THE DAMAGE DONE

By Desmond Reddick

It all happened in seconds, but Cherry remembered every horrific iota of time as if the whole thing took a lifetime.

The air around her rippled and was drawn toward her before exploding outward in a red flash. The locker doors melted instantly and the people closest to her were atomized. Those were the lucky ones. They died probably before even hearing the massive KRA-KOOM that would follow.

Cherry remembers watching the wave of explosive heat flow across the hall and slam into Becky and her friends, most of who had begun to turn towards the disturbance. She remembered seeing Becky’s eyes shrivel into their sockets before her face and the flesh underneath flaked away into ash. The same happened to her friends: charred skeletons on the buckled and liquefied linoleum floor.

The crumbling could be heard over the still booming sound of the explosion, and without any further notice, the high school collapsed into itself, burying Cherry under tons of super-heated rubble.

Her screams, muffled in a tomb of her own making, would continue unheard until unconsciousness took her.

“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

“Calmez vous, s’il vous plaît!”

Sweating and panting, Cherry looked across the room at the harsh face staring back at her. Then, she remembered. She was at Madame Rouge’s School for Girls, but things looked more like a hospital from where she lay.

The dream replayed her morning for her in clear and vivid detail. Or was it yesterday morning? There were no windows where she lay, so it was impossible to tell. She could see, however, that she was bound to the hospital bed with leather straps around her wrists.

Cherry yanked on her restraints and tried to sit up, but her arms were pulled tight. She didn’t have the room to sit up. Her panic increased.

“This will calm you, chère,” Madame Rouge said calmly as an incredibly handsome man in a white lab coat injected Cherry with something. “It is a sedative,” she said, her French accent pouring through her words.

“Wha–“ Cherry stuttered. “Why? Why are you doing this?”

“We can’t ‘ave you blowing up this school, chère. I work too ‘ard for someone to ruin it. The sedative will not put you to sleep this time; it will only calm your nerves.”

“What is this place?” Cherry asked after taking a few slow breaths.

“This is your new school, and I am your new ‘eadmistress: Madame Rouge. It is ‘ere you will learn some self-respect, and, most importantly, where your powers will develop. You have a gift, Cherry. A gift that will become very useful.”

“This is useless!”

Robotman’s metallic voice boomed through the observatory of Premiani Manor, dying in the high ceilinged room. The mansion had served as headquarters of the Doom Patrol for some time, predating several of the current members. Chief bought it partially due to its incredible size and utilitarian potential, but mostly for its capacity for the weird.

The mansion never managed to keep sane occupants for very long, and those driven insane inside its walls did not stay alive for very long if they did not leave. Dr. Niles Caulder saw the house in the same way as he saw everyone else he surrounded himself with: as a misfit. Naturally, it was the perfect place to set up shop. And, strangely enough, the members of Doom Patrol were never harmed by the building, though they were often unnerved by it.

The observatory offered the clearest view of Midway City with its open, convex windowed wall. The “weirdness” experienced in other parts of the huge mansion was dampened here since it was essentially an add-on built by Caulder and Robotman decades ago. It was also the room that housed the computer Caulder had spent a lifetime creating.

He called it “Legacy.” It, for good or ill, was the world’s greatest resource for the “weird.” But right now, it had nothing for them.

“Why are we waiting around?” Robotman continued his verbal rampage of frustration.

“We have no solid leads, Cliff. That’s why,” Chief said calmly, though also feeling the frustration of his long-time friend and ally. “What Mento was able to see were likely only flashes of what was to happen. Clearly he saw the explosion that we were too late to stop. ‘A face that changes at will’ fits with the nurse’s story and surveillance footage that a man who looked like her doctor wheeled her out of the hospital. That’s all.”

“Who do we know who can change their face?” Larry Trainor said. He sat in a comfortable chair but leaned over to his left naturally. The pain had been much worse than usual lately. Chief offered him medications to keep it at bay, but, after his previous experiences with treatment, he was averse to treating his cerebral palsy at all.

“We all know who it is,” Robotman said to both men, but he was looking at Chief while he spoke.

“We have no proof, Cliff.”

“It does point to her, Chief. Think about it: troubled girl with devastating power, shapeshifting headmistress of a girl’s school, the Baron’s power signature cloaking technology. It has to be Madame Rouge.”

The Chief was silent as he gazed out the window of the observatory out over Midway City.

“I don’t just want to rush in but we’ve go to, Chief,” Robotman pleaded. “We know where she is and right now, maybe they don’t know we know.”

The Chief remained silent looking out over the city for another moment.

“It is decided, then,” he said turning to the men. “Round up Steve and Rita.”

Robotman turned and walked to the door of the observatory as Larry pushed himself to his feet.

“Cliff!” Chief blurted before his old friend got to the door. “You need to watch him. Make sure he’s okay out there.”

Caulder turned to the glass podium to his left where Steve’s Mento helmet hovered in midair crackling with white lightning. He was bombarding it with powerful negative energy to try and find the flaw that was causing it to be addictive to its user.

“He won’t be taking this helmet today.”

“I said I didn’t need it!”

Steve was shirtless and walking to the bathroom before Rita could say anything else.

“I’m just worried, that’s all,” she said fiddling with the hem of her miniskirt length robe.

The water in the bathroom tap ran full blast for a couple of seconds before being snapped shut again. He emerged another few seconds later rubbing his face with the small hand towel that hung beside the sink. Rubbing it down his face to dry and then pushing it up his face, he shimmied his hairline dry before wrapping the towel around his shoulders.

“Baby, you don’t have to worry about me.”

Steve smiled his boyish smile and Rita melted. It was a common occurrence. For a self-obsessed multimillionaire and a failed movie starlet, it was amazing they ever got past the first date without both being checked into a loonie bin.

Sitting down beside her on the bed, Steve cradled Rita’s face in his hands and moved in for the kiss. But before their lips would meet, a hammering reverberated through the door.

They both jumped, and Rita let out a surprised yelp.

“We’re heading out now, you two,” Robotman shouted from behind the door.

“I swear sometimes that Chief built a kiss detector alarm into Cliff’s body on the last upgrade,” Steve joked.

“Let’s see if we can hear it going off through the wall!”

Rita grabbed Steve and kissed him voraciously.

“Stop that this instant!” Madame Rouge’s scream traveled seemingly as far as she wished it to across the entire grass hockey field. Which, by the way, was farther than it needed to seeing as Cherry was already halfway across the field.

“Pick up those feet and walk!”

Cherry, to escape further humiliation moved at a half-gallop. She would have run, but the school uniform was a skirt much shorter than she was used to wearing. That combined with sleeves that barely extended three inches from the shoulder, and she may as well have been wearing a bathing suit.

“Don’t worry, Cherry–” a pretty brunette began.

“You look great!” a pretty blonde continued.

“Yeah,” a pretty redhead finished. “The uniform really brings out your emo scars!”

All three of them laughed at the same time. Cherry was disheartened but not surprised. It was when she noticed the three girls looked not only ravishingly beautiful, but exactly the same, barring hair color, that freaked her out.

Cherry, hair black streaked with platinum white, stared darts at them.

“I see you have met The Clique. Very good. Next time ensure that you are ‘ere on time for Physical Education,” Madame Rouge said.

“Yeah, maybe use a sharper razor to get it over quicker so you don’t keep us waiting next time!” The blonde smirked and the two other girls laughed.

Cherry realized it at that moment: neither of their mouths moved. They were inside her head! Cherry looked at them, thought the most horrific things she could come up with and chuckled under her breath when their eyes went wide and their jaws dropped.

“Enough!” Madame Rouge shouted, clearly upset again. “There will be enough time for the cattiness when class is over.”

The four girls fell in line immediately. Their headmistress was clearly done with letting the leash out.

“Now that we are all ‘ere,” she said pausing to glare at Cherry. “We can begin Cherry’s fitness test.”

“Fitness test?”

God! Cherry thought, this school is just as lame as any other.

“Wait! Why are they here?” Cherry asked gesturing toward The Clique.

“Because, ma chère, we are ‘ere to test your powers,” Madame Rouge smiled. “And we cannot do that without a little bit of mental anguish, non?”

And with that, The Clique formed a circle around Cherry by joining hands. Cherry’s body clenched as she felt a jarring pain course through her body. Her knees buckled, but she did not fall. There was a slow splitting sound that only Cherry could hear, and it was deafening. The sound was her psyche being cracked and filled with malicious giggling.

School was in session.

NEXT ISSUE: It’s Doom Patrol to the rescue! But will Cherry want to be saved?