by John McCrae
I could feel another person, someone who hadn’t been there a moment ago. A man standing in the darkness.
The man strode forward, uncaring about the darkness. He caught Burnscar around the face with one broad hand, and he brought it down hard against the counter. I was dropped to the ground. Burnscar fell across me, limp and unmoving, and the man flickered out of existence.
The darkness slipped away, retracing its steps through my body, undoing its passage between my organs and joints, through and inside my blood vessels.
A clearing formed. An expanse of dim light, lit only by one shaft of light that managed to come in through the corner of a window. Burnscar’s head was pulverized, unrecognizable. She lay limp, unmoving, dead.
“Interesting,” Jack said, looking down at his fallen teammate.
“Yes! I’m almost positive I got this on record!” Bonesaw squealed.
“Which you’ll have to leave behind. We’ll retreat.”
“I just need the hard drive! I’ve been trying to get data like this for ages, and it’s a new system!”
Bonesaw started to head for the walk-in fridge where Brian was, but Jack grabbed her by the back of the neck. “No.”
“It’s ‘kay! Two seconds! I’ll be right back!” She slipped out of his grip, running into the freezer, opening one of the cases that looked Mannequin-made.
The darkness continued to dissipate around Brian, and I was aware as a masculine figure flickered into existence in the midst of the cloud, in one corner of the walk-in freezer.
It was Brian, but it wasn’t. It was colored in monochrome, with one eye open, the other half-formed. Markings in white covered his flesh, spiraling out from one pectoral, covering his chest and stomach. His hands were white to the elbow, and he was sexless. A ken doll with only more white patterns between his legs.
Or maybe he was white and the markings were in black?
Almost casually, he reached out and seized Bonesaw’s hands, which gripped the drive. He raised her off of the ground, her feet kicking, and she grunted as his grip tightened.
“The things I put up with,” Jack said, seemingly unconcerned. He whipped out his knife, slashing at the pseudo-Brian. There was no effect. “Hm.”
Grabbing a meat cleaver from the kitchen counter, he hacked at Bonesaw instead. It took three swings to sever her arms at the wrists. She hit the ground running, her stumps jammed into her armpits. They disappeared over the counter of the dining hall, Jack helping Bonesaw up.
Monochrome Brian lunged after them, but the floor of the freezer shattered beneath one foot. He lost his orientation, then flickered out of existence once more.
I could see Brian from where I lay, as I struggled to breathe with the one-hundred and whatever pounds that were piled on top of me. He hung there, haggard, glaring at nothing in particular. The man didn’t reappear, but the stream of incongruent events continued; I could see one of Brian’s ribs twitch like the limb of a dying insect.
With a glacial slowness, his body parts began retracting back into place. The metal frames holding his intestines and organs into place bent, then gave way in the face of the inexorable pull.
It took a long time. Five minutes, maybe ten. But his skin crept back, tearing where it had been pinned to the wall, joining back together, then healing. Even the scratches that had criss-crossed his chest since he’d fought Cricket began to mend.
The healing stopped before it was entirely finished. I saw the figure appear again. The monochrome, half-formed Brian. Mercilessly, it tore out the metal studs that had impaled Brian’s limbs to the wall. It caught Brian, then laid him carefully on the ground.
He couldn’t walk, so he dragged himself towards us.
He had another trigger event. Two new powers? Three, if I counted the way his power was diminishing my own?
He touched my hand, held it between his own. I could feel something thrumming through me, willing me to take hold of it.
It took me a minute to figure out how. The exposed bone of my forehead itched, then sang in an exquisite agony as it mended. My skin was next. My seized up muscles were last. My power was last to mend, and I regained my control, though the diminished effect continued.
I clenched my fist, struggled into a standing position. Brian hurried to Aisha’s side, grabbing her.
Four new powers?
I hadn’t heard about anything like this.
“Come on,” he said, his voice hoarse, “Don’t have long. I- Damn it!”
His darkness flowed out from his skin, heavier than I’d ever seen it, slow to expand, but it seemed to generate itself. It slithered through me yet again. Slithered through my bugs.
It was minutes before the darkness dissipated. When it did, Tattletale was standing. Parian was standing on the other side of the room, eyes wide. The three Travellers were huddled together.
“What the hell was that?” I asked. “Brian, hey-”
I stopped. He was on all fours, his head hung, his cheeks wet with tears.
I reached out for him, but a hand seized my wrist. Tattletale. She shook her head at me.
While I backed off, Tattletale reached for Imp, whispered something in her ear.
Imp bent down and took off her mask. In a voice far gentler than any I’d heard from her before, she said, “Hey. Big brother? Let’s get out of here.”
Brian nodded, mute.
Aisha could approach him, but I couldn’t?
He stood, refusing Imp’s offer for help in standing. He clutched one elbow with one hand, the arm dangling; it wasn’t an injury, I was pretty sure. He’d healed the worst of it. It was something else, some kind of security in the posture or something like that.
Darkness boiled out of his skin, a thin layer. It moved slower than it had before, thicker, more like tendrils sliding against one another than smoke. Just like the arm he had across his chest, gripping his elbow for stability, it was a kind of barrier, armor or a wall erected against the world. He walked slowly. Nobody complained, despite the proximity of our enemies and the fact that the darkness he’d spread out had to have alerted Hookwolf’s contingent about our existence.
I watched Brian as I walked behind him. I’d just been paralyzed, about to receive involuntary brain surgery. Now, in a much different way and for different reasons than before, I was again unable to offer him a hand. I couldn’t even talk to him without being afraid I’d say the wrong thing.
Even compared to being in Bonesaw’s clutches, I felt more helpless as ever.
13.10
I slept, but it was less like parking a car and more like running one into a ditch. I’d fallen asleep not by any choice on my part, but because I’d ceased to function. Over the past few days, I’d hit my limits of endurance, only to push past them over and over.
We’d made our escape without incident. When we’d gotten Brian settled, I’d planned on staying awake and keeping an eye on him, only to drop off to sleep within a minute of sitting down. I’d tried to push my limits once more and I’d discovered them.
When I woke up again, it was dusk. I was curled up in a chair with my head on the armrest. My eyes were sore and itchy, and I wasn’t sure why.
We’d settled at Brian’s headquarters, because it was close, and there had been the unspoken agreement that it would be better for him to be somewhere he’d be comfortable.
I was still tired, and I kept my head on the chair’s arm, clutching the blanket that someone- I suspected Tattletale- had draped over me. I could see her in the bed in the other corner of the room, lying beside Aisha. When I’d dozed off, it had been Brian and his sister sitting on the bed.
The blanket’s presence unsettled me, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. It was thoughtful, nice, and the fact that I didn’t know who’d done it or that I’d been unconscious and helpless when they’d done it, it shook me from the twilight of near-sleep.
Which meant I was now wide awake when I desperately wanted to get back to sleep, to stop thinking for just a few minutes.
The second I started worrying about things, my shot at a good rest would be gone. Worrying about things like Dinah, and Cherish’s hints that Coil wasn’t on the up and up about our deal. Worries about what that could mean in the long run. The newest were my anxieties over Grue.
No, I wouldn’t be getting to sleep any time soon. I turned my attention to checking my surroundings, rousing my swarm to check the surrounding streets and rooftops, count the nearby civilians, and get a sense of who was around.
Sundancer was out cold in the bunk beds in another room, and Bitch was sleeping in another bunk, in a heap with Sirius, Bastard and Bentley occupying the open spaces. Trickster and Ballistic were walking outside, maybe keeping an eye out for trouble. Genesis was off-site. She had to be awake for a while to recharge her power, so she’d told us she was going to report to Coil and check on Noelle. If my bugs were any indication, she wasn’t back yet.
Parian had gone her separate way. She’d had stuff to deal with; her family was dead or surgically altered, their faces changed to make them near identical to some of the most hated individuals in the western hemisphere. I felt bad about leaving her with the aftermath of that scene, but we’d been prioritizing Brian.
Seems Brian’s commentary to me on the morning we’d found out about Dinah, the morning Leviathan came, was ultimately on target. When the cards were down, we protected and helped the people we care about, and we ignored the greater suffering of the world beyond that.
I shifted restlessly.
My bugs ran into a wall of Brian’s darkness in the living room, on the couch. I could feel it seep through them, tracing their internal organs. I didn’t move them further. I didn’t want to wake him if he was sleeping.
He wasn’t. A hand settled over my bug and covered it. I felt him scoop up the cockroach and lift it into the air, holding it on the flat of his palm. The darkness dissipated, and the cockroach heard the bass rumble of his voice.
I made myself rise from the bed. My ribs didn’t hurt anymore, and my burns were gone, but my muscles had kinked up from my sleeping in the fetal position on a piece of furniture meant for sitting. I stretched as I made my way to the living room. He was sitting on the couch with his feet firmly on the ground.
“You say something?” I asked.
“I said you can check on me in person, if you want.” The words were kind, but the look in his eyes wasn’t.
His stare reminded me of Bitch.
“Okay,” I replied, feeling dumb. I’d come to do that anyways, hadn’t I?
And now I didn’t know what to do with myself. I hadn’t mentally prepared or planned for this conversation. I stood there, feeling an impending panic as I tried to think of what to say.
I couldn’t ask if he was alright. That might be the last reminder he wanted, in much the same way that I’d been trying to avoid dwelling on my own anxieties and worries. Could I approach closer, or would that bother him? If I left, would I be abandoning him?
“Keep me company?” he asked.
Gratefully, I approached the couch and sat. I could see him tense as I jostled the couch.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, stupidly.
He shook his head, but he didn’t offer another explanation.
“Can I ask about the new power, or-”
“Yeah,” he interrupted.
There was a pause. I saw him raise his hand and create a slithering mass of darkness around it.
“Feels different,” he said, “And I can tell where it is, more. Slower to create, spreads faster.”
“But the other powers? I counted at least four.”
“One new ability.”
I nodded. Didn’t want to argue, so I waited.
From the other end of the couch, he raised one hand and pointed it towards my head. I stayed utterly still as a tendril of darkness snaked through the air, taking its time as it approached.
I stood up, abruptly, and he jumped to his feet in alarm. I could see his hands clenched, lines standing out in his neck.
An awkward, tense silence reigned, as we stood facing each other.
I waited until he’d relaxed before I spoke. ”Had a bad time with someone else trying to get into my head, not so long ago. Um. Can we- can we just skip the demonstration? Or make it more blunt?”
“Right.” It was like a shadow had passed over his face. He stared hard at the shuttered window at the end of the room.
I sat down, pulling my knees up in front of me so I could wrap my arms around my legs, and I waited for him to rejoin me. He’d healed himself, but he hadn’t exactly bounced back. It wouldn’t be right to expect him to. Was this the kind of interaction Tattletale had wanted to avoid, when she’d urged Aisha to go to Brian, instead of me?
“I’ve talked to Tattletale about this. My power’s always had some effect on capes like Shadow Stalker. Her powers didn’t work as effectively in my darkness.”
“Velocity struggled, too. He was slower, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of the increased air resistance or something else.”
“Yeah. So we think I always had some effect in that department. That’s stronger now. Affects more powers, according to Tattletale. She’s making an educated guess that this aspect of my power is going to be more effective on capes with a physical power.”
“Right.”
“And when it works, I feel… a circuit? It’s like the darkness comes alive, a cord or wire between me and the people in my darkness, and I can actually see it. If I focus on it, it gets bright and hot, and I have access to whatever my power’s sapping from them. A fraction of a power, one power at a time.”
“So the healing?”
“Othala. I was so worried she’d escape my darkness before I finished giving you guys regeneration. I couldn’t just use her power on each of you, because it was only lasting a few seconds after I touched you.”
“And the regeneration was… Crawler?”
He nodded. I could see that dark look pass over his face.
“And then the duplicate you created would have been Genesis.”
He shook his head. ”No.”
“No?”
“She wasn’t in my darkness, I’m almost positive. And my power’s weaker than whatever I’m stealing. It doesn’t make sense that I was able to form myself as fast as I did. It wasn’t like she’s described it, either. Remember, I worked with her when we were dismantling the ABB.”
I nodded.
“It was more like… a forcefield. Except not. A hole in reality, and it took something out of me to feed and shape itself.”
I blinked a little in surprise. If Brian was stealing a share of other people’s powers, then-
I blinked again. My eyes were itchy.
“Damn it,” I groaned.
He gave me a curious look. Or at least, that’s what I took it for; I was having a hard time reading his expressions.
“Forgot to take my contacts out. My eyes are going to be sore for a while, and I don’t have a spare pair of glasses to wear.”
He nodded.
“Sorry. So small a problem in the grand scheme of things.”
“You need to be able to see.”
I reached into my utility compartment and got a small case with the spaces for the individual contacts and contact lens solution, then pried my right eye open to pinch the thing out.
A few seconds later, my other contact was out, and I was half blind. The way the shadows fell over Brian’s face, the shadows of his eye sockets made him look like he was wearing sunglasses. I couldn’t see the lines of tension, anger or anxiety. Whatever it was that’d had him awake, sitting up and staring into space at ten or eleven in the evening.
Maybe I should have left them in. Risking an eye infection was small potatoes compared to fucking up this interaction. Except I couldn’t put them back in without having to explain why.
Why was this so hard?
“You get any sleep?”
He shook his head.
“None at all?”
&nb
sp; “Didn’t need to. Didn’t want to. Felt better about keeping an eye out for trouble than about sleeping.”
“Trickster and Ballistic are out there.”
“I know. I saw them step outside after Rachel came back.”
I smiled a little. ”Wasn’t so long ago that you were getting on my case for not sleeping enough, mandating that I get a certain number of hours before we moved on the Nine.”
He didn’t respond, and he didn’t move. I couldn’t read his expression. Had I said the wrong thing? Should I not have mentioned the Nine?
“Yeah.” His reply was delayed, almost begrudging. It didn’t sound gentle, or kind, or anything like that. It was more like I’d expect someone to sound if they were giving up the password to a safe at gunpoint.
“Sorry,” I said. I wasn’t sure exactly what for, but the apology was genuine. The smile on my face was gone.
For a minute or two, neither of us said anything.
What had we ever talked about that wasn’t about our costumed life? At first, it had seemed like common sense. I was new to the cape scene, it was exciting, he was experienced, and he’d wanted to share his knowledge. We’d talked about our recent jobs, the implications, even jobs we were considering. I could count on one hand, maybe two, the times we’d done stuff that hadn’t been centered around powers and fighting and violence.
Now that I couldn’t raise those subjects without reminding him of what had happened earlier, I was lost.
“You shouldn’t have come for me.”
“What?”
“Should have left me there. I was as good as dead. Throwing away your life and the rest of the team, to try to rescue me?”
“You’re not thinking straight. There’s no way I’d leave you behind.”
“Right. Because you’re supposedly in love with me, so you go rushing off to rescue me.”
That stung, more than it should have, and it would’ve hit me hard anyways. I couldn’t read his expression, so I went by his tone of voice, by the anger, the bite in his tone. The fact that he’d brought it up so casually.