feel safe when I'm with you. I think I always will."
We were currently holed up and hiding from people who wanted to kill me and kidnap him for their own nefarious purposes. We were talking about the first time we'd met as if this was going to be the end.
Let's hope you get the chance, I thought.
I drew him away from me enough that I could kiss him. He needed that. So did I. He melted against me, and for a moment, the terrors of the future melted away, and it was just us.
When we separated, he was panting, his eyes a little wild. It was nearly dark in the shed, lit only by light coming from under the door and from the poorly-sealed walls. It was still a three-ring circus outside. But we were alone, and I knew that look on his face — that specific, hungry, trying-not-to-show-I-want-you look. I reached for him.
"Hugh, we can't," he said.
"We could."
"It would waste energy. We — we need to focus."
"Okay."
I stuffed down my disappointment. He was right. We were professionals, and trying to survive, and this was hardly the time or place. But, still, we could've been quick. It would certainly have been some great stress relief.
"It's not that I don't appreciate the thought."
"It's fine," I said, trying not to sound annoyed, because I never wanted to pressure him into having sex. But damn.
"It's just...not appropriate," he said again awkwardly.
"Can we change the subject? Maybe to something oh-so-professional?"
