But the worst turncoats were Psychics, too. They could operate under a guise, hidden, for far too long. It's why the Alliance kept such close tabs on them. Psychics that worked with us were required to wear GPS locators at all times, on duty or not. We could always find them, which really made me wonder how the hell a Psychic had been the one to do this.
What if it was someone with latent Psychic powers? Someone who was off the charts? It was possible that the Alliance had missed one or more Psychics, especially if one was already being controlled by one of those unrecognized Psychics. The idea made my head ache. What had happened to straight-forward supervillains who just wanted us all dead or to take over the world?
Or you know, ones who had a years-long grudge against you and wanted to hurt the people close to you. Whatever. I'd take anything that was normal again.
And what had I done to Creed? I remembered something about a fireball, but had we talked? Had I killed him? The pounding reached the top of my skull and I found myself rubbing my temples to try to relieve it. What I'd do for a little aspirin...
Footsteps drew my attention. Two people descended a staircase across the room from our tubes and I frowned. I recognized one, but not the other.
"Cooper, less time on your phone, more getting these heroes their dinner."
Allison Clark was a tall, lean, blonde woman with dark eyes and a number of piercings on her lip. I wished that anyone with magnetism powers had gotten within fifty feet of her in recent years. Watching those piercings go shooting out of her would have been a treat.
Cooper, I noted, was a man younger than most of us by a decade or so. Probably not too long out of high school, his skin was darker than mine by a few shades. His jaw was weak, his eyes yellowed with jaundice. Too young to be so sickly, I worried about him. He looked up from his phone and disappeared. A second later, he reappeared in front of my tube with a tray of food.
Well, Cooper was our Porter, then. He shoved the tray through the stuff that kept me imprisoned and I took it without thanks. Twice more he repeated the gesture, once for Lexi and once for Isabella.
"You get sick of playing both sides of the fence, Allison?" I asked.
She ignored me, sitting down at a laptop. It had an Apple logo on the back. Which just goes to prove so many things about Mac users. All hail Android.
The food in front of me was garbage. Mashed potatoes that looked like mayonnaise, carrots from World War 2, and a chunk of meat that could've been from any old dog in the street. Not my thing. I poked the tray against my tube and delighted to see it pass through. Perfect.
I had to angle it just right.
I leaned as far back against the tube as I could, gripped the edge of the tray and flipped it out of my prison. It hurtled across the room and smacked across the back of Allison's chair, spraying her with the glop that'd been on it. Fewer times had I been as proud of my aim as I was right then.
Allison froze.
"Boss?" whimpered Cooper.
Lexi and Izzy stopped mid-bite and stared at me like I'd lost my mind. And I got a very uncertain feeling about what I'd just done seconds before Allison tapped two keys on the keyboard and lemon-lime gooze started to creep up past my feet. Not wasting any time on screaming, I took a breath when the gunk passed my throat and held it.
It was over my eyes in a second, smacking against the top of the container. Breathless moments ticked past with no sign of relief. Looking around in the goop didn't hurt, but Allison was up and leaving the computer. She was headed back toward the stairs. My lungs screamed for oxygen and I schlorped my arms up through the mess to clap my hands over my mouth. It didn't matter if I fainted. I had to keep the air in, in, in-
Instinct forced me to open my mouth and breathe in the horrible gunk. It drove down, down, down into my lungs, my stomach, filling my eyes, my ears, my nose and throat. I screamed but I couldn't get the sound out of me. Convulsing, fighting off the darkness stretching across my vision, I clawed at the tube and desperately filled my body with the stuff around me.
The white sand beach was quieter than I remembered.
We were a hell of a lot younger, too.
The umbrella covering Cassie and I had a cloud pattern over the sky-blue sheeting, but I preferred to watch the real clouds above. She was maybe 18 or 19, early enough in her superhero career to only have a couple of scars here and there. I was about the same age, but where Cassie had curves, I was lean and gawky.
But then, I'd gotten into college with a scholarship for running. She'd gotten into college with her violin.
Scribe had been kind enough to let us take four years off to get our degrees. We were on-call with the Alliance if a huge problem popped up, but it was summer. What kind of asshole started trouble when everyone wanted to be out on the beach soaking up the sun and enjoying the great outdoors?
Whites did that whole tanning thing. Me? I just wanted to enjoy something that radiated as much heat as I did on the average day. Cassie, though, she was still pretty pale. I remembered that she'd had a cold that week and had just gotten over it, so we'd gone out to enjoy our weekend after she'd felt so poorly.
The waves crashed, the birds squawked, and Cassie rolled over to smile up at me in the way that used to make my heart flipflop. And on that day, in that place, I was still that same kid all those years ago.
I reached out and stroked her cheek. She crawled atop me, kissing me. Our lips met and I lost control of my powers for a second, glassifying the sand beneath us. Cassie pulled her head back with a laugh, then kissed me again. I wrapped my arms around her neck and drew her into me, to me, begging for something that was just out of reach. Out of mind. Out of... something.
The beach flickered around me, replaced by the goop. Then it came back to life. I shoved Cassie away, off of me, and ran from the illusion. Dreamweaver worked primarily in that vector, preferring the use of illusions of happiness and glee to completely disarm her enemies. Obviously, the stuff around me was some sort of conduit for her powers. I didn't fully understand how that worked or how she'd developed it, but I couldn't cope with this fake life. Not when my real one was still so screwed up.
Out towards the water I ran. What kills fire more easily than water? If I was to fling myself in, drown, surely I would come back to my senses. I could force my way out of whatever stuff was surrounding me in real life. I could escape, maybe even get Isabella and Lexi loose. The waves splashed around my ankles, my knees, and I dove in further. It didn't matter that I was a poor swimmer; it wasn't real. None of it was. And I was closing in on freedom, I was certain of it.
And if I was so close, there was no reason not to hurry it along.
I shoved my head underwater and took an enormous gulp of life-ending hydro. Bubbles shot out of my nose as the salty stuff entered my body, forcing the air out as the water took its place. Again I gulped, filling myself to bursting with the liquid around me.
Pressure built in my mind, my body. Something had to give or I was going to explode, to splatter across this false ocean or the chamber I was actually in.
All at once, it ended. I was on my knees, covered in slick stuff, back in the tube. I coughed a little chunk of it from my lungs and inhaled glorious, wonderful air.
"You can't just try to kill yourself in the Dream," Cooper said, his fingers still on the keyboard. My savior. "You'll actual die, too. Your body doesn't know the difference and it'll shut everything down. Allison would be livid if I... if I..."
"Let one of us get out of here?" Lexi growled. "Let one of us actually leave?"
Cooper, miserable, shook his head. "It isn't like that."
"It is," I said, feeling sick to my stomach. "Whatever she's got you believing, it is. Who are you?"
"Cooper Melton."
I sat back and frowned at him. "What city?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"What city is your Alliance building in?" I asked again, looking at Lexi out of the corner of my eye.
He looked between the three of us. "Alliance bu
ilding?"
"Izzy?" I asked.
In all her glory, Isabella sat up a bit straighter and cleared her throat. "The PTB Alliance is dedicated to serving both the superhero and non-super communities at large. Pyros, Prestos, Blitzers, Shriekers; even Porters like you can find a home within our walls. It's why she's asking, honey. We're all members; even Allison. You're not?"
"Mother doesn't let me leave the house very often. And Allison supports that."
I let out a low whistle. Isabella narrowed her eyes. "You're unregistered."
The poor kid looked like he was about to have a stroke. We'd caught him doing something wrong and as far as he knew, that meant that hell and fury was about to rain down on his head. I waved a hand at Isabella. "Easy on him. Not like it's his fault. I get the feeling we're dealing with a much larger problem than we first thought."
"Like who's hiding a Porter and what else might be going on under their stairs?" Izzy scowled.
"Yeah, that."
"I just want to say I feel like the forced registration of every super child is a little outside of the power of the PTB and maybe that's why we're having so much trouble keeping control of the Alliance in recent years and-" Lexi paused for a breath.
I interjected, "And nobody cares right now, Lexi. Take a breather. We'll get back around to you. We can fix whatever problematic bullshit the Alliance is up to behind closed doors when we get out of here. Cooper? How do we do that?"
He chewed his lower lip and slowly sank into the chair Allison had once occupied. He looked down at the keyboard, then back at the screen. I let him take his time with it. Pushing a guy like him, who held his life in your hands, wasn't the smartest idea. Lexi started to open her mouth again but Izzy flapped her hand at her and she shut up. All the better for the rest of us, Lexi wasn't exactly the coolest head in a situation.
...Really, when I'd come to in the tube, I'd have imagined it would have been Lexi smashing herself into it, not Izzy.
Oh. Oh no.
Cooper's face turned toward me. His head tilted to one side. "I think she's realizing it, ma'am."
"Then turn the power up a bit more. It shouldn't ruin her mind that much."
The disembodied voice was Allison's. I looked around the tube, nervous and uncertain. Could she be speaking through a speaker somewhere hidden in the ceiling? Or was I existing in some kind of a layered dream? The fact that I could not be certain of reality, of where I was, of what I was seeing, terrified me more than the idea of drowning in a stupid tube somewhere where no one would ever find me. My parents had moved on. So would Cassie, in time.
The world, by and far, would cope without me.
Lexi and Melody were gone. The room flashed in and out of time a dozen instances in a row, forcing me to land on my ass in the tube. Cooper vanished and suddenly, I was sitting in a tube in the blackness of nothing. In a void. Beyond touch, beyond comprehension. I looked around the darkness and held my breath for a second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
Then I let out the sigh and began to compose myself. I had been captured before. Demeter had been a monstrous person, willing to plow up the entire planet and start it all over again. She'd lost her daughter during an accidental miss with the Alliance. The kid had gotten shot in the crossfire of a Blitzer and a villain. The Blitzer just hadn't been fast enough.
No one was perfect.
It hadn't mattered.
Demeter had almost wiped out the city and a good chunk of the eastern seaboard because her little girl had gotten killed. It took something like that to make most people go insane or flip villain.
So what had changed Allison? Dreamweaver had always been an outlier, someone who didn't quite belong to the Alliance even when she was signed up, but someone who was always willing to give us a hand when we needed it. Had she really spent five years controlling my mind and body, forcing me to; I assumed, do good things and righteous whateversits only to fall apart now?
Why?
If I could get to the heart of the matter, I'd push her Psychic influence off of me. I wouldn't be stuck in a tube anymore, I hoped, but wherever I really was. If Cooper existed, maybe I could talk him around. Escaping the Dream wasn't as easy when I didn't have waves to walk into.
"You'll never break it. And you've been so happy within it, why try to get out? It's a peaceful place, Ardent. One where you can be content," Allison said from nowhere in particular.
"My name," I said, "is Ember."
A tiny flame sprung to life in my hand. It lit the area around me and just outside the tube. I frowned at it and muttered, "There is no spoon?"
Then I pushed the fire through the cheap glass surrounding me. My arm followed it and a hot excitement roared to life in my mind, forcing the darkness back. Allison dropped the microphone wherever she was. I had no doubt she was racing for my cell, wherever I was.
I focused all of my attention on the tiny flame in my hand, feeding it with that excitement and the passion I had for escaping. It burst into a lamp, then a torch. I lit up the night, I burned away the Dream around me, and I fell to my knees inside a typical stone-and-iron jail cell deep under someone's house. Outside, a tall woman peered in.
Allison did not look happy with me.
Chapter 6
"Well, that's all we can do for you, miss," said the doctor. "Your discharge paperwork will be available on your way out."
My powers were still as dead as a doornail. I gave him a last, pleading look, but he got up and left. He ignored me on his way out. I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand and took a deep breath. If I was going to be powerless for a while, I couldn't change that; apparently.
I'd have to learn to live with it.
It'd been two months since Melody's big betrayal. Adam was only coping so well, but most of the rest of us were coming along. Edwin would be in the hospital another week, but Adam and Nate had been cleared a while ago. They didn't know how much longer it'd be until Scribe managed to drag himself out of bed.
As I pulled on real clothes for the first time in too long, I glanced at the flowers drying at my bedside and sighed. Had she just been a dream? Some figment of my imagination, some last hope that I wanted so bad that I'd made it real?
No, the news made it obvious enough that she existed. Nishelle had been spotted a dozen times in a dozen places since I'd started watching television again, always in her Ardent costume. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know what the long-term impact of it would be. And, frankly, that scared me.
Pyros were powerful. She'd already been shown on live television doing something that could have been mistaken as a terrible thing. I knew better, but everything in me doubted that I did.
The headache awoke in my sinuses and worked its way to the back of my head, as it usually did when I started to try to think things through. I needed a hot shower, a giant bowl of beef stew, and somebody to hold me for the next couple of days while I tried to deal with the storm inside of me. If I was lucky, I'd get at least two of those things.
"I'll call," I said.
"You'll stay off the street," Scribe answered, exhausted. "No hero work until the doctors clear you. It's too easy for you to get killed."
I pulled the curtain back and frowned at him. "Not even support? Boss, I can still throw a punch or two. They just won't break a rib or a jaw or... whatever."
He sighed at me and patted the side of the bed. I walked to him and sat down. Scribe grabbed me in a bearhug that he usually reserved for especially heroic deeds, like saving a bus full of kids from going over a cliff. "You're quick. You're strong. But the streets are getting more dangerous every night. Reports say we've spotted Wreckless a few times, and she'd tear you apart in the shape you're in now. No work. Adam can take care of himself."
Orders were orders, but I had to try. "Can I run simulations to look for my powers returning?"
"If the doctors say you can."
There'd be no use in arguing. Besides, it wasn't like he could monitor us full-time if he was in the h
ospital. I returned the hug, knowing he just wanted what he thought was best for me, and drew away after a moment. "I really will call."
"And I'll be watching," he said, nodding at the television beyond his bed.
I smiled, shook my head, and grabbed my bag. Then I walked to the flowers and plucked a single, dried petal from them. I stuck it in my pocket and headed downstairs, not trusting the elevators. If someone wanted me dead, it was easier to get me when I was in a suspended box than it was in a stairwell.
Unfortunately, my life was to remain boring. I walked down to the parking lot and looked around. No one waiting for me, not even a taxi. Nate had said someone was supposed to come get me. I was under strict orders not to take public transportation; because it might make the civilians a target, and not to order my own transport. If no one had shown up, should I start walking home?
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