Abnormals

Slam!

Once again, Mandie tasted blood in her mouth.

“Do you have to hit that hard?” she asked.

“Compared to how I was trained, this is easy.” Jon answered.

Mandie corrected her stance and tried to land a punch on Jon’s stupid face. He sent her careening into the wall.

“You’re not going to get a hit that high from down there.”

Jon was nearly a foot taller than her. She could just reach his face when she was right next to him.

“I’m getting taller.” She was only twelve. She had plenty of growing left to do, not to mention she grew two inches over the past week.

“So?”

Fine. This time she slid, trying to catch his leg, but her momentum halted before he even budged. He kicked her, gently, back into the wall.

“Good strategy, but you’re a little light for it, and you don’t want to go down until the very last second.”

“Got it.”

She ran at him again, but he caught her head before she was anywhere near the last second.

“There’s no way I’m landing a hit on you, is there?”

“You’re halfway to winning if you’re already larger than your opponent, and that’s not very likely in your case.”

“Why not?”

“Your parents were both skinny, and you don’t show any change in that pattern. The best you can do is get more muscle mass.”

She flopped to the ground.

“So was there a lesson here, or did you really want to beat up a kid?”

“The lesson is that offense can only go so far for you. If you want to survive the fight long enough to get a hit in, you’ll have to learn a lot of evasion.”

“How much of that can you teach me?”

She’d learned to accept the Hunters’ hard to earn lessons by now. It was hard to tell, but she was improving.

“Well, let’s start with the fact nobody is completely untouchable.”

“But…”

“But with your abilities you can get damn well close.”

“In this corner, the Fantastic Raging Ray!” Leslie announced to a cheering crowd, “And in this corner, the Untouchable Nightingale!”

Mandie waved confidently to the booing crowd. Something about being small and pretty made her harder to root for compared to her competitors who at least had visible muscle tone. She wasn’t without her fans of course, but she looked like the mean girl most of these people came here to avoid.

“I heard you go down in one hit, pretty,” Rachael said, better known by the alter ego Raging Ray.

“You’ll have to catch me first.”

She didn’t actually go down in one hit. That would be a boring show. She did have difficulty getting out of a hold though.

“With pleasure.”

The match was on. No holds barred, out of the ring. She had to make a good show, trick Rachael into attacking her, wait a second too long, and let Rachael grab her, then throw her out of the ring.

She dodged several grabs, flipped over Rachael, held her for a few seconds, then got thrown to the edge of the ring. She held the ropes, preparing for another flip.

Something made a noise just beyond the wall she was facing. She could feel the thumping through her bare feet.

She caught Rachael just in the nick of time to jump over her head, bounce off the ropes on the other end, and slam her to the ground.

Rachael threw her off, and she did a well performed stumble, falling on her ass.

Then the thumping turned into a wall crashing open behind her.

Rachael froze. The room was eerily silent of both noise and thought.

Mandie turned around to find some monstrous creature on all fours. The thing seemed to have growths all over its body, a glowing face she couldn’t pick details out of, and severely mutated paws that looked like they had almost human fingers. All that and bigger than an elephant.

Nothing moved except the creature’s face, which eventually locked itself in Mandie’s direction.

“Run!” Leslie finally yelled.

Screaming erupted, and Mandie cringed, before getting up and jumping out of the ring. She mildly heard their announcer yelling that Nightingale had forfeit, so Raging Ray was the victor. She was busy looking for people who needed to get out of the way, because their monster looked angry now.

Everyone’s thoughts turned toward the same thing, running away.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rachael yelled, “Get out of the way!”

“It hasn’t attacked anyone. We don’t know if it’s dangerous.”

“It broke a fucking wall, Mandie!”

Rachael was right, it was definitely dangerous.

“I meant hostile.”

“That’s not for you to figure out.”

The thing still seemed to be facing her, specifically. She tried to reach into it’s mind. Psychic animals were rare, but they could usually be communicated with.

Nothing. No desires. No instincts. No thoughts. No wonder it was standing still, the thing practically didn’t have a brain.

“Then who or what made you come here?”

Someone grabbed her leg, making her nearly scream. It was a kid. Why did someone bring a kid here?

Between sobs, Mandie could make out the words “help” and “monster.”

Still watching the creature, she grabbed the kid, and slowly took them over to where people seemed to be waiting.

“Thank you,” The woman said.

“You should stop being a heel,” The man said.

Mandie didn’t respond. She was too busy feeling like a giant thing was glaring at her back.

“If you’re so focused on me, then maybe I can get you out of here.”

She ran up to the thing, ready for a defensive motion, which never came. Once she slid under it into the hallway, however, then it started sprinting after her.

She started repeating several swear words.

Locker. Concessions. Back room. Outside.

Bang!

Mandie put her hands up as several cops pointed guns at her.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Mandie doubled over as the scream from the dying creature coursed through her whole body.

“Get up!” A police officer yelled. They were either major assholes, or didn’t hear that scream at all. “What the fuck did you do?”

“I got it out of a room full of people while risking my life. You’re the ones that shot it!”

Shut up shut up shut up shut up. She was about to get shot.

“Are you accusing us of being accomplices?”

“No, of course—”

“She isn’t saying anything else without her lawyer. If you want to question her, ask her to come to the station later.” Leslie put himself between her and the cops.

“This is—”

“Animal control’s job. No one under my employ is saying anything to yous without a lawyer, understand?”

Somehow, those words were enough to make everyone stop pointing guns.

“You’re a miracle-worker, Leslie.”

“You save a room full of people, and I’m the miracle-worker. The miracle would be keeping you as a heel after that stunt. Can you make yourself look more cute and innocent?”

“Want me to wear a skirt?”

“So how many times does this make it that your car has broken down?” Catherine asked. Even if she enjoyed Pete’s company, it was feeling a little too common now.

“I’ve explained it before. Anything with a battery tends to break around me. It’s not my fault there aren’t any houses in walking distance.”

Catherine rolled her eyes. As far as excuses went, this was one of his weaker ones.

“Same address?”

“No, actually I moved to an apartment closer to work.”

“But still not close enough to grant me my solitude.”

“You volunteered when I said I needed a ride.”

Catherine shrugged. She was only teasing.

“Well approximately 75% of our female colleagues would pay a good deal to get alone time in an enclosed space with you. Someone had to rescue you.”

“Are you sure you aren’t part of the 75%?”

Catherine felt a heat in her cheeks. She made a point of not facing Pete when she got in the driver’s seat. Even she could tell why everyone liked Pete so much. Blond curls, wide shoulders, noticeably toned arms when he wasn’t covering them, all staples of a heartthrob. Add that to the mostly kind demeanor, and the grin he hid behind his hands every time he teased, and most people would fall head over heels. Not Catherine though. She had better things to do.

“I enjoy intelligent company,” she admitted.

“Why not ask Lawrence?”

They both tightly closed their mouths until a simultaneous burst of laughter. Lawrence was smart, possibly smarter than either of them, but nobody wanted his company. Catherine was a peach compared to him.

“How do we get to your apartment?” she asked.

“Turn left here.”

Catherine turned on the radio. She needed better background noise if she was driving somewhere new.

“A monster is rampaging through downtown. Authorities are keeping close track of it, but signals are currently being jammed. They can’t catch up to the creature, but say it’s making a beeline for Leslie Surren’s wrestling federation.”

Mandie worked there.

Catherine backed up, thankful to still be in the parking lot, changed lanes, and turned right.

“That’s not the turn.”

“This is a detour!”

A vehicle careened into the parking lot as most people were rushing to leave.

“What idiot is coming here after all of that?” Rachael asked, still mostly entranced by the corpse. “I’m not wrong, it is smaller?”

Mandie sighed. “Yes Rachael, I saw it shrink, and I don’t know what idiot would drive here now.”

“Mandie, are you okay?”

“Nevermind. Rachael, have you met my sister, Catherine?”

Catherine had a similar build to Mandie, somewhat less muscular and more hunched over, but the main thing that told them apart was a large burn scar covering most of the right half of Catherine’s face. Same red hair, same gray eyes, same stare they currently had targeted at each other.

“Hi,” Catherine said, barely waving, “Question stands: Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, why are you here?”

“I heard on the radio that some creature was around the area, and I wanted to be sure you were fine.”

Mandie turned and gestured at the thing. It seemed to have already started decaying. Mandie was glad for the times she had to take things out to the compost because otherwise the smell would be too much.

Catherine ran under the police barricade to get a closer look.

“Your sister’s crazy.”

“Thank you, Rachael, I had no idea.”

“I am never letting you drive me anywhere again!” a tall, blond man yelled from just outside Catherine’s car. “Where did she go?”

“Hi,” Rachael said. Mandie made some distance between them to avoid all the thoughts going through Rachael’s head. Blond wasn’t really Mandie’s type.

“Catherine’s over there.” Mandie pointed behind her. The man went over the barricade and made Catherine’s same beeline.

“He’s also crazy.”

“I’d assume he works with her, given that Catherine doesn’t really go anywhere outside of work, and they’re using a bunch of Xenologist jargon right now.”

“What the fuck’s a xenologist?”

“Xenology, the study of superpowers, did you not learn that ever?”

“No. I don’t have powers, why would I know that?”

“Huh. Guess I never thought about it.”

By the body, Catherine and her friend were coming to a disconcerting conclusion as they talked it over: They’d never seen something like this before.

As the police finally tried to stop them, they both offered their card should they need any xenological advice with this particular problem.

“My sister’s ridiculous.”

“Yeah, but she has a hot friend.”

“I doubt she’s aware.”

The xenologists walked back with their police escort.

“Gonna introduce me to your friend?” Mandie asked.

“We’re not friends,” the friend said.

“This is Pete, my coworker. I was supposed to drive him home, so the detour perturbed him. Pete, this is Mandie, my twin sister.” Catherine nodded her direction, briefly glancing at Rachael.

“This is Rachael,” Madie said, “We work together. She was about to beat me up when that thing showed up. Rachael, this is Catherine, my twin sister.”

Handshakes were awkwardly exchanged. Rachael lingered on hers with Pete for a bit.

“I should get you back to your apartment,” Catherine pointed at Pete, “Do you need or want a ride, Mandie?”

Mandie looked at the bike that took her here, and exhaustion immediately set in.

“Yeah, I’d like a ride, thanks.”

From the backseat, Mandie couldn’t keep from noticing Pete and Catherine’s thoughts. They were mainly focused on whatever that thing was, throwing out words like hypermutation and unprecedented. The other thing that kept pinging their minds, and the main reason Mandie couldn’t get out of their heads for long, was Mandie herself. They both wondered what Mandie thought of Pete, and not just in a meeting a new person way. They seemed to care more than expected about Mandie’s opinion.

Even after Pete was dropped off at his apartment, Catherine was wondering what Mandie thought about him.

“So Rachael wanted to know if Pete was single,” Mandie said, leaning her chin on the back of Catherine’s seat.

“He is not. I have met his… Girlfriend.”

That was a lie, or at least not all of the truth.

“Why did you hesitate there?”

“He hasn’t really admitted it, so I guess it could be assumptions.”

He had admitted it. Mandie could read that much, so what was Catherine so cagey about? Wait.

“He’s gay isn’t he?”

Catherine hit the brakes hard enough to send Mandie back to her seat.

“I almost missed the red light.”

“Trust me, I’d be the last person to share that news with Rachael, even if the state’s mostly relaxed about it.”

“He likes both,” Catherine explained, “But currently, or at least last I checked, he is in a relationship with a man. Now can we move on?”

“Not really. This is the first time I’ve met one of your coworkers, and he’s apparently cute—not my type, but it’s definitely worth asking if he’s yours.”

Catherine focused harder on the stoplight.

“Not that way, I think, but he is my closest friend at work, and we get coffee sometimes, plus I drive him home sometimes when his car breaks down.”

Mandie sniffed at the shotgun seat.

“What is that for?”

“I’ve smelled him before. I always thought it was just the car because it smells kind of metallic, but this is familiar.”

“This is getting weird.”

“You have a friend, that isn’t me or one of the Eisels.” Mandie put a congratulating hand on Catherine’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”

“Hands off while being driven.”

“Fine.” Mandie put her hands up in surrender.

“Why do you care?” Catherine asked.

“I’m your sister. If you’re close to a guy, it’s only natural that I’d want to make sure he was good enough for you. Plus I wasn’t lying about Rachael wanting to know if he was single. If he ever breaks up with his boyfriend, you should let him know she’s interested.”

“Will do.”

Yeah, she was crazy to think her sister liked anyone. She’d seen people show their interest, and Catherine neither noticed nor reciprocated time and time again. No reason for this to be different.

“So why did you care so much about what I though of him that you let it interrupt your thoughts about the thing that nearly tackled me while it was huge.”

“It was huge? When did it almost tackle you?”

“It was huge when it ran into the building, luckily without hitting any load-bearing beams despite running through multiple walls. I tried to lure it away because everyone was freaking out, and I sort of made a connection—don’t ask if it was thinking anything, it wasn’t—and when I ran, it ran, very fast, and then there were cops and they shot it and almost shot me.”

“Pete will be disappointed not to hear of this. When did it shrink?”

“After it got shot. It kind of screamed, but I don’t think anyone else could hear it.”

“Okay. So the growth was probably a stress response. I wonder if it will grow again once rigor mortis sets in.”

“Alright, I’m done.”

“Wait, no. I have more questions.”

“Ugh.”

The rest of the ride home was made up of answering questions about the thing, to the point Mandie forgot all of her personal concerns that it might have been sentient. It wasn’t. It didn’t have any thoughts at all, which was exactly why something was wrong.

She took a rest on the couch while Catherine immediately called Pete to share the details with him.

“You need to get a sample from the coroner.” Catherine said.

“Why me?” Pete asked.

“People like you better. Not to mention only one of us is a team head. Let me know when you get anything.” Catherine put down the phone.

“Do you have anything you actually do for your job, or do you just find weird things and look into them?”

“Yes, we have plenty of things we do, but this is an unknown, and unknowns are the main part of our job.”

“Of course, of course. What are you going to do if the coroner doesn’t give you a sample?”

“Pete is going to ask for the coroner’s report, and we work from there, and put what little findings we can get in a file to be looked at later if there is ever something similar. They usually call though. Med school avoids superhuman cases.”

Mandie couldn’t leave things up to chance. This thing locked onto her. Why? If she got a tissue sample, Catherine could look into it at work, and tell her whatever this thing was. And Mandie didn’t trust the system like her sister did.

The hardest part was finding the body in the first place. Every time she opened a door, she smelled the frozen rotted flesh. At least she could be grateful it wasn’t warm, though maybe the sun would burn away most of the odor.

If Catherine got angry at her for this, Mandie wouldn’t forgive her.

Eventually she found the body. It looked much worse in person. It seemed to follow the general pattern of a human body, but with growths covering too much to make it recognizable to anyone, especially with the ones covering what was possibly the face. They almost looked like cancerous tumors.

I hope you weren’t sentient, the corpse didn’t have a mind to speak to, but she still tried to provide comfort, Because this is a terrible fate to have.

She found the closest thing to a clear piece of flesh, and using her finger as a guide, telekinetically sliced a small piece of it off.

Hopefully this will provide answers for both of us.

She held the piece in the air, trying not to let it touch anything. She took the cleaned jar in her pocket, and sealed it in. Then she returned it to her pocket.

Sorry I have to leave you.

She closed the body up, and climbed back into the vent she came from, ignoring the odors and the dust as she climbed back onto the roof. She immediately set to work putting the vent cover back on so nobody would ever notice she was there.

“What do you need to take from a coroner’s office?” the voice was behind her, but sounded like it was coming from behind its own grate, which was impossible.

“Tissue sample. Something’s fishy about this, and I need a xenologist to look over it.”

A hand covered in metal pulled her away from the grate, forcing her to look up at him, a man in some imitation of plate armor. She’d assumed Electron was an urban legend made from a few Good Samaritans, but here he was in flesh and metal. Metal that did not block her hearing him think, Cate?—Mandie!

To his credit, he didn’t physically seem taken aback, in fact he had a hand out.

“Whoever you plan to implicate, it’s safer with me.”

She could stop him in his tracks and make him let her take this. Of course Catherine would make friends with a superhero on accident, one that clearly cared enough to take the fall for her if necessary.

But she had to play dumb for the man’s dignity if nothing else.

“Are you a xenologist?”

“I know a few.”

“So you’d implicate more people on the process.”

“Just the one if I throw you in through the window.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Well for starters,” She stood up, doing her best to make eye-contact with him through the helmet, “There’s no way you’re going to catch me in that armor. For seconders,” His eyes widened a bit, good to know Catherine kept some of their mother’s vocabulary, “I don’t want my sister endangered any more than you do.”

She placed the tissue sample in his hand.

“Don’t break it, please.”

Both internally and externally, Pete Gionelli was filled with stunned silence.