“Probably a good thing.”
“Yeah. Apparently, superpowers are genetic. And on top of that, you have to be approved by the Forgers to have your powers awakened.”
“Huh,” Alex said. “That’s off. I didn’t need anyone’s approval to get my powers. What about you?”
I dropped my gaze. That was the question, wasn’t it? I had no idea how I got my powers. There was only a gap in my memory from last summer. Amity had said that the Forgers might have been involved, but she hadn’t been sure. On top of that, I didn’t follow their rules. I hadn’t received my abilities when I was an adolescent, and no one else in my family had super-strength. Not to mention the way she had described Calypso’s first encounter with the Forgers. It had sounded more like an interview process than anything else. Nothing like the crippling fear that kept me awake at night.
I froze, thinking back on that voice, how those woman’s words had popped into my head as I had jumped from building to building, chasing that Costume…
“Dawn?” Alex asked.
“Ah, sorry.” I jerked back to attention.
“Hey.” He reached out and took my hand. “Do you have a history with these guys?”
“I…don’t know. Probably not.”
“How can you…” He paused and shook his head. “Your lost memories. Do you think—”
“I don’t know what I think.” I pulled my hand away. “But I do know that I’m not quite ready to trust them. Not when we know so little about them.”
Especially now that they’ve seen your face.
“I agree,” Alex said. “Christ, I wish that was the only problem we had right now.”
“Marty,” I replied with a nod.
“As usual.” Alex scowled. “Did you say something about Marty being kidnapped?”
I nodded. “I did, and I think Riley and Jane had the same idea about who may have done it.”
“What? That new Costume?”
I nodded before speaking again. “When Detective Bronson and I found Marty missing, the Costume was still there, in Colossus.”
“Did you get a chance to talk to them?”
“They ran away.”
“That’s not suspicious.”
“I couldn’t keep up with them. Or even get that good of a look at her face.” I paused. “I think it was a woman, based on her size, but it could have also been a smaller man. That and…” I shook my head. “Her costume, from the back, it looked like mine, only black and blue instead of red and black. Even the pattern on her cape was similar.”
“That’s…kind of unnerving.” Alex frowned. “Christ, who knows what these people could be getting out of Marty.”
At Alex’s words, I felt my stomach drop. I had been completely aware of the risks that came with telling the police about Marty, but I also knew about the benefits. Our identities would be in danger, but Marty would be safely reunited with his parents and receive medical care. But now Marty had been kidnapped—again.
“We…made a mistake, leaving Marty in there like that, didn’t we?” I asked.
Alex didn’t reply at first, and when he did, his response was a hundred percent easy to read.
“Fuck,” he cursed.
“Do you think he’s…okay?” I asked, unable to say the word “dead.”
“I have no idea. Did it look like he was taken by force?”
“The door was broken in from the outside. There were signs of a struggle, and a small pool of blood.” I paused, filled with the sudden urge to swallow. “I suppose there’s no way for us to know for sure but…”
“All signs are pointing to ‘hell yes’ right now, aren’t they?” Alex said, then repeated. “Fuck!”
I leaned back on my heels and ran my fingers through my hair. Come on, Dawn. Use your brain. You’re not completely in the dark. You have a lead. There must be a way to track down this new Costume. To find Marty. Some missing piece…
“What did the Forgers say about Edison Kent?” Alex’s voice cut through my confusion.
“Oh?” I said, blinking. “Well, they were kind of vague, but it sounded like Kent may have outed this new Costume or something? Maybe talked about her in a press conference.”
“Why would he be giving a press conference?”
“Don’t you know? He’s running for mayor.”
“That blowhard?” Were the situation less serious, the dopey look of surprise on Alex’s face would have been adorably comical.
“He’s a little more put together when he hasn’t just been kidnapped. He’s running on a pretty compelling platform. According to him, Costumes and Actuals are bad for the city.”
“What, like Calypso?”
“And me.”
“You?” He rolled his eyes. “Fuckin’ politics. The moment it becomes about pushing someone into power, everything gets soured.” He paused to run his hands down his face. “How did this all get so complicated?”
I felt a smile twitch at the corner of my mouth. “I’ve been wondering that a lot lately.”
“Things used to be nice and separate.” Alex placed his hands out in front of him, palms facing each other. “When I wore the armor, I was Faultline. I worked for Calypso, barely tolerated Amity, and busted a few skulls here and there. The rest of the time, I was Alex, working at Colossus, bickering with my sisters, chatting up pretty girls on the street.”
He tossed a small smile my way, which I couldn’t help but return. Only, when I did, his face fell slightly.
“What are we in all this?” he asked.
“Ah…what?”
“We, us. If you could even call us that.”
“I’m not…”
“Don’t get me wrong. A girl finds out your deepest darkest secret, maybe you give her some time to process. Maybe let her make the first move. I mean…I was the bad guy in this situation.”
“Alex, that’s not…” I began.
“No, I was. Sure, I made excuses. It was supposed to all be about paying the bills. Creating a better future for my sisters. Doing bad things for a good reason. Nothing to do with the fact that I was so angry at the world.” He shook his head with a scowl. “I guess things were plenty complicated back then too.”
He paused, pressing his right hand down on the table next to him to help him to his feet, a process that looked like it took more effort than it should. I reached forward to help, but something stopped me, leaving a wide gap between us.
“Dawn, when I used to look at you, all I could see was the girl I had run into on the street that day, all cute and blushing and shy. Now when I look at you, do you know what I see?”
“I have no idea,” I replied honestly.
“I see you,” he said, taking a step forward. “Crawling across the floor of the Grand Bailey desperate to save Calypso. Do you know how shocking that was?”
“What? She was going to fall. Anyone would have done that!”
“Can you honestly say that? Especially after everything she’d done.”
“That’s…not the point. She was in trouble. She needed help.”
“Sure, but in that moment, most people wouldn’t have seen things that way. Whether it was because of what she did to you personally, or the fact that the city would be a better place without her, most people would have let her fall.” Alex shrugged. “I would’ve.”
As he spoke, he looked me straight in the eye, his honesty, his openness shocking me to silence. After a few seconds of it, I was forced to drop my gaze, staring at his shoes instead of his face.
What a coward. Wasn’t I supposed to be brave as Hikari?
“This has me thinking,” he continued. “Given what you know now, when you look at me, what do you see?”
Gelato on the pier. Cupcakes and cinnamon rolls. Pre-dates and interrupted dates. Easy smiles and laughter. A guy who didn’t seem to mind my awkwardness, or my nerdiness, and was always so wonderfully straightforward.
Only…that wasn’t the whole story, was it? Much like he had, my mind still put Ale
x and Faultline into separate little boxes and refused to see the truth. And the truth had been complicated from the start. Sure, it had been Faultline who had kidnapped Dana and the others at the benefit, but it had also been Faultline who had managed to stop Calypso from stealing my powers. It wasn’t as simple as just good and evil.
I thought back on my rules, the ones I barely thought about nowadays, only to come up blank.
“I thought so,” Alex said with a scowl. “I’ll see what I can do about Marty. Maybe talk to Kent. He must have some sort of campaign headquarters in the city, after all.”
“Alex, you don’t have to—” I began.
“It was my idea to keep the kid locked up, wasn’t it?”
“And I agreed to it.”
“But you wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for me.” He shook his head. “In the meantime, you might want to keep an eye out for that new Costume, not like I can follow her up on rooftops.”
“Of course, I will—”
“Good.” He turned away from me.
As he walked to the door, a million words tried to jump to my lips. Like how, after everything, I had feelings for him, and how that had to count for at least something. Or how I was suddenly hearing voices and losing control of my powers. Or how, if anyone, Alex should be the one getting credit for taking down Calypso. Who knows what state the city would be in had he not intervened when he did? Or how maybe I should be the one to talk to Edison Kent given that he had been trying to get in touch with me for weeks!
Only my mouth refused to open. My throat closed and every one of those words remained trapped until the door shut behind him.
Dawn or Hikari, it didn’t matter. When it came to the real issues in my life, the big things, I couldn’t deal with them.
I could only run away.
At least this time I knew I was dreaming.
It helped that it was a memory, one of the strongest ones I had of Mark, having taken place several weeks before he had vanished from my life. Like everything connected to that time, I tried not to think about it. But Mark provided an extra layer of complication. He was a person after all, not some memory that had been erased from my mind. We had been dating for about five months before he had disappeared. And despite Sunshine’s protests, and how terribly things had ended between us, I had liked the guy. A lot.
It had been in the spring, right after midterms. There were still patches of snow on the ground, so when Mark had asked me to go mountain climbing with him, I had wondered if he was some sort of mind-controlled crazy person. But we had come across an unseasonably warm day, and a relatively small mountain, and I hadn’t been able to say no. I remember sitting up there, bundled up against the wind, gazing out over the tops of trees, studying the curve of the land and the even-taller mountains in the distance, still capped with snow. I breathed in the crisp mountain air, so happy I had let him talk me into it. Barring airplane trips, I don’t think I had ever been so high up.
“Geez, kind of close to the ledge there,” Mark said as he approached from behind.
I looked down and frowned. A couple feet separated me from the edge. And I was sitting, not standing. What was so unsafe about that?
“Heights have never bothered me,” I replied with a shrug.
“Yeah, well, there’s a difference between the highest floor in the Commerce Center and a mountain. Mainly, a railing.”
“Do you want me to move back?”
“Nah, you’re fine.” He smiled. “You know, everyone seems to think you’re so timid, Dawn. But you’re a lot braver than you look.”
It was crazy how well I could remember that afternoon. Probably because it was one of our last truly positive memories together. After this exchange, he had taken my hand and joked about how shocked he was that he had managed to tear me away from my comic books for the day. Which wasn’t exactly fair. It’s wasn’t like he had asked me to come out on a Wednesday, after all. I had finished my stack days ago.
“Surprised I got you up here.”
I blinked and turned, not to see Mark, but a white woman dressed in a much lighter windbreaker than the winter vest Mark had been wearing. Her dark hair was pulled into a ponytail, the polar opposite of Mark’s short, blond hair. And somehow, the two of us were standing, not sitting anymore. The woman grinned widely, and I felt my heart skip a beat.
Could grab my attention from across the room, that smile, a thought came to me, as sharp and clear as if it were my own. Only, I didn’t know this woman…
But I did know someone who had a smile like that—Alex. Bright, warm Alex. So open and friendly. Mark had been like that at first. But the longer I got to know him, the more layers I had discovered. Some layers that, in retrospect, hadn’t always been so nice.
I guess all people are more complicated than they look.
“Oh, you have no idea.”
I blinked in surprise at the familiar voice. And, instead of the strange woman from before, it was Alex who stood next to me. As if I had managed to summon him just by thinking about him. He gave me one of his swoon-worthy smiles then let out a long, almost exaggerated sigh.
“You know, you can’t string me on like this,” he said. “You’re gonna have to tell me what you want.”
“That’s not fair,” I protested. “I just need time to sort things out.”
“Oh, I know you Dawn,” he said, shaking his head. “Give you time, and you’ll use it to run away. You’re just so good at running away from your problems.”
I froze, because instead of Alex, I was now next to Amity Graves, dressed in the windbreaker the woman from before had been wearing. She leaned in close and whispered, lips brushing up against my ear.
“Kind of close to the edge, aren’t we?” she said.
And then, she pressed her hand against my chest and pushed me, hard. I soared over the ledge, tumbling down the side of the suddenly much larger cliff. No, not tumbled—I was pulled down by dozens of arms, yanking me farther and farther to the ground.
Just a little lie-down, a woman’s voice whispered in my ears, her words starting off soft then loud and sharp, almost mechanical. Almost like…
I jerked awake in my bed, the sound of a ringing phone filling the room. Only it wasn’t my regular cell phone. It was the number I had given Detective Bronson.
“Shit,” I said, jumping out of bed. I reached beneath the mattress and grabbed the cheap burner phone I had stored there. But the moment I touched it, a sharp pain shot straight up my right arm. I let out a hiss and dropped the phone. The pain immediately subsided. I shook my head, then picked up the phone once more, grabbing the call on the last ring.
“Good morning, Detective Bronson,” I said, my voice bright and cheerful.
“Huh. Based on that tone of voice I’d say I was talking to Hikari, not Dawn, although it seems a little early to be costumed up.”
What? I looked down to discover that I had once more, transformed into Hikari in my sleep.
When the hell had that happened? Did I have to worry about costuming up every time I had a nightmare?
“Well, it’s good to know I didn’t wake you. I thought we’d touch base,” the detective continued.
“About Marty?” I leaned forward.
“That’s part of it, yes. Unfortunately, we were unable to locate the kid.”
“Damn.”
“Yes, and his parents were none too pleased to discover that it appeared their son had been held hostage by Faultline for multiple days.”
“Faultline wasn’t the only—”
“A factor I failed to fill them in on,” Amanda replied. “Didn’t feel the need to fuel the fire anymore. Given that they’re going over to Kent’s side.”
“You mean Edison Kent?” I felt my stomach drop.
“The one and only. You can expect to see them on the damn campaign trail.”
“That’s…not great,” I said. “Although I suspect the BCPD should be happy, given their dislike for vigilantes.”
“We’d
be happier if we weren’t on his shit list as well.”
“What?”
“You haven’t heard his latest speech? He just loves to talk about how incompetent we all are. After all, look how easy it was for Calypso’s followers to infiltrate the force.” She let out a snort of disgust. “Not that he’s completely wrong.”
“That’s not fair,” I replied. “You were there. At the benefit. If it hadn’t been for you—”
“I wouldn’t have gotten my gun stolen, and you wouldn’t have been shot.”
“That’s oversimplifying the issue!”
“No kid, that’s spin.” The detective’s voice was firm. “Emphasizing the details that support you and your stance, de-emphasizing the elements that draw away from your cause. Hell, we all do it to a certain extent. It just sucks when you’re the one with a target on your back.”
I felt my mouth go dry for a moment and had to swallow before speaking. “Amanda, is working with me putting you in danger?”
“Don’t be so dramatic. I wasn’t talking about a literal target.”
“A figurative one can be bad too!”
There was a disturbing pause before the detective spoke again.
“I’m not going to deny that some people are aware that we’ve worked together, and some of those people aren’t too happy about it. See it as a sign of weakness, that the BCPD has to rely on Empowered people.”
“But this is a situation that involves other Empowered people!” I said. “What about that new Costume I chased?”
“Lost to the wind, which doesn’t look great.”
I paused, pressing my lips together.
“Amanda,” I said, “do we need to stop working together?”
“Hell no.” Her voice broke no argument. “Without you, I wouldn’t have known where Marty was. I’m not about to throw away a good asset because someone looks at me funny for using it. No, what I’m trying to say is that you need to start being careful.”
“I take it you’re not concerned for my safety, detective.” I said, trying—and failing—to keep my voice light.
“No. As much as it pains me to say it, I’m talking about your image. Those on Kent’s side will jump on any opportunity to paint you as a danger to this city. To the people already on your side, it’s all saving kittens from house fires. It’s the people in the middle you need to worry about. The ones that have yet to be swayed.”
Black and Blue Page 9