There’s no point in relating every call we went on in that first month. Hours of driving around with Denise in that squad car, talking about literally anything that popped into our heads, cruising in the patrol lane waiting for stuff to happen, interrupted by moments of dread and absolute despair when we were called to problems we couldn’t fix to help people we couldn’t save.
I didn’t really feel like a superhero until we got dispatched to a crash that hadn't quite happened yet.
The general alert came over the radio and Denise said, “There’s a guy about to crash in the Zone.”
Shit crashed in the Zone every day. People loved to send drones in and stream POV to see how far they could get before Nergal made their engines go dead.
But it wasn’t a drone this time. This was a whole car, and there was somebody in it, and that crazy fucker was about to die on live TV.
A police drone tossed us a badly zoomed live feed and I watched a cheap two-seat hovercar slowly descending into the Reclamation Zone from above.
He was playing chicken with Nergal, seeing how close he could get before the miasma pulled him out of the sky. He was probably counting on his emergency crash field to keep him alive, but the miasma was about to knock out all his electronics, not just the stuff keeping him in the air.
I had never seen Denise afraid of anything, but she was afraid of the Zone. She said, “Tim, nobody expects us to go in there.”
“Of course we’re going in there! I’m sure you’d be fine if you’re with me, but if you’re scared, just drop me off on this roof and I’ll jump over there.”
The car was still in the sky when I arrived under it, dipping and weaving as the sickly green fog reached for it. Didn’t matter how crazy my idea was, this man was going to die if I didn’t do it right now, ready or not.
I already knew I was strong enough to levitate a car, but weight wasn’t the problem. I finally understood what Simon had been talking about; why he couldn’t catch me that day at the rift.
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Levitation was not true telekinesis. I couldn’t just grab stuff with my mind and whip it around on some invisible string. It was a gradual reduction in weight that slowly pushed an object up. You couldn’t wait until the last second to catch something. You had to focus on the object you wanted to move and wrap your power around it, and it was incredibly difficult to do that initial step with a moving target.
There’s no way I could have caught a free-falling vehicle, but this car’s engine was fighting the miasma, struggling in Nergal’s grip, holding it steady just long enough for me to wrap magic around it and lower it gently to the ground.
The guy I rescued turned out to be a thrill-seeking moron trying to get attention for his streaming daredevil show. He was about to get a rude surprise, when VBC claimed full ownership of his media rights. All media filmed in the Zone became property of the company that financed Bluestar 7, just like any footage of the team in action.
The idiot could still parlay his brief celebrity into hits for his new stuff and his back catalog, but it would be a fraction of what he was expecting; not to mention the trespassing charge and the intentional damage to his vehicle, which would void his insurance forever. This stunt might end up costing him more money than it made, which would hopefully discourage others.
I had Jeeves make an alert for his name, so I could follow what happened to him in the next few years. Of all the lives I could have saved, all the orphans and earthquake victims in the world, my first rescue had to be this self-absorbed scumbag.
But still, I had saved a life today. This was a straight-up superhero rescue, and I had done it all by myself. It was proof I wasn’t destined to be a hired killer for Hell. The magic in my blood could be used to help people, if I just had the guts to follow through.
* * *
Denise was waiting on the roof by the squad car when I arrived. She had never seen me hop across rooftops before, so she was standing there with her mouth open when I picked her up and spun her around.
“I saved one!” I shouted. “It took a fucking month, but I finally saved one!”
Denise was slightly uncomfortable, but my joy was infectious, and she couldn’t help laughing with me. We were still laughing when I sat her down. I was still holding her lightly when our eyes locked, and I full on kissed her, the first time I had initiated a kiss between us.
It got really hot really fast, until Denise finally pulled away and asked, “Tim, are you still going home to a demon tonight?”
I stepped back and nodded.
“Then we have to stop,” Denise said, as all the happiness left me in a rush.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to do that, I just…”
Denise laughed and punched me in the arm. “Come on, hero, I’ll buy you a burger.”