Natural Enemy 1 (Patreon)

Chapter 1

TWO YEARS AGO

Lauderdale… place is barely a city, son. His dad used to say that all the time, mostly while he was complaining about traffic after he got home from work. Just a big ol’ swamp they’d paved over. 

Kai didn’t know all that, but he knew the air was wet and too heavy to breathe half the time, the way it stuck to the back of your throat every time you opened your mouth. 

It didn’t help that everything rotted down here. The wood on the boardwalk, the fruit in the bins, the people. 

Especially the people. 

If you were an orphan, you rotted quicker. 

If you were a freak of an orphan, you’d be lucky if they gave you time to rot. Nah, they just wiped you off the map. Gone.

Kai Doughlas Wade scrambled down the tight alley, nose wrinkled up as he pushed further down the narrow back street. Piss and stale beer from the bar next door, only made the sick stink of the garbage soup leaking from the dumpster so much worse. 

He was almost used to it, really. Almost.

The place had been home for the last three nights. After every ‘job’, after every attempt to scavenge something before somebody caught him, after every successful sneak into an unlocked business after dark… he’d come right back here to sleep off the day.

His stomach wasn’t like yesterday. He’d ate a bunch today, dollars handed over at the boardwalk to street vendors and left-over scraps; a half-dozen hotdogs and pretzels and half-empty sodas he’d picked out of the trashcan making sure his gut wasn’t snarling at him like an angry pit. 

Either way, it was something he knew how to ignore. Most of the time.

Three hundred dollars. Sixty-eight cents.

The paper was soft, worn thin like an old t-shirt the pocket of his jean shorts; money that never lasted him all that long. Not enough. He went through the bills so fast, especially when it came to food, so much just to keep him full. Never enough. 

His back slumped against a clean-enough wall, butt dropping onto a barely-stained mattress he’d dragged up underneath a fire escape. Kai barely had the time to let out a sigh when something fell across his face, a shadow making his breath hitch in his chest.

His head snapped up, hands snapping tight into a sweaty balled-up fist as his heart did a sick little flip. He was already moving before his brain caught up, scuttling back onto his feet as then the rough brick scraped against the back of his over-sized leather jacket. 

“Wh-what d’you want?”

They were older, the whole group. Fifteen, maybe sixteen, Kai wasn’t sure; all he could tell was that they were bigger, taller, heavier than he was. They were all bony elbows and sharp knees, a hunger to them that he recognized. He had the same look half the time, even on the few times he had enough to eat; the city had gone to shit after Cole’s Bomb, pretty much like the rest of the country. 

Hell, the rest of the world. 

Too many people were on the streets these days.

These three were no different.

The one in the middle, the leader, had a yellow smear of mustard at the corner of his mouth as he stared down at Kai, a smile that looked fake as anything on his face.

“Well, well.” Colonel Mustard’s voice came out, low in the way of someone trying to make it deep. Trying, sure, but failing with the way it cracked on the second word. “Lookit the little roach, countin' his crumbs.”

The other two laughed, the sounds barely real as their eyes flicked from the one in the middle and back down to Kai, then back up to Mustard Mouth.

He’s the one.

Mustard Mouth was the one to watch, the one who’d swing first.

“Ain’t got nothin’.” The words felt like sand, scraping their way halfway down his throat. 

“Saw you by the boardwalk,” Mustard stepped right into his face, close enough that the hot dog on his breath and the heavy helping of mustard that came with it overpowered half the smells in the alley all by itself. “Had like half a stack in your hand, don’t even lie.”

Stupid. The voice in his head was sharper than Mustard Mouth could ever be, meaner too. You had the money out. He saw it. Stupid, stupid.

Kai swallowed a mouthful of spit, fingers twitching as he felt the familiar cold tingle in them, the low hum under his skin already waking up. No. The sewer grate ten feet away, he could feel the water in it; dark and sluggish and already starting to bubble even when Kai tried to push it back down. Not now.

He held up his empty hands. “I got nothin’. Seriously.”

“Liar.”

Kai saw the hand coming for him, aiming for the front of his shirt, the mean little spark of victory in those mean ugly eyes. He couldn’t help it, his body doing what it always did when his heart started pounding like this.

The last time, it was at the fountain in Sunland Park.

The time before that, it was a birthday party he snuck into to get some cake.

Just like both those times, his hands came up without thinking to block his face. But his hands weren't empty. They were never ever empty.

The puddle at his feet—a rainbow-slick patch of standing water and garbage soup—exploded up with a deep wet WHUMP like a bag of cement hitting a wall, and slammed hard into Mustard Mouth’s chest. 

The kid choked, eyes going wide as his feet left the ground, sailing backward through the air like a ragdoll before he hit the dumpster. The sound was a loud, hollow CRANGGG of metal as Mustard Mouth slumped down the side of it and landed in an unmoving heap. 

The other two, the scenery, just stood there frozen, their mouths open in stupid little O’s of surprise. Both their eyes were on Kai, but they weren't seeing a skinny twelve-year-old anymore. 

They were seeing it. 

The things from the news. The reason Empire City was a crater, the reason so many millions of people had just dropped dead out of nowhere one day, and the reason, the reason, the reason…

“Freak!”

One of them screamed the word and the other made a sound with it; high-pitched and squeaky like a dog toy. 

“Freak!” Both of them said it now, as they half fell over each other trying to get away, ratty sneakers slipping on the watery asphalt as their screams bounced off brick. “He’s a freak! A Conduit!”

Conduit. Kai almost slumped back against the wall, heart trying to punch its way out of his chest as the water settled back down. Stupid. He took in a breath, trying to calm himself more than anything. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. 

Big blue eyes, the color that hadn’t changed since his power kicked in, looked down at his own hands. His fingers still tingled, worse than the rest of him; that rush that came with his powers, as much as he wanted to deny it…

It felt good. 

Not as good as having his parents around, but still… as sick as it was, it felt good. 

But none of that was important right now. Run.

Staying here was a bad idea, especially with two screamers running around who saw him use his powers. Have to run. Now.

Kai scrambled over to Mustard Mouth, putting a hand under the guy’s nose to check if he was still breathing. It barely took him a second to realize he didn’t need to do that, the wet sloppy sound of rough inhales coming from the older kid telling him all he needed to know. 

Maybe he had a couple broken ribs or whatever, but Kai didn’t care about any of that. All he needed to know was that he wasn't a murderer. Not today.

He was about to run, to just melt back into the city, when he heard it.

Woooooooo-eeeeeeeep.

Sirens.

The sound froze him in place; a sudden hook slamming through his ears digging into a part of his brain he kept locked away and pulled. 

Two years ago felt like yesterday all of a sudden. Red and blue lights dancing on the walls of their living room, making crazy patterns on the ceiling as his dad screamed his name. His mom stood at the window, hands up, palms out, “He’s only ten!” The door crashed into nothing but splinters, the sound of—

No.

Kai slammed a door in his own head, confused how the police could be here so quick; wondering how those thugs had gotten the cops so quick.

A man sprinted past the mouth of the alley as two cruisers, tires screaming, skidded to a halt, one blocking one end of the alley and the other… well, the other covered the opposite end, Kai’s eyes going wide as his mouth dropped the same. The runner, seeing he was trapped, made the only choice he had left. He ducked into the alley, twisting and rushing his way.

Into the alley.

With him.

You gotta be kidding me.

The man was a wreck, sweating through a cheap, heavy-looking coat even though the air was already thick enough to swim in. His eyes were wide, wild, and darting everywhere, the man clutching a silver briefcase to his chest like a life raft as a voice boomed from a loudspeaker just outside the alley. “NOWHERE TO RUN, SCUMBAG! DUP ROLLING IN! SURRENDER NOW!”

DUP. Department of Unified Protection. The boogeymen. This was worse than cops. This was so, so much worse.

The man with the briefcase suddenly looked the same way Kai felt, all the fight on his face crumbling away

“You want it?” he shrieked, his voice cracking as he screamed but at the sky, at the whole world. “You want to lock us all up in Curdun Cay? Fine! You can have it!”

He slammed the briefcase down on the ground, the thing popping open to show…a ball?

Sitting on a bed of black foam, the thing was about the size of Kai’s head, glowing and thrumming. A deep, low sound vibrated in the air as soon as the case opened up, making the bones in his skull buzz. Wh-what? The power under his own skin felt like it wanted to crawl out and meet it as veins of pure white light pulsed across the surface of the device.

The man’s shaking fingers fumbled with a little dial on the side of it.

“No,” Kai whispered, the word swallowed by the growing hum. He had no idea what he was looking at but that hum didn’t sound like it could be from anything good. “Don’t. Don’t do it.”

The man didn't hear him. Or he didn't care.

Whatever it was, whatever his reason, he twisted the dial.

The world screamed out with a sound he felt in his teeth, shuddering all the way down to his bones; a high, thin, tearing shriek as the alley, the bricks, the dumpster, all of it…

It just stopped being solid as colors ran into each other, red swirling into gray into blue as the sky dripped down the walls around him like spilled paint.

The wall behind him went soft, the dumpster groaning with it as everything went to liquid; metal and asphalt and red brick all flowing together as they stretched like taffy. 

Kai’s body screamed; everything feeling like it was being pulled apart in every direction at once. His eyes went to the right as the man in the coat just… dissolved in front of his eyes; body scattering into dust and light, a scream on his lips that went nowhere. No.

The blue-white light from the sphere grew brighter and brighter, until it was a hole in the world swallowing everything.

Mom. The thought was a tiny, lost spark in the middle of a screaming, endless storm. Dad.

Then, nothing.