Wayward

by Skye Knizley

  “Time’s up, little girl,” Bishop growled.

  His breath smelled like a carrion house in high summer, and Cadence recoiled in disgust. “Listen, can you go have a dog biscuit or something? Your breath is going to kill me long before your claws do,” she said.

  When Bishop snarled in anger, she pushed him off with her shield and rolled the opposite way, giving herself some distance.

  Bishop picked himself up and discarded his coat. Beneath he was wearing a dirty form-fitting top and loose pants that left his ankles bare.

  “You think this is comic book? You can joke?” He asked. He seemed surprised more than insulted.

  Cadence shrugged. “A year and a half ago I was just a normal high school student worried about finals and keeping my girlfriend happy. Now I’m fighting with a werewolf over a hidden bunker in the middle of a state forest. If I can’t laugh about that, what can I laugh at?”

  “You were never ordinary, you were extraordinary! If Talon hadn’t helped you escape, you would have been our best operative!” Bishop said.

  Talon. The name meant something, and once again a portion of Cadence’s mind opened, accompanied by staggering pain thudding through her head. Her shield collapsed and she fell to her knees with blood running freely from her nose. In her mind, she saw a small man with dark hair and a hooked nose. He wore the white uniform of Specter, but wasn’t like them. He was kind, for one thing, and he called her by her name, Cadence, instead of the one they’d given her. Shockwave wasn’t a name.

  Bishop didn’t waste the opportunity. He moved in close and kicked her in the face, then pounced, tearing at her flesh with his claws. Cadence barely felt it as wave after wave of memories danced through her mind. The pain that came with each one was far worse than anything he was doing to her body.

  She struggled to stand, to fight back, but her mind wouldn’t let her. Her shield sputtered to life only to shatter under Bishop’s attacks and she collapsed again. He kneed her in the face with enough force she spun head over heels and landed on her back in the foliage.

  “Now I know your Achilles heel. Memories, yes? That was Talon’s gift. Erasing and implanting memories,” Bishop said. “He locked yours away.”

  Blood filled Cadence’s mouth and she knew she’d swallowed at least one tooth. Memories were dancing before her eyes, memories of lives that weren’t hers. Talon hadn’t just erased her memories, he’d given her the memories of others. She remembered him, sort of. She could remember his voice in her head. “Cadence, you will forget everything. Forget what they did, forget the fight to escape. They will kill me when they catch me, you must keep their memories safe. If we lose the memories, everything they were is lost with them. Do you understand?”

  She understood. Talon didn’t erase memories, he took them. Everyone he’d ever erased was in her head, stored away for safekeeping. It’s how she knew how to fight, knew how to manipulate sound...

  The cascade of memories and personalities threatened to drown her. Each one threatened to subjugate and destroy what she knew to be her self. As Bishop pummeled her body, her mind struggled to stay afloat, to remain Cadence Phoenix under the onslaught.

  In a battle that seemed like years but was only seconds, Cadence forced the memories behind the wall Talon had created in her mind. The pain in her skull subsided, only to be replaced by the pain in her body, and she opened her eyes. Bishop was straddling her, punching her in the face and throat. She gagged on blood and another tooth, then spat in his face and brought up her shield. It sliced neatly through both of his legs and she pushed him off, ignoring his screams of surprise and fear.

  “What happened to Talon,” she snarled, ignoring the bloody wounds all over her body.

  Bishop tried to crawl away. “What do you think happened? Starr had him recycled!”

  Recycled. That was a quaint way of saying he’d been liquefied and fed intravenously to the prisoners. Starr was a monster who had the strange idea that he could make metahumans by forcing them to ingest other metahumans.

  Cadence grabbed Bishop by the back of his shirt and raised him to eye level. “And where is Starr?”

  “Seattle, awaiting delivery of your corpse,” Bishop replied. He wasn’t even trying to fight anymore.

  “He’s in for a surprise. Is Nikki with him?”

  Bishop nodded. “Yes. Are you going to kill me?”

  “Yes.”

  It was surprisingly easy to snap his neck. She felt it pop beneath her hands, and didn’t care. Like Starr, he’d been a monster. Her mind was still awash with memories, many of which weren’t her own, but she knew Bishop was responsible for countless deaths and providing victims to the Specter D-IX program. He didn’t deserve mercy.

  “Oh my God, CJ are you alright?”

  Cadence spun, surprised to see Ethan standing on the opposite side of the clearing, his pistols drawn.

  “Fine,” she said, a moment before she pitched forward onto her face, unconscious.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Consciousness came back over time. Cadence saw trees and flashes of light, then fell back gently into the wading pools of nothingness. Over and over she fought her way from oblivion, only to sink back into the darkness.

  When she finally woke, she recognized the roof of her car and the comforting rumble of its engine. She sat up and looked at Ethan, who sat beside her chewing on a piece of jerky and guiding the car down the lonely highway.

  “What happened?” She asked. She could still taste blood on her lips and it felt like new teeth were trying to grow.

  Ethan glanced at her. “You almost died taking down the hybrid. How are you feeling?”

  How did she feel? Like a werewolf had been using her as a punching bag while Chuck Norris emptied her skull with a spoon.

  “About like I look, I imagine,” she said.

  She struggled to sit up and looked at herself in the side mirror. It wasn’t as bad as she thought, her face was bruised and her lips were swollen, but the bruises looked days old, not hours. Her stomach sank and she spun to glare at Ethan, certain she’d missed the rendezvous with Specter.

  “How long was I out?”

  Ethan finished his jerky. “Stop panicking, only a few hours. I carried you back to the car myself and got you back on the road.”

  “Thank the Goddess,” Cadence said.

  “You can thank me, Gaia had nothing to do with saving your scrawny ass,” Ethan said with a grunt.

  “Thank you,” Cadence said. “Seriously. How did you find me?”

  Ethan’s pause was too long, and Cadence knew he was trying to think of a convenient lie. She laid a hand on his arm and shook her head.

  “The truth this time.”

  “I had a hunch you would go there. I had some idea what Dr. Lee and your father had left for you in that lockbox,” he said eventually.

  “You knew where it was?”

  Ethan laughed. “Of course I knew.”

  Cadence rested her aching head against the glass. Was there anyone involved in this whole mess who didn’t know more about her than she did?

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because some tombs are better left unopened, kid,” Ethan said. “There’s nothing left in that place but dust, ghosts and a couple uniforms that don’t mean anything anymore.”

  “They mean something, Ethan,” Cadence said. “My predecessors stood for doing what was right in the face of unspeakable evil. That means something, people have only forgotten.”

  Ethan looked at her. “Did you go and remember who you are?”

  Cadence shook her head, then gasped as sparks danced around behind her eyes. “Not exactly. I know a guy named Talon erased my memories and filled me up like a tape drive. I’ve got the memories and abilities of at least five people locked in my head.”

>   “Including your own?” Ethan pressed.

  It was hard to tell, if she was honest with herself. She’d pushed most of the memories back into the dark corners of her mind, but some were still floating around, and she recognized a few as belonging to her. Others, they seemed like hers, but also not. The trouble with memories is they were remembered in first person.

  “Some. I still don’t know who I am, who my parents are or where I came from,” she said. “I know I escaped from the Nevada facility with the help of a guy named Talon, I know he wiped my slate clean and left to take the heat himself. He gave me a second chance.”

  Ethan opened another package of jerky and took a big bite. He chewed slowly, his mouth moving like he was working a wad of tobacco. “Where’s this Talon guy now? Maybe he can get your memories back, find your connection to the original Cadence.”

  “Dead,” Cadence replied. “A guy named Starr had him killed and fed to their lab rats.”

  “That’s just downright unsettling,” Ethan said. He pulled the jerky out of his mouth and tossed it out the window.

  “I’m certainly not interested in eating soup anytime soon,” Cadence said.

  She looked out at the highway. “We’re going to Seattle, right?”

  “Yep. Be there in a few hours, we just left Richland.”

  Cadence twisted into a more comfortable position and closed her eyes. “How did you know?”

  “I’m a wizard, we know things.”

  ***

  The road sang her to sleep and she drifted, rocked to sleep by the hum of the road and the Mustang’s rumble. She woke occasionally to watch the cities and towns go by, before drifting off again. Her body needed rest and energy to heal, and they didn’t have time to stop.

  The noise of the car’s brakes and the chime of a gas station bell brought her to full wakefulness long after dark. Ethan climbed out to put fuel in the tank and she unkinked herself to join him under the awning. Typical of him, he was smoking a cigarette while holding the pump’s handle in place. She shook her head and gestured at the soggy dogend.

  “Trying to blow us up?”

  Ethan smiled around the cigarette. “Darlin’, I was smoking and pumping gas before even your daddy was crawling. Never blew up.”

  Cadence stretched and felt her shoulder go back into the socket, relieving much of the pain in her side. She sighed with relief and leaned against the car, glad to be breathing fresher air.

  “Fine. If we die in a fiery explosion, I’ll never talk to you again,” she said.

  “Uh, I think that might be the least of our worries. Folks are starting to notice the state of your clothes and the amount of blood,” Ethan said.

  “Huh?”

  Cadence turned. They were at a gas station and convenience store that was attached to a deli. Though it was perhaps eight in the evening, the store was busy. Customers exiting were giving her the once-over then glaring daggers at Ethan, as if he was responsible for her condition.

  “I should get cleaned up. Grab me a sandwich from the store? A burger if they got it,” she said, dragging her pack from the back seat. “Maybe a soda or something? I need calories.”

  Ethan was just finishing. “Roger that. See you back here, try not to hurt anyone.”

  The filling station’s bathroom was cleaner than most and they had quarter-operated showers. Cadence rinsed off using the soap and shampoo left for her convenience, then dried and dressed in bra and panties before lifting her uniform from the pack. Well, not her uniform, it belonged to the other her. It seemed fitting, if she was going to go play the hero she should look the part. She’d told Ethan that people had just forgotten, maybe it was time to remind them that there was still good in the world.

  The uniform was cold and slick on the inside, and seemed to fit her in a more provocative manner than seemed appropriate for a teenage girl. If they got out of this and she felt the need to have a uniform, maybe she could find someone to make one that wasn’t quite so tight.

  She put a light jacket over the grey and olive drab uniform and hurried outside to find Ethan sitting on the car’s hood eating what looked like a turkey leg. He whistled when he saw her and slid off car, clearly surprised.

  “I haven’t seen that in a long time. It fits you well, CJ.”

  Cadence blushed. She’d never worn anything quite so tight, and it was making her squirm.

  “Is it supposed to be this tight?”

  Ethan paced around her. “Yes, it’s designed to allow you to fight and move with the minimum of fabric drag. Think of it like an ice-skater’s costume.”

  “Because those guys don’t look like dorks,” Cadence grumbled.

  “It looks good, kiddo, I promise,” Ethan said. “You’ll have all the women staring at you, whether they want to be you or date you. If you weren’t like a daughter to me, I might have inappropriate thoughts.”

  Cadence rummaged in the paper bag on the hood and pulled out a delicious-smelling burger. “Not exactly what I was hoping for. Do you think it will inspire anyone?”

  “It used to. Hand to God, it used to,” Ethan said.

  The burger was as good as it smelled, but did nothing to take the edge off Cadence’s growing hunger. She devoured the second one nestled in the bag, along with an envelope of fries and what was left of Ethan’s turkey before she felt normal again. She dropped the bone back into the bag and tossed it into the trash, trying to ignore that people were looking at her. Little kids were pointing, teenagers were either laughing or trying not to drool and parents were just trying to keep order. Cadence tried not to stare back, it was worse than being on stage.

  “We should get going,” Ethan said, seeing her discomfort.

  Cadence took the keys from his hand. “I’ll drive.”

  “No argument from me. This thing handles like a tank.”

  “Bite your tongue,” Cadence said, starting the engine.

  “Maybe if we get through this, we can get like a CJ-Mobile or something, you know, like that Bat guy has in the comics,” Ethan quipped.

  “Heroes can’t roll up in a classic?”

  It felt good to be behind the wheel. It also felt good to have her behind covered by the seat, she hadn’t realized just how form-fitting the armor pieces were.

  “It lacks a certain something,” Ethan said.

  “Whatever.”

  ***

  It wasn’t long before the lights of Seattle loomed ahead, a beacon to anyone coming from the east. From here it was easy to see it wouldn’t be long before it and the sister city Tacoma were one and the same, the lights just went on forever, from one side of the horizon to another. They rose, brighter and brighter, until they all but vanished in the glow of the city, like stars outshined by the full moon.

  The Seattle Needle wasn’t hard to spot, it was taller than most everything in the city and visible for miles. Originally built as part of the World’s Fair back in the 60’s, it had changed hands several times. It was supposed to be owned by the city, but Cadence knew it was owned by a shadow corporation, which was why it’d been closed for renovations since 1974.

  “They’re going to be looking for us,” Ethan said as they entered the city. “What’s the plan?”

  “I was thinking we go in guns blazing,” Cadence replied. “Figuratively speaking.”

  Ethan looked at her. “I didn’t think that was our style.”

  There was a diner ahead, only a few blocks from the Needle. Cadence turned into the lot and found a space far away from the restaurant’s doors.

  “Got a better idea?”

  “Yes, actually. That subtlety you keep talking about. The observation deck is four stories and there is a second deck about halfway up. I can get you to that deck, then you take the elevator up and avoid most of the guards at ground level,” E
than said.

  “I’ll still have to get past them on the way out,” Cadence replied.

  Ethan’s perfect teeth flashed in the gloom. “I’ll handle them once the fighting starts.”

  It was as good a plan as any. Cadence locked the car and kissed the roof, in case she never saw it again, then paused to look up at the shining tower. It was supposed to be a symbol of hope and human achievement, and to many it was. They didn’t know it had been sullied by evil or that horrible men lurked under their feet. This was likely to be a wakeup call.

  Then again, people missed things happening in front of their noses every day. Bullies like Tommy beat up smaller children or pushed young women around and most people turned a blind eye. The way most people acted, they wouldn’t notice even if she threw Starr off the side of the building.

  She shook her head and followed Ethan through the maze of streets and alleys until they had a clear view of the first deck. At this late hour the area was almost abandoned, but a few passerby were still on the street, enjoying late-night snacks or pursuing a different sort of entertainment. Most didn’t give them a second glance.

  In the shadow of a nearby office building, Ethan shuffled his deck and fanned the cards.

  “Are you ready?”

  Cadence slipped her mask over her eyes and pulled up her hood. “Do it.”

  In a motion he’d no-doubt done a thousand times, Ethan threw an ace of spades against the wall and it unfolded into a gateway. On the other side was what looked like a narrow corridor leading to a pair of offices and the elevators.