Crushed, Crushing, and Crushes

[Wyatt Wyborn]

“You’re not here to angst on my rug again, are you?”

A month ago, if you had told me that Heidi was the only person I had left to turn to, I would have laughed in your face. Now… I’ve sort of broken up with Lauren, the Hundleys are up to their necks in problems way bigger than mine, Mia almost hates me. The only friends I have left at school are all Lauren’s friends too so… well… Heidi’s the only person I have left to turn to.

And the fact of the matter is that angsting is exactly why I’m here. Not that I’m going to admit that now. I saw Lauren at a party on the beach in Talos. She was with someone and there was drinking. But I’m not about to mention that now. I’ll just keep it to myself.

“I’m just here to say thanks again for helping me retrieve the safe from the Hundley’s store. I couldn’t have done it without your help.”

“Meh. No big deal,” Heidi says, even though it was a huge deal for me.

“Still, I owe you one.”

“I’ll collect, I’m sure.”

Should I tell her? Should I tell her I’ve actually seen him? The one who’s been messing with our memories? Maybe the one that she’s looking for? Should I tell her about the voices?

“Heidi…?”

“If the next sentence contains the name ‘Lauren’ then just stop right there.”

I actually laugh a little at that.


“No,” I say, “I…”

I’m going to tell her, but, not now. Not tonight. If I tell her now, she’ll go off alone.

“Meet me tomorrow at the fountain near the University here in Founders.”

And then I’m out the window and on my way to somewhere. Anywhere. Anywhere that I won’t see Lauren.

[Wyatt Wyborn]

(I put up a post right before this one, so this is the second post in one day.)

I’m dreaming.

I’ve just left the hotel where Mr. and Mrs. Hundley and I’m going to the beach in Talos because I’ve heard that some of the kids from school are there. I see them sitting down near the water so I got there. The closer I get, the slower the dream moves.

Their sitting in a circle. Mostly girls, a couple of guys. I can’t see their faces. (I hate that about dreams.) My faceless friends are passing around a bottle.

Whoops. No. Not my kinda party. Seeya later.

I leave.

Then I hear Lauren’s voice: Wyatt?

I turn and she’s standing right there behind me with the bottle in her hand.

Why don’t you stay?

Before I can answer, Diya’s there too, behind Lauren with her arms around her waist.

I want to ask her to throw down he bottle and come with me, but I can’t. I want Diya to let her go.

Lauren says, I’m just having some fun.

Diya kisses her neck.

More than anything, I want to walk away, but I can’t. I want to wake up, but I can’t.

Lauren tilts her head to the side, stretching and exposing her neck for Diya.

I love you, Wyatt, but you’re no fun anymore.

And then she turns her head and kisses Diya. With tongue.

Please – somebody wake me up!

Suddenly we’re in my room. Not my room at school. My room back home. Me. Lauren. Diya. They’re sitting on my bed, looking through a photo album of my baby pictures. They’re laughing, but not at the pictures, they’re laughing at me. Without looking in the mirror, I already know that I’m standing there naked.

I know you’re not a bad guy, Wyatt another voice says. It’s Brook. I don’t think you’ll ever be a bad guy.

Lauren and Diya are making out now. In my room. On my bed.

Someone is beside me. Mom? No – Brook. Brook is floating beside me. Not drone Brook, flesh and blood Brook. She’s got wires and hoses connected to her. Her body is pale, frail, and so much smaller that it seems like it should be. I can’t see her face.

No one can define you Wyatt, not really, Brook says. No one knows how you feel, how you really feel inside.

I’m disconnected. I’m in Brook’s tank, looking out the view portal at Lauren and Mia looking in at me, pointing, laughing…

Brook’s voice: I think if you just spend a tiny fraction of time thinking more about the consequences of what you’re about to do your life will be a lot better.

I scream and sit up. I’m in my bed. In my room. At school.

Don’t be afraid, a voice inside my head says, I am not going to hurt you any further.

[Wyatt Wyborn]

Teleportation. You get used to it in Paragon City, and recognize when it happens to you. The Mediport system, the Longbow grid, and just friends who can do it. One moment you’re standing beside a fountain making plans with a friend, and the next you’re somewhere else. It’s an amazing thing. It’s also the perfect way to set up an ambush.

I’m in a long room. Windows line one entire side, floor to ceiling while on the other three sides nothing breaks the monotonous white except for two heavy, steel doors, side-by-side on one wall. A machine hums behind one of the walls. It’s producing a feeling that is as familiar to me as the teleportation that brought me here. I’ve felt it in the athletic complex. I’ve felt it in the building Brook took me to a few days ago. A suppression field. I’ve been de-powered.

In a split-second, Heidi appears beside me.

Our apparent host is a slender man of pale complexion with a short-cropped head of graying hair wearing a grey business suit. The man I saw in the store.

“I’ve decided it was time for us to meet formally,” he says.

“That’s your first mistake,” Heidi says.

The man laughs. “No, I’ve made many mistakes with you two from the very beginning, I’m afraid.”

“You’re Calvin Jones.” Heidi’s in high form, spitting out her words as if each statement is a threat.

“No, he’s not,” I say and Heidi looks at me as if we’re in a play and I’ve missed my cue and said the wrong line.

“He’s not?”

“I’m not?”

“Calvin Jones is dead,” I say, repeating what I’m hearing in my mind.

Graveyard Man used his power to gain the knowledge of the dead and…

“…tapped into Jones’ knowledge of genetics to…”

… steal his identity and get inside at AdvanGen in order to…

“…set up the SeasoNil Experiment which became Project 8.”

The voice in my head is feeding me information faster than I can say it.

Heidi asks, “Who are De-Crypter and Graveyard Man?”

“Members of the Octagon – a meta-human group that operated a long time ago.”

The man –Graveyard Man on the outside – looks at me and smiles. “Who told you these things? Who would know?”

The day this man came into the store, Catalysm had altered my brain chemistry. That is her power, the ability to control or catalyze chemical reactions. I may be immune to a lot of things, but I’m not immune to my own body. She was supposed to have used her power to give me amnesia again, but she didn’t. She did something else. It caused me to have a hallucinogenic seizure, but it also changed my brain so that she could contact me telepathically. I hate telepathy.

But I knew the Octagon. I knew its history. The voice in my head –Catalysm – educated me all day when I should have been paying attention in class.

The Octagon was a group of eight heroes who were involved in the early research of Dr. Brian Webb. Anthrosaur, Catalysm, De-Crypter, Graveyard Man, Purrloin, Sleight, Transformer Man, and X-ponent: eight heroes who one day vanished from the face of the Earth. They were assumed to be lost forever, but they weren’t lost at all. They were changed. They crossed the sub-quantum divide and re-emerged as a new entity. They shared a single physical matrix, even though they still retained their individual sentience matrices. The process was irreversible – no going back to their former lives. They became Rototype who could access and combine all of the knowledge and abilities of each member of its collective self. Rototype could even assume the physical appearance of any one of them. At first they made the best of the situation, doing as much good in the world as they could, but after more than a decade of the forced confinement of their psyches within one form became unbearable. They all wanted their lives back and didn’t care about the cost.

Long story short – using the Calvin Jones identity, Rototype became involved in the SeasoNil Program, a secret experiment that had the potential to create an entire generation of metahumans. The final result of the program was that only eight metahumans were created, but they all shared the same genetic manipulation – the Rototype gene. That gene will allow the sentience matrices contained within the Rototype body to replace the sentience matrices that are already resident within those eight metahumans.

I know I left a lot of stuff out, but a lot of it was purely math and science and I’m just not that good at either. Oh, and one thing I left out? Heidi and I are two of those eight.

“Maybe I went to the library,” I say in answer to his (Rototype’s? Calvin Jones’? Graveyard Man’s?) question, and yes, I say it with a smirk.

“I can make you talk,” he says.

And I believe him except…

“We’re in a suppression field.” Heidi had the same thought I did.

“Do you understand the technology involved in power suppression?” Rototype (I’m going with that) asks.

We both shake our heads.

“Let’s just say that its variable calibration will not effect me.”

“We are Legion,” I say.

“Eh?”

Heidi looks at me clearly not getting the reference, though I don’t blame her.

I explain to her, “It won’t affect him. It can’t calibrate to him because he’s not one person. He’s a collective. He’s a quantum anomaly. There’s no way we can beat him.”

“How do you know this?” she asks.

“I just do.”

She turns her attention to Rototype. “Okay, we can’t fight our way out of here. For now, you’ve got us. What are you going to do with us?”

“I’m… going to keep you here. For… just a little while….” He speaks slowly now, as if they individuals he contained had to come to a consensus before he could go on. “Eventually… just look at it this way – you have been wondering for what purpose your mother died. You are soon to find out. In the meantime, if you will follow me, I will show you to your rooms.” He motions towards the two heavy doors.

“You’re going to keep us here until you’ve gathered all of us together,” I say, “which is soon, very soon. A few days at most? And then you’re gonna transfer your souls into our bodies just like the Circle of Thorns do their victims!”

“We… prefer not to use the word ‘soul’,” he says. “It has a supernatural connotation that some of us do not like. We prefer…”

“Sentience matrix,” I finish for him.

Rototype steps closer and looks down at me. I lift my face and meet his gaze.

“With which of us are you communicating?”

I try not to think it. I try to do just like I did a couple weeks ago when the Psionic Evolved attacked the city. I try not to think about anything.

“I could kill you and extract the knowledge from your corpse. Then I could resurrect you and heal you good as new.”

He grabs my throat and begins to squeeze. Heidi jumps on his back to stop him, but he shrugs her into the floor. I wonder now if I need air to breathe, even when I’m depowered. Behind him, Heidi gets up and is ready to try again but I open my mouth and say hoarsely, “Don’t.” Then I smile.

Suddenly, I’m thrown to the floor. Hard. It hurts in a way that I’m not used to, but he knows now that it will take more than strangling me to do me in. He kicks me in the head.

Things go white then black. I hear a short scuffle and then a whimper. I know that Heidi is down now too.

“Pleeeease…” a voice purrs in my ear, “tell us which of us is the betrayer…”

Someone is sitting on my thighs, pinning them together. My vision clears and I lift my head to look into a pair of golden eyes. Soft hands caress my face and the tip of a white, fluffy tail tickles my nose. She smiles at me with sharp, catlike fangs.

“Tell Purrloin who has told you these things and she will make your stay here verrrrry pleasurable…”

“Sorry,” I say, “I just broke up with my girlfriend and I’m not ready to start another relationship.”

Then the claws come out. One hand slashes down my face and the other across my stomach. The only thing that keeps me from being eviscerated is Heidi’s flying tackle that knocks Rototype-Purrloin off of me. In a flash, Heidi is on the floor and Purrloin has sunk her teeth and her claws deep into her should and arms.

I grab Purrloin’s tail and pull hard. I may not be super-strong right now, but I’m no lightweight either. I jerk hard and the catgirl-changling yowls. I jerk hard again and then spin, sending her flying into the wall. Before I can turn around to see if she’s all right, Heidi charges past me a slams hard into Purrloin crashing both of them through the wall where they disappear into another room. I follow.

The hum of the machine is louder now. I want to look around, to see what a suppression system looks like, but I don’t have the time. Purrloin is standing over Heidi in a primal kind of rage. She’s going to kill her!

But then Purrloin… ripples. Her body actually ripples. Rototype is becoming someone else. The transformation looks like something from a cheesy 50’s B-movie, with cheap effects where a wavy distortion and fade-out-fade-in is used to turn a teenage boy into a werewolf.

In a moment, the tall, slender, grey-suited form of Graveyard Man is there. He places one long foot on Heidi’s chest and says, “Purrloin would have killed and eaten you if I hadn’t stopped her, the bad kitty.”

Be ready… the voice in my head says.

Rototype-Graveyard Man shakes his head and says, “I didn’t want to resort to this. It is far too risky. Catalysm has offered to perform a chemical lobotomy upon you both” He pauses to let that sink in. “Now, if you would rather not do that; if you would rather spend your remaining days as something more than a pair of turiips, then I would advise you to come along peacefully to your rooms.”

“You mean our cells!” Heidi spits on his shoe after saying it.

“Ah well. I suppose if there is any permanent brain damage, then Anthro and Purr will have you two. They don’t need very much brain-capacity for what they do.” And then he ripples.

Catalysm takes form. She’s tall and slender, with red hair and – oh my god – she looks like she could be Heidi’s mom! One look at Heidi’s face and I know that the same thought has occurred to her.

Catalysm smiles at us.

Suddenly the hum of the machine turns into a cacophony. First an acid smell fills the air and then the room fills with the smell of ozone followed by a black cloud of smoke. Catalysm has wrecked the suppression field machine!

A voice snarls from her lips – no, make that voices snarl from her lips – saying, “Traitor!” Her face contorts with pain as Rototype transforms so quickly that a blink would not capture the speed of it. Long snout filled with teeth – sharp reptilian teeth – claws, scales, and a spiked, whiplash tail. Anthrosaur!

Anthrosaur whips his tail and sends me flying back through the wall. I smile. I have my powers back. That felt like a love tap.

Go! Leave! Catalysm says and her “voice” sounds faint and pained. Transformer Man is next and you’re not match for him even with your powers!

“No, I’m gonna finish this!” I charge.

In mid-charge, I feel my powers leave me again.

Heidi is up, she’s leapt past Rototype and grabs me up, lifting me over her head. Behind her, the lizard-man is already gone and now there stands someone who looks like a golden god.

“Don’t worry,” she says, “I’ve got this. You should be out of my range before you hit the ground.”

And then she throws me through a window. As I fall, as I feel my powers start to return, I see the top floor of the building explode.

[Wyatt Wyborn]

Beneath a bridge in Founders Falls. If there were any onlookers, they would see two figures, one of them lying prone on the narrow walkway beside the canal. Not far away, metas and firefighters struggle to contain a penthouse fire.

“We should make him forget. He doesn’t need to know.”

“I’ve done it to him too many times. He’s grown resistant to it. He’ll still remember some of it.”

“Maybe that will be enough. He’s had seizures…”

“That’s my fault also… but, maybe we can use it.”

“We’ll take him home. It can happen there. My father can find him. No one will suspect anything.”

“Why don’t you want him to know?”

“He doesn’t need to know. He’ll ask questions and I won’t have the answers.”

“You don’t want him to know you killed them all.”

“I didn’t mean to. It just… happened… But, yeah… that’s it. It matters, what he thinks of me.”

“You love him?”

“Wyatt? He’s too… Wyatt. High maintenance.”

“Ron was like that.”

“Which one was he?”

“Transformer Man. Like you said – high maintenance – but still, he was fun.”

“That sounds just like Wyatt. How close were they?”

“What makes you ask?”

“When I took Wyatt’s powers and then tried to take Transformer Man’s… They were like… the same. The energy was different, but… the same.”

“That’s why there was a reaction. An explosive feedback as the two—“

“Answer me, please… how close were they?”

“Ron was his father – his biological father.”

“Another reason he shouldn’t know what happened...”

“Heidi? Why did you save me? Out of us all, why did you take me in and no one else?”

“I wish I could have saved them all, but I knew I had to save you, because… I have to know – are you… somehow… my mom?”

“No, sweetie. I’m not your mother. But I can tell you about her. I can tell you about my sister…”