"This should have been me," Bedlam said.
"It's too late to change that," Kate said. "So you can either quit or make the best of what you have."
Bedlam glared at her but said nothing.
"Titus, did you see a generator anywhere from above," Kate said softly.
Bedlam connected eyes with her and nodded gently.
Titus pointed toward the back wall and limped over. Kate and Bedlam followed him. Against the back wall stood a machine, tall and vaguely designed, humming louder than anything else in the room.
Kate and Titus stepped back.
Bedlam walked up to it. She paused, almost as if in prayer. And then she punched the generator. Again and again, she slammed her cyborg fists, tearing the guts from it, sending sparks and parts flying. She screamed, primal pain and anguish, something dark and lonely and terrifying and scared. Titus still in werewolf form, turned his back to let her rage. He knew also what that feral energy felt like.
Kate simply watched the destruction, the loss of control, the way each strike was like a heartbeat and each piece torn away a shard of that same heart.
One by one, the tubes of blue light flickered and winked out. They were left alone in the dark. Kate felt Titus's hand, now human, then his arm, grip hers. She wanted to pull away, but she let him take her hand and held on tightly herself. They left Bedlam to sob in the darkness for as long as she needed. To mourn for the dead, and to mourn for herself.
Chapter 39:
Books of secrets
Doc Silence stood hunched over his desk, piles of books, some written in languages older than humanity itself, opened haphazardly and spilled on top of each other. They included books of magic and secrets, tomes written by wise men and mad ones, by gods and monsters, by wizards and priests.
In these books, Doc once thought, were the answers to everything. But tonight, they seemed to be just stacks of paper. Kindling for a world on the edge of burning.
He picked up a small book, bound in blue, its pages so papery thin as to appear made of mist. He set this aside in favor of a massive tome, so big it required both hands to lift safely. This one he'd stolen from a demon king, in another world, when Doc behaved bravely, yet stupidly and did foolish things without worrying who they might hurt.
None of them revealed the secrets he wanted. None of them offered the answers he sought.
Well, he thought. You don't possess all the books in the universe. The answer might be out there in some other wizard's library. Or maybe there just wasn't an answer this time. No secret spell, no weapon to turn toward the sky and save them.
He wondered if there had been beings like him living on the other worlds the Nemesis fleet had destroyed. Magicians who waved their fingers at the sky and caused things to change. Men these aliens defeated simply through relentless force. Magic was not Earth's alone, he knew. It weaved its web across all things.
"Haven't seen you hit the books in a long time." Jane stood in the doorway to Doc's suite. She leaned against the frame. Out of her costume, she wore the sort of clothes she'd first dressed in when she arrived in the Tower, jeans and a plain white tee under a checkered shirt, two sizes too big, old canvas sneakers on her feet. She'd pulled her hair back into a ponytail, but it still glowed with the reddish light of a low flame.
"Haven't had to," Doc said.
"Thought you knew everything."
"Fate has a way of reminding you that you can't possibly know everything," Doc said. He set the book down and sat on the edge of his desk, folding his arms across his chest. Jane stared at his arms, and Doc remembered how rarely she saw the mystical tattoos that covered most of his upper body. His long coat hung over the back of a chair, leaving his arms bare from his short sleeves down.
"What are you looking for?" she asked.
"Answers," Doc said. "I can't help wondering if there's a spell, some big bang I can conjure to stop them. All these books, spells, theories, and it just feels like a collection of parlor tricks when I really need something more powerful."
"You got us," Jane said. "How much more powerful you need?"
"Something potent enough so I don't have to take you up there with me," Doc said.
Jane tucked her hands in her pockets, bounced the heel of her right shoe against the toe of her left rhythmically. She didn't look like a hero then, in the dim light, her eyes cast to the floor. She looked young and like someone who deserved a chance to grow up normal and happy. Doc wondered if he'd stolen that from her, if bringing her to the Tower eliminated her chances at living an ordinary life. She was born extraordinary. Fate had something in store for her from the moment she took her first breath.
That isn't fair, Doc thought. It's a cruel and selfish world that thrusts so much power and responsibility on someone so young. We did our best, first the Hawkins and then Doc himself, to give Jane a chance to be happy. But people like her never stood a chance. They would always and forever be asked to place the weight of the world on their shoulders so others wouldn't have to.
Doc had loved in his life. Family, friends, partners. In spite of living in the darkness and looking up at the world from the most shadowy of places, he had always loved. But there was no living being he cared more about in his entire strange and inconsistent life. Everything good Doc had in him he'd given to make sure Jane grew up to be a hero. If I've done anything right in this world, he pondered, it is that I haven't failed her yet.
"What are you looking at?" Jane asked.
"Just thinking."
"About?"
"I'm going to have to borrow a few more books," he said and scooped up his jacket from the back of the chair.
"You're going to her, aren't you?" Jane said.
"Natasha has books I don't," he said.
Jane gave a disapproving glare.
"Don't make any deals with the devil," she said.
Doc waved his hand dismissively.
"I gave up dealing with devils years ago," Doc said. "Bad for your health."
Then they shared a short, honest, comfortable laugh. They really hadn't laughed much in recent months, Doc thought. They'd seen too many dark things, been through too much.
"Hey," Jane said.
"What?" Doc said.
Jane threw her arms around him in a hug. She radiated warmth, like stone on a sunny day. The solar-powered girl. Doc hugged her back; guilt gnawed at his belly. The worst of things always came down to them, he knew. The others had faced down terrible threats, but in the end, there was so much Jane and Doc did to protect their friends and each other, to keep the monsters at bay. He brought them all together, he taught them to save the world, but even now, even knowing and trusting his protégés, even with all his faith in them, there was nothing he wouldn't do to save them.
"We're all going to come back from this," Jane said.
"Yeah," Doc said. He knew his tone was unconvincing.
"Fine," Jane said. "I'll be optimistic for both of us. That's always been my job, hasn't it?"
Chapter 40:
Let's not lead with that
Billy almost had a chance to knock on the door to Emily's room but, in spite of the fact she was wearing enormous headphones and being overly engrossed in something on the computer, she spoke up.
"I know you're there, Billy Case," she said. "Since when do you knock?"
He shrugged and entered the room. Surprisingly spare for a geek culture hoarder like Emily, but like all of the Indestructibles, she had a tendency to keep truly personal effects elsewhere. All of them were, in some way, afraid the base would someday be attacked and didn't want too much of their personal lives on display here. Billy visited Emily's room back at her mother's house. She was certainly not, by nature, this tidy.
He flopped down on the bed and looked up at the ceiling.
"Things going that well, sunshine?" Emily said.
"I leave for a little while and I find out we've been secretly invaded for what, years? You guys almost die a few times, and now I get to be the
harbinger of death when I try to describe just how bad the fleet was when I found it," Billy said. "Yeah, things are going south."
Emily spun around in the chair and tossed her earphones on a desk.
"So you met the other guy? Horizon?"
"Met, yeah. Can't say we had much time to talk," Billy said. "I'm halfway between impressed because he didn't really abandon Earth and terrified because he seems like he kind of had a massive mental breakdown and went to become a hermit out near Jupiter."
"But," Emily said, holding up a finger. "You got to see Jupiter."
"Saturn, actually," Billy said. "We zipped past the other planets on the way there. Dude wouldn't let me sightsee."
We did, in fact, have more important things to do, Dude said.
"I know," Billy said.
"Was that to me or him?" Emily said.
"Him," Billy said.
"But right. You saw Saturn. The planet. How was that?"
"Amazing," Billy said.
"I knew it would be!" Emily said, palpable glee in her voice.
"The whole thing made me feel so… insignificant. The universe is so big, Em. We're these little specks of dust and we think we're the center of the universe but we're just…"
"What was the best part?" Emily said.
"The rings of Saturn," Billy said. "Before the fleet spotted me and I almost died. The rings were the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
Emily shot him a dirty look.
"What, are you seriously fishing for a compliment right now?"
"I'm just busting on you," she said, laughing. "If we survive this, can we go out there? I don't care how."
"I don't know. I have no idea how we'd get you out there," Billy said. "Dude lets me not need to breathe in space. You'd need… y'know. Help."
We'll find a way, Dude said softly.
"Really?" Billy said.
You have to actually survive the coming invasion, but if we all do, we'll figure it out.
"Is Dude offering to be our tour guide?" Emily said.
"Something like that," Billy said. "I think he's incentivizing us to survive."
"All right then, let's not die," Emily said. "Sidebar: I think we need to alert the public."
"That sounds like a terrible, terrible idea."
"Not if we craft an appropriate press release," Emily said. "Like, for instance, how would you describe the fleet?"
"It's this nightmarish green-black thing, like living space ships. They're halfway between bugs and plants and they might be immortal. Nothing about them makes sense in a human, logical way. You look and then it's hard to remember what you saw because they don't seem real."
"That sounds positively Lovecraftian," Emily said.
"Let's not lead with that in the press release," Billy said. He put his hands out in front of him as if laying out a headline on a newspaper page. "Breaking News: Lovecraftian alien body snatchers to invade Earth, film at eleven."
"Can we call them Shoggoths?"
"Seriously?"
"Gugs?"
"Now you're just making words up," Billy said.
"Trust me, these are the least weird names in Lovecraft stories," Emily said. "Changing gears, what about slitheens?"
"What?"
"Oods? Mindflayers?"
"How about we just call them aliens," Billy said.
"Fine, but that's boring," Emily said. "We have a chance to come up with something original. The gargleflargs. The poofniddles. The vormaghasts."
"Are you seriously just throwing syllables together and hoping they stick?" Billy asked.
"I am 'writing,'" she said. "Don't stifle my creativity, Billy Case."
He exhaled and sat up abruptly.
"Who would we tell, anyway? Can't trust the media not to blow this out of proportion," he said.
"We're being invaded by aliens," Emily said. "I believe it is literally impossible to blow this out of proportion."
"But still," Billy said. "Full-blown panic in the streets won't help."
"Might be fun, though," Emily said.
"Panic in the streets is fun?" Billy said.
Emily shrugged insolently.
"You're such an anarchist," Billy said.
"But you missed me when I was gone," Emily said.
"Sure did."
"Glad you didn't die in space, Billy Case," Emily said.
"Me too," Billy said. "Cause now I can die on Earth instead."
"It's that bad up there, huh," Emily said, spinning her desk chair back and forth aimlessly, then letting herself spin all the way around one time.
He shook his head in silence.
Chapter 41:
We're killing ourselves
Jane waited in the landing bay for the returning Kate and company, watching as the trio climbed out of the little vehicle they'd used to run their most recent mission. If things hadn't been so dire—and if Kate hadn't stepped off the craft looking fit to murder someone—it would have been funny to see all three of them squeezed into one little flying machine, but they'd clearly been in a fight, and that alone swallowed up any humor Jane might have found in it all.
Kate stormed toward her, pulling her cowl down so it hung like a hood off the back of her uniform. She punched the nearest wall.
"Lunatics," Kate said, slamming it again. "Lunatics. We've got an alien invasion force and there are actual human beings willing to sell us out because they think these things are some kind of religion. Our own people. We're killing ourselves, Jane."
"What happened?" Jane asked.
Titus, as always looking worse for wear but simultaneously the least upset of the three, explained.
"Hosts," he said. "We found another one of the traitors of the Children of the Elder Star with a facility full of host-bodies for the aliens."
Kate slapped the wall a third time.
"How do we win when our own species seems incapable of not destroying itself voluntarily?" she said.
"Are you okay?" Jane said.
Covered in soot, Bedlam brought up the rear, small cuts evident on her face and the exposed skin of her arms. She had a sense of sadness to her. Something changed.
"Bedlam?" Jane said.
The cyborg shook her head. She walked over to the wall where Kate had been venting her frustrations and leaned against it, casting her eyes at her feet.
"Do we need to go back there?" Jane asked.
Kate, who was pacing back and forth, paused and said, "It's taken care of. But now I'm wondering how many more of these places exist. They're here building armies of host bodies for those parasite creatures to use."
"Were they… powered? Like us? If this was one of the members of the Children of the Elder Star…" Jane asked.
"They'd been modified, but they weren't actually alive," Titus said softly. "They were amplified bodies. Kept in some sort of suspended animation."
"So for our aliens to use a host body they don't even have to be living," Kate said.
"Do we know that for sure?" Jane said. After Kate gave her a frustrated shrug, she looked to Titus for confirmation.
"It may have just been an experiment," he said.
Kate ran her gloved hands through her hair and made a low, frustrated growling sound.
"I… I am a misanthrope on a good day, guys," she said. "You know this. I see something like this and I feel a little justified."
Kate stormed off, leaving the rest of the group behind. Titus and Jane exchanged a look; Titus nodded his head and then gestured for Jane to follow her down the hall. Assuming Titus knew who Kate needed to talk to more, Jane took his advice and ran to catch up. "You okay?" Jane said.
Kate stopped walking; her shoulders slumped.
"I don't know how we beat this," Kate said. "I'm just a person. Just an ordinary person. I can't keep this up. Not against something like this."
"Yes you can," Jane said.
"No, I mean—we've fought monsters," Kate said. "We've fought evil people before. But we're what, six, seven peo
ple against… it's not the odds, Jane. It's the relentlessness. We keep hitting them and they don't stop."
Jane smiled.
"Well now you know what it's like to fight you," she said.
Kate glared at her like she'd said the most ridiculous thing in the world, but then she almost—almost—cracked a smile.
"It was tough on Bedlam," Kate said.
Jane frowned.
For Kate to say something about another person's emotional state was rare; it must have been truly awful for her to bring it up.
"How was it on the two of you, though?" Jane asked. "I can't remember the last time I've seen you this rattled."
Kate sighed and peeled off her fighting gloves, tucking them into her belt.
"I've always hated wasting my time. What we saw tonight," Kate said. "Could be a waste of our time."
Jane leaned against the wall, folding her arms across her chest.
"Why do you do all this, Kate?"
"What?" Kate asked.
"Why are you a hero?" Jane said. "You were doing this before any of us were. There on your own in leotard and painted-on mask fighting muggers months before Doc found you. Why?"
"To be better," Kate said.
"Why else."
"Because I didn't want anyone else to go through what I went through," Kate said.
Jane nodded.
"Has that changed?"
Kate didn't answer, and simply looked back at her silently.
"Do yourself a favor," Jane said. "Go down to the streets. Do what you do. Jump around on rooftops. Go watch the ballet. The Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler is playing at the City Performing Arts Center."
"You expect me to sit through a show," Kate said.
"It's the end of the world again," Jane said. "You should see one last ballet just in case."
Kate let out a soft grunting noise that might have been an assent to Jane's suggestion and started to walk away. She turned back.
"Thanks, Jane."
Like A Comet: The Indestructibles Book 4 Page 20
