There was like fifteen so that made sense. Still, a small pool of dread knotted in my guts and I paused.

"It's okay, Hamilton's got, like an ankle bracelet of lightning, pal," Jonesy said.

John shrugged. "I don't trust it either but..." John raked a hand through his hair, strangling it in a messy turban on his head.

"Tiff isn't the constraining type," Alex quipped, rolling the tenseness out of his shoulders. He did a loose swirl of his neck, working out the kinks as Randi sat on his lap, peering up at him.

Sophie snorted in the background while she filed her nails.

"Okay," I began, "my Dad told me to get out of Jade's place because the goon squad was coming..."

Archer mimed a small bow, "And I facilitated their escape."

I gave the nod to Lewis, who still looked like every hair was in place. I asked him when his birthday fell.

It was in October, like mine, right around the corner. We were definitely next in line. They'd been at it hardcore since the disembowelment of their main headquarters.

I thought it was stranger than shit that everyone had autumn birthdays. However, our collective numbers were up and the Graysheets had come calling.

"They're going to stick us," Randi said with a slight tremble of her lip.

"I call bullshit on that, big time shenanigan bullshit," Jonesy said. Then he added, "I was just getting the hang of causing black outs and shit and then they want to put out my awesomeness? No." He slammed his blow pop back in his mouth and slurped, missing Sophie's disgusted glance.

"What right do they have to jack our powers?" Sophie asked rhetorically, blowing glitter nail polish dust off with a pouty mouth. She splayed her fingers in front of her and with a twist of her mouth went back to Making her Manicure Perfect.

I guess nothing stopped grooming for chicks.

Right.

"They must," I said, beginning to palm my chin and pace. There had to be a way out of this. I kept turning over the rightness of losing our abilities against their control. Maybe it was the right thing for paranormals not to exist, but taking away our freedom? The right answer had become as gray as the Graysheets themselves.

"Wonder if your Gramps got rid of the Graysheets' bodies and the SUVs?" Alex asked casually, referencing the months' old mess.

Good effing question, I hadn't even considered the corpse wallow at Gramps'. Of course, the Graysheets weren't going to let their own sit around at a civilian's house so they could become further compromised. That had happened long enough ago... I didn't even have a clue. At least the zombie horde episode at the torched Graysheet complex had been pinned on Parker. That was one good thing, he could handle the heat. I opened my mouth to respond and there was a noise that made me turn toward the tunnel-like entrance of our semi-buried hiding place, stopping my introspection about Hiding Bodies.

It was Clyde and Gale.

Well wasn't this cozy? I strode to Clyde, a smile plastered on my face.

"You are well?" Clyde asked, clamping down on my hand with the vise of his own. My hand throbbed upon its release, blood rushing back to it in a tingling surge of pins and needles.

My smile became a grin and he smiled back at me.

"I'm better now that you're here."

Clyde was a subtle dude, he lowered his chin in the barest of acknowledgments and Bobbi came to stand at his side.

It hit me then.

My Clyde. The one who had stood by my side as my childhood melted into adulthood would cease to exist when Gale's AFTD power was stripped. The grayness of choices became less so with the thought of a world without Clyde.

"Oh no," John said, totally getting the implication.

"Yes," Bobbi said.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

His face became profoundly sad in pieces. When the last one slipped into place, taking the life from his eyes and dimming him, he responded, "Leave you, Master."

He gripped my shoulders and hugged me. It was goodbye and thank you.

It was crushing. I felt my soul bruise with his departure.

There was nothing they could do. Nothing we could do.

If he were to live, Bobbi Gale would need to remain an AFTD. She'd have to exist under the radar.

Clyde released me in the dead silence of the hideaway.

I turned my attention to Gale. "How?"

She turned her face and there was a healing scar over where her pulse disc should be.

She opened her palm, showing the crushed disc that lay inside.

"Oh my gawd, you guys are going rogue?" Sophie said and Clyde's lips turned up.

"Yes, my dear, we will be making ourselves scarce," Clyde said and Gale wrapped her arms around his waist from behind and he absently covered her small hands with his large ones.

"You knew I was here," I stated.

He nodded. "I know wherever you are." Clyde grasped my palms and looked into my eyes, hesitating. I could see the moment when he'd made an internal decision to tell me something. "I doubted you when you were a youth." His gaze searched mine, those smoldering hazel eyes holding so much more than most. "However," his eyes flared with intensity, sincerity, "I cannot imagine a better man."

I blinked hard, the wetness straining to overflow the rims of my eyes.

And with that, his hands slipped out of mine, and his arm pulled Gale against him as they made their way out of the tunnel.

And Clyde was gone.

Being an adult sucked balls.

And I had the feeling this was the beginning of a long term series of challenges.

Why, if life was so precious, did it hurt so much?

*

blaze of death

We were still arguing methods of avoidance when Gramps burst through the hole of the tunnel.

I'd never seen him look flustered, or out of breath.

"Kids, let's go," he said.

I looked at my watch, we'd only been here less than an hour. A surreal melancholy settled in when my mind brushed past Clyde's departure and I pushed it aside. It was easier to think about it later, especially when I heard Terran's words.

John whispered, "Tiff."

It crashed into us then: Tiff should have arrived by now.

Gramps nodded. "You guys are walled up in here while they're collecting every paranormal from here to goddamned Timbuktu."

Bry jogged to Gramps and put a hand on one of his big shoulders. "What is it, Mac?" Bry asked in a low voice that was filled with trepidation.

"It's your family Bryan." Gramps looked at all of us. "Their home is burning to the ground as we speak."

Jade ran to me and I grabbed her hand.

"How?" she asked.

Gramps turned in the narrow tunnel, continuing to move forward in an awkward scuttle. "Not how... who."

Terran smacked his head on the tunnel roof. "Tiff." He said the word in a statement as absolute as his existence and Gramps hesitated for a moment.

"Yeah, son."

"Is she okay?" Bry asked in what sounded like a soft cry and I heard the low sounds of Mia soothing him from behind us as we single-filed our way out of there.

Finally, we got out of the tunnel into a misting rain that was little more than sleet falling, unseasonably cold, Indian summer now only a memory.

Gramps got soaked in a second.

"They don't know," Gramps said, looking at Bry.

Bry swallowed, unashamed tears scalded his face as they drove a hot path to his chin. "The boys?" he asked in a raw voice.

Gramps nodded. "They're okay."

Bry's shoulders slumped in relief.

"Let's get going!" Terran shouted over the roar of the rain falling.

"Yeah, let's get the sticks outta our asses," Jonesy said, water dripping from his chin. Jade had my coat over her head like an umbrella so that the rain would sheet off the waterproof surface.

"Wait," Gramps said.

We paused.

"They'll net the lot of ya," Gramps said, resuming his smoking habit in the blink of an eye, the hot ember at the tip hissing in the damp weather, rain dripping off his cupped hand.

"Damn it all!" Terran shouted in to the heavens, the veins in his neck standing out like flesh cords, his hands in tight fists of impotent rage.

"We are so fucked," Jonesy said forlornly.

Gramps didn't head lock him for the language. None of us even responded.

We needed to get Tiff.

Who'd disappeared into thin air.

I knew it wasn't thin, it was thick. Thick with the usual soup: Graysheets.

In this case, it wasn't what we thought.

It was way worse than any of our suppositions could have ever been.

*

decoy

"You understand your mission?" Joe Zondorae asked him.

"Fuck yes, ya old goat." His eyes glittered at the scientist.

If Joe didn't desperately need the assistance of this piece of shit then he'd never ask.

Never.

Yet, he did. So here he was, his brother dead, raised as a zombie and put to rest at the thug Grandfather's house of Caleb Hart. His flesh and blood now lay entombed in the cement under a driveway where he could never pay his respects. Joe could feel his blood roaring in his ears, the rage at all their hard work null and void.

Well, he had one more card to play.

It had fallen into his lap like a fat plum. That jackass firestarter, Carson Hamilton, had somehow overridden his prisoner pulse cuff and torched the brat AFTD's house with her family inside.

Zondorae's lips curled in a smile of cruel satisfaction. It was perfect really. Now that smart ass was with her attacker and the trouble makers would come in, presuming they could save the day, and his least favorite Manipulator would be there to scoop up the reluctant Jade.

For it was she that Joe needed. She would be the catalyst. Her abuse and eventual death would send Hart over the deep end of sanity. It was the directive from above, the reversal still in full swing and gaining speed after the ruination of their government facility and the zombies that had appeared. The public sympathy was still not for the paranormals even two months later. Corpses had a way of turning folks off. Caleb Hart was too high profile to kill by traditional methods. It would need to look self-motivated, explainable. Of course, Hart could be helped along. He had high resilience, unfortunately. However, they'd run the numbers and hurting the girlfriend had the highest probability of eliciting the manic behavior that would lend credibility to his suicide.

Or faked suicide.

Psychologically, Hart wasn't the do-himself-in-type.

Joe stroked the vial that contained the sample provided by Parker and taken from Hart that he'd carefully sifted to include the Key's DNA.

But not for the reasons that Parker had surmised, his last legitimate act as an agent.

No, it was to keep that paranormal gene splice alive. With this unique set of DNA, his employers could enlist the help of anyone they wished to gift with the paranormal spectrum.

For the usual reasons: war, control, power, and Zondorae's personal favorite, money.

Better to make Parker believe he was helping humanity. Zondorae was more than aware of Parker's sentimental streak. Weakness, rather.

And if their chosen didn't like the gift... Zondorae looked at Frazier.

There was always manipulation with a capital M.

"Go fetch, Frazier," Joe said with more bravado than he felt.

"I know what I'd do if you you weren't immune," Howie Frazier said.

Joe Zondorae nodded. "Yes. My brother," he gave a hard swallow, and Frazier smiled, the sociopath, "and I were well-aware of your potential. Hence," he swung up his arm, scarred with a star shape, "the necessary precautions are in place, my friend."

"You're so obvious, Zondorae." Frazier gave a derisive snort. "You want Hart fucking crazy because then he can't realize what he really is." Frazier's eyes bored into Joe. "But I'm not the only one who knows. And then there's that whack-job chick..."

"Just do your job, Frazier. Leave the intellectual underpinnings of the plan to me."

"Yeah, 'cuz you've been so smart," he ended the last word on a sarcastic clip.

"Smart enough."

Frazier barked a short burst of laughter, briefly crossing his muscular arms across his chest. "Ask your brother how smart he was when Hart raised him like a ventriloquist doll."

Howie turned away, walking out of their meeting place, Zondorae's eyes darkening with his rage. When he was almost out of sight, he turned, giving Joe a fake gun salute, pulling back the imaginary hammer, he shot Joe.

Zondorae flinched.

Frazier laughed.

*

November

the journalist

Tim Anderson rattled the shit on his boss' desk in his need to emphasize the greatest point in the history of journalism, his fist making brutal contact with the unforgiving surface.