Let It Go

The voice crackled over Harris's headset, "Matassoni's in. Pinyan's to the right, Roark to his left. Set yourselves."

Pete Harris checked again to make sure that the chamber in his automatic was loaded. He brushed another cobweb out of his face and shuddered, sure that something was crawling on his neck. He swatted himself several times but, as always, failed to locate the creature.

They were monitoring an empty warehouse that Matassoni liked to use as a meeting place. Most of the task force waited in a neighboring building. Agent Burgess and the technicians were in a van nearby, watching through hidden cameras. Harris, because of his special talents, was in a dusty, spider-haunted tool shed adjoining the main building. No one checked this hiding place because a normal man would be trapped by the padlock on the other side of the door. All signs of Harris's entry had been carefully covered up.

"Rasmussen's guys are moving in," Burgess said. Matassoni was here to meet with a rival gangster about one of their endless territorial disputes. This time, however, Matassoni planned to settle the argument conclusively by assassinating Rasmussen. The Bureau hoped to catch him in the act and, ideally, prevent the murder. Once Matassoni made his intentions obvious, the task force would move in. Harris's primary focus was the bodyguard on Matassoni's left, James Roark.

"Go." The command was soft, as if Agent Burgess was suddenly afraid that he would be overheard. Harris reached out with his left hand and touched the door with his fingertips. He could feel the pressure between his hand and the door. With a gentle push and a mental effort similar to flexing his fingers, he forced the pressure outward, blasting the door to flinders. He moved into the room and raised his gun, aiming at Roark.

Harris shouted, "Federal officer! Drop your weapons!" The mobsters turned their guns from each other and aimed them at Harris. He smirked and fired at Roark as their bullets glanced off his pressure field. Roark flinched as Harris's shots took him in the chest, then snarled and raised his hands. Helixed people were generally hardier than normals, even if they weren't bulletproof. He suspected that Roark would take the whole clip before he went down, but he didn't get a chance to find out.

The air between Roark and Harris suddenly filled with flame. Rasmussen's men screamed along with several of Matassoni's as they were swallowed in roiling waves of orange and red. Harris dove for the ground and pushed his force field as far out as it would go. Those few inches of protection kept the flames off, but the heat was still brutal. Fortunately, Roark wouldn't be able to keep that up. Once the flames stopped, Harris was back up and the two supermen closed the distance between them.

Fire raged around Roark's hands as he lunged forward. Harris shaped his pressure field to his skin and weaved to the right. As Roark passed, Harris clasped his hands together and hit him in the left shoulder blade. With the field matched to his musculature, Harris could add its strength to his own. He could feel his opponent's bones crunch under his fists. The force of the blow threw Roark across the warehouse.

Roark got up, coughing blood, left arm dangling at his side. He spat a curse and flames roared up around him. Harris could feel the heat slamming into him as Roark staggered towards him. But this time Roark was really burning. He was hurt too badly to control his power, and his own demon was devouring him.

Before Harris could do anything, bullets tore into Roark from all directions. While the supermen had been focusing on each other, the task force had arrived and taken control of the room. It didn't matter. With a blinding wave of heat and light, Roark flared up and burned himself down to ash and bones.

Harris looked around. People were being arrested or carried off by paramedics all around him. Just as he was about to ask where Matassoni was, the mobster walked into the warehouse, held at gunpoint by his other bodyguard. Harris smiled. While the agents took custody of Matassoni, the turncoat henchman shrugged. A strange expression formed on his face before his features shivered, resolving themselves into a new form.

The shape-shifter was Harris's partner, Sam Pinyan. Pinyan had been working undercover as Matassoni's lieutenant for the past six months. The information he had gathered, combined with the charges they could make on this arrest, was expected to cripple every organization that did business with Matassoni.

***

"Your shot," Harris said.

"Huh?" Pinyan turned from the window. "Oh, yeah. Okay." He walked around the table, trying out various angles. He finally settled on a banked shot that kissed the five ball into a side pocket. There were several easy shots from that point, but Pinyan immediately started calculating again, apparently looking for something harder.

"Something eating you, Sam?" Harris asked.

Pinyan tried a ridiculously hard shot that ended with him skipping the cue ball over his target and directly into the corner pocket. He laughed off Harris's question and said, "My heart's not in it tonight. Mind if we just sit down and order some food?"

Over a pitcher of beer and some greasy bar food, Harris tried again to find out what was distracting his friend. "Nothing serious," Pinyan said. "I'm just worn out from this assignment."

Harris smiled and said, "Yeah, I can imagine," but he wasn't sure he really could. Pinyan had spent the past six months wearing someone else's face, living someone else's life. "Maybe they'll approve your request to get out of undercover work for awhile."

"It's not what I trained for, you know. I was supposed to be a profiler." Pinyan finished off his beer and poured another.

"Why'd you get helixed, then?" Harris asked.

Pinyan shrugged. "Just couldn't turn it down, I guess. I mean, did you even consider saying no when they offered you your license?"

Harris shook his head. "I guess not."

The process they had been through was fairly new and still poorly understood. The Helix Corporation had been looking for something else entirely when they discovered it. With one startlingly small genetic alteration, they were able to trigger a variety of spectacular abilities.

This procedure was federally regulated, available only to specially licensed military and law enforcement personnel. In addition to meeting a host of qualifying criteria, candidates for the process had to consent to being closely monitored for the rest of their lives. There were, of course, black market helix shops and legal superhumans who broke the terms of their license. Not only were such actions federal crimes, but the FBI kept a standing bounty of one million dollars - dead or alive - on the head of any unlicensed superhuman.

***

"At least you're not undercover," Harris said. He and Pinyan were standing in an alley with two local policemen and a charred corpse. He snorted and then added, "Why does it seem like the nut cases are always pyros?"

"Because it's so spectacular when they are," Pinyan answered, "and because we all favor data that confirm our expectations. Same reason it seems like telepaths are always shifty and shape-changers are always unstable."

Harris wondered why Pinyan had chosen that particular example. Not sure what else to say, he turned to one of the policemen and asked, "Are you sure this is a helix crime?"

"Well," the uniformed officer said, scowling, "It could be Old Man Withers trying to scare away the locals so he can search for buried treasure."

"Look, smartass," Harris said, "You don't have to be a pyrokinetic to set fire to somebody. It could-"

Pinyan interrupted. "Doesn't matter. Even if the killer wasn't helixed, the victim was."

"How-?" Harris started.

Pinyan cut him off again. "You know how when I touch someone to copy him I can get information?" When Harris acknowledged this, Pinyan went on. "I'm getting better at it."

***

The building was on fire. Two men with automatic weapons were holding a spot near the exit. At least one of them was helixed, with a kinetic field power similar to Harris's. This one's ability took the form of a telekinetic extrusion that he could shape into a variety of forms.

It had turned out that the first victim probably was killed by a pyrokinetic. They had found none of the residues that would have been left by an accelerant like gasoline. In addition to this, he was an unlicensed superhuman. Although unable to find out how the dead man had gotten helixed, Harris and Pinyan had managed connect him with the pawn shop in this building.

Then the shop owner exploded. In the middle of a sentence, the man had simply burst into flames, flames which quickly - too quickly - crawled along the ceiling and scuttled down the walls. They had encountered the two armed men while running for the exit. Harris got the impression that they were as surprised as he and Pinyan.

Harris couldn't get a shot past the shield, and he couldn't wade into the gunfire without leaving Pinyan behind. As he was leaning out to try another shot and take another spray of bullets in the face, Pinyan put a hand on his shoulder. "I think I've got this one, Harris."

Pinyan closed his eyes and the flames around them rippled in an unnaturally uniform pattern. The two gunmen screamed and dropped their weapons. Somehow, Pinyan had engulfed their gun hands in fire. Outside the building, they learned that their attackers were bounty hunters.

"Who were you looking for?" Harris asked, "and why the hell didn't you back off when we identified ourselves?"

The helixed one, a bulky man named Farley, snorted and said, "Anybody could shout FBI. I didn't see no badge." The arrogant sneer was particularly repugnant on his oily, pockmarked face.

His partner, Bleeson, was still clutching the wrist of his burnt hand and scowling in pain. "The bounty's our business," he growled through clenched teeth. "All you need to know is we got our hunting license."

"Got your helix license too?" Pinyan asked Farley. Farley handed over a card and Pinyan frowned. To Harris, Pinyan said, "Ex-military. Another case for not giving the helix to grunts."

Once the bounty hunters had been carried off to the emergency room, Harris asked Pinyan how he had controlled the flames.

"I found it in the shop owner's corpse," Pinyan said.

"Found-? He was helixed? How long have you been able to do this?" Pinyan had never been able to copy helix powers before. Harris had never heard of a shape-changer who could. Some people said it was because the helix-altered genes could modify other patterns, but not their own. Others said it was a psychological block, or that the physical changes were too superficial to include that sort of trait. Nobody was really sure.

Pinyan shrugged. "He wasn't helixed before he caught fire, or I would have picked up on it. Something ran him through the whole process in a matter of seconds."

***

"You heard from Pinyan today?" Burgess asked, leaning over the front of Harris's desk.

Harris hesitated. He wanted to cover for his partner, but didn't want to complicate the matter with an awkward lie. "Well, you know he called in sick Monday. Maybe he just thought we'd figure it out."

"Yeah," Burgess said. "Check on him, will you? And remind him that this kind of thing makes the License Bureau nervous, huh?"

Pinyan didn't answer when Harris knocked on the door to his apartment. Harris knocked again and said, "I'm coming in, Sam. You better have some clothes on." After waiting a few more seconds, he used the spare key Pinyan had given him.

Clothes were scattered all over the furniture, both men's and women's, along with piles of discarded fast food packages. An easel was set up near the window. An unfinished oil painting, apparently the work of a professional, depicted a dragon rising from the ocean. Harris found several pages of handwritten equations spread out on the table.

The door opened while he was still trying to make sense of the notes. A young blond woman came in wearing sneakers, bike shorts, and a sports top. She untied her hair, winked, and headed for the bathroom. Before she closed the door she stopped and turned. "You won't find much of use in there, Pete," she said. "It's mostly textbook stuff. I just did it to make sure I could."

Harris stared at the door after she closed it. After five more blinks, the shower started. He hadn't quite decided what to do next when the woman emerged from the bathroom. She had a towel wrapped around her head like a turban, and was wearing a robe.

"Sorry for the wait," she said. "I could have cleaned myself up with my helix, but you really haven't experienced a body until you've taken it through its routines."

"Is this what you've been doing all week?" Harris asked, still only half believing that this was Pinyan; her movements and facial expressions were all wrong. There was something, though, that still felt like Sam Pinyan. Maybe it was her choice of words.

"Not just this one, but yeah." She sat down across from him and leaned forward enthusiastically. "You wouldn't believe all the people I've been this week, Pete! I was a painter, a physicist, a biochemist, several kinds of athletes... And I'm retaining it. I can still do all of those things!"

Harris tried to grab a question from the whirlwind of thoughts that careened around his head. When did Pinyan start copying artistic and technical skills? How could anyone tamper with his own mind like that and still be himself? Was he still himself? But all he could get out was, "Which one is this?"

Pinyan smiled. "Athlete. She's into bicycling. I was taking her for a test drive in the park when you dropped by."

The comparison of human form to car gave Harris a little chill. He cleared his throat and said, "I'm sure you've guessed already, but Burgess sent me after you because you've been making the License Bureau nervous."

Pinyan looked annoyed and her skin began to ripple. She said, "I don't have time for that, now." By the time the sentence was finished, she had transformed into something else.

Pinyan's new form was slender, but lacked the cyclist's curves. He was bald, with smooth, featureless skin. His nose and ears were little more than holes, his tiny mouth was framed by thin, colorless lips, and his eyebrows were gone. His eyes were large, and seemed to be almost all pupil.

"Jesus, Pinyan," Harris said. "You look like-"

"I know," Pinyan cut him off, laughing. "Funny thing is, I just kind of relaxed into it once I started changing more often. I don't know if it snuck into my subconscious from the movies or-" He shrugged. "Anyway, it's comfortably generic. And less ... distracting than a normal body."

"Maybe for you," Harris muttered.

"Getting back to the game," Pinyan said, "Have you made any progress on the pyro thing while I've been out?"

Harris leaned forward, glad to be talking about the case with Pinyan again, even if it was a weird alien Pinyan. "Not much. Turned up a common factor among the victims, but it hasn't really gotten me anywhere."

Pinyan nodded and asked, "Matassoni?"

Harris sat back and waited. Pinyan obviously knew he was right.

Pinyan accepted the opening and said, "Thing is, Matassoni isn't really the factor you want. It's Roark."

Harris narrowed his eyes in concentration. "He have a kid or something?"

Pinyan shook his head. "No, you can't inherit the helix from your father. It's only the mitochondrial DNA that's changed, and that always comes from the mother. That's why there are so many more men in the program. The License Bureau only approves women if they're sterile."

"Makes sense, I guess," Harris said. "Can't have super-babies popping up all over the place."

"Maybe, but natural evolution isn't going to improve us any more. At best we'll just become more efficient breeders. The helix-" Pinyan cut himself off, smiling. "But this a little off the track, huh? Let me get changed and I'll show you what I think happened to our pyro victims."

Pinyan got dressed and switched to his natural face, then drove Harris to the warehouse where Matassoni had been arrested. It was still unoccupied, although the police barricades were gone. Pinyan walked to the charred spot where Roark had died and closed his eyes, standing still. A warm breeze rose and slithered lazily around the room.

Pinyan opened his eyes and said, "It's been spread all over the city, trying to find someone who can put him back together." He held his hand out in front of him and a little flame danced in his palm. "But it's still tied to this place."

"What the hell?" Harris spluttered. "What are you talking about?"

"You have to understand," Pinyan said. "At its core, the helix only does one thing: it extends the will of its recipient beyond its previous limits. It gives us control over our surroundings in a new way." While continuing to play with the little flame in one hand, he gestured with the other for Harris to not interrupt. "We've been chasing the helix itself, imprinted with Roark's will."

"Sounds like a ghost," Harris said, grinning. "Why would it kill his friends?"

"It's not Roark himself. Not really. It carries some of his memories and it moves according to his desires, but it doesn't really have a mind, not the way we understand it. Think of it as a dead insect with one leg still twitching, still trying to run. It was seeking out human forms because Roark's was gone, and those people in particular because of his connection with them."

Harris tried to put together everything Pinyan had dumped in his lap. "How do you know all this?"

Pinyan smiled. The little flame in his hand flared and lunged into the air, twisting around itself in snaky tendrils of blue, yellow and red, then seemed to swallow itself and vanish. "That should be pretty obvious, Pete. Even the grunts figured that much out. They'll be here-"

A voice from the door yelled, "On the floor! Now!" Armed men in black bulletproof uniforms spread out across the room.

Harris brought up his force field, but complied. Pinyan said, "A little early." Over a second demand that he fall down, Pinyan added, "To answer your question, I got some of it from Roark's helix, some of it by asking," he smiled, "in just the right voice."

"Get down or we fire!" one of the uniformed men shouted. Despite what looked like a gas mask on his helmet, Harris recognized the voice of the helixed bounty hunter they had met before, Farley.

"Pinyan, just get on the floor," Harris said, "They're mercs. We'll get this cleared up at the station."

Pinyan started to speak and they fired. He grimaced as if he had eaten something rotten, but remained standing. Harris sprang up to support him. The mercs or whatever they were had them surrounded, so he couldn't protect Pinyan with his shield. "They're not mercs or bounty hunters," Pinyan wheezed while Harris eased him to the ground. "This ... has happened before, to other people. Almost happened, anyway ... These grunts make sure we don't get ... out of hand."

The troops closed in. Farley said, "We'll use gas if we have to, Agent Harris. Back away."

Gasping and covered in blood, Pinyan smiled. "Too late this time," he rasped. His skin rippled as it did when he was changing shape, and his wounds closed themselves. "Humanity is just a bad habit," he said. "Let it go." His skin didn't settle into form as it normally did, but grew even hazier, as if his whole body was vibrating at high speed. Pinyan's clothes dropped to the ground. Where he had been, there was only a luminous cloud of shifting colors that spiraled up to the ceiling, twisting around itself like the little column of flame Pinyan had just tossed away. Before anyone could react, it was gone.

Not sure whether Pinyan had succeeded or failed, not even sure which of those he would see as good, Harris stared at his partner's empty clothes while silently obeying the grunts. If he stayed cool, he was confident that the attention Pinyan had attracted would drift back to a more routine level. Then he would be able to quietly explore his own abilities. Then he would find out for himself if Pinyan was right.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider tipping the author by clicking the PayPal button. Any amount will be appreciated!