by J. B. Garner
"I guess that's why you're one of the only Pushed who I can get to use my name, huh?" That brought a smile back on her face.
"Sssi, Irene. I jusst can't bear usssing my own. It'sss not like I can take this face off. I'll never be anything other than Medusssa again."
For every point there was a counterpoint. I shouldn't have been surprised. The universe seems to create these things and physics is all about 'equal and opposite reactions'. I sat there wondering what I would do if the time ever came and I had the choice. It was a far different decision than it would have been at the start.
Medusa had dropped back off into sleep, something I followed with a short time later, but not until I had been forced to eat by Archer's return. Not that it actually took any forcing, just the smell of any kind of food set off almost crippling hunger pangs. I wasn't sure if the gusto with which I devoured the meal put before me was amusing or frightening with the mannerly Crusader, but I cared not one bit. With the worst edge taken off my hunger, it wasn't a real shock to me that I passed out at the table. Fortunately, the table was an infirmary bed, so it worked out well enough.
My sleep was fitful and plagued by flashes of shapeless nightmares. Considering I had been in hand-to-hand combat with walking corpses, this shouldn't have been a surprise. What was unusual was that there was a sense of anticipation in these dreams. It alluded to an overwhelming sense of foreboding.
A gentle shake woke me. Half-awake, I struggled against an imagined attacker only to be held down with an iron grip. I opened my eyes as conscious action kicked in to see Hexagon hulking over the bed, his two 'real' arms holding me down with as much gentleness as the gentleman bruiser could manage.
"Indy," he said softly, "you're fine. Just a bad dream, I reckon." He flashed a big smile.
"Oh."
"Most of the others are workin' in the lab," he answered, as if my unintelligible mutter had been a question, "but, you know me, I'm not exactly cut out for that kind of work. Balance your budget, sure, but forensics, naw." He released his grip. "I thought you'd probably want to get all cleaned up and such."
"Yeah, right," I mumbled as I sat up. "Was that all of them?" My mind had meant to insert actual nouns into the sentence to make it understandable, but somehow Hex seemed to figure it out.
"Well, that was all of 'em at that bar," Hex crossed his arms with a frown. "Problem is all of 'em were normal not a few weeks ago at the latest. It's seeming mighty unlikely that they were the ones who started this mess." I nodded, swinging my legs off the bed. Medusa was already gone.
"God, what time is it?"
"Eight thirty-three on the button," the big man replied. "Everyone took a nap once we got back in from wrangling things under control then hit it hard and fast around eight-ish."
"Right, thanks, Hex." I slid off the bed and onto my feet. I still hurt all over, but it had turned into a dull, burning ache. I still wanted to down a handful of oxycodone and wash it down with a pot of coffee. First, though, I wanted to wash the feeling of inch-thick stink off of me.
"Anything else I can do for you? If there ain't, I'm going to stop on down by PART HQ and see if they got anything out of Mr. Blanchard yet."
"No, I'm good for now, thanks." With that, I marched upstairs to become human once again.
I was standing there, staring in the bathroom mirror. Droplets condensed and ran down the surface from the blisteringly hot shower I had subjected myself to for a straight hour. My stop at the sink was meant to be quick. Brush the teeth, that sort of thing. Now, who knows how much time had passed as I sat here, mulling over a vital choice.
The choice, on the surface, was a simple one. I could take a Frankenstein combination of the remnants of my pain pills and be feeling in tip-top shape for what was sure to be another day of life-or-death events or keep clean and be at far less than a hundred percent. Really, when lives were on the line, it seemed like a cut-and-dry thing.
The dawning reality was for more complex. I knew just how addicting these drugs really were. There were more important considerations than just 'pain or no pain'. The simple fact that I felt entitled to rifle through the infirmary's dispensary last night was more than enough evidence that I had a problem. What about the fever sweats with no fever? That wasn't right. How about all the times I had argued with myself about how I deserved just one more pill? I was saving the world, right? Did I even need to go on about the mood swings, irritability, and the defensive arguments? I was a walking list of addiction symptoms.
I looked down at the small glass filled with a shallow bed of pills ranging in size, shape, and color. A few remaining oxycodones, some prescription ibuprofen, a fair number of cyclobenzaprine, even a couple of hydromorphone pills I had managed to save from those broken ribs two months ago. Who the hell was the woman who would throw this back like it was nothing? Had I really come to this?
My hand was shaking as I put the glass away, knocking a few empty pill bottles down into the sink. I couldn't let myself be that woman anymore. There was more risk to myself and everyone by becoming her than by staying the woman I had been, no matter the suffering.
Still, my fingers lingered on the rim of the glass for several moments before I could force myself to pull away and finish suiting up.
Rachel Choi came up beside me as I walked through the Foundation toward the lab area, emerging from her own private office. I never bothered to ask where exactly Rachel and Duane had wrangled the funding for the Foundation, though I suspected it came from their deal with the FBI, much as I suspected that the self-same FBI gave them funds for my 'upkeep' without my knowledge. However they had managed it, though, the facilities here were pretty impressive even with my high standards working in academia.
"You look a little better, Irene," Rachel observed. "You know you could have gotten more sleep -"
"Not in that suit with the blood, sweat, and dirt on it, no way," I interrupted. "Very nasty."
"I have no doubt of that. How are your injuries?" She glanced at me as we walked with that appraising eye of hers.
"Not so bad, could be better," I admitted. "I'm functional right now, that's what is important." We walked a few more paces. "Did you know that Epic holds freaking formal balls constantly for his army? How can he manage that kind of crap?"
"While I certainly didn't expect our conversation to go in that direction," Rachel replied, "I can, actually, answer that question." Taking my glance as a sign to proceed, she continued. "Money is not much of an issue when you have the power to literally generate matter from nothing. I wouldn't be surprised if he has an opulent palace headquarters where people can come to bow down to him."
"Why didn't I think of that?"
"The answer to your question or the idea to create a palace for people to worship you at?"
"Either."
"For the first, I would conjecture that your injuries and preoccupation with the current crisis supersede worrying about the exact origin of Epic's resources," she said dryly. "For the second, you must simply be too humble for your own good."
"Well, glad to know the reasons are good," I muttered. "So what's the situation? What was there at the bar?"
"I was just about to check up on that myself," Rachel mentioned. "I was just on the phone with Hexagon hearing what information the police had gotten from Blanchard."
"Well, I guess we can all hear it together," I said as I pushed open the door to the lab's front room.
Like any professional set-up, the front chamber was dedicated to decontamination. While I had no personal knowledge of criminal forensics, some scientific principles were universal. You can't use something as data to prove or disprove a hypothesis if it's contaminated by outside sources. I could see through the observation glass that Duane, Ex, Archer, and Eye were hard at work, with Tank's cybernetic systems acting as a convenient portal nano-factory for whatever minor materials or chemicals they needed at the time. I didn't really know how Mind's Eye had any experience with this sort of thing ... she had been an inv
estment banker in her pre-Whiteout life ... but her breadth of knowledge was astonishing. Ex had served stints as an arson investigator with the fire department, while Duane and Archer's knowledge base was obvious.
"Morning, folks," I said over the intercom. "How is everyone doing?"
Tank was most enthusiastic in his waving, but everyone working gave a nod or raised a hand.
"Morning, Indy, things are going great even though I really don't know what all is going on because really I'm just here to make stuff that folks need but its still really cool to get to do that but I think Mr. Brooks probably can tell you what's going on best and oh, hey hi, Ms. Choi!" Rachel smiled and nodded through the glass to Tank in reply.
"I think Tank forgot to add that we're all doing pretty good," Ex added. "Even Sir Bow-a-lot here is being very helpful." Archer actually gave a guffaw at the poke. From pissing contests to locker room camaraderie in one night. I wasn't sure if I should be worried or not.
"Excellent," Rachel said, "I'm glad to see we're optimizing our resources on this, considering the gravity of the situation." Duane, having heard his name mentioned, looked up for a moment distractedly, but then went back to what he was examining. Mind's Eye cast a blind glance at the detective, then looked in the general direction of the glass.
"Mr. Brooks wishes me to give a summary of our findings as he is currently quite occupied," the Indian seer pronounced. "The first vital bit of evidence is perhaps the most important in the long term."
"And that is?" I found myself asking.
"In attempting to perform a general reading of past events on the site, there were numerous blockages. Blank spaces in the psychic record, so to speak." Eye pursed her lips. "I am certain you know what that indicates." There were only four people we knew of that caused Eye's oracular powers to blank out. I was the first. Epic and Reaper were both known quantities: one was in his Palace of Rocking Parties and the other was chained by anti-psychotic drugs in the body of Gerald Schuller. That left one person: Ian Mackenzie.
"Wait, why would a human supremacist use something Pushed like these vampires for foot soldiers?" The question was obvious, but not far behind in my mind was how he managed to create his little army in the first place. There had to be an original vampire and he knew where to find it, a feat that only took him at most three months to do.
"That's a great question, Indy," Ex replied, "and one we'll be sure to ask him when we nail his ass to the wall." Rachel and Duane nodded in agreement.
"Truly I do apologize," Archer interjected, putting down the documents he was reading through, "but who is this nameless chap we are speaking of? Why does he generate such ire in the room?"
"His name is Ian Shane Mackenzie," Duane said, looking up from his work, "and he's a scum-bag traitor who has his arms elbow-deep in blood."
"Enlightening, but -"
"You have to excuse my partner's colorful phraseology, Mr. Archer," Rachel said, cutting off further questions. "Let me explain in more detail and less color." She gave Duane an apologetic glance before launching into her story, one I had already heard in detail months ago.
"Ian Mackenzie was one of our instructors at the FBI academy," Choi began. "Already, at that point in his career, he was a respected and honored agent, combined with six years of solid work in the Army's military intelligence branch. To Duane and I, he was a mentor, a best friend, and a continual source of inspiration to work harder."
"Hell, we had a barbeque at his place not a week before the Whiteout," Duane added. Rachel smiled sadly at that and nodded.
"His specialty was cases of the unusual or the bizarre. Cults, occult-related crimes, unusual disappearances, all the sorts of things that no doubt inspired so many television programs, but he worked with the real thing. Ian had ... has an amazing mind, capable of seeing even the most easily overlooked detail and working it into a larger picture. Not only that, he was amazingly open-minded."
"Which really makes this terrorist bull-shit even more shocking." Rachel gave Duane another look to quiet him.
"I brought that up simply to explain how Ian was the obvious choice to head up the FBI's response to the Whiteout and why he immediately picked the both of us to investigate what he figured was the epicenter of the event, namely Atlanta. That's how we met Indomitable and the rest of the Atlanta Five."
"Where is this betrayal you spoke of?" Archer said.
"Now," Rachel answered. "When we came to Washington to investigate your master's scheduled political rally, I went to present our latest report to Ian in person. What I wound up being in the middle of was an explosion in the records department of headquarters. Ian had planted evidence to make it look like a Pushed terrorist bombing, but we learned the truth."
"On top of that, Ian not only manipulated the creation of the Humans for God, he was personally responsible for unleashing Reaper onto the rally in Washington. In essence, Ian Mackenzie was responsible for the entire Battle of Washington. He brutally murdered his colleagues and led to the deaths and injuries of who knows how many people both at the Battle and from Reaper's rampage before hand." Rachel fell silent, eyes dancing with carefully managed anger.
"I see," Archer said softly. "He wanted to destroy as many of the Pushed as he could in one fell swoop, and leave the populace so traumatized that all the governments on the planet would focus on eradicating the Pushed 'threat'."
"Thanks primarily to Indy and a last-minute moment of rationality by your leader," Ex pointed out, "we managed to keep that from happening, but we never even saw Mackenzie."
"No one has that we have found," Mind's Eye explained. "His nature is similar to that of Indomitable's. He is proof against my precognitive third eye and all of my mental powers as he is certainly proof against Epic's omnipresence."
"And despite all our efforts since then," Duane noted bitterly, "he's always stayed a step ahead." With some tweezers, Duane held up a strand of something. Thread or maybe hair? "This time though, he may just be within reach."
"Is that -" Rachel began to ask.
"Yep, it is." Duane put the hair into a plastic baggie. "Ian's hair. Recent too. He had to have been there sometime that week, by my first guess."
"I've been reading through this pile of documents we gathered from their lair," Archer added, "and methinks, in veiled language, there is evidence of another safe location." He looked at what from here seemed to be schematics. "Most unusually, it seems to be secreted in among the water and sewer system of this fine city."
"Wait a minute," I said, raising a finger. There was something I was forgetting but the mention of the water system brought it back. "The beer!"
"The beer?" Ex asked, confused.
"In the bar, the barkeep poured me a beer and there was a reddish taint in it. Some liquid that wasn't mixing with the beer. I think -"
"- it was blood. Not just any blood, but blood from the big vampire himself." Crap, Ex was still doing that.
"Well what the heck are we waiting for because who knows what will happen if everybody in the city starts chugging vampire blood-water-nasty-pants-drinks and then what about all the bottling companies here that use purified tap water that winds up not being so purified because who knows if they've got vampire-blood-proof-filters?" Tank's treads starting spinning in place, something that ceased with just one stern look from Mind's Eye. Even so, I could see that infectious lust for action starting to spread from one Push Hero to the next.
"Hold on, folks," I said, raising my voice, "we can't just jump on this without a little preparation first. Medusa needs to be back on our feet, her gaze is pretty effective against these jokers. On top of that, we lack one vital weapon."
"What is that, Milady?"
"Stakes. Lots of stakes."
Chapter 11 Stakes
"Do we really have time for thisss?" Medusa asked with a hiss of annoyance. It was one of the few times I didn't agree with her. As annoying as it was to be poked and prodded by Duane Brooks, EMT, yet again in the same week, considering this
was going to be a 'fate-of-the-city' kind of encounter, having the final medical okay was wise, even if it was just to know our limitations.
"This would go faster if you'd stop squirming and just let me do my damn job," Brooks grumbled. He had the bedside manner of an overprotective grizzly bear, but it got the job done. He looked over the now scaled-over buckshot wounds and nodded slowly. "Now was that so bad?"
"Ssso?"
"The new scales aren't hardened yet, so you're vulnerable on that side," he noted. "Basically, don't lead with your left side for another day or two. Otherwise, it's great to be Pushed." She stuck a forked tongue out at him as she pulled back on her shirt.
"I'm going to go sssuit up then," Meds announced. "Sssee you in the ready room, Irene." With a waggle of fingers, she was gone. I looked at Duane, sitting in one of those annoying, flimsy examination gowns.
"Irene," Duane started, then stopped with a sigh. "I really think you don't need to be doing this." He looked at his clipboard. "Shit, in the past twenty-four hours, you've been hit with grenade shrapnel, thrown into stone walls by a super-strong vampire, backhanded by the same vampire, had most of your forearm's muscles crushed by a bite, shot with rubber bullets, and strangled." He flipped through more pages. "Let's not inventory the rest of the week for you."
"I can't do that, Duane." I had the pain under control for now and everything seemed to be mostly working right. My breathing still felt a bit tight, but I was sure I could manage. "What if Mackenzie is there? They don't really understand entirely how dangerous someone like me is to them, but I'm sure he does."
