by LE Barbant
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Elijah swept his credentials through the card reader; the doors of PPG Tower clicked open. Brooke never responded to his text message, and calls were going straight to voicemail. Luckily, her assistant was on call, and she confessed that Rex had delivered Brooke to the office for an emergency session with the board.
Whatever Rex was planning, Elijah hoped that they weren’t too late.
The poet and the historian b-lined for the front desk.
Elijah smiled at the night guard. “How’s it going?”
The pimply-faced kid couldn’t have been over twenty. “Hey. You one of Alarawn’s?
“Yeah,” Elijah said. “Crazy time of the year—board meetings and all. Everybody upstairs?”
The guard nodded. “They’ve been in and out all day. Pretty tense, right? Guess that’s the price of big business.”
Elijah gave a courtesy laugh. Willa stood frozen at his side.
“Sure is.” He paused. “Did Mr. Bertoldo—Ms. Alarawn’s driver—arrive yet?”
“I can’t tell you that,” the guard said. “But I can’t stop you from looking at the sign-in list.” The kid grinned and spun a clipboard in Elijah’s direction.
Elijah printed his name directly under Rex’s. The man had been in the building for just under thirty minutes.
Turning to Willa: “Rex has a head start. He’s up there with Brooke already.”
The poet nodded and sped toward the elevators. “Your friend really messed things up, didn’t he?”
“My friend?” Elijah asked, trying to match her enormous strides. “I was going to say the same about you and your friend.”
Despite its being the middle of the evening, it took forever for one of the dozen or so elevators to open. The two stepped in and Elijah pushed the button for the thirty-eighth floor. The lift hummed and began its ascent. Their eyes were glued on the numbers. Nearing the twentieth floor, the elevator jostled and the lights flickered. Willa lurched for the wall to steady herself.
After a pause and a cough, the tiny box continued its upward trajectory.
“I don’t like that one bit,” Elijah said, faking a smile. It did nothing to ease the tension.
“What’s up with you two anyway?”
“Who? Me and Brooke? She’s my boss.”
The young professor faced forward. “There’s more though, right?
Elijah felt flushed. The elevator eased to a stop and opened into the Alarawn offices. “Let’s go,” Elijah said, ignoring her question.
The front desk was empty and the entire floor was dim. Something had knocked out the primary lighting, and the emergency bulbs were all that illuminated the context. The temperature seemed to have dropped twenty degrees.
“Something’s not right,” Willa said.
“You can say that again.”
The pair stepped through the office, its open floor plan eerie in the darkness. The common workspace was a ghost town. A noise echoed from the executive suite. Elijah steadied himself, then followed the sound.
“My. God.” Willa whispered.
The boardroom was as cold as a meat locker—and just as bloody.
Elijah did all that he could to stifle his gag reflex as he took in the body count. Five souls, as far as he could tell, had expired in the room. Their corpses were in various states of dismemberment. Most were huddled close to the door—as if they thought retreat was a possibility.
An arm lay on the floor at his feet.
Chairs were scattered throughout. The dark oak table, half the size of the room, was split through the middle. A portrait of Thomas Alarawn, Jr. lay torn on the carpet.
Gurgling came from across the room. A slight black man lay in a corner alone, impaled in the chest by a giant LCD screen. Blood trickled from his mouth. Fluttering eyelids exhibited the thin thread of life remaining in what would soon be lifeless flesh.
Elijah raced to his side. He crouched close enough to the man that he could nearly feel his bloody breathing.
“…monster…”
“Quiet. I can help you, we’ll get you out of here,” Elijah said. He placed two hands on the screen.
“No…Brooke…” The man’s face went blank. A final cough brought his ragged breathing to a halt. Lifeless brown eyes stared off into an eternal nowhere.
Elijah counted bodies. Not seeing Brooke’s form amid the carnage, he exhaled.
“We have to stop him,” Willa said, without looking at Elijah.
“We need to call the police. Look at this place? Do you think we stand a chance against Rex? What are you going to do, quote some Shakespeare and make him disappear? You’re not exactly equipped for this kind of thing.”
“Maybe not,” Willa said. She turned to face the historian. “But you are.”
“Me?” Elijah shrieked. “You’re out of your mind. Rex could snap me in half without Chem’s enhancements.”
“Maybe as you are now. The other you would stand a chance. Your monster could stop him.”
Elijah paced the boardroom, stepping over bodies and broken furniture.
“Even if I believed that bullshit, I don’t know how to do it.”
Willa smiled. For the first time since they arrived at PPG Tower, he felt warm. “You will. You’re here for a reason, Elijah.”
“What if I turn into that thing, and I only make things worse? You said it yourself, it almost killed you.”
She placed her hand on his arm. “I don’t know how to explain it, but even when I thought it was going to kill me, I could still sense your presence inside of it. Trust me. There’s no one else but us. When it comes you need to focus. Center yourself. Don’t let it take over, but welcome its assistance.”
A shout from another office halted their conversation. Willa ran, leaving Elijah no choice but to follow.
Halfway down the executive corridor, a large door swung open.
“You two need to leave.” Rex’s face was twisted in a snarl.
“We know what you’ve done, Rex.”
Rex’s snarl turned into a smile. “OK, detective, you’ve got me.” Rex raised his hands, palms out toward Elijah and Willa. “You going to take me to the precinct for booking?”
“Where is she?”
“Who?” Rex asked in a sincere tone that knocked Elijah off-center.
“Brooke. What have you done to her?”
“Done to her?” The man laughed again. “The question is: What did I do for her?”
Rex took two quick steps from the threshold and positioned himself between Elijah and the boardroom.
Elijah surveyed the man and tried to determine whether or not there was a difference—a change that might have been catalyzed by the serum.
Rex cracked his knuckles. “I’ll give you one chance to turn and leave. You can consider this a termination of employment,” he said, looking at Elijah.
Whether it was anger or the thought of Brooke being in trouble, Elijah felt new courage course through him.
“I don’t work for you, dipshit. But when I tell Brooke what you’ve done…”
Rex’s laughter interrupted Elijah’s threat. “I’ve done nothing but commit my life to the Alarawns.” His eyes narrowed.
Elijah heard a quiet mumbling. Willa’s lips moved—her eyes dilated.
The historian cursed to himself. It looked like he was alone in this. He hoped Willa was sane enough to dial 911.
He took a step toward Rex. “Let me pass.”
“Over my dead body,” Rex said. “You don’t stand a chance here, historian.”
Elijah made a fist with his right hand and took three steps toward Rex. The last punch he’d thrown was against Caleb Boyer in the eighth grade. Twenty years hadn’t improved his form. Rex blocked with his left arm, and countered with a quick, but brutal, right to the historian’s stomach.
The bodyguard put barely any effort in, but when his massive fist landed in Elijah’s gut, it knocked all the wind out of him. Elijah collapsed to the floor. Rex reached
down, grabbing him by the shirt.
“I’ve been wanting to do that since the day I met you.” Saliva and hate shot across the historian’s face.
Rex lifted him as though he were weightless, and heaved his body over a cubicle divider. Elijah landed with a crash.
The world spun.
“It’s your turn, bitch.” Rex stepped toward Willa.
Elijah, dazed but still conscious, could see her lips moving—the words came in a whisper. As the man approached, she closed her eyes and raised one hand toward him. With steady syncopation, the words got louder.
“Wild words wander here and there;
God’s great gift of speech abused
Makes thy memory confused:
But let them rave.”
Whether it was pure light or color, Elijah couldn’t be sure, but something coursed from Willa’s hand and landed in the center of Rex’s torso. The man paused, then stumbled backward. He shook. Sweat broke out on his face. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t enough.
Rex slammed a fist against his chest and stepped again toward the poet.
Willa was unfazed. It might have been his imagination, but Elijah thought he saw the poet smile.
She closed her eyes and started again. This time at full volume:
“A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear.”
Rex froze. Then, grabbing his head, he dropped to one knee and fell onto his side.
Elijah climbed out of the broken cubicle to join Willa. The fair-skinned woman was paler than he had ever seen her.
He glanced at Rex. The man’s eyes were open—they followed every move—and were filled with rage. A line of drool leaked from the side of his mouth.
Willa kicked him square in the face.
“That should hold him for a while.”
Willa’s powers were real. The evidence was laid out on the floor in front of him.
A scream echoed from the executive suite.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The enormous double doors at the end of the executive hall blocked their advance. She was in there. He knew it. He prayed that she was OK.
“Last chance,” Elijah said to Willa.
She nodded.
He reached for the giant handles. They were cold enough to burn. Ignoring the pain, he pushed into the CEO’s office.
Across the room, an older man in a suit lay flat on the mahogany executive desk. Brooke Alarawn, completely undressed, leaned over him. She kept him pinned with a knee on his chest. Her hands were wrapped around his throat—squeezing away his existence.
Her eyes were blue fire, and the surface of her body was encased in a thin layer of ice, like a windshield on a Pittsburgh winter morning. Her hair, a wild mane, encircled her head in a dark halo.
“Brooke. No,” he yelled.
The prostrate executive’s head rolled to the side. Elijah couldn’t tell if he was alive.
Brooke stared at them like an untamed beast. She was small, but nevertheless terrifying. “What are you doing here?” she snarled.
“We came here to save you…but…the board room…what have you done?”
Brooke vaulted off the desk like a practiced gymnast. Her body nimble, she glistened as she walked toward them. “I don’t need saving. I am the Savior. And now that I have your blood coursing through my veins, I’ll be able to save the city, and everyone in it.”
Elijah tried to make sense of what he was hearing. Seeing her was too much.
“My father didn’t have the strength to do what was needed—wasn’t strong enough for twenty-first century steel. Thanks to him, that guy,” Brooke gestured back to the figure on the desk, “tried to take everything from me. They’re going to take it all, break it into bits, and ship it oversea. That’s unacceptable. Pittsburgh needs this place.”
“Brooke, let him go. He knows what you are. I don’t think you’re gonna have any problems with him or his people for a long, long time.”
Brooke Alarawn let out something between a shriek and a laugh. She walked back to her victim, and ran a fingertip from his hairline down to the tip of his nose and across his lips. Her hand landed on his neck. “Don’t be so naïve, Elijah. The world doesn’t work like that. Sure, you can run off to your library when this is all over, but what about me? What about Alarawn Industries?”
As Brooke spoke, the coat of ice covering her body solidified; it became thicker. The temperature in the room continued to drop. Elijah’s thoughts turned to the scene in the adjoining boardroom. He pictured his own body parts scattered around the Alarawn office like knickknacks from a deranged Hallmark store.
“I know, Brooke,” Elijah said. “You’ve worked hard for this city—for these people. They don’t understand, and they probably never will.” He caught a glance of Willa out of his peripheral vision. A “what the hell are you doing?” look had come over her face.
“If you’re going to make a difference, it can’t be like this. You lost it in there—which I can understand—but we need a plan. We’re going to need to clean up the mess, configure a way forward.”
The room warmed, just a little.
Brooke’s shoulders relaxed.
“You believe me?” she asked.
“Always,” Elijah said, with the most authentic smile he could muster. “That’s why I came to Pittsburgh. I believed in you, in Alarawn Industries, and in this city. I want to be a part of the change.”
Brooke leaned against the table. Her pale skin was visible again through the sheet of ice. She was lost in thought. Elijah held his breath.
“Thank you.” Brooke exhaled. Her eyes still looked crazy, but a little less so. “You, with my power—our powers, Elijah—we can make this city great again.”
Elijah thought they might just make it out of the building alive.
“Bullshit,” Willa screamed at the frozen woman.
“Willa, stop,” Elijah whispered.
“You killed him. You killed Sean. He was a member of this city. All he wanted was to protect Pittsburgh and you had him murdered.”
Elijah held in a groan. He reached out to grab Willa’s hand, but it was too late.
Ice on the surface of Brooke’s body grew thick and turned deep charcoal gray. The crystalline exoskeleton took all of Brooke’s features and enhanced them. She looked like a champion female bodybuilder, her muscles thick and unyielding. The last parts of her body turned as Willa Weil dove at her. But Brooke’s strength didn’t hamper her speed. Sidestepping like a master bullfighter, the creature brought down a fist across Willa’s back. The blow altered the poet’s trajectory.
Elijah watched his friend’s body crumple on the floor. Willa was motionless.
“Any truly great enterprise requires sacrifice.”
Elijah wasn’t sure if it was Alarawn’s words, the sight of Willa’s broken body, or the images of death still fresh from the boardroom, but in that moment there was a catalyst. Something took over. The change happened fast—and he was conscious through it all.
In seconds, Elijah’s form expanded. He felt pain as his mass extended, but the power covered the pain. Fire burned in his chest. His thinking gained great clarity. And he was aware of another presence—he wasn’t alone. The transformed body was a vehicle for Elijah and another.
Holding his arms in front of his face, he saw the molten steel form for the first time; the cracks in his outer layer bled a burning orange-red glow. In an instant, steam filled the room, as fire and ice collided. Condensation covered the windows.
The cold eyes of Brooke Alarawn—or of the creature that was once her—watched the entire transformation.
“Hey, big guy. You come out to play?” She laughed, looking at her new body. “Looks like your chemist friend made some improvements to my batch. Or maybe I’m the improvement. Sadly, for
you, I’m ten times your strength.”
Elijah opened his mouth to respond. “Di do pitchi, kurva!” The shock of his alien tongue didn’t slow him. His voice was gravel. “I’ll fight ten times as hard.”
The molten creature charged, but the weight of his body was disorienting. His movements were too slow. The ice creature jumped over Elijah’s seven-foot frame and landed on the table behind him. Before he could turn, Alarawn spun and landed a reverse roundhouse kick to the back of Elijah’s head.
Her ice block of a leg connected at over 140 mph. Elijah felt a wave move through his body.
Disoriented, he tried to right himself. With a scream, Alarawn launched herself from the table. Elijah threw a sloppy right hook and connected with the creature in mid-air. It sent her spinning across the room.
“Stop this, Brooke. This isn’t you. Come back to me, we can manage this together.”
“Brooke is gone. I am the one who will save this city. I am its queen!”
Well, shit, Elijah thought.
Elijah lifted the enormous desk as if it were made of particleboard. He heaved it at her, then followed its path toward the ice monster. She batted away the desk, leaving herself exposed for Elijah’s tackle. He threw himself with all that he had. The two figures hurtled across the room and crashed through a sheetrock wall.
Got her.
Elijah looked into frozen eyes. With his left hand on her chest, he pulled back to strike a blow he hoped would only knock her out. Before he could, she grabbed the back of his neck and whipped her head into his. With a flick of her legs she threw him back into the office.
Elijah shook his head.
She was getting the best of him, and he knew he wouldn’t win this without finding a way to turn the tables. Alarawn’s creature was too fast. The tight space was disorienting. He needed room to move, and he needed to get danger as far from Willa’s unconscious body as possible.
Brooke stood between him and the doorway. He needed to find a way to get her out of this room and into the open.
“It’s over, Professor. Even with whatever you have swimming in your blood, you’re finished. I was born for this. I thought it was the damned medallion, but that didn’t work. Once I got the enhancement from the chemist, it all came together.”
