Cole stared at Choch.
“Do you see what I mean?”
“I…I already had these powers?”
“I mean, in fairness,” Choch said, “you had most of your powers. I did give you the whole healing thing. Too late to address the palm scars, mind you. But not too late to help you heal from savage knife attacks! Hello!”
“You…” Cole felt a rage burning in his chest, like all the pain from the night, all the fire, was now inside him. He forgot where he was, forgot about being quiet. “You tricked me! I didn’t need you! I never did!” Cole jumped to his feet, lunged at Choch, and wrapped his hands around the spirit being’s neck. “All those years of pain!!”
“CB…” Choch choked out with Cole’s considerable strength, his own strength, focused entirely on Choch’s neck. “…CB…you needed me to…tell you…you could hit the ball…”
“The therapy! The anxiety! Everything!”
“…and…who…would’ve…died…if you hadn’t…come back…for the…ice cream…”
“You did this! You!!”
“…think…about…it…”
As Choch’s eyes began to roll back into his head, Cole loosened his grip. Choch gasped for air. Cole fell to his knees, arms resting over his legs, palms pointing upwards. He stared at the scars.
“Look at me,” Cole whispered, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Look at what I am. This broken piece of nothing.”
“No, Cole.”
Choch crouched down beside Cole, rubbing his neck with one hand, the other on Cole’s back.
“You are everything you should be, and everything people need you to be. Look at all the things you’ve been through, and all the things you’ve done. Powers or not, you are a superhero, son. You are The Reckoner. I just…gave you a nudge.”
Cole looked up at Choch. “I never asked for any of this.”
“Heroes never ask to be heroes. They just act, when they’re needed. When they know something’s wrong, and that it needs to be righted. You ran to the school, you broke open those doors, you saved your friends, you came back here and saved countless lives.”
“You brought me back to life,” Cole whispered. “For more of this torture.”
“Yes, yes, I did. Just me.”
Cole shook his head. “I don’t know what to do now. I don’t know what this means.” He looked over his whole body. The power and the brokenness.
“There’s no deal,” Choch said. “You can go. You know that, now. No tricks. There never was a deal.”
“The deal…” Cole breathed.
“Whoever plays me in our movie, however, should automatically get an Academy Award,” Choch said. “Remember when I warned you not to tell Eva about any of this, and you found that loophole, and I got soooo mad. Acting.”
Cole straightened up. “I can’t leave. Not now. This is my job.”
Choch clapped slowly. “See? Heroes. They’re not born. They’re made. Or wait…is it…”
“Let’s get one thing straight.” Cole moved closer to the spirit being, index finger pointed at him.
“Don’t you finger point me!” Choch gasped.
“You didn’t make me.”
Choch’s face scrunched up to one side. “I mean, if it weren’t for me, I’m not quite sure you would have lifted that wall, which means that your friends might’ve died, which means you wouldn’t have moved away, which means—well, I mean, even if all that still happened without me, who got you back here?”
“You tricked me,” Cole said. “Again.”
“And you are my gullible little…sorry…big guy,” Choch said. “In my defence, whether I have fun or not, I’ve always had the best interest of this beautiful place at—”
At that moment, Cole heard the whiz of a bullet cutting through the air and watched as it stopped right in front of Choch’s face. The spirit being went cross-eyed looking at it, plucked it out of the air with two fingers, and dropped it.
“You really just did The Matrix after somebody tried to kill me.”
“Awesome, right?” Choch looked completely pleased with himself. “Can you say, just this once, ‘He is The One?’ Pretty please?”
“No,” Cole said. “Stop it.”
“I almost got killed, too, you know. I always freaking die. That was way too close. I should just…” Choch patted around on the ground until he found the bullet, then picked it up and flicked it at the guards. It shot out of his hand as though the spirit being had used a gun and hit one of the trucks.
“What the hell, Choch!” Cole got down onto his stomach and stared out at Reynold’s house from cover.
“Come out with your hands up, now!” A guard called out.
“Le sigh,” Choch said. “I guess it’s time to be a hero.”
16
LSD
ANOTHER BULLET WHIZZED BY COLE’S HEAD. He looked back to see if Choch had stopped it because firing back wasn’t that bad an idea right now. Why hadn’t he taken the damn rifle from Brady? He hadn’t thought of firing shots from the forest, where he had cover.
“But you’re a lousy shot, anyway,” Choch said. “Remember?”
“Except for when I’m like two inches away from the target,” Cole admitted and saw that the spirit being hadn’t caught the last bullet that was fired.
“Oh, you weren’t a big fan of the whole bullet-catching thing. You know me, I aim to please.”
“That’s a warning shot!” A guard called out from the direction of Reynold’s house. “You won’t get many more of those!”
Maybe his cover wasn’t that great after all. Cole shimmied behind a tree and slowly rose to his feet, making sure to keep the tree between himself and the guards.
“I hate to do this,” Choch gave Cole an exaggerated grimace, “but I kind of have an appointment.”
Cole peeked at the guards and another shot ricocheted off the bark right by his face. “Well, you’re not going to help, anyway.”
“Just remember,” Choch said as he faded away, “you can only die twice.” When his body was completely gone, he added, “Wait, was that a James Bond movie? Hashtag copyright.”
“Move! Now!” The guard demanded.
“We’ll give you to the count of three!” Another called out.
Cole could hear at least two guards begin to make their way over to him, step after step. He could hear the hammers cock on their guns.
“Three…”
Cole’s muscles tensed.
“Two…”
Cole stepped away from the tree and lowered his body to the ground. His palms were pressed hard against the dirt, one knee to his chest, the other leg stretched out, foot firm against a tree root. As though he were about to start a 100-metre dash.
“One!”
Cole erupted from the ground and charged the security force. They let loose on Cole, firing their guns. Cole jerked from side to side while still in motion, narrowly avoiding the shots. He felt one skim his left arm, but ignored the slight pain. He laid his shoulder into one of them, who flew through the air and smashed into a truck. The guard’s gun popped skyward. Cole turned to the other guard, caught the gun, and fired before they could get another shot off. The guard looked down at the wound in the middle of his chest, then his knees buckled, and he crumpled to the ground.
Cole heard other members of Mihko’s security shouting. Calling everybody to the front of the house. All hands on deck. They assembled by the truck that the other guard had hit; he was now on the ground unconscious. Cole counted seven, not counting the one he’d knocked out and the other he’d shot. They were face to face, mere metres separating them. Guards on one side, Cole on the other. Cole brought his hood up over his head, keeping the gun in his hand.
“Who are you?” one of them asked, his rifle aimed at Cole.
Cole couldn’t help but notice the shakiness in his voice.
“We’ll…” another started, looked around at the others as though for approval, then continued. “…nobody else has to get h
urt, kid.”
“I was just about to tell you the same thing,” Cole called back, deepening his voice. “All I want is to get inside. Everybody can leave. Just let me through.”
“Nobody gets inside!” another said. “Nobody sees Chief McCabe!”
“You must really want to die!” said still another.
“Drop the gun!”
Cole lowered the gun, but kept it in his hand. Cocked the hammer.
“I said drop it!”
How fast could he move? With one person shooting, a bullet had grazed him, but every other one had missed. Narrowly. Now, there were several guards, all with their weapons aimed in his direction. How many could he take out before they started shooting? And that was if he’d even hit anybody else—he’d shot the one guard while they were both standing still. Eva had taught him how to shoot before he’d gone off and gotten killed at the facility, but now, he’d have to shoot while running.
All bets were off.
Cole moved to the left and raised his gun. He sprinted forward, shooting at the guards in the same motion. Trying to keep them off-balance. And it worked—for a moment. With the speed Cole had summoned, a moment was long enough for him to cut the distance between him and the security force in half. By that time, he’d emptied the clip and knocked down two more. Then, while Cole kept running at them full bore, they returned fire. He wasn’t The Flash. He dodged some bullets, some simply missed him, but others hit him. He tried not to break speed. Not when he felt a shot enter his thigh, not when he felt another hit his shoulder.
When Cole got to the truck, it was five against one. They came at him, all at once. Swinging wildly. Shooting. Cole swung back. Knocked one guard out with a fist to the chin, and that one took another down with him. Cole managed to grab one of their guns. Another bullet grazed his neck. They were much better at connecting with their fists though. Those came hard and often.
Cole stuck the muzzle of his gun into a guard’s stomach and pulled the trigger. By then, the guard knocked down by his partner had recovered and came charging back. Three on one. Cole turtled and allowed the guards to wail down on his body while he picked up another gun, dropped by the man he’d just shot. He channelled all the adrenaline coursing through his veins and violently straightened his body, knocking all three guards off-balance. In the split second it took them to gather themselves, Cole kicked the guard in front of him in the balls, crossed his arms and shot the two others at once. When the one he’d kicked came up for air, Cole shot him in the chest.
All three fell to the ground at the same time.
Nobody stood up again.
Cole surveyed the scene, from where he’d fought the first two guards, to the area around the truck. Nine of Mihko’s security force were wounded, unconscious, or dead. He didn’t give himself time to think about what he’d done. He took a step towards Reynold’s house, when one of them weakly reached out and grabbed his ankle. Cole looked down at him, aimed his gun directly at his head. A flashback. A gun inches away from his face. A barrel sparking fire. A bullet hurtling at his forehead. Blackness. Cole shook his head, closed his eyes for a moment. He kicked the guard off his leg and tossed both of his guns away.
“You should be gone by the time I get back,” he said.
At the door, Cole was ready to kick it down when it swung open, revealing a shocked Lucy.
“Who the hell are you?” She looked around Cole, at the carnage he’d left behind, then back at him. His hood was up and his neck warmer was raised over his mouth. He needed the files, and he wasn’t going to hurt Lucy.
Cole lowered the neck warmer and the hood. “Lucy.”
“Holy shit.” She shook her head, closed her eyes. “No, no, no. Nope.” She kept them closed for another moment. Opened them again.
“It’s me,” Cole said, “but I was never dead.” There was no deal anymore, but that didn’t mean everybody needed to know he’d come back from the dead. He needed an un-freaked out Lucy.
“You were never dead?”
“Mihko faked my death, kept me locked up in the basement of the facility,” Cole said. “I was getting too close to the truth.”
“Okay,” Lucy appeared to be calming down, her voice steadying, “and what truth is that?”
“That everything that’s happened in Wounded Sky since I got back, and even before then, even ten years ago, is because of them. The sickness, the murders…Lucy, they were killing us to cover up what they’d done.”
“Mihko,” Lucy repeated thoughtfully, and maybe, Cole thought, unconvinced. She zoned out, and Cole could relate to that.
“Lucy.” Cole grabbed her shoulders, gave her a light shake.
She snapped out of it, looked past Cole to the guards again. “And you did that.”
“Yes.” Cole remembered that he’d been shot multiple times. The pain came like a hot knife being twisted into his flesh. He tried to forget the pain, to tell himself that, by morning, the wounds would be healed. The one gift Choch had actually given him.
Lucy looked down, where blood was pooling on the floor, around Cole’s shoes. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine,” Cole reassured her, but was feeling a bit faint. “Lucy, I need those files, the ones in the chest. Okay? I’m going to go get those files.”
“No,” Lucy said. “You can’t go up there.”
He moved her to the side. “I’m going up there. I have to.”
“You don’t get it, Cole. You can’t.”
But Cole was already walking away from her, to the stairs to the second floor. “I don’t have a choice.”
“The fire, the guards, they’re nothing…” she whispered. To herself? Her breathing was louder than the words she’d just spoken.
Cole stopped. “Nothing? What do you mean ‘they’re nothing’?”
“It’s not just Mihko,” she said even quieter, so quiet that only Cole could’ve really heard her. “He’s worse.”
He’s worse. Reynold. The monster. Upayokwitigo. He was alive. Fine, okay. So be it. Cole had beat Reynold before, he could beat him now. He had to. “I’m not afraid.”
Cole kept moving.
“You should be,” he heard Lucy say.
Cole walked down the hallway, into Reynold’s room, and went straight for the closet. He pulled the blanket off the chest and ripped off the lock. He opened the chest and rummaged through it until he found the file folder with the information on the experiments Mihko conducted on him and his friends. He stuffed the folder into his hoodie pocket, and turned to leave.
The panic Cole thought he’d pushed away came crashing back. His heart kicked into a fast, hammering beat, zero to sixty. His knees felt like they’d crumbled into one million pieces. His body vibrated, and his skin turned cold. He couldn’t breathe.
“You.”
It was Reynold McCabe. It wasn’t Reynold McCabe. Cole searched, in that forever moment, for anything human in what stood before him. He found nothing.
“You,” it said again.
Upayokwitigo stood so tall, it needed to crouch in Reynold’s bedroom. Its hunched-over posture made the ice giant even more frightening. It was massive, but at the same time, skin and bones. Starving. Its ribs were like icicles, sticking out sharply through its pale blue skin. Deep red eyes. Sharp, decaying teeth. Lank hair falling over its shoulders.
“You!” it hissed.
Reynold. Hungry for power. So hungry, the hunger had turned into something else. Had turned him into something else. This monster in front of him. This wasn’t what Cole had encountered in Blackwood Forest, outside of the clinic. That was something newly hatched, still growing. Caught in an insatiable hunger. Feeding, but never feeling full. Needing more and more.
Move, Cole demanded of himself. Move now. But his legs wouldn’t work. He’d had nightmares like this, where the terror was so great that he desperately wanted to wake up and ended up stuck. Conscious, but paralyzed in terror.
Lucy had been right.
It stepped forward
, and the room shook. Cole heard footsteps running up the stairs.
“Cole!”
No. What would it do with Lucy here? Did it even know Lucy anymore? Did it even know anything or anyone?
“You!”
It knew him. It knew Cole. Just like Cole knew himself, now. Knew himself and his anxiety. There were two monsters with him right now, and he had to beat both.
It took another step.
“Cole!”
Now. Cole drew in a breath and charged at the creature. Leaped in the air and connected with it, throwing both of his arms around its body. Cole felt the creature’s sharp bones cut his skin. The thing staggered back, then tried to pry Cole off. Cole dug his fingers in hard. So hard he felt its skin break. It screamed. Cole let go with one hand and wailed on the thing with kidney shots. One after the other while it tried to rip Cole away.
“Cole!”
“Get away!” Cole shouted back at Lucy.
“DIE!” it cried at Cole.
Cole forced himself to hang on, to not let go, to not let the thing pull him off. He gripped harder, until he had his hand wrapped around one of its ribs. The monster punched down on Cole’s back with both hands. Cole couldn’t breathe. He was getting weaker and losing his grip. It clutched his shoulders with both hands and with one violent motion pulled Cole off and threw him across the room.
He hurtled towards the wall.
“Unnnh!”
Lucy grunted as his body slammed into hers. Her body crushed under his weight, and they both went through the wall, into the next room.
Drywall dust and bits of broken wall fell over their bodies. Cole rolled off Lucy, got to his knees, and looked her over. She just looked asleep except for a stream of blood coming from the corner of her mouth.
Cole wiped it away.
“Lucy?”
She didn’t answer.
“Lucy!”
She didn’t stir.
With a trembling hand, he pressed two fingers against her neck. Prayed to feel something, anything. But there was no pulse, and Cole knew Lucy wasn’t there anymore. She was above, in the other place. A ribbon of light dancing in a sea of diamond stars. But now, in this moment, there was no comfort in that thought. Cole buried his face in his hands. Another life. How many more did there have to be?
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