Antibodies: Part Four

by DuAnn Cowart

Somewhere, somewhen else:

The caged baby universe in the heart of the Carrier pulsed in a steady golden glow, flashing in precisely the same frequency as it had in every moment since it was discovered two years ago by the man and woman who stood beside it now. A great number of things had changed since that time. A team had formed, friends and lovers had come and gone, governments had risen and fallen, but the Carrier's heartbeat, at least, had always remained constant.

The woman, clad only in reflective silver armor that covered her like a second skin, bent uneasily over a desk, thin features contorted in concentration as she wielded an alien instrument on an apparantly featureless matte finish black box.

Across the room, the slender red-haired man levitated several feet above the deck, arms and legs crossed akimbo as he stared vacantly into the Carrier's heart. Both worked silently, for all intents and purposes oblivious to the presence of the other.

Some time passed, though neither knew how much, when the tool slipped out of the woman's hands and clanged loudly against the Carrier's metal floor. The man snapped out of his trance and bobbled slightly in the air as he sprang to life, jarred by the noise. Bony freckled fingers curved as he prepared a defensive action, and dilated eyes narrowed behind ruby goggles as a glittering purple aura immediately formed around him.

"Oh, relax," Angela Spica, once and again The Engineer, rolled her eyes as she picked up the errant instrument. Her silvery skin glittered as the light from stars without number dappled and distorted against her rail-thin body. "I dropped a tool. Hardly a cardinal sin."

"Sorry,"  The Doctor murmured sheepishly in a lilting accent, his high-pitched voice echoing slightly as he drew the burgeoning octarine energy back into himself. Eyelids flittering rapidly behind opaque red glasses, he admitted, "I'm still a little on edge." Deep inside, all the Doctors that had come before him grumbled, their voices lapping against his own subconscious as he silently apologized for waking them for aid against a non-existent foe.

Attempting a smile that did not reach her eyes, she acknowledged, "Maybe you're right. Better safe than sorry, after all." Before he could respond, she turned her back on him and immediately resumed her work.

He closed his eyes, banishing the burbling of the other voices so he could again concentrate on the task at hand. Tapping into the energies he held as Earth's shaman, he again reached out to the alien mind of the Carrier, and again found nothing. Again he tried, and again, and again, and still came to the same result.

Sighing his frustration, he slipped out of the meditative trance and floated gently to the floor. Angie was still absorbed in her work, he saw, and smiled slightly.

Through the drug-filled haze that clouded most of his memories of before, he found himself recalling the single night they had spent together shortly before the world had ended. He had been way too far gone that night to retain much of it, but he did remember that she had been soft, so soft, a wonderful contrast to the metallic shell she presented to the world.

Surrepticiously studying her, he noted how much she had changed.  Now, although liquid machinery again flowed through her veins and coated her skin, she was gaunt and stretched, a far cry from the volumptuous beauty that had not only graced his bed but also the covers of such disparate magazines as Scientific American and Cosmopolitan. The violent transfusions of diseased experimental animal blood had taken their toll, and she had wasted into an emaciated shell of her former self. Now, weeks later, her ribs and collarbones still jutted out at prominent angles, and her green eyes were haunted with shadows she could not hide.

Angie was not the only one changed, he knew. In one way or another, each of his teammates bore the effects of the torture of the international cabal that had captured The Authority in order to replace them with their own stable of 'heroes', mercenaries bought and paid for by the taxes of the citizens of her own country. They had all recovered now, and emerged with a more or less happy ending, but he knew they would never be the same.

He himself, although physically unchanged from the ordeal, now bore an edge that no pharmecuetical could soften. His harsh reaction to a simple noise was more than instinct. He was more prepared now than he had ever been to serve as the Doctor. In perhaps the most important change from before, he had, in fact, even quit relying on the drugs to help him.

Perhaps fearing that he would overdose or escape, drugs had not been permitted in the null chamber where he'd been held captive. The residual drugs in his bloodstream had slowly leached away during the days and weeks of his capture, and for the first time in years Jeroen Kristensen's body was weaned from the mind altering substances that had been his food and drink for his entire adult life.

The resultant withdrawal very nearly killed him, but his captors were careful to keep that from happening. The last thing they needed was another rightful Doctor to take the place of their pawn and so, as time went on and he slowly emerged from the agony of withdrawal, he was surprised to find in himself a clarity which he had never known.

The angry young genius he had been had never had time to adapt to being himself, much less properly come to terms with the incredible responsibilities that came with being The Doctor. For all their horror, the monsters who had trapped him had done him an unintentional, and almost unimaginable favor. Separated from both the other Doctors in his head and the pull drugs with which he had numbed himself for so many years, terrified, humiliated, and so desperately, desperately alone, he had been forced to look inward at *himself*, and not the cacophony of forces that struggled for control of his soul.

Without the drugs, he felt new, he felt . . . strange, almost a stranger to himself. He smiled, as it was not an unpleasant feeling.  Whatever he was now, at least he was more than a muddied echo of whichever long-dead Doctor had won the struggle for dominance of his soul. Good or bad, right or wrong, he was Jeroen again as well as the Doctor, and that made it all worth fighting for.

It had come as a hell of a surprise for him to find that when he was reunited with the other Doctors that his *own* voice took precedence over theirs. Ever since he had assumed the mantle of Earth's shaman he had felt like there was a timeshare in his own brain, and the drugs were all he had that kept him sane. Now, though, for the first time, although he still felt their presence in his inner mind, he could control it, and felt more like who he thought he might actually be than he had ever thought possible.

Therefore, after the last battle was over and the team more or less intact, he had made the difficult decision to not return to his old lifestyle. The choice had not been an easy one, as he did in truth rely on the mind altering power of certain narcotics to expand his own abilities, and the habits of a lifetime were not so easily rejected, but. . . no matter how hard he tried to forget or convince himself otherwise, he knew damn well that with his power, he should have been able to swat the monsters who had bested them like insects, but instead, the opposite was true. He and his teammates- more than that, the entire planet- was destroyed, abused and tortured because he, the Earth's shaman, her protector, had been just too damn fucked up to stop them.

Again, he knew he hadn't been the only one. The members of the Authority had believed themselves to be invicible, and so they had fallen, one by one, prey to the gods of pride and arrogance. The team had bought in to its own publicity machine and had tried to bend a world to its will, and in doing so, had been proven horribly, dreadfully wrong. The world had suffered greatly for their mistakes, and try as he might, he couldn't forget how much their callousness and foolish hubris had cost.

Never again. No matter what it took, never again would he allow himself to play any part in such a folly again. Never again would he lose his guard like that, never again would he permit himself to be taken that way, allow himself to be stripped of all the meaning and purpose in what passed for his life. Even if it meant turning himself completely around, rejecting the life and the habit that had shaped him for so many years, he would do it. He would never be taken like that again. He was the Doctor, dammit, and it was time that he started acting like it.

'And this train of thought is leading nowhere,' he sighed, pulling himself out of his reverie. Looking again at Angie, he crossed the room in several short strides to stand beside her, looking over her bunched shoulders at the black box in her hands. He cleared his throat, interrupting, "Are you making any progress on that thing?"

She blinked, then looked up at him with flat eyes. Dropping her chin again, she flicked off her welder with disgust and yawned, pushing the cube heavily away. "No, not unless you consider getting a crick in my neck progress."

"Not under these circumstances, no," he responded with only the barest hint of a smile.

She pretended not to understand. Crossing her arms over her chest, she leaned back in her chair, looking up at him. "As for me, I'm getting nowhere. I think I've wasted the last three days on something that's going to wind up some lucky fisherman's boat anchor." She sighed. "How about yourself?"

He scowled, and a furrow formed on his brow. "Nothing. Nothing at all. The Carrier's not speaking to me today for some reason."

Bony shoulders dipped in a sympathetic shrug. "I tried earlier this morning, and I got nowhere, too. I just don't think she wants to talk today."

He shook his head and pulled at a nonexistent thread on his shirt. "Well, I know how she feels, but in the wake of . . . everything that happened, I think Jack was right in asking us to strengthen our defenses here."

They both paused. Jack Hawksmoor, still recovering from regaining the loss of his mental faculties, had returned to his duties as leader of their reassembled Authority with a grim vengeance, more intent than ever that the team present a vigilent defense to any foes.

At the mention of Hawksmoor, what little animation there had been in Angie's expression evaporated. Her eyes narrowed to green slits, and she sighed. "Whatever you say." Looking away, she muttered something else under her breath, but the Doctor couldn't quite make it out.

He tilted his head curiously. "What? I didn't quite hear you."

Her jaw clenched. "That's because I wasn't speaking to you."

The Doctor stepped back and looked around the room in an exaggerated gesture. "Uh, Angie, I'm the only other one in here."

She shook her head slowly, lank wiry hair making soft chiming sounds as it fell against her corded shoulders. "That's where you're wrong. We're never alone around here- there are ghosts everywhere."

She paused, and he saw her struggling with something. He said nothing, just watched her face, and after a moment her voice softened with something approaching vulnerability and she met his eyes bleakly. "Jeroen, what's happened to us? Where do we go from here?"

He blinked, surprised at her use of his real name. After their night together, she had never called him by anything other than his title, very few did. He opened his mouth to say something encouraging, but stopped himself. She deserved more than empty platitudes. She deserved the truth. After what they had gone through, they all did. Raising his hand to his face, he answered softly, "Beats the hell out of me, Angie."

She paused, and pushed away from the desk. Moving to the other side of the universe, staring at it like it held the secrets to her soul, she repeated, "What happened to us?"

He followed a few steps behind her, and blinked in surprise at the question. "Us? You and me?"

She fixed him with an icy glare. "No- well, yes, but not just you and me. I meant the team." Her voice softened wistfully, and she looked away. "I used to think this was the greatest job in the world. I used to be *proud* to be the Engineer. I used to think we were making a difference, *doing* something with these powers, these gifts."

He almost didn't want to know what was coming next. "And now?"

She stared blankly into the glowing cluster of galaxies. "Now? Now I just feel dirty."

He swallowed tightly.  "Angie, I don't know what to say. I mean, I'm hardly a paragon for virtuous living- probably just the opposite, but-"

She sighed, and he saw the universe reflected in her eyes. "I don't mean that, dammit. Or. . .maybe I do. Maybe if we had spent more time and attention on doing the right thing, on being the heroes we billed ourselves to be and not doping ourselves up to the gills and screwing everything that moved, we might have been able to stop . . . them. Hell," she sighed, and he thought he saw the beginnings of tears, "maybe instead of saving the Earth, we'll wind up leaving it worse off than when Jenny brought us together."

He paused for a moment, entirely at a loss, and then, more out of instinct than anything else, he reached an arm around her shoulders and squeezed tentatively, fully prepared to move away at the slightest hint of discomfort on her part. He was surprised when, instead of flinching as he'd expected, she relaxed and hesitantly laid her head on his shoulder, accepting the comfort offered there. They were almost of a height, so she had to lean against him, and he heard her heartbeat within the metal shell of her skin, echoing strangely beside him.

"Maybe you're right," he said softly, closing his eyes as he held her. Her skin was cool, but she was thin, so thin. "But we're back now, all of us, and maybe there's still hope. Maybe we can still do some good. Maybe we can still redeem ourselves after all."

She didn't answer, but neither did she pull away. They stood like that together for a long moment, until she finally pulled away. He let her go, his own heart pounding in his chest.

She inclined her head, and he thought he saw her eyes soften. "Thanks," she said, a little awkwardly. "Jeroen, I-"

He would never know what she had been about to say, for at that very moment the entire room flashed with a brilliant golden light and they both collapsed to the floor, grabbing their heads in sudden unexpected pain.

For the first time in millenia, the Carrier's heart had skipped a beat.

back to DuAnn's stories | Miscellaneous archive | comicfic.net