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  “Are we monitoring public reactions?” She asked.

  “Yes Ma’am,” the tech on the NSA desk answered. “Real time metrics, we’re scanning for any flags that might reveal the locations of other attacks mostly, but we also have predictive polling in place.”

  “How does that work?” She asked, walking over.

  “Give us enough of a data sample to work with, and we can predict what people are thinking and what they’ll do, with a margin of error of about two percent.”

  “How much data is enough?” Pierson frowned.

  “Hundreds of millions of points gets us started,” He said, “but hundreds of billions of points are needed to get the margins down to under ten percent. We currently have over a trillion points plotted, and counting. Social media is ablaze, the top three sites have all crashed under the pressure in fact. Most of our data points are currently coming from the third tier sites right now. I would not want to be working at Facebook or Youtube today.”

  Pierson shook her head, not wanting to comment on that last bit. The fact that the NSA could project the population’s opinions to within a couple percentage points was creepy as hell, but she’d long since learned that creepy was no excuse for not doing your job. She’d use whatever tools she had available, and let someone else worry about the ethical considerations.

  “Current opinions?”

  The tech shrugged, “Honestly? A clear majority seem to be treating it like it’s a superhero movie.”

  “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

  “No Ma’am,” The tech shook his head, “and honestly I can see why.”

  She just stared at him until he decided to elaborate.

  He waved at the screens, “I know in my head that is real people getting hurt and killed, real things of value being destroyed, but my visceral reaction is that I’m watching a Marvel film…”

  He paused, considering for a moment, “Well ok, maybe more of a DC film. Point still stands.”

  Pierson sighed, “I’m not into those movies, but I’ve seen enough action blockbusters to get the idea. So, people really think that this is some kind of movie for their entertainment?”

  “Sort of, yes Ma’am. That numbers changes massively, in any area directly affected, of course,” The tech said firmly, “though even then a significant percent still sees it that way. That percentage increases drastically in areas the Marine has responded to as well. He’s currently the most popular person on the face of the planet.”

  “What.”

  Pierson’s voice was flat, more disbelieving than questioning.

  “Yes Ma’am. Utterly destroying the closest competition, too. There are politicians who’d kill, literally kill, for one percent of his popularity right now.”

  Pierson groaned, rubbing her forehead, “I hate people sometimes.”

  The technician didn’t have anything to say in response to that, and wouldn’t have had the time to say it if he did. A flash of light on the screen caused someone to scream and Pierson snapped around to see what had happened.

  Every network was showing the same image now, Hale straining in place to hold back a bus that had somehow been flipped over and thrown at a group of civilians and police. The bus was crumpled almost in half, such that from almost any other angle you’d never be able to see Hale amidst the wreckage.

  As it was, however, the Marine picked the whole thing right up and lifted it into the air with him as he unwrapped himself from the twisted metal before tossing it with apparently casual air to an empty section of street that looked like a bomb had hit it.

  Maybe one did. Something threw that bus, Pierson supposed.

  Hale extended a hand out, pointing at something, then casually turned his hand over, palm up, and made a universal ‘come at me’ gesture that left her groaning.

  Goddamn Marines. Why couldn’t someone sensible have gotten these abilities…

  She almost thought ‘like someone in the Army’, but even her personal service patriotism wasn’t enough to keep her from mind-locking at that idea. Pierson sighed.

  Maybe airforce. They’d just sit around in a nice hotel room and not bother anyone.

  Her thoughts aside, Pierson didn’t take her eyes off the screen. No one did.

  History was being made, and the world knew it. The only thing nobody was sure of was just what sort of history they were watching.

  *****

  Berlin

  Hale stepped into a blow aimed at his head, intercepting it with his lower arm. He grunted in surprise as the impact was solid enough that he had to set his feet to keep from being thrown back by the force. He pushed off his attacker’s arm and countered with a straight jab that he only held back a little on, already quite sure that he wasn’t dealing with a baseline human.

  The blow took the man by surprise, apparently, blowing him back off his feet and throwing him helter skelter across the open square that had become the focus of much of the fighting.

  With him down, Hale looked around to get an idea of how things had been going.

  There was far too many of the changed here, where the hell are they all coming from?

  He was reaching up to contact Pierson when a booming voice echoed across the air, an unnatural reverberation sending a thrill down Hale’s spine as he turned to find the source.

  “The infamous Marine,” The voice said, in german accented english. “We should be honored to have garnered your attentions.”

  Hale’s eyes narrowed as he located the target, a hulking man with a huge collection of tattoos and sheer bulk that made Ogre look like a small and dainty fellow.

  No way that size is natural.

  “Sorry to burst your bubble, pal,” Hale said, “but I’m not here for you, or for any of this. Something actually important brought me… just figured I’d help out the cops with some pest control while I was in the area.”

  That seemed to annoy the hulk he was facing off against, but as that was the point of saying it, Hale was pretty pleased with the result.

  “You arrogant Americans, always sticking your noses in places they don’t belong.”

  Hale shrugged, “Honestly, you’ve kinda got me there. Only ever agreed with maybe a quarter of the stuff my government decided to do. All of it was over my pay grade, however.”

  “Just following orders,” The hulk mocked him, “That sounds familiar, does it not?”

  Hale looked incredulous, “Are you seriously using that line on me when you have a fucking swastika tattooed on your forehead?”

  The big guy growled, stalking forward, “Enough talk! You’re interfering with our god given path to purify this place of the foreign invaders! You will have to be taught a lesson.”

  “I’m pretty good in school,” Hale said planting a fist into his palm, “but between you and me? I’m more of a professor than a school boy. Class is in session.”

  He matched the big guy, stride for stride, timing his steps to have them meet in the center of the square as far from everyone else as was possible.

  “You have a name, before we do this?” Hale asked, mostly just delaying a little but also just slightly curious.

  “You may call me… The Superman!”

  Hale snorted, half turning away as he laughed.

  “Don’t laugh at me you pig!”

  “Sorry, sorry,” Hale held up a hand, waving at the big guy who towered over his six foot plus frame by at least two more feet. “It’s just… really?”

  “It is not funny!”

  “You’re going to get hit with so many lawsuits, buddy.”

  “Just because your American funny books use the name does not mean anything!”

  Hale couldn’t quite keep back another laugh at how defensive the big guy was sounding.

  “Just use the German translation, man,” Hale said, still laughing as he looked way up at the guy. “This is probably going out live on every network, and no one deserves to come face to face with that many lawyers, not even a Nazi.”

 
The big guy, Hale flat out refused to even think of him by the name he’d chosen, growled.

  “Enough of this idiot talk!”

  Bellowing, the big guy charged the last few meters to Hale’s position, where the Marine was waiting for him. Hale stepped into the attack, robbing the big guy of some of his power, but even with that the shockwave of their first contact blew up dust and debris for dozens of meters around them. Hale responded with a measured blow to the big guy’s mid section, eliciting a grunt of pain and lifting him off the ground a few inches.

  “Is that the best you can do,” the big guy grunted out, a superior smirk forming on his face.

  Hale just smiled, “not even close.”

  The Marine snapped out a kick to the big guy’s left knee, bringing him to his knees, while snapping at an upper cut that met the face on its way down and launched the 8 foot tall monster up and back.

  “I just needed to get a measure of how much you could take,” Hale said to thin air even before the big guy hit the ground.

  Hale was starting forward to be sure the big guy was down, only to pause as a flash of light and a shockwave caused him to twist and feel time slow around him as adrenaline began surging through his veins. His eyes flicked over in time to see a bus lifting into the air, and Hale tracked it’s trajectory for a few brief flickers of time.

  It’s going for the police cordon, and the civilians they’re holding back.

  Hale flickered away, a crack exploding from where he’d been as he broke the sound barrier and left a vacuum behind him, reappearing an instant later between the crowd and the bus. He lifted up to meet the oncoming ballistic vehicle, unhappily noting that he was going to have to catch it upside down.

  He honestly wasn’t even sure that was possible. Hale expected to punch through, and steeled himself to try and grab the frame on his way past if that indeed did happen.

  Hale felt the roof of the bus hit his outstretched hands and tried to give with the force rather than attempt to stop it dead. He needed to slow the big vehicle as gently as he could, or it would just keep on going as he tore through it, striking the people behind him.

  The roof crumpled almost immediately, but Hale could feel it slowing faster than he would normally have expected. However it was that he was able to fly, his personal telekinetic ability, extended out from his body and gave him more surface area to exert pressure with. Even so, the bus crumpled around him as he strained against the force of it.

  The strain was one of the oddest feelings he’d ever endured. It wasn’t a straight up physical strain, like lifting weights, it was more mental… a combination of trying to focus on not putting too much strength into what he was doing, and not putting too little. The buss folded around him, screams of tearing metal splitting the air, but it held… and it stopped.

  Hale lifted finally, pushing it higher into the air as he leveraged his way out of the crumpled metal casket, and then quickly scouted around for a clear spot to drop the bus off. The square was well clear of people, thankfully, anyone with any functional brain cells had long since run away from the incredibly destructive exhibition of powers.

  Hale casually tossed the bus to the ground, before looking around for the instigator of the attack.

  A woman was glaring at him, her hands glowing with fire as were her eyes… the only thing he could see of her face behind the arab headdress she wore. Normally he wouldn’t jump to conclusions, frankly he’d known far more good Islamic people than bad, but since the person in question had just thrown a bus at cops and civilians… well, Hale was assuming that he was now looking at one of the changed on the other side of the line Pierson had told him about.

  Shithead against shithead. Who cares who wins?

  Hale sighed.

  Unfortunately, when the shitheads in question were fighting with the equivalent of portable artillery in a crowded city… well, he might not care who won, but he damned sure cared about who was going to lose.

  “I don’t suppose we can speak of this like civilized people?” He asked in english, mostly because he didn’t know what dialect she would speak or what region she was originally from.

  The glow of flames from her fists and eyes intensified.

  “Fine,” Alex Hale said tiredly, pointing at her before he flipped his hand over and beckoned for her to come at him. “Let’s do this then.”

  *****

  Chapter 5

  Blue Solar West HQ, London, England

  Wesley Trenton looked over the lab from where he was standing in the observation room. They had a long line of volunteers, for a certain definition of the word. There were twenty men in the lab below him, hastily screened and vetted to the best of his ability given the time available.

  They weren’t his best men, Wesley wouldn’t be running that risk just yet, but they weren’t the human monsters that had been changed thus far either.

  “Proceed with the experiment,” He ordered into a microphone.

  CRISPR was actually a fairly straightforward technology, as such things went. Terrifyingly so, actually. There was nothing preventing people from doing exactly what his lab was about to in their own homes, using makeshift equipment. In fact, exactly that had been done on several public occasions and likely countless private ones.

  What kept people from having much success was the incredible complexity of the human genome, and the rather unpredictable manner in which genes interacted with one another. Anyone could add or remove genes from a subject, but far fewer people were able to specifically target genes for a desired effect… and almost no one was capable of predicting the seemingly random, yet deeply significant, interactions various seemingly unrelated genes might have with one another.

  Until rather recently, the first changed incident in fact, the best scientists money could buy wouldn’t have added the ‘almost’ qualifier to that statement.

  Someone had proven them all wrong on that, however, and now here they were.

  “Subject Alpha One Alpha is being administered the first variant.”

  Wesley watched as the man was injected with the CRISPR bacterial concoction, restraining himself from tapping his foot impatiently. He’d already been warned, repeatedly, that no reaction was by far the most likely outcome… at least in the immediate term.

  “Subject Alpha One Bravo is being administered the second variant.”

  Without time for proper testing, double blind studies, animal trials, and all the other safeguards, Wesley was well aware that what they were doing wasn’t even remotely science any longer. It was far more akin to just tossing darts at a wall, blindfolded, and hoping to hit an ant.

  Without the government data on the previous changed he’d managed to get released to his company when they won the contracts to study the incidents, it would have been even worse. At least they had previous changes to use, parts of the genome they knew had been targeted before with some degrees of success.

  Wesley just hoped it would be enough.

  We’re taking huge risks… this needs to be worth it.

  *****

  USSOCOM Bunker, Virgina

  “What do we have on her?” Pierson asked of the woman wearing the niqab face and head covering.

  “Backtracking through the data feed now, but not a lot.” The NSA tech said. “I think she managed to stay out of the sight of cameras, probably by masking with the crowds or staying in the shadows. We are seeing a lot of incidents that could have been her, however, the power signature is close.”

  “You’ve started a database for power signatures?”

  “Yes Ma’am, back during the Hong Kong incident. We currently use three dozen datapoints, but we’re always adding more as we find them,” He told her. “this whole situation qualifies under national security, and a full act of war according to Presidential memorandum. That means we’re authorized to pull feeds from everywhere, no warrant. With all the cameras out there today, we get a lot of information almost live. Being able to match signatures quickly is something som
eone decided would help.”

  Pierson nodded. She was Army intelligence, and knew how valuable that sort of data would be under normal circumstances, however they were managing to pull it. Against the changed, who had wildly diverse abilities and potential weaknesses to exploit, it might be a matter of life and death.

  Not everyone can take a hit like Hale can, after all.

  “If you find anything that can help, let me know,” She said finally, patting the tech on the shoulder before turning back to where the Brigadier was still watching the fighting on the screen.

  Hale and the woman were mixing it up, Pierson could see. She briefly wondered what the woman’s story was, but quickly decided it didn’t matter. Whether she was a straight up terrorist, or some beaten victim turned into a weapon and aimed at civilians, she’d thrown a bus at a bunch of cops and civilians.

  That’s not something you come back from.

  “Dear god,” Brigadier Isaacs swore, “That’s one hell of a thing.”

  Pierson glanced at the screen, where Hale was trading blows and blasts with the unknown woman, but she’d seen him do more impressive things.

  “Yes Sir,” She said dutifully, however, before glancing to the NATO representative. “Where is the target?”

  “Slowing on direct approach,” The woman answered instantly, “it should settle in over Berlin in a little under ten minutes.”

  “Hopefully long enough for Hale to finish his little errand,” Pierson sighed. “Sir, what is your plan for the target?”

  Isaacs pulled his attention away from the fight to look at her, seemingly confused for a moment. “Oh, of course. We have a Sled, an SR-71, modified with scramjet engines and armed with AIM-26A Falcon air to air missiles. The plan isn’t too complicated, I’ll admit. We’re hoping that your man can get the target to retreat, after which the Sled will be authorized to pursue and engage.”

  “AIM-26A?” Pearson frowned. “I don’t recognize that designation.”

  “Be surprised if you did,” An Air Force General said quietly. “They’ve not been in production for thirty odd years, and they were never used in combat. The Falcon was a kiloton range air to air nuke.”