The Infected 1: Proxy (24 page)

"Damn he hits hard," Brian muttered, gasping.

Lady Glory sat against the wall, sobbing. Brian limped over, voice not working the first time he tried it, on the third he got some sound. On the fourth try actual words came.

"Call... help... check...these..." He pointed at the other unconscious people on the floor. Still crying, the woman got up and went into an office. A man, one he didn't recognize, who wore the same sweats and t-shirt he did, except it had the legend "team one" on it, stirred and tried to get up. The other man, the small pale one in the suit, didn't yet. Brian choked a few words to the first man.

"OK, now. Rest. Help coming." He sounded better, air slowly coming back into his lungs, his body shaking and weak, after everything.

The other man still breathed and had a heartbeat, so Brian sat and waited. Glory came out and stared, looking at the man on the floor. After a bit he realized she thought he was dead and shook his head, telling her that he breathed.

"I don't know how to do much past CPR and basic band aids. All we can do is wait for real help now." As he finished saying that, part of team two, six strong, ran into the room led by Charles himself. Brian didn't recognize the rest by name, a few he'd seen in the gym. He waved at the people, including Prime.

"Everyone's alive. Prime should sleep for about fifty more minutes give or take. This man... I don't know him, he's alive but out. We need medical here now." Then he went silent. It was still really hard to breath and he gasped a bit.

Bridget came in last, Charles glaring at her. She ran to Prime and started calling to him, her eyes going wide with fear. She looked around, ready to kill, it seemed to Brian, lips pulling back, teeth bared. He raised his hand and signaled her, which actually got her attention somehow.

"Just sleeping. Drugs. Be up soon." He hoped that made sense, because he couldn't say a lot more. He doubled over in place and started to convulse a little, then got sick. There was some blood in it, but nothing major. People looked concerned but didn't say anything.

Charles walked over and kicked Prime, hard. "Get up, mother fucker!" He growled, then kicked him again, apparently for not getting up. This went on for several seconds, everyone around him just standing there, watching, except Bridget, who moved to tackle the team leader, only to be grabbed by someone else, a muscular man with what looked like inky vine patterns all over his face.

Brian got to his feet. Walking slowly, he approached the man and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Enough. He's out and we need to secure him. Without harm. Hurting him now will just make him into an enemy. He's having a bad day, but we need to try and fix it, not take revenge without reason."

The other man shrugged his hand off, but then froze as he turned and really looked at him, covered in his own blood, bruises blooming again across his already damaged body. Telling him to stop. Apparently it had some impact, because the man did and actually stepped back, a large breath coming then along with a curt nod.

"Right. Got carried away. Sorry. Let's get him to holding on eight." They carried him away, Bridget following, still looking angry and ready to fight. She looked back at him when she got to the elevator, her face blank. She looked scared to Brian. He'd have to go to her soon if he could. If she'd let him, after fighting with her dad like that.

Several doctors ran in, coming up the stairs, with other medics behind them. They put the small guy on a stretcher and took him to medical first thing, using the stairs as well. Probably procedure in case the elevators went out in an emergency. That seemed right. Brian learned the man's name, Robert, and that he served as the leader for team one. The other man came over to him, apparently able to shrug off the damage done after just a bit. It was a cool trick. Really, Brian kind of wish he had that power instead of his just at the moment.

"Thanks. Sorry it took us so long to get the situation. He's on our team, so we just assumed that he wasn't being the problem, except Rob, he kind of guessed, but he doesn't have the kind of power needed to keep Prime down on his own. LG tried, but Scott knows her too well. She can stop most people, even him, but he recovered and didn't let her hit him again, then... I don't really know what happened, he K.O.'d me pretty hard. Just a back hand nearly took my head off. Luckily I can heal most damage fast..." He took a good look at Brian.

"Which you can't, can you... You're that new guy, Proxy? The one that took out the Jackal? Damn... Medic!" He turned and waved over one of the people Brian didn't know.

"Him too. I don't know why he's still conscious. He fought with Prime and took him out... and here I thought it was impressive when Marcia did it. Damn." He went over to comfort Lady Glory, who'd gone back to sobbing, holding her arms across her chest. He could get that, he'd sob himself, but it would hurt too much. This whole thing was a mess.

The medic looked at him but didn't do anything, except put something in his nose to stop the bleeding. After about ten minutes, Burrows walked over and looked at him. Actually, he realized, she was giving him a look.

"All right. I know you don't get a choice about all this, so I won't ride you, but damn you need to learn to fight better soon. Blocking with your face over and over again makes too big a mess and can't be good for your self-esteem." She gave him a stare that didn't seem chastising, but wasn't happy either.

He just held up his right hand. It felt sore and heavy. "Honest, I just planned on a nice quiet night, moping alone in my room before bed. I never planned on taking a trip into a wall. Not nearly as entertaining as it sounds." He tried to keep his voice light, and did a decent job considering, he thought.

She wanted to give him pain killers and something to put him to sleep, but he shook his head.

"No, I need to go find Prime first. It might be a long night..."

From over in the corner, sounding frightened - a tinny, almost mechanical sounding voice - Lady Glory, asked why he needed to find Prime. Her tone didn't sound as compassionate as her reputation had her being. He didn't want to be mean, but every time they met the woman seemed to think he wanted to hurt people and kept getting in his way. It was kind of souring him on her as a person.

"Look... I don't know what your deal is, but you keep using your powers to stop me from doing what I need to in order to help people. It's annoying. I get that you don't like me for some reason, but come on already! Twice now, if you would have backed me up instead of going after me, other problems would have been avoided. Now, I need to go find Prime, because he's going to wake up alone in a cell, strapped down, thinking that all his supposed friends have abandoned him. Ever been there? I have, not a fun place. Something bad happened, but I'm not ready to throw the guy away or give up on him, not yet." He stood, pain coursing through his back, nearly taking him down. That wouldn't have made him look good, falling down after making a dramatic speech like that.

He felt a prick on his arm and looked down to see a large needle pumping liquid in. Burrows smiled. "Nothing to make you overly sleepy, muscle relaxants and pain control only. If you have any pain or if anything gets worse, call us or come in, don't wait."

Clumsily Brian stumbled to the elevator and tried to remember what floor number he needed. Eight.

Right, he escaped from there once.

He could do it again, if needed to take Prime out. Of course, Scott could probably do it himself if he wasn't in a blind rage, it wasn't that hard. On the floor, he found the director standing with Charles and Charlot Chambers outside a tan colored door. He limped over, feeling better as the medicine kicked in. Brian didn't want to get too into drugs, but lately some of them had really been making his life easier.

They all looked at him when he came over, the director actually looked frightened and went stiff, Charlot looked pissed, so normal for her if Karen had been right about that. Charles smiled and held out his hand politely.

"Thanks for earlier. I just... get too mad sometimes. Indignant. He could have killed someone, he nearly did, more than once. I know that Infected don't always have strict control of their emotions, but it's hard to remember that other people don't have the same downsides I do myself..."

They shook, Brian then took the Directors hand and did the same. Charlot swallowed and her lips went white. He held out a hand to her too. She took it, but shook, a slight tremble that could have been anything from fear or rage to simply not having eaten dinner.

"I came to make sure he doesn't wake up alone. I didn't know who all would be here for him. Good to see he has people." The words left Brian's mouth sounding soft and very young to his own ears.

The Directors eye's looked more compassionate then and he waved to the door. They didn't know when he'd come to, but they had the story from the woman, a reporter, who claimed she'd been sleeping with Scott for a few months. The man had grown tired of her and asked her not to come see him anymore. She made the mistake of slapping him, which given his first mode, set him off. Then, they guessed, that everyone that fought against him became perceived as insulting him.

"Runaway ego," the older man said, rubbing his nose.

"Publicity nightmare. An affair, well, no offense Charlot, but the man sleeps around a lot. He almost has to, given everything. He's a physical and cultural magnet for women and his ego tells him that he absolutely has a right to do it, no matter what anyone else says. Well, you've lived with it for almost twenty years, so you know. But nearly killing this woman... a reporter too. Couldn't he sleep with some nice secretaries or women that don't have their own television shows at least?" The older man smoothed his hands down his jacket front and looked at his wristwatch. The gold and white face of it told them it was only just now approaching eight o'clock, from the glimpse Brian saw.

Brian stood, pacing a little, waiting for the man, Scott, to wake up. The strapped down form started to stir about ten minutes later, way earlier than anyone had guessed. Sighing softly Brian asked to be let into the room.

"If he tries to kill me, then we know he's not ready to talk about this rationally and we can try again later." Director Moore didn't want to let him, but the other two didn't think they could stop him if he really wanted to do it. Brian almost laughed at that. Right now any of them could have stopped him by breathing out hard.

Brian didn't say it out loud, but if he went in and the man freaked, well, everyone else could forgive that, having been fighting with Brian earlier. Only natural really, right? If one of the others went, say Charlot, and he attacked her, or worse, the Director, then major bad things would happen. Charles could probably go, but Brian didn't trust him not to attack the guy, strapped down and vulnerable as he was. His old police training made him too dangerous to trust with someone that couldn't fight back.

A few minutes later when Scott opened his eyes Brian stood next to his bed.

"Hi, Scott. Feeling better yet?" he asked, forcing his rough voice to sound as friendly as possible. It wasn't that great, but he smiled and tried to look hopeful about it all.

"Yeah..." the man mumbled, clearly still more than a little drugged.

"I don't know what you'll remember, but we had a bit of an incident, so first, you'll be glad to know, everyone's alive. Robert's in the medical wing, but he's awake now."

The other man swiveled his head to look at him.

"Chew bit my nose?" He said, sounding incredibly out of it.

"That's right, I bit your nose. But it doesn't show now, I don't think it ever really did. I just had to distract you at the time. Kind of a bad cycle of things I take it? It can happen, but I think the first thing everyone wants to know is, are you back to your regular self now? If so we can get these straps off of you and get you some clothes."

It was a risk, but Scott Chambers wasn't noted for being crafty or even overly violent, so Brian figured it might work. Pretend everything was, well, not normal, but getting there and everything else would run more smoothly.

After a few more minutes Scott cleared a lot, and while glum, didn't seem like he wanted to rip anyone's head off. Brian took that as a good sign and started releasing the straps, not just four points like he'd had, but ten heavy straps that covered his body, pinning him in place. Behind him a voice came over the intercom. Moore it sounded like.

"Mr. Yi, is that a good idea?" The tone was worried.

Brian looked over at the door and gave a thumbs up and a nod, trying to smile happily when he did.

"Don't beat me up, they'll think I'm lying to them, the guy already thinks I'm a trouble maker." He whispered to Scott, releasing the last three belt straps and starting to work on the legs, then last, the wrists.

He asked the man to stay put and went to get him some clothing. It turned out to just be a pair of sweats, but it said team one on them and beat going nude as far as dignity went. They sat and talked about things for a while, Prime staying calm, his ego really showing, but that, Brian understood, would be normal for him.

He went to the door and got them to let him out and then, on impulse, turned and waived to Scott. "Come on, we've got work to do and messes to clean up. Like it or not you get to do a lot of the work on this, no one else can." That fed into his ego well enough, the large man came over, looking haughty and superior, not chagrined at all.