“Proximity Alert,” Jeeves said. “Storrow Drive closed for ground traffic. Please use alternate route.”
The alert lit up with live video of the scene, taken from a police drone above. An ancient 18-wheeler had jackknifed on the overpass, leaving the trailer dangling over the edge. It wouldn’t be a long drop, but probably still enough to kill somebody, and the drop was not the biggest problem.
The truck had been pummeled by half a dozen giant automated freight haulers. This guy was probably running outlaw, with all his transponders turned off, so the big robot trucks didn’t have time to slow down before they smashed into him.
You could see the driver squirming inside the cab, pinned by a door that may have already severed his leg. The front and side of the cab had been crumpled and pushed in. They would need an extractor claw to get this guy out, and the news transcript said heavy rescue was thirty minutes away.
I pulled up the scene on my living room projector and watched it with Lydia. “He’s not gonna make it,” I said. “He may be dead already. Even if they can save the leg, look how far back that steering wheel is. This poor guy is gonna die dangling off a highway overpass, even if the fall doesn’t kill him.”
Lydia was in her usual perch across from me, looking casual and human in jeans and a yellow blouse. I stared at her through the translucent floating screen. “This is happening right on my doorstep, just a few blocks away.” I paused, still staring at the screen. “I can help this man. I have to help this man.”
“Timothy, no,” Lydia pleaded with me. “It’s too soon for this. If you go out there, you’ll get noticed, and you are not ready to get noticed.”
I stood up and grabbed my keys.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m ready. This guy needs me now.”
* * *
I ran out the door and used levitation to skip across rooftops like Captain Cobalt, closing the distance to the highway in a few minutes.
A police officer was blocking the road with his squad car, standing alone in front of some floating holographic police tape.
He stopped me as I walked up. “Active scene, sir. Turn around.”
“I’m a wizard from Newbury Tower! I can help this guy!”
“I don’t see a Bluestar badge, so you are not authorized to help anybody. Turn around, hero. The humans have got this one.”
“I just saw your lieutenant on TV. He said it’s gonna take thirty minutes to get an extractor and a flying crane out here, and this guy does not have thirty minutes. Please man, let me help him. You’re really gonna stand here and let this guy die, because of some stupid rule?”
“Metahumans have to be licensed. I can’t just let you roll out of your dorm and play hero.”
“But I really can help this guy! Look!” I threw my hand out and levitated the officer’s squad car in front of him, casually lifting it three feet over his head.
Stolen novel; please report.
The cop flinched and ducked involuntarily. “Okay, I get it, you’re a wizard. But that car weighs maybe four thousand pounds, and that truck weighs eighty thousand. You really think you can lift forty tons?”
“Yes, sir. I can. Please let me try.”
“I can’t authorize this.”
“So, don’t authorize it. Just look away.”
He may have been bound by his rulebook, but this cop was a human being, and he had been listening to the screams of another human being for ten minutes, begging for help that would be too late.
The officer turned his head away, and I sprinted through the police tape.
The trucker was an older man, maybe mid-50s, with graying hair and a red flannel shirt, getting redder by the minute as it slowly soaked through with his blood. As I got closer, I realized his legs were trapped, and that steering wheel was crushing his chest so badly, the pressure from the wheel may have been the only thing keeping his insides in.
I walked up slowly and let some magic flare in my eyes. “What’s your name, buddy?”
“Ch-ch-Charles. Charlie.”
“Okay, Charlie, I’m a wizard from the tower and I’m gonna help you. I’m gonna rip this door off and get you out of there, then I’m gonna heal you. Probably all at once.
So, no matter what you see, no matter what you feel in the next two minutes, I want you to say to yourself, over and over, ‘I’m not gonna die.’ I want you to keep thinking that, over and over. Shout it, loud as you can inside your head, ‘I am not gonna die.’ Nod your head if you heard that.”
Charlie nodded his head.
“Okay, here we go. Big scary noise, horrible fucking pain, but I got you. Ready?”
Charlie nodded again, and I ripped the cab door off. Charlie tried to scream as I yanked the crumpled metal out of his leg, but his lungs didn’t have enough air in them. He kept screaming, silently, as I reached up and pushed the steering wheel away from him with all my strength.
That plastic and metal wheel had been buried in his chest. His ribcage was the only thing that kept it from crushing his heart.
I had used too much strength, as usual. The front of the truck came off, soared in the air, and splashed in the river; not close enough to hurt anybody, thank god.
I wrapped levitation around his body and yanked him out of the truck, pouring the healing spell into him as hard and as fast as I could. I put both hands on his shoulders and poured it on, watching as his chest expanded and filled out again, listening to muted wet popping sounds as his ribs snapped back in place.
Charlie was still screaming silently, with the sound changing to a weird kind of gurgling, getting louder as he got his lungs back. He screamed bloody murder for ten seconds or so as the sound of it got louder and clearer. He reached a crescendo and trailed off, slowly realizing that the pain was over, and there was no reason to scream anymore.
His jeans and shirt were soaked with blood. I lowered him gently to the ground. We stared at each other for a second, and he hugged me, sobbing and smearing my clothes with blood.
I hugged him tightly and whispered, “You’re okay, man. Everything’s okay.”
Charlie sobbed on my shoulder for a while, then he realized he was hugging a total stranger and backed off, still crying as he said, “Thank you,” over and over again.
Now that the screaming had stopped, I could hear a frantic series of beeps, whistles, and music stings coming from the cab of his ruined truck. Charlie was using an old-fashioned burner phone, and somebody was blowing it up trying to reach him, probably after seeing this wreck on the news.
I reached in, grabbed it off the passenger seat, and handed it to him. Charlie answered and tried to compose himself as he spoke to his family. “It’s me. I’m okay. I got hurt, but I’m okay now. Yeah, a hero or something. I don’t even know his—”
The cop was gaping at me as I walked away. I was almost back to the police tape when I heard a grinding screech of metal. The big truck had finally lost its battle with gravity, and the whole thing was about to fall.
I didn’t have time to think about it, I just reached my hand out and caught it with levitation, eighty thousand pounds of metal and unlicensed cargo, drifting through the air as I levitated the whole thing and set it back on the overpass.
The cop ducked as the wheels soared over his head. Then I looked up and saw the police drone, recording everything from fifty feet up.
It was way too late, but I threw my hand up over my face and made a run for it, sprinting back to the Zone.