The Inside-Out Man, Part 5
Into the inverted brain ...
Welcome to Olympus City, where super-powers, physics-defying tech, and unearthly creatures are all possible now. Human nature, however, remains unchanged.
No one is born a perfect superhero, but a few strive to live up to the ideal anyway.
Previously: Alyssa has once again donned her Silver Stranger trench coat. Now she, Miranda, and Ken need to stop the Inside-Out Man before he exacts revenge on a small-time supervillain.
Part 5
Bart Bloman had plenty of time to think these days. His cellmate slept a lot, and often wanted to go right back to sleep whenever Bloman attempted to strike up conversation.
The fact that they assigned him a cellmate at all surprised Bloman. He was a supervillain. The Puzzler. Why make it easier for him to recruit henchmen? Not that he minded. He’d need the connections when he escaped and reclaimed the empuzzling cube. There was no way the authorities had destroyed it—he had ensured that much. And if by chance they had, he could always persuade his brother to construct a more portable version. That would have such possibilities. He might do that anyway.
Bloman couldn’t wait to use the cube on Ultra Woman. He often fantasized about reducing her to a living jigsaw puzzle. Even more often, he replayed and savored his moment of triumph over her, relishing that look on her face when he revealed he had destroyed several pieces of Oliver Neal and there would be no saving him. She tried to hide her reaction, but he glimpsed it. The Puzzler had snatched success away from Ultra Woman. The memory warmed him each night.
Ultra Woman would become a jigsaw puzzle one day, and so would anyone else who deserved it. The thought lulled Bloman into a pleasant daydream until the sirens began to wail.
He hopped off the lean mattress and approached the bars. His cellmate tossed over on the top bunk and otherwise ignored the commotion.
Nothing appeared to be happening. Other inmates eyed what they could of the cell block, looked to each other for answers, and exchanged confused shrugs. Soon, though, their attention converged on Bloman as sunshine backlit him.
Stiffening, Bloman turned around.
The concrete wall of his cell was coming apart, dividing into oddly shaped pieces that flew out into the open air and twisted around each other. It was the strangest demolition he had ever witnessed. Carefully controlled chaos.
The phenomenon even woke up his cellmate, who uttered a few whole words in response. All expletives, but words nevertheless.
Bloman backed up against the bars, instinctively clutching them. As the opening widened and fresh air caressed him, he decided to perceive this as an opportunity. With some effort, he swallowed his fear and pried his fingers off the bars.
The floor shifted, warped, and flung him onto his bed. The mattress shot out the open wall in the manner of a flying carpet, and it dumped him in the middle of the empty prison yard.
Bloman brushed himself off as he looked up and prepared to thank his jailbreaker. He gasped and choked on the words.
The man was inside out. He wore his brain like a hat. Everything that was supposed to be inside him floated around him, revealing the monster within.
“Bart Bloman,” this monster said. “Your turn.”
The Inside-Out Man advanced. Several prison guards took aim and fired. The bullets never hit him—never hit anything, as far as Bloman could tell. The grass folded up like a rug and flipped the guards off their feet.
“What the hell do you want with me?” Bloman cried out, scooting away from the monster.
The Inside-Out Man approached. “To make you feel … what I feel. What you did to me.”
“What I—?”
“You destroyed me. Some of me.”
Bloman jumped to his feet and shuffled backward. “Oliver Neal?”
“Yes.”
“No!” Bloman wagged his finger in defiance of reality itself. “I didn’t do this to you. I left you as a puzzle. The scientists or doctors or whoever—they did this to you. Not me.”
“Because of you. Never whole again. You won’t be either.”
Bloman backed up against a wall. Nowhere to turn. He held his hands out, and they split apart.
The bones became the exterior while the skin and muscle bunched within. Bloman cried and begged Ollie to stop. The effect spread up his arm.
“What—what … no!”
“Yes. Forever.”
Bloman squeezed his eyes shut. Then, thin steel bars bent around his torso, whisked him across the field at an impossible speed, and came to such a sudden halt that he nearly became ill.
He collapsed to his knees and studied his hands, which had somehow snapped back together. Looking up, he discovered that the bendable steel bars were in fact arms belonging to a petite masked woman in emerald tights and a scarlet cape.
“You’ve certainly caused a lot of trouble,” Ultra Woman said, giving him something between a smirk and a scowl. Either way, the expression mocked him. “Stay put while we save you.”
*****
While Miranda yanked Bloman out of harm’s way, Alyssa touched down on the far side of the grass field, her breath hitting the back of the volto mask and warming her face. Ken landed beside her.
“You ready?” he asked.
“Kind of have to be now.”
The Inside-Out Man turned around in search of his vanished target. It didn’t take long to locate Bloman. Disconnected eyes swiveled faster than the head; they orbited Ollie’s skull like moons.
The hideous form lumbered toward Bloman while Miranda positioned herself between them. Alyssa thought it was noble of her to guard this man she loathed. As far as Alyssa was concerned, Bloman had signed his own fate. Regardless, someone needed to stop Ollie, and the retired Silver Stranger drew that shortest of straws. Stop the unstoppable, then go back to cleaning teeth for the rest of the afternoon.
I’m insane for even being here.
Alyssa concentrated on Ollie’s brain. It was right there, exposed for all to see. The slippery grey matter kept slithering around his skull, maneuvering around Alyssa’s telepathy. She heard only fragments of thoughts, each as coherent as if it was spoken backward. Ollie couldn’t escape one aspect of her power, though.
A beam of focused psionic energy zapped the scattered pieces of Ollie’s brain, and the Inside-Out Man staggered. His moaning sounded like it had emerged from the depths of the ocean.
Ken waved his arms, and an invisible shovel scooped up the ground beneath Ollie, lifted him along with it, and dumped him over. Dirt spilled through his organs while telekinesis kept him off-balance. Bits of rock and dirt pelted him while Alyssa persisted in her assault on his brain.
Miranda was up next. She employed a trick Carey had taught her several weeks ago, a gimmick the speedsters of his world often used to knock out the more persistent evildoers. She flew in circles around Ollie and kept accelerating, her form melting into a colorful blur. The air funneled up and away from Ollie while his lungs endeavored to absorb whatever it could into his misplaced bloodstream.
Neither Ken’s nor Miranda’s attacks would succeed without Alyssa’s part. Alyssa maintained a firm grip on their opponent’s brain, inflicting the ultimate migraine upon him. That was merely the start, though. She understood that not every part of Ollie Neal was flipped inside out. His psyche remained buried somewhere deep within his jumbled form. She launched her own psyche toward it.
The interior of Ollie’s mind appeared as a dark void. Alyssa floated within it, shorn of her Silver Stranger disguise. No dental scrubs either, just the most thoroughly nondescript clothing, like the last time she had used her powers in this way.
“Hello?” she said. “I know you’re in here.”
Various images entered the void, each a broken shard of some greater whole. They rotated around her, no two orbits alike. They were all Ollie, the innumerable pieces of him, doomed to perpetual separation.
Or so he had convinced himself.
“You don’t have to be this way,” Alyssa said.
His voice echoed from all directions. “Who are you?”
“No one. I’m not important here. But you are.”
“I’m missing.”
Alyssa took a breath, or the mental equivalent of one. “You’re right here. You just have to find yourself.” She reached into the void. “I’ll help you. Take my hand. Find one of your hands and take mine. We’ll start there.”
The various orbits shifted. A disembodied hand appeared before Alyssa, and she stretched farther to grasp it.
“There you go. Now where’s the arm?”
The forearm connected to the hand. Then part of a leg followed, but Ollie seemed to realize his error and switched it out for his upper arm.
“Keep it coming,” Alyssa said. “Bring your shoulder in.”
The shoulder found its way to the arm. Skeletons, muscles, and blood vessels slipped inside. Various organs assumed their positions.
The full torso took shape, and solid legs formed beneath it. The head was slower to come together. Ollie seemed to stall out with just the bottom half, but Alyssa encouraged him to keep going and find the rest. He was so close.
More of the head came together until Ollie appeared mostly intact—except for a cylindrical hole in his forehead. It was the size of a small fist and extended all the way out the back.
“Just a little more,” Alyssa told him. “One more piece to fill.”
“I don’t have it.” His mouth moved normally now, and his voice sounded like an ordinary man’s. He looked like a standard-issue middle-aged, middle-class, aggressively bland adult male, aside from the hole in his head.
Alyssa turned to the surrounding void, searching for the remaining piece. But only a void remained.
“It’s not here,” Ollie said. “I’m missing.”
“It has to be here somewhere,” Alyssa said, still scanning the void. “We just need enough to close the rest of the gap.”
“I’m missing,” he repeated.
His hand snapped out, and a viselike grip squeezed Alyssa’s neck.
He wasn’t really choking her, not literally. But Alyssa couldn’t tell the difference. Her senses convinced her that she couldn’t breathe, that for whatever bizarre reason, her mental avatar required oxygen and was no longer receiving any.
Ollie’s eyes were cold and bitter, filled with an unsettling intensity, no trace of anything resembling a civilized man. Seeing that, Alyssa knew precisely what Bloman had destroyed, and she knew Ollie would never have any interest in rebuilding it.
“I’m sorry.” Alyssa choked out the words as she pried a finger off her neck.
“I’m not.”
Straining, she removed the rest of the hand. “I know.”
Alyssa plunged her fist into the gaping hole in Ollie’s forehead.
*****
The Inside-Out Man toppled. The bones of his shoulder blades impaled the dirt as other organs settled around him. His breastbone caved in, then inflated, while his lungs continued their work.
Alyssa gasped as her mind returned to its proper home. She steadied her legs, surprised she hadn’t toppled too. Ken was holding her arm, supporting her.
The air settled as Miranda slowed down and checked on Alyssa.
“I’m fine.” Breath tasted stale, but Alyssa kept the mask on. “And he’ll live.”
“Kill him!” Bloman shouted from across the field. “You’ve got him, now kill him!”
Miranda turned, her eyes whipping around and landing on Bloman. Alyssa heard how Bloman, even from this distance, perceived the contempt. This tiny super-strong woman wanted to tear him apart. She could have. Nothing could have stopped her.
But Miranda simply turned back to Alyssa, who wished she hadn’t heard the notes of hope in her thoughts. “When he wakes up …”
Alyssa shook her head, and the hope screeched and shattered.
Miranda blew out a weary sigh, then addressed the prison guards who were rushing over.
“We need to get this man detained,” Miranda told them, pointing at the Inside-Out Man. “What are our options?”
While Miranda and Ken consulted with the guards, Alyssa slunk a few steps back. Unconsciously, her fingers reached toward her wrist, but the teleporting watch was long gone. She’d just have to wait. At least she had the mask and fedora.
A pair of guards seized Bloman and took him back into custody. Alyssa considered afflicting him with a parting headache, but, following Miranda’s example, she held back. She heard his thoughts, however. He wanted to call out to Ultra Woman and remind her what a threat he was, what he could do to her and anyone else who got in his way.
For once, though, Bart Bloman had enough sense to keep his mouth shut.
*****
The guards brought Ollie to the most heavily fortified cell in Argus Max’s lowest sub-basement, where specialized vents pumped a sedative into each unit, rendering even the most savage inmate docile. Miranda had never expected it to be used against a guy like Ollie Neal. It seemed inhumane. She wished she was smart enough to come up with a better solution.
Such concerns followed her all the way to Terrific Hall. Alongside Ken and Alyssa, Miranda descended through the skylight window and landed beside the triangular table at the center of the vast room.
Ken and Alyssa both ripped their masks off at once, and Miranda followed their lead.
“Thank you,” Miranda said. “Thank you both. I couldn’t have …” I didn’t.
She failed to save Ollie Neal. They stopped him, but they didn’t save him. He was alive, but his life had ended.
Ken stepped closer, tentatively reaching toward her, his face so full of concern. “Miranda?”
“I tried to reach out to him,” she said, gazing at the smooth immaculate table, guarding her thoughts. “I tried to remind him who he was.”
“Not everyone wants to be saved,” Alyssa said, in such a way that Miranda wondered who exactly she was referring to. “Recently, I—”
Carey dove through the open skylight and angled his jet boots for a gentle landing between the three old friends.
“Great work, gang!” he said. “Couldn’t have done it better myself.”
He didn’t do any better, Miranda recalled. He did worse.
“Thanks,” she said. “Are you okay, though? You seemed, well, rattled.”
A casual wave dismissed the notion. “Picture of health. He whammied me with some sort of mind-control blast. Had to get enough distance to break the circuit. Already gave myself a thorough brain scan—no lingering influence there.”
Miranda opened her mouth as she considered whether to correct him.
Alyssa did not hesitate. “He wasn’t controlling minds.”
Carey lit up like he had spotted a long-lost friend. “Hey, you. I was not expecting to see that trench coat out in the field again.” He pointed at the dental scrubs around her ankles. “Careful, though. I can see your work uniform. Dead giveaway to anyone who’s paying attention. So, does this mean the Silver Stranger is back?”
Alyssa tensed as she gazed into those twinkling, confident eyes. “No. Just helping out.” She took the coat off and flung it on the table. It landed on the mask and hat as she turned to Ken. “Can you give me a lift back? People are about to start wondering where I am.”
“Of course.” Ken slipped his mask on, gave a farewell nod to Carey and Miranda, then rose toward the skylight. Under his power, Alyssa floated up alongside him.
“You sure you’re okay?” Miranda asked.
“Don’t know any other way to be,” Carey replied. “By the by, you pulled off that super-speed vortex like a champ.”
Carey ambled over to the giant computer that lined the back wall, said he wanted to check the police blotter to see if anything else needed their attention.
Miranda still felt like some piece of herself was missing, something that got lost in all the bizarre reshuffling. And she wondered what piece Carey had lost. Or if it was ever there in the first place.
In Two Weeks: The Imperceptible Woman