Vs Reality

by Blake Northcott

  Chapter Eighteen – Epinephrine

  Oahu, Hawaii

  August 26, 2011

  12:28 am, Hawaii-Aleutian Time Zone

  Cole spits up a gob of wet sand and rubs the sting from his eyes. The fall was significant, but at least the landing was somewhat softer this time; the marble tiles on Dia’s rooftop terrace were far less forgiving. As he just discovered, tumbling through a pan-dimensional rift in the middle of a desert has its drawbacks, including – but not limited to – a seemingly endless supply of tiny abrasive grains flooding every orifice on your body. Irritating, but a small price to pay for a daring escape. He just wishes he’d had a chance at Govnida before they’d fallen through the trap door.

  He blinks the remaining sand from his eyes as the swirling cone of energy constricts above him, disappearing into the moonlit sky.

  He bounces back to his feet (quicker than he should have, though it’s too late now) and sways with nausea. He cups a hand over his mouth, resisting the urge to vomit. Teleporting is going to take a little more getting used to. Glancing down he notices that his tank top fits more loosely, dangling from his wiry frame. The Muse has worn off. Cole has reverted to his normal state; his tattoo is gone, and the rippling muscles have disappeared.

  He squints into the distance. A pair of shimmering angel wings carry Dia across the darkened beach strip; they’re fading as she pads along barefoot, her boots in-hand, allowing the surf to wash over her toes. Her platinum-blond hair has already dulled to her natural color.

  Cole jogs to catch up, running alongside her. “Who was that guy?” he asks, panting from the effort. Apparently when his muscles disappear, so does any semblance of cardio. “And why didn’t you let me kick his ass?”

  Dia laughs caustically under her breath, still padding forward. “You mean the guy who’s so powerful that he’s pretty much captured everyone on Earth with the ability to manifest?” She purses her lips and nods, flashing Cole an exaggerated thumbs up. “Really solid plan you had there, cowboy.”

  Cole knows that he could have taken him, but chooses not to press the issue. “So how do you know Govinda?”

  “I don’t,” Dia says, blinking hard, bringing a hand to her forehead. “At least…I don’t think so.”

  “Well he seemed to know a lot about you. And the guy is pretty memorable, so I don’t see how you could have forgotten about meeting…” Cole trails off and cranes his neck in every direction. He can’t help but notice the suspicious lack of skyscrapers. Squat, sun bleached buildings with faded pink balconies line the beach strip, which is dotted with gently swaying palm trees. “Hold up…where are we?”

  “I took us to Hawaii,” she says with a dreamy, nostalgic smile. “I lived here for a couple years as a kid; my dad was in the military so we moved around a lot. This beach just popped into my head as we were falling through the portal, and here we are.” Dia stops, curling her toes into the wet sand. She tilts her chin skyward, filling her lungs with saltwater air.

  As a fragrant, floral breeze blows by, Cole catches himself gazing out towards the Pacific. He’s momentarily transfixed by the enormous crashing waves in the distance. “So…this is nice and everything, and I’m not complaining about the view – but when do we jump back to New York?”

  “In a little while,” she says dismissively, her voice growing distant. She resumes her walk without warning, doubling her pace. “I thought I’d hang out here for the weekend, check out some real estate.”

  “What?” he calls out, double-stepping to keep up. “Well that sounds like a barrel of laughs, but do you really think this is the best time to go open housing? We have to get back to New York right now and fight these maniacs!”

  She stops dead in her tracks, rooting her feet to the sand. “You still don’t get it, do you? If you want to fight maniacs, be my guest. I’m not going to stop you But I have to find somewhere that I can live with Paige – far, far away from the epic shit-storm that just dropped on New York City. It’s getting too hot on the mainland.”

  “Everywhere you go is going to get hot, Dia. This isn’t a problem that can be fixed with a new penthouse.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Well I’ve been doing a pretty good job at avoiding the Collectors so far.”

  “This is the kind of life you want for you and your sister? You’ve been lucky so far, but this routine of cutting yourself and making a run for it isn’t going to keep working forever.”

  “What did you just say?” Dia shouts, her words spilling out like poison.

  “Your trigger,” he says coldly, pointing at her arm.

  On instinct she claps a hand over her forearm to conceal the scarred, jagged mess of exposed skin.

  “It probably started with tiny cuts,” he says. “Didn’t it? Then you needed to slice deeper and deeper before you could manifest. And now you need to get smashed in the face before you can feel anything.”

  “How did you…” she stares at him quizzically, eyes narrow. With a hard blink and a shake of her head she re-focuses her anger. “I was saving our lives,” she screams, shrill and irate. “What did you want me to do? We needed an exit and I was all out of Muse.”

  Cole can’t rid himself of the vision he’d experienced when he and Dia first met. Was it a hallucination? A premonition? The result of brain damage from one too many left hooks? He can’t be sure. But in that moment he knows Dia is lying to him, and that she’s lying to herself...a concept he’s all too familiar with. “No, I don’t think so. I think you’ve taken so much Muse that the effects have worn off. Between the pills and the self-mutilation, you’re so desensitized that you can barely open a gateway anymore.” He gazes into her moonlit eyes, searching for the truth, for some sense of self-realization.

  She bites down hard on her lip, bleary eyes moist with the onset of tears. “What do you want me to say, Cole? Do you want to hear all about how I would sit in my room alone every night, cutting my arms in the dark so I could remember what it was like to feel something? And how I met Brodie a few years back, and that he got me so hooked on Muse I was popping sixty pills a day just so I could tear open a single gateway? He keeps upping the dosage so I can keep myself going. I hate this about myself, but I had to go back to cutting – it’s the only trigger that works for me anymore.”

  “Then why don’t you just stop this all together?” he pleads. “Just go back to living a normal life.”

  “Because I need this.” Her voice is tight with emotion, words banded in steel. “When I manifest I become a lightning rod; there’s nothing else like it. For a moment, for one split second, I’m controlling something primal and raw that can’t be controlled. For that moment I belong. But when I’m not tearing open a gateway…” she trails off, gazing out into the crashing surf. “I’m dead inside.”

  “So this is how the story ends,” he says with a dismissive shrug. “Poor little Dia Davenport is too busy feeling sorry for herself to help anyone else. People all over the world who are just like you and Paige are being abducted, experimented on, and who knows what else. But hey, that’s cool, because Dia is going on a shopping spree and then out for a snorkeling lesson.”

  “Why the fuck do you care so much?” she thunders, slamming her palms into Cole’s chest. “What is this bug up your ass that you need to stop the bad guy and save the day? Spoiler alert: no one is going to give a shit if you save us all from this big scary super villain. Nobody will even know.”

  “I’ll know.”

  “Ahh,” she replies with a broad, sardonic smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “So now the truth comes out. You’re all high and mighty when it comes to my problems, but under that thick layer of hypocrisy we’re not so different. This kamikaze mission you’re itching to go on is just to feed your addiction.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he scoffs.

  “Don’t bullshit me, Cole. You’re not getting warm fuzzies thinking about helping people. You’re getting rock-hard because you finally have a taste of power. You wa
nt to get that rush of adrenaline when you clench your fists, grit your teeth and destroy something. You just came down thirty seconds ago and I bet you’re already itching for another fix.”

  Cole shakes his head, arms folded across his chest. “You’re crazy,” he says as dismissively as possible. He can feel the heat rising in his cheeks.

  “Am I?” she fires back. “Don’t even try to deny it: I saw that look in your eyes when you kicked Heinreich. You almost killed someone with a single blow and it gave you a high like you’ve never experienced before. Hell, you were practically glowing. And what was that shit in The Backyard? You were like a pit bull frothing at the mouth, ready to be unleashed on Govinda. If I hadn’t dragged you out of there what were you gonna do, fight him to the death?”

  “I’m not going to lie,” Cole finally admits. “I love feeling the power coarse through my veins after I take Muse. And the anger, the clarity of it…it gives me a rush that I’ve never experienced before. But the difference is that I know this is all temporary. I can stop doing it anytime I want.”

  “Oh really?” Dia says, her smile widening, eyebrows raised.

  “Really. After we take down Govinda and the Collectors, this is it for me. It’s over. No more Muse and no more manifesting.”

  “It’s just that easy, right?” She throws her hands apart and paces towards the surf. “Stop manifesting! The answer has been right here in front of me the entire time. It’s so simple. Why didn’t I think of this before?”

  Cole follows her into the ankle-deep water and clutches her shoulders, spinning her to face him. “It can be that simple.”

  “You really think you can quit just by snapping your fingers, don’t you?” Her expression darkens, voice leveling off to an eerie stillness. “And then what? You get a job as a stock boy at the local Wal-Mart, spend your weekends in some shitty apartment with a case of beer and your Playstation? Maybe you can live with ‘normal’, but I’d rather rot in The Basement.”

  “Eventually reality will catch up with you, Dia. You can run and you can distract yourself, but you can’t fight it off forever.”

  Dia stares back at him with haunted eyes. “Look, I know you’re jonesing to get your superhero membership card, but there’s more to this than saving the day and getting the key to the city. You can’t be this naïve.”

  “I just want to help people,” Cole says. “I want to help you.”

  She reaches out and cups a hand on his cheek. “I know you do, because you’re one of the good ones – you’re Captain fucking America. I saw it in your big blue eyes the second we locked onto each other back in Platinum. If you could put on a red cape and fly around the world saving everyone you would, because you’re that guy. And there aren’t many of you out there.”

  “Sure there are, Dia. You’re one of those people too. You came running after me and chased me through the portal to The Backyard, even when you didn’t have to. That counts for something.”

  Dia sighs, her shoulders sagging, head lolling forward as if she’s physically deflating from mental exhaustion. She lets her eyes fall shut. “You get a taste of power and your first instinct is to figure out how you can help people – even the jerks who don’t deserve it. You know what my first thought was when I realized I could tear open a gateway to another location? I wondered how I could steal a designer purse without getting caught.”

  “Maybe you’re not that person anymore. If we all work together we can stop the Collectors, I know it. We just need to think about—”

  “Look,” she interrupts. “You need to think about this, Cole: there’s no reset button here, and the stakes are as real as they get. People get hurt, people die…and it’s not always going to just be the bad guys. If you want to fight this fight you’ll have to do things that change you. Eventually the line blurs and you’ll forget what you started all of this for – maybe even forget who you were.”

  Cole feels the weight of her words penetrating his resolve, but he doesn’t flinch. “I get all that. I do. And I know there’s a lot at stake. I’m a warrior, Dia, just like you. I can deal with the consequences.”

  “You’re certainly brave, cowboy, I’ll give you that. But you’re not like me.” She lets out a weak laugh under her breath. “Which is a good thing, believe me. Once you cross this line you won’t be the same person anymore. And I can tell you from experience that when you feel hollowed out inside, like you’re not really ‘you’ anymore, there isn’t a pill in this world that can fix it.”

  Chapter Nineteen – Imbue

  New York City

  August 26, 2011

  6:45 am, Eastern Daylight Time

  Paige breezes into the kitchen with Jens at her side, flicking on an additional overhead light above their hostage.

  Heinreich sags into a chair that appears ridiculously undersized beneath his enormous frame, like an adult sitting at a kindergartener’s desk. He’s still unconscious, still bleeding, and is now bound by a haphazard combination of handcuffs, rope, and what appears to be three entire rolls of duct tape. He’s not going anywhere.

  Brodie is seated at the kitchen table, rifling through a small bag. It’s a brown leather case with scarred wooden handles; very retro, like she’d expect a doctor would tote to house calls in the 1950s. She’d heard that was a thing.

  “How goes it?”

  “Good,” he says cheerfully, still riffling. “Mister Heinreich here was coming around, so I had to give him a little sleepy-time remedy. My own personal concoction.”

  “Which means?” Paige asks flatly.

  “Thanks to my extensive collection of narcotics, he’s been injected with enough benzodiazepine to drop a charging T-rex. Plus a couple of extra ingredients. I don’t know if all this crap will keep him in place,” Brodie says, gesturing to the multicolored tape that’s mummifying their hostage, “but my cocktail sure will.”

  Heinreich breathes out a painful wheeze, like a distant foghorn.

  “He’s still not out?” Jens asks, regarding the giant with grave concern.

  Paige circles the kitchen table and pulls a can of soda from the fridge, popping the tab.

  “Meh, he’s in and out,” Brodie says, now prodding at a small vial of purple liquid he’d just pulled from his bag. “It’s hard to calculate the dosage for someone this big.”

  “No more drugs for this guy,” Paige says. “I’m going to question him.”

  “You know what,” Jens says, his hand outstretched. “I owe this bastard some payback for what he did to me back at Platinum.”

  “You do?” Page asks, a line creasing between her eyebrows.

  “Yup. And payback is gonna be a bitch.” Jens balls his tiny hands into fists and steps up to the sleeping hostage. “Mind if I take the first crack at him?”

  “Oh, be my guest,” she says with a stately gesture. A broad, rarely-seen smile stretches across her lips. She’s actually amused.

  Jens steps up to the giant, eyeing Brodie’s tape job. After a cursory examination (and when he’s relatively confident that Heinreich won’t be able to break loose) he glances back over his shoulder at Paige. She’s sitting on the kitchen table, legs crossed, nearly giddy with anticipation – or as giddy as Paige’s stoic face is capable of expressing. She raises her eyebrows and gives Brodie an affirmative ‘let’s get this show on the road’ nod.

  Jens draws in a deep breath and reels back, slapping Mister Heinreich across the face. He barely moves, but his eyelids begin to flutter. A second slap revives him, eyes cracked open, darting around the room.

  “Okay tough guy,” Jens says, now slightly affecting a Jersey accent for reasons even he doesn’t understand. “First of all, I want you to tell us everything you know about this Base Camp!”

  “Basement,” Paige interjects dryly.

  “Exactly!” Jens shouts, waving an accusing finger in Heinreich’s face. “And then you’re gonna tell us everything about your evil plans. If you don’t start talking I’m going to go medieval on your big German a
ss, understand?”

  Heinreich is barely lucid, head pitching back and forth. His eyes open a little wider and he focuses on the tip of Jens’ finger, and follows it down towards the extremely large accessory that dangles from his bony wrist. “Is that…is that my watch?”

  “Shut up! It doesn’t matter whose watch this is. What matters is where Cole and Daphne are!”

  “Dia,” Paige adds, more annoyed than before.

  “I don’t know,” Heinreich says weakly. “Goto must have initiated escape protocol and used emergency exit. Device can only be used once to make sure no one follows.” His words are coming slowly, but he’s exceedingly cooperative; in no small part due to the sodium pentothal that Brodie injected him with as they began tying him up.

  “Exit? Emergency?” Jens shouts, growing more frustrated by the moment. “Who followed what through a where?”

  “If your friends followed Goto,” Heinreich says, “that means they tried jumping to the Basement. Now they are probably lost somewhere in the Backyard.”

  Jens is now irate – or is at least pretending to be – bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet with his fists clenched, bobbing and weaving like a prizefighter. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you’ve just run out of time, son. And now, here comes the pain train.” He starts shadow boxing, throwing his fists in the air in a failed attempt at intimidation. “It’s coming at you, and there ain’t nothin’ you can do to stop it. I hope you’re ready, because here it comes!”

  Jens reels back and throws a wild, looping punch, slamming his fist into Heinreich’s face.

  There’s a crack. A painfully loud crack. And it isn’t Heinreich’s jaw.

  The German doesn’t budge but Jens reels in agony, holding his outstretched hand. “Holy shit,” he howls, leaping from one foot to the other as if he’s dancing barefoot across hot coals. “That hurt a lot! Wow, so that’s what it feels like when you punch someone?”