The Mimosa Effect 2

What’s even more unbelievable, is how I got away.  I’m starting to wonder if it really happened – and I was there.

When HeroNo1’s henchmen couldn’t get the info they wanted out of me, they decided they needed to take me to see No.1 himself.  Never mind how many times, and in how many ways, I tried to tell them that I had no clue what the hell they were talking about.  Maybe they thought I was being brave.  To tell the truth, after three days of the worst good-cop, bad-cop parody ever, I was starting to wish they’d just torture me and get it over with.

At least the back seat of the giant black boat they insisted on calling a car was more comfortable than the creaky old cot that smelled like moth-balls and cat pee.  I was getting more than a little tired of being tied up, but it could have been a lot worse.  They could have followed true movie protocol and tossed me into the trunk.  As it was, I had the back seat to myself, and eventually managed to squirm around into a mostly-upright seated position – just in time to get thrown against the window as the car swerved wildly to the left.

It happened so quickly, I had to replay what I’d seen in my head to make sense of it.  Amazing how slowly time crawls by when the car you’re in is careening off the road towards a bus stop full of people.

They had swerved to avoid a kid who was standing in the middle of the road.  Not walking, not running, just standing there.  The snapshot of it was crystal clear on the back of my eyelids.  The kid had his eyes closed, his face raised towards the sky, as if basking in the mid-day sun.  He wore a black T-shirt over a grey long-sleeved shirt, as if he’d temporarily forgotten it was winter.  I knew that face.  It had been staring back at me from my computer screen for days.  And he was wearing the same stupid back-turned ball-cap he’d had on the day he broke into the safe.  My safe.

Then we were smashing through metal and glass, and people were screaming, and then everything stopped really suddenly.  It took me a while to realize it wasn’t me that was upside-down, but the car.  Took a bit longer to realize that the wall that had stopped us was attached to the sprawling brick edifice we in these parts like to call City Hall. 

Considering how the two thugs in front weren’t doing much at that point besides groaning and twitching, it seemed like a good opportunity to leave.

After a few enthusiastic blows with both feet, I came to the conclusion that it was a lot harder than it looks to kick open a locked car door.  I twisted around so my bound hands could reach the lock, and pried it up, then managed to contort myself enough to reach the door handle – after which I kind of tumbled ungracefully out the door onto the ground.  Everyone around me was in full panic mode, far too busy running around and yelling to notice me.  The broken glass of the car windows provided another moment of serendipity too good to pass up.  I nicked my wrists a few times cutting through the rope, but it finally fell away and my arms swung free.  You think pins and needles from sitting cross-legged too long are bad, try hours spent with your arms wrenched behind your back. 

I looked around once before I ran, making a mental note of the only two things that seemed worth registering: First, there were no bodies littered around the car, which hopefully meant that the folks at the bus stop had seen us coming, and got out of the way in time.  Second, the kid was nowhere to be seen.

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Will Nyx & Dozer finally meet face to face? Find out in episode 13!
(Which will be posted on Thursday this week. Blame the cats, they had us pinned down.)

It was like being taken over by some kind of alien presence. I felt my legs pushing off, my feet leaving the hard surface. My body launched itself forward, into a front flip, the kind we always did off the towers at the pool. I felt the wind catch my open jacket, spreading out like wings. I landed rolling, ending in that classic mutant hero stance, crouched down, feet flat on the ground, one hand outstretched, the fingertips of the other resting lightly on the pavement, the coat-wings settling at my side. I hoped the thud my boots made on impact hid the sharp crack that shot up my left ankle into my shin.

I stood up slowly, ignoring the pulsing hot white spike of pain my left leg seemed impaled on. The dog was behind me, cowering next to the trashcans. The thugs were in front of me, caught in a comic frozen tableau, mouths hanging open. I brushed the dust from my jeans, put on my best tough-guy glower, and pulled my new butterfly knife from my pocket, flipping it open. First time I’d managed it, without fumbling the damn thing.

“I think you might want to leave now,” I said.

The Cro-Magnons looked at each other, then back at me. They shook themselves out of their stunned stupour, attempting to regain that casual, menacing slouch that all bullies spend hours perfecting.

The tallest one shrugged, curled his peach-fuzz-stained upper lip, and twitched his head sideways to spit on the ground. “Yeah, whatever. Freak.”

The other two chuckled grimly, then they turned around and left, kicking viciously at garbage bags and stacked up shipping pallets on their way. The leaving part was a really good thing, because I would have been completely useless in a knife fight – or any real fight, for that matter.

I waited until they’d turned the corner, then let myself collapse, the post-adrenaline-rush shudders taking over. The clanking, clattering sound in the background turned out to be Reeve, shinnying down the drainpipe in record time.

“Dude,” He said, breathless. “That was epic!”

I would have answered him, but the pain lancing through my leg was making me feel kind of sick. The world seemed all swimmy and unreal, like the buildings beside us were just cardboard cut-outs.

Reeve went on for at least a minute about how awesome the whole thing had been, before he realized I wasn’t moving, or saying anything.

“Hey man, you okay?” Belatedly, to say the least.

I managed to grind out a few words from behind gritted teeth. They went something like, “Forget the Chinese food. First we get the dog to the vet. Then we get me to the hospital.”

Reeve shook his head, blinked, then nodded. I think he’d finally realized it was a miracle me and the dog were still alive.

“Usual rules?” By which he meant, by taxi (or borrowed car, if the cab wouldn’t take the dog), no calls home, the usual cover-up story.

All I could do was nod back. The dog had slunk forward a little, and was sniffing my hand. Reeve grinned down at me.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said.

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Theme: Impossible Things

Words/Phrases:
rolling
expanse
discover
condemned

New to Saturday Scribes? Guidelines can be found here.

Seems we had some stainless steel rats chewing on the wires for a while there.  Back online now.

—

Back from another unscheduled break, helping with laundry. Apparently folding sheets is easier with two people, although I think my mom was hoping to weasel some kind of confession out of me. She knows I’m up to something, just not what, with who, or how serious it is. I thought she’d stopped being interested in what I did, given up maybe. Not sure what it was that tipped her off this time. Going to have to be more careful from here on in.

The three-legged dog was in the alley out back of Ed’s Car Wash and Billiards Room. Me and Reeve were on the roof. We’d recently discovered the essential difference between doing back flips on a trampoline, and doing them off a wall onto concrete. Reeve was still whining about his dislocated shoulder (we tried to fix it they way they do it in the movies, which didn’t quite work), and I was discovering a new ring of hell, or a particularly perverse Murphy’s law. Which is, as soon as the cast is set, is when your wrist starts itching. Pencils are too short, almost everything else is too thick. Reeve suggested chopsticks, but neither of us had any kicking around. We were on our way to pick up some Chinese (Minh’s on East and Vine is the cheapest, and fast when you’re in a hurry). We’d spent some time messing around on ledges and fire escapes, and were contemplating the sheer drop into the alley, wondering whether the rusted old drainpipe bolted to the bricks would hold our weight.

The dog ran into the alley, hunched and whimpering. Only two of its legs seemed to be working right, one sort of dragged. How it managed to move that fast on two and a half legs I’ll never know. It was followed a few seconds later by some throwbacks from the Neanderthal age, who seemed to find it funny that the dog couldn’t dodge the bottles and cans they were throwing at it. What would’ve been funnier, is if they’d tripped over their ridiculously oversized baggy pants and drowned in one of the rank-looking puddles by the trash cans. You could smell the reek of cheap cigarettes, bad pot and Johnnie Walker two stories up.

You know those moments, when the world kind of stops, and everything inside you slows down, and you imagine a million scenarios inside a single second? This wasn’t one of those times. I didn’t think about what I was doing at all. I’d practiced this kind of thing a hundred times, hadn’t cracked my skull open yet.

It was time to fly.

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…for a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. (If you hear a drawn-out high-pitched tone while reading this, it’s only in your head.)

Due to various unforeseen circumstances (which may or may not involve bug-eyed telepathic aliens and a steel glove that can resurrect the dead), this blog is being temporarily put on hold. We’ll resume normal programming on Wednesday, March 3rd, with the next installment of the Nyx & Dozer chronicles.

To our two or three loyal viewers, thanks for sticking it out. We’ll see you again in four days’ time (if the world doesn’t get sucked into a space-time vortex loop between now and then).

p.s. – To K: We left some blueberry pancakes on your back porch, but we think the orange stomach that walks like a cat may have gotten to them first. Better luck next time!

Theme: Extraordinary

Words/Phrases:
Torch
Barrows
Helpless
Beyond

New to Saturday Scribes? Guidelines can be found here.

The world has gone mad.  We’re talking, if sanity is Mercury, withering in the heat of the sun, then we’re way out past Neptune; hell, we’re in a whole different galaxy.

You’ll never guess where I’ve been for the past three days.  First off, let me reiterate that I am not crazy, or on drugs, or trying to hide some kinky secret (even if Zoë has convinced herself otherwise).

I was, quite literally, kidnapped by masked men (I kid you not) and thrown into the back of a van, then imprisoned for three days – during which time I was endlessly interrogated by idiots.   Thankfully, it was more like an episode of Get Smart than a scene from Guantanamo, otherwise I might not be here writing this.

All I could think of during that initial ride in the van (after I was handcuffed and blindfolded) was the stupid license plate.  I caught a glimpse of it when the van screeched to a halt at the corner, nearly knocking me off my bike, only a block  away from my apartment.  The plate read “HeroNo1″.  Since when do heroes kidnap people?  And come on, seriously? Who gets a license plate like that?

All I can say is, that someone has serious issues.  Not the least of which is that he’s decided I’m some kind of super villain.  Or at least, working for one.

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…Um.  That would be the author, being distracted by all sorts of interesting things (among them: blueberry pancakes, new Doctor Who DVD’s, furniture moving, MP3’s and treadmills).  On the upside, had a fun day that included going to the gym for the first time in just about forever (yes, a fun day that included going to the gym; helps to have good music along for the ride).  On the downside, totally neglected to transcribe today’s Chronicles offering.   You can tune in tomorrow for the next Nyx & Dozer installment. 

In the meantime – stay strong, be brave, wait for the signs.  (And if you get hungry, there are still three mini blueberry pancakes in the fridge. You can take some for the road, if you like.)

Okay, so maybe I don’t have any powers to speak of. No super strength, or super speed, or super durability, or anything like that. Might have been able to do something if I had; maybe saved the Hornet from becoming another specimen for the evening news.

Maybe it did start out as a prank. Like breaking into the school’s computers to change the students’ grades. Not just my grades, or a friend’s – all of them. Every single one of the one thousand and eight students attending Christchurch Collegiate and Vocational School (CCVS for short).

You could say that I had grown a little jaded. About the system, “the man”, life – pretty much everything. It was only supposed to be Mike Mitchell’s grades. He’s the guy that used to beat me up. Quite literally stole my lunch money, more than once. Kind of humiliating, really. He promised to leave me alone if I could get him a B minus. He didn’t have to worry about failing – they don’t fail kids any more – but he did have to worry about getting kicked off the basketball team. Reeve said I should go in disguise, in case I got caught on camera, or the cops showed up. We had just finished watching Mystery Men for something like the fifteenth time, and Reeve though it would be hilarious if I dressed up like a superhero.

I meant what I said earlier – the rule about no tights, and no cape. I only dressed up the one time, and I promise you that there was no Spandex involved. Just a long black raincoat, and an old beat-up fedora that I found in a box in the attic. I don’t know what I was going for. Constantine meets the Shadow, maybe. I lost the hat in the first five minutes. It fell off while I was scaling the wall. Which, by the way, is a lot harder than it looks.

You might be wondering at this point why I felt the need to physically break into the school to get at the computers. I mean, everything’s connected these days, right? I hear hackers came really close to bringing down the Pentagon that one time. Okay, so they didn’t come even remotely close. Barely scratched the surface. A light tap-tap on the front door, is about as far as they got. And we all know that no one in their right mind keeps anything important just inside the front door. But I digress.

The reason I broke into the school, was because it was hard. Hacking is easy, when your school has the kind of piss-poor security mine had. Even for someone as technically challenged as me. Pet’s names and birthdays abound as passwords, and the so-called firewall is a joke. The actual physical entity that is the school’s main server, though, that puppy is hard to get at. It’s in the basement, in what amounts to a closet. You have to go through four locked doors to get to it.

Locks, now – those I’m good at. Never mind that’s what got me into this mess in the first place. It was getting to said locks that was the hard part. The next day, I had the skinned shins and elbows to prove it. But I didn’t get caught. They say that’s what hooks most people, the first time – getting away with something. It could have gone in a whole different direction from there. But instead I found myself trying to save the world. I’ll get back to the bit about almost dying (I’m avoiding it mostly because it’s embarrassing as hell), but first I have to tell you about the three-legged dog, because that’s when everything started to change.

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