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Our Paranormal Chernobyl
Scene 41: You Can't Keep a Good Man Down
Tuesday, 5:31 pm, Above and outside the schoolhouse

Goo bent over to observe the wound.

The feeling of looking through a hole in itself was disquieting. But overall, Goo would have to rate the experience as could-be-worse. The area around the wound wasn’t bleeding (leaking?) and the pain, though initially intense, seemed to dissipate quickly.

If this thing had to happen to someone, Goo rationalized, it was probably best that it happened to Goo.

"Why’d you do that?!" DuFord shouted over the speakers.

"Please. Like I’m going to do something that stupid," Ed said flatly.

"Take this thing down!" Pender yelled to DuFord.

"I think I’m beginning to understand the ‘acting’ part of your title," Stranger said to Pender. Then he ran toward the exit.

Ed stepped past Goo, who was folded over examining itself, and moved next to Stranger to stand at the edge of the opening. Maggie ran next to him.

A hundred feet below, the pieces of the Jigsaw Man were flying through the air, converging on a glowing red core. One of the cops who’d arrived with Maggie, a tall black man, was on the ground a few feet from the thing, covering his head. The female PRIMUS chopper pilot, six feet away from it, was reaching for her sidearm. And within a thirty-foot radius were another dozen people: plainclothes detectives, uniformed police officers, fire fighters, and others.

"Can it be talked to?" Maggie asked August.

"Yes, but the last people who tried wound up a pile of body parts, so I really don’t suggest it," he replied.

"Lovely. Saint-Caline…"

Stranger didn’t want to land in the center of those shards, getting cut up without a solid target to strike back at. He picked a spot about fifteen feet away from the meta, outside of the circle of converging rock, and leaped out of the sphere. "Let’s Away!" he yelled.

Maggie shoved her helmet on her head. Hopefully, her force gloves would prove be an effective weapon against this energy-and-orbiting rocks being… and even if the creature was sentient and able to communicate, it was unlikely to be well-disposed. She fired her jets, and jumped after Theo August.

Ed was left standing by himself at the edge of the opening.

It made Pender regret she hadn’t kicked him out herself—but they didn’t have time for regrets just now. She flipped open her cell phone. "Jardine, this is Pender. Do you read? Over!"

There was no answer.

Goo snapped to attention, leaving thoughts of its injury behind.

"Ja-a-ardine?!?" it exclaimed.

Goo reacted instinctively. It leaped past Ed and went out the door, forcing itself into a thin, folded aerodynamic shape. Gliding downward like a soupy bird of prey, Goo was in a rapid controlled fall.

Ed watched them course through the air, flinging themselves towards a living knife that was probably completely fucking insane. Theo may have stood a chance, and the real irony there was that knife-boy and August were probably more alike than August and anyone else. Both nuts, both unkillable…

"Jesus…" he muttered as he looked over at Pender and the little dude. "Just you and me again, Pender. Looks like all the pajamas have taken the bait. Stupid, stupid, stupid."

He shook his head as he looked back out the exit. "I mean, I ain’t been inside that razor boy’s head yet, but if I was him this is what I’d do. Get maximum body count." He shrugged. "Too predictable, man… way to predictable."

Though it was nice having August and the gooey thing away from him. They were freaking him out. And he felt like he’d finally gotten most of the pieces he’d acquired from the minds he’d been in all locked down—nobody home but Ed in Ed’s head now.

Kind of refreshing, actually. And the view from up here was pretty cool too. He’d have to see if maybe he could figure out a way to get himself one of these things.

Then the ball lurched and Ed was forced to grab the frame of the door. The sphere began to drop.

"I don’t think we want to get too close," DuFord said. "It chopped my scout vehicle in half with one stroke."

"I can nuke it from here," Ed told them.

"Get this thing down on the ground, now," Pender barked. It sounded like an order. "We need to help get those people out of the area until—" Until this blows over, but what if it just blows back? "Just get us down there."

"No room," DuFord said. "The roof of the school is as close as I can get. Going down."

Below, the rocks assembled into the man-shaped thing Ed had seen way too closely in the school building. The Thorin chick abruptly braked to a halt half way down, but Theo and the Goo were still plummeting.

Ed focused his talent on the jigsaw man and immediately snagged a mind. But then he realized that he'd grabbed another tiny, fragmented thing like the piece he'd probed inside the ship.

A slight difference, though. Where the chunk in the ship had been mentally isolated from the others, this piece was firing its thoughts into the central core of energy swirling below—and getting fragmented thoughts in return. The core was like a big laser show, every puzzle piece beaming thoughts and energy to the others and getting blasted in return. He could read the thoughts of the thing, but it would be a royal bitch—like reading individual wasps to find out what the hive was going to do.

First he needed a name. As the ball dropped altitude, Ed cast a psychic net over as many of the mind-fragments as he could and tried to pull out what this thing called itself.

What he got back was a jumble:

Ed’s eyes narrowed, and they seemed to almost sparkle as the light struck the copper highlights within.

"What the fuck…," he whispered. There were names, but they were confused and almost didn’t make sense. "Franklin" he got, and "Jigsaw," but everything else was a mess.

He took a deep breath and focused his scan, trying to see how the pieces of Frankie’s mind fit together.

Maggie hovered over the street. The jigsaw creature had reassembled before her eyes, and now it surveyed the crowded street and skies. She felt a chill as its gaze swept past her, its attention drawn to the falling forms of Goo and Stranger.

The Stranger struck the sidewalk hard. His legs absorbed most of the shock, but the impact still knocked concrete into the air.

Goo had aimed its aerodynamic shape on the patch of street between Agent Jardine and the shrapnel creature. It landed with a heavy splat, flattening on impact, before abruptly springing back into its usual shape. Jardine, operating on pure adrenaline, yelled and dove backwards.

[See the map]

Stranger knocked the chalky dust from his arms. He’d been a fool to trust Pender. All she wanted to do was cover up whatever was going on. She wouldn’t listen to anything he said, and now he found himself facing the same creature who not thirty minutes ago had nearly killed him. For a moment he wondered what the rest of the group would do.

Goo was poised to defend Jardine, Maggie seemed to be studying the creature, and all of the bystanders were near complete panic. He wasn’t sure about Q-Ball or Ed but they were probably too far away to do any good.

He sprang towards Jigsaw with all his might. "Say hello to your blue-eyed boy, Mr. Death," he said mockingly.

Before Stranger had covered half of the dozen feet to his target, the shrapnel man suddenly came apart. The pieces flew backward as if thrown from a catapult, arcing over the head of one of the policemen, and reformed an instant later almost twenty feet away. Jigsaw was now in the center of a triangle of uniformed cops.

"Hello, Boys in Blue," the thing said, cackling. Then it looked at Stranger. "Jump me once, shame on me. Jump me twice…" The pieces of stone that made up its head shook from side to side. And then it looked around at the crowd, and up to the ball. "Nobody move, or cops get chopped!"

Stranger froze in his tracks, realizing his mistake. Damn! He shouldn’t have played it safe—he should’ve landed on the creature again. His tactical error and Pender’s lack of action were now probably going to cost lives. He had to try to do something. If only the rat were here. He would know what to do.

"Hey now, no need to freak out rock man," Stranger said to the creature. "I’m sure that we can work this out. What the hell happened to you, anyway?" he asked, crossing his arms.

"Shut up!" The voice seemed to come from all the pieces at once, a chorus of hoarse shouts. Jigsaw reached for the cop in front of him—

—as the air around the creature exploded in brilliant light.

5:00pm, Cook County General Hospital, Emergency Room:

That’s right. It fell.

In his dream, he was back in fourth grade, at Our Lady of Victory, doing the Christmas Play. (Except he’d never been in a Christmas Play, ever—but these were dream facts.) On stage, Mary and Joseph were sitting next to the manger, surrounded by the little kids in animal costumes, and the teen angels with their tin foil wings. He could hear their voices as they gave their lines, but when he tried to pay attention to the words, the pain would flare at the back of his head. So he slipped back into the cozy dark, far back in the wings, away from the bright lights.

He shifted his sandaled feet, hoping he’d be able to tell when it was his time to come on. They’d tied the towel around his head too tight, and he was practically swimming in his father’s bathrobe. He wasn’t sure what part of the play they were on. The angels were already there, and the wise men had come out early. Mary looked like she had a bad case of stage fright: she’d move her mouth but nothing would come out but moans, and some kid in a Sunday suit had to read her lines for her.

Joseph didn’t have any lines. He just stood at the back of the stable, sharpening the blade of a long, curved sword, eyeing the lambs and the donkeys like he was thinking about supper.

Suddenly everyone on stage stopped talking, and they turned to look at him. The other two shepherds, holding their staffs and dressed in a black concert T-shirts (one said "The Pogues" and the other said "No Empathy 99"), had already given their lines. Everyone was waiting for him. He’d missed his cue!

He reached for his staff, but couldn’t find it in the dark. He bent down on hands and knees, searching, and finally his hands closed on the smooth, polished wood. His bow! That would work. He quickly unslung the cables and string, wrapped them around the grip, and stepped onto stage.

The audience, invisible beyond the stage, laughed and clapped. He almost turned around then. The lights were blinding, and the pain in his head had grown unbearable. But his parents were out there in the dark, rooting for him, and it was time to get on stage (no, get back on stage—he’d been here before) and deliver his line.

He stepped forward, and the animals and angels moved out of his way. Mary, crying silently, looked up, and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. Behind her, Joseph ran a hand along the blade of his scimitar.

The wise men (or rather, two wise men—an old man in a gray suit and a young one in a black suit and red tie—and one wise woman in a navy blue suit)—stepped away from the manger and stared at him curiously.

The baby, a little boy, lay naked in the wooden crib on a nest of hospital linens. He was tiny and wrinkled, looking like he’d been born only minutes ago. Eyes scrunched closed, he stretched, yawning.

And then he opened his eyes and regarded the shepherd expectantly, waiting for him to deliver his line.

"You say something, dude?" a voice asked.

Jonathan Blake opened his eyes and sat up—too quickly. The back of his skull flared in pain, and he swore through gritted teeth. "Jesus Christ!"

Stokes laughed. "I guess you’re awake."

Jonathan had been dreaming of something, but the memory of it disintegrated before he could pull it back. Current reality was weird enough. He was in a hospital bed, his bow, quiver, and telescopic eyepiece at the foot. He pulled back the sheet and heavy blanket and saw that he was still in his costume. And what about—? He touched his face and realized that his mask was gone, the hood completely cut off. There was only a bandage around his head, wrapped so tight it was painful.

"Don’t worry, man," Stokes said. The detective sat on the opposite bed, one hand wrapped in thick bandages. "They didn’t fingerprint you, and I didn’t let ‘em take any pictures." A security camera lay on the bed next to him, trailing a wire. The wire was attached to a metal plate and a chunk of plaster.

"You really went out of your way," Jonathan said. "Thanks."

Stokes shrugged. "I have this thing about secret ID’s being blown by security cams."

"So what happened? The last thing I remember, plastic man was rolling a pickup on top of me, and I was hit in the face with a big pile of translucent, uh…"

"Goo," Stokes said. "It knocked you under the bed of the truck, otherwise you would have been pancaked, man." The detective filled him in on the new meta, the escape of the robots, and Maggie and Goo’s plan to rendezvous with Stranger. The ex-mental patient had been in this very hospital an hour ago, when he forced a doctor to give him an MRI, and then after they chopped down the door he leaped out the window, chasing a big floating golf ball that called itself Q-Ball.

"Another previously unknown meta chopped up a lot of people inside a schoolhouse, a lot of them PRIMUS agents, before Stranger, Q-Ball, and that kid Ed took him out. The ambulances are on their way now."

"Survivors?"

"Only one so far, but they’re checking for more."

It’s gone from bad to worse, Jonathan thought.

"Where are they now?"

"Everybody’s still there: Stranger, Ed, some PRIMUS people, Thorin, and Goo—and ten minutes ago they all went inside the ball. They’re just floatin’ there, a hundred feet above the school."

Jonathan swung his legs out of bed. His head throbbed, but the pain was manageable. There was an IV in his arm, and he plucked it out.

"Dude, are you sure you’re up to this?" Stokes asked.

Jonathan took one of his hunting shafts from the quiver and used the razor tip to cut a swath from the bed-sheet. He folded it lengthwise, and cut out two diamond-shaped holes.

"C’mon, man. You should get that conk checked. You’re gonna make me feel like a pussy for waiting to get my finger sewed on."

Jonathan had to smile. "Thanks for watching my stuff—and my back. But I’ve been out of action long enough." He tied on the makeshift mask, then strapped the telescopic sight over his left eye.

Jonathan spread his arms. "How do I look?"

"Like fuckin’ Crossfire, man."

5:31 and 30 Seconds:

Crossfire looked down at the jagged rock-like… thing that stood at the center of the cops. It wasn’t the same guy that had turned a truck over on him, but he’d do the trick. Jonathan was mad.

He surveyed the scene below. This didn’t look like a time to negotiate. Jonathan considered his two options. Get the guy away from where the cops stood or keep the bad-guy from doing anymore harm. He wasn’t sure any of his arrows could knock him away, not without hurting the policemen stuck around him. There was only one arrow he trusted right now, and he hoped that the others down there would know what to do when it went off.

It was nice to see Stranger down there, Jonathan thought as he drew the arrow. Hopefully, the bad guy wouldn’t be seeing much of anything soon. Crossfire sighted down on him with his telescopic eyepiece and let the magnesium arrow fly.

The metahuman shouted in rage. The cop dove away from creature. The other officers fell backwards, covering their eyes. Someone in the crowd behind the barricades screamed.

Jigsaw grabbed blindly for where the cop had been a moment ago, edged hands closing on air. He jerked his head left, then right, as if listening.

Sixty feet above the street and falling, Pender fidgeted in the ball, watching anxiously on the monitors but unable to take part—never mind what use she might’ve been. The bright flash of light was a bit of a surprise; if she hadn’t known any better she would’ve thought it one of Crossfire’s magnesium arrows, like the one he’d fired at Ed earlier that morning.

So you can be blinded. She filed it away for future reference.

"Jardine!" she shouted into her phone. Despite Q-Ball’s relatively soundproofed environs, Laura still felt the need to raise her voice over the hysteria of the crowd.

"I’m here," the pilot replied tersely.

"Let August deal with that thing for now—see what you and the MCTs can do about getting those civilians out of there." Her mind was racing with offensive possibilities for use against Jigsaw, but even with a couple MCTs and a helicopter, her options seemed as limited as ever.

Stranger had his own ideas. The flash hadn’t blinded him, but he could see that Jigsaw was sightless. Way to go Q-Ball, he thought. But he’s too far to reach, unless…

Stranger quickly crouched and jumped towards Jigsaw.

About to use Jigsaw’s momentary distraction to plow through it, Maggie spotted Stranger’s leap out of the corner of her eye and rethought her plan somewhat. If she knocked Jigsaw away laterally, Stranger wouldn’t be able to change his course in mid-air and would plow into the ground—whereas with true flight, Maggie could smash into wherever Jigsaw would happen to be when August was done.

Stranger flew over the cop crawling away from Jigsaw and came down hard. He kicked his legs into Jigsaw’s shoulders, and for the second time in an hour, drove the creature into the pavement.

The impact rammed Stranger’s knees into his own chest, and with a grunt he rolled to the side. He noticed abstractly that his left boot had completely sheared off, leaving his foot bare. If this went on much longer, he’d be naked. At least the thing’s razor edges hadn’t broken his skin.

Jigsaw lay in the inch-deep crater, facing the sky. The red core of energy still glowed between its rocky plates. Slowly it lifted its head, still looking about blindly.

"I’m gonna cut you," it said, the chorus of whispers shaky. "Cut you like—"

"Cut this," Maggie hissed. She swooped toward him, swinging her glowing fist down.

The gauntlet smashed into the thing’s face, and the dozen pieces that made up its head exploded into the air.

Maggie flew past him and pulled out of her dive before crashing into the bystanders. Behind her, Jigsaw’s glowing red core blinked out, and the rest of the creature’s shards collapsed into the hole with a clatter.

And the crowd went wild.

The officers and fire fighters looked stunned, but the civilians crowded behind the barricades began to cheer and hoot. It wasn’t clear if they just didn’t understand how close they’d come to dying, or were simply relieved to be alive.

Stranger picked himself off the ground, and as he stood the crowd applauded again.

"Damn lady!" Stranger exclaimed. "I’m glad you didn’t hit me like that—my hat’s off to ya though. Good thing we were here, ‘cause God only knows what would have happened if it had only been left up to Pender. Yeah, she really had everything under control," he said, laughing.

Well, that’s an unexpected overture from Mr. August there, Maggie thought. I am not going to complain if he’s starting to see reason.

She smiled at him and said, "Thanks, but you shouldn’t diss Pender. She looks honest enough and it’s not her fault if PRIMUS would rather spend its money on secret robot projects rather than the job they’ve been contracted out to do."

Camera flashes sparkled from the crowd, and several of the closest people reached up to her, whether to touch her armor or shake her hand it was unclear.

She landed next to Jigsaw, keeping a close eye on him in case he gave signs of awakening again. "Besides, considering she was asked to replace a missing Silver Avenger au pied leve, I think she’s done a very good job , and we’d better hope she keeps at it, unless you intend to hold Mr. Stone-and-Crackling-Red-Energy here by yourself."

She gingerly took one of the stones from the ground and tossed it a few feet away. If that stone started moving it’d be a sure sign to break out the force glove again.

A few strident voices began to call Maggie Thorin’s name, and she realized that she may be holding an accidental press conference.

Goo, who had been standing between Mr. Stone-and-Crackling-Red-Energy and Agent Jardine, spoke up.

"Acting Pender? Replaced missing Silver?

"Acting part ma-a-akes sense. Now.

"But missing. Why? How?"

"I'm not sure of the specifics," Maggie said. "You'd better ask Pender."

Crossfire’s head pounded. Not from a vehicle landing on him, not from hurrying over here, not because he craved coffee or had only eaten only a hot dog all day. He only had to look up at the metal sphere hanging in the sky and see Ed in the doorway. That was enough for Jonathan to wish he carried Tylenol in his pocket. If he had pockets.

The metal sphere didn’t register with him, nor did the mound of Crazy Glue on the ground. But he already knew a lot could happen in just an hour. Only this morning he’d woken up in New York thinking he’d have a lazy day around the house. Wherever Darius was, Jonathan hoped his ears were burning.

He drew a line arrow from his quiver and swung down to the street. Between Magnitude and Stranger, Crossfire chose Maggie to get some answers from. Stranger would just as likely ask another question in return. As he walked over, Jonathan glanced around at the crowd, the cops and the general mayhem in progress.

"Hola," Jonathan waved. Several camera bulbs flashed in return.

The archer then turned to the armored woman. "Nice shot there. Remind me not to piss you off. Seems like I missed a lot."

"Quite a bit, although you’ve seen most of what I have," Maggie said. She waved to Q-Ball. "These folks have also been busy. I mean Pender, Q-Ball, Ed, and Stranger. I think they’d best fill you in."

"Yeah man, I’ll fill you in," Stranger shouted to Crossfire. "It turns out that these robot doctors are creations of PRIMUS. It seems that someone ‘stole’—" He made quotation marks in the air with his fingers. "—their design and used it to create our little mad scientists. I wonder what they were designed for in the first place, considering their current use? And isn’t it comforting to know that our nation’s protector has got its head so far up its own ass that somebody uses their own technology to kill their agents? Oh yeah, did I mention all of the innocents that were also killed?" he added sarcastically. "Well, I guess it just goes to show that government contracts do go to the lowest bidder. Boy, I know I’ll feel safe the next time those PRIMUS boys are on the job," he said mockingly as he rubbed his hands together.

Crossfire wondered why Stranger was shouting at him when he wasn’t standing all that far away from him. Then again, Jonathan wondered a lot of things about Stranger.

"Then you must have that cozy, all-tucked-in feeling pretty strong," the archer said to the hulking man. "Lucky for us, PRIMUS agents have been all over this one today."

Above, the fifty-foot sphere dropped to a dozen feet above the roof of the schoolhouse. Ed was still in the doorway of the vehicle, one hand holding onto the frame, staring at the pieces scattered across the ground.

Even though his attention had been fully focused elsewhere, Ed had still blinked rapidly in response to the flash (and a wicked smile had flickered for just an instant around his mouth), and he had sensed the light-switch change in Jigsaw’s mind when Maggie struck him. The pulses of thought that the rocks had been sending to each other abruptly shut off.

But the mind itself was still there, just broken into pieces. He’d already seen what a single isolated chunk of the mind was like, before Jigsaw woke up. Now he just needed to gather up all the pieces, and sort through them.

Ed’s talent began to gather up the mental islands and sort through them, seeking the answers to the thing’s identity.

C’mon, ya miserable bastard, he thought. Tell me what I want to know. Who are you?

The name was still a jumble, and Ed quickly extracted the names he’d seen before: "Jigsaw" layered into "Franklin" and "Regle" and "Lewis," with "Lewis" having the weakest resonance. When Ed dug further for where he came from, he got images of Jigsaw (but not the metahuman below—this was a normal man) walking the dark streets under the elevated highway, sleeping under the steps of the El station at Wacker Drive, sitting for long hours gazing at the red Picasso statue in Daley Plaza.

Ok, so I knew you’d be another of the robots' patients, but… He let the thought trail off. Fine, let's take a look at the why’s of it all. Why’d you go psycho?

The answer, spelled out in a hundred fragments, was simply "Lily." The woman in Jigsaw’s memories was beautiful, with shining brown hair, porcelain skin, a brilliant smile. In his mind she was surrounded by a grand monument of flesh, an interlocking puzzle that spelled his love for her. So many had tried to keep him from her, so many puppets of idiot meat, no better than cows. Now that he’d been transformed, made into the living weapon that he’d always wanted to become, no one would ever keep her from him again, and no one would keep the child from him—not Ignatius, not the police, not the social workers, not even these new freaks that had come out of the dark and the sky to distract him.

No one.

Pender’s phone, still set to PRIMUS radio mode, beeped, and then Agent Jardine was back on the line. "MCTs are here, SA Pender—and it looks like another metahuman just arrived."

Laura took a closer look on the monitors. The outfit was all wrong—was he wearing a bedsheet on his head?— but the longbow was unmistakable. For his sake, she was glad he was on his feet again, but for her own, she’d been hoping not to run into him for at least a week.

"Copy that—Crossfire. I’ll be right down. Pender out."

She flipped her phone shut and turned to DuFord. "Harris, I need you to either land this thing or get me on the ground. Now."

"Aye aye, Cap’n," the little man broadcast in a bad James Doohan imitation. "She’s goin’ as—"

Pender suddenly lurched forward, blood gouting from her chest just below the right clavicle. She dropped to her knees, frowning, and then toppled over onto the ship’s deck.

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