The Indestructibles (Book 3): The Entropy of Everything (29 page)

Chapter 58:

The White Shadow

      Once upon a time, there was a man.

      Different stories were told about him. Some were true. Some not. In one of those stories, he was a banker, an ordinary man, who saw a crime in the street and, rather than turn his back and walk away, tied his handkerchief around his face, balled his hands into fists, and stepped in to save the day.

      During other instances he was a soldier, returning from the war—any war, the story changes with the passage of time, as all tales do—who came home to discover a world he didn't remember, a place he no longer fit into. And so quietly, anonymously, he continued to be a soldier, to be a force for making the world a safer place, impacting one life at a time.

      In still different accounts he was a mob enforcer. A thug, a man of violence, who was asked, on one occasion too many, to be a monster, to hurt those who could not defend themselves, and he turned the tables on his masters. He donned a mask and fought the very mob that created him using violence to thwart violence.

      And most often people spoke of a man in a suit, an office drone, who sitting in the park at lunch one day, watching the world pass by, witnessing all the terrible things the world inflicts upon its children, tired and disappointed, stood up, never returned to work, and made his life that of a hero.

      In all of these legends, there's the silk mask, the featureless, blank slate upon which anyone could paint their own picture. He could be any race. Any tribe. Perhaps he isn't a he at all, but a woman hiding behind a suit and tie in a period when that was all she needed to hide her identity, before the world moved on.

      The White Shadow was the City's first hero, and he came to represent the City's heart, the name you cried out to in the night when you were afraid, a shadowy figure in a black suit and tie who would be there when you needed him, who would save you from the cancerous maladies that gnawed away at the City from the darkness. The White Shadow was everyone. Belonged to everyone. He belonged to us. A tabula rasa, the nameless, faceless blank slate. An elusive ghost in the night. A hero.

      A hero.

      Are any of the stories true? Maybe. Some. An origin is there somewhere. But the genesis of the White Shadow doesn't seem to matter now.

      A man named Jeremy Light died that same morning Doc Silence touched down in a cornfield to retrieve a scared young girl who'd set fire to a barn with her hands. Light died not at the hand of violence but the way men often do—or hope to, in a bed, with his family around him, younger than some, older than others, and very old, very old indeed, for a man who took up arms against a sea of troubles and tried to change the world.

      Jeremy Light was a father.

      There's a saying among those who become heroes, that having families is a hazard they cannot afford, and this is often true, and it's a rule most cling to. But Jeremy Light, the White Shadow, was a man of hope. He became the Shadow because of this hope, because he believed his actions would make a difference, because he thought the things he did would make a better world, and he wanted children to live in that world. He assumed, unlike his peers, that having a family would make the world all the more worth saving. That having someone to return home to each dawn would allow him to become a better hero.

      The White Shadow was a man who had faith in love.

      A daughter was born.

      One of life's bitter ironies is that the world is often most terrible to those men and women who hold great hope in their hearts. And this cruel twist revealed itself to Jeremy Light in many ways. It took his wife from him too soon, from an ordinary, mundane illness. He was never quite the same after that, after watching the love of his life fade away, fighting a battle of her own, a battle he could do nothing to help her win.

      But Light's daughter became his best friend. She kept him afloat in hope. She was his future. His dream. And he wished to leave the world in a pleasant and stable enough state that she would never be required to do what he did, would never need to don a mask and try to fight against the inevitable crush of terrible injustices humans inflict upon one another.

      Light fought on the streets for thirty years. His knees gave out first. Then his back fell apart. He could feel the weather changing in those knuckles that had dutifully been used to fight criminals and terrible men. Jeremy Light wore his scars with humble pride, not because of how they looked, but because each one reminded him of another day he tried to save the world.

      But soon the hurt became overwhelming, his body failed him, and Jeremy Light found himself an old man, all the while watching the world grow worse instead of better. Watching humanity fail itself every single day.

      On his deathbed, he told his daughter that he wished he could have left her a better world.

      I tried, he said, with his last few breaths. I wanted to leave this place beautiful for you. I don't know what happened. I don't know why I failed. I tried so hard. I should have given more.

      And his daughter shushed him, and brushed his brittle white hair away from his face, and watched the light go out in his eyes. This man. Her hero. Her father. This beacon of hope, to her, to so many.

      The world never knew what became of the White Shadow. It was what he'd wanted, his daughter knew. There would be no eloquent obituary in the paper, no hero's funeral, no great unmasking. It was what he desired for her, one last bequest, the gift of anonymity, the gift of being left to live in peace.

      But all that his daughter could remembered was that her father died sad and heartbroken by a world that let him down.

      And she vowed to change it somehow.

      She believed there had to be some sort of reckoning to be paid by a world that broke her father's heart.

Chapter 59:

A daughter's gift

      And all I know," the White Shadow said, her voice heavy and low, "Is that this world never deserved him."

      Kate sensed Doc's emotions escaping from him. Anger, sadness, pain, guilt. Even horror. She didn't need to look at the way the flames in his eyes danced to see how upset he'd become.

      "The Shadow was my friend," Doc said. "I never knew."

      "You knew he was disappointed," the White Shadow said. "Knew this world broke his heart."

      "He was the most private man I'd ever met," Doc said. "We never found out how he died. Never discovered his real name. Sasha, we didn't know you existed. I mean that. He protected you—even from us."

      "Especially from you," the Shadow said. "I think he thought it was his gift to me. The opportunity to be perfectly normal. To be anonymous. The right to be simply a person. To not be like him."

      Doc waved his hands around, not in an attempt to cast a spell but as an expression of some sort of frustration he couldn't articulate. "All this though? All of this? He wouldn't have wanted it, Sasha."

      "I don't even think he could have imagined it," the Shadow answered. "He thought so small. That was why he was so wonderful, wasn't it? He focused on one life at a time. One rescue. A single act of kindness."

      "But why cause all this havoc then?" Doc said. "Why did this devastation have to happen?"

      "Your little werewolf said it best," the Shadow said. "I wanted to enforce peace. I reflected on my father's life and I kept seeing a man who pleaded so gently for us to be better. He was much too polite to put his foot down and say 'Dammit. Behave.'"

      "Why didn't you come to us?" Doc asked. "We weren't aware of you, but you had to know about us. Had to know who his allies were."

      "And you gave up!" the Shadow said. "Quit. All of you. Remember? Ran off to the stars, or hid in your books, or found some way to die so you wouldn't have to be responsible for the world anymore. Even you, hiding in your Tower just sitting there watching. You gave up. Quit on my father's dream. Why would I come looking to you for anything? Why would I expect anyone to care?"

      Doc's shoulders slumped.

      A raged built up inside Kate, a fury in response to these accusations, but she remembered the day Doc asked her to become the failsafe, the day he told her that she would need to be the one to be prepared to put her own friends down if they ever got out of control. If they ever, like Emily in this apocalyptic timeline, became a weapon and not a hero. She asked him if he had been the failsafe for his own friends, and Doc revealed the truth. They hadn't died. "We gave up," he'd said. They gave up. Here stood a girl who wanted to make a finer world, and the men and women she needed most had quit. And so she'd done it alone.

      "You had me killed," Doc said.

      "I recognized what you were doing," the Shadow said. "Repeating history. Building a team to perform exactly the way your own had done. And I realized you'd stand in my way. Understood you didn't have the guts to accomplish what needed to be done."

      "Are you saying your father didn't have the courage either?" Kate said, interrupting.

      The White Shadow's eyes widened, a wordless fury twisting on her lips.

      "We're doing what he did," Kate said. She felt Doc's tension, sensed Titus moving in closer. "We're your father's legacy, not you. I'm the heir to the White Shadow. You're simply a megalomaniac who stole your father's name and destroyed his fine legacy. Don't wallow in what you thought he wanted. You did this. And should be ashamed."

      "We should be," a new voice said.

      "Keaton," the Shadow said, her voice heavy, her throat tight.

      "I know I am," the newcomer, this Keaton, said. "We did this, you and me."

      "We tried to change the world," the White Shadow said.

      "Oh we did," Keaton said.

      And Kate noticed his hands weren't empty. He carried one of the gravity guns they'd seen earlier, a bit smaller, silver, like something out of an old sci-fi movie. "Look at how we changed the world. Aren't you proud?"

      "Keaton, don't," the Shadow said.

      "It's much too late for don't," Keaton said. He threw his hands up in a sad, powerless gesture of resignation. "She's gone, Shadow. Emily's gone. And she almost took the world along with her."

      "Keaton, please," the Shadow said.

      "I wish you'd witnessed it," he said. "I wish you'd seen them die. Emily and Solar. Our responsibility and our enemy. I stood there, and watched the sky. It was like looking into the eye of God, Shadow. And all I saw looking back at me was every single thing we've done wrong."

      "I'm sorry," the White Shadow said.

      "Oh how I wish that was enough to fix everything," Keaton said. And then he aimed the gravity gun at the Shadow and pulled the trigger.

      Everything suddenly happened at once; Whispering charged, not toward the shooter or the Shadow, but for the fallen body of future-Kate. Titus transformed, plummeting on all fours in the direction of Keaton, his claws squealing when they scraped the floor. Kate rushed to the White Shadow, knowing what she would find, understanding with complete certainty that she had witnessed a killing shot, not quite sure if she hoped to be mistaken or not.

      And Doc Silence stood like a statue in the middle of the room, allowing all of it to unfold.

      Later, Kate would learn that Doc had given up on changing this timeline, that he realized they'd exercised all the good and harm they could do here. But she couldn't help herself. Couldn't stand idly by. Kate never could.

      The loud bang of the gravity gun fired once again.

      Kate turned, terrified the shot had been aimed at Titus.

      She saw the gun fall weakly from Keaton's lifeless hands, heard the strange metal clatter sound when it fell to the floor. Kate scooped up the White Shadow's body in her arms, saw the woman's neck bent at a terrible angle. She stared into the blank and wide eyes looking back at her, then felt Doc's hand on her shoulder. She let the aging wizard take the White Shadow from her and watched as Doc cradled Sasha in his arms like a child.

      "I wish I'd known," she heard Doc Silence say. "If only I'd known."

Chapter 60:

I'd want you there

      Jane helped Annie climb out of the underground lab; Emily floated behind them lazily.
The world above waited eerily quiet. You'd never know someone had just saved the planet a few minutes before. Never know two people died so that everyone else could live.

      Annie walked away from Jane, stopped twenty or thirty feet from her, put her hands on her hips, kept her back to everyone else. The pink-haired woman moved a hand to her forehead, as if blocking out the sun, tucked a thumb through a belt loop. Her shoulders shook softly, and Jane thought she might be crying.

      "We just saw ourselves die," Emily said out of nowhere.

      Jane looked at the mess of Emily's blue hair, her cracked goggles perched on the top of her head. She played with her scarf, running the texture of the fabric under her fingertips.

      "We did," Jane said.

      "That feels like something that shouldn't be able to happen," Emily said.

      "It sure does," Jane said. She sat down on a nearby curb.

      Emily joined her. "It doesn't seem real, does it?" she said. "I mean, it feels real enough. I feel like we saw what happened. Like Solar's actually gone. But it's not like they were us. It's almost as if this all happened to someone else."

      "I think it did," Jane said softly. "No matter what, we'll never grow up to be those people. They share our faces, our DNA, but we can't be them. Can never be them, even if we wanted to be."

      Emily pulled off the puffy orange vest she'd been wearing over her uniform. Frayed, scorched, and battered, it looked more like an abandoned life preserver than a fashion statement. She tossed it on the ground.

      "But they had our eyes. Our voices. Our fingerprints and hands. I put my palms up against the glass cage and that other me placed her palm against mine, and Jane, they were exactly the same."

      "Can I say something weird?" Jane said.

      "That's my job," Emily said. "But you can go ahead and try."

      "I liked Solar," Jane said. "I don't really even like myself that much a lot of the time, but this future me, trying to hold the world together with her two hands, I grew fond of her, respected her. Wanted to be around her."

      "I hate to disappoint you, Jane, but you're the same as her. If Solar is any indication of who you'll be when you're older, you're not going to change that much."

      "She seemed so much braver than I am," Jane said.

      "Nope," Emily said, smiling a sad little smile. "She was who you're supposed to be some day. I think you should be proud to know that."

      Jane put her hand on the back of Emily's.

      "Even if you're just trying to make me feel better, Em, thank you," Jane said. "I'll miss her."

      "Then just don't stop being who you are, and you'll be with her every day," Emily said.

      "That almost makes me feel better."

      "It's easy. I just have to tell the truth," Emily said. "Meanwhile I grow up to become a caged lab rat with a fairly tenuous grasp on reality."

      "I'm sorry you had to see that," Jane said.

      "That's not what bothered me," Emily said. "Not really. What disturbed me is seeing how much like me she actually is. And how close I could've come to being locked in a laboratory somewhere. Becoming someone's attempt at a Nobel Prize."

      "The one thing this timeline's Emily didn't have that you do is us," Jane said. "We'll make sure that never happens to you."

      Emily stretched out her legs in front of her, crossing her big-booted feet at the ankle.

      "That's not how I'd like to die, if I have a choice," Emily said. "This hurts my heart."

      "It won't happen," Jane said.

      "But you know what? If I do have to die tragically like this, I hope you're with me," Emily said.

      Jane shook her head, almost laughing. "I don't know if that qualifies as a compliment, Em," she said.

      "Why's everything gotta be an insult with me?" Emily said. "I mean if I had to go, it'd be nice if yours was the last face I saw. I'd know I did something right if you were the last person who was with me."

      "You all right?"

      "Dying really messed me up."

      "Me too."

      "We gonna be okay?" Emily said.

      "I don't know?" Jane said. "To tell the truth, I don't really think so."

      "Me either," Emily said.

      They sat together in comfortable silence.

      Jane wondered where the others were. If they were okay.

      "Do you think Annie will be alright?" Emily asked.

      "I don't know," Jane said. "She knew everyone here longer. She and Solar were friends."

      "She still has us, though," Emily said.

      "For what we're worth," Jane said. "'
Before us lies eternity; our souls are love, and a continual farewell.
'"

      "Did you just quote William Butler Yeats?" Emily said.

      "You have Yeats memorized too?—Of course you have Yeats memorized," Jane said. "And yes. 'Ephemera.'"

      "You know Yeats?"

      "My dad's favorite poet," Jane said. "Read him all the time."

      "The farmer who read Yeats," Emily said.

      "Yeah," Jane said.

      "
Before us lies eternity
," Emily repeated.

      "
Our souls are love, and a continual farewell
," Jane said. "I don't know."

      Jane watched Annie pacing, rubbing her hair, appearing pained and tired.

      Emily hit Jane in the upper arm with a backhanded slap. "Is that Billy?" she said, pointing at a great ball of light in the sky.

      "Oh, no. I hope not," Jane said, standing up and dusting off the seat of her pants to find out.