“No more time! Uuuuupppppp!”
All around me, the mass bursts into flame. At the same time, I torch as much of the ceiling as I can reach. The tiles collapse, crashing to the ground, filling the air with smoke and dust. I hear coughing all around me as I hold my breath and fumble with my backpack.
I can see the oxygen mask inside, already hooked up to the tank. As I open the pack, though, the zipper sticks, trapping my fresh air just inches away from my grasp. I tear at it frantically, but it won’t budge. Finally, with a whisper, I melt the slider into slag and rip the pack open, jamming the mask to my face.
I inhale deeply, but get nothing. It’s broken! It’s empty! I’ve forgotten to open the valve. I twist it in desperation, and cool air flows into the mask. I breathe in greedily.
So here I am, surrounded by fire. Around me, the fires burn hotter and hotter as I feed them all I can. Holding my breath, I press the mask to the face of each of the cops in turn, but I have no idea if it’s doing any good. The one who was conscious has slumped back again, but at least he and several others are partially sheltered by the desk.
Hot debris rains down on my back, and I curl my body around the oxygen tank, protecting it. With the mask to my face, I stoke the flames higher, stealing all of the oxygen from the room. Everything is shimmering in a haze now, but I’m pretty sure I can see Vince collapsed face-down where he had been crouched.
I crawl over to check, rolling awkwardly through the burning fleshpool, burning my hands on the carpet. It’s him, the original; I can tell by the bullet-tattered clothes, charred though they are. He’s unconscious but not dead, dropped by the lack of oxygen. My plan worked perfectly.
I look around at the raging inferno consuming the building I’m trapped in the center of, and amend my statement slightly. Mostly perfectly.
I really could have used a step two to the plan, though. This was as far as I’d thought. I kind of figured getting out would be a little bit easier.
Abruptly, my entire body cringes in that momentary, all-over ice-cream headache that signals the removal of my powers. With the mask held tightly to my face, I laugh hysterically. Looks like you’ve successfully passed another challenge, Dan! Everything is on fire. Great work. Way to save lives.
Over the demanding roar of the flames, I can hear sirens. I hope they get here in time.
- Chapter Eighteen -
Firefighters have an incredibly tough job. I mean, I know that’s not really much of a revelation, but I’d never really thought before about how much mental fortitude it takes to head into a burning, collapsing building. Every cell in your body is screaming for you to leave. To ignore that primal demand in hopes of saving someone else’s life? That’s nothing short of amazing.
I have the idea to drag Vince over to where the cops are, so that the firefighters can get all of us at once if they got here in time, but I’m not able to drag him two steps before my ribs flare up and I fall to my knees, coughing. So when the rescuers come charging in the front door a terrifyingly long few minutes later, I’m still curled up around my oxygen cylinder, unable to stop staring at the advancing fire.
When I hear them come into the building, I shout, “Over here!” Or try to, anyway. I stupidly draw in a breath outside of the mask, and get a lungful of soot for my troubles. Instead of shouting, I collapse into another coughing fit. It gets their attention, though, so I suppose it’s not the worst result.
The fireman who gets me to my feet tries to pry the backpack loose from my hands, but I’ve got it in a death grip, and after a second he shrugs and gives up. “I’m going to support you to the door!” he shouts to me, over the hissing roar of the fire. “Rodriguez will carry your friend!”
“He’s not my friend,” I wheeze, but the fireman just nods at me, so I don’t think I was understandable. He helps me outside at a fast walk, shielding me from much of the fire with his body. By the time we’re at the front door, I’ve got my lungs under control again. The air outside is astoundingly cold, and I shiver as it hits me.
The fireman turns to go back inside, and I call out, “Wait!”
He turns and I say, “There are police officers down, unconscious in the back right of the main room. Near the offices.” My voice is still pretty raspy, but at least I’m audible again.
He nods and disappears back into the flames, moving at a quick trot. An EMT puts an arm around my shoulders and guides me farther away from the building, saying something that I don’t process.
Peterson and the other six cops who made it out are there, pointing to Vince and various clones as they are carried out and arguing with the medical personnel. Seeing me, Peterson breaks off and hurries over.
“Which one is the original?” he demands. The EMT with me gives him a dirty look, but I point to where Vince is lying unconscious on a stretcher.
“We’re cuffing the others — if these people will let us do our jobs,” Peterson says, returning the EMT’s dirty look. “But what do we do with him when he wakes up?”
I shake my head. “He’s…I don’t think he can do anything anymore. At least, I hope not. I can’t.”
Peterson addresses the EMT directly. “As I’ve been saying to your colleagues, this man is part of a gang that’s wanted for a large number of violent crimes, including attempted murder. And now arson,” he says, jerking his head sideways to indicate the inferno behind him. “So if I could please cuff him so that he doesn’t take someone hostage when he wakes up, I would greatly appreciate that.”
The EMT glares at Peterson for a moment longer, but says, “As long as I can treat him, do what you need to do. At least he’s not as badly burned as some of the guys over there.”
“They’re violent criminals who just burned down the police station! We can’t let them wander around just because they’re hurt.”
“You can’t handcuff someone with second-degree burns on his wrists, either!”
I sit down on the ground and lean against the ambulance, still cradling my oxygen tank absently. Fire hoses spray torrents of water over the burning station, slowing the progress of the burn. I watch as the firefighters carry out dozens of bodies; to my relief, nearly all of them begin showing signs of life within a few minutes of being carried clear of the fire. All of them have burns, but from the looks of it, everyone might have made it out.
There’s a rattle to my right, and then a voice speaks. “So, Danny. Nice work. You got me.” This is followed by a second rattle as Vince shakes the wrist that’s handcuffed to the frame of the stretcher.
I ignore him and keep looking ahead at the fire, and after a moment, he continues.
“All it cost you was a police station, huh? Not bad, not bad. I wonder what those cost to rebuild? A lot more than I ever stole, I bet.”
“You tried to kill me, Vince. You tried to kill a bunch of people.”
Vince laughs, a harsh croak from seared lungs. “Funny thing is, I can talk to you now. There isn’t this fist of hate in my head when I think about you. Guess I got it out of my system.”
I don’t have anything to say to that, so I stay silent and we both watch the fire. Eventually, one of the police comes and wheels Vince’s stretcher away, and I watch alone again for a while.
Another EMT comes by to put a blanket around my shoulders. She tries to take the oxygen tank from me, but I still haven’t relaxed my grip on it.
“It’s mine!” I tell her.
“Where did you get it?” she asks.
“I’m holding it for a friend. I told her I’d return it.”
As she leaves, I realize that my left hand aches from having been curled tightly around the bag for so long. I try to open my fist, but the fingers are locked in place, and I end up having to use my right hand to uncurl it. The zipper teeth are branded across my palm in an angry red welt from where I gripped the metal during the fire, and my hand aches in the cold air.
I look at the bag stupidly for a minute, then twist the valve shut on the oxygen tank and hug the bag to
my chest again. I sit there watching as the water slowly defeats the fire, as the roof collapses and buries the interior of the building in rubble, as the policemen organize the wounded into friend and foe and allow the EMTs to take everyone away for treatment.
The fire is still burning slightly when they help me into the back of the ambulance. I’m crammed in there with three of the cops who made it out before the fire started in earnest; they’re all a little banged up from the brawl, but they’re not burned and are therefore low-priority transport, like me. We’re basically going to the hospital for a once-over so they can send us home with a clear conscience.
Partway through the ride, one of the cops leans over and says to me, “Do you have any idea what happened in there?”
Well, yeah. It’s pretty straightforward. An immortal man cloned himself a couple of dozen times and started a fistfight with the police, so to stop him, I set the entire station on fire with my mind. Oh, and also there’s a terrifying semi-sentient puddle of body parts that’s taken over much of the floor, but that’s probably dead now. If it was ever alive.
I’m still trying to think of a way to translate this into something normal when another officer says, “Leave him alone, Sean. He’s in shock.”
“Sorry,” says Sean.
I don’t feel like I’m in shock. It seems like the sort of thing I’d know about, certainly. Doesn’t it? I stare straight ahead, puzzling over this until we arrive at the hospital. It’s not until an EMT taps me on the shoulder to guide me out of the ambulance that I realize everyone else has already left. I might be in shock.
The EMT takes me to the waiting room, and the nurse at the counter gives me a clipboard with paperwork to fill out. I take it back to a seat and stare at it emptily for several minutes before putting it down in my lap, still totally blank. Then, with my left arm curled through the straps of the oxygen cylinder backpack, I fall asleep.
- Chapter Nineteen -
I wake up muzzily, unsure of where I am. There’s a buzz of conversation around me, the draft of a large room, and an uncomfortable pressure in my side from the plastic arm of a chair — I must still be in the hospital waiting room.
I open my eyes and confirm this unfortunate fact. Someone’s come and put a blanket over me, but that seems to be all of the attention I’ve received. Across from me, a woman messes with the zipper on a burned backpack.
My oxygen tank! I sit up abruptly, reaching out with a, “Hey!”
The woman looks up in surprise, and my still-awakening brain informs me that it is Dr. Simmons.
“Oh. It’s you,” I say weakly.
“Thought I’d come to steal your backpack, Dan?” she asks with a smile. “You remember that I’m the one who gave it to you, yes?”
“Trust me,” I tell her. “I’ve spent a good bit of the last hour making sure that I had it to give back. Hour? Couple hours? How long was I asleep?”
“It’s just after four now,” Simmons says, so yeah, a couple of hours. She holds up the blackened and burnt backpack. “Also, this is how you return things? You’re never borrowing my car.”
“Hey, you told me not to blow myself up with it! I’m not blown up. It’s not blown up. Great success. Anyway, what kind of shoddy hospital are you running here where patients sit in the waiting room for hours and no one comes to take care of them?”
“One: I don’t run this hospital, Dan. And two,” she glances at the floor at my feet, “the people who do run it only consider you a patient once you’ve filled out your paperwork and let the nurse know that you’re here, so that they know to call you.”
I look down as well. At my feet sits the clipboard with the still-blank forms on it, having slid off of my lap sometime during my nap. “Ah. That would explain it.”
“Fortunately, for you I will make an exception,” says Doc Simmons, standing up and slinging the backpack over her shoulder. “If you’ll come with me?”
I unfold myself painfully from the chair. “Why do I get the feeling that this is more about you drawing blood and less about my health and well-being?”
“Because you are an astute individual, Dan.”
“Fine. Lead on, Dr. Acula.”
Simmons gives me a quizzical look. “Ah, it was funny in my head,” I say. “Write it down later, you’ll get it.”
Half a dozen vials of blood and a couple of skin scrapings later, Simmons has her samples set aside and is bandaging up the worst of my burns. “These really don’t look so bad, all things considered,” she remarks. “The backpack’s in worse condition.”
“They were a little bit worse when I got them, I think, but I still heal from surface stuff like this pretty easily. They’ll probably mostly be gone by tomorrow or the day after.”
“That’s good. Incidentally, have you been near a mirror yet?”
“No, why?”
“You’re going to want to get a haircut.”
I raise my hands to the sides of my head and feel around. The hair feels crisped at the ends all over, and I can feel bare patches of skin in several places at the back. “Right. Looks like I’m buzzing it.”
“Do you want me to do that for you? We have an electric razor here, and I can see the burned patches to avoid them better than you’ll be able to.”
“A doctor who gives haircuts? What is this, bringing back the Middle Ages?”
“Dan, say thank you to the person who’s about to wield knives near your head.”
“Thank you, Dr. Simmons!”
- - -
With my nemesis dispatched, my oxygen tank returned and my hair freshly cut, I’m feeling like a new man. A still fairly beaten-up man, but on the whole things are looking a lot better. This feeling lasts as far as the hospital lobby.
I’m heading for the doors and freedom when I hear a familiar voice, and look over at the admissions desk to see Peterson talking with the nurse on duty, who’s looking at her monitor and shaking her head. I start to slink out the doors before I remember that I came clean with Peterson and I’m not avoiding him anymore. It’s apparently going to take a while to get that message to my automatic systems.
Instead of making my escape, I call out, “Officer Peterson!”
He turns and regards me. “Mr. Everton! I was just looking for you. I’d like to talk.”
I wince. “All right, but seriously, could you smile or something when you say that? You’re coming across as pretty grim and ominous.”
“My station burned down, my friends are injured, and there is an impressive mess to clean up. You do not want to see my smile right now.”
“Noted.”
“Would coffee make this less ominous?”
“It would, thank you.”
We adjourn to the cafeteria and take a table in the corner. Despite the addition of coffee, Peterson still looks pretty grim. He turns his cup around in his hands several times, staring at me, before beginning.
“I’m about to have to tell a lot of lies to a lot of people, Mr. Everton. Both for the sake of making them sound accurate and for my own peace of mind, I’d like to know the truth.”
“I mean, you know most of it –”
“Tell me what happened after I left the building. In detail.”
I step him through the fight as best as I can remember it, emphasizing my efforts to subdue but not kill with the fire. “Except for the body blob,” I say, shuddering again at the image of the wave of grasping hands and teeth. “That, I set directly on fire and never regretted.”
That gets a smile from Peterson, and he’s right — it looks feral and not at all reassuring. “Understandable.”
“I am sorry about the extent of the damage. It would have been easier to burn off all of the oxygen with Vince in a smaller room, but he was right in the middle of things and I had to ramp the fire way up.” I’m starting to babble, so I take a deep breath. “The building’s a total loss, huh?”
“It looks like it, yes.” Peterson takes a long drink from his coffee, then sets it back down.
“But all of the officers are alive and accounted for, so I’m willing to accept it.”
He takes another drink, tilting the cup almost all the way up. “If Vince turned as much of the building into that flesh mass as you say, I have some phone calls to make, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Sure,” I say, but I must look as puzzled as I feel, because Peterson continues, “Bones don’t burn up in a standard fire. With all of the arms, hands and teeth you described, do you know what that mess is going to look like to the investigators? A slaughter, one of unprecedented proportions. And of course, they won’t match up to full bodies.”
I picture the trail of burned bones literally carpeting the floor and shudder. “What are you going to do?”
Peterson shrugs. “Pass it up the chain of command, mainly. The advantage here is that this is so impossible that people will be willing to cover it up rather than try to make it make sense. But I need to get started before someone says the wrong thing to the wrong person, and suddenly we’ve got headlines reading “HUNDREDS OF BODIES FOUND IN POLICE STATION MASSACRE.”
As we stand to leave, Peterson says, “Thank you for trusting me, Mr. Everton. In the event that something like this should come up again, I hope you’ll remember that I am on your side.”
“Yeah, I know. Thank you, too.” We shake hands, and Peterson heads for the doors. I finish my coffee and follow after.
Leaving the hospital, I check my phone for messages. I have a text from Brian asking how I’m doing, and a missed call with accompanying voicemail from Matt. I stare at that one for a long moment; it’s not going to be pretty, but I should probably just rip the band-aid off and deal with it.
“Out of the hospital,” I text Brian. “Got anything going on tonight?”
“It’s my weekend,” he writes back. “Movies?”
“My couch is fried. Your place?”
The Experiment (Book 2): Making Friends Page 13
