by J. B. Garner
The hallway that Quentin had helped me down dimly reminded me of an apartment building, an old one. Other than the lowered blinds giving a certain dimness to the hall, I noticed little else. All my effort and concentration was focused on making my legs move. They weren't as weak as I initially feared; it was the crippling soreness that made walking so hard. Cramps? Strain from thrashing and spasms? I didn't know the cause.
"Do you think he could have stopped me for long?" My voice was still hoarse, but some of its strength and volume had returned. My eyes were locked on Rachel as I felt Quentin's shoulders shrug slightly.
"She's right you know, Ms. Choi."
There was a long pause as Rachel's eyes flitted between the two of us. She was sitting behind an old oak desk, various open files littering a map of the city that covered most of the desktop. The look of mild annoyance faded and she let out a long sigh. Much like Duane, stress lines had cut deep into her face since the last time I had seen her.
"You're both right." She rubbed her temples. "Well, help Irene into a seat and check in with Duane. It looks like we have some trouble brewing and we need you out there."
"Maybe I should stay here?" It was a battered office desk chair Quentin helped me into. It matched everything else I had encountered so far here, old but serviceable.
"No, Quentin," I said before Rachel could say a word. "Even if they didn't need you, this is private." Rachel gave me a hard look, then nodded in agreement.
"Irene is correct, Quentin. Thank you."
Casting a glance at both of us, Quentin nodded and, without another word, turned and strode out of the room. The door closing behind him was the only sound in the room save for some uncomfortable shifting. That pall of silence reigned for a good minute or two before Rachel broke it.
"I'm sorry I haven't come to see you, Irene." The regret was almost tangible as she looked down at the map and the scattered papers. "I ... well, you can probably guess how busy we are, trying to stymie -"
"I don't want an apology about that. I understand that." I had a coal of anger that I was fanning, using that fire to keep moving and talking. "What I don't understand is why. Why is all of this going on when it could have been stopped?"
"What are you talking about?" The Korean-American detective looked up, vaguely confused. "Look, we had an operation under way to get you out of there. We just had to be -"
"No, not that. Before, when I had Eric on his knees and you told me to give up." My hands were clutching the threadbare armrests. "I had him beat; I could have kept going!"
"That's crazy, Irene." Rachel, as always, kept a cool head. "Maybe you could have taken all of those Crusaders, but probably not. True, you might have killed Epic ... that might have cowed them ... but could you have actually done that?"
"No, but-" I closed my eyes and tried to order my thoughts. Everything was still so jumbled. "Dammit, there had to be another way!"
Rachel let out a bitter sigh. No, not bitter ... old. She was perhaps my age, no more than forty, but all of this that we had been forced into with the Whiteout had aged both of us far beyond our actual years.
"Maybe," she said, voice barely above a whisper. "I've spent a lot of time in the past two weeks questioning my decision, that's for sure." Her voice was regaining its strength. "I'm not happy with how it went down but I don't think you or any of the others would have lived if I had made any other choice."
"I'm not sure if you can call what happened to everyone else living." It hurt me to think about what else the Crusaders were making my friends do. "What about Archer? Alma? Mind's Eye? I didn't see them at the prison. Where are they?"
"I have suspicions." Rachel looked me in the eye. "Irene, you have to understand that nothing is the same now. We have very few allies and even fewer resources left. No matter how badly you beat Eric, there's a thousand more Pushed under his command and Atlanta is theirs."
"Don't tell me you're giving up!" My shout was more of a croak, but it was loud enough to get my point across. "Why did you even call in these folks? Which, I have to add, you never told me about. You know, like you didn't tell me you were bringing Alma into this mess in the first place!" I wanted to rise from my chair and loom with anger, but that wasn't going to happen. "How much else haven't you been telling me?"
"I've been doing what had to be done, just like you were, Irene." No matter the weariness or age in her voice, there was sudden steel now. "You've been the one that's been impossible to work with. Yes, you have followed our leads and helped our investigations, but in so many other ways you have never listened."
"That's -"
"No, no, you are going to listen this once." Rachel rose from her chair. Even though she was shorter than I was by a head, her years in the FBI had given her a formidable presence when she chose to exert it. "How many times did Duane and I try to keep you safe, keep you from doing ... this ... to yourself?" She just gestured at me. No clarification was needed. "You're the one that forced every little problem to be placed on your shoulders."
"You know as well as I do that it was my invention that let Eric do all of this." That was a point even Rachel couldn't find a hole in. "How could you argue anything other than that I have a direct responsibility for it all?"
"I'm not. What I am arguing is that you've made every little aftershock of the Whiteout your personal problem to fix. You've ignored everything else. Dammit, Irene, you've practically killed yourself a dozen times over, never once letting anyone else share the burden. I don't even want to try to figure just how many pain-killers you've gotten hooked on." She folded her arms, anger bleeding out as her voice softened. "Maybe we didn't start out as friends, but that's what we all are now. Can you even imagine what you've been doing to all of us by just not accepting some damn help?"
I didn't have a single word in my extensive vocabulary to refute those accusations.
"So, to answer your questions, that's why I brought in Alma. That's why I called up some of the contacts I had been making for these past four months, bringing in the best Push Heroes I could find from Detroit to save our bacon. And that's why I've been networking with anyone who looked like they would stand up to the Crusaders. All 'behind your back'" - she even air-quoted that before continuing her rant - "because you would never stop long enough to listen!"
My death grip on the armrests faded as I hung my head. What else could I really do? Rachel was right and only now, in this moment of complete weakness, could I accept that. Hell, how many times had she or Duane tried to tell me this self-same thing? Even some of the team, blinded as they might have been by the Whiteout's comic-book reality, had tried to make me slow down. How much had I destroyed just trying to fix things?
"I'm sorry." I wasn't good at apologies. To be honest, I wasn't used to giving them. Maybe it was luck that I seemed to be on the right side of things for the most part. Maybe I was just a life-long stubborn jerk.
"Forget it, Irene, it -"
"No, no, let's not forget it." I was tearing up, something that really didn't surprise me. All the emotional damage I'd reaped was coming back home. God, just what I did to Ex alone was horrible. "It doesn't matter if I can say I never meant any of it, but that doesn't fix jack, does it?"
"No, not really." Rachel reluctantly approached me, kneeling beside the chair. "Look, I didn't mean to get you going like this but ... none of us can make a mistake now." She gripped my hand. "You can't go it alone anymore and I can't keep you out of the loop, even if you frankly deserved it."
I wiped the tears away with my free hand and let out a laugh.
"Yeah, I did, didn't I? Still, seriously, I'm not happy about Alma." I may have been forced to accept that Alma Gutierrez had the right to pick her own fate in joining our side but I had tried so hard to keep her safe from all of this.
"Did you have any better ideas to stop Bathory?" Silence. "I didn't think so." Rachel stood up and turned towards the desk. I took one last breath as my crying dried up.
"So, where are they?"
"Everyone."
"Right, well," Rachel said, smoothing out the map, "the Five ... they've basically been turned into Epic's personal attack squad. You saw all of them but Eye ... most of the time we suspect she's staying out of the limelight to telepathically direct both the team and keep them directly in contact with Epic."
"As for the others, well, we don't know about Archer. Duane's hunch, which I'll go with, is that, as a full-on traitor, Epic has special plans for him. Maybe he's being held at the Capitol. Your ex-boyfriend has turned that into his palace here."
"That sounds like him."
"Alma. Well, a few days ago, while you were asleep, we sent Quentin, Voltage, and Frost out to investigate the emission point for that dome, the Bank of America Plaza." I nodded ... it was the largest building in the city so that made sense. She continued, "They couldn't get much headway into finding out much before the Five, well, Four now, swept in but Quentin swears that he saw, among the new construction on the top levels, a chamber that looked to be made entirely of crystal."
Rachel didn't have to say anything else and she knew that. The pieces of the puzzle were simple enough to lay out. The Push had changed Alma from a typical sophomore engineering student into a creature of living crystal. As we had found out, her faceted body let her direct, split, and amplify light and, with the twisted physics of the post-Whiteout world, maybe all kinds of other energy. The Crusaders had to be using her as some kind of lens or focus for whatever kept that dome up.
The anger was coming back but it was all directed at the proper targets this time.
"I don't care what we have to do, but I have to get back out there."
"I knew you would say that. I wish I had some brilliant plan to offer, but there's only one course to take." Rachel turned back to me and sat on the lip of the desk. "We set this place up as an emergency safe house, so there's a few important things here. A small gym, for instance. I'd start there."
"There isn't time-"
"There has to be time, Irene." Rachel folded her arms. "I won't let you go back out there, no matter how much you push, until you're back up to snuff. I won't sign your death certificate just because you're filled with righteous fury."
I blew out a hard breath and nodded. I knew she was right. I had known it before I even bulled into the room.
"Things aren't good here right now but we're at a stasis point, at least for the moment." Rachel tried to sound certain but I knew her well enough to catch the unease in her voice. "The military is completely stymied by the dome, whatever the hell it is, and apparently they have yet to find a Pushed who can get through. The Crusaders are managing, even if it is barely, to keep the city fed and supplied."
"What about protesters? Resistance?" Twister's unease had to have been caused by something.
"There have been some deaths. There's going to be more." Rachel seemed hesitant to go into more details. "We're doing what we can to organize the protestors and keep them safe but..."
Five people trying to hold off a thousand, I can imagine that their efforts hadn't worked well.
"Well, we don't have any time to lose, do we?"
"No, I suppose we don't. The only good news is that at least you won't be rehabilitating alone." Rachel clicked a button on the old-fashioned call box holding down a quarter of the city map. "Medusa, could you come to my office? You and Irene need to get back to work."
"Sssi, it'd be my pleasssure," came the crackling hiss over the speaker.
I couldn't help but smile. I had managed to do one thing right and I was going to cling on to that thing with all of my might.
Chapter 6 Therapy
I forced myself to stand, despite the continued throbbing in my muscles, when I heard the door open. It was more than the pain that wanted to glue me to the chair. There was a sudden onset of fear.
After all, everyone had been guarded at best in regards to Medusa's condition. My imagination couldn't help but conjure images of gaping holes in her skull from where I had ripped that headdress free. Or maybe her mind had been smashed into barely responsive jelly. Alright, that one was unlikely, she had sounded fine on the intercom, but still my mind ran rampant.
When the door opened, there was no great horror, no reason apparently to be scared of what I had done at all. Medusa was simply standing there, almost unblemished, dressed in one of her usual jumpsuits. Every scale, every writhing snake remained in place. The only evidence there had been any harm done at all were the three clusters of blackened scales I could see along her brow and, more disturbingly, similar dark spots on the brow of the real woman inside the phantom shell.
"Isss that how you sssay 'hi' to your besst friend after everything that'ss happened?"
"I- No, no it isn't." I managed a smile. "Hey, Meds. God, am I so happy to see you ... especially not trying to throw -"
"Pleasse, amiga, don't," she said with a hiss. "I can't make myssself forget, but I don't want to remember either." One scaly brow spasmed. "It doesssn't ... feel good."
"You two should head to the gym, down the hall, catch up," Rachel said. I could hear the desk chair roll out as she sat back down. "There's a lot of work to do and a dwindling amount of time to get it done in."
"All business," I smirked. "Some things never change."
"Pot, kettle, black," Meds said. "Sssspeaking of that, do I get to tell you 'I told you sssso', too?"
"Sure, why -"
My leg decided to give out under a wash of agony as I took a step toward the door, cutting off my clever retort. Before I could properly smash my face into the hardwood floor, Medusa, with her snake-like reflexes, neatly caught me by the armpits. As she steadied me back on my feet, I cleared my throat.
"Well, at least someone around here is up to snuff."
"I'm a sssuperhero, Irene. Bad things don't ssstick to us, remember?"
It was meant as a joke, sure, but there was a just a hint of something in her voice that made my gut clench. I tried to dismiss that surge of anxiety and replied to her grin with one of my own, before putting an arm around her shoulders.
"Well, Ms. Superhero, mind helping out a citizen in need?"
"My pleasssure!" she said, punctuated by a sibilant laugh as she helped me out into the hallway.
"I didn't want to ssssay it in front of Rachel," Medusa said, sitting on a weight bench as I struggled into something better than thin scrubs, "but you really don't look that well ssstill." She paused a moment. "You're all ... wrung out."
"That matches how I feel." I gingerly inspected myself in the mirror as I changed. Mackenzie had said that I had plenty of scars and that was accurate. A few new ones had joined them, notably the two bullet wounds in my chest and shoulder, probably matched by that stab in my back.
I was pale and drawn, but aside from a strange bruising I could only attribute to thrashing and the need to be restrained, I wasn't a total loss. I hadn't lost all of my fitness though I had certainly lost some mass and muscle from my (if I took Rachel at face value) two weeks of relative inactivity and sickness. Pain and aches were the enemy as I pulled on the sweats, as well as the creeping desire to do something about that pain.
An errant thought wondered where Duane kept the medical supplies before it was pushed back into line.
"Hey, it could be worssse, chica. You're not a total lost caussse. Of courssse it would help if we weren't on the clock."
"I'm trying not to think about that." I stepped back out from behind the changing screen. The more I managed to move, the more my muscles started to work the pain out. Things were starting to progress from 'paralyzing agony' to 'beaten like a drum'. "I just wish I knew more of what was going on."
"Why not jussst asssk me what I know inssstead of your usssual 'sssslide thingss towardss the information I want' method?" Meds' snakes danced as she laughed. "It's no way to talk to your friendsss, Irene." Medusa was one of the only Pushed I had ever managed to get to call me by my proper name, though I never did figure out h
ow she beat that particular mental block.
"Sorry, Meds." I limped over to an older but serviceable exercise bike. It took some deliberation and focus, but I managed to get into the seat without any embarrassing wipe-outs. "Rachel and I had a bit of an argument about that sort of thing." I wanted to get my legs pumping right away, but they protested. "I mean, I suppose I've been a bit of an ass but I don't know if that justified all of ... this." I gestured all around me.
"Well, sssi, a bit of an assss is right." Despite agreeing with me, she still smiled. "I would sssay though you had a good reassson, if you assk me." She glanced around. "I don't know what you mean by all of thissss though. Looksss like good planning to me." As Medusa spoke, I managed to get my legs to push and slowly the bike's speedometer inched into life.
"I was thinking more the 'pros from Dover' and the whole secret weapon bit with Alma." I grit my teeth as I hit a bad muscle kink but kept peddling. "I had tried to keep that girl out of all of this and, yeah, that was wrong but was it any less wrong to drag her back in without telling any of us?"
"Honessstly, Irene, I would ssswear you're trying to look for problemsss." Medusa absently touched at one of the scorched spots on her temple. "You were too busssy to sssee what was coming. Duane and Rachel, thisss kind of thing iss their job, right? Keeping uss focussed and handling all the thingsss we were too bussy to deal with. Jusst think what would have happened if they hadn't done all of thisss."
I took a deep breath and let that roll around in my head. Rational Irene pointed out that it made perfect sense. It made so much sense, in fact, that I began to wonder if, like Mackenzie had, I was letting the Whiteout start to influence me.
An inordinate distrust between two members of a superteam, despite the illogic of it, simply to cause some dramatic tension? Classic comic book storyline right there, especially as I fit the role of the 'maverick', the team outsider who still always managed to pull through for the group. I shook my head, as if a physical gesture would hold an omnipresent reality-warping force at bay.
