Cassidy Jones and Vulcan's Gift (Cassidy Jones Adventures #2)

Chapter One: Old Joe

I was standing at the base of the Space Needle, staring up conspiringly at the saucer housing Sky City Restaurant and an observation deck over five hundred feet above, when a homeless man approached me from behind. I recognized his scent from my midnight jaunts through Seattle’s dark alleys, but had never come face-to-face with him before.

“Ol’ Joe knows when somebody is up to no good,” he said to me. His voice was deep and melodic, and he spoke with a Southern twang.

Running my gaze down the white-painted beam of the Needle’s northern leg, I thought, Joe is right. I am up to no good.

The previous weekend, amber-hued lights had been strung from the tall antenna erected up top in the shape of a Christmas tree, as they were every first Saturday after Thanksgiving. I had admired the festive sight from my kitchen window my entire life and had always wondered what it would be like to sit under the warm, glowing “tree.” Would it seem like a Christmas tree close up, or would it just look like dozens of lights strung from an antenna?

I had every intention of finding out.

Turning around, I looked up at Joe. He had salt-and-pepper dreadlocks, a gray goatee beard, and a brown, aged face lined by the hardships of his life. Tall and thin, he wore an oversized Pacific-blue Seahawks jacket. The jacket was grimy looking, but Joe had pride. You could see it in the way he held himself, and his round, dark eyes had wisdom in them, the kind learned from mistakes. Presently, they looked very scolding.

Tipping back his dreads, Joe stared down his nose at me, eyes bulging out in a knowing way. “That’s right,” he said, hands on his hips. “I am talkin’ to you.”

I wanted to assure him that I wasn’t up to anything too terrible, but couldn’t very well tell him that in my fourteen-year-old girl voice. He probably figured I was young, judging by my slender 5’5” frame. His tone, however, led me to believe that he thought I was male—an extremely misguided male. I could see where he would jump to this conclusion. A person wandering Seattle Center at one o’clock in the morning dressed head-to-toe in black and wearing a ski mask wasn’t usually a girl.

The only nonverbal response that sufficed was a quick nod of acknowledgment. After bobbing my head, I turned away and lifted my chin to the saucer, lit up and looking ready for takeoff, hoping he’d get the hint and mosey along. No such luck.

“Now, none of that,” he continued to scold. “You turn them green eyes back here.”

Exhaling a resigned breath, I did what he asked.

He twirled a hand at my face level. “I don’t like the looks of this here getup. You plannin’ on rollin’ somebody?”

Assuming he meant “robbing,” I shook my head emphatically.

Joe puckered his full lips, evaluating me. I was careful not to fidget so I wouldn’t look guilty. After seconds of scrutiny, his stern expression eased, and he slowly nodded, his coiled beard moving with the motion.

“I see,” he said in a sagely way.

I had no idea what Joe saw, though I was pretty sure it wasn’t a mutant. Not that he would even know what a mutant was, since I was the only one in existence. According to Professor Serena Phillips, that is, the world-renowned geneticist responsible for mutating me into a superbeing with wicked strength and speed, ultra-enhanced senses, and the abilities to learn fight moves just by watching them and rapidly heal from any injury.

I’d even risen from the dead once.

Now that’s not fair, blaming Serena for being infected, I chided myself. It wasn’t as if Serena had told me to sit on that rickety stool prior to my dad interviewing her, nor did she knock over the beakers of her gene therapy experimentation, Formula 10X. How could she have possibly known her soupy concoction of animal DNA would create a strange retrovirus? Einstein, Crick, and Watson combined wouldn’t have seen that one coming!