Making It Better
by T. Mike McCurley
“The road to redemption is a slow one. Every act done to reclaim your humanity is a tiny grain of sand in that road. Every slip, every backslide, every fall from purity of thought and deed is a ten-man bulldozer crew destroying the progress you have made.”
--Excerpted from the personal journal of Ian Calder, a.k.a. Annihilator--
The wind was cold and sharp, even to flesh that could withstand the destruction of a Howitzer shell. It whistled madly in Calder's ears as he hovered in the air beside the skyscraper. A twenty-foot length of steel girder was held effortlessly in his left hand as he used his right to project a laser-like beam of concentrated heat to weld the beam into place.
Below him, in the streets some five hundred feet away, he could sense them. A crew of jackals, feeding on his own flesh. Eyes enhanced by zoom lenses and digital image intensifiers, they watched him with studied interest. The knowledge that they were there was a tangible sensation of his skin prickling.
“Part of the price,” he reminded himself in a rasping whisper as he easily switched hands and began welding the other end of the girder. As he did, he saw a ghostly image of the beams slashing at the bodies of the reporters clustered down there. He blinked it away with an effort of will.
Still, the thought of the news cameras filming his every action made him feel ill. Years ago, it would have thrilled him. Months ago, it would have angered him. Now, it made him feel as though he were an animal on display in a cage of captured pixels, little more than a character in an afternoon drama. An image on the evening news to be jeered at and reviled. To be certain, he felt an empathy now for the tigers and apes which had so fascinated him as a boy. He felt the eyes upon him as surely as if he were pacing the interior of that zoo, glaring angrily out at the children who pointed and laughed; picked their noses and made faces at him and the rest of the exhibits.
“Ian!” a voice called above the wind and he snapped back to reality to see Gideon Marsh staring at him with a look of concern. A voice inside his head, that part of him he fought so hard to suppress, laughed aloud at the sight of the human construction foreman, clad in a down jacket and hardhat, lashed by cables to the steel skeleton of the building.
“So fragile...” taunted The Voice. It was deep and menacing, as cold and devoid of emotions as the grave. With a shudder, Calder forced The Voice into silence, ignoring the visions of ripping the foreman free of his restraints and tossing him into the news crews below and managing a weak grin for Gideon's benefit.
“You all right?” Asked the foreman, leaning against an upright beam with no more concern for the height than that evidenced by the genebooster who hung freely in the air with a goofy grin plastered across his face.
“Yeah,” Calder replied, swallowing once before he could choke out the word.
“You were starting to look kind of weird there for a minute, pal.”
There was no fear in Gideon's voice, and that fact alone made him a singular man in Calder's opinion. No fear of who he had been or anger at what he had done. No resentment for the lives taken, no hatred for the property so wantonly destroyed when he had been Annihilator. The foreman held nothing but respect for a man trying to redeem himself for the evils of his past.
“Just a moment of self-pity,” Calder confessed. He was never anything but truthful any more.
“It's 'cause of them, isn't it?” asked Gideon, gesturing downward with a jerk of his chin.
Calder pulled on the girder, exercising a minute fraction of his incredible strength, and felt no give in the welds. Satisfied with his work, he glided over to stand beside his foreman, letting his heavy boots settle onto the steel of the beam. His green eyes were filled with sadness, but they stayed that way these days.
“They're part of it, yeah. But I can't help the fact that I'm a spectacle now. Everybody wants to see what I'm doing, see if I'm really trying to help or if it's all some big scam.”
“Christ, Ian, you need to let up on yourself a bit,” Gideon remarked, fishing in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He had the battered pack in his hand and was sliding one of the slim sticks out when a wide hand appeared before his face, palm glowing with heat. Shaking his head and laughing aloud, Gideon touched the cigarette to the palm and took a deep drag as it ignited. He blew a long plume of thick gray smoke that was instantly swept away by the winds.
“Thanks,” he said a second later, cigarette bobbing up and down from its position in the corner of his mouth.
“You're welcome,” Calder replied, dropping to a squatting position and looking out across the city. “And I can't.”
“Can't what?”
“Can't let up on myself. Not for a second, Gideon. I have to remind myself every moment just how much damage I caused; how much I can cause.”
“Yeah, well, that's why you're up here, isn't it? Rebuilding. Fixing the damage,” Gideon said, rubbing a tired hand at the back of his neck. He scratched at the stubble on his chin before taking another drag on the cigarette. “Making it better,” he added.
Calder snorted, a rough, derisive sound that echoed even above the wind. “Making it better,” he mused aloud, rolling the words around in his mouth as if trying to taste the meaning. “How much better can I make it for Eiko Itami, or Shelley Forrester, or any of the other kids whose parents are in graves because of me?”
Gideon shrugged his shoulders, lifted the cigarette once more to his lips, and sucked thoughtfully on it for a moment before replying. He was amazed as always that Calder had taken the time to learn the names of his victims and that he could recite them at length. “Maybe you can't,” he finally said. “Maybe that's your whole thing, man. You don't get to make it better, but at least you're trying. I mean, that beats the hell out of sitting in a jail cell and crying about what you did, right? That, or worse,” he added with a cautionary look at Calder.
“Yeah, I know worse,” the genebooster nodded, running a free hand through his close-cropped brown hair. “I do remember worse.”
He recoiled suddenly as the other part of him surfaced in a rush of memories and he was Annihilator again, striding with ease through the city, breaking and crushing stone and steel and killing anyone and everyone who was simply unlucky enough to be in the wrong place. Bullets bounced from his chest and he laughed at the pathetic humans, no more to him than insects, who stood in positions of fear behind their squad cars and shouted for him to stop as they snapped round after ineffectual round from their useless weapons. The Voice leapt and capered in joy as he relived the moments when his heat-beams carved through the cars and the men and women cowering behind them with equal ease.
“Go home, Ian. Take the rest of the day and go home. Get a drink, get laid, go bowling, do something to remind yourself that you're still human like the rest of us,” Gideon said softly from beside him, jerking him again back to the real world. The images of that day tumbled back into the dark recesses of his mind, residing there until they could once more return to haunt him and draw him further into his self-imposed isolation from humanity.
Without answering the foreman, Calder sighed and stepped off the girders. He hung there for a moment, then looked down below as though confused. With a sick grin, he looked back at Gideon.
“This is where I always want to whip out a little sign like Wile E. Coyote, you know?” he asked. As Gideon laughed, Calder fell from sight.
Angling away from the building, Calder let his flight take him. The wind became even sharper as he picked up speed. As always, it made his eyes water. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering what would happen if he were to strike a bird or an insect while at speed. Though nearly invulnerable, he had often asked himself what the effect of a moth, or worse yet, some hard-shelled bug, would be if it struck his eyes.
He banked hard to the right to avoid the ominous shadow of a news traffic helicopter looming on the horizon, ignoring the camera which swiveled so quickly on its gimbal mount to track him as he cut the sky like a razor. He fought the urge to lash out in some way, even something as simple as giving them the finger. It would not help his case in the court of public opinion.
“Is that all you are?” The Voice asked him, bubbling up from the depths of his mind and sending a visible chill down his spine. “An amalgamation of opinion? Why is it that you suddenly care what they think?”
“I always cared,” Calder growled back, angry at himself for letting the beast out of its cage even for a moment. “I just wanted them to fear me then.”
“And, oh, it felt good when they did,” The Voice reminded him in a purr, taking advantage of the respite from Its imprisonment to send shivers of excited delight through him, flicking emotional switches to evoke the feelings of joy Annihilator had always known when the insignificant norms had cowered before him.
Calder shook his head to clear the images of blood and destruction from his eyes, nearly colliding with a brightly lit aerial as the memories interfered with his mental control of his flight. He drew himself into a standing position, hovering in the air and biting at his lip until he drew blood. His entire body was quivering with tension as he battled The Voice for supremacy.
“Leave me alone, you son of a bitch!” He snarled as his stomach fluttered uncontrollably with rage. “I'm not him any more!”
“Oh, yes, you have your precious morals now,” sneered The Voice. “Go, then. Go to your confessor and cry about your sins and misdeeds. Tell him how much you regret your life. Let all the norms stare at you as though you were some sort of freak. Hang your head in shame as they spit on you. They don't want you or your precious quest for redemption, you know. They want you dead! Not a single one of them sees you as more than the heartless bastard you really are! So you go and stand before them, now, and piss yourself in shame and misery because they don't like you. You make me sick, you pathetic little nothing!”
Calder hung in the air in silence, letting The Voice rail at him as he wept silent tears that dripped from his face to fall a hundred feet to the ground. When It tired of the effort, The Voice would retreat and grumble at him from where It lay buried in his heart.
“You look like shit, Calder,” declared a familiar voice, cutting through the moment of self-hatred and sending The Voice racing back down into the darkness. It did not like the new arrival. Calder glanced around until his swollen eyes caught sight of the azure costume as it twisted and rolled through the air in a graceful ballet.
“Hey, Deacon,” he said, trying to smile. “I feel like it, too.”
Swooping in on an errant thermal, Deacon Blue shook his head sadly as he passed the hovering booster. Calder knew that Deacon's face, hidden behind the all-encompassing mask he wore, would be twisted in a grimace of pity for the shell of a man that floated before him.
“You look like you could use a drink,” observed Deacon.
“More than you know,” answered Calder with more of the unashamed honesty that he had adopted since Deacon had shown him the path to redemption.
“Gonna take one if I offer it?”
Calder managed a real grin then, and shook his head. “Not today.”
“The newsies are coming to see if we're going to fight up here,” the blue-suited hero announced, pointing toward the helicopter vectoring toward them from the west. The brilliant red paint scheme, gleaming in the midday sun, was split by a stark white logo proclaiming it to be the property of Channel Seven. “Let's go somewhere else, unless you want to give them something to write about.”
Calder ignored the good-natured jibe and simply nodded. He followed as Deacon Blue shot away from him like a missile. The two boosters left the helicopter behind as though it were unmoving.
“So, you having a bad day?” asked Deacon, shouting to be heard over the rush of wind.
Calder thought back to the mid-air confrontation with The Voice and gritted his teeth as he sensed It readying Itself to come once more. He twisted his head to the side, feeling the joints of his neck crack with a sound like a pistol shot. A deep breath helped him settle his spirit before he replied.
“I was,” he said simply.
“And what are you going to do now?”
Calder saw an image of himself reaching out and blasting away the mask of his friend with a jet of fusion-hot energy from his hand, laughing as the flesh burned away in a heartbeat. Shrugging his shoulders as he ignored the all-too-frequent vision of destruction generated by The Voice, he pursed his lips in thought.
“Just keep going, I guess,” he answered.
“Siren still thinks you're too dangerous,” Deacon Blue announced calmly, as though he were telling Calder about the weather.
“Sometimes I think she's right.”
“A pretty one,” whispered The Voice. Calder ignored the sarcastic tone as he recalled his heat-beams blistering the once beautiful face of the brunette. Memories of her horrified screams still tore him, dripping with sweat, from sleep at night. That amazing voice, capable of shattering battleship armor, reduced to no more than a whimper as he casually brutalized her with burns and broken bones. Scarred face hidden behind a full-face mask, Siren had led the charge of the half-dozen boosters sent to bring him down a year later. It had cost them dearly. RocketStrike and Hellblade killed outright, ripped apart physically by Annihilator's powerful hands even as they begged for mercy, Johnny Reb sent to the hospital with only one arm and a shattered spine, and even Siren knocked unconscious, bleeding from mouth and nose with internal damage that would take months to heal.
But Deacon Blue had been there as well. Deacon Blue with his ability to cleanse the soul. He had simply drifted along in the battle, watching Annihilator closely and unable to physically stop the powerhouse genebooster. He had insinuated himself in the twisted mind of a creature so horrifically evil that it made even Deacon retch as he flew. He let himself in with all the ease of an invited houseguest, anchoring himself in Annihilator's heart and spirit, and showing him the visions of what he had truly become.
The battle had reached its climax with Lightbringer and Graviton working as a team to restrain and assault Annihilator. The gravitic attacks of the booster in the Kelly-green suit had forced even the enraged Annihilator to the ground, and the ferocious onslaught of Lightbringer's solar rays were beginning to tell on him. Given time, and more endurance, they might have held the day on their own. The other boosters, now dead or injured, had exhausted and weakened Annihilator.
In the end, though, it was Deacon Blue that took him down without ever once striking him. Walking through the chaotic jumble of hate-filled images in Annihilator's mind, Deacon Blue found the one thing that could control the monster. Cowering in a corner of his own consciousness, Ian Calder begged for help and Deacon Blue erupted into a flare of Prussian-blue light a thousand times more intense than the blinding rays of Lightbringer. Face split wide in a beatific grin, he extended a hand to Calder, who took it and instantly saw what he truly was. The rivers of blood through which he waded. The hate he generated. The despair and pain left in his wake.
In that instant, he understood what had to be done.
To the amazement of Lightbringer and Graviton, as well as the viewers watching the battle through the cameras of the four news agencies covering the war despite the personal danger, Annihilator went limp and raised his hands in supplication. He allowed himself to be led away from the scene in shackles of purest durite, despite the fact that he could probably have shattered even that metal with some effort. Behind them, as rescue teams went to work on the fallen geneboosters, citizens ran forth with handkerchiefs and rags to soak up the tears of the mighty Annihilator as some kind of perverse souvenir.
“I never could control it, Deacon,” Calder said as he rubbed his palms across his tired eyes. Deacon Blue pulled up short in the air, spiraling slowly around Calder in that relaxed manner that left everyone feeling peaceful as they watched his almost hypnotic midair dance. It was no wonder that many of the geneboosters sought him out as some sort of holy man, a priest-like figure to whom they could unburden themselves.
“Sure you could,” remarked the blue-clad hero as he continued the sinuous flight. “You just didn't want to. Too much effort, fear of what you would confront, hesitation at facing the real you, they all played a part.”
“It's still there, in the back of my head,” Calder said with a sniffling sound. “I call it The Voice.”
“Yep. Always will be, too.” Deacon Blue said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Thing is, it'll get quieter as time goes on. You just have to remember who's in charge.”
“That'd be me, right?” Calder quipped, banking away to resume the flight as Deacon Blue followed alongside him. He had seen something special below them and twisted his body to vector toward it.
“I would hope so,” laughed Deacon Blue as they settled gently to the ground. He glanced around, the mask shifting as his head turned. He looked into the startled face of a norm wearing a khaki uniform and pushing a cart loaded with fruit. Calder gripped a sack of oranges and grinned like a madman as he sailed through the air and over the nearest fence.
“What are you doing?” Deacon Blue asked.
Calder sat calmly on the grass behind the chain-link fence and tossed oranges to the apes who milled around, watching the newcomer warily and snatching at the fruits as they rolled across the ground. He looked up from within the zoo's cage, for once feeling as though he were where he belonged.
“Making it better,” he said with a smile.
END