The Indestructibles (Book 3): The Entropy of Everything (7 page)

Chapter 14:

Dancing

      Kate worked her way silently through the darkened hallways of the building, lights flickered as bulbs clung desperately to the last few watts of their lives.
She'd seen the look of pity on older-Jane's face. She realized something was wrong, something with her future, and Kate wasn't about to wait idly by until someone else dictated how and when she'd discover it.

      She'd find her own destiny. She always had.

      Kate knew a dance studio or rehearsal space would be located near the theater where they'd met the scarred and monstrous future version of Titus, and so she began to work in concentric circles outward from there until she found what she was looking for.

      She wondered if that was what the future Titus had waiting for him. A monster and a hero, damaged and limping, a pack of others like him hiding in the shadows and waiting for his commands. They had spoken briefly about what Titus learned in his time in Canada and how he was expected to be some sort of leader among the wolves, that he was a Whispering, whatever that word might mean, and that he would have responsibilities to his kind some day. And that those responsibilities would extend to humankind as well.

      Responsibilities always come with a terrible cost, Kate thought. The only safe thing to do is to understand your limits, to know exactly where your breaking point is, to ride that razor edge with skill and care.

      Where am I? Kate thought. What do I become? Am I monster as well? Or am I dead and gone, like Billy, my life ended in some poorly planned attempt at exceeding my own abilities?

      Kate wondered also what it would take to kill someone like Billy, protected as he was by the alien powers of Straylight. She'd hosted the alien for a while when Billy was incarcerated. She hadn't had a chance to really test the limits of those powers, but she knew how she'd felt, invincible, filled to the brim with power. Those powers would protect you, she thought, but they could also make you reckless, until some day eventually, everything fails you.

      Alien guardian angels and friends both.

      She found the studio, lights out, music playing softly from a small, battery-operated radio. A dim glow seeped in through foggy skylights. In the darkness, a woman danced.

      There's a language to dance. Some people become fluent in it and speak their emotions through movement—punctuation through the bend of a limb, exclamation via striated muscle. It is a manner of speaking that doesn't always require fluency to comprehend. Kate had seen people who never understood the intricacies of dance break down in tears at the sight of a performance. Though unable to explain why it cracked something deep inside them, why they remained inconsolable, their primal self clearly read the tale the dancer was trying to express.

      But if you are a dancer, and if you're lucky, you can read the story in the dance almost like words on a page.

      This dancer spun a tragic drama. A broken ballet, bastardized with pieces of modern, aggressive, frustrated, angry steps, feet landing hard and furious on the floor. She focused on working some inner dialogue out, a cry for help, for forgiveness, for a second chance. She moved across the floor like water.

      Kate Miller, the vigilante Dancer, does not feel sadness, she often told herself. I don't have time to feel sad. It makes nothing better, it does not bring back the dead, it fixes nothing.

      And yet, watching this woman dance, she felt her heart break in two. Kate stifled a sob with her fist, teeth biting into the fabric of a glove.

      Why does this dance hurt so much? she thought.

      The woman turned and Kate saw her own face, eyes covered with a blindfold, a cruel scar running up her forehead and into her hairline. She untied the blindfold. Sightless eyes looked back at her.

      "I can hear you," future-Kate said. "Who are you? Not one of Titus's little puppies."

      Kate didn't answer. She simply stared. Her future self was all lean muscle, but frailer, without the fighting strength Kate herself carried in her shoulders and back. This future self really did look like a ballerina, strong but slender, yet showing the affects of the vigilante life in the scar tissue visible on the bare flesh of her arms and chest.

      "Now, I know who you are," the sightless woman said.

      "Of course you do," Kate said.

      "Annie came back," future-Kate said. "I was hoping I'd be smart enough not to come with her, but you came along anyway."

      Future-Kate walked toward the far wall, placed her fingertips against it, then followed the edge until she found a water bottle on the floor. She took a long sip.

      "We shouldn't have come here," Kate said.

      Her future self nodded in agreement.

      "We don't deserve the help," she said. "We had our chance. We failed at every turn."

      "What happened to you," Kate said. "To us."

      The future dancer shook her head.

      "Do you ever feel inferior to them?" she said.

      "What?" Kate asked.

      "To the other Indestructibles," the dancer said. "What a ridiculous name. The Indestructibles. Is that what you're called in your timeline?"

      "It is," Kate said.

      "The press called us that in this timeline. Named us. Stupid name," future-Kate said. "We're all destructible. We're all breakable. Some more than others."

      "What happened to your sight?" Kate said.

      "The visual cortex," the future dancer said. "You know where it is?"

      "The back of the brain," Kate said.

      The old dancer nodded. "Gone in a split second," she said. "We are not indestructible."

      Kate heard footsteps.

      Anachronism Annie walked into the room slowly, backlit by the strange, warm glow older-Jane cast behind her. Younger-Jane—my Jane, Kate thought—sauntered almost bashfully behind both of them.

      "Everything okay in here?" Annie said.

      "Yeah," Kate said, her voice rough.

      "You shouldn't have brought them here, Annie," future-Kate said. "Bring them home before it's too late."

      Older-Jane gestured for the others to leave.

      Annie stepped back, watching younger-Kate.

      The future dancer reached out and grabbed her younger self by the arm, pulling her in close.

      "You're always right," the woman whispered. "Remember that. Remember your instincts. You will always be right." Then, she let Kate go, and the younger dancer took an unsteady step back.

      Younger-Jane tried to help, but Kate shrugged her off. Their older versions were arguing in hushed tones, the future-Kate clearly agitated, her version of Jane trying to calm her.

      The younger versions locked eyes for a second, but Kate turned and stormed away, almost crashing into Titus in the hallway, where the young werewolf stood with Doc Silence.

      "Kate?" Titus said, softly.

      Kate peered back into the dark dance studio, toward the soft sounds of her future self engaged in a pointless debate, and fumed off into the hallway alone, leaving Titus behind.

Chapter 15:

The secret history of the world (part 1)

      Jane returned with her older self, Annie, and Titus to the theater where the others were waiting.
Titus wanted to go after Kate, Jane knew, but the young werewolf understood better than to try to speak with the Dancer when she was angry, and clearly her experience with her future self had left Kate shaken.

      In the theater, Titus's future self, still in full-on werewolf form, sat on the stage like a king presiding over a court. Doc and Emily sat front and center—Doc, like a petulant student, rested on the back of one of the theater's chairs, and Emily mimicked his posture perfectly—while Billy milled about alone in the back of the hall, deep in conversation with Dude.

      Jane caught Emily's eye and gestured at Billy with a nod of her chin, but Emily shrugged and made a cartoonishly large gesture with her whole head toward the nearby Jessie, the future's newer Straylight.

      Jane sighed quietly at Emily's lack of subtlety and searched for a place to sit down.

      "It may be useful if we had a more complete understanding of where things went differently here," Doc said. "We know some of the basics, but maybe if we learn the 'how,' we might be able to help more."

      "What are you going to do?" Jessie asked. "Go back in time and fix it?"

      Doc shook his head. "Not an option."

      "Because you can't, or because you won't?" Jessie said.

      Doc turned his attention from the young hero to the older Titus.

      "You wouldn't know this, because I was gone before I was able to tell all of you everything in this timeline, but you can't alter the past," Doc said. He shot a defiant stare at Annie, who glared back at him. "And we know that because we've tried and failed before. The past doesn't want to be changed."

      "But we can try to alter the present," Annie said. "We can help here."

      "I'm not even going to pretend to understand what you're talking about," Jessie said.

      "If I had a dollar for every time someone said that to me . . ." Emily said, but Jane shushed her.

      Older-Titus shuffled to the edge of the stage and settled down on his haunches.

      "Enough," he said. "Where do you want us to begin, Doc? What don't you know?"

      "Near as I can tell, things started to go differently when I died," Doc said. Finnigan and Jessie shifted uncomfortably, but Doc waved them off. "This isn't the first time I found out I died early in another timeline. It's okay."

      "I hope I never get to the point where I can say that so casually," younger-Titus said.

      His older counterpart grunted, quieting the entire room. Then, he looked at the Jane from his timeline. "You should tell. You know the most about what happened," older-Titus said.

      Future-Jane nodded. "This is surreal, you know?" she said, looking at Doc. "Losing you was like . . . well, John Hawkins was my father, but you were pretty close yourself."

      Doc smiled.

      "I'm glad for that," he said. "But it'll be okay. Just tell me what you can. Do you know who it was? Who killed me?"

      "We knew that right away," future-Jane said. "We knew that as soon as it happened. It was Lady Natasha Grey."

      Then future-Jane settled in to tell the story.

* * *

      Once, in another past:

      Doc Silence watched his students training together and felt a quiet pride well up inside.

      His four pupils—Jane, Kate, Titus, and Billy—gathered in the massive space within the Tower that was designed for superhumans to test their limits. A few moments earlier the room had rumbled with mock combat and flashed with the light generated by Billy's and Jane's powers. Now, however, the room was filled with laughter. Doc, situated in the observatory above, couldn't make out the exact words, but Titus was ribbing Billy about something; Jane laughed, watching them with a pride not unlike Doc's own, aware that they were finally becoming something closer to heroes. Kate hung back, as she always did, but Doc knew she was present, in the moment, was now a part of the group, not an outsider no matter how much she initially wanted to be.

      I assembled a team after all, he thought, smiling. There was something missing, though, another hero or two, someone who would complement the abilities of this small group. But they were becoming friends, and that was the important thing. Doc had often heard that, in situations of violence, friendship and love is a liability, that it's better to have a professional respect for each other that could be relied upon. But when it came to people like those Doc had worked with his entire life, he knew it had to be more personal. You had to love the people you fought beside here. Because the things you would see, the things you would face as a hero, you'd need something more than just respect to make it through. You needed to think with your heart as often as you thought with your head.

      These young heroes were becoming a family, he thought. And that would save them in the end. Love doesn't conquer all things, but it is the light at the end of every tunnel.

      Doc was shaken from his own thoughts when Tower's artificial intelligence, Neal, chimed in.

      "Designation: Doc Silence," the AI's always professional voice said. "There has been an incident you may want to be aware of."

      "Bring it up on screen," Doc said, gesturing at a small monitor on his left.

      The AI's eyes were everywhere here. He was, in many ways, the Tower itself. Neal understood where Doc wanted to review the information he had to share before Doc himself knew.

      The screen lit up, depicting an aerial view using data filters only the Tower had, a sort of satellite imaging designed to sense unique energy signatures. It was how he found heroes like Billy, because their strange abilities appeared and were picked up by the Tower's network. The system informed the heroes ahead of time what type of obstacles they might be facing, be it nuclear, alien, or some other indefinable challenge. As it was in this case.

      Doc frowned when he saw the unique patterns indicate a magical attack outside London. Something strange was happening near Elephant and Castle, a tube stop Doc had been to many times. He'd lived nearby for a short time when he was younger.

      "Neal, please confirm. That's a magical energy signature, yes?"

      "It is, Designation: Doc Silence. It is—"

      "I know those spells by sight, it's okay," Doc said, cutting the AI off.

      He glanced back down at the young heroes below him, still laughing and joking together. They weren't ready for magic, he knew. It was partially his own fault—he'd never exposed them to the supernatural, and given them no training in how to deal with it or how to defend themselves from it. But even if he had, they wouldn't be ready. There's nothing in this world as dangerous as magic, he thought. And Doc vowed to keep them from it as long as he could.

      He touched the intercom and spoke into a small microphone on the console.

      "Jane, come up to the observation deck for a moment, would you?" he said.

      She looked up at him and saluted playfully.

      No, Doc thought. I'll take care of this myself. And when I get back, I'll start teaching them about magic.

      He wished very much that conversation would never have to happen. Doc wouldn't wish magic on his worst enemy, let alone these four kids he cared so much about.

      Jane's footsteps clanked on the stairwell leading up to the observation area and she loudly clomped her way in.

      "They're doing great, aren't they?" Jane said.

      She was as much their teacher as Doc was; Jane and Doc had time together to train before he first reached out to the others, time to acclimate her after Jane's powers first manifested themselves. It was a period to prepare her to lead, Doc knew. It had been clear from their first few days together that Jane possessed the instincts of a leader, the right amount of compassion, self-sacrifice and self-confidence, and he had made sure to instill in her the things she'd need to take these less experienced heroes into the field.

      "They are," Doc said. "And so are you. You've come a long way, Jane."

      She shrugged.

      "Only practicing what you taught me," she said. "You look worried. Are we doing something wrong down there?"

      He shook his head.

      "No," he said.

      "So why'd you call me up here?" she asked.

      Doc gestured to the monitor. Pulsating lights of whatever was happening at Elephant and Castle Streets continued to flicker.

      "I need to investigate something," Doc said. "And just wanted to let you know I'd be gone a few hours, maybe longer."

      Jane raised an eyebrow.

      "Want backup?" she said. "I think we're ready for some field work."

      "No," he said. Doc held up a hand in response to Jane's disappointed expression, "I don't doubt that you're close to getting out into the field, but these events involve magic. I haven't been able to give you anywhere near the tools you require to help with something like this."

      "Sounds like you've been neglectful in your duties, Doctor Silence," Jane said.

      He chuckled.

      "When I get back, I'll start teaching you about magic," Doc said. "But there's a reason I've held off. It's the final exam, not a prep test. Magic is the most dangerous element you'll ever face. I wanted to let you work your way up to it."

      "So when you return, we'll talk about getting the team into the field? Maybe stop muggings or something else?"

      "How about rescuing a few kittens out of trees?" Doc said.

      "Anything if it will get us out of the training room," Jane said.

      "It's a promise, then," Doc said. "You'll hold down the fort?"

      "You bet," she said. Jane pursed her lips, suddenly serious. "But if you get into any trouble, you'll call? Even if it's just me. I won't put the others in danger."

      "I will," he said. Doc put a hand on Jane's shoulder, amazed, as always, by the way the stored solar energy she used to power her abilities radiated a distinct halo-like heat from her. "See you soon."

      "Be safe," Jane said.

      "I always am," he said.

      Doc turned and cast a silent spell that opened a sliver in space. Through the gateway, he saw London's ever-unique skyline.

      "I'll be back soon," he said, not realizing that this would be the last time he'd ever see Jane.

* * *

      Then:

      Doc Silence stepped out of a portal across the street from the garish statue from which Elephant and Castle, a roadway in central London, derived its name. The road involved one of the more frustrating roundabouts he'd ever encountered during his time living here when he was young—he swore the rotary was the work of a demon, but then again, Doc thought, most roundabouts involve dark sorcery if you looked hard enough for it.

      Even still, the bright red elephant with a tiny castle on its back brought back memories of his years in London. He learned so much magic here, back in the early days. London hosted a hotbed of practitioners of magic, both light and dark; he'd come here to study, and to make a name for himself, if he could.

      But Elephant and Castle was also the home of one of his worst days here in London. Not fighting a demon, not ending a curse, not failing to solve a case or save the day. No, Elephant and Castle was the place where a young Doc engaged in a terrible argument with someone he worried about, someone who had known what he was going to become. She'd watched him going down a dark path—like roundabouts, all paths of magic are dark, even the good ones—and she'd tried to warn him off.

      By then though, Doc had already witnessed too much. It was too late to turn back. His eyes had been transformed to burning violet orbs. He perceived things while simply walking down the street that ordinary people never knew existed. He'd killed a vampire in New Orleans, battled an immortal serial killer in Paris.

      There would be no ordinary life for him, not then. So they'd had a row in the subway station, and his friend stormed off. They never spoke again. Sometimes, during those forlorn moments when Doc Silence was alone, he'd add up all the people he had lost to magic together with all the lives he'd saved because of it, and he would try to balance the scales. But sorrow weighs more heavily than victory, and Doc—even with the Tower full of young heroes in training— was and had been for a very long time, alone.

      Shaking off thoughts of the past, Doc cast a small spell, a little cantrip to let him know where magic existed in the vicinity. A glittering path, like dots on a map, led him down into the subway tunnels below. He followed, scattering those glowing specks like dust in bright sunlight.

      Back in the old days, Doc carried a knife with him. The subway could be a rough place. He realized carrying was illegal here, but he also knew the right spells to make officers of the law look another way, or forget his face entirely. He could walk around this city with a claymore strapped to his back and no one would notice unless they were searching for someone just like him. A magician. A troublemaker.