I rolled my eyes at that. "Really?"
"Believe in yourself. Is that so hard to do?"
God, it was turning into an after-school special. I rubbed my palms together and looked around, trying to think happy thoughts. Maybe I'd just float right into the fucking sky and off to Neverland. Or whatever.
The first strike caught me off-guard and sent me sprawling. Allison floated into my vision, a smile on her face. "You went and ratted me out to James. You coward. I thought you took care of business by yourself."
"I take care of what I can, but if you can't get rid of all the roaches yourself, you call the pest control guy," I snapped.
Her eyes narrowed and she sent a blast my way that would have ruined me if I'd been stupid enough to stay there. Instead, I rolled into the open vastness and I felt for my powers, but they were as of yet unavailable to me. She swooped at me and I grabbed her shoulders, throwing her into floor that served as a bottom for this strange universe.
As I thought it, the world snapped into view around me. Rather than white endlessness, there was a painfully dark road and tall buildings surrounding me. The apartment projects on the edge of Yarborough were a bastion for villains just trying to get their feet wet in the real world, often hurting the innocent people around them at the same time. I couldn't tell you how many people we'd taken out near these tender lives and I hated every minute of it.
You would think that those who were going to cause destruction would seek out the lives of the powerful, but I guess the security is too good on those gated communities.
She whipped me into a brick wall, which knocked the air out of me. When had she grabbed me? When I'd been distracted, reminiscing, when I should I have been concentrating on the fight at hand. But it was so easy to lose my nerve, so much easier to turn and run; once I peeled myself out of the imprint I'd left in the building.
I hated it.
I hated her.
"That's right, use that rage. It's what took my life from me the first time, Creed. Use it to end me again," she purred, her eyes ringed with a thousand different colors.
I shook my head and tried to bring myself back to some form of concentration. Whatever I was, I wasn't a murderer. And that was what I was going for. I was after her to end -her-, not because she was a threat to me. People aren't often as selfless as they like to think they are, but we -had- to be.
She frowned as I worked through it and shrank back, those terrible multi-colored eyes staring a hole through me. I pulled my head up and felt the power around me sing into being, like my sister was inches from me. Or that Cassie had just Blitzed past my shoulder. I drew it all in and shivered as the connection with my powers re-established itself.
"This is wrong. You won't harm these people because there aren't any people here. This is your Dream, your madness," I said. "And I won't be a part of it anymore. You'll be lost, forgotten in time, a footnote to a paragraph about Izzy wrecking the building."
Before me, she began to fade out. She faded back in, shaking her head. "This is reality. As much as it can be, as much as you'll ever see again. I'll trap you here for the rest of time, listening to the screams of the damned, of those you could never save. Because you're worthless, Creed. You kill for fun, you use your power to hurt people. That's all it's ever been for you; a power struggle."
I stared at her as she mouthed off to me. Had I been so gullible? To just, lay down and let her do those things to me? Honestly, that was more of an insult than what she was saying. Now that I had perspective, she was laughable. She was no more a threat to me or mine than the average news reporter, the type that said we were all scum and were out for money and fame.
So much money and fame that most of us didn't even own cars. The parking garage was never crowded despite all the superheroes who lived at the Alliance building. I wrinkled my nose at her, a perfect imitation of Cassie, and turned around, walking back through the street.
Her screams echoed down that dark road but it was if she couldn't escape. Like I'd somehow cut her off. In reality, I was certain that James was the only one doing the cutting off like that, but it felt good to know that maybe I was helping somehow. It wasn't like I was any expert on Psychic superhero stuff.
But the fact that I was still in whatever version of the Dream this was worried me. Would I be retrievable? Or would I be stuck there forever? I looked around at the clear streetlights, the sharpness of the buildings, and briefly wondered if I was actually back in Yarborough. If maybe James had somehow done some kind of Presto thing and sent me into another dimension. Magic-users were tricky and I didn't really understand -them-, either.
"I didn't do that, I promise." His voice came from a trash can a few feet away. I blinked down at it and he spoke up again. "I don't quite have you but I'm getting close. She's fading fast and I think you'll be out pretty soon. You feeling any better?"
I tipped my head to one side. "Feels pretty good so far, whatever you're doing. I appreciate it. You wanna get a steak some time?"
"Nah, I don't want to make Cass jealous. I get you around me, you'll want nothing else for the rest of time. Besides, I heard you're the type that needs to eat half a cow and I can't pay for a date like that."
Yeah, that was what I meant. We really needed to talk to Patterson about problems like pay. I put my shoulders against one of the buildings and watched the trash can, hoping it would reveal the wonders of the universe to me. Or at least keep talking to me, because it was the only friend I had and I really needed someone to talk to.
Unfortunately, it remained as silent as one would expect one of them to do. A rain began to pitter-patter down on my head and I stepped back into the shadow of a building, looking up at the sky and sighing. I didn't really have a guess of how much time was passing in real life, though I certainly hoped that I wasn't endangering anyone. I rubbed my nose and sniffled, then sank down to the ground and pulled my arms around my knees.
It was lonely and cold. At least Allison had been snapping to tear my head off, but making me sit on a rainy street was someone's best idea of torture. I put my chin on my knees and waited, watching the silent street with nothing but the best intentions.
I just wished I was free.
The rain turned into a thunderstorm. Lightning struck the building behind me and I moved back out into the rain, feeling the hair on my arms stand on end due to the electricity in the air. A pen dropped in front of me; a familiar one. I'd have known Scribe's favorite pen anywhere. I picked it up and frowned at it, then looked at the sky.
"One more minute and I'll have you free. Someone else did something to you a while ago, man. But you're almost there. Just hang on another minute for me."
I opened my mouth to respond, to try to show him the pen; maybe he'd recognize it, but I wound up sitting on the couch with my arm outstretched. James looked at me, in reality, through a ghostly white face and sighed. "How you feelin'?"
And then he fainted in a heap. Not like I blamed him, the sun outside the window was sinking over the horizon. He'd been going for hours with no one else to help him, and no support for his physical body. Anyone would have collapsed from that.
I picked him up and gently put him over one shoulder, sneaking out of the office as carefully as I could. I was a little too big for the door with him slung over me like that, so I had to do this weird crouch creep thing that allowed us to exit at the same time. It sucked. My quads hated me for it.
"Are you, you?" Izzy asked, tears in her eyes.
No one sat with her except for Cassie, who held her hand and looked absolutely irritable about having to do it. But my heart went out to my girlfriend and I gave her a thumbs up, a smile, and patted her cousin. "I think he overdid it a little bit. But I think I'm going to be okay. Still feel kind of shitty about how Allison went down, but I'm not drowning in sorrow anymore. Give me a minute to take him up to the infirmary, then I'll be back down here with the rest of you. And we can all go see Patterson, together."
I was met with a murmur
ed collection of assent. I nodded to the group, tucked James in a little more carefully, and headed off to the infirmary, letting the signs guide the way.
Chapter 8
Wasn't it possible to just run off and start our own chapter of the Alliance somewhere? We could train almost anything that came along except for a Flyer or a Presto, and those weren't all that common. Hell, maybe the other Alliance locations would loan us teachers.
I wondered all of it as I walked along that dark, narrow hallway and tried to remember to breathe. Everything was going to be fine, if I held myself together and I thought things through. Over the past little while, I'd gained most of my found family back. I'd become a superhero again. My parents had more or less come to support me; at least saving me when shit really hit the fan.
We could just call Scribe's whole situation a wash and be done with it, couldn't we?
But I knew we couldn't. Deep down, we were the only ones who could really fix the situation; and that was because we were the only ones with the full story. At least, as full a story as was available at the moment. I still wasn't certain why Scribe had turned on us or if it was really Scribe turning on us to begin with. Maybe it was Allison. Maybe he'd suffered some kind of terrible injury after he'd gotten electrocuted.
Traumatic brain injuries were a hell of a thing and I sure didn't have the medical expertise to try to diagnose a man who had been through one.
"You nervous, Strikes?" Nishelle asked.
I wrapped my hand around hers. "Nah. You some kind of chicken?"
She smiled at me just like she used to so many years ago. We were all so old, so battered, so exhausted from our current circumstances. It felt as though we'd aged a few hundred years, but I knew it'd hadn't even been a decade. I couldn't imagine what things would look like in another few years.
Yarborough's PTB Alliance had to change, and we were in Thomaston to do just that.
We entered Logan Patterson's office as one, our heads held high, our consciouses in the gutter.
He was a tall, strong white man with dark blue hair that stood straight up in a mohawk across the top of his skull. Logan reminded me of the kind of guy who had peaked in high school or college and never quite made it beyond that. Not that I disliked him; I just didn't know him as well as I could have.
And whose fault was that? Scribe had kept us as an island for so long. The other Alliance locations worked together constantly; hadn't Ardent's crisscrossing the nation been proof of that? How long had it been since we had gone to help or gotten help from the others?
When I thought of it, I realized it had been just before I'd accidentally poisoned Nishelle.
Everything led back to that same general time period. Everything at once. It was when Isabella had started her ascent within the organization. It was when we'd lost Nishelle, so we'd thought, and it was when I'd ended up behind bars. It was when Adam's nosebleeds had gotten worse. I didn't know what shitty fulcrum sat on top of that smidgen of time in the universe, but it could go fuck itself.
Logan's eyes landed on me.
They were the eyes of a snake, ready to strike if it was deemed necessary. I tried to look all together unthreatening and perhaps even a little bit friendly; which simply wasn't my look, but I was trying.
"I want a full report. Which one of you wants to go first?" he asked.
Nate started forward, but I let go of Nishelle's hand long enough to move in front of him. "I'll do it. I'll be as brief as I can, but you have to understand that it's a little confusing at first. I wasn't even certain of some things until this walk up here."
"You were deep in thought and coming up to talk to me, then you decided to change your story for me? Is that it?"
His voice was gruff, distrusting, and I didn't blame him. It took a certain amount of paranoia to exist within the Alliance, especially at his level. While what Izzy did had been almost unheard of at the time, more people were slowly starting to break out and away from our position due to people like Scribe.
I sighed. "No, sir. I simply put together some threads as I was walking. They say movement helps power the brain and, sometimes that's true for me."
"Go on."
Nodding, I walked to the center of the office and took a breath. "I'm not sure if I'm actually part of this or not, sir. But everything seems to have changed right around the same time as when Nishelle was poisoned."
I paused, waiting for him to say something. I was absolutely certain that he felt the road I was walking down was one well-traveled. Finally, he waved me on.
"I had been in control of her medications for years at that point. I knew what could be mixed with what and the simple excuse that I had forgotten or fucked it up never sat right with me." I shrugged. "I'm as human as the rest of us. I'm fallible. But for all those years, I kept that medication straight; and through countless changes. Only to screw it up suddenly at the end? No. Someone interfered."
Nishelle stared at me. "You think you were Allison's first victim?"
"I think I'm one of Allison's victims. So were you," I said. Then I began to point around the room at every single one of them. "And you, and you, and you. Even you, sir. We've been thrown over a barrel and fucked raw by her, and I think Scribe's just lucky enough to be her current vector for madness; this time from beyond the grave."
Logan tapped his finger on his desk. "What you're saying matches with what our laboratories are considering to be the truth. Though we don't have proof of it. Is there anything that you can give us that makes it certain? Because if there is, you're likely leading your own legacy to the slaughterhouse."
"I'm a Blitzer, not a Psychic, no matter what my parents say," I said. "I always have been, I always will be. But the point still remains; maybe instead of banning Zaps, you idiots should have banned Psychics."
My lips pressed shut at the end of it. His face slowly turned from gold to crimson and then back again. Nishelle stepped up beside me, taking my hand in hers. Edwin was next and, person by person, we united in a chain in front of him. One, wholly allied against a threat that intended to take everything from us.
And he saw it.
"If you're all going to back her, I have little reason to doubt it. You've been there. You've seen it. And we wouldn't be an Alliance if we didn't throw in to help all of you. I hate to get rid of Lamar. He's been a good man, you've all known it." Logan said. There was a solid round of nods and he continued. "But this is out of hand. You'll have ten of our best; it's what we can spare and keep peace on the streets. And we'll do what we can to send support and medical out for you, to help you with those back in Yarborough that may need some help to arm up for a fight."
"It's better than nothing," I told him. "And it's more than we had when we got here. We appreciate it."
He waved a hand at me. "Stick around another day. We'll take that long to get things prepared. There is a guest suite that sleeps twenty on the top floor. You're welcome to it. Cafeteria's in the same place yours is. Go get some food and get as much rest as you can. It's going to be a long couple of days ahead."
Adam's eyes lit up at the mention of food and I couldn't deny him. We split up and went to the cafeteria in pairs or trios, leaving only Nishelle and I at last. I glanced at her and tilted my head. Was she blushing? Or was it just me?
She stiffened when she saw me, turned on her heel, and walked straight out after everyone else. I felt like an animal stalking its prey as I followed, sneaking up behind her to wrap my arms around her shoulders. Nate got between us, but I wasn't angry about it; just frustrated.
And didn't that say everything it needed to about my relationship with my boys? It'd literally gotten in between Nishelle and I, stopping whatever I'd hoped we'd rekindle when we got together again. I grumbled under my breath and nestled against him instead, bound for chow and the sort of fellowship you needed before a big, violent fight.
Logan had been right. The cafeteria was just like ours, down to the colors that had been chosen and the shitty linoleum under our
feet. We split to go order but took over a long table, my men gathering around me like a protective wall. Nishelle watched from outside it, poking at her peas and eating what she could. Edwin insisted on feeding me bites of his steak, which was outrageously overdone.
But it tasted like home, just like the lousy steaks we had often had as a little group of trainees, all of us too stupid to know which way was up. I wondered if the kids currently at the Yarborough building were still allowed to talk, or if food trays were being delivered directly to their rooms. I couldn't help but picture their doors bolted from the outside.
It had happened to us, too, a few times. Mostly Scribe had allowed them to do it to us when we'd been stupid enough to try to follow a professional superhero out into the city. In those cases, we were just one more civilian that could get smashed or blown up, ripped apart or otherwise destroyed.
Allied: A Superhero Reverse Harem Romance (The PTB Alliance Book 3) Page 7