I can't be this tired, she thought. I can't.
The alien sensation of Emily's bubble of float passed through her and then crashed into the huge monster, lifting him off his feet as far as possible in the cramped corridor. Golem reached out to both sides though, and with thick, stone-like fingers, he gripped the walls, pulling himself free of the bubble and tearing hunks of plaster and tile from the hallway.
"I'm legitimately amazed nobody's ever done that before," Emily said. "Bubble of float failure."
Jane heard Billy groaning and glanced over to see him struggling to get back onto his feat.
"Em, take Billy and go get Sam," Jane said.
"How about a big pile of no," Emily said. "I'm not leaving you here."
Jane dodged a huge swinging punch and grabbed hold of the monster's wrist. She let her hands burst into flames, then dug her fingers into the creature's clay-like skin and Golem screamed; his clay skin dried and cracked like mud in the hot sun. More clay bubbled down, filling in where Jane was burning him, but it was slow and clearly enraged the monster as well.
Maybe I can take him out, she thought. If not . . .
"I can buy you enough time to get Sam!"
She was trading punches with the creature now, trying to keep him as far from Emily and Billy, who had clearly had his bell rung by that throw. Emily helped him to his feet and Billy attempted to aim that wrist-mounted freeze-weapon at Golem but couldn't seem to get his eyes to focus on the same place at the same time.
Jane threw a flame-engulfed fist at Golem's knee, turning some of the joint from mud to ceramic. She punched it again and it shattered with a satisfying crash, but then the monster kicked her with a foot nearly as long as her torso and send her sliding down the hall.
Golem charged her and the floor shook with each footstep.
"Emily, you need to save Sam! I'll catch up!" she said.
Emily looked back at her in horror, so distracted that she wasn't even using her gravitational powers to help her keep Billy on his feet, so the boy's entire weight seemed to lean heavily on her shoulder. She was hesitating.
"I got this, Em," Jane said. "Go save our friend."
Emily nodded gravely and then, supporting the still groggy Billy, headed toward cell 1313.
Chapter 48:
The lights go out
on Broadway
I really don't know how much longer I can keep this up, Titus thought as he was tossed again across the courtyard. The rain soaking his fur had been helpful at first, refreshing, keeping his body temperature down, but now, so long into the fight, it became a burden. The weight of it pulled him down, making him slow and less agile.
The male sentry hit him with such speed and power that Titus's amazing healing abilities were having trouble responding in a timely fashion. Bruised to the bone, there were parts of his body where things weren't connected correctly anymore. Somewhere in his shoulder a piece of gravel from the pavement had settled in under the skin and his body kept trying to push it back out again, but so much of his energy was directed to keeping the Distribution-suit wearing sentry at bay that everything became a challenge.
Bedlam, meanwhile, no longer seemed to be enjoying the fight. Her previous glee at having an impervious opponent faded into a methodical struggle, the unstoppable force against the immovable object.
"Remind me to never help you guys out again," Bedlam said between thunderous punches.
And then Titus noticed something. The Distribution suit no longer lit up when Bedlam struck the sentry.
Titus lashed out with one massive, clawed hand at his own opponent and witnessed the same thing — where previously some type of circuitry glowed below the surface as the suits absorbed kinetic energy, now there was no reaction. The suits still protected their occupants, but if they were no longer lighting up, did that mean they were no longer generating strength with each new attack?
Titus advanced to test the waters further, and realized that during his attack the suit no longer glowed and the pilot seemed to slow down, with a lack of strength behind his counterattacks. Titus tried to yell a warning to Bedlam, but the sound left his wolf-shaped jaws like Chewbacca hiccupping and burping, Titus briefly wished he had stayed with Finnigan a little bit longer so he could have learned to control his voice more while in werewolf form.
And yet, surreally, Bedlam seemed to understand exactly what he was saying.
"You're right! I think we broke them!" Bedlam said.
Her sentry's body language changed, the cocky and assured fighter's stance giving way to something more fearful.
Titus noticed his own opponent working harder to avoid contact as well. Both sentries exchanged knowing glances with each other. Titus's sentry started to back away and headed toward the Labyrinth's entrance. He looked over at his counterpart as she struggled to disengage herself from Bedlam, who had decided, almost cruelly, to latch onto the woman's wrists and not allow her leave. Bedlam winked at Titus and then released her. They turned and ran, the suits propelled them at superhuman speeds across the courtyard and helped them leap up and over a brick wall and out of sight.
"Do we go after them?" Bedlam said.
Titus shook his head, still unable to speak properly, and pulled his now ragged hoodie back up over his head to hide his face. He picked up his spear from the pavement and let himself revert back to human form.
"They're just doing their job," Titus said, his mouth feeling alien and strange after the transformation. "Looks like someone on the inside did us a favor."
"Reckon it was Dancer?" Bedlam asked.
Titus shook his head.
"Shutting down those suits wasn't part of the plan," Titus said. "We didn't know how they worked."
"So glad you guys had a solid plan before we knocked on the front door," Bedlam said.
"We like to think ahead."
Bedlam slapped him on the back with a cyborg hand and rubbed his head like an older sibling affectionately teasing a little brother. Both gestures ached as she touched still-unhealed bruises and cuts from the brawl, but Titus didn't say anything. She was just being friendly, and Titus knew a thing or two about underestimating your own strength.
"We're a good team, aren't we?" Bedlam said. "It's like a buddy cop movie. He's a mild mannered werewolf with a heart of gold. She's a cyborg science experiment gone wrong. Together, they fight crime."
Titus laughed.
"I think we technically just fought the law," Titus said.
"And the law did not win," Bedlam said. "Go team. Do you guys do stuff like this all the time?"
"Not always. Sometimes we have pizza and movie nights."
"Rad," Bedlam said. "What's next, Hoss?"
"Unfortunately," Titus said, gesturing toward the open gates of the prison, "I think we go in there."
"And break things?"
"And break things."
"Okay, I'm in," Bedlam said. "You got any hot ideas?"
"If Kate's plan is working, she's going to need my help," Titus said.
"Want me to go cause a bunch of problems while you go find your sociopath sidekick?"
"Don't let her hear you call her my sidekick," Titus said.
"Don't let anyone call you her sidekick, then," Bedlam said, before taking off at an inhuman speed into the open doors of the Labyrinth, her robotic lower legs leaving footprints in the blacktop as she ran.
Chapter 49:
Paging Doctor Emily
The infirmary turned medical lab was uncomfortably quiet and dark when Billy and Emily entered. The lights were turned down low as if out of respect for the patients' eyes, but red emergency lights glowed dimly from the ceiling, warning them that something bad had happened elsewhere in the building.
They passed by the same rooms they had looked into when coming to see Sam during the first visit and noticed that the reptilian man had been moved, presumably back to his cell, while the Ape Lord still languished in his bed, cuffed and dozing.
"Hang on," Emily said, and
entered the Ape Lord's room.
She touched one handcuff, then the other, and as she placed her fingers on them, the cuffs unlocked, dropping to the floor.
"What are you doing?" Billy asked.
"I was going to ask the same thing," the rumbling, strangely accented voice of the Ape Lord said. The massive gorilla-orangutan hybrid shuffled his body into a sitting position to look at her.
"A friend of mine said you could have been a good guy if you'd done a few things differently," Emily said.
The massive ape nodded.
"I made bad decisions," the Ape Lord said. "Don't regret them, but know I could have done things better."
"If we set you free, would you do things differently?" Emily asked.
"I'd go home," he said. "I'm not alone you know. There are others like me. And they've not been treated well. Some of that is my fault. Much of it isn't."
"You'd help them?" Emily said.
"I'd try."
Emily waved her hand in front of the Ape Lord and the diodes and tubes holding him to the bed fell away, leaving him free.
"Magic," she said, smiling.
The Ape Lord put a vast hand on Emily's scrawny shoulder.
"I know magic when I see it, little one. You're something different," he said. "Thank you."
"Go be better," Emily said.
"I will," the Ape Lord said, moving ponderously out of the reinforced hospital bed. He looked back to Emily. "Why do this?"
"I have a soft spot for screw ups," Emily said. She pointed at Billy. "It's why he's my best friend."
The Ape King released a huge belly laugh.
"I hope we meet again someday," he said. "And if we do, I hope we're on the same side."
"Me too," Emily said. She and Billy moved aside as the huge man-ape with a bow-legged gait walked out the door, down the hallway and into the darkness.
Billy looked at Emily and shook his head.
"Every day, Em. Every day you're a wonder to me."
"It's what I do. I'm wonderful," she said. "Now come on."
They moved quickly down the hallway to Sam's room, where the old man was dozing, still hooked up to monitors, but breathing regularly and without assistance of a machine. Billy approached him and Emily began to scope out the monitors and papers all around the room.
Billy nudged Sam's shoulder and he stirred.
"Heh," Sam said. "I should've known it'd be you to who came to get me."
"You bet," Billy said. "You look like hell."
"So do you," Sam said. He studied Billy's face for a split second, then frowned. "You're alone in there, aren't you."
"I am," Billy said.
"Dammit," Sam said, trying to twist so that his feet were off the bed. Billy helped him, and although he tried to bat the younger man's hands away at first, Sam relented and let Billy assist him off the bed and into a nearby wheelchair. "What did they do to you?"
"Hit me with some kind of ray gun," Billy said. "Dude's gone."
"I told them to destroy that thing," Sam said.
"Is it permanent?"
"No. Not as it was originally designed," Sam said. "It was created by an enemy of your alien buddy's species to be used in deep space combat. It's meant to jolt the Luminae out of your body, which is a temporary thing and relatively harmless unless the host needs the Luminae to breathe in outer space. Then it kills the host and leaves the alien scrambling."
"Dude never told me he was called a Luminae," Billy said.
Sam waved him off.
"That's a story for another time," Sam said. "I don't think his people liked our name for them. Now . . . what is your sidekick doing?"
Emily was standing slack-jawed in front of a computer monitor, arms hanging loosely by her sides.
"Everything okay over there, kid?"
"Billy, we've got to get Sam out of here," Emily said.
"I'm working on that," Billy said. "You, apparently, are not."
Emily spun around and pointed at Sam.
"Do you know what they were planning to do with you?"
"It's not the time, Emily," Sam said.
"This thing they did to you, if it worked, you were supposed to be the cure," Emily said.
"The Cure?" Billy said. "Like the band?"
"Stop stealing my lines," Emily said. "He was supposed to be. . ."
"A super-healer," Sam said. "Instead of a super-soldier. They were trying to make someone who could defeat the sickness your Plague person is spreading throughout the country."
"Did it work?" Billy asked.
"I don't know," Sam said. "I've been out of it."
"Partially," Emily said. "According to what I'm looking at over here, the experiment didn't cure Sam's own illness — it froze it. As long as he wills himself to be okay, he can fight it."
"But it's not permanent. If I ever stop fighting it, I'm done," Sam said.
"Yes. You're a partial success," Emily said. "Like how you fixed Billy's broken bones. But broken bones don't grow new viruses or cells or spread. You can knit a broken thing back together again, but you can't kill a living, breathing illness."
"Why would you do this? Why volunteer for this?" Billy said. He looked at Emily. "And how are you retrieving all of this information?"
"Genius, Billy. Don't make me say it again."
"I didn't have much time left, Billy," Sam said. "And I figured, let 'em try it on me. Maybe it'll stop them from experimenting on someone younger, who had more time."
"And if it worked, you get to heal yourself, too," Emily said.
"That was the hope," Sam said. "Winter knew it wouldn't work. He wanted to talk me out of it. Said he'd do anything he could to help me except this. He knew this was never going to be a complete success."
Emily shook her head, neon blue hair flying all over the place.
"But you could buy us time," she said. "To figure out how to stop Plague forever."
"How?" Billy asked, and then two flying objects whizzed into Sam's hospital room, bounced around a few times, and struck both Billy and Emily in the head with such intensity that they were both knocked off their feet.
"What the carp!" Emily yelled, rubbing her eye like a sleepy child.
Billy rummaged around on the floor until he could find whatever it was that hit him, and when he did, he was so confused he spoke out loud.
"A Super Ball?"
Chapter 50:
School days
Hundreds of miles away, while the Indestructibles did everything within their power to break out of a building, Caleb Roth simply walked into one.
In the early morning, Caleb wandered into the local high school with others his own age, looking worse for wear, tired perhaps, a motivated student who went to school with a stomach bug rather than miss an important test. He chose a nicer school, one with less police presence, in the hopes that his unfamiliar face wouldn't jump out at a school resource officer or security guard, but a large enough school where administrators or teachers might overlook someone whose name didn't spring immediately to mind.
He walked the halls between chimes announcing change of class, hid in the school library and resource center between periods, or in the lavatory if he got the impression a teacher or librarian might think him out of place. The lavatories were, perhaps, the most interesting place, where he overheard students conducting normal, petty conversations, about girls, about classes, about sports practice, about tests. It was amusing to hear the way the boys swore when they thought nobody would rat them out, or spin wild tales about things they clearly hadn't really experienced.
And all the while, Caleb was making them sick. The entire school. He had already hit two other schools in town, the DPW, and Town Hall. He restrained himself, not wanting the disease's onset to happen too quickly. This time he wished it to be huge, he hoped it would capture the attention of the news media, he wanted it scary enough that the Indestructibles would have to come for him.
At lunch, he couldn't resist the urge to wander through the
cafeteria.
The whole day passed and not a soul had asked his name. There were no teachers curious why he wasn't in class, or puzzled why they didn't recognize him as one of their own students. Many people simply shied away from him, muttering things under their breath, questioning why he didn't stay home if he was so sick, why would he bring that to school, all the while bandying about words like "gross" and "nasty."
In the cafeteria the situation was even worse: students slid their trays away from him, hunched their shoulders over sandwiches and pizza as if their turned backs would keep them from catching whatever he had. All of this caused Caleb to think he'd made the right choice. None of these people deserved to be happy, he thought. None of them were entitled to his compassion, or pity.
And then, the girl.
Plain, in a pretty way, sporting hair that had not been styled or cut in a particular fashion, a young girl's hair worn casual before she really knows who it is she wants to present herself as being. Dressed in all the bland trappings of an ordinary person — a tee shirt with a Broadway musical's emblem on it, faded jeans, discolored flip-flops.
Yet suddenly, she did the strangest thing.
"You feeling okay?" the girl asked.
The question, the interest, was so unexpected, so simple and empathetic, that Caleb found himself staring back at her for what seemed like entire minutes, waiting for the joke, anticipating the punch line. I'm not okay, he thought, I'm dying and can't complete the deal, I'm just rotting here like decaying fruit wasting in the sun.
Instead he said, "I'm . . . just a little under the weather."
"We haven't met before," she said. "Have we? I'm Beth. Are you a sophomore? I thought I knew everybody."
Of course her name is Beth, he thought. Everyone knows a Beth. But still, he was compelled to answer kindness with a kind lie.
The Indestructibles (Book 2): Breakout Page 21