Lafferty, Mur (25 page)

"Keepsie, that’s-" Barry started, but Keepsie interrupted him.

"Wait, where's Peter?"

Into the bar. Out into danger. Back into the bar. Back out into danger, despite the state they were in when they last came to the bar.

Shit. Shit. I can't believe-Shit.

Keepsie ran. The moment the thought of Peter had muscled through the noise in her mind, everything had cleared except for her horror and determination, and she dashed from the bar.

Her memory was clear now. Timson's attack. Her last ditch effort. The move of her mind to go on vacation. The shocking, yet painless, travel through the wall and the hill. Her relative ease in transporting her friends. Most of her friends.

God.

She ran. The streets and the skies were still clear. She didn't stop to wonder where her many attackers of the day were, just Peter. Her friend. Her - well, her Peter.

She trotted up the Academy stairs and paused. The hill leading down from the Academy to the diner's parking lot obscured her exit hole. She turned and headed that way.

He lay in the mouth of the hole, on his back, staring at the sky. Blood flowed from his nose in slow but steady stream.

Keepsie dropped to her knees beside him. "Oh no, Peter, no, what happened to you, aw, come on, sweetie, come on." She touched his face lightly. He was warm and his eyes twitched when he felt her touch.

"OK, good, alive, that's a good start." Her monologue continued as she felt him clumsily for broken bones. He seemed intact.

"Now we sit you up, yeah, OK, no, don't worry about me, I can do this just fine, right, oh, crap." She attempted to get her arm underneath his shoulder to lift him, the way she had Ian and Michelle, but he had slumped over and to the side.

"OK, right, guess that super strength or whatever is gone. Wish it had lasted. But I guess if it had lasted, I wouldn't be out here, I'd be all Lucy in the sky with diamonds again. How did you get hurt, anyway? Did you get the bad luck of getting hurt right after it wore off?"

Peter's eyes were disconcerting, and she wondered if they were drying out. Shuddering at the implications, she carefully closed them. Now he seemed unconscious, not completely paralyzed. That was easier to deal with.

She finally went for the undignified route and grabbed his wrists. She grunted and pulled and dragged him down the hill. Gravity helped her a great deal, but once they reached the sidewalk, he wouldn't budge.

"Peter, I thought you were a thin guy. What gives?" She sat next to him on the sidewalk, close to tears.

“Keepsie!” Tomas’s Norwegian voice called from around the corner.

“Stay right there,” she told Peter’s body, and ran to meet Tomas.

"Colette's pretty angry with you," Tomas said.

"Yeah, well, if she can tell me what she would have done in the situation, I'd love to hear her suggestions," Keepsie said.

“Shall we get Peter inside?”

Keepsie shook her head. “Right. Let’s go.”

“Where is he?” he asked.

Keepsie groaned. “No. No no no no. This isn’t happening!” "What?" said Tomas.

"He's gone."

Two grooves in the hill marked where Keepsie had dragged him to the sidewalk, which was smeared with blood, but Peter was, indeed, gone.

"Crap! He couldn't have gone far. What are we going to do? You head up the street, I'll check inside the Academy."

Tomas laid a large hand on her shoulder. "Keepsie."

"Come on, he's hurt!"

"Keepsie. Look."

She raised her eyes. The Academy was a burning husk, even worse than before. It was little more than a hole in the ground.

Tomas pointed again. Clever Jack stood atop a roof a block away, watching them. Light of Mornings hovered nearby.

"Keepsie, we have to go back to the bar."

Peter looked up, groggy and disoriented. He was running through a garbage-strewn alley. A couple of bodies -homeless people, by the look of them -lay in pools of blood. The work of Doodad’s robots? Light of Mornings?

By-products of hero battles? Random slaying? Peter didn't understand why he had no physical reaction to the grisly deaths. He also didn't understand why the copper smell wasn't filling his head with terrifying images of death.

"Third Wave. None of you could ever control your power," he heard his own voice say. He turned and ran down a street parallel to main. Why wasn't he headed to Keepsie's Bar?

He stopped running and put his hand to his head. Only, his body didn't respond to either of those demands. What?

"Don't fight it. I'm driving now," he said again.

His heart started to race, but only in his perception. His body traveled on, determined, driven by this other power. He began to panic, but forced himself to calm down and think of a way out of this prison.

"You are welcome to try," he said.

No. Not he. She. Timson. He had inhaled her as a gaseous form, she was in his brain.

This is impossible. There is no calm way to deal with this because it is not happening. I should have stayed in the cave.

But his body continued its run. He hadn't even been paying attention to the course it was taking. He found himself face to face with the Crane, looking into the narrow, cold eyes.

"It's Timson," he growled at the threatening figure. "Password is elite."

"Oh, ah, ma'am…" said The Crane, backing down. "How-"

"The idiot inhaled me when I was in gaseous phase. His power is one that causes his brain to be profoundly affected by scent. I was able to grab hold."

"Oh. That was, ah, clever, ma'am. But what happens if your body takes on another elemental form? You had said you were having trouble controlling it."

"Well. The change will likely be painful for me, but I should be all right."

There was an inflection to his - her - tone that made Peter shiver. If he could have shivered, that is.

The heroes assembled in an apartment in the good part of town. Peter realized they were in The Crane’s secret identity home. The spotless white walls gleamed, as did the plush white carpet and furniture. The Crane served sparkling water - nothing that could stain - to the heroes. But a certain few were missing. Pallas, namely. Every hero, save White Lightning and Samantha - Ghostheart -who had been involved with the torture at the Academy was there, as well as some younger recruits who he didn’t recognize.

The Crane sat on a spare spot on the couch, looking frightened and uncertain. Peter saw with some satisfaction that the hero's wings were sullied with blood and soot, and he trembled slightly.

"We've finally had some luck," Peter announced to the heroes. "Clever Jack and Light of Mornings are converging in the city again. Ghostheart and White Lightning are working on our backup plan. Doodad has been captured by the Third Wave.

"The bad news is that Doodad has clearly taken the Zupra-Ex and it has increased his abilities so that he can now make machines that power themselves. There is some question as to what else he might have made.

Further bad news is that Laura Branson is in possession of the only collection of Zupra-Ex that exists, and she possibly has the chemical compound as well."

The heroes looked at each other uncertainly. This news clearly wasn’t good.

"I have discovered I can take possession of this Third Wave's body when I am in gaseous form," he answered. "I have some time before I switch again, I believe."

"Why a Third Wave, Doctor?" asked The Crane. Peter could feel Timson's underlying revulsion for his sycophantic nature.

"Besides the fact that his power is unique in that it allows me to do this, it’s perfect for infiltration, Crane," his voice took on an oily quality he was unaware it could do. "This man is a close friend of Laura Branson. He can get the drugs from her.

"But I need to hurry."

Panic made his ears sing and his vision blur. He tried everything he could to wrest control from her, but as he had no idea how to fight this kind of threat, he felt as if he were trying to move a glacier with a frozen chicken.

He didn't even know where to start.

As Timson talked to her flock, he tried to gain control of something he figured she wouldn't notice. First he tried to twitch a calf muscle. He had never thought about the effort it took, the synapses that had to run through his body, the exquisite concentration. No go. He moved to something smaller.

Timson had grasped the side of the armchair and he tried to grasp it just a little tighter, make her think the emphasis was her own. Nothing responded.

Hell. He tried to cry, to weep, to beat hysterically against her iron control, and his prison did not crack. All he was able to do was watch out his own eyes and listen through his own ears.

The most frightening thing was that he could not smell anything at all.

"All right. Heretic and Devil, come with me, the rest flank us and stall Clever Jack. If I need aid, Tattoo Devil will send word."

Heretic was at Peter’s side at once. “Doctor, what will Pallas say about our new, ah, plans?”

“I have arranged for her to be in New York for the duration. She won’t interrupt her trip unless I call her. Our PR people are working on a plausible spin for it. It will all work out.”

Peter barely paid attention to her. He was out of ideas. She carried him out the apartment door and down the road several blocks. People peeked out of windows and smiled at them, giving thumbs-up signs.

They reached Main Street too quickly. Timson’s heroes and Clever Jack and Light of Mornings had engaged and the battle was bloody. Timson guided Peter's eye briefly to where White Lighting and Ghostheart were conducting the battle from their vantage point, high in the sky, safe from attack. Ghostheart called down to the streets below, egging on - oh Jesus.

The city’s destitute, the homeless, the hoboes and bums, those that cities tried to keep care of but secretly wished would go and plague another city, had formed an army. Ghostheart’s army, guided by her power of lies and suggestion. They marched forward toward Jack and Light of Mornings.

How are bums going to fight a nuclear child?

Light of Mornings appeared beside Clever Jack on the roof. Peter’s question was answered as the army began throwing things at her, causing no damage but clearly distracting her. She flew down to the street and raised her hand.

No…

Her blast blew their forces back, the limp bodies tumbled like dice, stopping only when hitting something larger than themselves. They did not get up.

The heroes’ grisly plan was working, however, as White Lightning was able to get through the girl’s defenses and strike her with a lightning bolt. She looked up, however, and glared at him.

“Idiot,” Timson said with Peter’s mouth. “If she’s made of energy he can’t hurt her that way.”

Peter felt something as Timson stared at the girl: rage. He hadn't been able to notice her emotions before, was it because he was getting more attuned to her, or his own panic was fading enough for him to notice her?

The hobo battle seemed to be focused on the street right in front of the bar, but Samantha’s forces had retreated just enough to where Timson could carry Peter and his body to Keepsie's front door. She turned and nodded to Tattoo Devil and Heretic, and entered the bar.

Peter felt Timson's surprise as his arms were suddenly full of Keepsie.

"Where the hell did you go? What happened?" she demanded after hugging him.

Peter sat back - metaphorically - to watch. There was nothing he could do. He could watch, and wait for Timson to mess up, or change from her gaseous form… and then what?

Well, he would see.

Peter looked positively startled when Keepsie hugged him, something she attributed to the stress. A small part of her mind wondered if she had been reading him, or Colette's clues, incorrectly, and she was making an ass of herself. Another part of her was angry at his response. But mostly she was monumentally relieved to have him back.

"I don't really remember what happened," he said, hugging her back tightly. "I woke up in an alley and made my way back here."

"How did you get past the ruckus outside?" asked Barry.

"They didn't even notice me," Peter said confidently.

"So what happened to you after we got blown out of the building?"

Michelle asked, still holding her injured arm awkwardly.

"I, uh, don't remember that part either. I was in the stairwell, and then I was in the alley. No clue."

"Well, we're just glad to have you back. We've pretty much decided to hole up here and let them duke it out," Keepsie said, leading him to the bar.

Ian sat in front of six painkillers, all lined up in a neat row. He methodically popped one into his mouth, chased it with a gulp of beer, and moved onto the next one.

He shot Peter a look. "Dude."

Peter stared at him for a moment, and then took his seat.

"So, after someone wins out there, then what?" Peter asked, jabbing his thumb toward the door.

Keepsie shrugged. "I don't know. There aren’t any good guys left. Timson is insane, Clever Jack has a nuclear bomb… I can't keep these drugs forever, but I - shit, we've been over this. Let's worry about it when the dust clears."

Peter nodded. "Where is everyone else?"

"Who do you mean? Everyone is here. No one else has made it out since the initial attack, and anyone we’ve called said they didn’t want to come down. Not that I can blame them.” "So, just us, huh?"

"Yes, just us, like it's been all day. Minus Alex, of course," she added sadly.

"And where is Alex?"