Cone of Silence Read online

  She finished her scan and kept working with a slight smile on her lips. Folks were more responsive if you had a slight smile. That was another tidbit from her lessons on how to be human again. She had had quite the curriculum.

  Chapter Four

  She had just finished lining up the fibres when the school group entered. A light application of adhesive locked the fibres of canvas in place, and she was able to sit back and fake a stretch again.

  The detail of her work was exposed on the screen, and she verified that she had tidied up all the small bits before she twisted and went to find lunch.

  While she went to the lounge, she looked from side to side, focusing on the group and listening to their chatter in a wide application of her particular skill.

  Her scan swept through walls, floors, and other visitors to the museum, and she listened to the giggling emissions of the teenagers who were looking at some of the more naked artwork.

  Maira ate lunch, and once she had completed her meal, she returned to the repair station and put her lens on. She fixed it over her eye, and as she did so, she brought up the girls’ image on the tablet and sent it to Jianik.

  Her equipment was all wired for communication with the investigator.

  A tiny icon appeared in the corner of her lens to indicate that Jianik was on the images.

  The other girls that disappeared had all been lured away from their friends, so Maira settled herself at her station and changed the position of the picture so that she could line up with the group and keep them in her line of reception. She kept her mouth shut and didn’t hum or even breathe too heavily. She wanted to keep the line of communication as wide as possible without tipping the hand that someone was listening.

  She listened to the girls discuss their classes, the content of the paintings, and when a masculine voice sounded, Maira went on the alert.

  His tone was young, just bordering on a deeper masculine tone. Maira paused and flicked through the link to the internal monitors, and she found the group. She clicked the link to Jianik and sent her the new face.

  “So, ladies, you seem to be having a nice time.” The young man was a few feet away from them. He was tall, handsome, and polite.

  The three girls that he had separated from the others by simply talking to them, all giggled.

  One of the girls inclined her head. “We are having a nice time. Our school year is almost over. This is a reward for good grades.”

  He chuckled. “Smart as well as lovely. May I come with you? I think seeing these paintings via your perspective will improve my enjoyment of them.”

  Maira wanted to whistle. He had given them no socially graceful way out. They either had to dismiss him rudely or allow him to come with.

  One of the girls smiled. “Of course, you can come with us. I am Maisi, this is Lorora and Demda.”

  Maira winced. Watching this, even via her senses, was painful.

  Maira heard something that sent her heart thudding.

  The shyest of the girls so far said, “Why are you wearing gloves?”

  Maira waited. The brief had been absolute. She had to wait until there was no doubt that kidnapping was taking place.

  Maira tapped the tablet and zoomed in on the young man’s hands, sending the image to Jianik, so she knew where the danger was coming from.

  The young man said, “It was cold when I left the house this morning, and I don’t like to leave fingerprints when I touch the interactive displays.”

  Maira nodded. It was a plausible explanation if you were a teen and not paranoid. Her senses were rioting, but she had to wait.

  She tracked them through a number of the chambers until they reached the interactive displays that let folks stand in one of the paintings or virtually carve a statue from holographic stone.

  Lorora ended up alone with the young man who had yet to come up with his name. The other girls were all shrieking and enjoying themselves, posing as classical nudes with a digital overlay turning their bodies into paint and canvas.

  She held the projected chisel and mallet, and he moved next to her. “Let me help you.”

  Lorora tried to protest, there was a squeak, but no words came out.

  Maira didn’t know what happened. She checked the visuals, but there wasn’t a camera on that particular corner of the display. It was time to get moving.

  She set the tools and brushes away from the painting she was working on, grabbed her purse, and slipped the bands on over her knuckles. Shit had just gotten serious.

  She was on her way down the stairs when she saw the girl, Lorora, being escorted by the young man, he was chatting to her and laughing. Her face was frozen in a smile.

  Maira moved quickly. She could see his hand, and he wasn’t wearing a glove. His palm was pressed to Lorora’s, and he was swinging their joined hands as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  They were out of the building by the time she made it to the front steps. A vehicle was waiting for them, and Maira watched as they bundled Lorora inside and drove off.

  She stepped to the street and took out the cycle orb, and when it struck the ground, her clothing did something peculiar.

  She went from wearing business casual attire to wearing a blocky leather bodysuit, complete with gloves that ran under her knuckle bands.

  “Communication initiated. Investigator Jianik standing by.” Her cycle spoke in her helmet.

  She got on the cycle and drove, tracking Lorora.

  “Her abductor uses a skin-contact hypnotic. Appears to be a teenage boy but he knows exactly what to say and how to say it. He gave them no chance to shake him off.”

  “Good. Do you have them?”

  “Tracking them now. About to initiate communication with Lorora.”

  “Good. Keep her calm.”

  She set the cycle to auto and used the tracking to pinpoint where she was getting her signal. Every time the vehicle turned, she updated the tracking.

  “Lorora, don’t jump. My name is Mara, and I am following you. You are not alone.”

  There was silence. “I can’t move my mouth.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I can hear you just fine.”

  “Are you with a hero team?”

  “No, I have been sent by an investigator. Other gifted girls have gone missing, and the schools wouldn’t stop the trips, so watchers have been placed to keep an eye out for another abduction. You are the target today.”

  The whisper came. “What if they hear me?”

  “They can’t hear you. If my gift is engaged, no one can hear you.”

  There was silence. “Why didn’t you stop him?”

  “I was several floors away, and this chat is the sum and total of my gift. I would apologize, but that would waste time. Also, those girls that I mentioned?”

  “Yes?”

  “No one knows where they are. I believe that this event has been structured to find them.”

  Lorora’s mental tone was flat. “I am bait.”

  “It wasn’t you, precisely. Any gifted girl could have been the target.”

  Lorora snorted in her mind. “Maisi would have jumped into his arms. No paralytic needed.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “Not as much as I should be. As long as you can keep talking to me, I will be fine. Where are they taking me?”

  “We don’t know. Do you hear any names of places?”

  “The world is silent right now. It is rather nice.”

  “Ah, right. I will go quiet for a count of ten seconds, and you tell me what you hear.”

  “Don’t leave me!”

  Maira took a deep breath and corrected the course once again. “I am not leaving you. I am keeping you in my scope. Wait. Go quiet, and I will listen for you. You can speak if you need to but make sure your mouth isn’t moving.”

  “Okay. Just don’t leave.”

  “I will stay with you.”

  Maira opened her cone of
focus, and she heard them congratulating themselves, heard the word base, and the mention of two hours.

  It was going to take two hours to get to their destination, but they weren’t leaving Dlio, so that was something.

  She called Investigator Jianik. “They are on their way to a base, two hours from the city. That is the chatter in their vehicle, anyway.”

  Maira focused on Lorora and said, “I am back in focus.”

  “Thank you. So, you heard what I heard?”

  “Two hours?”

  “Yes.”

  Maira chuckled and changed direction again. “Do you know any local trivia?”

  “I am good at math. I can give you quiz questions.” Lorora sounded unsure.

  “Nope. I am driving. Tell me about the names of the stars in the sky at night or your favourite artist.”

  “You like art?”

  Maira chuckled. “You can say that. You can ask me about art. I am pretty good at it.”

  “Right. Who is your favourite postcolonial artist?”

  “Maquiset of Fealli. His use of colour and layering always sucks me into the images, and I love the three portraits that I have seen.”

  They talked about art while the time ticked away. When the vehicle left the traffic and took off into the countryside, Maira knew it was simply going to be a matter of time before she was noticed.

  “Employing security screen.” The cycle stated it in such a bland voice that Maira wasn’t sure she hadn’t imagined it, but while she checked every five minutes, it soon became clear that Maira wasn’t visible to the men who had taken Lorora.

  After ninety minutes of the chase, a message came through from Jianik. “Look for their base and listen for other females. You have to be approaching it soon.”

  Off-roading on a street cycle wasn’t the easiest of things, but she clicked the affirmative and kept talking to Lorora. They had just achieved the mix of modern and ancient techniques in current era collage art when a flash sweep gave Maira the location of six other girls. They were all in a space together and speaking softly about what they missed about home.

  She got the location and attached it to the tracking program.

  “If this is the location of the girls, tap once.”

  Maira tapped down on the com unit with one finger while discussing using bodily fluids as a disgusting art medium.

  “Excellent. Backup is on the way. Feel free to take out the capture vehicle by any means necessary.”

  Maira grinned and whispered to Lorora. “I am going to be coming up on the side of the vehicle now. It may spin or stop. Even if he lets go of you, don’t react unless you think you can get away.”

  “Yes, Mara. What are you going to do?”

  “Have a bit of fun.”

  She leaned into the cycle controls, took it off automatic, and throttled it up with a roar.

  “Concealment has been disengaged.”

  She grinned and propelled the bike forward, clenching her left fist as she powered up next to the dark car with darker windows.

  She used the side of her fist and connected with the lighting system at the back of the vehicle. Two sharp hits and the mix of metal and plexi began to slow until it stopped. She shot out in front of it, and she waited. She didn’t have to wait long.

  Two men tumbled out of the front seat, one of them holding a whip.

  She spoke to him, deafening him to the world around him. “Now, that isn’t a very nice toy for you to be playing with. What would your mother think?”

  His cohort was screaming at him to use the whip, but her victim was trapped in a world where he saw his mother looking at him sadly, and she was shaking her head. He sobbed and dropped to his knees in the real world, and it left Maira free to drive the cycle at his companion and punch him as she whipped past. He took her momentum and that of the propulsion charge and landed thirty feet away.

  She got off her cycle and stepped up to the vehicle, tapping on the window. “You might want to come out now.”

  Lorora was frightened, her mind was wild when Maira spoke to her. “He has a stunner to my head.”

  Maira sighed and found him in the vehicle by tracking the thud of his heartbeat. “Put the stunner down, or you won’t like what happens next.”

  “I will kill her. This was supposed to be easy. Grab some rich bitches and get out. This was supposed to be easy.”

  Maira said, “Let her out of the car or get out yourself, but don’t hurt her.”

  “You think she is getting out of this alive. You are insa—”

  In his mind, in his very nerve centre, Maira whistled. She gave it a piercing shriek, the sound of a body going deaf. It wasn’t a slow decline, it was a sharp, pounding pulse of pain, and then, the world was silent.

  She heard the shriek, and then, she opened the door, pulling Lorora free and holding her upright against the vehicle while she struggled to recover.

  Her eyes were bleary, her head was heavy, but when she finally straightened, she threw her arms around Maira, and she sobbed with relief.

  Maira held her while she cried as every superhero team that she had ever heard of flew overhead and focused on the base. She had been part of a plan after all.

  Chapter Five

  “What did you do to him?” Lorora was sitting on the vehicle while one man sobbed and her original captor was still blacked out from shock. The third man wasn’t moving.

  “I used my skills to ask that one if his mother would be proud. Surprise. She would not be. The youngling who captured you, he wanted you dead, so I gave him one of my memories in a whisper, and he passed out from the pain.”

  “One of your memories?” Lorora looked concerned.

  “It was from a few years ago. It was what gave me the skills to be here today, actually.”

  “Why are you here?”

  Maira looked around as the puffs of smoke and dust rose near the base. “I am here to do a job. I am not a hero. I am a survivor.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that when life knocks you down, you get up. When someone needs help, you give it. If you are knocked down in the process, you get up again and again, until you can’t get up anymore.”

  “What happens then?”

  “You heal, and you get back on your feet, and you go out again, and you take what is in you, and you use it to help when you can.”

  Lorora chuckled, and she leaned her head against Maira’s shoulder. “I thought being a hero was about punching people.”

  “No. You stand between people and the punch. Here’s the fun thing. Anyone can be a hero. You just have to step between someone and approaching danger. To be a survivor, you have to do it and then go home afterward to have a normal meal with normal people, like nothing has happened. Then, you get up and do it all again the next day.”

  Lorora sighed. “Why do the heroes in the teams get paid?”

  “Everyone has to eat, to gain shelter, to put their children through school. They can’t all live at a training centre. They need to have a life to keep their link to the very people they are trying to help.”

  “What if you don’t want your gift?”

  “No one asks for them. You have them strictly because your genes were triggered. I was perfectly normal until I wasn’t. It has been awkward, and I have had to train to learn what I can and can’t do, and I am still shocked that I could make that guy’s ears bleed like that.”

  “Will he die?”

  “Probably not, but he will be deaf if he doesn’t get medical care soon.”

  “Why are we waiting here?”

  “Because I don’t know where to take you next. My investigator didn’t give me instructions.”

  Three of the flying heroes came toward them and landed several feet down the road.

  Lorora tensed. “Can I go?”

  “Certainly. I was just here to keep you safe.”

  Lorora stepped away from the vehicle, a
nd she took a few slow paces toward the central figure in the trio before she ran toward him and was embraced by the hero. He spoke softly in her ear, and she sobbed and nodded.

  The other two flyers stepped toward Maira, and she kept her casual pose against the vehicle.

  The woman with crimson hair and the red cast to her skin smiled. “How many prisoners to take care of?”

  “Two. The one in the car is armed and needs medical care, but the one on the side of the car will be helpless until he gets a good night’s sleep. The guy I hit... he hasn’t moved.”

  She gestured and saw the flyer make a slight move. They were treating her like the enemy, or at least someone under suspicion. “He’s over there.”

  “Where will you go now?”

  “I will ask my investigator and see if she has an extraction plan for me. I need to get to my cycle.”

  The woman quirked her lips. “Of course.”

  Maira got to her cycle and activated the com system. “Jianik, how am I getting out of here?”

  “Bright Burn is going to give you a lift. She will get you back to the portal in a few minutes.”

  The woman had walked up next to Maira. “Jianik, is she one of yours?”

  “She is. She has also just stopped the extortion, so now, the teams can get back to normal operation.”

  The woman, Bright Burn, smiled. “It is good work, and she didn’t get in the way, either. I will get her back to the city.”

  “Thank you.” Jianik sounded smug.

  “It is my pleasure, Investigator. This is becoming interesting.”

  Jianik laughed and disconnected the communication, so Maira triggered the compression and opened her suit to put the marble back in her cleavage. It seemed like the best place to keep the most important part of her equipment.

  “Oh, the guy in the back of the car, he excretes some kind of neurotoxin via his hands. I don’t know if other parts of his body do the same.”