“Hmmmm,” the detective said. “And when exactly did you happen to stumble across this one?”
“I didn’t,” I admitted. “Faultline did. He came to me a couple days ago. He wasn’t…in favor of turning Marty in, given what he knows, but I convinced him.”
“And that took two days?”
“No,” I said. “Faultline wanted a chance to locate Amity first.”
The detective frowned.
“You shouldn’t have waited at all.” She paused and shook her head. “But we don’t have time to discuss that now. Show me the way.”
I nodded and made my way to the door. I reached out to open it and froze.
“Something’s wrong,” I said, dropping my voice.
Amanda pulled out her service weapon.
“Explain,” she said.
I pushed the door. It swung open with a creak. I looked down to the frame to find the wood splintered around the lock.
“This is wrong,” I said. “When I met with Faultline…he hadn’t broken down the door like this.”
“Then someone else must have gotten in,” Amanda said. “Did you tell anyone else about Tong?”
“Only you.”
“Shit. Show me where he is, quick.”
I led her inside and down to the basement. The flashlight Alex had used was mysteriously missing, but the detective had her own, which she swept across every hallway and potential hiding spot. Was she concerned about a trap? By the time we got to the bank of meters, I could see that someone had left the lights on. Detective Bronson looked over the meters once, then focused on the lit-up area.
We cautiously made our way down the hall, myself in the lead, Amanda following. Everything seemed too quiet, separated as we were from the ambiance of the city above. As a city girl, I must admit it creeped me out a little. I needed some noise, even if it was just a car passing by.
Then we got to Marty’s room, and my heart sank. The door was wide open.
I strode through the entrance. Like before, Marty’s belongings were on the floor, only now they were thrown about in a more haphazard way. The sleeping bag lay half across Marty’s backpack, which had been torn open. Half squished protein bars were scattered everywhere. I looked to my boots and froze. A couple of feet away was a small, red puddle. Could that be blood?
“Don’t go any farther,” the detective said. “This just became a crime scene.”
I turned around to see her standing a couple feet past the doorway. She reached for the radio at her belt.
“But…no one else knew that Marty was here,” I said, shaking my head. “Only Faultline and—”
“Faultline is the one I’m worried about.”
“He wouldn’t hurt Marty.”
“He wasn’t exactly gentle to him at Northwest Comics.”
“Marty was hurting people. I wouldn’t have been all that gentle either.”
“Maybe he felt like he had a good enough reason here as well.”
I looked down at the pool of blood, feeling, with one hundred percent certainty, that Alex wasn’t responsible for this. I’m sure Alex had had his reasons for joining up with Calypso, but it wasn’t because he was a bad person. And then there was the door! Why would he break it down when he clearly had a key?
Then again, Alex was pretty smart. And that little detail was just enough to throw me off.
Alex wouldn’t do it. But Faultline…
“This is Detective Bronson,” Amanda began speaking into her radio.
I heard a thud coming from the hallway. A thud that stood out in the too-quiet basement. I spun around.
“Did you hear that?” I said, walking past her toward the door.
“Huh? Wait. Hikari!”
I stepped into the lit portion of the hallway and began making my way down to a T-stop. At the end, someone darted past. I froze.
It was someone in a cape.
I broke out into a run, sprinting to the end of the hallway and turning left, following the Costume in front of me. I heard the steady clunk-clunk-clunk of footsteps and made the connection to the nearby stairwell. I headed to the stairs and ran up them, catching the sight of what looked like black and blue fabric.
Was this the person who had taken Marty?
Seconds later, I burst into the back alley. I heard the creak of a nearby fire escape and looked up to see the black and blue figure standing where I had waited for Detective Bronson just a few minutes ago.
Well, two could play at that game.
I bent my legs and jumped. I felt the wind rush by me as I arced upward, jumping across the alley and over the fire escape, landing on the asphalt top of the building. I took a second to find my balance, then looked up and forward. The figure—whose cape, I now saw, was actually a hooded cloak—was already flying to the next building, soaring over the alley with relative ease. I had no choice but to follow.
I was immediately thankful for all the time I had spent jumping around on rooftops, as a clear map of Bailey City showed up in my mind.
Unfortunately, the other Costume seemed either to be just as knowledgeable or really lucky, as they skillfully made their way from rooftop to rooftop, avoiding pitched roofs and places filled with super-breakable patio furniture.
Fortunately, I was gaining on them.
The next time I landed on top of a building, the mysterious figure was only about ten feet away.
As they launched themselves off the roof, I noticed something…strange about the cape. That pattern…
I jumped off the roof, gaining on my charge. I would catch up to them by the next building or so. And then I could figure out where Marty—
Just a little lie-down.
The woman’s voice from my dream slid into my mind, cutting off the noises around me. And then, I could feel them, all those hands reaching out to grab me, pulling me back, pushing me down just like before. It wrenched my attention away from the present. So much so that when my bare hand reached for the next fire escape, it almost slipped from my fingers.
Wait. My bare hand? Where had my gloves gone?
A sudden, sharp pain shot through my right arm, causing me to let go of the fire escape. I plummeted down ten stories to the pavement below, my body twisting in midair, trying to get that damn superhero landing down. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until right before I hit the ground that I realized one very important thing.
I wasn’t wearing a costume.
I heard a sickening crack, and it wasn’t until I lay there, seconds later, that I understood what the noise had been.
I had broken my legs.
“Ugh,” I said, letting out a gasp of pain as I tried to pull myself up to a sitting position. I’m not sure if you could call my results a success. I caught a blurry image of my twisted, bloody, legs. Something white and sharp poked out of the right one.
I felt my vision swim.
Pain. I had thought I was familiar with it before. But now, it was overwhelming, pushing out any other thought or sensation. I was dimly aware that I was close to passing out, that I had reached my limit and my body was trying to shut it all down. That had never happened before.
Because by now, the healing factor had started to kick in.
My mouth opened wide as if to scream, but nothing came out. My voice was silenced. My body shook. And blood. I was bleeding all over the pavement.
In the back of my mind, a part of me knew that I would be fine. That I just needed to transform. My healing abilities could take care of this easily. I had taken larger falls and had walked away from them. A month ago, I had fallen off a speeding tram with a gunshot wound in my side. I needed to transform. To become Hikari.
And I needed to do it before I passed out in this alley or someone found me.
Sweat coated my face, and I closed my eyes. I counted in my head. One…two…
And then I accidentally shifted my weight somehow.
“Ah!” I cried out. My voice echoing around the alley. I reached up and slapped my right hand, scraped fro
m the pavement, across my lips. I couldn’t let someone find me like this. If that happened, I’d need to transform in front of them and reveal myself or stay as Dawn and let these broken legs heal normally. And that could take months.
I closed my eyes once more and began to count.
One…two…
5
Alex
I couldn’t even tell you what was on the television screen. My mind was a million miles away.
I sat on the couch in our living room. My phone, a gift from Calypso, sat on my lap, displaying the time. My deadline with Dawn was rapidly approaching. But I had known since yesterday that my cause was hopeless.
It was kind of fucked up. While working together, I had hated Amity so much. Still did. She had a talent for getting under your skin. I had always done my best to stay far away from her. But on Friday, I had been desperate to find her.
Now, I wanted to strangle her.
Every person I had talked to had been completely clueless. Sure, my coworkers from Colossus remembered seeing me working there, but not the dozen times I had left to go on a job for Calypso and Amity. Hell, they didn’t remember Amity, period. And while this made me look like a better employee than I had been, it also meant any connection I had to Amity was gone. I had even tracked down one of the drones, and he had no idea who the hell I was, even though I had taught the guy how to box. It looked like Amity really had erased everyone’s memory of me, at least as Alex. Probably Dawn too.
I bet she expected me to be grateful.
Marty seemed to be the sole exception, having escaped before Amity had gotten to him. He had told me as much the last time I had gone to check in on him. That kid remembered everything.
I had failed on this one, hard.
I felt sparks flicker at the edge of my vision. Looked like my frustration was beginning to trigger my powers. I sighed, closing my eyes. For several seconds, I just listened to the sound of my sister, Mariah, typing on her laptop, combined with the low buzz of the television set. Mariah was a nursing student over at Bailey College. She had recently killed it on her midterms and had secured a great internship for spring. It wasn’t that surprising. Out of the three of us, Mariah had always done the best at school. Granted, Claire and I set the bar pretty low, but Mariah had always seen the value in an education. And now that she finally had time to focus on college—as opposed to taking care of our sick mother or worrying about our mountain of debt—it was paying off.
Fortunately, I still had money from the benefit—Amity had handed me the full amount the moment I had brought Dawn in—which would easily cover the rest of this month. Probably December too, if we didn’t do much for Christmas. But what the hell were we going to do next year when we needed to buy oil?
Not to mention that getting a job will be impossible if Marty outs me as Faultline.
I sighed. I understood Dawn’s perspective, even if I didn’t agree with it. Sure, it took a lot to strain my conscience, but the opposite could be said for hers. And that conscience seemed to come back and kick her in the ass more times than she realized. Hell, during our fight on top of the tram, she had stopped to catch me, saving me from plummeting dozens of stories below. Had she not done that, there’s a good chance Noel wouldn’t have been able to get that shot off, and if Noel hadn’t shot her, then Marty would have never figured out who she really was.
Of course, I would also be dead.
“Falling asleep, big brother?”
It was impossible not to recognize that voice, with just a hint of dry disdain. I opened my eyes and turned to see Claire standing behind me dressed in a blue polo shirt and khaki pants, her face free of makeup. It was a far cry from the heavy eyeliner and layers of black and gray I was used to seeing on her, which meant one thing.
“You going to work, Claire?” I asked. “I didn’t think you were on the schedule.”
“Selena has the flu, and they need me to come in and handle the lunch rush, rather than tempt a Typhoid Mary situation,” Claire replied.
I frowned. Two days after things had fallen apart with Colossus, as money worries were starting to sink in, Claire showed up in that same uniform, explaining she had gotten a job down at Norma’s Diner as a hostess.
“It’s no big,” she had said. “You’re always going on about how tight money is, so I figured I could pitch in. Granted, I can’t pitch in much. They only have me on schedule for three days a week and as a backup if anyone calls out. But, like, that should cover something, right?”
I hadn’t liked the idea at first. Claire had to worry about graduating high school, after all. We already had one dropout in the family, and the last thing I wanted to see was Claire go down the same path I had. But over the past few months, I had begun to see the drawbacks of trying to control my sisters’ actions. That, and the fact that every test and paper she had received since being hired had come back with a passing grade (usually a B), which was a hell of a lot better than I had ever done.
That didn’t make me fond of the fact that my seventeen-year-old sister was the only one financially supporting the family right now. Wasn’t I supposed to be the man of the house?
“I guess this means no HGTV marathon this afternoon,” she said. “Sorry, Mariah…Mariah?”
Mariah jumped a little in her seat. She looked up, her eyes darting back and forth between the two of us.
“Ah, sorry…what?” She blinked, taking in Claire’s outfit. “I didn’t realize you were working today.”
“Um…did you just miss that entire conversation?” Claire asked in confusion.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Claire. My mind’s just on…” Her voice trailed off for a moment. Then, she shook her head, snapping the laptop shut.
“Anyway,” she said, sitting up straight. “You mentioned something about covering?”
“For Selena,” Claire replied. “Are you okay?”
I could see why she had asked. Mariah looked a little shaken. And while she was, by nature, a bit of a worrier, it wasn’t something we encouraged. Not that you could tell that from our actions from the past few months: me joining up with Calypso, and Claire almost getting expelled…
Okay, maybe we encouraged it more than we realized.
“Oh, I’m fine,” Mariah said. “Just…a lot to keep track of, that’s all. If you’ll excuse me. I have to get going.”
And with that, she left her laptop on the couch and headed to the kitchen where her purse and jacket hung on a chair. Claire and I looked at each other as she gathered her things, dropping her keys twice in the process, and headed out of the house. The door shut behind her with a thump.
“Um…what the hell is going on?”
Claire crossed her arms over her chest as she spoke. They looked too skinny to me. They usually did. Claire was built like our mother had been, rail-thin even before she got the cancer that took her life. She also shared the same fair skin and hair. I was more like our deadbeat dad—dark hair, tanned skin, dark eyes, and a broad build that would turn to fat if I stopped working out. Mariah seemed to be a mixture of both. She wasn’t quite as skinny, but not heavy either. Her skin was fair, but her curly hair was dark, her eyes green. If you looked at both Claire and I, it wasn’t clear that we were related, but put Mariah in the middle and you could figure it out.
“I dunno,” I replied.
“Well, you better figure that one out, big brother, cause I gotta go to work,” Claire said with a sigh. “See you later.”
“Sure thing,” I said, hoping this wasn’t a sign that there was something wrong with my home life as well as my night life.
I texted Dawn twice, only to get no response, leading me to believe that she had already transformed, and her phone was…wherever it went when she was Hikari. Which made sense, as it was just after the deadline. Figuring Colossus would soon be swimming with cops, I decided to keep my distance, but stayed in the neighborhood. After all, there was something relatively close by that I did not want the boys in blue to get their hands on.
I opened a large pantry currently half full of dry goods to find the sleek case that held my armor. I grabbed it and turned to the back door, figuring it would be smart to get out of here as soon as possible.
And then I saw it, a single figure pass by the back door.
It was the goggles that let me know something was off. With a frown, I stepped closer to the screened-in window and watched as a tall skinny man with fair hair walked down the back ally. From the back he looked completely normal, if you could ignore the large metal gauntlets that covered both hands.
Was this a new Costume? And why the hell was he heading toward Colossus?
Not that it was any of my business. I turned away from him. This wasn’t the only exit in the place after all.
Of course, the fact that he was heading towards Colossus also meant that he was heading toward Dawn. I froze at the thought.
I could warn her with a text. Dawn seemed to be able to take care of herself just fine, after all. But what if she was still costumed up?
And I had no idea what this guy was capable of. Or if he was actually alone.
My hand tightened around the handle of the case, my body urging me towards the side entrance, away from whatever was going on in that back alley. And then I closed my eyes.
“Fuck,” I said, before slapping the case down on the counter and opening the locks.
The question was, would I be able to change in time to even make a difference?
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