by P. S. Power
“So, the man of the hour. Enjoying living the life of the rich and famous on the taxpayer's dollar?” His tone didn't sound friendly. Not at all. Well, not everyone was going to hug him and tell him good job, he knew. Life was never like that. Not his life at least.
Brian raised his shoulders and realized that, if this man were a reporter, that wouldn't work. He struggled for a moment and decided to just go with the truth rather than something flip or glib.
“It depends what you mean by life of the rich and famous. I mean, the government – which means the taxpayer – is spending a lot of money to get me trained. If that's what you mean, well, enjoying is... not exactly what I'm doing. Like last week, I got flown to a training exercise in a private jet. That can't be cheap, right? But then I had to eat bugs and pack my clothes with leaves and pine needles for warmth at night and survive without anything, not even a knife, just the clothes I wore in... That's where I left from when the thing with the senator happened and where I went back to.”
The man didn't look happy with the answer and asked about what he did at the base, when he wasn't out camping. Brian laughed, wondering just how bad this guy would make him look in the news, and went on. No matter how bad it was, the guy had to make a living, right?
“I have a nice room, eight outfits – five of them sweats and t-shirts, three copies of what I'm wearing right now. I get two meals and exercise or train for at least nine hours a day, often more. A lot more if you include the firearms work, but that's not very physical. Um, more exercise, not meals, that part stays pretty constant. I've had some weight issues in the past and need to be fit, so try to not overeat now. The training is going up. In the mornings I've been walking or running, but I don't know how far. It varies, depending on how hurt I am...”
A female voice came from behind him.
“About twenty to thirty miles, Brian. At least on the days you can run. I've seen you walk nearly ten in conditions were I wouldn't be out of medical.” The woman speaking stared at the reporter. “We put him out in some of the harshest survival training in the world, and it's a break for him, Richard. Even then he saved nearly fifteen people directly during that time, from the middle of nowhere. He's not one of us soft Team One people.” Brian thought hard seeing a woman he only vaguely recognized. The last time he'd seen her he'd been knocking her into a wall, hitting her with a convenient Prime, so he could run away from her and the rest of her team. The pretty violet costume lady.
The surly man suddenly lit up and took her hand warmly. For a second Brian thought the chubby fellow was going to kiss the back of it, but he merely bowed over it slightly.
“Georgia! I didn't think they were going to let the rest of you out here with this mob. Good to see you. So... Yi isn't one of your first squad? I'd thought... Well he's been out here enough and he does have some presence that polls well...”
The woman shook her head, lightly red-brown and bobbed, cute he realized, when she wasn't standing ominously in her superhero costume. He didn't have a clue what kind of powers she had at all, so how she would have kicked his butt when they'd last seen her escaped him. Maybe an area of effect thing? Tightly packed as she was, with her own group, would have stopped it from being used. She made a point of holding the man's thick hand, stroking the back of it gently. Neither of them showed any sign of wanting to let go.
“No, Brian is on Team Three. Where the most powerful operatives all are. The people we send when no one else can get something done. Or when they have to go alone, without back-up, sometimes against incredible odds. The taxpayers could be spending twenty-times what they do on them and still be getting their money's worth. You know about the Jackal, but did you know Brian also took out the Blood Brothers, all four of them. By himself. Just to protect one old man who's home they invaded. No one's been able to touch them for years. And the Compton River serial killer, you heard that he was killed trying to get his last victim? Seventy-two girls and women over twenty years. Gone now thanks to him.” Her finger pointed at Brian meaningfully, touching him on the nose in a way which must have looked cute, because several nearby people laughed.
“In the last three years Team One has taken on twenty-seven high powered Infected and brought them to justice. Team Two does that in a year, easy. Brian's done that in the last two and a half months. Alone. And all his power does is get him there.” The woman, Georgia, teared up. A real tear running down her cheek. She didn't wipe at it though.
“He's also spent more time in medical in that time than all of Team One and Two put together, been starved and beaten and almost died so many times that if you and I could split it up between us, we'd snap, both of us, and no one in the whole world would blame us for it either... Rich and famous? I checked his purchases at the store and all he's gotten have been basic toiletries and two haircuts. Forty-three dollars worth of goods and services in all. He doesn't even own his clothing. Yes, he rode on a private jet. His team leader's, paid for by her parents, not the taxpayers... All that's even true, by the way Richard. I know you'll check it out.” She dimpled and kissed the man on the cheek and then winked at Brian.
The whole thing had made him feel uncomfortable. Fighting, even when needed, didn't make you a good person. It was what you did to survive and help others live that made it important, but not a virtue. Besides, he had a lot to learn about it to even be halfway decent. Right now he knew that he still kind of sucked. That he'd gotten lucky helped, but that didn't mean he could slack off.
Two hours and six reporters later, the whole thing broke up. Brian asked Karen to come down to nine after dinner, trying to be cheery about the whole thing. She looked down and nodded, seeming shy suddenly. He could get with Marcia at dinner, but had no clue how to get in touch with Jason. He found Christian in her office, the first time he'd ever gone in, and asked her how that would be done. She chuckled at him and pointed toward the wall next to her.
“One door over, he's here.” She smiled at him, her look less...disgusted with him than usual.
She gestured at him, indicating his whole body.
“You've been in... horrible pain and discomfort the whole time I've known you, Brian. Getting close to you at all has been like, well, like having your pain and the emotional stuff on top of my own... Wicked. OK, it's bizarre as all heck that you've got Karen's little sister in your head, but as long as she's being helpful... Well, you'd be surprised what some of the people around here actually have going on inside. And no, I won't tell everyone everything, I'll leave that to you, unless it becomes important. Then I'll do what's best for everyone concerned. Until then...” She waved her hand airily.
Brian hid his shock at first and even considered lying about Dharma – Becky – but realized that would be a waste of everyone's time. The girl appeared and Christian's eyes went wide.
“Wow, that's... Is it really you, Dharma? Are you her ghost?” The blonde team leader looked so soft in her pink fuzzy sweater, fifties style skirt and pearls, but didn't back away from the potential ghost in fear. In fact she leaned forward, interested.
For her part, Becky just smiled and walked over to the woman, giving her a hug that they both seemed to feel. Brian didn't feel her. He felt a little jealous for a second.
“Don't know, Chris. I really don't. I doubt it. Probably a copy that Karen's power made somehow. But... I feel like me. Just more than I was. The inside of this guy's mind is... intense. We should chat sometime...” She looked at Brian meaningfully.
Taking the hint, he excused himself to go see Jason and ask if he'd meet with everyone after dinner. He didn't blink or ask about what, just nodded and asked where. Brian smiled and told him that they'd planned to meet at the round table outside his office door in the common room area.
So someplace easy to find.
The meeting went well and felt congenial and even happy to Brian. Everyone left a little before eight-thirty, leaving instructions for him to be asleep – or at least in bed – by nine. It reminded him of being twelve, orde
red into bed without being tired and told it was for his own good. The only difference here was that Doctor Kern came and gave him a shot of something fifteen minutes before that, making him sleep hard, a dark, warm feeling with no particular discomfort for once.
He woke to a pounding on the door at six-twenty. He knew it was six-twenty because Karen stood on the other side of the door and told him. Loudly. Several times. She let him shave and brush his teeth, get on socks and shoes, and took him directly to the track on fourteen, sleep still in his eyes and feeling fuzzy-headed and like he wanted to crawl back into bed.
“I know. But you can't afford to hang out and lounge around like a big softy anymore...” She told him as they walked, not giving him a chance to speak first. He shrugged, remembering that this had been all part of the plan. Kind of his plan too. Mainly Marcia's, with some help from Jason, but he had asked... So his fault.
He learned two things that day, both shook him a little bit. More than a little really. The first he should have guessed, of course, all things considered. He wasn't in nearly the shape he'd thought he was.
They started with a two mile slow run to warm up, which felt fine to him, good even, but then Karen had him run sprints, as fast as he could for thirty seconds, gave him two minutes to recover, then had him do it again. They did this eight times. By the third one he spent his two minutes gasping and wheezing and by the sixth the only thing that kept him from getting sick violently was that he didn't have anything in his stomach. When they finished the eighth one he wanted to collapse and just lay on the ground for a while, catch his breath, and maybe reconsider that being drugged into a virtual coma thing. Instead he got a two minute break and had to run again, this time at a reasonable pace, for almost two hours at just under a speed that caused his stomach to cramp up. He did get to have water, but that got handed to him in measured doses, so he didn't have too much at any one time, in a small pink water bottle.
Then he'd apparently earned the right to switch to weight lifting, forty-five minutes of heavy weights followed by running, almost literally, down to fifteen for the next part of the day. Karen stayed and watched this part, but the actual instruction came from a slightly-built man named Carl who had him work on a strange moving climbing wall. The whole thing rotated vertically, like a treadmill on end, and stood about fifteen feet high. The hand holds were just projections that moved out of the wall at regular intervals, each about the size of a grapefruit. At first.
After about ten minutes, just as he started getting the hang of things, the wall sped up, Carl calling out instructions and hints. The red and blue projections popping out as the belt like wall came down at him, instead of being out the whole time. He started feeling his shoulders and legs burn by twenty minutes.
Carl apparently didn't understand that he wasn't one of the more physically oriented people at the base, because he made the whole thing go faster twice more, forcing Brian to scramble as he panted, trying not to fall off the wall. He called things out, not sounding mean, but his voice definitely having a serious edge to it.
“That's kind of pathetic, Brian... I expect a lot more out of you, understand? You have to be ready for anything, all the time...” Carl, muscular, thin, and pleasant sounding, turned the machine up another notch, his gray climbing clothes looking worn. Tight, shiny pants and a loose white shirt with no sleeves, shifted around as he stared at the wall. After a while, Brian thought he might be done when the guy called out that he looked better.
Instead the projections changed size. Some were suddenly a lot bigger, about the size of a bowling ball, and about as round, others about the size of slightly rounded ends of candy bars in varying shapes. The speed didn't let off, but he had to work twice as hard to not fall off. Brian scrambled and shifted, nearly losing it time after time, Carl yelling at him when he wasn't groaning. It wasn't boot-camp-like screaming, just suggestions, but the man clearly didn't sound happy with his performance.
After an hour of this the wall stopped.
“Get down, Brian. We need to talk.” The man looked at Karen shaking his head slowly. “Look, Brian... What you just did here is level one on the easiest piece of equipment we have down here. If you want to be what you really can, you've got to let go of what you thought possible before, and accept that the old rules don't apply to you anymore. They can't. Failure really isn't an option for you. Now, I'm not saying you can't do this, really, I know you can. I checked your information carefully before I even agreed to let you come down here at all... But you have to want it. I'll see you tomorrow, and we aren't starting this thing on one, so be ready.”
Brian took a deep breath, feeling almost like he wanted to cry, but swallowed the feeling and nodded. He'd have to do better and didn't have time for self-pity or slacking off. The thing was, he'd been doing the best he could, at least Brian thought so. Did he have more he could make himself do somehow? His arms and legs felt sore already and he hadn't even gotten halfway through the day. Not just tired or heavy, but bad, aching, and starting to stiffen up a little, his hands felt swollen and fat. Flexing his fingers he realized that the swelling wasn't just a feeling, his fingers really had gotten bigger from all the stress placed on them.
Carl patted him on the back and sent him and Karen away. On the way up the stairs the woman nudged him with her shoulder.
“I can't believe it, Brian! Jason expected Carl to throw you out after ten minutes and never let you return. Marcia suggested you go down to teach you that not everything would be possible, not to make it part of your regular schedule. This is... interesting. Carl must like you. It's part of his contract that he can refuse to work with anyone you know. He literally doesn't have to let anyone onto fifteen. Not even the Director can visit without permission. They tried to have the President come down once to tour the facility and Carl kicked him off the floor. He did let a couple of the secret service guys stay though. It was funny. It was just that the President was distracting everyone, I think.” She gave him a little one-armed hug at the top of the stairs.
Then it was back to the gym, where he had to alternate running one lap at his normal pace with a faster one. It wasn't a sprint, but hovered at the edge of discomfort, his stomach starting to just barely cramp up on those laps again. Just past eleven-thirty Karen stopped him.
“You get lunch now, food should be waiting for you and a new set of sweats. Shower first, eat, and meet Marcia in the gym at twelve-fifteen. You get forty minutes for all this, so hurry. Oh, eat all the food too, even if you aren't hungry.”
That, as hungry as he felt, took work. The food was normal enough, roast beef and cheese sandwiches and salad, about what he ate most days – when fish and bugs weren't on the menu and he wasn't acting like a little “bitch-man” as Dharma so charmingly called any mood not totally dedicated to the task at hand. It was just that the plate of food Mark put in front of him had nearly twice what he'd gotten used to having each day. He got it all down, but felt a little sick after doing it.
Penny teased him about being fattened up for slaughter, like a prize cow, which made him laugh and repeat it for Mark, and Chris, who actually came to sit with everyone for lunch for once. Mark smiled too, but shook his head, looking toward where Penny sat.
“Probably not. Given the current training program we probably won't be able to keep weight on him, even doubling what he eats. Pretty soon were going to be forced to cut his training time each day, Jason is practically pulling his hair out over the idea. I'm thinking supplemental meals – health shakes and stuff...” He walked off then, leaving his own plate on the table half eaten.
Just after finishing lunch, Brian headed back to the gym, where for an hour he and Marcia did nothing but run drills on the empty red floor mat toward the back of the room – punching, kicking, throws, and locks – over and over again.
She made him hit her part of the time, and throw her to the ground, with varying levels of resistance on her part. It wasn't that different from what he'd done before, just faster and wit
hout any breaks. She told him to do something and if he did it wrong, she quickly showed him how to do it again, often painfully, then made him do it until it was good enough.
Then they worked weapons, which mainly meant she started with a weapon, then he had to try and take it from her and use it to “kill” her. If he could. Marcia smiled at one point and suddenly went all out, at least in speed, making it almost impossible for him to even touch her. He kept after her and as she pretended to break his neck, stabbed her in the throat. The knife – real and sharp, something she insisted on for this level of training, so he'd learn both to be careful and not fear blades too much – bounced off her and nicked his other arm, leaving a trail of blood.
Then Tobin came and sang at him while Brian tried to hit him with a padded stick, one about the length of his arm. The world shifted in and out of focus and turned into a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors, spinning as the smaller man with his big head and eyes and overly long arms danced in and out of range. The awful part was that the man was so good at singing that Brian wasn't sure he could have easily hit him even without the effect of the powers. It would be like smashing one of Mark's cakes. Just wrong somehow. It took half an hour for Brian to score a clean hit, and he highly suspected that Tobin had just grown bored and decided to let Brian be successful so that Marcia would let him go.
Then he learned another hard fact, the second of the day; he wasn't nearly as good a shot as he'd thought either. Not even close at all.
Jason came and took him to the firing range, where he didn't get to have normal targets any more, only moving ones that refused to hold a regular pattern, swimming and floating through the air one minute, and then rushing toward him faster than any human could possibly run. Unless they were Infected. All the targets looked different too. Some like regular black silhouettes, but some were pictures of real people. Including a few of little kids. He had to shoot them all.
