Chapter 3: Jailhouse Rock

Chapter Three: Jailhouse Rock

            Justin woke up with a monstrous headache. Rubbing his eyes he rolled off of whatever surface he had been resting on, hitting the floor with a clang. Clang? He realized. Then, getting up, he saw before him a room the like of which he had never imagined. The walls were grey and smooth, with no viewports, bars or windows in them. Looking down, the South African realized, with a jolt, that he was in a completely different outfit; this one was a jumpsuit with blue, black and grey patterning on it. Below the left shoulder, a small grey tag sat, labelled with a number: 14764. There was a doorway in front of the cell, but no bars. He walked toward it, but as he was just about to pass through, he stopped as if restrained by an invisible hand. Confused, he pushed forward, and that was when the shock hit him. It felt like having a million red-hot needles pressed into the skin around the offending area at once. The sound was a combination between a hum and a crackle, and Justin quickly found himself tumbling backward.

            “That won’t work,” came a voice from behind him. “I already tried blasting out.” Justin whirled, and then he saw the other man. He was shorter than Justin by about two inches, and his hair was a lighter shade of brown. What immediately drew the eyes about him, though, was the dyed red streaks in his hair. Nor was this the coppery red of natural color; no, this was nearly crimson, an altogether unnatural color on a person. His eyes were a strange shade of brown, and they looked bloodshot. He was wearing a black and red outfit with a number on the lapel, similar to Justin’s. #14765. Sitting there on the floor, cross-legged, he looked like some bizarre interpretation of the Buddha mixed with a punk rocker.

            “I beg your pardon?” Justin asked.

            “You’re one too, right?” the boy asked, for boy he was. He seemed younger than Justin was, in addition to being smaller. “Someone with special abilities?”

            “Special abilities?” The South African queried. “What exactly do you mean?”

            The boy laughed and got to his feet. “Don’t play dumb. I can see it in your eyes. You’re different.” He closed his own eyes and concentrated for a minute. “Hmmm….Super speed? Or perhaps something different…something stronger, maybe? Well, it isn’t bad.”

            Justin took a step back. “Say what?”

            “I’m telepathic,” the boy explained. “I can read your mind, or at least do something close to it. And you were thinking that there was no way that anyone could know about you and your powers. That’s why I said something. I wanted you thinking about it.”

            Justin sighed. Well, at least this boy would not be making fun of him for being odder than he was. “All right, yes. I have superhuman speed, or at least something that works in similar fashion. Still, I’m not certain how it works or why.” The other nodded.

            “That I can see. I’m telekinetic too, you know, and that doesn’t always work the way you want it to, either.”

            “That’s what you used to blast the cell?” Justin asked, remembering the other’s words.

            “Uh-huh. Didn’t work, though. Whatever field blocks the doorway was stronger than me.” Justin turned and popped his neck.

            “Why are you trying to get out anyway,” he asked. “Has anyone been in here? Threatened you?” The other shrugged.

            “They haven’t, no. But do you really want to wait for that?”

            “Fair point,” the South African conceded. “You said you couldn’t do anything against the field?”

            “A little,” his new friend answered. “But not anything permanent.”

            “Let’s see if I can’t do a little more,” Justin murmured. Then, he bolted forward and slammed a punch against the field. There was a burst of light and a visible ripple, and Justin momentarily harbored hope that he might have done at least a little bit of damage. Then, the shield solidified once more, and Justin felt the familiar sensation of an electric shock as he was thrown backward again.

            “Guess not,” the boy quipped, extending a hand to help Justin to his feet. The South African took it. “You’re a bit impulsive,” he assessed. “I like that. Pleasure to meet you. The name’s Abel Gant.”

            “Justin Tully,” the other replied. “So you’ve been awake for how long?” As he said the words, he knew it was a little too forthright. Still, the other seemed not to mind.

            “For about four hours,” Abel answered. “I spent two of those hours trying to blast my way out of here, and the other two trying to read any minds outside. Neither worked. I don’t know how to get out of here, why we’re here, or where here even happens to be.”

            Justin lay down on the floor, pressing his ear against it. “The floor’s vibrating,” he announced.

            “Which means?”

            “Either a generator or some other large engine-powered device,” the other answered. “Where that leaves us, your guess is equal to mine.”

            Abel nodded. “So wherever we are has a generator and metal ceilings and floors. That narrows it down,” he muttered sarcastically.

            “The floors aren’t metal. They’re metal-plated,” Justin corrected. “The foundation is probably stone or cement.”

            “Okaaaay…” Suddenly, Abel had an idea. “The circuits for the field have to be in the walls somewhere, right? I mean, every electrical system has to have wires…” Justin shrugged.

            “Maybe, maybe not,” he replied. “In all honesty, I can’t be sure. Plus, it’s a cell for superhumans, or so we think. Do you really think they’d make them accessible?”

            “Let’s see,” the other whispered, kneeling down and examining the seams between the plates. There were slightly discernible gaps in between each piece of metal, and he focused on them, imagining his fingers forcing one apart. The pain in his head came once more, and heard the screech of metal rending as the plates came apart. Justin watched, fascinated by the spectacle. Was there anything this boy could not do with his mind put to the task?

            “That’s got to be handy,” he said aloud. Abel grinned.

            “Says the guy with super speed.” He began to feel along the walls on the right side of the cell, close to the front. He would have bet these plates covered some kind of circuitry. “Never being late for anything must be nice.” Justin frowned, remembering the snapping sound the one man’s back had made. His powers were no gift, not by any stretch. In fact, he would have been hard-pressed to conceive a more terrible curse.

            “It isn’t all it’s made out to be,” he replied. Abel grinned as he focused on a seam and slowly forced it apart. Inside, just as he had hoped, he saw three or four thick wires.

            “I can imagine,” he said, focusing on the wires with his mind. Slowly, the insulation around them began to sever, followed by the wires themselves. “Everything about you moves that fast. Organs, too. And all contact you make with people at superhuman speed transfers that speed to them, meaning you break bones easily.” One, then two of the wires split, sending up a shower of blue-white sparks.

            “You saw that?” Justin asked. Abel nodded.

            “I did. Even if I hadn’t, I’d be able to tell simply because of Newtonian physics. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s all about force and motion.” Three wires split now, working on the fourth…there! Abel grinned again. He heard an electric hum, followed by a sputter and a flash at the cell door. “One escape made to order, my good fellow.” Justin bowed in exaggerated fashion.

            “After you.” Abel shook his head.

            “I give you a head start and you don’t take it. What kind of runner are you?” He turned again, and suddenly Justin was standing in front of him.

            “A fast one,” the South African replied, a mischievous glint in his eye. “Keep up now.” And, just like that, he was gone, an explosive whoosh accompanying his departure. Abel sighed.

            “Like that’s going to happen,” he moaned.

            Keeping up might have been hard, but following Justin’s wake was hardly so. He left a trail of knocked-out guards and dented metal in his wake. Like them, the guards were wearing colored jumpsuits, though they had helmets and armor plating, where the two boys had only been given a flexible mesh underlay. The dents in the walls and floor told Abel that his new friend was having trouble controlling speed in all its aspects, and that was a comfort. At least he was no longer alone. Justin was waiting in the hall outside. He smiled as Abel came through the door.

            “Nice of you to join me,” he observed. “Especially after you let me do all the work.”

            “Not all of us can break the sound barrier jogging,” Abel retorted. “The least you could do would be understand I’m nowhere near as fast as you.” Justin shrugged.

            “Fair enough,” he said. “Which way now?” Abel shook his head.

            “I can’t read unconscious people,” he pointed out. “It’d be easier if you hadn’t hit them that hard.”

            “Oh well,” Justin said. “We just have to find a conscious one, then.”

            Whitewall Room

            “I don’t believe this,” the man said, looking at the screen. “We haven’t had a Spanner that powerful in years. And the speed…how? Wasn’t that reproduction supposed to be morganatic?”

            “It was,” the other contested rather hotly. “I made sure of that myself. The genetic material should have been sufficiently degraded as to prevent this.”

            “And the other?” the woman asked. “The algorithm doesn’t even recognize him, and his genetics don’t match anyone in our database.”

            “Then maybe you’re looking in the wrong place,” her companion suggested, “Did you try Castle records?”

            “Yes,” she said. “Again, nothing. At least, nothing public. I refrained from hacking just yet.”

            “Perhaps you ought not,” the second man mused, staring at the screen. “It looks like Speedy isn’t the only special one on the block anymore…”

            “Do you still think the maze test wise? A little…unnecessarily brutal, isn’t it?” The first queried.

            “Perhaps,” the other admitted. “But it is certainly effective, is it not?

            Maze

            Justin rushed the guards without a second thought; after all, he was exponentially faster than they were, and he knew it. The first two went down without a problem: the first succumbed to a punch and the second to an elbow. Even at speed, though, he never even saw the blast coming. That was partially because it came from a wall-mounted turret and not from the sentries, and also because he had been so absorbed in knocking the guards down that he had not seen the guns engaging. Abel groaned as he watched his frenetic companion drop, a wide scorch mark appearing on his left side. Pay attention, he mentally admonished. You just got shot. Shouldn’t you be catching bullets, not taking them? So saying, the pan-chromatically haired psychic sent a massive blast of force into both the guns, crumpling the metal plating like paper cups in a toddler’s hands. The guard turned away from Justin to face Abel, raising his gun as he did so. The psychic caught the weapon and shoved it aside, to prevent himself from getting shot. The man pulled the trigger, but the bullet went wide, and Abel sent a telepathic cacophony of noise into his head. The man screamed and dropped his pistol, which Abel then used to knock him flat.

            “There. That’s…” He saw motion out of the corner of his eye, and he whirled just in time to take an uppercut to the face. He staggered, feeling blood dripping down his face, and saw that another guard had come up behind them. His gun was in his holster, and he went for it. Abel did, too, but the guard was quicker, coming up with the weapon first. He pointed it at Abel’s face, and the telepath tried to point it out of the way again, without success. He closed his eyes tightly, expecting a gunshot to rip through his head and kill him. As anticipated, the weapon went off, but nothing happened. Instead, he suddenly felt that same mind-searing pressure and the force of the gunshot smack against his palm and blast his hand to bits. However, instead of blowing into a million individual pieces, as he had expected, appendage held firm, as though sustained by some invisible force. The bullet, he realized, stopped inside the barrel, suspended by telekinetic force. The backfeed of force blasted the gun apart, sending pieces of metal flying in all directions. Somehow, the guard’s hand did explode, though he obviously felt a lot of pain. Abel took advantage of this development to smash him telekinetically against a wall with enough force to knock him out cold. Justin slowly got to his feet, shaking his head.

            “And I make a mess?” he queried, a smile on his face. Abel grinned back at him.

            “I got what we wanted,” he replied. Pointing to the left at the fork ahead, he said, “That way, one right, two lefts, one more right, and we’re home.”

            “Good,” Justin said. “Let’s move.”

            Whitewall Room

            “Did you see that?” The one scientist breathed.

            “Seeing and believing are not equivalent,” the other remarked placidly. “But yes, I did both.”

            “A reflexive block like that…” began the one.

            “…should have been impossible for a mere Tier 3,” she acknowledged. “Yes, that’s true. His power level may be basic, but his application less so. I think he has great potential, as does the other.”

            “Do they think the exercises are live-fire?” he asked.

            “They assume so, yes,” she told her compatriot. “You’re not comfortable with this,” she surmised.

            “Are you?” the other challenged.

            “Not completely,” she admitted. “Those rounds could serious injure them, though they aren’t fatal. Still, it’s better than blanks, because that’s not what they’ll be getting in the field.”

            “You plan to try to deploy them? After the evidence we’ve accumulated?” He asked. “Why?”

            ‘Because we’ve been tendered an untenable situation,” she snapped. “You know that. A violation of the accords now, after everything we’ve worked for, would be disastrous.”

            “And they can stop that?” he asked. “You saw what I did. The mathematics are so self-evident they shouldn’t even have been run. This won’t end well. You know that.”

            “Can the end we write be much worse than the alternative?” She retorted.

            “Not telling them could place our men in danger,” he informed her. “Is that a wise choice?”

            “Look at them,” she said, shaking her head. “They don’t have killer instinct.”

            “The fast one, no.” The man looked down. “But the telepath? Is that a risk you really want to take?”

            “We don’t really have the option,” she answered tersely.

            Maze

            Abel shook his head. “That’s not possible,” he said. “According to what I saw, the exit should be here.” Justin turned and ran away momentarily, only to return a second later.

            “There’s no exit,” he announced, doubling over to catch his breath. “The walls are all the same. The prison cells are gone. It’s like this place is a maze.”

            “Maybe it is,” Abel murmured. “But what’s the point of a maze without an endpoint.”

            “THIS IS THE ENDPOINT.” The voice seemed to be coming from all around them, but Justin could see no visible place from which it could emanate. “MY CONGRATULATIONS, BOYS. YOU SOLVED OUR LITTLE CONUNDRUM EVEN FASTER THAN WE EXPECTED.”

            “Great,” Justin replied sarcastically. “Care to tell us why you made us solve it in the first place?”

            “GLADLY,” the voice answered. The wall in front of them swept back, revealing a tubular elevator. “WATCH YOUR STEP NOW. BUT PLEASE, CLIMB ABOARD. TIME IS NOT ON OUR SIDE FOR ONCE.”

            Justin suddenly looked pale. Abel looked at him. “What’s the matter? Scared?”

            “No,” the other answered. “I’m claustrophobic. I hate elevators.”

            Whitewall Room

            Abel and Justin stepped out of the elevator and into a large circular room with glass walls. Looking down, they saw that, to their shock, the floor was glass, too. Beneath them, they could see wisps of cloud and the glitter of ocean water, offset only by several small, irregular patches of green. Justin instantly recognized it as the coastline of Europe. Now, surveying the room, he saw four people seated around a large table at the eastern end of the room, in front of several large computer monitors. One of them, a tall woman who looked scarcely older than Justin himself, stood and gestured for them to come over.

            “Please, gentlemen,” she said. “Have a seat. There are important matters that we have to discuss.” Abel raised an eyebrow at her, but made no movement beyond that.

            “All right,” he replied, spreading his feet a little wider and planting them a bit more firmly. “First give me a reason to listen to a thing you have to say instead of blasting my way out of here.”

            The woman looked bemused, as though unwilling to believe what she was hearing. “You are aware that you are more than ten thousand feet in the air, correct?” Abel shrugged.

            “I’m telekinetic. Suppose I could try to break my fall that way. Then again, I’m guessing you already know that, along with why and how I am. And also why I’m here and where in the name of anything sane here is.”

            “Where…” the woman’s voice trailed off, and she gave a knowing smile. “That is probably one of the more intelligent questions I’ve heard this morning.” Something about her voice was strange. Not ill-fitting, just…not right. She had a faintly discernable accent, but neither Abel nor Justin could place it. “Please,” she said, gesturing to the chairs again. “Sit. Let me explain.” Justin darted forward at superhuman speed, seating himself at the furthest point on the table from anyone else. Abel, for his part, took a seat a bit closer to the other people, but not by much.          

            “All right,” he said. “We’re sitting.”

            The woman’s lips quirked upward in a crooked grin. “You are quite sarcastic, aren’t you? Not at all what I’d been led to expect by the report.”

            “It helps whenever the person you’re talking to won’t tell someone that would beat you as soon as look at you,” Abel snapped. “But continue.”

            The woman nodded. “Of course.” The computer monitor behind the table flared to life, illumining with a large red symbol: A clock with a helical pattern at the center. “You two should probably first know what’s happening to you. As you’re both aware, you’ve developed…special talents in the past twenty-four hours.” The screen changed to a DNA double helix, with several strands highlighted. “Now, here’s the hard part. You two might not realize this, but your parents aren’t exactly human.”

            “That’s absurd,” Justin said. “My parents are perfectly normal.” He looked to Abel. “What about yours?”

            “Don’t know,” Abel growled. “All that’s clear is that they didn’t want their spawn weighing them down. Dumped me into foster care first chance they got and split. I haven’t seen hide or hair of them since. If I had, I’d probably have punched my dad in the face.” He looked to the woman. “Okay, so if we aren’t human, what are we?”

            “You’re human,” she answered. “Make no mistake about that. But you’re more than human. As were they. Let’s start from the beginning; your parents weren’t normal for multiple reasons, but the chief among them was their…travel abilities. Time travel has often been theorized as being possible through machinery, but one man discovered that it was possible to transcend divides between space and time through genetic modification.”

            “Hold on,” Justin protested. “So you can just change our cells and we can jump through space and time? And shouldn’t time travel be impossible?”

            “One or the other,” she corrected. “It was decided early on that the genes should not be combined in any one individual. Each of you has one of these abilities. Abel here is what we call a Space-Jumper, or simply a Jumper. You, Mr. Tully, are a Time-Spanner, or a Spanner more concisely. And no, not impossible. Just a very exclusive privilege.”

            “Accepting your rather ludicrous claims,” Justin said, drumming his fingers as super speed on the table, “then what about the powers? You still haven’t explained them.”

            “Each time or space traveler was also gifted with a power based on their personality and current environmental needs,” she explained. “For example, you have the ability to manipulate a non-Euclidean flow of time around yourself to create the illusion of super-speed. You can also turn temporal currents into physical force, which explains the superhuman feats of strength. Abel’s powers…”

            “…speak for themselves,” Abel replied. “I’ve always been a freak, so fate decided that was the way to go. So, let’s say we take you at your word. Not saying I do or don’t. Where does that leave us?”

            “It leaves you here with us,” she replied. “Our organization is called Echelon, as we are the highest level of temporal normative enforcement in existence.”

            “Normative enforcement?” Justin asked. Abel gave a sardonic smile that turned to a scowl.

            “You gave the wrong people time powers, you idiots. Now, you’re stuck cleaning up that mess for all eternity. Right?”

            She nodded. “Regrettably true, though I fail to see the idiocy of it. Several members of the Timekeepers’ Council disagreed on what rules applied to stability in time, and those that took a position separate from ours created a new organization that they named Castle. We theorize that they were responsible for your powers flowering so soon.”

            “And it couldn’t have been one of your own agents why exactly?” Justin asked. “I mean, aren’t people more susceptible to corruption with that kind of absolute power at their disposal?”

            “Very true,” she admitted. “Agents are indeed vulnerable to corruption, but we can, to a degree at least, mathematically forecast the future actions taken in a given scenario by an agent.”

            “So you calculate who will obey you, and they’re the ones you empower?” Justin reasoned. “That seems a bit…forced. Shouldn’t you let the children of your best at least have the chance to choose their own life?”

            “We do not expect you, as of yet, to understand our procedural operations,” one of the other members said. “As cruel as this is, and we freely acknowledge its injustice. The problem is that we have no better way to continue our legacy, and we must do so.”

            “But you don’t trust us,” Abel said, his eyes narrowing. “I can feel it. You know I’m a telepath, and yet you still don’t even try to hide it. You’re all looking at us strangely. So…why? What about us is such a problem?”

            “That…is a matter we would also like to discuss,” a third man put in. “At issue is the fact that you’re not the only ones whose genes have been activated. There are four others, both Spanners and Jumpers, who have begun exhibiting powers similar to yours.”

            “And them?” Justin asked. “Why bring us here and not them?”

            “Because we wanted our oldest and most experienced members personally briefed by this gathering,” the man replied. “The other recruits are here, but they have not yet woken to complete their mazes just yet.”

            “What are you going to say that you don’t want them to hear?” Justin queried.

            “We…” the man pointed to the screen, upon which a large and complicated group of numbers appeared in sequence. “We employ this algorithm to calculate the best candidates to be our next generation of agents.”

            “But we didn’t show up when you ran it,” Justin surmised. “What’s wrong with that?”

            “The problem with that is that you showed up on another algorithm…” the man answered. “One calculated to find those most likely to threaten our stability.” The names, all six, appeared at the end of the equation, but they scrolled too quickly by for Abel to catch. Justin, however, saw them all clearly and realized, with a jolt, that his sister’s was among them. What could her power be, and how had he not seen it? “It calculated you all down to the abilities you would develop. We felt that it was best to draw those capable of threatening our stability here and to ask your help. But your team itself cannot know of this.”

            Abel smirked with that same caustic style he so enjoyed. “You’re scared that a bunch of people taken from their families without any prior reason being given might react with some disappointment that they were only special enough to be a threat to you? Hmmm….can’t imagine why.” He shrugged. “Don’t any of you think that honesty might actually be helpful in this scenario?”

            “We cannot,” the man replied. “We calculated that several of the team members had to know, but not all. That would be potentially disastrous.”

            “And you trust these calculations over people?” Justin asked. “You’d rather hide the truth from those it directly affects? What makes you think we would even trust you after that?”

            “We had hoped it would not come to this,” the woman replied. “But we must inform you of the truth. If you will not help us willingly, we will coerce you to. By any means necessary. We have formed a team, and you, Mr. Tully, will lead them. Voluntarily or not; it matters little to us.”

            Justin shook his head. “You don’t seem so benevolent when you’re threatening people. You know that, right?”

            “Sometimes, to accomplish a good end requires darker means than most would be comfortable with. But that is what we must do if stability is to be maintained,” the first man said. “We cannot allow the good of any one individual to cloud our view of the good of all. Time is a very fluid thing, gentlemen, and that fluidity is impossible to clearly understand. What we do requires sacrifices of great magnitude.”

            “But not so great as to compromise your own self-interest,” Justin put in. “Yes, I see that. All right, we agree.” Abel nodded assent. “Then let’s get to it. What do you want from us?”

            “For now?” The woman asked. “Watch and wait.” Several security camera feeds appeared on the computer screens. “And assess your new team.”

            Abel looked at Justin. The South African clearly heard the American’s voice in his mind. Is this really wise? They’re encouraging deception of our teammates. What makes you think they haven’t already agreed to deceive us?

            They probably have, Justin answered mentally. But we don’t have a choice. Resistance is only possible with a group behind us.

            All right, Abel agreed. I’ll go along with this, but that doesn’t mean I like it.

            Justin shook his head. What makes you think I do? He asked.