The Push Chronicles (Book 3): Incorruptible (4 page)

Chapter 4 Fever

I passed out sometime during the flight, with only a last few sensations of silvery scales and that sickeningly unreal golden glow in the skies above to keep me company.  There were a few fleeting moments of awareness at certain points; I was fairly certain our flight wasn't entirely uneventful, but whatever happened, it didn't stop us.  What brought me back to my senses fully, at least for a few minutes, wasn't roughness, but softness.  The warm embrace of a soft bed and blankets swallowed me as I was laid out on them.

It was a clean, plain room, though I could see, staring up from the bed, that the ceiling plaster was yellowed and cracking with age.  I wanted to prop myself up on my elbows to look around the room but I was too spent from everything.  My body ached from being forced into action, my mind swam in alternating fever and chills, and as for my heart?  Well, my best friends, my only friends left, most of them had just attacked me like puppets on strings.  Let's say my heart was not doing well either.

I gave up for the moment and fell into a deep sleep.

"- telling how long it will take," Duane Brooks said.  "Truth is, she'll never get over it entirely.  That isn't how this kind of shit works, assuming the rules are even the same for people like her."

I must have been semi-conscious and that sentence wormed its way faster through my brain than I thought possible.  Before whoever else he was talking to could respond, I was bolt upright in bed.  Something, an IV probably, tore free from my arm as I grabbed the black man's arm.  It had been a gesture of urgency that turned into necessity as my head swam with vertigo.

"What happened to her?" I croaked out.  "Where's Meds?"

"Doc, Christ!"  There was pain laced in Brooks' voice.  I let the pressure off of my grip, only now becoming aware of the looming presence behind me.  Phantom scales brushed my wrists as hands took hold of them.

"Duane, should I-"  It was Frost's rumbling voice beside me.

"No, no, it's cool."  Duane looked into my eyes.  "It's okay, Irene.  Let go and lie back now."

I nodded slowly and let go.  With how horrid I felt, I would have dropped back to the bed if the dragonwoman hadn't shifted her grip to lower me back gently.  The loose scrubs I had been changed into, the sheets, my hair, clung to me with sweat and my own sudden movement had done my throbbing head no favors.  Even though it was soaked, the soft pillow was still some comfort as I looked between the two figures now staring down at me.

Duane was still the same, though I would swear that the week, if it was even that at this point, had aged him a year or more, earning him a few more worry lines.  He had forgone shaving for a few days and sleep seemed to have evaded him for a while as well.  The seemingly coarse detective had served as our primary medic ever since I had met him so it was no surprise he was here.

Frost, well, I hadn't gotten a good look at her before and, even now, it didn't help that the room kept wanting to dip and spin.  Still, I could tell that her Pushed form was tall and powerful, covered in sleek, silver scales, dulling along the chest and belly.  There were teeth, claws, and wings ... everything you would expect.  Inside, I was a bit surprised to realize that I recognized the woman.  In fact, I had seen Aileen Frost's face on the back of more than a few book jackets in Eric's stack of well-thumbed fantasy novels.

"Doc."  I found myself focusing on Duane again.  "Medusa's okay.  More or less."  Before I could croak out anything, he continued.  "Having someone mess with your brain isn't something you just get over like a cold but she's not in any danger anymore."

"Voltage is fine as well," Frost added.  "He transmuted the both of them into electricity and escaped through the city's electrical grid."  Even though it wasn't real, the sparkle of her scales was almost hypnotic.  I shook my head, trying to think clearly.

"I need to get up, got to-"  I tried to push off the bed, but my hands just seem to push into the mattress.  Frost took one arm and Duane held onto the other.

"No, not now.  You aren't getting up and doing shit, not yet anyway."

"Indomitable, you are still quite ill, especially with..." There was a moment's pause.  "...you are still 'drying out'."

I relaxed against the grips on my arms.  I was feeling too shitty to get up anyway.  As I went limp, both of my apparent caretakers let my arms loose.

"So you were talking about me, I guess?" 

"Yeah.  I'm not sure how much you heard, but Frost and I were talking about your condition."  Brooks glanced at Frost and she began to very carefully reattach my IV.

"So when is your touchdown dance?"

"I'm not petty like that, Irene."  He couldn't resist a bitter smirk though.  "I did tell you so though."

"Bite me, Brooks."  My vision swam a little.  "Isn't there something you can do to at least get me to where I can see straight?  We don't..."  The entire world was wavering again as my body started to involuntarily shiver.

"The amount of time we have doesn't have any relevance to your health."  I'd give the dragon that much, she seemed insightful.  "No matter how dramatic it would be, you won't recover any quicker if you know there's a deadline."

"More importantly, it's not like I can talk to my usual sources to get the right supplies."  Brooks let out a short bark of a laugh.  "Shit isn't going well inside the dome.  The only reason your ex's boys haven't tracked us down is they're too busy keeping the population in order and the army boys on the outside."

"The dome?"

"Aye, you must have seen it when you emerged from your prison.  It came into being not a day after you and yours were taken captive."  Frost walked over to the window, carefully pushing open a blind with her claw tips.  "We only barely managed to make it into the city before it closed off entirely."

"Why did -"

"Look, Irene, don't worry about all of this."  Brooks put a hand on my forehead and frowned.  "You just need to rest as best you can."

"I-"  That first syllable was all that escaped my lips before I sighed.  "- you're right."  My eyelids drooped closed.  "I'm dead weight right now.  No matter what is going on out there ..."

"Just give it a few more days."  Brooks tried to sound optimistic.  He sucked at it.  "I don't know what they were stuffing in you but you've almost purged the worst of it."  He didn't sound certain and, even more confusing to me, the Crusaders hadn't been giving me anything.   Had they?  "That's my best guess anyway."

There was little else I could think to say, not right then.  Every new fact about the Crusader occupation would make me either upset or angry and neither of those two things would make me recover any quicker.  Honestly, both of those things would simply make me far more prone to do something very stupid.

"Okay, Brooks."  I let out a sigh.  "Just take care of Meds."  I glanced in the direction of Frost.  "I didn't get a chance to thank you and your friends earlier."

"There's no need, but I appreciate it all the same."  She turned away from the window, regarding me with those strangely warm, blue eyes.  "I would only wish that we had the time to implement the original plan."

"...the key..." I muttered it to myself just so I wouldn't forget about it in my confused state.  Where the hell had that key come from?

"Don't worry about that right now," Brooks said, getting up off the side of the bed.  "I'll check up on Medusa.  You get some rest."  He walked towards the door.  "Someone will always be keeping an eye on you, okay?"

"I'll try."

The fact of the matter was it was actually very easy to comply with his prescription.  Sleep swallowed me up almost as soon as he closed the door behind him.

It was the crawl of static electricity on my skin that brought me to being fully awake once again.  I am sure I drifted in and out of a semi-aware haze over the ... however long it was ... but everything was crystal clear now outside of the aches that throbbed in every muscle group of my body.

"...think there was anyone else like me until Rachel tracked us down."  There was the slightest sound of a playing card ripped off the top of a deck, then laid down.

"Funny, huh?"  It was definitely Voltage's humming voice.  "I always figured she was just a Push Hero like everyone else.  Hell, I figured you were the same, Quentin."

"Well, Vee, in the end, the final dish matters as much as the ingredients you put in."  That was Mr. Mystery from before.  I tried to push myself up on my elbows.  My success in doing so came with the price of throbbing pain.  No doubt it was the cry that I tried to stifle that got the attention of my current watchers.

"Hey now, the sleeper has awakened."  No longer in disguise as a paramilitary guard, the mystery man looked amazingly ... plain.  He wasn't bad-looking or handsome, but he looked like he could blend into any crowd in any city in the U.S., with brown, curly hair and dark brown eyes.  To his credit, though, he had a big smile on his face.  "Sorry, I couldn't resist."

"...right."  I bit down on the pain and glanced between him and the always-painful-to-look-at electrical being.  "How long-"

"Mr. Brooks and Ms. Choi both think that's something to wait on, Indy," Voltage said.  "Best to take it one step at the time, I believe was the order."

"It hasn't been that long though," Quentin, if I was attaching names properly, added.  "Vee, Frost, and I have been trying to make as much trouble to can to give us more time while you've been, er, indisposed."

"Quentin..."

"Hey, if anyone has an idea of what Dr. Roman can deal with and when, it's me."  With delicate fingers, Quentin flipped out another card from his deck.  Solitaire, I guessed.

"It doesn't really matter, fellows."  I didn't understand why I was in the pain I was, but I knew so little about how I had been progressing.  "I need to see Rachel.  Just let me get up -"

"Now that is right out, ma'am."  Voltage, standing ... floating ... whatever ... next to Quentin on one side of the bed, reached out in my direction, not straying too close.  "You need to stay here until Mr. Brooks gives you the A-O.K. to be up and around."

"She's not going to listen, Vee."  Quentin smirked as I proved him correct, continuing to push my way up to a sitting position.  "That's not how I'm wired, so I doubt she is."  He faked a cough.  "Sorry for talking about you in the third person, Dr. Roman."

"Very astute."  It sounded much less cool and off-the-cuff as the words were pushed out between clenched teeth.  Voltage's sparking features were impossible to read, but the man inside looked exasperated and defeated.

"Fine, sure."  The annoyance was writ large in his voice as he hovered back.  "Thanks for the backup, Quentin."

"Anytime, Vee my man."  Quentin slapped the deck down and got to his feet.  Even out of his disguise, he stuck to blacks and muted colors.  "Want a hand, Doctor?"

I shook my head, sweat beading on my brow, either from another fever spike or just exertion, I wasn't sure which.  It took a good minute before I felt well enough to swing my legs off the side of the bed, then another thirty seconds before my courage had risen enough to try to stand.  While I prepared myself, Voltage let out what I could only describe as a huff of static.

"I'm going to tell Mr. Brooks what's going on then.  At least do something useful instead of goading the patient on."  I was fairly sure I'd never grow accustomed that that electrical dispersal of his.  Human bodies weren't supposed to split apart like that.  Turning from the unnatural display, I pushed off the bed.

Maybe I should have expected my legs to collapse like wet noodles.  There was no telling how long I was bed-ridden and even before that, in prison, my detox sickness had cut severely into my exercise.  Still, to me, it was a shock, so much so I made no attempts to catch myself.  So much for dealing with life's strange twists with aplomb.

Before I could let out a grunt of pain, Quentin had hopped over the bed and landed beside me.  Without a word, he took my right arm, slinging it over his shoulder.

"Ready?"  There was no worry or fuss in his voice.  I didn't think it was a lack of concern.  No, I thought he understood that I didn't want that but I also wouldn't turn away his help.

Maybe Quentin did understand me and my thoughts as much as he said he did.  After all, Mackenzie had an understanding of me beyond what he had observed and likewise I understood him far more than I expected to be able to.  There was a common thread that connected us Naturals together, much like the Pulse connected the Pushed.

I grunted and nodded my assent and, with his help, I pushed up to my feet.  There were no more need for words about where I wanted to go.  I needed answers.  All of the answers I could get.  No matter the pain I was going through, the weakness, or the ... yes, best to call a spade a spade ... addiction I still had, I couldn't stand for this to wait any longer.

Quentin helped guide me to the door and out it on our way to see Rachel Choi.

Chapter 5 Angry

"Quentin!  You were supposed to keep her resting."

Rachel Choi had rarely ever raised her voice during the months I had known her, but considering we had just barged through her door unannounced, maybe she had some cause.

The hallway that Quentin had helped me down dimly reminded me of an apartment building, an old one.  Other than the lowered blinds giving a certain dimness to the hall, I noticed little else.  All my effort and concentration was focused on making my legs move.  They weren't as weak as I initially feared; it was the crippling soreness that made walking so hard.  Cramps?  Strain from thrashing and spasms?  I didn't know the cause.

"Do you think he could have stopped me for long?"  My voice was still hoarse, but some of its strength and volume had returned.  My eyes were locked on Rachel as I felt Quentin's shoulders shrug slightly.

"She's right you know, Ms. Choi."

There was a long pause as Rachel's eyes flitted between the two of us.  She was sitting behind an old oak desk, various open files littering a map of the city that covered most of the desktop.  The look of mild annoyance faded and she let out a long sigh.  Much like Duane, stress lines had cut deep into her face since the last time I had seen her.

"You're both right."  She rubbed her temples.  "Well, help Irene into a seat and check in with Duane. It looks like we have some trouble brewing and we need you out there."

"Maybe I should stay here?"  It was a battered office desk chair Quentin helped me into.  It matched everything else I had encountered so far here, old but serviceable.

"No, Quentin," I said before Rachel could say a word.  "Even if they didn't need you, this is private."  Rachel gave me a hard look, then nodded in agreement.

"Irene is correct, Quentin.  Thank you."

Casting a glance at both of us, Quentin nodded and, without another word, turned and strode out of the room.  The door closing behind him was the only sound in the room save for some uncomfortable shifting.  That pall of silence reigned for a good minute or two before Rachel broke it.

"I'm sorry I haven't come to see you, Irene."  The regret was almost tangible as she looked down at the map and the scattered papers.  "I ... well, you can probably guess how busy we are, trying to stymie -"

"I don't want an apology about that.  I understand that."  I had a coal of anger that I was fanning, using that fire to keep moving and talking.  "What I don't understand is why.  Why is all of this going on when it could have been stopped?"

"What are you talking about?"  The Korean-American detective looked up, vaguely confused.  "Look, we had an operation under way to get you out of there.  We just had to be -"

"No, not that.  Before, when I had Eric on his knees and you told me to give up."  My hands were clutching the threadbare armrests.  "I had him beat; I could have kept going!"

"That's crazy, Irene."  Rachel, as always, kept a cool head.  "Maybe you could have taken all of those Crusaders, but probably not.  True, you might have killed Epic ... that might have cowed them ... but could you have actually done that?"

"No, but-"  I closed my eyes and tried to order my thoughts.  Everything was still so jumbled.  "Dammit, there had to be another way!"

Rachel let out a bitter sigh.  No, not bitter ... old.  She was perhaps my age, no more than forty, but all of this that we had been forced into with the Whiteout had aged both of us far beyond our actual years.

"Maybe," she said, voice barely above a whisper.  "I've spent a lot of time in the past two weeks questioning my decision, that's for sure."  Her voice was regaining its strength.  "I'm not happy with how it went down but I don't think you or any of the others would have lived if I had made any other choice."

"I'm not sure if you can call what happened to everyone else living."  It hurt me to think about what else the Crusaders were making my friends do.  "What about Archer?  Alma?  Mind's Eye?  I didn't see them at the prison.  Where are they?"

"I have suspicions."  Rachel looked me in the eye.  "Irene, you have to understand that nothing is the same now.  We have very few allies and even fewer resources left.  No matter how badly you beat Eric, there's a thousand more Pushed under his command and Atlanta is theirs."

"Don't tell me you're giving up!"  My shout was more of a croak, but it was loud enough to get my point across.  "Why did you even call in these folks?  Which, I have to add, you never told me about.  You know, like you didn't tell me you were bringing Alma into this mess in the first place!"  I wanted to rise from my chair and loom with anger, but that wasn't going to happen.  "How much else haven't you been telling me?"

"I've been doing what had to be done, just like you were, Irene."  No matter the weariness or age in her voice, there was sudden steel now.  "You've been the one that's been impossible to work with.  Yes, you have followed our leads and helped our investigations, but in so many other ways you have never listened."

"That's -"

"No, no, you are going to listen this once."  Rachel rose from her chair.  Even though she was shorter than I was by a head, her years in the FBI had given her a formidable presence when she chose to exert it.  "How many times did Duane and I try to keep you safe, keep you from doing ... this ... to yourself?"  She just gestured at me.  No clarification was needed.  "You're the one that forced every little problem to be placed on your shoulders."

"You know as well as I do that it was my invention that let Eric do all of this."  That was a point even Rachel couldn't find a hole in.  "How could you argue anything other than that I have a direct responsibility for it all?"

"I'm not.  What I am arguing is that you've made every little aftershock of the Whiteout your personal problem to fix.  You've ignored everything else.  Dammit, Irene, you've practically killed yourself a dozen times over, never once letting anyone else share the burden.  I don't even want to try to figure just how many pain-killers you've gotten hooked on."  She folded her arms, anger bleeding out as her voice softened.  "Maybe we didn't start out as friends, but that's what we all are now.  Can you even imagine what you've been doing to all of us by just not accepting some damn help?"

I didn't have a single word in my extensive vocabulary to refute those accusations.

"So, to answer your questions, that's why I brought in Alma.  That's why I called up some of the contacts I had been making for these past four months, bringing in the best Push Heroes I could find from Detroit to save our bacon.  And that's why I've been networking with anyone who looked like they would stand up to the Crusaders.  All 'behind your back'" - she even air-quoted that before continuing her rant - "because you would never stop long enough to listen!"

My death grip on the armrests faded as I hung my head.  What else could I really do?  Rachel was right and only now, in this moment of complete weakness, could I accept that.  Hell, how many times had she or Duane tried to tell me this self-same thing?  Even some of the team, blinded as they might have been by the Whiteout's comic-book reality, had tried to make me slow down.  How much had I destroyed just trying to fix things?

"I'm sorry."  I wasn't good at apologies.  To be honest, I wasn't used to giving them.  Maybe it was luck that I seemed to be on the right side of things for the most part.  Maybe I was just a life-long stubborn jerk.

"Forget it, Irene, it -"

"No, no, let's not forget it."  I was tearing up, something that really didn't surprise me.  All the emotional damage I'd reaped was coming back home.  God, just what I did to Ex alone was horrible.  "It doesn't matter if I can say I never meant any of it, but that doesn't fix jack, does it?"

"No, not really."  Rachel reluctantly approached me, kneeling beside the chair.  "Look, I didn't mean to get you going like this but ... none of us can make a mistake now."  She gripped my hand.  "You can't go it alone anymore and I can't keep you out of the loop, even if you frankly deserved it."

I wiped the tears away with my free hand and let out a laugh.

"Yeah, I did, didn't I?  Still, seriously, I'm not happy about Alma."  I may have been forced to accept that Alma Gutierrez had the right to pick her own fate in joining our side but I had tried so hard to keep her safe from all of this.

"Did you have any better ideas to stop Bathory?"  Silence.  "I didn't think so."  Rachel stood up and turned towards the desk.  I took one last breath as my crying dried up.

"So, where are they?"

"Alma and Archer?"

"Everyone."

"Right, well," Rachel said, smoothing out the map, "the Five ... they've basically been turned into Epic's personal attack squad.  You saw all of them but Eye ... most of the time we suspect she's staying out of the limelight to telepathically direct both the team and keep them directly in contact with Epic."

"As for the others, well, we don't know about Archer.  Duane's hunch, which I'll go with, is that, as a full-on traitor, Epic has special plans for him.  Maybe he's being held at the Capitol.  Your ex-boyfriend has turned that into his palace here."

"That sounds like him."

"Alma.  Well, a few days ago, while you were asleep, we sent Quentin, Voltage, and Frost out to investigate the emission point for that dome, the Bank of America Plaza."  I nodded ... it was the largest building in the city so that made sense.  She continued, "They couldn't get much headway into finding out much before the Five, well, Four now, swept in but Quentin swears that he saw, among the new construction on the top levels, a chamber that looked to be made entirely of crystal."

Rachel didn't have to say anything else and she knew that.  The pieces of the puzzle were simple enough to lay out.  The Push had changed Alma from a typical sophomore engineering student into a creature of living crystal.  As we had found out, her faceted body let her direct, split, and amplify light and, with the twisted physics of the post-Whiteout world, maybe all kinds of other energy.  The Crusaders had to be using her as some kind of lens or focus for whatever kept that dome up.

The anger was coming back but it was all directed at the proper targets this time.

"I don't care what we have to do, but I have to get back out there."

"I knew you would say that.  I wish I had some brilliant plan to offer, but there's only one course to take."  Rachel turned back to me and sat on the lip of the desk.  "We set this place up as an emergency safe house, so there's a few important things here.  A small gym, for instance.  I'd start there."

"There isn't time-"

"There has to be time, Irene."  Rachel folded her arms.  "I won't let you go back out there, no matter how much you push, until you're back up to snuff.  I won't sign your death certificate just because you're filled with righteous fury."

I blew out a hard breath and nodded.  I knew she was right.  I had known it before I even bulled into the room.

"Things aren't good here right now but we're at a stasis point, at least for the moment."  Rachel tried to sound certain but I knew her well enough to catch the unease in her voice.  "The military is completely stymied by the dome, whatever the hell it is, and apparently they have yet to find a Pushed who can get through.  The Crusaders are managing, even if it is barely, to keep the city fed and supplied."

"What about protesters?  Resistance?"  Twister's unease had to have been caused by something.

"There have been some deaths.  There's going to be more."  Rachel seemed hesitant to go into more details.  "We're doing what we can to organize the protestors and keep them safe but..."

Five people trying to hold off a thousand, I can imagine that their efforts hadn't worked well.

"Well, we don't have any time to lose, do we?"

"No, I suppose we don't.  The only good news is that at least you won't be rehabilitating alone."  Rachel clicked a button on the old-fashioned call box holding down a quarter of the city map.  "Medusa, could you come to my office?  You and Irene need to get back to work."

"
Sssi
, it'd be my pleasssure," came the crackling hiss over the speaker.

I couldn't help but smile.  I had managed to do one thing right and I was going to cling on to that thing with all of my might.