The Push Chronicles (Book 3): Incorruptible

by J. B. Garner

  We made our good-byes, wished our good-lucks, and set our new communication frequency. With everything in place, we got down to business.

  Despite Mind's assurances that the thoughts in the minds of those we were about to meet were pure, I was still anxious. The fact of the matter was that things could turn crazy in a moment when Pushed were involved. It seemed almost a requirement that any meeting devolved into at least one moment of tension, if not an outright brawl, before everything got peacefully resolved. Still, this was a necessary part of the plan, the one I had put forward, so I just had to suck it up.

  At least we had the advantage of semi-home turf. All sides had agreed on a neutral meeting place but, considering what we were doing was certainly frowned on by the current regime, some concessions for security had been made. The warehouse in which we currently waited was another emergency safe house, one of several it seemed that Rachel and Duane had set up using Foundation funds. I shouldn't have been surprised, really. If you were a normal sticking your nose in on this kind of thing, you would want every contingency covered.

  The important point was that, though it wasn't exactly familiar terrain, the dynamic duo of Brooks and Choi had the place wired for video and sound (internal and external), as well as remote control over the electronic locks on the main entrances. It wouldn't make much difference if things did get hairy, but it was still nice as an early-warning system of impending trouble. Having an actual record of what happened here would also be a plus in later planning, no matter how things went down.

  "The hour of our conclave has come and past," Frost rumbled as she paced. "Perhaps some foul play has interrupted our potential allies?"

  "No, all is well," Mind's Eye said as she blindly stared at the back doors. "In fact, they are here."

  Never one to doubt the seer's senses, I turned towards the object of her gaze. Our watchers must have seen the same thing she did, as there was a chime that indicated the doors had just unlocked. The metal emergency exit pulled open and three figures hurried into the cover of the old warehouse.

  I really shouldn't have been shocked to see Twister among them. Even through my fevered haze in prison, I had known the old cowboy's heart just wasn't in what Epic was selling, not this invasion gig anyway. Likewise, the other man in their little trio was obvious: Fray Justicia, the masked luchador who claimed to have a direct hotline to God. While I wasn't about to buy that, he had, in the few times I had encountered him, held himself to a higher standard than others among the Crusaders.

  Their last companion I only knew from the files. One of the youngest among the Crusaders ranks, the slight five foot tall teenaged girl was known as the Mighty Polymer. As silly as the red-and-white clad girl's name was, Polymer was one of the Crusader's heavy-hitters, with a body composed of some super-tough elastic substance that gave her immense strength and all kinds of bizarre shape-shifting powers. I guess we both felt the need to have muscle on hand for this.

  "Indomitable." Twister tipped his Stetson as the three Crusaders approached the meeting table and its chairs, the only pieces of furniture gracing the maze of aisles and crates.

  "Twister. Sorry about the whole beating thing but -"

  "Water under the bridge." The sentiment seemed truthful enough.

  "Si," Justicia added, "our opposition in the past remains there. There are more important things, matters that linger over the good people of this city, which must be attended to."

  "A noble intention, but perhaps it should have been considered before your army sought to wrest control of it, eh?" I couldn't fault Frost's logic but now wasn't exactly the best time.

  "Hey! Things looked pretty awful when we got here." Polymer crossed her arms and pouted. "How could we know that it wasn't like Epic said? We thought we were helping."

  "Okay, look, let's stop this before it even starts." I looked around the table. "Mistakes were made and shit happened." The elastic girl was the only person at the table to blush at my language. "If we decide to have the blame game right now, we won't get anywhere." Mind's Eye inclined her head in a soft nod to show her agreement.

  "Right, so quiet down, you two. We ain't got time for that." A stern look from the lawman quieted Frost and seemed to especially chastise his fellow Crusader. Polymer seemed to almost deflate an inch or two from the gaze. I rubbed my eyes as the interaction of the unreal and the real in the teenager's body made my brain throb.

  "With that out of the way," I continued, "we know why we're here." I gestured to my team. "We're trying to free the city, get it back into the hands of the proper government, and hopefully cut off the military before they can get in the dome and wage good old-fashioned warfare."

  "For our part, we desire what is best for the people here," the masked priest said, gesturing outward. "That would now seem to be to try to convince Epic that this is not the best course, to counteract what has been done." His full-head mask disguised his expression but as he turned his head down, I could feel a sense of regret. "I had been unsure of what he had proposed from the start but I let the assurance I had felt in what he represented overtake my good judgment."

  "'Course, that would be assuming we could even talk to him. None of us ain't seen hide or hair of Epic outside of a few scattered meetings here and there."

  "There was the big speech-thing he did right after the, uh, take-over thing."

  I glanced at Polymer quizzically, but it was Frost that answered the question on my mind.

  "Epic broadcast an address over the airwaves in the city right after the dome fell. He even had his image projected through some arcane means into the sky so none could ignore his declaration." Frost shrugged and flapped her wings. "It seemed of little importance to tell you about earlier. The usual prattle of any dictator justifying their actions."

  "Such things can never be justified." Mind's Eye absently rubbed at the center of her forehead, where her behavior-warping helmet had rested. "Freedom is vital for good to take hold."

  "Look, I ain't agreeing with how some things happened, but you've got to have order for society to work. Sometimes, a little freedom is the price you pay fer the safety to exercise the rest of those freedoms."

  "I believe we are once more going off course," Justicia said with just a slight raise of his voice. "What is important is Epic has become a hermit king and that, above all, is why this meeting is happening."

  "We want to fix things but, without him, we don't have a choice but to do things another way." Polymer bit her lip. "I, well, I just don't want to have to fight anybody to do it. We're all good guys, right?"

  "That might be." I sighed. "I don't see how we are going to avoid a fight of any kind though." Epic's sequester was not what I expected to hear about. I wasn't sure how to judge it ... was he even in control anymore? "Just how far are you and the others who agree with you willing to go against your fellow Crusaders? Right now, I don't know exactly what we might have to do, but if you guys aren't one-hundred percent committed ..."

  The implied conclusion hung in the air as the three Crusaders shared glances. No doubt they had a telepath in their mix like we did, letting them mentally conference. If not, they must have talked long and hard about this before. Even the most naive person in the world, a title I suspect might be currently held by the Mighty Polymer, must have known this would come up.

  "You know that you ask a very hard thing for us to agree to." Fray Justicia shook his head gravely. "For brother to turn against brother -"

  "Silence!" The bitterness in Eye's interruption wasn't unexpected but the outburst itself was. "How dare you say such a thing when that is what you Crusaders have forced us to do? I have been made to lash out against those I hold dear. Every one of us among the Five and, most of all, Indomitable have had no choice but to do the very thing you flinch from now. You have no right to complain, to shy away from what may very well have to be done!"

  "...what does she mean, Mr. Twister?" Again, nothing but innocence in the teenaged Push Hero's voice. I guess when you
have a thousand-man army, it's easy enough to tell people only what you want them to hear.

  "Again, I never liked it but Gaslight and the Doc, they made these helmets that -"

  "I did not know what it was they intended to do. If I had, I would have done something sooner."

  "Done what? What did those helmets do?"

  "Well, kid, I was told they were just supposed to change people's behavior like, well, instant rehabilitation. Help them think straight and not cause trouble while they came around to our side."

  "That's not exactly what they do," I added. "It's far worse than -"

  "No, that isn't what we're supposed to do!" Polymer expanded as she cried out, her stature stretching with her emotions. "We're supposed to be the good guys!" One of her hands blew up like a cartoon character blowing up her fist and she slammed it into the poor, defenseless table. The spray of splinters bounced around, harmlessly funneled away by what I assumed was one of Mind's Eye's telekinetic fields.

  The look of embarrassment on the girl's face was rivaled only by the tears threatening on the corner of her eyes. Frost, having tensed in anticipation of battle, relaxed and crossed around the splintered table, putting her hands on the elastic teen's shoulders. Good, I was happy to let Frost handle that as I turned a hard eye on the two older gentlemen.

  "I think she's cast her lot. So, I have to ask again, are you in? It's not like I'm asking you to do anything I haven't had to do already."

  Fray lowered his head once more and whispered what I assumed was a prayer. Twister cast an apologetic look at his young compatriot, who had buried her head against Frost's chest, and turned back to me.

  "Yeah, we're -"

  "Armored truck, coming down the street fast," Duane's voice shouted over the warehouse's intercom. "Get ready for," he continued, interrupted as the front end of the building caved in, "trouble."

  The sound of a roaring engine segued seamlessly into the cacophony of shattering stone and bending steel.

  "Impossible," was the only word that Twister could get out as the armored personnel carrier's doors were flung open.

  "That's happening a lot lately," was my answer, shouted back as I was already up and moving.

  Chapter 15 Battalion

  What came out of those metal doors was one of the few things lately to truly give me pause. It wasn't the fact that the small platoon of armed thugs coming out of the armored car all looked identical; I had faced down duplicators before. It wasn't the fact that I recognized them: he, well, they were all Battalion, one of Epic's right hands. I had met him before, briefly, when facing Bathory's vampire army. Sure, I hadn't known he had a power like this, but I supposed you have to earn the title 'One-Man Army' somehow.

  What gave me pause was that all of these things were completely unreal. Unlike every other Pushed entity I had encountered, dead, living, or created, there was no core of reality, nothing I could see at any rate. I could very well be completely untouchable by these things but the reverse was also true.

  "I've got these guys!" the Mighty Polymer shouted, taking the problem completely out of my hands as she blithely defied the laws of conservation of mass, stretching and expanding as she stepped over our heads. "Get out before the rest come!"

  "Kid's right," Twister said as he turned for the back door. Winds were already starting to whip up around him. "I don't know how he found us but he ain't gonna be alone."

  Two titanic hands pushed out like a plastic tidal wave, sweeping all of the Battalions back into the vehicle they came from. I let that sublime mental focus take over and followed Twister's advice, hopping over the shattered remains of the meeting table. Before now, Epic (or whoever was calling the shots) had been willing to play the 'tit-for-tat' game, meeting us with equal numbers, making it easy to forget he had a thousand Pushed at his beck and call.

  "We're leaving, folks," I called out to my team as I made for the door.

  "What about her? We cannot abandon -" Eye began but, to my surprise, Frost cut her off.

  "I think we should not fear for her, instead fear for her opponents." With a beat of silver wings, the dragonwoman was at the door first, tearing it off its hinges.

  Mind's Eye cut off her retort and took flight, with myself and Fray Justicia right behind her. I didn't even take a look back to see the source of the sounds of rending steel and glass. The back alley seemed clear and staying off the main streets were our best plan to ditch pursuit so I simply pointed left, hoping to keep the others together.

  "We will need more speed than what you two can offer, no offense," the Indian psychic pointed out before we had even reached the end of the alley. "Twister?"

  "I agree, ma'am. Friar?" Twister looked at the masked grappler, who replied with a nod and a leap into the lawman's cyclonic forces. It was a testament to his control that Justicia wasn't buffeted about and instead suspended improbably in a relatively stable position.

  "Indomitable?"

  "Do it."

  I stopped where I was and waited for that brief moment, one that seemed far too long knowing we were sitting ducks, as Mind's Eye focused her concentration. There was a grinding sound as the chunk of asphalt beneath my feet ripped free, suspended by the psychic's telekinetic power. Sure, she couldn't pick me up directly, but this would do.

  "Now go!" I shouted. The din of the initial confrontation was starting to quiet but anyone with half a brain could hear the sounds of engines and the screech of turbines in the distance, from all directions. I won't even mention all of the unnatural sounds I couldn't classify coming towards us.

  The kid gloves had finally come off.

  The wall of blowing dust behind us courtesy of Twister was a help, certainly, but was only a mild deterrent at best. It wasn't a shock that we were overtaken in short order; even flying, we weren't moving nearly as fast as I knew the fastest among the Pushed could go. Even so, the exact form of first contact was startling enough.

  I risked a glance back, hoping to see a glimpse of Polymer catching up to us. It was a vain hope but it did give me just the hint of a warning in the form of a glint of rainbow light. There was no time to shout my surprise before that glint became an encompassing beam and then I was off my asphalt surfboard.

  The impact knocked the wind out of me as I was carried, held aloft in the middle of the rainbow beam. Though fuzzy and dispersed, I could make out the real shape of Wavelength, the living rainbow, who looked almost as shocked as I was.

  "Epic was right, this did work!" the Japanese woman shouted above the din. Though she was incorporeal light to the rest of the world, to me she was quite real. I'm not sure, though, that Wavelength considered the double-edged sword of this situation. At least she didn't until I slammed my elbow with stunning force right into the back of her head.

  Yes, it wasn't the safest way to get free from a flight that was going to end with disaster but it had to be better than the previously intended ending. The grip around my waist went limp as Wavelength's energy form spiraled away from me. Sadly, away from her grasp, the laws of physics, strained as they were by the Whiteout, took over and I hurtled through the air with no way to stop my arc before hitting something.

  There was a feeling of passing through tissue, no doubt a desperate attempt by Mind's Eye to grab me before I hit something, and a sudden rush of something red, white, and huge to one side but everything was flying by too quickly for even my accelerated mind to take it all in. I somehow had the foresight to curl up into a fetal position and cover my head with my arms right before I hit something.

  It certainly wasn't a wall. Instead it felt like falling into a dense but pliant cushion, saving me from an instant splatter to a slow but still violent splat.

  "Fly ball caught! You're out," came the echoing, gleeful shout from all around me as I tumbled down the elastic form of a rather huge and stretched out Polymer. I couldn't help but wonder just how much of her expanded form was real if it could slow my fall like this, though it certainly felt good to be alive. That sense of vict
ory was short-lived as my slide slowed and, now on my back, I could see the onrush of Crusaders breaching the rolling tsunami of dust and debris.

  The sudden impact from Wavelength had put me almost a block ahead of most of my other friends but they were about to be overtaken by more than a dozen others assailants. That seemed to be only the first wave. Every size and shape of colorfully costumed form was on display in that swarm of misguided righteousness. The sheer mass of unreality made my eyes scream in a fashion they hadn't since the Battle of Washington.

  "Oh crap." There was a hint of fear, justified in my opinion, in the Mighty Polymer's voice.

  "Polymer!" I shouted up, hoping that the stretched-out teen could hear me. "We have got to go! NOW!" It was probably stupid to think we could get away at this point. There were just too many of them moving too quickly and guided by who knew what sources of information and divination powers. I jumped down to street-level, more confident on my own two feet than an unstable platform of unreality, just as they fell down on us like hail stones.

  "Did you really think you'd get away with this?"

  I tried to pay as little attention as possible to the booming voice of Battalion over a loudspeaker. After all, I had bigger fish to fry as I slammed my fist hard into the Pushtech armored flier who had presented himself as my first target. It really had become so simple as 'fight or flight' and flight, well, that was off the table now. All we could do was go out in a blaze of glory. Rational Irene was screaming in my ear right then.