Floor 21- Dark Angel
Page 27
Just the thought of living like that makes her look a little nervous. “You grew up there with Mike and everyone else, right?”
“Yeah. Just me and all those crazy guys. True story, I didn’t meet Dodger until we started exploring the Tower, and I didn’t really like her the first time we met. Me and Mike though . . . we were pretty close for a couple of years before we got out here.”
“He’s alright, I guess.”
“Just alright?
She smiles as she finally . . . finally . . . sits down next to me, her feet dangling over the edge of the rooftop. “No. He’s actually pretty cool.”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought when I met him, too.”
“Really?”
“That’s right. I was actually around your age. Mike was a few years older than me, and it made me so nervous just to talk with him. He just had this way of seeming awesome, I guess. He played music and made everyone want to hang around with him . . .”
“I get what you’re saying. He’s always been cool.”
I look away with this big smile on my face. “Yeah, he was always the cool guy. Everyone wanted to be like him. Me though . . . I just appreciated him. When I was a little girl, I remember standing on the top of the Tower, just me and him staring down on the world. From the Tower, there’s this cloud, called the Darkness. It surrounds everything for miles before clearing up, so I never saw ground when I was a kid. Still, I’d stand up there, wondering what the rest of the world was like. Looking at the only other Tower I could see and wondering if anyone lived there. Nobody wanted to ask the same questions I was asking, so when I’d get lonely, I’d stand up there by myself and wonder if we’d ever be able to live out here, in the rest of the world.
“Sometimes, though, when I was lucky, Mike would come around and stand up there with me. We’d talk and ask questions about what the rest of the world might be like. I’d look over the edge of the roof and feel the wind in my hair, and Mike would just stand there, letting me ramble on about my life and how bad I wanted to leave that place. I only had one other friend who’d listen to me like that, named Allison, but Mike was the only person who’d ask questions like I did. Mike wasn’t cool just because I thought he had a great haircut or a cute smile. Don’t get me wrong, the guy’s got a little bit of both. What made Mike great was how much he wanted to know about the world.”
“Like you.”
“Yeah. He was always curious. He’s actually a lot smarter than people think.”
“Cynthia says the same thing.”
“Well, she’s got to be pretty smart herself if she sees that.”
“He probably doesn’t believe it, but I think Mike’s really smart, too.”
“Yeah?”
She nods. “He doesn’t treat me like a kid.”
“Well, you are.”
“Yeah, I am, but everyone talks to me like I don’t know what’s going on. They all act like I don’t see how bad the Creep is or how bad the raiders are. I think about how things are a lot, though.”
I smile. “People . . . People used to treat me like that too.”
“Mike never does. When he talks to me, he can see what I’m thinking. When Cynthia’s trying to protect me from the truth, he knows I’m not buying it.”
“Sounds a lot like how he acted when we were younger. He knew I was pretty sharp, and he treated me like I was, so I guess that means you and me have a lot in common. We’re both too smart for our own good.”
“Maybe.”
“Well, you seem pretty smart to me.”
“Being smart doesn’t matter when nobody wants to tell you anything.”
“It can get a little frustrating.” I suck in a deep breath as I’m looking at her. “Is there . . . is there something I can do? Everyone lately treats me like this . . . this . . .”
“Like a superhero.”
“Well, that’s not the word I’d use.”
“They’re already playing commercials of you on the video feeds, before the news feeds, and during shows.”
The thought of it actually makes me lose my words for a second, which doesn’t happen often. “Commercials? Of me? What do they say?”
“Everyone’s bragging about you, talking about how you’re the new secret weapon for the city. The Dark Angel. The Angel of Central Freedom.”
“The Angel of Central Freedom, huh?”
“Sometimes they just call you the Angel of Freedom.”
“God, that is so . . .” I look away and stare back out at the city. “It’s really nothing I ever wanted to be.”
“What did you want to be?”
“Well, like my dad, I guess.” When I say it, I feel my chest tightening up a little. Even my breath goes shallow. “My mom, too, but I guess me and my dad were a little closer.”
“I guess he wasn’t a superhero.”
“Well, he was my superhero, but he was actually a scientist, just like my mom. So, growing up, all I ever knew was that I had to keep asking questions. They always wanted me to be the smartest person in the room, so they always taught me to be curious about everything. I kind of imagined myself growing up, getting out of the Tower, and just running experiments on everything going on in the world. I never imagined becoming . . .” I stare down and flex my metal encased hand. “Whatever this is.”
“A walking ton of destruction?”
That gets another laugh out of me. “Well, when you put it that way, it sounds pretty bad.”
“No, it’s not. We need it.” She looks away from me and down at the streets. “We don’t always get to be what we want. Sometimes we just have to be what we have to be. What people need us to be.”
The way she talks, it does remind me almost too much of myself when I was younger, except maybe even a little bit wiser. “I don’t think there’s any better way of putting it. But is that really how you feel? About yourself?”
“I want to be . . .” She winces, like it’s painful. “I want to be what Mike was for me and Cynthia. I want to save people. Make their lives better. Maybe I’m not supposed to be a politician, but I want to do something. I want to be . . . I want to be a general. I want to help people stay safe, but not like General Yousef does it. I don’t want people to be afraid of me. I want to protect people. I want to be on the War Council and do things the way Mike would.”
“How would he do things?”
“He’d see it’s important to be safe, but you also have to give people freedom. You have to let them live their lives. What’s the point of being safe if you’re in a prison?”
“Yeah, I can definitely see what he sees in you. You’re smart like I was, but you’re definitely your own girl, Mandy. The only reason I really ever wanted to go into the Tower was because I wanted to explore. I never really wanted to be a fighter or anything. It just turns out I’m pretty good at it. But, if you want to be on the War Council, then just go for it. Nothing’s stopping you.”
She grins and shakes her head. “Yeah right. There’s never been a girl on the War Council.”
“There’d never been anyone outside of the Tower, until me. That was five hundred years of people being in there until I pushed us to get out. Now, a lot of times, the odds aren’t going to look good. I’ve been in way too many situations where there it looked like there was no way to win or get my way, but I did.”
Mandy looks up at me. “How?”
“I never gave up.”
A GOLDEN JACKAL
Mike’s Recording 12
The team’s scheduled to head out to Fort Silence today. I said my goodbyes to everyone before coming out to meet the doc. It’s his job to keep tabs on me, make sure I’m staying on the meds. It’s the medication that keeps my powers from going out of control, keeping my psionic abilities from going crazy. That’s partly to keep my mind from latching onto the Creep and partly to keep me becoming destructive. I get a weekly injection to keep my psychic powers suppressed. Actually, I take it from home.
Except, this past week, I didn’t.
&nb
sp; Doc knows something’s wrong the second he gets back scans of my brain. “Lieutenant Chapman,” he tells me as he’s looking over the images. “You’re demonstrating unusually active signals in your brain. Now, I don’t doubt your commitment to this program, but I must ask . . . You did take your injection, did you not?”
I look over at him, not really sure what to say. “Actually, doc . . . not this week.”
He always looks like he’s on the verge of going into that psycho side of his, and when I tell him I’ve been avoiding the meds, there’s this twitch at his lips that scares me. His hand is shaking as he sets the scans on a nearby table. “Now, I’m due to leave with the rest of the convoy for Fort Silence in less than an hour, so I believe we should clear this situation up promptly. You are aware that even missing a single dose could mean the difference between your current state, and . . .” He taps at his temple. “Your powers escalating to previous levels. Perhaps more so.”
“I could become even more powerful than I was?”
“We’ve been suppressing your body’s natural production of certain naturally occurring hormones and chemicals using the solution which I devised. If you were to abruptly stop taking your medication, your body would overcompensate in an effort to restore itself to previous levels.” He looks over his shoulder, at an empty medical bed. There’s just one stethoscope on top of it. “There. That. Tell me, can you . . . can you feel it, right now?”
I look from him to the bed. It’s been a long time since I’ve done it, but I start, well, stretching my mind. It’s sorta like being able to feel something in your hand even when it’s not there. That’s pretty much what happens. Even from the other side of the room, I can feel the stethoscope. “I can touch it, doc.”
“Can you pull it now?”
My face tenses up for a second as I squeeze my hand, a spark of blue energy bursting from my fingers. A second later, the stethoscope rockets across the room and into my palm. The doc’s mouth drops open as he looks to the empty bed and back to me. “Lieutenant Chapman,” he growls, but a second later, his face softens a little. “Michael. You understand the risk you’re putting everyone at by not taking your medication. Why would you do such a thing?”
“Because we’ve been hit hard, twice, by raiders. Guess what? Twice I haven’t been able to save myself.” I look away, closing my eyes for a second as I think back on Jackie having to take a rocket to the stomach to save me. “That happens again, I need to be able to defend the city. What if another attack happened to Central? Couldn’t we use someone like me?”
“I understand the compulsion, but you must understand that regardless of what you might think, you do not fully comprehend the scale of your power. The truth is that, unchecked, your gifts could cause the Creep to rampage through the city.” He taps at his forehead for a second. “Though, I suppose the energy field we generate around Central would keep such an event from occurring. Still, think about what would happen should you lose control. You remember what you did when your friend, Jackie, tried to rescue you from that insane scientist, David Chapman. Your psychic powers reverberated through the very core of the Tower and threatened to bring it down entirely.”
“I remember. I’m better now, though. Back then, I didn’t have anything to hang onto. I was . . . drifting. Hopeless. I’ve got Cynthia now. She’s my rock.” I let out this huge breath as I look up at him. “Doc, I need to be able to protect her. Promise, first sign of any trouble, I’ll take the meds. Just please don’t tell everyone else I’m not using them anymore.”
“Tell them? I’d lose access to my research if anyone found out I’d let you walk out of here without taking your injections. They already refer to me as a ‘mad scientist,’” he spits out, his face contorting with anger I can see in his eyes. “No matter. This will provide for interesting research data. I’ve recently become interested once more in the psychic links between humans and Creep. I’ll afford you your freedom from the medication so long as you promise to take your injection should your powers seem to be going out of control, but also on the condition that you allow me to implant you with a medical tracker. The tracker itself will transmit your biological data to my laboratory, but otherwise, you will never notice it.”
“Doc, if it means I can protect Cynthia and Mandy if I have to, then you can track my health all you want.”
Personal Recording of the President, Gabriel Branagh 12
In the morning, right before we roll out for Fort Silence, Dravic takes me aside. “Say hello to my old friend, Yousef,” he tells me. As much as Dravic has had my back these past few weeks, those words still put a chill into me. Yousef is military crazed, but Dravic was always just a step behind him in his zeal for military authority. It was Dravic who gave his explicit consent for the old general to nearly militarize all of Central. It’s a testament to how divorced the Advisory Council is from the people that they’re still pushing for him to be president again, especially considering that he was forced from the position by riots in the streets.
But, with all that said, even I have to admit that he’s accepted the demotion about as well as anyone could. I put the exchange behind me and load into one of the three armored personnel carriers taking us north. Martin decided to put me in the center car to give me the most protection in case a fight broke out. Of course, that also means that everyone other member of my delegation gets stuffed inside of there with me. I’m talking everyone. Colonel Martin, Tommy, Doc Watson, Jackie. Needless to say, it’s not the most comfortable ride.
When I take a look at everyone, I can’t help but think they all seem uncomfortable in close quarters. You can actually feel the tensions for the first half hour or so, at least until Martin looks over at Jackie. “We’re outside of Central now. You don’t have to keep wearing that helmet if you don’t want to.”
Damned funny thing. She just looks up at him from behind her helmet and says, “I know.” I can’t help but chuckle as Martin leans back against the wall of the car, looking practically ashamed at her response.
I look over at her. “Tommy says you two knew each other pretty well back in the Tower. Actually, he says you two used to hate each other.”
At least that gets a smile out of her, which is the point. “I wouldn’t say hate. More like, a mutual dislike. Me and Tommy used to be on all of the same sports teams. Baseball, basketball, that kind of thing. We were always competing.”
“The Towers are big enough to have baseball fields?”
“I mean, you’ve seen one of the Towers, right?”
“I have, but only in recon pictures.”
“They’re monstrous. The biggest skyscraper you have in Central isn’t as big or wide as a Tower. They were created to keep people alive if the rest of humanity was going extinct, so they have shopping malls, labs, rec areas. Basically, they’ve got everything you’d need to keep mankind going.”
“Well, I guess we did okay surviving out here in the meantime. Anyway, if you and Tommy were always such rivals, how did you two end up becoming friends?”
Her smile gets a little bigger. “By total accident. I nearly died trying to find out what was on the top floor of the Tower. Almost dying is kind of a recurring theme in my life, apparently. But, turns out that wanting to take risks was the sort of quality that our Tower director was looking for. At least, it was one of them. So, I got sent with Tommy down into the lower floors, along with the rest of our team. That’s also how I met Dodger. Actually, I couldn’t stand her when I first met her, either.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“The people picked to go scavenging in the lower levels are troublemakers. They ask too many questions or they’re just kind of antisocial. That’s not really the sort of behavior they’re looking for on the upper floors. I guess it just makes it harder to keep everyone in line. So, people like that either get arrested or sent down into the Tower.”
“So, which one were you? The type to ask too many questions, or the kind of person who was antisocial?”
“Jackie.” I hesitate a little as I’m sitting across from her. “If you don’t mind my asking . . . How old are you now?”
“How old?” She looks my way and hesitates herself, like she’s scared to admit it. She actually avoids looking me straight in the eyes when she says, “Uh, I’m . . . I’m 19.”
Martin’s eyes spring open as he shoots her a look. “You’re only 19?”
Next to me, Tommy coughs and interrupts the conversation. “Yeah, um, Jackie was the youngest one of us to go down as part of a Scavenger team. You had to be 18 to join. They made an exception for me because I was close to my birthday, but Dodger was already 18, and Mike was 20 when he first went down.”
“So, Jackie was the youngest?”
“Yeah, colonel. I know when you look at her in the armor and everything . . . Well, I don’t know what you see. That was my best friend in the Tower, though. Everyone forgets she was the youngest one of us, and still, nobody wanted to find out the truth like she did. I’ve also never known a single person who was willing to put her life on the line for her friends like Jackie was. She was always like that, even before the Creep and her new armor. Even when she was acting like she was annoyed by everyone else.”
Martin’s eyes go to the floor, and I can tell that he’s thinking things over. Jackie looks over at him and sucks in a deep breath. “You still think I’m going to kill you, colonel?”
“What?” His eyes shoot up to hers. “No, no, not at all. I’m . . . Well, I owe you an apology, Jackie. I admit, I was suspicious when you arrived, even with everything you did the night of the invasion. But, seeing you back out there again, and seeing what you did for Mike and his troops . . . the injuries you took . . .” He shakes his head. “And learning you’re just nineteen. I’ve never known another person your age with the kind of power you have, and I’m not just talking about how you fight. You just . . . Your will power is obvious. When you set your mind to something, like when you went out there to save Mike and his crew, it doesn’t seem like you’ll let anything stop you.”