The Push Chronicles (Book 3): Incorruptible (21 page)

"When I smashed the machine when you were escaping, it did this?"

"Gold star, but only under duress.  The answer was so pathetically obvious."  Ian shook his head, his eyes dancing wildly in his head.  With each shake, white wisps of pure God particles shook with him.

"Sorry, my dear, erratic, I know.  Time doesn't stay still in this state.  My personal time frame slips in and out of synch with the real world.  Most times I am either moving too swiftly or far too slowly to interact with anything out ... there."  He waggled skeleton-like fingers at the stilled confrontation in the rest of the room.

"So you can interact then when things align just so."  I arched an eyebrow.  "It was you, wasn't it?  You figured out how it cycled -"

"Oh, but you see, Irene, there was power to be had for the price I inadvertently paid."  If Mackenzie had heard my accusation, he ignored it in his rambling.  He drifted in an erratic circle around me, gesturing madly.  "I may not be like you anymore, but I learned that there was more to be had by embracing what had changed around us.  Though I suppose having this monstrous machine fused with my body may have had something to do with it."  He shook his torso and sparks flew from the machine that was now a permanent part of his Pushed shell.

"Why, Ian?  Why did you create that video?  Why did you set me free?  Why do any of this?"  I grabbed him by his lapels.  For now, at least, I seemed to be sharing his fate, synched to his shifts through time, and that rendered me more than able to touch the gibbering madman.  A change came over his face and, for the moment, it was once again the serious, tired face of the man I had known.

"The purpose has never changed, never wavered.  Even if I am, technically, Pushed now, they are the same dangerous force I described to you before."  He looked behind me, at the barely-moving scene of violence taking place there.  "You, of all people, have to see that now.  Epic took over the entire city and then let it fall apart, picked to pieces by his various lackeys.  It's only the start.  So I made sure that it would also be the finish."

"With Reaper?  He won't stop here.  He'll ..."  I saw the twinkle in Ian's eyes.   That wasn't it.

"Reaper was always just the motivation.  Certainly, I made certain that specific bits of information made it into the proper hands, files in the right places.  After all, I needed to ensure they made Reaper unbeatable this time, at least by any means you and your merry band could come up with."  Another bout of irrational giggles came on, but I cut them off with a shake of his jacket.  "The real calculated risk was that the military wouldn't just resort to the nukes."  He glanced at the ground.  "Now, could you please put me down?"

I blinked and couldn't think of a good reason not to.  All hurting him would do was shut him down.  Talking, even as crazy as this all still sounded, gave me information.  Maybe even a chance to pull this out if I played my cards right.

"Thank you."  Ian straightened the fraying lapels of his jacket.

"You said Reaper was the motivation?  For what?"

"Come now, Doctor, I certainly needed you to understand the real stakes of all this.  I need you.  You are the real lynchpin here, the person who can make all of this better."  He rubbed his claw-like hands as if he were fighting off a tremendous chill.

Pieces started to click together.  Ian had told me the last, well only, time we had a serious conversation that war and death were his last resorts.  His rebuilding of Eric's original reality-altering device had only been the first step to recreating the Whiteout or, more importantly, rewinding it.  That had been his true goal.  Why wouldn't he try that again with who knows how much time he had on his hands, how much power?  The onset of insanity probably helped Ian go down that same dead-end path.

"You want me to finish a new device so this can all get changed."

"What?  No!  I mean, I already built the new one."  He snapped his fingers, much like Epic would, and an exact replica of the device I had seen in Eric's laboratory that fateful day shimmered into existence.  "I did have a lot of time on my hand and little else to do aside once I had sabotaged everyone's nice little stalemate.  You would be amazed how the mind can wander if it remains unfocused."

I narrowed my eyes.  Mind's Eye's insights had been frightfully accurate once again.

"You did more than just sabotage things for the Crusaders.  You sabotaged us too.  It was you that brought the dome down."

"Well, someone had to or this wouldn't go anywhere, would it?"  His lips twitched between a grin and a sneer.  "You probably would have won if I hadn't and, well, that wouldn't push things to the level of crisis I needed.  You wouldn't listen to me until things were just so desperate you had no choice."

I caught him off-guard with the jab to the face.  My hand screamed from the fractures but the joy of watching Ian's head snap back from the blow made it all worth it.  I grabbed his staggering form by the jacket and yanked him vertical, another fist ready to strike.

"You bastard!  You killed Medusa!  Every death today, human and Pushed alike, it's all your fault!"

"Now hold on, Irene, if you kill me, you never get out of here.  God, woman, if you just make me angry, I'll let you sit in this time bubble forever, moping like a kicked puppy."  He let out a short chuckle.  It wasn't funny.   "Only I can push you back into your proper time stream.  Or ... there's always option B."  He pointed in the direction of the reality machine.  "You can fix it.  You can make it all go away."

I couldn't help myself.  My eyes followed his pointing as I set him back on his feet once more.

"As you know, not even Epic or Reaper, as godly as they are, can bring back the deceased.  The only way to save your friend, stone dead out there, no pun intended, is to use it.  Turn back the hands of time, wash our hands clean, and save us."

"Why haven't you already done so yourself?"  It was an excellent question.

"Don't you think I tried?"  He let out a miserable sigh.  "The horrific accident you caused seems to leave me ineligible.  It would seem I am always meant to be the architect but never the builder."

I walked over to where the device sat and picked up the electrode studded crown.  It was real enough, not a bit of fantastical Pushtech in it.  Like myself, it wasn't washed-out in color, something I assumed meant that it belonged in the same bit of time I was from, unlike Ian.  It was insanity that I was even contemplating using the thing but what other choices had Mackenzie left me?

My best friend was dead.  It was pretty likely that Brooks and Choi were dead as well.  The rest of my friends, well, if Reaper didn't finish them off, the military probably would.  How many innocents had already died in these past four months?  How many more would in the aftermath of this calamity?  What other choice could I rationally make?

"Before I do this, Ian, I have to know one last thing."  I looked at the madman as he loomed over me like the proverbial devil on my shoulder.  "How did you do it?  What did you do to Schuller?"

"Again, I can only take credit for the concept.  The military boys, well, they deserve the true credit."  An irrational snigger came over Ian which he cut off with a hard slap to his own face.  "Ugh, there.  My apologies.  Where was- oh right!"  That professoral tone returned to his voice.

"Reaper.  It was simple.  All it took was devising the right cocktail of anesthetics to put the conscious mind of Gerald Schuller into a trance, leaving his subconscious free and clear.  That tortured part of Gerald's mind we call Reaper was then free, unhindered by Gerald's waking mind and the sympathetic link they shared."  Mackenzie smiled at my expression of understanding and continued on.

"Oh, I can see that I am simply confirming suspicions at this point, but the true crux was that you had no way to know what drugs were in his system.  Even if you hazarded a guess, the risk to Schuller would be so great you wouldn't even try until it was far too late."

It had been a rigged game from the start and Ian had successfully played us all for suckers.  Sure, I now had several ideas on how to deal with Reaper but there was no chance to be free of this temporal nightmare, not without Mackenzie.  If I played his game, well, it wouldn't matter anymore.  The problem was would I make a world as flawed as the one Epic made?  That Ian would have made? 

Mackenzie whistled the tune to an Irish jig.  He seemed confident in the situation.  I looked up at the near-frozen scene before me.  Ian had called me a lynchpin in all of this and he was right.  I
was
a lynchpin because I held the fate of this reality in my hands but for more reasons than that, reasons I was only starting to realize.

I focused my attention on Epic's face and the man inside the god.  There it was, that flash of heroism I had seen a few times briefly.  The hero the man named Eric Flynn wanted to be.  Somehow, beaten, defeated, he found it in himself to give it one last shot, even if it was probably pointless with how weak he was.  It was all there in that unmoving slice of life and tribulation laid out for me.  The ultimate lesson to being a hero, that role I never wanted but had come to accept.

If I was one of these heroes, above all else I had to do the right thing.  I looked back down at the crown of wires and probes.  There was one vital question I realized that was more important than any other, that would determine what course was the right one.

Would I put this thing on to try to make the world better, to advance it further or would I do it simply to rewind what had been?  Did I have the right, especially in light of the fact I felt no one else did?  Could I be the next Ian Mackenzie?

"Ian."

"Yes, Irene?"

"I wanted to thank you for giving me this choice, this chance."

"I'm just glad you're going to do the right thing, Dr. Roman.  For all of our sakes."

I focused all of my considerable strength and crunched the helmet in between my palms.  Ian let out some existential screech, like a dying man deprived of oxygen, as I turned towards him.

"You taught me that history was filled with Whiteouts and that made me realize that I was wrong.  This reality, it doesn't need to stripped away.  It's just the next step.  Sure, it was birthed through tragedy and brought about too early but it's still reality now."

The madman flung himself at me, gibbering and clawing.  I shielded my face from raking fingernails with my forearm and flung Mackenzie to the ground.  In the transition from Natural to Pushed, no matter how powerful, Ian had sold off a chance of taking me in a straight brawl.

"However it goes, it's not my right or anyone's right to change it again, not like this.  I may never entirely forgive Eric for what he did, but it's done now."  I drove a motorcycle boot into the machine, toppling it over.  "It's time for dinosaurs like us to accept that."

"You insane- I- You'll never leave the in-between!  I'll die before I let you go free."  He scuttled to his feet.  "You can watch everything go to hell from here, just like I will.  We'll see then, won't we?"

"You might be right, but at least I know I did the right thing."  I actually smiled, despite the pain and grief whirling in my heart.  "I'll die soon enough and, the entire time before I do, I'll be right here, telling you that I was right every day of the -"

I cut myself off when a flash of motion caught my attention, out of the corner of my eye.  Well, it was more like molasses trickling than a rapid movement, but it was still something.

Turning to the frozen world around, things were very slowly starting to speed up.  Ian had inferred it would do this, but it wasn't like I could take advantage of it.  He certainly believed it was solely in his power to push things out of this in-between time frame; he had certainly pulled me in.  What struck me as odd, though, was that Quentin, who had been shielding his eyes in super-slow motion from the glare of the blast, was now looking squarely at me with a creeping look of disbelief.

"Gloat all you want, I don't care, Irene," Mackenzie spat as he clawed his way to his feet.  White wisps of pure power started to come off of his scarecrow form like streamers.  "I might just kill you now and save the time!"  It certainly seemed like a bluff so I kept my attention squarely on Quentin.

It was a long shot, but what today hadn't been long shots?  I ran past the shrieking Mackenzie towards Quentin as the world started to regain color and resolve to normal speed, a hand stretched out towards him pleadingly.

"Wait, wait ..."  Pleading desperation had taken over for the anger in Ian's voice.  Long, thin fingers clutched my shoulders.  "You can't go, you can't leave me!  You're supposed to save people, Irene, aren't you?"  It only took a shrug of my shoulders to throw off the stick-thin ghost of a man.

Faster.  Some recognition played on the short-order cook's face.  He had said his senses were sharper than anyone's and once more his boast seemed to be true.  His hand started to move towards mine.  The trick was if we would meet at that one fraction of a millisecond when I would be moving in his time.  It was an impossible bit of synchronicity to hope for, but I hoped all the same.

Faster still.  I held my hand in place, trusting to Quentin's unnatural senses to guide his timing.  Sweat poured down my brow as salvation was so close yet so far.

"I'm going easy on you, Ian.  Enjoy your freedom."  Those were my last words to Ian Mackenzie as, almost full speed now, Quentin's hand rushed towards mine.  I closed my eyes and made a prayer to a God that I didn't think existed to just give me this one thing, this one moment, in exchange for all he had taken from me today.