by Peter Clines
“Get over yourself,” she said. “You’re way too skinny to be the Dragon.”
He smiled. “Afraid not.”
She used both thumbs to pull the hammer back on the pistol. It made a loud clack in the room. “Last chance.”
St. George took in a deep breath. He felt the tickle in the back of his throat, and let it sigh out. The flames trickled from his mouth and lapped up and around his head.
Her brows went up above her dark glasses and her mouth fell open. Her grip slipped on the pistol and it shifted in her hands. The weight settled on her trigger finger. The hammer slammed down.
There was a thunderclap of noise in the small room and the bullet punched St. George in the shoulder. He yelped. The girl shrieked and jumped back against the window. The deformed round clattered on the floor.
“Ohmigod!” she said. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said. He rubbed the top of his arm and patted the smoking hole in his jacket. “I’m fine. It just stings a little.”
“Boss,” shouted a voice in his ear. “You okay? We heard gunfire.”
“No problem,” he said. “Just a misunderstanding. Everyone’s fine.”
“It’s really you,” she said. Her arm went down and the pistol slipped from her fingers. It thudded on the carpet. “You’re the Mighty Dragon.”
“Told you.”
“Oh my God,” she said. Her body slumped with relief. “Oh my God. I just … you don’t know what it’s like out there.”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea,” he said.
“I’ve barely seen anyone in ages, and the people I did see kept trying to make moves on me. One guy stole some of my food and another one was this creeper who wanted me to do him and some people just shot at me and I …” She paused to breathe, dipped her head, and something like a smile crept onto her face. “I haven’t been able to trust anyone for a while now.”
“You can trust us,” he said. “Inside the Wall’s clean and safe. We’ve got food, electricity, and …”
Her glasses slipped down her nose when she lowered her head. She met his eyes and rushed to push the oversized lenses back up. “Please,” she said, “just let me ex—”
St. George marched forward and snatched the glasses off her face, crushing them to splinters in his hand. She tried to turn her head and close her eyes, but he saw them again. There was no mistake. They were gray and chalky. The veins were dark against her pale irises.
“Don’t hurt me,” she said. She skittered back across the floor with one arm up, trying to hide her face. “Please! I’m not one of them.”
St. George marched after her, grabbed the dead girl’s shoulder, and tossed her across the room. She hit the wall and fell onto the couch. “Rodney, I swear to God, after what you did—”
“Please don’t!” she shrieked.
“—the last thing you should be doing is wasting my time with another stupid …”
He stopped.
The girl was crying. A single tear made its way down her cheek. It left a path of clean, pale skin behind it. She was taking in raspy breaths as she cried, her chest moving up and down. Her cloudy eyes had gone wide with fear.
“Please,” she said. “I’m not one of them. I swear. I swear I’m not.”
St. George opened his hands wide and stepped back. “I … I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s okay. I thought … I thought you were somebody else.”
She slid off the couch and skittered away from him. The trust had vanished from her face. Her eyes flitted to the pistol on the floor.
“Who are you?”
The dead girl lowered her arm a bit. “You’re not going to hurt me?”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. He raised his hands a little higher, spread his fingers a little wider. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”
A cloud of drywall dust drifted down from where she’d hit the wall. They both glanced at it. She set her jaw and glared at him.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. “We’ve had trouble with … well, we’ve kind of got a low-level supervillain here in Los Angeles. He calls himself Legion but his real name’s Rodney.”
She blinked. “And you thought I was him?”
“He controls all the exes in the city,” explained St. George. “He can talk through them, see through their eyes, make them act just like a person. He’s tried to trick us before, so I thought you were him. Because you’re … you know.”
“I’m not like them.”
He nodded. “I can see that.”
“I’m not!”
“Okay, then. Do you want to come in? I think there are some people who’d like to meet you.”
She stood up slowly. “How do I know I can trust them? Or you?”
He gave her a smile. “I’m the Mighty Dragon, remember? One of the good guys.” He held out his hand. “Most people are calling me St. George these days.”
She looked at the hand for a moment, then reached out and wrapped her cold fingers around his. “I’m Maddy,” she said. “Madelyn Sorensen.”
Eight
Now
“ CAPTAIN?”
“Sorry, sir,” said Captain Freedom. He’d been staring at the girl for two minutes. He turned to St. George. “It’s just … does it count as seeing a ghost if you never saw the real person?”
Madelyn sat inside one of the hospital’s observation rooms. They’d cleaned everything out of the room except for a pair of chairs and a small table. Stealth had posted two guards inside the room and two more outside.
Franklin and Dr. Connolly had wheeled in their own table to take samples and check a dozen or so different vital signs. The dead girl winced as another needle went into her arm, but she stayed in the chair. It wasn’t by choice. She’d agreed to let them strap her down until Stealth was convinced the girl wasn’t Legion.
Madelyn had stripped down to a pair of threadbare jeans and an oversized T-shirt. The arm they were taking blood from had three wristwatches on it she refused to remove. A restraint ran between two of them.
St. George and Freedom stood outside with Stealth, watching the tests. Freedom stood with his hands behind his back, at ease. It pulled his duster open across his broad chest. Stealth’s head moved inside her hood and her gaze settled on the huge soldier. “It is Madelyn Sorensen? There is no question in your mind?”
Freedom nodded. “I’d bet my pension on it, ma’am,” he said. His mind flitted back three years, to the day he’d sent a team out to bring Dr. Emil Sorensen’s family to Project Krypton. It hadn’t ended well, for any of them. He still remembered the young girl being pulled across the sand, dodging the exes surrounding the base. He’d added her name—all their names—to the long list of people he’d failed to protect.
He shook the thoughts from his head. “I only saw her in person on the day she died,” he continued. “But Dr. Sorensen had a dozen pictures of her and her mother in his office. I must have seen them a thousand times. If that isn’t her …” He shrugged. “As I said, I’d bet my pension on it.”
“So,” said St. George, “she’s dead and an ex, but it seems like she’s still talking and thinking. Anyone got an idea how that happened?”
“More to the point,” said Stealth, “how did it end up in Los Angeles, four hundred miles from the site of her death?”
Madelyn locked eyes with St. George through the window and he gave her a reassuring nod. She managed a weak smile back.
“Sir, ma’am … a point, if I may?”
St. George nodded. “Yeah?”
Freedom’s mouth twitched. “Dr. Sorensen was always insistent Madelyn was still alive,” the captain said. “Every now and then he’d have these moments of clarity about his wife, just little flashes when you could tell he knew what had happened to her, but couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud. But he was convinced Madelyn would’ve survived the attack that killed them. He wouldn’t back down on that.” His eyes drifted back to the dead girl. “He said she was spec
ial.”
Stealth’s posture shifted. “Special?”
The huge officer shook his head. “I don’t know, ma’am. I always assumed it was fatherly instincts bleeding into his mental instability, that losing his daughter was somehow worse than losing his wife.”
In the room, Franklin slid a needle out of Madelyn’s arm and pressed a piece of gauze against her vein. She asked him something they couldn’t hear through the glass and he answered with a few words and a nod. Then he followed Connolly out with the rolling table and left the girl alone with the guards.
“It wanted eyedrops?” Stealth asked Franklin.
Franklin’s brows went up and he glanced at the window. He glanced at Captain Freedom out of habit, then nodded at the cloaked woman. “Yes, ma’am. I told her I’d get her some.”
“Why does it need them?”
“I’m guessing because her eyes hurt. Her tear ducts probably aren’t working well.”
St. George looked over at Connolly. “So?”
The doctor shook her head. “Well, she’s definitely an ex,” Connolly said. “No pulse, no respiration, body temperature is seventy-point-five. I think it was cooler but she started warming up once we got her inside.”
“But she’s conscious,” said Freedom. “She knows who she is. Or was.”
“She seems to.”
St. George looked through the window again. “Is she Legion?”
“It would not appear to be,” said Stealth. “Legion consistently displays the same dialect and body language. Whoever or whatever this is, it is demonstrating numerous tics and habits different from his.”
“Whatever she is,” said Connolly, “she’s pretty sure she’s a seventeen-year-old girl.”
Freedom’s brow wrinkled. “She said she was seventeen?”
The doctor nodded.
“This is a discrepancy in its story?” asked Stealth.
“I’m pretty sure she was seventeen when she died,” said Freedom. “I remember Dr. Sorensen talking about having her eighteenth birthday at Krypton.”
“Well, it’s not like she’s aging any more, sir,” said Franklin.
“No,” said Freedom, “but if she’s conscious why wouldn’t she think of herself as twenty? Physically she might be the same, but almost three years have passed.”
“Three years?” echoed Connolly.
“Two years, nine months,” said Freedom. The images and sounds rushed through his mind again. “I lost four good soldiers that day, along with Sorensen’s family.”
Franklin set his jaw and gave a faint nod.
St. George looked at Connolly. Her lips twisted. “Something else wrong?”
She stared through the window. The dead girl was tapping her fingers on the end of the chair and looking around the room. “I’d never’ve guessed she’s been dead for that long.”
“The ex-virus does slow decay significantly,” said Stealth.
“It does,” agreed Connolly, “but it doesn’t stop it. And it doesn’t do anything to halt rigor mortis, evaporation, or basic wear and tear. I would’ve said she’s been dead for a month at most. And a pretty gentle month.”
“What are you implying, doctor?” asked Stealth.
“Just that I’m probably going to want to do a lot more tests after all this blood work’s done. If that’s okay.” She glanced through the window at the dead girl. “With everyone.”
Stealth nodded once.
The two doctors left the heroes standing at the window.
“So,” said St. George. “Now what do we do?”
“We interrogate it,” said the cloaked woman. “Captain Freedom, you are the most familiar with Madelyn Sorensen. Would you be able to confirm its identity?”
The huge officer straightened up and his face got hard. “That depends on what type of interrogation you’re asking me to do, ma’am. I won’t hurt a teenage girl.”
“For the moment, a verbal interrogation should suffice. If you are satisfied with the results, there would be no need to go further.”
* * *
One of the guards in the room, Cook, glanced at the dead girl. She smiled at him. “Hey,” she said. “I’m Maddy.”
He ignored her. “You think if she turns out to be an ex they might let us have her?”
His partner followed his gaze. “For what?”
Cook shrugged. “She’s not that messed up. Can’t touch her but she’s still fun to look at.”
“Hey, creeper,” snapped Madelyn. She glared at him. “I’m right here, y’know.”
“Shut up, corpse girl,” Cook said. He leveled his rifle at her. Her eyes went wide.
“That’s enough of that,” said Freedom. He stepped through the door and made the room look small. He walked over to Madelyn and gave Cook a hard stare. “You can wait outside, gentlemen.”
Cook opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it. The other guard cleared his throat. “Stealth’ll have our heads if we leave our posts.”
“Your dedication is admirable,” said Stealth from the doorway. “Wait outside as the captain instructed.”
She made no move to get out of their way. The two guards turned sideways and pressed themselves against the wall to get out of the room without touching her. Once they were gone, she walked in the rest of the way. St. George followed her in.
“I apologize for that, ma’am,” Freedom told Madelyn. “There’s no reason for them to be speaking like that to you.”
Her eyes flitted from St. George to Stealth and up to Freedom. “It’s no biggie,” she said. “I’ve heard worse in gym class.”
“I’m still sorry.” He reached over to her and pulled the straps open. She stretched her arms out and flexed her wrists.
They’d cleaned Madelyn up, even though she still wore the inner layer of her ragged outfit. Her slim body had started to fill out with the shape of maturity, but she couldn’t’ve weighed more than a hundred pounds. Her skin was the dusty gray of the long deceased. She had her mother’s dark, wavy hair, and it brushed her shoulder blades. Freedom recognized the shape of Dr. Sorensen’s eyes, even though they were pale and cloudy.
She stared at him for a moment. “Are you Captain Freedom?”
Something twinged in his chest. He paused, half crouched into the other chair. “Yes, ma’am. How did you know?”
“Dad told me about you. I know he wasn’t supposed to, but he was really excited and proud of how you guys turned out. Especially you.” She smiled. Her teeth were bright and flawless. “I like your coat.”
“Thank you.” Freedom spread his duster and settled into the chair. It creaked under his bulk but held him. He glanced back at Stealth and St. George. The hero stood by the door. The cloaked woman had settled behind Freedom, near the window. “And your father is …?”
“Emil Sorensen,” Madelyn said. Her thin brows furrowed up. “He’s the doctor out at Project Krypton. Your military base, right?”
Freedom nodded again. “How do you know about that?”
She raised an eyebrow at him. It let more of the light hit her pale eyes. “Because you guys flew me and Mom out there to meet him.”
“When was that?”
“Just a few …” She closed her eyes for a moment. “It was July of 2009,” she said. “We got on the plane late on the twenty-sixth, landed in Arizona a little before noon on the twenty-seventh.”
“Okay.”
“Why are you asking me all this?”
“We need to make sure you are who you say you are, ma’am.”
“Is this what St. George was talking about? You think there’s someone else talking through me or something?”
“More or less,” Freedom said. He paused for a moment and studied the girl’s face again. The twinge grew to a small knot. “Do you remember what happened after you landed?”
She nodded. “Some of Dad’s soldiers … your soldiers, I guess … picked us up at the airport. There were exes there. They shot most of them, and the noise really freaked Mom out. On
e of the guards was bit, but I couldn’t tell how bad it was and nobody wanted to say. Then they got us into a big armored jeep-thing and we headed for the base.”
“It’s called a Guardian,” said Freedom.
“Okay, cool. So, we were driving along. I remember we could see the base up ahead. Mom was relieved and I was excited to see Dad and his new lab. And then …”
“Yes?”
“Then the guy driving the jee—the Guardian—shut it off. He turned the key and said the gas tank was empty, even though the gauge said it had half a tank. The woman in charge, Sergeant Washington, she said it was empty, too. I thought it was some kind of joke, just to see if they could make us scream or something. Then there were some explosions, and the exes were trying to get into the car. Their teeth were super loud. And all the soldiers kept saying there wasn’t any gas, and they were serious . They really thought it was empty. So they were calling for help and me and Mom were freaking out and begging them to start the car back up and then one of the soldiers started freaking out and …”
She stared past Freedom to St. George. Her hands crawled toward each other and knotted together.
The memories crawled through Freedom’s mind. The team had been brainwashed by Agent Smith and his mind-control powers. They’d looked at the gauge, seen empty, and believed it. One of the soldiers, Adams, decided it was better to try running through hundreds of exes to reach the gate. He’d dragged Madelyn with him and they’d both been torn apart right in front of Dr. Sorensen. The whole team had died.
He’d never been sure why Smith had done it. Maybe it had been to punish the doctor or keep him in line. Or maybe Smith had done it just because he could.
Freedom brushed the thoughts away. He took a slow breath to help cover the pause. “And then?” he prompted.
“I don’t remember,” she said. Her fingers shifted in their knot. “I think that’s when I died.”
“Do you have any idea how this happened to you? Why you came back with your mind intact?”
She shook her head. “Nope.”
Freedom set his hands on the table. They looked massive across from hers. “Do you know what your mother’s name was?”