Chapter One: Heal In Time

Dawn breaks, clear and brisk. He doesn't get the chance to find a place to sleep. An E.P.D Sergeant from the Warren calls and tells him the Dust Men are tearing the place up looking for blast shards, eradiated metal fragments touched by the Ray Sphere's energy.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out they're using them to build more of their scrap metal dreadnoughts. Those things are getting real old, real fast.

He spends the few remaining hours before dawn hunting down the scavenger parties. By the time he gets back to the Neon, the sun's peering out over the horizon, ready to swamp the city with its first rays of light.

Fatigue's starting to creep in now, making his muscles heavy and his head swim. For a moment, he starts to long for that old, threadbare couch on Zeke's roof, with its pizza stains, coffee spills and electric discharge burns. He can't remember the last time he got more than a couple of hours sleep. All he knows is that it's been too long.

But he can hear the sound of voices in the street - raised, angry, urgent. He can feel synapses firing on overtime, a crackle of electric discharges. There's fury and fear heavy in the air.

It feels like trouble. Sleep's going to have to wait.

He looks out over the edge of the building. There's a crowd gathered below. Two men have another guy hanging by his feet from a rope wrapped around the top of a streetlight. There's another spewing out obscenities, firing up a crowd. Some people are just watching. Others are throwing rocks.

If there are any cops nearby, they aren't coming to help. It's up to him, as usual.

He jumps down, yanks his hood up over his head, and starts walking towards the gathering, hands plunged into his pockets, playing at stealth. Already, he can see the vacant, unseeing look in the victim's eyes. He's seen that look before. He can't hear what the agitator's saying yet, but he already knows what's going on.

"We need to show these sons of bitches that we're not going to be pushed around!" the rabble-rouser yells, slamming the metal pipe he's holding into the hanging man's stomach to a chorus of approval, "if the law isn't going to do anything about these assholes, we need to stand up and take responsibility! This is our city! We've got to keep our people safe! If we can't rely on anyone else then we need to rely on one another. This prick won't take anymore lives, and we're gonna be the ones who make sure of that!"

The accused man just hangs slack on his rope like some kind of living piñata. Black drool rolls down his face. He doesn't even seem to realise what's going on. A woman at the back of the crowd draws back her hand, clutching a rock about as big as her fist. A piece of rubble from one of the shattered buildings. Cole steps forward, catches her wrist. She looks back at him and he shakes his head. Slow. Deliberate. She drops the stone and backs away, before fleeing down the street.

Now he just has to deal with the rest of the mob.

"Let him down," he says.

The mob hears. They go quiet and turn to face him, parting to let him walk through their ranks. Some recognise him and slip away unnoticed. The others just watch him in silence.

"Who the...? Oh, it's you." The ringleader sizes him as he emerges into the middle of the circle. "Where the hell were you when this piece of trash firebombed that clinic in broad daylight? Killed a dozen patients, three doctors, and burned up a whole bunch of medical supplies to boot. Still think we should let him down?"

"I think you need to get out of my face, cut him down and let the cops deal with this. Or are you and me going to have a problem?"

"See?" The man ignores him, starts addressing his congregation. He's waving his weapon like a conductor's baton, playing the others like an orchestra. "This is what I'm talking about. We can't rely on this guy, or those pigs, to get justice. This is about us protecting ours."

Cole growls deep in the back of his throat. He wants to tell these people that the guy they're thinking of lynching is one of theirs. He's being controlled by Sasha and her mind-control tar. But that sounds crazy when he thinks it, let alone says it out loud.

"If you wanna kill this guy then you're gonna have to go through me first."

Some people in the crowd are smart enough to know that they're fighting a losing battle. Their leader doesn't seem so quick on the uptake. He's the man now, the one everyone's taking their cues from. He's drunk on the power and he doesn't want to give it up.

Cole's seen it a few times now. Ordinary losers, just like he was once, getting a taste of control and losing their minds with it. He's felt it too. He knows how hard it is to get a grip when you've got power that you didn't have before.

He also knows how dangerous it can be if you don't.

"Through you, huh?" he asks, fingers tightening around his length of pipe, "with fucking pleasure."

He swings for the fences, real homerun material, but Cole lifts a hand and catches it almost without trying. Then he pumps a few volts through it and it goes off like a cattle prod, knocking the guy clean out. Everyone gasps.

In one move, he kills the mob's fire. They start to disperse, heading home, wherever home is now. The two big guys drop the rope and their would-be victim hits the concrete, hard. He doesn't even seem to feel it.

No one tries to help the ringleader up. That's fine by Cole. Maybe waking up in the gutter will sober him, take him down a peg or two.

He waits until everyone moves on before he lets himself swear and clutch at his hand. He's strong, but even he has to admit that was a good swing.

"Come on," he says, hauling the tar-sick man up by his collar.

He stands for a moment, then slumps, feet giving out beneath him. His hands clutch at the front of Cole's jacket. Tears are streaming down his face, thick with tar, and he's sobbing and grunting nonsense. Then he vomits black all over his saviour's shoes and passes out.

Cole groans. He's had that crap on him before. In fact, he's been covered head-to-toe in the stuff on more than one occasion. He knows firsthand what it does. He's certain the only reason she didn't have him rampaging through the streets, throwing cars at pedestrians and blowing up police precincts is because of his own powers.

He's more than human now, in body and in mind.

But this isn't a new convert. Sasha pumps her victims so full of tar it spews out of them from every orifice. This guy's barely leaking it. That only means one thing. He's an ex-Reaper, one that the cops captured and hosed down.

Except that he isn't clean. Not really. And so she was able to make him pull a final, crazy stunt for her. One that cost the city three doctors and needed supplies. And fifteen people their lives.

He isn't happy, but the first thing he has to do is get this guy off the streets, before he hurts anyone else. Then, he's going to have a little talk with Harms.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Trish had never had many friends.

It hadn't been her fault. She'd been a great person. Funny and lively. Strong and compassionate. People couldn't help but like her.

But people didn't like Cole. Other than Zeke, and maybe Amy once they'd become close, no one got along well with him. That suited him fine. He'd never been interested in being everyone's friend.

But he felt sorry for Trish. She was a med school graduate. She could have done anything she'd wanted with her life. Instead, she'd stayed behind in Empire City, settled for being an E.M.T, so that they could be together. Everyone else she'd known from college had left to study abroad or got great jobs elsewhere in the country. She'd been stuck there, because of him.

She'd told him dozens of times she wouldn't have traded what they had for the world. She'd proved it dozens more. Opportunities came and went, and still she stayed with him. He'd never deserved a girl like that. He'd always hoped she'd never regret it, even with all she'd lost. All he'd ever wanted was to make her proud of him.

And with her last breath, she'd told him that she was proud. It had brought tears to his eyes.

Kristen Daniels was the closest Trish had ever had to a real friend. They'd been to college together. Hell, their pictures had been next to one another in the hall of graduates at Empire University. That was, before the Ray Sphere turned it into a crater.

They hadn't been particularly close. They'd met for coffee every now and then. But what they'd lacked in affection, they made up for by agreeing on just about everything.

Before the disaster, Kris had been the head of a successful private practice in the Neon. Since then, she's been doing everything she can to help keep the city alive. She never turns a patient away and spends every spare moment researching the plague, looking for that cure the government failed to deliver. Trish's kind of people.

Kris and Cole had never seen eye to eye, but that didn't matter to him. She was one of the few who hadn't let that affect her friendship with Trish and he respected her for that. And she'd defended Cole at every opportunity when Trish had walked out on him.

Despite what she thought of him, she'd known that he was the good guy, the one trying to save the city. She might even have been the one that convinced Trish to take him back, and given them a couple more weeks together. For that, Cole doesn't think he can ever repay her.

And today's not the day he gets the chance to try.

He bursts in through the clinic's door, carrying the mob's tar-sick victim, to find the place noisy, crowded and reeking. Business as usual. Patients are lying on gurneys and litters. Others are propped up in chairs. Others still are curled up on sheets on the floor. The medics run from bed to bed, stepping over puddles of vomit, blood and other rank bodily fluids.

They've got them all here - plague victims, pedestrians wounded in gang attacks, car crash survivors. It's a sorry state of affairs, and it's the same the whole city over. Not enough doctors to tend the sick and wounded. Not enough supplies to stock the clinics.

No wonder the lynch mob went so crazy.

The place is so hectic no one even pays him any attention. He's got his hood pulled up anyway, just to be sure no one spots the city's hero running through the place with a Reaper in his arms.

He pushes past the plastic curtain that leads into the back room and sometimes operating theatre. Fortunately, there's no surgery going on right now. He sets the guy down on the floor and looks him over. He's still passed out, which makes things a little easier. If he'd had to listen to that babbling for another minute, he might have knocked him out himself.

Before he can think about what to do next, he hears raised voices in the next room. A team of medics in gore-streaked scrubs charge through the curtains, dragging a gurney between them. Kris rides atop, straddling the patient's torso, working oxygen into his lungs through a rubber bladder. The man's heart is limp in his chest, and a glimpse of the blisters on his arms and face tell Cole why. The plague is killing him.

Even as she dismounts, Kris is barking orders. Taking control like she was meant to. "I want those paddles charged. Get me epinephrine and keep that oxygen going."

One of the others takes the bag out of her hands and starts squeezing."We're losing him."

"No," she says, biting the cap off a syringe and plunging it into her patient's chest, "we're not. Not again."

"Still nothing."

Cole speaks up. He knows it's the best chance the dying man has. "Stand back."

The staff turn to look at him as he steps forward. Kris locks eyes with him, then shoos her team away. He flexes his fingers. Sparks flicker at their tips.

He presses his hands flat to a ribcage covered by thin skin. Sometimes he wonders if the people in this city are worth saving when all they have to live for is suffering. In the end, he knows it's not his choice. It's theirs. All he can do is the best he can. He has to leave the rest to them.

Energy pulses from his palms, rippling out through the body before him. It jerks, limbs flailing, and then falls back to the bed. He steps away as the medics crowd around again.

"Vitals steady. Looks like he might be back with us."

Kris nods. "All traces of the disease should be gone too. Cart him back through. I want him in observation until he's recovered. But he should be over the worst of it."

They do as she asks. Some of them stop to clap Cole on the back, shake his hand, or just say thanks. Then they wheel the stretcher away and leave him alone in the back room. Alone with Kris.

"First, I want to say thank you," she says, "that man would have died without your help. I appreciate what you did."

She snaps off her gloves and turns to wash her hands at the sink. There's something in the passive-aggressive way she strangles the soap that tells him he's not going to like where this conversation is headed.

"Now I want to know what you're doing here, and who the hell you've brought into my clinic."

"No one important."

She stoops to examine his patient. It takes her a second to find the watery black ooze seeping out of his mouth, nose and ears.

"Cole, is this man a Reaper?"

"Used to be." He scratches at the stubble on the back of his head, sheepish. "Still is until they clean him up right."

"I don't believe this. Of all the stupid, irresponsible..."

"What did you want me to do, Kris? Leave him out there in the street? They were gonna lynch him."

"How about taking him to the police?" she snaps. As usual, talking to him is making her temper flare. Same old shit. "Or anywhere else that isn't here. Jesus, Cole, I have innocent people here that need my attention. I can't be babysitting a felon."

"The nearest precinct's eight blocks from here. I can't cover that kind of distance carrying someone. I'd be a sitting duck for a Reaper attack. I just need to keep him off the street until I can get Harms to send someone to pick him up."

The sick man stirs in his sleep. The tar turns his dreams into hallucinogenic nightmares. His feet kick against the linoleum. His hands reach out for someone long gone. But it's all in vain. He can't run away, and he'll never hold her again. Cole knows that feeling.

"Joanne," he groans, between fits of wordless, terrified moaning, "Joanne, come back. Don't leave me."

"She really did a number on him, didn't she?" the doctor asks. She looks from him to the Reaper and then back, features softening, agitation crumbling. "When are you going to stop that woman?"

"Soon as I find her. Trust me, no one wants to kick her ass as bad as I do."

She sighs and runs a hand over her face. She can't ignore the man's suffering, no matter how much she wants to. She knows that he's innocent, that it's the work of the sickness clouding his thoughts and controlling his mind that's turned him into a killer.

Trish was the same. That's why he knows he can count on her.

"Make sure they send someone quick," she says, "if anyone finds out that I'm hiding a Reaper here, I'll have a mob banging on my door, and I won't be able to stand in their way. My patients come first."

"Thanks Kris."

He kneels down beside the man and places a hand to his chest. Another pulse of power, and he lashes him to the floor with crackling tethers. It's more for her peace of mind than because it's necessary. The man's unconscious, near comatose. Not even a threat.

She catches his eyes with her own as he rises to leave. "Don't make me regret this, Cole."

"I'll take care of it," he says, pulling his hood up over his head.

He sweeps aside the sheet and starts to walk back towards the front entrance.

But he doesn't even make it halfway through the clinic. He looks at the moaning mass of bedridden bodies and feels a pang of guilt. He'll regret leaving Kris that way. He knows it. She's one of the good guys, as dedicated to keeping Empire City alive as he and Harms are. And he's just left her with an even greater load to bear.

He figures he needs to make it up to her, do something to compensate and redress the balance. He promises himself, once he's done with Harms he'll go back and help out for awhile. He can't do much for the folks injured by the Reapers, but he can help the plague victims, at least. Ever since the blast, he's been able to heal the sickness with a touch.

He'll do what he can, at least until the city needs him again. He never gets the chance to play doctor for long. The gangs are never idle for long and there's always too much for him to do, too many things clamouring for his attention.

And yet, no matter how much he does, it never seems to be enough. All that power at his fingertips, and it never feels like he's making a difference.

He steps out onto the street. The stink of smoke and the trash piled in the gutters and smoke is a pleasant change from the cocktail of vomit, blood and antiseptic permeating the air inside.

His mind buzzes with questions for Harms. He wants to know where all the cops are. He wants to know why no one was there to break up that lynching. And why no one stopped the sick man from killing fifteen people.

Even as he looks to the rooftops, something else catches his attention. People are running, screaming, shouting warnings, fleeing from the direction of Archer Square. His question and answer session with the Warden gets put on the backburner. At least until he figures out what the hell's going on.

A guy in a baseball cap and hooded top shunts into him hard, too panicked to watch where he's going. It knocks Cole's hood back, but he's too focused on grabbing the man's arm and stopping him from landing on his face to notice.

"Hey! Let go!" He swats him away. Then he gets his first good look at the man he crashed into. His eyes go wide."Whoa, aren't you that … electric … guy? You are, aren't you? You're Cole MacGrath!"

"Yeah, that's me. What's the rush?"

"Huh?" he asks, stammering as he gets cut off in mid-ramble. He recovers fast. "There's a big fight over at Archer Square. Me and my bro went to a swap meet over there, see if we could trade some empty batteries for some drinking water. We were halfway through a negotiation, and next thing we knew some crazies come out swinging baseball bats and shit, just started laying into everyone they could get at. Me and Jack bailed, but it's a goddamn war zone over there, dude."

"Sounds like my kind of party," Cole says.

His eyes follow the line of fleeing bodies down the road towards the riot. He flexes his fingers, feeling static discharge prickle across their tips.

The other man looks at him like he's crazy and then keeps running. He wants to leave the heroics to the hero. That suits Cole fine. The less chance of collateral damage, the better. He's all for inspiring people to stand up for themselves, but if folks try what he does then they're gonna get themselves killed.

And when he lets loose on whichever psychos are causing this mess, he doesn't want any innocents caught in the crossfire.

He takes off at a sprint, back down the street, against the flow of people streaming away from the warzone. He jumps and lands on top of a phone booth at the side of the road. A second jump lands him on a scaffold running along the buildings lining the street.

There's a good four storeys between him and the rooftops, but he clears them in seconds. Most people don't notice him, but those that do forget what they're running from. Some even start to applaud.

The rooftops feel more comfortable. Less constricting. The city stretches out before him, and he feels like he can reach it all from up here. From this vantage point, he can see fires glowing and bodies colliding in the centre of Archer Square. He quickens his pace, flying across the rooftops.

Whatever's going on down there, and whoever started it, he's going to finish it.

-x-x-x-x-x-