by Rob Horner
Shaking my head as the news went to commercial, I continued to the elevator and went to find some lunch.
The most important aspect of joining up with people like those at Mandatum was the partial release from the responsibility of having to find all the answers for myself. Back when it was just me, Tanya, and Crystal, it felt like everything rested on my shoulders, as if, because I was there when it started, it was up to me to fix it.
The events of the past thirty-six hours had shown me this wasn’t the case. I had allies…we had allies.
This war was going to happen regardless of who walked through what trailer park and listened in on something when it would have been better to keep on walking and ignore the funny sounds. The imparting of gifts to fight the Dra’Gal, though I didn’t understand the science of it—and probably never would—still would have happened whether I was there or not. To hear Fish explain it, there wasn’t much chance of me being left out.
I was special.
How much worse might it have been if I’d shown up at school the next day without the experience of seeing those things coming into our world? Would I still have been able to get away? Or would I already be wearing a Dra’Gal skin, my powers under the control of an alien being who wouldn’t hesitate to use them to fight against humanity?
My powers…
The ability to project force was awesome enough and made me a more-than-capable fighter in this war. But what about the purging aspect? And why was I the only one who could do it?
These were the thoughts crowding my mind as I munched through a few slices of pepperoni pizza and sipped from a bottle of Coke. The cafeteria was sparsely populated with a half-dozen soldiers and an equal number of Chosen. The soldiers congregated around a single table while the Chosen sat apart in smaller groups. Jason waved to me with a huge smile on his face as he sat next to Joi. Tiffany and Ricardo occupied another small table, while Caitlin huddled shoulder to shoulder with Danielle, probably offering emotional support to the young woman after the loss of Ben. None of the groups appeared as though they would welcome my presence, though I doubted any of them would be so rude as to turn me away.
Deciding not to test the theory, I ate alone, lost in thought, then went in search of someone to help me in the Distilling Room.
The big room at the end of the hall straight out from the elevators seemed different. The large pen at the back of the room was still there, but it was empty. The horse-corral gate stood open. There were no guards standing watch, no Chosen maintaining a field to prevent Manifesting. It was just a big, empty, open space where every footstep echoed and my voice, if I chose to raise it, might seem magnified and strange, like the last man alive serenading himself.
The big machine at the front, which would somehow take a sample of my power and put it into a bullet or a grenade, was just as massive and alien as it appeared two days before. There were controls on the side, colorful buttons and gauges which would give readings in farads, Hertz, and millivolts, while allowing a control over how much STEM was applied, or how fast the VERT was taken. I needed someone to explain those acronyms to me, but there was no one available.
A certain resignation took hold. We’ve all been there. If you go long enough without doing anything, you eventually lose the drive and decide to do nothing, even if there was something you really wanted to do.
That’s how I felt.
Getting to use the distiller was important. Maybe the ability to purge could be infused into something so others could help with the task. I’d gotten up wanting to try it, aching to see what it could do with my power. But now, I simply didn’t have the will to go looking for someone to teach me how to use it.
There was something else that had been bothering me, and now was a great time to work on it.
A right turn outside of the Distilling Room put me in the hallway that led around the back of the infirmary. The door to the stairway was there, as Rick described, and just beyond that, opening on the right, was a short hallway leading to the workout area. I wasn’t clear on whether it was called a gym, a studio, or some other term that encompassed all the above. A set of double doors at the end of the hallway opened into a large space, almost as big as the distilling room, but without the side offices taking away from the available room in the center. To my left was a full-size basketball court, complete with bleachers against the north and east walls. Directly ahead was a full set of free weight equipment: benches, Roman chairs, racks of weights and dumbbells, bars for curls and presses, and squat racks. Behind the weights was a section devoted to stamina and cardiovascular training: three treadmills, two stair-climbers, and a quartet of stationary bikes. Off to my right was an area made up of connected mats. Maybe the other residents of Mandatum hosted massive aerobics classes, or someone practiced a gymnastics routine on them, but I had a different idea in mind.
They called me The Banisher.
It wasn’t only that they had a name for me. It was that they knew so much about me they could prepare for my power and potentially counter it, like a baseball club manager learning the other team’s signals. I needed to expand my repertoire, or, failing that, work out different options which might keep me alive a little longer. There wouldn’t always be a Caitlin around to help.
It would be nice to see what else my power could do. I had some ideas, things that occurred to me after the time to use them, but they needed to be tested first.
We’ve all been there. It’s like when you think of the perfect comeback fifteen minutes after you’re insulted. All those, “I should have said,” or, “I could have done.”
Well, now was my chance to test a few theories.
And what better place than a floor lined with mats? You know, so I didn’t kill myself.
Unfortunately, I was dressed in the black cargo pants and black shirt that made up the Mandatum uniform. While comfortable and no-doubt functional, the clothes weren’t conducive to a serious workout. I had no doubt there would be numerous opportunities to get these things dirty and sweaty; I just didn’t want to do it right then.
Turning in place, I noted men’s and women’s locker rooms on either side of the entrance. Moving quickly, I returned to room A-7 and retrieved a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and hurried back to the gym. The locker room had benches, a couple of showers and, impressively, a sauna, which I’d never used before.
Maybe later.
For now, it was a matter of a few minutes to change clothes and head out to the mats.
The gym space was still empty except for me. Unlacing my shoes and setting them on the side of the mats, I gave a practiced bow, even though there were no flags to honor, and walked out to the center. My hands twitched and my mind raced, aching to get started, but it wouldn’t do to rush right into a workout.
I stretched first, forcing myself to hold each position for a full ten-count before relaxing. There’d been so much fighting lately that just about every part of me was tight, especially my back and legs. Maybe I would try out the sauna afterward.
There was an idea floating in my head, something no one had ever done before simply because no one who did Tae Kwon Do ever had my power. But I couldn’t rush into trying it. I wanted to work through the old patterns, the old forms, to see if they sparked other ideas, other ways of fighting. Considering how the Dra’Gal learned from each other, I was going to need more than one card up my sleeve.
So, after all the stretching, I stood in the center of the mats, my feet shoulder width apart and my hands lightly fisted and held in front of me, what we called a Ready Stance. Slowly and deliberately, I shifted into the first form taught to every white belt, Palgwe Il Jang, which placed an emphasis on several different blocks and only two hand attacks, the middle punch and the knife hand strike.
At my school, we learned a different form, or Palgwe, with each new belt. We were also responsible for helping teach those coming up the ranks behind us. The hope was that, even as we worked on mastering new forms, we didn’t forget the forms w
hich helped us grow. When it came time to test for black belt, one of the requirements was a consecutive performance of each form that led from belt to belt, each movement precise and paced, no rushing allowed.
So, I breathed and moved, flowing from stance to block to stance to attack, progressing from the simplistic Palgwe Il Jang to Palgwe Yi Jang and Palgwe Sam Jang. My muscles loosened as my body warmed up, my brain moving beyond having to think about each move and instead operating two or three steps ahead, a necessity as the moves became more complicated.
Palgwe Sa Jang combined blocks and strikes as simultaneous motions, the first form to do so. It was also the first time the spear-hand strike and hammer fist joined the arsenal. Palgwe Oh Jang added the scissors block and elbow strike, while Palgwe Yuk Jang included the cross-leg stance and back fist.
By the time I reached the seventh form, Palgwe Chil Jang, my thoughts were calmed, flowing like a gentle stream. And like a stream, I could envision not only what came next, but could give attention to the smaller eddies and whorls that occur on the sides, where rocks and tree roots dangled into the water. The rocks were a place to store up ideas, new attacks that might not occur in the normal flow of combat, but which might be confusing enough to at least get through just one more confrontation. Take the cross blocks from Chil Jang, as an example. Rather than just blocking a descending attack, the hands were positioned to rotate and grab, enabling the practitioner to pull an off-balanced opponent into a flip.
So far, I’d avoided any maneuvers that might take a Dra’Gal to the ground, having the innate dislike of floor work that many Tae Kwon Do fighters harbor. We had moves and techniques for floor level fighting, of course, but we preferred to work with our legs from a standing position. The Dra’Gal would know that by now, so perhaps it was time to get over my dislike and do some work from the ground.
The roots and branches of the trees lining the stream were a place to focus on my wilder ideas. As I progressed through Palgwe Chil Jang and into the eighth and final form, Palgwe Pal Jang, putting the numerous blocks and strikes together, both my fear and excitement at trying my crazier idea faded, to be replaced by a calm certainty that it would work.
As the eighth form ended back in the Ready stance, I began the traditional form learned when a student earns his black belt, the Koryo Poomse. Technically difficult, with double sidekicks and groin finger strikes, the challenge in the form wasn’t the individual moves but the pacing and timing. Controlled breathing and moves that took a specific amount of time to execute brought my focus back from the sidelines, where new ideas awaited, and centered me in the moment. Koryo ended with the triangle hands pressed out, and I was ready.
The alpha was twelve feet tall.
I needed to be able to hit it.
If every extremity could exert force, could I use that to enhance a jump?
The first attempt was a small hop in a room with a ceiling high enough for two teams to play a game of full-court basketball. As my feet came down, I pushed, hoping my power worked the way I thought, the way it needed to. Light flashed, hurling me up and forward, throwing me towards the wall. Desperate I flung my hands out in front of me, and light flashed again as they struck the wall, though now my trajectory was down. I landed on my back and the breath blasted out of me.
Lying there on the mat, watching the overhead lights work through a slow spin, I tried to assess whether I was injured, and what I could do differently.
It was the toes. It had to be.
When I hopped, I landed on my toes, which meant the power projected me forward.
What if I landed flat-footed?
It was a few moments before I tried to stand. Luckily, nothing was twisted or broken. I moved through a few quick stretches, then a few rising kicks, both straight ahead and circular, to make sure nothing had stiffened up.
Then, taking a deep breath and saying a silent prayer, I repeated the hop and press, this time making sure to land as flat-footed as possible.
Light flashed and up I went, straight up this time. There weren’t any markers on the wall to tell how high the power pushed me, but it wasn’t high enough to touch the ceiling, which was perhaps twenty feet above the floor. From the way I’d pushed off, there also wasn’t any way to twist or spin, but that could be fixed by launching differently.
I had to roll when I landed, unsure if my ankles and knees could absorb that much kinetic energy and not willing to test it. Ricardo or Angie could both fix me if I broke something, but it would hurt. It would also be embarrassing, having to hop or crawl from the gym to the infirmary.
On my third attempt, I tried exerting force from my feet without jumping, and it worked, though I went no higher than before. Apparently, my power exerted a certain amount of force regardless of intent, at least through my legs. It was probably the same through my hands; I couldn’t remember a time when there was any lessening of force despite my intentions. The only difference seemed to be when I was trying to go nova, but even that was a steady buildup to a release, not something I could just say “Okay, that’s enough, let’s release at half-load, or at a quarter-load.”
The fourth time included a twist, nothing more than shifting from a back stance to a ready stance the instant before pushing away from the ground. It was the basic lead-in to a jumping three-sixty spinning kick, and it worked. Landing it was more difficult. My body wasn’t sure which way to roll, resulting in a slight twinge to my right ankle.
Deciding that was enough for the day, and more than satisfied with the results of my experiments, I headed to the sauna. After a few minutes in the steam, I limped back to my room to shower and change. A few more ideas occurred to me while relaxing, and I wanted to jot them down while they were still fresh.
Then it was off to find someone who could sew.
Chapter 24
Johnny bombs
The next few days were more of the same, as Brian and Fish, along with Angelica, Jeff, and Iz, spent the majority of their time working with the Virginia Beach police, setting up surveillance techniques that would give us warning if the police were ever infiltrated again. Jeff would pop in on me at times, once while I was on the toilet, to get me to come purge someone. Seems the Dra’Gal thought they could reinfect the police department by sending converted officers back, having them show up like they’d only stayed away because weird things were happening.
Sunday came and went, marking the one-week anniversary of the start of the war.
It was also the carnival’s last day in Hampton. I spent much of that day in a blue funk, thoughts twisted with worry over Crystal and Tanya, hoping they were all right. Mandatum didn’t have a chapel, but Mrs. Jean hosted a kind of nondenominational service in the Rec Room at noon. Surprisingly, every soldier not currently on-duty attended.
“There are no atheists in a foxhole,” Bart told me when I asked.
Raymond got his memorial service that day, as quite a few soldiers and Chosen stood to recount personal stories and humorous anecdotes of their time with the friendly man. Though I hadn’t known him very well, just as I didn’t know many of these people yet, I included him in my prayers, hoping he’d found his way to a better place.
My ankle was a little better Sunday morning, but still ached enough that a visit to Ricardo was in order. Tiffany was with him, as always, and showed a great interest in my drawings. I got the sense she felt as though her abilities weren’t as much a benefit to the mission as the rest of ours and gladly jumped at any project where she could be of assistance. Several people might have been killed in the upstairs kitchen if she hadn’t been able to warp that shotgun’s barrel, but she waved that away like it wasn’t important.
As humble as she was about the strength and usefulness of her Catalyst-inspired talents, it didn’t extend to her sewing ability. To listen to her brag, she could knit circles around Betsy Ross and put Martha Stewart out of business. She gladly took on the project I presented to her.
The healer made me promise not to try anymore crazy
jumps and twists for at least three days. I still went and worked out after lunch but kept myself from trying to touch the ceiling.
That night I dreamed of the trailer again, but it wasn’t the same as before. Instead of being forced to my knees and confronted with a statue, I was an invisible bystander as the charismatic man stood with his hands on the resonator. Though the windows were covered, there was a sensation of movement, a minute shifting of the walls, a vibration in the floor. No sound accompanied the dream, so I didn’t know if he was praying, or chanting, or having a pleasant conversation with the rock. After only a few moments, an explosion of red dots, like a sprinkler full of paint, sprayed out, streaking through the tin walls of the boxy house-on-wheels. The dream faded after that, but it left me nervous. Iz and Fish believed one resonator could manage a finite number of connections, tenuous links between a Dra’Gal consciousness and an item with the potential to infect one of us.
Did I just witness the birth of a new crop of infected toys and statues, replacements for the things we’d destroyed in the mall?
Monday saw me out on another meet-and-greet with Jeff and Angelica at the police precinct. My heart sank as the woman approached. Easily six feet tall, with caramel skin and chiseled features, she was beautiful and as tall as an Amazon.
And she was the sixth person I’d seen in the alcoves.
She called herself Savanna and described her power as a “binding,” meaning she could make anything, objects or people, stick together by touching them. She smiled as she shook my hand and stuck my feet to the ground. Not just my shoes. I could no more lift my feet out of them than I could lift them, until she removed the binding with a second touch.
That night, Iz held a meeting in the Rec Room, where he updated everyone on our new partnership with the police and outlined our next attack on the Dra’Gal resonator.
“We’ve got a week to train, get outfitted, and find out what each of you can offer through the Distiller,” he said. “Johnny, you’re up first thing tomorrow after breakfast. The Dra’Gal are staying with the carnival, it seems, and are preparing for a long engagement at the Westchester County Fair.”