The Indestructibles (24 page)

Chapter 54:

Doc

Twenty years, Doc thought, and I'm still not sure how to beat her.

      Once upon a time — and shouldn't all stories about magicians begin this way — Doc Silence was a punk kid in baggy pants and combat boots, a street magician who knew a few spells and how to coax minor creatures out from the shadows. He played with fire. He played with blood.

      And then he went down into the sewers to save a little girl who had been stolen away, and Doc thought he was a big old hero. But there are still nightmares lurking in the sewers, he learned, and there are still monsters living in closets and under beds, and there are so very many things that go bump in the night.

      He ventured into the bilge of the city's underground plumbing, brought the little girl out, and left a piece of himself behind.

      Doc abandoned the city then; got on a train, and then he walked, and then he flew to one country, and another, conjuring money like doves from a top hat. He conversed with mediums and shaman, with old stage magicians who'd learned more than they should. He spoke with men of God and men of other things. He tried to master his craft.

      In a cave deep in the Australian Outback, he fought a nightmare that had wandered out of someone else's dreams by accident, with a dozen legs and a dark and malicious intelligence. In London he set fire to a building with Molotov cocktails so that no one would have to see what he found inside. He exorcised a house in Louisiana with wall paintings that moved when you walked by. And then Doc nearly died in Moscow at the hands of a witch older than time.

      In an abandoned Paris opera house, a demon with too many faces offered him a bargain. Doc refused, and when he next looked in the mirror, his hair was bluish white. He was twenty-five years old.

      A year passed and another malevolent creature challenged him to a duel. Doc won, but his eyes were forever changed, some small piece of that demon latched onto him, leaving each eye its own tiny inferno.

      The Lady approached him a month later, on Christmas Eve. She was as beautiful, as she was kind. And Doc was tired of losing pieces of himself in every battle with the darkness.

      She offered to teach him.

      "You don't have to fight them, darling," she said.

      She removed her movie star sunglasses and showed him her eyes, pits of fire like his, but brighter, more like real flame. "Most everything that goes bump in the night can be reasoned with. Can be bought. You just need to know how to make the right deal."

      He accepted.

      Doc assumed she'd be angry when he left a few years later. She taught him a new kind of magic, darker, more utilitarian, with more to gain, but with much higher stakes. He could envision where this path would lead, and he saw what the Lady had become as a broker of dark things. He understood that the world needed creatures like her, but he knew also that he couldn't be one of them.

      They parted friends.

      Doc Silence and the Lady Natasha Gray would cross paths again many times over the years. Never as allies, because he returned to the business of saving little kids from sewers and battling and the evil things that lurk under beds and in closets. Doc and his friends would interfere with the Lady's games sometimes, and she'd defeat them, or they would defeat her, and she would always come out on top, and Doc wondered for many years if he wasn't somehow part of her long con, her big scam. She trained Doc just enough to make him useful for her and her eternal game.

      Doc knew one thing: he possessed no means to destroy her. And he was not sure he wanted to — even if he were able. But if there were a way to strike a bargain, cast a spell, or cajole her out of the game . . .

      Doc poured over old books, found ancient scrolls he thought might help, uncovered diagrams for hexes the Lady would shrug off like the wind.

      He thought of the storm, the destruction that would lay waste to whatever coastal city the enemy chose to target, the number of lives that could be lost. He thought about things he could bargain away. About their friendship, their fallout, the things they shared, the things that kept them apart. He thought about what she held most dear to her, her immutable rules. And then . . . about a storm without a sorceress behind it, pulling its strings. If only there was a way he could convince her to stay out of it . . .

      There was indeed one option. He didn't like it.

      "But I enjoy this world," he said to himself. "Like being in it."

      "I like it too," Jane said, walking into Doc's study without warning. "Who you talking to?"

      "Old ghosts," he said.

      He looked at this girl, the one who would make a finer world if given the chance, who he'd picked up from the wreckage of that aircraft and held in his arms, feeling the warmth of the mid-day sun radiating off her little body. The one he handed over to John and Doris Hawkins, because he didn't know what else to do with her, because he knew he was no man to raise a child, because he knew someone else could keep her safe and help her grow up to be a better person than she would in his care. Annie, for all the good she was capable of, could never understand why he was so upset, why he had been so heartbroken, to give Jane away.

      He'd done the best he could with the time he had, he thought. And this was the only way to keep her safe and give these inadvertent heroes a fighting chance to save lives.

      If he did this . . . well, it's not as though he would be gone forever. That was the problem, though: the not knowing.

      "You okay?" Jane asked. Earnestness in her voice. She — more than all the others — was so earnest. That was John and Doris speaking. They did a fine job helping her grow.

      "Jane," he said, and he could hear the tone in his voice, could see her pick up on it. She'd never seen him upset before. There'd never really been a reason.

      "You're not okay."

      "There's a way I can take the Lady out of the fight. When we make our big move," Doc said. "She's too much for anyone else to handle. Too much for all of you to handle. But I can . . . I can just remove her from the fight."

      "That's a good thing, right?" Jane said.

      "Yeah," Doc said. "Except I have to take myself out of it as well. And it . . . it might be a while Before I get back."

      "What do you mean? Where you going?"

      "Jane, there are worlds upon worlds," he said. "Layers and layers of reality, all piled on top of each other. I'd really hoped I'd get to show you a few of the good ones some day."

      "You still can, right?"

      "I think so," he said. "I just. Just don't know how long I'll be gone. It may be a long time."

      "We have other options, right? There's got to be other options."

      "There isn't time," Doc said.

      Jane tried to speak a few times, the words not forming. Then she latched onto him, a bear hug too big for her small frame. She still radiated heat like a warm day.

      "You can trust Sam," Doc said. "He knows things. He can help you."

      "What are we going to do without you? We barely know how to do anything on our own. You can't — "

      "If you only knew how great you are already," he said.

      "Stop talking like you're gone already," Jane said.

      "And look out for the others while I'm away," he said. "They'll follow you. You set the tone; they'll follow you."

      She looked up.

      "I'll leave Emily in charge if you go," she said, sniffing back tears. "I will. You can't leave."

      Doc smiled. She'll be fine, he thought. She just needed someone to show her how to fly.

      "When?" Jane asked.

      He didn't answer.   

      Then Neal's voice chattered over the intercom.

     
"Designation: Doctor Silence,"
Neal said.
"Designation: Dancer is looking for you. We have pinpointed the enemy's base of operations. Shall I recall Designations: Straylight and Entropy?"

      Doc kissed the top of Jane's head and wiped his eyes.    

      "Now's as good a time as any," he said.

Chapter 55:

Home

Billy's family lived, Emily was surprised to discover, in one of those suburban towns large enough to feel like a real city but small enough to not have the name recognition of a genuine metropolis, an outlier stuck with all the big city problems without the big city fame.

      His mother waited on the porch of their house: a two family located on a side street off a busy main drag. She paced until they touched down. Her eyes widened when her son and his goggle-wearing friend dropped out of the sky and landed.

      "You," she said, and then ran down the front steps and clenched him in a huge hug.

      Emily smiled.

      "Told you it was a good idea," she said.

      "We saw you on the news," his mother said, fussing over his face, which was, Emily thought, still pretty well busted up. Billy looked like he crash-landed into a tree trunk. "What happened to you?"

      "Last week, I got punched in the face by a giant bear crab mole and was exploded on yesterday — or the day before. I forget."

      "Billy Case," his mother said, adjusting and dusting off his beat up street-clothes jacket. "We thought you were dead."

      "I didn't think you'd worry," he said.

      "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," she said. "Your father's been beside himself."

      "Dad?"

      "Yes."

      "He here?"

      "Waiting inside," she said.

      Billy looked at Emily in a plea for help.

      She simply smirked.

      "Go on!" Emily said.

      Billy's mom looked her over, squinting at her hair and clothes.

      "This your girlfriend?" she asked.

      "No way, " Emily said, laughing. "Billy's like my big brother. But he totally has a crush on one of the other super girls and doesn't know it yet."

      Billy scowled.

      Emily shrugged her shoulders.

      "I'm just glad you're here," his mother said.

      I shouldn't have come home, Dude, Billy said.

      His father sat in the living room, looking as big as he always had — all shoulders and dark hair and that long, exhausted face that said so much about how he labored too hard at his dying hardware store.     Billy knew that face. He'd seen it as the face of disappointment, because his son was, admittedly, lazy, and, also admittedly, inept at almost everything he applied himself to. His father wanted him to take over the family business, but Billy had little aptitude with his hands and even less with money, and then there was that unspoken truth between them that the store would probably not survive another bad turn in the economy.

      More than once, Billy suggested they adopt another son who might be better suited to save the business. He gave his father credit for never taking the bait, even if they both knew it would have probably been for the best.

      So there the old man sat, staring at him like he was a stranger, and all Billy could think of was, who was working at the store right now?

      I really screwed up, Dude. Should have stayed away.

     
Give them time, Billy Case,
Dude said.

      "That was you all the while, flying around the city?" his father asked.

      "We never recognized you, until the news covered that . . . thing attacking a building," his mother said. "We'd seen you hovering around but you all wear masks and . . . "

      "I was . . . on an errand when that happened," Billy said. "Didn't have time to put my costume on."

      "My boy's running round the city in tights," the old man said.

      "They're more of a space age polymer, chemically manufactured, under sterile — uh, never mind," Billy said.

      "Who would have thought . . . You up and leave us and we imagined you'd taken off to become homeless or do drugs and you're a goddamn superhuman," his father said.

      "Something like that."

      "Same people, down south helping out with the hurricane cleanup?"

      "That was us," Emily said. "Billy's not quite as useful at cleaning up as he is at fighting monsters, but he tries."

      "You should see his room," his mother said.

      "Why didn't you tell us what you were running off to do?" his father asked. "Wouldn't it have been better if you told us the truth? You scared your mother worse than I've ever seen her. We've been nailing posters to telephone poles thirty miles in every direction looking for you."

      "You looked for me?"

      "You thought we wouldn't?" his mother said.

      They looked for me, Dude. I didn't think they'd . . .

     
We are all wrong sometimes, Billy Case.

      I can't even run away from home the right way, Billy said. I even screwed this up.

      "But . . . would you have believed me if I told you?" Billy asked.

      His father nodded yes.

      "Fair enough. Actually, you would have locked me up in the loony bin."

      "Perhaps we would have had you see a psychologist, yes," his mother said. "You can fly? I saw you fly, and what was that stuff? Shooting lasers out of your hands?"

      "That's. . . way cooler than how I usually describe it."

      "But how did it happen?"

      "I . . . " Billy said. And then: how did it happen, Dude?

     
I picked you.

      Why? Why pick someone like me?

     
Does it matter?

      Maybe?

     
I am a very good judge of character, Billy Case.

      I wouldn't have been anyone's first pick.

     
My other choices were already inhabited by aliens.

      Did you just make a joke?

      And then he heard something he had never, not once in all his time with him, heard before: Dude laughing.

      "Why are you smiling?" his father asked.

      "Because I have an alien living inside me," Billy said. "Which sounds, like, completely insane, and also really creepy. But one day I'm walking home from school, and this bolt of light hits me, just, pow, out of the sky, right? And I felt awful for a few days, and you wouldn't let me skip school — "

      "— Because we thought you were faking," his mother said. "You have to admit you faked it a lot."

      "Yeah," Billy said. "But after a few days I start hearing this voice, and begin to think I'm losing my mind, except this voice starts telling me all these amazing things I can do, and they turn out to be true. So I thought, well now I'm a freak."

      "Well, you are," Emily said. "We all are. That's why we get to do what we do."

      Billy's father directed his attention to her for the first time.

      "Who are you, anyway?"

      "Billy's teammate, and also his Jiminy Cricket."

      Billy's dad stood up and paced back and forth across the small living room.

      "So you're not crazy, and you have all these powers, and, what, now you . . . you save people? That's your job?"

      "It doesn't pay much," he said. "But the benefits are pretty rad."

      His father stopped pacing and looked Billy right in the eyes.

      "You know, we saw you on the news, and I thought, that can't be my kid," his father said. "And then I saw how bad it was, and how much destruction was happening right there in front of me, and I thought, I hope that isn't my kid. Then I realized what you were all doing, and how you're all out there together like a bunch of, I don't know, miracles, and I said to myself — no, I wish that's my kid."

      "And there you were," his mother said.

      "Why did you wish it was me?" Billy said.

      His father laughed, that scratchy, ex-smoker's laugh that no friend or family member ever heard enough of. The man never had a lot of reasons to laugh.

      "Because I was so damn proud of you, Billy," his father said. "You were doing things the rest of us could only dream of. And you were out there without a single consideration for yourself."

      "I, uh, think about myself a lot during these expeditions. Mostly how to keep from getting blown up. Again," he said. "The again part is important."

      "Keep doing that," his mother said. "I'd prefer my son not get blown up all the time."

      "You're really proud of me? Not mad?"

      "I'm still mad about the note," his mother said. "I expect the best mother's day present ever to make up for that."

      "There's a lot of things people would do if they had your gifts, your power. And you've decided to do the noblest thing you could with it," his father said.

      Did he just call me noble, Dude?

     
You are not noble yet, Billy Case. Give it time. You might get there.

      Thanks for keeping me humble.

     
It is not easy. You are particularly prone to moments of self-aggrandizement.

      Emily's transmitter beeped. A second later, Billy's did as well.

      "What's that mean?" his mother asked.

      "Em?"

      Emily popped into dining room to answer the call.

      "You get paged these days?" his father asked.

      "I tried to talk them into using a spotlight as a signal, but it didn't work well during the day."

      His father laughed again.

      It wouldn't take much convincing to get used to that sound, Billy thought.

      Emily rushed in and pulled her goggles down over her eyes.

      "We gotta head back," she said. "Kate found something important. Gotta move quick."

      "Off to save the day again?" his mother asked.

      "People are in constant need of saving, you know that? I never knew," Billy said.

      "Do you really have to go?" his mother said. "Can't they do this one without you?"

      Billy looked at Emily.

      She frowned.

      "Jane sounded really worried," Emily said.

       "I think they need me," he said.

      Billy's father stuck his hand out.

      They shook hands, like adults, like grown men do. It made Billy feel taller, somehow.

      "Go get 'em, kid."

      "Sure you're not mad?"

      "Just come back in one piece," his father said. "Maybe bring your mom flowers when you visit."

      Billy responded with a smile so wide it hurt his cheeks.

      "You got it, dad."

      His parents followed them out onto the porch, looking on with a mixture of disbelief and excitement when Billy and Emily took flight.

      "Roses!" his mother yelled as they increased altitude. "My favorite are yellow!"

      "I'll be back soon," Billy yelled.

      But as they cranked up their speed and headed home, Billy wondered if they could ever really promise anyone they would return at all.