Sentinel

by Emerald Dodge

  Lark slumped in her chair. “She had a meltdown and transformed. She didn’t change back for a week. Ever since that day, she’s never said anything other than ‘tiger.’”

  “We always figured that her problem was simply that she’s not really a human in her head. She’s a tiger who can’t figure out how to live with humans,” Berenice said, her green eyes heavy with grief. “Damn, I hate Peter.”

  I dropped my head onto the table. How many superheroes lived like Abigail and her team, in fear of a leader who’d been taught that he could prey on his subordinates? How many young people endured “hot-handings,” or being tossed into walls and choked? When would it stop?

  I pushed myself up from the table. “I’m getting some water. You three, go back to your headquarters and wait for Peter to come back. I’ll contact you if I get a lead.”

  The team took a few more minutes to speak with Gabriela and make contingency plans if Peter showed up to her house when they weren’t there, while I poured some ice water to wake myself up.

  While I sipped and splashed some of it on my face, Topher and Lark went into the living room with Marco and Reid to discuss the Westerner attack. Gabriela went upstairs to check on Reuben, leaving Berenice and Ember with me in the kitchen.

  Berenice pulled up her sleeves again and wet a paper towel, pressing the cool water to her burns, not once wincing from the pain I knew she felt. Was she hiding it because I was there?

  “Aloe vera helps with burns,” I said. “I can go get some from the medical bag upstairs.”

  “Like I’d use any of the supplies we brought for Reuben. And I know how to deal with a burn. It’s a wonder that you do, since you’ve got that criminal on your team.” She glanced at Ember. “Some telepath you are. Jill was actually surprised when I told her about Benjamin’s exploits. I’d think it would be a matter of course that you’d listen in on him.”

  “Benjamin has proven time and time again that he’s my friend and brother. I don’t invade his privacy,” Ember said evenly. “And not that it’s any of your business, but I’ve developed a certain… distaste for listening in on people without their permission.”

  Berenice snorted. “What, are you tired of Jill mooning over her killer boyfriend?”

  Ember’s eye twitched.

  Berenice dropped the wet towel, clutching her head. “Stop! Okay! Okay! I’m sorry! Please, stop!”

  Ember merely poured herself a glass of water and watched Berenice hyperventilate on the floor. “Oh, did I make you uncomfortable? My bad. That was just a taste of what Patrick made me listen to day in and day out to intimidate me. Want to see what he imagined when he caught me in his head when he didn’t want me there?”

  Berenice picked up her towel and threw it away, slamming the lid of the trash can. Her furious expression contained a hint of fear. “No.”

  “Then stop being a shrew. Maybe Benjamin has a past, but never once has he ever shown the capacity for sadism that Patrick did. Or hell, even Matthew. And not that it makes it totally okay, but you’d just knocked out his sister. If there’s one thing I know about Benjamin Trent, it’s that it’s unwise to threaten people he loves.”

  “Sadism,” I murmured, rolling the word around in my head. “What does that mean?”

  Berenice’s blank look confirmed that I wasn’t the only one who’d never heard of the word.

  Ember made a face. “It’s when people enjoy causing others pain.”

  “That sounds like Peter,” Berenice said. “I’ve always gotten the impression that he gets off on the power trip.”

  Ember rearranged the strap of her knife’s sheath, tightening it around her slim thigh. Berenice tore off another paper towel from the roll and continued to dab at her burns.

  I watched them, looking between Ember’s weapon and Berenice’s wounds, putting together something Ember had said. She’d connected Patrick and Matthew’s behavior, linking them by their desire to cause pain and suffering. They’d enjoyed it.

  Specifically, they’d used threats of sexual violence to terrify and dominate Ember and me. Patrick had attacked Ember when she refused to give in to his demands for information; his attack, while sexual in nature, hadn’t been driven by desire. On my end, Matthew hated me, and everything he’d said and done after the tribunal had been to drive home how powerless I was.

  Powerlessness. It was the true defining attribute of most superheroes.

  They were trapped in relationships with leaders who were given complete control over them, leaders who had been told from birth that their word was law, that they could not be disobeyed, that they could use pain and fear to enforce their will. In our thinking, Matthew had been given absolute leadership over me. He’d been no different than Patrick, in that regard.

  How many more superheroes had to deal with leaders who thought like Patrick and Matthew? They couldn’t all be predators, but the elders had created a perfect environment for sociopaths to grow and thrive unchecked. Were there young, naïve superheroines who believed that they had to submit to their leader’s baser whims, just like I’d believed I had to with Matthew?

  I leaned against the counter. Believed.

  I realized that Benjamin’s shouted words had taken hold, like so many of his words did. Matthew had no right to hurt me, married or not, just as I had no right to hurt anyone on my team. Patrick had never had a right to hurt us.

  Berenice tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, pay attention.”

  I jerked back into the moment. “What?”

  “We’re going now. We’ll be by tomorrow. You going to look for leads?”

  “Yeah.”

  Berenice explained how and when to give Reuben more painkiller, then joined her team as they walked out in the night.

  Through the closed door I could hear Topher’s low voice. “She’s not half as bad as you said. I was expecting some fishwife.”

  “I’m telling you, she’s crazy. Back me up, Val.”

  “Be nice,” Lark said softly. “I thought she seemed really, really sad. Truth is, after her brother died, she wasn’t the same. I remember…” Lark’s voice faded into nothing as they walked down the street.

  I sat down at the computer and tried to log on, but my fingers fumbled over the keys.

  “You said you’d go to bed after talking to Gabriela,” Reid said from the doorway. “Gabriela’s gone to bed, and now it’s your turn.”

  I didn’t look at him. “I need to be here when the messages come in.” Bed could wait. I had to review all the information as it came in. Every second counted.

  Ember walked up behind me. I felt her fingertips brush my upper arms.

  I sprang out of the chair, a hand on my chest. “Don’t,” I gasped. “Not without asking. You asked Reuben.”

  Ember crossed her arms. “You need to go to sleep.”

  “So you were going to just go into my head and put me down?” I’d begun to shiver. “Why… How can you…”

  Hadn’t Ember been the one to lecture Berenice about unwanted mind invasions? I understood that sometimes Ember picked up thoughts without trying, but it was another issue if she was going to go into my mind to make me slip into unconsciousness against my will. How could my good friend so easily walk up behind me and… and…

  Ember held out her hand to me, her wide eyes apologetic. “Oh. Oh, of course. I’m so sorry. I’ll always get your permission first. But please, you need to sleep. You’ll get sick if you don’t. We need a strong, able leader for the mission ahead. I’ll ensure that you have beautiful dreams.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, I took her slim hand in mine.

  The world swirled and melted away.

  When I woke up, I was bundled in a warm sleeping bag on Gabriela’s living room floor, a squishy pillow under my head. The sun streamed in through the windows, high and bright.

  I rolled over, trying to cling to the last wispy vestiges of my dream. Benjamin had been there.

  The forums!

  I bolted out of my makesh
ift bed and ran to the computer, logging on at record speed. The computer’s clock read 11:35, but I couldn’t hear anybody moving around in the house. I went to my email, which was clogged with over two hundred notices that people had replied to my posts.

  Though I was hungry, thirsty, smelly, and in need of a bathroom, I read each reply. Nearly all of them were various forms of assurances that there were no groups of Supers living out west that weren’t superheroes. A few people scolded me for stirring up “those old rumors.”

  A notification from the Denver team’s forums caught my eye.

  Unlike the others, the member had sent me a private message. I clicked it open and read member MuirReborn’s message.

  Hey there,

  I just saw your thread. I’m sending this as a message because I don’t want tons of people asking questions. Two months ago my roommate and I went on a three-day hike just south of Crazy Woman Creek in Wyoming, off Tipperary Road. We camped out at a lake in the hills. On the first night we were approached by three men in Army surplus-looking clothes. They told us to get off “their” land. When we said we weren’t on private land, one of them shot ice at me.

  Seriously, ice. It came out of his hand. Joey and I ran for our lives. We told the Buffalo cops what had happened but they told us that we were making it up and to stop wasting their time.

  Anyway, hope this helps.

  I read the paragraph three times before I fully believed what I was reading.

  We were going to Wyoming.

  17

  “We’re going up through Pennsylvania, into the Great Lakes region to Wisconsin, then to South Dakota, and through to Wyoming.” As I talked, I traced my finger along the bus trip we’d begin late that night.

  I’d spread out an old car map of the United States on Gabriela’s kitchen table. My team huddled around me while I explained the plan. Reuben was in a deep sleep upstairs.

  They’d returned from the salon an hour after I’d woken up and read the message from MuirReborn. Ember had had her hair bobbed, and once I’d recovered from the shock, I’d been able to admit that she looked great.

  What was more, she looked like a civilian, which was essential for my plan once we reached Wyoming. We’d retrace the steps MuirReborn and his roommate had taken, pretending to be civilians to entice the Westerners to come out and confront us.

  I placed a different map on the table, a printed map of Wyoming I’d found online. I pointed to a small town east of Buffalo.

  “In three days we’ll be here, near Tipperary Road. We’ll hitch a ride or grab a taxi, whichever is easier, and start our hike here.” I dragged my finger to a spot in the road just north of the lake mentioned in the message. “We’ll go south, to the lake. That’s where the three men approached the two civilians.”

  Reid reread the copy of the message I’d printed out. “You do realize that this lead is two months old, right?”

  “I know it’s a weak plan, Reid, but it’s literally the only one we have.”

  Reid tapped the Wyoming map, indicating the hills around the lake. “This terrain is similar to my camp in Idaho. In fact, the area itself isn’t all that far from where I grew up. I’ve experienced the types of temperatures we’re going to be dealing with. We’re going to need lots of layered clothes.”

  “I can help with that,” Gabriela said. “But I’ve been thinking about what your story should be when you meet these people. From what Reuben’s told me, they’ll probably be trained to spot superheroes at twenty paces. Looking like a civilian isn’t enough.” She pointed to Ember’s hair. “You’re going to need a disarming story. Something that throws them for a loop. Your clothes will have to match that story.”

  “Like what?” Marco asked. “Maybe, like, we’re hunters and our car broke down?”

  “We’ll need a story that explains why we’re there in the dead of winter, with no camping supplies,” I said. Gabriela had bought our tickets—I couldn’t ask her to buy more for us. “But also a story that makes us totally innocuous.”

  “Hippies,” Gabriela said.

  “What?” we all asked.

  “Pretend you’re hippies, or free spirits, or whatever. I can rustle up some hippie clothes, and you guys can pretend you’re on a spirit quest. People go to the butt end of the wilderness all the time for weird stuff like that. You guys can just say you’re on a vision quest, looking for a good place to start a commune. Believe me, start talking like that and nobody will take you seriously.”

  “Um, okay,” I said, glancing at Reid, who shrugged. “What’s a hippie?”

  Gabriela bought our hippie clothes from the thrift store down the street.

  Ember and I wore thick stockings, over which we’d donned long dresses and two skirts. My skirts were far too long, and Ember’s were too short, but Gabriela assured us that the inappropriate sizes would be more convincing. We each slipped on several thin, loose shirts, and then two thick sweaters.

  Necklaces with odd designs—Gabriela said they were Native American—clinked while we walked, making me miss my J necklace so much I ached to think of it. We traded our combat boots for worn hiking boots.

  The multiple layers would keep us warm as well as make it so we didn’t have to carry baggage besides beat up backpacks, purchased from the same thrift store from which we’d bought the clothes.

  Reid and Marco’s clothes were less interesting than Ember’s and mine, as men’s clothes often are. They wore thick sweaters over old, loose shirts, and battered jeans. They kept their combat boots, which didn’t clash as loudly with their outfits as they would with the feminine ones.

  Beanies topped all four of our heads. Our backpacks contained scarves, gloves, shawls, basic toiletries, and all the food we could carry.

  As we dressed, Gabriela coached us on how to speak “hippie,” though I still didn’t understand just what a hippie was. I gathered they were some kind of homeless person, possibly in a cult. Benjamin would’ve known, a fact that for once didn’t fill me with sadness, but determination.

  When I found him, I’d sit with him and speak about many things, including the “cult” in which I’d grown up. I still didn’t accept that we were in a cult, but I no longer felt the prick of anger that I had whenever he’d said so before.

  After dinner, I returned to the computer, planning every tiny detail of our trip once we arrived in Buffalo. I checked the projected forecast, the local fauna, the towns, the bodies of water, everything that could affect our time there.

  Most of all, I checked the forums, reading the new updates on my threads. There were no other leads.

  “We need to leave soon. It’s twenty-one hundred. The bus leaves at twenty-three hundred.” I fiddled with my watch band. We’d agreed to leave our phones behind because they contained too much identifying information.

  We were all in the living room, repacking our backpacks, trying to stuff every possible item in them for our three-day bus trip and the midwinter hiking trip after.

  “No, it’s nine o’clock, and the bus leaves at eleven o’clock,” Gabriela said. “Civilians don’t use twenty-four-hour time.”

  A frantic knock on the door made us freeze.

  “It’s Berenice!” Ember dashed to open the door.

  Berenice hurried inside without a greeting and slammed the door behind her. “Peter’s back,” she said between pants. “I’m supposed to be on patrol. I don’t know for sure that he didn’t follow me.”

  I stood and gripped my knife, which was hidden under a skirt, with a slit I’d designed for easy access. “Has he made any threats against Reuben or Gabriela?”

  “Yes, but he thinks they’re in Saint Catherine with you guys. Lark told him you’d come and gone. She made it sound like we’d chased you off.”

  Gabriela gasped, clutching the back of the couch. “What are you going to do? Reuben can’t fight right now and I… I… We have to leave. Tonight.”

  Berenice walked over to Gabriela and took her hand. “The team and I talked last
night. We’re going to guard your house. If Peter attacks, we’ll kill him. Nobody is going to hurt you.” She placed her hand over her heart. “You have my word.”

  I tilted my head to the side. Huh. “You’re going to fight your leader?”

  Berenice glared at me. “Are you saying I’m not allowed—”

  “No, I’m saying I’m impressed, and I admire your dedication to Reuben.” I offered my hand to Berenice. “You’re alright, Artemis. Even if you stole my codename.”

  Maybe she was a jerk to me, but Berenice had shown nothing but concern for Reuben, and if there was one thing I valued, it was loyalty. This was a new side to Berenice, and I realized that I hoped to see it again one day. Maybe we’d even be friends.

  Berenice stared at my hand, then shook it. She didn’t try to break my fingers, but instead gripped it warmly, almost respectfully. “Yeah, I did. You always wanted that name and I figured using it was the best way to screw you over. I guess we both had some growing up to do, huh?” She surveyed my team. “You’ve got a great crew here.”

  I grinned. “We have a lead. We’re going to Wyoming. Do you still want to come?”

  “Had Peter not threatened Reuben and Gabriela, I would. But I’m needed here. I don’t know what you guys have got planned…” She paused to look us up and down, smirking. “…but I know you’ll pull it off. Like I said, we’ve all been keeping an eye on the situation in Saint Catherine. I bet there are a lot of leaders that are sleeping less soundly tonight because of you. Atropos was first, and I think Imperator will be next. After that, who knows?”

  “It’s going to be the elders. They’re next.”

  Berenice chuckled. “Oh, Jill. With you, it’s always go big or go home.”

  She tipped her head toward my team and Gabriela, then slipped out the door.

  Two hours later, Gabriela waved goodbye to the four of us as we stepped onto the large bus, unsure if we’d ever see her again.

  18