The Indestructibles (Book 4): Like A Comet (23 page)

      And then there was no noise but
the hum of machinery and moans of broken men.

      The smoke cleared and Kate let her
eyes adjust. Bedlam still stood in the center of the room, arms hanging at her
side, her chrome cyborg parts and bright orange hair glowing in the blue light.

      "This could've been me,"
she said to herself.

      Titus dropped down from the second
level, hobbling a bit, blood stained his fur. Kate knew he would wait to
transform back. He healed faster as a monster than he did as a human.

      "If I hadn't pulled through.
They would've stuck me in one of these jars and just kept me," Bedlam
said. "Just in case they needed spare parts."

      Bedlam spun in a slow, deliberate
circle, taking in the entire room, looking at each of the tubes one by one.

      "We have to destroy them, don't
we?" she said.

      "If they're still alive, we
could save them," Kate said.

      Bedlam found a control console
between two of the center tubes. She touched a few keys and a screen lit up.
Kate joined her at the terminal. Hospital-style monitors showed the vital signs
of the bodies. Nothing but temperatures and electrical currents. No signs of
life. No heartbeats. No blood pressure.

      "This should have been me,"
Bedlam said.

      "It's too late to change
that," Kate said. "So you can either quit or make the best of what
you have."

      Bedlam glared at her but said
nothing.

      "Titus, did you see a
generator anywhere from above," Kate said softly.

      Bedlam connected eyes with her and
nodded gently.

      Titus pointed toward the back wall
and limped over. Kate and Bedlam followed him. Against the back wall stood a
machine, tall and vaguely designed, humming louder than anything else in the
room.

      Kate and Titus stepped back.

      Bedlam walked up to it. She
paused, almost as if in prayer. And then she punched the generator. Again and
again, she slammed her cyborg fists, tearing the guts from it, sending sparks
and parts flying. She screamed, primal pain and anguish, something dark and
lonely and terrifying and scared. Titus still in werewolf form, turned his back
to let her rage. He knew also what that feral energy felt like.

      Kate simply watched the destruction,
the loss of control, the way each strike was like a heartbeat and each piece
torn away a shard of that same heart.

      One by one, the tubes of blue
light flickered and winked out. They were left alone in the dark. Kate felt
Titus's hand, now human, then his arm, grip hers. She wanted to pull away, but
she let him take her hand and held on tightly herself. They left Bedlam to sob
in the darkness for as long as she needed. To mourn for the dead, and to mourn
for herself.

Chapter
39:

Books
of secrets

Doc Silence stood hunched over his desk,
piles of books, some written in languages older than humanity itself, opened
haphazardly and spilled on top of each other. They included books of magic and secrets,
tomes written by wise men and mad ones, by gods and monsters, by wizards and
priests.

      In these books, Doc once thought,
were the answers to everything. But tonight, they seemed to be just stacks of
paper. Kindling for a world on the edge of burning.

      He picked up a small book, bound
in blue, its pages so papery thin as to appear made of mist. He set this aside
in favor of a massive tome, so big it required both hands to lift safely. This
one he'd stolen from a demon king, in another world, when Doc behaved bravely,
yet stupidly and did foolish things without worrying who they might hurt.

      None of them revealed the secrets
he wanted. None of them offered the answers he sought.

      Well, he thought. You don't possess
all the books in the universe. The answer might be out there in some other
wizard's library. Or maybe there just wasn't an answer this time. No secret
spell, no weapon to turn toward the sky and save them.

      He wondered if there had been
beings like him living on the other worlds the Nemesis fleet had destroyed. Magicians
who waved their fingers at the sky and caused things to change. Men these
aliens defeated simply through relentless force. Magic was not Earth's alone,
he knew. It weaved its web across all things.

      "Haven't seen you hit the
books in a long time." Jane stood in the doorway to Doc's suite. She
leaned against the frame. Out of her costume, she wore the sort of clothes she'd
first dressed in when she arrived in the Tower, jeans and a plain white tee under
a checkered shirt, two sizes too big, old canvas sneakers on her feet. She'd
pulled her hair back into a ponytail, but it still glowed with the reddish
light of a low flame.

      "Haven't had to," Doc
said.

      "Thought you knew everything."

      "Fate has a way of reminding
you that you can't possibly know everything," Doc said. He set the book
down and sat on the edge of his desk, folding his arms across his chest. Jane
stared at his arms, and Doc remembered how rarely she saw the mystical tattoos
that covered most of his upper body. His long coat hung over the back of a
chair, leaving his arms bare from his short sleeves down.

      "What are you looking for?"
she asked.

      "Answers," Doc said. "I
can't help wondering if there's a spell, some big bang I can conjure to stop
them. All these books, spells, theories, and it just feels like a collection of
parlor tricks when I really need something more powerful."

      "You got us," Jane said.
"How much more powerful you need?"

      "Something potent enough so I
don't have to take you up there with me," Doc said.

      Jane tucked her hands in her
pockets, bounced the heel of her right shoe against the toe of her left
rhythmically. She didn't look like a hero then, in the dim light, her eyes cast
to the floor. She looked young and like someone who deserved a chance to grow
up normal and happy. Doc wondered if he'd stolen that from her, if bringing her
to the Tower eliminated her chances at living an ordinary life. She was born
extraordinary. Fate had something in store for her from the moment she took her
first breath.

      That isn't fair, Doc thought. It's
a cruel and selfish world that thrusts so much power and responsibility on
someone so young. We did our best, first the Hawkins and then Doc himself, to
give Jane a chance to be happy. But people like her never stood a chance. They would
always and forever be asked to place the weight of the world on their shoulders
so others wouldn't have to.

      Doc had loved in his life. Family,
friends, partners. In spite of living in the darkness and looking up at the
world from the most shadowy of places, he had always loved. But there was no
living being he cared more about in his entire strange and inconsistent life.
Everything good Doc had in him he'd given to make sure Jane grew up to be a
hero. If I've done anything right in this world, he pondered, it is that I
haven't failed her yet.

      "What are you looking at?"
Jane asked.

      "Just thinking."

      "About?"

      "I'm going to have to borrow
a few more books," he said and scooped up his jacket from the back of the
chair.

      "You're going to her, aren't you?"
Jane said.

      "Natasha has books I don't,"
he said.

      Jane gave a disapproving glare.

      "Don't make any deals with
the devil," she said.

      Doc waved his hand dismissively.

      "I gave up dealing with
devils years ago," Doc said. "Bad for your health."

      Then they shared a short, honest,
comfortable laugh. They really hadn't laughed much in recent months, Doc
thought. They'd seen too many dark things, been through too much.

      "Hey," Jane said.

      "What?" Doc said.

      Jane threw her arms around him in
a hug. She radiated warmth, like stone on a sunny day. The solar-powered girl.
Doc hugged her back; guilt gnawed at his belly. The worst of things always came
down to them, he knew. The others had faced down terrible threats, but in the
end, there was so much Jane and Doc did to protect their friends and each
other, to keep the monsters at bay. He brought them all together, he taught
them to save the world, but even now, even knowing and trusting his protégés,
even with all his faith in them, there was nothing he wouldn't do to save them.

      "We're all going to come back
from this," Jane said.

      "Yeah," Doc said. He
knew his tone was unconvincing.

      "Fine," Jane said. "I'll
be optimistic for both of us. That's always been my job, hasn't it?"  

Chapter
40:

Let's
not lead with that

Billy almost had a chance to knock on
the door to Emily's room but, in spite of the fact she was wearing enormous
headphones and being overly engrossed in something on the computer, she spoke
up.

      "I know you're there, Billy
Case," she said. "Since when do you knock?"

      He shrugged and entered the room.
Surprisingly spare for a geek culture hoarder like Emily, but like all of the
Indestructibles, she had a tendency to keep truly personal effects elsewhere.
All of them were, in some way, afraid the base would someday be attacked and
didn't want too much of their personal lives on display here. Billy visited
Emily's room back at her mother's house. She was certainly not, by nature, this
tidy.

      He flopped down on the bed and
looked up at the ceiling.

      "Things going that well, sunshine?"
Emily said.

      "I leave for a little while
and I find out we've been secretly invaded for what, years? You guys almost die
a few times, and now I get to be the harbinger of death when I try to describe
just how bad the fleet was when I found it," Billy said. "Yeah,
things are going south."

      Emily spun around in the chair and
tossed her earphones on a desk.

      "So you met the other guy?
Horizon?"

      "Met, yeah. Can't say we had
much time to talk," Billy said. "I'm halfway between impressed
because he didn't really abandon Earth and terrified because he seems like he
kind of had a massive mental breakdown and went to become a hermit out near
Jupiter."

      "But," Emily said,
holding up a finger. "You got to see Jupiter."

      "Saturn, actually,"
Billy said. "We zipped past the other planets on the way there. Dude
wouldn't let me sightsee."

     
We did, in fact, have more
important things to do,
Dude said.

      "I know," Billy said.

      "Was that to me or him?"
Emily said.

      "Him," Billy said.

      "But right. You saw Saturn. The
planet. How was that?"

      "Amazing," Billy said.

      "I knew it would be!"
Emily said, palpable glee in her voice.

      "The whole thing made me feel
so… insignificant. The universe is so big, Em. We're these little specks of
dust and we think we're the center of the universe but we're just…"

      "What was the best part?"
Emily said.

      "The rings of Saturn,"
Billy said. "Before the fleet spotted me and I almost died. The rings were
the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

      Emily shot him a dirty look.

      "What, are you seriously
fishing for a compliment right now?"

      "I'm just busting on you,"
she said, laughing. "If we survive this, can we go out there? I don't care
how."

      "I don't know. I have no idea
how we'd get you out there," Billy said. "Dude lets me not need to
breathe in space. You'd need… y'know. Help."

     
We'll find a way
, Dude said
softly.

      "Really?" Billy said.

     
You have to actually survive
the coming invasion, but if we all do, we'll figure it out.

      "Is Dude offering to be our
tour guide?" Emily said.

      "Something like that,"
Billy said. "I think he's incentivizing us to survive."

      "All right then, let's not
die," Emily said. "Sidebar: I think we need to alert the public."

      "That sounds like a terrible,
terrible idea."

      "Not if we craft an
appropriate press release," Emily said. "Like, for instance, how
would you describe the fleet?"

      "It's this nightmarish
green-black thing, like living space ships. They're halfway between bugs and
plants and they might be immortal. Nothing about them makes sense in a human,
logical way. You look and then it's hard to remember what you saw because they
don't seem real."

      "That sounds positively
Lovecraftian," Emily said.

      "Let's not lead with that in
the press release," Billy said. He put his hands out in front of him as if
laying out a headline on a newspaper page. "Breaking News: Lovecraftian
alien body snatchers to invade Earth, film at eleven."

      "Can we call them Shoggoths?"

      "Seriously?"

      "Gugs?"

      "Now you're just making words
up," Billy said.

      "Trust me, these are the
least weird names in Lovecraft stories," Emily said. "Changing gears,
what about slitheens?"

      "What?"

      "Oods? Mindflayers?"

      "How about we just call them
aliens," Billy said.

      "Fine, but that's boring,"
Emily said. "We have a chance to come up with something original. The
gargleflargs. The poofniddles. The vormaghasts."

      "Are you seriously just
throwing syllables together and hoping they stick?" Billy asked.

      "I am 'writing,'" she
said. "Don't stifle my creativity, Billy Case."

      He exhaled and sat up abruptly.

      "Who would we tell, anyway?
Can't trust the media not to blow this out of proportion," he said.

      "We're being invaded by
aliens," Emily said. "I believe it is literally impossible to blow
this out of proportion."

      "But still," Billy said.
"Full-blown panic in the streets won't help."

      "Might be fun, though,"
Emily said.

      "Panic in the streets is fun?"
Billy said.

      Emily shrugged insolently.

      "You're such an anarchist,"
Billy said.

      "But you missed me when I was
gone," Emily said.

      "Sure did."

      "Glad you didn't die in
space, Billy Case," Emily said.

      "Me too," Billy said. "Cause
now I can die on Earth instead."

      "It's that bad up there, huh,"
Emily said, spinning her desk chair back and forth aimlessly, then letting
herself spin all the way around one time.

      He shook his head in silence.