The Normals

Chapter Twenty Two: Fantastic

Marianne hadn't gotten the hang of navigating while using James's power—walls and corners kept coming at her at unfair speeds—so she flew at a normal pace, which was still enough to make her eyes tear up as she laughed with joy.

Feet pounded behind her; some light, some heavy, some weightless. The Supers should have been able to catch her. If Marianne had been watching this chase, she would have screamed in frustration at their inability to do so.

But she knew the Stuffed Cloud, and this oddly-shaped hallway especially. The Flyers behind her crashed into walls just as much as she did, and they didn't have the excuse of inexperience with their powers. They were just plain lost.

“Come and get me!” Marianne cried just before knocking over a tool rack. “I meant to do that,” she added to the Super it landed on.

The Machine loomed up in the dark, visible only by the hinted shapes in the darkness that Marianne knew to look for. It occurred to Marianne to worry about any Supers with eyesight powers, which would make trapping them in the Machine a problem. Oops, she thought. But it didn't matter. It was a trap, and traps always worked.

She grabbed on to the door of the Machine and swung herself feet first into the Distilling Chamber. The thick high heels of her boots hit the far wall with a resounding crash that none of the Supers could have missed, and Marianne crouched in the top corner like a spider as she waited for them to come chasing the sound.

They streamed through the door right on cue. Marianne could just barely make out the fluttering shapes of their bodies as they spread out looking for her; she could see that several of them were posing. She counted them off in her head, allowed a couple of seconds for any invisible ones that might be there, and then shouted, “I’m up here!”

The resulting mob rushing to the corner was quite easy to slip out of. In  all the confusion, nobody understood where Marianne had gone or realized that the door was closing—until it closed.

“You’re ready?” Roger asked. His hand was already on the button.

“Hang on a minute.” Marianne took a couple of deep breaths. “Okay, yeah, I’m ready. This is gonna hurt, though.”

“I know. There will be six times as many powers investing themselves in you all at once, and—” Something slammed against the wall inside of the Distilling Chamber, sounding a lot like the Believable Rock’s fist, and the entire Machine shook. “That’s not good. Go! Hurry!”

This time, when Roger slammed the door shut and hit the start button, he was ready for the screams. That didn’t make it one bit easier. He crouched in his chair, hands over his ears, hating the terrible chorus that reverberated around the room.

Why didn’t we make the chambers soundproof? he asked himself angrily, rocking back and forth. He knew the answer: it was for the same reason that they had put a window in the Distilling Chamber door. Pet had assured him that he would want to observe the Supers’ transformation.

Roger told himself not to look at the timer, then failed and peeked at it. The Machine was barely halfway done. He couldn’t keep sitting in his chair any more. His legs felt like jelly as he stood, uncertain of their ability to hold his weight. 

He realized that he didn’t even know how many Supers were in the Machine. There hadn’t been time to count, but it sounded now like hundreds of people were in pain.

It was a bad idea to go look in the window, but Roger couldn’t keep himself away from it.

They were writhing all over the floor, their colored costumes glowing sickly bright in the pale fluorescent lighting. The Invisible one kept flickering in and out of existence in a way that made Roger’s stomach turn. A Flyer twisted in the air near the ceiling, dropping inches at a time and then gaining them with a struggle. He fell to the floor all of a sudden, but the thump was too quiet to hear outside the Machine. The Believable Rock looked like he was deflating. The Supers were clutching themselves, trying to holding themselves together, and Roger could see the strength getting pulled out of them. It was colorless and invisible, but he could see it.

He turned his head away from the window, just for a moment, and his gaze fell on the two Supers that Marianne had hidden behind the Machine. They were still leaning on each other, but no longer on the verge of collapse, and they were staring at him. Their bodies were trembling and they jerked at every loud scream, but their chins were high and their gaze was steady. He couldn’t meet the accusations in their chilly blue eyes. He turned away.

Silence fell. Everything stopped. The Supers lay still and frozen, and Roger shivered. He stumbled back to the control panel, hit the button to open the Infusion Chamber door. He didn’t go out to meet Marianne.

After a few seconds of staring at his desk, he gulped and asked, “Did you hear them screaming?”

“Yes,” answered Marianne. “But I didn’t hear them very well, because I was a bit busy screaming myself.”

Roger looked up at her. “How do you feel?”

Marianne examined her hands. “I feel. . .”

She was different. She looked different somehow, in no way that Roger could place, but she felt different too. Everything about her radiated power. She  was still shorter than him, and yet she seemed to take up three times as much space as before. The room was filled with Marianne in the same way that, a few minutes before, it had been filled with a dozen flashy Supers. Yes, Roger decided, that was the difference: one Super alone could take up attention like no Normal ever could, and now that power was multiplied in Marianne.

“I feel fantastic,” she finally decided. “Yes, that’s it. I feel like I could take on Fantastic Man myself.”

Roger took her hands, and realized something else about her new power. Even one Super could make people feel better, stronger, just by smiling. But standing here, looking at Marianne vibrating with happiness and energy, he had no idea how he could ever feel bad about anything ever again.