“Decided?”
Danny shook his head.
“Could be that she did it for you,” she said. “I think even Tattletale was surprised she went over to the other side.”
Danny didn’t reply.
“Good luck, either way.”
“You too,” he answered.
“We survived,” Forrest said.
“We survived,” Charlotte said. “You’ll be by in the morning?”
Forrest nodded.
She waited until he was gone, then closed the shutter, being careful to lock it.
Then she ascended to the top floor, past Skitter’s room, with the now-empty terrariums and the armor stand with her old suit. She reached the top floor, where Skitter’s belongings had been collected and boxed.
I’d meant to show this to Danny, to see if there was anything he wanted to keep or to send to her.
She lay in her bed, Skitter’s old room, but sleep didn’t find her. She was still awake when her alarm buzzed. She rose and made her way downstairs to the bedroom. Checking on the kids.
Jessie’s bunk, dry.
No food under Mai’s pillow, or at the end of her bed. The girl had taken to hoarding food.
Others were asleep, though Ethan’s eyes were open, staring. She pulled his covers up a bit, and he smiled in the dark.
Aidan was awake too.
“I want a dog,” he whispered.
“I know,” she whispered back. “No nightmares?”
“Not any really bad ones since… five nights ago.”
“Five nights ago?”
“Had a good dream. A big dream.”
“About?”
He shook his head. “Can’t really remember.”
“Okay,” she whispered back. “Not a big deal.”
“But you told me to draw things or write them down after a bad dream,” he said. He pulled a pad of paper from the gap between his bunk and the wall.
She looked at it. It didn’t look like much of anything. Two scribbles, circles and dots.
“These big things… Fish?”
“I don’t remember. I think it started as a bad dream, and then became better.”
“And these dots or circles?” They only covered part of the page.
“Planets and stars. I only remember because that’s how I usually draw them.”
“What do you mean, you only remember?”
“Forgot. Even faster than I usually forget the bad dreams.”
She frowned. The way he described it, it put her in mind of something. The day Skitter had rescued her. Someone had had a trigger event, and both Skitter and Tattletale had reacted.
The way the two had forgotten, and the things Tattletale had mumbled about while she was recuperating…
“You don’t have superpowers, do you?” she whispered.
Aidan shook his head.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” he said, in a very solemn manner.
If it wasn’t a trigger event, then what?
“Five nights ago?”
“I know because it was the night Skitter stayed out all night. I woke up a bit after she came in. I was drawing while she made noise in the kitchen.”
The night Skitter had been outed. Where had she been, and how did it connect?
If not a trigger event, the potential to trigger?
So many questions, and Skitter was no longer here to answer them.
22.y (Donation Interlude; Lung)
March 2nd, 1997
“Okay,” Daiichi said. His Japanese was easy, a lazy drawl. He paused at the top of the flight of stairs, sneering a touch as he waited for his followers to ascend. “If you don’t hurry, they’ll be gone by the time we get there.”
There were grumbles from the others.
“Why isn’t there an elevator?” Ren whined. Of all of them, he was the heaviest, the black jacket of his school uniform straining across his shoulders. He’d dyed his hair blond, but hadn’t yet found a good style to wear it. Ren was Daiichi’s lieutenant; most thought that was because Daiichi put too much stock in Ren’s size, ignoring the fact that he was more fat than muscular. People who knew Daiichi better speculated that it was because Daiichi wanted someone fat and ugly that could offset his own good looks. Only those inside Daiichi’s group and the people who crossed them knew better.
“Only three floors,” Daiichi said. “And we wouldn’t use it if they had one. They could have someone watching.”
“With only two of them?” Ryo asked.
“Can’t hurt to be safe,” Arata said.
Kenta was the first up the flight of stairs. Daiichi clapped one hand on his shoulder. Their leader asked, “Ready?”
“Ready,” Kenta answered. His heart pounded.
For others, for his neighbors and peers, conformity was safety. To be the same as one’s peers, it reassured the self, reassured others. Standing out was bad.
But Kenta stood out anyways. He looked different. People knew his mother was Chinese. He was oddly tall for his age, his grades poor. He could have struggled, but there was so little point. He was competing with classmates who were already miles ahead of him, who were fighting to keep ahead of one another by studying after school, studying at night.
This was something else. It was both thrilling and terrifying, to recognize those lines and ignore them. To be brazen, to stand out on purpose. Breaking rules, breaking convention. He imagined it was like the rush that accompanied a fall to open water or hard ground.
“This is our springtime,” Daiichi said, and he managed to say it without sounding ridiculous. At seventeen, he was older than any of them.
Springtime, Kenta thought. Daiichi had it all planned out. They would earn a reputation for themselves, then submit themselves to the Yakuza. With luck, they would be accepted as low-level members of the ‘chivalrous organization’. The freedom would be gone, in a way. Their ‘springtime’, in a sense, referred to the brief period where they were free to do what they wanted, between the confines of school and membership in the Yakuza.
“There’s only two Chinese?” Ren asked, as they filed out of the stairwell and into the restaurant on the third floor. The rooms here had thick walls and a wooden door, rather than the traditional paper. They’d wanted privacy, maybe. It didn’t matter.
“My cousin owns the building,” Daiichi said. “He said they paid with bundles of bills, and no other Chinese came in. Some Western gaijin, but nobody threatening.”
Kenta looked back at their group. Nine people for two men? And they had an unfair advantage, besides.
“Go,” Daiichi ordered.
Kenta was stronger than Ren, so he was the one to kick down the door. He moved aside to let fat Ren advance. He wasn’t stupid, wasn’t ignoring the possibility the foreigners had guns.
There was no gunfire. Instead, he could hear someone speaking in English, very calm.
“The woman is upset you did not take enough precautions,” A man said, in Chinese. He sounded more alarmed than the English speaker.
Daiichi and Ren led the advance into the back room. Kenta followed, looking over Ren’s shoulder to take in the scene.
There were five people in the room. Two were Chinese, sure enough. Businessmen, they seemed to be, kneeling on one side of a squat dining table that was neatly stacked with cash and ‘bricks’ of white powder in plastic wrap, as well as various dishes laid out with vegetables and meat. A Japanese man sat at one end of the table, hands folded in his lap, eyes wide.
But there were two more gaijin in the room, kneeling opposite the Chinese foreigners. A black woman in a white suit jacket and a knee-length dress, and a twenty-something woman with a European cast to her features, with dark hair and a black suit.
The black woman spoke, and the Japanese man translated it to Chinese. “The woman recommends we stand back. Her bodyguard will take care of the situation.”
“The woman in front is a bodyguard,” Kenta told Daiichi.
This was wrong. The two women were t
oo confident.
Daiichi drew a gun and pointed it at the woman. Kenta felt his heart leap at the sight of the weapon.
Then Daiichi fired, a warning shot. Kenta flinched despite himself. He’d never heard a gunshot before. Loud.
The men were cowering, trying to hide beneath the table. The women hadn’t even reacted.
“One bodyguard?” Daiichi asked, sneering. He made the first move. He flared a brilliant green, then jolted as a phantom replica of himself leaped forth.
The phantom Daiichi flew across the room like living lightning, a trail of neon green smoke in its wake.
The bodyguard was already moving, her hand on a plate. She turned it upside-down and threw it in a single motion, and it caught the air like a frisbee. It turned in mid-air and crashed into the real Daiichi’s face.
He staggered, and the phantom he’d created dissipated a fraction of a second before reaching the bodyguard. She shut her eyes as the residual smoke carried past her.
Kenta stared. He’d never seen Daiichi’s ability fail him like that.
Daiichi raised the gun, and the woman raised one knife from the table, turning it around so she held the blade, the metal handle extended. She held it out with one hand, pointing it at Daiichi’s shoulder.
Daiichi fired, and the knife went flying. It ricocheted, spinning rapidly, striking the doorframe behind the bodyguard before flying over her head in a tall arc. She caught it in her other hand, resuming the exact same position as before, then shook her right hand for a second.
She said something, murmuring it in English. The knife, still held in front of her, had a dent on the end.
The black woman behind her said something else.
“What are they saying?” Daiichi asked.
“The woman in the suit just got permission to kill us,” Hisoka said. “But the black one said not to spill any blood.”
“We should run,” Kenta said.
“You scared?” Daiichi asked. “We have muscle.”
“So does she,” Kenta retorted.
Daiichi only smirked.
Can’t run, we’re going to get hurt if we stay…
Ren rolled his shoulders, then inhaled.
Wind rushed out of the room, and small objects were drawn towards Ren. The intensity of the suction grew as the fat boy sucked in more and more air.
The bodyguard kicked one edge of the low table, and the wind caught it, helping it rise. Money, plates and the bricks of white powder slid to the floor, sliding and rolling towards Ren.
Daiichi opened fire again, indiscriminate, but she didn’t even react. Her knife blocked one shot that was directed more at the black woman, flying out of her grip, and the bodyguard walked between the rest of the shots without even dodging. She seized a table leg in one hand. It would have been too heavy to lift, but Ren’s suction was hauling it off the ground. Two bullets bit into the thick wood.
Daiichi unleashed his power, creating another ghostly replica of himself, incredibly fast, stronger than he was.
The woman kicked the table, and it spun through the air as it flew towards Ren, clipping the ghost. The phantom lost an arm and a chunk of its chest, got its bearings, then charged the bodyguard. The damage to its chest was too grave, and it crumpled into neon green dust a pace away from her.
Ren was struck by the moving table, hit with enough force that he stumbled backwards into Kenta, Hisoka, and the other mundane members of the group.
Ren blew, and the table went flying across the room. Kenta’s heart sank as he saw the woman, crouching low to the ground. Her hand reached up to strike the flying table, altering its course as it flew towards the Chinese men. It came so close to hitting them that Kenta thought it would be like the cartoons, where someone was cut but didn’t start bleeding until seconds had passed.
Except it hadn’t hit them, and the woman was too close to the ground to really be affected by the wind.
“Suck!” Daiichi shouted.
“Don’t!” Kenta said, though there was little point.
It was too late. Ren had stopped blowing, buying her a second to move. She stepped forward, closing the distance to the group. Daiichi created a third ghost, rushing towards her, but she avoided the first strike.
Ren started drawing air in once more. Daiichi’s spirit opened with a flurry of attacks, moving twice as fast as she was, but failed to land a strike. The bodyguard took a step back and used the toe of her glossy black shoes to flick a brick of powder into the air. She threw it, and the suction only added to its velocity as it soared to Ren’s right.
Daiichi’s spirit was fast enough to avoid the brick, but Daiichi wasn’t. It bounced off his head, and the ghost dissipated again. She kicked the table, and again, the suction caught it. It flew into Ren’s shins, and he fell.
Thrice, both the ghost and Ren had been countered, almost casually.
Daiichi shouted, uncharacteristically angry. Uncharacteristic, maybe, because he’d never lost a fight before.
The others pushed forward from behind Kenta. Had they not just seen the fight? They really thought they’d accomplish something?
But the force of the others charging forward from behind started him moving forward, and he was driven to keep advancing by the vague, incoherent idea of what might happen to him if he, the largest, physically strongest member of Daiichi’s group, turned coward.
He knew in an instant that it was a mistake. Daiichi’s ghost, twice as fast and twice as strong as Daiichi himself, an expendable assailant, hadn’t accomplished anything. Why would six or seven teenaged delinquents?
She tore through them, every movement precisely calculated to disable, to crush, blind, stun and stagger. They were driven to stumble into one another, their weapons knocked from their hands. She wasn’t any faster than any of them, not a martial artist, though there was a degree of elegance to what she did. No movement wasted.
Her foot caught Kenta in the diaphragm. She planted one hand on the back of his head as he winced from the blow, then pushed him face first into the ground.
His teeth bit into a brick of powder, puncturing the plastic itself. Kenta tried to rise, but she stepped on the back of his head, driving him facefirst into the brick a second time, hard.
Someone else fell to the ground a short distance away. Kenta turned to look, simultaneously coughed, and loose powder exploded around his face, filling his eyes.
The powder caked his nose, thick in his mouth, to the point that he couldn’t swallow.
Drugs weren’t a ‘big’ thing in the East, even among gangs. He didn’t know the particulars of any powder or substance. Only that they were bad, possibly lethal if too much was ingested. He tried to spit it out, but couldn’t help but feel like he was swallowing more than he was removing. The weight of the woman bodyguard was on his head, holding him there, suffocating.
He felt the rush of it taking hold, intense and seemingly without a ceiling to top it off. His face in the dirt, in the dust, he was overwhelmed by the paradoxical sense of being like the king of the world.
That rush lasted too short a time. He could feel the rush building until it felt like his heart was going to burst or vibrate itself into pieces. He felt nauseous, as if he was going to throw up, but couldn’t bring himself to.
Kenta’s left arm started going numb. He knew what that meant.
With a cold feeling in his churning gut, he thought, I’m having a heart att-
He found himself out of his body. He was an observer, an outside agent, without body or mind. He couldn’t think. He could only exist, as a part of some sequence of events.
Two entities, communicating in increasingly short bursts as they drew together. Two entities, each unfolding and folding through realities, through multiple worlds at the same time. Two entities, singing ideas through mediums he could barely comprehend. Through light and heat and space and half-lives and gravity.
And they were looking. Looking at a planet that was broad, more gas than solid. A world of perpetual st
orms. There were lifeforms in there, lifeforms in countless possible variations of that world. Bloated bags of gas that flowed through and in the storms, in kalleidoscopic patterns.
He could see what they were focusing on, see them examining those possible worlds, declaring something. Ownership here. Claim there. Territory elsewhere.
-ack.
Kenta’s thoughts were confused as he felt the high seize him. Three things overwhelming him at once. The things he’d just seen, fleeing from his recollection. His own body, dying in a violent, incomprehensible way. The world beyond-
He blinked the dust out of his eyes, felt them burn, could only see shadows, could only hear the rush of blood in his ears.
The bodyguard had stepped away from him, freeing him to raise his head. She’d staggered, and was being supported by the black woman.
He turned away, flipping himself over. He could see the fat shape of Ren, on his hands and knees, Daiichi prone on the ground.
The bodyguard recovered faster. She found her stride quickly enough.
She kicked at Daiichi’s throat, hard. Ren, she struck in the nose with one boot.
The black woman said something in English.
“S-she’ll take the cost of the lost product out of the deal,” the translator said in Chinese, his voice distant.
Kenta only lay there, his chest heaving. He felt stronger, could feel his heart returning to some form of equilibrium.
But he knew he couldn’t win. He lay there, doing his best to emulate the dying, as the Chinese men collected both cash and drugs in a bag, handing them to the black woman.
She spoke, and the Japanese man translated it to, “She would like to discuss delivery of the product on the way out.”
Kenta lay there long after the two women and the Chinese men had left. He wiped caked powder from his face, though the effects had receded, the tingling and the rush long since faded. Whatever had happened to him, the drugs did almost nothing, now.
He wiped his face with his shirt, then checked on his friends.
Daiichi, dead, suffocated, eyes bulging. Ren lay there, eyes rolled up into his skull, his nose rammed into his brain, though the blood hadn’t leaked past the aperture of his nostrils.
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