James Axler – Zero City

“Leave us,” the man ordered with a gesture.

The sec men snapped their rifles to their chests in a salute and departed, closing the door behind them.

Krysty saw all this peripherally, as she could only stare at the tall man’s hair. She had noticed it seemed to be moving a lot more than anybody else’s on the outside platform, but now she could see the truth. His hair was the same fiery color as her own, exactly the same color. Slightly more than shoulder length, it constantly moved and flowed as if stirred by secret winds, even now in a locked room with no ventilation. Her own hair coiled tightly to her head in response, and cold flooded her stomach as Krysty realized he could be kin. A distant cousin perhaps. Or even her unknown father. Krysty could actually feel him standing close, the same way she used to be able to sense her mother in another room.

“Yes,” the man said, as if reading her thoughts.

“And do you know how long I have been searching for you?”

“For me?” she asked incredulously.

“You specifically? No, although if I had known you existed, I would have traveled the Deathlands to find kin. I was referring to how long I have been searching every redhead I could find to locate another one of us.”

His sharp emphasis of the last word wasn’t lost on Krysty. And deep inside, the woman was forced to admit she would have done the same. In a world of norms, where all muties were looked upon as a filthy evil, to find blood kin was her deepest wish.

“But I’m being rude, my dear,” he said with a slight bow. “Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Baron Gunther Strichland, master of Alphaville.”

Krysty said nothing in return.

“And you are…?” he prompted with a beguiling smile.

“Nobody of importance,” she muttered, testing the chains.

In blinding speed, Strichland drew a blaster and fired. Krysty flinched as the round burned past her face and embedded in the cinder-block wall.

“What was that again, please?” the baron said with a smile, twirling the blaster by the trigger guard.

He was insane. Good, that gave her an edge. “Krysty Wroth.”

“Of?”

She shrugged. “The Deathlands. Nowhere. Everywhere.”

“Ah, a wanderer.” Gunther lifted a leg and rested it on the corner of the table. He appeared to have something wrong with his left leg. “And now you have come home to me. I was starting to think I was the only one of my kind, doomed, to breed with the norms, casting my superior genes into the stagnant pool of their monkey blood.”

“We’re all the same,” Krysty said, trying to keep a calm expression.

The baron laughed. “Are we? Do they heal like us? Have the same control of their muscles as we? Can they sense things in other places? Oncoming danger? Have you ever seen one of them getting a haircut?” Rising, he spit the words like a curse, his hatred contorting his handsome features.

In spite of herself, Krysty flinched at the memory of the companions giving each other a trim. It had been horrible. The slightest tug on her hair was painful, combing was agony and cutting was worse than getting shot. Her hair was as alive as her fingers and toes, not just dead protein filaments.

“Yes,” Gunther said softly, standing very close. “I can see you have, and the sight affected you the same as it did me.”

Krysty didn’t reply, estimating the range of her chains and the distance to the stool. Any weapons were preferable to none.

“Can you lift things with your hair?” the baron asked unexpectedly. “My mother could, and I could as a child, but that has left me with age.”

Her hair went still as Krysty stared at the man. He seemed in the prime of health, certainly no more than thirty years.

“I’m sixty-three,” he said. “Our kind age very gracefully. Or, at least, I do.”

The mystery of her own parentage suddenly welled within her as an unstoppable force. “Who was your father?” she asked desperately.

Snarling furiously, Gunther slapped her across the face. Krysty swung her head to avoid the blow but not fast enough, his jeweled rings raking her cheek like knives.