A Once Crowded Sky (12 page)
The momentum of the vehicle transfers to his body and becomes a weapon to be yielded through the precise movements of his limbs. At the edge of the failing structure, he sticks his knee, the metal one, into the hard dirt and transfers the strength of the car into his joints. He leaps, and he’s back in the sky.
The first good grips are 13.4 feet up. Pen’s hands land where they need to, and his toes kick into the wall, digging into the half-crumbled concrete. Without looking down, Pen starts his ascent, climbing through flight, throwing his hands up first and commanding his feet to follow.
The wires in his muscles begin to glow as they strain joyfully, buzzing with gratitude. They perform 11 percent beyond expectations, which isn’t bad.
As he scales the wall, Pen hears the building’s voice, each section telling him exactly how far the heat’s crawled, how much damage it’s done, how soon the building will fall. Ultimate had taught him this
particularly subtle language a while back, and Pen’s relieved to see he remembers most of the words.
One last leap and—his arms outstretched, his feet hanging 77.2 feet above the ground—Pen reaches out. His fingertips scratch at the loose paint on the windowsill; the paint slackens, gives way, and Pen slides back, the grains of white damming behind his nails. Control. Energy streams into his top knuckles, and he pushes. Pen’s feet swing backward and upward, and his legs follow, flipping his entire body backward, upward.
The hazel, wet eyes’ll be leaking as they stare out on the unwelcoming below. There’ll be rust on the latch of the window, and she won’t be sure if she’s strong enough to pry it open. The fire giggles, rises; there’s no place left to—and there are feet outside of the window, bare feet.
Another
crack
, and glass shatters. The woman looks away, attempting to avoid the shards, unaware that their exact trajectories around her body have already been calculated by the man trapezing through the air, somersaulting head over feet until his toes land softly, wrap themselves in the tall strands of carpet.
The sixteen people in the room surge toward him. Most are screaming, some out of panic and some trying to tell him about the fire escape that has already collapsed, the emergency exits that are blocked. There’s no way out. But he’s already got this; the building already told him. He doesn’t need more information. He needs a ladder.
The fire escape’s still attached on the next building over. There’s no one there to use it: the structure’s been cleared. Looking out a window, Pen can see the adjoining roof, 7.2 feet across and 1.3 feet up.
“Where’s your conference room?” he asks a man who appears to be slightly less rattled than the rest.
Around a few corners and down a hall he finds the table—9.8 feet long—spotting it through the long glass wall running the length of the office. Herc’d say something about the blessing of the gods, and Ultimate’d lecture on about the fruits of exact calculation, but of course each of them could’ve lifted the damn thing with one hand. Oak with a faux-marble top, 386 pounds: within his limits, if just. Pen sprints to the head, stretches out his arms, folds his hands around the table’s cool sides. It’s too heavy, and he’s too weak. No, he’s wrong; he’s always wrong.
Some of the muscle fibers in Pen’s back are metal, and they glow hot
through his skin as he swings his body around, rolling the table toward the window. It’s too much to hold—his grip slips, and the table spins in the air, shatters through the office glass, before landing facedown in the hallway. Pen follows it through the new opening, slashing his shoulder on a jutting splinter of glass.
Scooting the damn thing down the hallway’s easy; getting it around the corners proves more difficult; but as he’s already mastered the space, understands when to shove and when to yank, he easily shimmies the table through the gray-carpeted labyrinth, until the window is straight ahead of him.
Seven point two feet across and 1.3 feet up. He’ll need a running start. He clutches the back legs of the table and rams it forward. Just as it’s about to reach the wall, he slaps his foot down on the table’s back edge, using it as a lever to get the front of the thing to tilt upward, to be at the exact angle that’s needed as he hurls it through the glass.
Another crash as the window caves forward. Gleaming veins jump under Pen’s skin; his teeth locked, his entire body stretched, strained, his heart pulsing, glowing, Pen puts the table across the distance, creates a bridge to another place, a setting with a ladder, an escape.
It’s not steady yet, and he yells at the biggest man there—an orderly who’s smacking on a piece of watermelon gum as if trying to kill it—to hold this side of the table. Pen’ll do the rest. Once the man puts his considerable weight down on this end, Pen walks to the window, steps out on the ledge, and leaps.
While in the air he considers doing a flip for old times’ sake, but that childish impulse never really got him any farther, as Ultimate was ever so fond of reminding him. When he hits the adjacent building, he rolls with the impact, and springs back to his feet.
The building he’s left sputters, gasping out that there’s no time left. Beneath him, emergency crews peel away, resigned that they’ve done all they could. Pen shouts to the people on the other side to start moving as he wraps his arm around the bridged table. Wires in his face and chest hum, shimmer blue under his skin.
Most of the sixteen get the urgency, and they hurry well enough, balancing toe to heel across the bridge. When everyone’s across except the orderly, Pen picks two men to hold this side and again takes to the air, sailing back into the original building before inserting himself between
the table and the smacker, allowing the big man to let go and step out onto the ledge.
Pen knows the gas line will ignite, and had he thought about it, he might’ve hesitated to come back; but when you’re in the game, you don’t think. That’s why a robot in a silly cape was so damn good at it.
The fire blasts yellow-blue and then crackles into waves of orange that rumble through the room. The tips of his hair singe, and Pen drops to the floor, allows the worst of the heat to rest over his head, makes sure to keep his hands locked down on the table. The flames hook into his skin and wrench his flesh upward; but his grip’s sure, and he holds.
The wooden ceiling brace above his head’ll fall, but he can’t move for another fourteen seconds, not until the smacker’s across. He stiffens his body in anticipation of the impact, and when the blow comes—the beam snapping on his back, swaddling foot-long slivers around his skin, slopping sand inside his nostrils and eyelids—Pen retains his stance, his hands slipping, but still pushing, holding.
Eight seconds. There’s pain, but he holds, his fingers bucking with the ferocity of his grip. Four seconds. The table tips and chortles, and Pen cries out, pushes down. Two seconds. The pain is much worse. One second. Pen holds.
From the light jerk of the marble, he knows the man’s weight’s shifted to the other side. Pen lets go, and his body retreats into the carpet, the hardened strands of coffee-stained fabric scratching at his cheek. The table, finally left unattended, stutters, whines, and drops.
The heat follows Pen down. In the old days, he would simply have hid behind that comforting expanse of metal until it was safe, until Ultimate’s skin stopped radiating white and returned to its normal, pleasant silver. Then he’d pop out with some hilarious comeback and pounce on whoever the enemy was on the other side.
Left alone with the fire, Pen arches his neck and slaps his head, tries to cull some energy together, but smoke sneaks into his chest and caresses his lungs, veils his head, and twirls into his eyes, ears, whispers for him to go down again, descend into the pillowed darkness and sleep until morning. It’s been too long; this is nothing, barely anything. He shouldn’t already be tired. Not this tired. His eyelids slack, and though he seems to push at them, they fall just the same.
Wait. No. Wait.
His muscles spasm against the smoke; his arms wave out. There’s no one on the other side. No one to show them where to go. Once this place collapses, the shock wave’ll crash into the building next door, and it’ll fail too.
The people he’s saved—they need to hurry, find the fire escape on the southeast side. Pen’s got to get back there and tell them. He should’ve told them before. He should’ve thought of that. He’s not as good anymore, and he never was all that good.
Now they’ll die. They’ll all die. It’s been too long; he’s forgotten so many of the rules, and if you don’t know the rules, you can’t really play the game.
The heat near the floor is too much, but it’s better than the boiled belting he gets as he stands again in the wake of the flame, as he steps again onto the sill. He needs to come back; he needs somehow to yell to them that they have to move, they’ve got to get somewhere safe. He needs to save them all.
The smoke has clouded his eyes, and it takes Pen a moment to see the empty skyline. Jesus, they’re not there. No one’s waiting for him anymore. They must’ve understood to go. They’re safe now.
Too tired to stand and much too tired to jump, Pen crouches down at the tip of the window, 77.2 feet above where he’ll soon fall, coming to rest on the top of a thousand split pieces of a long oak table with a brilliant marble top.
Seven point two feet across and 1.3 feet above. A space just crossed, but in better conditions when smoke wasn’t leaching power from his lungs, before the fire had baked his muscles solid. He’ll try, of course. There’ve been so many times worse than this, when he found himself struggling forward when all ways ahead were impossibly blocked. Now, things were a bit different back then. Back then, you could count on the sky; there were heroes in the sky—they were like stars.
Pen jumps, and he comes up short; and to be honest, he probably knew before he leapt that he would. He’s not used to being out here on his own; he was hoping someone would help him. But there’s only one player in the game now, and he saved sixteen lives today.
His fingers reach out, and they’re so close. Inches, a few slender inches. The fall begins; his hands drift beneath the surface of the ledge, beige outlined on the hospital’s filthy white wall.
He’s been nearer to death than this, and he knows what’s coming: his parents and Anna’ll all crash together, blend, swirl, all crying, screaming, until at the very very last second Ultimate sweeps in and tucks Pen close into that metal skin, and PenUltimate lives another day to fight another day. God, he’s been through this so much, it’s almost boring.
But they don’t come. Both the familiar visions and the rescue parties keep their distance, watching from afar as their hero slides down and down. Instead, he’s left alone with only one beating thought, steady and clear.
“I’m sorry,” over and over again, “I’m sorry.”
A hand on his wrist. A pain in his shoulder. And he’s suspended. Saved.
“You’re doing good,” Prophetier says, smoke from his lips winding down their locked arms, “keep going.”
Devil Girl #66
She babysat for him all the time when he was little, chasing after him as he scurried through the White House, young Tad Lincoln as ever trailing a few slivers behind, but she hasn’t seen him in some time, and the girl with the red hair certainly didn’t expect to see him here, her little soldier all grown up, laid out and bloodied, chewing on his lip to keep the pain from coming out, to make sure no one sees he’s found himself dusted on one of the great battlefields of Europe. The wind doesn’t blow, and her long, crimson dress lies still.
“Another battle won,” she says. “Well done, well done.” She bends down and places his arm over her shoulder. “Y’know, it’s going to get kind of light soon. Big, blinding, they’ll-shoot-you, dangerous kind of light. You should maybe get back to your line.”
“I’m dying,” he says.
“Yeah, sure, well, most of us are, right? Anyway, if you’re caught out here, you’ll be dying a whole bunch of faster. So c’mon, ’kay?”
The morning sun bends over the stripped-white plane. The light
begins to crawl forward, nudging at the few desiccated tree limbs left that fill in the spaces between the bodies of the doughboys nested all around them.
He starts to stand, but as he rises, a strap of barbed wire tied around his ankle sinks in a little deeper. She bends down and untangles the metal from his muscle, and when she’s done, she kisses his gouged skin. “There you go,” she whispers, and she returns to her place under his arm, hoisting him up. “Not too tall now, Soldier, the snipers’ll get you.”
He nods and starts to limp forward. Soon he’s walking on his own, his body hunched, his track marked by the blood dripping off his stomach. Jerry’s waking, and a few stray bullets shriek in the air.
“Wait! Wait!” she shouts, and he looks back at her slim figure jogging toward him. Her feet are white and bare, her toes painted the color of a girl’s nursery. “You forgot these, dummy.” She flips the two guns in her hands so the grips face him. “There you go, Soldier, okay? Good luck! Better go quick.” He grunts and turns back toward the trenches.
The next time she gets to see him, he’s got both of those guns blazing, firing at a German Panzer, a tank notoriously resistant to small arms, and his arms seem particularly small. She’s again wearing a long, crimson dress, which she hopes is not the same one as last time.
