Chapter 24
The scene which greeted me in Las Vegas was pure pandemonium. Indra had left a trail of destruction in his wake. The place advertising the best steak on the strip had had its facade reduced to rubble, and the battle had apparently been making its way south from there; the huge sign advertising Bally's lay in shattered pieces, as did half of the pedestrian walkway over Las Vegas Boulevard. I could see my teammates clustered still farther south, over near a replica of the Eiffel Tower.
Trina, it appeared, had recovered from her injuries, and Alvaro's concert must have finished, because I could see all ten Primes attacking the Indra monster from every direction. And they were getting their tails kicked. Our four shooters were spaced out in a large square surrounding the monster and blazing away, but Indra was ignoring their shots as if they were raindrops.
As I ran forward, I saw Padma and Nicolai dash up for a double axe-strike. Indra batted Padma's knee-high swing aside with ease. Nicolai's blow sent him staggering, but he recovered quickly and kicked out, sending Nicolai sprawling backward.
"I'm here, guys," I announced. "How can I help?"
"Glad you decided to show up, Blue," I heard Mike say acerbically as he zapped Indra with his blaster to give Nicolai a chance to roll away. "Have a nice long chat with Lily, did you?"
"Not in the mood to discuss it, Red," I replied evenly. "I'm here to help; what can I do?"
"Partner up with me," Toby said. "We're attacking him in pairs. In and out, as fast as you can. He's pretty deadly with that Vajra of his, so don't let it hit you if you can avoid it. And it absolutely must not touch your weapon. Wizzit's orders."
"Got it, Green." I stripped off my sap gloves and tucked them into a pocket of my battle vest. If I had to block a Vajra-strike from Indra, I didn't want to have to worry about it touching my gloves. Pulling out my sais, I said, "Let me know when you're ready."
"We are also shooting at him in between strikes," Trina piped up. "Everyone, all at once, on my signal. I am using Pink's blaster and Pink is using mine. And don't worry if you accidentally hit Pink or one of the metal Primes. Our blaster shots don't affect them, the same way they don't affect Lily."
Hmm. I guess that made sense, since they had no real force shields. "I, uh, sort of lost my blaster in New Mexico," I explained.
"Wizzit told me where it fell, and I grabbed it for you," Bill said. "It's a little banged up, but it should still work. Coming your way."
"Thanks, Black." I snagged it out of the air as Bill tossed it over to me.
I'll spare you most of the tedious back-and-forth we went through with Indra; I'll just note that he was one of the toughest customers we had ever had to face. Ain't too many Enclave monsters that could shrug off eleven simultaneous blaster shots, four of them triple-strength. And every time we started getting the upper hand, he'd come back with that damned Vajra and start whaling away on everyone. I could see that Toby, who had been fighting this monster from the beginning, was getting more and more frustrated with our inability to put this guy away.
Eventually, during one of his runs at the monster, he lost his temper. Trina and I were with him, but when we backed away, he stayed in there, pounding away at the monster. "Damn . . . thing . . . just . . . won't . . . fall . . . down!" he snarled, punctuating each word with a blow from his hammer.
Now, Toby's pretty strong, especially when he gets riled, which isn't too often. Indra staggered back from the force of his attacks. "Better back off now, Green," Mike warned him. "You don't want him to start coming back at you."
"Like . . . hell . . . I . . . will!" Toby drove the monster back farther, pushing him close to the fake Eiffel tower and the building it stood on top of. To my eyes, it looked as if Toby had Indra on the ropes, but I have learned never to count one of these beasties out until I see it explode before my eyes.
"What can we do to help him, Blue?" Trina asked me anxiously. Normally, she would have just whipped out her triple-blaster and started blazing away; I think going without it had her at a loss. Before I could reply, though, Padma yelled and sprinted in for an attack. She seemed to have a special enmity for this particular beastie. Her axe blow caught him right behind the knees. Already off-balance because of Toby's attack, the Indra monster windmilled all four of his arms and slowly toppled over backwards.
Everyone rushed forward at that point, me included. Once you've got an Enclave monster off its feet, you never want it to get back up again. Even the Primes Emeriti moved in, shooting in between the rest of us. "Back away, Pink," I ordered as Angie hesitantly trotted over to join us.
"But --"
"I said back away! I don't want to have to worry about you getting hurt!"
"He's right, Pink," Trina said. "Stay back."
"All right . . ." she said reluctantly.
I thought we had him then; I really did. Everyone with a force shield was pounding on the guy by now, and every one of the Emeriti was blasting him continuously. He was thrashing about, but it was obvious he was getting steadily weaker. I half-expected Wizzit to call for a final strike at any moment. At some point, though, Indra managed to raise the hand holding the Vajra and strike it down hard onto the earth.
The impact created what felt like a major earthquake, throwing us all violently to the ground. As I struggled to pick myself up, shaking my head to clear it, I saw Indra rise up unsteadily to his full height. Toby was lying on the ground practically at his feet, apparently out cold. Indra raised his hand, preparing to deliver a crushing blow from the Vajra straight onto Toby's prone form.
Angie, being the farthest away, was the first one of us to recover. I didn't see where she came from, but all of a sudden she was standing in front of Toby before any of the rest of us could react. "Not today you don't, bub!" she yelled, firing straight up at the monster.
Indra took a step back and clawed at his face, which surprised me. I knew we had weakened him. I guess maybe at this point he couldn't just shrug off a point-blank triple-blaster shot directly into the eyes. He uttered a high, piercing shriek and flailed out blindly with a pair of arms; it was by pure dumb luck that he caught Angie across the midriff and sent her flying against the Eiffel Tower building.
"Pink!" I cried out. I winced as she bounced off a corner of the wall and fell to the ground, limp as a rag doll. Indra swept out the hand holding the Vajra; it struck the wall, crumbling it inward and sending chunks of masonry down onto my sister. "Pink!" I screamed again and started forward.
Indra's vision must have cleared by then, because he suddenly seemed to focus on my sister. His face twisted into a snarl. I whipped out my blaster and started shooting at him. A couple of others did the same, but he seemed to be recovering his strength rapidly and ignored us. Looming over Angie, he brought the Vajra down for a death-blow.
That was when it happened again. I drew in a sharp breath to yell, and for the second time in my life, I seemed to inhale part of my force shield with it, and time ground to a halt. I could the monster's fist descending more and more slowly until it stopped just a foot or two over Angie's pink-glowing form. I struggled forward, fighting my way through the transparent, sucking mud that seemed to have enveloped my entire body.
As I slogged toward the monster, I began to hear a weird sound. It started off in the subsonic range, gradually rising in pitch. As it entered my range of hearing it began to resolve itself into . . . Wizzit's voice?
"--ith him. Lock weapons with him. Lock weapons with him. Lock weapo--" it said over and over, beginning as a slow growl and going faster and faster toward an ultra-fast mosquito range. It occurred to me that this might be the only way Wizzit could communicate with me in my speeded-up timeframe.
Lock weapons with him? Toby had said earlier that Wizzit warned us not let our weapons touch the Vajra. Still, Wizzit knew more about this kind of stuff than I did, and if he said to lock weapons, that was probab
ly for the best.
I dropped my blaster, not sure whether I could jam it into its holster without breaking something, and pulled my sais from my belt. Nearing the monster, I stepped over Angie, her bright pink form seeming a dull black to my altered senses. I crossed the blades of my weapons and brought them up in a low, awkward X-block against the knob of the Vajra that was protruding from Indra's fist.
A spark blossomed almost immediately at the spot where the weapons met. It was bright -- unnaturally bright in the darkened world of my speeded-up senses -- and grew rapidly. It reminded me a bit of the sparklers we used to light on the fourth of July. I began to hear the strange, rising sound of Wizzit's voice again. This time the words were, "--ontact. You must make physical contact. You must make physical contact. You mu--"
Physical contact? Was he going to teleport us someplace? I risked letting go of one of my sais -- it remained suspended in midair as if it were stuck to the Vajra -- and grabbed hold of Indra's massive wrist. Right away, I began to feel a strange sensation at the back of my neck, like the normal tingle I got from a teleportation, but slowed way, way down. The spark kept getting brighter and brighter as my vision got hazier and hazier.
I had never before felt the exact moment when I teleported. Normally there was just the tingle and when my vision cleared, I was someplace else. This time, though, I felt for the briefest of instants as if I were in two places at once, and then I was in just one place again -- a new place.
This was a strange place. There was an odd sort of light, made odder by my altered vision. Things were sharper, clearer -- the shadows had knife-sharp edges -- and yet there was no color at all in my surroundings. Nothing but gray dust and rock everywhere. I scarcely had time to take everything in, though, when I heard Wizzit's voice yet again. "--lue! Back away, Blue! Back away, Blue! Ba--"
Well, that was clear enough. I had no quarrel with backing away from the Indra monster. The spark from the joined weapons was getting uncomfortably bright by now, and I was starting to feel some heat from it as well. I released Indra's wrist and stepped back. There was some resistance as I pulled my other hand from the sai, but then I yanked hard and it came free; my crossed sais remained stuck fast to the Vajra. And the constant mud-like drag that I had been feeling from what I assumed was air resistance was completely gone. I felt almost as if I were moving normally.
The teleportation sensations made themselves felt as soon as I pulled free, and I soon found myself back in the lounge at HQ, moving at normal speed once again. As soon as I realized where I was, I demanded, "Where is everybody? Wizzit, where's Angie?"
"They are still in Las Vegas," Wizzit said calmly. "Be patient, Blue. It has been less than five seconds since I teleported you to the moon and back. They have scarcely had time to realize what has happened. I am bringing Angie back now."
Angie appeared at my feet in a flash of pink light. I heard her breathe in sharply, as if she were relieved not to have those pieces of broken building lying on top of her. In a flash I was kneeling at her side. "Angie!" I exclaimed. "Angie, are you all right?"
"I don't think so," came her trembling reply. She drew in a shuddering breath. "I hurt all over . . . except . . . my legs! Big brother, I -- I can't feel my legs! What's wrong with my legs?"
I don't think I had ever heard Angie sound scared before, not since we were little kids. I took her hand in mine. "It's all right, little sis," I assured her. "We'll take care of you. We'll make everything all right. Wizzit will make everything all right." I looked up at the ceiling. "Wizzit? We can heal her, can't we? She can piggy-back off my healing coma like before?"
"Not at the moment, but once your force shield recharges itself, then yes, we can." He switched to my belt speaker, Prime-to-Prime, so that he was speaking just to me. "She has a severe concussion. Her back is broken and her spinal cord has been severed. A number of her internal organs have been bruised. There is a reasonable probability that I can save her life, but beyond that, I can't say."
"Dammit, Wizzit, I can't --" I stopped to brush the tears from my eyes. "I can't lose her and Lily both in the same day!"
"I understand, Blue. I will do my best."
My teammates flashed in just a few minutes later. Toby was still out cold; Wizzit said just to leave him where he was and started his healing coma right where he was lying. The others clustered around me and Angie, murmuring sympathetically while I explained about her injuries.
We quickly established that, aside from a few scratches and bruises, the Primes Emeriti were all reasonably healthy. Padma had a badly wrenched knee and could barely stand, but she waved off all offers of help and limped over to one of the comfortable chairs. Then, one by one, Mike, Trina, Nicolai, and Bill all settled down for their healing comas as well.
The Primes Emeriti stayed with me while my force shield recharged itself, for which I was profoundly grateful. I don't know how much Angie knew of what was going on, because she seemed to be passing in and out of consciousness. All I was aware of was a sick sense of dread that I had gotten my baby sister killed or crippled for life, and I didn't want to be left alone with that feeling.
To help us pass the time, Wizzit showed us a vid of the moon he had pulled from some major observatory within the past few minutes. "Pay careful attention, Trevor," he said. "This is why I didn't want any of your weapons to touch the Vajra."
I saw a blossom of light that grew rapidly larger until, within seconds, it obscured nearly a fourth of the moon's disk. It then faded away almost as quickly. I whistled. "Was that Indra?" I asked.
"Yupperooni! It was only because you were moving so quickly that I was able to get you out to the moon and back again fast enough," he explained. I shuddered as I imagined that same kind of explosion taking place in downtown Las Vegas.
At last, Wizzit announced that my force shield was back to full strength. "But," he said, "there's a problem. Angie's number doesn't correspond to yours. I need to change it."
"Then change it!"
"I will, but I need her to deactivate and then reactivate to make the change effective. I can't do that for her."
I gripped Angie's shoulder. "Angie?" I said urgently. "Angie, Wizzit needs you to reactivate." There was no response; I shook her shoulder slightly. "Angie?"
"She's unconscious, Trevor."
"Then change me!" I snapped. "Change my number to match hers; make me Prime Nineteen! That would work, wouldn't it?"
"It . . . would indeed," Wizzit said, sounding surprised. "I have no idea why I didn't think of that myself." My force shield flickered. "Done. Prepare for a healing coma." He hesitated. "Trevor, I understand that your species has some fairly strong taboos against certain types of touching between siblings. Nevertheless, the more skin-to-skin contact you can manage, the better this will work."
"Fine." I skinned off my tee-shirt and lay down on my side next to Angie, close enough that my chin was resting against her bare shoulder. She had said she was still in her Liat costume, which, as I recalled, consisted of some sort of modest bikini, a few leis, and a grass skirt. Plenty of exposed skin, so I shouldn't have to remove any of her clothing. I twined one of my arms around hers and laid my other hand across her bare stomach. I also crossed ankles with her, so that one of her legs was touching one of mine from heel to thigh. A little more intimate than I would normally have been with my sister, but hopefully not too creepy.
"Is this good?" I asked.
"It's fine."
I kind of lost track of time after that. It wasn't like a real healing coma, but not like I was just lying there, either. I was vaguely aware that Cathy and Alvaro teleported home, while Mayumi stayed with me. Mostly, though, I just felt Angie lying beside me -- her breath fluttering against my nose, her stomach rising and falling beneath my hand.
The others woke up from their healing comas, one after another. Mayumi forestalled any
questions about the way Angie and I were lying together and shooed everyone into the kitchen. I thought I saw a couple flashes of light at one point, as if someone had teleported in or out, but I didn't pay them much mind.
I expected the healing coma to end the way they normally did, with my eyes flicking open and instant full awareness. Didn't happen. Instead, I heard Angie make some sort of uncomfortable noise, and then she yelled and was suddenly struggling to sit up, grabbing at something on her leg.
There was a ripping sound, and I smelled something hot. I sat up; Angie was in a half-sitting position, the pink glow around her gone. "What happened?" I asked her as she sank back down.
"My Junior Prime Pink badge! I had strapped it to my leg because there was no other place to put it, and it started burning me!"
Her badge was lying on the floor beside me where she had evidently tossed it. I picked it up, then immediately dropped it again with a yell and stuck my fingers in my mouth. The darned thing was scalding hot. "Wizzit, what's going on?"
"The unit overheated," Wizzit explained. "It's quite useless now, I'm afraid; the internal components have fused beyond repair."
"You mean, she's as healed up as she can get?"
"Affirmative."
I looked down at Angie. "So . . . how do you feel?"
She looked thoughtful for a moment, as if she were considering the question. Then I heard a commotion from the direction of the kitchen. Wizzit must have passed the word that Angie was awake, because my teammates were entering the room, along with two figures I hadn't expected to see.
"Mom? Dad?" I said, feeling inexplicably guilty over being caught half-naked next to my sister. "What are you guys doing here?"
"Wizzit sent us a text explaining where Angie had gone," my mother said. "We were so worried when we couldn't find her backstage after the play."
"I told Julie to tell you guys that I got a call from Trevor!" Angie protested.
"We didn't see Julie," my father replied. "Anyway, after we got home, Mike teleported in. He told us that you had been seriously hurt and that we needed to come right away." He raised his eyebrows in a silent question.
My mother was more direct. She knelt beside Angie and laid a hand against her forehead, the way mothers do. "How are you, dear?" she asked anxiously. Then she recoiled at the sight of a smear of red along her stomach. "You're bleeding!" she exclaimed.
"That's Trevor's blood," Wizzit interjected, as if that should make my mother feel better. "He tore off most of the skin on his palm getting away from the monster."
I looked at my bloody hand, now mostly scabbed over, and shrugged. It hurt, but I had felt worse pain. "So how are you, little sis?" I prompted her.
"I feel okay, I guess," Angie said slowly. "Nothing hurts. I had a vague memory that I couldn't feel my legs, but . . ." She slapped one thigh experimentally. "I felt that just now." She gathered her legs under her and rose to her feet.
Well, she tried to rise to her feet. It wasn't very successful. She got about halfway up, faltered, and sat back down. "My, um," she said uncertainly, "my legs aren't working very well."
"There was a certain amount of injury to your back and spinal cord," Wizzit said. I noticed that he omitted the rest of the problems, presumably because they were all taken care of. "I fixed as much as I could before your Junior Prime Pink badge burned itself out. It is mostly healed."
"Mostly?" Angie, Mom, Dad, and I said at the same time.
"There appears to be some lingering damage to the nerves, as evidenced by the weakness you are experiencing," he explained. "It's difficult to say how severely you will be affected. There is a chance that the weakness may go away, or it could get worse; you may possibly experience some numbness in your lower limbs. Worst case, you might lose the ability to walk."
Angie's face went pale under her stage makeup. Without a word, she scooted herself over to the nearest chair and, using it for support, started to push herself up. I held out a hand to her, but she grimly shook her head. It took her over a minute, but eventually she was on her feet. Taking a deep breath, she stepped cautiously forward. Two steps, then three, and then her legs refused to support her any further and she fell forward into my arms.
"Little sis, I am so sorry this happened to you," I said. I held her tight against me and closed my eyes, feeling the hot sting of tears. "I should never have let you come out to help us. I'm sorry I ever told you I was a Prime!"
"Don't be," she whispered back. "It's not your fault. I was out there because I wanted to be, not because you made me. Being Junior Prime Pink was the coolest thing I have ever done."
I eased her down into one of the comfortable chairs. She sat there for a long moment staring down at her hands, obviously fighting back tears. "This isn't going to get any better, is it?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Realistically, I'm going to be like this for the rest of my life, aren't I?"
"Ordinarily, I would say yes," Wizzit replied. "However, once you join us as Prime Violet, assuming of course that you're still interested, then --"
"Wait a minute!" Angie interrupted. She looked up at the ceiling speakers. "You mean, I can still be a Prime?"
"Of course," Wizzit said matter-of-factly. "After today's brave performance, I could hardly rescind my offer, could I? But as I was saying, once you join us and have had a day or so to become acclimated to the Prime belt, then a healing coma should fix you up in no time."
I don't think Angela heard much beyond "of course," because all of a sudden she was crying and laughing and trying to talk, all at once. I couldn't make out much of what she was saying, except that she used the phrase "two months" an awful lot, which I knew was how much time she had left before she graduated. I swept her up in my arms and gave her a big hug, happy to know that my baby sister was going to be all right. Eventually.
After that, there wasn't much to do except send our visitors home. I kissed Mayumi's cheek and thanked her for staying with me the whole time. When I introduced her to my parents as a former Prime, my mother gave me what she probably thought was a sly wink and commented that the two of us made a cute couple. That made Mayumi beam and my face turn red. I decided not to mention to my parents that she was already married and, despite her looks, was closer to their age than to mine.
To my surprise, Toby insisted on carrying Angela home in his arms. It was the least he could do, he said, to show his appreciation for her having saved him from Indra. Toby can be a bit tongue-tied around girls, especially pretty girls, but his thanks were eloquent enough. And I have to say, Angie did look awfully adorable being carried around like that.
Attack Doll 4: Primes Emeriti Page 25