New Identity

by Tenaya MKD

  She cleaned it thoroughly, trimmed some skin that had rolled up, and liberally applied an antibacterial ointment before bandaging me up. I had begged her to pop the awful blisters, but she refused. Apparently, that's how things get infected.

  “Thanks, Jessica. I appreciate you coming on such short notice,” Quinn said, as she entered the room.

  Jessica kept her eyes down on her tools. “Well, we’re even now.” A layer of tension spread through the air between them.

  “Fair enough.” Quinn nodded.

  Jessica determined that the rest of my cuts would heal on their own. I just needed to get into a shower and clean off. So, she bagged up my hand, and sent me away.

  Quinn led me to the master bedroom where Cayde was already resting. I sat on the edge of the bed, just listening to him breathe, for what felt like a long time. Every steady breath he took was a comfort.

  “I should have listened to you,” I eventually whispered. Then I softly kissed his forehead and made my way to the shower.

  Blood turned the water pink as it ran off my sore body into the tub. I let it drip through my singed hair, over my tear-streaked face, across each cut on my back, and down my still-shaking legs. With my right hand in the plastic bag on the other side of the shower curtain, I couldn't do much to scrub the dried sweat from my skin. But I felt too sore to scrub anyway. Instead, I stood under the faucet, letting the hot water slowly erode away the grime.

  When I stepped out of the shower, it was only because I couldn't hold my arm up anymore. I was exhausted down to my bones. Emotionally and physically drained.

  Dressed only in the underwear I’d managed to wrestle on, I collapsed onto the bed next to Cayde. My wet hair soaked the pillow immediately. But I didn’t have the energy to care.

  It seemed like forever ago that Cayde and I shared a bed in our hotel room. So much had changed in a day… I wanted to press myself against him again and have him wrap his arms around me. But I settled for gently resting my good hand on top of his. I counted five of his steady breaths before I fell asleep.

  He kissed me awake. It was such a nice way to wake up, that I thought I was dreaming at first.

  “Focus,” he said, putting his hand in mine.

  Even in the dimly lit room, I could tell Cayde looked better. His eyes had their shine back. I was still so tired. The last thing I wanted to do was focus. Holding him, while I drifted off again, sounded much better. But I tightened my grip on his hand and did as he asked.

  Wanting to speed this along, I imagined the place in my mind that I knew we needed to be. As soon as the colors were visible, I sent my own wave of consciousness to cover them. It grew higher than I’d been able to grow it before. And much faster.

  Where in the past, my wave was thin and wispy, this time it was clearly defined. It covered the whole of my mind and extinguished the building energy. I had felt Cayde there with me, but I was certain that wave had been all me. When he let go of my hand, I opened my eyes to find him beaming at me.

  “Did you do that?” I asked.

  “No, Nova, that was wonderful. You did it!” He brought my forehead to his lips, with a soft hand on my cheek. “You controlled your power.”

  I couldn’t believe it. That, after all this time, I’d finally done it. On this night of all nights.

  I wrapped my good arm around his neck and buried my face into his good shoulder. “I’m so glad you are okay. I was so afraid.”

  He lifted my face up to see his and smiled my favorite smile.

  If he had been standing a few inches to the left when that bullet hit him, I’d have never seen that smile again…

  “When you ran from us… I nearly lost my mind,” he said.

  “I regret doing it now. I thought it was what I had to do…” My voice was so small.

  “We have to trust each other, Nova. If we can’t, then this won’t work.”

  I didn’t know what to say. He was right. I had betrayed his trust and ended up putting him in danger as a result. “I’m so sorry.” It was all I could say.

  I felt him nod, then he softly kissed the top of my head. “I’m just so glad you’re okay.”

  “If you guys had found me a minute later…” The sound of Crowley’s saw echoed through me, making me shudder.

  He lay back down and pulled me into his side. My head rested on his chest and, as I listened to the soothing sound of his heart beating, my tired body melted into his.

  We hadn't planned to stay in New York, but no one wanted to leave without Zane. It felt like giving up. And none of us were willing to do that. We had been here two days, spinning our wheels, trying to come up with a plan.

  Wyatt had flown back to Crowley's building. But he found it completely empty, with nearly the whole top floor scorched. There was no trail to follow. Not even a hunch to go on. We assumed that the hooded man had been working with Crowley, but we couldn't even be positive of that. If he was, why had he waited to join the fight until that moment? There were so many questions.

  Quinn was spending a small fortune to rent the apartment by the day, from some rich banker spending his Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. We only had one more full day with the place before he was returning. I was desperate.

  “Can't we use GWNN to find him? He was wearing his crystal! Shouldn’t that help?”

  “Sam has tried, but he's not showing up on the radar,” Markham answered me. “Crowley has never shown up either. She’s guessing that the same thing he uses to track powered people is able to shield him. Similarly to the way GWNN hides us.”

  I had to give him credit for staying calm, despite the foul attitude I'd been throwing around all day. I'd been pacing with heavy feet for the entirety of our conversation.

  “There has to be some way to find him!” I couldn’t keep from yelling. My good hand raked through my hair for the millionth time that day. It was beginning to feel like greasy straw between my fingers.

  “We’ll think of something,” Cayde said. He grabbed my hand to stop me from wearing the polish off of the wood floors any further.

  I flopped onto the leather couch, next to Eric. The way it barely gave under my weight, and creaked when I moved, irritated my already-raw nerves. I laid my head back against the stiff cushion with a sigh. My eyes locked onto the ceiling while I willed myself to come up with a solution.

  I have to think of something. I have to find him.

  “Wanna play dinosaurs?” Jacob asked Eric. The kid had a knack for appearing out of nowhere.

  He was very sweet, but he was a test to my patience. It felt like every ten minutes he was asking one of us to play a game. His inventive imagination was impressive. He managed to play all these games without a single toy. But it was exhausting.

  His shaved head made his dark eyebrows stand out, even against his tanned skin. He was adorable, but I had a hard time being around him. Between his bright smile, and the fact that he was here thanks to Zane, he was a painful reminder of my continuing failure. I tried my best to be patient with him though. To keep in mind what he had been through.

  Exactly what he, Adalyn and Dawn had been through still wasn't clear. No one wanted to make them talk about it. Jacob was managing fine, and we really wanted to keep it that way.

  Adalyn was too much of a mess. She only left the bedroom she'd been given in order to use the bathroom. When I saw her in the hall, she always had the same bug-eyed, twitchy look on her young face.

  You couldn’t really blame her. She’d been kidnapped, had her head shaved, been experimented on, and then found out superpowers are real. It would have been enough to overload anyone. Cayde had tried to talk with her a few times, but even he freaked her out more than it was worth.

  “She just needs time,” he said.

  Dawn was more put-together, but very quiet too. Not in a “too shell-shocked to talk” sort of way, but in a “leave-me-the-fuck-alone” way. I wouldn't have been surprised to find out she was Harper's mother.

  When we finally discussed
how to go about finding out what they knew, Quinn was the only one to agree with me that we should make them talk. Being sensitive would be great, under different circumstances, but we had no time for that. If they knew something that could lead us to getting Zane home, we needed them to tell us. It made no sense to me that some people couldn’t see that.

  The rest of the day slipped by. We had the same conversation, over and over again, never getting anywhere new. But unwilling to stop, just in case.

  When it was late enough to go to bed, it was a relief. A chance to stop thinking in circles. A chance to stop replaying the moment that Zane and I locked eyes, right before he disappeared.

  “You need to stop blaming yourself,” Cayde said, as I placed the last strip of medical tape that would hold his fresh bandage in place. He grabbed my ointment off the bathroom counter and led me to sit on the foot of the bed with him while he applied it.

  “I don't blame myself,” I lied. Which was silly, considering who I was talking to. He looked at me incredulously. “At least, not completely.”

  “It’s not your fault at all, Nova. He wanted to help you. He knew what risk that had.”

  “He's just a kid, Cayde!”

  “No, he's not. He’s young, but he’s far more than just a kid. He has been through more, and trained for more, than a lot of people do in a whole lifetime. To say he’s just a kid doesn't do him justice. He knew what he was doing.”

  My head hung between my shoulders. “I should have made him leave. I should have at least gotten him into the car first. I promised myself that I would keep him safe. “

  “I made myself that same promise. He’s like a little brother to me. He has always been my responsibility… If anyone deserves blame, it's me. Do you blame me?”

  “Of course, I don't.”

  “Then stop blaming yourself.”

  I had no idea how to turn the guilt off, but I nodded.

  After placing the gauze, he fastened the end of the protective cloth bandage around it, sticking it to itself with the attached Velcro. “There,” he said, “You're all set.” While he took the ointment to the bathroom counter, I slipped under the covers and snuggled into the fluffy comforter.

  “So, umm, I was thinking, I could sleep on one of the couches...”

  I popped up to sitting. “Why would you do that?”

  “I wasn't sure if you would want me to stay with you… Since you don't really need me to, anymore.”

  I had now managed to control my power twice without his help. The thought of sleeping alone made me anxious though. And not only because I was still afraid of not being able to control myself. I just didn’t want to sleep without him.

  I turned down the covers on the other side of the bed and patted the mattress. “Get your ass over here.”

  He left his sling on the nightstand and obeyed with a smile on his face. “I'm glad you feel that way.”

  I scooted myself back to lie against him. “Well, I can’t make you sleep on one of those shitty, leather couches. I feel enough guilt as it is.”

  He scoffed. “You're too kind.” He kissed the top of my shoulder.

  “Still wake me up, okay?”

  “I will. Goodnight, Nova.”

  “Sweet dreams.”

  37

  Our last day in New York was the same as the day before. We were either silent, or spinning the same old wheels. That night, I finally lost it.

  “We need to know everything they know!”

  “You gonna be the one to make Adalyn talk? She is a jittery mess!” Wyatt yelled.

  “Cayde can keep her calm! We have no choice here!”

  “Nova is right,” Quinn said, the only one to keep her voice even.

  “They probably don't even know anything. We'll just be putting them through hell for nothing,” Eric said.

  He'd developed a soft spot for both Adalyn and Jacob really quickly. It seemed they had brought out a paternal instinct in him that I would have never guessed was there. It was sweet, seeing him play dinosaurs with Jacob, but his protectiveness over Adalyn had become frustrating.

  “Eric, this is Zane we’re talking about! We can't tiptoe around this. We owe it to him to try everything. And frankly, they owe us! If it weren't for us, including Zane, they would still be cowering in a cage!”

  “That doesn't mean they owe us anything! Since when do heroes ask for favors in return?” Wyatt asked.

  “Since we need one,” Quinn fired back.

  “Since when are we heroes?” I yelled. “Aren't we the same people who spend most of our time hiding from the enemy? And I wouldn't call our mission the other night a heroic success. Multiple innocent people died. And one of our own was kidnapped. That's not how it goes down in the comic books.”

  Markham finally stepped up to give some input, when Dawn coughed from the doorway.

  “Can y’all stop yellin’? And stop talkin’ about us like we ain't here?” She came into the dining room and sat in one of the chairs we had all been too tense to fill. “If ya’ll need to hear what little I know, then I’m willin’ to talk. Once. After that, I don't wanna think about what happened in that place, ever again. Will that shut everybody up?” Her scratchy smoker’s voice was stern.

  “Yes, ma'am,” Markham said. He sat in the chair closest to her, clearly taking charge of the interview. Wyatt, Cayde, and Quinn sat around the table too. I kept my place standing against the wall.

  “We are sorry to make you think of it at all, but we need any leads we can get, in order to save our friend.” Markham’s voice was softer than I’d ever heard it.

  “I really don't think I know anythin’ that’ll help, but I’ll tell ya what I can.”

  “Did you hear anyone talk about other places they work from?” I asked eagerly. Markham glared at me; I ignored him.

  “No. Most of my time was spent in those cages. And the guards only talked about sports or chicks they've banged.”

  She cleared her throat, but her voice still came out like gravel. “The creepy bastard in the suits only came ‘round for the actual testin’. I had to go through it twice.”

  “Do you know what he was testing for?” Markham asked. I felt Cayde's eyes glance in my direction—I purposefully kept mine on Dawn.

  I had told everyone what Crowley said while I was strapped to his chair. They knew he was planning to “fix” the world. And that he wanted to kill a lot of people in order to do it. They knew that he wanted to somehow use my ability for himself, in order to live forever. I’d just left out the part about him giving me my powers in the first place.

  Markham and Sam were already too interested in my abilities. I wouldn’t put it past them to want to know how to reverse engineer the process themselves, if they thought that giving someone powers was a possibility. It was better if they didn’t know.

  Cayde was the only one I shared that information with. He felt strongly that I shouldn't be keeping it to myself; but I was standing by my decision, at least for now.

  “No. Seemed like it was a good thing just to see us survive... Most people didn't come back alive once they were taken to the top floor. Me and Adalyn are rare cases. We only ever saw the others again if… they were bein’ cut open.” Whatever memory was playing through her head, was making her visibly sick. Her hand raised to press against her lined, smoker’s lips.

  Markham paused, lowering his eyes to the floor. I thought he might be thinking of dropping his questions, so I pushed forward. “What do you mean by ‘cut open’?” I caught glares from every person in the room.

  Dawn swallowed hard. “He… looked at their insides sometimes. If they didn’ make it. They’d bring the bodies back and that monster would root ‘round inside them on the table right in front of us.” Her whole body trembled. “All the blood…”

  “I’m so sorry.” Markham said gently. “We’re almost done here. Can you just tell us what the testing was like?”

  Her face stiffened. Through a tight jaw, she said, “It hurt like hell.�
� She took a deep breath, letting go of some of the tension in her face. But her eyes stayed low, looking at nothing in particular. “I was strapped to the chair. Lot of wires were taped to my head. That's why they shaved us...Then he gave me shots with huge syringes of liquid.” A shiver passed over her. “It burned my insides. I could feel it movin’ inside me. I wanted to scratch through my skin to get it out.” She rubbed her arm, absentmindedly.

  “There was a lot of beepin’ machines, but I have no idea what all they did. One of them sent shocks through my head. Over an’ over an’ over...” She looked up into Markham’s face. “I wanted to die. Whatever was supposed to happen, didn't, but I managed not to die. When they brought me back to the cage the first time, I thought it was a miracle. After the second time, it felt more like a curse. I wanted to die, just to never do it again.”

  He took her hand. “It’s over now. You'll never have to go through anything like that again.” She nodded. “And you have a home with us, for as long as you want it.”

  “Thanks.” She pulled her hand back to fold her arms over her chest. “Would be nice to get a chance to rest up somewhere safe, before goin’ back home.”

  “We’ll help you, however you need.”

  She nodded. “Is that enough?”

  “Have you lost any of your memory?” I asked.

  She scoffed. “That would be nice. I remember every goddamn detail.”

  “Thank you, Dawn,” Markham said.

  She stood, looking down at Markham. “Don’t make Adalyn go over this too. She doesn’t know any more’n me.”

  As soon as he nodded, she pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and rushed out of the room—leaving us no closer to saving Zane.

  38