A/N: Read 18 again. I finished it and put up something that passes for an explanation.
Sing to Life
By JadeRabbyt
Chapter 19: Energizer
The technician glared at the view screen, its camera directed at Alex's cage. He frowned, hand hovering over the call button. McKinley had told him, and everybody else, not to call unless it was absolutely necessary. He was working on a new processing scheme for the Alex data with the biggest, most focused brains in the complex. Still…
The technician made up his mind and clicked on the intercom. It beeped mechanically for several seconds before somebody picked up. "Hello?"
"I need McKinley."
"McKinley's busy. What do you want? Is something happening up there?"
The tech shook his head. "No, but he's… agitated."
"How so?" The voice on the other end sounded concerned. "Here, McKinley wants to talk."
"Hello?" McKinley's voice.
"Hello sir," said the tech. "I'm sorry to bother you like this, but Alex has been pacing for about an hour. Ever since he woke up."
"Has he tried anything?"
"No… But it looks like he's thinking about it."
The line crackled as McKinley sighed into the receiver. "Just what we need." His voice grew faint as McKinley addressed his scientists. From what the tech could hear, they were going to back up their data and experiments. "Alright," he finished. "Just wait. I'll be right up."
XXX
Alex wondered why he hadn't tried the bars before. Obviously, because there hadn't been a reason to. All things considered, inside the cage had been much better than outside. He perused its various angles as he walked the length of the cage.
He didn't know if that had changed or not, if outside was still worse than inside. The problem was Jazz, Jazz and her blasted magazines. Alex snorted. Why should he care about some stupid research done by stupid mindless mortals? Not only was it enourmously impractical, given the chain of events in motion, but it was also enormously inconvenient. The world was going to blow up. Who cared how it worked anymore? He didn't even know why the science mattered to him, although it had felt good to be thinking again, trying to process pure scientific data instead of just stewing in his own self-pity. He'd liked the taste of it on his mental palate, the rigorous logic that seemed too familiar…
Of course he'd already decided to destroy the world, and no filthy magazines would change that. The blackness never would have left him if he hadn't started the doom ball rolling. Better to die without knowing what he might have missed than to learn moments before the end.
That stupid girl. Alex wasn't going to put up with it.
He quit his pacing and strode up to the 'bars,' the glowing blue bolts of what might have been electricity, each one about as thick as a child's wrist. Alex braced himself, and reached out to touch one.
XXX
McKinley shoved the slack-jawed tech from the intercom and banged the thing on, calling for guards.
XXX
It did shock him, but it was a tolerable kind of sting, like a continuous jolt of static electricity. Definitely unpleasant, but not unmanageable in the slightest. It made a funny kind of tingle in his mind, too. He spread his arm out, several more bars drilling into his skin. Alex breathed in sharply and squeezed his eyes shut, but the pain faded quickly to a mildly euphoric sting. After a minute, he could hardly feel anything, except that tingle getting stronger. Alex bathed in it, sucking up the energy before stepping out, searching out the tingle. Maybe he could do something with it…?
Like blast those damn vents. They were trying to put him out again, just like they did before experiments. The stuff was odorless, but Alex could sense it now that he was a little stronger than before. Alex followed his intuition up to a small round pipe in the corner of the ceiling. He prepped whatever power the bars had given him and, after a careful aim, sent a bolt of azure lighting to the corner. The wall at that end crumbled, showering the tiled floor with rubble and exposing the guts of the ceiling. Alex flexed his fingers, more than a little pleased.
Something hissed across the room. The blast doors disgorged two bodies arrayed in every kind of armor imaginable, but they were still just humans after him with guns. Alex prepped another bolt. They were shouting, not shooting. They had huge cannons, so why weren't they shooting him? Oh yes, Alex remembered. He was the local gerbil.
Alex built another charge and zapped them. It didn't go through the armor, but by the time the two had regained their balance Alex had yanked their knives from their belts and slit their necks open. The blood sprayed all over the place, one initial burst and then a creeping pool that spread across the floor beneath their bodies. Alex's eyes gleamed. Maybe it wasn't science, but that had sure felt good.
And he'd like to do some more of it, but first he had to get out of this room. He could go through the hole in the ceiling, or he could take down the reinforced door.
"He can't get up through the ceiling." A scientist laughed. The pertinent personnel had gathered in the control room, several floors above and to the side of Alex's. "We've got the ectobarrier, even with the ceiling out."
Somebody had spread blueprints over the conference table. "Well, those bars didn't stop him, so I wouldn't put much stop in the barrier. At least the door should be safe. That thing was designed to last."
"Good," said McKinley. "But let's be quick about a plan, people."
The door would be much more fun, but first a recharge. The only functional device in the room was his former cage, so Alex went back to that, reaching up to plug his fingers in the energy bar outlets. Even after that he didn't have enough. Maybe enough to fry the world's largest cow, but nothing close to what was necessary for him. Alex growled and kicked one of the guards' limp bodies. He registered a noticeable spike in the stored energy, and started to get an idea.
If he didn't have enough, maybe he could make enough. Alex started to play with the energy, searching for the right cycle.
Back when he'd had the black stuff, Alex had learned certain tricks that let him control it, manipulate it to an extent. A lot of it was just instinct, seat-of-the-pants kind of stuff. Nobody thinks about how their brain tells their feet to walk. Then again, some of the control had been conscious. Certain cycles, particularly centrifugal ones created through mental imagery, could double or triple output. Alex could tell that this electro-ecto-stuff didn't have half the malleability of the darkness, but he could work with it nonetheless. He just had to focus. Focus, focus, focus…
Ah. There he had it.
XXX
A thundering explosion rocked the control room and sent several ill-supported technicians flying. "What was that?" McKinley demanded.
"The doors are gone." The speaker didn't sound like he could believe it. "Alex just blew up the blast doors."
McKinley rested a hand on his forehead. "Details."
A technician tapped at the keyboard. "Umm… well the door was designed to withstand nuclear blasts, 'bout five megatons…" The tech scanned a computer screen. "And that explosion released quite a bit of energy."
"How much."
"The sensors overloaded in the immediate area, but a couple hallways over we're reading gamma radiation." He shook his head. "I've never seen that kind of precision."
Jazz had been standing in the midst of them, mostly staying out of the way. McKinley had called her and her parents and the rest of the critical personnel up to this room, and she had been staying quiet for the most part. Now, she had something to get straight. "Would I be wrong in thinking that gamma radiation means nuclear energy?"
"I don't know about you people, but I'm having a remarkably bad day," McKinley muttered.
Jazz shot him a worried look.
XXX
Alex raced through the hallways, the wind sweeping at his cheeks, his feet beating a confident, purposeful rhythm in the hall. He felt amazing, just like the good old days when he could kill a few hundred without batting an eyelash. Screw self-pity.
He skidded to a stop when a team of men rushed about a corner up ahead, all armed with plasma cannons. His lips curled in a sneer.
The group skidded to a halt as they spotted him and the leader the troupe ordered them to fire. The five men loosed a combined shot that would have killed just about anything, human or ghost. They flipped up their visors and squinted into the glow, waiting for it to dissipate, but it didn't dissipate. It rose into the air and grew brighter.
The commander shouted retreat as their own energy augmented energy zapped back to them, striking their bodies with a sound like splintering glass and blowing the hallway apart.
XXX
He's going to kill everybody, Jazz thought. Apparently McKinley thought so too, because he was giving everyone directions to an escape tunnel. It led away from the main complex, through the ground, and up to a stairwell and elevator shaft. "The elevator opens directly into the stairwell through several side panels. If the power goes, you can still get out. Beyond that is a helicopter pad, and the pilot should already be up there."
Jazz followed the other scientists, most looking as though they had just jumped out of bed. Eyes were glazed, motions uncertain. Jazz spotted her mother at the opposite end of the room, adjusting the equipment on her suit.
"Mom! We've got to go." She tugged at the suit sleeve. "Everybody's getting out of here."
"I'm staying." Maddie perused the short, metal pole one more time before sliding it into her boot.
"But—"
"Jazz, honey, where is the first place Alex is likely to go once he gets out?"
A light went on for Jazz, but she didn't think that Alex visiting their house could be any worse than her mother facing him alone. Maddie bent down and rested her hands on her daughter's shoulders. "You have to go now." She turned Jazz toward the others. "Go."
Jazz took a couple steps forward, turning to look back. But her mother had already gone.
XXX
Alex wanted another knife. He struck out for the break room, racing along the hallways, checking all the doors. All empty, the work of those cameras on the ceiling. It didn't matter. He could hear their echoing movements, see their activity from the queer movements of the cameras, feel the fear-stricken beating of their hearts through a medium of the blackness, a medium growing denser all the time. Living terror blanketed the empty hallways like a blanket. Alex shoved open one door colored differently from the others.
Bingo—the break room. He pushed through the door and extracted a serrated bread-knife roughly eight inches long, its large teeth quite well suited for tearing. Should produce a most satisfactory shower of blood, too. Neck-breaking was alright, but Alex liked to see red.
He practiced around the room, weaving and dodging experimentally. Such a relief! Before he'd had to depend on that black crap for his fun, but now he had the use of his own two hands…
And here came somebody to test their skills. Alex slunk back against the doorway, out of sight, ready to pounce on the owner of the feet clattering toward him. A flash of blue showed itself and he leaped out with a shout, but somebody must have warned this one. She caught his arm in the motion of stabbing and flipped him over her head, onto his back. Alex phased through the floor as she moved to stab him with a bright green staff.
He laughed to himself and darted out of the way as the staff followed him through. She'd be able to see him with those red goggles, and that staff must hurt quite a bit—not that he'd mind the pain. Actually, the prospect of a challenge kind of appealed to him. Alex dug into his brain, past the analytical and the emotional all the way to the sensory reactives, and set them on full throttle. He closed his eyes, feeling his own flesh and blood and tuning himself to everything, the cold floor, the breathless air, the sticky rubber handle of the bread knife and the tiny squeak of the woman's shoes as she moved to strike again.
Alex rolled up and out of the floor, stood, and grasped the harmless midpoint handle of the staff, accompanying the motion with an attempted stab to her gut. She grunted and blocked him, kicked his knife-bearing hand clear and shoving him down with the handle of the staff. Alex rolled with the motion, bringing her down on top of him and flipping her over his head. The movement wrenched the staff from her hands and left it in Alex's. Without missing a beat he jumped up and stuck her through the chest with it.
The woman froze on the floor, but only long enough for them both to realize, one with academic relief, the other with mild curiosity, that the device did not affect normal humans. "Hm," said Alex.
The woman grinned at him and leaped up again. Alex crushed the handle in his hands, the double-beamed staff fizzling into nothing, and struck forward with the knife. She blocked him, but Alex had planned something else this time. While she focused on the knife, he slammed his shoe against her shin. She grimaced but recovered quickly, executing something too fast for Alex to see but which leaving him several yards away, on the floor. He jumped up and went right back at her, knife clutched in one hand.
Alex had sifted into a world of pure reaction. He registered each dodge and punch, what few managed to find targets on either side, with a kind of detached wonderment. He could feel his wonderful mind churning and humming, calculating a thousand little subconscious movements and building them into attacks, defenses, and escapes. Doubt evaporated into will and ability, distraction into nothing save action. Alex loved it. He didn't want it to end, but he could tell the woman was getting desperate, and she was an excellent player at the fighting game, too. If he didn't kill her, she would certainly get him.
His moment arrived when she stumbled. A slight unbalance, but it was all he needed. In a moment he had her on her back, on the floor, with his knife at her throat.
He could almost feel her pulse through the knife, her chest heaving, a dampness of sweat shining on her cheeks. Alex pressed with the knife, drawing blood. It seemed a pity to kill something so skilled, but it couldn't be helped. However, at the least he should see who it was. Alex reached out and wrenched off the teal hood.
He froze. Red hair, green eyes… His mood changed in an instant. Now this was a matter of principle. He really did have to kill this one. The knife trembled in his grip; the woman's eyes shifted between him and the instrument, wincing from the pain but still attentive, ready to throw him off the moment he slackened. How dare she hope for such a thing.
Alex's knuckles turned white. He screwed up his face and tried to make him press down—that's all it would take, just a little more pressure or even a slip to the side…
"Damnit." He twitched the knife lower and took a good-sized chunk out of her collarbone. "Damnit!"
By the time Maddie had the will to look again, all that remained was a bloody knife on the white-tiled floor beside her.
XXX
McKinley shook his head. "There he goes. Right back to Amity."
Jazz looked, peering out the window of the helicopter. A green streak raced over the farmlands and disappeared in the distance. "I wonder if my mother is alright…"
McKinley, seated across from her, turned away from his own window. "Your mother is probably the only reason he didn't blow the whole place sky high. And with his abilities and our power loads, he could have done it extremely easily." McKinley radioed in to the base, verifying that nothing further was happening below, then ordered the copter back to the labs. He shook his head, clasping his hands in his lap. "I apologize for all this, Jazz. I think I've asked quite enough of your family." He cut her protests short with a wave. "Go back to Amity and keep Danny out of trouble." McKinley, Jazz thought, looked every one of his years, about ready to collapse, and she had a terrible sinking feeling that the rest of the world wouldn't be far behind him.