West Pacific Supers: Rising Tide (28 page)

Another one of the
crew was wrapping a blanket around her shoulders. She struggled and tried to
explain again; they were arguing with her, though she couldn’t make out the
words. Paul came over, holstering his pistol, and said something to the man
behind her, who helped her stand so that she could see the body of the
creature. It had been shot several times and trussed up with a rope that was
secured to the boat itself. That would hold. She nodded, satisfied, and let
them lead her to the enclosed area for survivors.

Sirens
woke her up. She could hear them out of her left ear, though there was still a
persistent ringing in her head. Her right ear hurt like hell and wasn’t hearing
anything. She tried to open her eyes and found that one was swollen shut.
Through the other she saw two men looking down at her. One was boat crew; the
other looked like a young paramedic.

“Oh my God,” said
the paramedic as he stared at her. “Well – that’s…something.”

Seawolf used a claw
to carefully remove the dried blood and puss from around her swollen eye and it
slowly opened. The paramedic took a step back.

“I’m not going with
him,” Seawolf told the crewman flatly. Her voice sounded strange and distant
above the ringing in her head.

He looked surprised.
“Ma’am, we have to get you to a hospital! You’re badly injured. There’s an
ambulance…”

“I don’t do
hospitals,” she said. Something tasted bitter in her mouth; she spat it out in
the direction of the paramedic, who jumped. The crewman gestured to the door
and the two of them quickly left.

Seawolf tentatively
stretched out her injured leg. It throbbed in protest but no shooting pains.
Good, nothing was broken. She sat up and was almost overcome with dizziness.
Well, driving was out of the question. There was a bottle of water next to her
and she used some to wash out her swollen eye. Her claws were still filthy with
dried blood and eel flesh. Eel-thing - the creature…where was it? They had to
get that body analyzed. She stood up shakily and started limping towards the
door.

Paul was coming in,
looking upset. “Seawolf, there’s an ambulance waiting for you.”

“Where’s the body?”
she demanded.

“Both bodies are
being taken to the morgue. Come on, you’ve really got to get to the hospital.”

“No, really not,”
she said. “I have to get to headquarters.” She glared at him but he didn’t
budge.

“Medical treatment
first, investigation later.”

“Dr.
Gavriel
at HQ will give me medical treatment,” she growled.
“You think a hospital doctor knows how to sew up scales? If you want to do
something useful, call a cab.”

Paul frowned. “I’ll
drive you, just give me a minute.”

Paul had an old
Liberty Motors Jeep, which was sufficiently dirty inside to make her not feel
so bad about the fact that her leg was dripping blood all over the seat.

“So why the hell are
you so stubborn anyway?” Paul asked after they’d been driving for a few
minutes. “I’ve never met anyone wound as tight as you are.”

Seawolf adjusted the
seatbelt so it would stop cutting into the raw spot on her stomach. “The last
time I went to West Pacific Memorial, the receptionist looked at me and said
that they didn’t treat animals. She suggested I try a veterinary hospital.” The
memory enraged her.

“You’re kidding me!
When was that?”

“Well, I was 14 or
15 so…about 1988.”

Paul turned to give
her a strange look. “That was 25 years ago, Seawolf! Don’t you think people
have changed since then?”

“Not really.” She
shrugged. “Some have, I guess, but mostly just on the outside. It’s better than
nothing, but at least back then people came out and said what they were
thinking. Now they just give you dirty looks.”

Paul sighed. “I
think you’re too hard on people. Sure, there’s still some racist idiots out
there, but by and large people accept mutants now.”

“Right,” Seawolf
snorted. “Everyone’s got a mutant friend – or at least a signed poster of their
favorite mutant superhero. But people still move to the side of the elevator
when I get in.”

“Everyone moves to
the side of the elevator when someone else gets in! If you expect people to
treat you differently, that’s all you’re going to see.”

“I’m not just seeing
things!” she exploded. “Damn it Paul, you have no idea what it’s like!”

“No, I guess I
don’t,” he said slowly. He was silent for the rest of the drive. “It’s just
that not all of us are bad,” he said as he opened her door when they reached
HQ.

“I never said all of
you were,” she said wearily. “But it’s not all one happy human brotherhood
either.”

Dr.
Gavriel
had been one of the team physicians as long as
there had been a team. Before there had been a team, he had been on staff at
the Hodges Academy. He was old, unflappable, and didn’t coddle his patients.
They were superheroes after all and had more important things to do then lie
around in some hospital bed. Now, two hours after Dr.
Gavriel
had grunted disapprovingly as he completed his first examination of her, the
results of the tests he had run were back.

“Injured Reserve,”
he said.

“What? You’ve got to
be joking!” Seawolf was indignant. “My leg stitched up fine and you said
nothing’s broken. If I wanted Injured Reserve, I would have gone to West
Pacific Memorial!”

Dr.
Gavriel
looked bored. “If you’d gone to West Pacific
Memorial, you’d be in the ICU. Now I’m going to let you go home in the morning
but only on low activity and no swimming for at least a month. You’ve got a
ruptured ear drum. I’ve patched it up but it needs time to heal or you may have
permanent hearing loss.”

“I feel fine,” she
protested.

He laughed. “Ringing
in your ears, muscle spasms, a fractured leg, and you can barely walk - but you
feel fine?”

“You’re the one who
always says that unless there’s buckets of blood or protruding bones you aren’t
concerned!”

“Perhaps that was
true ten years ago, but you’re what – 39 now? The human body, even a mutated
one, can only take so much. Your metabolism isn’t what it once was.”

“Are you saying I’m
getting old?”

“No, you’re in the
prime of your life.” Dr.
Gavriel
gave her a withering
look. “You don’t heal as fast as you used to, Seawolf. You blacked out twice.
You’ve got internal burns from surviving electrical attacks that would have
killed a normal human.”

“I’m not a normal
human,” she interrupted.

“You’re lucky not to
be dead. External appearances aside, you’re actually a lot closer to a normal
human than some other members of the team I might mention. Camille, for
instance. She may look completely normal, but she can fly and expel energy,
which means that her DNA is far more extreme that yours is, my dear. Injured
Reserve.”

Seawolf scowled at
him.

“And one more
thing,” Dr.
Gavriel
added. “Don’t come crawling back
here in a couple of days trying to get me to reconsider. I’m not revisiting my
determination for a month - and I’ve informed Dr. Sterling, so don’t think you
can go around me for a second opinion. Yes, I know your tricks. Now we’re
keeping you here overnight so you can stay on the IV. I’m having the pharmacy
compound an herbal medicine for you to take once you get home – algae and some South
American tree barks – utterly revolting in taste, fantastic stuff. So shut up
and get some sleep because the door is DNA-encoded and alarmed and if you try
to sneak out it’ll be Injured Reserve for the rest of the Season.”

She snarled at him
and he laughed as he left.

She had
visitors in the morning: Dr. Sterling and Starfish.

“I got one of the
creatures,” Seawolf said as soon as they walked in. “The Coast Guard had it
taken to the morgue – Starfish, you need to get down there and… ”

“Already done,” he
said with a smile, two rows of perfectly even pearly white teeth. “I’ve had it
transferred to my lab here. Fascinating creature, just as you said. I would
concur that it is not a natural species.”

Seawolf pushed
herself up on her pillows. “This one was very similar to the other one I
fought, only it seemed like it was decomposing. The arm - just sort of came
off.” She shuddered.

“Not decomposing,
evolving,” corrected Starfish. “It is my hypothesis that the base species was
an adult human male, exposed to some sort of mutagenic compound that was
transforming it into an eel-like hybrid life form. A transformative process
that was still underway when you encountered it. Both humans and eels are
chordates of course, but you are still crossing between classes, which always
is tricky, as you should know. Not to mention that electric eels are hardly
suited for Northern California marine ecology. No wonder your poor fellow was
falling apart.”

“But where could the
mutagenic compound have come from? I was thinking maybe toxic waste is being
dumped off shore and…”

“Well of course it
is wonderful to have theories, but as a scientist, I am more interested in
facts
. I will be
conducting an autopsy and thorough genetic analysis that should prove far more
informative than bedside conjecture.”

“Of course,” said
Seawolf, her ears drooping. She looked over at Dr. Sterling. “We need to keep
up the patrols in case there are more of these things out there. Dr.
Gavriel
has put me on Injured Reserve, but I think that’s
overkill. At the very least, I can go out with the Coast Guard and… ”

Dr. Sterling cut her
short. “All of that will be handled by other members of the team. Starfish is
taking over the investigation until you’re back on your feet. He’ll be working
with the Coast Guard and organizing patrol schedules for everyone else. No,
it’s pointless to argue, Seawolf. Dr.
Gavriel
was
quite clear that you will be out for the next three to eight weeks. This is why
we have a team, to cover for each other when someone gets injured. You know as
well as I do that if you actually get rest you’ll be back on active duty a lot
quicker than if you try to fight it.”

“My goodness, three
to eight weeks,” said Starfish. “You should stop at the library on the way home
and pick up some good books.”

Seawolf glared
sullenly at both of them.

“I’ve arranged for a
driver,” Dr. Sterling said, “so when Dr.
Gavriel
is
done with you, you can head home. I will have people checking up on you, so
don’t get any ideas and decide to go for a nighttime swim. Understood?”

Seawolf growled.

“Excellent,” said
Dr. Sterling briskly. “Come along Starfish, you have work to do.”

“Feel better soon,”
Starfish called as he walked out. “And don’t worry about your eels, I’m sure we
will be able to track them down.”

The door closed and
silence descended on the room. Seawolf was alone and already being overlooked.
She had entered into the wasteland of Injured Reserve.

6:27 p.m.,
Saturday, May 18th, 2013

Sunset
Dreams

Pacific
Ocean

“So what
do the two of you do?” asked Dr. Brandeis of the young couple who were sitting
next to him and Candy for dinner at the Cornucopia Restaurant on the
Sunset Dreams
. They had
met earlier at the pool and hit it off; most young people were dreadful, but
Patrick and Emily were well-grounded and had adult sensibilities.

“Well, I’m a student
at Berkeley studying business, though I’m thinking of going to law school after
I graduate,” said Emily, who gave Patrick a curious look as well. Dr. Brandeis
wondered if Emily was an escort like Candy. After talking with Ian, he had
decided that it was better to do a one-night dinner and dancing cruise with
Candy than go on a longer cruise with Pam. As Ian said, with Candy, you’re
guaranteed a good time because you’re a paying customer, but with Pam you’re
married and there are no such guarantees. He had to admit that so far the idea
had been genius - like most of Ian’s ideas - and he was having a great time.
Then again maybe Patrick was the escort; he needed to be more flexible in his
thinking, according to Jorge.

“I…well…I’m in
entertainment; I’m an actor,” said Patrick. Dr. Brandeis noticed that Emily
gave Patrick a smirking smile so maybe Patrick was in porn or something;
someone had to do it. He found that his perceptions about people had become
quite keen since working with Ian and Erica.

“Have you been in
anything we would know?” asked Candy, who was also an actor. You weren’t
supposed to call her an actress as she was an actor, or some such nonsense. He
humored her, because he was nice that way.

“Well…I…” Patrick
gave a pleading look to Emily. Yes, he was definitely a porn star or maybe
alternative theater; he wouldn’t want to admit that either. However, Patrick
looked really familiar - though that didn’t mean he wasn’t a porn star.

“He’s done a few
commercials and pilots for television, but nothing’s stuck yet,” said Emily
with a smile. “I have big hopes for him.”

“So Dr. Brandeis,
what are the odds for the big one hitting California?” Patrick was surprisingly
interested in geology for a young person. Maybe he was playing a geologist in
one of his television pilots.

“Not likely, but
possible,” said Dr. Brandeis. “However, it’s more likely that some supervillain
will devastate California than a massive earthquake will.”

“So true,” muttered
Patrick. “Still there has been some research into relieving tectonic strain by
using specially configured explosive charges – I think Dr.
Fukimara
was the name I remembered reading about.”

“Dr.
Fukimara
is a hack,” said Dr. Brandeis bitterly. “He runs
the CGS, California Geological Survey, and pitches these sorts of ideas to keep
the funding rolling in
.”

“It happens,” shrugged
Patrick. “So Candy what do you do?”

“I’m a dental
hygienist,” lied Candy. Dr. Brandeis appreciated the lie - it was a good one,
no one cared about dental hygienists, and even if they did you could fake
talking about it easily enough.

Emily looked like
she was about to say something, when an overweight woman two tables over
shrieked and jumped up, knocking her table hard. All eyes turned on her as she
screamed, “rats!”

Dr. Brandeis was
surprised to see Patrick spring up and head to the other table, the one that
everyone was moving away from. Even the help staff was hesitating. Patrick
peered under the table, popped up to grab an empty glass, ducked back under the
table, and emerged with a little mouse in the glass, which he closed off at the
top with a saucer.

“Relax, it’s a house
mouse,
Mus
musculus
.
It’s not a rat,” said Patrick as he handed the glass to one of the waiters who
headed for the kitchen. Dr. Brandeis was impressed by Patrick’s quick action,
but became alarmed as he saw more mice moving towards the waiter, lots of mice.
They swarmed up the waiter, which caused him to drop the glass with the mouse
and scream. The room erupted into chaos with people running in all directions.
For some reason Dr. Brandeis felt calm: they were just house mice, and stuff
like this didn’t really bother him that much anymore.

“This isn’t normal,”
commented Patrick as he watched the mice scurry around the room chasing people.

“No, it isn’t,” said
Dr. Brandeis. “You know this might be a super crime! Mice would make a great
distraction!” He filed that away as a future idea if they had to do another heist,
though training the mice would probably be time consuming. He would need to
delegate the training to a behavioral scientist; he didn’t really like animals.

“Shouldn’t we get
out of here?” asked Candy to Emily; they were both standing on chairs. Dr. Brandeis
was impressed with Candy; Pam would have just taken off and left him, but Candy
was being supportive. You couldn’t buy loyalty like that, well, maybe you
could, and perhaps that was the point.

“People are
screaming all over the deck.” Patrick pulled out a HoloBerry.

“Is that the new
9300 - shock resistant with waterproofing?” asked Dr. Brandeis. He was thinking
of upgrading, especially since the 9300 had a voice-recognition security
system, which would be a good idea as he kept forgetting his password and Ian
did spot checks to make sure everyone’s electronics were secure.

“Yes, it’s great,
but I switched out the software for Lotus,” said Patrick. “It’s more
user-friendly…hey, Annie, I’m on the
Sunset
Dreams
and we have mice – lots of mice…yes, mice, no, it’s a lot of
them…listen, just get Ops online and start doing some research!”

Dr. Brandeis found
that an odd conversation. Maybe Patrick worked for a pest extermination company
- that would make sense. It was definitely a very organized outfit; he would
have to get their name and use them if he bought Ian’s house.

“Patrick, what’s
going on?” asked Emily.

“I don’t know, but
let’s find out,” said Patrick as he took off out of the restaurant. Dr.
Brandeis followed him with Emily and Candy in hot pursuit. As they left the
restaurant, they saw hundreds of mice scurrying about everywhere in the lobby
outside.

“I’m going to throw
up,” said Candy.

“It’s like a live
action
Ratatouille
– which is sort of disgusting,” said Emily, turning pale.

Patrick ran up to a
crewman who was swinging at mice with a broom. “Sir, I need to talk to the
captain. I’m Cosmic Kid with West Pacific Supers.”

Dr. Brandeis went
white. Now he remembered where he recognized Patrick. This was not good – a
superhero! He had been talking and eating dinner with a superhero! One of the
good guys, the opposition, trouble with a capital T! He needed to disappear. He
took a step back and grabbed Candy by the arm. “We need to go.”

As he backed up,
Patrick called out to him. “Noah, will you keep an eye on Emily while I deal
with the situation?”

“Ah, sure, yes,
definitely, Cosmic Kid,” said Dr. Brandeis.

“Sorry I lied
earlier, but you know how it is.”

“Absolutely, you go
and save the day,” said Dr. Brandeis. With that, Cosmic Kid took off. Dr.
Brandeis thought about ditching Emily, but then Cosmic Kid would track him down
and beat the crap out of him. Nope, best to go along with the plan.

“Let’s get up on
deck,” said Emily.

“Good idea, if they
evacuate we want to be close to the lifeboats.” Dr. Brandeis led the way up on
deck. Candy was now clinging to his arm and looking worried, which made him
feel more confident. Plus, Cosmic Kid, an actual superhero, had entrusted him
with the protection of his girlfriend. That had to count for something.

They soon reached
the deck where many of the other passengers had gathered and were talking in
alarmed voices. Dr. Brandeis saw Boomerang, the cruise ship’s super; all of the
major cruise ships had a super or two on board for security. Boomerang had the
ability to throw things and control the things he threw, a fairly moronic
power, but what did you expect for a cruise ship super. He even did a show at
night throwing things; the four of them had planned on attending it. Dr.
Brandeis wondered what Boomerang would do against the mice – perhaps throw
mouse traps. No, what they needed was someone with fire powers!

“Look at that!” said
Emily, pointing at a mouse. Dr. Brandeis looked at it and noticed it was
dragging a silver necklace. He followed the mouse as it went towards the side
of the ship and crawled into a lifeboat. He walked over and reached out to pull
back the tarp and look inside.

“Don’t!” exclaimed
Candy.

“They’re just house
mice,” chuckled Dr. Brandeis as he pulled back the tarp and saw dozens of mice
organizing jewelry, wallets, and cash into separate piles in the lifeboat.
“That’s brilliant!” He wondered why he couldn’t ever think of things like this.
Then again, maybe he could – the Plan was all his idea. Perhaps he had the
makings of a true criminal mastermind like whoever had trained all these mice.

“Disturbed is more
like it,” said Emily.

“They’re kind of
cute. They’re like little mice Robin Hoods,” said Candy.

“I should replace
most of my staff with mice,” said Dr. Brandeis thoughtfully.

A crash echoed nearby
as two double doors were knocked open and Cosmic Kid flew out and slammed into
the railing. Following him out was a huge mass of mice, mice formed in the
shape of a man that ambled towards Cosmic Kid. The mass of mice writhed
horrifically as it maintained its shape while running across the deck.

“Yes, vomiting now,”
said Candy as she ran to the side of the ship.

“Huh?” said Dr.
Brandeis. This was unexpected.

Cosmic Kid was
gasping for breath and looked bad. Emily covered her face. The giant mouse man,
or
man made
of mice, spoke. “I am Mouser!” he
squeaked, though it was hard to determine where exactly on his body the sound
was coming from - perhaps all of the mice speaking as one. Mouser charged for
Cosmic Kid; Dr. Brandeis wanted to avert his eyes, but couldn’t; the sight was
mesmerizing. Right before Mouser made contact, Cosmic Kid smiled, dropped, and
rolled, and as Mouser hit the railing Cosmic Kid sprung up and smashed into
Mouser’s back, sending hundreds of mice over the side.

“If anyone’s a
mouser, it’s me,” said Cosmic Kid as chunks of Mouser soared over the railing
into the waters below. “A mouser hunts mice, moron.”

He looked rather
pleased with himself until he saw that several lifeboats filled with mice were
being lowered into the water. One group of mice near Cosmic Kid writhed into a
large hand-shaped formation and gave the super the middle finger before jumping
into one of the lowering lifeboats.

Cosmic Kid looked
dumbfounded. “We need to blow up the boats before they escape!”

“But they’re loaded
with valuables,” said Dr. Brandeis, who personally felt Mouser should get away
with something. He was a man mouse after all; if anyone needed a handout from
society it had to be him. He wondered if maybe this was one of the
supervillains Ian was hiring to distract West Pacific Supers, if so there
really should have been a memo sent to him.

“Noah’s right -
there’s valuables in the boats, like wedding rings,” said Emily. “It’s better
to try to recover them than sink everything to the bottom of the ocean!”

Candy was nodding in
agreement and Dr. Brandeis did as well, though more out of respect for a fellow
supervillain.

“I guess so,” said
Cosmic Kid. “At least I stopped him before he robbed the casino.”

“A thwart’s pretty
good,” said Emily, squeezing his arm sympathetically.

At that a
photographer ran up to take a picture. Cosmic Kid grabbed Noah by the shoulder
and maneuvered him and Candy in for the shot. It had indeed been a very
exciting cruise. Unfortunately, things got even more exciting the next day when
the
West Pacific Times
ran the picture of the four of them on the front page and Pam discovered it
with her morning coffee.