Park smiled. Got you!
But as he twisted his wrists to seize Shockwave’s own forearms, to mold the flesh right off them — which would give the bastard something else to think about until Park could get away — he encountered some kind of barrier. Too late, he realized that Shockwave was generating more kinetic energy right through the strange material of his red costume; not enough to push Park’s hands away, but more than sufficient to prevent him from getting any closer.
Then Shockwave smiled back as he shifted that energy into his hands ...
... and crushed Park’s radius and ulna bones into virtual sacks of gravel.
Park screamed.
But his voicing of his tremendous pain was caught short — partially, at least — when Shockwave released one of his forearms and slapped him hard enough to bring stars to his eyes.
“Don’t wanna hear it!” he snapped as he let go of Park’s other ruined arm to push him back against the motel bed.
Park continued to keen in agony — he couldn’t help it — as he cradled his limbs against his belly and slumped on the floor, making no further attempts to get away. How could he? Between his ankle and his forearms, the bastard had crippled him.
Shockwave squatted in front of him, just far enough away that Park couldn’t grab him, even if he had been physically able to try.
“We’re gonna have a little chat now, Doc, and you’re gonna cooperate.” The man smiled, and it was so sneering, so cold yet fuming with hate, that even through his tremendous pain, it gave Park a chill. “You’re gonna cooperate, vehemently.”
PCA
Mark forced himself to hold still for a moment. Just hold still, and breathe.
Park appeared subdued. Messing up his arms that bad — and his right foot wasn’t looking too good, either — demonstrated how serious Mark was. The problem was, he wanted to keep going, he wanted to beat this man’s face to a bloody, messy pulp, something he knew he could do without firing a single shockwave.
You need him, he reminded himself. Mike needs him, to fix what he did. So don’t kill him, you dumbass, or what’s the point of this?
The point of this would be revenge, but he was trying to keep his head screwed on a little better than that.
Mike needs him, he repeated over and over, Mike needs him, Mike needs him ...
In the meantime, Park was staring down at his ruined arms, then up at Mark, then back down at his arms. The man was waiting for what would happen next, knowing that the hammer could fall any second.
Mark was fine with that. Let the son of a bitch stew, while he tried to get himself under control.
“Goddamn!” came an old voice from behind him.
Mark didn’t even need to turn around. He knew who it was: The old fellow he’d flashed his badge at in the front office, the one who confirmed Park’s room number. The Gladius had been able to narrow it down to this shithole motel, and he had been pretty sure of which room — this new dude seemed to have a bottomless bag of tricks, Mark had to give him that — but Mark figured it didn’t hurt to double-check, to be sure.
He knew that’s what Mike would’ve done.
“It’s all right,” he called over his shoulder without taking his eyes off Park. “Everything’s under control. Contact the PCA about the damages to the door. Don’t worry, we got insurance out the wazoo.”
He waited for a response, but was content to hear the old guy’s retreating footsteps.
Then Mark leaned over Park, and let all his pent up anger, his hatred show — not with a snarl or sneer, but with the coldest of grins. “You know,” he said, “PCA protocol would say now’s probably a good time to slap one of our trusty ol’ psi-jammers on your forehead, make sure you don’t still try to use your powers, on yourself or me. But my partner — you remember him, right? — he’s the one who carries all those gadgets around in that coat of his. But he’s not here right now. And honestly?” He allowed a small shockwave to ripple across his whole chest, down his arms, and outward to his fists. “That wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. Because I’m hopin’ you keep tryin’ to fight back, you little shit. I really am. I hope you give me all the excuse in the world to keep ... layin’ ... into you.”
“L-look ...” the asshole said through pain-tightened lips. “I ... I’ll do wh-whatever you want. I ... I’ll fix your face, for free! I’ll ...”
Mark chuckled at that, and was pleased to see that it came out dark enough to make Park recoil. “Oh, you’re gonna fix a face, all right. You’re gonna fix my partner’s face. And yeah, you’ll do it ‘for free.’ No question ‘bout that.”
Park blinked some of the sweat from his eyes, then nodded. “Okay, okay, sure. I ... I’m glad to hear that he’s alive.”
“No thanks to you.”
“I ... I wasn’t trying to kill him. You understand that, d-don’t you? I-I just wanted to get away, and he was between me and the d-door, so...” He saw the look on Mark’s face, and swallowed. “I-I-I ... I’m just offering to make it r-right, offering to ... to undo s-some bad choices. I’m offering ...”
Mark had enough. He reached out with a casual hand, placing it on the man’s left kneecap.
Park blurted, “W-wait—!”
Mark did not wait. He cycled a small shockwave through his palm. Not enough to turn the bones into powder, like he’d nearly done to the man’s forearms, but he made sure the kneecap and all that soft tissue around it felt the pressure.
Oh, yeah, Park felt it all right. His latest scream said as much.
When the guy finally shut up and settled down into sobbing, tears streaming from his eyes and snot running from his nose, Mark removed his hand.
“That,” he said, “was to get your undivided attention.”
Park blubbered something that might have been “You already had my attention!” but it was hard to be sure. Mark chose to take it as such.
“You’re not ‘offering’ me shit, Doc,” he explained. “I am telling you what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna fix my friend’s face. You’re gonna put him back together, right down to the goddamn millimeter.”
Park inclined his head down toward his ruined arms.
“Park, I swear to God, if you try to say that you can’t do it because of your arms, I’m gonna shatter both of your knees and crush your nutsack into oblivion.”
Park slumped without comment.
“Good call. Because if you can erase my friend’s face, give women tits bigger than watermelons, and most of all, massage your own arms until they’re pumped up bigger than Lou Ferrigno’s, I’m pretty damned sure you can fix everything I’ve done to you. So far.”
Park just nodded, sort of.
“But the reason we’re havin’ this particular conversation right here and now, in this cheap-ass love nest instead of PCA headquarters, is ‘cause you got away from me this morning ... but you didn’t do it alone. Did you?”
Park hesitated, then shook his sad head.
“So ... where’s your friend?”
Park appeared sincerely confused by that, so Mark decided to clarify matters for the dumbass.
“Where’s the shadow-maker, dumbass? Where’s the Skygger?”
Park gasped under his breath and shook his head again, and this time the gesture was bigger. “I-I don’t know.”
Mark rotated his hand, cracking his wrist in the general direction of Park’s kneecap. “You’re gonna have to do better than that, Doc.”
“P-please!” the man pleaded. “It’s not l-like that! It’s ... it’s not my friend!”
Did Park really know where the Skygger was? Maybe not. But Mark wasn’t going to let him off easy, not after what he did to Mike.
Besides, maybe he did know where it was.
“Last chance, Doc.”
“I swear, I swear! It comes and goes as it pleases! It does whatever it wants, whenever it wants! It ...”
Park’s eyes widened, and a heartbeat later, Mark realized why.
The room was getting darker. Way d
arker, fast.
Mark leaped to his feet, willing his shockwaves to flare up just beneath his skin on all sides. Clenching his fists, he turned in a slow circle, scanning the small room, ready to send up a kinetic shield or fire offensive shockwaves.
But there was nothing to see. Hell, he could barely see anything at all — the motel room lamps, the light coming in from the hallway ... it was like the world was a movie that was fading to black around him.
Come on, you bastard, he thought. Show yourself.
An inch at a time, Mark rotated all the way around ...
... and in the murkiness of the room, he could barely make out that Park’s throat had been torn wide open.
“Jesus!” he barked, backing away from the fresh corpse until he collided with the room’s cheap desk. Then he willed his shield into existence, and the desk was crushed up against the wall behind it.
Park, his eyes rolled up in his head, twitched once, twice ... then stopped moving.
It’s here! he realized. It’s right here, and it killed the doc.
A minute passed, maybe longer, and nothing else happened. The darkness might’ve even lifted, a little, but there was no attack, no sounds, nothing at all.
He was tempted to stand down — keeping his shield shockwave firing this long was tiring, and it didn’t feel too good on his skin. But how could he? And what should he do next? Leave? Call for backup? What?
He took another look at Park and his gashed throat.
Wait. Why didn’t blood spray everywhere?
He looked closer still, and found what might be the answer: Hard as it was to tell for sure in this darkness, it looked like the upper “lip” of the massive throat wound had been tugged down, which acted like a nasty barrier and redirected the blood downward, soaking into Park’s shirt and pants, and the carpet all around him.
Why would it do that?
It didn’t want me to have any kinda warning. It wanted me to turn all the way around and shit myself when I saw Park like this, outta the blue.
Aware that he was still in danger and keeping his shield up in spite of the physical discomfort, Mark squatted again and looked at Park’s face. The man’s last expression fell between fear and surprise. Had he seen it coming? No way to know.
Why would it do this? Park was one of its own, one of its followers or pawns or whatever, and he didn’t seem like he was gonna give me anything really useful. He must’ve been doing something for it, or it wouldn’t’ve rescued him. So why the hell would it kill him now?
Mark rose back to his feet, ready to get the hell out of here.
“Because ...”
Mark screamed and whirled about. The room had continued to brighten in tiny increments, and so he had thought that maybe the Skygger was gone.
It wasn’t.
The creature was perched in the upper corner of the room, partly on the wall, partly on the ceiling. The room was brighter, but only by comparison, and Mark could barely make out the thing. He could see that it was kinda-sorta humanoid ... ish, and its eyes glistened like crazy in the shadows, even though there wasn’t enough damned light in here to cause that shimmer.
“Because,” it repeated, “you needed him.”
“Wh-what?” Mark stammered, his head spinning even as he willed some of his kinetic energy down toward his hands.
“You wondered why I would kill Park,” it clarified. “Especially since he has been so useful to me.” It chuckled. “I killed him because you needed him.”
The goddamn thing had read his mind. Mark’s jaw clenched — which brought a smile to what little he could see of its bizarre face.
Then it rocked its head back and forth, speaking in a sing-song voice as it said, “And now your friend, your precious Michael, is disfigured for life.” And that warped smile widened.
Mark spoke, slow and clear, as he told it, “I’m gonna kill you.”
He was pretty sure the thing’s smile widened that much further, but the darkness was deepening again even as the glistening of its eyes intensified.
No you don’t! he thought. Cheap motel, only one floor. So there’s no one above us.
Shockwaves rippled around his fists, a split-second from firing, but the thing was already on the move, scrambling across the ceiling to his left.
Uh-uh, nope.
Shifting focus mid-attack hurt worse than all the other kinetic shuffles he’d been juggling, but it was worth it: Instead of blasting two shockwaves from his hands, Mark rerouted and discharged it from his entire upper torso. The energy sieved through the tiny links of his red micro-chainmail suit and erupted like a geyser.
The Skygger either picked up what he was trying from his mind, or maybe it was just intuitive as hell, but rather than scampering, it leaped to evade his shockwave.
But Mark had spread it too wide for that to work. And even as the shockwave punched a massive hole straight through the ceiling — something that would require an ass-load of paperwork later — it clipped the Skygger. The creature spun out of control, crashing into the edge of the new sunroof with a satisfying crunch.
For just a moment, it hung there, limp, the edge of the torn rooftop bending its body at a grotesque angle, and Mark wasn’t about to back down. Pressing on with his original intent, he fired too more waves — one high, one low — from his fists.
It almost worked. The Skygger came back to life at the last instant, twisted around as though it no longer had bones and avoided the lower shockwave. But the higher shockwave still caught it by the shoulder, spinning it further around as it crumpled almost out of his view.
Mark aimed again, but he was too late this time. The Skygger, its face more visible thanks to the sunlight — and man, was it ugly! Like a mangy, messed-up hyena — hissed like a pissed off cat and vanished from sight. He heard its scratchy footfalls as it rushed away.
“Not so freaky-quiet now, huh, asshole?! What happened to all that super-stealth?!”
It didn’t answer.
But that was all right. He hadn’t really expected to get one. He had a feeling this thing only played by its own rules, and when its victim got the upper hand, it stomped a bratty foot and stopped playing altogether.
Because that was exactly what he had done: However briefly, he had gotten the upper hand. He hurt it. Not as much as he’d wanted, but enough to send the bastard running off with its tail between its legs.
Yeah, that extra paperwork for the hole in the ceiling was already worth it.
Then Mark remembered where this exchange left Mike, and his mood sunk once more. He glowered down at Park’s corpse, then pulled his phone out of his belt to call it in.
TAKAYASU AND SHOCKWAVE
Michael was smothering.
Doctor Park made a run for it, and Michael got in the way. Park reached up, touched his face, and then the world went dark, and Michael was smothering.
He couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t breathe.
He can’t breathe.
He can’t BREATHE!
PCA
Michael bolted awake, gasping. The world remained just as dark as his nightmare, but he was able to breathe now through the hole the emergency surgery had made where his mouth was supposed to be. Michael sucked sweet air through that crude little mouth hole, willing his heartbeat to slow.
It took some time.
He eventually calmed enough to recline onto the sweat-dampened hospital bed and — in spite of the nightmare that had just thrust him into the waking world — he yearned to sleep again. Or to pass out. Whatever it took to escape from this pitch-black, claustrophobic existence.
Did blind people feel this way? He supposed those born with sight and later losing it must, at first. Though he would wager that no one had ever been blinded quite the way he had.
God All Mighty, those first minutes, before Mark opened his throat ... “horrific” was too kind a word for that. Michael expected to have nightmares about it for years. Regaining consciousness to the p
ain of having his trachea punctured was a small price to pay for the precious oxygen it had allowed back into his lungs!
Since the old PCA headquarters was bombed, Michael often felt that he was living on borrowed time, but this ... this was truly his closest brush with death.
And once again, it was Mark who saved him.
After the tracheostomy tube was removed and the small “mouth” hole created, Jeremy Walker healed both wounds while apologizing that he couldn’t do more, leaving Michael able to breathe that much freer and speak as though through clenched teeth, since the illustrious Doctor Park left the skin along his jaw too tight for him to open it much more than that.
So Michael could breathe, suck water or soup through a straw, and grind out words. All better, all improvements. If only he could open his damned eyes and see ... but he knew that wasn’t going to happen, not until Mark returned with Doctor Park and forced the son of a bitch to fix what he had done. But how long would that be? No way of knowing, and his current sense of time was more subjective than ever.
Michael was deeply grateful that, given the nature of Park’s attack, his hearing had been spared — if he could not see the world around him, at least he could hear it. Such was the case when his hospital room door opened: He heard Ensign Sherman, his door guard, exchange words with someone, and then the door closed again. Sneakers trod the floor beside his bed, and he had come to recognize that stride over the past two years.
“Hey, Mark,” he tried to say (though it came out sounding more like “Shey, Mawk”).
“Hey, Mike.” And his defeated tone told Michael everything he needed to know.
“Park got away, huh?”
Pawk gout ‘way, uh? he mimicked himself.
Stop it, he admonished himself. If Mark has trouble understanding you, he’ll ask you to repeat yourself. Don’t make it worse than it already is. Appreciate that you can speak at all.
Paranormals | Book 3 | Darkness Reigns Page 31
