CHAPTER 11 - FISHER

The next morning, Fisher had an appointment to keep. He left at the crack of dawn and stopped along the way only to pick up flowers. It took him far too long to decide between roses and carnations. He’d never been much of a guy for flowers, and there was something galling that deciding between two different types of them was the most pressing decision he’d had to make in years.

His boss—his real boss—was practically interred within the Asclepion Center for Empowered Recovery and Rehabilitation. It was one of the finest medical institutions in the world, and one of the few that specialized in empowered injuries and other maladies. And it was one of the last reasons why Asclepion still held any relevance on the global stage. It was, in Fisher’s mind, a monument to the reality that sometimes all the funding in the world didn’t mean a damn thing.

The Center sat within the inner ring of Asclepion, practically in the shadow of the Citadel, amid all the carefully arranged parks, Golden Age monuments, and people who confused isolation for safety. It was one of the finest medical institutions in the world—and none of it meant a damn. The weight of history was pressing down on the whole world. Places like ACER just crumbled more slowly than others.

He’d stayed away too long. The flowers were supposed to be a gift, but all of a sudden felt cheap and insincere. Sitting in his car in the ACER parking lot, Fisher weighed up whether he should even go in. Whether he was prepared to face the lingering horrors of what many used to call humanity’s greatest age.

Every age of humanity had brought with it new horrors, leaving the fields of science and medicine struggling to catch up to play damage control. The Industrial Age had reaped down entire fields of young men with gaseous scythes, blasted them apart with explosive shells—figuratively and literally. The Atomic Age had scourged away entire cities and racked the bodies of the survivors with the lingering, eternally destructive power of the atom.

The Heroic Age had been no different. In the process of solving many of those more traditional ailments, it had engendered fresh horrors that made the battlefields of two globe-spanning conflicts seem remarkably quaint. Supercancers, nano-plagues, telepathically induced comas, neurological disorders that could be spread by touch and at least one that had spread by sight…

So, there were limits. Even ACER was playing catch-up when it came to cape-related injuries and degenerative conditions. As Fisher walked the pristine, sterile halls, taking the unfamiliar path to room 719, he caught fleeing glimpses of shapes and figures through doorways and observation panels. Most of the patients here could only be managed and made comfortable. Few of them could ever be cured. Not one of them would ever live anything approaching a normal life again.

Feeling a strange sense of guilt, Fisher shoved his free hand into one pocket. Very few people came back from a brawl between capes in need of serious medical attention. You either survived, and got all the accolades, or you didn’t, and that was the end of it. There were capes who might lose a limb in the line of duty—present company included—but cybernetic prostheses were simple enough to install. If you were lucky, you might even get the damage regrown.

Fisher hadn’t been lucky.

But he’d still been luckier than the people who came back with injuries that were more severe than a lost limb. The ones who had to be kept under constant care. The ones who were practically hidden away in places like this. Restorative practices had always lagged behind the ability to do harm.

Some of them, like Miss Millennium, would probably never be caught up to.

Miss Millennium had survived her run-in with Panacea back in ‘41. Very few people had, and less so wished that they had. Panacea had been one of the world’s foremost healers; hence the name, had made a living in facilities like this one and in more mundane ones. And when he had broken…

Well, disrupting the body had turned out to be just as easy as restoring it. Perhaps easier.

Twenty years ago, Panacea had marched across Europe, turning his bio-engineering powers against the people he had once made a living off helping. Miss Millennium had beaten him down and carried him into the stratosphere before she hurled him downwards, pitting his ability to alter biological organisms against Newton’s laws. Cast him down like God throwing down Lucifer.

But the time climbing, clutching Panacea in her arms, had a cost.

Even though Millennium had won, Panacea had disrupted the repair mechanisms of her body, the everyday parts of her that controlled tissue regeneration. They worked so well that she’d been invulnerable from the outside. A simple push, and they worked so well at doing everything wrong, at healing incorrectly. That was when her joints began to calcify, when her connective tissues turned to bone, when Miss Invulnerable became Miss Immobile.

One hell of a victory, Fisher reflected as he stepped into room 719.

There were new growths of bone around her face, distending the skin. Fisher didn’t let the revulsion show on his face. He forced a smile.

“Hey there, Millie.”

She croaked out, “Pavel?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Will wonders never cease.”

“Who knows,” he said. “But you don’t look so good.”

She smiled as much as she could, laughed. It came out as a horrible wheeze. “Better than you,” she said. “At least I can still touch myself.”

Fisher snorted. “Hey, peace offering,” he said. “I brought you flowers.” He set them on the bedside table, where he was pretty sure she could see them without turning her head.

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“Roses,” she said. “How sweet. But I think it’s a bit late to be trying to impress me, Pavel.”

“Hey, I stood there for like ten minutes trying to pick these out.”

“Ten minutes. I’ve been here for seven years.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Bad joke. I’m sorry I didn’t come by earlier.”

“It would’ve been nice,” she replied. “We’re the only ones left now.”

“Yeah,” he murmured. “I know.”

He stood there for a while, hands in his pockets. What the hell was he supposed to say?

Millennium spoke first. “It’s not like you to come for a social visit, Pavel. What do you want?”

“I can’t come see an old team member? Talk about old times?”

Millennium made a sound that was her attempt at a laugh.

“Old times,” she rasped, catching her breath. “Don’t bullshit me. After you lost your hands, you gave up on the ‘old times.’ You were bitter and hateful. I know that, and you know it. So, don’t bullshit me—why are you here?”

It was true, and maybe that was why it hurt. Fisher thought, I got out when I got the chance. Don’t have to lie here in a bed feeling my immortal body kill me.

He sighed. “Call it a working vacation. I’m supposed to be chasing up that thing with the refugee ship.”

“Ah.”

“But I’ll let you in on a funny story. Well, more like rumors from the Asclepion underworld, actually. Someone’s been going around calling themselves The Bull. Getting their symbol out there, building a bit of a network—remind you of anyone?”

Millennium rasped again. Fisher could see the humor in it. Only the most powerful villains got to use that singular determiner. Even Panacea, with all of his horrors, hadn’t been able to earn such a title. And if he couldn’t, then she couldn’t.

“Taurine,” Millennium said. “Our old nemesis. Remember those?”

“Yeah.”

“With the horns. I remember her.”

“Yeah.” Fisher felt his teeth press together. “She’s back.”

Miss Millennium closed her eyes and tried to sigh. “Pavel...”

“She’s here,” he continued. “I can feel it.”

“Pavel.”

“She’s coming out of the shadows. Snapping up followers, eliminating competition. Got people painting her symbol around the city. A few nights ago, someone hit the local Dynazon complex just to steal a single power cell. Who else would be brazen enough?”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Millennium said. “Not her MO.”

“Then one of her followers—someone connected to her. Her symbol was right there!”

“Her people would’ve leveled the place. She never did things by halves.”

“We underestimated her once before. Everyone did. And times change—she adapts, we both know that. Trust me, I know what I’m seeing out there.”

“Pavel,” she said, again. “You have to let her go.”

“No,” he replied. “I have to bring her in.”

Silence. Somewhere, machines beeped. Millennium turned her head as much as she could, trying to look at him. Fisher swore he could hear the bones grinding in her neck. She got about halfway there.

“What happened to Blackguard wasn’t your fault,” she said.

“You’re right,” Fisher replied, heat prickling across his scalp. “Her people grabbed him out of costume. Her people entombed him in cement. Her people threw him into the ocean while I was griping about my fucking hands! They still haven’t found him. And the only person who might know where he is is her.”

“It was ten years ago. If she even remembers, do you really think she’ll tell you?”

“She’ll remember. She’ll fucking remember.”

“Pavel.”

“I owe it to Mark to try,” Fisher said. “I owe it to you, and I owe it to me, and I owe it to everyone else that bitch has hurt over the years.” He was shaking, sweating—hell, he just about felt alive.

She just stared at him. “You don’t have a team, you don’t have backup, you don’t have your ability.”

“None of that matters,” he replied. “Mark’s alive down there, Millie. Drowning forever. I have to do this.”

“So are you. Drowning in a bottle. I can smell it from here.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Isn’t it?”

It wasn’t. It wasn’t. If the world was falling apart, then maybe it was never supposed to be saved. All the worst trends of humanity—of history—had continued with maybe a few hiccups here and there. It was about doing what little good he could. He wouldn’t save the world doing this, but the Millennium Brigade might get one final win.

“I didn’t turn my back on the team, you know,” Fisher said. “I turned my back on saving the world. How much did we have to sacrifice? Every single day, there was some new disaster, and everyone acted like it was our job to fix it. Why?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do. Because there was no one else who could.”

“Yeah, and look at where your logic got us both.”

“I wouldn’t change this,” Millennium said. “My cause was right.”

“Oh, was it? That righteous cause has set your own bones on killing you. Christ, Katherine.”

“I knew the risks. So did Mark. So did you.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’re not my type,” she replied. “And I have more than enough bones in me as it is. I might be in this bed, but I’m alive. You? You’re set on walking to your own funeral.” She sucked in a breath, and Fisher couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be until she couldn’t breathe without machines.

After a while, she spoke again: “If you go after Taurine, Pavel, she will kill you. Did you really come here so your old team leader would give you her blessing to commit suicide by proxy?”

“I’m not going to kill myself.”

“Suicide isn’t an action, it’s a frame of mind. Find something worth living for, Impel. Something beyond that cat of yours.”

“Don’t badmouth my cat,” Fisher said. “As for the rest of it… Well, I let that train go on without me a long time ago.” Turning for the door, he added: “You take care, Millie. Enjoy the flowers.”

On her bed, Miss Millennium exhaled another rasp—but Fisher couldn’t tell whether it was a sigh or a laugh. Not that it mattered. If the conversation had made one thing clear, and if he was going to finish things with Taurine, then he’d have to go it alone.

“Yeah,” she said. “See you soon, Impel.”