He looked at Tempest whose emotions were having a battle across his face. Regret, worry, and anger all fought for dominance. Gus was surprised to see that worry overtook the others.
Yuki poked her head into the room. “Anything I can do?”
“Get BoJack down here. We need to get her out of here. Now,” Tempest quietly ordered in a detached voice.
Yuki nodded and began to murmur on her comms as she left, leaving the family alone again. This was not the reunion that Gus had always hoped for in his dreams. Mom was supposed to make everything better. Bridge the gaps between him and his father, and help them connect at last. He wasn’t sure what, if any, of his mother was left.
Time became drawn out. At some point, BoJack arrived, and they managed to disconnect Gwen from the multitude of monitors and equipment. Only by BoJack using his ability was he able to sustain Gwen as they made their way back to the transport. Gus barely registered the sheer number of rooms they passed with people in identical situations as his mother, wired to the gills.
Gus registered some of the other Crew but they were not impeded on their way by any of the staff as they made their way out of the hospital.
They passed another ward that was full of what looked like fetuses floating in jars, bubbles percolating in amber liquid as they were fed through a synthetic umbilicus.
Gus held the door as they slowly moved his mother through a control room filled with monitors. He stared at the screens showing all sorts of hybridization attempts, some more successful than others. Whatever Mengele was doing here, he was pushing the envelope of what had been tried before. None of it shocked Gus. He was already numb from finding his mother in basically a vegetative state, her future uncertain.
Eventually, they all were back on the ship and headed out of Hinansho at long last. If he never saw this place again it would be too soon. The medical suite on the transport was small, so Gus stayed outside while BoJack and his father tended to his mother. He stared out the window as they finally broke through the barrier and back into the sunlight. Gus took no pleasure in its simple warmth. It didn’t touch the chill that had spread to his core.
He closed his eyes and let the light shine in on his face. He could feel tears welling up and threatening to fall, and so he kept his eyes closed, willing them to go away. He had longed to feel the warmth of the light again in that dismal place, but it did little to raise his spirits or kindle his hope. Mengele was gone. Escaped scot-free to who knew where. Probably to some other hidden place where he worked his horrors on others.
There were other sanctuary cities, all of them wary of supers. He probably had bases at every one of them, working away happily, free from any interference from supers or anyone who would stop him.
A hand on his shoulder made him cough. He tried to surreptitiously wipe at the corner of an eye to wick away the extra moisture there.
“How are you doing?” Aurora asked softly.
Gus looked up at her and bit his lip. He just shook his head. If he spoke now, his voice would betray him.
“There’s still hope. I know Mengele got away, but I managed to put a tracker on his ship. It should ping any moment now to the satellite network. And it’s all because of you, Gus. If you hadn’t gifted me that crafting ability, I wouldn’t have been able to make that tracker. We can find him. I just wanted you to know. I know it looks dark right now, but don’t give up.” She turned and gave him some privacy.
Gus forced a smile and nodded.
“Thanks,” he managed to croak, voice almost breaking as he coughed and cleared his throat again to cover.
“Sure,” she said. Normally her voice was so curt and almost abrasive, but he had felt her genuine concern. Taking a series of deep breaths, he felt the emotions subside to a manageable level. The sun glistened off the ocean below as they began to bank.
Seneschal came over the comms. “Gus, can you come to the bridge? Your father wanted me to talk to you; he won’t leave your mom’s side—”
“I’ll be right there,” Gus took one last look at the expanse of blue and made his way to the cockpit.
“We have to head back, Gus. We missed some crucial communications while we were incommunicado in Hinansho and it raised some red flags. There won’t be time to drop you off at the manor, unfortunately. I think things will be okay with the Crew if we spin our story a bit. I’m sure that bringing Gwen back will be the main focus, and not what we were doing to bring her back. Plus the intel on Mengele should be useful; we have so little to work on for the more elusive villains. The public expects us to deal with them because they are beyond any reg’s abilities to manage.”
“I get it, you guys have responsibilities. I’m just glad we got Mom back.”
“Your father says we need to get her back to the Faction so they can look at her. I can only imagine what she’s been through. Hopefully, someone can ease the psychological stress she’s undergone and coax her back out as we nurse her body back to full health.”
“Did you know her, Seneschal?”
“Yes. We were… at odds at times. But there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for your father. We’re all on the same team.”
“I’ll let him know. Thanks for telling me.”
“I’ll make a general announcement soon, I just thought I’d let you know why.”
Gus headed back to the medical bay and poked his head in, giving his father the news.
“She’s stable,” BoJack said, weariness evident in his voice. “She should be fine until we get her back to the Faction, anyways.”
“Thank you, BoJack. It is going to be a major undertaking taking care of her, so it is probably for the best that I am out of leadership. I can focus on helping her heal, and not worry about neglecting any duties at the Faction. A priority I should have rearranged a long time ago.” Tempest reached out and gripped Gus’ shoulder.
“Gus, I know you want to come along, but I kind of need you for a bit. You’re not an official member of Purple Faction and it would take a while to get vetted anyways. Then you would have to go through the Academy before you’d be official and could join us on missions. I don’t want you tied up like that. Excuse me if that’s selfish, but I still need you to be available.”
Aurora poked her head in and pointed to Tempest and Gus, signaling them to follow.
BoJack waved a hand. “I’ll watch her, don’t worry.”
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Tempest promised, taking one last look at Gwen before closing the door softly.
“Seneschal just made an announcement that we’re heading back to HQ. They want me to make a full report since I was captured. One problem, though. You know that tracker I put on Mengele’s ship? Well, its signal is very weak and intermittent. If you could sync it with the manor’s scanning network protocols, I think you could boost the signal. If he gets too far out of range, we may lose him. It’s only a level one tracker, so it has limited access to the network. By connecting it to the full power of the manor, we could keep track of him in real-time. When the Crew has finished up with Faction business, we could come back and deal with him together.”
“That’s good thinking. Thank you so much for not letting him get away.”
“It’s the least I could do. I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Aurora. I’m grateful you helped me keep the manor from Manticorps, and gave me my first lessons on being in a team. I’m horrible at ‘thank yous,’ but I really am grateful for all that you have done. I wouldn’t be here without you, I’m pretty sure.”
“I don’t know about that either. You’re pretty savvy. But thanks. Mengele has made a refueling stop in Spain, so he should be there for a while, at least a day. We need to get you back to the manor within a day.”
“I’ll authorize a portal,” Tempest offered.
“I guess that’s settled. It’ll be weird to be home again, after all that’s happened. I just wish it were under better circumstances.”
“We all do,” Aurora said.
“ETA is less than an hour, so I’m going to gather my things. You guys good?”
They both nodded and Tempest went back into the medical bay. BoJack came out soon afterward and put an arm around Gus.
“Hey, your dad says that you’ve been having headaches again. Let me check you out again.”
“Aren’t you tired?”
“That’s the life of a medic, Gus. Utter boredom, stop-your-heart stress, or bone weariness. It’s part of the job description. Your dad said he saw you struggling in that battle at the hospital. What’s going on?”
“Headaches again, much more intense. Any time I try to access my abilities,” Gus admitted.
“Is that it?”
Gus sighed. “Well, to be honest, I’ve really been doubting myself again. I still feel like I don’t deserve to be with you guys. I’m worried I’m going to mess up and compromise the team. I was a liability at the hospital.”
“It happens to the best of us, Gus.”
“I suppose. But, on top of it all, I just feel weary. The stress of all these responsibilities is crushing me, but I can’t let everyone down. I can’t let myself down. All those promises I made about what I would do differently if I only had the chance. I don’t want to let myself get cynical and justify why I am not being true to what I think is right deep down just because I am painfully aware of my weaknesses. I realize that I made a lot of those choices in ignorance and naivete, but I still feel that I was onto something when I made those commitments.”
BoJack smiled ruefully. “I would like to tell you that it goes away, but that’s not really true. That feeling will be with you as long as you try to be a super, unfortunately. You just learn how to manage how much it affects you to a certain extent.”
“But how do you choose what is the best thing to do? My mind is full of conflicts and I feel paralyzed by making a crucial failure. Mixed in with that is a weird type of malaise that is sapping my motivation. No one really knows me as a super. But in a weird way, I feel like I represent regs too, and I don’t want to turn my back on them and treat them like second-class citizens now that I have these powers.”
“Which is probably a good thing,” BoJack said and Gus pressed on, encouraged.
“I keep thinking: ‘Why me?’ Of all the people who could have gotten powers, I happened to get them. At times I feel guilty, almost like I cheated to gain my powers instead of being worthy of them somehow. I haven’t really told the others, but I have an ability that lets me take powers from other supers. Stealing them. Benefitting from the work and effort it took to hone and develop those skills from level one.”
BoJack’s eyes widened, but he nodded as Gus talked through his worries.
“Gus, my life has been pretty tough. Still is, I guess. No one really knows a lot about my past, but there’s a lot of pain there. I’ve also gotten to the point where I’ve been at rock bottom. I just kept asking myself: ‘What do I need to be happy again?’ I thought about it for ages. At first, I thought I just wanted to be free of all the negative influences in my life, but then I recalled my brother. After our parents were killed, he never really recovered. To avoid the whole situation, he sought to escape more and more, divorcing himself from this reality to spend more and more time in virtual games, where he could live an alternative fantasy life of his choosing. Eventually, he chose to check himself into a game hospice.”
“A game hospice?” Gus questioned.
“It is an option for those with severe depression that are classified as suicide risks. Basic body functions are supported while the individual stays wholly immersed in the game, only pausing to sleep. They blend the transition using sedatives and in-game prompts so the game becomes their whole reality.
“The trade-off is that even with the nanobots, their lifespan is shortened considerably. Humans weren’t designed to lay there prone for long periods of time. The body stagnates and they eventually pass as it just stops functioning. The euphemism they use is ‘failure to thrive.’ But Bobby failed to thrive a long time before he ever went to the hospice. Twenty-two years old and that was his choice.”
Gus didn’t know what to say as BoJack paused, allowing the silence to stretch as he gathered his thoughts. His own issues seemed so small and insignificant compared with how this guy had dealt with multiple issues that would have broken Gus if even one of them had impacted his life. And he showed none of it to the world. He didn’t parade his struggles in front of others for sympathy or special treatment. On top of that, he had even found a way to be happy.
“Do you feel guilty? Like you could have done more? I’m not saying that I think you didn’t help him or anything, but looking at myself, I think I always wonder if there is something I should have done that would have made a difference.”
“At first I did, yeah. Every damn day.” BoJack nodded. “Especially since I have a healing ability. Kept trying to see if this was just a problem with his brain chemistry that I could tweak and then he would be better. Some super-serotonin modification that would snap him out of his funk. I tried to be there and be supportive, but he just became more and more detached.”
“That must have been hard.”
“It was. I was a reminder of his old, painful life so, as he transitioned, he became less responsive. You can receive messages and even calls in-game, but he stopped accepting them more and more until he wouldn’t answer them at all. Whenever I would visit in person, he would be in his pod. I would stock the fridge and even make some food at times, leaving it for him to reheat. Near the end, I visited a week later and found that none of the food had been touched. I ran to his pod and banged on the lid. I pulled him out of the gel and removed the leads, laying him on the spongy mat outside. His pallid skin hung on his gaunt frame. He was wasting away in every conceivable way. The pod had sustained his base nutritional needs and the gel and nanobots managed waste removal and circulation so that he didn’t get bed sores but he looked like death boiled over.”
“Wow,” Gus whispered.
“After that, he signed some simple forms at the hospital and was moved directly to the game hospice. Apparently, it’s much cheaper for the government to do that than support them, provide training or counseling.” He sighed.
“So how do you do it? How did you find a way to be happy? I struggle with all these emotions and doubts almost constantly. Do you just push them down, or just stay so busy that they aren’t as pressing on your mind? I’m always worrying about the ‘what ifs.’ What if I don’t do this? What if I don’t make the right choice that would be obvious to someone with more experience?”
“I stopped comparing myself to others a long time ago. It was one of the things that was bringing me down. Asking myself, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ was something that always brought me down. It made me feel powerless. When something else happened, it felt like life was just piling on the misfortune. I went down that road, trying to see if I was bringing this misfortune on myself by some negative karma I had somehow gained. Envious of other people’s lives who seemed to sail through without a care, and how often those people were dishonest or at least extremely unethical. And no repercussions happened to them; in fact, they seemed to be thriving.”
“Exactly! It’s so discouraging,” Gus agreed. He gets how it feels.
“I had to let all of that go. It’s toxic. It either makes you feel superior and loathe those who you deem to be beneath you, or you loathe yourself for being so broken, incomplete and unworthy. Sometimes horrible things happen and it isn’t anyone’s fault. Or it is and you can’t change it.
“I don’t want you to think this all happened overnight, either. I’m just lucky I had the time I did with my parents, Bobby, and my wife.”
“What happened with your wife?” Gus blurted before he could restrain himself.
“That’s probably a story for another time. Another tragedy, unfortunately. The real question you have to ask yourself is, ‘Do you want to be free from anything bad ever happening to you, or do you really want
to be capable of handling any challenge that comes your way?’ Avoiding struggle involves no growth.
“I have gone through many painful experiences, but even if I could go back and change them, I doubt I would now. There were times when I obsessed on finding a super with a power that would allow me to go back, but with the years I have a new perspective. I know who I am better because of how I reacted to all of those challenges. The choices I made, the bonds that became deeper, the habits I formed. I was forced into the situation, but I chose how those affected me. I think too many people give their power away. Don’t do that, Gus. I would rather fail a thousand times than fail to try once.”
“I wish I was okay with my failures.”
“There are no failures. That’s good data on what doesn’t work. Accepting that, I was a lot happier, along with letting go of the notion that things should be fair. I now expect things to be hard. It changed something fundamental in my mindset. Then I was able to change how I felt. There were days when I just wanted to sleep all day, looking for the escape of dreams. If not for my brother, I may have stayed in that state for too long. When I finally confronted those insurmountable challenges, I began the process of overcoming them.”
“That really resonates with me, man. Thanks for sharing that. It gives me a lot to think about.”
BoJack turned and looked out the window, watching the rain hit the window outside the transport. “Anytime. I hope it helps, and you don’t take as long as I did to sort things out. I’m beat, so forgive me if I nod off for a bit.”
Gus nodded and turned to his own thoughts. He tried to discover what would make him happy. Really, what were his expectations before he could feel happy? He closed his eyes and tried to relax. He could feel the pressure slowly draining, like a pinhole in a beachball, but he would take any relief. After a time, he noticed that the draining stopped and he opened his eyes. BoJack sat there slumped in the seat, fast asleep.
Snapback pain hit him like a bat between the eyes.
I need to do something. This is going to kill me.
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