(The Push Chronicles (Book 2): Indefatigable (4 page)

"Gah," he grumbled incoherently.  "Is that it then?  I'm just your boy toy and your shoulder to cry on and then, end of the day, bam, it's like it's nothing."  He wisely bandaged over the fresh stitches before he made any other slips.  The bed springs creaked as Ex stood up, heavily treading into the small bathroom.  "No one deserves that, Indy."

"Really, Ex," I shouted, "for once could you use my actual name.  My name is Irene.  Irene Roman and I'm not ashamed to be normal."

"Indy, you're as normal as I am, as any of us are."  His aggravatingly handsome head poked out of the bathroom door as the sink's water began to run.  "The sooner you come to grips with that, the better off we all are going to be."  That was the last straw.  Despite my injury, I shot up from the bed, livid, and stomped to the bathroom door.

"Out."  I pointed at the small apartment's door.  "Get out now."  Ex looked at me with those green eyes for a long moment.  There was regret there and, for a moment, I wavered, questioning myself.  A little voice in my head was firm, though.  If I relented now, I sent the wrong message.  I would give up control, and I desperately need control in some part of my life right now.  "I'm sorry, Ex, but ... I need to be alone.  Please."

"Okay," the firefighter nodded.  "Okay."  Ex walked to the door, grabbing his jacket from the hanger.  "I'll see you for the morning meeting, right?"

"Yeah, I'll be there."  I controlled my tears of anger and frustration until he was well out the door.  The next night, all was forgiven, no matter the actual truth of the matter, and we made passionate love on that very bed.

"Have you ever thought about how insane it is that you can practically fly on that thing?"  It wasn't until the words were out of my mouth that I realized what it would start.  I could only feel, in looking back, that I had intended it, despite my conscious thoughts on the matter.  Extinguisher and I had just gotten back from a routine Pushcrook bust and he had given me a lift back to the Foundation.  I was staring out the open window as the unsuspended icy track dissipated back into water vapor in defiance of any sane rules of reality.

"We just fought a humanoid land-octopus with eight cutlasses talking like a pirate and you're bringing up my ice slide," Ex complained.  "Seriously, Indy?"  Even two months later, my actual real name never came up.  In fact, it seemed, as things soured, he used my alter ego's name a sting when he was annoyed with me.

"Look, it's not my fault it breaks all the laws of reality."  To Ex's credit, he hadn't yet given up on his efforts to take our relationship to a more serious level.  There was a part of me that was sorely tempted too.  He was handsome, courageous, loyal, and dedicated.  All excellent traits.  In the end, though, another part of me rebelled.  How much of what Extinguisher was came from the Whiteout?  How much of that man would go away when it was undone?  And more importantly, could he ever live with the woman who took something he loved so much, being a superhero, away from him?

"Says the lady who kicked a steel security door right off it's hinges and not two months ago fought toe to toe with the world's most powerful Pushes."  Washington always came up when we went into this argument and it always set me off.  It always made me think of Eric.  "Who's breaking which laws of reality again?"  I could feel a floodgate opening in my heart.  I had managed to keep the real truth of the Whiteout away from Extinguisher, away from all the Atlanta Five.  To show them that the only way to truly save the world from all the tragedy of the post-Whiteout world would be to stop it entirely, that they were as much part of the problem as the solution, I just didn't want to hurt my friends that way.  Now, though ... if Ex wanted to push that way, he could get to know the truth.

"Okay, alright."  I turned from the window and right up to him until we were practically nose-to-neck.  "You want to know the big answer to that?  I'll tell you ..."

In one fell swoop (more like in one raging tirade), Extinguisher became the fifth person I knew of in the world to know the truth of the Whiteout.  Also, our roller coaster ride of a relationship ran out of track, becoming a horrible, mangled wreck.  We avoided being alone with each other from that point on, though we both knew how important the Five's and the Foundation's work was.  Our unspoken rule was to not let the hurt show and to keep those two wild, crazy, passionate months hidden from our friends and colleagues.

It was the spiraling descent that broke me out of the past.  On more pleasant days, I would have my head leaned against Ex's back, using him like a cuddly ice pack for whatever bruise or cut I had from a day's work, and we'd always hit that particular spiral down to my apartment window.  Why did he feel compelled to come this way?  He had three whole axis of movement to plan his approach but instead he chose the one path that would bring those pangs of memory into me.  I grit my teeth, not from pain, but surety.  I wasn't going to let myself fall into the trap of self-doubt and recrimination.

As we spiraled around the eight-story office building, I could see that Rachel's call to arms had brought not only Extinguisher in from patrol, but the Human Tank as well.  The eager cyborg teen had worn a tread in the loading dock entrance.  I could only guess that Ex had called in during our return trip, as Tank had a cushion set on his tank-like lower body.  Finally setting down, I didn't even voice a complaint and flopped down on the cushion, stomach first.

"Finally, someone I'm happy to see."

Chapter 5 Home

"Heya, Indy; heya, Ex; heya, armored dude, I'm really glad to see you too because I was with Eye and we were tracking clues on that Mackenzie dude and then Rachel called so I tore treads back here and then Ex called so I got here!" the Human Tank enthused.  "How bad are you banged up, not too bad I hope, and anyway who's the new guy, I don't recognize him, so is he a new local or an out-of-towner?"

"Tank," Ex managed to get a word in as the excitable cyborg paused for breath.  "Just take Indy to the infirmary.  I'll show our 'guest' to where he needs to go."  He was very unhappy with the situation and I couldn't blame him.  Just because I was willing to put up with a Crusader for the moment didn't mean I was jumping up for joy about the idea.  Of course, at the moment, I didn't feel like jumping at all.  Fortunately, Archer, having landed down beside us in the loading area, kept his lips sealed in what had to be a rare burst of common sense.

"Okay, here we go!" Tank called out behind him.  I gave him a clap on the back with my good arm as we rolled up through the loading dock doors.  The Foundation didn't often need the dock for conventional purposes but how else would a kid with tank treads for legs get into the place?  "You've gotta stop getting beat up so much, Indy, I get all worried about you because you're not a Pushed even if you're kinda like one but you seem to get hurt a lot more than we do and you're like my best bud!"

I grumbled some kind of complaint but, in essence, Tank was correct.  I didn't have a sheath of unreality covering my body to protect the squishy bits.  Even the physically weakest of the Pushed had inhuman durability for that one reason.  I had ... skin.  Even my one 'super power' sent my body into overdrive so much that my metabolism ate through my body's calorie reserves fast.  If I used it for too long, it was potentially lethal in and of itself.  So why was I doing this again?  It was a question I asked myself more every day.

"Here we are," the treaded teen announced.  Even face down, I could tell by the antiseptic white light we were in the infirmary, so I pushed myself up and rolled onto my feet.  Duane Brooks, the other half of my favorite pair of FBI-agents-turned-private-investigators, was already there, snapping rubber gloves onto his meaty hands.

"Good afternoon, Doc," he nodded.  "Glad to see you're still in one piece."

"Not for lack of trying," I argued.  "I really need you to work on me as fast as you can.  Ex is keeping an eye on our Crusader friend -"

"Crusader?!"  Tank's engines revved and energy started to crackle down his forearms.  "Why didn't you say that guy was a Crusader because I would have whomped him right -"

"Tank!  He's helping out.  This whole mess is something bigger than our two sides squabbling.  For now, he's cool, got it?"

"If you say so," he replied, "but I better still go find Ex and help watch the dude because you can't trust those Crusaders but at least they aren't Hogs or Pushcrooks so there's that but still .... those guys!"

"Then get on out of here and stop agitating my patient, kiddo," Brooks advised.  "Shit, who knows what injuries you have her aggravating every time you make her shout like that."

"I'm not a delicate wilting flower, you know."  My protest was patently ignored by both of them.

"Okie dokie, Duane, I'm gone!"  The Human Tank left a gouge in the floor behind him as he trundled off to find Ex.  With all of the Five almost constantly in a mind-link courtesy of Mind's Eye, he undoubtedly was heading straight to him.  Brooks shook his head and slapped the examination table.

"Now, you, get up here and let's see what you've mangled this week."

"Real vampires, huh?" Brooks asked as he dug grenade fragments out of the hole in my back.  I had waved off any kind of pain-killer for the moment, instead focusing the pain away.  I needed to be clear-headed for at least a bit longer; there was too much important information to get across.

"Well, as real as anything else these days," I said, chin propped up by my good forearm.  "It was like dealing with Reaper: The Pushed shell was controlling the, well, corpse.  Really gruesome.  What worries me more is not knowing what spawned it."   There was a pulling feeling and a sickening sound in my back.

"There you go, you little bastard," Duane shouted triumphantly.  "You're lucky as hell.  Small bugger managed to wriggle deep, but it missed the more vital spots."  There was a small clink of metal as he continued.  "I think it's best to assume that the entire Hog cell are bloodsuckers now.  What about this Archer dude?"

"I almost punched the hell out of him," I confessed.  "Just the gall of Epic teleporting in his goons here almost made me lose my cool, but ... this vampire thing.  This is new.  This is bad.  If he's willing to follow the rules, I couldn't turn down the help."  I could feel the spray of liquid as Duane cleaned the wound to pack and dress it.

"I can feel you.  Hogs are one thing, but vampire terrorists?  That's the kind of shit that'll give you nightmares."  There was the tearing of medical tape and, a few moments later, Duane tapped my shoulder.  "You can get up, all done."  As I got up off the table, he was already scrubbing his hands in the sink.  "There sadly isn't a thing I can do for the arm.  There's no break, just a lot of damaged muscle and nasty bruising.  Best advice I can give you is to try not to use it much until it heals."

"Okay, I'll try."  I pulled my t-shirt back on.  "Uh, Duane, I know it's probably early yet but -"

"Hell no, Irene."  Brooks had turned off the water but was still facing the sink, leaning on it with both hands.  "If you need to take that many each day just to deal with the pain, you need to scale this shit back.  It's not healthy; this shit is addictive."

"Sure, Duane, I'll do that."  That frustration was building up inside me.  No matter who I talked to these days, no matter what good I was doing, I was always the villain of the argument.  "I'll sit back, take a day off, and let, who knows, a dozen people die?  Or should I only take the day off if it will only cost five lives?  Twenty?"

"You keep this up, Doc," he replied, "and you'll only be responsible for one death: your own.  Even with how fast you heal, you're getting hurt faster than you get patched back together."  He turned towards me, a deep frown etched on his features.  "Nobody here wants to see that day when someone brings you back home in a body bag."

I wanted to shout something, to make a clever retort, to demand he give me the pain-killers and muscle relaxants that I swore I needed to keep doing my job.  Staring into his eyes, though, I couldn't.  I could almost see what I was turning into reflected back at me.  My stomach flipped as I lost my focus, bringing all the physical pain rushing back in one giant wave.

Duane was there, catching me by my good arm before I crashed to the floor.  The world lurched for a moment and then stabilized.  I was still in agony and my stomach was tossing and turning, but I could stand.  Even so, I didn't push Brooks away.

"What the hell am I doing, Duane?"

"Doc, let me get Tank or Ex to get you to your room.  Just get some rest and shit will sort itself out."

"Look, keep the team on task."  I poked Duane with a finger.  "This is a plague and -"

"I can do the damn math, Irene."  Duane gave me a hard look.  "But there isn't anything you can do until your shit is together."  He put me into a chair.  "Now sit."

"Like I have a choice."  I tried to find a position that didn't aggravate the wound in my back.  I had to concede one thing, for certain.  I was in no condition right this moment to go back out in the field.  Plotting with myself, I conspired to get a few hours rest, then be back up and ready before sundown.  That would be when things would get scary and I would have to be ready for it.

"I didn't even know you were back," I remarked as Medusa helped me through the door to my quarters.  The Latino snake-woman smiled, unable to conceal a hint of fang.

"When Rachel put out the call, well, my leadsss weren't panning out anyway," she replied, her snake hair twisting and writhing.  If Ex was my actual ex and Tank my younger brother, Medusa would be my best friend.  She was the most inhuman in appearance of the Atlanta Five, but perhaps the most human underneath the shell.   "A call to armsss ssseemed more important than quesstioning the same men for the tenth time, especially when it wasss you in trouble."  I was regaining my own feet, but Duane had still been insistent that someone help me up to the room.  Now that the pain wasn't crashing down in one sudden lump, I could manage it.  That didn't stop me from letting Medusa help me down to the side of my bed.

"Thanks, I appreciate it," I said honestly.  "With everything going on, I don't want to be in the way, so if you want to catch up with everyone down at the lab -"  Medusa waved a scaled hand to cut me off.

"No way,
chica
," she said.  "From what I'm getting over the mind link, I don't need to be around to watch thisss Crussader and Ex puff up like cobrasss at each other."  Her snakes hissed.  "Men, right?"

"No comment.  I had to keep them from an all-out brawl when Extinguisher showed up in the first place.  Not that I would have blamed him too much, considering the situation."  I hadn't even put my jacket back on down in the infirmary, so I tossed it haphazardly in the direction of my laundry bin.  The snake-woman flipped a chair around and set down in it with that sinewy grace that couldn't be duplicated by a mere mortal.

"Irene."  I was just starting to settle on my side when the use of my actual name caught my attention.  "Forget everything going on down there."  Medusa's reptilian eyes remained impassive, but I could see the eyes of the actual woman underneath grow concerned.  "There'sss been sssomething eating at you for a while now and I am ssserioussly worried about you."

"There's nothing wrong that putting Epic and Mackenzie behind bars won't fix."  I was feeling horrible enough at the moment; why did everyone suddenly decide it was 'dissect-Irene's-emotional-state' day?  "Until then, there's just not going to be much time for anything else."

"None of that isss going to happen overnight or we would have already done it," she astutely noted.  "None of it isss going to happen without you, either."  I let out a sigh.  I didn't want to get into the same argument I almost got into with Duane just minutes before.

"I'm not trying to get killed, Meds," I said.  "At the same time, though, what do you think the real bad guys out there are doing?  I bet none of them are stopping to take a few days off to rest up or to just enjoy the day."  Medusa stroked her chin with a long finger.

"Well, maybe you ssshould assk the one perssson who could tell you that later.  You might be sssurprissed by the ansswer."  I really had been a step behind my usual self all day; we had a source of information we never had before.  A semi-friendly font of insights into how the Crusaders operated from the inside out.  I started to force myself up off the bed until the snake-woman shot me a reproachful look.   "When I ssaid later, I meant it.  Doctor'sss ordersss are for you to get sssome resst and heal."

With a sigh, I relented and tried to relax.  I was really showing my ass today and I knew it.  Maybe the stress of bearing all this responsibility was starting to make me crack.  There was no relief; the one outlet I had tried to make for myself ... well, that ended horribly.  I rubbed my hands over my face and realized I had yet to take the mask off.  I was beginning to wonder if, one day, the mask wouldn't come off; that it would be a permanent part of my face.

A gentle, scaled hand pulled first one, then the other arm away.  In the time I had been lost in those thoughts, Medusa had gotten the acetone solution from my dresser and come back.  She dabbed at the edges of my mask with a soaked cotton ball and peeled away at the loosened spirit gum.

"Meds, I'm sorry."  Taking off that mask was like taking a thousand pound weight off of my shoulders.   "I've really been -"  Her snake hair collectively hissed for silence.

"Ssshut it,
amiga
."  She shook her head slightly.  "Apology accepted and let'sss not make more out of thisss.  We might not be like you, whatever you are, but we're not ssstupid either."  She laughed, accompanied by a chorus of snakes.  "Not that I think you think we're ssstupid, but let'sss be real, you know thingsss we don't."

"Well ..."  She was, of course, right.  Her job before the Whiteout was as a social worker and Meds had a very good eye for people.  Seeing what had happened when I brazenly told Ex the whole truth, I was certainly never going to tell it to the rest of my Pushed friends.

"I don't want to know," she said, sitting back down.  "If you aren't telling usss, there'sss a good reasson.  The important thing isss that we know it'sss a burden on you.  We all make allowancesss for that.  Jussst lissten to usss when we tell you to ssslow down."

"Alright," I acquiesced, "I'll honestly try."  I glanced at her sidelong.  "Just promise that someone will get me up before sunset."  Medusa let out a put-upon sigh.

"Even now, you are alwaysss thinking about the misssion," she said as she threw up her hands, her snakes writhing in concert.  "Fine, Irene, you win.  I'll make sssure."

"Thanks, Meds, I owe you."  I absently kicked off my boots and rolled over to a more comfortable position.  The fatigue of using my abilities was beating out the pain now and sleep was coming on unbeckoned.

The last thing I was conscious of was Medusa pulling a blanket over me as I completely passed out.