Floor 21- Dark Angel

by Jason Luthor

  I nod at her. “I know, Jacko.”

  For a long second there, her face twists up. “Is that all you want to say to me?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if what I say’s going to do us any good.”

  Her face contorts even harder as she shakes her head. “It’s that bad, huh?”

  I feel Dodger’s hand close down on my knee, and my head just kind of cocks to the side as I try to control this painful surge inside of me. My fingers fidget at my jaw, running on my chin as I try to keep it all together. All I know right then is that, if I say anything, it has to be done right. “You really cut me pretty deep.”

  “Tell me,” she says as she takes a deep breath. “I need to hear this.”

  “It’s like . . .” I feel Dodger’s fingers move to my back as she rubs at my shoulders, and I just sigh. “It’s like you didn’t even care, you know?”

  “Didn’t care about you?”

  “Didn’t care that you were acting . . . acting just like my dad.” I see her suddenly lean back in her chair and suck in a deep breath. Her hand goes to her mouth as she struggles to control her breathing, and I can see her eyes getting watery. “Don’t . . . I don’t want you to cry or anything. I don’t want to say anything to hurt you. Nevermind.”

  “Tommy. Please. I need to know, and . . . I think you need to say it.”

  And I mean, she’s right. I scratch at the back of my head and just nod to her one last time. “Fine. The truth’s that nobody’s made me feel like you did in three years. Not since we all dropped down the Tower. Jackie, I remember us being in training together and how much you wanted to hate me. I remember you thinking I was just some dumb jock and me trying . . . trying so hard to get you to realize I wanted to be friends.”

  “I remember. When Commander Abbott was training us so hard that I really didn’t think I’d make it through.”

  “I wasn’t a military guy or a political guy back then. I just wanted to be your friend, Jackie. That’s why I kept trying to keep your spirits up as much as I did. But also, just . . .” I wipe at my face, my shoulders rising and falling as I breathe in. “I needed to be your friend. Even if we didn’t like each other when we were younger, I knew you better than anyone else in training. And . . . I needed someone to talk to, so I could get my mind off my dad. Honestly, I didn’t know anyone I liked or respected more than you by the time we got done with training. Just us being friends meant I didn’t have to think about what it was like being back home, where I’d spent my whole life getting . . . getting thrown around a room by my drunk father. Getting screamed at and locked in a closet overnight because I couldn’t get the apartment cleaned up fast enough.”

  “Tommy.”

  “So, when you came to my room and acted the way you did . . .” I lean forward and bury my head in my hands for a second, Dodger still rubbing at my back. It takes me a little bit before I can look back up at Jackie. “You were the last person on the planet I’d ever wanted to see my dad in. I don’t . . . I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that hurt by anyone.”

  “Tommy, I . . .”

  “And I cried for you, Jackie. Cried. For months. You can ask Dodger or Mikey. We were all messed up when we thought you died, but I’ve . . . I’ve still got the audio recordings I made after we got out of the Tower, of me talking about how I didn’t want anything else but to have you back. Our friendship was worth more than almost anything else to me. It was definitely worth more than the relationship I had with my dad.”

  She shakes her head, a lot, as she holds her closed hands in front of her face for a minute. “I messed up. I hurt you worse than I even thought I could, and considering how often I think I screw up, that’s saying something. I won’t . . . That kind of thing? It will never, ever happen again. I swear. If you give me another chance, I won’t ever hurt you like that again, Tommy.”

  “Of course, Jackie,” I tell her, forcing a smile. “I wouldn’t . . . You’ve always been there for us. I believe you. I’m not saying that it’s going to be easy to just get past it all.”

  “I get it. It’s been a rough couple of months, and we need to get back to the way things were. Being friends. But I’ve kind of realized lately that things aren’t going to be normal between all of us if I’m the one who keeps hiding things from you.” She gets out of her chair and paces for a second, walking back and forth before standing in front of us. “I gave Yousef a chance, too many chances, because I wanted to know there was someone else like me out here. I wanted . . . I needed to know someone else existed that could do something like I do.” She smiles and looks at Mike for a second. “At least, now I know that you’re rocking some pretty nifty powers. That makes me feel a little less like I’m the weird one.”

  He smiles back at her. “We can be weird together.”

  “I can deal with that,” she says as she paces one more time. “But that’s going forward. If you want to know why I couldn’t talk to any of you, why I couldn’t trust my own powers . . . If you want to know why I agreed to having Fort Silence in charge, then it’s because I didn’t think I could protect you. Not because I don’t think I’m strong enough. It’s because . . . because . . .” Jackie sucks in a deep breath. “It’s because I’m too strong. Mike, when we were in that crater, I told you that I’ve crossed certain lines that shouldn’t get crossed. Certain limits.”

  Dodger whispers something next to me, but we all hear it. “The Alexander Limit.”

  When the words are out of her mouth, Jackie looks like she’s been shot. She takes a step back, and her breathing gets short. “Dodger. You . . . knew.” She shakes her head and smiles. “Obviously, if anyone was going to figure it out . . .”

  “It was the doctor,” she says. “I was working with him in the lab.”

  Jackie looks at me and Mike. “What about you two?” The two of us shake our heads no, and Jackie looks back at Dodger. “Why didn’t . . . Why wouldn’t you tell them?”

  “It felt private, Jackie. I thought if anyone was going to tell them, it should come from you.”

  Mike looks as confused as I do, and he looks up at Jackie. “Seems me and Tommy are obviously out of the loop.”

  “Yeah,” Jackie agrees. “You’ve all wondered why I didn’t go back to the Tower. Why I didn’t even bother showing up around Central even though I obviously knew you were all here.”

  “Crossed our minds, I’d say.”

  “It’s because while I was out there, in the Deadlands, I ran across survivors. Lots of survivors, but there was one group specifically that sort of became my new family. I’ve mentioned it. Anyone who’s seen me for five seconds out in the field knows I got some kind of training while I was gone. That’s because the survivors I ran across were securing . . .” She smiles, but it looks pained. “They were descendants of Old World military people. These survivors, they’d been living at an old military base for centuries. They’d managed to survive because it was so far north of Central, and because that base was locked up tight. They took me in,” she says as her smile fades. “And I got them all killed.”

  We all wait with our breaths held. This the story we’ve all been waiting for Jackie to tell us, but now that it’s here, I feel this deep sense of dread in my stomach as she keeps going. “They were great people, but I actually thought they were a bunch of religious nutters when I first met them. I’m not saying all of them, but a lot of them talked about a ‘god on the mountain.’ These guys lived at the base of a mountain, but none of them could get near to the peak because of an energy field that attacked everyone who got close. Thing is that I knew there had to be something at the peak, a smaller military installation. It’s called Highpoint Waystation. I found those survivors because my suit had been leading me there for weeks. The last thing I expected to find was a bunch of people just living their lives and enjoying life. The fact that they took me in . . . I don’t even know why they took a risk on me. But they did.

  “The only thing they asked me not to do was go up the mount
ain, which kind of defeated the point. They were all so nice though, even if they were pretty serious about all their military training. Anyway, that’s why I stayed. I hadn’t actually felt like I’d belonged anywhere in forever. So, I stuck with them, and they showed me how to fight like a soldier. After centuries, their equipment was breaking down and the base was a shell of what it had been before, but they still knew about tactics, about discipline, basically about all the things you need to get people to fight together. They still kept using whatever vehicles they had that worked, and I got my practice with them. These guys had generations of practice together. They could have probably survived there forever if they’d had the right equipment to survive. The problem’s that they didn’t, and me being me, I told them to take it easy on some of the other survivors in the area. Survivors who turned out to be raiders.”

  She shakes her head, her chest heaving as she keeps talking. “You want to know why I’ve been hunting the raiders since a long time before Central, why I’m so focused on taking them out? Maybe even one reason why I sided with Yousef. It’s because I’ve already given the raiders a chance. I thought we could work together with them.” Her eyes go to me. “So did you, so did President Branagh, but you can’t work with people like that.”

  “Jackie,” I tell her. “Are you okay to keep going?”

  “Yeah,” she says with a nod. “It’s time you knew. Because I said it was the right thing to do, the base started taking in people. In my head, I just kept thinking about how amazing we were going to make the world. I thought we could change things for once instead of always having to fight. And for a little bit it all seemed to work out.” She looks over at Mike. “There was a little girl I was friends with there, named Samantha. Funny part’s that she was almost the same age as Mandy. She made me realize I’m not great with most kids, but kids like her?” She smiles. “I taught her how to throw a punch. How to take one,” she says as her hands go to the sides of her head. “And those . . . those people we’d trusted . . .” Jackie’s eyes are pinned open wide, and I’m genuinely feeling worried about her. “They waited until I went up the mountain. This was before I had all the gear I have now. I’d been planning to head up and see this ‘god on the mountain’ for a while. Find out what the military base had been securing for so long, why it had been built there. All I really knew was that I’d be able to pass through the energy field, even if I had to rely on my Creep cells to keep me alive.

  “Even if I had to let my skin burn off and regenerate over and over, I was going to make it up the mountain. Obviously, I’m happy that none of that happened. The field synced to my suit and let me right through. So yeah, I made it up there, to the peak. I was dead set on confronting this god. I wasn’t really ready for how big the place was. Inside, it was gigantic. I spent way too much time inside of there, trying to figure out what had happened and who built the place. There was tech there from centuries ago, from right around the August War. We’re not just talking about weapons. I mean there was medical equipment, research labs, everything you’d need if you wanted a research facility built for the apocalypse. So yeah, I spent a lot of time inside. When I got back . . . everything had gone to hell.”

  She softly taps at her temple with her fist. “Those sickos had been planning from the beginning to shut down the base security systems and let every one of their raider friends through the front door. By the time I’d gotten done exploring inside the mountain installation, the whole base was on fire. I couldn’t fly back then, so I had to run. Just, an hour, an hour of watching the base burning to the ground. An hour of wondering if the people I cared about were alive.”

  She stops pacing and her hands fall to her side. “I still had the Creep in me, so I actually did get there faster than most other people would have, but . . . it wasn’t enough. When I go there, the first thing I did was make my way to the residential dorms. I fought my way there, helping out any survivors along the way, at least as much as I could, but how much could I do? I couldn’t fly. I couldn’t move fast enough. I wasn’t close to how strong I am today. Not until I reached the barracks, and . . .” Jackie wipes at her cheeks and takes in one last breath. “And saw Samantha there with her mother.” Her eyes take on this cold look as she looks up. “Gutted open like animals.”

  I lean in. “Jackie, that’s . . .” I can barely finish. “I’m sorry. I wish you would’ve told us sooner, but . . . I mean, it all makes sense why you’d want to have the support of Fort Silence. At least they’d be able to help prevent that from happening again.”

  “No,” she says flatly. “I didn’t say I was done, and that’s not why I wanted the help of Fort Silence.” Her breathing is getting faster, almost like she’s hyperventilating. “It’s what happened next that I needed to protect the world from. What I had to keep from happening again.”

  There’s just this split second when she says it that I see that crimson flare of light across her pupils, like a red light burning through the lenses. “Jackie. What exactly happened?”

  “I wouldn’t find out until more than a day later. Because I blacked out. But you’ve seen what it might have looked like, Tommy,” she says as she holds up her hand, and just like that day at Fort Silence, three blades of bone start to slide from her arm and toward her elbow while the tips of her fingers calcify into claws. This time though, it happens slowly. The blades gradually extend out of her arm, slowly cutting through her skin. They’re covered in streaks of blood this time, and I can see her gritting her teeth and heaving in. “I did save people. I saved hundreds of people who were fighting at the base that night, but the next day, none of them would talk to me. I woke up in the dorms with no clue about where I was or what had happened, and I barely got outside in time to see the survivors packing up the last trucks they had. No matter who I tried to talk to though, they pretended like I wasn’t there, like I didn’t exist. Then they drove off. I don’t know where they went. All I know is that all I was left with . . . all that got left behind was a mountain of raider corpses across the whole base. Just . . . piles and piles of them, in pieces, like they’d been torn apart by the Creep.

  “It wasn’t until I got back to Highpoint Waystation that I found out what happened,” she says as the blades retract and her hand softens back to normal. “When I checked the cameras at the installation. I realized I’d passed a limit. After spending more time around the base, I found out what it was called. The Alexander Limit. The same limit Sally passed and Judge passed. For twenty-three minutes, I had more energy and power than I’d ever had in my life. There wasn’t a bullet that could put me down. All that power, and . . . I killed every single one of the raiders that was there that day.” She takes a deep breath before she says one last thing. “Five hundred and seventy-three deaths. Just because of me.”

  It’s the number that’s mind blowing. It’s more than that, it’s . . . staggering, to think that one person could cause that much death. Even when she says it though, even if I feel this sense of shock that’s impossible to deny, I don’t make the same mistake I made at Fort Silence. The second her hands fall to her side, I’m out of my chair with Mikey and Dodger in tow, and we’re around her. All of us are wrapped around her as she shakes. “I learned everything I did about the Creep and my suit there, at Highpoint.” Her voice is struggling as we hold onto her. “I didn’t want to tell anyone what a . . . what a mon—”

  Mike cuts her off. “Stop it, Jackie. No way you could’ve known. No way.”

  Dodger agrees. “And it was the Creep. The Creep did it. You know that.”

  I bury my head on top of hers, for once in my life taller than her now that she’s not in her armor. “That’s right, Jackie. You couldn’t haves stopped it because you didn’t even know it could happen.”

  Everything goes quiet and I can feel her crying into my shoulder. We just hold onto each other for a long time, not saying anything and just giving Jackie the time to let it all out. I couldn’t tell you how long we stand there. All I remember thinking
’s that whatever anger I was feeling at Jackie vanishes the second she’s done talking. Because nobody who hates fighting like Jackie does should ever have to go through something like that.

  Dodger’s Recording 14

  It’s probably about a few seconds after we’ve all let go of Jackie when there’s a knock at the door. We all give her a look to make sure she’s alright, but by the time we turn her way, she’s already standing seven feet tall in full armor. As far as any of us can tell, she’s ready to go. We don’t have any time to say anything else before Colonel Martin’s through the door, looking red faced as he stares between Mike and Jackie. “I understand it’s been one of those nights, but we’ve got a situation.”

  Tommy shakes his head. “When don’t we? Lead the way, colonel.”

  A minute later we’re walking through the garrison, and a minute after that, we’re all standing in the war room. Branagh, Yousef, Dravic, and McCullum are all standing there. Dravic’s the first to say anything. “Is it really necessary to have all of them here?”

  Jackie looks his way. “You need my help? They stay.”

  He holds up his hands and lowers his head. “It was only a question.”

  Branagh takes a deep breath as he motions to the viewscreen on the far wall. It’s part of the city out in the Deadlands, but it’s basically impossible to tell where. “I know we’ve had a hectic night and there’s a lot of things that are going to get sorted out over the next 48 hours, but honestly, we’ve got bigger worries than that at the moment. A few days ago, the militia started picking up a lot of raider activity in an area we’ve deemed Zone Delaware. It’s south of Central maybe about sixty to eighty miles. Now, it looks like they’re moving out a significant number of troops, and we’re not sure why. Normally, we’d put together a team, but frankly the chatter we’re picking up on radio is concerning.” His hands settle on his hips. “Do all of you know what Panzers are?”