by B.A. Savage
“Dude, it can’t be that bad.”
“Man, I saw it the first day it was here and it’s still haunting my days. It seems like they would have had it strapped down or knocked out with drugs, with burns that bad but the thing wasn’t making a sound as they walked it chained down to this room.”
“Ok, dude, here I go.” He leans forward and peers into the room, “What the hell, man?”
“See, I told you. Messed up huh?”
“What? There’s nothing wrong with her.”
“Her?” puzzled, the orderly looks in to find Ms. Grimsley. Her skin is a little splotched here and there but doesn’t look like a burn victim at all.
“Hey, must be some kind of mix up.” He leans back to look at the door number on the door pane and it reads, “N-103”.
“Maybe, they moved it.”
“I don’t know. They never tell us much around here. Well let’s get back to work. This was lame.”
“Sorry dude, I thought that thing would still be in here.”
Once the men are gone away from the door, Ms. Grimsley looks up at the door. She has a vacant look on the face. She starts to look back down until a voice is heard from the shadow in the corner of the room. She looks at it. She can make the outline of a man. He says, “Ms. Grimsley. My master is gone. I have come to serve a new one.”
She grins an eerie grin as the man in the shadows kneels down yet still in the shadows.
Chapter Sixteen
“I’m not doing it. I’m not going to be some sideshow freak.” Detective Allen surveys the room and adds, “Sorry guys, I didn’t mean anything personally guys.”
BCG answers for the group, “None taken. We all know how difficult it is to adjust to the new augmentations, but if it wasn’t for them we would be just your everyday average handicap Joe, but these make us…”
Scorch cuts him off, “Don’t say it.”
“What?”
Dr. Q answers, “That it makes us handicappable. I’m sorry, but that was lame the first time I heard it.”
Scorch adds, “Plus, I was able bodied without this suit.”
BCG replies, “Yeah, but you couldn’t do much with your skin the way it was. I mean with all the skin grafts and nerve damage it wasn’t a pretty..”
Nina, the head of this misfit group and creator of their gadgetry, cuts him short, “Don’t ever tell a woman she wasn’t pretty.”
BCG looks down and Scorch smiles, and Nina adds, “Even if now she looks like a man.”
“Hey!” fires back Scorch, “It’s not my fault that men don’t seem to respect a nice rack and legs to die for.”
They all have a good laugh, except Detective Allen. “That doesn’t change anything. I’m still not gonna have some nickname and walkaround like some robot cop. Damn, I feel like a broken record but it just feels like I’m living out some B movie.”
BCG says, “Hmm…a movie about a robot cop huh? That sound like it would be a blockbuster movie to me, especially if he had guns that came out of his thighs like mine do.”
They all start giving their two cents in as to how a movie of this type would do, when Allen clears his throat to gather everyone’s attention. “Still not doing it.”
Scorch says, “Have you ever wonder why I didn’t just let you lie in that cave and die?’
This clearly has been a sore topic in the past few weeks. Detective Allen answers with a coldness in his voice, “Yes, I told you. I would have been better off dead.”
Scorch says with a more empathic tone, “I was you, I served the people. I was a firefighter once. Was trapped in a fire and pretty much left for dead. After years of trying to get the men in the firehouse to respect me and treat me as an equal and finding out it was for nothing. When I realized that my own company turned their backs against me. You see in the movies, B rated or not. Firefighters usually risk their own lives to save a fellow fighter, but not in the movie that was my life. That day, they let Lorelei Marie die. No one came to my rescue.”
The other members of this group get more serious as they have heard this story before. Detective Allen listens quietly as she continues, “I thought I had died. I came through on a table just like you. Unable to move, to feel anything. The first person I saw was Nina. She had rescued me, and to this day, I still don’t know how and don’t care. The fact that she did was good enough to me. I had burns all over my body and without this suit, I would have died. She gave me the choice to live and continue to help others like I had sworn as an oath as a firefighter or to die and let the naysayers win, prove to them I just didn’t have it. I choose to live, and that meant that I would spend pretty much the rest of my life in this suit. I accepted that and I have kept my oath.”
Detective Allen looks on the fence about what to do.
Nina’s next statement seals the deal, “I didn’t want to tell you this until you made your decision but I was outvoted. At least, we did agree to tell you if you seem hesitant to try to use your new abilities. Ms. Grimsley survived and later she escaped from McLaughlin’s City’s ASP center three days after her arrival.”
His look turns to stern and serious, “Then let’s get this training started with.”
While everyone in the group looks happy with his decision, Nina asks, “Are you sure? This can’t be fueled by revenge; you will fail if it is.”
He looks her in the eyes, “I said I’m ready to train didn’t I?” Then he smiles.