The Push Chronicles (Book 1): Indomitable

by Garner, J. B.

  Every time I had encountered Eric, I was having more of my notions about how he would act change, usually as more lies are peeled away. I would simply have to assume the worst and try to prepare accordingly. I would have to be in Washington in two days time.

  My plan was as simple as it was insane. It was a perfect product of a comic-book-influenced mind and it still made me nervous to have embraced it. I would have to set myself up as an opposite of Eric/Epic. Not a ‘villain’, as I needed the public to be open to listening to me, but an equally ‘heroic’ rival.

  The majority of the people seemed to be instantly fascinated by the Pushed so if I could step into that role, I could try to push the actual truth of the situation forward. Maybe, just maybe, I could counteract enough of Eric’s lies to make a difference. If enough people started to shift their beliefs, it could start to blunt and maybe even reverse the Whiteout.

  It wouldn’t be clean; it might very well not even work. I would probably get myself killed in the process. It was still a better chance right now than sticking my feedback machine to my head and hoping for the best. I pulled my notebook out of my backpack and flipped to where I had begun to list what I thought I would need to try to slip into the role of, best to call a spade a spade, ‘superhero’. I had to get past planning and into actualization very soon.

  Before I could even put pencil to paper, I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck and a throbbing sensation in my brain: what I was realizing was the precursor of the Pushed and their powers. I got up from my chair as papers and knickknacks began to blow around in an unnatural cyclone. In a split second, there was a blinding flash of pure white light and a sudden wind as the air was displaced in the room.

  As the light faded into white splotches, I could see Eric floating only a few inches off the ground, both his godlike and human faces contorted in a mixture of rage and grief. I ignored my crawling flesh as I felt my body tense up. Never had I seen him like this before and I had no idea what would happen next.

  “How could it not work?” Eric cried as he started floating back and forth in an unnatural form of pacing. “Tell me, Irene, what is the logic behind that?” Even altered and enhanced as it was, Eric’s voice was trembling. I kept my eyes on him, following every movement, and tried to keep my most even and gentle tone of voice as I spoke.

  “What didn’t work, Eric? What’s wrong?” The question brought him to a sudden and immediate stop as he clenched his fists and shook, like a child who was filled with undirected rage. Tears pressed out of the corners of his eyes as he turned in midair towards me.

  “I could not bring them back, Irene. I should be able to and I cannot! My parents are still dead. Why?” Eric’s eyes were pleading and his tone desperate.

  “I don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t know right now because you changed it all.” I wanted both to comfort him and to hurt him at the same time. I settled for trying to be both blunt and helpful simultaneously. “Honestly, I think you do have some idea why whatever it is you did didn’t work, don’t you?”

  Despite my plea of ignorance, I had a few theories. First and in my mind most likely is that, under such tremendous stress, Eric’s concentration cracked just the tiniest bit during his experiment, causing his new reality to veer from his intentions. Maybe the Whiteout decided it needed to keep the great motivation of it’s soon-to-be greatest hero. After all, how can you have a true defender of justice without his tragic back story?

  Eric floated there, unmoving in thought save for the tremble of his clenched fists. Even that much tension was enough to keep my senses screaming in warning. All it would take would be a flick of a finger by such Herculean strength to knock my head clean off.

  “I have so much power, almost everything I wanted, but not that one request. Why can’t I? Why aren’t we being greeted with open arms, Irene? So many people love us but, even now, with the effect setting in, the government is still scared. They shouldn’t be! Why, Irene?” He paused for a moment from his almost sing-song cycle of depression, clarity, and anger.

  “Wait. There was something ... one thing that I did not include in my calculations. I never thought, even if it happened, it could possibly alter the outcome of the experiment.” His eyes flickered from his normal brown to those same inhumanly glowing orbs I had witnessed before. This time, that gaze felt like it was pushing right through the very essence of me. “You.”

  “Wait! Hold on! You seriously didn’t expect me to be there, even after that goading message? You even said yourself you figured that I would parse out all the odd things you did.” I met that inhuman gaze and tried to match it, as realization set off a cold anger in my heart.

  “You expected that I would just roll over and accept this, didn’t you? The whole time. Now only is that insulting, it’s stupid, almost as stupid as thinking I somehow sabotaged the whole thing.”

  “It had to be you. My calculations were perfect. Months of exacting research to formulate that one signal, it could not go wrong.” Eric, no, this time there was very little Eric, it was Epic that floated up to me, the anger of the gods in his eyes.

  “It was all you. Your stubborn unchanging mind, so much confidence, so much belief, you poisoned the source at the well. Even now, I can see it, flying off of you, waves of defiance, your desire to make this new world a tiny bit worse.” Tears rolled down his cheeks as I felt my back against the shelves behind me. “Why, Irene? Why can you not let me save the world?”

  “Save it? You’re going to destroy it! It wasn’t a great place before, but you’re going to push us over the edge unless you back down!” I pointed out the door behind him. “For every 10 people who are brainwashed into loving you, there is one person deathly afraid and all it takes is a few of those people in the wrong place to turn this into a new World War.” I had ceased flinching back; now I was moving forward. We were almost brow to brow as he hovered lower to meet my gaze.

  “You want to know the worst part? You’ll suffer the least! You’ll wave your magic hands and fix the things you want to fix. Just like in the comics, the good guys never suffer for long, but if you’re an extra in the background, your luck is up!”

  That’s when he slapped me. I only caught the barest indication of movement, a microsecond of tensed muscles, then the impact. It’s possible I could have ducked away or at least softened it by flinching. I made up my mind, in that microsecond, I wasn’t going to back down to Epic. If I was ever going to get through to him or, in the worst case, stop him, I couldn’t retreat ever again, even if it killed me.

  It stung. It hurt, to be honest, it wasn’t a light tap on the chin. My head snapped to the side and I could feel my lip bust open, but somehow, my head was still attached. It felt no harder than any normal guy mistreating his girlfriend. Even the surface of the hand felt small, smaller than Epic’s giant fists.

  As I swiveled my head back around, unable to suppress a grin born of cold anger, Epic looked horrified. Tears still trickled down his chiseled cheeks. One eye was locked on my face, the other locked on the hand that had slapped me.

  “Irene ... how ... I ... I did not mean to -”

  I interrupted his stammer with a wild, angry, haymaker. It wasn’t any of the calm, practiced techniques I learned in all those self-defense classes city-going women take. It was the retaliation of a woman who had been pushed too far, thought of as an attachment, and then slapped like she was an animal that needed to be disciplined. I didn’t care how much it would hurt, as long it would show him that I wasn’t the frail helpless object he wanted me to be. It came again, the same rush I had felt in the cemetery, as my anger and focus of intent seemed to push everything in my body into overdrive. Adrenaline pumped, endorphins sang, and every muscle fired in one giant push.

  It was among the most painful experiences of my life to that point. I knew instantly that I had fractured all of my knuckle bones, several finger bones, and who knows what in my hand. I was actually in amazement that I hadn’t pulped my hand entirely, that
it had simply been badly hurt. The recoil of the punch shuddered through my body. Just as I thought I would instantly pass out from system shock, all the pain vanished. No, not vanished, but it was locked up in a little mental box and pushed off to the side.

  The effect on the nigh-invulnerable demigod was equally dramatic. I could see my hand after the initial impact push through the unnatural shape of Epic and connect with much reduced force into the jaw of Eric. As my mind and senses seemed to partially reject the new reality of the Whiteout, my body was somehow doing the same. Even with the punch’s strength reduced as it was, the force of the human body’s hysterical strength was more than enough to send Epic flying back across the office, smashing into my office door. That impact shattered the glass panes, showering him with twinkling shards.

  “I warned you, Eric,” I said. My voice was icy calm. Anger was giving way to a vivid, almost surreal clarity, no doubt brought on by whatever was flowing through my system.

  “Do you want to know why this isn’t going how you want? It’s all because of you. You poisoned the well, not me! Your life had some bad turns and you wanted to change it all. You never thought that maybe, just maybe, some of those bad turns were your own fault. It’s how you reacted to your tragedy that led you here.”

  Epic pushed himself out of the bent and shattered door, wiping at blood that only existed on his inner form. His eyes were no longer glowing, but instead were very human and very shaken.

  “No.” He shook his head. “No no, I can still fix it. It is far from over. It is only a few setbacks.” Some measure of his unnatural confidence had returned. “Of course, of course. The heroes never win in the first act. There is always struggle, death, and adversity. I just have to stay the course.”

  I cradled my broken hand to my stomach and started to stalk towards him. I had no idea how long I would be in this state of, I didn’t know how to describe it, focus.

  “Eric, no. You have problems, you need help.” I took a deep breath and came out and said it. “If you don’t stop this, God help me, I’ll have to stop you myself. Somehow, I’ll find a way before you get more people killed.”

  “Of course!” Eric defied gravity again, floating in the air, some kind of mad realization in his eyes. “A foil, a nemesis, a counter-agent! Just as in physics, comics require opposite forces for the story to work. It would have to be you. Our love adds to the dramatic tension.” He smiled, his lips curling in a way that was grotesque to me on some level.

  “I understand it all now. I was simply flying too high too fast. My wings, though, are not made of wax. I have the chance to fix it and now I know what I must do.”

  I was right next to him at this point. I reached out to grab a wrist, a hand, anything I could hold, hoping somehow to reestablish his connection with human sanity, but Epic had blurred out of reach in a blink of an eye.

  “Oh no, my love,” he declared. “This is just beginning. I promise, in the end, I will bring you back to the side of the angels. Until then, though, next time I will not go easy on you!” With that unbelievably cliched dialogue, Eric disappeared in another burst of blinding light.

  Whatever had been flowing through me, keeping me going, stopped abruptly. I could feel pain start to turn to shock and I let out a moan of agony, both physical and emotional. I felt like I had walked into a carefully laid plot, all set up by whatever insane forces pulled our universe’s strings now, and in my desire to try to fix it, I had become a player in this sick game. I was already sobbing when the security guards ran in to help me.

  Chapter 9 Agency

  I sat there in my makeshift corner of the Grady ER center, waiting for a doctor to give me the okay to leave. The already stressed medical system in the city was being pushed beyond it’s limit. What had formerly been the waiting room for ER patients had been split with portable dividers into a honeycomb of triage rooms and even that was overtaxed.

  I gazed ruefully at the hardening cast that now covered my arm from elbow to knuckles. I wanted to be gone and out of the way so that people who were actually dying could get treatment. The hunger I had felt before was starting to come on again and it had me both worried and scientifically curious. Most importantly, I hated the fact I was wasting valuable time sitting here and waiting for the doctor for no reason by a technicality.

  Not that I hadn’t needed medical attention right after Epic’s departure. Again, the miracle was that I wasn’t more badly injured. My suspicions about that fact were advancing to full fledged theories now, but this wasn’t the place to confirm them. Eugene hadn’t even questioned what happened. There was only time for him to triage my injury and call the ambulance.

  I had passed out briefly at some point during the trip to Grady, but I was cognizant by the time the doctors were examining me. True to my instincts, I had managed to break every knuckle bone, badly sprained and fractured multiple hand tissues and bones, and aggravated my previous break. Still, I wasn’t going to die anytime soon. That still left me in the unenviable position of being on the bad side of a horribly powerful man whose love had turned into a love-hate relationship with me, the same man I had to stop.

  Beyond the Whiteout’s influence, I had no choice in that course of action anymore. I had poked the lion too many times in my attempts to help it and it was ready to roar. Anything Eric did now was at least partly on my hands. All the layers of lies had been peeled completely away and now I was sure that he would not back down to the government or the President Wednesday.

  I sat up and tried to crane my head over the barriers; I felt more and more the need to get out of the hospital. I didn’t see a doctor, but I did catch the sight of two neatly dressed individuals coming down the path between the triage areas. One black man, one Asian woman, both with badges, they both looked deadly serious.

  I palmed my own face; I should have expected to not leave before the police made it to me. No matter what else, what happened to me and my office was obviously a result of Pushed activity. I sank down behind the divider and sat back down. It was for the best to get this over with, Rational Irene reminded me.

  “Dr. Irene Roman?” the woman said, taking the lead in introductions. I could guess, up close, she was of Korean descent.

  “That’s me.” I put on a pained smile for their benefit. Offering my good hand, both of the officers accepted with quick, firm shakes. The woman continued on with the pleasantries. The badges weren’t local, that much I could tell, but I was playing more attention to the people than the badges to catch more as they were flashed.

  “I’m Agent Choi and my partner here is Agent Brooks. We’re happy to see that you aren’t seriously injured, Doctor.” Choi seemed happy; Brooks had a dead level expression that betrayed nothing. “We are with the FBI, working in association with the GBI and Atlanta police investigating Push incidents.”

  “What happened tonight, Doctor?” Brooks continued after Choi seamlessly. Both of their faces were lined with age and stress; it was obvious they had both seen more than their fair share of action on the job.

  “I was working late at the lab.” I looked between the two agents. “I’m assuming you guys know where I work, right?” A silent nod prompted me to continue. “Well, we’re in the middle of a study of a Tech student who was Pushed. I was working on the data we collected today when, poof, bright white light and some big Pushed guy was there. I tried to talk to him, but he was raving about oppressing his brothers and came at me.” I raised my cast hand.

  “I had the stupid idea to try and defend myself. Maybe me getting hurt spooked him or made him snap out of whatever crazy he was on, because he looked shocked when I hurt myself so badly and he did the flash-gone trick again. That’s when Eugene, the night watchman, burst in.” Choi and Brooks exchanged meaningful glances.

  “What happened to your face? The doctor’s said those were previous injuries. The same with your initial fracture,” Agent Brooks said. He had the rough voice of a life-long smoker.

  “You realize we have to as
k, simply to be thorough, Dr. Roman,” Agent Choi added. I lightly touched the numerous healing cuts and scratches.

  “There was a Push Battle I ran into yesterday. It would be better to say I was caught in the middle of it. Some fire creature and Frosty the Fireman. I got caught on the fringe of a car blowing up. I’m just lucky it wasn’t anything really serious.”

  I viewed the fact I was lying to government agents as practice for all the lying I’m sure I would be doing in the near future. Again, there was that knowing exchange. Agent Brooks crossed his arms across his broad chest, while Agent Choi produced a leather-covered notepad from an inner jacket pocket.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Roman, maybe the stress of the situation caused you to become confused. We are finding that many people come away from Push Battles with hazy recollections and minor mental issues. Let me refresh your memory.” Her tone was sincerely apologetic, almost sweet. It was classic Good Cop/Bad Cop, like you’d see on a police show.

  “Yesterday morning, you were in the middle of a Push Battle, yes. However, you left the scene under your own power after assisting several injured motorists, but before you could be questioned by any authorities. One of them did take note of your license plate number, which we matched through the DMV database with your motorcycle.” She flipped another page.

  “In addition, your old injuries are inconsistent with the kind of injuries you would have sustained from an exploding car. I especially find it noteworthy that your initial arm break was in the same arm you must have used to strike your assailant tonight and consistent with the kind of injury that can happen when striking an object too hard for the body to withstand.” Well, there went any comparison to a typical cop show. These two had done a lot of homework.