The Indestructibles (Book 3): The Entropy of Everything (26 page)

Chapter 51:

The Entropy sphere

      The lab spread out before them like a bird's nest, a room bound by cords and wires, its high ceilings lit from lanterns far out of sight.
Jane and Solar entered first, past and future side-by-side; the metallic smell of electronics stung their noses.

      The room, a technophobe's nightmare, was walled by screens. Half-finished and abandoned experimental projects lay careless on tables, their guts exposed to the open air. Rows of computers stood ready but unoccupied, lines of numbers flowed and flickered across their screens in the darkness.

      The room hummed with power. The air was just a little too cool, like an air conditioner still buzzing on a cold summer night. Coiled cables pulsed like forgotten creatures at the bottom of the sea.

      And in the center of the room, a sphere glowed blue, lit from the inside.

      "This place looks like the movie sets of
Star Trek
and
Rent
mated and had a baby," Emily said, sidling up to Jane's side.

      "This is it?" Jane asked. "This is where all of this trouble originated?"

      Annie entered last, her strange, clockwork laser gun in one hand.

      "It looks like the inside of a bomb," she said. "How do you feel, Em?"

      Emily rocked on her feet and waved her hands around dismissively.

      "I'm fine," she said, but Jane could see a glassiness in her eyes. She wasn't quite right.

      "There's our generator," Solar said, pointing at the sphere. "Are we going to put it out of business?"

      "Wait," Emily said, walking ahead.

      The others followed a few paces behind as Emily approached the glowing cage.

      Everything about this room seemed wrong to Jane. It felt dangerous, and chaotic, on the edge of being out of control. Annie was right. It was like being inside the guts of a bomb, and this bomb could explode at any time.

      Emily stopped in front of the sphere and put her right hand against the glass. Someone else put her left palm up against the surface from the other side, matching Emily's fingers.

      "No," Jane said.

      "This can't be," Solar said.

      A dark reflection of herself stood face-to-face with Emily. This older Emily was frail, an IV piercing her right arm, her skin shining sallow and papery. She didn't have Emily's trademark neon hair. Instead the tresses that fell down her weary face sported a bland, darker shade.

      "No . . . way," Emily said.

      "Hello, me," the girl in the bubble said. "Look at me. So pretty and I never knew. We never know, do we, what we have? Not until it's gone."

      "You're me," Emily said. "But you're not."

      "I always thought I was smarter," the wasted woman said.

      "No," Emily said. "There's something different about you. Different from me."

      "I think the words you're looking for are hair and dye, darling," the woman in the bubble said.

      "Shush," Emily answered back. "What's the matter with you? You're wrong. All wrong. I can feel it."

      "Can't you though?" future-Emily said. "Can you feel the chain reactions? Can you feel a universe collapsing in my sorrows?"

      Emily leaned in closer.

      "What did they do to you?" she asked.

      "There is no perfect machine," the girl in the bubble said. "Everything breaks. Even me."

      "They broke something in you, didn't they?" Emily said. "I can sense it. I can tell."

      Future-Emily lifted one narrow hand and touched her fingertips to her chest.

      "They broke my heart," she said. There were blue veins of sadness in her voice as she spoke. She sounded half-mad, like someone who'd never seen the light of day, the sun. "Isn't that funny? I never thought it would hurt this much. They broke it, and it's bleeding. It's bleeding stars."

      "You're going radioactive," Emily said. "You're gonna come apart at the seams. Did they do this on purpose? Why?"

      "They didn't know," future-Emily said. "Nobody knew. They thought they had in me the cure for everything. I was the future, kiddo. You will be too."

      "No," Emily said. "No, we're going to put you back together again."

      Emily stepped back, grabbed Jane by the shoulder, and spun her around.

      "They did something to me," she said in a harsh whisper. "To her. The black hole where her heart should be. The singularity. It's dying."

      "You're going to have to be more specific for me, Em," Jane said. "What does that mean? What can we do?"

      "It means she's either going to collapse or explode. I don't know," Emily said. "Jane, I barely understand my own powers and they went and put her engine back together again all wrong. I'm blind here."

      "We all are," a new voice said, stepping out from the shadows. "It's just one life, they told me. What's one life when you can change the world."

      The newcomer was a man in a lab coat, his face lined with worry more than age, thin hair turning gray. He stopped by the sphere, and put his hand against the glass palm-first.

      "I loved you like a daughter, you know," the man said.

      The woman in the cage laughed. "You haven't loved me for a very long time, Doctor Bohr," she said. "Maybe years ago, before I became your very own personal tinker toy. Now you just look at me with pity, like a child longs for a broken plaything."

      "You treated her like a tool," Solar said, voice rising in anger.

      "Fathers and daughters play catch and have tea parties," Emily said. "They don't turn each other into doomsday weapons."

      "You'd be surprised," the man said. "History is littered with abused children."

      "Who are you?" Solar said. "What do you want?"

      "I wanted to change the world. Make it a better place. Same as you," he said.

      "At the cost of the life and freedom of one little girl?" Annie said.

      "Hedonistic calculus," Emily said.

      Jane looked at her, shaking her head.

      "You thought what? Enforce peace by utilizing my powers and you could rule the world?"

      "We miscalculated," the man said. "On everything. We—"

      Emily lashed out, flinging a hand up in the man's direction.

      He went spinning into the air, then smashed against a wall full of computer consoles.

      "Bored with you now," Emily said. "Other things to do."

      Returning to the woman inside the glass cage, she asked, "How do we get you out of there?"

      "Little bird, apparently you're not listening to me," her future self said. "This cage is all that's holding me together anymore. And even with that, I don't have much time left."

      Future-Emily paused and tilted her head, pressing up against the glass again.

      "What do you suppose really happens when a singularity dies?" she said. "I don't know that we've ever really witnessed it. Maybe it will be as if nothing happened. We'll just become an empty spot in the night sky."

      "Okay, so future me is a beat poet. That's okay," Emily said. "I can live with this."

      "Em," Jane said. "Maybe she's right. If she's as smart as you are, she understands those machines. She knows what'll happen."

      "I'm not giving up," Emily said.

      "I'm not asking you to give up. I'm asking you to think straight," Jane said. "Talk with her. Maybe she knows a way."

      "I'm not quitting on her," Emily said, steamrolling over Jane's voice. "Because this is what I do. I save the day, Jane. I'm going to save the day."

      "Get that scientist," Jane said. "Maybe we can force him to help. He seemed to be aware about what was going to happen."

      "He's gone," Annie said, rejoining the conversation. "I appreciate the sentiment of knocking him across the room, but . . ."

      "Of course he's not here," Solar said. "That would be too easy. What if we break the machine? Isn't that what we came here to do?"

      "No," Emily said, running over to a bank of computers and scanning for some clue on the screens.

      "I thought we were going to destroy the cage and that would fix everything," Jane said.

      "That was before they damaged her ability to regulate her own powers," Emily said. She slammed an undersized fist down on the table. "We let her out of there, she loses the only thing that stops her from bubble of floating us into the sun or . . ."

      "Going boom," future-Emily said. "Maybe we should let me do it. Let me explode. Let's find out what happens. It'll be an experiment."

      "No. I . . ." Emily swayed and fell to one knee.

      Annie reached Emily first, helping her to stand.

      "I need to contain her."

      "How?" Annie said.

      "With my big brain," Emily said. "Keep looking for something that will help her regulate her powers. I've got to help."

      Emily left Annie at the computer hub and held out both hands toward her future self.

      Jane felt the room swim and sway as Emily's energy washed over all of them, everything taking a turn for the weird. The cage suddenly became a sphere within a sphere as Emily's bubble of float enveloped it, a faint glimmering hue holding things in place.

      "I've got you," Emily said through gritted teeth.

      "Not forever, little bird," her future self said.

      Emily's hands began to shake.

      Jane looked on in awe—it was the first time she'd ever seen Emily show signs of limitation to her powers. Lack of control, certainly, but overpowered? Not once, not ever.

      "She's right. I can't do this forever," Emily said.

      "Of course I'm right," her future self said. "I'm you, after all. I know exactly what you're capable of."

      "Do you want to die, is that it?" Emily yelled. "Is that the finale you're pushing us toward?"

      Emily's future self gestured around the inside of her sphere, as if graciously showing them the limitations of her world. "If this was all you knew, wouldn't you?" she said. "But that's not it, not all of it anyway. It really isn't. You know everything I do, you understand how this must end."

      "Annie?" Jane yelled.

      The time traveler looked baffled and worried, a sheen of sweat beading across her face.

      "I don't. I don't," she said. "I'm thinking."

      And then things got worse.

      "Jane! We need backup! They have null guns! Jessie's been hit!" Billy's voice crackled through their earbuds.

      Solar looked to Jane.

      "Null guns?" she asked.

      "The one weapon Billy can't stop," Jane said, an acidic pit burning in her stomach. "If Jessie's already been hit . . ."

      "Go," Emily said.

      "Em," Jane said.

      "Hurry," Emily said. She beamed a huge, mad smile at Jane, gritting her teeth. "We'll figure this one out. Go save our friend."

      "I can't leave you here," Jane said.

      "Yes you can. Don't leave him out there by himself. We'll be fine," Emily said. A drop of sweat hung from one eyelash, her whole body shook as she tried to maintain control.

      Jane nodded gently, and bent down on one knee. She felt her strength build, felt the earth come loose beneath her. And then she exploded upward, through the ceiling, breaking through into the sky as the sun's rays soaked her skin, recharging. Someone would live through the day, she thought. She just didn't know who would be the one to survive.

Chapter 52:

Do not go softly

      Can't you turn their guns into kites or something?" Kate asked Doc as they hunkered down behind a heavy wooden table.
Titus and Whispering had ducked out of sight as well when they found another pocket of resistance, a wild-eyed and manic gang of fighters armed with a variety of firearms and one very powerful, and very loud, gravity gun mounted on a tripod.

      The bullets were problematic but could be handled; the gravity gun posed a greater challenge. Titus tried charging it and was left with a rapidly mending broken arm for his efforts. Kate focused on Titus as he hid around a corner in werewolf form, his golden eyes appeared almost comically pathetic as his left arm knit itself back together again.

      "Kites?" Doc said.

      Kate waved her arms around dramatically.

      "Magic. Use magic. Make the bad stuff go away," Kate said.

      Doc laughed.

      He's actually laughing at me, Kate thought, nobody laughs at me, what does he think, I'm joking?

      "You say that like turning complicated weapons into sticks and paper is easy," Doc said. "If—"

      A bullet clipped off the table, peppering both of them with broken wood.

      "If it were that easy," Doc continued, looking at the bullet hole with annoyance, "I would have delivered peace to the world by now."

      The air rumbled, and the gravity gun fired again, knocking out part of the wall Whispering was hiding behind. The scarred wolf emerged from the rubble unhurt. He looked at Kate, then at Doc. He held up the spear he always carried and nodded toward the gravity gun.

      "Keep your head down," Doc said, before standing up.

      Doc waved his hand in a horizontal arc. A bow of light formed in its wake. Darts of white launched from his fingertips, scattering the enemy fighters as they ducked for cover. Doc dropped back down before anyone could fire a shot, and when he did, Whispering's spear whistled overhead like a crossbow bolt, flying with horrifying precision. Kate stole a look to watch the spear strike the gravity gun, splitting it down the middle. Sparking, popping, and sizzling, the weapon's guts fried.

      Titus ventured out next, charging into the still-distracted group of fighters. He knocked the first few senseless with a huge, closed fist. Someone managed to discharge a round with a short, stubby machine gun, and Titus roared in pain before pouncing on the man and dragging him to the ground.

      Kate leapt to her feet, taking out several guards from behind as they became distracted by the bleeding and furious werewolf in their midst. Elbows, knees, pressure points, nerve packets. Whispering moved in to chase two runners. Kate watched to see if he'd use lethal force or not, but he brought both men down without drawing blood, at least until their faces scraped along the floor.

      Titus reverted to his human form, checking the sealed, pink marks where the bullets struck him. The wounds faded in front of Kate's eyes.

      "Who are these idiots?" Titus said.

      "No matter the cause, there will always be zealots who rally to it," Whispering said in his low rumble.

      "How many more could there possibly be?" Titus said. "Why aren't they outside watching superheroes fight robots? What are they doing in here?"

      "Waiting for us," Kate said.

      "If the White Shadow isn't aware that some of us have arrived already, then we've really overestimated our enemy," Doc said. "And I don't think we have.  So the question remains, will the Shadow stay or bolt?"

      Solar's voice crackled through their earpieces.

      Kate pressed two fingers against her ear to listen.

      "Doc Silence? We need you here," Solar said.

      "What's wrong?" he said.

      "The situation isn't what we expected. We're having trouble containing things. Hoping magic might help slow events down before they get worse."

      "Who's there with you right now," Doc said. "Is everyone okay?"

      "Jane went to help Billy and Jessie," Solar said. "Emily and Annie are still with me."

      "I'll use Annie as a lock to find my way there. Stay put."

      "We aren't going anywhere," Solar said. "Hurry."

      Doc looked at Kate.

      "You okay with this?" he asked.

      "I'm always okay," she said.

      Doc took something from his pocket, an old penny, cupped it in his hand and blew on it. He leaned in and whispered something to the coin, as if requesting something personal. He turned it over to Kate.

      "Don't lose this. You need me, call me. That'll bring me back here," Doc said.

      "We won't need you," Kate said.

      "Then use it to get me back when you find the Shadow," Doc said.

      "We can handle the White Shadow," Kate said.

      "I know. But I need to be there. Promise me."

      Kate wrinkled her nose, but acquiesced. "Okay. I'll send for you."

      "Good," Doc said.

      Kate heard him speak a few words in a language not of this earth, and a doorway of pale blue light opened up.

      "Be safe."  Then, he stepped into the light and disappeared.

      One of the enemy fighters started to regain consciousness, and Kate belligerently kicked him in the head. "Stay down."

      "Pretty sure he wasn't getting back up, Kate," Titus said.

      Whispering licked his fangs absently like a predator after devouring a big meal. Then his head whipped around, ears pointed straight up.

      "What?" Kate said.

      "You," Whispering said.

      "I can hear her too. Future you is fighting someone nearby," Titus said, beginning to transform back into his werewolf shape. "We need to keep going."

      Titus completed his transformation and charged onward, racing on the heels of Whispering. Resigned and frustrated, Kate picked up the pace and ran after them. Though she was getting used to watching the Titus she knew and the man and monster Titus would become, running side by side, it made her uncomfortable. It felt too real.

      I really just want to go home, she thought.