The ground opened up beneath her when she rolled to the periphery of the deck, and toppled over.
Somehow, she grabbed hold of the edge on her way down. Kate's full weight tugged at her grip. She felt the bruised pain of the second gunshot blare, a thrumming ache that took the breath from her lungs. Broken ribs, she thought, I can't hold on . . .
The entire structure shuddered with a vast metallic bang. Heat washed over her and the helicopter exploded in a ball of flame. Kate's hand burned as if she'd held it under hot water too long. She tried to reach up with her other, her breath hitching and catching in her throat. The water below churned hungry and dark.
Pale, thin fingers grabbed hold of her wrist. Those fingers jutted out of a familiar, if ripped and bloody, hooded sweatshirt.
Titus's face, his human face, appeared over the edge. He clasped her arm with both hands. Slowly, she hauled herself back onto the deck.
The helicopter lay crashed and nearly dead center on the rig. Boxes and small buildings burned hot. No one moved inside.
Kate glanced over at Titus, who half-lay, half-sat against the guardrail of the deck. Covered in cuts and bruises, one arm lay limp against his side, and she could see that his pants, those silly yoga pants Emily made fun of him for, had been sliced open across a leg, an angry wound visible through the gash in the fabric.
He smiled.
"Had an interesting afternoon," he said. "And you?'
Kate punched him on his good shoulder and tried to stand up. Her legs went watery, so she sat back down. She put an arm around Titus protectively, and pulled his hood up over his head.
"I can't believe this stupid sweatshirt survived," she said.
"I'm thinking of getting a new one."
"Don't you dare!"
And then, almost without warning, the sun came out. Dark clouds on the horizon slowly disappeared.
Funny what a little daylight can do, Kate thought. She rested her head against the top of Titus's shoulders and closed her eyes, the heat of the sun warmed her cheeks.
Chapter 65:
There are so many worlds
Doc woke to find the Lady standing over him, arms crossed, legs akimbo, a look that would turn an ordinary man's hair white on his face.
"What did you do, Silence?"
"Used a planar knife," he said, pushing himself up onto one elbow, struggling to get to his feet. They were in the middle of a desert, the sand almost snow-white, the sky above them an unnatural shade of blue. The air was strangely temperate. It felt more like beach than desert. Water was in the air.
"You didn't," she said.
"I couldn't come up with any other way to stop you, so thought I'd just remove us both from the equation and let the mere mortals sort things out," Doc said.
He stood up, dusted off his clothes, and shook sand out of his jacket. His rose-tinted glasses jutted out of the sand like a lost toy. Doc picked them up and cleaned them with the hem of his shirt.
"Where are we?" she said.
"I don't know. I didn't tell the knife where to go."
"A planar knife can open a door to anywhere!" she said. "Where is it?"
"I dropped it."
"You . . . dropped it?"
"I did," he said. "Didn't want to risk you getting home before me."
"You threw us through a dimensional window and didn't bring the key with you?"
"I didn't."
"Why didn't — I have seven of those knives," she said. "If I'd known — "
"You have six," Doc said, then smiled.
He smiled.
The Lady glared, paused, and then laughed her silver bell laugh.
"Clever boy," she said.
They looked around, scanning the distance. On a ridge, silhouetted against the sun, a group of travelers riding animals with too many legs made their way across the salt-colored sands.
"Never been here before," she said.
"Me either."
The Lady sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.
"Do you have any idea how long it will take for us to get home again?" she said.
"Nope," he said. "But I was thinking we'd get home a lot faster if we worked together to find it. I'd like to get back sooner rather than later, myself."
She stared at him, the fires in her eyes glowed hotter and brighter than usual. Then she laughed again.
"Very clever boy," she said. "Fine."
The Lady waved a hand up and down her frame and her clothes twirled into a new shape, a loose fitting robe, vibrant gold and orange. She pulled a hood up over her head.
"Well? Straighten yourself out, Doctor Silence. You've put a serious damper in my retirement plans, and I want to get a move on back to them."
"But I always look like this," he said.
"You would," she said.
"Come on. Let's ask those folks on that hill what world we're in."
She pointed at him.
"You owe me for not killing you, Doctor," she said.
"Well, we have some time to negotiate a repayment, don't we?" he said.
"Beginning with you getting my planar knife back," she said.
"Done."
"Not done, Doc," she said. "This bargain's not done by a long shot."
They bickered as they walked, the Lady in her golden robes and he in his long black coat. Doc wondered, and hoped, that his charges were okay.
Chapter 66:
The calm after
They watched her, the trio of heroes, floating there outside her cage. The golden girl, the silver boy, and the strange one with her goggles and scarf. She felt the storm inside her now, because it had nowhere else to go, no way to escape. It wailed and cried in her head, but every time it tried to extend its reach, to lash out at their mutual captors, this sphere of emptiness stopped it from attacking.
She knew how strange she must look to them, twitching and squirming as the storm tried to take control of her body. But now it couldn't; the storm remained inside her, it could not take her body from her. She felt the storm's rage spill off her like waves.
"You must take control," the golden girl said.
"What if I can't?" she said.
Even her voice — colored with hints of pouring rain, of howling wind — no longer sounded like her own; it sounded elemental.
"I saw you," the golden girl said. "Saw you control the lightning to help me. You saved me."
"I don't know how I did it," Valerie said. "It just happened."
"You willed it to happen," she said. "You took control."
"Does she speak?" the silver boy said.
He lacked pupils. His eyes glowed white, from the inside.
"What?" Valerie said.
"Does the storm speak to you."
"She doesn't talk," Valerie said. "Only feels."
"But can she communicate?" he said.
"I've tried; tried so many times," she said.
"Try again," the younger girl said. "Maybe she was too big to listen. Or just didn't want to."
Valerie closed her eyes.
At first she spoke in English, in words, phrases — then in pleading sentences: please stop fighting, please work with me, please be one with me. But, later she gave way to feelings, sadness, loneliness, fear. She wanted to go home. She wanted to be free. She wanted to live. She wanted to fly.
And she felt those feelings returned to her. Childlike, more raw, unfiltered. The enormous sentiments of a child, not the controlled emotions of an adult. Such rage, such fear, such joy. They caused her heart to pound in her chest, her eyes to ache with tears.
"She's listening," Valerie said.
The storm's passions crept in, making her feel more, more of everything. She'd never been so afraid, so angry, so alone in her entire life. Valerie wasn't sure that any human being could sense these things as desperately as she did now.
"Can you control her?" the golden girl said.
Valerie closed her eyes again. She reflected on a vision of her mo
ther, the storm's mother, smaller, but still strong, still destructive, still impossibly vast; she remembered being born, breaking free, a rain cloud left behind after the death of a hurricane, just a bit of condensation and sky, growing into a downpour, into a thunderstorm, into a tropical storm, into a vortex.
She was majestic. And she knew how to do only one thing.
Valerie hoped to show her how to be so much more. She wanted to be something to this juvenile storm, this alien intelligence. She had incredible things to learn, and without Valerie, very little time to do it. Without Valerie she'd vanish like a summer shower come morning.
Stay with me, she said. We need each other. We can learn so much.
Waves of rage, waves of sadness, a spike of fear . . . and then, clarity — cool water in her veins. She looked at her hands, at her arms. No longer harsh, dark gray, instead, they swirled marble white, cumulous ivory. The calm after a storm.
"She's gonna be fine," the younger girl said. "Look at that. She's gonna be totally fine."
"What should we do?" the older girl said. She was looking to Valerie. Asking her.
Valerie smiled. It had been so long since she smiled, it hurt. Her cheeks ached, tiny facial muscles in atrophy — unused for months — now creaking with effort.
"We'll be okay," she said. "Do what you have to do."
The older girl looked to the boy, whose own smile, a cocky grin, glowed with inner light.
He nodded to her. "She's going to be fine, Jane," the boy said.
The older girl put a hand on the younger one's shoulder.
"No more bubble of float, Em," she said.
"Finally," the younger one said. "This isn't easy, you know."
"Yes it is," the older girl said. "For you it's always easy."
"Well, yeah," the younger girl said.
She opened both hands in front of her like a magician releasing a dove, and Valerie felt the world tug at her again, gravity and air and wind and sky — all the things that made her real. Clouds moved across her skin like thoughts.
"I'm sorry for everything we've done," she told them.
"It was never your fault," the older girl said. "You just wanted to go home."
"Isn't that what we all want?" Valerie said.
And she let the storm inside her take flight. Sleek clouds followed her like dolphins along the bow of a ship. The sky opened up. The sky was hers. And she was home.
Chapter 67:
Generations
Bedlam often thought about hitchhiking. Not because she was exhausted. Her cyborg legs and whatever engine they'd given her to keep her heart pumping ensured she was never tired. But a constant plod north, particularly in the rain like today, got old fast.
And as much as she hated to admit it, she missed talking to people. She pretended to dislike everyone, but even the world's worst curmudgeon wants someone to have a conversation with once in a while.
Maybe that's why she was heading for the city. That idiot boy she beat up seemed nice enough. It was fun taunting the werewolf. Teasing counted as conversation, right? And the alien boy had been almost interesting. Not actually interesting mind you, but close.
So fine. She was going north because she was lonely. She could admit that. But would they really let her feel like one of them? Of course not. Why would they? They'd never trust her, not with where she came from and where she got her powers. And she hadn't exactly made a great first impression. She needed to stop punching first and asking questions later.
That was becoming a really bad habit.
And as for hitchhiking, well, yeah, who was going to pick her up? They might slow down, since she looked practically like a normal girl in a poncho from behind, but when they saw her face, or noticed that the thumb sticking out looking for a ride was dull chrome, would they call the cops, or just gun it and run? Either way, she wasn't interested in that particular kind of human interaction.
People suck, she thought. That's pretty much the sum of it.
Because of all this, she looked at the truck pulled over on the side of the road ahead of her with some trepidation. She couldn't really help, unless they were stuck in a ditch or something. Not like she could give them a jump-start if their battery was dead. And she really didn't want police attention, or some trigger-happy road warrior thinking she was a threat.
The driver slid out of the car and looked right at her. Fight or flight kicked in when she saw his face, one side bristling with cybernetics that ran down his neck, an entire arm replaced with a robotic one, like hers had been. He looked familiar.
And then Bedlam realized he might be from the lab. There were other modified people there. Would they bother sending someone like him after her? Was she worth pursuing?
She tensed, ready to attack. So much for not punching first and asking questions later, she thought.
Then he waved and smiled, almost sheepishly.
"You have got to be kidding me," she said.
"You Bedlam?" the man said.
His voice was definitely familiar. She wondered if he'd been in the room during some of the early experiments, when she wasn't fully conscious yet after the surgeries.
"You're from the lab," Bedlam said. "You're not bringing me back alive."
He waved a hand dismissively.
"Lab's gone," he said. "I'm not here to bring you back."
She flexed the fingers of her robotic hands. He didn't look as powerful as she was, nor nearly as modified, but she knew there were a million ways to build a six million dollar man.
"Then what do you want?" she said.
"Can I come over there?"
"No."
He laughed.
"Fair enough," he said.
"Are you gonna to tell me what you want, or am I gonna have to punch you in the face?" she said.
"I'd rather you didn't," he said. "Have you thought about your future?"
My future? She thought. Sure. Mall job. Working at Build-A-Bear. I'd be great at it, my arms never get tired. What a stupid question.
"I was thinking about going to veterinary school," she said. "People suck, dogs don't."
"If that's what you want, good luck to you," he said. "Look, I was at the lab. Never really liked what was going on there. You in particular, because, well . . . "
He gestured at his own face.
"Because I could relate. I'm not working for them anymore."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah. I'm done," he said. "And I knew you were out here on your own, and, well, like I said, I could relate."
"You're here out of the goodness of your heart?" she said.
"I'm here because once upon a time I was like you, and someone gave me a leg up," he said. "Granted it was a leg up into a pretty violent career, but it was better than what I could've been doing."
"What do you want from me?"
"I'm thinking of starting a new business," the man said. "I need a partner."
"You gotta be pretty desperate if you're offering homeless girls on the highway a partnership."
The man laughed again.
"I'm not desperate. I'm just figuring . . . I got some karma I'd like to balance off. I can help you get that bomb out of your head. Show you how to get around this world looking like we do without needing to put a trash bag over your head."
"I think my poncho is quite fashionable."
He shrugged.
"Up to you, kid," he said. "I'm not forcing you. Your choice."
She offered him a long dose of stink-eye.
The man shrugged again and turned to get back in his truck.
She called out. "What's your name, anyway?"
"Name's Black," he said. "You got a name you prefer to Bedlam?"
"Nah," she said. "Bedlam's what I am now. It stays."
"What do you say, Bedlam? Want to join cyborgs for hire?"
She raised an eyebrow.
"Do I have to sign a contract or anything?"
The man shook his head.
"I'm sick of th
e paperwork. You leave any time you want to. At least let's get that thing out of your brain. If you want to work at a fast food joint after that, I'll pay for your train ticket to wherever you'd like to go."
"That's a crap offer," she said. "Nobody's letting me on a train looking like this."
"Lesson number one, Bedlam," the man said. "When you look like this, you can do almost anything you want."
She pulled her makeshift poncho over her head and then threw it onto the side of the road.
"I'm in," she said. "Was sick of wearing a trash bag over my head anyway."
Chapter 68:
The old friend
Neal's directions sent Kate to an old industrial building on the edge of town. The exterior looked as if it hadn't been touched in a decade, the brick walls crumbling and slathered with moss and vines, the parking lot more rubble than pavement. She vaulted the fence — not a simple task with the barbed wire skirting the top — and walked up to the front door.
Before she could knock, the door unlocked with a heavy thump and creaked open.
"Huh," she said and walked inside.
The interior was an abstract painting of shadows and cobwebs. Things moved in the dark, small rodents, a night bird squawked at her interrupting presence. Kate took a few steps inside and paused in the light of one of the large, cracked windows.
"Hello?" she said.
Sam had gifted her a pair of infrared goggles, which she now slid down over her eyes. But all she saw was more of the same: cobwebs, small mammals. Nothing human, not yet anyway.
"You have a recurring pain in your left ankle, an old injury that never healed right," a voice in the dark said. "You've recently been wounded in the shoulder. You're moving sluggishly on your left side. You're what, eighteen? Start seeing a chiropractor now. It'll do you a world of good if you hope to have a career after thirty."
The Indestructibles Page 27