The rain is coming down so hot and heavy that I feel like the Great Cow of the Heavens is pissing on me. Don’t ask me how I know what having a cow pissing on me feels like. Or do … it happened during a difficult calving, but …hey, I offered to help.

Anyway, I’m not in the rain right now and no water is actually dripping on me. Angel Grace is lying across my chest, dreaming about her husband. In a way, I hate being so safe that married women think they can join me in bed and stay true to their vows. Sad fact is they can and I am safe. What a fucked up world I live in.
Angel is broken-down, spent the last vapors in the tank tired. She couldn’t transport an ant across the room; much less evacuate another few refugees from this unforgiving monsoon.
We’ve been at it for four days. Angel came to get me Christmas day and the rains haven’t let up yet. Mudslides have buried thousands of homes, burying tens of thousands of Malaysians and making all kinds of rescue work hell. So, Utopia steps in and they call me. More to the point, the send Angel to get me at my families Christmas gathering, damn them.
She’s young and new to the work. She keeps at it and she’s going to burn out. The world is full of suffering and if you don’t realize doing what you can is all that you can do, you can beat yourself up into a buttery-taint nightmare. I look after her now, as much as I can. I look after most of them now, humans and novas. Its getting eerie how they all looked to me when I showed up, stepping from frigid Boston to steamy ass-end of the world God-I-forget where ever I am. Somehow the stunt I pulled off in Malawi has gotten around. I don’t begrudge the humans for talking about it. I opened their minds and held them open for two days while we worked miracles keeping and Ebola outbreak form going epidemic. The problem with Miracle-Workers is that everyone is waiting on the next miracle, and I’m just not that guy. Frankly, I don’t care what they want from me. I know what they need … to keep people alive beyond the next few terrifying seconds and to plug another gap in the steaming corpse of the world.
God, but that’s depressing.
I need to get home, see some friends, and hang out a bit without doing anything. Live a little.

Angel stirs so I reach into her biochemistry and knock her out for another good four hours. No reason worth dying for is going to come around in the next few, despite what any of the uninformed might believe.
I step out into the wall of water and see Order moving about. The guy’s and administrative whiz, and keeps the supplies flying in the tiny gaps of good weather we are having. He gives me a friendly nod and I am sure he is wondering for the thousandth time why I don’t join the Project. He doesn’t get it that I really like saying “No” and “Not today” and I don’t know if he ever will. At least he never mocks me about not getting paid.
I walk around the camp. Computer keeps me updated with the various situations I’ve tasked him to. The people all greet me and smile. You would never guess they have just lost everything they own, and in a few cases, even loved ones. Yeah, a bit of that is me too. I’ve tweaked them, boosting their immune systems and cleansing most of the impurities out of their bodies. Maybe tonight, when they find it difficult to fall asleep, they’ll start finding it curious, but right now, they’re happy.

I go to the morgue. I had to pull Angel out of here. A train full of people got buried alive in here and no one knew about it for sixteen hours. The Uppies dug out who they could. Over a hundred dead and only eight survivors. I’ve worked with the eight. They were the most draining, because I needed to touch their minds as well. No one needs to go through life remembering being alive while the mother underneath you suffocated. Usually I ask, but right then, there wasn’t the time. We, save who we can, patch people up the best way we know how, and move on.
Today its mudslides and torrential rains, tomorrow it will be an earthquake and if it’s Wednesday then it must be a war zone. It’s getting to the point that I know were I am by the faces I see around me. There isn’t a Red Cross/Crescent medical specialist I’m not on a first name basis with and the same goes with Doctor’ Without Borders and Argus International. If I ever decide to collect on all those free drinks I’ve been offered over the years … who am I kidding? I could down a distillery and it would make a dent. Still, they notice. They know me almost as well as my closest friends growing up ever did. The see me more often now than any family does. I’ve bled with them, dodged bullets and bolts with them, and we’ve held each other when the blood gets too much and we have to scream and cry in order to stay sane.

I leave the morgue and wander back out into the rain. Eating sounds good right now. Order comes up and tells me the weather is going to break. There’s also been a refinery explosion down south in Indonesia and do I …
I look at him like he’s offering me a bowl of ice cream at the North Pole.
“I’ll pass on that one, Captain,” I tell him as I keep from screaming at him how pointless this feels. He nods in his stoic and off-camera heroic manner. He’s a good guy trying to make the world a better place and quietly I wish him luck.
I get some paste and a wok full of rice from the kitchen and head back to Angel. She murmurs something and I catch the name “Charles” … her human husband. I settle in next to her and start shoveling in the grub. Thankfully someone forgot to flavor the paste so it only tastes like cardboard. I can live with that. The rice is good which is a plus.
I think about her husband and think that he would break down and vomit if he saw what his wife did down here. He’s like an accountant in Germany and is still expecting her to give him children, which is a cruel joke indeed. I don’t have the heart to tell her and once again I turn my mind to the problems of novas and sterility. If only I had the time … and the resources.
I finish the rice and task Computer to keep me updated on the sterility issue. I snuggle down next to Angel and try to catch a few minutes of shut-eye myself.

I awake with a start. Its an explosion ripping across the compound. I feel them coming and I grab Angel and drag her out of bed.
"You've got to get out of her!" I scream at her confused face.
"Elites! Get Order and get out of here!
Her eyes snap alert.
"What about you?"
"I'm not a Utopian!" I lie. This is a hospital and I have no intention of leaving. She nods in semi-belief and we are running out of the tent. Captain Order is coming toward us and the he can't hide the shock and dismay on his face when he sees us ... together. The reality that we are both fully clothed escapes him.
I turn to Angle's Grace.
"Get him out of here. I'll do what I can."
She nods, but Captain shakes his head.
"No way. There a hundred and twe ..."
Angel's Warp envelops the two of them and they're gone.
Yeah ... now there are a hundred and twenty unarmed aid works and over four thousand refugees ... and me.
The Speedster finds me first. He cuts a diamond pattern around me and is gone. I have no idea what he looks like. People are screaming and Maurice comes running up. He wants to say something, but I cut him off.
"Get everyone under some cover, get away from the hospital and medical supplies, and HIDE Maurice ... hide."
My eyes brook no argument. He nods and begins yelling out instruction in his accented French-African voice. People, startled awake by the attack, but without the benefit of nova reflexes, are only starting to react.
On come the elites. People are screaming. Some are dying now ... for no good reason. The first one comes leaping out of the rain and darkness. He lands on me, slamming me into the mud while he raises up a hand to strike at me with ... a hand with eight-inch long razors replacing the last digit of each finger.
"I found one," he screams out gleefully.
Found one? That isn't good.
I feel the earth move beneath me. Someone very large is coming.
Razor ... I'm going to call Mr. Fingers here Razor ... picks me up and I wish I was lying back down. A huge mockery of a man is coming my way ... I'll call him Huge. Huge isn't the problem, really. Its the body he is holding in his arms is. The emotion etched across his face is. She's dead and he's in agony. She's dead and I already know what's going to happen ... and suddenly I wouldn't be my Father for anything in the world.
Huge walks up and extends the body to me.
"Fix her," he rumbles.
I look at her. She's dead all right. Very dead.
"I can't. She's dead ... way beyond my ability now," and he hits me. Bad answer.
My face shatters. I lose eight teeth and blood turns my scream into a gurgle. My whole upper torso is a mangle of broken bones and twisted muscles. Razor impales me on a hand and shoves me back toward Huge. By the time I land on my knees before him I'm fully healed.
"Fix her," he bawls.
"Put her down," I respond. Now all I can do is stall for time and hope to keep them fixated on me. I look down at the woman and see the worst of her wounds. Something cooked her flesh from the inside. The chest wound is nasty and probably fatal, but the gaping hole in her left cranium was what killed her. Her quantum signature and fading biosigns are totally separated ... there's nothing for me to work with. Still, I place my hands over the two worst wounds and will the Quantum to do something ... anything. There is no connection. My QE knows this.
I look up at Huge.
"She's dead. There's nothing I can do."
"No," he whimpers. "No ... you will make her right."
And I sort of lose it. I stand up and start yelling at him. Its not really his fault, but Huge becomes the focus of my rage and frustrations over all of this insanity.
"No, you fucknut! She's dead. You waltzed her out onto a battlefield and someone killed her! What in the hell do you think happens out there ... people die! Enough people die and your number comes up to. Her number came up and there's nothing I can do to change that!"
I emphasize the last points by beating my fist against his sternum. Huge looks down at me, bewildered.
Then he hits me. He hits me really hard. He hits my so hard my pain receptors actually shut down ... for which I'm grateful.
I'm flying through the air ... more tumbling than flying. One of the girls up in the sky ... did I forget the flying elites hovering over the camp? ... well, she catches me and spins me around and now I go slamming into the ground with more bone-crushing force. If I wasn't already beyond pain I'm sure it would hurt ... a lot. I imagine they practice maneuvers like that were ever they come from.
Bones are setting themselves and I'm pushing myself out of the mud when the pain receptors come back on line, damn them. I start crying it hurts so much. I'm crying, so I don't feel Huge come up behind me and pick me up, one hand wrapped around my head and neck ... really big hands. This guy wouldn't just palm the basketball, or the net ... he could palm the whole backboard ... really big hands.
He spins me around so we are looking face to face. The rain coming down hides the fact that we are both crying ... and he grabs my arm ... and he pulls it out of its socket ... wrenching it free.
I'm really screaming now. That kind of pain is really hard to describe. Something inside of me kicks in and I feel every cell in my body go on overdrive. Tendrils of flesh and bone race after the fountaining blood, creating a new arm whole-cloth within seconds. My old arm decays and turns to a blackened mush in Huge's hand while he looks on stupefied. I think he was planning to beat me to death with it. I'm just glad to have an arm back.
Huge tosses me away and screams up at the heavens. As I get up, Speedster comes by and grabs me. He's running me at something, but he's made a mistake. He's let me grab hold of him. I tap into over a hundred pleasure centers throughout hid body and I set them all off at once. I hear its a hell of a way to go and its more pleasure than he can take. The brain shuts down and now we're flying. I twist ever so slightly and feel the impact of us hitting the water truck through his body.
I really should heal him, but I don't give a fuck right now. I start running back toward Huge. He's the eye in this storm and I've got to keep him focussed on me. Razor gets in the way and he starts babbling about how dead he's going to make me.
Whatever, asshole. I'm busy here, in case you missed it.
He starts carving me up. He's way faster than me. My dodge is pathetic and he's shredding my clothes. Together, we realize that I'm healing as fast as he can carve me. I'm shocked and he's annoyed. He laughs and goes to decapitate me. Having my vertebrae separate like that is very, very disturbing, but as it turns out, not fatal. I kick him in the nuts. It has no real effect, but it does fuel his frustrations and he flings me away. It would have been nicer if he hadn't done it by driving his fingers into my lungs first.
I roll over close to Huge once more and am standing when Maurice runs to my side. Damn him, what part of hide didn't he understand. Huge grabs Maurice and I grab for Huge. Razor grabs my arms and pins them to my back.

Maurice was born in Niger. He fled when he was a child, orphaned, during that countries civil war. He educated himself, became a pediatrician, and has a wife and two little girls in Dakar. He's one of the good guys.
Huge is going to kill him and I'm sick of this. So damn sick of this. I can't take it anymore.
Huge is holding a struggling Maurice out at arms length. He's yelling at Maurice, but I don't really care what he's saying. All I can see is his arm and the muscles getting ready to crush Maurice's skull like an egg.
I see the arm. I know the arm. I know how it works, how it could be better ... and how to make it stop. I've never tapped into that last bit before now. I've never really wanted to dwell on how cells die, how biosystems fail ... on just how easy it is for things to die. Now I do.
I feel the Quantum answer my needs, coursing down new pathways in an Bioentropic storm through Huge's arm. Flesh blackens and dies instantaneously. Maurice falls away as muscles are devoured from within and tendons snap and die. The bone cracks and blackens and Huge is screaming. I can't really grasp what I've just done.
Razor throws me to the ground and dances away. The Flyer up above is building up one hell of a bolt to incinerate me with. I figure this is finally it ... and I can't say that I'm all that afraid. I want to get away from all of this.

The storm comes alive and slams Flyer into the ground. Its raining Utopians. Angel Grace is at my side, propping me up.
"We're back," she whispers to me in sympathy. "We came back."
Yeah ... I was counting on that, but not that it would take so long.
I try to stand up. A Utopian who looks too much like Julie is standing watch over both of us and for a second I think I might be dead. Its not Julie and I'm still alive and I'm standing up.

Its all changed. I broke my vow. I've harmed another with malice of forethought. I'm just like them now, and I'm crying.
I've been doing this too long. Next time I'll kill someone, I just know it, and then there really be no difference.
I want to go home. I want my innocence back. I want helping people to be all there is and I don't want to live in this world anymore.
Angel Grace holds me and tries to comfort me as her companion looks on embarrassed.
"It will be okay," she says, pampering me. I wish she wasn't lying.