by LE Barbant
Elijah laughed. “I know what you mean. But I wish Willa was here.”
A rumble followed by a crash from the basement interrupted their conversation.
“Chem, come quick,” a gargling voice shouted.
He was the first to the door and Elijah was right behind him.
They pounded down the steps.
Chem slapped his hand on the support post and spun toward the sound. Fear for his experiments rushed over him. It’d taken months to rebuild what Rex had stolen, and he didn’t want to start from square one again. Although he had plenty of Elijah’s blood, the enhanced and matured compound sat in the basement, too unstable to move.
Rita’s ichthyic face struck Chem first. Her yellow rain jacket was smeared red. Blood polluted her pale, scaly arms.
A broken body was at the creature’s feet, the work boots and red flannel indicating who it was.
“What happened?”
Rita’s chest heaved. Chem was unsure if it was the weight of carrying Tim or pure fear. “The monster,” she said.
Elijah rushed over to Tim and rolled him over onto his back. His face was unrecognizable with his nose bent and cheeks swollen. A gash laid open his face on the left side.
Blood painted everything.
“Hospital?” Elijah asked under his breath.
Chem quickly, but meticulously, cleared everything off of his lab desk table. “No. Not the hospital. I can handle this, I think. Help me get him up here.”
Elijah and Rita heaved Tim’s 200-pound frame onto the table. Chem gently placed the man’s arms by his side. Dropping his ear to Tim’s chest, he held his breath. “Breathing. He has a heartbeat. So that’s something.” He turned Elijah. “Go get my medical bag. It’s in my room.”
Chem unbuttoned the flannel and exposed Tim’s torso. Pressing on his rib cage, he felt every other rib crunch under the light touch of his fingertips. He moved on to Tim’s legs and applied pressure to the femurs and down through the tibias. The legs had been spared.
He moved back to Tim’s face. “Broken cheekbone. Maybe a fractured skull, but I’m not sure. He’s been in the shit before—could be an old wound.”
Finally, Chem attended to the shattered nose. “Sorry, buddy,” Chem said, holding the nose in one hand. He yanked it to the left. Cartilage crunched in his palm.
Tim’s eyes flew open.
“Monster…metal…fuck.” Tim spat blood and then passed back into unconsciousness.
Elijah returned with the bag and was standing by Chem’s side as the chemist wiped red from his face.
“Metal monster?” Chem raised his eyebrows.
“Don’t look at me,” Elijah said. “I was upstairs getting my geek on. What about you?”
Chem didn’t answer. He turned back to Tim’s broken form. “He sure got the shit kicked out of him. But I think he’s stable. I’ll clean him up, tape his ribs, and give him something for the pain.”
****
Chem and Elijah eased Tim into Elijah’s bed. They stripped off his boots and jeans, but left the bloody flannel on, afraid removing it would cause too much pain. Returning to the living room, the men found Rita standing in the corner with the lights off.
Elijah reached for the switch.
“No. Please,” she said.
Chem could barely make out Rita’s black eyes, but he could feel them pleading with him.
Elijah and Chem eased onto the couch, exhausted from the night’s events.
“What the hell happened out there?” Elijah asked.
Elijah didn’t know Rita, but he had no reason to distrust her. Chem, on the other hand, had ample reason for doubt. He thought of Tim’s broken body, and his first thought was that this was an act of retribution. But if that were the case, she wouldn’t have brought him back to their house. Still, he wondered how much bad blood was left from earlier this summer.
“It was that thing,” she answered. “I got there just in time. It was hitting him over and over and over again.”
“You guys rolling together?” Chem asked. “I thought you hated Tim.”
“No…I was…I could smell him.” She turned her head, looking toward the kitchen. Chem was unsure if it was a sign of guilt or shame.
“What could take on someone as tough as Tim?” Elijah asked.
The two men stared at each other.
Chem knew that the same vision of Brooke Alarawn passed through their minds.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rays from the rising sun seeped through the living room window. It blended with the light of the incandescent bulbs, casting a hazy glow in the room. Sleep eluded the historian, but his eyes were closed as he leaned back in the recliner.
Rita crouched on the opposite side of the room. At some point during the long night, she’d slid down the wall and sat with her heels against her butt. She hadn’t moved from that position since they settled Tim in Elijah’s bed. Though mostly silent, a slight gurgle occasionally arose from her still body.
Elijah kept his eyes sealed because he didn’t want to look at her grotesque humanoid form, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep from staring. He tried to empathize with the creature sleeping across from him but, despite his own changes, the chasm was too great. In ways, the historian felt guilty that his transformations were few and far between. With his training, someday he’d be able to control it, call on it only when needed. His life wasn’t normal but by all appearances he maintained his humanity.
Rita wasn’t so lucky.
Her story remained, for the most part, a mystery. She didn’t talk much, and he hesitated to ask questions, fearful of alienating her with his curiosity. He had heard that she and Tim had a couple of run-ins before Chem found a way to broker a peace. If she could hold her own against the ex-mercenary, then Elijah assumed she knew how to handle herself in a fight.
Imagining the two of them duking it out made him wonder for the hundredth time who or what could have taken the warrior down.
“His breathing is getting worse. I can hear fluid in his lungs,” Chem said as he entered the living room. The chemist looked like he had been awake for a week. His normally sunken eyes sat deeper in his skull, bags heavy underneath. “He’s stable though. And if there’s one thing I know about Tim, he’s a fighter. He’s gonna make it through just fine.”
Although he had known Chem for such a short amount of time, Elijah felt closer to the scientist than to anyone back in Boston—their bond formed in the heat of disaster. Elijah was grateful for all that the scientist had done. But if Elijah were honest with himself, he’d admit that, deep down, he still didn’t trust the man. Chem had underhandedly developed a serum from Elijah’s blood. And the historian couldn’t help but feel as if he’d been used, or at least conveniently kept in the dark. He wondered what else the chemist had kept from him.
“We should take him to the emergency room,” Elijah said. “You don’t know what’s gonna happen, Chem. What if one of those dislodged ribs pierces a lung or stabs his heart or something.”
“Stabs his heart?” Chem laughed. “Stick to history, mate. I was trained to do this, you know. Tim will be fine. Not to mention, if we took him to the emergency room, they’ll have a few questions for him—and us.”
“We tell the truth,” Elijah said. “Selectively. But the truth.” The historian shrugged. “He got jumped. That’s really what happened.” He paused. “Or do you want to take the chance that he actually dies?”
Chem landed his feet on the coffee table, and crossed them at the ankles. “Listen, Elijah, if somebody asks about the history of the cork industry in Northeast Ohio, I’ll keep my mouth shut. That’s your area. We’re all specialists here, right?” Chem watched Elijah shrug. “This is my area. I know what I’m doing, I’ve done it for years. You’re just gonna need to trust me.”
“Trust the guy who got thrown out of med school?” Elijah regretted the words even as they passed his lips.
Chem’s eyes stared at the floor. “Screw you, man. I saved
your life, and now you’re worried about my credentials. You weren’t asking about the Hippocratic Oath when you were in Tim’s situation, were you? But now, all of a sudden, you want to get all high and mighty on me. And trust? How do we know that wasn’t you out there? A big metal monster with inhuman strength? That sounds familiar.”
“Don’t be an idiot. I was here the whole time with you. Not to mention, I’m not the only monster that has shown up in Pittsburgh. How do we know that that thing out there isn’t the product of one of your experiments? Trust you? You stole my blood, distorted it, and then allowed it to get stolen. Not to mention what happened to…” Elijah stammered, leaving the thought unsaid.
The tension in the room could be cut with a knife. Rita watch the two argue, her head moving back and forth as if in the front row of the U.S. Open. Elijah knew the words that he volleyed at Chem were hurtful, but he didn’t care.
“I said I was sorry,” Chem said under his breath.
“What?”
“I said I was sorry,” Chem said again. “We can’t do this, you and me. If you’re never going to let that go…I made a mistake. But I didn’t know you then. I didn’t betray you, I did what was necessary for science, for progress. Brooke made her own choice that night. I didn’t give anything to her. She took what she wanted, but it wasn’t ready.”
A tempest battled in Elijah’s gut—the appropriate emotion just out of reach. Anger, guilt, shame—any of them could fit the situation. He took a breath and tried to defuse the strain. “You’re right. Brooke’s death was on her. But if Tim dies because we’re afraid to accept the consequences, then who’s to blame? What if there’s internal bleeding or something?”
Chem closed his eyes and nodded. “Could be. I’ll keep checking his vitals. But there are signs, you know, just like the evidence that you hunt for when you research. Each of us have ways of seeing—methodologies. Trust that I know my way, just like I trust you.”
Elijah pushed on the arms of the chair and stood. He paced to the opposite side of the room. Rita’s gaze burned the back of his head. “I don’t know what’s happening out there, but we need to do something.”
Chem’s face went sullen. “I know.”
Rita lifted herself up into a standing position. Her raincoat looked even more absurd in the morning light. “You’re wrong.”
“What?” Elijah said, taken aback by Rita’s sudden involvement.
“Life’s full of shit. Why make it our problem? You’re not running off to battle genocide somewhere in Africa or war in the Middle East. How is this any different? We didn’t do this, didn’t start it, and we don’t need to end it.”
“We’ve been drawn in,” Elijah said. “How can’t you see that? The evidence is lying in my bed right now.”
“Yeah,” Chem said. “We’re implicated. Tim’s our friend. We can’t take this lying down.”
A low growl emerged from the woman. She lifted her hood and moved toward the door. “Tim’s no friend of mine. And he implicated himself when he decided to run around playing hero. If you follow in his footsteps you’re going to find yourself in the same place…or worse.”
****
Homestead was just waking up as Elijah hopped the last step and landed on the empty street of his new home. He wasn’t certain whether or not working out would have any significant impact on his metal form. But the doughy historian had woken up recommitted to developing his physique. He needed to become a better version of himself, even if it had no effect on the monster inside of him. At the very least, it would give him a better chance to fight or run in case his powers failed him. Fitness was something he always wanted, just not enough to ever do anything about it. The imminent fear of death was a more effective motivation. But it wouldn’t be easy overcoming the long-term deterioration his body had been experiencing for the better part of a decade.
His legs ached as he trotted out his ten-minute miles. Soreness from the previous day’s workout quaked throughout his body. The runs were meant to increase his stamina, but they were also a time to decompress, to think. Knees screaming, he pounded downhill toward the river. Most days, Elijah enjoyed plugging into his earbuds. Depending on his mood, he’d be accompanied by Slate’s “Political Gabfest” or his favorite album of the month. But that day he resigned himself to relative silence. The sounds of the morning provided his soundtrack.
He needed to work things out.
A neighbor lady waved to Elijah on his way out of Homestead. The gray-haired woman in a floral muumuu watered her lawn just like every other morning. He smiled and waved, wondering if she’d still be holding the hose in October. As he passed out of sight, a grin took over his face. If she only knew who I am, what I am. Monsters were on people’s minds, and no one would ever guess that one of them lived among them, just across the street from Little Frick Park.
Elijah’s breathing settled in as he hit the Great Allegheny Passage and turned east. Crushed limestone crunched under each footfall. He was cautious not to step in the Pittsburgh puddles, which never seemed to go away. The Passage connects with the C&O Canal trail and terminates in the nation’s capital. If he had the strength or the will he could run out of this town and away from its problems forever.
The events of the previous day took over his consciousness. First, he played the fight with Chem over and over in his head. A rehearsal of what should have been said, first to win, then to be kind and gracious. Chem was really his only friend now. Then he thought of Tim and pictured a beast pummeling him into a bloody mess. And finally, he imagined poor Rita. She was something from the cover of a checkout line newspaper. The academic wouldn’t have believed if he hadn’t seen her himself—and he still almost didn’t. His world had become otherworldly. Besides his new friends, he couldn’t talk to anyone about it. He would be a laughing stock, a lunatic. Knowledge had always granted him access: to journals, guest lectures, and other possibilities. Now, what he knew isolated him—this understanding cut him off from the world outside of this supernatural one. But it was a reality he could no longer deny.
Trying to clear his mind, he watched the trees pass. In a few months, the leaves would change, the trail would explode into a Western Pennsylvanian kaleidoscope. He hoped he would still be running to see it. He hoped he’d still be alive.
Doing quick math, he imagined he could trot to D.C. in just over a month.
He laughed at the thought as he stopped and bent at the waist to stretch his hamstrings.
Then he turned and started the run back to the life he had chosen.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Boggs mansion sat in the heart of Pittsburgh’s North Side. Russell Boggs made his fortune in upscale department stores, the railroad, and banking. Not unlike Anthony Rizzo today, Boggs had had his fingers in many baskets.
The North Side, and most of its surrounding neighborhoods, had been ravaged by the steel industry’s desertion. However, recent decades saw a movement to gentrify these parts of the city, and old homes like the Boggs place suddenly became desirable real estate.
The mansion briefly served as a bed and breakfast, but Anthony Rizzo considered this a travesty. So, he bought the building for himself.
Rizzo, then in his mid-60s, decided to settle down. The life of crime had taken its toll, and he had passed the mantle of leadership off to his oldest. This information wasn’t hard for Willa to find. Or really for anybody with an Internet connection and half a brain. The Rizzos’ infamy extended well beyond the city. While the family reputation had changed over the two decades since Anthony’s retirement, it was clear that they were still connected—power players in the Pittsburgh political scene.
After her visit to Professor Crane, Willa spent hours researching the family. She tried to understand everything she could about the man who had changed her life by ending her mother’s.
It was knowledge that begged to be used.
On the sidewalk in front of the Boggs mansion, Willa tightened her fists in an attempt to make the shakin
g stop. Until the previous winter, she had been under the assumption that her mother died in a freak accident—a burglary gone wrong. But everything changed when Edwin Weil shared the true story.
Her mother’s murder was intentional.
She thought back to the last conversation she and her grandfather ever had. His pragmatism still ate at her. Edwin’s revelation wasn’t prompted by sympathy or honesty. Rather it was a calculated move designed to manipulate his granddaughter into staying away from the very actions she was now undertaking.
But he was gone, and everything was different.
The wrought iron fence’s gate creaked as she pushed it toward the house. Sticking to the shadows, she skirted her way around to the side entrance. Taking the steps two at a time, she paused at the top of a small porch. She breathed deeply, her eyes closed. She knew Anthony lived alone, but a team of medical providers were always close by.
Willa tried the door. Locked.
Keeping her hand on the knob, she started to chant with confidence.
“Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,
Set ope the doors O soul.”
The lock clicked open and she turned the knob.
More of a museum than a residence, the Boggs mansion’s austere furnishing stood out against its opulent fixtures. Willa waited in the foyer and listened. Silence. She gave herself a self-guided tour of the first floor. Sliding her hand across the mile-long dining room table, she made her way toward the kitchen. Its spotless chrome appliances looked unused. Chances were it hadn’t been truly lived in for years. An article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette chronicled Rizzo’s failing health and the ensuing bed rest. The author noted that the infamous crime lord had few precious days to live.
Willa intended to test that hypothesis.
She climbed the steps, careful of the sound her shoes made as they weighed down each ancient board. The stillness of the mansion threatened to eliminate the element of surprise.
