Chương 10: Warm and Fuzzy

Dr. Samantha Way brought to a cordoned-off part of her junkpile that she called a lab, specifically a region of it she referred to as an infirmary. There was a single medical cot surrounded by a small army of desks and cabinets.

"Get in," she told me, and I obeyed just to get this moving along. She raised my cut open arm up to examine it, and I saw that the cleaver had split through the sleeve of my shirt. I was going to have to get it stitched up. This was my favorite shirt. Cruel world.

"Sandy got you good. I never saw it resort to bladed weapons so fast. Or the pepper spray. Your aggression must have made it want to mirror you. How's your arm feeling?" I gave her a particularly flat look. She knew it hurt.

"... Yeah, I'd imagine it's not feeling great. I need to get it disinfected and then I can treat it with some topical painkillers and wrap it up. It's not a rough enough split for any sutures to be necessary, it'll close fine. One advantage of cleavers being so sharp." Air shot out of my nose before speaking.

"Glad to hear some good news," I sniped.

"Was I really the only one who won against that? It just seemed to be holding random things up to me. Everyone else should've been fine." The doctor nodded to me.

"So the test was slightly different for each of them. Christian had to shoulder-toss Sandy, May had to activate an infrared signal, and Jairo had to land ten jabs on Sandy. The water and flour worked on Christian, and May went down to the pepper spray. Jairo kept getting parried by the boxing glove until he got frustrated and quit. You actually dug in and committed." The only thing my body permitted me to do was slowly nod along.

"I didn't think they'd give up so easily." I leaned over to try to spot Christian, but I couldn't see him. He must have left to rest or play with Dr. Way's kids. For the best; I hated talking to groups. She began spreading out some yellow-ish goo that stung.

"Antiseptic and a topical anesthetic that'll kick in momentarily. And no, it's not that they were easy to make quit, it's that they're not used to the stress of direct fights. You're the only one of this group who has ever been in an actual fight. Jairo was trained for boxing — he wanted to go pro but that parasite's made it impossible, superhumans can't participate in sports — and he'd done some amateur fights but that's an agreed, prepared bout." Never fought someone who wanted to hurt him.

"Christian's a martial artist too but he's only sparred and outside of one incident before joining, violence wasn't a big part of his life. He's been put on some field patrols where he's wrangled some muggers but even that didn't require a fight against someone who was actually trying to be a menace." Lived exclusively in theory.

"And May's just a normal college student with no experience whatsoever." Completely mundane life experience.

"They haven't gotten used to it. You, meanwhile..." She looked at me, tilting her head a bit. I nodded.

"I'd been carving a swathe through Richmond for half a year. I've actually been under pressure and dealt with a lot of situations they haven't yet. That was the difference." The doctor nodded, and followed up with, "You know what it's like for people to fight back and want to hurt you. I feel like part of why Tancred really wanted you was because you've developed an initiative from that which will help." I rolled my eyes.

"Yeah, I guessed I was wanted because I'm useful. If I wasn't they would've probably let me rot in a gutter." The doctor's lips pursed, her body stopping until suddenly activity resumed a few seconds later.

"I don't think that'd happen either. I think someone would've taken you in no matter what. Here you can do what you're good at: helping people and keeping bad guys at bay. And if what you were good at was something else, I think you would've found your way into that too. You shouldn't keep acting like it's all the worst case scenario." My gaze stayed fixed on her eyes. There was some kind of sincerity, but for all I knew it was an arbitrary sense of honesty where she just wanted to believe her own bullshit.

"You were homeless for half a year, and I know how awful that can be, but you've got a steady place here. They're going to pay for your education, you're never going to have to worry about paying for food, I'm probably the best doctor anyone could ask for, and you're going to get professional coordination to save lives. I think you should let yourself enjoy that." Those are just things.

"Look at it like this, you've always been in a position where it wasn't really safe to let your arms stretch or just walk around. You can do that now. Everything here is made of concrete and metal; it's all meant to be fixable, and we have the infrastructure for people with super strength. Once I'm done here, I'm gonna diagnose you with a dose of Vitamin Stroll. Just get out and walk around for a while. The worst that'll happen is they'll make you wear an earpiece if they need to call you back.

We don't have curfews or anything, so that means if you're in contact you can be out for as long as you like." I fought off my head tilting in confusion. Mostly because my neck was already sore.

"I'll take responsibility, I promise." Had to just concede with a nod, lying back in the cot.

"Fine. But I need to know how to get out of here. Tancred was supposed to show me but I think he's waiting until there's a good reason to let me out." Dr. Way shook her head.

"Don't worry about him, I make the earpieces anyway so I can get one put in. I only have two conditions for your trip. The first is you need to let one of the team show you out; they don't have to follow you out but I want you to socialize just a little more. The second is I just wanna ask one more question about your powers." Of course. I rolled my eyes.

"What is it?" She had started wrapping gauze around my arm, eyes fixed on me.

"Your papers said you used to be pretty sick, diagnosed with asthma and all that. But you show no signs of breathing issues. So you weren't born with your powers, right?" Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. I nodded.

"They showed up when I was a kid. Nine years old. Asthma left when the powers showed up." She mirrored my nod, before giving a quick yank on the bandages to tighten them on me." So you haven't really been able to do all the stuff a kid could do. You were either sick or alone because people don't know how your powers work. I don't think you're gonna have an answer today, honestly you might not have an answer even across two weeks." Optimistic expectation for how long I plan on sticking around.

"But you should start thinking about all the stuff you might want to do that you didn't get to do as a kid. Just come talk to me about it in your down time and we can figure something out, alright? I think that might be the trick to lowering your guard. And you don't need to tell Chris or Tancred. Just a little secret between us." She put on the kind of smile I imagined only her kids saw. It put a pit in my stomach and I didn't know why.

"I'll think about it," I conceded, glancing down at my arm.

"Looks like you finished closing me up. How long am I gonna need to keep this on?" She wiggled her hand." So for a normal human's metabolism it could as long as a couple weeks to fully close. If your healing isn't accelerated, same case for you. We just don't know yet because if it cured your asthma, who knows what else has happened internally. I can do check-ins for it just in case." Never really considered that. I hadn't gotten sick since then but I chalked it up to kids normally having strong immune systems.

But I did have one question.

"So why just normal patching up? You're a super-scientist, you don't have any like... instant wound-closing gels or something?" It seemed like a reasonable question. She laughed at it.

"So technically there could be but the best model I've found for something like that involves stem cells and that requires a whole separate field of research and grant money they're not giving me. Even if we avoided a lot of the red tape by just making them through the stem cells in your wisdom teeth for personalized supplies, that'd be a pretty limited resource.

I considered researching into magical means of healing but that'd require getting into contact with wizards who are comfortable with telling people their secrets." I nodded.

"So not really something you could get." She just gave me a more disappointed smile.

"Yeah, the average wizard thinks reading a page out of their books is akin to pulling out their heart by their arteries. Oh well. I've got some models for other medical treatment that's more efficient for broken limbs and muscle strains, but cuts and gashes we're going to need to stick to a more rudimentary method until I've hit a breakthrough." She snapped her fingers and pointed at me.

"Oh, you could try and find a wizard for me." I couldn't help it, my head tilted again.

"How the Hell would I do that?" Her lips pursed together tightly as she gazed off in thought, before her expression melted into one of disappointment." Ah, snickerdoodles, I have no idea. They don't exactly put up any neon signs. As much as I'd like to just reach out to Abracadini, she's with The Wave of Hope and they're on really rocky grounds with the government." The Wave of Hope. First superhero team.

Surprised to hear they weren't good with the government given the government made them according to the history books. But I only knew what little I read on it. I considered that I could probably get an answer from Tancred if he could be normal for five minutes.

"I... can try to keep an eye out, I guess? Maybe I'll luck out and there's a billboard." With a grunt, I began to roll out of the cot but nearly fell on my shins. I managed to catch myself on one foot at least, and stood up straight. I was just sore at this point, but I was able to move.

"What time is it, anyway? I just realized I haven't been keeping track of the time." That wasn't normal for me. I at least kept aware of the hour. The doctor hummed in thought before leaning back, facing towards where her kids were.

"Hey kids! What's the number on my big clock say?!" A few seconds later, two juvenile voices and what appeared to be Christian's yelled back " SEVEN!" Well, there you go.

"Well, there you go," she said, echoing my thoughts at the exact same time which felt a little disquieting.

"Should still be bright enough for a walk I guess," I considered, before looking back at Samantha.

"And you said I needed an earpiece?" She perked up quickly at that, and scampered off to another corner of the lab at speeds I did not expect from such a malnourished-looking woman. By the time I made it a quarter of the way towards her, she rushed back with a black box with a little blue light on it, and a small piece of transparent plastic.

"Earpiece. It vibrates the bones in your ear, and reads the vibrations of the bones when you talk if you hold the button on it. Box is a transmitter." I pondered the energy costs on this.

"How does it stay on?" She waved it off dismissively.

"The earpiece itself only turns on when it receives a signal from the transmitter, so its little button cell battery should last up to a week or two with frequent conversation before it taps out. The transmitter is full of D batteries. It'll last a month with frequent use. I make extras for circulation too so you don't need to worry about needing to operate with a dead one." I looked at the two devices, before acquiescing and slipping the earpiece in. I didn't even feel it, which was quite surprising.

I just slipped the transmitter in my pocket. It was a lot heftier than I expected, must have been those batteries.

"Comms can reach you from any place, but when you touch your earpiece and talk, it comes to two places. The first is the comms room on the admin floor, the second is here. My lab keeps conversational logs for transparency's sake and to make sure anything they tell us is in some kind of writing for legal purposes. We're not confidential black budget people like the Patriot Project, that transparency will do us good." Great, so I was being spied on now.

I considered throwing the earpiece in a ditch but I imagined they'd notice it being in one place for too long and start hunting me down.

"Right, so where's the exit?" Dr. Way waggled a finger at me.

"Uh-uh. You're gonna have to ask for it from a teammate. They'll show you out and it's up to you if you want to walk by yourself or bring them with you. But it's doctor's orders that you talk to a teammate besides me to get the exit." I groaned and nodded, limping towards the exit. Off to the side, I could see Christian with Dr. Way's kids, all of them taking turns palming and batting at the plasma globe she made for the kids. I considered asking him, but I honestly would rather chew glass.

Making my way out of the room, I approached the common area where I spotted May by the kitchen island, and Jairo watching TV. I mentally flipped a coin before approaching May and addressing her. Unfortunately, I was so beat down I was not prepared with my words, and gave the wrong signal.

"Hey, May, could you take me out?"