“W-what?”
Her news van was parked outside the hospital, back doors open. The arm of a body caught in the door. Tony, Rebecca’s cameraman. Shriveled, twisted, I almost didn’t recognize him. Sam, her sound engineer, was barely holding on, slumped in her chair in the van.
“Talk to me Sam, where’s Rebecca?”
“Loviatar…” Her voice rattled in her throat.
“Where?”
The city streets blurred past, I paid them no mind, fixated on the retreating back of Loviatar.
Six times we’d fought, six times I’d beaten her, but she had escaped every time. Not this time.
On she flew, a specter of death in grey rags, her face lost in the depths of her hood. In her wake, a cloud of disease, wherever she went, sickness followed. No sign of Rebecca and I couldn’t spare the time to be subtle. No telling where she was or how she was suffering, I’d need to take Loviatar now.
I held my breath and accelerated through her disease cloud. I felt bacteria and viruses settle on my skin—no exaggeration, the Cabinet gave me hypersensitivity to fight the Imperceptible Empire—but that was a worry for later. I reached out as she made a turn down Main Street, as she cornered, she drifted too close to the Giffen building; a blast of ice pinned her to the wall.
“Where is she?” I demanded.
“You won’t find her like that.” Loviatar laughed, puffed out a dense cloud of bacteria.
My head spun, my skin prickled with sweat. I couldn’t afford to give in to the illness, not until I knew Rebecca was safe. I flew close, leveled a punch at the wall beside her head. Concrete shattered.
“My word, Bastion, aren’t you strong? Very impressive. But you should know, I can break things too.” The ice around her fractured, splintered, and she lunged forwards, the clawed tips of her fingers raking wide gashes across my stomach. She spun away from me, floating, laughing. “Ice-minus bacteria. Wondrous things. Quite the party trick, I’ve been working on it a while now.”
I held an arm across my stomach, searing pain radiated outwards from the scratches there, and the wound seemed to deepen as more bacteria ate away at my flesh. My senses contracted. Sounds deadened. Vision blurred. I lost the sensation of the bacteria on my skin. “What have you done to me?”
Time, causality, memory, thought—it all unraveled.
“Now, Cody, before it’s too late!” I roared.
“It’s always those closest to you, isn’t it?”
Who said that?
I stood in a cave, an impossible tree at my back. My old friend David, the Lobstrosity, crashed through the wall, crashed out again.
I stood on the cliff, crafting a rose to give to Loviatar.
Chimpanzees ate my legs.
“You will never defeat me,” shouted Lord Negativity, cackling with glee.
I floated above Main Street, blood seeping through my fingers. Loviatar drifted a few feet away. “You want to know what I’ve done? I’ve saved the world. You can’t do any more harm now, Bastion.” She brought her hands up to her hood.
“No,” I said. Something was very wrong, something…
She cast back her hood, pulled off the mask she wore beneath. “Hello. My name is Rebecca Randall.”
“Blink once if you’re back in the room,” said Cody.
I closed my eyes. Opened them again.
One moment followed the next. The universe displayed order, decaying. The inevitable march of entropy.
My mind was clear, like waking naturally from a long sleep. Things were pin-point sharp, clearer than they had been in a long time, since long before Loviatar had infected me, clearer than they had been when I first stepped into the Cabinet.
“Oh, of course, there were two Cabinets.”
“Yes,” said Cody. “It took me a while to realize the significance of that, too. It really is more like magic than science, I think. But for all that, they would have gotten along with Newton.”
“For every action…”
“… there is an equal and opposite reaction, yes. I do wonder if the explorers took turns? On one planet, Alien Jeff would get the buffs and Alien Brian the banes, then on the next planet, Jeff gets to huddle in the second Cabinet feeling woeful.”
I tried to move, but thick leather straps held me fast to the table. A simple flex of my arm should have torn the straps apart, but they didn’t budge. I tried to summon ice to make them brittle; nothing happened.
“What have you done to me?” I asked.
“Pay attention, I’m telling you in a glorious villain monologue. Oh, you mean more recently? Nothing at all. Those straps, on the other hand, contain fragments from the second Cabinet, from the wreckage of the ship—the one that kept the dark explorer contained. You can’t use your powers while bound by them. I know, I’ve tested them quite thoroughly.
“Yes. Gasp! I used the Cabinet on myself. I probably should have waited. I knew you were against trying the Cabinet out, but you left it here in my loft, and I… Just. Couldn’t. Resist.” He loomed over me, eyes wide and wild, but something else too, a darkness, a shadow.
“I tried it even before you did. Five years I’ve been upgrading myself, but far less ostentatiously. Little Cody the Research Assistant. I should thank you, under your mentorship, I feel I’ve really grown. Your mentorship and an alien superpower device, anyway.”
“What have you done to yourself, Cody? You sound unhinged. Let me out of these straps. We can work out a way to put this right, together.”
“Oh, Professor, always with the instinct to help. Do you think you would have sought out the life of the ‘superhero’ if you had retained your natural acumen? You were easily lured down that path as it was. And each time I made you stronger, I understood the rules of the Cabinet more clearly.
“It was a couple of years before I really understood that every time someone got improved by the Cabinet, someone else suffered. Without the second Cabinet, I never quite know who’s going to get it. But as the Cabinet has made me smarter, I understand now. I got lucky that first time. It latched on to you to make you slower. Sorry about that. I really didn’t know. Not the first time, anyway.”
“No,” I said, horrified. “Are you saying Rebecca was right? I was to blame for what happened to Dave? And the rest?”
“Well, I think as ‘man at controls,’ I deserve some of the credit, but yes, each time you upgraded to defeat one villain, you created your next opponent. Twisted someone, body, mind, and soul to be your new opposite. Quite elegant, from a job creation point of view.”
“But why them?” I asked.
“Horrible isn’t it? Together we’ve transformed your colleagues, your friends, your college roommate vacationing in Falcon City for the summer. Remember good ol’ Tim? We turned him into Colossosaur, and he ate a school bus! So sad. I’m surprised it’s taken you this long to question why so many of the people you fought turned out to be connected to you. I think the magic seeks out those connections. Some karmic nonsense is my best guess. It’s always those closest to you, isn’t it?”
“What did you say?”
“You are a disease,” Loviatar told me. “You spread your infection to all those close to you twisting us with powers, crippling our minds, calling out the darkness. And it’s always those closest to you, isn’t it?”
The memory was sharp, clear. I let Cody rant over me in his loft, what Loviatar said was important, I had to remember.
We floated outside the Giffen building, me bleeding out, her unmasked. There was no fight left in me, and Rebecca—Loviatar—she just looked disappointed.
Loviatar studied me, appraised me. Shook her head. “No. It isn’t you, is it, Bastion? My poor sweet Tom. I thought I’d found the cause, the catalyst. Everything pointed to you, but as cancerous tumors go, you, you’re practically benign.” She spat the word like the greatest insult. “Who is it, Tom? Who are you working with? Who did this to me?”
“Cody.”
“Your research assistant? He did this to me
?”
I groaned, sank, couldn’t stay aloft much longer. “To us.”
Cody moved around behind me; standing by the Cabinet. I twisted my neck as much as I could, but however I moved, he was out of sight. He was setting the Cabinet controls again. The clicks and beeps were a familiar song, but whatever he was programming this time was more complex than I had ever heard.
“I enjoyed watching you work, Professor. Bastion’s exploits were very exciting, if occasionally ridiculous. If I could have kept you on a little longer, I would. I really am rather fond of you. But I know enough now, and I’m afraid you know too much. That won’t do. The time for subtlety is done. One last upgrade, to push my powers to the limit. What will it do to you? Wow, I dread to think. But I doubt we’ll talk again afterwards.”
“It’s just as we feared, isn’t it? Just like you said. You let the Cabinet affect your brain, and now you aren’t quite human anymore.”
He came back into view, a heavy-duty crocodile clip in each hand, each trailing a cable back to the Cabinet. “I don’t have a second Cabinet, but I’m confident this sort of connection will do the trick. These may nip, just a little.” He paused, looked down at me, all sign of the person I thought I knew was gone. “Professor, you’re sweating! You’re not just a teensy bit nervous, are you? How terrible.”
The clips bit into my flesh. “There, all comfy now?” he asked.
“Don’t do this, Cody. We’re friends.”
“Are we though? I found the ship, the Cabinet. I pushed you into trying it that first time, to save those children. If I hadn’t set that fire, would you ever have gone into the Cabinet? Without your powers, would you have ever met Rebecca? I’ve been your Alfred, the guy in the chair, the voice in your ear. The devil on your shoulder. Through it all. Every step of the way. And whenever I suggested I’d take a turn in the Cabinet? ‘It’s too dangerous!’”
“It was designed for aliens. What it’s done for me? That was an accident, a fluke. It could have done horrible things to you…”
Cody leaned over me again. “Don’t think I didn’t hear that pause. You think it has done terrible things, don’t you? Oh, you’ve always thought so little of me. Your research assistant. Well, I gave you all your power, literally made you the man you are. You think you are the real power? I’m the real power.”
“It shouldn’t be about power. The only reason I went into the Cabinet time and again, endured that pain, risked the people around me? It was to help people. It wasn’t fame, glory, power. Just to help.”
Cody leaned forward until we were almost nose to nose. “You just can’t handle me being better, can you?”
I coughed.
A thick billow of smoke escaped my lungs, enveloped Cody’s head.
“What is this? What have you done?” He staggered away, knees buckling underneath him.
“A gift from Loviatar. It’s extremely fast acting, and viciously debilitating. I know.”
“How? I cleared her diseases from your system.”
“I must have relapsed.”
Loviatar floated in through the skylight. “Hi, Cody, nice to see you. Tom tells me you’re feeling a little under the weather?” She laughed. “Finally, I have the right vector. You’ll pay for all that you’ve done.” She strode across the loft, motes of darkness and death gathering around her hands.
“No!” I said. “Get me out of these straps. I can fix this. Fix everything.”
“But I could just kill him, now,” she said and pouted.
“I need him alive, or I can’t undo it.”
“Fiiiiiiiiiine.” She danced around the table, undoing each strap as she passed it. As she passed Cody, she leveled a powerful kick at his ribs. “Oops.”
I leapt from the table, scooped up Cody, pushed him into the Cabinet. “Him first, then me. See this button here? When I go in, you need to press it.”
“And what will it do?”
“Make things right. I hope. It’s all guesses, it always has been. But this should reset all the changes the Cabinet has ever made to us. And… I can’t be certain. There’s no way to know for sure except just to try it, but in theory, if it reverses the changes in us, it should suppress all the changes it made to others because of us. Maybe. Hopefully.”
“And you’d really give all this up? The flying, the super strength, the ice beam?”
“In a heartbeat. When Cody realized what this machine could do, he saw what it could do for him, make him more powerful, raise him up above everyone else. Me? I had the opposite reaction.”
A Word From Rob Edwards
I am a British born writer and podcaster currently living in Finland. I’ve been a story teller for as long as I can remember, as a writer, as a gamer, and as a trainer. More recently I’ve been focusing on my writing, led primarily by my monthly podcast, StorycastRob, where I read my stories to the world.
My love of superheroes comes from my dad buying me Green Lantern, Flash, and Justice League comics in the seventies. I have a life-long love of DC books, and the first novel I’m hoping to find a publisher for has a little bit of Legion of Superheroes about it.
You will find more stories from me in anthologies from Inklings Press, including in Tales from the Underground, and from the Sci-Fi Roundtable’s anthology Quantum Soul. Follow me on Twitter as @storycastrob and check out my podcast on i-Tunes or at www.storycastrob.co.uk
Jingle
BY JDC BURNHIL
In my experience, people get away from a school as fast as they can. Student or teacher, when that afternoon bell rings, we're all numb from a long day of drudgery, and we just want out. So when I stepped out the front door to see a dozen fellow students and our red-faced vice principal in front of the school staring up at the second floor, it was obvious something was amiss.
I walked out and turned to see for myself what was up. The dull-finished metal letters embedded in the brick wall of the building read "Granette High School," just as they should. Hanging in the air right in front of them, however, was the glowing declaration "R'S SUX!!" When I say "glowing" I mean literally; the crudely scrawled letters hung in the air without any means of support, luminescing and crackling like a cross between a neon sign and a firework sparkler.
Some of the students—notably, the ones low in the social hierarchy—seemed to be poorly concealing a certain amount of admiration for whoever had thumbed their nose at the school. Most likely because they hadn't really thought through who that someone certainly was. Other students seemed just as mortally offended as Mr. Weatherwell, even if he was clearly still first among equals in his ire. "This is an outrage!" he fumed. "Thoroughly unacceptable!"
"Seriously," I said. "Even if we were to claim variant spelling on the verb, that's blatant subject-verb disagreement right there and misuse of an apostrophe as an attempt to indicate a plural, to boot."
Mrs. Holsom would've given me a perfect score for that answer. Weatherwell just gave me a withering glare and turned away. A second later, though, he turned back to me, eyes narrowing. "Did you have something to do with this?" he demanded.
Afterward, I thought of snappy comebacks. At the time, though, I was caught completely off-guard. Why on Earth would I be involved? I didn't have any history as a maker of trouble, or of statements disparaging our football team, the Rockers (get it? Granette, Rocks, Rockers? oh, my sides.)
In short, Weatherwell had absolutely no reason to point a finger at me in this incident except that I'd said something intelligent about it. So at the time, the best retort I could come up with was "Sure, cause I've got superpowers. That's why I'm going to this school.”
He harrumphed and looked away. Sure, don't apologize or anything.
My sneakers kicked up dust as I continued down the slope. We always know when spring has really come because the hill where the junior high and high schools stand dries out, and the dust starts flying around in the wind. Every year, the maintenance crew goes out there trying to find some variety of grass seed that'll stay alive mor
e than a few weeks and stop the erosion. It never works; the grass only stays alive on the lower slopes, making the hill look like a middle-aged giant wearing the two schools on the crown of his balding head. Behind me I could hear Weatherwell arguing with one of the maintenance people, Weatherwell insisting that the offending words had to be removed immediately, the maintenance man just as stubbornly repeating that none of his people were going to touch "that superpower crapola" until they knew it was safe.
I trudged down the hill, thinking about adults. When they were kids, they must have seen clearly the injustices in their lives and told themselves, "I'll never forget this lesson when I become an adult!" And then they act in ways that tell you they've forgotten completely. Forgotten, for example, how infuriating it is to be falsely accused.
Or take how we wound up in Granette to begin with. More than once Dad had talked about how, when he was a kid in the twenty-twenties, one school nearby was always That School. Every place he lived—and that was a lot of places, thanks to Gramps and the military—there was always one school that made constant headaches for everyone else. Always named "Something Academy" or "Deadperson Prep," That School brought together kids who'd already learned they were better than everybody thanks to their parents' money and added gang mentality to their arsenal of unendearing traits.
So when Mom and Dad picked a town to settle in, to raise my sister and me, and to establish Dad's catering business, where did they pick? Why, Granette, just half an hour's commute from the big city of Rayburn. Granette, home not just to Willem Hayes Prep (which is definitely That School) but to Claremont Vocational.
To be fair, there are Claremont students who aren't asses. They might even be the majority. It's just that the ones who think having superpowers makes them godly, and gives them the right to do things like tag other people's schools with dumb insults, create the stronger impression.
I've wondered, of course, whether going to Claremont would have made me like them, another self-important bully. You can never really know about the road not taken, but I just can't picture it happening.
Somebody, Save Me! Page 7