by Mur Lafferty
Blood. Some day he would remember to use his power. He inhaled sharply, sucking the cool underground air through his nose, but all he smelled was earth. No strong smell of expired bodies. He stumbled over something—a tree root, it felt like—and lay panting on the uneven floor.
You could just stay here. You’d be safe from the fighting and the heroes and the demons and the villains. Your friends are probably dead. You’re far enough underground to be safe. It sounded nice. He was so tired.
He dabbed at his forehead again, keeping the blood out of his left eye, and got up, trying to remember to keep stooped down. He squinted and thought he could see some light. He picked up his pace, breathing in Keepsie’s scent from the shirt he still carried. She wasn’t far away. He neared the edge of the tunnel, a hole punched into—or rather, out of—the side of a slope that led to a grocery store parking lot.
As he stepped out of the hole, he caught a whiff of something, a something malevolent, frightened, and slightly mad. He staggered back into the hole, falling onto his back, his eyes wide and blind, everything that Dr. Timson had been and was currently overriding his brain.
Peter had never inhaled a superhero before. Not inhaled some of their body. He convulsed, rolled over to his side and vomited. He blew air out his nose as hard as he could, attempting to remove her. And still, the images ran through his mind.
Young, eager scientist, studying the effects of the superdrug. Offering herself up as a petri dish, wishing for a superchild. Rising through the ranks as her colleagues recognized her brilliance. Taking more time to build the secret Academy than raise her son. Setting up labs to make an even stronger superdrug to give powers to adults.
The images came faster.
Loss, betrayal of her son, imprisonment, grief, rage at the Third Wave, situation spiraling out of control, forming her inner circle, finally, finally, before it was ready, testing the drug. Rush, power, excitement, base elements, power, loss of control, loss of sanity, loss of medicine, the Third Wave, always the Third Wave, they started it, they caused it, it was them, all their fault.
Peter clawed at his nose. This was worse than when he’d kissed Keepsie, he knew everything, and she knew he knew.
Stop it, stop it.
The race of images stopped, replaced with one image, that of Dr. Timson, half of her face fire, half ice, still in her white lab coat. She grinned at him. Stupid Third Wave. Control is the first thing we teach those with powers. With lesser powers, you’d think you could control yourself.
Get out.
I like it here. It’s quieter than inside my head.
Please.
No.
He screamed then, clutching his head. He could feel nothing, see nothing, smell nothing but the woman inside his head. His friends were forgotten.
28
Keepsie sat up and looked around her. Ian and Michelle lay within ten feet of her. Had they lost their glow, or was it simply lost in the daylight? Was it daytime already?
Keepsie shielded her eyes, squinting. Or was it just the glow of Light of Mornings, who outshone the sun, hovering above the Academy? Her back was to the parking lot where Keepsie and her friends lay, and neither Clever Jack nor Timson were in sight.
“I wonder if we’re going to start losing teeth.” She got up and took stock of her body.
Ill-used, certainly, but there was an odd absence of any indication she had been hit square on with a blast of nuclear power and blown through a wall and many feet of earth.
Her friends. She felt a stirring of worry. They couldn’t have survived it. Wincing, she approached Michelle.
Her wound still bled freely—need to do something about that—but otherwise she seemed fine. She stirred, groaning, but did not look to have the crushed bones and shredded skin and other symptoms of death that Keepsie had expected.
Ian, also unconscious, was much the same. Beaten up, sure: they’d had a bad day. But not looking as if he had lost a battle with a nuclear girl and a concrete wall.
Keepsie sighed. She was surprised that she was not more surprised. She leaned over, slipped her arm under Ian’s shoulders, and heaved him up. She got her shoulder under his armpit with ease, and went to pick up Michelle. With little effort, she dragged them both behind her, heading for the bar.
* * * * *
Keepsie hadn’t expected all the commotion. It was nice to walk through the empty streets without being attacked once. She didn’t look to see if Light of Mornings was still there; she really didn’t care.
The mech patrolled the sidewalk and it stopped when she got near. It ran at her, then, great lumbering steps.
She made a face at it. “Oh please.” It reached within ten feet of her and stopped cold, frozen in place.
She shook her head. “They’ll never learn,” she said to her unconscious friends. She dragged them down the stairs to the bar, then stared at the door. It was closed. She had no hands free. She frowned at it, and it opened. She walked inside, banging Ian’s head on the doorjamb before she remembered to sidle in, and the door closed behind her.
“Hey guys, can you help me out here?” she asked. That’s when the commotion started.
“Good God, are they dead?” Barry cried, rushing forward to take Michelle from her.
“No, but she’ll need a towel, I think.”
“What happened?” asked Tomas, helping her lie Ian down.
“There was a fight. A couple of fights, actually.”
“Where’s Peter?” The voice was the usual matter-of-fact, cut-the-bullshit tone that Colette excelled at. It managed to break through the haze in Keepsie’s brain. She rubbed her forehead, frowning. “I’m not really sure. We were separated. He smelled something bad. Then we got blown out of the Academy.”
“Was that the blast we heard?” Colette asked.
Keepsie nodded. She felt uncomfortable all of a sudden. Colette motioned her into the kitchen. She followed meekly.
Colette wordlessly handed her kitchen towels from the linen cabinet, a plastic bag of crushed ice, and a first aid kit. Then, with Keepsie’s hands full, she crossed her arms.
“How did you open the door?” she asked.
“I —” she paused. How had she opened the door? She didn’t know. She just did.
“Does it have something to do with why we’re all glowing?”
Now that she focused on Colette in the kitchen’s harsh light, she realized that her cook was glowing, like her other friends had been.
“I thought that was just my eyes.” She looked down. “Shouldn’t we get these in there?”
“Yes, and as we clean up the others, you’re going to tell me what happened. The guys are terrified, and how could you leave Peter behind?”
Without waiting for an answer, she banged through the door, which hit Keepsie in the elbow on the backswing.
Her head began to clear. She hurried after Colette and helped wordlessly as the cook directed Tomas on how to clean, dress and ice Ian’s head wounds. She and Colette pressed towels on Michelle’s wound, which had slowed its bleeding. Michelle groaned as they applied pressure, and Keepsie sighed in pity and relief. She was alive enough to feel pain, at least.
“Jesus fuck,” Ian mumbled. “What happen?” He rolled over and vomited onto Tomas’s lap.
Tomas got up to clean himself and Barry took over tending to Ian. “I feel like someone’s hit me several times with a large stick,” Ian said.
“Well, that looks to be true,” Colette said. “What happened to your face, kiddo?”
Ian passed his hand over his face, and his eyes widened. “That bitch Timson. Now she’s got like ice powers or something. She covered me with ice, I couldn’t breathe. And I don’t remember what happened after that.”
Colette looked at Keepsie, but Michelle groaned again. She sat up with difficulty and Keepsie’s help. “She’s like an elemental or something.” She looked around, frowning. “How did we get here?”
“Keepsie carried you. Both of you. And how did Timso
n get powers?” Colette said, looking again at Keepsie.
“Wow? Is it that drug you took?” Michelle interrupted.
“I guess,” Keepsie’s words trailed off. Something was important. Something that didn’t seem important before.
“Drug?” Colette’s voice was very soft. “You took that drug?”
“She was going to kill them,” Keepsie said. “I think. I took one of the pills that Timson used to get her powers. Or—I’m not sure what it was.”
She pulled on her ear. If only she could think. Colette held out her hand, as formidable as a mother, and Keepsie retrieved a pill for her and handed it to her without comment.
Colette turned her back and stomped into the kitchen.
“What was that all about?” Tomas asked.
“She can figure out what’s in it.” Keepsie scowled at the floor. “Or rather, she can figure out how to use it to make the tastiest dish with it. From there she makes, um, guesses.”
Michelle pulled the towel from her shoulder. The nasty puncture wound had nearly closed. She looked at Ian, who was no longer needing Barry’s help to sit upright. “OK, this is not right. We should be seriously injured. What happened?”
“Oh. We got blown through a wall. That’s right,” Keepsie looked up suddenly. “Light of Mornings came back, looked for files, and blew us through a wall. We ended up in the parking lot of the diner. Oh, and I got a file. Here.” She handed the file she had managed to bring with her to Barry.
They stared at her as if she had suggested they form a militant commune in the bar and have lots of love children. The glow around them subsided and her head finally cleared.
“Keepsie, that’s—” Barry started, but Keepsie interrupted him.
“Wait, where’s Peter?”
* * * * *
Into the bar. Out into danger. Back into the bar. Back out into danger, despite the state they were in when they last came to the bar.
Shit. Shit. I can’t believe—shit.
Keepsie ran. The moment the thought of Peter had muscled through the noise in her mind, everything had cleared except for her horror and determination, and she dashed from the bar.
Her memory was clear now. Timson’s attack. Her last ditch effort. The move of her mind to go on vacation. The shocking, yet painless, travel through the wall and the hill. Her relative ease in transporting her friends. Most of her friends.
God.
She ran. The streets and the skies were still clear. She didn’t stop to wonder where her many attackers of the day were, just Peter. Her friend. Her—well, her Peter.
She trotted up the Academy stairs and paused. The hill leading down from the Academy to the diner’s parking lot obscured her exit hole. She turned and headed that way.
He lay in the mouth of the hole, on his back, staring at the sky. Blood flowed from his nose in slow but steady stream.
Keepsie dropped to her knees beside him. “Oh no, Peter, no, what happened to you, aw, come on, sweetie, come on.” She touched his face lightly. He was warm and his eyes twitched when he felt her touch.
“OK, good, alive, that’s a good start.” Her monologue continued as she felt him clumsily for broken bones. He seemed intact.
“Now we sit you up, yeah, OK, no, don’t worry about me, I can do this just fine, right, oh, crap.” She attempted to get her arm underneath his shoulder to lift him, the way she had Ian and Michelle, but he had slumped over and to the side.
“OK, right, guess that superstrength or whatever is gone. Wish it had lasted. But I guess if it had lasted, I wouldn’t be out here, I’d be all Lucy in the sky with diamonds again. How did you get hurt, anyway? Did you get the bad luck of getting hurt right after it wore off?”
Peter’s eyes were disconcerting, and she wondered if they were drying out. Shuddering at the implications, she carefully closed them. Now he seemed unconscious, not completely paralyzed. That was easier to deal with.
She finally went for the undignified route and grabbed his wrists. She grunted and pulled and dragged him down the hill. Gravity helped her a great deal, but once they reached the sidewalk, he wouldn’t budge.
“Peter, I thought you were a thin guy. What gives?” She sat next to him on the sidewalk, close to tears.
“Keepsie!” Tomas’s Norwegian voice called from around the corner.
“Stay right there,” she told Peter’s body, and ran to meet Tomas.
“Colette’s pretty angry with you,” Tomas said.
“Yeah, well, if she can tell me what she would have done in the situation, I’d love to hear her suggestions,” Keepsie said.
“Shall we get Peter inside?”
Keepsie shook her head.
“Right. Let’s go.”
“Where is he?” he asked.
Keepsie groaned. “No. No no no no. This isn’t happening!”
“What?” said Tomas.
“He’s gone.” Two grooves in the hill marked where Keepsie had dragged
him to the sidewalk, which was smeared with blood, but Peter was, indeed, gone. “Crap! He couldn’t have gone far. What are we going to do?
"You head up the street, I’ll check inside the Academy.”
Tomas laid a large hand on her shoulder. “Keepsie.”
“Come on, he’s hurt!”
“Keepsie. Look.”
She raised her eyes. The Academy was a burning husk, even worse than before. It was little more than a hole in the ground. Tomas pointed again. Clever Jack stood atop a roof a block away, watching them. Light of Mornings hovered nearby.
“Keepsie, we have to go back to the bar.”
29
Peter looked up, groggy and disoriented. He was running through a garbage-strewn alley. A couple of bodies—homeless people, by the look of them—lay in pools of blood. The work of Doodad’s robots? Light of Mornings? Byproducts of hero battles? Random slaying? Peter didn’t understand why he had no physical reaction to the grisly deaths. He also didn’t understand why the copper smell wasn’t filling his head with terrifying images of death.
“Third Wave. None of you could ever control your power,” he heard his own voice say. He turned and ran down a street parallel to main. Why wasn’t he headed to Keepsie’s Bar?
He stopped running and put his hand to his head. Only, his body didn’t respond to either of those demands. What?
“Don’t fight it. I’m driving now,” he said again.
His heart started to race, but only in his perception. His body traveled on, determined, driven by this other power. He began to panic, but forced himself to calm down and think of a way out of this prison.
“You are welcome to try,” he said.
No. Not he. She. Timson. He had inhaled her as a gaseous form, she was in his brain.
This is impossible. There is no calm way to deal with this because it is not happening. I should have stayed in the cave.
But his body continued its run. He hadn’t even been paying attention to the course it was taking. He found himself face to face with the Crane, looking into the narrow, cold eyes.
“It’s Timson,” he growled at the threatening figure. “Password is elite.”
“Oh, ah, ma’am...” said The Crane, backing down. “How—”
“The idiot inhaled me when I was in gaseous phase. His power is one that causes his brain to be profoundly affected by scent. I was able to grab hold.”
“Oh. That was, ah, clever, ma’am. But what happens if your body takes on another elemental form? You had said you were having trouble controlling it.”
“Well. The change will likely be painful for me, but I should be all right.”
There was an inflection to his—her—tone that made Peter shiver. If he could have shivered, that is.
The heroes assembled in an apartment in the good part of town. Peter realized they were in The Crane’s secret identity home. The spotless white walls gleamed, as did the plush white carpet and furniture. The Crane served sparkling water—nothing that could stain—to t
he heroes. But a certain few were missing. Pallas, namely. Every hero, save White Lightning and Samantha—Ghostheart—who had been involved with the torture at the Academy was there, as well as some younger recruits who he didn’t recognize.
The Crane sat on a spare spot on the couch, looking frightened and uncertain. Peter saw with some satisfaction that the hero’s wings were sullied with blood and soot, and he trembled slightly.
“We’ve finally had some luck,” Peter announced to the heroes. “Clever Jack and Light of Mornings are converging in the city again. Ghostheart and White Lightning are working on our backup plan. Doodad has been captured by the Third Wave.
“The bad news is that Doodad has clearly taken the Zupra-Ex and it has increased his abilities so that he can now make machines that power themselves. There is some question as to what else he might have made. Further bad news is that Laura Branson is in possession of the only collection of Zupra-Ex that exists, and she possibly has the chemical compound as well.”
The heroes looked at each other uncertainly. This news clearly wasn’t good.
“I have discovered I can take possession of this Third Wave’s body when I am in gaseous form,” he answered. “I have some time before I switch again, I believe.”
“Why a Third Wave, Doctor?” asked The Crane. Peter could feel Timson’s underlying revulsion for his sycophantic nature.
“Besides the fact that his power is unique in that it allows me to do this, it’s perfect for infiltration, Crane,” his voice took on an oily quality he was unaware it could do. “This man is a close friend of Laura Branson. He can get the drugs from her.
“But I need to hurry.”
Panic made his ears sing and his vision blur. He tried everything he could to wrest control from her, but as he had no idea how to fight this kind of threat, he felt as if he were trying to move a glacier with a frozen chicken. He didn’t even know where to start.
As Timson talked to her flock, he tried to gain control of something he figured she wouldn’t notice. First he tried to twitch a calf muscle. He had never thought about the effort it took, the synapses that had to run through his body, the exquisite concentration. No go. He moved to something smaller. Timson had grasped the side of the armchair and he tried to grasp it just a little tighter, make her think the emphasis was her own. Nothing responded.