by J. B. Garner
"Are you okay? Ssshould I get Duane?"
"No, it's nothing." There. I felt a little more myself as I smiled. "Passing ache, that's all." That wasn't entirely a lie. The Whiteout, after all, was the biggest pain in the world's collective neck at the moment, no matter if this was the first or the one-hundredth time it stung. "To turn that around though ..."
"It'sss taking a bit to heal, but Duane sayss the burnsss are going to be just fine," Medusa said, pointing at the spot on her forehead. "Electrical feedback from whatever signal that thing on my head wasss usssing to..." - the pause was short, so short that to anyone who didn't know her well it wouldn't even register - "...control me." As if remembering the purpose of the equipment she had been using for a chair, the snakewoman busied herself with picking out some weights.
"That's good, I suppose," I said as each turn of my pedals worked out another sore spot in my legs. "The thing is, that's not exactly what I was getting at. Physical stuff has never been a problem for you and the others."
The good news is that the majority of my own problems seemed to be the damage I caused myself more than the enforced dry-out I had experienced. Not that that hadn't made an impact but this entrenched pain I had probably caused myself from spasms and fits. I just had to not think about the easy way out of the pain. Biting the inside of my cheek to focus, I kept my eyes locked on Medusa.
"What do you mean?"
"Now it's your turn to stop it. Look, I may have had my head up my own butt some of the time these past months but I can still tell there's something eating at you."
Of course. That's why we were here. Rachel wasn't just looking forward to reuniting two friends. Sometimes I wondered, no matter how much of a friend she was, if Agent Choi didn't have an angle in mind even when she ordered her coffee in the morning.
"I- Well, really, it'sss nothing. Essspecially not anything for you to worry about, chica, you have enough on your plate asss it iss." Selfless as always. I stopped peddling and leaned my elbows on the handlebars.
"It especially does sound like something for me to worry about." I flashed a smile. "You're the one person when we get out there that I know I can count on. Sure, Quentin, Frost, Voltage, they seem like good folks and they're decent when things get hot, but it's not the same thing. We've saved each others' lives how many times now?"
"Point taken." Medusa looked up from the dumbbells she had set in front of her. "There'sss been a lot in my mind thesse passt weeks and -"
"Don't you mean 'on your mind'?"
"No." She paused to see if I would interrupt again. I didn't. "Firssst it wasss Bathory. Do you have any idea what it'sss like to have sssomething ssso ... wrong ... insside your head?"
"Only a little." The Countess had certainly tried to stick her hypnotic claws into my brain but if there was one thing I had you could call a 'superpower', stubborn willpower would be it. "It didn't feel good, even that little touch."
"I wasssn't ssso lucky." Her serpentine face contorted in an unreadable expression, but the look of horror on the woman inside that face spoke volumes. "If sshe had jussst taken me over like a puppet, it wouldn't have been sssso bad. Bathory, though, for thossse minutesss ssshe wass there, she made me love her. I would have done, Madre de Diosss, anything I could to protect her."
I remembered that all too well. Her gaze hadn't been directed to just crumble the ice slide Extinguisher and I were riding. She had full well meant to turn us to statues and it was Ex's last minute evasion that saved us (well, him at any rate) from that fate.
"It could have been any of us. You can't beat yourself up over -"
"You don't underssstand. Thossse thoughtsss linger. Even though I know that wasssn't entirely my fault, I ssstill felt those things. Did thossse thingsss." Her fingers clenched the handles of the weights and her knuckles were turning from deep emerald to pale green. Meds wasn't nearly as strong as Hexagon was, but her inhuman strength was enough I feared for the equipment if she got too upset.
"Those headbands, they didn't control you either, did they?" Even one minute forced to feel that way would linger, sure, but it seemed to me that weeks of it would turn that moment into a lasting trauma.
Medusa's eyes widened slightly and she nodded with deliberate slowness. I knew that snakes couldn't cry and it appeared that she couldn't either. Despite that, the rest of her body reacted as if she were starting to sob. Her long fingers came up to her face, as if she herself was hunting for tears that should be coming but couldn't.
I was sitting on the long bench facing her before I knew it, gently grabbing her hands in my own. I tried to be careful and not press through the soap-bubble scales. I didn't want to upset her more, after all. She turned her gaze away as much for my safety, unnecessary as it was, than her embarrassment.
"Eight daysss, Irene. Eight daysss of thinking Epic and his commandersss were the bessst, that I ... that we'd all do anything for them." Her snakes hissed like mad. "Firssst Bathory, then Epic, then Gassslight and Bio -"
"Wait, why them?" Gaslight was one of the Crusaders that Epic had brought in with him to fight Mackenzie's horde of vampire terrorists (which sounded as crazy as the actual event had been), his specialty was Pushtech inspired by steampunk designs. As for Bio, well, Doc Bio I knew all too well.
"I guesss that the headbands were their creation." Medusa tried to calm the intermittent sobs. I gave her hands another squeeze as encouragement. "Ssso they were alsso the folksss who acted as our directorsss. We rarely if ever saw Epic himssself. I guesss that devotion thossse machines causssed transsferred over time." She shook her head. "I don't know. I don't care. It doesssn't make it any less frightening."
"Maybe they didn't stick a headband on my head, but I do know something about having your mind changed." I moved a hand up to her shoulder. "You're right to be afraid of it. It makes you question yourself and wonder how much of what you did was the influence and how much of it was you all along."
"Sssi, that'sss it exactly." She looked me straight in the eyes. I never quite realized that it had to be hard for her these past months. One accidental gaze, one wrong turn of the head at just the wrong time, and Medusa could kill. Certainly, there was a brief moment when she almost panicked but that passed when I didn't turn to stone.
"Alright then, let's make a pact." I shifted my grip on her hand from a comforting hold to a more traditional clasp of the hand. "You keep me from being an asshole any more. You keep me grounded and save me from myself."
"And you, Irene, you keep me from doubting myssself. You keep me from ssecond-guesssing all my thoughtsss and feelingsss sso I don't go crazy from what thosse pigsss did to my head."
"I swear!" To add an extra level of grade-school solemnity to the affair, I crossed my heart and hoped to die.
"I sswear!" Medusa took it a step further, formally crossing herself in the Catholic tradition.
Maybe it was stupid. Maybe it was childish. It didn't matter. There's a refuge to be found in the rituals of childhood. More importantly, there was comfort in simply knowing there was someone else who understood. Someone else who was there to watch your back and support you when you were down.
Whatever our new friends could do, how powerful they might be, that was one thing they couldn't provide.
"Now with that sssettled, my firssst official action to sssave you from yourssself isss to get you back to work." Medusa rose off the weight bench in one graceful motion and gestured to it with a mock bow. "It'sss all yoursss." My arms already started lodging formal complaints at the mere thought of lifting even a pound.
"See, what makes you such a great friend is your boundless compassion and empathy for my pain," I snarked as I forced myself to ignore those protests and turn to lay back on the weight bench.
"It'sss what I'm here for, Irene." Medusa flashed me a final smirk as I grabbed the weight bar to begin.
Chapter 7 Mixer
The next few days passed quickly. I had only the barest idea of where we were, a small property that Rache
l and Duane had purchased and somehow kept off the record, but it was safe and secure. Rachel, for her part, seemed to stay purposefully busy for most of her waking hours and I barely saw her outside of passing in the hall or momentarily at meals. Probably for the best. I still wasn't sure how I felt about her place as the master planner of all of this. Unjustified as it was, the stubborn thought lingered as I worked it out of my system.
Duane, well, I had some small recriminations about him as well but that was countered by the simple fact the man had patched me back together more times than I could count. There was something to be said for the doctor-patient bond. Medusa and I were called up daily for a poking-and-prodding session to see how we were progressing to be ready to get out in the field again.
As for the B-team (something else that stuck in my mind and I felt horrible for), they were being constantly sent out in a mad scramble to at least present something of a resistance to the Crusaders. It was at the end of one of these sorties, two days after I had started down the road to recovery, that we all had a chance to do more than exchange pleasantries.
Medusa was having her daily check-up with Duane, something I had a feeling was not a physical check-up like my own was, while I was running through a set of exercises in the small gym. Honestly, I was feeling very positive about my progress. My inactivity had been shorter than I had originally feared and, well, as much as I disagreed with the Whiteout's effects, some of those reality twists worked in my favor. Even normal people seemed to bounce back quicker from illness, injury, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, they died just as easily as before. That grim thought pushed me through my next sit-up.
"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen," Quentin's voice echoed over the loudspeaker. "In honor of our last-minute escape today, I'm whipping up a special brunch." He had taken the affectation of a cheesy cruise ship host from the 1970s. "Enjoy wonderful cuisine and mingle with your fellow resistance fighters! It will be a wonderful morning for all."
Well, it was a hard offer to pass up. I had worked up a hunger and at least most of that could be filled there. Besides, these were the people I was going to be trusting my life with. There was no better time to forge some kind of bond with them. I sat up, toweled myself off, and headed to the dining room.
I had yet to figure exactly what this building had been before as I walked into the dining room. My first guess had been an old hotel, but I was edging towards an apartment building or tower of condos. After all, what we called the 'dining room' bore more resemblance to a repurposed living room. An open bar-style counter led into the kitchen proper. The very first thing that struck me as I opened to door was the positively divine smell of eggs, bacon, and coffee. At least the Crusaders were keeping food flowing into the city somehow.
Voltage, still hurting my eyes, was hovering, sitting, lingering, whatever you wanted to call it, around the battered table in the center of the room. Frost sat opposite of him, delicately typing on a laptop with her clawed fingers. To her credit, the laptop was remarkably free of gouges or missing keys. The 'I'm A Dragon In My Other Life' bumper sticker slapped on the back of the display was either prophetic or plain strange.
"Looking good, Doc," Quentin called from over the open bar. He was in the middle of simultaneously tossing an omelet and a skillet of pancakes. "I, and every red-blooded American male, appreciate your hard work."
"Eyes on the food," I shot back. "I'd appreciate a non-burned non-spilled meal." I certainly didn't mind a compliment, of course, but not quite in the vernacular of your average New York construction worker. Quentin flashed a grin and tossed off a salute as he reached for a spatula.
"Don't mind Quentin too much, ma'am," Voltage buzzed as I grabbed a seat. "He's kind of a screw-ball."
"It's a good thing to find humor in all of the madness around us." Frost's sparkling sapphire eyes had crested the top of her laptop. "There is far too little of it in this fair city." She paused a moment, then smirked. Well, I thought it was a smirk; I wasn't up to date on draconic facial expressions. "Besides, Quentin's observation isn't exactly wrong. You certainly seem to be back in fighting trim, Indomitable."
I dropped down into a creaking folding chair as I gave the dragon a fake sour look.
"Do I need to start fighting off suitors or something? I just came here for the food."
"Ssssuitorss? Why do I alwaysss misss the good ssstuff?" Medusa said, standing in the door frame.
"I can see I'm vastly outnumbered here." I rubbed my face with my hands as Medusa dropped down on the bench with Frost, directly across from me.
"Well, you can always join us, Dr. Roman," Quentin noted as he slid two plates on the table before ringing a bell. "Orders one and two are up! Get it while it's hot!"
The witty repartee was broken up by the rapid succession of plates served up to sate everyone's hunger. Quentin was almost a blur in the kitchen. The best way I could describe it would be watching a hibachi chef applying all that skill and theatrics to the fine art of the short-order cook. Greasy spoon meets Iron Chef. It was, I had to say, impressive to watch.
"So does anyone know where our fearless leaders are?" the cook asked as he took a place at the table. He must still have been dressed for whatever mission they had been out on. In many ways, it mimicked my own gear: altered motorcycle gear but in shades of black and gray as opposed to my own very impractical white and blue. Parallel thought or did he get a similar helping hand as I had?
"Duane sssaid he had to do sssome planning with Rachel and to not wait up on them." Medusa tossed some crumbled-up bacon into the air for her snakes. "How did thingsss go out there?"
"Our primary mission was a success, ma'am." I found it exceedingly hard to look in Voltage's direction normally. Watching him eat caused even greater visual confusion for me. "Secondary objectives, well, no luck there."
"What was your mission? What were the objectives?" I said as I speared a perfectly cooked sausage link. "I don't know if we should be cheering or brooding." If no one else was going to be very informative, the team might be.
"Recon on the Bank of America Plaza," Voltage reported automatically. "Secondary objective was to try to isolate any of your former teammates to try to disable those Pushtech headbands."
"I'm not sure if we were supposed to be spreading that around, Vee."
"Sssorry, Quentin, but we need to know thesse thingsss too!"
"I obviously agree with Meds. If Rachel or Duane have a problem with it, they can deal with me later."
I glanced between the three of them. Quentin didn't look too off-put by Medusa's outburst, still chewing on a stack of pancakes. Voltage's patterns had shifted which probably meant something, while Frost had closed her laptop.
"I can see the wisdom of both sides," the dragonwoman began. "You are both intimately close to what stand as our most dangerous enemies at the moment, so there's a point in shielding you from it. At the same time, well, I imagine you will both be with us out there soon. Being ready to face them is just as important."
"I don't disagree exactly. It's, well, we owe the Foundation a lot." Quentin scratched his cheek. "I don't want to come off as an ass when they ask us to do something."
"We can dissscuss the ethicsss of it later." Medusa glanced in Voltage's direction. "Did you guysss run into any of them?"
"Yes, ma'am. They seem to do a good job of being around when we stick our heads above water. Our clash was inconclusive." The buzzing voice, past the strict military edge, seemed a bit disappointed.
"The info we were sent to get is more important than having a scrap to maybe possibly free up an ally." Quentin frowned a bit. "No offense to you ladies."
"None taken," I said, nodding to Medusa. "We all have to make hard choices. Greater good and all of that."
"I am not sure I entirely agree." Frost steepled her silvery hands. I hadn't noticed before, but even her claws seemed to be made of pure silver. "For every member of the Five we free deprives Epic of one of his most powerful champions and adds them to
our fellowship. It's just simple math."
"That sounds great, but think about it like this." Quentin scooped a spoonful of his delightful cheese-smothered scrambled eggs onto his plate. "This, this is us." He tapped the chipped serving bowl, heaped with more eggs, with the other. "All the rest of these eggs, these are the Crusaders." He scraped the barest hint out of the bowl and added it to his plate. "That's the effect of snatching another of the Five."
"We almossst ssstopped thiss whole thing in the firssst place," Meds hissed. "I think we count for more than a ssspoonful." She gestured at me. "Irene beat Epic down one-on-one, after all."
"That may be, but there's this thing called 'economy of action'," the cook said. "It doesn't matter how bad-ass each of us may be if their numbers are too great. You can take out, let's say, two of them at once, but there's still a hundred more coming down on you. It's a physical impossibility to take them all down before they nickle-and-dime you to death."
It was a hard statement to counter. Mackenzie had pointed it out before and I certainly realized the reality of it, even if I preferred not to.
"Come on, folks," Voltage said, speaking up before Medusa could add a retort, "it doesn't matter. We didn't have a chance to make a move, even if it wouldn't have threatened our primary mission."
"Electric Company has a point," I added. "Uh, no offense." I looked around the table. "We'll get them back and we'll put a stop to all this. That is why you guys were working on springing me, right?"
"In a manner of speaking." The draconic author made a motion as if to adjust a pair of glasses she no longer needed. "The idea is that, with two people of Quentin's unique abilities, we can fight through and take down whatever they are using to generate the barrier and rescue your friend, Alma. The cavalry is just beyond the edge of the dome, no doubting waiting to surge to our rescue."
"None of you were at the Battle of Washington, were you?" I already thought I knew the answer, but there's always the chance I missed them in the wash of thousands of Pushed. The trio responded with shakes of their heads.
