Mermaid crouched down, her towering stature looking Lucy directly in the eyes. “Was I right? Are you that type of person, Lucy Grae?”
Lucy closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and said, “Yes, ma'am. Yes, I am.”
28
MIGUEL
When he finished his Judo training with his father, he took a long shower, allowing the hot water to beat against him. The stinging sensation was soothing as it worked out the soreness in his muscles. He lost himself in the steam, inhaling the humid air with deep breaths. He took a moment to meditate while he stood under the spray of water, allowing his mind to clear of thoughts and worries and expectations. He was in the moment and nowhere else.
Centered within himself, he turned off the water and stepped out into the small locker room. He put on some loose fitting clothing and walked toward the weapons training room to continue his target practice from that morning. He was training with throwing items. Knives, shurikens, hatchets, and improvised weapons that you might find on the street or in the average home. His father always taught him to be prepared. He may never know when he'd be caught without his equipment, so he should be able to use anything within arms reach as an offensive tool. His father would often quiz him, trying to catch him off guard.
He'd suddenly yell at him, from out of nowhere, “Attack!” and Miguel would have to grab the best thing to use that was within reach. It seemed to Miguel that no matter what he grabbed, his father would always find something better. If he was in the kitchen and grabbed a knife, his father would grab the pot that was still full of hot coffee. If he was in the bathroom and ripped the towel bar off the wall, his father would grab the ceramic lid off the back of the toilet. It was a fun game, and he hoped some day he'd win.
As Miguel walked past the laboratory, he made the mistake of glancing in. There sat the little girl they abducted, crying on the floor of her containment unit. She wasn't wailing, or openly weeping, just shaking as tears rolled down her cheeks. When her gaze lifted from the floor and met his eyes, she wiped the tears from her face and rushed to the glass wall. She pressed her hands against it and yelled, but the containment unit was sound proof.
Miguel looked away, taking a few steps toward the weapons training room before he stopped in the hallway. He knew he shouldn't talk to her, but he talked himself into believing that maybe there was a problem with the containment unit that she was trying to alert him to. Who knows what would happen if he didn't turn around and find out what she was trying to say? They needed her to finish their plan. She was an integral piece of the puzzle. His father would blame him if he ignored it. When he created enough scenarios where going back to the laboratory was in everyone's best interest, he turned himself around to investigate.
As he entered, he found himself nearing the containment unit with cautious steps. But the little girl inside was bursting with excitement, slamming her fists against the glass and yelling something. He walked toward her and flipped the switch on the small speaker box attached to the unit.
“-to help me! I don't know where I am! I don't know where my mom is!” she yelled through the speaker and Miguel glanced over his shoulder, thinking her loud screams would attract someone's attention, but neither his mother nor his father were in the command center.
“Calm down!” he yelled back at her.
She gulped in some air and nodded her head.
“Is something wrong?” he asked. “Why were you trying to get my attention?”
She looked confused and glanced around at the containment unit. “I'm trapped in here. Can you open the door?”
Miguel frowned and shook his head. “Of course not. You're our prisoner. I can't let you go.”
“I'm your prisoner?”
“Yes,” he said firmly.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why am I your prisoner?”
Miguel frowned again, disappointed that she didn't know already. “You have the disease. You're dangerous. We have to stop you from hurting people.”
“I'm not sick.” She sniffled and wiped her nose on the back of her arm. “And I don't hurt people. People hurt me. Like those stupid scientists. They hurt me all the time.”
Miguel shrugged. “They were probably trying to figure out a way to stop you.”
“Is that what you're doing?”
“No. We're going to use you.”
“Use me? For what?”
“To kill someone.”
The little girl backed away from him until she was pressing against the glass wall opposite from where he stood. Her eyes were large and her bottom lip was quivering.
“Why would you say something like that?”
Miguel shrugged again. “Because it's the truth.”
The little girl's eyes filled with tears, which she wiped away before sitting down on the floor and shaking her head. “I'm not going to kill anyone.”
“It's not up to you. We're going to use your disease to kill someone else with the disease. We've killed lots of people like you before. It's what we do.”
“You kill people?”
“Sure.”
“You? You're just a boy.”
“I'm fifteen.”
“You've killed someone?”
Miguel shrugged. “I've helped.”
There was a silence that hung in the air for a while. Miguel knew he should shut off the speaker and leave, but something kept him there.
“My name is Beth.”
“Yeah. I know.”
She stared at him for a moment before she said, “You're supposed to tell me your name now. That's what you're supposed to do. My mom says so. It's manners.”
“I can't tell you my name.”
“Why?”
“You can't know my name because then you'd know who I am.”
“So?”
“So? That'd be dangerous.”
The girl laughed at him.
“What's so funny?”
She tried to breathe between laughing and managed to say, “You're scared of me.”
“What?” He crossed his arms. “No, I'm not!”
She kept laughing. “Then tell me your name.”
“Fine. You know what, Beth? I am scared of you. I'm scared of your disease. I'm scared of what it can do.”
“Because I can do this?” she asked right before bursting into a rolling green cloud of gas and swaying around the containment unit.
Miguel was stunned for a moment, entranced by the motion of the gas. For a split second, he almost thought it was beautiful, but he quickly looked away.
“We've killed people with more powerful diseases than yours.”
The cloud of gas hardened back into the form of a little girl as she asked, “Why do you keep saying that? I don't have a disease.”
“Yeah, you do. It's what lets you turn into gas.”
“I made our cows sick one time, but that's because they jumped when a car honked its horn and they all started running and I got scared and I poofed.”
“You poofed?”
The little girl shrugged her shoulders and said, “That's what me and my mom call it. I poof and I turn into a cloud, except I'm down here instead of in the sky.”
“You're no cloud. You're dangerous.”
“No, I'm not.”
“I read my mother and father's report. You're a noxious gas, more powerful than anything man-made. If someone inhales even a little of you, it knocks them out for days.”
Beth pursed her lips to the side as she shook her head. “That only happened once and it was because those dumb scientists made me do it. I don't want anyone to inhale me. That's gross.”
Miguel felt defiant. The little girl was trying to trick him or something. He wasn't going to fall for it. His mother and father taught him better than that. He would feel no empathy for her, just like his father wanted.
“You could change your mind about hurting people. You could grow up and become a supervillain.”
Beth flex
ed both arms above her head and said, “Or a superhero!”
He blew out a derisive puff of air from his lips, dismissing the idea. “Superheroes are just as bad.”
“You're crazy. Superheroes are awesome.”
He tapped his finger on the glass to get her attention, ready to repeat everything his father and mother had told him. “No. They're not. They're dangerous and irresponsible and selfish. You can't trust them anymore than the weather. They're like hurricanes or something. They come into the city and wreck stuff.”
Somehow when he said it, it didn't sound as convincing as when his father said it.
“But they stop the bad guys,” Beth said. “If there were no superheroes, who would stop the bad guys?”
Miguel proudly said, “I could stop them.”
Beth perked up. “You have super powers?”
Miguel shook his head, frustrated that she didn't understand what he was trying to say. “No, no. Super powers are dangerous. That's what I'm telling you. Anyone who has the disease needs to be terminated. And that's what we do. Me and mother and my father.”
“So, you're just a regular boy?”
Miguel pressed his lips together in anger. “I have a suit. My mother made it. It does all kinds of things. Things that could kill you. Things that-”
“Your suit kills people?”
“No!” he said, throwing his hands into the air. “I use my suit to kill people! People with the disease!”
“Oh,” she said. “Even if they're good?”
“Yes! I mean, no. I mean, they aren't good. They fly around in the air and they forget about us. They forget about all the normal people. They hurt normal people because they don't remember what pain feels like.”
Beth nodded her head, but then she looked down at her own hands and said, “I remember what pain feels like. The scientists hurt me all the time. They were bad people.” She looked up at him and said, “Why don't you kill those people? They don't have any super powers but they're still bad people.”
Miguel shook his head and said, “My father and mother say we need to focus on the big problems. Besides, those scientists were just doing their job.”
“Is that what you say to make it okay when you hurt people? You say you're just doing your job so you don't feel guilty?”
Miguel felt his frustration boiling over, like he was beating his head against a brick wall, trying to break through before he bled out. But the brick wall was winning.
“It's not like that!” he yelled. “It's... it's...” but he couldn't come up with an argument to her words, flustered by her roundabout logic, and before he could put anything together in his mind, the voice of his father shouted from the doorway.
“What do you think you're doing!?”
His father stormed into the room, ignoring Miguel's pleas to explain himself. His father slammed his hand down on the switch for the speaker, turning off Beth's ability to talk. He grabbed Miguel by the collar and yanked him out of the laboratory. He slammed the door shut behind him, and shoved Miguel up against the wall, wagging his finger in Miguel's face as he shouted at him.
“Why were you talking to that thing?”
“Beth was yelling for me and I wanted to make sure nothing was wrong with the containment unit, sir. I thought it was important to-”
“Beth?” His father cuffed Miguel alongside the head. “That thing isn't a person with a name. That thing is a cloud of gas. That thing is a tool. That thing is a weapon in our war. Nothing more.”
“Yes, sir.”
Miguel's father released his grip and took a deep breath. “I never thought you would fall for such a simple ploy.”
Miguel stood up straight and shouted, “I didn't fall for-” but his father held up his hand to silence him.
“I saw everything, Miguel. I was watching you through the camera. That cloud of gas tried to humanize itself in your eyes. It was trying to confuse you into thinking that what we are doing is wrong. And as far as I could tell, you were doing a poor job of standing up to it.”
“I would never think what we're doing is wrong.”
Miguel's father shook his head as he looked at the floor. “I wished I believed that. I really do. I want to believe you're ready for this war. Your mother tries to tell me that you aren't-”
“She does?”
“-and I keep defending you, but you keep giving me reasons to think I might be wrong.”
“No! I'm ready! I swear!”
As Miguel's father walked away, he dragged the heels of his feet across the floor, as if he was so drained by his disappointment, that he couldn't bear to lift them any higher.
“I'm going to bed. We'll start your lessons an hour earlier tomorrow. I want to start from the beginning. The basics. I need to figure out where I went wrong.”
As his father stepped out of the command center and shut the door behind him, Miguel felt his life drain from his body. His mother didn't believe in him. And now, neither did his father. Miguel's body felt as if it was going to turn to dust and blow away in the wind. He felt meaningless. He felt empty. He felt nothing.
But only a second later, his fists clenched into tight balls of defiance. He would not let go. He would not allow his father's pride in him to slip away like that. He would prove to him and his mother that he was ready to be a hunter.
He ran to the arsenal and reached for his favorite gun, stopping inches away from touching it. His father would have armed the alarm, so taking anything off the wall would alert him. He wouldn't be able to take his suit either. But that was okay. The harder it was, the more he would prove to them that he was ready, even without the weapons and gadgets. He grabbed a regular jacket instead and scanned the room for anything else he could take with him before he remembered the throwing knife that was still stuck in the target from that morning's weapons training. He ran to the training room and grabbed the single blade, yanking it from the bull's-eye. He shoved it into his boot and made his way to the secret exit that his mother had only begun to construct. He used one of the manual exits, so that he wouldn't set off any alarms, and followed a tunnel a few blocks away from the MajesTech building. When Miguel crawled out of the tunnel and into the cold night air of an alleyway, he could see his breath in front of him. He placed the fake manhole cover back over the tunnel exit and readied himself to climb up the nearby fire escape, but he paused and made the mistake of allowing himself to think about his father and his mother. The look of disappointment. The sadness. The lack of pride.
He slid the knife out from his boot and pulled up the sleeve of his jacket. The old wound on his forearm was still red, barely clotting from the night before. He pressed the blade against his skin, parallel with the first cut. There was something beautiful about the design. Two lines. Lines that belonged to him. Lines that he created. He would remember the pain as long as they existed. He would remember his failure, his mother's lack of trust, and his father's disappointment. And whenever he touched the scars, he would remember what he did wrong, so that he would never do it again. Someday his father would be proud of him. Someday his mother would believe in him. Someday there would be no need for scars.
29
NIKO
A servant placed the guardian helm upon his head as softly as she could. The padded interior formed around his piles of braided hair, feeling both comfortable and secure. He turned toward the mirror and admired the crest of four wings enwrapped in an infinite loop on his armored chest, the symbol of his title, the Cherubim. He tugged on his black cape, pulling it over his shoulders so that it hung perfectly. He was a guardian, and he needed to make sure he looked like one.
“Make sure you polish my armor tonight,” he said to the waifish girl standing next to him with her head bowed. “The gold of this helm is shinier than the rest of my armor.”
Before the girl could respond, his sister, Zana, flung open his bedroom door, flying through it with her feet only a few inches off the ground. It startled both the servant girl and Niko, his
helm almost falling off his head as he stumbled to the side.
“Zana! What are you doing? Don't you know how to knock? You can't just-”
“Have you seen Yuri?” she spit out the question, breathing heavy and looking panicked.
“Yuri? No. Not today.”
Niko would have assumed she was playing a game of hide-and-seek with their younger brother, but she looked away with fear in her eyes, clenching her fist as if she were trying to summon another idea.
“What's wrong, Zana?”
She shook her head like she didn't want to explain. “I don't know. Maybe nothing. He's been acting differently. Angrier than usual.”
“He's a little boy. A spoiled little boy. He's just acting out. I wouldn't worry about it.”
Zana nodded her head. “Maybe. But I've looked everywhere and I can't find him. I don't think he's in the citadel.”
Niko dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “He knows he's not allowed to leave. Mother would kill him. Not to mention grandmother.”
“They're both too busy to even notice if he's standing next to them. I swear, I've raised that kid more than our mother has.”
He motioned toward the servant girl and she nodded her head, hiking up the bottom of her thin robes and tiptoeing out of the room. Niko lifted the helm from his head and placed it on the oak desk sitting next to the mirror.
“With everything that's happening with Aunt Sasha and the Oshiros, I don't think we can blame mother for being a bit distracted,” Niko said, closing his bedroom door for more privacy in the conversation.
“But that's my point, Niko. If it were just the last week or so, maybe I'd be more forgiving. But our mother and father have been distracted for Yuri's whole life.”
“It's your decision to coddle that kid. Sometimes I think you like playing mother to him. Practicing for when the imperator marries you off to Dominus Mastodon's son? I'm sure your child will be adorable with an elephant trunk.”
The Super Power Saga (Book 1): Super Powers of Mass Destruction Page 24