Ex-Communication

Eight Now

“CAPTAIN?”

“Sorry, sir,” said Captain Freedom. He’d been staring at the girl for two minutes. He turned to St. George. “It’s just … does it count as seeing a ghost if you never saw the real person?”

Madelyn sat inside one of the hospital’s observation rooms. They’d cleaned everything out of the room except for a pair of chairs and a small table. Stealth had posted two guards inside the room and two more outside.

Franklin and Dr. Connolly had wheeled in their own table to take samples and check a dozen or so different vital signs. The dead girl winced as another needle went into her arm, but she stayed in the chair. It wasn’t by choice. She’d agreed to let them strap her down until Stealth was convinced the girl wasn’t Legion.

Madelyn had stripped down to a pair of threadbare jeans and an oversized T-shirt. The arm they were taking blood from had three wristwatches on it she refused to remove. A restraint ran between two of them.

St. George and Freedom stood outside with Stealth, watching the tests. Freedom stood with his hands behind his back, at ease. It pulled his duster open across his broad chest. Stealth’s head moved inside her hood and her gaze settled on the huge soldier. “It is Madelyn Sorensen? There is no question in your mind?”

Freedom nodded. “I’d bet my pension on it, ma’am,” he said. His mind flitted back three years, to the day he’d sent a team out to bring Dr. Emil Sorensen’s family to Project Krypton. It hadn’t ended well, for any of them. He still remembered the young girl being pulled across the sand, dodging the exes surrounding the base. He’d added her name—all their names—to the long list of people he’d failed to protect.

He shook the thoughts from his head. “I only saw her in person on the day she died,” he continued. “But Dr. Sorensen had a dozen pictures of her and her mother in his office. I must have seen them a thousand times. If that isn’t her …” He shrugged. “As I said, I’d bet my pension on it.”

“So,” said St. George, “she’s dead and an ex, but it seems like she’s still talking and thinking. Anyone got an idea how that happened?”

“More to the point,” said Stealth, “how did it end up in Los Angeles, four hundred miles from the site of her death?”

Madelyn locked eyes with St. George through the window and he gave her a reassuring nod. She managed a weak smile back.

“Sir, ma’am … a point, if I may?”

St. George nodded. “Yeah?”

Freedom’s mouth twitched. “Dr. Sorensen was always insistent Madelyn was still alive,” the captain said. “Every now and then he’d have these moments of clarity about his wife, just little flashes when you could tell he knew what had happened to her, but couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud. But he was convinced Madelyn would’ve survived the attack that killed them. He wouldn’t back down on that.” His eyes drifted back to the dead girl. “He said she was special.”

Stealth’s posture shifted. “Special?”

The huge officer shook his head. “I don’t know, ma’am. I always assumed it was fatherly instincts bleeding into his mental instability, that losing his daughter was somehow worse than losing his wife.”

In the room, Franklin slid a needle out of Madelyn’s arm and pressed a piece of gauze against her vein. She asked him something they couldn’t hear through the glass and he answered with a few words and a nod. Then he followed Connolly out with the rolling table and left the girl alone with the guards.

“It wanted eyedrops?” Stealth asked Franklin.

Franklin’s brows went up and he glanced at the window. He glanced at Captain Freedom out of habit, then nodded at the cloaked woman. “Yes, ma’am. I told her I’d get her some.”

“Why does it need them?”

“I’m guessing because her eyes hurt. Her tear ducts probably aren’t working well.”

St. George looked over at Connolly. “So?”

The doctor shook her head. “Well, she’s definitely an ex,” Connolly said. “No pulse, no respiration, body temperature is seventy-point-five. I think it was cooler but she started warming up once we got her inside.”

“But she’s conscious,” said Freedom. “She knows who she is. Or was.”

“She seems to.”

St. George looked through the window again. “Is she Legion?”

“It would not appear to be,” said Stealth. “Legion consistently displays the same dialect and body language. Whoever or whatever this is, it is demonstrating numerous tics and habits different from his.”

“Whatever she is,” said Connolly, “she’s pretty sure she’s a seventeen-year-old girl.”

Freedom’s brow wrinkled. “She said she was seventeen?”

The doctor nodded.

“This is a discrepancy in its story?” asked Stealth.

“I’m pretty sure she was seventeen when she died,” said Freedom. “I remember Dr. Sorensen talking about having her eighteenth birthday at Krypton.”

“Well, it’s not like she’s aging any more, sir,” said Franklin.

“No,” said Freedom, “but if she’s conscious why wouldn’t she think of herself as twenty? Physically she might be the same, but almost three years have passed.”

“Three years?” echoed Connolly.

“Two years, nine months,” said Freedom. The images and sounds rushed through his mind again. “I lost four good soldiers that day, along with Sorensen’s family.”

Franklin set his jaw and gave a faint nod.

St. George looked at Connolly. Her lips twisted. “Something else wrong?”

She stared through the window. The dead girl was tapping her fingers on the end of the chair and looking around the room. “I’d never’ve guessed she’s been dead for that long.”

“The ex-virus does slow decay significantly,” said Stealth.

“It does,” agreed Connolly, “but it doesn’t stop it. And it doesn’t do anything to halt rigor mortis, evaporation, or basic wear and tear. I would’ve said she’s been dead for a month at most. And a pretty gentle month.”

“What are you implying, doctor?” asked Stealth.

“Just that I’m probably going to want to do a lot more tests after all this blood work’s done. If that’s okay.” She glanced through the window at the dead girl. “With everyone.”

Stealth nodded once.

The two doctors left the heroes standing at the window.

“So,” said St. George. “Now what do we do?”

“We interrogate it,” said the cloaked woman. “Captain Freedom, you are the most familiar with Madelyn Sorensen. Would you be able to confirm its identity?”

The huge officer straightened up and his face got hard. “That depends on what type of interrogation you’re asking me to do, ma’am. I won’t hurt a teenage girl.”

“For the moment, a verbal interrogation should suffice. If you are satisfied with the results, there would be no need to go further.”

One of the guards in the room, Cook, glanced at the dead girl. She smiled at him. “Hey,” she said. “I’m Maddy.”

He ignored her. “You think if she turns out to be an ex they might let us have her?”

His partner followed his gaze. “For what?”

Cook shrugged. “She’s not that messed up. Can’t touch her but she’s still fun to look at.”

“Hey, creeper,” snapped Madelyn. She glared at him. “I’m right here, y’know.”

“Shut up, corpse girl,” Cook said. He leveled his rifle at her. Her eyes went wide.

“That’s enough of that,” said Freedom. He stepped through the door and made the room look small. He walked over to Madelyn and gave Cook a hard stare. “You can wait outside, gentlemen.”

Cook opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it. The other guard cleared his throat. “Stealth’ll have our heads if we leave our posts.”

“Your dedication is admirable,” said Stealth from the doorway. “Wait outside as the captain instructed.”

She made no move to get out of their way. The two guards turned sideways and pressed themselves against the wall to get out of the room without touching her. Once they were gone, she walked in the rest of the way. St. George followed her in.

“I apologize for that, ma’am,” Freedom told Madelyn. “There’s no reason for them to be speaking like that to you.”

Her eyes flitted from St. George to Stealth and up to Freedom. “It’s no biggie,” she said. “I’ve heard worse in gym class.”

“I’m still sorry.” He reached over to her and pulled the straps open. She stretched her arms out and flexed her wrists.

They’d cleaned Madelyn up, even though she still wore the inner layer of her ragged outfit. Her slim body had started to fill out with the shape of maturity, but she couldn’t’ve weighed more than a hundred pounds. Her skin was the dusty gray of the long deceased. She had her mother’s dark, wavy hair, and it brushed her shoulder blades. Freedom recognized the shape of Dr. Sorensen’s eyes, even though they were pale and cloudy.

She stared at him for a moment. “Are you Captain Freedom?”

Something twinged in his chest. He paused, half crouched into the other chair. “Yes, ma’am. How did you know?”

“Dad told me about you. I know he wasn’t supposed to, but he was really excited and proud of how you guys turned out. Especially you.” She smiled. Her teeth were bright and flawless. “I like your coat.”

“Thank you.” Freedom spread his duster and settled into the chair. It creaked under his bulk but held him. He glanced back at Stealth and St. George. The hero stood by the door. The cloaked woman had settled behind Freedom, near the window. “And your father is …?”

“Emil Sorensen,” Madelyn said. Her thin brows furrowed up. “He’s the doctor out at Project Krypton. Your military base, right?”

Freedom nodded again. “How do you know about that?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. It let more of the light hit her pale eyes. “Because you guys flew me and Mom out there to meet him.”

“When was that?”

“Just a few …” She closed her eyes for a moment. “It was July of 2009,” she said. “We got on the plane late on the twenty-sixth, landed in Arizona a little before noon on the twenty-seventh.”

“Okay.”

“Why are you asking me all this?”

“We need to make sure you are who you say you are, ma’am.”

“Is this what St. George was talking about? You think there’s someone else talking through me or something?”

“More or less,” Freedom said. He paused for a moment and studied the girl’s face again. The twinge grew to a small knot. “Do you remember what happened after you landed?”

She nodded. “Some of Dad’s soldiers … your soldiers, I guess … picked us up at the airport. There were exes there. They shot most of them, and the noise really freaked Mom out. One of the guards was bit, but I couldn’t tell how bad it was and nobody wanted to say. Then they got us into a big armored jeep-thing and we headed for the base.”

“It’s called a Guardian,” said Freedom.

“Okay, cool. So, we were driving along. I remember we could see the base up ahead. Mom was relieved and I was excited to see Dad and his new lab. And then …”

“Yes?”

“Then the guy driving the jee—the Guardian—shut it off. He turned the key and said the gas tank was empty, even though the gauge said it had half a tank. The woman in charge, Sergeant Washington, she said it was empty, too. I thought it was some kind of joke, just to see if they could make us scream or something. Then there were some explosions, and the exes were trying to get into the car. Their teeth were super loud. And all the soldiers kept saying there wasn’t any gas, and they were serious . They really thought it was empty. So they were calling for help and me and Mom were freaking out and begging them to start the car back up and then one of the soldiers started freaking out and …”

She stared past Freedom to St. George. Her hands crawled toward each other and knotted together.

The memories crawled through Freedom’s mind. The team had been brainwashed by Agent Smith and his mind-control powers. They’d looked at the gauge, seen empty, and believed it. One of the soldiers, Adams, decided it was better to try running through hundreds of exes to reach the gate. He’d dragged Madelyn with him and they’d both been torn apart right in front of Dr. Sorensen. The whole team had died.

He’d never been sure why Smith had done it. Maybe it had been to punish the doctor or keep him in line. Or maybe Smith had done it just because he could.

Freedom brushed the thoughts away. He took a slow breath to help cover the pause. “And then?” he prompted.

“I don’t remember,” she said. Her fingers shifted in their knot. “I think that’s when I died.”

“Do you have any idea how this happened to you? Why you came back with your mind intact?”

She shook her head. “Nope.”

Freedom set his hands on the table. They looked massive across from hers. “Do you know what your mother’s name was?”

“Eva.”

“Do you know what year—”

“Wait,” said Madelyn. Her eyes got huge. “What do you mean, was?”

Freedom’s chair creaked again. The knot by his heart caught fire. He glanced over at St. George, then studied the tabletop for a moment. His voice dropped a few decibels, but it still rumbled in his huge chest. “I regret to inform you, ma’am,” he said, “but your mother died with you in the Guardian attack.”

The knot of fingers unraveled and she wrapped her arms around herself. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said. “I was there. We tried—I tried to stop them, to save both of you and my soldiers. I … I’m very sorry for your loss.”

A lone tear raced across her cheek. Her chest heaved. With her eyes closed, she almost looked alive. After a few moments she wiped her face with her arm and opened her chalk eyes to look at him. “Does Dad know?”

Freedom paused again, then nodded. “He did. I’m afraid he died last summer, while we were evacuating Project Krypton.”

Madelyn shrank a little more in her chair.

“Your father loved you both very much,” said Freedom. “In all the years I knew him, I don’t think we had more than a dozen conversations where you didn’t come up. Losing the two of you was a huge blow to him.”

She sobbed for a few minutes, but there were no more tears. Freedom’s chair creaked again as he turned to look back at St. George and Stealth. The cloaked woman nodded once.

“I knew with all the stuff going on …” Madelyn stopped to blow her nose. “I knew they were probably gone, once I realized how long it had been. I just … I hoped.” She sniffed again and wiped her dry face with the back of her hand.

Freedom let her sit for another minute. “May I ask you a few more questions?”

“Sure,” she said. She sniffed hard and her voice got strong again. “I’ve got nowhere to be.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just need to be sure.”

“I get it,” said Madelyn. “Ask away.”

“What was your sister’s name?”

“I don’t have a sister. Or a brother.”

“Do you remember the names of any of the other soldiers who picked you up at the airport?”

“I don’t, sorry. I just remember Sergeant Washington because I thought of the president, and then she said her name was Britney.”

He nodded. “So how’d you end up here? Why not Phoenix or Las Vegas or someplace closer to where you … closer to Krypton?”

“You can say where I died. I’ve gotten used to the idea.”

“Okay. So why here, ma’am?”

“And please stop calling me ma’am. You make it seem like I’m some ninety-year-old dowager or something.”

“I can make do with Madelyn,” he said. “So why here?”

“I saw fireworks.”

“What?”

She sighed. “Could I get my bag back?”

Stealth nodded to St. George. The hero stepped outside and a moment later he carried in the dusty duffel bag. It was unzipped and some clothes hung out of it. Madelyn pulled a battered book from one of the side pouches. She flipped through the pages, then handed the open book to Captain Freedom.

July 1st 4th, 2011

Dear Diary,

There were fireworks out to the west! West and south.

They must’ve been huge for me to see them from out here.

“That was almost nine months ago,” he said. “It took you nine months to get here?”

“Sort of,” she said. She tapped her head with her fingertips. “I have trouble remembering things since this happened to me. If I don’t write stuff down, it’s like it didn’t happen. There may have been a couple days I was backtracking and didn’t know it.”

“Nine months, though?”

“Maybe a lot of days.” She looked him in the eye. “I know it’s been almost three years since this happened. I can see it written out in my journal. But it feels like it was a couple of weeks ago.”

St. George spoke up. “Is that what all the watches are for?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I kept forgetting days, so I thought the watch was broken, so I got another one. Then I thought maybe they were both broken. But three saying the same thing have to be telling you the right date and time.” She closed the journal and pulled it into her lap. “Are you sure there’s no chance Mom or Dad survived? I mean, maybe they’re like me or something.”

Freedom set one hand on top of the other. “No, I don’t believe so.”

“You’re sure?”

“In your father’s case … no. I’m sorry to say there’s no way he could’ve come back.” The huge officer paused for a moment. “Your mother’s body was never found. We’d assumed she reanimated and walked away, or she’d been … damaged to such an extent that her body was destroyed.”

Madelyn stared at him for a long minute. She didn’t blink. It occurred to Freedom that she didn’t need to. Then she lowered her eyes and sighed.

He gave her another moment. “Why did you try to hide your … condition from us?”

She looked down at the straps. “Not counting the chair, you guys have been great, but not everyone’s so chivalrous to a seventeen-year-old girl on her own.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Some of them thought me being dead made it okay to do things to me.”

The captain’s face hardened. “Did anyone … Were you assaulted in any way?”

Madelyn shook her head, then shrugged. “Not like that, no. I got groped a couple times, but that’s it. Some people stole my stuff. I lost my shoes once. Most of them got freaked out by me being dead and still, y’know, smart. I could get away without too much trouble.”

“And the pistol? Where’d you get it?”

“I found it in a car, under the seat. It was empty, but there was a box of ammunition in the glove compartment.”

“Your father taught you how to shoot, correct?”

“Yeah, right,” she said. “Dad and Mom hate guns.” Her face fell. “Hated guns. It was pretty easy to figure out, though. There wasn’t a clip or anything, just the … Are you still testing me?”

“Yes,” Freedom said, “and it’s called a magazine, not a clip.” He turned his head back to Stealth again and nodded.

Stealth stepped forward. “We are prepared to accept you are who you claim,” she said. “You are not Legion.”

“Cool,” said Madelyn.

The cloaked woman turned to St. George. “However,” she said, “this poses a question. How is she not Legion?”

“Maybe because she’s conscious,” St. George suggested. “His powers may need the … the space of an empty mind.”

“Perhaps she doesn’t count as a regular ex,” said Freedom. “Some tweak to the virus or something similar. If Legion’s possession ability is very narrow-ranged, she might fall outside its parameters.”

“According to everything we know,” said Stealth, “the virus never mutates.”

Madelyn tapped her fingers on the tabletop. The rhythm was from a song, something popular before the outbreak, but Freedom couldn’t place it. “So,” she said, “what happens now?”

St. George cleared his throat. “If you’re up for it, I think the doctors want to run some tests on you and try to figure out why you are … well, the way you are.”

“What does that mean?”

“To be honest, I couldn’t tell you. I’m not a doctor.”

“Am I … am I under arrest or anything?”

Freedom straightened up from his chair and shot a look at Stealth. “I don’t think so.”

Madelyn stood up, too, and swayed side to side. She was smaller than all of them. “Can I go out and walk around? It’s been a while since I could just, y’know, walk and not worry about bumping into exes or anything.”

St. George caught the shift in Stealth’s body language. “Maybe we should ease into that,” he said. “Most people probably won’t react well to seeing a dead person inside the walls. Just for now, you shouldn’t go anywhere without an escort.”

“And until we are certain why you are the way you are,” said Stealth, “we should make running tests our main priority.”

Madelyn’s face dropped. “Yeah,” she said, “I could see that.” She looked at St. George. “Where am I going to stay until then?”

“We shall have a room prepared for you here,” said Stealth. “Captain Freedom will set up a liaison for you to take care of whatever needs you may have.”

The dead girl glanced at Freedom and her lips twitched for a moment. “You mean, a guard to watch me.”

“To protect you,” said Freedom.

Madelyn looked ready to say something else when St. George’s earpiece squawked loud enough for them all to hear. He slapped his hand up to block the sound, then yanked the plug out. He held it an inch from his ear. “Calm down, Barry,” he said. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be right there.” He looked at Stealth and Freedom. “You didn’t hear that?”

She shook her head. “What does he need?”

“He says we’ve got to talk in person. It’s urgent.”

St. George found Zzzap in Stage Four, pacing in the air outside the electric chair. Is it true?

“Yeah,” St. George said. “We’ve got an intelligent ex and it’s Dr. Sorensen’s daughter. But we’re not sure how she—”

The other hero shook his head. No, not her. Jarvis was bitten?

The reminder hit St. George in the chest. “Yeah, he was. Sorry. I thought you would’ve heard by now.”

Only rumors on the radio . He glanced at the entertainment center and gave a little nod. His hands did something in front of his chest, a motion lost in the glare of his body. Is he going to make it?

St. George shook his head. “There’s a chance, but probably not. Sorry.”

Zzzap nodded and continued the odd motion with his hands. St. George realized the wraith was tapping his fingers together. He glanced at the television again.

Okay, this is going to sound a little weird but … we need him .

“We need him for what?”

No, not you and me “we.” I mean—yeah, shut up. I’ve got this .

“What?”

His body. When he dies, you can’t destroy his brain. Just strap him to the bed or whatever and let him change .

St. George took in a slow breath. “What the hell are you talking about?”

We just … I need you to trust me on this, okay? Don’t let them put him down .

He looked at Zzzap and tried to inhale the wisp of angry smoke around his nostrils. “How can you even ask something like that?”

Because … The gleaming wraith looked over at the television. Yeah , said Zzzap. I think it’s time we told him .

“Told who what?”

Told you. No, just let me do this my way, okay?

“Okay.”

Zzzap waved a hand at him. Not you, George. Sorry. I’ve wanted to tell you for a while, but we agreed it’d be better to keep it quiet until the opportune moment, so to speak .

St. George felt something twist in his gut. His shoulders slumped. “You’ve been keeping something from me.”

Yeah. I figured you’d notice. Or Stealth .

“She did.”

Zzzap nodded. I really suck at secrets , he admitted. It’s a good thing the world ended or I would’ve blown the whole secret-identity thing inside of a year .

A moment of silence passed.

“So,” said St. George. “Are you talking to … people on the radio again?”

Yeah. No. No, this is me and you .

“You sure?”

What? Yeah, of course .

“Okay. So what’s going on?”

Zzzap stopped tapping his fingers and started pacing in the air again. Okay , he said, you know I don’t really “see” anymore, right? Not when I’m like this, at least. Not the way you do .

“I think so, yeah.”

The wraith nodded. I take in a lot of material from across the spectrum and my mind’s sort of figured out how to process it all as visual information. Visible light, infrared, ultraviolet, radio, television, microwaves, gamma rays … I see all of it .

“Right.”

Okay. Well, see, sometimes, all these things I can see come together in certain ways—certain alignments, you could say—and I can see even more .

St. George crossed his arms. “More how?”

Like a lot more. About a year ago I realized I can see stuff no one else can. Not with any equipment or lenses or anything, because no one’s ever been able to look at the world the way I do .

“Barry, what are you getting at?”

The wraith paced in the air for a few more moments. He made a buzzing noise like a sigh. Then he turned to face St. George.

I see dead people .