Chapter 4: Code Red
It is only 11:45 in the morning when I hear a knock on my housing barracks door. I am getting pretty irritated that the Agency keeps waking me up. I stir in the bed for a second before I hear a voice from the outside my door.
“Physion, wake up! Time to get up!” it yells to me. I recognize it immediately as Darius. I groan a bit before I flip off the covers and walk to the door. I intend only on opening it a crack to tell him to shut up but he manages to push his way into my room.
“Nice place you got here,” he says to me and takes it upon himself to sit down in the easy chair they’ve provided for me in the room. The barracks looks strikingly familiar to my old dorm room and it makes me both sad and angry to think of it because my college career was cut abruptly short.
“What the hell are you doing?” I ask him. He’s looking around the bare room when I ask him and he blatantly avoids answering the question in favor of being borderline creepy.
“Could use some posters or pictures or…something, I dunno. Aren’t girls supposed to be good at decorating?” he asks me and cocks his head to the side.
“I have an actual apartment, you know. Wait, why does it even matter to you, why are you even in here?” I ask him and shake my head. He develops a wide grin and replies in a snarky manner. “To make sure you got up, of course.”
“Well, I’m up now, you can leave,” I tell him and motion my hands toward the door. He settles down more comfortably in my chair and drums his fingers together.
“I’m going to change out of pajamas,” I say and make larger sweeping motions toward the door. He redevelops his grin and cocks his head to the side again, looks me straight in the eye, and with a completely straight face says, “Excellent.” I sigh and shake my head and move toward him.
“Get out, man!” I yell at him and he starts laughing and stands up.
“You know I’m only kidding,” he says as he walks out the door, “Though I wouldn’t file any complaints if you let me stay.” I sigh at him again and shut the door behind him.
I sit for a minute on the edge of my dormlike bed and contemplate what I want to wear. I only have a few sets of clothes in the barracks so my options are severely limited. As far as I’m concerned, I would have no qualms with showing up to the meeting in my pajamas, it will save me time in having to change back into them when it’s over, but I figure Rhodes might find it not befitting of a professional-type setting. Maybe I can just use the fact that I’m a mutant as an excuse. I decide to change into more appropriate casual clothes instead.
It’s 11:56 when I leave my room and it won’t take me that long to walk to the meeting room. Darius is nowhere to be found when I emerge. I am half expecting him to appear from behind some pillar or from around a corner, but the coast is clear and I only pass one other Gifted that I don’t recognize in the hallway during my walk to the meeting room. We nod at each other but don’t say a word. He doesn’t appear to have any outward signs of his mutant gene, but none of us do, really. It is 12:01 when I enter the room.
“Only a minute late, Physion,” Rhodes says to me with a grin as I take a seat next to Tux. “We expected to be waiting at least fifteen.” I smile because I know it’s true, I am chronically late for just about everything except my own birth. Tux laughs a little and Shadowmind cracks a grin. Darius points at me from across the table and mouths “you’re welcome.” I roll my eyes and look toward Rhodes.
“Well, now that we’re all here, we can discuss the mission plan in dealing with the Sleepwalker. Since very little is known about this…entity, as we shall call them, we will do our best to lock on to as many psionic emissions as possible using Shadowmind’s abilities. Hopefully, we will be able to detect some distinctive feature of the entity within a relatively short period of time. So far, Shadowmind has only been able to get moderately intense visions and feelings from the Sleepwalker’s victims. He’s working on building a stronger connection to the Sleepwalker’s psionic emissions, though.
“What we’re hoping is that once Shadowmind is able to locate or identify one of the victims, Tux will infiltrate their home and collect intelligence on them. We’re hoping that will help us make connections to who Sleepwalker is targeting. We suspect it will be some time before we are able to get any kind of vision of the Sleepwalker himself, or herself, as it were,” Rhodes explains. I nod my head and then lean forward.
“How will Tux infiltrate their home?” I ask. Rhodes smiles and nods toward Tux.
“Care you explain yourself, sir?” he asks. Tux smiles and spins his chair slightly to face me.
“I am an Electric Kinetic. I have the ability to transfer my physical energy into electricity and travel along electrical lines and fields to different destinations. Once I reach my destination, I must remain in my electrical form because rematerializing takes so much concentration and it renders me defenseless until the materialization is complete. I can easily be attack while going between forms. I usually hide out in electronics and spy on people’s web browser history while I’m collecting data. It’s good fun,” he explains to me. I find it absolutely fascinating.
“Can you manipulate the electricity?” I ask him with my eyes wide. He shakes his head.
“No, I can only use it for data collection and travel. When in my electrical form, I still have thoughts and memories, that’s how I spy on people. But I can’t manipulate current or anything. I’m no Physion, after all,” he says with a smile. I immediately start thinking of the implications of what he’s just told me. If he is correct, that means that using my abilities to manipulate physics forces and laws, I can control him in his electrical form.
“Does this mean that I can control you when you’re…electricity?” I ask him. He opens his mouth to speak but Rhodes cuts him off.
“As long as it’s for the greater good, my dear,” Rhodes says to me sternly. I am almost dumbfounded by the knowledge that my ability to manipulate physical properties means I can have control over another person. I am trying to decide how I feel about the situation when there is a knock on the door and one of the escorts comes in with a paper and Rhodes steps into the corner of the room. They talk briefly and Rhodes sits back down with the paper in front of him.
“Well, it seems as though this meeting is shifting gears. We appear to have a larger, more immediate problem on our hands, lady and gentlemen,” he starts and Shadowmind immediately reaches out his hand to connect with Rhodes to obtain the information. Rhodes grabs his hand and for the first time, I notice that as they are touching, Rhodes’ skin turns gray and the area surrounding him seems to get cold. Shadowmind’s tattoos become visible. When they let go of each other, Rhodes notices me staring at him and he smiles as the color returns to his face.
“Ah, yes, Physion, I forgot to mention that I have some Gifted abilities myself. I am what you’d call a Conduit. I can transfer abilities from one Gifted to another while in physical contact with both of them, though I do not obtain the abilities myself. Shadowmind here is quite fond of reminding me of this every time he obtains information from me using his Gift,” he explains as Shadowmind reaches out to myself and Rhodes and I notice the air getting colder around Rhodes and his skin turning gray as I reach to take Shadowmind’s hand. Darius and Tux take hold of Rhodes’.
I immediately see the burning building I saw once before and a woman’s shape standing among the flames. I see other burning structures, walls of fire, I feel anxiety, terror, and anger. I see a doctor choking from smoke in his office, I see a man I recognize as a Justice Society member screaming for help inside his burning apartment. I see two women and one teenage boy asleep in an apartment with flames slowly crawling up their bedroom walls. Almost as quickly as the visions started, they stop for a moment and I feel intense amounts of confusion and feelings of extreme conviction. I then feel satisfaction and enjoyment as a vision of a man appears in my head and I recognize this man immediately as the one feeling the confusion, conviction, and pleasure. I notice that his eyes are completely black except for a faint red glow in the center where the iris should be. He has a smile on his face, it seems almost maniacal. His facial features make him look like anyone else, but he feels different to me in my head. I know right away that he is the one creating and manipulating the fires I saw. As Shadowmind lets go, I shudder.
Tux has already moved his eyes from what I assume to be Rhodes’ psionic stare and Rhodes’ color and temperature are back to normal. I look at Darius and Tux and none of us speak as we wait for Rhodes to talk.
“That, friends, is the Pyromaniac. One of our other operatives identified him earlier this morning. It seems as though he is targeting people at random thus far,” Rhodes explains. I sit quietly as Darius rocks a bit in his chair.
“What does it matter, I mean, in all honesty, we have bigger things to worry about, here. Why doesn’t someone else’s team take care of him?” Darius asks. Rhodes and Shadowmind look at each other and nod.
“You will understand shortly,” Rhodes says. Again, Shadowmind reaches out for me and Rhodes locks hands with Darius and Tux.
As I touch Shadowmind, I immediately see a building already in flames and the scene focuses on a wall somewhere in the building with a single word burning in flaming letters: Physion.
