The Light of Redemption

by Natalie Damschroder

  The door opened in front of me, knocking me back. I retreated and spun around so he couldn’t see the shock on my face. I’d lost it. Completely lost it. How had I not noticed him coming up the steps? While I was contemplating breaking into his computer.

  “You okay? I didn’t see you.”

  “I’m fine.” But when I turned and saw the rage in his eyes, I stepped back a few more paces. “What’s wrong?”

  “CASE struck again. Salt Lake City.”

  “I didn’t know there was a team in Salt Lake.”

  “Yeah, Slate. They’re new. A non-hero with the ability to vibrate at specific frequencies has been breaking into businesses and messing with their records. Some other people from the region teamed up to take him on.”

  “Non-hero? Is that the same as super-villain?”

  He grimaced and packed his laptop, throwing stuff into the case along with it. “That sounds too comic book.”

  “Why did they need a whole team to go after him?”

  “He can literally walk through walls. Well, glass, anyway. And we’re talking big companies, making money and more disappear. Rendering them inoperable, but also leaving their customers and the government in dire circumstances. That in turn interferes with basic needs for the most at-risk people. It’s—”

  “Okay, I get it. So what happened to them?”

  “Took him down last week. Got the key to the city.”

  I hadn’t heard. That would have surprised me if I hadn’t been so distracted by my own crap. “And?”

  “And today CASE attacked a charity regatta. Two heroes drowned, plus six civilians.” He set the laptop bag and electronics case by the front door and stormed to the bedroom, coming out with a leather soft-sided suitcase. “Twenty more are in the hospital. Some fucking reporter out there has to be affiliated. He’s shredding Slate and turning everyone against them. I have to go.”

  That much was obvious. It wasn’t as obvious why he was so bothered by this. “I understand. Can you drop—”

  “No. You can stay here, or you can call someone to get you. I don’t care.” He spotted my raised eyebrows and shoved his hand into his hair. “Sorry. Of course I care. You’re just as important as the people in Salt Lake.”

  “I don’t think I am.” I cocked my head, dying to know what was making this so personal for him. But I bit my tongue—literally—because I just met him. I had no right to pry.

  He sighed. “Do you know Tulie Altamura?”

  “Not personally. But . . .” I knew what had happened to him. He’d been in San Diego, lost his fiancée at the zoo. “Don’t tell me he’s part of this.”

  “Slate needed help. I talked him into going out there to advise them on structure and logistics. And now this.” He cursed. “I’m sorry, it trumps whatever is happening here.”

  “I understand,” I repeated. “I’ll take care of myself. That was my plan all along.”

  He gripped my arm as a gesture of thanks, and left.

  Stranding me.

  I couldn’t complain. I had information and safety and could probably come back here as long as I was careful not to let anyone follow me. But, damn. I didn’t know how long he’d rented the place for. Or if I had to take care of the horse. And he hadn’t given me his number. Maybe Conn had it. Except Conn wasn’t responding to my text messages. Without a car, I couldn’t do anything. I needed Angie. But . . . I checked the clock and sighed. It was heading into dinner rush. I couldn’t ask her to leave the tearoom.

  Prowling the little house got me nothing. No computer, no tablet. A binder in a drawer gave information and instructions for the house, and it mentioned that the horse had someone caring for her. The dishes were done. Nothing else needed attention.

  I considered taking a nap and giving my body a chance to heal more, but even once I was comfortable on the couch, my eyes wouldn’t stay closed. A growing state of urgency pushed me back on my feet. I needed to do something. It wasn’t right to drag Angie out here when she should be working, but maybe Simon could come get me. I dialed his number, and he answered on the second ring, laughing.

  “Hi, Harm. You okay?”

  “Yes, fine. You sound like you’re having fun.”

  “Julie’s a trip. We don’t have any more information for you, though. She said when you can, it would be a good idea to come test—”

  “Okay. Now would be great. Any chance you can come get me?”

  “Uh . . . sure.” He sounded taken aback. “I thought you were with some agent guy?”

  “He had an emergency and had to leave. I’m stranded and going crazy.”

  “What’s the address?”

  Luckily, that had been in the binder, too. I read it off and waited while he keyed it into his GPS. “Twenty minutes.”

  “Okay. I’ll be ready. Thanks, Simon.”

  “Of course. See you soon.”

  It couldn’t be soon enough.

  Chapter 12

  “I still don’t think this is the best place to do this.” Simon hauled a big tub out of the back of his car and followed Julie, who lugged a wide padded case, strap dragging down her shoulder, making her list to one side as she walked. She’d insisted on carrying it herself, citing my injuries, so I pretended I didn’t feel guilty as I held the door open at Emeraud. We’d needed a safe place where no one would see us, so the newspaper office and any of our houses were out. Simon had argued loudly when I suggested coming here.

  “There was a police call out there.” He’d stuck his fists on his narrow hips, chin up. “Gunshots, Harmony.”

  “Oh, that.” I’d waved my hand at him. “That was me. I mean, not me, I didn’t fire the gun. They shot at me.”

  “What?”

  So we went around about that for a few minutes. But Sark said the place was cleaned out, so Kyle and Wig probably considered it burned—as in, known by law enforcement. That meant it was the safest, most remote place I could think of for us to do the tests. I also hoped they might have left fast enough to overlook some kind of clue. If I couldn’t find Conn, I needed to do the next best thing and figure out who was after me and why.

  I closed the door behind us without answering, shoving it hard into the frame. We’d had to park on the property this time, pulling Simon’s car around back. It was as close to the building as possible, but could still be seen from at least one spot where the road curved, and it wouldn’t be dark for another couple of hours. My usual access was out, since the stuff they hauled was too heavy to carry up and down the riverbank. And even though my injuries had healed a great deal, my knee and the large laceration on my thigh still ached and throbbed with my increased activity.

  “Where do you want this?” Simon strained to hold on to the tub.

  “There is fine.” Julie lowered her bag to the floor, looking around.

  Simon practically dropped the tub, bracing his hands on it and whoofing a few breaths in and out.

  “This is where you found the components?” Julie asked.

  I pointed to the shadows on the far side of the building. “Over there. It’s all gone now.” The table, bed, cooler, all of that had disappeared. The big broken hunk of machinery was still there, but it looked forlorn with nothing around it. I hadn’t harbored high hopes, but it was disappointing to see how empty the place was.

  Julie wandered over, inspecting the ground and walls. I thought it was just general scientific interest and checked the burner phone. Still silent. I stroked the keypad, trying to think of a new message to send that would get Conn to answer me when the first six had gone ignored. I’m at Emeraud, I finally typed quickly and sent. If he refused to let me know what was happening on his end, at least I could keep him informed about where I was.

  Julie made a squealy noise and waved me over. “Look! I think they tested the
compounds here.” When I reached her side, she pointed. There were some splotches on the wall, slightly darkening it, but other stains marred the brick surface, too. “Does it look the way the jewelry store walls looked when you first got there?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Go ahead. No, wait.” She backed up about twenty feet, tugging Simon along with her, then nodded. “Okay. You back up over there, and then try.”

  “Try what?”

  “To make it react. That’s why we’re here, right? To get information.”

  I didn’t move. “Why can’t you test it?”

  She cocked her head and pushed her glasses up her nose. “Becauuuse . . . I’m not Eclipse?”

  “I mean with your stuff. Safely. If I test it, it will blow up.”

  “That’s kind of the point.”

  “I’m not doing that deliberately.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  “I thought we were going to use your samples from the jewelry store, in a controlled space. Isn’t that what all that’s for?” I pointed to the tub.

  “Well, yeah, but that won’t give us enough information. I only have a couple of pieces left. And I can’t make more, since I don’t have all the ingredients.” She looked at the wall, then back at me. “Isn’t this what you were hoping to find? Something new?”

  Dammit, yes, but I’d wanted, I don’t know, a scrap of paper with an address or something. I twisted to see what Simon was doing. He had a tablet in one hand, the other prodding at the lower lip he chewed as he read. He was paying us no attention.

  “Can’t you take scrapings or something?” I asked Julie. “Analyze the content?”

  She sighed. “We can only get limited information that way. I thought we were going to do active experimentation.”

  Her longing made me wonder how bored she got in the lab, masked by her constant cheer.

  But I didn’t want to feed her excitement with danger at my hand. “We’ll make do with what you can get.”

  She went over and brushed her hand over the wall, not touching it, but as if cataloging what was there. “These are different consistencies. We can document their progression of development, record the different reactions.”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  She turned and clasped her hands under her chin. “Can’t you use a tiny bit of light to set off a tiny explosion?”

  “In theory.” I stared at her. Why didn’t she get what I was trying to say? “What if the amount of light doesn’t matter? You and Simon could get hurt. Or I could destroy half the building.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “Look. The ball of light that ignited it the first time was about this big.” I curled my hand through the air, intending to call up a ball from my reserves, but nothing happened. My heart jolted and a surge of cold heat went through me. I covered by cupping my right hand over my left, showing the size. “It barely brushed the wall, and the whole place blew up.”

  “You didn’t see it afterward.” Simon walked to the wall and studied the splotches. “This is about half the coverage at the jewelry store. It should be fine.”

  “I’m not operating on should-be’s, Simon.”

  He wasn’t listening. “It started here.” He held a hand over a spot about where my light brushed the wall in the store. Then he backed up, holding his arms out wide, as if visualizing the blast. “All the energy was concentrated in this direction.” A fireball noise came out of his mouth. I rolled my eyes. Boys.

  He turned and pushed with his hands. “The shock wave blew out the window, which was already busted, and knocked you two back through it.” He dropped his arms. “But the damage inside was minimal. A couple of broken cases. The wall itself was fine. It’s like the explosion—”

  “Was attracted to Eclipse.” Which made no sense. You could shape a charge to blow in a certain direction. I knew that from TV. But this was stuff painted on a wall. It should have blown in all directions, including into the structure it was on. “What could make it do that?”

  “Nothing I know about in this world,” Julie said gleefully. She waved at the wall and raised her eyebrows with an encouraging nod.

  “No.” I folded my arms and stepped back.

  “Come on.” Simon caught Julie’s elbow and walked her backward, stopping at the midpoint of the building. About where Wig had tried to shoot me and got Kyle’s leg, instead.

  I looked at the wall, trying to envision the smallest bit of light touching the smallest patch of igniter. I reached into the reserves I’d pushed deep. Even after my body had siphoned it to heal itself, there was more light than I’d ever collected and held in reserve. Normally, it would jump to be used, but it didn’t even stir.

  The splotches were too big. The light barely needed to touch one to set it off, and it wouldn’t set off just the edge. I could feel Julie’s excited impatience and Simon’s tempered expectation all the way across the building. I’d never convince them this was a bad idea, but I could refuse to do it. Or . . . just not be capable of it.

  I shook my head and tried not to hyperventilate. “I can’t.”

  Simon came back, Julie trailing behind. “You could go behind that baler. It would shelter you from the blast.”

  “Unless it crushes me with it.” Which was beside the point. I didn’t want to do it, but not being able to do it was a completely different thing. “That thing is a baler?”

  He shrugged and gave a sheepish grin. “I have no idea what it is. Sounded convincing, though, didn’t it?”

  Julie laughed, and Simon’s chest puffed out.

  Dammit, what was happening with Conn? I checked my burner phone. Nothing. Could it even receive calls and texts?

  Simon crouched by the old machine. “It’s bolted to the floor.” He pushed on it, and it didn’t budge. “We can move the loose pieces away. If you do a small enough sample, you won’t even need it.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I can’t do it.”

  “Please, Harm, we—”

  “No.” My voice had gone up an octave. “I’m not refusing.” I didn’t have to. “I mean I can’t.”

  He straightened and looked up. “You need light? I can—”

  “No. I have light.” I drew a deep breath, trying not to sound freaked. “I can’t use it. It won’t come.”

  “Oh.” He pursed his lips, looked at Julie, back at me, at the wall, at the giant light fixtures overhead. “Is that because you’re afraid to? Or does it have something to do with last night?”

  “I don’t know.” I pressed my fingers to my forehead and paced. “I collected a lot of light last night, and never let it go. It’s been healing me.”

  “What?” they said together.

  Julie didn’t even question it. “Oh, my God, this is so cool.” She ran over to her stuff and extracted a legal pad and pen. “I’m sorry. It’s not cool that it’s not working. I just— Science!” She danced back over and propped her pad on the not-a-baler. “Tell me everything.”

  I sighed. It felt wrong to take them deeper into this. But she was so eager, and I knew she could help. Help me do what, I wasn’t sure. Like always, I was making it up as I went along.

  But for the first time, I wasn’t alone while I did it. Maybe I should embrace that instead of fighting it.

  “Okay.” I was tired. I sank to the floor and leaned against the machine. “Normally I draw local light, use it, and return it or dissipate it. I can store it for a while—indefinitely, I guess. But lately, I’ve done things I’ve never done before.” I told them about the pit in the woods and drawing that mass amount of light almost instantly and without realizing it. “At the store, I pulled light from three street lamps, plus I had some from fireworks already. I couldn’t release it with everyone around, so I held it, and through the day,
all my injuries have improved.” I pushed back my sleeve and unwrapped the bandage on my forearm. The deep lac there was pink and tight. A scar, not a fresh wound.

  “Whoa.” Simon lowered himself beside me and gently took my arm in his hands to study it. “I saw them change this dressing while you were out. It was ugly.”

  “I noticed a few hours ago that things hurt less. I wasn’t as tired. Everything is almost fully healed, except the worst injuries.” My panic had subsided while I talked. Librarians and scientists had similar MOs. Get us working on the puzzle and we can’t freak out. “Look at my hands. They were hamburger.” I’d unbandaged them while waiting to be picked up at the safe house, and even since then, they’d gone from an angry, pebbled field of tissue to hot pink and smooth. “I think it’s accelerating. So the amount of light I’m holding has dissipated while that went on, but there’s still more than enough. I just can’t seem to access it.”

  “How does it work?” Julie asked from over my head. Her pen hadn’t stopped scratching across the paper. She flipped a page and slapped the pad back down.

  “I don’t know. It just does.” A thought, a flick of the wrist, and it did what I wanted it to do. “I don’t know if it’s because I’ve held it—”

  “And it’s becoming part of you,” Julie suggested.

  A very unsettling idea. “Or if I’m still too damaged to use it, or if my fear of blowing you guys up is keeping me from accessing it. Or if . . .” I didn’t want to give voice to the last if. What if the compound also had something in it that killed my ability? I smoothed my thumb over my palm, digging in and reassuring myself with the lack of pain. I wasn’t damaged enough to lose the light, and it was healing me. It was one of the other reasons. It had to be.

  “Okay. We’ll do my stuff first. If you have those controls in place, maybe you can release the block you’re putting on it.” Julie danced over to the bin and yanked off the lid. “Then once that shows you how safe we’ll be, you can try the wall.”