Warnings for violence and reference to the Columbine school massacre.
Chapter 13 The Weight
Nathan drove. Randall Paperny was Shawn Wright's best friend, and neither of them had shown up for school this morning. They were on their way to Paperny's house to see where he might have gone, whether they had gamed together – whether they had emerged from their game world together. They couldn't even tell yet which of the boys had the Trouble.
Dana sat in the back of the Bronco with Duke. He'd refused to give her the keys to the Tramp, and she'd refused to drive with him while he was still fucked up from whatever battle high rode him. He twitched and blinked, couldn't sit still – she should have taken him home like Nathan suggested. He was winding himself up again with the renewed chase.
She wanted to scream and beat on him. Stop it. Stop, stop, stop. He was supposed to be her happy refuge, her safety and laughing strength. Invulnerable and invincible. Not another one of the broken, bleeding boys she had to keep together with her bare hands.
"Give me some of those," she demanded. Meaning some of his weapons.
If she was going back to war, she wasn't going in unarmed.
Duke's grin was pleased – another thing they could share. She shook her head at his offer of the sword – there was no way she could swing that at another person. But she took a couple knives, and the Taser. She really wanted her M-16, but that was not going to happen.
One minority report of a voice inside her wailed terror and helplessness. Not even her inner child; her inner damsel in distress, her inner frozen useless hysterical victim of a princess. She ignored it. The rest of them… some wanted it over with. Some wanted damage done to avenge those two nice people in the bed. Some even wanted to show off in front of the boys and show them what she could do. Mostly, she wanted… she, herself… wanted to know what was going on and to stop it. Stop hurting each other.
She couldn't not help.
No matter how loud that hysterical princess got.
Dana met Nathan's eyes in the rearview mirror as she buckled on the Taser holster. Flicked away. Nathan was not her concern right now.
She put her hand over Duke's, preventing another go-round of him practicing with a quick-draw knife, triggering the hidden mechanism over and over again.
"He's a kid," she said, pleading. He was a messed up kid with a sudden superpower he couldn't control. The scene in the bedroom was horrific, but maybe… "They're both kids." There had to be another way besides killing them.
There had to be a way besides Duke killing him.
"You weren't here," he responded darkly. Unintelligibly.
"I know. I'm here now."
Something flickered in his eyes, recognition. "Audrey?"
Dana could have wailed herself. "No, my love." Sifted hair from eyes as if to clear his vision. Held on. "It's Dana. I'm Dana. I'm here."
"We're here," Nathan announced, pulling into a driveway.
The Paperny home was lower rent than the Wright's, a clapboard bungalow from the 1950's in need of a paint job – not old enough to be heritage, not new enough to be comfortable. It was also nearly destroyed. The front door lay on the lawn, intact, along with the shattered remains of the wall that had once held it, all in splinters and dust. The doorway was a gaping wound in the house, revealing the guts of the front room torn apart like a bomb had gone off.
Or a Horde had invaded.
Duke took point, sword out. He and Nathan alternated, moving through the house – Nathan announced them as Haven Police, standard warnings, but there was no one to hear them. No cars in the driveway, middle of the day – maybe no one was home.
But there'd been a fight in the house – an axe wielding, flame throwing, furniture tossing battle. Between who and who, they couldn't tell. One victim – human and dead, as Dana checked his pulse. Pro forma only, he had a hole in his chest you could see through, same diameter as a coffee mug. She didn't recognize the costume he wore, layers of unwieldy looking armor, and, pulling it off, a helmet designed more for looks than function.
She looked up at Nathan, who shook his head. Not Shawn Wright or Randall Paperny. Just some random player who…
"Keep moving," Duke barked. "Nothing we can do for him."
Nathan picked her up, hand under one arm, got her to her feet. Duke was moving out with or without them. They had to stay together. She knew the fucking drill. She shoved the police chief away. One more dead boy, what did it matter, after all. All part of the drill.
They found the room they were looking for – much the same as Shawn's, an elaborate video game setup, destroyed. Only Randall Paperny was still in it, laying on the floor, curled up on his side. No game costume. The carpet squelched underfoot as she ran to him, oozing up blood where she knelt to check him out. No way to tell how much, the way the carpet had absorbed it, but … a lot.
"Where's Shawn," Nathan demanded, kneeling beside her.
"Gone," Randall whispered.
"Don't talk." Conscious, breathing, oriented. Good. Blood pressure too low to register in extremities – checking his pulse at his wrist – bad. Pulse at his neck very weak and slow.
"Ambulance is on the way," Nathan told her.
She nodded. She found the leak pretty quickly, a deep gash to his upper abdomen – Randall held it with his hands, she put her hands over his, applied pressure. There was nothing else she could do. She didn't even have gloves. Never mind the clamps, surgery, liters and liters of blood this boy needed.
"He's gone," the boy repeated. Little boys, all of them, playing at games they could not possibly understand, throwing their lives away, just for – for what?
"Don't talk," she told him again. Respiration increased blood flow. Blood flow, now, only increased blood loss.
"Where? Where did he go?" Nathan questioned.
"Nathan!"
Nathan clamped his hand over hers, squeezing painfully tight. Repeated his question.
"School," Randall sighed. "He wants to kill – everyone. I said no." As if waiting for that sanction, he let go, of the breath in his lungs, and the hold he'd kept on his own life.
No pulse at all. "Fuck!" Dana rolled him over on his back, ripped open his shirt, started chest compressions. "Hold him there," she ordered Nathan, "apply pressure to the wound." Nathan did as he was told, but he looked at her.
Oh, Christ, she knew that look. That look that said she was wasting her time. It was already too late. Fuck them. They didn't know. Death was not an on/off switch. Unless you hit just the right centers of the brain, it took minutes – minutes of screaming agony sometimes. Shattered bodies and broken minds – the moment of IED detonation lost forever because the brain simply didn't function – but the minutes afterward stretched out on endless repeat. Burning and trapped and screaming…
Dana hesitated, came back. Checked for a pulse again, nothing. Two breaths, started compressions again. Wiped the snot that streamed from her nose on her shoulders without missing a beat. Fucking autonomic reaction. Meant nothing. She wasn't crying. She wasn't anywhere near crying.
Where the fuck was the ambulance? "Where the fuck-" The paramedics appeared like she'd conjured them – all pressed uniforms and bright red emergency bags. No gloves. Fucking amateurs. What kind of call did they think they were responding to, like they had time to glove up while they were standing around waiting? She gave them the rundown –
Even as Duke pushed himself off the wall and went to Nathan, "We should go."
Dana wiped Randall Paperny's blood off onto her jeans. The paramedics took over the body – body, not patient – Dana figured they needed the practice as they started compressions and oxygen. Looked at Nathan. "We should go."
Shawn Wright had emerged from the game in character – along with who knew how many of his buddies – and then murdered his parents in their bed and hunted down his friend at home for refusing to go along with a planned massacre at his school. She had it wrong from the start. Not a frightened confused kid at all. A budding psychopath turned into a video game character now headed for his high school. Klebold and Harris only wished they'd had that kind of power.
"We should go, Nathan."
*.*.*
The exterior of the school looked entirely normal. Normal except for the students running for their lives and the police cars rolling up into the parking lot.
Even Laverne's voice over the radio had turned clipped and short – her version of panic – as she relayed calls from all over. Shawn's posse had walked the ten minutes from Paperny's house to the school, scaring people into car accidents – but they were focused on their goal. Reports from inside the school from students and teachers indicated at least six – no way to tell who was a person or who was like the orc, a character from the game itself.
Not that it mattered at this point.
He should really look into forming a SWAT team for the Haven PD, Nathan thought. It would blow his budget to fragments, but, right now, he might just be able to get it through.
Dana and Duke argued with each other over who should go in – a background noise Nathan tuned out as unnecessary. Dana wanted Duke to stay behind because then they could go in with guns. Duke wanted Dana to stay behind because… he wanted to protect her. He was in love with her and wanted her to be safe. Nathan sympathized, with both of them, but he couldn't spare either of them.
Standard procedure was to protect first responders – cops, firefighters, paramedics – even above civilian deaths. First responders only became more victims and made the situation worse when they rushed in with no regard for their own safety. Good in theory. In practice, there was always a risk associated with responding to a situation that had already injured or killed someone else. Time was always an enemy.
They were here, and he needed them both. There was no one else he trusted. As far as hostage negotiators went – Dana was Audrey. He hoped. There was no one else. He couldn't afford to risk either of them. He couldn't afford not to.
The interior of the school was anything but normal. The walls had been turned into rock cliffs and castle walls, the floors were ground – sometimes grassy, sometimes rocky. Dana walked hip deep through an apparent lake she could not see while he and Duke were stymied behind her – until she literally led them by the hand. Nathan could see the depth fall away beneath his feet, and he couldn't actually feel any different – he stumbled and nearly fell. Duke steadied him. Nathan closed his eyes, gritted teeth and deliberately turned over control and trust to the other two.
*.*.*
It happened suddenly, unexpectedly – as it always did. Nathan was on point, Dana right behind him in the school hallway. They were crouched down and checking out the next classroom, while Duke was behind them, waving a full class of students down the opposite way – the way they'd come in and cleared for their escape.
Nathan turned around to see an orc blink into existence behind Duke's turned back – between him and Nathan.
Duke turned, arms spread wide as if to shield the students that way.
The orc split him from shoulder to breastbone with one massive swing of his axe.
Dana screamed, "Duke!" and attacked, just as Duke stuck the orc like an olive in a martini with his sword. It flickered out, both sword and Duke collapsed to the floor.
No no nonononooooo…
Dana slid the last several yards on her knees, gathering Duke up in her arms. She pressed him together, ignoring the uselessness of the action. A helicopter evac, a surgical team standing by – she could – she could – She could carry him out herself. The other paramedics and cops were not allowed in until the school was secure – she would carry him herself.
There were the screaming ones, those stupid brave bleeding soldiers – her boys, all of her boys – those with breath and sense enough to scream, and then there were the ones like Duke. Silent, and calm. The keening came from her, and even after she realized it was her, she couldn't make it stop.
Liquid brown eyes looked up at her. "Hey, you," he breathed.
"Duke." There was nothing else to say. Nothing else she could say. She was crying, now.
His focus shifted to over her shoulder. Nathan, crouched there, still on the lookout down the hall, but shifting glances down to look at Duke. "You think?" Duke wondered at him.
"I guess we'll find out," Nathan said calmly. Worried, but calm. Fucking iceman.
Duke looked up at her, eyes wide and staring at the pain. She held her face to his. "I heard you." Huffed, no voice. His lips against her ear. "In the truck, I heard you." His eyes closed, and he sagged limp and unconscious in her arms.
Not unconscious. No pulse.
Nathan did not move – she could feel him behind her as she rocked Duke in her arms, as she sobbed, gulping for air, and then started all over again.
"Dana," Nathan started, when she seemed to be running down.
She knew. She knew the drill. There was an imminent threat somewhere in this school and more innocent lives in danger, and they couldn't just sit here in the middle of the hallway, exposed – She knew the fucking drill. Give her a fucking minute here, Christ.
"Dana – Duke can absorb other people's Troubles."
Could. He could. Used to.
"There was this doctor… Haven had a lot of zombies for a while."
Dana finally looked at Nathan. Was he completely insane? Even if that were true – what the fuck did it matter now?
"Until Duke cut him, and absorbed his ability to bring back the dead."
What?
"It was curse – the dead rose, but they were still dead. And rotting. But about a year ago there was a woman who – she thought she was the next messiah because she could heal people. She really could, but… it didn't end well. It turned out that she couldn't heal herself. But she gave it to Duke before she died. He can't heal other people, but he can heal himself. I've seen him do it."
The scars across his chest.
She tried to process what he was saying. Her mind was soupy mud, thick and unmoving, unstructured by shock. Duke could …
She pulled off his vest – probably the only reason the orc's blade hadn't split him right in two – ripped apart the already ruined shirt beneath it.
The wound stitched itself together even as she watched, from the bottom up, already a pink line near the breastbone, still gaping but unbleeding at the top, a puckered line in between. And not just on the surface, the flesh underneath binding itself together – a natural healing process at unnatural speed –
A pulse! He had pulse. A goddamn real fucking pulse.
She slid her knees out from under, laid Duke flat on the floor. Breathed for him, once, twice – Duke responded with a choked cough, breathing on his own. Opened his eyes, and then grabbed her with his good arm, rolling her over him so that the artificial respiration became a full length make-out there on the floor.
Dana broke it off when she couldn't breathe herself, caught up between the crying and the kissing and the laughing in relief.
"When you two are quite finished…" Nathan drawled. Dana would have been offended except for the way he was undone himself, propped up against the wall himself, legs out straight and staring at Duke. Of the three of them, Duke was on his feet first, pulling Nathan up into a manly one-armed hug. Macho bastards, the pair of them. Like they were fooling anybody.
Duke pulled her up, too, tilted her chin up when she couldn't meet his gaze. "I love you, too," he said, simply.
She pushed him away with an almost punch to his chest – the opposite side of where a scar was fading even now. "You bastard. You're going to make it up to me, scaring me like that." He could have said something before now, warned her somehow.
Duke grinned, and her imagination started running like a roller coaster at the wicked gleam in his eyes. "My pleasure."
"Okay. We should go now." Nathan muttered.
*.*.*
They found one of the six sitting on the floor in one of the hallways, legs stretched on the floor. His massive sword lay on the floor on the opposite side of the hall. Dana put the Taser away – realizing that it likely wouldn't penetrate the armor he wore.
He looked up at them. "I don't like this level."
She knelt, Duke right behind her with a hand on her shoulder, "Where are you from?"
"Miami. Shawn said – he said that he had made a new level. Super realistic. I can't – I can't figure out how to turn it off."
She told him to take off his helmet, and the rest of his costume. Walk out of the school. Pretend to be a student. Call his parents as soon as he got the chance.
He looked at her, still trying to process. "It isn't real. It can't be real."
She took his hand, pulled him to his feet. "It isn't. It's just a game. You'll forget all about it."
He started walking away, dropping pieces of his costume as he went. "I hate this fucking game."
*.*.*
Shawn Wright had locked himself in the gymnasium with the principal, two teachers and about twenty students – lording it over the frightened group with bolts of lightning-like power, and throwing things around the room with gestures of his arm. Of course, to Nathan the gym looked like an great black cave right now, complete with fiery torches and deeper pit with a lava like glow from beneath.
Dana confirmed that he was actually throwing things with his mind – sports equipment and chunks out of the wall – not boulders or explosive weapons.
Telekinesis. That was just great.
And he'd locked the doors to the gym – enormous iron gates – somehow. Nothing physical that Nathan could see. A spell of some sort.
Nathan knew almost nothing about these kinds of games. Duke denied it as well, with an ear to ear grin. "I have a life, Nathan. And a girl," with a significant tug on Dana's waist, pulling her up even tighter to his side. Dana just shook her head. Presumably, in reference to the game question, though it could have been more layered than that.
They'd been glued together ever since – jesus, ever since they'd met. But literally skin to skin since Duke had… resurrected… in the school hallway.
Duke was hard to look at right now. Not just whole coming back to life bit – though that curdled in Nathan's gut somehow that Troubles rarely did anymore. It was how he seemed to be wiped clean, polished and glowing. Happy and at peace, like – Nathan realized – he'd never been. Not as a kid, not as a troubled young man – taking his newly won boat like a turtle with him and setting out for anywhere that wasn't his home town, and certainly not as a Troubled resident of Haven. Duke… right now Duke looked remade. Not just restored – broken down and polished and chromed and put back together with loving hands so that the pieces of him fit like never before. Better than before.
Vince was wrong. Vince had to be wrong.
This was not a curse. Please, Nathan prayed. To whoever might be listening. Please.
He was not jealous as Duke and Dana pancaked together against the wall, unwilling to let even air get between them. They had identical expressions, weapons ready, waiting for him to tell them what to do about Shawn Wright. He was not jealous; but he ached, a little, for their togetherness and his separateness.
"What now?" Duke asked, as if they were almost ready for the dessert course.
"We have to find a way to talk to him."
"Talk? You want to talk to him?" Dana jeered, incredulous.
"What do you want to do?"
"I want him flayed."
Not Audrey. "After he releases the hostages," Nathan agreed. He had them beat on weapons. He literally controlled the game. At some point he was going to do what he'd come to the school to do.
"Fine," Dana said, and wrenched open the iron gates of the gymnasium doors, "let's go talk to him."
*.*.*
"Identify yourself, Huntress," Shawn said, pointing his axe at her.
Nathan came in behind her on the right, Duke on her left – "Hell – lo," Duke leered.
"What do you see?" Dana circled around – puppy after its tail – trying to find what he was looking at.
"You're purple. And," he motioned a curving female figure, "wow. Can I just say… that's what I want for Christmas. And my birthday."
She turned to face Shawn, wondering if blush showed up under purple skin. She knew enough about these games to guess what her character's costume was probably like. Designed for allure rather than any practical fighting use. That and the frank stare Duke gave her. Warming, but distracting.
Duke laughed freely at Nathan, "Love the tail. Suits you."
"I can throw something for you to fetch, dog boy."
"Really?" Delighted. Duke examined his own limbs, put his hands over his face.
"Boys." It was not quite a snap, but – focus, come on. They looked the same as ever to her.
Shawn himself wore a death mask/helmet thing, with curving horns on top. Practical armor, chain mail and a great curving axe. He'd come out of the game like this, she guessed. He looked the same as on the other side of the door, that axe was real. The rest of it was some sort of projected illusion.
"Identify yourself!" Shawn's axe came up.
"No."
"Then you mark yourself as an enemy, Huntress. I am a Death Knight. I will –"
"Yeeeah," Dana drawled boredom. "I'm not playing a game here, Shawn. I'm certainly not playing your game."
Talk to him.
All her voices were telling her the same, and they never agreed 100% on anything. Just as well she hadn't brought the M16. Shawn would have an extra hole in his head by now and she and Duke would be on their way home to celebrate.
How could she talk to this psychopath?
Shawn grabbed one of the hostages, a woman her age – who seemed to try to crawl inside herself out of fear. Held a knife to her throat. "TELL ME who you are!"
"My name is Dana. These are my friends, Duke and Nathan."
"Name your allegiance."
Dana smiled, unexpected tears stinging her eyes. "You know what, for the longest time, I couldn't have answered that. It was just me, and I – I ran and I ran… I used to know a lot of boys like you. Just a couple years older, most of them. They all – they all played at these war games just like you. Only for them, their enemies were real. And the bullets and the bombs were real and there was no magic. When they died, when I couldn't save them no matter how hard I tried…."
She was peripherally aware of Duke and Nathan moving slowly to opposite sides. She blocked it out and concentrated. "Do you know what I saw today? I saw a man come back to life. He was dead. Now he's not. He's so brilliantly alive. I can't explain that." She took a step closer to him. "Your friend Randall is dead. Do you even care?"
"How did he come back?"
She was emptying her heart out to a fucking sociopath. "I don't know. This is Haven." She didn't look at him, but she directed her words at Duke, not the empty shell of a human being in front of her. "There was a time when I would have sold my soul to – do that. To bring people back. To bring all of them back, all those boys." All her failures. To redeem that, what price? She couldn't have answered but that she would pay. Name it.
Shawn let the hostage go, threw her down.
"Now – I've seen it – it can be done. I believe." Duke's eyes met hers across Shawn's shoulder, he'd moved around that far. She closed them to prevent the teenager from picking up on it. "You ask me my allegiance?" Her monkey king – the semi-divine tormentor of the gods themselves – laughing at his rebirth and his love for her a physical force across the space that divided them. Even the interesting, unhappy police chief no longer looked at her like her face lacerated him.
Opened her eyes. "I'm with them."
Like it was prearranged, Duke and Nathan both charged Shawn, who whirled, hand raised. Dana went for the axe. She was closer – he turned back to her and blew her across the floor with a blast of power.
*.*.*
They landed on him together, Duke went high, Nathan went low – Shawn went down hard. Crash test dummy hard. Nathan heard something crack when his head hit the floor – really hoped it was Shawn and not him. He stripped off armor and gloves – knee in his back – until he could find the kid's wrists properly. Cuffed him.
The hostages streamed around him, disregarding him as they ran for the doors, crying and traumatized. He couldn't see much through them –Duke went to Dana first, pushing aside everyone else and sliding on his knees to her. He did see her stir and try to get up – awake, thank God.
This kid got leg shackles too, Nathan decided, and paid no attention as he screamed that the cuffs hurt him.
Dana screamed – a short surprised burst, and rolled away from Duke, clenching her fists over her eyes. Considering that Duke was still in the wolf-like character he'd transformed into after stepping over the threshold, maybe that wasn't so surprising. Was Dana seeing him like that for the first time? Nathan checked his own limbs – yep, still blue, and – damn – still cloven hooves instead of feet. Despite being disarmed and cuffed, Shawn's Trouble was still in full force.
Nathan met Duke halfway – he was headed for Dana, Duke apparently for the prisoner…? But if she turned away from Duke, what chance did he have?
"Dana?" He hesitated only minutely before putting his hand on her bare shoulder. There was little enough of her costume as it was – only to realize it wasn't bare. Shirt sleeve appeared beneath his hand, and the illusion of Azeroth, the cave, and their characters faded away.
Shawn had quit complaining. Duke stood over him with eyes white with power, and blood on a little four inch dagger in his hand.
"Nathan?" She turned over towards him. Dark, slate-blue eyes looked up at him. "What is going on?"
... and fade out. End episode one...
Evil cliffhanger, I know. Feel free to berate me in comments. ;-)