Firedrake Chapter 9

Hart’s scream of terror was a thunderous blast in Drake’s ears as he felt his teeth begin to pierce her skin. He could freely smell the sudden burst of Emergence-heightened pheromones from the woman as she attempted to use her abilities to deter his attack. His head grew fuzzy as the chemicals invaded his system. He knew that he should be biting down, but at the same time he wanted nothing so much as to release her. His hands clenched tightly on her shoulders, then flexed open and closed once more. Struggling to maintain his focus on closing his jaws, he found himself asking why he was doing this to her.

Before he had a chance to answer that thought, the giant window to his side shattered inward with a crash and he was suddenly flying backward across the room along with a thousand shards of what was supposed to be shatterproof glass. His head turned and he was looking into the sad green eyes of the man from downstairs. They slammed into the rear wall of the room and broke through in a shower of concrete and sheetrock dust. In pain, and furious at being robbed of his prey, he roared aloud and snapped with his jaws. They came together on the hand of the man and Drake yelped in shock at the flash of white-hot agony that ran through his muzzle. At least two of his teeth cracked from the assault. It was like biting into steel, or worse.

“Biting won’t work,” the man said calmly. Still in flight, he released Drake without any warning and the reptilian booster fell to the floor before his wings could come into play.

Rolling across the thinly-carpeted floor, Drake crashed through some kind of cabinet, spilling vials and jars of chemicals to the floor. Noxious fumes and tendrils of oddly-colored smoke rose where several of them mixed on the floor. Seemingly unharmed by the trip through the wall, the man touched down softly onto his well-worn boots. He gave Drake a half-smile.

“Gonna play nice now, pal?”

“Not so’s you can tell it,” Drake said in a low growl, lips peeling back to expose his teeth. Blood ran from his gums in a ghastly display. He reached to his left and gripped the frame of a small table, then threw it toward the man in the leather jacket. As the table flew through the air, Drake charged behind it, drawing back a ham-sized fist.

The table exploded into splinters as the man swatted it aside. He did not have time to retake a guard position before Drake was on him. A scaled green fist slammed into his jaw with staggering force. The man was knocked backward and to Drake’s left, blasting through a wooden lab table with a granite slab atop it. Water spurted upward as the faucet attachment ripped free of the pipes which supplied it. Shaking off shards of glossy stone and brushing wood splinters from his jacket, the man stood up, giving no other sign that he had even been struck. Drake, however, was not so fortunate. His first two knuckles broke audibly at the impact and his wrist felt as though he had dislocated it. He howled in sudden pain.

“Just stop, man. All right?” pled the man. He stood without any attempt to engage Drake. “Give it up. I don’t want to do this.”

Drake’s legs flexed and he leaped forward, claws gouging long rents in the floor. He reached forward with his uninjured left hand to grapple with the man. Calmly, as though he had little concern for the ferocity of the attack, the man grabbed the extended hand and spun in place, using Drake’s own momentum against him and slamming the booster headfirst into the nearest wall. Concrete broke again and dust rained down from the battered wall. Acoustic tiles fell from the ceiling, exposing plastic-sheathed cables and matte grey metal ventilation shafts.

Drake struggled to regain his footing. Multiple images of his opponent swam in his vision and his ears rang painfully. Powdered concrete particles spun lazily in the air, fouling his nostrils. Snuffing to clear them, he hooked a plastic chair with his tail and flung it forward, missing the man by nearly a yard. If he could keep the man at bay for a moment, he could recover and launch a fresh attack. He drew in a slow breath, tasting the chemical change in his mouth that signaled his breath weapon was ready.

“Agent Drake!” shouted the voice of Colleen Hart. It was distant and tinny in his ears, but he turned to look at her. Four images of her stood framed in the hole that he and the man had made in the wall. Drops of blood still ran down her neck and she seemed a bit unsteady on her feet, though not so much as Drake himself. Though mindful of the opponent behind him, Drake took a step toward Hart, intent on finishing what he had begun in the observation room.

“Good night, sweet prince,” said an elfin figure as she stepped up beside Hart. She wore what looked like a cheerleader’s outfit of red and green over bright blue leggings, and her hair was a brilliant orange in color with blue stripes that ran the length of the hair down to her shoulders. Her hands were outstretched and she had a triumphant look on her face. Everything Drake saw began to spin, and he staggered as he tried to take a step forward. The floor, the ceiling, the walls, all intermixed in a spiraling display that caused his stomach to surge. His arms felt leaden and his breath came heavy in his chest as he forced himself to take another step. The sensation of falling became more pronounced and he vomited noisily onto the rubble that littered the floor. The effort of being sick forced him to his knees, and he was unable to stand again as the room became little more than a carnival ride of flashing lights and spinning walls. His eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the floor as everything went black.

*****

“Mister Drake?”

The voice was a whisper in his right ear, a tiny fragment of the outside world that encroached on the pleasant senselessness in which he had been floating. It demanded his attention nonetheless, and he flicked open an eye. The sudden shock of staring into the overhead lighting was like an ice pick through his brain, and the lid hastily slammed shut.

“You’re all right, Mister Drake,” said the voice. It sounded male, Drake thought, and young. Slowly, he rolled his head to the side to see who was addressing him, allowing the eyelid to reopen when he felt it safe to do so. Still, he was hesitant after the agonizing first attempt. The light still hurt, but not as much once he had prepared himself for it.

The young man that Hart had referred to as Splicer was beside him, seated in one of the uncomfortable chairs that Drake had seen throughout his entire association with government facilities. He had a book on his lap, and Drake tried to see what it was. The angle was wrong, though, and all he caught was a glimpse of something he could not make out.

“It’s nice to have you back,” Splicer said, reaching to switch off the harsh fluorescents above them. The room remained lit by a series of smaller incandescent lamps situated at various points in the room.

“Where the—“ Drake began.

“You’re in one of the auxiliary laboratories,” Splicer said, waving away Drake’s attempt at speech. “I’m staying here for a few days while we try to figure out this whole thing. I’m not one of the favored few, so I don’t get the prime housing.”

“Hart?”

“Alive. Not happy, but alive.”

“Not happy, huh? Well, one out of two ain’t bad, I guess,” Drake said. He sat up smoothly, recognizing the object he was on as a lab table of some type. It was then that he realized just how easily he had moved. He looked down at his right hand, remembering vividly the broken bones. It looked fine, and he flexed it experimentally.

“You’re healed,” Splicer told him flatly. His face clouded. “It damned near killed me, though, so please don’t do anything rash. I have better things to do than repair someone who goes a couple of rounds with Annihilator, you know.”

“Annihilator?” Drake asked, mouth falling open. He struggled to remember what he knew about the legendary booster, but was unable to recall what the man looked like. The video footage he had viewed in the past all showed a leering psychopath in a calf-length black duster, not the tormented face he had seen on his assailant. “That was… No wonder he beat me so easily,” he mused, gnawing thoughtfully on his lower lip.

“Yeah. He calls himself Ian Calder these days, like it makes people forget who he is or what he did. Director Hart’s got him guarding Patriot. Fox in the henhouse, I say. Anyway, she figures if anybody can get past him, they weren’t going to be stopped. I guess you fired him up when you tried to eat her.”

“Well, I wasn’t gonna eat her so much as just chew on her a little,” Drake said absently, still trying to wrap his head around his current situation. Patriot, Elementaire, and now Annihilator. He suddenly felt very small and far out of his league.

“What happened in there? Who was the little fashion victim that took me out?” Drake wondered, pointing for a moment before he realized he had no idea where in the facility he was currently located. Splicer looked up at him with a sour expression.

“Vertigo,” he said with obvious distaste. “One of Director Hart’s new bodyguards. She disrupts the inner ear, as near as I can tell. I had to wait until the effects of her attack wore off to start healing you, so your body has been through a lot in the past few hours. Trust me, I mean a lot.”

Drake remembered in perfect clarity watching his own wounds close over as Splicer touched him in the observation room. He could still see the wounds appearing on the thin body of the booster who sat before him now. He looked down to see the youth massaging his own left hand as if it still ached. For all Drake knew, it might. He reached out with a long finger and touched the hand gently.

“You, uh, you felt it? The pain, I mean?” he asked, feeling stupid for asking the question as well as for the manner in which he asked. For his part, Splicer simply nodded.

“I feel it all,” he said, eyes trained on a spot on the floor. He spoke with a slow precision, as though forming the words and reviewing them before he said them aloud. “I take the pain of the sick and wounded on myself. That’s how I do it. That’s how I’ve always done it.”

“So how do you… Is it some sort of, I don’t know, some sort of regeneration?”

“Yeah. What I take in fades quickly. I remember it all, though. Ever since the first time. Every broken bone, every bullet, every skinned knee on a scared third-grader. It’s all there when I go to sleep.”

“So if I had a broken arm, say, then yours would break, too?” Drake asked .

“Yeah. If you had an illness, I’d catch it for a while, too. At least until I managed to burn it off.”

Drake took in an astonished breath as recognition set in. “You were that guy last year on the Ebola outbreak, right?”

“That was me,” Splicer verified. He sounded tired, as if even the memory exhausted him. “Eighty-eight cases, and I cleared them up in three days. I told them never again. Too much of that and I get worried I might not recover.”

Drake ground his teeth at the declaration. He had unknowingly added to the burden carried by the healer. He stepped down off the table, feeling his legs flex easily under his weight. He looked around at the room, then at himself, noting without surprise that while he still wore his usual dual shoulder holsters, they were empty.

“Well, that’s kinda what I figured,” he muttered to himself. He changed the subject, as much out of curiosity as to avoid causing the healer any further emotional distress. “How’s the Man doing?”

“Patriot?” Splicer snorted derisively. “I tried to work him. Left me with a headache and a stomach full of twisty feelings. Whatever’s in there is better than me.” “He’ll make it,” Drake said with an enthusiasm that didn’t reach his own heart.

“You’ll want to see him, I’m sure. Everybody does. I’ll take you. Besides, I’m supposed to bring you down to Director Hart when you wake up.”

“Good. After talking with you, I’ve got an idea.”

“Don’t make me have to heal you again,” Splicer warned. Drake laughed.

“Not that kind of idea. The kind where I might know what’s going on with Patriot.”

“Oh, yeah? What?”

“No, no, no,” Drake said, waggling a finger. “You’ll have to wait to hear it with the rest of them.”

Arching an eyebrow in curiosity, Splicer stood from the chair and set aside the book. Drake caught a flash of the cover. It was a pale, flat yellow-khaki in color, with letters of an odd green shade across the cover. It reminded Drake for a second of generic food products, with their cold and stark labels of ’Bran Flakes’, ’Beer’, and so forth. It took a moment for the actual words to register with him.

SMALL UNIT SELF-DEFENSE AGAINST AIR ATTACK was the title, and the words DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY were spelled out in smaller letters at bottom of the cover.

“Military field manuals?” he asked, gesturing toward the book.

“Yeah. I, uh, I kind of grew up with them,” he replied as a blush spread across his cheeks. “You read anything special?

“Got a subscription to Naked Gators Monthly,” Drake quipped, pulling open the door to the room and holding it for the smaller man. They stepped into the hallway and Drake stopped short as he saw the pair of Marines standing in the hall, their rifles held at a perfect port-arms position. There was one on either side of the door, and they were both watching him.

“Y’all ain’t here for little ol’ me, is you?” he asked, exaggerating his drawl. He folded his hands over his chest and sighed like a love struck schoolgirl in a Japanese anime film. “It’s so sweet!”

“We’re your escorts, Agent Drake.” said one. “You have been placed under suspension, and ordered to report to Director Hart.”

“Yeah? That’s fine. Escort me to her, then, escorts.”

The pair of Marines did not take the verbal bait, and they led Drake and Splicer through the labyrinthine tunnels that made up the underground complex, guiding them unerringly to a large bank of elevators. The ride was silent, though Drake noted that they were descending again, which told him that the laboratories in which Splicer was staying were situated on a higher level than the medical bays. A part of him dismissed this as useless information, but another part filed it away for future reference. Drake never knew where his job would lead him, and knowing the layout might well prove to be valuable at some point.

Their final destination proved to be a conference room. As the heavy wooden doors opened ahead of them, Drake saw a single table that dominated the chamber. It was at least fifteen feet to a side and surrounded by occupied chairs. Hart stood at what could nominally be called the head of the table with a pointer in her hand. A projector displayed various images of chemical compounds, MRI images, and an assortment of technical data that Drake had no hope of understanding. As the doors spread to admit Drake and Splicer, all heads turned to see who had interrupted the meeting.

Never one to waste an opportunity for a grand entrance, Drake drew himself to his full height and let his wings rustle out slightly to show them off. He narrowed his eyes and stretched his lips back in a feral grin. Wisps of smoke drifted from his nostrils.

“Agent Drake,” Hart said, her voice carrying easily through the large room. He noticed that she had a gauze bandage on her neck. “You’ve been suspended, so I don’t see why you’re even here. Will you behave, or do we need to sedate you again?”

His head turned slowly to take in the group in the room. Vertigo was present, seated in a chair near to Hart’s position. Drake marveled anew at the horrific blending of clothing styles worn by the girl. He recognized a few of the other geneboosters, having worked or trained with them at some point in the past. The remainder of the crew he figured for scientists or doctors of some kind. Most of them were looking at him with eyes full of fear or disgust. There were also four more Marines set at strategic points in the room. Each was armed with what appeared to be oversized shotguns. Survey complete, he returned his attention to Hart.

“You want to dick around asking stupid questions, or do you want to know what I figured out about Patriot?” he asked as he folded his arms across his chest.

Hart made a snorting noise as a smile flickered across her face. “What you figured…“ She struggled to control herself for a second, then raised an inviting hand. “Feel free,” she said.

Drake approached the table slowly, allowing the thudding of his feet to play a bass counterpart to the harsh clicking sounds of his claws on the floor. There was no sense wasting the effect of his entrance, and drawing out his declaration added to the tension of those in the room. As he closed on the wooden slab of the table, he lowered his hands to brace himself on the edge. It creaked beneath the pressure and he backed off just a little. He let his eyes rove over them all once more, waiting for the perfect moment. Signs of exasperation were beginning to overtake those of dramatic tension and he suddenly slammed his hands down on the table, shattering off a foot-wide piece and causing everyone present to jump in surprise. The Marines jerked their weapons into position to cover him.

“There’s NOTHING wrong with him!” he shouted.

There was a moment of confused silence, then a chorus of derogatory noises and comments began to spew from the assembled group. Drake flicked out his tail and picked up the piece of broken table, let the people try to talk over one another for a few seconds, then tilted his head back and let out a roar that rattled the lights in their fixtures. Everyone fell silent before the auditory onslaught, some covering their ears in response to the volume.

“You people are supposed to be smart!” Drake declared. He held up the broken piece of wood that was still held by his tail. “How come you all seem to be about as thick as this wood?”

“Yo, man, what the hell are you saying?” called one of the boosters. The Justice Department knew him by the name of Scope. He had been brought in on the Patriot case for his visual acuity. Scope could see through most objects, and his eyes were able to focus microscopically down to a near-molecular level. He usually worked in the Department’s forensics labs, helping to analyze substances or items located at crime scenes.

“He’s not fighting himself. He’s being himself,” Drake declared. “All he’s ever done is defend someone, or something, or some lame-ass philosophy. What’s happening is that his body is going full bore to defend itself. All the cells are ganging up on the other cells, right? And when you try to counter anything, they gang up on your attempts and push them out. Whatever happened to him has put his system into some kind of hyperactive defense mode, and you’ve got to figure out why.”

One of the men seated at the table raised a hand. Drake chuckled and pointed at him. “The dumbass in the lab coat has the floor,” he announced in an imperious tone. No one else seemed amused. The man took a second to compose himself, clearly not thrilled with the prospect of directly addressing Drake. He polished his glasses on a handkerchief and peered through the lenses before replacing them on his nose. Only after he had taken the time to do so did he begin to speak.

“You come in here without any medical training or scientific background, take a look at the patient, then just miraculously come up with this theory,” the man said. His tone was that of a professor lecturing a student, and it rankled Drake. “You have not even examined the previously-collected data. We have noted several different shifts in the functionality of the patient’s central nervous system, a pronounced variance in serotonin and norepinephrine levels, and a tendency toward spontaneous antibody generation. The patient is exhibiting a variety of symptoms ranging from near heatstroke to hypothermia, and shows a marked disposition toward phagic activity among his leukocytes as a result of - ”

“Yeah, yeah, and the angels from above came down to play their harps and sing over him!” Drake yelled, cutting off the doctor in mid-flow. “What does it take to make you shut the hell up, slick? I mean, you know what I’ve heard for the last thirty seconds, huh? I heard ’blah, blah, blah, patient. Blah, blah blah, data’ and, personally, I’ve about had it up to my ass with your ’blah, blah, blah’. Think you might, just once, stop and consider that sometimes you don’t know everything? I mean, obviously, if you knew what to do, he’d be up and running around in that sissy suit of his, saving the world from radioactive dandruff or some such shit.”

“Show some respect,” one of the scientists gasped, her mouth open in shock at the statements she had just heard.

“Respect? You want respect?” Drake raved, glaring at the woman with his best ’be afraid’ expression. To her credit, the woman did not faint, as some had in the past. Drake flung aside the shattered piece of tabletop and used his tail to drag the figure of Splicer up to the edge of the table. The youthful healer stood at a parade-ground-perfect pose of attention.

“This is the one that should get your respect!” he said. “Not only has Splicer done more to help than all of you put together, he’s the one who showed me what the problem was.”

“He wasn’t able to heal Patriot,” Hart noted. “He’s damned good, I’ll give you that, but this was something he couldn’t handle.”

“He handled it, all right,” Drake countered. “Handled it so well he gave it to me when he healed me. See, I’ve been thinking about it. I hate you, Hart. No secret there, right?”

Hart nodded. “He does,” she said dryly, confirming the statement for the others at the table.

“You’ve been screwing me over one way or another for years now. But have I ever once so much as taken a swing at you? No. And why? Not ’cause I’m afraid of you, or in awe of your title, or ’cause I like your haircut. Basically, it’s because you ain’t worth the effort,” he said with a grin.

“That’s not what you thought when you sucker-punched her upstairs, Green Meanie,” Vertigo interrupted. Drake looked at her and shook his head in disbelief.

“Where the hell did you come from, little girl? Ain’t there any more child labor laws? Tell you what, Gidget. How about you shut up and sit back, ’cause the grown-ups are talking here.”

“I’ll put you in a spin again, big boy,” she threatened, rising from her chair.

“Hart, put your monkey back in its cage,” Drake said in a bored voice. “And tell her if she speaks out of turn again, I’ll dress her up as Malibu Barbie.”

Hart placed a restraining hand on Vertigo’s shoulder, easing the girl back into her chair. Despite the caution of her employer, Vertigo could not resist a parting shot. Looking at Drake from eyes that radiated contempt, she stuck out her tongue. “I made you hurl,” she boasted.

“Only when I looked at your outfit,” Drake said with a chuckle. Incredibly, the sound was echoed from several positions around the table and more than one of the Marines.

“So what happened?” Hart asked, cutting off Vertigo before the angry girl could respond. “What made you jump me?”

“A couple of things, actually. I’ll address some of them later. The only one that really matters at the moment is right here,” Drake told her, dropping a clawed hand onto the shoulder of Splicer. The youth looked up at him with a stunned expression.

“I didn’t...It wasn’t...” he stammered, and Drake nodded.

“Yeah, you did. But it wasn’t anything intentional,” he added, seeing the Marines shift their points of aim marginally in favor of the small booster. “You were just helping.”

“Helping what?” Hart demanded.

“Splicer here, he heals folks. Y’all know that much. What most of you don’t know is that he does it by absorbing the damage of the victim. My theory, and yes, that’s all it is,” he said, directing a murderous stare toward the labcoat that had spoken before, “is that whatever’s tearing up the Man got absorbed when Splicer tried to fix him. A little bit, at least. It made him need to heal people in the same way that Patriot needs to defend them. Well, he saw me all banged up and did his thing. Next thing I know, I can’t see you as anything less than the enemy,” he told Hart.

“So you’re saying that he transmitted this disease or whatever to you? And that’s what made you so mad?” Scope asked from his seat. He had propped up his Nikes on the table and was leaning back in his chair.

“Well, I don’t think it’s what made me mad,” Drake answered with a shrug. “Just made me act on my anger instead of holding back.”

“Makes sense,” Hart admitted. “Patriot defends people, Splicer heals them, and Drake…”

“Attacks them,” several voices said at once.

“There you go,” Drake said with a nod, making no attempt to dissuade the opinions that characterized him as so violent.

“But it wore off, right?” Splicer asked, withdrawing a much-abused pad and pencil from one of his pockets. When he flipped it open and rifled through the papers, Drake saw page after page of scribbled chemical equations and notes that could only have made sense to the author. Using the pencil, Splicer began to document what had been said.

“Seems to,” Drake said. “Hey, Hart? Wanna help me run a test? Put your head back in my mouth and see if I feel like biting on it.”

“I believe I’ll pass, Agent Drake,” she replied dryly. She looked to Splicer. “So can we expect this attack on Patriot to wear off as well? If so, when?”

“I would have to understand the exact mechanics of this virus, or whatever it is,” Splicer replied, never taking his eyes off his pad as the pencil danced across the paper. “I’m not an expert on diseases or epidemiology in general, but there are a few people here who are. If we can determine how it works, then we can begin to combat it. Set up blocks, as it were, that might slow or disrupt its progress. Until we know what it is, though, we’ll be shooting blind. I’ll need blood samples, copies of the reports so far, and access to the laboratories. The real ones,” he hastened to add. “Not that college teaching lab I’m sleeping in.”

“You’ve got it,” Hart said. In answer to the sudden intake of breath from several of the scientists present, she raised a hand and glared frostily at the assembled group. “None of you have had any success in dealing with this so far. As of now, Splicer has medical and scientific control. All his decisions are final, and anyone that fails to work with him will answer to me. I believe you all know what that will entail. As for those of us without the necessary skills to assist him in this work, we all have our own tasks. Get to work, people,” she ordered.

The group stood from the table, unsure whether to direct their hatred toward Splicer, Hart, or Drake. They moved, though, and within a few minutes, the only ones still in the room were Drake, Hart, Vertigo, and the Marines.

“So this is how it is, huh?” Drake asked. “You gonna fire me or what?”

Hart reached beneath the table and picked up a brown paper bag that was rolled shut at the top. Setting it on the table, she slid it down the length of the wood to Drake.

“It’s yours,” she told him, crossing her arms on her chest.

“Awww. And it ain’t even my birthday,” he said. He opened it and grinned widely on seeing the contents. His pistols, spare ammunition and badge all lay inside.

“Gear up,” Hart told him. “You’re back on the job.”

“That’s cool. I’ve got a prisoner to see, anyway,” he told her as he loaded the pistols with the magazines of heavy rounds from the bag. He filled the first with a magazine of blue-tipped ammunition, then slipped it into place beneath his right arm. The second mag held rounds with red tips, and he loaded it into the second pistol.

“She’s downstairs, in the lowest level,” Hart told him. “There’s a kind of brig set up down there, so we figured that would be the best place for her.”

“I presume I don’t need them any more?” Drake asked, jerking his left thumb at the Marine escorts behind him as he used his right to holster his weapon.

“Marines, you are dismissed,” Hart said simply, not bothering to address a response to Drake. For his own part, Drake turned and waved merrily to the departing troops.

“She’s awake, by the way,” Hart said as she gathered the last of her presentation materials and returned them to the massive briefcase beside her chair. “Came around not long after getting down there. The Marines restrained her.”

“Hell, I put cuffs on her,” Drake said.

“Yes, you did. However, once she awakened, she was able to cause some significant damage to her surroundings. The Marines on guard said she only spoke to them and things started to happen.”

“What kind of things?”

“It started with an electrical malfunction that caused the lights to fail, and progressed through random energy blasts to one Marine attacking the others with a rifle butt. He was subdued and has been relieved of duty.”

“And how did they deal with her after that?” Drake asked, leaning against the broken table.

“Duct-taped her mouth shut.”

“Oh, I have got to see this one up close,” Drake said with a laugh. He clipped his badge back onto his belt and turned to leave.

“Don’t take any chances down there, Agent Drake,” Hart cautioned him. “She’s an unknown element.”

“Yeah? Well, she knew I was the one who took out Aquatica,” he replied, setting his jaw and not looking back. “So it looks like she’s gonna get to be a known element pretty damned fast.”