“Where am I?” Her head snapped back and forth around the room. “I…woke up here earlier.” She frowned. “Did you… did you drug me?”
“You were becoming violent,” Riley said. “Could have hurt yourself. We had to calm you down for a bit.”
Calypso’s gaze focused on Riley.
“Time for a little lie-down,” she said, her voice deepening.
At the familiar words, the Calypso memory of her time in the asylum hit me hard, the hands pulling me down. The stabbing of the hypodermic. I had to rest a hand on the two-way glass to keep myself steady.
Calypso turned to the window and blinked several times.
“Someone’s over there,” she said with a frown. “Why can I—”
“Do you feel a connection with the person on the other side of the glass?” Riley asked.
“Connection? Yes…one of them.”
“One of them?”
In response, she began pulling on the chain at her wrist again.
“Okay,” Riley said. “Let’s go for a different line of questioning. Easy questions. When’s your birthday?”
“August,” Calypso replied, moving to a standstill. “August thirteenth.”
My birthday.
“Where were you born?”
“Bailey City General.”
“And where do you live now?”
“Bailey City,” she replied.
“Where do you go to school.”
“Bailey U.”
“Do you have any pets?”
“A cat…her name is Lockheed.”
It was so strange. The questions were so simple, innocent. But every correct answer made my skin crawl. If Calypso truly believed that she was me, what else could she know?
“What are your parents’ names?”
“They…” Calypso began, then paused.
Had he forgotten that my father was dead? Or was he just making the questions slightly more complex, seeing what she could remember?
Calypso looked around the room, distracted.
“I’ve…been in a place like this before,” she said, then turned to Riley, her face a mask of confusion. “Is this a hospital?”
“You remember being in a hospital?” Riley leaned forward.
“Yes, for years.” Calypso paused. “No, that’s too long. Weeks. Over a month.”
I felt my breath caught in my throat. But that was how long…
“Was this recently?” Riley asked, leaning forward ever so slightly.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe? I think it was this summer?”
“And were you alone in this hospital.”
“No. There were others. Maybe…”
Her voice drifted off, her gaze drawn toward the window. I felt myself moving forward, resting my right hand on the glass.
“Dawn,” Riley said, his voice now firm. “I need you to pay attention. Do you remember any of the names?”
Calypso jerked at his new tone of voice, then nodded.
“Names,” she said. “I…yes. There was Mark, of course.”
“Your boyfriend,” Riley nodded. “Mark Andrews. Do you remember anyone else?”
“Karen…Karen D’Entremont. Gerry Trimpop. Luiz Dias. Diego… Teresa Del Toro…they burned her the first day.” Calypso raised her right wrist to her nose. “I can still smell it.”
I could too. The scent of burnt flesh and hair filling my nostrils, overwhelming me, causing my stomach to churn. And the smoke—
“What the fuck?” Jane said.
And then Riley threw the folding chair across the room.
I hadn’t seen it, of course. I had been too caught up in Calypso’s (my?) memories. But I sure as hell felt the after-effects.
Riley stood tall on the other side of the glass, the folding chair now halfway across the room. Calypso pressed her hands against her ears, her breathing loud, forced. Was she having a panic attack?
“Thousands of hands pulling me down,” she said between large gasps. “S-straps…Time for a little lie down…Time for a little lie down…Test Number Thirty-Seven. Ah!”
Calypso grasped at her right arm, shouting in pain as if it had been broken in two.
And I knew that because mine felt exactly the same. Pain ripped through me. I cried out, pulling my hand back from the glass and cradling my gloved hand tight to my chest.
Gloved hand…
When had I transformed?
The door to our room flew open, and I jumped. Riley stood in the doorway.
“How did she know those names, Riley?” Jane said, bearing down on him. “How did she know those names?”
“Not now, Jane,” Riley said, his teeth clenched. He reached up and pulled his hands through his hair. His face was pink in anger.
Which Jane promptly ignored.
“My p-project,” she said. “For Marcus. All those names, they were on that list. The Dead Trees! Even.” She faltered, and when she spoke next, her voice was softer. “Even Dawn’s name. Dawn’s was there too.”
She turned, looking back at me.
“Riley…what’s going on?”
In response, Riley looked at me.
“I am so sorry for any role that we played in this,” he said. “For what happened to you, everyone.”
And that’s when I knew. He knew about everything. The abduction. The resulting powers.
In fact, he probably knew more than I did.
“Why are you here, Riley?” I asked, holding my aching arm against my chest. “Was it really to gather information about Calypso?”
“Of course it was,” Jane answered.
“Not completely,” Riley replied.
Jane gave him a sharp look.
“The higher-ups sent us here to gather information on y’all, that’s true. But, when we were driving to Bailey City, I got a call from someone else.” He paused. “We mostly call him Forecaster.”
“Wait,” Jane said. “You got a call from…” She shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it was important that none of the higher-ups knew what was going on, and you’re not the best at keeping secrets. Especially ones that might involve you.”
“M-me?”
“It’s about that project you worked on with your mentor, the list of Dead Trees. Forecaster discovered that a quite a few of those people have gone missing over the past year. Most are expected to be dead. When he looked into it, he discovered that the list had leaked from the archives. Your mentor, Marcus, was expected to be involved, as was…” He swallowed. “One of the higher-ups.”
“Leaked?” Jane asked. “What would be the purpose of a list of outsiders without powers?”
“To figure out a way to bring those powers back,” Riley said. “And given that the process would likely kill the subjects? Well, using outsiders as fodder made the most sense.”
“I thought you said that the higher-ups didn’t do this anymore?” I asked Riley.
“Technically, they don’t. They contacted an outside organization for this. Kept them from getting their hands dirty.” Riley shook his head. He seemed to have calmed down from before, but his teeth were still clenched. “And Forecaster, well, he’s able to see things more fully than we can. How small actions can set chains of events into motion. So he had me contact Marty Tong and told him where to find Hunter Davies.” He sighed. “To be honest, I didn’t really understand why sending a drone into a comic book store would benefit us, but considering it was your efforts to find Marty Tong that convinced you to work with us in the first place, it did.”
“Hunter Davies,” I said, bewildered. “He…believed that you weren’t responsible for any of this. That if you had been, the Forgers would be using these methods to Awaken more people’s powers. That he would know.”
Riley’s voice softened. “That’s because the higher-ups believed it was a failure. Dawn…dozens of people have gone missing. You were the only one of them to survive.”
Karen D’Entremont, Gerald Trimpop,
Diego Del Torro, Mark…all dead.
Mark…
Why did those names, all of them, mean something to me? Why did every one of them result in a twist in my chest?
Like a key turning in a lock, opening doors that should have remain sealed.
“I…excuse me,” I said.
And just like during my father’s trial, I shoved my way out of the room. My gait quickened, making my way to the bathroom at the end of the hall, the one near the exit.
I shoved the door open and ran to the sink. Planting my hands on either side of the porcelain, I leaned over it, resting my forehead against the glass mirror.
And in the back of my mind, that haziness remained.
“So typical.”
I blinked at the voice and looked up to fine none other than Amity Graves staring back at me. But that couldn’t be. The mirror…
“How—” I began.
“You’ve got an insane woman pushing around in your brain, is this so surprising?” she said, shaking her head. “Not that anything you do is surprising. You’re so easily triggered.”
“What! No—”
“All it takes is one mention of last summer and you’re there,” she said. “Borderline panic. And for what? Something you can’t even remember? Pathetic.”
“I’m n-not panicking,” I stammered. “I’m over it.”
“Running in the other direction every time the issue is brought up is not the same as being over it,” Amity said, then sighed. “You’re so good at running away from your problems.”
She launched forward, slamming her hands on the sink on the other side of that mirror. I jumped backward.
“You can only run away from it for so long, Dawnie,” she said. “Eventually, things are going to catch up to you. Eventually, all doors must be opened, and you’ll have to face the people who did this to you.”
And then I felt it, rage boiling to the surface. My hands tightened on the edge of the sink. My teeth clenched. And when I looked up to the mirror, my eyes, framed by that dark mask, looked pale green.
“Traitors,” I spit out. “All of them. Kent. Peterson. Faultline. They put me in that place, that hole. Eight years of my life gone.”
Wait…no that was wrong. I hadn’t been abducted for years. I pulled back with a gasp, digging my hands into my hair.
What was going on?
“I know,” Amity said, shaking her head on the other side of the glass. “And there’s nothing that can be done about that. But there is something we can do now.” She leaned forward. “And you know where at least one of them is, right?”
One of them? Yes. Kent. I had tracked him down. Hard not to with him shouting on the stage like that. It had been enough to cut through the haze of confusion that had settled on me for the past month, ever since the fall. Since…
The image of me falling from that rooftop cut through the confusion. The sharp sound of my legs snapping as I hit the ground.
No…that wasn’t me. That had been the other one. That girl—
What have you been doing up there with that girl?
Don’t get your dress dirty.
I can show you how to protect this city.
I shook my head. How many years had I done what was asked of me? Put aside my own desires to make others happy? And what had that gotten me in the end?
“Callie,” I heard Amity’s voice say. “Are you ready?”
Images exploded into my mind. Amity Graves, reaching out to me, extending a hand from above. Her eyes losing their mocking lilt.
“I’m going to take you out of here,” she said. “Are you ready?”
I blinked, looking back into the mirror. At Amity, holding out her hand, once more promising me a future, a way forward.
And in the back of my mind the key continued to turn, threatening to pull me back.
I stepped forward.
“There’s my girl,” Amity said, the grin on her face spreading wide. “There’s my Calypso.”
Calypso…no. I couldn’t be her. Merely being Calypso hadn’t been enough.
In the end, all that had done was shove me beneath the surface, filled my lungs with water. I had to be more.
Amity’s image faded from the mirror, replacing it with my red and black colors. And as I watched, the red shifted to blue.
It was time to finally put these traitors to rest.
16
Alex
For a second, all I could do was stare. Amity stood in front of my kitchen cabinets. She was dressed (as always) like she was ready to address the chairman of the board. She had thrown her blue blazer over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, a wide smile on her face.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house?” I asked.
“Oh Ally, did you get hit too hard in the head again?” Amity sighed. “You were looking for me what, five days ago? Don’t tell me things have changed.”
Things couldn’t have changed more. It was one thing to find Amity when we had Marty locked up beneath Colossus, but now—
“I managed to put the pieces together myself, of course. Saw the headlines. Faultline kidnaps missing drone Marty Tong.” She stopped to chuckle. “Kidnapping? Looks like some old habits die hard.”
As she spoke, she closed the kitchen cabinets and walked over to the table. She pulled out a chair and took a seat, making herself right at home.
“Well, if you’ve been keeping up on things then you know that Marty’s missing again,” I snapped. “Didn’t your connections tell you that?”
Amity blinked and paused. And it was a short pause, but it was enough.
I took a step forward before speaking. “You didn’t know that. The police haven’t released that tidbit to the papers yet. How good are these supposed connections of yours, really? Now that you don’t have any drones under your control.”
Amity’s smile froze in place.
“Well, it looks like my information is a little out of date then,” she said, ignoring my question. “I suppose it’s not much of a surprise, knowing you managed to make a mess of things. Calypso always overestimated your intelligence.”
Was it just me, or had she stumbled, just a little bit, over Calypso’s name?
“Then I guess there’s no reason for me to be here.” She rose to her feet. “And I was looking forward to having both of Bailey City’s Actuals in my debt.”
She turned to the door.
“Why?” I asked.
Amity let out a snort. “Really, Ally, do I need to explain the importance of favors—”
“In this case, yes. What’s the point of me owing you anything? You could get the same results from blackmail. After all, you know who I am.” I gestured around the room. “Dawn too. And yet you went through all the trouble of removing us from the drones’ memories.”
“A willing participant is far less likely to stab you in the back.”
“Does this look willing to you?” I took a step forward. “No, this is something different. This is about the Forgers.”
The smile fell from Amity’s face.
“Been speaking to little Dawnie haven’t you. Not surprised to see you’re still chasing her skirts—”
Her comments sent up sparks of annoyance, but I pushed them down, focusing on my line of questioning.
“You knew the Forgers would be coming to Bailey City to look into Calypso. And you wanted to make sure there weren’t any paths that led to you.” I shook my head. “After all, it’s not like a job. People don’t just leave the Forgers.”
Amity let out a loud sniff. “Talking about things you barely understand. Plenty of people leave the Forgers, how could they not after years of failed Awakenings? It’s the people who matter that can’t leave.” She sighed. “Who did they send?”
I paused for a second, then replied. “Riley Simmons and Jane. I didn’t get her last name.”
“Alice’s boy,” Amity sniffed. “The higher-ups’ golden child reduced to a mere field agent. I don’t recognize this Jane. Is she new?”<
br />
“Given that she looks about sixteen, I’m gonna go with yes.”
“Glad to know the Forgers haven’t given up on child labor just yet. I suppose you’ve told them everything about me.”
“Haven’t had much to tell, to be honest.” I shrugged. “You weren’t here.”
But you are now.
“Listen,” I said, spreading out my hands. “I can’t believe I’m even suggesting this, but Riley and Jane have agreed to help us look for Marty. If you could—”
“You’re not suggesting that I work with them.” Her lips twisted into a snarl. “After what they did to Callie. All those years locked away.”
“Actually, it’s interesting that you’d bring—”
“I’d thought, if anything, you could relate to her pain. I’d figure Dawnie would fill you in. Now that you two are all close.”
I felt my jaw clench. I didn’t like it when she said Dawn’s name like that. It was almost as bad as when she called me Ally, Mariah’s old nickname for me.
“Listen,” I said. “Dawn and I are just friends.”
Amity let out a bark of laughter.
“Of course, you are,” she said. “I’ve seen into that girl’s mind, Ally, and it was enlightening. A true idealist. Someone like that would never stoop to being with someone as tainted as you.”
“Hey.” Sparks appeared on the edge of my vision. “That’s none of your—”
“Business? You asked me for help, didn’t you?”
“Not that kind of—”
“Especially when I’ve seen into your past as well.” She shook her head. “People are so predictable. Nothing more than a series of repeated mistakes. You and Dawn are no different. You’ll continue to react out of anger, and Dawn will continue to run away.”
The sparks around me intensified, reminding me of the last time I had lost my temper in this room. I had been angry enough to shatter glass. And then I had run off to help Calypso with the benefit, even though it had been a stupid decision. I had just been so damn angry.
And Dawn…hadn’t she run away from me just hours ago?
“Get the hell out of my house,” I said darkly.
“I’m sorry,” Amity said, voice sing song. “Did I—”
“Get out before I put you through a wall.”
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