John Fortune got out of the bathtub. Fortunato could feel his eyebrows curl and singe as his son stepped closer, but he didn’t flinch. There was a nanosecond of horrible pain as they almost touched. Then Fortunato stopped time.
His astral form fled his body, but maintained a thin thread, a tenuous link to draw energy through, for it would take tremendous amounts of energy to implement his plan. Fortunately, size was a meaningless concept on the astral plane. Fortunato went down into his son’s body. He propelled his consciousness through his son’s bloodstream, flashing like a corpuscle through his veins.
Searching, he found the changes wrought by the virus in John Fortune’s brain, nervous system, and all the cells throughout him. Fortunato wasn’t an expert, but he knew that it didn’t look good. The cells were twisted abnormally, blasted and sickened. This will be rough, he thought. The enemy was almost numberless, and he was only one man.
He broke himself into a million fragments and ordered them into battle against John’s body. He fought it cell by cell, shifting, rearranging, and cleansing, but never harming. He burned energy at a prodigious rate as he willed John Fortune’s cells to repair the damage the wild card virus had done. Thankfully, he didn’t have to guide them in the process, to tell them exactly what to do. They knew themselves, wired deep in the mysteries of their DNA, how to correct themselves. He just had to supply them with the energy they needed, and the time. He gave freely of both. He hoped he had enough.
He settled in for the longest, most difficult battle in his life.
Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower
Ray knew where he would find the Angel. He went to Barnett’s headquarters as quickly as he could. The corridor leading to Barnett’s office sanctum was empty. Ray rushed into the reception area to see Sally Lou sitting behind her desk and the two Secret Service agents crowded around the door leading into Barnett’s office, looking in but afraid to enter.
Ray brushed by them as if they were children, and they didn’t even protest. He took in the room with a single glance. Barnett was on his knees, praying loudly. Angel was standing by him with her hands on her hips and a frown on her face. He also noted that a hole had been punched through one of the sanctum’s walls. The Witness lay in the corridor beyond. He didn’t look too good.
Ray rushed up to Angel. “You had me worried there—” he began.
“Sometimes,” Angel said, “you think too much. Kiss me.”
He did, with enthusiasm. He could have kept it up for a long time, but he realized that things weren’t finished, by any means.
“John Fortune—” he said, somewhat breathlessly as he pulled away from her.
She nodded. “He’s in Fortunato’s suite. There—something’s wrong with him,” she said with a concerned expression. “His temperature is rising. The Hand—Barnett said that it was out of control.”
Ray glanced at Barnett, who was loudly praying for guidance and forgiveness. He nodded. “Let’s go.”
Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower
Time was meaningless on the astral plane. Fortunato couldn’t tell how long he’d been fighting. It seemed like forever. He gave of himself with every single battle with every single recalcitrant cell of his son’s body. He knew that he didn’t have much left. He needed help, but there was no one to give it. If he’d had a physical body, he’d be exhausted. Even without one, he was still exhausted. That was a sign of the desperate state he was in.
But all throughout a hard life, Fortunato had never given up. Never once. Not even when he’d gone to Japan, he finally realized. It had been a step in his evolution that he’d had to take. A time to rest, reflect, and learn. It had not been a wasted sixteen years if it had enabled him to do this.
Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower
Ray and Angel barged into Fortunato’s suite. Inside it looked like the Jokertown Clinic’s emergency room on Saturday night, crowded with patients and worried on-lookers. Some of them seemed to be members of the other team, Ray realized, but nobody seemed to care, so he didn’t.
“John?” Angel asked, staring at a worried-looking figure standing near the doorway to one of the bedrooms.
He shook his head. “No. It’s me.”
“Creighton,” Ray said.
“My name’s not Creighton. It’s Strauss. Jerry Strauss. I just wanted you to know that.”
Ray nodded.
“John’s in the bathroom, with Fortunato,” Jerry said.
“They’ve been in there a long time,” Mushroom Daddy said.
“What’s going on?” Ray asked.
A little old black man standing next to a big young black man armed with an automatic weapon said, “He’s trying to heal him.”
Ray shook his head. Time enough later to sort out who was who. “Well—has someone checked on them lately?”
No one said anything.
“Someone should,” Ray said.
Still no one said anything. He looked at Angel, who nodded. He went quietly through the bedroom, Angel at his side. He listened at the closed bathroom door, but heard nothing.
“Should I open it?” he asked quietly.
Angel nodded again.
He hesitated, took her hand, then quickly opened the door. Fortunato was lying on the bathroom floor, his son in his arms. As they watched, John Fortune’s golden aura flickered and went out. Ray and Angel stared at each other for a moment, then rushed into the bathroom, vaguely aware of the crowd that had gathered at the door behind them
Ray gently lifted Fortunato off his son and felt his wrist. He looked at the Angel, then at the others crowded around the bathroom door. “There’s no pulse,” Ray said flatly, as if he could hardly believe it himself. “Fortunato’s dead.”
“The boy?” Angel asked in a shaky voice.
“He’s all right,” Fortunato said. He lifted his head and opened his eyes and gripped Ray’s arm hard. It was the only thing that prevented the stunned ace from dropping him. “He’s all right. Tell Peregrine not to worry. He’ll just be a normal boy now. Tell her I took the virus... away...”
“God,” Ray said. “My God. You have no pulse. You’re dead.”
Fortunato smiled. “That’s right,” he said, and he kept smiling as his body slumped in Ray’s arms.
John Fortune opened his eyes, looked around the room, looked at everybody crowding around the doorway, looked at Fortunato’s limp body in Ray’s arms. He asked in a quiet voice, “What happened?”
The Angel went to him and put her arms around him. She said nothing, but held him as he cried, until he stopped shaking.
Chapter twelve
The Feds arrived on the scene, as usual, half an hour too late. Agents from half a dozen bureaus wandered about the lobby of the Angels’ Bower in a daze, watching as EMTs helped the last of the wounded civilians.
Ray and the Angel sat in the lobby’s wreckage with John Fortune. The Angel held the boy’s hand while he stared numbly into space. Jerry Strauss, who wore his real face, Sascha, back from his fruitless trip to the airport, and Mushroom Daddy stood around them. Barnett was up in his penthouse, praying and refusing to come down. The Witness was still unconscious in the hallway. Magda was still frozen in Fortunato’s suite. Ray figured it would be better to leave them up there for now. Couple less thing to worry about.
“Man,” Ray said. “I don’t even want to think about trying to explain all this.” He looked at the old black man who had just joined them, and the young big black man at his side. “Like where in the Hell you fit into it.”