Peter Clines - Ex-Communication

“Please,” she said. “I’m not one of them. I swear. I swear I’m not.”

St. George opened his hands wide and stepped back. “I … I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s okay. I thought … I thought you were somebody else.”

She slid off the couch and skittered away from him. The trust had vanished from her face. Her eyes flitted to the pistol on the floor.

“Who are you?”

The dead girl lowered her arm a bit. “You’re not going to hurt me?”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. He raised his hands a little higher, spread his fingers a little wider. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”

A cloud of drywall dust drifted down from where she’d hit the wall. They both glanced at it. She set her jaw and glared at him.

“I’m really sorry,” he said. “We’ve had trouble with … well, we’ve kind of got a low-level supervillain here in Los Angeles. He calls himself Legion but his real name’s Rodney.”

She blinked. “And you thought I was him?”

“He controls all the exes in the city,” explained St. George. “He can talk through them, see through their eyes, make them act just like a person. He’s tried to trick us before, so I thought you were him. Because you’re … you know.”

“I’m not like them.”

He nodded. “I can see that.”

“I’m not!”

“Okay, then. Do you want to come in? I think there are some people who’d like to meet you.”

She stood up slowly. “How do I know I can trust them? Or you?”

He gave her a smile. “I’m the Mighty Dragon, remember? One of the good guys.” He held out his hand. “Most people are calling me St. George these days.”

She looked at the hand for a moment, then reached out and wrapped her cold fingers around his. “I’m Maddy,” she said. “Madelyn Sorensen.”

“ CAPTAIN?”

“Sorry, sir,” said Captain Freedom. He’d been staring at the girl for two minutes. He turned to St. George. “It’s just … does it count as seeing a ghost if you never saw the real person?”

Madelyn sat inside one of the hospital’s observation rooms. They’d cleaned everything out of the room except for a pair of chairs and a small table. Stealth had posted two guards inside the room and two more outside.

Franklin and Dr. Connolly had wheeled in their own table to take samples and check a dozen or so different vital signs. The dead girl winced as another needle went into her arm, but she stayed in the chair. It wasn’t by choice. She’d agreed to let them strap her down until Stealth was convinced the girl wasn’t Legion.

Madelyn had stripped down to a pair of threadbare jeans and an oversized T-shirt. The arm they were taking blood from had three wristwatches on it she refused to remove. A restraint ran between two of them.

St. George and Freedom stood outside with Stealth, watching the tests. Freedom stood with his hands behind his back, at ease. It pulled his duster open across his broad chest. Stealth’s head moved inside her hood and her gaze settled on the huge soldier. “It is Madelyn Sorensen? There is no question in your mind?”

Freedom nodded. “I’d bet my pension on it, ma’am,” he said. His mind flitted back three years, to the day he’d sent a team out to bring Dr. Emil Sorensen’s family to Project Krypton. It hadn’t ended well, for any of them. He still remembered the young girl being pulled across the sand, dodging the exes surrounding the base. He’d added her name—all their names—to the long list of people he’d failed to protect.

He shook the thoughts from his head. “I only saw her in person on the day she died,” he continued. “But Dr. Sorensen had a dozen pictures of her and her mother in his office. I must have seen them a thousand times. If that isn’t her …” He shrugged. “As I said, I’d bet my pension on it.”

“So,” said St. George, “she’s dead and an ex, but it seems like she’s still talking and thinking. Anyone got an idea how that happened?”

“More to the point,” said Stealth, “how did it end up in Los Angeles, four hundred miles from the site of her death?”

Madelyn locked eyes with St. George through the window and he gave her a reassuring nod. She managed a weak smile back.

“Sir, ma’am … a point, if I may?”

St. George nodded. “Yeah?”

Freedom’s mouth twitched. “Dr. Sorensen was always insistent Madelyn was still alive,” the captain said. “Every now and then he’d have these moments of clarity about his wife, just little flashes when you could tell he knew what had happened to her, but couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud. But he was convinced Madelyn would’ve survived the attack that killed them. He wouldn’t back down on that.” His eyes drifted back to the dead girl. “He said she was special.”

Stealth’s posture shifted. “Special?”

The huge officer shook his head. “I don’t know, ma’am. I always assumed it was fatherly instincts bleeding into his mental instability, that losing his daughter was somehow worse than losing his wife.”

In the room, Franklin slid a needle out of Madelyn’s arm and pressed a piece of gauze against her vein. She asked him something they couldn’t hear through the glass and he answered with a few words and a nod. Then he followed Connolly out with the rolling table and left the girl alone with the guards.

“It wanted eyedrops?” Stealth asked Franklin.

Franklin’s brows went up and he glanced at the window. He glanced at Captain Freedom out of habit, then nodded at the cloaked woman. “Yes, ma’am. I told her I’d get her some.”

“Why does it need them?”

“I’m guessing because her eyes hurt. Her tear ducts probably aren’t working well.”

St. George looked over at Connolly. “So?”

The doctor shook her head. “Well, she’s definitely an ex,” Connolly said. “No pulse, no respiration, body temperature is seventy-point-five. I think it was cooler but she started warming up once we got her inside.”

“But she’s conscious,” said Freedom. “She knows who she is. Or was.”

“She seems to.”

St. George looked through the window again. “Is she Legion?”

“It would not appear to be,” said Stealth. “Legion consistently displays the same dialect and body language. Whoever or whatever this is, it is demonstrating numerous tics and habits different from his.”

“Whatever she is,” said Connolly, “she’s pretty sure she’s a seventeen-year-old girl.”

Freedom’s brow wrinkled. “She said she was seventeen?”

The doctor nodded.

“This is a discrepancy in its story?” asked Stealth.

“I’m pretty sure she was seventeen when she died,” said Freedom. “I remember Dr. Sorensen talking about having her eighteenth birthday at Krypton.”

“Well, it’s not like she’s aging any more, sir,” said Franklin.

“No,” said Freedom, “but if she’s conscious why wouldn’t she think of herself as twenty? Physically she might be the same, but almost three years have passed.”

“Three years?” echoed Connolly.

“Two years, nine months,” said Freedom. The images and sounds rushed through his mind again. “I lost four good soldiers that day, along with Sorensen’s family.”

Franklin set his jaw and gave a faint nod.

St. George looked at Connolly. Her lips twisted. “Something else wrong?”

She stared through the window. The dead girl was tapping her fingers on the end of the chair and looking around the room. “I’d never’ve guessed she’s been dead for that long.”

“The ex-virus does slow decay significantly,” said Stealth.