What could this mean? Was I going to become Hikari whenever I got super-anxious or something? Yeah, there were times when it could come in handy (it had saved Dana from falling to his death after all), but as someone with a very specific fear of public speaking, I could see where this could be severely not-good.
Will have to keep an eye on that, I thought as I closed my eyes and transformed from Empowered Actual to Dawn Takahashi, an awkward, petite, twenty-year-old Japanese-American coed dressed in a white button-up and jeans. I swung my legs off the side of the bed, moving my laptop away from its precarious position near the edge. The only part of the bed not occupied by my sleepy self and schoolwork had been claimed by my plump cat, Lockheed. He looked up at me, an affronted expression on his face, as if he couldn’t comprehend why I had dared cut our joint napping session short.
“Sorry, little guy,” I said, leaning over and reaching out to bury a hand in his soft fur. His eyes immediately shut in pleasure, and he began to purr. I looked up and glanced at the clock beside my bed.
Well, at least that train-wreck of a nightmare had woken me up before things had gotten too bad. I still had enough time to make it over to Northwest Comics to see Sunshine and Steve.
The symbolism with Alex wasn’t too hard to read. Sure, it had been weeks since the benefit, but I still struggled to come to terms with fact that Alex was really Faultline. How could the two be the same? Alex, the guy I had shared gelato with? Who had listened to my problems so patiently? How could Faultline be Alex!
I had been meaning to call him, really I had. But I had been so busy with midterms, and my role as recently minted Actual. And now, with Thanksgiving just around the corner, there was only so much a girl could juggle at once, right?
Oh, that’s rich. You, telling me to take responsibility for my past. When you’re an expert at running away from yours.
I flinched at the memory of Amity’s words from the benefit. And, well, Calypso’s right-hand woman hadn’t exactly been wrong. I did run away from my problems, grabbing at any logical-seeming excuse. Whether it was the fact that the boy I had a monster crush on was secretly…well, a little more monstrous than I had realized, or the bigger problem. The missing gap in my memory. The several weeks that had been erased from my mind when I had been abducted and given powers.
Was that what the second part of the dream had been about? Those hands…that fear. It was the same emotion that gripped me whenever I lingered over that gap.
I shivered and pushed myself up and out of my bed. Lockheed let out a plaintive mew the second I stopped petting him.
“Sorry,” I murmured.
After doing my best to brush my hair and smooth out my shirt (one task went more successfully than the other), I walked downstairs to the sound of pots clamoring and the scent of food cooking.
Oh yeah, Mom was home.
It was kind of weird that I kept forgetting that. She had been home for four weeks now, almost the same amount of time that she had been away on book tour. But so much had happened during that time. I had gone from nameless Costume who sometimes fell off rooftops, to an Actual. Calypso had risen and fallen—the latter a little too literally. I had stopped blaming myself for Callie’s death, but I don’t know if I would ever be comfortable with the fact that I had been unable to catch her. I became Hikari to save people, after all. And someone had died for me to become an Actual, leaving me to wonder if I even deserved it.
Life was full of unexpected consequences.
I found Mom in the kitchen, dressed in a pair of gray slacks and a purple shirt. Even though she worked at home as a writer, she still got dressed every day as if she were going to some sort of office, saying it helped get her in the right mindset. (This was an affectation adopted by my older brother, Alan, to the nth degree. His casual days were what most people wore when they wanted to look polished.) As I entered the room, she looked up from where she sat at the breakfast nook, sorting through the day’s mail. A small, flat-screen TV played the news in the background.
“Hey, Mom,” I said, walking over to the stove where a large pot lay covered. “That smells good.”
“It’s almost done if you’re looking for something to eat,” Mom replied, pushing the mail aside. “In all honesty, I wasn’t sure if you’d be up from your nap in time.”
I froze. I had woken up in costume. Did this mean that she had seen me?
“I stopped by to give this to you at least an hour ago,” she continued.
I felt my shoulders relax a fraction and looked over my shoulder to see her holding up a letter. I’m pretty sure if she had seen Hikari lying in her daughter’s bed, her first reaction wouldn’t have been to get my mail. Or maybe it would. My mother was an orderly person after all and going through the day’s mail was one of her regular habits.
Why didn’t I just tell her the truth? Would that make things easier? Well, maybe. Don’t get me wrong. I love my Mom and am well aware that she loves me back. At the same time, we’ve never been particularly…share-y. Especially compared to how close I had been to Dad, who had died when I was sixteen. He was always the one I had run to after a nightmare, or if I was overwhelmed by schoolwork. My mom on the other hand…
Growing up, I couldn’t help but feel as if she was constantly comparing me to my genius of an older brother. Sure, she never said anything, but after years of getting perfect scores (not just As, but perfect scores) from Alan on a daily basis, how could you be satisfied with someone who just made the honor roll? This resentment had crumbled in the years since my father’s death, but the distance remained.
I had no idea how she would react to the thought of her daughter as an Actual.
“It’s from Edison Kent,” she said as I made my way to the breakfast nook.
“Again?” I felt my face crease into a frown.
The former mayor of Bailey City had tried to get in touch with me twice over the last couple of weeks, something about wanting “the victims of Calypso to stand together” in some sort of way. I had turned him down, his super-vague terms not sitting well with me. That, and I wasn’t big on the spotlight, especially when I had so much to hide. From what the media knew, I was just another victim of Calypso’s, and had spent my time in a room, handcuffed to a wheelchair.
Thanks to Amity’s mind-wiping abilities, the only people who remembered I was Hikari were Alex, Dana Peterson, Detective Bronson, Amity herself, and Marty Tong, the one drone that had managed to sneak out before the police had arrived. It wasn’t a number I was comfortable with. I could only access my powers when I was costumed up, making me crazy-vulnerable the rest of the time. At least I knew I could trust Dana. And Alex…well, he had a secret identity to worry about as well. Amity had made it very clear that she wanted to use me for something in the future, so it wasn’t in her best interest to hurt me. And Marty…
He hadn’t been seen in weeks.
“I wonder what he really wants.” I tore into the letter.
In response, Mom picked up the remote next to her and began turning up the volume on the television. My neck snapped toward the screen when, to my surprise, former mayor Edison Kent’s voice started streaming from the speakers.
“There are few things as dangerous as the cult of the superhero,” the politician said. He was standing behind a podium in some sort of press conference. Looked like he was on the front steps of City Hall. His hair was the perfect Mr. Fantastic, white at the temples, dark everywhere else. The wind swept it away from his forehead.
The fifty-something, slightly overweight white man took in a breath before speaking again. “The media worships them, talks about the tourism that this woman, this Hikari, is bringing to our city. But what they fail to see in their blind worship is the damage that they ultimately do. There can be no heroes without villains. No Hikaris without Calypsos. And every time we shine a spotlight on some half-crazed woman in a mask and cape, we are feeding this delusion. That life is nothing more than a Hollywood set piece, some high-stakes fight betwee
n a hero and villain. Only in real life, the faceless victims who get caught in the crosshairs are more than movie extras—they are us.”
He closed his hand into a fist and thumped it against his chest, causing his voice to jump slightly.
And that’s when I noticed who was standing behind him.
Dr. Sylvie Bouchard, one of my fellow abductees from the benefit, stood alongside Arthur Hamilton, who looked almost as drained now as he had after weeks of captivity. And next to them was Sara, the drone-nurse who had patched me up after I had fallen from the tram. She stood with two other people I knew to be drones, or people that had once been under Calypso’s control.
Well, that explained the letters, I guess.
“I’ve been told that Deputy Mayor Gonzales has bought into all of this. That she admires Hikari for all she has done. Wants to give her the key to the city. And who can blame her? It’s hard to look at a woman who rescues kittens in her spare time and think, ‘That can’t be right.’ But I know better—we know better. We who stand before you know of the consequences that come when the Empowered interfere in the lives of normal citizens. And that is why I am announcing my candidacy for mayor of Bailey City.”
The press in front of him surged forward, shouting out questions.
“Running for mayor?” I asked. “I thought Mayor Conway was just passing things on to Deputy Mayor Gonzales.”
My mother shook her head.
“It was one thing when she was running unopposed. Mayor Conway has been a beloved civil servant for a decade now, and few people want to go against the wishes of a sick man.”
I nodded. Tony Conway had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for a while now. A few months back, he had announced that he was ending his final term in office a year early due to the demands of the disease. It was too late to vote during the normal election season, so a special vote had been set up in January to find his replacement.
“I guess Edison Kent doesn’t agree,” I said.
“And he’s not the only one,” Mom said, nodding toward the screen. She paused and frowned. “Isn’t that the store you and your brother like going to?”
I paused, turning back to the TV to see the familiar facade of Northwest Comics.
In front of it was an ambulance.
“It has been revealed that the shooter in question is Marty Tong,” Deanna Sommerville said, an image of Marty from his high school yearbook appearing on the screen. “The nineteen-year-old Tong is the son of Calvin and Lin Tong, the owners of Tong Enterprises. Tong is a former follower of Calypso, more commonly known as a ‘drone,’ and is therefore considered mentally unstable. The woman who was shot was taken to Bailey General in critical condition, but is expected to recover—”
“Shot?” The word escaped from my lips.
From next to me, my mother murmured something, but all I could think about was how I was supposed to meet Sunshine at Northwest Comics in fifteen minutes. Had she shown up early? Did that mean…
“Mom, I need to go.”
The foot traffic at Northwest Comics fell into predictable patterns, the busiest day usually being Wednesday, when new comics were released. But today was a completely different story.
Police tape was pulled across the door, which was guarded by a member of the BCPD. I frowned, not recognizing the tall black man with neatly trimmed facial hair as he turned a couple of men away from the store. If I had been lucky, it would have been Detective Amanda Bronson, my Commissioner Gordon, as much as she despised the comparison. Right now, I could have really used a Commissioner Gordon.
“Stop right there, miss,” the man said, raising a hand. “This is a crime scene.”
“Um, okay,” I said, looking down. “But you see, my friend isn’t answering her phone and…”
Here’s the one thing you should probably know about me. When I’m in costume, I’m one hundred percent confident. Some people have even (in not always the most complimentary of ways) called me chatty. I just can’t help it. Being an Actual fills me with this energy. But the rest of the time…
Sure, it’s one thing when I’m spending time with friends or family, like Sunshine or my brother. But when it comes to strangers, or people I just don’t know very well, I’m a little…well, some people would say shy. “Embarrassingly awkward” would be more accurate.
Just wanted to embrace that nerd stereotype as hard as I could, apparently.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t be here,” the policeman repeated, firmly though not unkindly.
“But I think…my friend. She may have been the one…I heard that someone was…”
“It’s okay. She can come in.”
The door opened, and I blinked. On the other side stood one of the owners of Northwest Comics, but not the one I had been expecting.
“Hello, Dawn,” Michael said, nodding toward me. “Come on in.”
The police officer frowned but let me by.
I followed Michael, trying to remember the last time I had seen the guy. He co-owned the place with his husband, Steve, but Steve ran most of the day-to-day operations, while Michael kept the books and had a day job in some tech field (all I knew is that it involved a lot of coding). I probably only saw the guy a few times a year even though I visited the comic book store once or twice a week.
As I stepped inside, my gaze was drawn to a large stain of blood that streaked across the floor, as if someone had been dragged. I swallowed.
“Dawn?” Steve said.
He stood at his normal place behind the counter, only as I drew closer, I noticed that the glass countertop was all cracked like a spiderweb. Steve’s typical easygoing smile was gone. Instead, he stood playing with his wedding band, twisting it over and over again. Michael walked around the counter and stood next to him, placing a hand on the small of Steve’s back.
It was often said that the two of them didn’t seem to fit. Steve was a bit overweight, his dirty-blond hair was often mussed, and he was in the habit of wearing old graphic tees. Michael, on the other hand, always looked more together, his figure trim, his wardrobe less likely to be freckled with holes. He was also biracial—half black, half Cambodian, with the coloring of the former and the facial features of the latter, while Steve was a mixture of English and Irish. As far as their personalities went, while Michael was a perfectly nice guy, Steve was just more of an extrovert. It was why he ran the shop.
“Hey,” I said. “I heard about the shooting on the news.”
“Yeah,” Steve replied, trying and failing to smile reassuringly. “It’s scary…but it looks like everything is going to be okay.”
“I heard someone was shot.” I did my best to avoid looking at the blood. “It wasn’t—”
“Dawn!”
Before I could finish, I was cut off by a running hug. I clenched up at first, never being much of a hugger, but stopped when I saw who it was.
Sunshine stood next to me, her hair done up in victory rolls, wearing a vintage dress from the forties. Her makeup, usually painstakingly applied, had been smudged.
“Sorry,” she said, backing up. “It’s just…God! I wasn’t made for these stressful situations.”
“You were here?” I asked.
“Yeah. Steve too. And those weirdos that are always protesting down the street.”
“Captain and Lady Justice?” I frowned.
“They were here for a meet-and-greet,” Steve explained.
“Ugh! Why did I call them weirdos?” Sunshine said. “I mean…that woman got shot! For you!”
“Marty had been aiming for me.” Steve’s face grew paler.
“Holy shit. It was like something out of a movie! Only…I didn’t think that Lady Justice was that type of Costume.”
Sunshine immediately began to describe the events of the morning. And although her words filled me with an oh-crap-that’s-terrifying feeling, there was also a small part of me that was strangely…glad for it. Things between Sunshine and me had been awkward lately. It was nice to get back t
o normal. Granted, normal usually consisted of Sunshine ranting about her latest failed date, not about seeing someone get shot at our local comic book store.
And then she got to the part about Faultline, and I felt my stomach sink.
“He just took him,” Sunshine said. “And part of me felt like I really needed to stop the guy. Like, I’ve never been Marty’s number one fan, and him pulling a gun on Steve isn’t likely to change that, but it’s hard to judge him when he’s all messed up in the head. Although I know that you said Faultline helped you during…you know.”
Aaannnd it was back again. The topics I refused to discuss hung between us like one giant ball of awkwardness. And it was fair to say that maybe Sunshine should just get over the fact that I wasn’t comfortable chatting about the most challenging days of my life, but it was fair to point out that what I was asking Sunshine to do was pretty contrary to her nature. It wasn’t natural for Sunshine to hold things back.
That’s not to say that she couldn’t keep a secret. On Parents’ Day, earlier this year, I had watched her roommate’s parents ask if their precious track-star daughter ever went out partying and Sunshine had, wide eyed and innocent, denied her roomie’s bi-weekly benders. But when Sunshine felt something, she had to tell you, usually loudly and enthusiastically. It was something I normally really liked about her.
And in telling her I didn’t want to talk about the benefit or, even worse, the abduction that had resulted in me gaining my powers, I was denying her that.
“Trying to challenge a man that can tear you in half without breaking a sweat is not a smart thing,” Michael said. “That, and them leaving meant they were going to stop messing up my shop.”
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