After The Apocalypse

by Roseman, Josh

  “Glad?” I’m still processing the story of Noah Lambert, and wondering when it’ll be my turn; it makes it hard to hang onto my anger. “You’ve taken away everything that made me me. I can’t imagine that I’ll ever be glad about that.”

  “I know.” He actually looks apologetic, and again I’m reminded that he really does care about me. He leans forward and puts his hand over mine, and I let him. “Andrea, we have to do this. Every week. Or else your powers will come back and--”

  “Every week for how long? And why can’t you just give me the Device?”

  “Every week until you die,” he says. “And be honest with me: would you use it?”

  I don’t even have to pause to think about the answer.

  “No. Of course not.”

  He nods. “Well, then, there you have it.”

  We sit like that for a while longer. I know him well enough to know he’s trying to come to a decision. Finally he stands up and goes to my kitchen counter. He writes something down on my notepad and then turns to look at me. “When the Agreement was brought into existence, no one expected the technological world we now live in. No one could have imagined that science would save the young men and women who saved our world. And no one who came before me would believe what I’m about to show you.”

  “What are you about to show me?”

  The Professor tears off the small square of paper and sets it on the table in front of me. “Go to this address tomorrow morning at nine. She’ll explain everything to you.”

  “‘She’?”

  “Dr. Colibri.”

  “And just who is Dr. Colibri?”

  “Tomorrow, Andrea. Tomorrow.”

  Once the Professor is gone, I go back to bed and bury myself under the covers. I sprung for heavy curtains when I rented the place, so it’s suitably dark and dreary. Buffy has perched herself at the foot of the bed, watching over me like a sphinx, while Willow is allowing me to cuddle her close. I alternate between crying softly and staring at the spinning blades of my ceiling fan, with the occasional foray into the bathroom or the kitchen. Toward dinnertime, I leave a message on my boss’s voicemail telling her I’ll be out tomorrow due to illness.

  Which, I suppose, is accurate. I am sick. Heartsick.

  I really don’t want to die. I never did. I wasn’t so afraid of death once I figured out what my powers allowed me to do, but I truly feared for my life each time I faced the Dark King.

  It happened three times, but only the last one was on purpose. And now, if what the Professor is saying is true -- and I have no reason to think he’s lying -- I’m either going to have to give up my powers permanently or risk facing the Dark King again.

  The thought of that just makes me cuddle Willow harder.

  Despite a sleepless night spent mostly on the living room couch watching truly horrible late-night movies, I’m still showered, dressed in what passes for professional attire, and standing in front of the address the Professor gave me with five minutes to spare. It’s a cool morning for this time of year, but my phone says it’ll hit 85 by the afternoon.

  I’ve lived in and around Atlanta all my life, but the weather here still confuses the hell out of me.

  I knock on the nondescript door of the nondescript walkup, but no one answers. After waiting about thirty seconds, I try the handle, and it opens, but instead of a living room or a foyer or... well, or anything... all I see is a staircase heading downward.

  Well. That’s not ominous.

  I look down the dimly-lit stairs; they seem to go farther than they should, and I can just barely see the bend at the bottom where they turn leftward into a hallway or another room or whatever else is waiting for me. “Damn it.”

  The thing is, I don’t really have a choice in the matter. If I want to know more, I have to go down there.

  But at least I don’t have to go unprepared. I flip my phone to vibrate so it doesn’t give me away; I close the door quietly behind me; I reach into my purse and take hold of the little cylinder of metal that, if I do have to fight my way through something, will give me a little extra power behind what I already know is a good, solid punch.

  It still takes me almost a minute to psych myself up enough to go down there, though.

  The vestibule at the bottom of the steps is cool, almost as cool as the air outside this... this whatever-it-is... and I force myself not to shiver. I counted the steps down -- all 65 of them -- and I know that, if I need to run, I’m going to be in hell by the time I get back to street level. But one thing I will say for the growing ball of icy apprehension in my stomach: I haven’t thought about my missing powers in a few minutes. At least.

  I turn left and walk slowly down a long hallway. I’m guessing that, by now, I’m already at least one building away from where I started, and I wonder how this place even got down here to begin with. There are no doors on either side of me, just light fixtures that give enough illumination to see by and nothing else.

  At the end of the hallway, I step through another opening, and I feel myself let out a soft sigh of relief. All this time I wasn’t quite sure if I was in the right place, but this room can only be the destination the Professor had in mind for me.

  It looks like every science lab or gadget repository in every supernatural spy movie ever; that’s the only way my brain can process it. Lab tables, glassware, things bubbling in beakers over open Bunsen-burner flames, and devices I can’t even begin to describe the use of. Also, for some reason, what looks like a dentist’s chair.

  With unlocked restraints at the wrists and ankles.

  “Well, that’s not normal.”

  “Hmm?”

  I jump and my head turns quickly to the side. A small, slender woman has just come out of a doorway, drying her hands on a paper towel. She’s wearing a lab coat over jeans and a button-down blouse, and I notice that she has heels on as well and is still quite a bit shorter than me.

  But it’s the hair that catches my eye and takes me back to Saturday night, to a Manic Pixie Dream Girl who was going through my apartment while the goons and I fought: so dark-brown as to be almost black, but dyed a lighter color at the ends and trimmed into that sort of artful short-hair thing that women my size can never pull off. It makes me like her even less than I already do.

  I swallow hard and find my voice. “The chair. It’s not normal.”

  “I guess not.” She goes to the lab table and opens a laptop; the screen illuminates her face, which is narrow and fine-boned. She even has the large, dark eyes that fit the trope to a T. “So. Alexandra.”

  I shake my head. “Just Andrea, thanks.”

  “If you say so, Alexandra.” Great. She’s just going to ignore me.

  “And you’re Dr. Colibri?”

  “Yes,” she says, “but you can call me Diane if you want.”

  I don’t plan on it. “Professor Wedlund sent me to see you. He said you’re going to show me some things?”

  “I’m sure he did.” She doesn’t look up from the computer. “Have a seat, would you? I want to take some readings before I get started.”

  “Get started doing what, exactly?”

  Now she looks up. “Just sit down, please. I’m not going to hurt you -- and if I was,” she adds, all traces of manic and dream gone from the girl, leaving just a pale, blank-faced pixie, “I would’ve done it on Saturday.” She stares into my eyes. “Sit. Down.”

  My body obeys her before my brain can consciously process her orders. That’s strange.

  What’s stranger is that I’m sitting in her crazy-ass dentist’s chair. I guess that could be worse, too; it could be an actual doctor’s exam table. At least in this I can watch her open drawers and cabinets, putting small pieces of equipment on a tray that she carries over and sets on a high rolling table. Nothing seems very menacing, other than the Device -- or, I suppose, a Device, because why wouldn’t there be more than one of them in existence? There’s a reflex hammer, one of those flashlight things that can be used for the eyes
or the ears, a pair of calipers that make me hope really hard she isn’t planning to do a BMI test, and a set of lancets and slides. Blood test, I’m guessing, although I haven’t had a finger prick since I was about twelve. Since then it’s been a needle straight into the arm.

  Well, whatever. At least it doesn’t look like she’s planning to kill me or anything.

  The doctor wheels a stool over to the chair and taps a foot pedal until I’m low enough for her to look into my eyes again. She really does have lovely eyes, drowning-dark and almost glowing at the same time. She smiles. “Other than the needles, this shouldn’t hurt at all,” she says. It’s not reassuring, but her eyes are, and I smile back. “You’re not afraid of needles, are you?”

  “Not little ones.”

  “Good.” Without looking away from my eyes, she reaches down and fits the restraint in place over my right forearm. “Sorry about this, but it’s easier if you can’t move.”

  I pull against the cuff, my skin suddenly sweaty against the padded vinyl on the inside of the metal edge. She catches my eyes again, just enough to talk me down from the edge, so to speak, and then tears open a little alcohol swab. Once my fingertip -- the middle one -- is wiped down, she grips the finger tight, squeezing hard, and I feel the needle drive through the thin layers of skin. I grunt, just barely. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” she says, pressing my bleeding fingertip against the cool glass slide. She quickly lays a cover slip over it and sets it on the table before pressing a gauze pad against the tiny wound. She holds the gauze with one hand and, picking up a pen, writes something on the slide with the other. “I know it hurts.”

  “I’ve had worse.”

  “Yes,” she says, turning those amazing eyes back to me. “I know.”

  Dr. Colibri checks my eyes, my reflexes, my heart, and my lungs. She hasn’t let my right arm out of the restraint yet, but I’m not really worried; she keeps checking on me as she works, asking me if I’m all right, making sure to look into my eyes when she does. It’s comforting, in a way, to have someone this solicitous looking after me; the Professor, for all the good he did in my life, was never this nice about things.

  “I wonder what would’ve been different if you’d trained me, instead of Professor Wedlund.”

  “Hmm?” She doesn’t look up from the Device, which she’s been calibrating with a tiny tool for the past couple of minutes.

  “I mean, you’re so much nicer than he is,” I say, letting my head rest against the chair. She hasn’t shot me up with anything, but I still feel relaxed. I never feel relaxed around doctors -- I’m always waiting for them to tell me I need to lose weight -- but Dr. Colibri has a way about her that puts me at ease. “Maybe things would’ve been different.”

  “Maybe,” she allows. “But I’m only four years older than you--”

  “You don’t look it.”

  “Thank you,” she says, turning her smile -- and those eyes -- on me long enough to cover me in soft warmth. “In any case, I’m not old enough to have been your mentor when you were fifteen. I’d have just been in college at the time.”

  “Too bad.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.” Something comes to me. “Why are you fiddling so much with that thing? The Professor never does.”

  “The Professor isn’t me,” she says. “He’s not an expert with it like I am. You know it needs to be increased in power the older you get, don't you?” I shake my head, and she sighs. “The power grew as you got closer to the final battle, right?”

  “Right.”

  “That’s the way it works. You get stronger as you get older, so in order to stop the powers from coming back, we need to make the Device stronger.” She closes the little control panel and activates the Device; its tip begins to glow, but I don’t really pay attention to it because I’m paying attention to her eyes. “No one has lived this long after their battle with the Dark King.”

  “Does that mean the Device won’t work?”

  “Oh, it’ll work just fine,” she says. “Put your left hand up on the other armrest, would you?” I do, and she eases the restraint in place, locking it with a small click. “And your feet?”

  “No problem.” Soon enough I’m held down quite securely. “Why?”

  “This will probably hurt a little, and I don’t want you breaking contact until I’m done.” She says it so matter-of-factly that I barely realize what she means until she’s sitting next to my head, sweeping my hair out of the way with one small, cool, latex-gloved hand. “Try to hold still, okay?”

  I nod. I wish she could be looking at me while she does this, but I’ll settle for closing my eyes and holding the armrests tight.

  The Device touches my neck. She holds it there until I whimper.

  And then until I scream.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  HOMECOMING

  +++++

  When I can think again, Dr. Colibri is sitting in front of me, head slightly cocked, looking at me with those dark, luminous eyes. Whatever fear I had is replaced by relief: relief that she didn’t leave me alone, locked into this chair. “I’m sorry about that,” she says. “I really didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No,” she says, looking serious, “it isn’t.” She touches my left hand. “I took some blood and, while you were unconscious, compared the before and after with respect to the Device.”

  “And?” I want to touch her hand, her arm, like a friend would do when someone has bad news -- and I just know the news is bad -- but I still can’t move. “What is it, Doctor?”

  “The Device isn’t powerful enough.” Something in her expression cuts through the gentle warmth she’s been laying on me all morning, and I start to worry a little. “It would have to be used at that strength every day or two to make sure you don’t regain your powers.”

  “What’s so bad about that?” I ask. “Not the Device, but the powers. The Professor said something about how, if I have the power, the Dark King can come back. Why can’t I just defeat him again?”

  “It’s more than that.” She cups my cheek, then gets up and goes back to her worktable. I can’t quite see over the top of it, but she’s working with microtools again. Maybe she’s fixing the Device; I don’t really know. She does look at me every now and then as she speaks, though, so it’s all right. “The balance of power is a very literal thing when it comes to humanity versus the King, and it’s a twofold problem. First there’s the powers themselves: if someone has them, then the Agreement says he has the right to fight that person. The last thing the Professor and I want -- the last thing anyone wants -- is for you to have to face him again. You were in your prime last time, but now you’re a little older and -- forgive me -- not in the best shape.”

  She’s right about that, I suppose. “What’s the second thing?”

  “The stronger you are, the stronger he is, and the stronger all his minions are as well.”

  “So if I’m, what, twice as powerful?”

  “More like a sixty or seventy percent increase,” she corrects, “but close enough.”

  “Right. Well, if I’m that much stronger, then he’s that much stronger.”

  “Which means more damage and devastation, more killing, more fear.”

  I feel like I should be more upset by this, but she’s looking at me again even as she assembles more tools on a metal tray -- I hear them clink as she sets them down -- and her eyes keep me calm. “What can we do to stop it?”

  The doctor carries the tray to the table and sits down near my head again. “There’s an experimental version of the Device that I’ve been working on for a couple of years now,” she says. “This is it.” It’s a probe no thicker than a pencil and no longer than my finger. “It recharges using your powers, and when you reach the threshold, it sets itself to go off while you sleep. If anything, you might have a little stiffness in your neck the next day, but it shouldn’t hurt.”

  “Well, that’s not
so bad.” I swallow hard; even her eyes aren’t helping as I ask the next question. “It goes inside me, doesn’t it. How?”

  She takes a pair of clippers off the tray and gently turns my head to one side. My entire body wants to shiver as she runs the buzzing blades along my neck. The mark is surrounded by my hair, which is getting long, so it should cover up any exposed skin. Plus, who would ask me about it anyway? “I’m going to give you a few injections of local anesthetic,” she says. “Then I’ll make a small incision, place the Device, and put in a couple of stitches. They’ll dissolve in a week or so; you just have to be careful when you wash your hair.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, Alexandra, these will hurt. I’m sorry. I’d hold your hand if I could.”

  “That’s all right,” I say. “Do what you have to do.”

  She’s right -- the needles burn like fire going into my skin, and they stay in for far too long. I keep my teeth clenched, trying to force down my fear, waiting for the moment when she looks at me again. “Shouldn’t I be face-down for this?” I ask, my voice quivering. “Not that I want to be, but wouldn’t it be easier?”

  “I don’t have any way to restrain you in that position,” she says, sticking me for the third time. I whimper. “I’m sorry,” she says.

  It doesn’t sound like she means it. I want to see her face -- want to see her eyes, see the reassurance in them -- but if I move, I might mess things up. Instead I clutch the armrests and listen to the padding crinkle under my hands. That’s new.

  “Okay, Alexandra,” she says, and I’m too scared by now to correct her, “I’m going to give that a moment to work, and then I’m going to make the incision. Don’t worry, it’ll be over soon.”

  I nod. The anesthetic is already making my neck seem thick and tingly, and my heart starts to pound. In a minute or two -- maybe a little more, maybe a little less -- a very sharp blade will be slicing very close to my spine, and then a foreign object will be implanted into my neck. “Doctor,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking, “can you talk to me?”