Chapter 24: Purpose and Sacrifice

Monday, July 20, 2009, 7:15 AM

“NO!” Tricia screamed. “I refuse! We are NOT letting him die!”

Snow Angel was tearing, and holding Joey’s head. Green energy flowed from her hands into his body. “Tricia! There’s nothing I can do! I told you. I can’t fix this!” Her voice was shaking in sorrow.

“You HAVE to be able to help him!” She looked into Joey’s eyes. He was choking on his blood, shivering, rasping, and his eyes stared at Tricia in terror. “Joey, I am not letting you die! We’re getting through this!”

“Don’t give him false hope,” Snow Angel sobbed.

The sprays of blood were now just trickles, and the warm blood ran down over his shoulder and into a puddle around him. Tricia closed her eyes, crying, praying, and pushing on his wound, trying to keep the blood inside him. “You have to help him. Please.”

Her mind raced back, searching for clues, inspiration, anything. She remembered the conversation she had with herself back on Wednesday. The words from her future self echoed in her mind. “Everyone in your life now is in it for a reason ... He is everything! Think creatively! You can get through anything with him, even if he’s ... even if he’s dying in your arms and you think there is no hope. As long as he is alive and with you, there is always hope.”

“Everyone in my life is in it for a reason...” she whispered to herself. “Think creatively.” She stared at Snow Angel. “You! You can heal! You can rebuild tissue! Heart is just tissue! You can rebuild his heart, can’t you?”

Snow Angel hesitated. “Yes, but ... it’s too difficult!”

“Is it too much tissue to rebuild?”

“No. It’s ... I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like!”

“WHAT DO YOU NEED?”

“These are complex structures, and I don’t know what’s missing, what needs to be rebuilt, what connects to what! What shape things are supposed to be.”

“So you’re physically capable of healing him, but you just need information, right? You just need to know what to do. Someone to guide you?”

Snow Angel nodded. “Yeah. But ... do you know what to do?”

Tricia shook her head. “No, but...” She grabbed her cell phone and opened it. Blood from her hands smeared over the keys and screen. She tried to wipe the blood off the screen, but she only managed to put more blood on the screen, rendering it worthless. “God damn it!” she screamed, and threw the phone aside. Tricia took a couple deep breaths and thought. She leaned in to Joey. “Joey. I have an idea. But I need your help. You can still use your powers, right?”

Joey’s mouth was opening and closing like a fish gasping for air. He had stopped breathing, but was still conscious. He nodded fearfully. She took his hand in hers.

“Good. I need a power. Something like a ... mind scan. Something that can let me find someone who can help us and talk telepathically. Someone miles away. Can you do that?”

He nodded. He breathlessly mouthed a word. “ ... name...”

Tricia concentrated on the name of the person she wanted. Sparks erupted from his hands, and she felt the power enter her body. Her mind rippled, and she threw her head back and screamed as a wave a psychic energy exploded from her consciousness.

“DOCTOR BOOTH!”

Somewhere in the suburbs of Bethesda, Maryland, Willow Booth sat in her bedroom in a lotus position, meditating and floating about eight inches above her bed. The young, brown-skinned, teenage girl was surrounded by hovering, glowing circles of mystic energies inscribed with triangles, pentagrams, and arcane glyphs.

“Speak to me, spirits of the ancients...” she chanted. “Speak to me ... tell me your secrets.”

The spirits were not talking today, and she continued her concentration, stretching her mind out into the astral, seeking knowledge and companionship. Her phone buzzed, and her eyes snapped open. The glyphs and symbols vanished, and she settled on the bed gently.

She looked at her phone. “Whoa ... Sorry spirits, but you’re nothing compared to Twitter.” She rolled to her bedside table, tossed aside a stuffed rabbit, and grabbed her TV remote. She then turned her TV on and switched to the local news channel.

“ ... and emergency crews are arriving on the scene,” said the reporter standing outside a building complex. “So far there have been no reports of injuries from people escaping the area, but it looks like there are two people injured at the scene of the fight. For those of you just joining us, there is a major super-fight occurring right now at Freedom Plaza in Rosslyn, Virginia. We are getting varying reports as to how many people are involved, anywhere from five to seven. So far we’ve confirmed Multiplex, Bullwhip, Snow Angel and Quantum Knight. Bullwhip is currently fighting a red woman with black wings and fire powers.” The camera focused in on Bullwhip as his leather whips entangled in long fire whips. “We’re not sure as to the identity of the woman he’s fighting, but she appears to have a strong resemblance to a villain named Desdemona, who was killed over five years ago. We don’t know if or how this woman is related. There is also a very large and apparently dead ... I don’t know what to call it ... a dinosaur, or something, and there are a lot of smaller strange bodies about the area. Lizards, or dogs, or very large bats or something like that.”

A woman’s voice spoke up from the station. “And what is going on with the wounded?”

The camera panned over. “Quantum Knight is down, but ... I can see she is still moving. Snow Angel and this other woman are tending to a young boy. It appears he’s been seriously wounded. We don’t know yet who this woman is, or who the boy is.”

Willow gasped as she saw the camera image zoom in on Tricia and Joey. “MOM! DAD!” She jumped out of bed and ran down the stairs. “MOM! DAD! COME QUICK!”

“What is it, Willow?” her mother called from the kitchen. Her father was sitting at the table reading the paper when Willow ran in.

“Remember that boy last week? He failed the magic tests, and all the others? He’s on TV! There’s a big fight, and I think he’s hurt!” She grabbed her mother and pulled her. “Come!”

They all three ran back to Willow’s room. Her mother gasped as she saw them. “It’s Joey. Oh dear.”

Her father watched, seeing the blood spraying from his chest. “Oh no ... He’s...” He shook his head.

“We’ve been getting some reports that the woman has super-powers, and is responsible for most of the property damage in the area,” said the reporter. “We also hearing from some witnesses that the boy had some powers, but we can’t confirm that. I’m going to try and get a bit closer, and see if I can...”

Willow and her parents watched as Tricia threw her head back and screamed something, and a wave of blue-white energy shot out of her body. The reporter let out a “What the FUCK?” on the air, and the energy wave expanded and exploded across the plaza in all directions. The wave washed over the reporter and the camera, and the image shook violently as the cameraman stumbled. They could see the ground, feet, shadows, and legs, and the reporter spoke again. “What was that? Doctor Booth? Did you hear that?” Several agreeing and affirming voices from the local crew came from off-camera, and the camera image shakily righted itself, returning to the reporter.

“Greg? Are you all right? What was that?” asked the anchor woman.

“Uh, yeah. I’m okay! That ... that was weird. That energy wave, when it passed, I heard a woman’s voice, and she said ‘Doctor Booth’.” He turned to his crew. “You all heard that too, didn’t you? Yeah. We all heard a ‘Doctor Booth’. I don’t what that means, but I’m going to find out.” The reporter started running towards the wounded, but was stopped by a sudden stream of Multiplex clones. The clones vanished, leaving one behind.

“Get back!” Multiplex commanded.

“Multiplex! Can you tell us what is happening? Who are these people, and who is Doctor Booth?”

“I said BACK!” And on live TV, Multiplex violently punched the reporter in the stomach, taking him out in one shot. He then lifted the reporter and started carrying him away from the fight. The stream of Multiplex clones shot towards the camera, and a gloved hand covered the lens. The signal broke into digital noise.

“Um ... we’re going to switch to our eye in the sky,” said the anchor woman. “Dan, can you tell us what you can see?”

The image switched to an aerial shot of the city. Sounds of a helicopter came over the speaker. The camera was following the wave of blue energy and it traveled across the Potomac. “Well, Abbie, we’re watching this energy wave, and it is just racing out in all directions like nothing I’ve seen before. It’s not stopping for anything, and we’ve been watching traffic accidents happen right in front of our eyes. The entire George Washington Memorial Parkway and the Key Bridge are just in chaos. So whatever this is, it’s affecting people, but I don’t think it’s directly affecting anything else.”

“Any idea what this wave is?” asked the anchor woman.

Willow turned to her parents, and gave them a frightful and expectant look. “She’s calling you!” She ran to her window and looked out. Her parents took each other’s hands and they stared at each other, waiting.

“What is that, Willow?” her mother said. “Is it a spell?”

“It didn’t look like a spell. I don’t know what that was.” She watched out the window. “Oh.”

“What is it?” her father asked, and they looked out the window. “What do you...” He stopped as he saw what his daughter saw. The horizon was glowing as the massive energy wave approached.

“Can you protect us?” her mother asked.

“I don’t think this is something you need to be protected from,” Willow answered. The phone started ringing downstairs. “Don’t answer that.”

A web of blue-white lightning filled the sky as the wave raced towards them, and Tarak held Patina’s hand in his, and held tight. The wave enveloped the houses across the street, and a moment later flew into the house. Tarak screamed as the wave hit his brain, and he fell back onto Willow’s bed, grabbing his head. The wave vanished.

“Got him!” Tricia yelled, all the way back in Rosslyn, Virginia. “Doctor Booth! Can you hear me?” she cried out.

Tarak rolled on the bed in agony, screaming. Patina and Willow raced to him, holding him, and trying to help him.

“STOP IT!” he screamed.

“Joey. I think it’s too loud,” Tricia said. “Can you reduce the volume? ... Is this better? Can you hear me?”

Tarak stopped screaming. He looked around in Willows room in a panic. “Daddy! Are you okay?” Willow pleaded.

“Tarak! Please are you all right?” his wife asked.

“Who is that?” he asked.

“You can hear me! Good! Oh, thank God! This is Tricia Sanchez! We met last week at your wife’s office. You talked to a boy in private. Joey. Do you remember him?”

“I ... I...”

“Look. I’m talking to you telepathically. Joey’s been hurt, and he needs a heart surgeon. You’re the only one I know. I need you to help him. He’s been ... I think he’s been stabbed in the heart. I’ve got Snow Angel here, and she’s keeping him alive, but she needs help to fix his heart. I need you to help her with that.”

Tarak looked around wildly. “What? I...”

“Daddy! Please? Are you all right?”

“I can hear a woman. I can hear her,” he said.

“Yes! Good! And I can hear you too!” Tricia said. “Now please! Help me! He needs help. I ... I can’t feel his heart beating.”

“His heart stopped beating,” Snow Angel’s voice confirmed. “It’s shaking now.”

“You’re talking to her?” Willow asked. “You can hear her?”

“Yes. I ... Tricia, you said. What are you doing? How are you doing this?”

“Not important right now. Look, I know this is really strange, but I need you to help me.”

“I ... I don’t know if I can help you. You need to get him to a hospital. Now!”

“He says we have to get him to a hospital. Can we get him to a hospital?” Tricia asked Snow Angel.

“No,” Snow Angel said. “I’m pulling Earth lifeforce. We can’t move him.”

“No, we can’t move him,” Tricia repeated. “We can’t get...”

“I heard another voice,” said Tarak. “Who is that?”

“You can hear her? That’s Snow Angel. Joey! How is...” Joey pointed one shaking finger to his ear. “You’re connecting what we hear, right? Okay. Look, Doctor. We need you to help Snow Angel put his heart back together.”

“I don’t know what I can do to help you.”

“Daddy! Please, help him!” Willow cried.

“Um ... I need to see the wound. Where is the wound.”

Tricia hesitated. “Um, I...” She looked at Joey’s wound. “It’s about ... three, maybe four inches from his neck ... I...”

Joey pointed to his eyes, and then hers. She made the connection. “Optical telepathy?” He nodded. “Doc, you’re gonna be looking out of my eyes now.”

“What? AAAHHH!!” Tarak thrashed and reached out as his world changed.

“You’re looking out of my eyes now, doctor,” Tricia leaned in over Joey and ripped his shirt open. Blood poured from the wound in thick surges. “Oh, god...” she gasped, and she tried wiping the blood away. Her eyes filled with tears, and she almost wiped her eyes with her bloody hands, and managed to wipe her eyes on her arm instead. More blood seeped out of his chest, obscuring the wound. She kept wiping the blood away, and she could see the ripped skin on his chest, but there was too much blood in the wound to get a clear view. “Can you see the wound?”

Tarak sat on the bed, looking through Tricia’s eyes. “I ... I can see what you’re seeing, but I can’t see the wound. Can you suction out the blood?”

Tricia swallowed. “Can we do anything about the blood? Get it out of the way?” she asked Snow Angel.

Snow Angel nodded. “His heart has stopped.” She reached into the wound and the blood froze solid. She pulled chunks of red ice out. Tricia looked closer at the wound.

“I still can’t see the damage.” Tarak said. “I don’t think I can help you. I’m sorry, Tricia.”

“I AM NOT GIVING UP!” she yelled. “I’ve got a sorceress here pumping oxygen into his cells and she can rebuild tissues! She just needs to know what needs to be fixed, and you can help her. And I’m not letting go of your mind until you help her! Now what do you need?! I’ve got a shit-load of power to work with here.”

“I ... I need to see what the damage looks like.”

“He says he needs to see the damage,” Tricia relayed.

Snow Angel thought. “Okay. Um ... I think I can do that.” She held her hand over Joey’s shoulder and a snowy sculpture formed in her hand. Tricia recognized it as a heart and a lung, and torn in various places.

Tarak looked at the model. “Can you show me what is under the lung?” Tricia relayed the request, and Snow Angel lifted the lung model, showing the heart model. He studied it. “There is a tear through his aorta and ventricular septum, and it looks like his aortic valve has been damaged.”

“So you can help us!”

“Tricia ... His blood is compromised. There are air bubbles and pieces of flesh in his blood. His blood is clotting ... Even if we fix his heart, we’re looking at embolisms and infections. This is not going to work. I’m sorry.”

“Snow, can you clean his blood? Get rid of air bubbles and germs and whatever else that doesn’t belong in there?”

She nodded. “Yeah. That’s easy! I can handle little things like that. It’s just the big stuff I need to know.”

Tricia stared at the snow models. “Doc, we can do this. She just needs to know what a healthy heart looks like from the inside. Do you have something she can look at? Joey? Can you bring her into this? Make it so she can see what he is looking at, and hear him too?”

Joey nodded, terrified. Snow Angel let out a yelp. “WHOA! Where is that?”

Tarak turned to Willow. “Get my heart model from my study.” The girl nodded and ran. He turned to his wife. “Anatomy books.” She nodded and ran. “This may not work, Tricia.”

“I can hear him too!” Snow Angel remarked in surprise.

“What does he need? What else do we need to do?”

“Well ... he’s lost a lot of blood. He needs a transfusion too.”

Tricia glanced at her arm. “I don’t know his blood type ... I don’t know what where we can get blood from...”

Snow Angel turned her head around. “Multiplex! O-Negative, stat!” She turned back to Tricia. “We have as much blood as we need. Multiplex is O-Negative. Universal donor. It’s a little radioactive, but we can worry about cancer later.”

Willow returned with the plastic heart model and handed it to her father. His wife returned with a few anatomy books, and they lay them on the bed, opening them to the sections on the heart. Tarak opened the plastic cutaway model of the heart and started pointing to sections. “This is the aorta. It wraps around the pulmonary arteries and is fed by the left ventrical. His-side left.”

Snow Angel nodded, and mentally probed Joey’s damaged heart. “I ... I think I see what’s damaged. There’s a big rip in this thick part.”

“That is the ventricular septum. Can you rebuild it?”

“Yeah.” Snow Angel concentrated. “This is going to take some time, but I can shape this.”

Joey grimaced. Tricia squeezed his hand. “You’re doing great Joey. This is going to work. We’re going to fix you.” She glanced over at the fight between Desdemona and Bullwhip.

“We do not need to see that,” said Tarak. “Keep yours eyes on Joey.”

“Sorry.” Tricia returned her eyes to Joey, but wondered how much time Bullwhip could give them.

Bullwhip’s and Desdemona’s fight had taken them far from the others, as was Bullwhip’s intention. At first they grappled with whips, but she had managed to destroy his with a combination of fire and claws. Thinking he was helpless without them, she used her mystic fire-whips on him, only to discover that the moment they touched him, they were no longer under her control. So now they had resorted to brute-force clawing and pummeling each other.

He savagely punched her, repeatedly delivering bone-crushing blows to her body and skull, and Desdemona raged and screamed, viciously slashing her claws at him. The man was an unstoppable powerhouse, and every rip in his clothes that she did manage to puncture just repaired itself, fibers reweaving themselves as fast as she healed from his attacks.

She roared and charged him, her claws extended and fire rippling from her hands. Bullwhip caught her by the arms and held her back. She bared her new fangs at him and hissed, and he head-butted her. Desdemona shook it off, and held her ground, glaring at the mutant superhero.

“You’re getting weaker. You’re getting tired.”

“Not yet,” he growled back at her, straining to hold her.

Desdemona squinted and sniffed. “No ... It’s not that. It’s your clothes. Clothes do make the man, don’t they? You’re not strong. Your clothes are, aren’t they boy?”

“DON’T CALL ME BOY!” Bullwhip yelled, and he smashed his fists into her, knocking the demon to the ground. Desdemona reset her jaw and smiled at him.

“I know your secret. I don’t have to attack you. Just your threads.” She licked her lips, hissed, and pounced, slashing into his sleeves. Chunks of cloth ripped and fell off, and others re-wrapped around his arm, reinforcing their integrity. Bullwhip blocked and fought, and she slashed his face, leaving huge scratches in his cheek. He screamed in pain, and she tore his sleeves open, ripping huge pieces of cloth off. She slashed into his chest, and more leather and fabric fell to the ground. Much of his skin was now exposed, and what little cloth was left wasn’t enough to defend or enhance him.

Desdemona centered her eyes on his chest, at his heart. She licked hip lips and smiled. “Time for you to die, hero.”

Bullwhip surprised her by charging her, punching her in the stomach. She doubled over in pain from the crushing blow. Her ribs cracked and shattered, and she fell to the ground. He roared and pummeled her body. His arms and chest were bare, muscled, sweaty, and bleeding, and he pounded her with his fists, screaming at her.

She kicked out, connecting her foot to his chest, and sent him flying back. He rolled on the concrete, scraping his skin. She glared at him, and wiped the blood from her mouth.

“You should be weak. How are you staying so strong?” She sniffed the air. “Ahh! Clever boy, punching me in my own clothes. Using my own clothes against me.” She stood and raised a claw to her bodice. “But what if I fought in the nude as well?”

Ker-CHUNK! WhirrRRRRRR! “Hey! Beelze-bitch!” Desdemona turned and saw Quantum Knight standing nearby, carrying the BFG-9000 Magnetic Accelerator Assault Cannon. “Remember this?”

“NO!!” she screamed, and spread her wings to take off. Quantum Knight lowered the gun and started firing a stream of accelerated nails at her. The nails split into a sine-wave pattern, focusing in on her, ripping through her flesh and taking out huge chunks. Desdemona spun and howled in a rasping and gargling voice as the nails tore through her body.

Quantum Knight glanced in Bullwhip’s direction. “Go! Get some fresh clothes! I’ll hold her!”

Bullwhip nodded, turned, and ran towards the emergency vehicles parked a block away. His pants were still intact, and using the strength in them he leaped high into the air, covering the distance in a couple of seconds. He landed hard on a police car, smashing the hood, and startling the several officers around him.

“Bullwhip! Jesus, fucking Christ, what’s going on? What can we do to help?” one of the policemen asked.

One policeman was a big guy wearing a leather jacket. Bullwhip jumped off the car, landed next to him, and slapped one hand on his shoulder. The jacket quickly unzipped and flipped itself off the man. The man yelped as his jacket flew off him and onto Bullwhip.

“Gotta borrow this,” he explained, moving on to another policeman. The jacket zipped up around him and he touched another startled policeman. His Kevlar vest, strapped over his body, suddenly became alive and unhooked itself, whipping around Bullwhip’s torso. He continued striding through the crowd of police and paramedics, and headed for the fire fighters. The first one he reached, he touched, and the tan fire fighter’s jacket ripped itself off the startled man and wrapped itself around the hero. Bullwhip reached the fire truck and slapped one hand on the side. All the hatches on the truck opened, and a long fire hose snaked out like a tentacle towards the hero. He took the fire hose in one hand and looked back to the fight. The fire hose unhooked itself from the truck and snapped out, wrapping around a light post. Bulllwhip grunted and jumped on his powerful legs, and the hose pulled him, and he soared back into the battle.