THIRTY-ONE

WHEN THEY GOT back to Stealth’s office with Christian, Madelyn was fast asleep in Freedom’s arms. Her eyes were half-open, and her jaw hung slack. Her body sprawled like a limp rag doll.

Christian shuddered at the sight and muttered something so low St. George couldn’t hear it.

Freedom looked at Christian. “Miss Nguyen,” he said. “Good to see you, ma’am.”

She said nothing. St. George gestured her to a chair. He nodded at Madelyn. “Is she okay?”

“Just sleeping,” said the big officer. “Or whatever it is she does. Recharging?”

“As good a term as any,” said Stealth.

“She yawned and almost fell over just before we heard the gunshot,” said the captain.

St. George heard a rattling noise. Danielle pushed Barry out of Stealth’s office, using the office chair for a wheelchair. Barry looked slightly more comfortable with it than he did being carried. He had a pillow and a blanket on his lap.

Freedom set Madelyn down on the table and arranged her body so it looked natural, careful that her feet avoided the pile of ashes and burned material. Barry handed him the pillow and the huge officer tucked it under her head. He draped the blanket over her and slid her eyelids closed.

“So,” Danielle asked Christian, “how did you end up here?”

The Asian woman glowered at them. “It was what I could reach when the exes came,” she said. “I thought that psychotic bitch might’ve set some traps or defenses or something that would make it safer.”

“Watch your mouth,” said St. George.

“Make me,” snapped Christian. “I’m sorry you don’t want to be reminded that she finally ran out on all of us, but—”

“More likely,” said Stealth, “I would guess he is hoping to make you restrain yourself before I come up with a more direct way of silencing you.”

Christian gave the unmasked woman a nasty look, took in a breath to respond, and then she recognized the voice. Her face softened and she shrank back.

“What happened here?” demanded Stealth. “Was it Legion? Did Agent Smith cause this somehow?”

Christian’s eyebrows went up at Smith’s name. Then her usual surliness surged over her brief surprise. She settled back in a corner of the room and glared at the heroes. St. George wasn’t sure if it was mild shock or plain old stubbornness.

Stealth took a step toward the former councilwoman, but he held her back.

“You should get some sleep,” said Barry. “You look fried.”

“It’s been a rough two days,” St. George said. “I think I am kind of fried.”

“Both of you sleep,” said Freedom. He nodded to St. George and Stealth. “You need it more than any of us. We can do shifts until we all get caught up.”

“We’ll … we should …” St. George tried to come up with a protest, but part of him realized in the few moments of downtime his brain had started shutting down all on its own.

“I’ll wake you up in four hours,” said the captain.

Stealth took St. George by the arm and guided him back to her quarters. The small cot still had a sheet on it. It looked glorious.

He pulled the shirt off over his head and popped two buttons off in the process. It smelled like death. There were dark stains and splatters all over it, but not enough to hide the fact it had been white once. A few stitches had split on one shoulder. He let it drop on the floor. He didn’t look forward to putting it on again when he woke up.

Stealth peeled off the ragged fleece jacket. There were two or three dark patches on the arms that had dried into little spikes. Blood and gore had soaked through the fleece to make a few spots on her bra. She placed her baton and the pistol she’d taken from Billie’s body and placed them on top of the jacket.

They stretched out on her thin mattress. There was no blanket or pillows, but it felt luxurious to not be standing. She pulled his arm around her shoulders and pressed herself against him. Her skin was warm. She was always warm.

He kissed her forehead, and he was pretty sure she kissed him back, but he was already asleep.

It’s the early days of the outbreak. I don’t even know it’s an outbreak yet. In four days, I will meet the woman who will change my life forever. She will tell me the monsters are the result of an infection. A year and a half from now, we will learn where the infection came from. Two days after that she will tell me her name.

There are almost a dozen monsters—exes—in the parking lot with us. They are hunting homeless people. They won’t be exes for another two weeks, when the President refers to them as ex-humans for the first time in a televised statement. The name will stick.

A dead thing grabs my cape and tugs me off balance. I spin around and hit it in the head with a backhand. Its skull cracks under my knuckles.

With me is Gorgon. His vampiric gaze is useless against the monsters—the exes—but earlier we stopped a minor gang skirmish, and for another hour or so he is superhuman. He grabs an ex by the wrists and swings, throwing it across the pavement. His leather duster whirls open as he does. I know he looks much cooler than I do, but I am still proud of my red and green costume.

I’m aware this is a dream. Far more aware than I’ve been in a long time. This is the past replayed as present.

I slam my hand out and an ex flies across the parking lot to slam into a brick wall head-first. It slumps to the ground. Gorgon—his name is Nikolai, but I don’t know that yet—punches the last one in the jaw. Its head spins from the blow, and he grabs it and twists even more. Its neck breaks with a sound like driftwood and it drops.

A year and a half from now Gorgon’s body will be twisted by a giant monster—a bastard of the ex-virus and a failed super-soldier project—and his own spine will break in four places. His death will be quick. My friends and I will tell ourselves it was instantaneous.

He turns and looks at me. The dark irises of his goggles gleam in the streetlights. He shrugs and settles the long jacket around his body. The jacket looks wrong without the silver sheriff’s star on it, but that is still almost nine months away, and I realize I’m looking at him through my eyes, the eyes that have seen all this before.

This is the point where most dreams collapse. The point where you become too conscious of the dream and start thinking about it rather than experiencing it.

“Okay,” says Gorgon, “you’re clear this is all in your head, right?”

I stare at him. This is not how the past went. I’m not sure what to say.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, George,” the other man growls. “It’s a dream. Just a bunch of stuff you dredged up from your memories to help you figure stuff out. You’ve beat him on this level before, when you saved Karen out at Project Krypton.”

Gorgon was dead months before I traveled to Krypton. He never learned Karen’s name. No one else did, not until the night—

“It’s not me, you idiot,” he snarls. “This is all just you. All of it. Smith made you provide all the details, made you build your own prison, but you stuck me in here to help you remember the truth. You’re just talking to yourself.”

“Like Fight Club?”

“Yes, just like Fight Club, except I’m way better looking than Brad Pitt.”

I snort back a laugh and realize I’m not wearing my mask. My old costume, the Mighty Dragon, is gone. I’m back in my leather flight jacket, the one that was charred to bits fighting the demon, Cairax Murrain. I’ve got a pair of goggles of my own, but they’re pushed up on my forehead, holding my hair in place. “You were just a clue,” I say. “Because I knew you weren’t supposed to be here.”

He nods back and looks down. His body is twisted under the coat. His clothes are wrapped tight around his waist. His toes point behind him. One of his knees bends at a strange angle. “Looks like everyone dredged up some dead people to gnaw at them. Plus you had that stupid parrot sketch and all the clicking sounds. Little things your subconscious was trying to get your attention with so you’d know none of this was real.”

The parking lot has vanished into a dark gray blur. The dream is starting to fade away. Or maybe I just can’t focus on it because I don’t need it anymore. Even as I think this, another ex lumbers out of the darkness behind Gorgon. It’s a man in a suit. It has a very colorful tie. Even in death, its smile is broad and insincere.

I step forward to knock it away, but Gorgon stops me. He glares at me through his goggles. “Don’t you get it?”

I look back at him, then at the ex. It’s only a few feet from us. “Get what?”

“Jesus, you’re dense sometimes.” He turns and points at the ex. It has a United States flag pin on its collar, and also a small pin showing a bear. The seal of California. “How often do you have to have something set out right in front of you?”

“What are you talking about?”

Gorgon turns and the ex grabs his shoulder. It bites into his bicep, but the leather duster protects him. It gnaws away at the material. He shakes it loose and drives the heel of his palm into its forehead. It stumbles back and tips over. It makes no attempt to slow its fall and its skull hits the ground with a crack. The noise is loud enough that I realize—on that higher dream-level—that it’s going to wake me up. The last shreds of memory fall away, but Gorgon says one last thing before they do.

“Why are you still dreaming about me, George?”