LLH 10.1

“Heat Wave” by Roentgen

There were many great things about working on Russell Stark’s dime, thought Kyle Armalin. For one, it meant you got to collect two paychecks.

As it took almost one hundred people to support the training activities of a group of nine teenagers, he almost considered himself a company commander – and dammit, a leader needed a place to think, a place where he wouldn’t be bothered with bullshit situations. He had found a foxhole in an unoccupied office on the eleventh floor, and he had affixed to the door a nameplate simply reading “Dr. Kyle Armalin” and giving no hint as to who or what he was beyond an academic title. He still slept down in the Quarry; he needed the four walls of an office for his waking activities.

However, trouble always found its way to the man in charge no matter where he might hide. Even when he wanted away from the demands on his time, those demands simply followed behind.

“I can’t stand this Taylor girl,” Sergeant Brenda Nemec told him. “She’s a real four-percenter.” By “four-percenter” she meant that Brittany Taylor would be a Category IV on the ASVAB – a person of below-average intelligence, someone you would only make into a Marine if you were desperate.

“I don’t believe it,” said Armalin. However, he was disturbed that Sergeant Nemec, a woman he knew that could turn Category IVs into real soldiers, who could teach a slug to reassemble a M4A1 blindfolded, was at her wit’s end. “She’s a lot smarter than you think.”

“If she is,” said Nemec, “it’s the best impersonation I’ve ever seen of being a dumb bimbo. I think we have a good chance of getting rid of the Gang of Four in March. I think Morgendorffer-Queue is going to pass the qualifying exam on the next go. So is Rowe. Blum-Deckler – even she’s pulling through with a lot of hard work. But Taylor ain’t gonna make it. Not this round. I’m going to be cramming knowledge up her ass a nickel at a time until summer.”

“How much longer have you worked with the other three, Nemec? Quite a long time. Bringing Blum-Deckler up to spec is a goddamned miracle. I think you have another miracle in you.”

“You tell that to your chief medic. He’s been trying to get Taylor through her EMT classes. He says that she’s going to end up killing someone out in the field, or he’s going to die of frustration. She won’t pass that module either. This goddamned cheerleader is going to be the death of us all. I can’t deal another moment with these shit*, Major, and you know it. If that smartass Sloane boy hadn’t passed that entrance test we gave him…I would have had to kill a man right there.”

Armalin nodded. “You want to go back to the real Corps?”

“They won’t have me. ‘Don’t ask don’t tell bullshit.’ They didn’t prove shit.”

“Then if the Legion is paying your paycheck, you work for the Legion. Give Taylor another chance. At least you can keep working with her instead of having them wash out like they did in Boot Camp. Save ‘em all, Nemec.”

Nemec grumbled and left. Despite the pep talk, it weighed on Armalin’s mind. Taylor was brave, she took responsibility, she tried to succeed -- but she wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box. She had learned unarmed combat, she had an almost intuitive grasp of tactics – but she was a hopeless academic. Just by observation, he could sense that she was becoming discouraged. The natural bounce in her step was dying.

What to do? Take a personal hand in her education? It would be a vote of no confidence in his staff. “You have to make the hurdles high,” said his old professor, “but not so high that they can’t be jumped.”

“How do you know if a hurdle is too high?” he asked.

“You watch. If the hurdle is too high, you lower it. If it isn’t…you wait until almost all hope is lost…and then you give a little push. But don’t wait too long, or they’ll just walk away.”

(* * *)

Ah. Soup. Soup deserves its own place on the periodic table.

Tom Sloane looked over his few possessions which he had moved to Legion Tower. He had taken a leave of absence from Fielding with his parents’ permission. He had also passed the Legion’s test of general knowledge given to him by the insane drill sergeant.

He must have said or done something to piss her off. “Tell me, Sloane…are those bruises on your face from the coat hanger…from the abortion?” It made him feel small in an instant. He tried to hide his resentment and anger while she hovered over him as he took the test.

But now, things were different. He had a room of his own on the same floor as Chuck. The guy wanted to be called “Chuck”, so he called him Chuck and not “Upchuck”. Chuck was a nice guy, and pretty damned smart…a conversational equal but a little obsessive about James Bond and The Three Stooges, and whenever he talked about either he became a bore very quickly. Otherwise, it was no problem living on the same floor as Chuck.

Chuck was also maybe a little too interested in and obsessed with women. No wonder Jane and everyone else thought he was a creep. It wasn’t that he was going to go Ted Bundy, the poor guy just didn’t know how to deal. First rule, dude, get some new clothes. And maybe, shut up once in a while.

Despite his meager possessions, he looked forward to his first dinner at Legion Tower.

That’s when he realized he had no can opener.

Dammit. Ripping the top from the can was no solution. Burning it with his vision power wasn’t a solution, either. Maybe things weren’t going as well as he thought they were.

(* * *)

The elevator door opened. Tom hoped to find someone at home. Jane wasn’t in her apartment, and neither were Daria or Chuck. That left the “Fashion Club”.

He could tell that one of the apartment doors was open. “Hello? Anyone home?”

Looking at the small brass nameplate which read “Stacy Rowe” Tom simply peeked into the room . “Hello?” he asked.

“Hello!” called Stacy. “Come in!”

Tom stepped aside. The contrast between his apartment (and for that matter, Jane’s apartment) and Stacy’s could not have been more obvious. Tom and Jane considered their respective apartments a place to dump their stuff, a home away from their real homes. Jane’s living room was a storehouse of art supplies and only had two chairs to provide any avenue for comfort in the living space.

But Stacy’s room! It had a couch! And a TV! And…an ottoman! And plants! And pictures hanging on the walls! And was that…carpet? Someone had come in and put carpet in?

It looked great. Tom concluded that compared to Stacy, he was living in a hovel.

“I’m wearing overalls! My hair isn’t braided! You don’t want to see me!” was Stacy’s shout from some hidden room.

“Uh…I was hoping we could stand on informality…after all, I did come uninvited.” Tom rubbed the back of his head. “I was just wondering if….”

“…Uh? Tom?” asked Stacy, meekly. “Can I have some help?”

“Sure.” Tom walked through the apartment, and eventually found Stacy standing in the bathroom. Her hair was indeed unbraided, giving her a more feral appearance. She wore overalls, and a girl’s T-shirt underneath, which if one didn’t mind peeking to the side of Stacy’s bosom a few times, one could make out the words “Kiss Off!” with enough effort.

“Tom..I have a question and you have to be really, really honest. Can you see them?”

“Can I see…uh…what?” asked Tom.

Stacy did not so much as smile as pull her lips back at him. “Cxxn yxxu sxxxee txxxxm?”

“Huh?” He looked at Stacy baring her teeth at him. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking at.”

Stacy closed her mouth. Then, she went back to the bathroom mirror and opened her mouth again and ran a finger over her beautiful, white, incisors.

“Where we were in that big fight with that guy who broke in – and I’m really, really sorry he beat you up by the way! – something happened. I lost two teeth, and two more teeth grew back in right away! I don’t know what they are? Are they sharp? Are they fangs? Are they fangs?”

“They look like normal teeth to me.”

“Really? I mean…you wouldn’t be lying to me because you wanted to be nice or because you felt sorry for me or because you -- !”

“Look. I’m no expert on teeth,” said Tom. “If I were, I’d be the dentist to movie stars all over the world and I’d implant listening devices in their fillings. But from a casual glance your teeth don’t seem any different from any other person’s teeth.”

“You mean – you think…they look like a normal girl’s teeth.” Stacy looked crushed. “They’re unattractive teeth! They’re…*choke* not [i]cute teeth….”

“No….no! Look,” said Tom, now wondering why he even entered Stacy’s House of Woe, “I would say that those teeth are…substantially cute teeth!”

“Really?”

“Sure. They are very cute teeth.”

“Ahem.”

Stacy and Tom turned around. It was Jane.

“Oh, hey Jane,” said Tom. “We were having a conversation about Stacy’s teeth.”

“Yeah,” said Jane with a half-smile, “I just bet you were. Look, Loverboy, I need you upstairs for a minute.” She turned to Stacy. “Sorry to take you away from your dental fetish.”

“Uh…sure!” As Tom left with Jane, Stacy realized that she didn’t know what Jane was talking about. Then, she went back to examining her teeth in the bathroom mirror.

(* * *)

“So, what were you doing at Stacy’s?” asked Jane.

“I was looking for a can opener. You weren’t at home, Chuck wasn’t at home. That left me to wander into dangerous quarters. By the way…you don’t have super power that allows you to locate me, do you?”

“Nah…but I have this.” Jane flipped open her Legion clamshell phone. “Can keep tabs on any Legionnaire, as long as they have their phone. Just a matter of following the blue arrow.”

“I should get one of those,” said Tom, dryly.

“Look, Tom…you need to stay away from the twenty-third floor.”

“Huh?”

“Those girls steal other girls’ boyfriends.”

“Oh?” smiled Tom, somewhat flattered. “You think I can’t take care of myself?”

“No,” said Jane, “but I can take care of you.” After a beat, Jane said, “Hey! Let’s go for a pizza!”

“Great idea,” said Tom. “You know…why don’t we just have them deliver?”

(* * *)

Sandi and Quinn began the drive down the long road out of Lawndale to Legion Tower. It was just a matter of getting in the right lane, looking for the right exit. Sandi, however, seemed quite distracted and not her usual chatterbox self.

“…so anyway, I mean, now that we have the money, I mean, the big money, I’m like thinking, ‘why should we have to shop at Junior Five?’ I mean, why can’t we take shopping excursions to New York, and like, buy really nice shoes, the shoes that make people say I bet she knows – “

“Quinn, can I ask you something?” said Sandi, looking straight ahead.

“Sure!”

“Why are we here?”

“Huh?” said Quinn.

“I mean…this has all been really fun…except for a few times like…you know…a couple of weeks ago, when that black guy came in and starting bossing everyone around….”

“Yeah,” said Quinn, shivering. “Everytime I see a red rose it just creeps me out. Stalkers are so not cool!”

“I mean…who gave us these powers? How did we get them? And why did we get them? Why not someone else? Why not better people than us? I mean…what was the point of getting them? Were we supposed to do something with them after we got them?”

“Of course we were!” said Quinn. “I mean…I suppose there’s a point to it. We’ve been to some cool places…and have done some cool things.”

“Yeah. My mom’s car got crashed when some evil guys tried to kidnap you. I was trapped with your “cousin” in some real hellhole of a city that, like, didn’t exist…or something. I was stabbed in the butt by some mobster. Then there was that thing with Stacy going crazy….and that guy you just couldn’t kill no matter how hard you tried.”

“But then,” said Sandi, “that Black Majesty guy showed up. That was when I thought…you know all of us are going to die. Right here. Like, tonight or something. It’s, like, over, and all these things I thought we were supposed to be doing…they just…didn’t get done. We were all out shopping for clothes instead.” Sandi sounded embarrassed.

“So,” said Quinn, “what do you think we should have done?”

“I don’t know,” answered Sandi. She still didn’t know.

As Sandi was driving, she heard the loud, blare of a fire truck’s “foghorn” behind them. Other cars were trying to pull to the side of the road or stop to let the fire truck by, which had its lights on.

“Jesus,” said Sandi. “There’s a fire somewhere.”

“Yeah,” said Quinn. “I hate it when the truck is right behind you and you have to follow it and – “

“Let’s follow it,” said Sandi. “Maybe there’s something we can do. Maybe we can help.”

“Uh…Sandi?” said Quinn. “Neither one of us can put out fires. I don’t know what we could do.”

“Gee, Kuh-WINN,” sniffed Sandi, “I thought you would be like, supportive, of the plight of others!”

“Sandi, not to criticize, or be a bitch, or anything, but we’d just get in the way!”

Sandi smiled. “Not if we get there first.”

Sandi pushed the pedal to the floor of her BMW. The luxury car gave a lurch forward and cut off a car in the adjoining lane, as Sandi narrowly avoided a collision.

“Sandi!” gasped Quinn. “What are you doing?”

“Time to put our offensive driving skills to use!” said Sandi, barreling down a busy throughway as the BMW shifted past the 90/mph mark….

(* * *)

“Keep looking,” said Sandi. “You’re not looking!”

“I’m looking! I’m looking.”

Sandi and Quinn continued to drive through a suburb of Lawndale. There was nothing going on. It looked like any normal suburb. “Dammit!” said Sandi, “I should have tried to jump that ditch!”

“Are you crazy?” said Quinn. “That ditch was four feet wide. You had a van on either side of you! The only way you would have ever been able to follow that fire truck was to push a Volkswagen out of the way and cross six lanes of traffic against the light! I mean, God forbid you wreck your car but if you wreck somebody else’s car it would totally cause major embarrassment to the Legion -- !”

“—yeah, I know.” Sandi sighed. “We’ve lost them. Are you sure you don’t see a fire or a fire truck anywhere?”

“I’m positive! It was probably a false alarm or something!” said Quinn. “There’s no fire. Now, Sandi, let’s just go home.”

Sandi thought about it. “Just one more time -- !”

“—no. We’re going home.”

As Sandi looked for a way out of the suburb and back to the main roads, she muttered to herself, “I am, like, so buying a police radio….”

(* * *)

Daria sweated. She was wearing a pair of short pants and a thin shirt, her bra off and in bare feet. She took another look at the thermostat. Fifty-six degrees. She wondered how much cooler she could make it, before the real risk of hypothermia set in.

She knew she was supposed to be cold. The chillbumps on her legs told her she was cold, each tiny white hair sticking straight up. Her teeth should be chattering. However, all Daria could feel was heat, the heat of a white-hot fire burning all around her.

At least, she told herself, I’m not in a coma. It was the very first time Daria had ever been given a sedative, because when she woke up, she screamed as if her skin was on fire. She was shouting Black Majesty’s name at the top of her lungs and the medics had to give her something to calm her down. No. Armalin had to give her something to calm her down, as he was the only one who could get close to her.

She was put into a drug-induced sleep for at least a day. When she woke up, she complained of the unbearable, obnoxious heat. But she wasn’t thinking about Black Majesty or hell or demons or delusional thoughts anymore. She was to keep taking the Ativan for three more days. Armalin said something about some kind of psychological reaction.

In her heart, Daria was against any psych drugs. But she liked the Ativan. It kept her mellowed out and put her to sleep, and she felt that sleep was impossible due to the unbearable heat. She gave in without a fuss. I hate drugs….but I like sleep, she told herself.

Now, the heat was getting tolerable. Armalin told her that as her mind readjusted to reality, the imaginary heat would lessen day by day and then go away completely. Daria suddenly found herself full of energy and things to do as the medication began to wear off.

However, she didn’t want to leave her apartment, which wasn’t as unbearable as room temperature, thanks to the adjustable thermostat. Therefore, she did what she could.

She gave Dawn Hall a call, but Hall never answered. She finally left a long message about John Dynell, or as much as she could leave on a one-minute answering machine. She knew that Dawn Hall was in contact with Russell Stark, in some way shape or form. At least, she could tell Mr. Stark about the man who wanted him dead, about the man who had tried to have him killed even if it took down an airplane full of innocent passengers.

The only other thing to do was write Dr. Armalin at mailto:karmalin@legion.com. She wrote him a long e-mail regarding the events on the airplane, about John Dynell’s visits to her home, and about how she had visited Dynell in New York without even knowing about his role in the attempt on Stark’s life. She would have simply visited him or called him – but she didn’t know how busy he was. She felt that a written letter would be more accurate than a meandering conversation.

She had done what she could. She had told what few authorities she could tell. The Lawndale Police could not help. She had no evidence to present to anyone, the only evidence being the voices in her mind and a recollection from a former diary entry.

With that, she took the last of the Ativan and settled down to sleep. Tomorrow, she would probably leave the apartment and just deal with the (imaginary) heat. It was tempting to do otherwise, to just stay in the nice warm cocoon of the apartment…but life had to be lived, even with the reason being mere momentum…