Another background tale from the Starforce Saga. This story takes place a few years before Burden of Solace and features a couple of the characters from that book. You might even recognize an unnamed redheaded medical student in the beginning. 😉 This story answers Cassie's question from Burden - "Who's Gina?" It also features one of my favorite characters: Ironhorse. More about him later.
BTW, this story took 2nd place in the 2019 Writerwerx Short Story Contest.
In Vulnerable
by
Richard L. Wright
Nate’s thoughts blurred as they wheeled him
through the emergency room entrance. Hands pressed against his chest, urging
him to lay back down on the moving gurney. Concern etched the face of the young
redheaded woman as she looked him over, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Nate
tried to look around, hoping to see his father.
Where is he?
Was he sent to a different hospital?
“Please, sir,” the redhead insisted. “You need to
keep calm.”
“How is he still conscious?” Nate heard another
voice whisper. “I can’t imagine the pain.”
The small entourage that surrounded him banged
through one set of hallway doors after another, finally arriving in a room. Two
nurses and the petite redhead efficiently transferred his prone form to an
examining table. He looked to his right and saw Gina lying on the next table.
She met his eyes for a scant second and then cringed, looking away before
someone pulled the curtain between them. Over the chaos of activity, he
couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like she was crying.
“I keep telling you, I’m fine. Where’s my father?
Jim Gorman - big guy, early 60’s. Is he OK?”
The redhead exchanged looks with a paramedic as
she prepared an IV line and tied a length of soft rubber tubing around his
upper right arm. The paramedic shrugged.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I’ll try to find
out. But, right now you need to let us worry about you. Now, you’re going to
feel a little stick. Hold very still.”
She positioned the needle against Nate’s skin.
“Good luck with that,” the paramedic snorted.
Nate watched as the needle bent, crumpling into a
zig-zag.
“Dammit,” she muttered under her breath. She detached
the ruined needle and tossed it into a red plastic container attached to the
wall, then reached for another IV set from a bin. Before she could rip open the
plastic bag, the paramedic laid a hand on hers.
She slapped the EMT’s hand away, anger flaring in
her green eyes. “You just don’t know what you’re doing.”
The paramedic shrugged, smiled, and began packing
his portable gear back onto the gurney. “Let me know how that works out for you.”
A white-coated male doctor came in, wiggling his
fingers as he snapped the cuff of his blue nitrile gloves. He gave Nate a quick
visual survey, then gingerly lifted the edge of one of the many gauze bandages
covering Nate’s left side. Nate saw the doctor’s eyes widen before they moved
to meet his.
“Mr. Gorman, can you hear me? We’re going to give
you something for the pain.”
Jeez, these
people act like I’m half-dead or something.
“I’m OK, doc - no pain, and my hearing’s just fine.
But I need to find out about my dad. Is he here?”
“Dammit!” The redhead tossed another ruined needle
into the sharps container. “Doctor Olsen, I can’t get an IV started. The
catheters keep bending.”
The doctor rolled his eyes and moved to Nate’s
right side. “Don’t they teach you kids anything useful in med school? Here, let
me show you.”
The redhead threw up her hands and stepped back.
“Yeah, you do that.”
It took nine bent needle-catheters before Dr.
Olsen finally admitted defeat.
“Seriously guys, I feel fine,” Nate said. “This is
a lot of bother over nothing.”
Olsen regarded him with disbelief. “He’s
delirious. Get a gas-passer in here, stat.”
Nate was about fed up with these people. He felt
fine and he had no idea why they were making such a fuss over him, or why half
his body was wrapped in gauze. His dad was a different story. The radiation
levels Jim Gorman had received were serious, probably lethal. If it weren’t for
the restraining straps on his arms and legs, Nate would have just gotten up and
left.
Another doctor wheeled in a cart with several
compressed gas tanks and began fiddling with knobs and hoses. When Nate saw him
attach a face mask to the hoses, he realized they were going to knock him out.
“No. I need to leave.” The doctors exchanged looks
and nods, and the mask came closer, hissing its siren song of sleep. “Stop!”
His left arm jerked up, ripping the buckles off
the leather restraint. His right leg followed suit, tearing through the strap
like tissue, just as the mask clamped down over his nose and mouth. Nate tried
to twist his head away, but the gas went straight to his head. He collapsed
back to the bed as darkness descended.
*
There was a single point of light somewhere in
front of him, but Nate couldn’t tell if it was far in the distance or just a
pinhole. Was Dad there? Nate tried to focus, but there weren’t any details to
latch onto, no fixed points to use for reference. Voices bounced around in the
void.
“…can’t believe these burns are new…”
“Dammit. Nurse, another 10 blade.”
“…negative on the diamond saw. Maybe the laser
can…”
Nate focused on the sounds, following them back to
the world.
“… four dead. Our two are stable.”
Two. Dad?
That thought - the idea that his father had somehow
survived, that Nate could see him, talk to him, one more time - ignited Nate’s
mind. He clawed his way back into the light.
He sat up, eyes wide. Restraining straps fell away
like ribbons from a maypole. The two nurses in the room dropped whatever they
had been doing and made a hasty retreat, fighting each other for the doorway.
The room was darkened. No sunlight seeping around
the blinds so it was probably night. Nate’s eyes adjusted quickly, enough to
make out a figure seated against the wall. A middle-aged black man in a
wrinkled suit clicked on a lamp beside his chair. An unlit cigarette filled the
corner of his mouth, bobbing as he spoke.
“The docs said they gave you enough anesthesia to
keep an elephant in la-la land for days. Good thing I stuck around.”
Nate threw the sheet aside and swung his legs over
the side of the bed. The remaining leg straps snapped like licorice whips. He
noticed that his left side was now more formally bandaged. His hand went to his
chest, moving up his neck. The bandages extended to that side of his face.
“I’m glad you’re awake, Mr. Gorman. I’m Detective
Bill Walsh, Atlanta PD. I have some questions about the… accident.”
Nate’s eyes narrowed as he turned his attention to
the detective.
“It wasn’t an accident. It was sabotage. A bomb.”
Walsh locked eyes with him, pausing a couple of
heartbeats before nodding. “Agreed. But I know that because my forensics guys
say so. I have to wonder how you arrived at that same conclusion. Unless, of
course, you’re the one that planted the explosive?”
Nate shook his head, fighting off the lingering
effects of the gas.
“What? No. Why would I try to blow up our own lab?
I was almost killed. And where is my father? Is he OK?”
Walsh pulled the cigarette from his lips. His eyes
softened. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”
Nate froze, his legs hanging from the edge of the
bed. He had been in motion to stand up, but now he doubted they would support
him. “Dad?”
A part of him knew that his father wasn’t going to
make it. The level of exposure was just too intense. But hope wasn’t something
you let go of easily. Through the fog in his brain, Walsh’s voice sounded
distant.
“After you were found, they followed the tunnel Ironhorse
dug, down to the control room. Except for you and Miss Braswell, there were no
other survivors. Ironhorse retrieved your father’s body from the containment
vessel.”
“…the tunnel
Ironhorse dug…” Is that what he told
them?
“Can I see him? My dad?”
Walsh pursed his lips, his head moving in a slow
half-shake. “I don’t think that’ll be possible. His remains
are dangerously radioactive. Even in a lead-lined casket, he probably can’t be
buried in a regular cemetery. Ironhorse had to undergo an hour of
decontamination before he was released.”
Nate’s mind couldn’t process all that he was
hearing. He made a mental note to thank Atlanta’s resident exohuman Guardian
for recovering his dad’s body. Only someone impervious to physical harm could
have withstood the gamma rays still poisoning the area where Jim Gorman had
sacrificed his life.
“Do you want to talk about how you and your
girlfriend survived?”
Nate closed his eyes. It wouldn’t be an untruth to
say that their escape was a blur, random memories of digging through rubble and
pulling at chunks of broken concrete. He had no idea how he’d done that. He
tried to concentrate on what he was sure of.
“Gina’s not my girlfriend. Not for a while now.”
Walsh remained silent, waiting for Nate to
continue.
“We broke up about a year ago. We’re just friends
now. Co-workers.”
Walsh’s stony expression told Nate that the
detective wasn’t much interested in whatever relationship status he and Gina
shared, nor the brightness of the torch he still carried. Continuing on that
tangent would only create more suspicion. Best to get on with it, carefully.
“I don’t really remember much about the explosions
themselves, except the noise and the dust. Afterwards, it was dark. The
emergency lights didn’t come on right away. I don’t know how long it was, just
that I was feeling around for a while.”
Memories unspooled - the silent darkness, his
hearing gradually returning as he scrambled through the dust and rubble to find
the others, the horrific realization that two of their friends were buried in
that rubble.
“Jeffrey and Marilyn were killed when the back
wall collapsed. The reactor had gone wild, headed for a meltdown. We tried to
shut it down, but the control rods were jammed.”
“We? You and your father?”
“Yes. Plus Toma - Dr. Stasiuk. He was still alive
then. Hurt pretty bad, but we didn’t know how bad until the seizures started.”
“And Miss Braswell?”
“She wasn’t hurt, but she kind of fell apart.
Shock, I guess. I had to carry her.”
“You carried her? Ironhorse said he carried you
both out.”
“Yeah, I meant...before, when we tried to unblock
the stairway. The door frame was racked, so we didn’t get far.”
“OK, so you tried to shut down the reactor, but
couldn’t. What happened next?”
“Dad sent me to check the auxiliary controls. It
was just a trick, a distraction so he could enter the containment vessel.”
When he’d
returned from the AuxCon, Dad was gone. It had taken him a minute to realize
there was no place for him to have gone. No safe place, anyway. Then he saw the
necklace hanging on the hatch.
“He went inside to manually lower the control rods,
to try and save us. He knew he couldn’t survive that kind of exposure, but he
did it anyway.”
Nate’s voice broke, and he reached for a cup of
water in the bedside table. Again, Walsh waited for him to continue.
“He managed to get some of the rods dropped, but
not enough. But he bought us time. Time to say goodbye.”
The intercom had still worked, a minor miracle
that let them talk one last time, to say things left unsaid for a lifetime.
Nate remembered gripping Mom’s pendant, squeezing it so hard that the points of
the golden starburst dug into his palm. Then he’d slipped the chain over his
head. Dad had worn that necklace since her death, a constant reminder. Now it
was Nate’s turn to remember them both.
“So, how did you shut down the reactor then?” Walsh
pulled an old-fashioned notepad from a jacket pocket.
“I poisoned it,” Nate said.
Walsh’s expression was almost comical. Nate
explained that one of the safeguards against a reactor going out control was a
supply of a liquid with a high rate of neutron absorption - liquefied boron. In
an emergency, the liquid was dumped into the cooling liquid, effectively
stopping the nuclear reaction. Because it ‘killed’ the reaction, it was
referred to as a neutron poison.
“The automated dump valves weren’t working; we
tried them early on, part of the standard SCRAM procedure. The only way to
reach them, to open them manually, was to climb into the plumbing above the
containment vessel.”
It was a rat’s nest of pipes, wiring, hoses and
support beams - all of it three stories up and never intended to be accessed
while the reactor was active. The entire area was hotter than any Hell ever
dreamt of. Some of the cooling pipes had started to leak, pushed beyond their
design by the pressure of superheated steam. The climb had been torture. Nate
had flashed back to his teen self, struggling to pull his long, scrawny form up
the dreaded rope in gym class. He’d wondered if he could have avoided that
particular humiliation if his life had been in danger.
“I managed to open three of the four valves. With
some of the control rods down, opening two was probably enough, but I wanted to
be sure. The last valve was in an awkward place, and it was stuck. I had to
beat on it. I dropped the hammer and it must have cracked a pipe below. Then I
fell.”
He’d swung one leg across a gap and hooked it over
a large pipe. Grabbing an electrical conduit overhead to begin the crossing, it
had felt good to be out of the cramped space. For the first time, he’d dared to
think that he might actually survive the day. Then Nate’s hand, slick with
blood and sweat, had slipped off the conduit. Down the three stories of the outer
chamber he’d fallen, bouncing off pipes and cables. A cloud of superheated
steam - what happened when nuclear fire met ordinary water - enveloped him.
“I… I’m really tired. Can we finish this later?”
Walsh’s lips pulled in as he bit back on a
response. Then he nodded. “Just one more thing and we’ll call it a day.”
Nate could see suspicion in the man’s eyes. He
knew he wasn’t getting the whole story.
“After the techs declared it safe, I went down to
that control room. The stairwell door - the one you said was jammed - had been
ripped out. Ironhorse said he punched it open from the other side.”
“OK,” Nate said, nodding. He knew where this was
going, one of many loose threads that could unravel his story. He searched the
detective’s eyes, looking for a clue to what Walsh intended to do with that
thread.
“Ironhorse has been Atlanta’s guardian for a very
long time, all the way back to World War One. He was around before the law
required exohumans to register, before they started stripping other exos of
their names and assigning them numbers. He’s saved a lot of people around here,
including me.”
Nate sat silently, listening. He realized now that
Walsh had been using Ironhorse’s original name, and not that ridiculous
“Guardian One” designation the government tried to give him. At the least, the detective
wasn’t one of those anti-exo bigots who supported the federal mandate that exohumans
weren’t human, weren’t owed human rights.
“Over the years,” Walsh continued, “first as a
patrolman, then a detective - I’ve seen a lot of things he’s punched. And I’ve
seen a lot of things he’s pulled. That door didn’t look punched.”
Nate hadn’t paid much attention to how the door
looked after the way was cleared, but he did remember the handle bending in his
grip, the door following it as the hinges screamed and popped.
“Did you have question, detective?”
The cop stood up, stiff and slow. “Not really. Just making sure we have all the
facts straight. I hope you appreciate what Ironhorse did for you.”
Nate said nothing as Walsh left the room. He
collapsed back on the bed.
*
It was quiet, as quiet as a hospital gets anyway. Most
of the elite surgeons of Atlanta’s premiere trauma center were gone,
comfortable at home in their beds while the patients they had stitched back
together moaned softly in theirs. Activity persisted in the Maternity Ward and Emergency
Room, but these halls were muted.
Nate padded down the corridor, keeping his
bandaged side turned to the wall in case a nurse should come along. He’d asked
several times to see Gina but had met with resistance. 'Isolation' was a word
they liked to throw around, although they couldn't seem to pinpoint whether it
was him that was in isolation or her. When he asked about her condition, all
they would say was that she was "resting comfortably."
He reached the door he sought, ‘Braswell’ written
on the masking tape label. He tapped his knuckles on the heavy wooden door and
then pushed, just a crack at first. When he didn't hear a greeting, he came
close to aborting the visit, but he needed to see her, to make sure she was okay.
After their escape, the paramedics had declared her physically uninjured. Her
mental and emotional state wasn't something they were qualified to assess or
treat.
"G?" He pressed the door open wider,
taking it slow. He wasn't sure if he was wary of her seeing him or the other
way around.
"Nate?"
Gina’s voice sounded distant and dull. She was
sitting up, the articulated hospital bed shaped into a reclining 'z' shape. Someone
had brushed out her long, raven hair so that it fell in almost geometric
precision across her shoulders. She had a juice box in her hand, the straw
close to her lips like she had been taking a sip and had become lost in
thought.
"How are you, babe? They wouldn't let me see
you until now."
She looked at him with faraway eyes. Her smile was
slow to form. "I'm fine. Kind of sleepy, I guess."
She tried to focus on him, and a cloud passed over
her face. A cleft appeared between her eyebrows before she turned away. "Those
bandages... Oh, your poor face. Nate, I'm so sorry."
"It's OK, G. I’ll heal."
She refused to look back, her eyes fixed on some
point away from him. "Your dad. Toma and Jeffrey. Marilyn... "
Nate moved to her bedside, reaching out to take
her hand, careful to use his unbandaged one, keeping his left side away from
her. She looked down at his hand covering hers. Tears welled up in her eyes and
she slipped her hand away. "You didn't need to come here, to see me."
"Of course I did. I love you, G. That's never
changed."
She wiped at her eyes, sniffing. He reached to
stroke her hair, something he'd always done when he couldn't take away whatever
hurt or disappointment was troubling her. He wanted to shield her, to keep all
the bad things from touching her. She turned away again.
“No one was supposed to get hurt,” she mumbled.
"G?”
She reached for the remote control that hung on
the bed rail and pressed the call button. “You should leave. I’m tired.”
Nate stood and took a couple of steps toward the
door. Behind him he heard the floor nurse over the scratchy intercom. “Yes, do
you need something?”
“I think it’s time for more medicine,” she said. “I’m
feeling... feeling…” Her voice trailed away as she let go of the remote.
At the door, Nate turned back to look at her, but
she had rolled onto her side, facing away from him.
*
When he got back to his own room, Nate found
someone waiting. An old black man stood at the windows, looking out at the city
lights. Dawn wasn’t far off and purple tinged the skyline. The man was big,
barrel-chested with just the hint of a gut. His hair was almost completely
gray, what was left of it. Shoulders slumped and back bowed, he carried himself
with the worn-down posture that sometimes comes with age. Tucked under one massive
arm was a motorcycle helmet.
“Can I help you?”
The old man nodded, slowly. When he spoke, his
voice was deep - the kind of deep that made you think of rocks rubbing
together.
“Maybe. But I reckon you’re the one that could use
the help.”
Nate wasn’t in the mood for visitors. The look in
Gina’s eyes haunted him. All the way back to his room, he’d thought about
ripping off the bandages and getting out of here.
“I’m sorry. Have we met?”
The big guy smiled, a broad, expansive grin. “Not formally,
but I’m sure we’ll get to know one another well enough. Today, I just came by
to give you this.”
He held out the motorcycle helmet. It was one of
those full-face helmets, black with a mirrored visor. Puzzled and more than a
little bit annoyed, Nate took the helmet. He turned it upright and a pair of
keys fell out.
“She’s on level 2 of the parking garage, north
corner. The GPS is programmed with a safe location.” The old man turned to leave.
“Wait. Why are you giving me a motorcycle?”
He paused at the door and gave a little laugh. It
was a deep rumble, like thunder in a cave. “Call it a loaner,” he said.
Nate bent and picked up the keys. One was clearly
for a bike, the other looked more like an ordinary door key. “But…why? Who are
you?”
His visitor turned in the doorway. “Let’s just say
we have something in common. We’ve both been through something that changed us,
altered the course of our lives forever. It happened to me a long time ago. A
very, very long time…”
His eyes grew distant for a moment, then returned
to look into Nate’s. The old man straightened up, his large form shedding the
pretense of decrepitude. Nate flashed on a similar shape, clad in red and blue
leather, his face concealed by another helmet - a stylized, art deco representation
of a locomotive.
“You’re ‘bout to go through some difficult times,
Nate. Just know that you’re not alone. I’ve done what I can to buy you some
breathing space, but that’s comin’ to an end. Pretty soon, some people are
gonna come lookin’ for you, government people. It’s their job to make sure the
ones like you and me don’t rile up ordinary folks. In my day, that meant hiding
the color of my skin under a helmet – because a lot of those folks wouldn’t
cotton to the strongest man in the world being no colored boy.”
Nate recalled the stories, legends almost, about
America’s first exohuman hero, the unstoppable super-soldier of World War One.
His longevity was just part of that legend. Never had there been a hint that
under that colorful costume and helmet was a black man. Nate had to remind
himself that things were very different a hundred years ago. The idea that this
man had lived through all of that history and change, experienced it himself, made
Nate wonder if he was now destined for a lifespan measured in centuries.
“Back then,” Ironhorse continued, “I wore the
helmet because I was told to. Now, it’s a way to keep some part of my life
separate from what they tell me to do. As for you, well, maybe a helmet will
get you through this too. That’s up to you, probably one of the few things
you’ll still have a say in. But someday, maybe someday soon, I believe none of
us will have to hide anymore. And I think you’ll play a part in that change.”
He turned
once again to leave.
“You never told me your name,” Nate said softly.
The old man nodded. “True enough. I think you know
what people call me, the name I wear with the helmet. But you can call me Gabriel.”
Then he was gone. Nate didn’t see him walk away,
barely registering a blur where his visitor had stood. Nate looked down at the
helmet and remembered that the city’s Guardian could move at incredible speed
when needed.
He went to the narrow cabinet that served to keep
a patient’s personal belongings. Some clothes that he didn’t recognize hung
there, along with a pair of sturdy boots. He had just placed the helmet and
keys inside and closed the door when he heard a soft knock. He turned, hoping
to see Gina, but instead a doctor entered, clipboard in hand.
“Ah, good. You’re up. I was hoping we could chat
before the day gets too hectic.”
“Are we going to talk about me going home?”
“Uh, no. I mean, not just yet.” The doctor looked
decidedly nervous. He closed the door and pulled out a chair, waving for Nate
to take a seat on the bed.
“First, I want you to know how sorry I am for the
loss of your father. I didn’t know him, but he struck me as a man of vision, a man
that made things happen. We use some of his inventions right here in this
hospital.”
Nate nodded, not trusting his voice to answer
without breaking.
“I’m also sorry we can’t do anything about your…injuries. We tried every method at our disposal - everything from scalpels and
lasers to bone saws. We even tried a diamond-tipped drill. Nothing worked.”
Bits and pieces of overheard conversation came
back to Nate, things he had absorbed while under sedation. His mind had shied
away from what lay under the bandages, but the memories were still there -
memories of falling and searing steam, memories of dying. Memories of rebirth. He’d read somewhere that the human mind couldn’t
remember pain. Maybe that was further proof that he was no longer truly human.
“As for the rest, well, the hospital doesn’t have
much choice when it comes to reporting exohuman Emergence. The law’s very
specific and the penalties are severe. Exohuman Affairs has requested that you
remain here until they can come and interview you.”
Nate’s eyes wandered to the cabinet. “Take me into
custody, you mean. To strip me of my rights and identity. To assign me a
number.”
“Mr. Gorman, I’m sorry. I really am. I know this
is a lot to take in. I wish…”
The doctor stood up and heaved a sigh. He extended
his hand, some hesitation showing in the gesture. Nate took the offered hand,
careful not to squeeze too hard. As it was, he saw a slight grimace on the
doctor’s face before he released the grip.
“Thank you,” was all Nate said.
The doctor left, without haste but also without delay.
Nate sat for a moment, thinking. Then he stood and
walked to the mirror. His right hand came up to hover before his face, certain
of what needed doing, but unsure if even he was strong enough for this. He lowered
his hand a little and grasped a corner of the tape and gauze that covered the
left side of his chest. Steeling himself for what was about to be revealed, he
pulled it away in one swift movement, forcing his eyes not to flinch or look
away.
It looked like molten wax had been poured down
that side of his body. Rippled and stretched pink skin was crisscrossed by a
network of angry red ropes. His eyes traced the knotted rivulets of flesh until
coming to rest on a spot in the center of his chest – a pattern buried there
under dense tissue, the shape of an eight-pointed star.
Mom’s
pendant.
A calm filled him as he thought of the sacrifice
his father had made - how he had paid the price for Nate’s survival. He touched
the raised starburst shape.
I’m all
that’s left of them, the last to bear their name – a name that people are
coming to take away from me.
After a moment, he removed the bandages covering
his face. Even after seeing the horror that his body had become, he was
unprepared. This time he looked away.
When the Enforcers from Exohuman Affairs arrived
for him, Nate and the borrowed motorcycle were miles away.
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