Infected 8: Impulse: A Whole New Day (23 page)

Looking over it was hard to see what was going on, but there was a lot of blood, the bright red shining in the mid-day sun. It stood in contrast to the grass. Some of the people tried to help the Nazi guy, but that didn't work. She could have told them all that it wouldn't, since she couldn't hear a heartbeat, and it sounded like his neck had broken. Then, joke or not, she'd told Marcia that Will was one of
their
people. Right before the Nazi guy had acted. That made an attack on the kid
their
problem. One that they weren't going to take sitting down.

Except for her, given that she was, literally, sitting on one of their other problems.

Thankfully Doug came flying in, at a nice controlled pace, about four minutes later. It might have been two, and just seemed like longer, since it was that kind of day. Just to round the whole thing out, her tummy started making grinding noises. Not growling, it was past that already. It was a deep and grating thing that got the terrorist she was on to give
her
a funny look.

Bridget shrugged in answer.

"I don't have time for a sandwich right now. Thanks to you." She started to make a joke about cannibalism, but if this took too much longer she might really be tempted, so kept her face shut. It wasn't a fun thought, after all. Not the kind of thing that would really have her acting without control. Not until she realized that her hunger was so bad that putting anything in her stomach was better than suffering any longer. Then all bets would be off. It wasn't that bad yet. Not even close. Still, a snack would have been nice. She tried not to think about it, since while she could dream of cake and meatloaf, she was going to get bland and sickening oil. Even that was better than nothing, but not what her brain wanted to fill in. For her entire life food had almost always been something easy for her to get. Not just regular stuff either. Mounds of delicious gourmet fare was hers, with little more effort on her part than a walk down the hall.

Things had changed now. It hit her again that her old life had finished. She hadn't really been convinced that there was going to be a war before, she realized. That had seemed like something that they could stop. Proxy would do his thing and they'd all pull together and it would all be
fine
.

There she was though, sitting on top of a suicide bomber, who still occasionally tried to throw her to the side long enough to kill herself, even though everyone else was too far away to hurt.

The bomb team arrived, from the local police force, just as she considered all of that. They were dressed in nifty anti-being blown up outfits, but didn't want to close with them for some reason. At first, she rather naively thought that it was about the
explosive
. That the experts could see something she didn't, like a second bomb or detonator, and knew that putting their soft bodies too close to it would lead to their deaths.

If that was the case, now that Gravity was there, they could move to an empty area and she could just let the thing blow up. That would kill the woman under her, which would be a shame, but it might
have
to be done. Not that she had any great love for the hater down there. She was probably a pawn, however, and might know who had set the whole thing up. At least who they worked with, as underlings.

Dead, the woman couldn't tell on her friends, which would slow the investigation down.

It wasn't that however, they were all just afraid of
her
. The naked girl that was protecting them all. She knew that because she could overhear them talking about it.

"Impulse... She's the one that attacked the whole force last year. I hear she isn't exactly stable." The man that spoke muttered the words to the other man dressed in a bomb suit from about a football field away.

She grinned, not wanting to be the one to make trouble for once. Then she yelled, decently loud.

"You mean when I had to subdue those terrorists? They
had
just attacked our base and personnel. Now, if you gents could come on over and see about fixing this, that would be really nice. Thank you." She even sounded happy and pleasant, neither of which were things she really felt. It was taking forever for the ambulance to get there, and if Will died, she was
not
going to feel good about things.

It would probably end with his father dead, for one thing. The man wasn't on her list of friends, right now.

 That got them moving however, and the man that actually came toward them had a little remote control camera on a robot, which was connected to a long wire. That way it wouldn't set off any radio detonators.

She nodded as the man muttered that, talking to himself.

"See, that's why you get the big bucks. I never even would have thought about that." He glanced up from the screen and looked embarrassed. Then he whispered again, clearly to
her
this time.

"Sorry there. The truth is I've only used this thing a few times, and only
once
for a bomb. That doesn't happen a lot here. Mainly we deal with fireworks that get left around. We need to get eyes on that device though. I don't suppose you can shift a bit without setting it off?"

The little silver machine trundled up, going slowly, the camera lens pointed right at her, or so it seemed.

"I think so. Are you getting my good side?"

That got a dark chuckle. "Hell yeah. Don't worry, we won't put it up on the web. For one thing you'd know who to come looking for. So, if you can move left, in three, two... now."

The shifting wasn't hard, though the bigot screamed, and the lights from the ambulance caught her attention. A sense of relief came over her then, knowing that someone was coming to help them. Will was, kind of, her responsibility. Letting him get stabbed like that had been sloppy. She should have had the people searched. Somehow.

In all the tense operation of dealing with the bomb took forever, and she had to do all the hard work, since, as the cool bomb man pointed out, she'd handled the one from earlier well enough. They'd seen footage of it, which was part of why it had take so long to get there. Odds were, given everything, that the two devices had some things in common. Like one maker. Not that anyone would really know that in time to help.

In the end they just brought her a knife and had her cut the thing off, standing well back. The straps that held it in place probably didn't have anything to set them off inside them. If they did, well, she'd go boom. Again. So would their future informant. It was a risk, but less of one for her than anyone else there. She'd mentioned that to the man, who
didn't
whip out his tremendous man beast, and tell her that he had it covered. That was sort of refreshing.

The explosion didn't happen. What did, was the ambulance taking Will off to the hospital, and the police actually doing their job and handcuffing the suspects that were under arrest. Including their boss. That was a hard one to explain, but they
did
it. One of them did at least. He shrugged when the older man growled at him.

"Do it and you're fired, Specconi."

"Take it up with the union? If you're innocent, then this will all pass. If not, then we can't let a terrorist organizer go, can we? When I hired on, you told me,
yourself
, that all those accusations were unfounded. That it was the Infected that had made you out to be something you weren't. Damned if you didn't jump off the stage and start running though, just before the bombers started yelling. I
saw
the footage, Chief. We all have. That pretty much means that you were in on it."

That got a nod from everyone around the whole place, because that made normal person sense, didn't it? The
only
way that he could have known to jump and run would have been his own guilt and culpability. Except that she remembered hearing something. The same man had, once, backed down when Brian had threatened to kill him and his whole force. There had been almost a hundred armed cops, and they'd already tried for Brian that day. They weren't afraid of one man, given all that. Still, he pulled them all. Running away, at decent speed. Which didn't fit his overall personality, as far as she could tell. The man was brash and loud, not cautious. He used force as a rule, and expected it to work, even when that was
stupid
.

He'd quieted down, over the last months, because, everyone in the IPB said, the man realized that without his old cronies, he wasn't in as good of a position. They'd even stopped going for Proxy, as far as anyone could tell. Which was good, since Brian
would
have killed them all. He might have officially been a class two, but that was a lie. One that, now that she knew about herself, she had to wonder if it was done on purpose. Proxy had fought, and killed, sixty-plus class fives once. That would put him at something like a class seven, she thought. It didn't totally make sense, but it was true. The thing there is that the Chief had no way to know that at the time. Brian should have been no worse than a man with a gun, in the situation they'd been in at the time.

The Chief had run though, in fear.

What if that had been different though? Not cowardice, but the simple knowledge of what was about to happen?  She thought about it for a minute, while she cut away the vest, listening, and not blowing up. When that was done her new bomb buddy sent a little cart on a wire, with what seemed like a heavy duty chest on it, and asked her to, gently, put the thing in it and close the lid. Then it got driven away, as the police woman came to see about little miss bombypants.

Walking over to the Chief and Marcia, who was not too far away, hiding a smirk, Bridget shook her head. She wasn't certain of course, but she waved at Quartz.

"Watch this. I have a theory." Then, without warning she suddenly jumped in, and slowly, for her, tried to kick the man in the balls. She could have landed the move at that speed on most people, but he threw himself back, even
before
she started the motion. His hips kicked back first, before he fell on his rump, his hands behind him. The trick of course had been in the fact that, if he hadn't done that, she totally
would
have nailed him there. "Like that. My guess is a near time field precog. It's probably why he hates Proxy so much, since they pretty much have the same power, but this guy is a bit lame and Brian is awesome. Or, something like that. I'd feel bad too, if it were me." Not that she really would. The old guy in front of her had just protected himself from her. Oh, that might not save him in a fight, against Impulse, but it might just have him say, able to move away from a bomb blast?

He glared up from the ground, but of the listeners only Marcia and after a few seconds, Doug, really got it.

Turner whistled.

"Did you know you were Infected and try to hide it, or..." She smiled, but the man shook his head.

"I'm
not
Infected. I just got lucky. It happens."

Which was true, so Bridget aimed her pale foot at his throat and tried to kick him there. Again, fast enough that almost anyone would have been caught off guard. It nearly touched him, but not quite. Then she tried to stomp his head, since he ended up on the ground, laying flat and rolling. If she doubled the speed, he wouldn't have made it, but the people watching caught on, after about ten seconds of the show.

Bridget smiled.

"So, I'd guess a class three. That makes him one of ours. I-" She nearly suggested they put him under Proxy's care, but then changed the wording. That was far too close, she realized, to telling the world that the man was still alive. "Really, we need to get the office up and running. Officer, this is an IPB matter. This doesn't clear him totally, but it
might
be enough to show that he didn't have foreknowledge of today's events. Or not
good
foreknowledge. He really only seems to respond when he's personally threatened with serious harm, too. That needs to be tested."

"I'm not Infected! You freaks think that this is funny, claiming that kind of thing, timing your attacks there so I look like-" Marcia moved in with a kick that would have shattered bone, aimed at his leg. It wasn't there when her foot got into place.

"You
let
me knock you out? That means you
know
. Plus, you aren't as big of a pussy as I thought. I wish I could have Pours look at your mind..."

Bridget force herself to make a face, because the woman was
supposed
to be dead.

"Me too, Marcia. Anyway, officer, you might as well let him have his hands free. You, um, Danton, isn't it? Ryan?" She stopped and waited for the man to go narrow eyed, but he didn't correct her. "You're an IPB Operative now. We're short staffed, so get ready to work. Just to stop the days of endless yammering on about your rights; you're Infected and it's been proven. You have either a class three ability or a lower level skill that can counteract specific abilities at that level or higher. You have a legal obligation to serve in the IPB, and as you might have guessed, if you refuse, we'll have to get a Death Warrant for you. So welcome aboard. We'll give you three days to get your ship in order here and get your replacement up to speed, which is a lot more than most people get. Later though, right now we need to handle
this
situation. Officer? If you will?" She gestured, the movement reminding herself that she kind of needed some clothing. No one had been staring, so there was that. She wasn't keeping a bomb from exploding now, so she could get something to wrap up in.

"For the moment, Ryan, could you get me something to wear? That would be really nice. This is already going to be all over the net. Perverts having a good old time, watching me stop that bomb. Well, I'm sure they'll provide their own explosions, so there's that. Goodie. I won't have to feel bad for leaving that part off on their account."

She didn't say anything else, just being glared at for a long time. No matter what his first mode ended up being it wasn't that bad however, so she didn't expect violence. Especially since he'd lose, if she went at him all out. That was the same problem that Braid had, she realized. The woman could avoid her in the time stream, if she knew to, but there was a good chance, if they met again, that Bridget might just kill her. The same was true of
this
shmoe. Only less so, she was willing to bet. If he could get info on things more than a few minutes away in time, she'd be shocked. He wasn't just a two minute precog either, or he'd be rich, and probably not a cop at all. So it was something more like an alarm system. Good information, when it came, but close in time and while precise, it mainly covered things that could hurt him, personally.