Enhancer 4

by Wyatt Kane

  Those others, the first responders and other volunteers, Ty couldn’t help but admire. They had come with no intention other than to help, to undo the damage that had been done to their city.

  The Master and his minions were attacking New Lincoln. The secretive super villain seemed intent on destruction, and had the power to bring that destruction to bear. But these people fought against such intent without even knowing that’s what they did.

  And they did so without the added protection Ty possessed.

  The actions of these men and women inspired him. Despite his discomfort, how could he do less than they did?

  So he ignored the ache in his head and the exhaustion in his bones, and worked through the rubble as systematically as he could.

  How lost count of many people he helped. Young and old, some with the body modifications typical of the people of New Lincoln, but many with none. Ty helped them all. Sometimes it was enough just to dig them out from wherever they were, and help them to the edge of the destruction. At other times, he had to call Lilith, to get her to teleport the survivors to the hospital.

  Aside from those times, he saw the demon woman rarely. The area of destruction was extensive, and there were areas Lilith could reach that Ty simply couldn’t.

  When he called her, she would come as quickly as possible, and teleport the survivor away with barely a word. Yet her expression spoke volumes. Working like this, helping people in such a situation, was both traumatic and uplifting. In no way should this have been allowed to happen, yet Lilith could use her power to help. She wasn’t under the control of anyone looking to further their own ambitions. She was simply acting according to her nature.

  She wanted to help, and would continue to do so for as long as it took.

  Ty ran out of nanites sometime around noon. Perhaps he should have called Lilith before doing anything else and returned to the mansion to make more. If he hadn’t been so tired, maybe he would have done that. But before he could think to do so, he stumbled across a young boy partially buried in the rubble.

  7: Jason

  The boy couldn’t have been more than four or five years old. His eyes were closed, and Ty’s first thought was that he was dead. By then, Ty had seen enough dead bodies in the ruins that he was somewhat inured to the sight. But something about this boy, this innocent in the wreckage, spoke to him.

  Ty looked quickly about, seeking the boy’s parents. Seeing no one else nearby and knowing they could be buried under his feet, Ty knelt down and shook the boy by the shoulder.

  “Hey,” Ty said. Because of the layer of dust that covered everything, there appeared to be no major injuries, at least as far as Ty could see. Yet that didn’t necessarily mean much, as he’d already learned. The dead in this disaster area could range from barely recognizable as human to almost entirely undamaged.

  Ty prepared himself for the worst. He tried to close his heart to the boy and got ready to push all thoughts of him aside so he could continue his work.

  But then the boy’s eyes flickered open.

  They were clear, blue, and as calm as two pools of water on a windless day.

  “Am I going to die?” the boy asked. His voice was calm and surprisingly clear, and betrayed no hint of fear.

  Ty’s first instinct was to offer comfort. He tried a grin. “No,” he said. “Of course not. I’m here to help you.” Then he frowned. “Why do you ask? Does it hurt somewhere?”

  The boy studied him seriously for a moment. “No,” he said. “It did a little while ago, but not so much anymore. But I can’t feel my toes.” For a boy so young, he sounded surprisingly articulate. Ty found himself warming to him. Somehow, the boy reminded him of someone he used to know when he was young. A dimly remembered version of someone he used to play with. Perhaps a neighbor? Ty couldn’t really remember. It was so long ago.

  The brother of one of his sister’s friends?

  At the same time, the boy’s answer worried Ty. He wished he had some of his nanites left, and decided to get some replacements as soon as he could. In the meantime, he needed to get to the boy’s lower half, buried under a mound of rubble.

  Ty could have dug the boy out even without the enhanced strength his shield offered. Yet he was careful. He didn’t want to hurt him any more than necessary.

  “Let’s get you out of here,” he said. But before he removed even the first piece of rubble, he asked a question. “What’s your name?”

  “Jason,” the boy said. He kept staring at Ty with his calm, serious eyes. “Are you an angel?” he asked.

  Ty let out a laugh. “No,” he said. Then he realized the boy was wondering about his blue glow. “This is just a new type of tech,” he said. “Like a force field, but a little different. Now, you tell me if anything I do starts to hurt, okay?”

  Jason nodded solemnly, and Ty got to work.

  It didn’t take very long to shift the rubble covering Jason’s lower half. But as he uncovered the boy’s legs, Ty started to worry. It seemed the boy was more injured than he’d originally thought. His legs seemed twisted in odd ways. Worse, the dust that covered everything was a darker shade than it should have been.

  It looked as if it was wet. As if it had been mixed with the boy’s blood.

  Ty paused with what he was doing.

  “Your legs don’t hurt at all?” he asked, careful not to convey how worried he was.

  Jason shook his head calmly. “No. They feel kinda numb. Like, I know they are still there, but the pain has all gone away.” Ty nodded, and the boy looked at him. “Is there something wrong?” he asked.

  Ty shook his head. “No,” he said. At the same time, he really wished he still had some nanites. “I’m going to call a friend of mine,” he said. “She will take you to the hospital, where they’ll make you all better.”

  The boy nodded. “Thank you,” he said. Then, without any change in inflection, he said something that made Ty’s heart ache for him. “I think my mother is dead,” he said.

  Ty didn’t know what to say.

  “Why do you think that?” he asked, thinking that maybe he could find the boy’s mother. Perhaps he would be lucky. Perhaps he could be able to save her as well.

  “She was with me when it happened,” Jason said. “I was sleeping and a loud noise woke me. Then the building fell down, and now she’s not here.”

  Ty understood then that the boy’s mother was probably buried somewhere nearby. “I’ll look for her,” he said, even though he had little hope of finding her. “For now, let’s get you to a hospital.”

  With that, Ty contacted Lilith once again.

  The demon woman took longer to answer than usual.

  “I have my hands full,” she began before Ty could say a word. “Three people, and there’s a fire nearby. I don’t know how long they might last. It might take a minute to get to you. Can it wait?”

  Ty could sense the urgency in Lilith’s voice and knew her situation was desperate. At the same time, his instincts said that the boy needed help right away, that there was something serious going on with his legs. Yet he couldn’t justify taking her away from what she was doing. With fires, even seconds might be important.

  He couldn’t put three lives in danger for one. Especially as Jason didn’t seem to be in any real discomfort.

  “As quick as you can,” he said. With that, he hung up and turned back to Jason. “She might take a minute,” he said.

  The boy nodded, apparently content to wait. “Will you hold my hand?” he asked.

  Ty nodded. He could do that. He deactivated his shield and took the boy’s surprisingly cool hand in his own.

  ◆◆◆

  Ty Wilcox sat in the rubble, holding the young boy’s hand and counting the seconds until Lilith would appear. With the hangover caused by the AZT–407 drug, his brain felt more foggy than usual. He started to second guess everything. Should he have called Lilith back right away? Which was more urgent, her trio of potential burn victims, or Jason’s uncertain injur
y?

  He wondered if he should be murmuring something comforting to the boy, but Jason didn’t seem to need it. He seemed perfectly content to wait, with Ty’s hand gripped in his own.

  Most of all, Ty worried about his lack of nanites. If only he’d been more sparing with them as he shared them out. It didn’t really matter how many he gave to the injured. A single nanite would be as effective as ten million. It would just take a little longer for it to replicate inside a victim’s system.

  And then, as the seconds slowly ticked by, he realized he did have a supply of nanites. He had them in his own bloodstream. The only issue was getting them to Jason.

  Was there some way he could perform a transfusion? Should he cut his hand and let the blood drip over the boy’s wounds? Or would that create more problems than it solved if their blood types proved incompatible?

  Even as he finished the thought, a new idea came to mind. His new skill. Cyber assimilation. He didn’t truly know what it meant, but when he’d woken that morning, the device he wore on his wrist had been partially absorbed by his flesh.

  Assimilation was not the same as absorption. In Ty’s mind, it meant more ‘becoming part of’ than simply engulfing. And when Ty willed it to happen, the process had reversed. The device on his wrist became no longer part of him, but was instead just a device on his wrist.

  Did that mean he could somehow control technology with his body? That he could absorb it and spit it back out on a whim?

  Or did it mean more than that as well?

  Ty shook himself. All that mattered at that moment was the ability to absorb and, more importantly, the ability to un-absorb.

  If simply thinking about it had resulted in his flesh giving up the device, what would happen if he willed himself to expel some of the nanites from his system?

  Ty looked at Jason, who looked completely at peace. The boy’s eyes were still open, and he seemed comfortable. Yet when he saw Ty looking at him, the words he spoke were enough to make the cold hand of fear clutch at Ty’s heart.

  “It’s getting darker now,” the boy said.

  Ty closed his eyes and willed the nanites to re-emerge with everything he had. He imagined them working their way through his bloodstream to the tips of his fingers, to emerge from the pores in his skin. He imagined he could even feel them moving about, and could sense them accumulating like cold water on his fingertips.

  Then he opened his eyes. With a sense of profound relief, Ty saw that the nanites had indeed concentrated themselves at his fingertips. He felt that now everything would be okay. That Jason would be fine. The nanites would replicate in the boy’s system and repair all the damage that had been done. The boy might grieve for his mother, but at least he would live.

  Ty reached over and allowed the nanites to drip from his fingers onto the boy’s shattered legs. He expected them to disappear through the boy’s sodden trousers and into the flesh below to start their work.

  But they didn’t. They just stayed on top, like pale mercury beading on a flat surface.

  “Come on,” Ty muttered. He breathed, frowning, not understanding. “Come on, do your job,” he said.

  But for some reason, the nanites didn’t listen. They stayed where they were, quiescent.

  Ty flicked a glance at Jason’s face, and saw that the boy had closed his eyes. “Jason?”

  Then, between one heartbeat and the next, Ty knew what had happened. The boy’s hand, still clasped in his own, had grown even colder. Ty didn’t let it go, but instead gripped the boy’s shoulder with his other hand as well.

  “Jason?” he repeated. He shook the boy, first gently, and then with more vigor. “Jason!” Ty shouted. In his heart, he already understood the truth. But he didn’t want to believe it. The boy had been okay!

  “Jason! Wake up!” Ty pleaded, but the boy didn’t respond. “Jason! Don’t be dead! Oh, God, please don’t be dead!”

  Ty couldn’t believe it. Moments before, the boy had been alive and conscious. He had been lucid and calm, apparently unconcerned by what had happened. And Ty had thought he would be okay.

  “Jason, don’t do this to me!” Ty said. He’d known that the boy’s injuries were bad, that he needed to get to the hospital. But to have been moments from death? Ty couldn’t believe it.

  With his breath coming in short gasps, Ty felt for a pulse in the boy’s neck. Nothing.

  He laid his head on the boy’s chest, listening for a heartbeat or the sound of him breathing.

  Still nothing. But that didn’t mean anything. There was too much noise. The boy was naturally still, surely it didn’t mean anything. Ty was just listening in the wrong place.

  “Jason!” he shouted again, and shook the boy even harder.

  All thoughts of his headache and tiredness had fled. All that mattered was the boy lying on the rubble. Ty went through a mental inventory of what he could do, and came up with nothing. His skills were all useless. His shield was useless. Not even his nanites could do anything more.

  There was only one more thing he could think of. He gathered the boy into his arms and staggered to his feet. Raising his head to the heavens, Ty shouted as loud as he could. “Lilith! I need you!”

  8: Grief

  Ty didn’t know if Lilith heard him call for her or if she was responding to his earlier message. All he knew was that the demon woman appeared before him within just a few seconds. She looked tired, but not yet to the point of exhaustion. Nothing about her suggested anything other than a willingness to see this task through.

  Yet one look at Ty and her expression became one of alarm.

  “Ty! What’s wrong?”

  Ty didn’t waste time with unnecessary explanations. He was desperate. Distraught. He thrust the body of Jason toward Lilith with a wrenching cry.

  “Take him!” he shouted. “Get him somewhere they can help! He needs to be resuscitated!”

  Barely understanding, Lilith took the boy out of reflex more than anything else, an expression of puzzlement on her face. Yet she figured it out soon enough. With Jason’s head and arms hanging limply, Lilith teleported away, the popping sound of her exit echoing among the debris.

  It felt as if she had taken Ty’s heart with her. Ty had no idea why the boy had affected him so much. All he knew was that he had.

  Feeling suddenly weak, as if all of his muscles had turned to mush, Ty had no choice but to sit down. He didn’t know how long Lilith would be, didn’t know what news she might bring when she returned. All he knew was that he had failed the boy.

  All his power, all his capabilities, and there had been nothing he could do.

  All at once, Ty knew that his focus had been wrong. He’d thought about how to make himself stronger. How to combat villains. But, as Lilith instinctively understood, at its core, being a superhero was about helping people.

  People like Jason.

  And in that, Ty had failed.

  Unbidden, tears flooded Ty’s eyes and ran down his cheeks. He buried his face in his hands and wept for the boy he’d just met as he’d wept for his sister when she had died.

  Ty didn’t know how long it was before Lilith returned. Several minutes. No more than ten. He had spent much of that time wracked with grief mixed with guilt, letting out sobs that he just couldn’t keep in.

  In that time, none of the volunteer rescuers or first responders had come close. He had climbed over and through tons of fallen masonry to get to where he was, and none of the others would risk it. So Ty had been left alone in his grief, alone in his guilt, and was still alone when Lilith popped into existence with an odor of ozone.

  Ty drew a deep breath, mustered his hope, and silently looked to the demon woman. He didn’t trust his voice enough to beg her to tell him Jason was okay.

  Yet one look at her face was enough to tell him otherwise.

  She bit her lip in a hesitant expression he might have found endearing in other circumstances, but shook her head just a little as well.

  Ty’s eyes welled back
with tears, and he buried his face in his hands once again.

  The demon woman sat down beside him and pulled him close until his tears ran dry once again.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “They tried. They really did. But there was nothing they could do.”

  Ty just nodded. He sat as close to Lilith as he could, and said nothing.

  “It’s not easy, this superhero job, is it?” Lilith asked.

  Ty shook his head.

  “But it’s worth it, isn’t it?” Lilith asked. “This is the first time in my life I’ve ever felt needed.”

  Still Ty said nothing. Lilith drew a deep breath and continued. “Come on,” she said. “There might still be others we can help.”

  Ty knew she was right. He gave himself a moment more, then nodded. Lilith took that as a signal to stand, and held out her hand to help Ty back to his feet.

  ◆◆◆

  Ty and Lilith continued to work for a short while more. At first, Lilith was hesitant to leave Ty alone, but soon enough they returned to their earlier routine.

  Ty found a few other people to help, just as he found others who were beyond resuscitation. He did his best, conjuring nanites from his own body as he went, and gradually the red pounding pain of losing Jason started to fade. He understood there was little he could have done to save the boy with the capabilities he currently possessed. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t think about options for the future.

  With his head pounding as it was, he couldn’t think of much that might help, but his headache would fade. Sooner or later, he would be back in the Architect’s workshop with time on his hands. When that happened, he would make this his top priority.

  If he ever found himself in a situation like this again, he would be better prepared.