Project LOSS

Chapter 5

Kai circled the kitchen, pacing heavily as he tried to locate the bread in the fridge, the knife and fork drawer and the glassware cupboard before finally stopping himself, sucking in his lips and thinking. Bread bin, dummy.

He finally found the seeded batch, but ripping into it he didn’t reveal the soft, bouncy texture he craved.

“Stale,” Kai muttered. He dropped the bread onto the work surface and narrowed his eyes when it produced a blast zone of flaky crumbs and seeds. Punching a hole through the centre of the loaf did nothing to alleviate his anger or the mess.

“Leave it for Lani, you hormonal monster,” Vrethie suggested, as though Kai might have miraculously developed the urge to clean the kitchen. Vrethie often said Kai’s constant angry mood swings and outbursts resulted from hormones. Kai knew nothing of hormones but had no reason to doubt his brother, who appeared to have more knowledge on that topic, and most topics, than he himself had accrued in his short life.

Sometimes Kai thought Vrethie knew everything, and sometimes he thought Vrethie was just making stuff up. Either way, his current anger was generated by a very real source, rather than the more abstract concept of hocus-pocus brain chemicals.

“So, you’re taking a pay cut?” enquired Vrethie, as if reading his brother’s mind. Vrethie claimed his mind-reading abilities did not work on Kai, but Kai was often sceptical, especially in moments like these.

“Of course not,” scoffed Kai as he stopped pacing the dining room. “The CDA wouldn’t dare cut my pay. I just have to say I have.”

“Why so angry then?”

Why am I so angry?

“It’s the principle of the matter.” Kai wasn’t entirely sure what that saying meant or even why he was mad at all. The Lead Officer had very nice about the whole situation, so nice that Kai would have felt bad refusing the request. When making his speech, Roger—the Lead Officer had begun many of his sentences with the phrase “I’m not begging, but.…” His many protestations to the contrary led Kai to believe he was begging, but he didn’t want to appear as doing so.

They could not afford to pay the others more, nor could they lose Kai, and so the lie seemed like a perfect way to do both and keep the peace. Still, Kai was of the somewhat biased opinion he should earn more than the others. If he ever left, the city would surely lose its proud title of ‘The Safest Free City’ and quickly fall into ruin.

“Well, I hate to make a bad day worse, but I didn’t manage to cancel that meeting you had set up for four o’clock.” Vrethie winced as he delivered the news.

Like you even tried. Kai thought and was going to protest when Vrethie vanished with a barely audible pop. He felt the familiar whoosh of air as it rushed to fill the vacuum created by the void of Vrethie’s form.

“Chicken s**t,” Kai cussed his absent brother.

He suspected the meeting would be an utter waste of time, knowing it had been requested by a group he had no intention of helping in any way; a group known as Zaber, or the Hope and Glory Force. A ridiculous name for a bunch of fools who had frequently tried to recruit his aid despite his fierce rebukes. They were, to the best of Kai’s limited knowledge, a mobile task force and secret division of the PAVE; an organisation that inspired little hope within Kai. He had zero interest in their twisted agenda, did not particularly want to hear what they had to say and failed to grasp why Vrethie insisted on entertaining their requests to spew their drivel upon deaf ears.

As usual, Vrethie had arranged a decoy property to maintain Kai’s privacy. The small bungalow wasn't Kai’s favourite. It would better suit a lady in her late seventies with a penchant for cats. The doorbell chimed promptly at four, not a minute before or a minute after. Kai answered to find two women and a man, none of whom he’d had the pleasure of meeting previously, all regarding him with the same cold analytical eyes.

The taller woman, awash with a distinct air of superiority, sauntered in ahead of her allies. She examined the many clashing floral designs of the furnishings with a look of clear disdain, asking, “You live here?” with raised eyebrows as though that idea bordered on ludicrous.

Kai ignored the possibly rhetorical question and instead invited them to “Please come in,” in his most sarcastic voice. Only the smaller, altogether more pleasant woman waited for an invitation. She smiled meekly and followed Kai into the living room where her male companion had seated himself awkwardly on the edge of the sofa arm. The tall woman stood, turning over a porcelain ginger tom cat in her hands.

“You break it, you buy it,” Kai warned with a wolfish smile. Screaming, “Don’t touch my things,” as much as he wanted to, might come off a little childish … or insane. He already hated the woman and sensed that the feeling was very much mutual. As much as Kai also disliked the décor of the bungalow, it provided warmth, shelter, and safety, which was more than many people had access to. He was sure there was a reason behind the odd decorating choices Vrethie had selected but had never been interested enough to mention it in conversation. Either way, the woman’s snobby attitude was not helping their case. She theatrically rolled her eyes and dropped the cat back into its place, among its many feline companions upon the mantlepiece.

“Let’s get this over with,” Kai directed, falling into a pile of soft velvet cushion that emitted a puff of dust upon his impact. He made a mental note to give the cleaner some verbal abuse over her lack of dusting. She tended to focus her efforts on the main apartment building, but they paid her to manage all the properties. Kai disliked the cleaning girl, so was happy to have found a reason to get on her case.

“We have discovered the First is planning a massive blood sharing operation in efforts to combat the effect you are having on their numbers. The different factions of the army will meet to give and receive blood from one another, and the leaders of each will be present for a short time at least. We have found out when the green and blue armies are meeting and would like you to bite the leaders of each.”

The woman’s voice droned on and on. Kai stared at her as she spoke but did not see her; listened as she spoke but did not hear her.

“The First is not a God. His power is not magical as he would have you believe. His mind control is the work of tine tiny machines that take over the consciousness. When you bite someone, everyone that person has bitten also returns to normal. This tells us the nanomachines must be fitted with a serial number, or code, which lengthens with each person infected. We have theorised that your ability works by deactivating that code. Therefore, if this plan works, your extraordinary ability will become useless and the one hope for humanity will be lost forever. We can offer you three times your usual fee for destroying each army leader.” The snobby woman fixed her eyes on Kai after delivering her monologue as though she expected an immediate response.

“Sorry, but I am going to have to decline,” Kai uttered without hesitation and without really listening to what she had to say. His mind, being what it was, had registered all the information but not connected any active thoughts to it. His imagination had wandered as soon as her mouth opened, contemplating which snacks he wanted to eat as a replacement for the meals he’d skipped that day.

“Why?” the horrid woman demanded. “We’re offering to pay you very well, and this job should not be difficult for you if everything I have heard about you is true.”

“Oh, it would be easy, sure, but I’m not doing it,” Kai told her as evenly as possible while holding back the smugness he felt on the inside.

“Please, will you even just think about it?” the quieter woman piped up, only to be reprimanded by the other.

“We didn’t come here to beg.” She turned and almost spat at the smaller girl, making her noticeably recoil in fear.

Kai turned to her and snickered. “Ask me nicely and I might do the job for free.”

The man and the timid girl jumped to attention, their faces full of shocked hope and disbelief, but the face of the rude woman only darkened further into a twisted scowl. She did something unexpected. Grabbing Kai by the scruff of his shirt she slammed him against the wall. She pressed her face into his and hissed the word ‘please’ through gritted teeth. Her strength, although alarming and rare as it was, did not compare to his own.

There were only a handful of individuals with super strength, and the few Kai had met hadn’t particularly impressed him. Vrethie had once smiled and told Kai that no one could match up to him because his was the strength of God but would not explain this mysterious claim any further. Kai used that strength now, prying her hand away and simultaneously twisting her wrist into an armlock. He thrust her face into the faded pink sofa cushion with another puff of dust.

“You call that asking nicely? Because I sure don’t.”

She didn’t answer, just struggled angrily against him to no avail. Having had enough of her, and of the whole pointless affair, Kai kicked open the nearest window and threw her out as hard and far as he could—which turned out to be a considerable distance.

The remaining two sets of eyes stared at him in shock. He shrugged.

“You would throw her on her ass too if you could.” Kai guessed aloud. Neither replied, but as Kai ushered the pair out the door, the nicer woman spoke up again. “Why do you hate us? We only want to make the world a better place. Surely you want that too?”

“It’s PAVE I hate. I have my reasons, trust me,” Kai assured.

“But we aren’t part of PAVE anymore. Maybe at one point in history, but things have changed so much.”

Kai sensed she was telling the truth, to the best of her knowledge, at least, but his hatred of PAVE was only part of the reason he’d refused the job.

“If I do this, I start a full-on war with the First. Everyone says if I bite him it will free his drones, but how do we really know?” Kai asked.

“You won’t unless you try,” the girl said, grabbing on to Kai’s hand. “Please, can you not just give us some hope? Something? Please.” She gave Kai the look—the big tear-filled beseeching eyes.

Kai sighed, pulling his hand away and running it through his hair for a moment. “Get me a hundred times my fee and I’ll take on the First and his generals.”

“We can't gather that much in time.”

“But hey, at least it’s something, right?” Kai said with a shrug, shutting the door on the Zaber losers once and for all. He hoped.