[Maelstrom - Chapter 04] Paralysis

She had lied when she said she’d stopped drinking. I could smell whiskey on her breath as I drew close to kiss her. I hesitated, but kissed her just the same. I knew that what had happened to her was cruel. And that I should be spending more time with her. “Did you have dinner?” I asked her. She shook her head, not taking her eyes away from the sea. It was cold on the balcony, but she sat on her wheelchair wearing only a satin shirt, motionless.

“You don’t have to come home this early from work you know,” she said almost monotonally. There was frustration in her voice. Lately she had grown a disturbingly melancholic. And I came home earlier than usual to be with her. I’d been thinking about quitting work, to spend more time working on finding a way to make her walk again.

When I lay on the bed next to her at night, she turned to face away from me. Simple conversations had become awkward to begin, or continue. I held her; she didn’t react. “Everything will be fine,” I told her, mustering as much strength as I could. But I knew she didn’t believe me. Eventually she’d drift off to sleep and I would go to the lab.

She was paralyzed from the waist down. It had been abrupt. She had complained of back aches for days, and then one day, she couldn’t walk. No one really knew why or how it had happened. It had something to do with her spine, one specialist had said.

“Activated,” the main system monitor said, and then the lab flickered to life. I had been working on an artificial leg for her. I hadn’t known at that point that she would die before the leg would be completed. And that the work I did on creating the leg would, along with my need for revenge, drive me to make the machine that I am now wearing.

“…the hydraulics have suffered complete paralysis. The plane has lost all contact with ground crew and is feared to have crashed, killing…” - the newscast was confused and jumbled. I had been scanning various channels for any news of incidents requiring my attention. Finally something interesting was brought to my attention by the suit’s AI - a commercial airline, having 342 passengers on-board had lost radar contact over the Atlantic ocean after reporting damage to the engine.

I had to fly supersonic to reach the location where the plane had last been seen on radar. There was no sign of the plane in the air. Hacking into the IATA mainframe, I was able to retrieve the flight information, that could be used to search for the plane. A weak distress signal in the plane’s radio frequency was being detected a few miles to the north. It was fading fast. I flew to the source. The plane was still in the air, losing altitude. I tried hacking into the plane’s computer, but it was offline. The pilots were flying blind, and without any computer assist.

They had a short range radio on board. “Turn off manual control,” I told them. They looked at me through the windshield. “I am Maelstrom, and I can carry the plane to safety,” I said reassuringly. They nodded, still stunned to see me. They would have remembered me from the news a few weeks ago.

Flying with a plane on my back was, needless to say, a piece of cake. The wings generated unwanted drag and lift, so I had to slow down considerable. It took me close to three hours to land the plane and fly off.

After four weeks of re-design and testing, I would be back on the news the next day - this time, with a cooler name.