Her grip tightened on me and I wished I hadn't lost so much oxygen in that pointless shriek. I realized, quite quickly, that I wasn't going to get out of it alive if I kept fighting.
So, I stopped fighting.
I went limp in her grasp, holding what little air remained in my lungs. I was unconscious, drowning, dead, for all she knew. And when she let go of me, it was almost true. Almost, but not quite. I tore away from her and flew up the stairs, grabbing a giant lungful of oxygen on my way out. The door slammed open behind me, but it didn't matter. Scribe was right; they were all right. My powers hadn't shown the slightest flicker when I was dying.
Was it like this for everyone else? Terrified of one quick movement, one flash of aggression that could put you down forever? I feared death; everyone fears death. It wasn't like I was immortal or something. But I'd spent so long being strong, so hard to defeat. I mean, come on, even my suit was at least bullet resistant.
The areas where I'd been stitched together started to burn. Though the stitches had long-since been removed, I was still tender. I was still vulnerable, and that word didn't sit well with me at all. I'd tried to fight it away and look at where it'd gotten me. How could I forgive myself if I had to rely on my fellow superheroes to save me? To put themselves at risk because I'd taken the bait like an absolute idiot?
Nishelle caught me and the two of us fell into an alleyway together. I whipped the baton out, remembering it at last, and raised it to clock her solidly over the head. It might not be enough, but it would buy me time. And I desperately needed that.
She shoved me up against the brick wall of a house and kissed me.
The simple description of that act isn't enough to understand it. Like life itself was pouring back into me; we were younger, stupider, more reckless than ever. It was after a fight or something and we were hidden away, checking on each other, taking care of one another. I pressed my lips back against hers and threw my arms around her neck, dragging her closer, tighter-
We had to part to breathe, but her forehead came to rest against mine. She panted. "Sorry. So sorry. Controlled. Don't understand. Might not have long. Christ, I missed you."
"Controlled?" I asked, confused. I watched those beautiful dark brown eyes and felt my brows wrinkling together. "Embs, what's going on? Is it you? Are you really you?"
Nishelle laughed. It was a breathless little thing. "I'm me. I'm always me. Me, but not who was back there. Me, with you, always with you. Don't care. Don't matter. You, you, you."
She sounded half insane. I kissed her again and wished, not for the first time in my life, that I was a Psychic like the rest of my family. I could have looked inside her, fixed her, whatever was wrong; it would've been my pleasure to change it. But there I was, lost, without my powers, in the arms of someone who had tried to kill me moments before.
And it didn't matter. It didn't. If it meant dying, this was worth it. I'd beg forgiveness from the guys, but I knew, somehow, that they'd understand.
"Sosie, sweetheart, this is so touching."
That nickname. I ripped away from Nishelle and reached for a baton that I'd dropped in the midst of all that. I got it, too. Nishelle moved in front of me, whispering, "Run. I'll keep her off you."
"Fuck that," I snarled. "She'll kill you. She's nuts!"
Nishelle turned to look back at me, her eyes sad. "Baby, so am I."
I took the invitation. The chain link at the back of the alley was a problem but not one that made me do much other than strain to get over it. Knowing my luck was running low, I ran through trash and piles of junk, hoping that I wouldn't slip on anything. Around the corner I went, down another alleyway, and through a shop that just happened to be open. They blinked at me as I ran, started to scream, and then I heard a pair of snaps that sounded too much like... like...
Doubling back, the shadows of two bodies lay on the floor. Had I caused their deaths just by running through a store? And how had anyone gotten there so fast behind me? I-
...I...
Lexi's elbow smashed into the back of my neck, driving me to the ground. The world blinked black, white, then came back into focus just in time for her foot to crack across my face. I rolled with the blow, in wonder at just how much it hurt. Did I always hurt this much? Was it simply covered up by the fact that I was usually railing off so much adrenaline that I couldn't remember most of my fights clearly?
Another kick took me in the ribs, a third against the shoulder. I looked up into Lexi's face as I lay there. She came in for the final blow, a rough stomp to my ribs that would crash through my ribcage and, almost certainly, kill me. I didn't have anything left. A few short and simple blows had been enough to ruin me completely. This was how we looked to the normal people walking around us. Not saviors, not hired help, but a threat just waiting to burst forth from the Alliance's protection. No wonder parents burst into tears when we told them their kids had powers.
They knew their kids were going to turn into people like us.
"Now, now, Sosie's for the boss lady," Melody chirped, pulling Lexi back from me.
Fuck, just let her kill me. I closed my eyes rather than look at Izzy's face. What had I done?
Worse, what had she done to Nishelle?
"There we go!" Melody's cheerful voice was giving me a headache. Or maybe it was that kick to the head. Either way, it felt about the same.
Something scraped past my head. I looked up at it to find Nishelle staring off into the distance, her feet resting at the top of my skull. Her hands were burned, something that had almost never happened once she'd gotten full control of her powers, and she had an expression on her face that said she was definitely not at home at the moment. Melody bent over me and beamed, "Hi there, sleepyhead. Nishelle's going to pick you up and so's Lexi and they're going to take you to a great big car parked right out back, 'kay?"
"You sound like a fucking moron," I breathed. My ribs threatened to stage a rebellion for my daring to speak. It didn't matter. I probably wasn't going to make it out of this. I wanted to go out running my mouth to my boyfriend's jerk of a sister.
"And you look like a prisoner, Sosie. But it won't be that way for long. It won't, I promise. You'll be up and roaming the streets with us soon."
Oh.
Oh, hell no.
I laughed as Lexi and Nishelle picked me up and carried me off. Whatever information they had on me was wrong or out of date. Maybe Nishelle had even done so intentionally. I was worthless to them and whatever their cause was. Whoever their cause was. No one had heard from Allison, alias Dreamweaver, since Melody's attack.
I assumed I had a traitor in the family.
Besides, boss lady, right? There were only so many female superheroes in the world and only so many who had the power to take over the minds of multiple people at once. Even if it wasn't Allison, it was likely another family member of mine. Which meant that they knew exactly who I was, how to get to me, and what to do to tear me apart if I didn't decide to join their fucked up little cause.
The girls threw me into the back of a van and I landed with a crashing pain that went on forever. Their doors opened, shut, and the motor started up. I had to use every trick I knew to keep from crying, but I managed it. With my powers were gone, I had no chance of bouncing back in some quickly healed scenario like I was used to. Right?
I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure about anything and that frustrated me. We drove for far too long. No one checked on me. I didn't expect them to, unsure of how badly damaged their psyches were.
If a mind is stretched too thin, it breaks. It's one of the first things they teach you when they assume you're a Psychic superhero-to-be. You have to massage it, roll with the problems in it, and teach it new ways to accept the information that you're giving it. Which, terrifyingly, meant that somewhere deep down, Melody had been dreaming of doing all this from the start.
That wasn't too hard to believe. Everyone, especially power-hungry people like her, wants to climb the ladder and grab that golden r
ing at the top. That thing that says you're safe forever, that you never have to worry about being able to pay your electric bill again. It's the feeling that, even if your dog breaks his leg, you can afford the vet bill because that's how much power and wealth you have.
And it's great.
I grew up in a place where I didn't have to worry. When my parents had discovered I wasn't what they wanted me to be, they weren't... cruel, but I'd certainly wanted to leave sooner rather than later. I wasn't unwelcome, but no one was killing themselves to make sure they sent me a birthday card, either.
The loss of that safety net had been hard on me to start out with. Then I'd grown. I'd learned. And I'd found wonderful friends, people who loved me for who I was; not just my powers or the lack of the acceptable ones. Adam and Edwin cared about me. Nishelle had, at one point, too.
I wasn't really sure where the barometer was on that anymore. Like I said, you have to have something to work with to make people do things, even if you're a Psychic. And she'd tried to drown me.
That made things a little more complicated.
The van halted suddenly. The doors opened at the back and I stared up at the blonde wearing a smile. Then, I sighed.
"Hello, cousin."
Chapter 9
The pile of styrofoam boxes sat on my lap the entire way home. Nate had been kind enough to call a cab while I mourned my poor, dead car. Watching the lights go by as the city grew closer to waking never got old. It was a quiet time, out under the stars.
Except when I was busy punching people in the face or you know, whatever.
"When Iz and I were little," I said, the cabby ignoring us. "This was when we got woken up. Mom and Dad were nuts about getting us into the business. Intent on it."
Nate checked the skyline, then frowned over at me. "Awful early for kids to be up and going."
"Didn't matter. We had two hours of hero prep work to do before we got up. If they knew I was dating who I'm dating," I said, glancing at the cab driver. No need to drop more information than I had to. "They'd probably have a stroke."
"Never understood that whole family rivalry stuff. Both of you just worry so much about it."
"Your folks have been dead for how long?" I asked.
Nate turned his head to look back out the window. "I was 12."
"And now you're old," I said, cheerfully. He snorted. "It's different when they put so much pressure on you. When they tell you that you aren't good enough, that you can do better than your best. That shit affects you for the rest of your life."
"Yeah," the cab driver agreed. "My folks hated a bunch of shit about me. Had a scholarship off to school all set up. Ran off and joined the military instead. See what that got me?"
I peeked up through the window divider at him. "I dunno. You're charging us $6.50 a mile."
He shook his head. "Company's charging you $6.50 a mile, buddy. They own the car, the business, hell; they own me. Only pay me a buck fifty of that. Keep the rest for maintenance on the cars and whatever bullshit they can come up with. Lemme tell you, this car's engine ain't been serviced in three and a half years."
"That sounds... moderately dangerous," I said, blinking.
The driver laughed, maybe a little bit on the crazy side of things for me. "She'll hold together until we get you home. The Alliance building, right? You two some kind of undercover superheroes?"
"Yeah, actually."
He parked across the street from the building and looked back at us. I offered him the emergency card I kept on my person even when I was in uniform. There were always instances when you'd need cold, hard cash; but a card did it in most cases and this was certainly one of those. All the better, he'd only ever know me as Adam and he wouldn't believe me in ten minutes.
"Okay, heroes. That's $74.50. You boys have fun in your Spandex."
"Round it up to $90?" I said, scribbling my name on the clipboard and handing it back. Taxis were funded by the Alliance. It felt good to bleed them a little bit.
Nate popped out of the car as I struggled to keep my grasp on everything. It'd been easy enough when I'd been leaning forward and talking to the driver, but doing so had shifted the food around. As the first box tipped precariously toward me, Nate reached in and took half the stack. "C'mon. Let's go."
Relieved of half my burden, I drew myself out of the car and gave the driver one last nod of my head. He gave us an ironic salute and chuckled, rolling up the windows of his car. Not the first guy to doubt us, definitely not the last.
The pair of us walked through the lobby without so much as a blink at the door. Whatever the guy who'd brought us home may have thought, I wondered if he knew about our security measures. I wondered if he knew what he'd just seen. Or if he'd even hung around to find out. You never really knew; some people had kids who were fans or were fans themselves and never recognized you outside of the suit.
Living a split life was complicated.
We walked down to the lab. Nate and I had gotten the food to go so we could hang out with Cassie and settle down after the whole Kipa thing. It'd be nice to sit down, talk, maybe watch a couple of videos on Edwin's giant projector. And after Nate had left for the night, when he'd gone off to do whatever the hell Nate did when he was by himself, I'd bury my head against Cassie's shoulder and hold her forever.
Forever and ever.
Sharing was fine, but I wanted a little one-on-one time and I hadn't gotten it for a while. The plans danced in my mind, each sweeter and more desired than the rest. We could snuggle up, maybe watch a movie together. We'd talk about everything going on, everything in the past.
I hadn't realized just how much it would hurt to lose someone so close to you.
You understand it in theory, but until it happens? You really do not know the pain of it. It's not the excruciating agony of the first few moments, realizing that you can't save them or that they're gone. It's the endless, long-term sorrow that just won't go away no matter what you try to distract yourself with.
The door swung open but nobody was home. Had she even gotten a new phone yet? I couldn't remember. I sure didn't have the number programmed in and I was terrible at remembering numbers otherwise.
"Cassie?" I called, sitting the boxes down on Edwin's desk. He'd have been livid, but that just made it all the better.
There was no answer. Nate put his boxes down beside mine and settled at the desk. He did something with it, his fingers flying. Then he pulled up a phone call, recorded on both ends. We watched as Cassie spoke to Nishelle, yanked on a hoodie, then left the room.
"We have to go after her."
I was halfway to the door when Nate grabbed my shoulder. I whipped around to deck him, but he had a look of understanding in his face. "You go running off after her and you're just someone else we're stuck trying to fight on the street. We can go after her, together, after you calm down and we have time to plan this thing out."
The temptation to rip away from him, go running out the door, and fly off into the night was stronger than it'd ever been. I curled my fists into balls and he said, "Please. I can't lose you all, too."
As tears ran down his face, he dropped his head. Did he want me to ignore them? It was hard to say. Nate and I had been friendly for years, on and off, but we weren't joined at the hip. I looked between the food, the flashing message on the screen; that was new, and Nate. Then I took his arm in mine and guided him back to his seat.
"I won't do anything stupid," I promised. "Sit down. Eat. And what's the thing blinking?"
His head turned to look at the screen. Another few buttons clickety-clackety-ing later and he sighed. "A ransom. Dear sirs, we have Cassandra Clark, Nishelle Hudson-"
Nate shut up. I moved around behind him to finish reading it. "-Alexis Barnett and Isabella Reed. They are a plague upon the peace and quiet of your city and will be decommissioned if the following demands are not met."
"They've got Lexi," Nate whispered, touching the screen.
Cassie, Lexi, Nishelle, and I
z. All wrapped up a cozy little package with nowhere to go. The amount they wanted made my jaw drop. It was over three times the cash the Alliance would have on hand. Whoever had written the demands had to know what we were working with.
"Has to be Dreamweaver, then. Or another superhero like her," I muttered. "It's too obvious that they've got that kind of money written in. They're looking for a reason to suck their powers away."
Nate looked up at me. "Doesn't matter for Cassie, at least not right now. They don't know about that."
I grabbed a box and sat down beside him. I shoved another at him and dug into my own. "I can't imagine that Melody's in with this for real, then. Or Lexi. That's a relief, right?"
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