Short Change: Heroes with Oddly Specific Powers

  Franklin took care to keep the pages in place as he opened it and thumbed through. It was a lot to take in all at once. He saw some choice photos that resembled ID tags, like the kind a factory worker would have. Mr. Adamson’s very own Savage Steel currently employed this one, apparently. Last name, Emmerson. Age, 25. Sex, Male. Just moved from North America, by the looks of it. Poor chap.

  “Understood. He’ll be dead by the end of tomorrow.”

  Franklin slapped the folder shut and started to walk out, but he felt a firm hand grip his shoulder tightly.

  “Not so fast, Arc,” Mr. Adamson said. “Word has it, this one’s special. He’s found a resonance … the same as you.”

  “I doubt very much it’s the same,” Franklin replied.

  “I don’t want him dead if I can help it,” Mr. Adamson insisted.

  “But the merger is tomorrow. If he talks …”

  “Negotiate first. Then decide if you need to resolve your differences.”

  “I’m not a negotiator, sir,” Franklin said.

  “You don’t need to be,” he replied with a grin. “You’ll be taking Leblanc.”

  What?

  “That witch?” he yelped.

  Of all the rotten …

  “Careful what you say, Mr. Beaudry,” he heard a soft voice reply. “You might wish you hadn’t.”

  An older, middle-aged woman stepped out into the open, from a point that would have been just outside of Franklin’s current point of view. He scowled at her from arms reach but kept his distance. He thought to himself, there wasn’t anywhere to hide. He would have seen her while walking in. Then again, he probably did.

  “You two will play nice,” Mr. Adamson told them. “That’s an order.”

  “Of course, sir,” Franklin replied.

  “Fine. Fine,” Leblanc added.

  “Miles Emmerson was last sighted in Marseille, by the coast. Our sources report that he hasn’t left yet.”

  “I will find him,” Franklin reassured the Iron Giant.

  “And when you do,” Leblanc said with a chuckle, “I will make certain he can’t refuse.”

  Chapter 5

  Coffee Break

  Marseille, France

  Night descended on Marseille. An obnoxious mixture of smoke and the billowing ocean air crept up into Miles’ nose. He paced through the city streets with a large duffle bag strapped to his back. A hodgepodge of old things that he couldn’t bear to part with filled the old sack. He managed to scrounge up a bit of cash too, enough to pay for transport if he needed it, but his belly ached from lack of nourishment. It wasn’t enough for both though. Maybe … maybe just a cup of coffee.

  He recalled passing by at least three coffee shops in the last hour of walking. Miles scanned the immediate area, and his eyes landed on a small shop that called itself, Café de Terre.

  “Of the Earth, huh?” he said to himself as he walked over.

  Miles was still getting used to the language, but with three semesters under his belt, the work wasn’t much difficult. Getting the gist was easy. Communicating full on foreign language … now that was hard.

  He parted open the door to the little café and took a seat near the entrance. Good, unobstructed path. Miles gently let his duffle bag rest underneath his table. He already looked enough like a convict. No sense scaring the staff.

  A young woman in a staff uniform walked up to him and asked, “Your order, sir?”

  “Coffee, s’il vous plait,” he replied to the server. “I’d like a bit of crème too.”

  “Merci,” she said, while writing it down onto a thick notepad. After her pen stopped moving, she tore the paper off and walked in the other direction.

  Miles sat quietly, noticing the cheap varnish on his table. This was probably an Americanized coffee shop, not much better than fast food. He didn’t leave the states for this. Now that he was thinking on it though, he might have been better off not leaving altogether. He focused on the act of contemplation so much, that when he looked up, he realized that somebody else was already sitting at his table.

  “Please, don’t let me interrupt you,” the guest said. He was an older fellow. Miles reached for his duffel bag. “Oh, you can’t leave yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because your coffee’s almost here.” A second or two after the old man spoke, the very same server planted a cup of coffee down on his table. “I’ll take one as well, if you don’t mind, miss,” he said to her. “Black, if you please.” The woman scratched down something very quickly and took off.

  Miles desperately wanted to savor a sip, but he set it down to cool off first. Until then …

  “Don’t worry, my boy,” he said. “I’m not aligned with those would-be thugs.”

  “Sure,” Miles replied grudgingly, “then who are you?”

  “My name is Simon Bogart, and I am a party of interest.”

  Party of interest? How ambiguous, but at least the old man didn’t appear harmful. Still, it was worth asking.

  “How did you find me?”

  To that, Simon paused. He glanced down at the table and back at Miles. He smiled.

  “There’s a price for everything, you see … well, almost everything.” Simon continued talking as the server arrived with his own very black coffee. “In the human body, for instance, each and every organ has a price … but what price can there be for a resonance?”

  “The heck is that?” Miles stammered.

  “It’s what you have floating deep inside your mind, boy. It was how I found you, because out of the whole of Marseille, you were the only person whose price I couldn’t discern.”

  Chapter 6

  Crime Scene

  Marseille, France

  Franklin laid eyes on a sparsely crowded crime scene in the lower income district of Marseille. There were at least three officers policing the area to keep pedestrians from crossing the tape. One good thing, at least … with Leblanc, getting in shouldn’t be hard. The door to the two-story apartment was hinged open, so there were probably a few inside as well. Franklin walked up to the tape and locked eyes with an officer who stood watch.

  “Move along,” the attendant said to him. “And mind your own business.”

  Franklin shrugged and replied, “We’re here from Interpol.”

  “I’m going to need to see some identification,” he said.

  “Of course,” Franklin replied. “Leblanc, hand him your ID.”

  Leblanc stepped up in response and took out something from inside her jacket. She kept it hidden enough underneath her hand, but Franklin could tell that it was just a crumpled piece of note taking paper. Leblanc liked to doodle from time to time.

  The officer held out an open palm to receive what he thought was an Interpol badge, and before he had the common sense to withdraw, she made contact. Franklin watched the man’s eyes go blank. She was erasing his short-term memory with physical contact … rewriting it even!

  Leblanc didn’t need Mr. Adamson with a resonance like hers. She could go anywhere and do anything … or at least make people believe that she had. But, and Franklin gave this quite a bit of thought, maybe she remained employed to Savage Steel because she felt it was safer to be in Mr. Adamson’s hand than in his path.

  Once it was finished, she drew her hand back and waited for the officer come to. It was a light rewrite, so his senses shot up nearly immediately. He looked at them with a confused expression on his face.

  “Sorry, gents,” he said to them. “It’s been a hectic day.”

  “What can you tell us?” Franklin asked as they both ducked underneath the tape.

  “Residents heard gun shots. Two thugs were apprehended, affiliations unknown. The resident … one Miles Emmerson was seen leaving the premises.”

  Franklin followed the officer up the stairs with Leblanc tailing close behind. It was a shoddy apartment. Stains covered the walls, and the wh
ole place smelled like mildew. Emmerson must have been more than poor to put up with these living quarters.

  They stopped right outside the door to Emmerson’s living room. A barrage of bullets blasted it to bits. Mr. Adamson was going to have to rethink his interview process if this was what a ‘clean kill’ was supposed to look like. He stepped inside and took a quick look around. Aside from the immediate and direct damage caused by the machine guns, not much else lent itself to a dire struggle.

  “You can tell your men and women to leave for now,” he told the officer.

  “Oui,” he replied.

  After a quick bit of motioning, a crew of about five investigators with gloves and plastic bags in their hands huddled out of the living room through the narrow blasted exit. Franklin stopped for a moment and took it all in. There was a broken baseball bat splintered onto the carpet, though that wasn’t quite as intriguing as the two pot marks on the ceiling above him. They were small, like the two coin slots in a vending machine.

  “He didn’t kill them. Strange.”

  The notion took a while to come to Franklin. He was so preoccupied with the nature of the attack that he’d forgotten entirely that the thugs were ‘apprehended.’ Leblanc broke the silence that followed his statement.

  “Not everyone’s a murderer,” she said.

  “Right, I just kill people.”

  “Don’t give me that look,” Leblanc replied.

  Once he felt adjusted to the environment, Franklin felt the pull of a particular path. There were many, but this one was the most unusual, and it was the fastest one, which indicated he was in a hurry.

  “One path leads out from here,” he said. “It’s definitely a resonance user.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  “Hold on, Leblanc,” he replied. “Something’s odd about this one.”

  “Does it matter?”

  It was very subtle, but Franklin couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d felt a course and flow like this one before. His perceptions reached as deeply as they could, but the answer always held itself on the tip of his nose.

  “No, I suppose not.”

  Chapter 7

  Broken Rules

  Marseille, France

  Miles followed Simon through a steep downward staircase. Simon parked his car just outside a dilapidated old brick building in Marseille, and it wasn’t more than a short hop from the parking lot to get here. There was an old smell, but it wasn’t particularly bad. It smelled less like a basement and more like an antique shop, like the kinds he used to visit in rural America.

  Simon stopped in front of another old door, some twenty feet from ground level. He pulled out a set of what was probably twenty keys, but didn’t even spend time searching for the right one. He just whipped one out and twisted the knob.

  Miles walked into a large, expansive basement with walls lined in concrete. There was ventilation pouring in through vents that he could hear just slightly. There were a few situated on either side of the room. He looked around to get an idea of exactly where they were. Old instruments lined the place. Record players, broken electronics and a heck ton of wires. Most of it looked like junk from the 1980’s.

  “So, this is where you live, huh?” Miles asked.

  “I own a few pieces of property in Europe, actually,” Simon said. “One or two in the Americas as well, although I haven’t visited in ages.”

  It took a few seconds for the old bulbs to brighten the room completely, but once they did, Miles could see just how big it was. Areas previously hidden in a soft shadow revealed themselves larger than he previously imagined. A jolting thought overtook his priorities for the moment though.

  “Okay,” Miles started, “so we have to think of code names.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I want to be Short Change,” Miles said with a grin.

  It made perfect sense! He could telekinetically manipulate pennies and he was … er … that is … well, the name sounded cool at least, and it was the first thing that popped out of his head.

  “Now is neither the time, nor the place.”

  “C’mon, Simon!” he pleaded. “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a pawn broker.”

  “See? That’s it! You can be … The Broker,” he ended in a cool voice.

  “Are we done yet?” Simon said with a groan.

  “What are your powers, anyway?” Mile asked.

  “My resonance is tied to value. I see the worth in all things.”

  “Like … philosophical, metaphysical …”

  “Material.”

  “For everything?” Miles said, leaning in.

  “Well, I started out with antiques at first, which brings me to my first point.” Simon reached into his pocket drew out a single penny. “Mr. Emmerson, if this currency alone is the extent of your resonance, you’ll have a hard time making use of it in France.”

  Miles recalled the car ride over. The vehicle’s windows had a pretty solid tinting, so he had a field day showing Simon just what he could do with the small amount of change he held in his pockets, but the only things he could manipulate were the standard pennies. Was it the material? The shape?

  “I’ll just move back to the states,” he insisted.

  “Oh. And do you think your former employer would allow something like that?”

  “Guess you have a point.”

  Simon walked up to him and held up the single penny, cupped in his palms.

  “Listen, my boy. A resonance can’t be broken, but it can be expanded. I do believe that you can use more than pennies … if you try.”

  Resonance. There was the old man and himself. Who else was out there with powers over different things? It didn’t even have to be a physical object. If Simon could see values, maybe somebody could see sound or have powers over light.

  “Well, I guess I could give it a go.”

  “Good,” Simon replied as he walked over to an antique desk. “Hand over your pennies, boy. I should have spare francs in this drawer.” Miles followed him over and slid his pennies onto the top of the desk, where Simon promptly scooped them up. The old man reached inside a dim top drawer and pulled out a handful of change. “There we are. Six at your disposal.”

  And Simon set them down on top of the wood. Miles tried concentrating at first. He did notice by now that he could feel the presence of nearby pennies. His face muscles strained to establish some kind of psychic connection, but he couldn’t feel a thing. It didn’t feel natural, but he tried moving them anyway. He strained until his face was beet red, but …

  “No good, Simon. I can’t even feel them.”

  “I thought as much,” Simon replied. He swept up the franc coins and shoved them into deep pockets. “Take your pennies back.”

  He chucked them into the air and Miles caught them with his resonance, six beautifully suspended pennies in between the two of them … but wait. Miles had two … and Simon had one …

  “Sneaky jerk!” Miles snapped, realizing that the other three shone a sleek silver.

  “I told you, didn’t I?” But, as he spoke, a kind of alarm buzzed just once from the corner of the basement. “Ah, just in time, too.”

  “In time for what?”

  “Apologies, Mr. Emmerson. I didn’t want to alarm you, but it seems we’re having guests this evening.”

  Chapter 8

  Devil’s Work

  Marseille, France

  Simon grabbed hold of the handle and opened the door just a crack. He peered through to spot a young man in a long coat and a middle-aged woman standing behind. They were also resonance users. He’d known that for a while. He could see the price tags in bold green lettering that hovered above their heads and next to every article of clothing. The coat itself was 55 euros. The young man was carrying two SS-100 handguns carefully concealed underneath it.

  The woman in back must have been a smoker. Her lungs were
in considerably worse shape than someone her age. Other than that, however, she didn’t appear to be carrying any firearms. He did spot a fluctuation near her waist, but the price didn’t resonate anything in particular that he knew of. A knife maybe? He never put stock into knives.

  “Can I help you?” Simon asked.

  “Excuse me,” the young man said. “My name is Arc. May we come in? I have business to discuss with your guest.”

  It was a long time since Simon laid eyes on that particular stare. It wasn’t exactly blood lust, but the look in Arc’s eyes told him the truth. This boy was prepared to kill the both of them … if it came to it. With a shaky hand, Simon opened the door.

  “Mind the warehouse, now, Mr. Arc. There are lots of valuable things in storage.”

  “Is there a different place we could talk then?” Arc replied. “I would hate to cause unnecessary damage.”

  “Follow me,” Simon said.

  He led them around a series of tables that housed wares from the fifties and onward. A larger warehouse portion stored crates and things. Simon never needed to pay rent on it since it didn’t exist on record.

  The items there were much older, but at least there was room enough. Mr. Emmerson’s resonance was in its infancy, but there wasn’t any helping that. No matter what move he made, Savage Steel would have been right on his tail.

  “Here we are,” Simon said as he made his way down some stairs. It was a much wider venue with somewhat more vertical space. The air here was stale, like that from a stone basement left to rot. Nobody cleaned it in some time either. Cobwebs and the scent of mold were abundant.

  “This will do,” the woman behind Arc said.

  “Allow me to explain the situation to Mr. Emmerson,” Arc began. “Last night, you witnessed the tail end of a murder, Miles … plain and simple.”

  “And you’re here to tie up loose ends, right?” Mr. Emmerson answered.

  “Hardly. Leblanc and I are here to offer your job back.”

  “Wh … what do you mean?”

  “Savage Steel doesn’t care as long as you don’t talk … and Mr. Adamson would like to make use of your newly acquired abilities.”

  “Arc! Language!” Leblanc shouted.

  “THE Richard Adamson?” Miles stammered.

  “Apologies, Leblanc. I’m not good at this.”

  “That’s the offer, boy,” she told him. “Your whole life back … plus an opportunity to put those powers of yours to good use.”