The Infected 1: Proxy (7 page)

Brian told Penny that she didn't have to run with him, since he was just going to try and get around the track once, if he could, first.

"Good. I'll be lifting weights then and see if I can grab one of the ellipticals. I'll come over again when I'm done with my official work out, all right?" She squeezed his arm gently and patted him on the back. The contact surprised him a little, since they'd just met. Then again, if she hadn't been able to really talk to anyone for a while, maybe she just wanted him to like her? Or maybe that was just her way?

Starting slowly, he managed to get about half the way around the track before his trembling legs threatened to give out, even from the slow jog he used. He slowed down even more and finished the loop. It took a long time. Brian tried it again, keeping the very slow speed and managed a few more laps that way. Then he had to walk. He tried to keep his pace up. Three laps later he felt like he could maybe run another one, if moving just past a quick walk really counted as running. Maybe he could get away with calling it a jog?

Brian had a strong suspicion that small children would have been lapping him and old people pointing and laughing at how slow he moved. Oh well, screw them anyway, he decided. If the mythical old people in his head weren't going to support his efforts they could go fuck themselves with their walkers.

He saw Lauren watching him as he struggled lamely around the track and waved, feeling a little embarrassed, being so out of shape when she was clearly lifting something around the weight of a small house, but didn't stop. He did grab a drink of water from a fountain quickly and then tried to keep going. After thirty minutes more he was down to walking, he couldn't get his legs to move faster than that anymore.

His stomach ached from having not eaten too... Brian shook his head, refusing to let that distract him.

Walk.

It didn't sound like a big deal, but it his legs shook from it already and it hadn't even been an hour. He made himself keep going. When he wanted to quit he remember Barbie Dorn and how he'd failed her. If he had to be in pain now to save the next one, then bring it on. He'd dealt with worse after all.

The track itself felt nice, a bouncy rubber underfoot, red-brown, a nice bright color with four lanes of traffic separated by fresh-looking white lines. No one else used it, so at least he didn't feel like everyone wanted him out of the way. The space was big inside the track, about twice what a football field looked like, maybe bigger. He didn't know what that meant for the track itself but he didn't think it was that much bigger than the one he'd ran on in high school.

Brian did know that in about two more laps, he'd have run or walked on this track more than he had the one at school during his four years there. Not a major feat really. Being as young as he was in school no one had expected much of him back then. Right now Brian kind of wished he'd done a little more.

He tried to jog again for a while, and barely made another lap. Then it went back to a walk, panting, right leg in particular burning, his feet sore already, like blisters were forming. His ankles ached to the bone, a feeling he'd grown used to over the past weeks from where the police had put the leg restraints. His wrists felt about the same and he wasn't even walking on them.

After another couple of laps he felt a hand on his back.

"Eeew, wet!" Penny sounded both grossed out and humorous.

"Part of the point, I think. You got here just at the right time, since I don't think I can run any more. I'm supposed to do this until bed time, but I don't think I'm going to make it. Man I suck."

Penny chuckled. The more he heard the girl, the more normal she sounded to him. Her voice almost seemed conversationally loud now.

"Yeah, you do suck a bit if walking is too much for you. Come on, don't give up! Only... four and a half hours to go!"

Brian nodded. He could do it and if he couldn't, there was always crawling. That had been an option too.

They chatted as they walked, Penny telling him about how she'd gotten there in the first place, a helicopter landing and bullhorns blasting, calling her by name, asking her to get on board. That had been two years before.

"I don't really know how they found me, even now. It was really hard here at first, because my power makes everyone forget I'm around. So I had to leave notes and then get away from them so that people could read them. Christian can read my mind too, like everyone else's, but she won't do it unless she has too, so it's almost the same as if she can't communicate with me at all. I get it... I mean everyone's thoughts hitting her all at once is a lot, so she has to try and block it all out. That means I get blocked too though."

Then she told him about the teams, team one, mainly the show piece that everyone sees. Prime, Lady Glory, Shiva, Argos, Pixie, and Torque. They also had a half dozen less popular members. Team two had most of the real work horses and actually did most of the things that team one got credit for in the press.

"Most of them have something wrong with them though, well, we all do, but team one has pretty people, ones that play nice and at worst are stuck on themselves. Lady Glory's even cool. I can't talk to her or anything, but she's willing to hang out with everyone and doesn't act like being on team one means anything in particular. Team two... they tend to be rougher, not as good looking, like Lauren there. Incredibly strong and even pretty quick, like run-down-your-car fast, but not pretty enough for the public, even though she's saved more of them by herself than the whole of team one has. They're the largest team, two. I think they have forty-odd people. I don't hang around their floor much."

When she got to team three, she faltered for a bit, and walked quietly. After a while she spoke, making Brian start, having almost forgotten her. He'd been trying to make himself keep walking, his sore feet beginning to cry out for relief.

"Team three... We're kind of misfits even here. Like me. I'm here, I even have a power that sounds pretty useful, but how can it be deployed? They've tried to put me on spy missions and stuff, but they kept missing me on pick up. Kind of scary really. Twice I had to hop on planes and fly home on my own from other countries. I mean, I couldn't buy a ticket or anything, so I just had to go on board and try to get an empty seat. After the second time I told them that I didn't want to do it anymore. No one's said much about it, but then, really, they can't." She gave a light chuckle.

"Mark, he's really nice. Very calm. His power is probably one of the most powerful of anyone in the world. He can stop time - move things around and basically do almost anything in that state that we can, but no one else can do anything about it. He'd be on team one, except that he's not flashy enough. He just gets things done, no super speed or flying or glowy lights. Also, he kind of works alone. If he ever figures out how to take another person with him when he does his thing... Could you imagine Lauren just popping out in front of you if you were trying to kill a bunch of people? Massive."

She hit the others in turn.

"Christian, she's powerful too. Telepath like I said earlier. But too powerful, she hears everything all the time. I think that's why she likes Mark so much. He's so quiet and calm. He has to be. Any stress or anxiety and his power triggers. It's a defense mechanism I guess. Kind of like mine is.

"Itch is... a bit of a problem really. He makes people feel things, like itching or tickling, but the tickler didn't fly as a name for him with the higher ups. They said it sounded too gay. His power's useful, he can work crowd control like no one else, even Lady Glory with her ability to spread love and compassion doesn't hold a candle to him. He can do emotions too. All of them. The thing is, no one else wants to work with him. By all rights he should have been dumped on team one and trotted out for the press, which would make him happy, but he's so unlikable that their whole team voted him off after about two weeks, even Lady Glory I heard, and that's saying something. We could do that too, vote him off, but then were would he go? Team two would murder him inside a week. Probably for real.

"Marcia, they call her Beatdown now. She used to be on team one and had a different code name, but she got pissed off at Prime one day and kicked his ass. Like into the hospital. She's not in his power class really, but she cheats. I think they stuck her with us because they're hoping to get Prime to calm down about it and let her back on team one. He rules them. Narcissism as first mode. So he has to be in charge and in front of the cameras and is cool enough that everyone kind of expects him to be there. Not a good situation really..."

They walked quietly for a while, until about seven when Bridget ran up and tackled him, nearly taking him to the ground on his unsteady legs. He felt Penny make the catch and push him upright when he got nearly halfway to the ground.

Bridget noticed it and snorted.

"And they said you don't have any powers. Defying gravity or whatever should count." He laughed and explained. The small girl looked around, sniffing the air openly.

"That... is so cool! I mean I knew team three had an invisible, but I never met her myself." Putting out a hand she waited and after a second shook. "Neat! You should come hang out with me! Just, you know, come grab me or something and shake until I get it."

They had to keep walking, or at least he did, he told them, and began to trudge along again. Slowly. At nearly eight, Jason - the trainer - came. Making Bridget scamper off as if she'd been doing something wrong. He didn't say anything bad about it to Brian though.

"Brian!"

His gaze followed Bridget as she scurried over to Lauren. "Making friends? Good to see you still at it, I... wasn't sure you could after I heard the extent of the damage from things. Normally we'd ease into this kind of thing over the course of a few months, not throw you in the day you got out of the hospital. I've been planning your work out and training schedule, it's pretty basic, but grueling to start with, then it moves into being more demanding... Tonight we'll drug the hell out of you at nine, so you can sleep, then in the morning, as soon as you get up, you need to start working out. Karen will be working with you on that, until noon. Ex-Olympian, gymnastics, so get ready for a work out and don't expect her to coddle you. Then you get a break for a whole hour to eat lunch. After that you have martial arts training, weapons, and later - as you heal up a little - we'll add in speed work for running, obstacles, and that kind of thing. For the first few weeks I don't think you're going to be able to do all this, maybe not even after a few months, that's fine. As long as the level of discomfort stays high enough it should be OK. I'm not bothering with a diet plan on this, eat healthy and have some veggies, but don't worry about calories. You'll drop weight doing this."

The pad Jason carried disappeared. After a few seconds Brian understood that Penny had taken it. There was an outraged grunt from the girl, followed by a gasp.

Then Jason fell down.

The fit looking man didn't seem to understand what had happened, that Penny had tripped him or pushed him, but then Jason didn't hear the girl calling him a mother fucker either. When he tried to get up again he couldn't, falling over again.

"Penny! Stop it. Please?" Brian spoke softly. The violence made him uneasy. Like he should stop her or something. Not that he really could.

"Brian, this schedule is insane, no diet plan? He doesn't even have breakfast on this! You get like, two hours un-drugged time to yourself each night, not that you'll be able to do anything, because I doubt you'll be able to move..." She sounded worried about him.

Asking gently, he got her to stop attacking at least, so that the whole thing could be explained. Brian had a feeling that she followed the other man, ready to do it again if she didn't like the answers. Brian fought a smile.

At least someone here was going to stand up for him if he needed it. That was a good sign he guessed.

Every second they walked got harder for him, each ache hurt more and he really wanted to stop, to just sit down and rest. He mentioned this to Jason, expecting the man to berate him for being lazy or a wimp. Call him names or even remind him about Barbara Dorn, but instead he just nodded. No smile on his face, just a serious look.

"Given everything, this must be a bit like trying to run a marathon without training. Actually it's almost literally like that, you haven't gone that far yet today, but darn close... And after what you've been through... Yeah, tough. I don't mean the work either, I mean you. This time right now though, when you want to quit, when everything in your body begs you too, when it doesn't matter if you do really and no one in the world would blame you for slacking off a little... Right now is when your mental endurance and toughness grows. Every step you take when things get this hard makes you stronger. It's not a big comfort now, but it's true."

Jason left at eight forty-five and came back ten minutes later with a woman that carried a silver tray with several things on it. Needles and syringes. They stayed by the elevators on the far side of the track and watched him hobble over slowly. When he got there the woman, a cute, slightly plump doctor named Sara, gave him a shot in the arm and told him that he'd start getting loopy after a few seconds and be ready for bed inside fifteen minutes.

Brian went with Jason, feeling Penny's hand on his arm steadying him as the drugs kicked in. He would have been a lot more amazed by their effects if he hadn't spent most of the last ten days in a similar state. Jason took him to floor nine and showed him to his room, number four, right on the main hall. Convenient.