“Ummm, you were the one—”
“Just answer the questions,” snapped Sorensen. “How much energy can you put out?”
Barry drummed his fingers on his thigh. “In ambient heat or as directed bursts?”
“Both.”
“Ambient, a lot. Directed, a real lot.”
Sorensen made a fist around his pen.
“Hey, here’s a thought,” Barry said. “How about a demonstration?”
He flipped the switch in his mind.
Light blasted through the window and Sorensen and Smith both flinched back. The cot was incinerated and the concrete floor burned. The window flared again as Zzzap hurled a blast of energy at the massive door and a deafening hiss of static boomed from the intercom. He threw another burst and it sizzled against the steel.
Son of a bitch , the gleaming wraith said. That is a big door .
“As you yourself pointed out,” Sorensen said, “you are in a reactor core. It’s extremely heat and radiation resistant.”
Well, I had to try.
“It was foolish.”
Hey, do you have any idea how much damage those bolts can do? One of my small blasts is three or four times more raw power than a bolt of lightning.
“One-point-twenty-one gigawatts,” said Smith with a faint smile.
Points for the reference, but like I said, it’s a bit more than that.
“At breakfast you implied your focused energy was derived from your own mass,” said Sorensen. The doctor paused to tap his fingers against his thumb. He twisted his head back to look at Smith. “Remind me to check his follicles and nails when he reverts to human form. Why not shoot smaller bolts, then, and conserve your resources?”
Doesn’t work that way. It’s like a fire hose. It’s on or it’s off, and you do not want to be in front of it when it’s on. There’s no ‘light mist’ option. The wraith drifted over in front of the window. Quid pro quo, Clarice. What’s the point of all this?
“I would think that’s obvious,” the doctor said. Even through the glass, he managed to look down his nose at Zzzap. “You’re the most powerful superhuman in the world, Mister Burke. If I can figure out how to duplicate your abilities it could mean a rebirth for this world. Clean, limitless energy for America and its allies.”
Yeah , said Zzzap. And you’ll figure this out how? I mean, considering it’s already stumped a lot of really smart people?
“The usual methods. Examination. Physiological and neurological testing. If all else fails, we’ve been authorized for more invasive procedures. I’m sure we won’t need to go that far, though.”
The burning wraith hung in front of the window for a moment. Okay, then , he said. I think it’s time I was leaving. Thanks for the bacon and the massive dose of sedatives. Let’s not do it again anytime soon.
“You seem to be forgetting something,” said Sorensen, rapping his knuckles on the window between them. “You’re in a decommissioned nuclear reactor. This whole chamber was designed to contain energies like yours. You could spend the next six —”
Not like mine.
The doctor paused. “Sorry?”
Zzzap moved his head to the left, then to the right. This is a fission reactor , he said. In this state, I’m a whole different scale of magnitude. Thousands of times more powerful. It’s like saying a pair of sunglasses can protect you from the visible light output of a hydrogen bomb.
“I stand corrected,” said Sorensen. “As I was —”
I mean, I could just let ‘er rip and burn a hole straight up and out.
“You could,” said Sorensen, “except for all the soldiers.”
What soldiers?
“There is a military base above us with close to a thousand men and women. There could be a barracks right above that chamber. Or a mess hall. Perhaps a fuel depot which could explode and injure or kill dozens of people.”
Zzzap focused his attention on the ceiling. Maybe nothing.
“You can’t be sure, though, can you? The reactor shielding screens any x-rays or infrared that would tell you what’s above you.”
Yeah, you got me there. Not that it matters.
The doctor paused again, his mouth open.
You keep thinking of me in terms of a man. As matter. I’m pure energy.
“What do you mean?”
Look at all this. The wraith waved his arm around himself. The big door. The walls. You set this up thinking you needed to hold a physical person who lets off a lot of energy.
Smith pushed his way to the microphone. “I…I’m not sure we follow you.”
I don’t blame you. It’s a hard thing to wrap your head around. I’m not physical. I’m a few bazillion trillion joules of energy bound into a human shape by my consciousness. Heck, the only reason you can even hear me is I learned how to excite air molecules to imitate sound waves.
There was a long moment while they stared at each other through the glass.
“You’re lying,” said Sorensen. “I have twenty-three confirmed reports of you causing sonic booms in my files. You did it just this morning when you arrived. You can’t cause a sonic boom without mass to displace air.”
Unless I’m displacing the air by some other means. He held up the gleaming arm again and wiggled the fingers. Inside the visible area of the energy form is a little over nine hundred and fifty degrees Celsius. I keep all that energy contained, but air still comes near me, gets heated, and pushes away. That’s where the sonic booms come from. I’m not solid, but the atmosphere acts as if I am.
The doctor stroked his beard. “Assuming I believe you, Mister Burke, what are you getting at with all this?”
What I’m getting at, Emil—Can I call you Emil? What I’m getting at is that to a being of pure energy, a big pane of clear glass is the same thing as an open door.
The shadows vanished as Zzzap flitted through the observation window.
Sorensen and Smith stumbled back. The soldiers drew sidearms. Zzzap raised his hand and the temperature shot up by twenty degrees. Don’t do anything dumb , he said to them. You can’t hurt me and I don’t want to hurt you.
Sorensen pulled off his glasses and stared at the wraith with wide eyes. “You could’ve done that at any time.”
Yup.
“Then why spend so much time talking?”
Because I wanted to hear what you had to say about all this. And I hate to be the one to break it to you, doctor, but your own personal Elvis has left the building, if you get my drift. Now if you’ll all excuse me, I think my friends are somewhere nearby and they need to hear that you people are a bunch of nutjobs.
He shot toward the door and there was a deafening crack. Zzzap flailed in the air, then rushed the door again. There was a second report, and the wraith was hurled away a second time. His outline blurred for a moment, then pulled back to a crisp silhouette.
The doctor polished his glasses on his shirt sleeve and balanced them back on his nose. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept of a Faraday cage, Mister Burke,” he said. “They were very popular with scientists and espionage agencies because they block out all outside signals and interference. One as well-built as the one around this chamber can block any type of electromagnetic signal. Cell phones, television, radio waves— it can keep all of it out.”
The rumpled old man smiled at the gleaming wraith.
“Which also means it can keep anything in.”
Smith cleared his throat. “I know you don’t want to hurt anyone,” he said. “But I’d guess just hanging out in an enclosed space like this with you isn’t…well, it’s probably not healthy for any of us mere mortals in the long term.” He nodded at the soldiers. “Definitely not for these two who are going to be here monitoring you. Maybe you should go back into the core?”