I got to my feet as Jyen backed away, seeming confused.
“But you’re a level ten,” she said miserably.
I took a deep breath before answering. I didn’t want any more unnecessary electrical discharges in my apartment, especially directed at me.
“Jyen. I’m a level four. That’s it. A destroyer shooting me would kill me and everyone I’ve ever known without breaking a sweat. That…lightning thing you just did was very painful. Was that some kind of device?”
“No, I’m a mutant like you. The Colmarian government has categorized you as a ten, though. I saw the report.”
Garm and I have known each other for a while. We talk all the time. We’ve been doing deals as a matter of necessity, and yes, friendship, for a fair number of years. She had that look.
I reached out my hand and grabbed her hard on the collarbone.
“What did you do?” I asked her.
“No one reads that report,” Garm said weakly.
“What report?”
“Look, each Adjunct is allocated funds based on population and infrastructure and military conditions and…mutant population.”
“What?”
“They figure, it takes more credits to look after more mutants. A pretty reasonable assumption,” she said nonchalantly.
“Go on.”
“They just total it all up and we get money based on that. You’ve been around so long there was no record on you. They probably wrote it down on stone tablets. So I figured we could get some more money if I bumped your level up a little.”
“You made me a ten?” I yelled.
“But no one reads that.”
“I did,” Jyen said helpfully. Garm scowled at her.
“Has there ever been a level ten?”
“I think so,” Garm said sheepishly. “But they died kind of quick. Hank, if I had known anyone was going to care about that number, obviously I wouldn’t have used it. I figured it was like population. We have eighty thousand people here and—”
“I thought there was 100,000,” I interjected.
“Yeah…,” Garm said, looking at the floor.
“So that makes sense,” I began. “The Dredel Led got a copy of your stupid report and they figured they had to kill this guy who might have the power to sneeze their race out of existence. Jyen, what are you, like a level six? Seven?”
Jyen had a thoughtful expression and snapped out of it.
“Me? No, I’m a level four.”
I almost hit Garm I was so angry.
“She can shoot lightning and she’s a level four. What do you think a level ten can do? No wonder the robots are here.”
“And that’s why they came out when you were there and we haven’t been able to find them since,” Garm said.
“Right, it was like, ‘Oh, hi, we’ve been looking for you, dumbass,’” I said with no amount of joy.
“Though how did they know it was you?” Garm asked.
“I don’t know, maybe because you kept calling me ‘Hank’?”
“Still, it’s kind of a good thing. Because now we know if you go out there, the last one will probably come and we can kill it again.”
“We? They’re after me. I killed it. And even if I do destroy it, what makes you think they’ll stop with just these two?”
Everyone was quiet, the only sound being water dripping off me.
“I don’t want to have to move to another space station,” I said, contemplating the terrible concept.
“I’m Hank! Hank is me! No one here but ole Hank!” I yelled to the empty street.
I stood in the center of the road far out in Western Belvaille. Garm and her men were five blocks away, armed with scoped rifles. Some were positioned in upper windows.
This was the fourth stop we’d made and I was getting bored. The immediate tension and nervousness had worn off hours ago. Now my knees hurt and I wanted to sit down. So I sat down.
“Stand up, Hank. What if you have to run after it?” Garm radioed to my ear.
“I’m not going to catch anything that has a jet pack. Or that has two legs, for that matter.”
Yeah, I was grumpy. I was bait for a Dredel Led, the twin of a machine that had practically knocked me into a weeklong coma.
We were going on the assumption that what Jyen said was true and these things were here to kill me because of my mislabeled mutant level.
I held my plasma pistol on my lap. I hadn’t actually checked it since the last fight but I didn’t notice any scratches. Presumably it had to be fairly sturdy considering its beam sliced up buildings.
We waited around for another hour, with me periodically yelling to the sky. We then drove to another location to try it again.