The Push Chronicles (Book 1): Indomitable (18 page)

“Well,” Schuller ran his hands over his bald scalp, “I was released and that was all fine, even with the whole Whiteout thing.  When I met my parole officer, I was told he had been replaced by a new guy.  I didn’t know the man, so it didn’t matter to me.”  He cast about nervously, as if was expecting this man to jump out of the shadows right now.

“He said his name was Mr. Mackenzie.  He kind of gave me the creeps.  Very intense.”

“I don’t mean to push you but I think I may pass out really soon.”  I shook my head.  Stick with it, Irene, I told myself, you can’t blackout now.  “So if you can –“

“Of course!  Well, after our interview, he treated me to dinner.  I think he slipped me something.  I started to feel really bad and the bad man in me started to come out.”  Fear washed over the poor man’s face.  “Except this time, he did more than tell me to do things.  He became real.”

Did he use some kind of psychosis inducing drug?  Maybe just something that neutralized the anti-psychotics Schuller needed?  Whoever this Mackenzie was, he was responsible, in my eyes, for a hundred counts of murder or more.

“Reaper?” I asked.  It was obvious, but it was getting hard to think clearly and I wanted to be sure.

“Yes, ma’am,” Gerald answered.  “Mackenzie was weird to the bad man.  He couldn’t sense him with his powers and he gave off a strange aura.”  He was obviously searching for words to describe something there was not words for.  “You’re just like him, you know.  Mackenzie explained what had happened about the Whiteout and the rally.  He offered the bad man a chance to take it all over.  The only things Mackenzie said that could stop the bad man were Epic and you, ma’am.”

“So,” I asked, feeling my speech start to slur, “this Mackenzie is behind all of this?”  Things were going gray.  I repeated the name in my head over and over.  I had heard it before, but at that moment, my brain was like thick porridge; if you had asked me my name right then, I would have been hard pressed to answer.  Gerald moved forward to catch me as I started to stumble.  He didn’t answer my question.  Instead, he yelled for help.

Chapter 20 Pyrrhic

I am ashamed to admit that my memories of the events right after my talk with Gerald are incredibly hazy.  I remember starting to pass out.  It was impossible for me to hold on any longer, no matter how much willpower I had.  I faded in and out of a twilight haze, with only the occasional moments of clarity.  I know I was placed on someone or something with wheels.  There was some sort of argument or discussion; there were definitely uniformed people involved, but I’ll be damned if I couldn’t tell if they were police, military, or something else.  I think I may have been in an ambulance at one point, then there was the anxious sensation of being wheeled on a gurney surrounded by doctors and nurses.  It was surreal, as if I was in one of those medical dramas when the trauma victim gets rushed to surgery.  That’s when everything completely faded away.

The next time I woke up, I was in a hospital bed.  There was a moment of panic when I tried to lift my head, only to find my neck locked in place, but a second’s pause made me realize I was in a neck brace.  It took some effort to push up onto my elbows to see what kind of state I was in.

I would have gone by feel, but I felt like both my body and my brain were wrapped in cotton.  I didn’t even want to know how many drugs I had pumping into me.  By weight, I could tell one forearm was in a cast.  I could only attribute the tightness in my torso from having my ribs wrapped up.  I was dressed in a flimsy hospital gown and covered up, so there wasn’t much else I could see.

What I could see was that I wasn’t alone.  Even if I were blind, the sudden cry of my name would have clued me in, though at the time I wasn’t sure which name was called out, real or assumed.

The Human Tank looked pretty good for a teenager who tried to run over a demigod.  He had one of his goofy grins, staring at me.  His outcry seemed to rouse a snoring Duane Brooks, his feet propped up in an empty chair.  My dazed mind wondered how Tank had managed to get his unwieldy treads into a hospital room.  I could tell there was another occupied bed here, but my total lack of neck swivel kept the occupant’s identity a temporary mystery.  As I tried to get my mouth to work enough to smile, I realized one last oddity.  My mask was still secured to my face.  I reined in the temptation to start making noise about the absurdity of that fact.

“Yes!  You’re awake and you’re not in a coma and everything is going to be biscuits and gravy!”  It was a strange proclamation, but I didn’t dissuade him.  Instead I managed to put a finger to the bed controls and ratcheted my head up so I could comfortably see the room.

“Hot damn, you had us worried,” Brooks said.  He had bags under his eyes and he needed a shave.  “Shit, the doctors said you probably should have been dead on arrival.”

“Don’t worry her, Duane,” came Rachel Choi’s voice from the other hospital bed, still annoyingly out of view.  “Let’s just be happy that she is going to be okay, yes?”

“Everybody else says hi and glad to see you’re awake and great news and all sorts of stuff like that and also that they’ll try to get here to see you as soon as they can but right now there’s still a lot of clean up and fall out from the big fight and that they’re sorry if they don’t get here right away.”

That managed to make me smile.  Even though I knew he was alive, I was still worried that our stunt in the National Mall might have permanently injured the kid.  I was glad to see that worry was unfounded.

“Thanks, Tank,” I croaked.  I wet my lips and tried again, sounding more like myself, only half-dead as opposed to completely dead.  “Do I want to know how long I was out?”

“No, but I’m gonna tell you anyway, Doc.”  Duane tossed me a copy of what I assumed was the day’s Washington Post.  It was the Sunday edition.  What caught my eye wasn’t the date, though, but the front page stories.  They were all about the battle on the National Mall, the legislative and political fallout, and continued sightings of Epic and his proclaimed Crusaders for Justice.  I picked up the paper in my functional hand and stared at it.  “A lot has gone down in these past few days.”

“Come on now, Duane,” Rachel said.  “Indy just woke up and I’m sure she is confused enough as it is.”  She was addressing me now.

“All you should be doing is focusing on getting on your feet again.  We can figure everything else out after that.”  Tank nodded emphatically in agreement.

For a moment, I wanted to argue with them.  My inner scientist wanted to know what had happened and analyze every piece of news.  Unfortunately, my mind wasn’t the only thing with a say in matters.

My body had other plans and far greater needs.  I had glanced at the first article and meant to ask a question about the legislation, but it came out sounding incomprehensible.  I was so sleepy and making my lips move turned into more effort than it was worth.  Brooks made a ‘huh’ sound, but before I could try to clarify, I tumbled back to dreamland.

When I next woke up, it was with a start, roused from some deep, horrible nightmare that I couldn’t remember.  The sudden movement alone alerted the room to my condition; the cry of fear wasn’t necessary but beyond my control.  In an instant, I was surrounded on all sides by worried faces.  The sudden startle of fear seemed to have triggered my hyper-awareness again; I was vividly aware of everything without the hint of the drug-induced stupor I had been in before.

Medusa, Extinguisher, and Duane were now crowded around my bed, all talking over each in other in an effort to find out what was wrong.  I raised my good hand for silence as I tried to calm myself down and drop out of my accelerated state.  All the adrenaline and other hormones racing through my traumatized body couldn’t be helpful to my overall condition.

“I’m okay,” I said.  My voice still sounded like an alien toad-beast to me, but at least I could be heard easily.  “Just a nightmare.”  The thought of that unremembered terror brought new phantom pains to my neck.  I made an incoherent grumble and asked, “How long now?”

“Only a few hours this time,” Duane remarked as he sat back down.  “The kid went to get some shuteye himself.”

“Yesss, he’sss been here full time sssince they put you in a room.”  Medusa stayed standing, but leaned back to give me space.  Her shoulder was bound in gauze and lines were scored into her fine scales.  “We ssent him off to sssleep now that you’re okay.”

“I know he passed it along,” the fire fighter said, “but I just want to say how sorry I, well, we are.”  Extinguisher rubbed his cheeks with his fingers, looking almost as exhausted as Duane did.  “We all wanted to be here for you, but between the lack of room and, well, all the time we’ve had to spend both cleaning up, debriefing with the government, and –“

“Debriefing?  With who?”  I cast a glance at Brooks who, to my surprise, didn’t look guilty at all.

“The better question is who we haven’t!  I’ve lost track of the committees, the sub-committees, the alphabet agencies, law enforcement, NASA.”  He slumped back in his chair, tapping his head against the wall.  “It's fine, I guess, though, if it keeps folks out of jail and starts to get our reputations cleaned up.”

“Okay.  Now, really, before I fall asleep again, I need to know.”  I raised my bed up to a reclined sitting position, in an effort to keep myself awake.  “What happened?”

“Well, after Schuller called for help and you passed out, we loaded you on Burnt Rubber and wheeled you towards where the police were rushing onto the mall,” Extinguisher began.  “We dropped the wall the moment Epic took his crew out of there, you see, what with it keeping emergency services out.”

“Trussst me, chica, you ssshould be glad you weren’t awake for that.”  Medusa’s snake heads hissed.  “It took a lot of sssweet talking to not only convince the cops not to ssshoot on ssight but to get you in an ambulance.  Thank God there were ssome actual paramedsss there; they wanted to help more than shoot though I wouldn’t be sssurprissed if Mind’ss Eye worked la magia on them.”

“I don’t want to know and I don’t care.  I’d prefer to be the optimist and think that some of those cops saw what went down and knew we weren’t the bad guys.  Anyway, we wound up making a deal with the commanding officer on site: we’ll help with the clean-up and rescue efforts and then immediately turn ourselves in peacefully afterward.”  Extinguisher chewed on his lip a moment.  “Speaking of that, technically, you’re kind of under house arrest right now.”

“Hold on.”  I felt at my face.  Yep, that mask was still there and it didn’t feel like it was gruesomely bonded to my skin.  “If I’m under arrest, why did they keep this on?  More importantly, how the hell did this fool anybody enough for them to decide I needed it on anyway?”

“You’d be surprised how much a difference it makes, Doc,” Brooks chimed in.  “And your identity is still under lock because we called in our last favors.”  Duane frowned.  I had never seen him sad before, but imagined that was what he was right now.

“Essentially,” Rachel added from her own bed, still out of my field of view, “we pulled some strings, noting your extensive help as a C.I..  After all, you’re not only the woman who got the FBI ahead of our rival agencies in regards to Pushcrime, but you also provided access to key information to finger the real culprit behind the bombing of our own headquarters.  It was enough to convince our superiors that you would be more useful to everyone if you kept a layer of anonymity.  Think of it like a bizarre form of witness protection.”

“I take it, though, the FBI knows who I am under this thing?”

“Yep,” Brooks nodded.  “Expect them to be a continual bug up your ass from now on.”

“Won’t it just be like before?” Extinguisher asked.  “You know, her working with you two as her handlers or bosses or whatever you guys call it?"

Rachel let out a sigh.  Brooks instinctively reached for his cigarettes, but produced only nicotine gum.

“We would, if our resignation hadn’t been part of the deal.”

“What the hell, guys?”  I was definitely more woman than alien now.  “Why would you even agree to that?”

“Indy, it’s alright.  Duane and I, well, we were going to quit anyway.  At least this way, we got something more than a pension out of the deal.”  Rachel’s voice carried no regret.

“Sssso, what did happen then?”

“Simple.  The agency wants to cover up who caused the bombing.”  Duane’s sadness turned to anger in the snap of a finger.  “They were going to pawn it off on the first dead Pushcrook that fits the M.O. as soon as they sorted the bodies.  They don’t want anyone to know it was an inside job.”

“Mackenzie!”  I regretted the shout as my enthusiasm tore at my throat and lungs.

“Yesss, that wasss the name Gerald sssaid, right?”

“Yeah, as far as we can figure, the same dude.”  Brooks looked over at the two Push heroes.  “Nice work getting Schuller out of there, by the way.  There isn’t shit connecting him to Reaper, so maybe if we’re all lucky, we can let him slip away and enjoy a peaceful life on his meds.”  I was far from sure that would happen, but I tried to take Duane’s enthusiasm to heart.

“No one at the agency knows how he did it, but it was definitely Ian.”  Rachel paused for a thought, then continued.  “He was one of our instructors at the academy.  His specialty was fringe cases.  You know, cults, extremists, conspiracy theories, the occult, that sort of thing.  After the Whiteout, he was one of the first agents who wanted to get out there and tackle Pushcrime.  He was in charge of our investigation of you, in the first place.”

“I don’t know what his game is now and I don’t care what the FBI wants, Rachel and I are going to hunt him down and bust him.”

“Isn’t that going to be pretty hard without you two being agents anymore?”  Extinguisher’s question was quite valid.

“Well, as I am recovering, I’m getting everything into place for us to become licensed private investigators.”  Rachel tapped at what I assumed was a laptop.  “Do you people prefer R and D Investigations or the Brooks-Choi Foundation?”

“You two do know that this Mackenzie character isn’t exactly a mere mortal anymore, right?”  My question caught everyone’s attention.  I had forgotten that, for the most part, no one was paying much attention to Gerald after the end of the stand-off save for me.  “Schuller said he was like me.”  I gave Duane a knowing look.

“Huh,” he replied.  “Maybe that’s why … “  His voice trailed off as thought overtook speech, rubbing his unshaved chin.

“He’sss like you, kind of Pussshed but not Pussshed?”  Medusa’s snakes danced around her head as she tapped her chin.  “We really need a name to call thisss sssort of thing.”

“We can nail down nomenclature later, guys.  What’s important is you can’t go after him alone.  You’re going to need help.”  That thought not only got the attention of the two former agents, but the Push heroes as well.

“Well, I was going to let Rachel do her smooth-talk thing but,” Duane shrugged, “how about you lend us a hand?  Off the FBI radar, natch.”

“Don’t leave us out of this,” Extinguisher added.  “If Ian Mackenzie led to so many people dying this week, I can safely say for all of us that we want to help bring him in.”

“Groovy,” was Duane’s one word reply.

I settled my head back.  My growing realization was that, despite all the blood and bones, I was not a single step closer to my actual goal of stopping the Whiteout.  For the sake of my friends, I tried to put that thought out of my head.  Instead, I simply said yes.