“Unbelievable. He didn’t even budge her,” Drew said. “Either the transmitters are working more efficiently or Marcus here has finally perfected the fusion for the suits.”
“Both,” Victor declared, clearly happy with himself. “It appears as though Celaine is the strongest one yet.”
In shock, I looked back down at Blake, who was still cradling his deformed hand. Grasping at his bent fingers, he snapped each bone back into place with one stomach-churning crack after another. He looked up at me in amazement, managing to stand back up. His hand was bright red and clearly swollen.
“That’s impossible,” I stated in utter awe. “He hit me with enough force to almost break his hand and I felt nothing…I didn’t even move.”
“Exactly what we were aiming for,” Victor inspected Blake’s hand. “It appears as though Marcus’ research and refinement has paid off. You and your suit are even more indestructible than Blake here is. Don’t worry, Blake. I’ll have Marcus commence work on a new suit for you immediately.” Marcus nodded. Victor patted Blake on the back. It was a gesture which I could tell was more irritating than reassuring to him.
“So, is it me or the suit?”
A grin crept over Victor’s face. “A little bit of both. I’m sure you remember what I told you about the effects the implantation of the transmitter would have on your body. You’ve already witnessed the various possible feats of wonder for yourself in both Blake and your little science experiment in the hallway this morning. The physical integrity of the suit coupled with your enhanced physique have combined to create quite the force to be reckoned with. With a little training, you may well be one of the most powerful fighters we’ve ever had.”
“I’ll say. I’ve never seen anything or anyone take a punch from Blake and still remain standing…or breathing for that matter,” Cameron said, still in a state of shock.
“Blake, why don’t you take Celaine to the gymnasium and start showing her everything you know? Tomorrow, we’ll test her out in the simulator. Marcus, Cameron, Drew, accompany me; I have a little project for you.” They obediently followed Victor out of the training room, leaving Blake and I alone.
“This place has a gym, too?” I asked.
“Does that really surprise you?” Blake rubbed his injured hand again.
“No, I can’t say that it does. Look, I’m sorry about your hand. I guess I don’t know my own strength.” I stuck my arm out and flexed my muscles, but my lighthearted attempt at lightening the mood fell on deaf ears as Blake shook his head and walked away.
With me following closely behind him, Blake led me to a set of double doors at the opposite end of the training room. He pushed the doors open, revealing an elaborate display of weights and equipment. Off to the side of the room sat a large, padded wrestling mat which took up nearly half of the space available in the gym. In the middle of the room, anchored to the ceiling, was a large television tuned into a cable news station featuring President Brooks’ recent trip to Japan. Blake led me to the mat, bypassing the equipment.
“Do they expect you to show me how to exercise or something? It’s kind of insulting if they think I don’t know how to use a treadmill.”
“That equipment isn’t for us. Trust me, you’re physically well beyond what that equipment could help you with. Your muscles are constantly working out, so to speak. The effects of the adrenaline are far more profound than what any machine could do. My job is to teach you how to fight.”
“Excuse me? I can fight.”
“I’m not talking about slap boxing.”
“Very funny for a guy who just got his butt kicked by a girl.” Blake winced as though my remark had wounded his hand all over again. He rubbed it, flexing his fingers. “Well, sensei, show me what you got.”
He shook his head. “Okay, grasshopper,” he chuckled.
“Hey, at least I got a laugh out of you.”
“Okay.” Blake began, looking serious again. “You have the body, you have the armor, but you don’t yet have the skills. You’re running into walls, for Christ’s sake.”
“That was one time.”
This is serious, Celaine,” Blake sighed. “I don’t think I have to tell you that the life you’ve chosen requires more dedication than you could ever have imagined. We have to be on top of our game physically and mentally at all times because those who oppose us will most certainly be on theirs.” I must have had a confused expression on my face as Blake continued. “Although, the vast majority of the population is grateful for our existence, there are still those who loathe us. They view our existence as some sort of conspiracy. To them, we are the catalysts behind the new order instituted by President Brooks. We’re more symbols of oppression than peace.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I used to think that, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Let’s get started with teaching you how to fight, shall we?”
I was struck by Blake’s last statement. Obviously, there was a tremendous amount of tension between him and Victor, leading me to wonder where the source of it originated. “Learning to fight,” I said out loud. “I never thought I would say that and have it be a reference to something that I was going to do. Aren’t we going to use weapons? We’re just supposed to rely on our own physical prowess?”
“We have guns, but it’s not like they’re all that effective against The Man in Black. His armor is more advanced than our own. I have my doubts that there is much of anything short of nuclear warfare that could take him out.”
“If that’s the case, how are we supposed to stop him? Aren’t we too weak for him?”
“No, not quite. Liam and I came close a couple of times. He’s powerful, but like us, he’s not invincible. He wasn’t quite prepared for two of us. One of us, sure. However, two of us posed a challenge. We…” Blake trailed off for a moment as if he was deciding whether or not to relive that day, ultimately deciding that it was better that I know than not. “Liam hated The Man in Black…hated him more than I think anyone I’d ever met before. That hatred made him one of the best of our kind; until, as hatred often does, it rendered him blind to anything else but his own agenda. He wanted to be solely responsible for taking out The Man in Black just as that monster had taken out his three-year-old daughter. The night Liam died, we had him cornered on the roof of a warehouse in Dover. We’d run him down; he was weak. In his weakness I noticed a flaw in his armor, a small but nonetheless vulnerable tear, and quickly took advantage of it. I fired one shot, striking him.”
“I saw the blood dripping onto the concrete when he took off running. Liam and I had devised a plan before that night that if something like that were ever to occur, we would flank him and bring him down together. If we chose to bring him in alive, so be it. If not, then he resisted and we were defending ourselves. But, instead of sticking to the plan we’d gone over, Liam decided to take him down himself without waiting for me. I’d been injured in a blast that night which ripped a hole in the leg of my suit. A beam shot into my leg, coming close to the femoral artery. I was losing a lot of blood which obviously slowed me down, royally irritating Liam. And The Man in Black, even with only half his strength, was still too much for Liam to handle on his own. Before I could stop him, Liam charged him, attempting to knock him off the roof of the warehouse. Instead, it was Liam who was thrown from the roof, and The Man in Black managed to escape.”
I walked over to Blake, placing a hand on his shoulder. A sort of solemn state had overcome him, making me suspect that he blamed himself for not being able to save his partner. “Teach me what you know, and I promise you I won’t let you down.”
He sighed. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“I guess so.” He changed his stance on the mat, shaking off the memory he recounted. “So, Celaine, do you know anything about Judo?”
“Do I look like I know anything about Jud
o?”
“Do you always have to be such a smartass?”
“Go on.”
“Judo is more of an art form than a form of fighting. It requires discipline, self-control, poise and concentration. It keeps you mentally focused, allowing your body to move fluidly, efficiently rendering your target…” I didn’t have time to blink before I found myself flat on my back on the mat with Blake’s arms around my neck in a chokehold. “Defenseless.”
“Okay, okay, I get your point.” I gasped to fill my lungs back up with air, rubbing my throat. Blake released me from his grasp, leaping up into the air to what must have been close to twenty feet before gracefully landing back on his feet at the opposite end of the mat. As he landed, he executed a series of thrusts, jabs and calculated kicks at such remarkable speeds it gave me whiplash just watching him. Not to be outdone, I sprung to my feet, landing on the opposite side of the mat, facing him in my best martial-arts-wannabe stance. Again, I ended up finding myself hitting the mat after having been taken out by Blake. “You’re just showing off now,” I grumbled, rubbing my back. “I thought Judo was the gentle form of martial arts.”
“Should I tell Victor that you’ve given up?”
“Hardly.”
Determined not to let him get the best of me again, I shifted my undivided attention towards him. He was like poetry in motion in the way he moved. My muscles stiffened with the anticipation of his next attack, my eyes catching every subtle movement of his limbs until the subtleness dissipated and I found my body reacting to his fast-as-lightning ambush. Springing to life, I flew into the air twisting my body, thrusting my right leg forward until it made contact with his back. The force of my kick was enough to throw him off balance, causing him to do a series of somersaults on the mat. He jumped up. Regaining his composure, he prepared himself for another attack. I landed awkwardly on my left foot, turning it in slightly. As the pain shot through my leg, I tried my best to ignore it and regain my focus.
When I landed, he charged and, like before, I was successfully able to dodge him, throwing him off his game. He made a sharp jab at my chest as he backtracked and, even though I was successfully able to fend off his fingers from making contact with my body, I didn’t quite anticipate the kick to the abdomen he delivered next. My body hurtled across the mat, rolling to a stop against the wall. Sensing another assault, I hurriedly hopped to my feet, throwing out a jab that struck Blake’s shoulder. Swiftly, he retaliated with a series of jabs of which I was surprisingly able to block with precision, throwing in a few of my own.
Detecting a familiar movement in Blake’s right leg, I sprang into a back flip, narrowly avoiding a kick to the shoulder in the process. Upon landing, I returned to my defensive stance. There he and I stood, staring at each other, our eyes beckoning the other to make a move as if we were in a live-action game of chess. Who would be the first to checkmate?
Deciding to go for it, I charged. Blake reciprocated by delivering a flying kick that came within centimeters of hitting my jaw. I’m sure, from the spectator’s point of view, our training looked like a perfectly choreographed routine, but it was anything but that. Our battle went on for fifteen minutes, then twenty-five minutes, with neither of us relenting or forcing the other to the ground in defeat. We catapulted ourselves into the air simultaneously, spinning around, trying to derail each other.
Finally, after one in-air spin, I made the mistake of miscalculating his next move and, before I knew it, his foot was impacting my shoulder, slamming my body down on the linoleum floor a foot away from the mat. Pinning me there, he looked down at me with his wide-toothed grin. I hadn’t noticed it before, but he really did have a nice smile.
“You’re pretty good for a first-timer,” he commented. “I’m impressed.”
“I’d be more inclined to believe your attempt at sincerity if it weren’t for the fact that you seem entirely too pleased with yourself right now.” He knelt down offering me his hand but, instead of holding out one hand for him to take, I took it with both hands, throwing him over my back. He landed with a crash on the weight bench twenty feet away. Sucker, I thought to myself.
Blake sat stunned where he’d landed with his back propped up against the weight bench. “Was that really necessary?”
“Why, whatever do you mean?”
He rolled his eyes as he stood to pick up the weights that had fallen onto the floor. My muscles ached with such intensity that I wanted nothing more than to curl up in the fetal position on the cold linoleum floor to soothe them. But I refrained as I figured they would frown upon something like that here and proceeded to pick myself up from off the floor. As soon as I put pressure on my right shoulder, I heard a pop that was immediately followed by intense pain, the likes of which I’d never felt before. Its intensity made my arm give out, forcing me to smack my body back down against the floor. I moaned in agony. In a flash, Blake was by my side.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked, inspecting me.
“My shoulder. It feels like my arm is being ripped off,” I said between gritted teeth.
Blake ran his hands up my arm to examine my shoulder. “You probably tore your shoulder from its socket. It’s pretty common to over extend your muscles with the science experiment they’re conducting inside our bodies. I’ve done it a few times myself.” He reached down to pick me up, but his attempt to help me was met with sharp resistance. “Celaine, you have to let me help you up. I can’t pop your shoulder back in place with you writhing in pain on the floor.”
My heart was racing, and I felt as though I was going to pass out from the pain. Nonetheless, I managed to push myself up to my feet with my other arm. “Just make it quick.”
“I’ve never had a woman tell me that before.”
The pain was too overpowering for me to even attempt any form of a witty retort. Blake gently took my arm from behind my back and proceeded to rotate it until a final pop indicated that it had been successfully relocated back into its socket. By now, I was trembling. I could feel my racing pulse begin to speed up. Sweat formed in my hairline, my eyesight began to fade. With dizziness beginning to overtake me, I turned around to thank Blake.
“Celaine…”
My name was the last thing I remember hearing before everything went black.
Chapter Nineteen
The Man in Black
Removed from society, sheltered by the abyss of darkness, he remained. Society was a joke with a punch line he didn’t find humorous; a travesty that needed to be erased from publication. And since no one else was up to the task, he’d be the one to do it. He was the entity they’d dubbed The Man in Black. To attach an identity to one based purely upon their physical attributes was a cliché. After all, he’d killed countless people. Surely, they could do better than bestowing him with a moniker based upon his gender and choice of attire. Then again, they were nothing more than mere mortals, and he shouldn’t expect too much.
He stood from his vantage point atop the Piedmont Tool and Die building, steadying himself for his decent. Leaping between both it and an abandoned warehouse on the opposite side, he used his feet like a spring to bounce between the two buildings until he landed on the crumbled, concrete sidewalk. In the last ten years, he’d made a profound impact upon humanity. Single-handedly, he’d instilled enough terror to make them abandon their livelihoods. They were afraid of him and he loved it. He’d been called a serial killer, deranged, a monster even. These references annoyed him. There was no rhyme, reason, or pattern to his killings and, therefore, he was no serial killer. The monster label, on the other hand, he somewhat agreed with as he knew he’d ceased being human long ago.
From the neck down, he was no longer organic. The injuries he’d sustained over the last ten years of being pursued had rendered him more robotic in nature. His last injury, a gunshot wound to his abdomen, still throbbed with the bullet having come close to striking his spleen. He’d nearly succumbed from the blood loss but, as always, he managed to pull through. Year
s of cheating death made him quite oblivious to mortality. There was no one who could stop him no matter how badly they were able to mar his body. After all, there were always replacements. In fact, quite a few of his organs were organs he had not been born with. Portions of his arms and legs had been rebuilt with titanium steel, replacing the original bone. Skin grafts covered areas of his back and chest. No one ever saw him without a shirt on, nor would they as, most certainly, a slew of annoying questions would surely follow.
He adjusted his mask, allowing the cool air to brush against his face, drying up the sweat accruing under its confines. His victims were relying too much on their government to protect them. They were looking to their beloved leader for answers, reassurance, and safety. But, instead of coming to their aid, this government was using his existence as a platform to benefit its own agenda. The curfew they’d enacted not only spat on the foundation their country had been built upon, but was as big a joke as society itself. Sure, it kept throngs of people out of potential target locations at night, ostensibly keeping them safe. However, in allowing such legislation to pass, the people had in essence turned a blind eye to the fact that their chief had successfully been able to herd them into their homes. They were sheep who’d made not so much as a baa in protest to this new order. President Brooks had almost as much power over the masses as he did, and that did not set well with him.
Then there was the matter of those so-called superheroes. Give someone an ability that overshadowed most of the population’s and, suddenly, they were considered a superhero when, in reality, they hadn’t done anything super at all. They hadn’t been able to stop him. To the contrary, a few of them had met their maker in confrontations with him. Only the one they called Blake still remained, and it was only a matter of time before he was dealt with as well.
It had been too long since he’d been responsible for the spilling of human blood, and the urge was welling up inside him like an out of control brush fire that no amount of water could extinguish. He needed the perfect target. Not just any one would do. And now, as he stalked the streets, he believed he’d finally found it. It was perfect, too perfect. There were hundreds if not thousands of people there…all helpless. People who not only worked within its confines, but who were laid-up in beds, and hooked to machines. People who were immobile. Sitting ducks, so to speak.
Enigma Black Page 18
