H.E.R.O. - Metamorphosis

by Kevin Rau

Several police officers helped a woman up onto a stretcher just outside the doors. She was as fit as a volleyball athlete, yet it appeared as though they had problems with her weight. A nurse went over to check the patient over. The woman had a lot of blood on her clothes, but what really stood out was the mirror-like silver skin. The nurse and an officer rushed the woman off into the hospital, heading through a double door.

  Wait a second; she’s got to be a super, they are likely to bring her to the so-called quarantined area. I double-timed it after them, and the place was busy enough that no one challenged me. Rock on, Rael Stromm, superspy.

  They arrived in a secondary area where they worked on emergency treatment of some people, and began cutting part of her clothing off. Then, I caught a familiar scent. I quickly opened the paper bag, the one with Stephanie's shirt, and took a deep breath. I wrapped that back up and started trying to follow the scent.

  I didn't get more than twenty feet when I heard the nurse say she couldn't get a needle in. I debated walking away, but here was someone in trouble. Ah, shit. Dad said to help people out, it builds good karma. But I need to help Stephanie, yet if this chick doesn't get some help....

  I sighed and walked over to them; they both glanced up at me. The nurse was a middle aged woman, curly brown hair, kind face, looked to stay in decent shape. Her name tag said “Kim.” She looked a little wore down, as though she'd been running on high gear for hours, possibly on top of a long shift. The cop was also middle aged, had a mustache and a stocky build, but wasn’t really overweight. His brown hair was graying.

  They did a double-take when they saw my face. “Let me try to break through the metal skin on the inner elbow, and you try the needle.”

  The nurse said, “You aren't supposed to be in here, you'll need to leave, now.”

  I lied through my now-pointy teeth, “They asked me to help out in the quarantined area; with so many officers being injured they wanted a few of us on hand to help out.” They picked up immediately on who the “us” referred to.

  The fates smiled upon me. The officer said, “Hmph, well that's a damn good idea. I thought they had everyone on the H.E.R.O. program out helping at the damage scenes though.”

  I said, “I'm not in it yet. I'm just volunteering for now until I can get in, shouldn't we focus on her now though?” Yes, yes, yes! I might just have an IN on this area.

  The nurse said, “Yeah, but I can't find a pulse in the arm. Without that it won't help to cut through the metal, and we aren't sure how deep the metal goes. The neck would work, but....”

  I replied, “But that's more dangerous. What's the alternative? Let her die or something? So I cut her neck, and we try to avoid the jugular....” Did I just say that? AVOID the jugular? Man, I usually think to hit vital points.

  I made sure the nurse was ready, held down the metal girl's head, and then carefully tried to make a cut down along the neck where the nurse indicated. It made an awful screeching noise, and I’m sure that we got a bunch of nasty looks.

  All the while, the metal girl squirmed in pain, and I wondered if she was going through the same fire pain I did. Why isn’t her transformation done? Mine only took a short while. At least it seemed that way to me. I scratched the metal on her neck repeatedly, wearing away at the metal until a small amount of blood welled up. The nurse quickly jabbed in the needle and administered the drug. What do you know; claws aren't just killing apparatus after all.

  The girl slumped down to the table. The nurse said, “She looks like she's going through the initial changes, we've had a bunch of them tonight.” She did a quick exam of the girl's body, and didn't find any noticeable damage anywhere else on her body. Especially difficult when the skin appeared to be made of metal, and was uniform in color everywhere. The metal blocked the view of potential bruises that would indicate sub dermal damage.

  Wow, metal girl's hot. It was kind of like they poured silver over a stripper's body. Her hair was black, still non-metal. She must have weighed a lot, because Kim had problems even lifting the woman’s metal arm. I helped, but the arm felt light to me.

  She interrupted my thinking. “They appear to change, and heal rapidly at the beginning, so it will be more useful bringing her to a room to see if anything severe occurs rather than try to get through this.” She tapped her fingertip on the girl's arm.

  I again noticed her nametag said Kim on it, and I asked, “Kim is it? You want help bringing her to a room? I'd imagine you guys want every officer on hand up front.”

  The officer agreed, and said to Kim, “If you have this under control?” The nurse nodded, and the officer walked back to the front area. She put a cover over the girl, and brought the clothes she cut off to a bin. I stuck with her to avoid anyone else asking questions of me, and stopped at the trash bin. I smelled something....

  Stephanie … I smelled her. Wait … that means they cut off her clothes here as well and probably threw them in the hamper. I'm in the right place, now to get to the quarantined area to try to find her.

  Kim looked at me strangely. My mind raced, and I pointed at my nose. “Acute smell, there's a lot of blood and sweat on the clothes in here. It's distracting.”

  She nodded, still watching me closely, and headed back to the metal girl. She motioned for me to grab one end and push, and she pulled as we headed further into the section. Stealing looks at metal girl, I considered the possibility of carrying out Stephanie in one arm and the metal girl in the other. Hell, you could probably drag her out by her hair. Bouncing that metal body around isn't likely to hurt her.

  We took an elevator, headed up several levels, and exited onto the new level. The reception area had four security guards. Wait, these aren't police, they are private security, armed with pistols and rods.

  I kept my hands around the cart push bar, and kept my eyes lowered and mostly shut, so the slit eyes weren't obvious. The nurse pulled us to the nurse's station, and asked for an open room. She took a quick look in the purse of the metal girl, and filled out a slip with the personal information, handed it to the woman at the station, and pulled us toward the room we'd been directed to.

  I helped her get the girl onto the bed; she seemed extremely light for being made of metal, and yet the thump when her arm fell onto the rail told me she weight a lot.

  While Kim did a final check on her, I debated my options. I could just try walking down the hall, but there are security guards spaced out at regular intervals of these rooms. I could ask the nurse to just walk me down each corridor to see if the security needs my help, but then she might wonder if I'd truly been 'assigned' here. I could confess to her, but that might not go well either. Damn it. What would a comic book hero do? Just bash in to the villain, I'd think.

  I glanced at the nurse, and realized she had been watching me. Shit. Was I that obvious? I put my hand down; it turned out I’d been running it through my hair as I considered the options.

  Kim said, “You weren't really asked to help out here, were you?”

  Damn. She's smart, and observant. I answered, “Yes, and no. The hospital and police didn't ask me to help, but there really are a lot of police injured tonight, and I figured you could use the help. But … I'm really here because a friend of mine was brought up here, and I need to see how she's doing.”

  Her eyes were large as she asked, “Are you going to hurt me?”

  I was surprised, and honestly answered, “Of course not. I was just trying to think of how to find her without having a problem with security.”

  She stared at me for a long time, debating.

  I sighed. “Kim, listen, that's my best friend being pretty much held hostage here. She wasn't brought here willingly. I'm going to do quite literally anything I need to, in order to get to her. I want to do this all friendly-like, but if I have to go through those guards to find my friend, I'm going to do it. I care about her that much. Does that make sense to you?”

&nbs
p; She still looked dubious, but I thought appealing to the heroic guy figure worked for her. I continued, “I'd really love to just get to her room and be with her. If she is going through the same thing I did when I ... changed ... I'd like to be there to hold her hand.” I must be channeling my inner Lance; I barely recognize the words coming out of my own mouth. God, I sound like such a suck up.

  “What is your friend's name?”

  “Stephanie Quinn, two n's.”

  “All right, you follow me to the station, stay outside the desk area itself. I'll see if she's in the computer, and bring you to her room. If someone comes after me for helping you, I'm going to tell them you threatened me. We'll stop at a few rooms before hers, so as to not attract attention if her room is too far away.”

  “Fair enough, and thank you.”

  “What's in the bag?”

  I almost forgot I’d been holding it. I said, “A shirt of hers, and metal cutters in case I needed to rescue her.”

  “You really would break her out of here, possibly hurting others in the process, and endanger her?”

  “Yes. Why are all the new supers being kept in a 'secure' area? Why so many guards? Why sedate them all, like you did this girl? When I changed, the pain was immense, but it went away after a little while.”

  “Blasters, mutants, and psychics. A new super that can't control their power can do a lot of damage to others just by getting angry. Others become ... monsters. They just attack others; some even try to eat people. And every new super being brought in tends to be in pain for a good hour or more. That’s a ‘little while’ to you?”

  Damn ... monsters? Blasters. That would be like Hellshock, he blasts lightning from his hands.

  “Err, no. I thought it was only a few minutes. Well, I'm pretty normal, barring the odd hands, eyes and teeth. My friend Lance just changed, and people downstairs are talking about him stopping some mutant bug guy. That's two out of three of my friends that have changed tonight, and we aren't attacking people.”

  “But you are willing to.”

  I shook my head. “No, I was willing to before, but not just to fight with people, or start a problem. Certainly not to eat someone. I would have done it to protect or save a friend. Well, anyone really, but especially a friend.”

  “Not to sound negative, but you've got the characteristics of the mutants, or monsters. The claws and teeth. Most of those that look similar to you get ... bloodthirsty. You might be more dangerous to others than you think you are.”

  Great, I might have an inner demon. Guess I'll have to watch my anger management issues.

  She asked, “What's your name?”

  “Rael.”

  She edged past me to the door, opened it, and walked out. I watched her, and followed after a moment. She walked around the counter to the empty seat at the nurse's station. I figured I ought to play up the role I'm playing here, and headed over to the security guard nearest me.

  I nodded to him. He watched me closely. He noticed the claws and eyes after all. I could see the look in his eyes change to one of caution.

  I said, “Man, all these people changing, it's making it a hell of a night, huh?”

  “Yeah. Why are you up here?”

  Damn, talk about being blunt. “Police are dropping like flies out there; they don't have the personnel to deal with this wide of an outbreak. They thought it would help having one of us up here in case a freak goes crazy. No use getting more people hurt up here.”

  “We're equipped for it. So long as the docs keep the freaks drugged up it's all under control. We really don't need ... you ... up here.”

  Nice to know they aren't biased, pfah. I'll have to keep that in mind – they sound more likely to attack on sight than to talk. Fine by me, it's your ass, jerkoff.

  Chapter 8 – Mutant Breakdown

  Rael's Viewpoint