The Misbegotten

[The trip is monotonous, slow, an agonizing trudge. He needs to do something to occupy his mind, other than lounge about with no more than the worrisome thoughts of the present. He wants to relive the past, but he is dreading it. Though he is convinced there is, in fact, an answer buried there. He’s not certain he can handle the unearthing of it. And yet, he has nothing better to do.]

It was 6:32 pm exactly when Jacob called later on that evening.

I know this for a fact, all these years later. Because when the line disconnected with no warning ten minutes into the call, I thought I would never hear from him again.

I was wrong of course. You see, if there is one thing to say about my cousin, it is this. He is a motherfucken cockroach. You can stab him or shoot him or bash him over the head with a god damned sledge hammer.

Fuck, you can even hand-grenade the sonofabitch!

He will always, under the most miraculous conditions, pick himself up off the floor, dust himself off. He’ll stare at death in the eye and say, “What, deeeeck, you think your fucking love taps hurt? It’ll take a lot more than that to put a Rodriguez in the ground, bitch!”

Then, he’d flip you off and walk away, lighting up a joint.

Even back then, he was indestructible.

Nowadays, I like to think of him as a defective, puny version of the Incredible Hulk. No matter what you do to the fucker, he always seems to be able to walk away unscathed, maybe even stronger. It always makes me shake my head in wonder.

Fucking Jacob!

That’s the only phrase that capture’s him in a holistic sense, in one breath comprise his existence.

Nonetheless, the call came while I was finishing up the dishes with Katie, Flavia and Johan. We all decided to stick close to one another. After my two younger siblings came under assaulted by the same mysterious sickness attacking many of us on that fateful day, we thought it best.

“Jacob, what’s up?” I had asked at once, answering the call with a slide of my finger.

“Hey, Eff, this is going to be a quick call. I got a shitload to tell you and not a lot of fucking time to do it,” he said, sounding out of breath, harried, rushed. “I think I’m under surveillance or something, cuz -.”

I heard rustling on the other end of the line as if he were transferring his cell from one hand to the next.

“- I keep seeing the same fucking Culos following me all over the god damned place. The maricones are everywhere!”

I rolled my eyes. Already I hoped, in his “quest about the streets”, that Jacob hadn’t smoked a joint or two laced with some psychotropic substance. That was the last thing I needed right then. I needed him focused, on point, like he had been earlier that day. I couldn’t have him drugged out of his mind on PCP or some other stupid shit. Too much was happening too fast. I had to keep up. Too soon, I felt like a bug buried at the bottom of a port-o-potty, praying there wouldn’t be another shit storm from above.

“Dude, you’re gonna have to get it together. I don’t have time to be messing around right now. This Muto shit is getting out of control,” I emphasized, voice sharp. I was about to say more, but caught myself of a sudden. This was an open cell line, easily tapped and triangulated. Maybe I had said too much already.

FUCK!!!

“What are you talking about, cuz?” asked Jacob, his tone, his inflection – everything changing in a flash.

Naw, this dude wasn’t fucked up. Not at all.

I recovered in seconds. “Forget it, man. I was talking out of my ass. Jus-just go ahead and tell me what you found out, ok?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said immediately. “Ok, well, you remember that dealer I was talking with earlier?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, well that dude, being the cool fucker I always knew he was, did some searching on his own. But you know damned well he did it out of respect for our uncles, not us, right?”

“Sounds right,” was all I said, hoping he would get to the point.

“Anyway, bro, he’s got an acquaintance - no more like a colleague - in the organization he’s belongs to. This guy… well, this guy is a little more connected, you know? He has bigger clients, more contacts. Let’s just say he’s a bigger fish in the pond, ok?”

I nodded to myself, but stayed otherwise silent.

“This dude tells my guy that it might be a good idea to stop dealing for a while, at least, until things calm down. This of course made my guy curious, so he asks the dude, why?” Jacob paused to take a breath and cleared his throat. “The dude says one of his clients fucking works for the NIA. He’s a soldier in one of the Shock Units they’ve been shipping to this part of town in secret since the beginning of spring. This trooper tells my friend’s friend something big is about to go down.

“Curious himself, the dude offers the trooper a free hit of some new shit he’d recently acquired, hoping to pump him for more info.

“After a few hits, the trooper – out of fucking nowhere – says, ‘you ever heard of Inhaler Software?’ Of course, the dude has no fucken idea what he’s talking about and says so. The trooper takes another monster hit, keeps the smoke in his chest for a minute or so, then explodes with it a big grin on his face. He says to the dude, ‘Inhaler is some real crazy shit, my man. It can tell who’s a Muto and who’s not. It can even back track data all the way to the point of origin. Soon, it’ll have tracked the Muto Taint all the way back to the fucking explosion itself.

“Once it’s done that, the techs will have the ability to fast forward the software to predict where the highest probable Muto outbreaks will occur.’

“The dude asks, ‘what explosion?’

“And the trooper says, ‘the explosion of the comet that was on its way to destroying all life on earth last year, you stupid fuck!’

“This confuses the dude even more and he says what does that have to do with Muto’s?

“The trooper takes another hit and says, ‘that’s where it all came from, man. The comet wasn’t just ice and rock and your occasional hunk of metal. There was something else on it, something that affects humans in an adverse way. This something – whatever it is - has the potential to turn anyone into a full blown Muto in a matter of months.’

“The dude is like totally shocked and kinda puts two and two together. After a few seconds or so, asks the trooper why are there so many of his homies hanging around Highland Park.

“The trooper looks at the dude with glossy eyes. He says, ‘the Inhaler Software predicted an inordinate probability of Muto manifestation throughout the whole northeastern section of Los Angeles. It seems, the program tracked a unique strain of the shit coming out of the comet. This is a very strong, a very potent strain, and the NIA is dead set on wiping out to the last Muto. No questions asked just pure eradication.’

“The trooper stops right then, you know, seems to catch himself. He looks over at the dude and says, ‘it’s going to happen soon. It’s going to be a clusterfuck for the civilian population around here. You should think about clearing out.’ Then the bastard takes another hit of whatever the dude had given him and walks the fuck out of the room.

“My guy is listening to the dude as he tells his story and then it hits him square in the cajones what the dude is talking about. He realizes, the whole thing connects to the request I had made earlier. So, he hits me up on my cell. He starts talking like crazy about how something fucked up is about to go down. I should get my family out of Dodge, like now.

“Eff, he sounded a little spooked, you know? And this guy is usually as calm as dried-up shit. So, I said I’d take his advice serious and he cut out. About an hour after the call, I started seeing motherfuckers in suits and ties off in the distance. They were just fucken standing there, staring at me and nothing else. It’s been hours now, Eff, and these guys aren’t letting up. They’re all over me, cuz.” He stopped then, mumbled something unintelligible.

Then a high burst of static sounded through the earpiece.

I had to pull the cell from my ear. “Jake, you still there?!” I asked as loud as I could, the moment the shrill noises ceased.

A heartbeat or two later, he came back on, but I could just hear him.

I repeated myself a few more times to no avail.

Then, as clear as a bell, “Eff, you still there,” said my cousin.

“Yeah man, I’m still here,” I answered him. My head was running a mile a minute.

“Whadaya think we should do?” asked Jacob. His voice was just above a whisper.

I heard him, but there was one thing, one item that he had mentioned that made everything else seem inconsequential. “You said, the trooper had said, the Muto shit had come from the comet?”

“Yeah, man, isn’t that crazy,” he replied after a short delay. Again, it sounded like he was moving fast, as though he were running and hiding - moving fast, then slow. It was erratic, weird in my ears, but I could picture it so clear in my mind’s eye.

“That’s pretty fucked up, if you ask me,” I voiced my opinion with heart. “I mean, here we are, saved from mass destruction, only to face something else. It's like a curse or something. Doesn’t that seem kinda Wrath of God to you?”

“I don’t know what it sounds like, Eff. All I know is these motherfuckers are after me. We gotta figure out what the hell we are going to do,” retorted my cousin, breathing ragged now. He was laboring. I knew he wasn’t much of an athlete. Running would wind him fast.

“Where are you, Jacob? What the fuck is going on?” I asked, realizing he just might be telling the truth instead of acting like an ass. Maybe someone was following him!

“I’m not gonna say right now, cuz. I have a bad feeling about all this -.”

“Hey you!” It was another voice in the background, male and resonated with authority. “Stop where you are, right now!”

“Oh shit, Eff, they fucking found me. Fuck! Fuck!!”

All at once, there were scratching sounds, jostling and fervent movement through the cell. I squinted against it, but kept the device plastered to my ear. I wasn’t about to miss a single detail now, just in case.

“Shit, these motherfuckers -. Fuck! Oh, SHIT!” was all Jacob managed.

“Halt! We have you in our sights, young man. Stop now or we will use lethal force!” It was the same voice from before only amplified, metallic in tone.

“Fuck you!” I heard Jacob yell at the top of his lungs, more distortion and garbled noises followed.

“Jake, are you ok?!?” I bellowed into the microphone of the cell. “Jake! Answer me, Jake!”

That was when I heard the first shot. It sounded like a hollow snap through the connection. I could hear Jacob breathing like a madman. There were more indiscernible pops and squeals.

Next came the words, sending a chill up my spine.

“Shoot for effect! Bring him down!”

I closed my eyes as ten, twenty, then thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred shots rang out – again and again. There were so many it seemed like they would never stop.

A second later, the Jacob’s cell hit something, or maybe something had hit it. I would never know. A blink of an eye later, the signal dropped and I lost him. I had lost my cousin to some faceless enemy, some adversary I hadn’t even understood.

Jacob was dead. He had to be.

I looked at my cell with stark unbelief, my face a rictus of horror. I let me gaze fall to the others in the kitchen with me.

They all stared back, dread plain in each of their eyes.

All I could say was, “They got him. They got him. They got him!”

Katie rushed forward and crushed me with her embrace, attempting to force strength and courage back into me.

Yet, when my gaze found my brother’s, it drained away all the same. I was a ragdoll in my cousin’s arms.

Jacob was dead.

The NIA had killed him. And for what? Information? The fucking truth?

It was the first step of many, down the path I’ve trudged, taking me to where I am today, all these years later. A path lined with all the vile titles others have called me over the decades – assassin, extortionist, pimp, sexual predator, terrorist, Muto, bigamist.

Fuck, the list goes on and on. Some of which is truth, though most is just the persona that has evolved around me and my associates.

[He slips to the surface like an alligator in water. Just eyes and nostrils break the surface.]

What did you expect? A Hero? A righteous vigilante? Fuck all that shit. We went from frighten refugees to become the Aegis Synod. I never fucking cared what people thought about me. I still don’t give a shit. This was about survival, protecting what I loved. I know it started that evening when I thought the government had gunned down my cousin. I know now, they made me a criminal that night. They forged my will. I would never be one of the good guys. Naw, I was going to be something else, something… feared…

…And, I was going to kill them all.