The Infected 1: Proxy (20 page)

"Wonderful! So good to see someone with sense around here. I told them I should be out there, being an American Icon and all that, but they thought you wouldn't want to share the stage. Glad to see you're an intelligent and wise person." He moved to pat Brian on the back, a hearty slap, but Chambers blocked it and yelled at him.

"Damn it, Scott, he had half his shoulder eaten! Not everyone shrugs that kind of thing off you know! Read the reports on other people occasionally, all right?" She spun to Brian.

"Seriously? You'll go out with him behind you? It does play well when he's on..."

"Sure. Prime's cool. He can give me hints if I get lost or just jump in and rescue me if I flub too hard."

Prime's smile got bigger. "Of course I can."

For the next four minutes the woman gave him directions, walk out with the director and Prime in front of him, stop on the blue tape x on the floor and trade places with the director when introduced, then answer questions. Just point at someone and listen carefully. Try not to start a war or insult anyone. Except the Jackal and his friend, he could insult them all he wanted. As long as he didn't use actual swear words.

After all, what were they going to do, sue?

As he walked to the stage he leaned over to Charlot and whispered.

"You do know I'm on drugs right? Just got out of surgery?"

Then keeping his face straight he walked out.

He hoped he didn't mess up too bad. At least he had Prime, who'd probably steal the show, but that worked for him. If the guy wanted this mess, he could have it.

The lights were blinding and he could hardly see anyone in the audience. That... really, it was kind of comforting. Brian just hoped they didn't make him stand too long, he felt a little woozy already. On the good side, this tiny bit of stage fright couldn't hold a candle to some of the stuff he'd done lately, even Itch had scared him more. So had Marcia for that matter. He tried to keep his face still while the Director, Kevin Moore turned out to be his name, ran over the events pretty well and did it relatively quickly. He seemed to have a knack for this kind of thing, his statements all clear and concise, no grandstanding and when he turned to Brian after introducing him, his smile seemed genuine.

Brian walked to the podium, extending to shake the director's hand, because it seemed right. The man returned the gesture smoothly, then got Brian up on the little box putting him in front of a large array of microphones.

"What Director Moore said hit most of the facts pretty well, so I'll just take some questions if anyone has some? If not I bet we could dig up some snacks or something and find a movie to watch maybe? I think I get the rest of the day off..." The audience chuckled.

"Right, how about you." He indicated a man that looked familiar from somewhere. Well, TV, but Brian didn't know what show or even channel.

The man spoke loudly enough, even without a microphone, to be heard all over the room.

"Can you explain the nature of your abilities? It seems a little unclear..."

This took Brian a little aback, being a much more practical question than he'd expected.

"Sure. Someone gets in trouble and is about to die, I go there and take their place... it's kind of like teleportation, except I don't control it at all, and then I try not to die myself. I don't know where they go, the people I replace, but they come back when I'm done. Unharmed. At the same time I go back to where I started from."

The man didn't seem satisfied with that.

"What about other powers? You've fought at least a dozen Infected individuals, some with high level abilities, what else can you do?"

Laughing, Brian shook his head a little.

"Other than get the snot beaten out of me? I don't have any other abilities. I can't even sing. I do play a mean Oboe though."

He pointed to another man about four people over, dressed in a black suit.

"When you were fighting the Jackal, were you afraid?"

"Yes. If you follow up with "did you wet yourself", I'll lie... Well... honestly I don't remember, so you'd have to ask whoever did my laundry after, but it sounds like a very reasonable course of action - in hindsight at least. The guy had already helped kick my... rear once, and then some other things happened after that which, yeah... Afraid... Very."

The questions went on for a while, most of them getting honest, if flip remarks. He pointed to someone, a woman he thought, wearing red toward the back. That or a man in a dress. He just really couldn't see past the lights.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" she asked, making the others laugh.

Brian shielded his eyes like a visor, searching the audience for where the voice had come from. "Mom? Is that you? Look, honestly... I'm not gay!" He over-exaggerated the words and got a huge laugh for his effort.

"Seriously? No... I'd like to, but I don't think I have the time."

A voice came from the room in front of him, it sounded male, and thoughtful.

"Why not? Do they work you that hard?"

Smiling he shook his head then let it tilt.

"Well, actually, yeah, come to think of it, they really do, but I meant I don't think I'll survive long enough for it to be fair to anyone I might have a relationship with. I'm essentially just a regular guy, like most of you and most of the people at home. The only difference is that I keep getting dropped into fights, sometimes with Infected people, sometimes not, sometimes they have guns and knives, once I was chased by a mob calling for my death. If I make it to my next birthday that's going to be pretty good and probably means someone keeps bailing me out. Um, my birthday is in June, next month, on the twelfth. If I'm still here, I'm having a party. Cake and ice cream on me. You're all invited."

No one asked any more questions.

"No one? OK. Well, nice chatting with you, if you think of anything else, let me know and I'll try to get an answer back to you if I can fit it into my schedule. Not a joke. They're already riding me about how much I suck at fighting." He waved and stepped back, and traded places with Moore hoping he hadn't screwed up too bad, telling them all that.

They walked out together a few minutes later, Charlot grabbed him by the collar, he thought she wanted to hit him for a second, but she kissed him instead. A dry kiss, but on the lips.

"You rocked! If I weren't married I'd date you myself. That bit about being around on your birthday... I couldn't have paid people to come up with it. Prime, get over here!" she ordered, sounding angry again.

Before she could say anything, Brian put his hand out to the tall man - who really did look like a superhero from an old time comic book. "Thanks, man. You saved that out there you know. If they only had my face to look at everyone would have turned the channel. It really helped a lot."

He meant it, realizing that having the man behind him didn't just make Prime feel better, but had helped him too. It had reminded Brian that the fate of Infected everywhere didn't rest only on what he said.

The brunette looked at him, and raised her eyebrows.

"That's right, you did a great job, Scott. From now on, if Brian here needs to be on the air, I want you with him, all right? Even if you're not in the picture just then, I want you standing backstage for him. You're the master of this kind of thing after all."

Penny came over and took his hand. The one not attached to a lump of pain.

"That was pretty good. Let's get out of here, you should get back to your hospital room and make sure you didn't open anything up moving around like this."

Director Moore walked over and shook his hand, which made Penny let go first.

"You did well out there today. We'll have to see how it plays, but it had a kind of honest, folksy charm that people like. I'll get with you in a few days for follow-up, all right?"

They all parted ways, Penny practically holding him up as they walked, his energy about gone. Back in the hospital room, Bridget and Lauren had "borrowed" a television and wired it to play. It was huge, about fifty inches across. They'd stolen the wall mount for it too, putting it up without asking any of the medical staff, but wouldn't tell him where they'd gotten it from.

"We'll give it back in a few days. It's not really like we're keeping it or anything." Fidgeting, Bridget looked at the screen with awe and greed in her eye. "Yeah, definitely just giving it right back as soon as we're done with it."

To distract him, Lauren turned it on.

The preset had it turned to one of the big five cable news channels, the most popular one. His face came up, startling him. He didn't look good, too battered for that, but he did look a lot thinner than he'd thought. He had bruises on the side of his face, but he couldn't even remember what had happened to cause them. His voice sounded all right, just a little higher pitched than inside his head, but that happened. Bridget clapped and shushed everyone when he started speaking. It turned out to just be a clip, covering three of the answers, all about his powers.

Because him being lame was clearly the big story here.

The good-looking people sat on stools, almost standing, which couldn't have been that comfortable, Brian decided. A pretty golden-blond woman spoke first. She wore a blue blouse and tan skirt that was just a little short for someone claiming to give reliable information, but looked hot.

"Can you believe it? He's an ordinary guy, he knows he's going to die, but he doesn't sound bitter about it, just happy he can help people. It's kind of inspirational. We could all do with a bit more of that. I have to dig deep into my soul to give a few hundred dollars to charity at Christmas each year. Can you imagine?"

Her co-host, one of two, a sandy-blond man that looked like he tasted something sour, snorted.

"I find it hard to believe that on top of all the recent negative press for the Infected this fellow comes out of nowhere with a heroic act and a sob story, don't you? Doesn't this seem a little tailor-made? He saves the kids of a bunch of officials, from a group made up mainly of Infected and then finds the most notorious serial killer in the world and fights him to the death to protect some people in the heartland of America? On video no less? It doesn't scan for me." He sounded like he tasted something sour too, Brian noticed.

The brown-haired man looked at the other man like he'd lost his mind.

"Dan, seriously? Do you think they hired the Jackal or that Mr. Yi is secretly the new Prime? He looked pretty wrung out if you asked me, which I'd expect if he's what they say he is. Just someone doing the best he can in a pretty messed up situation."

Brian suggested they find a movie. Bridget got on the bed and curled up next to him warmly, but kept her hands to herself, which had to be a sign that she could control what she did if she wanted. That or he looked so bad that even her rather loose standards didn't think it worth the bother. At about eight-thirty, Doctor Burrows came in with a large shot of something.

The woman held the needle up, "Mwa-ha-ha! Erm, I meant, time for medicine deary..." She did the last in an old lady voice.

Her expression was a little wry but she kept the syringe up in the air ready to stab something. It looked a little maniacal to tell the truth. She just needed a flashlight under her jaw and the lights on low for the full effect.

"Your friend Christian came in earlier and told us all that we'd better do more for your pain or she'd tell everyone our darkest secrets. Somehow I don't think she was kidding. So here you go. More where this came from if you need it. Now my personal secrets aren't that dark, If people want to know that I dated a girl for six months in college no big, but a few of the guys looked more than a little freaked..." She gave him the shot in his left arm, a new I.V. not having been started when he got back.

Brian fell asleep before the end of the movie, nodding in place, but no one said anything about it. The world swam and he realized after a while that Penny sat next to him, the room lights low and everyone else gone. She leaned over and kissed his cheek.

"Get better soon. We need you. More than you think." She walked out, probably not knowing he'd even woken up.

Kissed by two women in one day, a record for him. Before that the last kiss he'd gotten had been.... He couldn't remember. Bridget, he thought. She counted right? Still too young, but hey, he couldn't afford to be picky.

It didn't take long for Brian to drift back off again until morning, about seven. He woke up feeling drugged, but not too bad all things considered. The doctor that came in had been the guy that helped him with his feet, Kern.

Brian asked if he could go workout and the man laughed at him. It wasn't a pleasant chuckle either, but that kind of laugh smart people give you when you just said something they secretly think is retarded, but don't want to tell you that straight out to save your feelings.

"Tell you what, let me check that wound, recheck your feet, give you more anti-inflammatory, and then we'll see if I'll let you go and walk around the track for a while. If you try to run I'll personally come down there and drag you back, got it?" The doctor folded his arms and gave him a stern look, but ruined it by grinning after a few seconds.

It didn't take long, his feet had toughened a lot and all the blisters were gone, Kern worked one patch down a bit with an emery board, so that it wouldn't throw his gait off over time. Twenty shots later, only one for pain in the shoulder, and he let Brian get dressed and walk himself to the track. Kern insisted that Brian wear a shoulder sling, one that coordinated with his sweats - which made him smile - until the Doc pointed out that injuries were so common here that all the bandages color coordinated on purpose.

"It helps hide how often people here are hurt." This time no smile came with the words at all. The tone wasn't happy either.

He made his way to the elevator, finding it empty, and rode to fourteen, the room still almost deserted - it being too early for anyone else - except one of the team two people, a strange looking fellow that went by the code name Goblin, and kind of looked like one, stick-thin body, large head, green and black skin. He often came early in the morning for a couple of hours, clearing out when it got busier. Brian waved to him and felt surprised when the other man waved back, smiling.

He walked around the track, struggling not to seem to enfeebled. It was an odd distance, just shy of a half mile per lap it turned out, meaning this complex was huge inside, Brian thought as he walked, not even bothering to try and count the laps, just walking at a smooth pace. At around nine-thirty Karen came running over to him, rust-colored ponytail bobbing as she did. She moved in beside him, moving quickly to match him.

"I didn't think you'd be back yet! Kern called and told me if I didn't check on you he'd smear my name in the press. Tell them I was sleeping with Prime or something." She mock shuddered, which made Brian laugh. Prime might not have the best personality, but most women didn't really care about that in his experience, at least not once you got past the obviously off-putting stuff. Being a narcissist ticked women off, unless you had a pretty enough face and body, then they were all into it, even if they claimed they weren't.