by S. J. Delos
I slammed my palm into her chest, shoving the armored woman away from me. Seconds counted off in my mind as I blasted out of the alley toward the broken window. I sailed through the jagged opening into the building’s lobby.
Once inside, I twisted in the air to land in a crouching slide, boots tearing through the tile floor as I stopped right in front of a large support beam in the center of the room.
About twenty people stood around it, a mixture of fear and confusion on their faces. It was obvious they’d seen the missile come in, but didn’t understand why it didn’t explode.
The rocket was half-buried in the concrete and plaster of the pillar, with only the tailfins and exhaust pipe showing. I wrapped my fingers around the body, easily yanking it free. The digital clock built into the thicker middle section revealed the precious little time remaining.
Eighteen seconds.
I tucked the bomb under my arm as I shot back through the damaged window. Once outside, I paused for less than a heartbeat to turn my body into a vertical pose. Then I pushed away from the ground with every ounce of power I could muster. The thirty floors of windows above the lobby blurred past as I climbed ever faster. Just as I zoomed past the edge of the building’s roof, my ears popped as I broke the sound barrier.
I risked a glance down at the device as I continued to race to the clouds above.
Eleven seconds.
I looked away from the timer to see the city spread out far below me. My armored opponent’s boast stated the bomb in my hands was powerful enough to vaporize up to three city blocks. I guessed that I was already four or five thousand feet up, and still rising. My goal was to be high enough that the people below would be safe, as well as be able to get as far away from the blast as I could.
I wasn’t sure even my vaunted invulnerability would protect me from an antimatter explosion.
After another two thousand or so feet, I noticed my lungs were working much harder than normal, and it wasn’t due to the fear-laced adrenaline coursing through my body. I slowed to a stop, hovering among the wispy, broken clouds.
Five seconds.
I glanced up to make sure the sky above was clear of air traffic, gripped the bomb tightly in one hand, drew back my arm, and hurled it with every ounce of my strength toward the stratosphere. The exact second after the device left my hand, I flipped around into a hard dive back toward the ground.
Approximately four heartbeats later, a brilliant burst of pure white filled my vision, momentarily blinding me. It was like being wrapped in the center of a star going nova. Right on the heels of the intense flash came a shockwave that slammed into my fleeing form. It turned me head over heels in the air, changing my dive into a careening tumble. The heat embedded in the shockwave was more intense than anything faced since my Activation. I blinked as my sight returned, staring at my arms with the expectation of finding charred flesh.
Orientation, as well as control, came back to me a second or two later. I spread my arms and legs to stop the seemingly endless flips before vertigo made me puke. When I was halfway back down to the ground, I stopped to look up. No remnants of the powerful explosion remained.
I turned my attention to my own body, wondering if being in the middle of an antimatter blast had affected me. The sleeves of my uniform were dotted in various places with dark scorch marks, but none of them seemed deep enough to be an actual hole. The exposed skin of my hands was an angry shade of pink. It stung as being slapped repeatedly by an angry nun with a ruler.
I remained in place, trying to recall everything I knew about positron/anti-positron reactions. What I kept coming back to was the radiological effects.
I wasn’t sure how much of the actual blast had got me. Nor could I know for sure I avoided being bathed with a concentrated burst of ionizing particles. At least not without access to the proper scanning equipment. I glanced to the Paulus building, sighing aloud.
The day had turned into such a farcical roller coaster that the possibility of having been bombarded with upper spectrum waves served as the perfect icing on the crap cake. I rose several hundred more feet and headed back toward headquarters.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, shocking me with the amazing fact that it survived both the fight and the blast. I pulled it out, answering when I recognized the number on the caller id.
“Hello?”
“Karen,” Greg said from the other end of the connection. There was a note of obvious relief in his voice. “We just saw the news about the bomb. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Was anyone hurt?”
“The report said you flew away with it before it could explode. There was no mention of any InBee injuries or casualties.”
“Good.” I chewed on my lower lip for a second as I drew closer to the place I called home. “Greg? Can you go down to the storage bays and pull out the heavy decontamination chamber. I think it’s in Bay One. Haul it up to the hangar and place it right under the roof doors.”
There was a moment of silence. “Okay, then what?” he asked, obviously curious about the strange request.
“Open the roof. Then you and everyone else haul ass downstairs to the lobby until I say it’s okay to come back up.”
Greg must have put me on speaker because Alexis chimed in, voice shaky.
“Karen?” she said. “Karen, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“No, Lexi-chan, I’m not hurt.” I crinkled my brow. “But I think I might be … uh, radioactive.”
CHAPTER 7:
QUARANTINE IS
A TEN LETTER WORD
I remained high above the building, hovering directly over the hangar bay doors. When they finally slid open, I waited a full two minutes before drifted down through the opening.
The chamber was exactly where I requested, and I saw that Greg had been kind enough to open the top hatch as well. I floated down slowly, slipping through the not super-wide opening to land inside the unit.
During one of my orientation tours upon joining The Good Guys, Daniel had shown me the chamber. He was quick to inform me that he was responsible for its design and construction. According to my former teammate, it was extremely effective it was at removing any radiological, chemical, or biological hazard.
At the time, it seemed as if he were just being meticulous, providing potentially useful information to the new girl. It was only later, after all that happened between us, that I realized he was actually boasting.
The chamber was approximately fifteen feet long, eight feet high, and six feet wide. It was outfitted with a durasteel cot that retracted into one wall, and there were huge portal windows on either side made from an advanced omni-plex polymer. There was also an uber small closet in one of the corners that served as a bathroom.
I stood in the middle of the chamber, turning around twice as I looked for a lever or button that would close the top. The only thing I saw was a square panel that housed the intercom system next to a switch that worked the lights.
“Okay. So how in the hell am I supposed to shut the damned thing?” I asked aloud.
“I got it,” came the reply from the outside.
I whirled around to see Alexis standing in front of one of the windows. There was a smile on her face, but I could tell it was a front. The worry filling her eyes gave her true feelings away.
“Get out of here, Alexis!” I yelled, waving my hand wildly. I wasn’t sure if any possible contamination would be able to get out through the open hatch to hurt her. “I told Greg to get you all downstairs.”
She shook her head, then held up her hand. “It’s okay. I’m intangible.” She pushed her arm through one of Sonya’s rolling toolboxes to prove it. “We realized you wouldn’t be able to close yourself up alone. Sonya said that my phased state should grant me enough protection, just in case you are radioactive.” She walked out of view. A second later, the metal iris of the hatch closed. The vent on one of the windowless walls began to blow warm air.
Alexis came back to the window a
nd gave me a thumbs-up.
I flipped a switch on the intercom panel. “Sealed?”
“Sealed,” she confirmed. Then she pressed on the side of her ear. “Everything’s secured. It’s okay to come up.” She leaned to look at something on the side of the chamber. “Uh, there’s a blinking red dot surrounded by a solid green circle. Oh...okay, see you in a bit.” She looked back at me as the forced smile became strained.
“I take it that wasn’t good news?” I asked, though I could guess the answer.
“They’re on their way back up.”
“What’s the deal with the red dot and green circle?”
She rubbed her arms, her eyes moving off mine. “The green circle apparently means that there’s no detectable contamination outside the chamber.”
“The red means that there is inside, right?”
She nodded, looking down at her feet. I probably could have said something to put her at ease, but since dealing with the aftermath of being in the middle of a sub-atomic explosion was a new experience for me, I couldn’t think of anything that might not be a lie.
A minute or two of awkward silence later, the double doors on the other side of the hangar opened, and the rest of the team rushed in. Well, Zip rushed in. Greg and Sonya followed right behind him. Darla appeared as well, but stopped well short of the chamber’s location. Richard was nowhere in sight.
Greg must have noticed my silent roll call. “Believe it or not,” he said with a shrug, “the first thing Richard did when we got off the elevator was contact the EAPF to see if anyone was injured or harmed by the blast.”
I guessed that was a perfectly acceptable reason for not coming to check on one of your potentially contaminated teammates.
“They should be fine,” I said. “I think it went off around ten thousand feet or so.”
“Judging from the news footage, the effect radius shouldn’t have been more than four thousand. Six at the most,” Sonya said. She stepped over to look at the diagnostic panel Alexis used earlier. The light manipulator tapped on her lower lip with a slender finger before looking back to me.
“How bad is it?” I asked. To say I wasn’t sure I wanted to know would be an understatement.
She must have heard the concern in my voice because she shook her head, the smile on her face reassuring. “You’ll be fine. It was delta radiation. Anything less energetic would have simply bounced right off you.” She pressed a button on the panel. In response, several circles in the ceiling of the chamber began to hum. “However, the particles still managed to penetrate the first couple of layers of your skin.”
I looked up at the vibrating discs. “Scrubbers? Is that going to work?”
She nodded. “Yes. But it’s not going to be quick.”
Alexis looked between us, brow scrunched as she attempted to follow along. “How long is she going to have to be in there?”
“Thirty hours, give or take.”
I blinked, mouth dropping open. “Thirty hours? I’m going to be stuck in here for over a day?” Somehow, I was hoping getting decontaminated wouldn’t take more than an hour or two. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to speed things up?” I asked, knowing the answer instinctively.
“Nope. You’re in the middle of a Catch-twenty-two, Karen. Your high degree of invulnerability kept the radiation from actually passing through your body. Without that, you’d most likely be either dead or dying right now. But that same toughness makes it harder for the scrubbers to remove the radioactive particles that did get lodged in your skin.”
“Thank goodness for small favors,” I said sarcastically.
“It won’t be that bad,” Alexis said. She placed her hand on the glass. “I’ll be around to keep you company.”
Sonya turned to Greg. “Can you move this to the far corner over there?” She pointed at a spot a furthest from the hangar’s entrance.
I pressed my cheek against the window, looking at the indicated corner. It was dark, and devoid of anything more substantial than dust. I shook my head. “Wow, talk about making a girl feel like a leper or something.”
Sonya gave me a little smirk. “You’re not being banished, Karen. It’s for your own privacy. I merely thought you’d be more comfortable way over there out of view since you’ll be naked.”
Zip’s head whipped around from Sonya to me and back to Sonya before he zoomed over to stand next to Darla. Alexis let out a little giggle while Greg gave Sonya a confused look.
“Why would she be naked?” he asked.
Sonya pointed at the circles set all along the walls and ceiling of the chamber. “In order to remove the type of radioactive particles Karen is contaminated with, those scrubbers have to emit a hard sonic pulse. The vibration has to be powerful enough to get through the first couple of layers of her invulnerable skin.”
“Anything that could do that is going to disintegrate my clothes,” I said.
“Sorry,” the blonde said, stepping back from the device.
Greg grabbed the handles under the window. “Okay,” he said giving me a look. “Hold on while I move this thing.”
I plopped down on the metal bench. “Anyone got a deck of durasteel cards so I can at least play solitaire?”
Alexis tried to be good to her word, keeping me company through most of my necessary confinement. Zip brought over a chair and a computer to the hangar so we would have something to watch while waited for me to be cured of my status as a public health hazard.
However, as we entered the sixth hour of our Dollhouse marathon, I noticed the constant drooping of her eyes and repeated nodding of her ponytailed head. It was cute at first, the way she was determined to keep me company while I went through the lengthy cleaning process. But eventually, I began to feel guilty about it.
“Hey,” I said as I tapped on the window. “Lexi.”
She jerked back into being fully awake from her dozing, rubbing at her eyes.
“Huh?” She asked, looking from me to the computer. “What did I miss?”
“Go to bed, Alexis. You’re practically falling asleep as it is.”
She shook her head. “I promised to stay with you through this.”
I placed my palm on the glass, unable to not smile at her. “You have. But we’re both beat and should probably try to get some rest. You can come back tomorrow.”
The teen continued to stare at me for a moment, then nodded. She stood up, turned off the computer, and walked toward the exit. A few feet away, she stopped, turning around.
“I was worried about if you were going to be okay or not. You know?”
I nodded, a smile run wide across my face. “I know, Lexi-chan. Thanks.”
After she left the hangar, I flopped on the cot, staring up at the glowing circles in the ceiling. The beams themselves were undetectable. Other than the constant feeling of something brushing against my skin, which had taken on a slightly pink color.
Sometime later, the intercom on the wall clicked. A new, yet familiar, voice came through the speaker.
“If I get one of these things for my house,” Kurt said amusedly, “Will you lay around naked in it?”
I jumped up, covering my chest with my hands on reflex. I glanced past him to make sure he was alone before I lowered my arms, resting my hands on the cot.
“Jesus, Kurt,” I said, shaking my head. “How about giving a girl a heads up or something.”
“Sorry,” he said, grinning. He leaned against the side of the unit. “Greg called me a few hours ago to tell me what happened. I some paperwork to finish up before I could get over here.”
“Okay.” I looked away from him to stare at my toes. The cherry-colored polish, put on earlier in the week, was gone. Completely atomized by the scrubbers.
“Karen, can we talk?”
I shrugged. As if it weren’t bad enough I was stuck in this gigantic fishbowl without a stitch of clothing, now we were going talk about a subject I wanted to pretend never happened.
“I made a few calls yester
day afternoon and this morning,” he said. “Spoke to a couple of Fred’s former parolees.” He sighed. “It seems you were right. He coerced them into having sex with him under the threat of sending them back to prison. He’s been placed on suspension pending an IA investigation.”
I glanced up at him, my mouth slightly open in … surprise? I mean, I never expected the truth about that slime bag to come out. I sure as shit never thought anything would be done about it. After twenty years, there were still plenty of people who thought of the Enhanced as something less than human.
“Good,” I said. “He deserves whatever the judge throws at him.”
Fred really deserved whatever I threw at him, which would probably be a tank. However, I could at least take some satisfaction that he would never get a chance to do to Lorraine Dallas what he’d done to countless other scared, female ex-cons.
“I know you don’t want to talk about … it,” Kurt said softly. The electronic nature of the intercom made his voice flatten with the lowered volume. “That’s understandable. But you also don’t need to feel like you did something wrong. Or that I’m judging you. Or seeing you differently than I did before yesterday morning.”
I looked up at him. “Well, you are kind of seeing me differently,” I said, gesturing at my confines.
I hoped I would get a grin in response, but his face remained deadly serious. Like having to tell someone their dog is dead level of serious.
“Can you not deflect? Just for a moment? You don’t need humor to defuse the situation.”
I opened my mouth to comment that attempting to defuse was how I got irradiated in the first place. However, I bit down on the sarcasm to listen to what he obviously felt compelled to say.
“Fine,” I said, shrugging. “I seem to be a captive audience.”
“What you did before we were together? That’s in the past.” He sighed. “I’ve never chided you on your time in the Max. Or what you did to get there. Because I don’t care.”