Meta Zero One (6 page)

  As Head of the Task Force even Elroy had seen only the smallest part of the facility, he knew there were large areas he did not have any access to. There were labs, cells and divisions all operating on or over the limits of morality, and legality.

   “Has he said what happened?”

   “No,” Francine answered, “and I’m sure that he knows. I'm sure that he saw it happen, but he's not said a single coherent word since he was brought here.”

   “Ok, anything show up in his medical?”

   “Not yet, we've not had the full results back, you think something will?”

   “Definitely,” Elroy took the shirt out of his briefcase and handed it to her, Francine held it for a minute, then gave it back. “Explains a lot doesn't it?” he said.

   “Yes in this crazy screwed up world we live in, except why of course. Oh and we checked the daughters records,” Francine consulted her notes, “she was adopted 4th August 2008, parents were poor dirt farmers in Littlewood Nebraska, you were right, she wasn't his.”

   “No way on earth Sally was his, couldn't have been.”

   “Obviously not.”

  “Can he talk, or is he too doped up for that?” Elroy asked.

   “Try him,” she replied, “you might just shock him into something, you never can tell. And anyway I think he's faking.”

   “Why did you do it?”

   No response, Steven stared straight ahead, looking right through Elroy, as if he wasn't there.

   “Why did you do it Steven?”

   No direct response, a low inarticulate moan was his only sound.

   “Why did you murder your wife and child?”

   Steven's eyes flickered momentarily, meeting Elroy’s for a moment, then he looked away.

  Elroy carefully placed on the table the lab photos from the crime scene and the scan photo he had picked up in the house the night before.

   “Because you did murder them you know, of that I am certain.”

   “No.” One word, dragged out under sufferance through clenched teeth. Steven’s voice was hoarse and harsh, his throat raw from screaming. He looked Elroy in the eyes, holding his gaze, “I didn't murder her, I had no idea what would happen.”

   “No idea,” Elroy sounded calm, but inside he felt his anger rise suddenly. “No idea,” he snapped, “come on man. You must have seen what was going on, you must have known what was going to happen, the only thing I don't understand is how you kept it from her.”

   “I'm good at secrets,” there was a hint of a smile, Elroy wondered just how much effect the drugs were having on Steven, perhaps he really was faking. He knew from bitter experience, you could think that a Meta was pacified; only to have their metabolisms deal with the drugs far faster than a normal person could. He still limped in cold weather from the chunk of flesh Razorfist had taken out of his leg two years ago.

  “Not anymore Stevie boy,” Elroy grinned evilly across table, taking from his briefcase the green and yellow shirt and the coffee jar, and placing them on the desk, between them.

   “Not anymore,” Elroy continued, “your secrets belong to me now, and unless you start talking and I see a reason to cut you some slack, you will never leave this building alive. You will join the ranks of the other costumed nut bags who thought that their secrets were not for me to know.”

  Steven flinched when the creature in the jar scurried around the inside of the jar responding to the sound of their voices.

  “It has your eyes, don't you think?” Elroy asked.

  “No, it hasn't,” Stevens eyes were clear, the drugs had been flushed out of his system completely; he stared at Elroy with a look of thinly disguised contempt.

  “Oh I think it has, yes, you have to look past the 8 legs, the vicious little teeth and the rather nasty temperament. But it definitely has your eyes. All four of them.”

   “What do you want?” Steven asked, “cut to the chase zero.” Zero, that was a name Elroy had heard before, a derogatory term used by some of the   Meta Powered to refer to normal unpowered humans.

   “The truth,” that'll be a start Elroy thought; “I'm the man who holds the key to your future. Do you end up in a cell 39 floors down from here, with a bodybuilder called Bubba buggering you every night?  Or do we help each other? Really it all depends on you. But let's start with the unalterable fact that your wife, and adopted daughter are dead, because of you. You must have known what was happening, you must at least have suspected, are you just stupid? Or were the lives of two zeros so unimportant to you?”

  “I didn't know what would happen,” Steven asserted again.

   “Ok,” Elroy held up the green and yellow shirt, with the distinctive pattern emblazoned across the capital “A” on its chest, “from the top then, when did you get your powers?”

   “6 years ago, when I was 18,” there was resignation in Stevens voice.

   “Good, that’s a start, how did it happen?”

   “It was a drug test, a trial sample for a serum developed from some rare African mantis-venom. I stole it, to be honest, thought it would be worth something, but it broke while I was getting away. Glass shards coated in the stuff became embedded in my hand and the drug entered my bloodstream. Somehow it reacted with my system, my body, I don't know why but I woke up the next day with powers.”

   “What?” Elroy thought he knew Steven’s powers, he was after all a major league Meta in the Pantheon of Heroes. An occasional member of both the League of Heroes and the Family he was a well-known champion of the underdog. He was a street level hero unlike The Guardian or the Warrior Queen. He had to Elroys knowledge saved hundreds of people, not that made murder  acceptable, but it might give him some leeway, in the eyes of the FBI if not in Elroy’s.

  “I can make webs obviously, I'm strong, fast and can jump really high, and I can change my skin color and texture to blend in with the background as well.”

   “Is that it?”

   “Yes.”

   “Remember no lies, No tricks I need to know the truth, I need to know if you can be useful to us in the future, if you are better-off alive than dead.” Elroy knew that many Metas kept some of their abilities secret, they thought it gave them something of an edge.

   “Well I can sweat a pheromone which makes me more attractive to women. The affects are not permanent, and it doesn't always work, but it can be very effective in the long-term, if I use it consistently, on the same person.”

  “Did you use it on Jean-Marie?”

  “Yes,” Steven looked embarrassed, “I'd always loved her, but she never even saw me, how else was I to make any impression at all. I had no other chance. Without it I didn't have a shot.”

   “Smooth,” Elroy said, “nice moves you've got there, so you effectively drugged her and raped her. You used your powers to seduce and trick an innocent woman. That explains a lot.”

   “Don't judge me Zero, I've saved the world more times than you can ever know, I've saved hundreds of people from rape, murder, car accidents, alien invasion, you name it, and all I ever got was “thanks”. I deserved a reward. I deserved what I got.”

   “And did Jean-Marie, did she deserve what she got?”

   “No, of course not, not in the end, no. But we were happy together, she loved me, love is a chemical reaction to stimuli after all, what’s the difference if it’s externally induced, at first?”

   “But was it just at first Steven, or did she need further doses?”

    “No, unfortunately, it didn't last. I had to keep topping it up, she needed to be reminded why she loved me. The effects kept wearing off, so I had to top it up every six months or so.”

  “Like I said, smooth, you seduced and raped an innocent woman using your powers, and you justify it by how many people you've saved. That doesn't paint you in a good light does it? Next question, did she want children or was that all you?”

  “She did, but I didn't want to risk it, I'd no idea what the effect of my powers would be on a child. I'd no idea what it would turn out like. But in the end I loved her so….”

   “So?”

   “So I lied, I told her I couldn't have kids, that I'd been sterilized by an industrial accident, it was probably true anyway, or so I thought. So we adopted Sally two years ago. She was great and for a while everything was working out fine.”

   “Very sensible, you surprise me, so what changed it in the end?”

   “It was an accident I think, we just got carried away and forgot to take precautions or she forgot take her pill, or deliberately forgot. I don't know really, and I couldn't really ask, after all I was supposed to be sterile remember. She was two months pregnant before I knew anything about it. Then well, she was so happy. She loved Sally, but somehow this felt more special, it was more a part of us. It even meant that I had to use less pheromone’s to control her.”

   “How wonderful for you, when did you realise something was wrong?”

    “The twelve week scan. I'd set it up with a doctor who knew my secret, he faked the scan Jean-Marie saw, just in case, so she saw a perfect little foetus. It was later in private that he showed me what was really there. I threw up.”

   Elroy held up the jar and gave it a shake the evil looking creature inside writhed and spat at the glass.

   “Yes, there were hundreds of them, in a tight ball, growing inside her, almost like a normal baby would be.”

  “Like a normal baby? And you let the pregnancy continue?” Elroy spat out.

  “Ok, I know now it was a bad idea but at the time I still didn't know what to expect.”

   “And Jean-Marie?”

  “I don't know what she thought, I think she knew something wasn't quite normal, but she had nothing to compare it to. She had no sisters or close friends who'd had children. The creatures moved every so often, and we continued to fake the scans and the test results, she thought we were having another little girl.”

  “How were you planning on hiding the birth from her?”

  “Emergency caesarian, it was due...”  Steven looked upwards, thoughtfully, “tomorrow as it happens. We would have faked an emergency, and put her out, opened her up, removed the sac and hidden it. I'd got a replacement baby lined up, from a woman due at the same time as us, sad case, a rape victim I'd got to just too late. It was going to cost me a lot of money, but we would have had a child, which at least Jean-Marie thought was ours. And we would have kept the others secret.”

   “Who was helping you on this, not a normal doctor surely?”

   “No, it was a Meta Powered one, I won't tell you who, but he fits more into the mad scientist role than most, I promised to protect his identity.”

  “So what went wrong?” Elroy already suspected who it could be. The Arachnid had strong ties to The Five, who were led by a slightly mad, brain enhanced scientist.

  “We had just got to bed, and,” Steven paused, “Jean-Marie wanted to make love, she had read there was something in sperm that could induce labor. I didn't want to, but she,” he hesitated, “she persuaded me.”

   “Then?”

   “The sac must have burst; she was on top of me, her hands on my chest, eyes closed. Then the sac must have reacted in some way, perhaps the movement, perhaps it was my sperm, I don't know for sure. But the sac must have opened anyway; I think I heard it pop. She opened her eyes and a look of joyful surprise spread across her face, she must have thought it was the start of labour. At first there was a happy glint in her eye but it was rapidly followed by one of pain, then one of sheer terror. She stayed on top of me at the whole time; I lay beneath her and watched helplessly as they ate their way out of her. There was a torrent of them spilling out of her stomach onto my belly. Her blood sprayed all over me and all over the wall. The noise they made, the scurrying of their feet was awful. God, I screamed and screamed and finally I managed to throw her off. She was dead by then, but they just kept on coming. They were crawling all over her at one point, and then almost as one, they scurried out. They must have smelled Sally I suppose, saw her as some sort of threat, or just a source of food.”

  “And you?”

  “I did nothing, they left me alone for some reason, I can't remember much more, Sally’s screams, the noise, the eating sounds, the blood dripping. The next thing I knew I was here in this room.”

   “So you murdered her, you let her get pregnant, and you let it continue to completion, even though it clearly was not normal, even though it was clearly dangerous for her. And now, we have a few hundred hungry angry little Man-Insects crawling around the city. Man-Insects which I will no doubt spend the next few years clearing up after.”

  Steven looked at him, silent, the arrogance with had surfaced a few minutes ago had now gone, he looked hollow and empty.

   “What happens to me now?” he said dejectedly, all the fight had gone out of him.

   “Not sure,” Elroy said, standing, “for now, I think I'll leave you and junior to get to know each other. Your days as a superhero are over for sure. But I think we can find a use for a man of your abilities, that pheromone thing certainly sounds interesting.”

   “What happens to him now?” Francine asked, she and Elroy were back in the viewing room; she had stayed for the interview and had heard everything Steven had said. “There are definite sociopathic tendencies there, we can't let him go free you know that don't you.”