by Carl Damen
Jack wrenched open the door, slid for a moment on a patch of black ice, then stood and glared at the woman on his hood. "Cyd, this isn't funny. I told you last time, I'm not who you think I am."
She stood, and the stink of smoke and stale urine waved over Jack. If anything, it smelled worse than Cohen's building... "Sure you are, sure you are! You can't leave me hanging here, Jack, you see what I've become!"
The soldier at the head of the line had become aware of the commotion, and had waved at two others to join him.
Jack clenched his fists. "Just what the hell do you want from me, huh?"
"Lead us, Jack! Allen picked you, knew you were the only one who'd get the Q-bomb!"
"The fuck are you talking about?"
Cyd began to bounce, rocking the car. Inside, Alice gasped, looked nauseous, nervous, ready to scream.
"Cyd, get off the car."
"Nuh-uh!
The soldiers were approaching now.
"Cyd, off."
"Not 'till you agree to help! Melana fucked up something awesome, huh?"
"Cyd."
"Nope."
"Cyd."
Cyd laughed, continued to bounce. The soldiers were only two cars away now. Jack didn't want this. He just wanted to be back in the tower, his tower, the place he was safe, where Alice could be safe, where he could pretend his life was the same as it had been a year—a decade—ago.
"Cyd."
"Not until you say please!"
"CYD!"
The soldiers stopped short, too frightened to ready their weapons. Alice, breathing heavily, stared blankly at the dashboard. Cyd's face slowly peered up from the far side of the car, shattered windshield sparkling in her hair.
There was a moment of total silence as Jack stood, staring at the gently rocking car, it's shattered windows slowly tinkling out onto the icy streets, the shards of glass adding their iridescence to the the thin snow.
Cyd's low, throaty chuckle echoed off the empty buildings lining the streets, and suddenly the world collapsed back into sharp focus for Jack. He saw Cyd, not as she was, but how she once had been, tall and naked and glowing with a fierce pride. Saw her as she joined with him, with Allen, in overrunning the guards, making a break for the door, for escape—
The lead soldier yelled, raised his carbine, fired. Alice screamed, kicked open her door, fell into the street. Jack grunted, clutched his left arm, looked down to see a small white beanbag stark against the blacktop.
He knew it wouldn't hurt him, knew his jacket had padded him enough that there likely wouldn't even be a bruise. He knew too how many rounds the soldiers had left, what their standard protocol would be from here on out, what the likelihood of them panicking and ignoring protocol was.
He blinked, fought down the torrent of memories that was flooding into him, the half-remembered reflexes that were urging him to action. One reflex, an instinct even deeper than his training, finally brought him to action: he ran.
Around the car, past Alice, stumbling towards an abandoned car, out of range of the soldiers. He was two blocks away now, coming across another barricade, this one with no gate. He continued on, his body demanding more and more breath until he collapsed, gasping, into a drift of snow in an abandoned alley. His legs twitched, cramped, finally lay still.
He sat up and pushed himself into the wind shadow of a dumpster, tried to bring his memories under control. He was upside-down, surrounded by a galaxy of glass, saw the road coming at him—awake now, in the dark, naked, cold. Someone was beside him, he saw her, held her—she was gone now, but he wasn't alone, was surrounded by others like himself, the children of Allen.
And suddenly there she was, his strength, the woman he had vowed to get back to, the woman he loved and needed to survive here: Lauren.
He fumbled in his jacket, surprised he had it, found his mobile, scrolled through until he found her name.
Three rings, click.
"Lauren!"
"Who is this?" a man's voice answered.
Jack cursed; Ken had answered. "I need to talk to Lauren."
"Who is this? Is this Jack?"
"Let me talk to her!"
A moment of indecision then, quietly, "Lu. It's for you."
"Hello?" She sounded tired.
"Lauren!" He felt elated, relieved beyond measure. "Oh, God, Lauren, it wasn't the wreck, I didn't forget you, I always remembered—"
"Jack? What the hell are you—"
"It wasn't brain damage! I didn't forget you; someone took you from me! I remember everything, Lauren, or most of it or—I'm a goddamned Defender, Lauren, and someone took you out of my mind, made me forget you, and my decade, and made me think I was in a coma, and, and..." He was breathing heavily now, drifting in and out of reality; there were no walls now. Was he talking with Lauren? Was she really there this time? Or was it Suzanne, was he telling her about Lauren, or—No, Suzanne was dead, he couldn't forget that, could never forget that. But he had forgotten Lauren, hadn't he? How could he have forgotten her for all these years—
"Jack."
He was sitting behind a dumpster, his left biceps throbbing, his jeans soaked in snow. Lauren was talking.
"Jack, I don't know if this is some kind of sick joke, but I don't need you dredging up the past. I'm happy with Ken now, I don't need you."
"Ken? Wha—no one was talking about Ken! Lauren, this is about us, about a second chance. I remember us now—"
"I'm happy with Ken." Her voice was strained, distant. "Goodbye. Don't call again."
Click, and the call was over. Jack sat in the snow, felt the cold creeping in on his limbs, felt the fire raging in his lungs, in his heart, slowly die down. He numbly stood, got his bearing, and trudged off in the snow, towards Sky Crest. He was only peripherally aware of his destination, only vaguely felt the pull of his tower. As he walked his mind swirled, a decade of forgotten memories fighting for their moment in the sun, fighting to be remembered...
The human leg was a many splendored thing. Edarus rested on a colossal metal beam, looking out at the endless bridge of crystalline bone stretching off into the red-black void. He stretched out from his perch, found a place were the brown crystal had sheared apart, opening a crevasse that stretched down to the marrow. He stroked the end of the crystal, reached out and caught a globule of plasma, ripped the sugars from it, pressed it to the crystal, willed it to grow—
A high-pitched whine shivered through the superstructure, reverberated up the small metal pin, brought a slight ache to Edarus's shattered knee, and caused Edarus to shift in his wheelchair and look around.
He was in a large bedroom, decorated to look like the official bedroom he now doubted he would ever sleep in. His leg was propped up before him, white cast wrapped in a blue support. It wasn't going anywhere soon.
The whining continued, and Edarus realized it was the intercom hailing him. He pushed a button on his wheelchair, and the whine stopped. "Fuck off!" he shouted.
He waited a moment, heard no response, and grunted in satisfaction. It had taken him nearly twenty minutes to get his mind down and into the minutia of his damaged leg; he didn't need any further distractions.
Back to it... Breathe out, relax, settle back into the seat... disconnect, feel the room around him, his body as a separate, warm entity... feel the heat, the inflammation of the torn tissue around the surgical pins, the patella sewn together with wire, the bone slowly straining out to reform itself in its intended shape. Scattered about the smooth plate were small protuberances, shafts of bone that had grown too quickly, too poorly, experiments by an untrained god in the arts of healing. It was a good thing Forre knew the secret; the bizarre spurs would worry any other doctor.
Edarus finally found the site of his last awkward fumble, found the crystal that had begun to swell wildly in his moments of distraction, pulling sugars and minerals haphazardly from the surrounding fluids. Edarus touched the spot, found the life growing in it, quickly killed it, watched as the new growth crumbled
away. Without his constant attention, growth that fast could become cancerous.
He had just gathered the scattered minerals, had just begun to sculpt them back into new growth when sudden movement pulled at his attention.
Focus returned to his eyes just in time to see the double doors leading into the room burst open, and the small form of Joan Ashheart to storm in.
She stopped just inside the room, looked over the shriveled, robe wrapped form slouched in the chair. "Well, at least you have pants on."
Edarus straightened, tried to look presentable. "Leave me alone!"
"Hey!" Ashheart clapped her ands and stalked forward. "I don't give a damn about your personal life, or your injuries, and I know for a fact you're not on any pain medication right now, so don't try to act wasted! You are the president sir, and the country is going to hell out there! Focus. You have a job to do. Everything else, I've been more than happy to delegate, all things considered, but you need to listen to this."
Edarus looked away from her, slumped sideways, tried to focus all his attention on the carpet. He didn't want to be president anymore, had more important things on his mind.
"We've found a Defender sir."
He trembled, and glanced sidelong at Ashheart.
"In Philadelphia, a Defender just used his powers in front of a National Guard blockade. As far as we can tell, he didn't injure anyone. More importantly, he's alive, he's been identified, and we know where he's going."
Edarus slowly lifted his eyes to Ashheart, the rest of him following as he straightened. "Who? Where?"
"Jack Dolad. He's heading toward his home; Sky Crest apartments."
Edarus swallowed, then ground his teeth. Dolad: Allen's hand-picked successor, the one he had entrusted with carrying on the Q-Bomb, just before he was executed. The thought of Dolad out on the streets, rogue and with full powerful, was terrifying. But if he could get to Dolad, strike a deal with him... Then all the Defenders would be on his side, or at least enough to sway the balance of power. The Defenders would be set up as an independent power, would be a benign global threat, would win Edarus the Nobel Peace Prize and never ending fame. And then Mistaren's entire mad scheme would be fulfilled, all of the pointless plotting and second-guessing would be over—
Mistaren.
"He lives at Sky Crest?"
Ashheart nodded.
Of course he'd live at Sky Crest. Where else would Mistaren put such an important piece of his plan? Edarus felt a brief stab of regret for sending Amanda and Than into the lion's den, then remembered that Dolad and he were on the same side. In fact, the only possible threat towards alliance was Mistaren himself, unless he had edited himself from the Defender's memory. If that wasn't the case, Edarus would lose no sleep in throwing Mistaren in as a bargaining chip.
"How long ago did this happen?"
"Twenty minutes. Police and National Guard are tracking him on foot, and we have a satellite lock on his mobile. Everyone has standing orders to hang back and observe."
"Perfect." Edarus rose to stand, gasped as his leg caught on the wheelchair's supporting arm, slumped back down. "I want someone waiting for him when he gets home, an agent we can trust, someone personable."
"The NSA is still on site in Phil—"
"No!"
Ashheart snapped her jaw shut with an audible click.
"Not... not Mistaren. I want someone a little lower-rank, a little less intimidating. And then, I want a helicopter standing by. I want whoever we have there to talk to Don—to whoever the Defender is, cordially invite him to a conference with me, to advise me on the Defender situation, and to help improve relations. This is strictly voluntary. Hell, I'll go to him, if he want's that."
Ashheart looked uneasy. "Neither of those options sounds good. This is the most dead-end hole we possibly have, and I certainly don't want any security breaches, especially not after what happened at Eglon. And I definitely don't want you out and about."
"Well, that's not really your call to make, is it, chief of Staff?" His smile was designed to annoy.
Ashheart frowned, then nodded. "I'll go get everything ready." She turned on her heel and walked briskly from the room, pulling the doors to behind her.
Edarus chuckled, then leaned back and put his hands behind his head. He glanced down at his leg, then decided to ignore it for the time being. If everything went well, this time Thursday he'd have someone who could show him exactly how to fix the useless thing...
10
Chapter 21
Chapter 21
Dusk was fading into darkness when Jack turned a corner and saw Sky Crest rising from the shell of the mall. A few cars drove by, desperately trying to get to ground before curfew hit. Jack stood for a moment, trying to focus, to feel minds around him, to distract their attention from him. He remembered the procedure, the tried and true methods of misdirection, but there was a blockage of some kind, a disconnect that prevented him from putting action to thought. His past life still felt... unreal. It was as if two Johns inhabited the same body, both diverging from the car wreck: One, slowly awakening in a hospital, surrounded by friends and family, slowly brought back out into the real world; the other, swiftly awakening in hell.
Gritting his teeth, Jack stepped out into the street, crossing in front of a Humvee packed with soldiers. As he walked he scouted out paths of escape, alternate routs into the building, into his apartment. Worst case scenario: infiltrate the Central Maintenance Core, and take a utility elevator to his floor.
He stepped out of the street and onto the front walkway, taking in the warm, smoothly flowing brown stone underfoot, realizing with a pang of regret that this would probably be the last time he saw them. Through the front doors, into the grand foyer, following the gently curving surfaces of the room to the focal point were a man stood, dark skinned in a dark suit, contrasting with the silvery steel of the inner wall.
Jack stopped, tried to feel the man's intentions, only read a confused hubbub from the thousands of souls overhead.
The man smiled, raised one hand in greeting. "Mr. Dolad, hello! Frank Norgent, State Department."
Take a step back, make it outside, around the east side of the building, freedom— "What can I do for you?"
Norgent dipped his head in acknowledgement. "I'm here on behalf of President Latterndale, meeting you as a representative of an independent people group."
"Has that gone through yet?"
"We're still working on it." Norgent lowered his arm and shifted uneasily.
Jack could finally make out a bit of this man's signal from the noise of the tower. Not enough to find meaning in the message, merely to identify the man as a distinct entity.
"And what are you going to do to me, as a representative of an independent people group?"
Norgent shrugged. "Don't see as there's anything I can do. You're not out beyond curfew; you're brother's car is insured, and I doubt he'd press charges, given the circumstances. Not even trespassing on the way here."
Jack felt suddenly very stupid. He wasn't thinking clearly, wasn't acting up to his abilities even with mundane skills if they were able to track his so readily. "So then, what do you want?"
"President Latterndale is very interested in seeing peaceful international relations established with you Defenders, and as you're the first we've met who's in a..." he moved his jaw, then gestured to the air, "...reasonable state of mind, he would very much like to meet with you, see what you would like to see come out of all of this. He wants to work with the Defenders, but up until now, he hasn't had any to work with."
There was a way out, a last little shred of the world the resurrected Jack held onto. "I'm not really in the best position to be a consultant; I don't remember too much."
Norgent nodded, relief evident on his face. "This is a completely voluntary request. If you don't feel the need to meet with the president, he won't force the issue, though he may try to fly out and meet with you on your own terms."
"Where is he now?"
And just like that, Norgent was back on edge. "I'm afraid that's privileged information."
Now Jack was getting something... fear, disappointment and... hope? Behind Norgent's walls of professional concern, of his mistrust of this Defender standing before him, was hope that Jack's intervention on Edarus's behalf would cause the whole world to step down. Still, hope was not enough.
"How do I know you won't just kill me as soon as we're in the air?"
"Because the world has already seen you, Mr. Dolad. Your little outburst at the car is now an internet sensation. If you disappear now..." He shrugged. "Could destroy the world."
Memories flitted by, only showing themselves for the barest of moments. Jack already could destroy the world. "I'll need to get a few things from my apartment."