Sapphire Angel - Superheroine

Chapter 6 - The Masterminds

The ventilator mask covered the face of the sleeping girl. Demarco Dominick's lips trembled as he held her hand and looked down at her face. Three tubes ran from the machines around the bed, disappearing into her body. Even when she had been healthy, his massive hand had dwarfed the hand of his seventeen-year-old daughter, Ashley. Now she was frail, her physique a victim of all the pills and other drugs she had abused.

His jaw tightened. The scumbag addicts who had pulled her into their world had caused this. Before drowning in that world, she had been his sweet, innocent baby.

She looked like a tiny skeleton next to his gigantic frame. Dominick, a tall black man, was large in other ways beyond just his height. His belt could have fit around the waist of two men, and his arms and legs were the size of tree trunks. His size was that of an obese man, not an athlete. He had been an athlete, decades earlier, but many years behind a desk had robbed him of that physique.

He wasn't sure how long he had sat here, starting at her while she slept. She was all he had left. His wife and her mother had died two years earlier, just before Ashley first slipped away, into this coma. The doctors had told him Ashley was brain dead and wouldn't awaken, but he had refused to believe it. It had taken the best lawyers in the country to win the fight to bring her home. Now she lay here, day and night, hooked up to a machine to keep her alive.

His friends assumed he had brought her home to die. But Dominick wouldn't accept death for his daughter. Dominick hadn't built Fizzure Technologies into a powerhouse by quitting. He had grown from humble beginnings into one of the city's richest men through force of will, to go along with his intelligence and ingenuity.

Dominick turned and crouched before a small safe to the right of the bed. He keyed in a combination and opened the door. A dull, black rectangular piece of rock, about the size of a brick and with smooth edges, sat nearly invisible inside. The brick was so dark it blended in with the black fabric lining of the container.

Dominick took it in both hands and held it up in front of his face, marveling at its lightness. The rock was solid and smooth on all sides, but was nearly weightless in his grasp.

He placed it inside a device resembling a microwave oven, on a shelf next to Ashley's bed. A tube ran from the device toward the bed, before splitting into three smaller tubes. Each of those tubes ran to separate intravenous bags hanging above her.

He closed a door on the front of the device and pressed a button. He stood back and waited, turning his attention to his daughter.

Moments later his daughter's eyes flickered, color returned to her face, and her breathing became more consistent. He slid the breathing mask off her face as her eyes open. Her lips formed into a smile as she looked up at her father.

"Hey, Daddy," she said, her voice clear and strong.

"Hey sweetheart," he said, running his hand through her hair.

"How are you holding up?" she asked him.

"Me?" he asked, looking at her and shaking his head. "Honey, don't worry about me."

"I worry you'll be alone, Daddy, when I'm gone."

"Don't talk like that," he said. "We will figure this out. You will get better."

"It's been how long, Dad? Two months? And they still can't make this last more than a minute or two. You need to prepare yourself."

"No," Dominick said firmly, setting his jaw. He took Ashley's hand. "We are making progress. My men achieved a breakthrough. A way to lend power to this. Power that could make it last."