He stops pacing, catching her drift. “You’re pregnant? Since when?”
Brianna hesitates. She hasn’t told anyone yet, not even Lon. And Lon, with his skepticism of the career
bad boy,
certainly would not approve of her telling Johnny. “Confirmed it today,” she divulges. Johnny has proven himself trustworthy in her court, time and time again. “Went to see my doctor on my lunch hour.”
“So, it’s early?” He continues to question, his cogwheels spinning. “Were you trying?”
“We weren’t
not
trying.” She grins. Her color may be ghastly, but her emerald green eyes sparkle with happiness at the revelation.
“Well, then…shit…you can’t take this case,” he blurts out with concern.
“The morning sickness will pass,” she assures. “It’s just gnarly in the first trimester.”
It would be best to catch her in the first trimester. Otherwise, we cannot manipulate the embryo,
Dr. Godfrey’s words from her first pregnancy with Braydon ring through Johnny’s memory.
“I’ll be more than capable of handling this case,” she continues, attempting to convince herself in the process, as she takes another sip of water even the odorless and tasteless liquid is nauseating.
Johnny shakes his head, his hand waving through the air. “No. I mean, you can’t take this case. Now that you’re pregnant. It’s too dangerous, Brianna.” He leans over her desk, his palms pressing firmly into the wood.
The bad boy rarely uses her given first name these days. He always has some shortened version or provoking nickname for the
jolie blonde.
“Seriously? Brianna?” She questions his scolding, parental tone.
“Ah, yeah,
Brianna,”
he adds an even stricter quality to his voice. Pushing off her desk, he turns for the exit door, sputtering the entire way. “You’ve gone bat-shit crazy if you think I’m gonna be a part of you taking on the Gambinis while you’re pregnant. They’re fucking ruthless,
Brianna.
Do you think they care that you’re pregnant?”
“Well, somebody has to do something,
Johnny,”
she snaps back, accentuating his name the way he has hers. “They don’t even need to know I’m pregnant. They don’t need to know anything about me, period. It’s the 21
st
Century. I’m a prosecutor. They can’t just go around bullying prosecutors. We don’t operate on the
good ol’ boy
system anymore. It’s my job to stand up for what’s right.”
“Yeah. Go ahead and tell Vinny Gambini that. I don’t think he got the memo,
Brianna.”
Stopping at the door, he turns to her shrewdly. “Does Lon…
Loverboy,”
he quickly covers his sincerity for the adolescent friend, “know?” Already wise to the answer to that question by the fact that she is biting at the Gambini case, Johnny threatens before walking out the door to her office, “You tell him. Or I will.”
Patting her hand fondly over her stomach, she talks to her unborn, “It’s alright, baby. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Her head tilts upward resting on the back of her chair, her eyes fixating on the ceiling. Visions of her parents and their unrequited past flash through her mind like snapshots. It seems a lifetime ago, yet she cannot let it go—her search for reparation.
The silhouettes in her mind briskly turn to Lon and Braydon as she tries to fill in the blanks with the child she carries now.
Will it be a boy or a girl? Will it favor her or Lon?
Her questions plaguing her determination and drive for justice, she wonders why her family—her beautiful, growing family—is not enough to extinguish that void.
Looking across her desk at the glass door to her office, she catches her reflection—the auburn hair a reminder of the skull she and Lon found years ago. Even though she has grown accustomed to its crimson shade by now, she is still befuddled as to how it came to replace her natural blonde locks. Assured it had something to do with cutting her hand on that skull, her emerald greens glance down at the inside of her palm, the raised and pearl-beaded scar still residing.
She and Lon swore off any further
blood
experiments the night after they buried the skull in his father’s backyard. Half convinced her persistence for justice has something to do with the skull and the blood and the whole eerie happenstance, her desire—her need—to avenge those wronged (many of whom she has no personal ties to, has never laid eyes on before) seems more of a calling than a job. It’s as if she cannot help herself from helping others, no matter the cost.
Her hand scribbles on a notepad an organic fleeting thought from her subconscious:
‘
This’ is what I do,
I sit. I watch. I wait.
But, I don’t know why.
As autonomic as taking a breath,
A divine assignment,
Too compelling to defy.
In his discreet lab, tucked away in a rather seedy side of town, Dr. Godfrey’s concentration is interrupted by the whining of a familiar souped-up Triumph Bonneville motorcycle. He shuffles to the door, his posture slouched from many years of leaning over a microscope.
“To what do I owe this visit, Johnny, my boy?” The happy, round-faced hematologist hurries the bad boy into his lab, his gaze peeking about the street and sidewalk for any busybodies or Peeping Toms.
“Test me again,” Johnny wastes no time getting to his business, “see if I’ve gotten any stronger.” He prepares himself in the training room, limbering up his body. His eyes begin to flicker—beams of pale blue dance about the room, shifting with the trajectory of his stare.
“We just tested you last month. Don’t you think you’re being a bit overzealous?” Dr. Godfrey argues, willing to bet all the money in his bank account that Johnny’s performance has not enhanced measurably. He does not want the bad boy to grow discouraged.
“Just do it,” Johnny barks, “please.” Peeling his shirt off, he hops bare-chested up onto the treadmill, powering the speed and incline as fast and furious as they will go. His hands work nimbly in assembling medical
leads
to his chest and hands—leads that measure his heart rate, oxygen saturation, lung capacity, etc. “I feel stronger than I ever have,” his admission releases conflicted from his mouth as he tries to convince his physical self to get on the same page as his mental self.
Dr. Godfrey shakes his head disbelieving, but obliges. Grabbing up his trusty clipboard, he begins to document his student’s potential.
Johnny hones in on the objects (targets made of glass, wood and concrete) in front of him as he sprints away on the treadmill. His eyes project rays of pale blue about the room with focused power in the direction of the objects. Glass shatters and wood splinters with each successive dart of his eyes. “Come on, goddammit,” he grits out between clenched teeth. The concrete remains intact no matter how hard he tries to obliterate it.
“Now, don’t get frustrated, Daredevil,” Dr. Godfrey coaches encouragingly. “You’re using up two different energy sources at one time.” He nods to the treadmill and the objects. “It only makes sense to falter in one of the two categories.”
Johnny lurches off the treadmill with one formidable leap. Coming down from the air on the balls of his toes, he positions himself directly in front of the remaining targets. Using his fists and the heels of his palms, he demolishes the rest of the wooden objects. He approaches the concrete bull’s-eye, his fist drawn, contemplating release.
“No!” Dr. Godfrey yells, knowing his pupil will surely end up with shattered bones. Mustering the energy to propel himself in front of the concrete target, the elder is confident that he has not moved so fast since his youth. “Do not let your powers fool you, my boy. You are, after all, human.” He pats his hands affectionately on the sides of Johnny’s face, looking intently into his eyes. “That’s why you train your vision. To save your hands.” Paternally, he gathers the bad boy’s hands in his, inspecting the redness and chafing caused to them by the demolished wooden targets.
“I should be able to bust through that concrete by now.” Johnny pulls away from him, pacing furiously. “Six years. Six years! I’ve been training. And where in the hell has it gotten me?” Unable to carry the burden on his own, he lashes out at Dr. Godfrey, “Where have
you
gotten me? I should’ve known better than to trust you. Look at you.” He throws his hands out, disgruntled, in the hematologist’s direction. “You’re old. And feeble. And weak. What do you know about power? Strength?” he huffs, turning away.
Dr. Godfrey grabs him firmly (a show that he is neither feeble nor weak) by the back of his collar, spinning him around. “Try again,” he provokes in a contrastingly gentle tone, “the concrete. With your eyes.”
Johnny preps himself, his fanatical peepers beaming upon provocation, swearing he will deliver with his fist this time if his mind (working by proxy through his eyes) is incapable. His captivating pale blue ray shoots a direct route from his irises to the center of the concrete target, which remains unscathed.
“Not through it,” Dr. Godfrey coaches, dissuading him from trying to break it apart at its core, “but against it. There’s no need to bust it apart. Try and move it. Push against it.”
Johnny releases a frustrated exhale, his head flexing side to side. He regroups, hard and fast, pushing with his eyes at the bottom edge of the concrete, his energy fixated on moving the target rather than bursting it into smithereens. Much to his surprise, it actually works—Dr. Godfrey’s approach—the hefty concrete target slides across the floor slowly but steadily.
“That’s it, Johnny, my boy!” Dr. Godfrey’s waifish form grows as erect as it can with the revelation, another milestone in their testing infancy.
The feat unremarkable for the instant gratification seeking bad boy, he strains (his face turning red, the veins in his neck bulging), lifting his pale blue ray up. The concrete target follows suit, wobbly and uncoordinated but still successfully rising up off the floor.
Dr. Godfrey watches, awestruck yet slightly apprehensive. “Impressive, Daredevil,” the words stagger from his lips at a whisper. “Easy now, my boy.” He counsels at how high Johnny is lifting the target up off the ground. The higher it climbs, the more unsteady it gets.
“I know what I’m doing,” Johnny grunts, the mental strain of lifting the concrete now draining his physical energy. Halting the target in midair, he drops his eyes to the floor much the same a wrestler would slam his opponent to the mat. As the target plummets forcefully, it splits apart at its center, the inflexible material finally giving. “Argh,” Johnny exhausts, falling to his knees completely spent from such exertion.
Dr. Godfrey documents frantically on his clipboard as if he believes that if he doesn’t write down what he witnessed immediately it did not exist. “PK…psy-cho-ki-ne-sis,” he sounds out each syllable as he endorses the latest phenomena or
power,
as he likes to refer to it.
“Psycho what?” Johnny questions, pushing up off the floor, his body now vertical but drained.
“PK…psychokinesis. The ability to move or levitate an object with the mind,” the wily hematologist explains. “Virtually the same as telekinesis.” He looks at him proudly. “This is inspiring, Johnny, my boy.”
Johnny shrugs off the compliment. “What would be impressive is if I could shatter that concrete with my eyes the same as I can with wood or glass or pretty much any other object. It doesn’t make any goddamn sense.” He paces while he vents. “I can break things. Apparently
levitate
things,” he stresses the new vocabulary. “I heal like a champ. It’s as if that blood. Their blood,” he speaks of Lon and Brianna’s commingled blood that Dr. Godfrey transfused to him, “is invincible. If I get hurt…my flesh tears open and I bleed…my body gets stronger. It repairs itself faster. If their blood is the center of all of this…the power, the strength, everything…and I have that blood beating through my veins, I should be able to bust concrete the same as wood or glass.”
“You did break concrete. I stood right here and watched you.” Dr. Godfrey’s eyes glance up over his bifocals as they dart about maniacally, enthused and sleep deprived, his bolts are nearly two turns shy of coming unscrewed.
“But the way I did it…psycho whatever,” Johnny releases frustrated, “takes ten times longer than a straight shot right to the heart of the object.” He shakes his head, doubting the entire process, his patience (six years of patience to be exact) is wearing thin. “I’m ready for more than
training,
Doc.”
“Don’t try to shuck and jive me, my boy.” Dr. Godfrey gives him a pressing glance as a disciplining father would a son. “I know you use your powers outside of training. You can’t help yourself. All of that ground-pounding you do for
Ginger,”
he refers to the once fair-haired
jolie blonde
by a more fittingly auburn name. “I know how you retrieve all of that toilsome evidence that wins her cases. If it weren’t for you, she wouldn’t have that cushy office and prestigious prosecutorial title. You’d think she would be a bit more indebted.” He turns around, hiding a guileful smirk forming at the corners of his mouth, always happy to pit Johnny against Brianna and Lon ensuring his allegiance.
“She’s grateful,” Johnny defends. “If you don’t believe me, take a look at my paycheck.”
“Your feelings for her…they have grown stronger with her blood coursing through your veins,” Dr. Godfrey probes. “Brings a whole new meaning to getting under one’s skin.” He chuckles mirthlessly, teetering between sensible and unhinged.
“Our relationship is strictly work oriented and that suits me just fine.” Johnny moves on to the next station in the training room as he works over the punching machine—a boxing machine that measures the amount of force behind a strike.
Maintaining his superhuman persona, he has learned how to control slipping in and out of it over the past six years. His pale blues continue to flicker, his numbers on the machine so impressive that many of them cannot even be calculated.