The Push Chronicles (Book 1): Indomitable Read Online Free PDF Page A

progress.  When I found the first picture we had taken together, that first night he asked me out, I almost stopped.  Seeing us just one year earlier, happy in each other's company, giggling like idiots in front of Fellini's Pizza, left me stunned, trying to make that man in the photo and the man I saw last night combine into one whole being.
    When I was finished, I had little to show for it, but it wasn’t totally fruitless.  There were two things that, while not providing insight into what exactly his scientific basis was, provided me with a deeper insight into the emotional and mental state that must have led up to this.
    First, well, the comic books themselves.  I read some when I was a little girl (I only ever really got into Wonder Woman; I was always insulted that most other female heroes were distaff counterparts of the men) so I was woefully unprepared for the vast array and evolution of the medium since then.  Between a couple of hours browsing and referencing comic book history, I could only confirm my initial suspicion that comic books, specifically superhero ones, were forming the basis for whatever thoughts he was amplifying last night.  The problem I found was that there was so much hypocrisy and circular logic in the genre, at least in the more classical versions of it.
    Heroes and villains often generated each other.  Depending on the title, a villain could murder a hundred people and at worst spend time in a jail from which they easily escape when the writer needs them again.  Heroes themselves could then inversely perform the same acts of mass murder as long as the situation or the writer warranted it.  I didn’t try to argue it’s entertainment value to myself:  A lot of enjoyable fiction required the suspension of disbelief and a sometimes illogical approach to cause and effect.  It was the fact that someone was using this, or their perception of it, to rewrite reality that scared me so much.
    Second, I found on his computer photographs and records on his family.  His mother and father had been a topic that Eric actively avoided.  It was something he was intensely private about.  I assumed initially that there had been a falling-out or bad blood or possibly abuse, so I didn’t pry.  It was a month ago, during one of our frequent walks through Grant Park, that he told me that both of his parents were dead, that they had died in an unnamed accident when he was ten years old.
    It was obvious that Eric had made an active attempt to clear out as much biographical information as he could but he must have felt either compelled by sentiment or simply rushed, as there were a few files left intact.  What was clear from these files was that his parents hadn’t died in a simple accident, but the specifics were unclear.  I wasn’t beat yet.
    It took more time than I expected to find the information I needed online.  Web traffic, especially to news sites, was at an all-time high.  Still, it only took patience and some rudimentary net sleuthing to discover first Eric’s parents’ obituary and then, from there, several news articles in connection to their deaths.
    The tale they told was one straight out of one of Eric’s comic books.  The story of a young boy orphaned when his well-regarded parents were murdered in a failed mugging attempt.  The mugger-turned-murderer, Gerald Schuller, was eventually apprehended.  After over twenty years of imprisonment, he was set to be released on parole tomorrow.  Eric’s court date last month to clear up a speeding ticket was yet another lie:  he had testified at Schuller’s parole hearing.  In yet another point of serendipity or, more likely, design, the anniversary of the murder was today.
    I closed the comic book and tossed it onto the stack I had been skimming through.  Gerald Schuller was plagued by several mental illnesses.  He was dirt poor and was never properly treated until he went into prison.  I had little doubt that Eric wanted to do