TITAN

Tim sat beside Eric’s bed listening to police sirens. There were three squad cars and a big van that looked like the medical examiner or the crime scene unit. From the window in Eric’s room, Tim saw four officers run inside the hospital with guns drawn. It didn’t take a mastermind to realize someone had found the carnage on the roof.

Tim was perfectly calm. He was satisfied with both how he cleaned things up and what he had done. The men in the helicopter were killers and he knew what they would have done to his son. But more than all of that, Tim hadn’t been seen by a soul on his way downstairs. Additionally, all of the surveillance cameras had been turned off. He could probably thank the kidnappers for that. He was scot-free, insofar as the police were concerned, but whoever came after Eric knew who he was. Four chumps and a helicopter won’t be the end. And Tim wasn’t the man he once was. Eric would have to defend himself.

By some miracle, he can do that now.

Eric would wake up soon. Until then, Tim had to be with him. He had to protect him.

Somehow.

But if those bastards came back, Tim wouldn’t have the element of surprise anymore.

Unless I can get Eric ready.

Nancy appeared in the doorway. Tim could tell she had been crying. Nancy’s memories were as clear as his. Perhaps clearer. While he’d been out revenging wrongs, Nancy had been the caregiver. She took care of Sarah and raised Eric, too. Tim had been there, but not at first. No, first the bastards had needed to pay. But his memories were hazy. It had been so long ago.

“Timmy…” Nancy said. She went to Eric’s bedside and touched his leg.

Tim put his arms around her. She felt small and frail in his grasp, like she might break. “He’s gonna be fine, Nance. Doctors checked him and didn’t find anything. Just a fever. But it’s going away.”

She grabbed Eric’s hand. It shocked her to feel how warm it was. “What about everything else?”

“They didn’t find it.”

Nancy trembled and cried deep scared tears. Mother’s tears. “It was supposed to be over.”

“I thought it was. I have never heard of anything like this.” Tim’s words felt hollow. What he thought was moot. Reality took its hold on the moment. There wasn’t time for thoughts, only reality.

“What do we do?” she asked. But before Tim could answer, Nancy saw his knuckles—split open and cut. She touched his hand.

“You better sit down,” Tim said. He wanted to wait before telling her about the kidnapping. He was surprised by how easily he could push what he’d done out of his mind. I shoved a man into helicopter blades and I’m thinking about dinner… Well, not really, but Tim was more troubled by his capacity for compartmentalization.

I’ve done it before…

Nancy sat in the chair beside Eric’s bed. Tim stood at the foot of the bed and told Nancy what happened. He began with what the doctor told him and ended with the impromptu cleanup on the roof. Throughout all of it, Nancy stared at him behind glassy eyes. Tim couldn’t read her.

The horror of what he’d done was apparent when spoken. Locked in his mind, he could rationalize it and forget it. But the plain facts were fantastic and terrible. He felt great sadness, but it was buried deep. Tim conquered adulthood by projecting strength and will. Sadness and regret were weaknesses he wouldn’t allow.

Nancy looked from Tim to Eric. She felt raw and used up. This road was well traveled and she didn’t know if she could handle another trip. “How could they know and we didn’t?” That was it. No worry about Tim’s welfare. No concern for the lost lives. No doubt about getting away with it, just the question.

Tim didn’t know and said so. But he should have known something like this. Even the book didn’t speak of it. Despite that, Art’s words were with him: “…from God.” And the only rules He followed were His own.

“Dad?”

Eric’s rasp gave them a startle. Tim and Nancy slid around to either side of the bed. They reached for Eric’s hands. His hands were still warm hot and Eric squeezed their hands back. Eric’s eyes fluttered open. They were cloudy, but alive. Eric’s next words sent shivers up Tim and Nancy’s spines. Tim knew Eric told the truth.

“I was in Hell… Sarah was there…”

* * *

Tim had passed out years ago—paralyzed by fever and pain under his father’s gaze. He experienced the same change Eric had endured. He had felt hot and sweaty. Everything had swirled in his vision and he had felt agony from so deep inside it was unreachable.

Tim didn’t feel like he was unconscious. He felt like he was transported. Tim was in a room where he felt nothing and everything all at once. There was a girl in the distance. He remembered thinking that she was beautiful, but it was difficult to tell since he couldn’t get closer. It was very nihilistic until the pretty girl who stood far away opened her mouth and screamed an inhuman, terrible sound. The deep, unyielding mewl of Hell. Tim always remembered it but somehow until the moment Eric spoke, he hadn’t recognized the girl.

It was his daughter.

Something heavy and sad pressed down on his chest and he couldn’t push it away. Tim Steele saw his daughter spewing Hell from her mouth before she had been born. The thought sickened him. Eric’s words caused an avalanche in his brain. Thoughts, feelings, and memories rumbled out of the mountains of his subconscious into the town square of his everyday mind. Tim saw—felt—one thing rising over the dense fog cloaking his memories. A single word, an overpowering presence, that made him shudder.

Evil.

Tim had been touched by Evil. Not lowercase everyday-bad-guy-twirling-his-mustache evil. No. This had been rise-out-of-the-maw-and-drag-you-down-devour-your-soul-vomit-it-back-up Evil, uppercase. He felt it then in that room, that frightening place of nothingness. He had felt it when he saw the girl he didn’t recognize. His bones hummed like he was standing under a transformer. Tim felt it then like he felt it now in the hospital room with his wife and son. And staring into Eric’s eyes, Tim knew his son had felt it too.

“What did you say?”

Eric was still groggy but coming out of it. He didn’t hear his dad. He muttered to himself like he thought he was still dreaming.

Tim seized Eric’s shoulders. “What did you say?”

“Timmy!” Nancy squeezed Tim’s shoulder, but he didn’t feel it.

“Dad? I…” Eric looked at Tim as if he was seeing him for the first time. After a moment, the lights came back on. Eric remembered, but he wanted nothing more than to forget. His face worked to block the tears waiting behind his eyes. They came anyway. “I saw Sarah… it wasn’t her though. She was…”

Sarah’s eyes… the eyes were gone…

Eric squeezed his eyes shut, trying to stem the tears and block that terrible image. Neither stopped. The dead eyes followed him into the dark and saw him still. He was out of that horrible place, but they still watched him. Eric had fled. It touched him and he fled. That thing knew him now.

Tim’s loosened his grip on Eric’s shoulders. Instead he comforted him. But he couldn’t comfort Eric’s fear away. This was one monster in the closet from which Dad couldn’t protect him. Eric would face it alone…

…I fled…

Eric gripped his parents’ hands. The fear that gripped him seemed almost tangible. He gritted his teeth and fought through it. “She was beautiful. She looked like she was supposed to look—how she would have looked if she hadn’t been handicapped.” The words came easier. The pressing dread surrounding him lessened as he inched closer to the world again. “But then she changed. I’ve never seen anything so horrible before. It was like she died right in front of me. There was blood everywhere…”

Nancy stared at Eric with her mouth clamped shut. If she opened it, she would cry so she kept it closed. Tim nodded to himself. Everything was becoming clearer. Whatever curtains had been closed around him flung open and Tim was coming to understand.

It was very simple: something bad was coming.

“I felt like I was someplace else. You know how even a ‘realistic’ dream has a kind of sheen or haze around it and you realize it when you wake up? Whatever that was, it wasn’t a dream… I was somewhere else. I know it. Sarah… that thing… chased me, but there was something else. It seemed to be everywhere and I could feel it. Like when someone stands behind you and you don’t hear them or see them, but you know they’re there. It gives you a chill. It was like that. And I got more than a chill… I felt it inside of myself,” Eric said.

Eric looked up as everything came flooding back at once. “How did I get here? Oh! My car! It’s in Old Town. I… I just fell… What’s happened to me?”

Tim stood up and closed the door and placed a side chair in front of it. When he walked back, Tim crossed his arms and glanced at Nancy. She was close to cracking.

“Dad, what happened to me?”

“I’ll tell you, but you won’t want to believe me. You’ll wish it wasn’t true. But it is. All of it. This is what I know.”

“It begins with love…”

* * *

It begins with love. All God wants from people is for them to love Him. When He created people, they were always good and always did the right thing. They loved God because they didn’t know how to do anything else. But God wants real love. So, to earn real love, God gave people free will.

There was a drawback, though. With free will, people don’t have to love God. That’s the point. If you don’t have to love God, but choose to, it is so much better. That makes it real. The joy of giving and receiving true love was so great that God gave us free will even though it could destroy him.

“Destroy God?” you say. Well, yes.

What could destroy God? Everything you learn in church or in Catholic school says this is impossible. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” isn’t that right? The beginning and the end. When God created free will and gave man a choice of whether or not to love and worship him, he also created Evil; the complete and utter opposite of God. Where God is life and creation, Evil is death and destruction. It’s cliché, but it’s true.

The existence of choice created a force like an anti-God. It’s not really a god like God is, but it is a being and it exists as a separate part of creation, disconnected. The point is: when God gave man the power of choice, He put Himself in jeopardy. God can destroy Evil by eliminating free will, but He won’t do that. He’s a selfish God. He says as much.

What does this have to do with the price of steak in Texas? Loving God is supposed to be hard. You can’t just say “I love God” and put it on your windshield like those Police Association stickers. No. You’re supposed to “Do unto others…” and that sort of thing.

Evil tempts you. It’s not hard to choose against God. Because if you do, you can do anything. Cheat, steal, murder, gorge yourself, booze it up, whatever. Evil is the ultimate expression of selfishness. It will give you anything you want to reach its goal and come into this world. Then it will destroy God. Then it will destroy us.

But God’s not stupid. He gave us the gifts of conscience and reason to know right from wrong. But Evil is powerful. There are terrible, awful things that prey on the weak and the strong alike. Demons, monsters, and, of course… people. Demons and devils are mostly made of Evil, but people can always choose. And the ones that choose Evil put devils to shame any day of the week. The point is that it’s hard to choose God with a monster’s claws at your throat.

That’s why God gave us Titan.

Regular Joes can resist Evil and sometimes they do. Some die doing it. But God didn’t think people should have to die by the hands of horrible things. Being good and choosing to love God on a daily basis while driving the Beltway home every night is hard enough, let alone with monsters threatening and tempting you. Good people need protecting. Not everyone can be a hero.

But Titan is.

He has more power than a normal man. I guess you could say that Titan is God’s way of playing dirty. Titan has existed for a long time, always the first born child. Like your grandfather. Like me…

…like Sarah.

I learned who I was when I was ten. Titan raises and trains his replacement. He told me what I just told you, but I learned throughout my life. I know exactly what you’re feeling. The fever, the stomach pains, the aching in your bones… I wish you had told us…

You’ll know more in time. It will come to you in dreams, visions, and even memories that don’t belong to you. It’s different for everyone, though, I didn’t have many.

You might be wondering about not being our first born. I don’t know why this happened. Your grandfather was a religious man and he always said anything was possible through God. I don’t know. But after World War II, when the U.S. uncovered all of that information about Hitler being obsessed with the occult, they learned what he knew. Of course, no one really believed in it except for a few crackpots.

Stories about Titan surfaced during the war. They eventually traced it back to your grandfather. They knew they couldn’t just approach him. They never came after me, specifically. I don’t think they understood how Titan worked until later. They did get to me eventually, though…

Dad had been a military man. He landed at Normandy on D-Day. After I graduated high school, I joined the Air Force. Me and your mom got married. A little while later, the service sent me to Alaska. An easy assignment, right? Nice weather, too. Maybe they figured I could take it since I grew up in Buffalo.

Your mom and I always wanted a big family. Your mom came from one and mine wasn’t as big as hers, but kids were always in the picture. Of course, I knew that I had to have at least one. It sounds cold and calculated, but it’s true. We got pregnant with Sarah not long after we moved into the apartment off base. Your mom’s doctor was from the base, a recently transferred captain named Frank Smithe. He was very diligent about keeping your mom healthy, regular checkups and all that.

I want you to understand why we lied to you about Sarah. It doesn’t change a thing and she’s still gone. But believe me when I say this, we wanted to separate you from all of it. You would be the first Steele in a long time to be free. Sarah was the first born, so when she got… when she was made sick, I thought Titan was gone. And after what happened, it seemed just as well.

When your mom went into labor, I got a call from my sergeant about a design problem with one of the communication rooms I worked on. It was urgent and I had to be there. Your mom went to the hospital with a friend of ours, Kevin, who lived across the hall. When I got to the node, there was no problem. I called my sergeant and he said the order came through channels and that he’d look into it. Then he told me: “Get your ass to the hospital, jerkoff. Your wife’s about ready to pop.”

When we got to the hospital, there were a lot of MPs around. At least they looked like MPs. Kevin told me that your mom needed a C-section. I was worried. They usually only do that when there’s a problem. When I tried to see your mom, the MPs stopped me.

I told them, “You better get the fuck out of my way. My wife’s having a kid back there.”

I should have known something was wrong when the shithead smiled at me, “You’re not allowed back there, son. Take a seat.”

If I had been paying attention, I would’ve noticed that my bones were humming. It’s a kind of sense Titans have that warns them of danger or guides them. But I was nervous so I thought that was it. I just assumed there was a prisoner or something like that back on the wing. In retrospect, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to put a prisoner on the baby ward, but I was about to be a dad. If you told me the sky was orange, I probably would have believed you.

I went into the bathroom to cool down. I splashed water on my face. I washed my hands probably ten times and just stared at myself in the mirror.

That’s when I heard your mother.

Keep in mind, I was a whole wing away, so a part of me thinks that I was concentrating and heard her in my head. However it happened, I heard it and I knew she was in danger. I shot out of that bathroom like a bullet, taking the door right off its hinges.

I ran down the hall and the MPs tried to stop me. I broke their fuckin’ arms. Clean breaks, I’d guess. I knew they had guns and one good arm each, but I didn’t care… I only thought about your mom.

Three MPs guarded a steel reinforced door. If I had been thinking straight, I might have wondered why your mom was behind a security door to have a baby. I mean, it was at least three-inches thick with a steel bar across. But it was just another obstacle in my way.

I changed into Titan and didn’t care who saw me. Titan’s power comes from elements inside your bones like liquid metal. But it’s not just metal. It’s made of all kinds of substances that give you strength, quickness, and other abilities. It’s like having the red, molten core of the Earth inside of you. It comes out through your skin and weaves around you like fabric… a really malleable, tough fabric.

Titan wrapped around my arms in thick sheets and I slammed two of the MPs against each other like they were children. I didn’t know my own strength. I never let myself off the leash like that.

The other guard drew his gun and shot me, point-blank. I didn’t have my whole armor on. It stopped me in my tracks and hurt so bad, but Titan transforms you from the inside out. Metal wraps around your bones and organs both to protect and strengthen them. The bullet glanced off a rib and came out my side. Or so I learned later. All the shot did was made me mad. I used him to open the door. By the time I brought the door down with that bastard’s body, he felt like a sock filled with pulp and rocks.

When I got inside, I was fully Titan. The suit covers your whole body and your head like a mask. I had a big fat “T” on my chest like an extra layer of armor. I needed it. Two MPs inside shot me. They had .50 caliber pistols and since I wasn’t really prepared, they knocked me back. I threw “T” shaped spikes at them, which impaled them on the wall.

Your mom was on the hospital bed, drugged. But adrenaline kept her awake long enough to tell me Sarah was in the next room. Dr. Smithe had taken her. Your mom said something about tools, but she wasn’t making sense. I found out what she was talking about soon enough.

This is going to be hard to hear.

It’s about Sarah, but it’s also about me. We can get into some of the more pertinent details later, but this is what happened: When I entered, I saw a big window. I thought I was in that room from all the cop shows, the uh, you know… the observation room looking in on the interrogation room. It was like that. And it must have been sound proof because three men, in what looked like space suits, didn’t seem to expect me. They were too busy… too busy with your sister. She was… I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Okay. She was dangling upside down from a series of tubes with needles on them. The biggest one was… in her back. In her spine, I guess. I couldn’t hear her, but I saw that she was screaming. Her whole body was bright red. The tubes seemed to be draining the life out of her…

Titan can make weapons with the liquid metal that comes from inside. Knives, swords, axes, you name it. Can’t make guns or anything too complicated, at least I couldn’t. But I… and I’m not sure why exactly… I made a sickle. And a double-sided axe. I crashed through the window, aimed away from Sarah, and scared the hell out of those monsters…

I killed them, Eric.

I killed them like I had never killed anyone before. Without remorse. Without restraint. They were scientists or doctors, I guess, but I didn’t care. The closest doctor got a blade where his face was supposed to be. As he fell, I threw the axe at another doctor, planting it in the back of his head as he tried to run.

The last one fought back. It was Dr. Smithe. He pulled out a circular saw, like what they use to open skulls, and made a move for Sarah. I came down with my arm and sliced his hand off. The saw dropped and snapped around on the floor like an injured bee. Dr. Smithe stopped and looked down at his arm, draining blood. He screamed like an animal and rushed me. I stabbed him with a long blade jutting from the top of my fist. He didn’t give me anymore trouble.

There I was, surrounded by bodies and blood, confronted with my daughter hanging from the ceiling by needles and tubes. I held her as gently as I could and removed the needles. She screamed after each one was taken out. Sarah was a mess of blood and caked raw Titan elements. That’s what they were doing, Son. Taking it from her. Stealing Titan right out of her bones, only minutes old, sucking her life out of her.

I weaved light netting and cradled her inside it. I went back to the other room and brought Sarah to your mother. She was out, but I laid Sarah with her. I looked up just in time to see Kevin appear in the door. He was white as a ghost with sweat pourin’ off him. I dropped the blood covered mask to show him my face. His eyes went wide and he said, “Jesus, Timmy, you?”

Titan had become an urban myth in Alaska. I had been caught with photos a few times. The newspapers had written about me. Remember those? The military had posted warnings about me… not the black ops guys, of course, but regular Air Force. I felt numb. Everything was hazy. I had just killed close to ten people. But the only thing I felt was hate. It wrapped around me... felt good. I realized the suit was feeding it but didn’t care. That only made me happier. Hate would help me.

I told Kevin to get the car and bring it around. I held Sarah in one arm and slung your mother over my other shoulder. I took them out to the car and Kevin started to scoot over for me to drive, but I told him to go ahead. I had to clean up. He looked really worried, but he didn’t argue. He drove your mother and Sarah to the nearest public hospital.

I went back inside, became Titan again, and found the receptionist cowering behind her desk. She cried when she saw me and… and I liked it. It came over me like a cool wind. I enjoyed her fear. I reached for her and grabbed her by her neck. She screamed and begged not to be killed.

For the briefest of moments, I wanted to do it. I didn’t think she had anything to do with what just happened, but killing her would have felt good. I knew it deep inside. But I didn’t do it. I asked her where those men came from. She didn’t know. I set her down and asked her to call my sergeant and tell him what had happened and to meet me at the nearby hospital. I told her to leave out the part about my alter ego and forget that it ever happened. If she didn’t, I’d find her and kill her. I said those words… but now it feels like it was someone else. I sometimes think it was.

My memory fails me after that… it was a blur. The next thing I knew I was in a hospital with your mom. The doctors told us that Sarah’s injuries left her with a terminal condition. That, you know… cerebral palsy. Among other things. Those bastards crippled her and put her in a chair for the rest of her life… the doctors didn’t think she’d live past the week, but she did. And another week. It got to be a badge of honor. When your mom would go get Sarah out of bed in the mornings, she would remind her that she proved the doctors wrong another day. Your mom did that every day for sixteen years after that.

What just happened to you happens to every person who becomes Titan at the exact moment of their birth at the age of maturity. Some generations became Titan at twelve. As far back as I know, it’s been eighteen.

It feels like your insides are on fire. Deep pain in your bones. It’s Titan asserting itself in your body, strengthening your bones, expanding your muscles, enhancing your nervous system, and enriching your body with minerals and vitamins. It just happened, so you’re still weak… but I bet you could lift a car right now if you tried.

Eric, you’re Titan now.

* * *

Eric stared at Tim and occasionally over at Nancy with dull eyes. His skin looked sour and his hands clutched the bedspread. Disbelief and confusion worked their way into every inch of him. But one small part of him, the part that remembered the awful pain, did believe. Deep down he knew it was true. But fear seeded denial into his mind. Tiny weeds sprouted but couldn’t overwhelm the sliver of grassy belief.

“What?” It was all Eric could manage. His whole world was on its ear. And the only explanation offered was a Marvel origin story.

Tim smiled. It felt good after spilling his guts. He didn’t expect Eric to react any differently than he had. “I know it’s hard. It sounds stupid and silly. But you’ll know it soon enough.”

“Everything about Sarah… it was a lie?”

Nancy shook her head. “Only how we told you she had gotten sick. You were a little kid. Were we supposed to tell you someone made her that way? We couldn’t.”

“Sarah was the last bit of that life left. We just wanted you away from it. It’s a terrible story and I wish you didn’t have to hear it…” Tim said.

“Okay… assuming that it’s true, what about you?” Eric said to Tim. “Aren’t you Titan?”

Tim’s face was dark. He gulped and looked at the floor. He never did that. Tim Steele was the boldest, loudest, most willful man Eric knew. Now he looked like a scolded child.

“I’m not. Not anymore.”

“Convenient,” Eric said.

“I lost it.” Tim raised his eyes. The words came hard and bitter. “One night, it was just gone… it wouldn’t work anymore. I’m regular joe.”

Eric was still reluctant to believe, but that tiny sliver of grass was expanding. It was beginning to yank the weeds out by the roots, “Why?”

“I wasn’t a champion anymore. Just a killer…” Tim said.

“Timmy…” Nancy started to say something, but thought better of it. Eric wasn’t sure he believed the story, but he was positive his dad did. Tim wasn’t crazy or a liar. Eric’s fear grew—not sowing seeds of denial any longer, but fear of the truth. Fear that the world Eric thought he knew was a lie. Fear that he really was Titan and that very soon he would be responsible for something greater than himself.

But most of all, Eric feared that if all of it was true, then the room existed. And if it did, then, the thing that wore his sister’s face, drooling blood, was waiting for him.