“You’re clearly up to something else, aren’t you,” said Ms. Infinity.
“I don’t have to say anything.”
Ms. Infinity said no more. Days earlier, her mother had warned her against using her mental powers, saying that even mind reading should never be used except in cases of emergencies. But knowing what Gunn had done to her, and what he might well do now, she could infer that this might well be such an emergency.
Without another word, she peered into the man’s eyes, binding him so he could not look away. Then she scanned his mind for a few seconds—a few seconds were all she needed—and released him with a short-term memory wipe.
“I don’t have to say anything,” said Johnny, effectively returning to a few seconds earlier.
“You know what?” said Ms. Infinity, “You’re right. You don’t. And I can’t stay here another second!” With that she flew off at a blindingly fast speed.
“Well,” said Jake, “We got lucky. We got them both together. But now she’s gone. I’d have to say we’re following Gunn now.”
“But we still need our scoop,” said Jenna, “Think. Is there anything new from her?”
Jake looked puzzled. “I get that Johnny Gunn tried to kill her with nuclear weapons. You know what else? From here, I couldn’t be sure, but I could swear she just read his mind.”
“But Jake, how does any of that get us closer to getting her secret identity?”
Jake looked at Jenna for a few seconds in silence. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’m running out of things to be surprised about.”
“I’ll give you that,” said Jenna, “She’s full of surprises.”
“No Jenna,” said Jake, “I’m talking about you.”
Ms. Infinity flew like a flash across the Middle Atlantic, appearing over Washington in barely a nanosecond. Looking down, she breathed a nervous sigh of relief that it was still there—for now. But her heart was beating hard and fast, for an apocalyptic disaster was only minutes away.
Flying up into Washington’s sky, she talked to herself in a near panic. “Now I have to face another…nuke. I just…have to face…Oh no!!!”
She didn’t want to admit it, but now she couldn’t even hide it from herself; she was even more terrified than she was before. No longer laboring under the illusion of invincibility, now she had to face the very thing that had nearly killed her. She held fast to thoughts of her mother and Lisa. There was her faith. Then she flew.
Every ounce of her wanted to turn around. But she pressed on, her nerves in a frenzy, her throat nearly closed, her stomach throbbing with pain. She thought, If I didn’t have to watch where I was going, I’d close my eyes. With nobody watching, she threw her head back and screamed, “Mommy!”
Suddenly, she saw a strange sight. As she looked upwards, the clouds began to part before her. Then she suddenly had a view of her mission, clearer than day. There was the missile, still far away, but falling fast.
She flew upward, trying her best to contain the fear inside. She instantly dashed toward the missile, then turned around to fly parallel with it. And now, she plummeted toward Washington, the ground growing closer by the second. It was scarcely a minute before the capital would meet its end. She had to turn and stop it—now! But how?
She wanted to grab it to turn it around, but there was one big problem. There was nothing to grab it by. It was smooth and featureless. Even the tail had a smooth finish, with no protrusions.
There was a part of her that wanted to forgive herself for her inability to save the country at this pivotal moment. If she couldn’t grab it, she couldn’t grab it. No! she thought, That is no excuse at all. I have to find a way, and I will find a way. In fact…damnit I know it.
There was a way to stop this thing, and she knew it damn well. It just scared the living daylights out of her. She had to put herself at the business end of the missile, where she had met the other two missiles when they had nearly killed her. There was no choice but to get under it, and risk blowing up with it.
With Ms. Infinity gone, another scene broke out a few yards away from Lisa. A few men were storming towards a protester. When they engulfed her, Lisa heard her shout, “Leave me alone!” But her cries were instantly muffled by the tide of vicious attackers, and the sound of beating was all that could be heard.
Lisa felt a moment of doubt. The danger that would face her if she stepped in was obviously very real. But then there was already a great danger on the woman being attacked. For a split second, both of her choices, to ignore or to intervene, were in complete equilibrium. But then suddenly something stirred inside her; she knew exactly what her heart wanted, and her sense of justice overcame her fear.
“What are you doing?” cried Lisa at the attackers.
The most aggressive of the men stopped and turned to shout at her. “None of your business!”
“Oh no? And what business is she to you?”
“Shut up!” snapped the man.
“You’re hurting a woman who has done nothing to you. I think you should leave her alone.”
The man began to walk towards Lisa threateningly. “If you don’t shut up, you’ll be next!”
Lisa held her breath, working desperately hard at not giving into her anger. She was amazed at herself for even speaking to someone as threatening as this. “I’m not shutting up. This woman deserves to be left alone. And besides, I don’t like to see this going on here. This is my city, and my country, and I’m used to feeling safe in it. I’m not going to stand by and let you spread chaos.”
Another attacker began to walk towards Lisa, holding an assault rifle in a threatening stance. “Oh no, you little Chink. This isn’t your country! This is my country! Your time is over here.”
“Let me ask you something,” said Lisa, “Are you going to shoot me?”
The rest of the men stopped beating the protester, perhaps out of curiosity, or maybe it was fear. They watched ever more intently.
“Oh right now, I don’t know what I might do,” said the attacker confronting Lisa, “You’re at my mercy.”
“I didn’t ask you that,” said Lisa, “I asked you if you are going to shoot me.”
“Listen Ming Ming, you better be begging for mercy!”
“Will you or won’t you? You see, I’m not so sure I need to be afraid.”
The man looked confused. “What are you trying to do? You run away before I…”
“You wouldn’t dare! You will leave me alone, and you will leave this woman alone too!”
“What the…?”
“You heard me. You are leaving her alone and walking away. That is all.”
The man didn’t speak. He seemed too confused to answer. The other men were stunned.
“That’s all,” said Lisa, calmly and forcefully, very nearly as if she had superpowers of her own, “This is over now. All of you are getting up and moving on.”
The rest of the men got up and walked away. The man who Lisa had first confronted stood another moment. He seemed as if he was about to move on, but he had to get one last dig in. “You’re both gonna die soon anyway. You’ll see!”
Ms. Infinity had to act. There was no time to think about it. At best, there were maybe seconds left before this thing hit Washington and ended everything for the city.
Holding on tightly to her faith, she flew under the missile. Her heart nearly stopped as the inevitable happened, and she began to fall with it. She took a deep breath, took control of her senses, and pushed against the missile’s bottom.
With all her will, and all her strength, she exerted herself to stop the missile. It was much more complicated than simply pushing. The object was tremendously unwieldy, and having to move it from a smooth, narrow bottom took tremendous concentration. She had to use her power of telekinesis to help keep it steady as she flew, but even that was tricky. Its enormous weight made it hard to exert both mechanical and telekinetic force on it at once. But then, when she thought about it, even that still shouldn’t have been so hard. Her ne
rves were the real issue.
Her head was throbbing. Never looking down or to the sides, she was convinced that she could not possibly be flying fast enough, though sounds emanating from the powerful winds around her should have told a different story, for the force she was exerting was indeed tremendous.
Finally she looked down, certain that she must still be falling. To her surprise, she was not. She was flying upward very fast, if anything much faster than she should have been. It was almost as if someone was pushing her.
She exerted herself more to increase her speed. It wasn’t clear if this might still detonate. Faster and faster she flew until at last she reached the end of the atmosphere. Then she bent her knees under the missile’s edge, and gave it one final push to throw it into space. She was amazed at her own strength. She felt as if her force had doubled, as if someone else had somehow thrown it with her.
And then, just seconds after she threw the missile, she was taken with a sudden shock when it finally exploded. Time itself seemed to pause as she saw what might have been the fate of her nation’s capital. Before her was a vast nuclear detonation, overwhelming in its scale, intense in its many colors, yet eerily silent as it spread about the void of space. The flash of light alone would have blinded her were she not of Centerian constitution; she did not seem to have the common sense to look away. As she viewed another explosion similar to the one that had nearly killed her, the memory now snapped back to her, and she wanted to panic once again. Yet somehow she found a strange comfort inside. In fact, she could swear she felt a warm, comforting embrace, rather like her mother’s. Must be a trick of the light atmosphere, she thought. As she turned to fly home, she could swear she saw an owl flying away ahead of her.
With one more look around, she said to herself, “Right! Now I’m going back to New York. Lisa might need me.”
“Look!” said Jenna Storm, “She’s back! Take the camera! I’ll say my piece about Gunn, but then you will point it at Ms. Infinity! Don’t mess this up! When she flies away, you will be damn sure to find out where!”
“You’re kidding me,” said Jake, “That’s the best you have right now?”
“Just do it, Jake!”
“Alright. I will get her direction the best I can. I don’t know how much that will help.”
Jenna took the microphone. “At this point, it is uncertain how Johnny Gunn intends to realize his ambition, or what kind of response the government has. Ms. Infinity mysteriously flew away minutes ago. She has now returned, but has not made any official comment.”
After Jenna’s statement, Jake set up the camera to point at Ms. Infinity. But soon he was distracted. In the noise and confusion, it was to be expected that he could not hear an invisible presence right above him, nor could he notice when the camera seemed to have a mind of its own.
“Uh, Johnny,” said Miles, “I have a call here from your friend Uri.”
“Okay Romanov!” said Johnny as he grabbed the phone, “This better be good! I told you, do your job and leave me alone. I have a country to take over.”
“Sir,” said Uri Presputnik, “I think you had better be aware, the bomb did not detonate. It did not even fall all of the way. I cannot be sure, but…”
“You Russian moron!” shouted Johnny, “You failed on both missions. The witch and the government are still living!”
Johnny hung up then shouted, “I’m not giving up! I can still be king!”
Miles quietly moved away. But what disturbed Johnny more was another scene. A few feet away, Will and Joseph Roach had made their way into their limousine, and were driving toward the heliport.
As the scene became more chaotic, Johnny Gunn began to panic. He tried to keep a security escort as he headed to his rendezvous near Macy’s. But many of the officers were involved in controlling the violence around them. Soon he was separated. Alone in the crowd, he began to panic. He ran in a direction where thought he would be safe, but soon he was lost.
As he looked around, there was not a friendly face around. Nobody seemed to recognize him, or maybe they were too distracted to notice. He carried on, trying to hide his fear. But as he reached a clearing, he was face to face with a strange, terrifying scene. Right before him, his own powerful supporters were stopped in their tracks by nothing but a small, young Asian woman, Lisa Lin.
Now his panic began to grow out of control. He was convinced that the crowd had turned against him. He began to run aimlessly. He was unaware that a live TV camera was now aimed at him.
“Where’s my car?” he shouted.
Nobody answered, so he shouted again, “Where is my car! One of you morons, get me the hell out of here!”
“What?” said a woman with a stroller next to him.
“Listen you idiot. I need to find my car! You may not understand English, but I make more in five minutes than you will in your whole worthless life! I need my car!”
“I don’t know where…”
“Get out of my way!” he shouted. He then punched her in the face, and pushed her hard. She fell into the stroller. It started rolling into the gutter. She ran frantically to pull it out of danger. Not far away, the camera was catching every second of the confrontation.
A moment later a police officer came up to Johnny Gunn. “There you are!” he called, “Here! I’ll take you to your car!”
Lisa watched the scene in amazement. “Unbelievable!” she cried, “If that was the other way around, she would have been arrested in a half a second!”
With Ms. Infinity’s help, the crowd was broken up. Many arrests were made. Soon cameras were pointed at her, and questions were asked.
“So Ms. Infinity,” said Jenna, “Do you have any comments following this event? What is your real name?”
Liz Leland broke in after her. “Do you have any details about the world you came from?”
“Is that all you have to say?” snapped Ms. Infinity, “Really? After all that happened here?”
But even as she spoke, she noticed a familiar face running toward Jenna’s cameraman. It took her a second to recognize him out of costume, but it suddenly hit her that this was Roger, the man who had been dressed as Mighty Man back at Comic Con. Her super hearing picked up the sound of a whispering conversation.
“Jake! Thank God you’re alright! I worried about you in this madhouse!”
“Shh! Thanks Roger. I’m fine, but please! I’m filming. Besides, we can’t….you know…here…not too close. Look around here. This crowd. I know, but this is not a safe place for us. We’ll talk later.”
Ms. Infinity paused for a moment to think. So the cameraman must be Jake. She then thought about what her mother had said to her the other day. Clearly Roger and Jake did not feel safe being open about their marriage in public, especially in this crowd. She did not have to think at all where she stood on that matter.
“You know what?” continued Ms. Infinity, “Yes. I am from another world! And do you know why I had to leave? It wasn’t safe for me there! I was always in danger for who I was. You see, this is a place where they have complete contempt for women. Females there don’t even have the most basic rights. And I was persecuted because my abilities were greater than the males around me.
“This is an extreme dictatorship, ruled by men with no regard for peoples’ rights. Somehow they have their subjects convinced that they are keeping them safe. They use fear to keep themselves in power, to bully everyone into submission.
“I don’t want to run or hide anymore. This is who I am. I am a powerful woman, and I always will be. Some of you will never accept that, and the truth is, I can’t change that. But then you can’t change me either.
“The last thing America needs is a powerful person who believes he or she can take over and solve all its problems. Johnny Gunn can’t make everything better, and guess what: Neither can I. I have my place, but it’s worth nothing without everyone else!”
She looked at the reporters in front of her. “So do you have any other questions?”
<
br /> “Ms. Infinity!” called Liz Leland, “Can you tell us how you keep you figure?”
“I have a better question!” shouted Jenna as she bumped in front of Liz, “Where do you go every day when you disappear?”
“Never mind that!” shouted Michael Klozet, “Do you have a superpowered boyfriend?”
“Much more important!” interrupted Kaz Pimple, “You must at least know this: What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
“I don’t know,” said Ms. Infinity, “Right now I’m not even hearing the sound of half a hand clapping. Look kids, I’m out. Never forget the power you have inside you!”
With that, she flew away, seeming to disappear in her super speed.
With Ms. Infinity gone, Jenna Storm ran to look over the video she and Jake had taken, or thought they had taken.
“Did you get that?” shouted Jenna to Jake.
“I think so,” said Jake, “Let me…”
“What the?” cried Jenna. To her dismay, the camera had been pointed the wrong way.
“Are you incompetent?” she yelled, frantically shuttling through the video, “Alright Jake, I’ll probably get you fired, or reassigned, but in the meantime let’s see what you did get.”
She scanned through the footage. Jake’s eyes were closed, a look of dread on his face. But a moment later he was shocked when Jenna suddenly shouted.
“Jake! Jake! You genius! Look what you got!”
They looked at the footage the camera had captured. It showed Johnny Gunn running like a coward through the crowd, then hitting the woman, and pushing her into the stroller.
“Ha!” shouted Jenna, “Nailed him! You know what? I don’t need to pick on Ms. Infinity. She’s not the enemy here. No. I have something much better. This is why I got into journalism in the first place. Come with me, Jake. We’re going to the studio. Let’s go and take down a lowlife of a politician!”
“It would be an honor!” said Jake.
“One little thing,” said Jenna, “Can you just stop in on the way and get me a macchiato?”
“So I uh…uh…Wow! Good thing I found you!” said Bonnie.
“Bonnie!” said Lisa. “That was amazing what I just saw!”
Where Infinity Begins Page 22