Full sensation of weight and gravity slowly returned to normal as the Black Tear settled into place on the landing gear that extended from the bottom of the dark craft.

Turning from the console and removing the cable from the jack in his arm, Johnny turned to Sam, “You ready to meet some folks?”

“Sure, why not?”

Standing, Johnny walked towards the back of the cabin. “Follow me!” he said with a wave and walked out into the falling dusk..

Sam released the restraints and stood up from the seat. He turned and followed Johnny to the exit. Ghost followed out in a lazy glide.

Outside was a lush area of parkland. “Welcome to Yadkinville!” came a cheerful, female voice. Sam saw a slender, dark haired woman walking towards Johnny and him with a smile. Her green eyes probed him from head to toe as she came close. “Is this your first trip to the outskirts?”

“Hello to you too, Rachel...” snarked Johnny.

“You know we love you here, Johnny, but you are old news around here!” she joked with a grin. “Let’s go have a talk over food.”

Feeling left out in the banter, Sam just nodded his head yes.

“Then you need to try the fishing!

“Jeremiah called us ahead to tell us to expect you. Food should be ready.” she said as her five foot frame bounced towards the dining hall.

The dining hall was a low building that was built into the side of a hill. The spotless facility was warm and welcoming. Ham, greens, deviled eggs, potato salad, and coleslaw were there in abundance. Everyone but Sam was talking animatedly. Many of them had very unique features. Some had oddly colored skin or exaggerated features.

Sam tried to be circumspect about it, but Rachel noticed him looking with interest. “As you can see, we are a diverse group. Almost all of us suffer from the effects of the taint. Here, we embrace the changes that it has made in us.”

“I’m sorry for being impolite. I don’t know of any people I’ve met who were affected. The public information doesn’t show how much people have changed.”

Rachel put on a tolerant smile. “There are many of us who have not been changed in any way that is easy to see without getting up close and personal. Others have very functional, but obvious changes. We have named ourselves ‘The Mods’. We are the new form of modern humanity.”

“Johnny told me about Haans. His gift seems incredible!”

Others around the long table nodded along with the assertion of Haans’s gifts. One person about three people down, who had dark brown, leathery skin, paused between bites of a burger, his jagged and sharp teeth tearing through the meat with ease. “We accept anyone here. We all have gifts of our own. We have heard of yours, but I, for one, would love to hear more about your exploits!”

While this conversation began, Johnny excused himself to take a phone call. Sam could tell it was something that disturbed the pilot.

As Sam finished eating the food on his plate, Rachel turned to him with an intensity she had not shown before. “Why don’t we go to my office and talk about some serious subjects?”

“Lead the way!” he said as he scooted his chair back and stood. She followed suit and led the way out of the massive dining hall. Ghost took this to a little higher altitude and began patrolling the skies.

She led him quietly to a two story office building a few hundred feet away. The manicured grass had gravel paths sweeping through it. The occasional shrub or bit of hedge could be seen interspersed with neat little Dutch style houses. The exposed timbers were all dark and solid, making their geometric, angular shapes stand out in the dusk that had fallen. The whitewash on the spaces between the timbers almost glowed in the diminishing light. They went into the office building, and she took him past several security checkpoints that seemed well armed.

“You have quite the safe office here…”

Rachel smirked a bit with a mirth that never reached her eyes as she turned to Sam, “We have had unwelcome visitors try to take an ‘unscheduled meeting’ with me a few times. They had to have polite office manners ‘explained' to them.”

“I’m glad I was giving a polite introduction then!”

“Yes, you might have found our hospitality lacking if you had dropped in without notice,” she replied as her handprint on a plate at waist height caused the heavy office door in front of her to swing open quietly. The office was laid out with a soft, but utilitarian carpet. The large desk against the opposite wall was a sturdy oak with a glossy, clear coating. The organizer on the desk pad was well used, with many notes and sticky notes on it. The computer was a low profile model with no visible pointing device or keyboard. The monitor was mounted high on an arm and adjusted to allow her to look at it with a slight upward tilt of her head, leaving a clear view of most of the room, as well as whoever occupied the three leather chairs in front of the desk, without the display in the way. Rachel took her seat in the high-backed, leather office chair behind the desk. The walls tastefully displayed multiple maps, interspersed with photos from the surrounding community.

“Do you know what happened to us in ‘The Taint’? I mean the details.”

“I know that contaminated street drugs, and then contaminated medical supplies, had mutagens added that caused incidents of disfigurement and cancer clusters a few years ago. The disfigured people have been persecuted and referred to as subhuman by some religious sects. The weakened federal government has had less control of smaller cities and towns. That, combined with the efforts of the states to sell large community areas to corporate entities that are effectively the only government in those areas, consortia and corporations have complete control. Other areas have become their own, effectively self governing mini countries. Two examples of ideological mini countries would be the New Confederacy and the New Iroquois Nation. There are also many smaller enclaves like the Winston-Salem Free Zone. It all worked together to make the people who survived the taint a new minority who have few, if any, advocates and no place of their own.”

Rachel sighed, “That sounds like the official story that keeps getting repeated. The reality is more complex. Yes, the rate of cancer in those affected was extremely high and still is. However, the ‘disfigured’ part of that is both too mild a description and misleading. Many were changed in horrific ways. Others, almost none at all. A good number were lucky to have advantageous changes. Some might even be said to have become ‘gifted’. We have take a name they gave us in some of the documentation that came out of the studies that were performed. They called us ‘Modified Humans’. We like to call ourselves ‘Modern Humans’. Mods for short.”

“So Haans is not the only person who can do incredible things I guess. Can you reproduce the success stories? Maybe create a new industry of mutation-based enhancements?”

Looking up to her monitor, Rachel could be heard tapping on what had to be a hidden keyboard at the desk. “Take a look at these pictures from our research.” She turned the arm mounted display so that we could both look at it.

On the screen were multiple folders that had titles that had letter and number designations. Opening one of the folders, she used the unseen mouse to select one of the files in the folder. A video opened in a new window. The video obviously depicted a blood sample seen through a magnifying glass. In the video, a cluster of octagonal objects started to enter the view, accompanied by what looked like strange bugs with ten legs and no discernible head. “What we are seeing is the infiltration of a normal blood sample with a contaminated street drug sample. Watch what happens to the blood samples as the infiltration happens.” On the screen, the bugs were taking hold of the octagons and bringing them to the blood cells. When they made contact, the bug would tether the blood cells to the octagons. The blood cell would either collapse or undergo a change in texture, and then the blood cell would go back to its previous activity. The destroyed cells would be absorbed into the bug, and it would take its cargo to the next blood cell. “When the octagons and bugs reproduce at an alarming rate. Meanwhile, any extra fat in the body starts being converted into a hybrid substance that has many of the properties of both an MCT oil and a concentrated carbohydrate. The liver begins to grow a new section that only produces this hybrid substance. While this is happening, the subject is sometimes sealed in a cocoon that protects their body while more drastic changes happen.”

“MCT? I’m sorry, I don’t have any idea what that is.”

Rachel paused the video just as one of the red blood cells burst more violently than the previous ones had. “Medium Chain Triglyceride. It is a fat that is burned more easily in certain organs than sugars or regular triglycerides. We have found that the people who gained abilities from the taint seem to have those abilities fueled by this hybrid fat.”

Sam sat absorbing all of this lecture. “What has this got to do with me?...”

Just then, a ringtone sounded from  Rachel’s pocket. Putting up a finger to ask him to hold on, she took the phone out and looked at the screen. Her face drained of all color that moment. “I am afraid your stay with us may be a bit extended. Johnny has to go back to WSFZ right away. There has been an event that requires him to be on hand to help Jeremiah. He will return for you when he can, or we will get you back to WSFZ.

“Getting back to the subject of why we can’t use this mutation tech, it is rarely the same from one person to the next. So far, it looks like a combination of genetic and environmental factors is involved, but there is more that we do not know about how it works. We have people researching it, but we also do not have a reliable supply of the mutagens.”

“Hold on, I’m going to be stranded here?” Sam asked as there was a roar from outside that was, obviously, Johnny Black taking to the skies again.

“Don’t worry. It will give us all a chance to get to know each other. I’m sorry. Where are my manners? Since you will be with us for a while, would you care for a touch of bourbon? I have a lovely one that we distill in small batches right here.”

Sam, at a loss for the moment, hesitantly agreed to have the drink. She continued as she got up and walked to a countertop of marble extruded from an unseen slot in the wall. She reached for a similarly impossible-to-see cabinet in the wall and pulled out two cut crystal tumblers and a matching decanter. “Do you take it neat?”

“I have never tried it. I’ll have it however you are having it.”

There was a strange tearing sound, like heavy cloth ripping. As Sam was about to look back at where Rachel had been, she was suddenly in front of him, holding out the tumbler. He carefully extended his right hand and gripped the glass. She grinned. “As you can clearly see, I am one of the ones who can be thankful for a gift that the taint gave me.”