The Rising Dawn, # 31— "A Fuse"

The Sentinels along with the Dawn Society were no longer taking any chances, caught in a pincer between The Wulf and the Magister. Even after reeling from the confrontation of both these parties, Baron Marks (The Track) had managed to capture a valued psyker straying from Freedom Tower.

This outlier, called Fusion, had the ability to be the exact reciprocal to another human being in exact likeness to the human he was interacting with. In other words, if you were yin, he was yang, and vice versa. He would become the ultimate compliment to whomsoever you were as a person.

His ability was prized as a therapist, for those seeking balance in their lives. As a reciprocal, fools were answered with a foolishness in the other direction, athletes received a brain, and brains received an athlete. Depressives received bushy-tailed cheer, reckless people received a man with conservative values.

It didn’t sound like much, but Finlay Marsh, AKA Fusion, had his place in the Dawn Society, and in the hands of General Derrick Wulfgang, a high-ranking officer in the shadow-government organization simply called The Shop, he was simply a bloodmeal. Feasibly, he was better off here than in the hands of The Magister, who recently murdered several Outliers to send a message to the Sentinels and the Rising Dawn Society.

Baron Marks, The Track, had a history of both intrigue and rivalry with the Magister’s main operative, The Ice. With the Shop’s formula, he had gotten the edge on her, until recently. Combined with her Gift (abnormality), the drug called Drive had turned her into what Wulfgang would call an ‘ubermensch’. He could no longer face her alone and win.

But The Track had a different job than The Ice, and that was finding and capturing prey alive. Moreover, Marks was the leader of the New Marines, the super-soldiers molded by the Shop. The Ice didn’t command, train, or galvanize troops; she was The Ice. Leesha Stellar, was her name.

Fusion promised to be an excellent source of Outlier blood, which was interminably in short supply. What the Magister and his boy Madhouse had done was reckless— provoking Gallant and squandering replenishable blood out of spite.

Those organs, though, would command high prices.

“So you’re the Fuse,” said Baron.

“Cool name, bro,” said Fusion,  “‘Fusion’ is a bit nineteen-eighties.”

“I can see it now. Bam. That’s the reciprocal,” The Track laughed in spite of himself, “so your power is to be my wingman? Am I getting it right?”

“I’m your huckleberry,” said Fusion, and then sang, “I can be your bodyguard! I can be your long lost pal!...”

The Track kept laughing.

Then he punched Fusion, but not with all his might. To do so would cause more damage than was necessary, and the Fuse would have trouble talking with a shattered jaw.

Fusion cried out in dismay. “Wha! What was that for!?”

“I wanted to see you be my yang to my proverbial yin, after— well, punching you in the face.”

Fusion trembled, “Please. Don’t. I have a low pain tolerance. I’ll tell you anything you want.”

“Cowering. Interesting. Yes, I can see how that’s a fuse.”

“Look, I’m willing to believe it’s just a quirk. Just let me go. I’m a good therapist.”

“I wanna see more fusion.”

Fusion swallowed.

“My name is Baron Marks,” said Fusion, mirroring Baron’s deportment, “I am a scholar and philanthropist, rescuing orphans from human trafficking rings domestically and across the globe.”

“Interesting,” said Baron Marks, “Am I still swole as f*%k?”

Fusion imitated Baron’s voice patterns and cadence. “I still check myself out in the mirror every day of my life, and I’m shared by five beautiful women, who insist that five is the limit. Most of my fighting is having the money to pay the right people to get those children to safety.”

“If I needed to rescue someone else’s brats, I could do it myself.”

It was as though Baron was talking to himself.

“Well, running an orphanage is expensive. So your wives handle donations to your program, and I use my military training to wage war on human traffickers in Rook City and elsewhere.”

“How so?”

“You’ve received the secret training necessary to combat them as though they were domestic terrorists.”

“Well I’ll be. You know, I’m sorry I hit you. I’m sort of a scientist myself, when you get right down to it.”

“Look, man. I’m you. When you went in this direction, you chose soft women with nice ta tas, swooning over how much you love children.”

“And the Ice?”

“The Ice is a killer. She knows what she did to you. You’re in the belly of a tiger.”

Marks perspired. “Fusion, huh!?” and then he punched Finlay Marsh again, giving matching black eyes.

“I-I-I’m only d-o-oing what you told me,” said Finlay, in tears.

“You did good. It was about time I had a heart to heart with myself.”

Forget what happened between him and The Ice. A philanthropist? An academic? Five wives sounded tender, though. It was certainly better than dealing with the fall-out from the disasters that befell Baron Marks throughout his life. 

Baron now placed his ambitions with the Wulf: a world where patriots were rewarded with the next stage in evolution, and a nation that chose wisely to constrain the power of Outliers until the government could get Evolution under control. Wulf wanted an ubermensch, and he along with many suits were not willing to sit idly by while Nature bestowed Evolution with cruel random selection. The Track had tasted the Shop’s version of the Drive, called Lot 17, and he wanted more enhancements, better formula. Why watch the world evolve without him?

The Track hadn’t survived this long to be thinned with the herd. The Wulf and Company would take Evolution into their own hands.

Baron would be taken to the next level.