(THE “S” STANDS FOR HOPE) CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT: TRAINWRECK

Trainwreck had learned a long time ago that television news was rarely worth watching, particularly when the people on the screen were talking about capes. Most of it was speculation dressed up as reporting, with talking heads filling the gaps between whatever footage the stations happened to have available, and he had little reason to care about any of it when there were machines to build and problems that actually required his attention. He had left the television running that afternoon while he worked on one of the smaller components for his latest project, but the mention of Superman was enough to draw his attention back to the screen.

The news anchor was standing outside the Brockton Bay PRT building, speaking about an announcement that had apparently attracted enough attention to warrant live coverage. Superman had developed a machine capable of reversing the mutations plaguing those like him, and the PRT had confirmed that the first successful treatment had already taken place.

Trainwreck stared at the screen, expecting the reporter to reveal that the supposed cure was still untested or that the PRT hadn’t been able to verify the results, but neither came.

Instead, the broadcast showed photographs of a blonde woman standing beside Superman, with the reporter identifying her as Noelle, a former Case 53. She looked completely human, while the people surrounding her appeared equally convinced that whatever the machine had done, it had worked. A second photograph showed her before the treatment, and the difference between the two images was difficult to dismiss as camera tricks or clever editing.

Still, he studied the photograph more closely, searching for anything that might explain what he was seeing. A prosthetic could be hidden with enough preparation, and a photograph could be manipulated in a dozen ways, but the image showed too much of her. Her posture, her hands, the way she stood beside the others, and even the casual expression on her face all looked natural. If there was some trick behind the photograph, he couldn’t see it.

Trainwreck put his tools down.

He had heard rumours before, as had every monstrous cape. Somebody always knew a guy who knew a cape who had supposedly found a way to reverse the process, and every few months another miracle cure would appear somewhere on the internet before disappearing just as quickly. Some promised experimental surgery, others involved miracle Tinkers or healers who demanded ridiculous amounts of money upfront, and every few months another rumour would collapse under even the most basic scrutiny.

He picked up the remote and increased the volume.

“…according to the PRT, Superman has offered to make the technology available to Case 53s who wish to undergo treatment, although the process is currently being conducted at a PRT facility in Brockton Bay under controlled conditions.”

That should have been reassuring, but Trainwreck found himself wondering what the catch was. The PRT wasn’t exactly known for inviting villains into its facilities and handing them opportunities to walk away with their problems solved. Even if they genuinely wanted to help, there were plenty of ways the offer could turn into a containment operation once someone like him walked through the door. He had no intention of volunteering himself as a test subject simply because a news anchor said Superman had invented a miracle cure. If this was a trap, it was an elaborate one, but that didn’t make it any less of a trap.

The report continued, however, and the more information he heard, the harder it became to dismiss the whole thing.

The PRT had apparently examined Noelle after the treatment, and the announcement had only been made after their own people had confirmed that the changes were genuine. Superman was now offering the same treatment to other Case 53s under PRT supervision.

Trainwreck leaned back in his chair.

If the PRT had wanted to lure monstrous capes into a trap, they could have made the offer and trusted desperation to do the rest. Yet they were allowing the machine to be examined and arranging further treatments where other people could watch the process from beginning to end. That was the part Trainwreck couldn’t quite reconcile. The more opportunities they gave people to verify the machine for themselves, the harder it became to believe they were relying on deception.

He turned the television down and looked at the machine spread across his workbench.

He couldn’t remember what his body had looked like before Earth Bet, and whatever memories remained from that part of his life gave him no face to reclaim or old loved ones to miss. There was no photograph tucked away somewhere that could show him what he had been, no childhood friend waiting to tell him that he still looked like himself. 

What he had was the body he lived with now, along with every limitation that had forced him to build machines simply to function. His machines had started as necessities before becoming something he was genuinely good at, but he had never forgotten why he’d needed them in the first place.

If Superman could change that, Trainwreck wanted the chance. He just needed to be certain the offer was genuine before he put himself anywhere near the PRT.

Over the next several hours, he went through every report he could find about the machine, paying particular attention to the details the PRT had released rather than the speculation surrounding them. The technical information was frustratingly incomplete, but it was detailed enough for him to recognise that whoever had built the machine understood what they were doing. He found himself stopping over certain descriptions, rereading them and trying to work out how the different systems might interact. The explanations were simplified for public consumption, yet even those snippets suggested a level of engineering that went well beyond ordinary medical technology.

There were descriptions of biological monitoring systems, containment mechanisms and energy regulation, along with several other components that seemed to have little in common with one another at first glance. He couldn’t work out exactly how the systems interacted, but the more he read, the more convinced he became that each component had been designed to solve a specific part of the same problem.

More importantly, nothing he found contradicted the original report. Noelle had entered the machine as a Case 53 and come out human, while the PRT’s medical personnel had confirmed that the result had held. Now they were preparing to put another Case 53 through the same process.

He still didn’t trust Superman, and he trusted the PRT even less, but the evidence was beginning to outweigh his suspicion. If the machine really worked, he wanted access to it. He could keep looking for reasons to distrust the offer, but eventually he would have to admit that some part of him was already hoping it was real.

Which left him with a more immediate problem: figuring out how to get inside the PRT facility without ending up in a cell. Walking into a building full of heroes and admitting that he wanted to volunteer for their experimental treatment wasn’t exactly the sort of plan that inspired confidence.

Should he just steal the machine…?

Shaking his head, Trainwreck looked back towards the television, where Superman’s face had appeared beside another photograph of Noelle, and found himself wondering what he might look like if he stepped into that machine and came out the other side. The fact that he had no memory of the body he’d possessed before made the prospect easier to consider. Whatever emerged from the machine would be new to him, and for once, that didn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing.