Quantum shift, p.23
Quantum Shift, page 23
part #1 of Phase Shift Series
“To what do I owe this dubious honor?” asked, looking slightly askance at the food-like items placed before her. “I’m not sure if this is meant to be a reward or a punishment, to be honest.”
“This is my way of saying that I’m sorry,” he smiled at her. “I’m not much of a cook, and I can’t even say this is the best I could do – I got distracted trying to get the toaster to work, I’m afraid, and let the eggs get a bit overdone – but it’s better than an energy bar. I think. I hope.”
She took a hesitant bite of the pale-yellow eggs, made a slight face, then grabbed the saltshaker on the table. “Needs salt,” she mumbled as she chewed. “Besides that, it’s not bad. Thanks.”
As they ate, they chatted inanely about various subjects – what they would find in Green Bay, how they could go about creating a secure base in the small city, where they might go to get more supplies. They very carefully avoided talking about anything pre-Shift; those topics would lead down a dark path, and Troias, for one, was happy to wait and see what awaited him in Chicago. Speculations, he knew, would just get darker and darker until they ate at him and drove him to do something drastic.
He’d been there, after his injury. The doctors had told him that, with the severity of the damage, even with reconstruction he might end up walking with a cane for life. They’d even told him there was a better-than-even chance of that, and that he should prepare himself for it just in case. He knew now that they were just trying to get him ready for the worst-case scenario, one that easily could have happened, but instead, it threw him into a depression. He’d stopped eating, stopped doing his exercises, and basically given up. His girlfriend at the time, another MMA fighter who was early in her career but just as ambitious as he was, had stopped coming to see him; he’d learned later that she was having trouble dealing with his anger and bouts of weeping, but at the time he’d thought she just didn’t want to be with a cripple.
He’d gone to a dark place, and more than once he’d thought about ways to end it all. It would be hard, in a hospital, but once he got home, he could do it. Surely, he told himself, death was better than life as an invalid.
It was his mom that finally snapped him out of it. His parents had come in from Florida to see him, and she’d taken one look at him, shooed his dad from the room, locked the door, and sat down. “Tell me,” she’d demanded. He’d resisted at first, telling her he was fine, plastering a smile on his face, but she’d been insistent. “I’m your mother, and you’ve never disobeyed me, yet. Tell me.”
And he had. He broke down and poured everything out, all his fears, his anger, his rage at the one who did this to him. He laid bare his dark imaginings, and she’d endured it all stoically. When he finished, she simply held him and allowed him to rid himself of the shame, the guilt, and the secret hatred, leaving him feeling strangely hollow.
“Now, let me tell you something, Troi,” she told him when his weeping had subsided. “First of all, those doctors aren’t nearly as smart as they think they are. Oh, sure, they know about our bodies and all the ways things can go wrong…but they don’t know why those things go wrong for one person and not for another. Why does one person smoke for a year, quit, and develop lung cancer ten years later, while another smokes their whole lives and never has a problem? They don’t know.”
“Luck,” Troias muttered. “And mine’s been rotten lately.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think so. I think it’s about the spirit and the will, as much as the body. Your body was broken, Troi, but your spirit can heal it. Which brings me to the second thing: you’re not a quitter.
“Wherever this will take you, you won’t just endure it, you’ll conquer it. You’ll come out the other side, maybe not stronger, but wiser, tougher, and better. I know that, because I know how strong your spirit is, and I know that it’s never quit, not once, no matter how hard things got.
“I won’t tell you not to grieve for what you lost, because that would hurt you. Grieve and get through it. But know this: you are the only one who can determine how you heal and how strong you are at the end. This isn’t over, so don’t you dare think about quitting on me, you hear?”
He’d roused himself after her visit. He was still depressed, but he decided that she was right: he’d make it through this. When the dark thoughts came, he clung to that faith, that belief that he could do it. And he had; the journey had been excruciating at times, and his doctors kept telling him that there would be a place where his body would simply refuse to do what his spirit was telling it to, but they’d been wrong. His body had healed, and he’d regained almost complete use of his leg. He could run, bike, even continue martial arts. He couldn’t compete – the knee was too fragile for that, and that level of activity would probably destroy it – but if he’d lost his old life, he’d gained a new one with the dojo.
And, he supposed, that’s what had happened with the Shift. He’d lost his old life, sure, but he’d gained a new one, and while this one wasn’t better – yes, he had superpowers, but he also had to fight for his life daily – it was his. He would make it the best one he could, because that’s all he knew how to do: to keep pushing forward, to make each day better.
His mom had passed about ten years after that fateful day, to the very cancer she’d talked about with him. Sometimes, the doctors did know what they were saying, and when they’d told her that her stomach pains were stage 4 uterine cancer that had started to metastasize into her abdomen, they’d been right. They gave her six months; she lasted nine. His dad had made it almost another decade after that before succumbing to a heart attack. Troias missed them both, but he’d had time to come to terms with their loss.
Annalise hadn’t had that luxury of time. Some part of her had to know that it was likely that her family was gone, but she obviously wasn’t ready to face that possibility. Troias was fine with that; denial was part of healing, and he didn’t want her back in that dark place she’d been when he met her. She’d eventually move past denial, and when she did, he’d go with her to find out what happened, and he’d be there to help her deal with whatever losses she would face, because that’s what friends did for each other.
Troias felt much better after their attempt at normalcy. His Facets had recovered, sure, but he’d also had a chance to stop and regain his mental balance. Crossing the bridge hadn’t been a good idea; Annalise was right, he’d started to feel invulnerable, and that was a good way to get killed fast. He’d never gone into a fight assuming he’d win back in his competition days, and it was dumb to start doing that, now.
If he were being honest, some part of him was treating this like a game, as if he’d get a respawn or could just restore to a save point if he died, and that was unacceptable. Although this world had some game-like aspects, it was real, and dying here would be forever. He couldn’t gamble with their lives like that. Once he realized what the problem was, it was easier: he just had to be aware of that mindset and, hopefully, stop himself if he fell into it again.
He decided to treat the Guard Station the way he should have treated the bridge. He assumed something very dangerous was inside and acted as if he would lose a straight-up fight to whatever it was. When they arrived, they drove slowly around the building, their eyes and ears searching. They opened the rear window and let Max hang his head out, but the dog gave no sign of any sort of danger. Even so, they parked in the lot of the swimming pool next door – the pool was fortunately drained this time of year, or Troias would have worried about something aquatic attacking them from behind – and went over the chain-link fence separating the lot from the Guard Station. The fence was topped with barbed wire, but Troias used his bolt-cutters to open a hole at the bottom of the fence, allowing them to slip easily underneath. They crossed into a parking lot with military-style Humvees decked out in green camouflage, one of which had what Troias would have called a machine gun mounted to the roof, while another was hooked to what looked like a small piece of artillery. Troias took those in with a glance, imagining how useful they could be, but Annalise was salivating while staring at the machine gun, and Troias had to remind her to stay focused as he warily approached the back door.
The door was steel-reinforced, but he’d come prepared for that and gently slid a flat prybar into the gap above the frame. He had to use some energy from his Force Facet to press the bar deep enough into the narrow gap and a bit more to bend the door and frame apart, freeing the latch. It took him almost five minutes to free the door, since he was worried that if he went faster, the bending metal might squeal and give away their presence.
The moment the door was free, though, it slammed outward, knocking Troias backward as something large, furry, and fast charged out at them, lunging directly at Max. Annalise’s rifle rang out, and the creature stumbled for a moment, giving Troias a chance to roll to his feet, ready his weapon, and get a good glimpse at the attacker before it bowled into Max.
The creature didn’t quite look like Troias’ imaginings of a werewolf. Its fur was gray and sleek, rather than shaggy and unkempt, and its arms hung below its knees, allowing it to run on all fours. Its back was severely hunched, and its lupine head jutted straight out from its shoulders instead of sitting atop its neck like a human’s. Its legs were wolf-like, with a backward-bent knee and long toes, and its mouth was filled with canine teeth.
The creature leaped at Max, but another shot rang out, deflecting it to the side. The malamute dodged the creature’s flailing claws and lashed out with his fangs, slashing the back of its legs. The werewolf whirled, flinging itself at the dog, but instead it found itself impaled on the tip of Troias’ glaive. The big man thrust the blade into the wolf’s chest, lodging the crescent back-blade in its ribs, and heaved, slamming it against the wall and pinning it there. He held it, thrashing and clawing at the haft, until Annalise’s gun spoke. The wolf’s skull jerked to the side, and its left temple exploded out and splattered along the brick wall. Its struggles ceased instantly, and Troias yanked the blade free, allowing it to drop lifelessly to the concrete.
Troias immediately spun toward the building, his glaive at the ready. The heavy door had closed silently, its pneumatic closer still apparently functional despite the Shift, but it would be easy enough to open. Troias stepped to the right of the door and slipped the butt-spike of his weapon into the gap he’d made, using the heavy point to pry to the door open. It swung noiselessly open, but this time, when the heavy wolf body slammed into it, it didn’t send him flying with it.
Instead, he jabbed with the spike, catching the creature in the side and knocking it off balance, then spun to his right and brought the blade around, slicing into the wolf’s stomach. It growled and slashed at him with its long arms, and only the length of the pole in his hand kept him from having a nasty gash across his face. Annalise fired again, and once more, the creature’s head exploded, sending it tumbling to the pavement.
They pried the door open again, but this time, nothing rushed them. Troias glanced at Annalise, nodding his head toward the door, and she sighted her rifle directly at it. He flung the door open and stood back, but she shook her head. He glanced through the open door; nothing else was in sight.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped inside, his weapon at the ready. The space was dark after his having been out in the sun, and he stopped just inside the long hallway before him, waiting for his eyes to adjust. It took several seconds until he could see that the hallway before him ended in a simple office door and had other doorways opening onto it. He moved forward cautiously, his glaive held outward, so when the first door slammed open and a furry body rushed into the hall, it merely impaled its stomach on his blade.
He twisted the weapon and yanked it upward, slicing through the monster’s ribs and up into its lung. The wolf gagged and coughed a fine, red spray as blood filled that lung, collapsing it. A loud crack sounded as Annalise fired into the creature’s breastbone, punching a hole in it, and as Troias yanked the blade free, Max rushed the falling creature and ripped its throat out, ignoring its flailing claws. The dog’s fur seemed to act like armor, and his skin was tougher than it should have been, so the claws merely drew thin lines of red along Max’ flanks and back that the dog ignored.
The wolf shuddered and fell still, and Troias snapped his fingers to call Max back to him. The wolf hadn’t been trying to attack the man; like the first one, it had been trying to get past him, to Max. It was as if the canine’s presence was a challenge to them, and they couldn’t help but respond. As he pondered that, a second door flung open, and another wolf began racing down the hallway, its eyes aimed on the gray-white dog behind Troias. The big man set his glaive and thrust as the creature jumped, and his blade caught it directly in the throat. It hissed and gurgled, scrabbling to get free, but after a minute or so, its struggles ceased, and it fell limp.
“You noticed that they’re only going for Max, right?” Annalise observed softly.
Troias nodded. “And I noticed that the two rooms they came out of were the only ones with open doors. I wonder if they can smell him; maybe we should open the door at the end of the hallway and see if that attracts more of them?”
Annalise shrugged and leveled her rifle. The gun fired with a blast, and the window in the door at the hall’s end exploded in a shower of glass fragments. Troias instantly heard banging and snarling at the door, and he watched as the flimsy panels shuddered under heavy blows and the press of bodies. Furry arms reached through the window, scrabbling, and one creature got half its body through before a bullet took it right in the eye and dropped it instantly.
At last, the door burst open in a shower of splinters, and a pack of wolfmen loped into the hallway. Unlike the dogmen, the wolves didn’t shove one another or trip each other; they moved smoothly and rapidly, closing the distance faster than Troias would have thought possible.
He stepped in front of Max, choking up on the glaive in the narrow hall. As the werewolves neared, he swung low, aiming for their thin, bony legs rather than their bodies. There were too many for him to simply kill them one at a time; he needed to disable them and come back to finish them off later. His brain knew this instinctively, the result of ten-thousand hours and more of combat training, and he turned off his conscious thought as he moved forward, into the horde.
Claws raked across his shirt and jaws dragged along his legs. He called up his Spiritual Armor, feeling energy rush to his skin, and while the fangs and talons scored thin lines of blood, they didn’t penetrate deeply enough to cause real damage. He wielded the glaive like a bo staff, slashing with the bladed end, slamming the butt end into fragile knees, and thrusting both ends into throats and chests when the opportunity arose.
A buzz of loud noise reached his ears, and he realized that Annalise had switched out her Remington for her HK and was firing it full auto into the fallen creatures behind him. As he chopped through the slavering wolves, he idly noted that, while he’d expected her to just unload constantly on the creatures, she was firing short bursts of three or four rounds – he wasn’t sure which. He was sure there was a reason for that, but he put it aside and focused on the task before him.
A set of fangs sank into his forearm as his Spiritual Armor wore off, and he renewed it instantly. He called up Spiritual Speed, as well, and he felt power fill his arms and legs as his entire body became nimbler and more responsive. His swifter strikes crushed bones and severed limbs more often than simply wounding them, now, and he pressed forward, his glaive in constant motion. Speed killed, but so did stillness. If the blade ever stopped, he knew he’d be pressed backward, so he never let it rest and kept moving forward.
At last, the final wolfman fell, and Troias released the energy flowing through him, leaning heavily against the wall as the aftermath of the battle drained his energy. Almost every inch of his skin stung, and he was sure that everything from his neck to his knees was crisscrossed with fine, red lines of blood. The only thing that really hurt was his arm, where his armor had failed for a moment; eight puncture wounds marred his skin, four on top and four on bottom.
Annalise knelt to check on Max for a moment before moving over to examine his wound. “This is almost exactly where Max bit you,” she noted clinically, reaching into her side pouch for peroxide and bandages. “It’s like you have an Achilles forearm or something.”
“Probably better than a heel,” Troias shrugged. “Besides, I can’t be like Achilles; that would be weird.”
“Why?” she asked in a puzzled tone as she wrapped his wound, touching it gently as she transferred some of the injury to her own arm – enough, at least, that blood stopped flowing and the pain dulled to an ache instead of a sharp stabbing.
“My name, Troias, means ‘of Troy’ in a Greek dialect,” he told her. “My parents believed that a strong name makes a strong person, so they named me after the strongest city in all of Greek legends. Achilles was Troy’s enemy, so…”
“That would be weird, yeah,” she grinned. “Would you rather be Hector?” Seeing his startled glance, she laughed. “What? I saw the movie. Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, and Orlando Bloom? Even if it had been awful, I would have muted it and watched it anyway.”
He snorted and shook his head. “No judgment from me. That’s how I used to watch ‘Charmed’.” She laughed, but a moment later, he frowned.
“I didn’t get an option to claim the place,” he told her seriously. “That must mean that either a lot of it is sealed away…”
“Or something else is here,” she finished, replacing the magazine in her HK, her hilarity gone in an instant. “Something that didn’t come running out to get Max.”
