by John Ridley
Vision blurred, head throbbing. Soledad sank to the floor, couldn't help herself from going down. She tried to lift herself, then sank again. Pain was the motivator to stay where she was. Brilliant pain. Arm burning. The Nomex uniforms were fire-retardant, not fireproof, and not fire-anything against muties. She slapped the flames dead, then stared at charred fabric. Except it wasn't charred fabric. It was burned flesh beginning to boil and blister.
Soledad felt like she was swimming: light, buoyant, moving through a viscid fluid. She felt all that, and her burnt arm felt cool.
Shock. Coming on fast.
Soledad's empty hand groped for the Benelli but stayed empty.
Yarborough, still down. Still immobile.
Where was Bo? Where was Reese?
Soledad managed to get her head up. Coming toward her through dutch-angled vision was the thing. The floor sizzled where it stepped.
Soledad's long-standing fear, her cop nightmare: to be incapacitated by a perp, unable to run, unable to hide… a weapon touching-close but too far away to be of any use, she'd be unable to do anything but lie and watch Death take a stroll for her. It was a weak and helpless and frightening scenario, and she was staring right at it.
"What's da matter, ya bitchass skeez?" Slow burn to its voice. All of it burned slow. "Ain't got nothin' more ta show me?"
A hard struggle got Soledad nowhere near up to her feet.
"I'll show ya, sumthin'. Ya wanna see sum shit?"
The thing stopped moving. It stood over Yarborough. Its hand glowed, gathering heat and flame, ready to send it pouring over the cop. Ready to kill him.
"Too easy!" Soledad screaming, swooning with disorientation. "Kill a guy who can't fight?" Felt like she wanted to fall. Still on the floor, and she felt like… "You're the goddamn bitch, you two-dollar whore!" Burned, weaponless, weak; big talk, that's all she had.
Nothing. For a second, nothing.
Then the glow from the thing's hand spread over his body. He went hot with excitement as much as fire.
"Skeez got sumthin' after all. I'm gonna light you up. I'm gonna light up yo pussy!"
The man of fire stalked for Soledad, but took its time about it, each step prolonged for its max pleasure: the anticipation of the kill. Foreplay, then death.
Soledad felt the thing approaching, felt the heat of it pressing toward her more than she could see it. One eye was swelling shut, the other collecting the blood that ran from her head. A weak arm feebled for her back, for the pack she had attached there. Didn't have the strength to pull it free.
"How you want it, girl? Which hole you want it in?"
The heat, oppressive, burning oxygen and passing Soledad out. At least, she thought, she wouldn't be conscious for her own end. Through a curtain of blood she saw the thing's fiery hand reaching for her. It was an unnatural wonder. It was the last thing she'd ever see.
Blue, moving fast. Reese, throwing herself at the mutie, knocking it from Soledad's path.
Soledad rolled, scrambled for the cover of one of the verticals. The stay of execution injecting her with enough fight to keep alive.
Reese, on the floor; wounded animal sounds. The side of her body she'd slammed against the thing was black with burns.
Reese down. Yar down. Bo gone.
Time. It was only a matter of how much—a minute, a few seconds—before that thing killed them all.
Hand alive with desperation, Soledad pulled the pack from her back, worked the zipper. Inside: a gun.
The freak, only dazed by the open-field tackle, got its bearings, moved for Reese. "Bitch, I wasn't tryin' ta fuck wit you. Ain't nobody told you ta come in here an' git wit my shit. You better axe sumbody!"
No hesitation this time. The thing's hand to the chestplate of
Reese's body armor. A second later: a horrible sizzle, the smell of burnt meat.
From Reese, screams. Spastic jerking and twitching against the pain, and screams.
Shaky hands, Soledad fumbled for the clips in the pack. Which color, her mind unable to lock thoughts. Which color? Which— Red, the red clip. Grabbed it, she slid it into the back of the gun.
One deep breath.
Soledad stood, came into the open.
The thing rose to meet her.
Reese's body kept flopping around over the wood.
"Oh, now bitch wants sumthin'. You gonna play me like dat wit yo little bitchass gat. Let's get it on, girl. Bring it da fuck on!"
Yeah. Let's bring it on.
Soledad took aim with her piece. The DTT raced up, then locked.
The thing burned bright, ready to spatter fire. Ready to kill.
How do you shoot something like that? How do you use a bullet against a thing that can melt lead?
Soledad squeezed the trigger. No hammer fell. Just the same, her weapon spat. The slugs—four fired in instantaneous succession— touched air, then went white hot. They stayed white-hot as they cut through the freak's flames, hit it in the chest, tore it open. They were white-hot as they ripped and shredded flesh and muscle, broke bone and turned it into shrapnel, wounding from the inside outward. The slugs were just as hot when they opened four jagged defects in the freak's back and kept on going.
Phosphorous bullets. Soledad had answered a question with a question: How do you melt what's already on fire?
The thing stood unbelieving. Blood, like streams of lava, leaking from the tunnels Soledad had laced through its chest. It stood for a moment… stood… its light and fire dimmed. Then the thing went down felled-timber hard.
Quiet.
Soledad limped for the body, not having known until that moment she'd done damage to her leg. The pain of a twisted knee subordinate to that of smoldering flesh.
Step, drag. Step, drag.
Soledad stood over the pyro. She venom-dripped words down at its empty eyes. "Who's the bitch now? You bleed. Fucked-up-looking and hot, but you bleed."
Eulogy over.
Soledad turned for Reese. Reese's body. In the center of her chest, where her armor was melted away, was a burned-out crater. Cooked meat hanging off the bone.
"God…" Soledad lowered herself, repulsed by Reese's wound but unable to look away from it. Her hand out toward it to… to what? To touch it? Tend to it? What was the point? Nothing she could do. Not one—
A gurgle. A spasm from the body.
Soledad sprang back.
Reese in a death prattle… and then something else. A breath. Short, shallow, but a breath.
"Ten-thirty-three!" Soledad yelled, not knowing she was yelling. Not even sure if there was anyone to hear her. "Officer down! I need a rush on a bus at this loca—"
Real quick her words got choked out. Her throat was on fire. A painful jerk of her head to the side, through the corner of her eye: It was alive; the thing, the human flame. Alive just enough to ignite its hand, take Soledad by the neck and sear her skin.
"… Youse sumthin', girl. " Slurred words of the dying, but dying slow enough to drag Soledad with it. "Truth: youse the only bitch man enough ta be wit all da shit. Truth. It's da truth dat sets ya free, an' revelation is comin'. Come here, bitch, an' kiss me good-bye."
The thing worked up half a smile and got ready to end Soledad's life—choke it from her, squeeze it, burn it from her. One way or the other, kill her.
Three loud pops. Three large holes bust open in the thing's body just before it tipped and thudded against the floor.
Hand to her throat. Soledad could feel the dead flesh peel beneath her touch.
Across the warehouse: Bo, blood leaking from his skull, held his smoking .45.
Soledad saw that, then promptly passed out.
Expense equaling excellence, Cedars-Sinai was the best hospital in the world. Parked on prime real estate in Beverly Hills, Spielberg had a wing there. So did Max Factor, the long-gone Hollywood cosmetics king. Cedars-Sinai is where the rich went for plastic surgery, movie stars went to die and MTacs got sent to recuperate. Usually MTacs didn't get to die in a h
ospital. Usually MTacs died on the spot courtesy of some kind of superpowered metanormal.
Soledad woke up floating above her hospital bed. Above her body. Felt like she was. The sensation coming from the painkillers that doped her up. From her vantage point, looking down at herself—her black skin counterpoint to the white sheets and gown she was wrapped in—Soledad's physical self looked like it needed all the painkillers the docs could legally feed her. Her neck was wrapped with gauze and netting. Same with her left arm. A brace on her right leg. Bruises, cuts, welts all over.
But she was alive.
Were the rest of them?
Bo, yeah. And Yarborough, probably. He got jacked up, bad, but he must've made it.
Reese?
Reese was alive. Had to be alive. It'd take more than a crack-high freak to put Reese down.
Then Soledad remembered the smoldering cavity the freak had burned into Reese's chest and wasn't so sure of things.
And that had been Soledad's first call. Four cops injured, one critically.
And the screams: the screams that came when the thing shot flame to the street below the warehouse. Had those cops lived or fried?
All that pain and suffering and death just to bring down one of them. One out of how many who lived hidden in the city? In the country?
But they had put it down. They, she, had chopped it cold. Except for being badly burned and getting her leg messed up and almost having the life choked and smoked out of her, Soledad had stopped it. Well… she had slowed it some until Bo could kill it.
Still, not bad. First call and all. This was a…
Soledad had started to think to herself that this was a learning experience; there'd be time to pick skills up and get things right. From her corner of the ceiling she looked down at her broken self. A busted, charred body is what using reality for a classroom had gotten her.
The door.
Bo came in. Flowers in hand, plastic-wrapped. Picked up, probably, from Ralphs or Sav-On. Bandage on his head.
From way up high Soledad saw herself turn, try to focus. Bo looked… he looked downright quaint. The good cop visiting the wounded partner. He looked healthy too. Broad in shoulder and barrel-chested. His hair was prematurely white and just under it, where his hairline met his forehead, was the bandage that covered some stitches. Other than that you wouldn't much know he'd just gone up against a pyrokinetic. He was a helluva cop, one Soledad wished she could be.
Flowers on the nightstand. Bo pulled up a chair and sat himself down.
"Well, now," drawl in full effect,"how you doing?" he asked. Then, quickly: "No, don't try and say anything. Doctor said your throat would be fu— messed up for some."
Soledad smiled. Her physical body smiled. It was cute to her: Bo, the BAMF cop she'd almost died with, worried about his language around her. She wanted to tell him it was cool to talk free, but the thought of speaking was enough to send a phantom of pain howling through her throat.
"But nothing too bad," Bo went on. "They said you'd heal up pretty good. Your leg too. Maybe just some… a little scarring. On your neck, I mean. Your neck and arm. Just a little."
Soledad found herself trying to lift her hand to her neck, feel the wound. She was too hopped-up to get her limb off the bed.
"Yar? He's okay." Bo dialogued with himself. "Don't think he's going to ever wear shorts at the beach again, but…"
The hint of a laugh escaped from Soledad. The hurt that came with it was monumental.
Bo caught her wincing. "Sorry. Shouldn't be making jokes."
The pain passed. Soledad knew what Bo was building to, and with sheer force of will silently asked the question. Reese?
"She's still alive," Bo answered. "You can call it that. She's got… there's… it's a hole. That thing put a goddamn hole in her chest. Had to… they, uh, had to take out one of her lungs."
Bo's voice cracked. He had to tilt back his head to keep water from filling his eyes. Something about that; something so painful about a cop, a tough cop, breaking down over one of their own… For Soledad it hurt just to watch.
"That mutie, its hand was so hot it cauterized the wound. Only thing that saved her. Even at that, a little to the left, an inch, and it would have cooked her heart."
Yeah, but the thing's hand wasn't that inch to the left. Reese was alive.
A version of it.
Virtually alive.
Soledad wanted to tell Bo that everything would be cool, that Reese would make it through okay. Maybe with just one lung, and a big fat divot where her sternum used to be, but she would make it. And then, after a long while 'cause everybody had a lot of recovering to do, he and Reese and Yar and herself would all be back together: an element again. Even though they'd only been on one call together—one that had nearly gotten them all dead—they'd be back together and better than ever. Except for the burns on Yar's body, and Bo's cracked skull and Soledad's seared flesh and Reese's missing lung, better than ever.
Soledad wanted to tell Bo all that, but her broiled throat turned her reassuring words into a sickly gurgle that meant nothing.
"She's in a coma," Bo continued, not having been able to decipher Soledad's new language. "Good thing, I guess. She can't feel anything that way. Thirty-three, you know that? Reese was thirty-three." Something in his voice. A quiver. He was breaking again."You don't think how young that is until someone dies at that age."
But she wasn't dead, Soledad thought. Thought hard, trying to make Bo hear her. Reese wasn't dead, so why would he say something as foolish as that when he knew she wasn't—
"You did a job out there." Bo looked back to Soledad. He worked up a smile, forced some dull light behind his eyes."For a probee, and against a pyro? You were really something. Really…"
Bo hesitated. A second. Hardly that. Time enough for Soledad to know what was coming wasn't good.
Bo said: "There's going to be trouble. About the gun. The one you used. I shouldn't be going on about that now. You've got other concerns. I don't want you to worry, but you should know. I think… I'm pretty sure there's going to be trouble, and you should at least know."
Soledad wasn't sure what to say to that. Couldn't say anything if she did know how to respond. So she did nothing, didn't want to do anything. The drugs that killed her pain dulled her ability to care about possible future troubles she might have. She just wanted to float. Floating was fine.
For a while longer, a good while, Bo sat with Soledad. Saying nothing. Just sitting. Just being there for her. After he'd sat for what seemed like a good amount of time, he got up and patted Soledad twice on the shoulder and left.
Soledad kept on floating over her body. She thought—or at least all the dope working in her made her think—as long as she had freedom from solid form, she should float to Reese's room, see how she was doing.
And maybe Reese was having a fake out-of-body experience too. Maybe the both of them could float and talk, get to know each other like they'd never previously done, or maybe take a sail around the hospital, because how many times in life do you get to fly?
So Soledad did that; tried to float to Reese.
She couldn't.
She went to sleep instead.
Reese made for a queer sight. Lying on her hospital bed, she looked tranquil; face placid. Body relaxed. The angel at rest.
In high contrast were blood-soaked bandages that covered her ugly red/black wounds, tubes and catheters and wires that ran from orifice to sustaining contraption—commingled in a complex matrix until it was pretty much impossible to tell where humanity ended and appliance began. If the devices sustained the body, or if the body justified the devices' existence.
And with the hybrid biomechanical form came the sounds of life: the slurping of the pumps and the suction of the tubes that replaced the inhale/exhale of lungs and the quiet, regular beat of a human heart. The beeps and clicks of monitors as they read cardio rate and pulse and respiration and alpha waves and tabulated their minute variances over a period of t
ime, then printed this information so that the well-trained, highly skilled, overly expensive C-S medical staff could analyze the data and pronounce their prognosis: no change. The patient was, still, not dead, not alive.
All that science, all those electronics and gears and dials just to maintain the approximation of life.
Nearly two weeks. Ten days it'd taken Soledad to nerve herself for the event of crutching it from her room, down the hospital corridor to the elevator to the ICU to where what remained of Reese was kept. Ten days, not counting the five Soledad had no choice but to sit in her room, recovering, with nothing more to do than prepare for visiting Reese.
Yarborough she'd seen already. Visiting Yarborough had been easy. Even banged up and in the hospital, Yar was in good spirits.
Not that he'd been looking to get himself all fried, but he didn't much seem to care. Yarborough was the original BAMF. An MTac with an exponent. He didn't do what he did so much because he believed in the cause; because he wanted to protect and defend ordinary humans from the hegemony of the muties. He did what he did because how many times in life do you get to serve warrants on people who can throw flames from their bodies or make metal come alive? Not enough where Yarborough was concerned. Not hardly. It was like he was bred for the job. Five-ten, just over one-sixty, Yar was trim and light and moved fast, and that helped him get through a bunch of years of hunting freaks well battered but still alive. His scar tissue got worn like medals, were displayed just as proudly.
Soledad, hand to her throat. Absentminded.
Yarborough had pointed out his wounds to Soledad in a morbid show-and-tell. A puncture in his chest where a telekinetic had sent a sharp piece of something or other. Teeth marks where a shape-shifter tried to bite out part of his leg.
"And you see this?" A scar on his temple Yarborough stuck a finger at with glee."Know who gave me this?"
Soledad didn't.
"Gave it to myself. Shot myself in the head. Or a telepath tried to shoot myself for me."
"You went up against a telepath?" Soledad, impressed. There were only a very few MTacs, anywhere, who'd ever mixed it up with a telepath and lived to tell. And that was the thing: Out of all the boasts Yar'd made to Soledad since she'd arrived at Central MTac, going against a telepath wasn't one of them.