“We can’t,” Marco said, grinning. “It’s against the rules.”
We reached the doors. “And if you find someone around here who cares about the rules, make sure to act natural,” I said, my hand on the door. “Start reciting the principles or something.”
I pushed the wooden door open and slipped through.
The patients wing was yet another glassy hallway lined with plants, but to my surprise, there were no people. Were they all in operating theaters? No alarm had sounded, but I knew without a doubt that I was under camera surveillance, so I didn’t stop to ponder the question. Instead, I dashed to the first room on my right.
Empty.
The second.
Empty.
The third: a woman whose abdomen was being sewn up on a blood-stained table. Four medical professionals in scrubs and masks looked up when I opened the door.
“Excuse me,” I said briskly, reaching for her hand. Healing surged from my fingers to hers, and then I was gone—but not before I heard the shouts of surprise from behind me.
It took only another minute and a half to find the rest of the team in the other operating rooms. They were all in various stages of being stitched back together. Each time, the medical team yelled in alarm, but I didn’t hang around to explain.
I was flexing old psychological muscles by flouting rules made by those superheroes, even though I was in fact saving their lives.
I was fighting the system. Standing up to the giant.
“Causing trouble?”
Jillian’s beautiful voice made me spin around. She stood in the doorway of one of the rooms I hadn’t checked, barefoot and clad in dark purple scrubs, and holding onto an IV pole as if she were claiming the hallway for Saint Catherine. Her lush hair cascaded down past her shoulders, and some of the color was back in her cheeks.
“Jillian!”
“Benjamin,” she said, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “I wondered how long it would before you started healing people.” She pulled me inside her room and closed the door. “I heard what they were saying in the operating rooms. Something about ‘I’m healed!’ and ‘Who was that?’”
“It was actually Reid’s idea.”
“Uh huh.”
Being so close to Jillian was intoxicating—even more so than Elijah’s false calm. Although I’d just upset the smooth order of the hospital and sneaked into Jillian’s room, I couldn’t feel the fear and worry that had haunted me.
In fact, as I studied her pink-tinged cheeks and vague smile, the months of fighting and combat flipped backwards like pages in a book. We were in the park again, our wildly different lives as yet unbeknownst to each other, just two young people with the future to look forward to. No battles, no uniforms, no scars visible or invisible. Jillian even looked the same now as she did that day, her head angelically haloed by sunlight from the window, and the red in her hair shimmering every so often.
There was a sharp knock on the door, and then it burst open. Three grinning nurses and a harried, red-faced doctor stormed inside.
“Was that you?” the doctor demanded, pointing to me.
No point in lying. “Yeah.”
“This hallway is patients only!” he insisted. Some of his hair was sticking out in different directions.
I nodded. “My apologies. Next time I’ll ignore the urge to heal the woman with her intestines hanging out.”
The doctor sputtered, but one of the nurses looked at her watch and said, “Tony, you have a meeting with the director in ten minutes. Since you don’t have any surgeries for the rest of the morning, you might want to get ready for that.”
Doctor Tony swore and threw up his hands, then stomped out, followed by two giggling nurses. The third crossed her arms and looked down her nose at Jillian. “Did he heal your pneumonia?”
Jillian shrank back. “No.”
“Then get in bed, lady.” She walked out.
After making a face at the door, Jillian led me by the hand to her wide hospital bed and slipped back under the covers, then patted the empty space next to her. I pulled off my boots and joined her, careful to not lay on the tubes and wires that crisscrossed the mattress.
She turned slightly so she could face me. “I think there’s something in my IV that’s relaxing me. I feel better than I have in a long time.”
“It’s probably a tranquilizer,” I said, taking in her soft expression and airy voice. “Were you upset earlier?”
“I wouldn’t stop talking about how I needed to be with my team. One of the nurses changed the IV bag and said I’d feel better soon.”
Though Edward’s plight wasn’t remotely funny, I couldn’t help a laugh. “I just met another team leader who needed some outside help to calm down. I bet they’re used to that here.”
Jillian’s eyebrows drew together and she opened her mouth, but before she could inquire about to whom I was referring, a booming knock on the door made us startle.
“Come in,” we said.
The door swung open to reveal the funniest-looking group of people I’d seen in a long time.
Two men and two women in bloody, destroyed uniforms filed in without a word until they were fanned out at the foot of the bed. They were all older than anybody on our team, probably in their mid-twenties, and each of them had a scowl on their face. One of men was missing his left arm below the elbow. From what I could tell of their ripped, bloody uniforms, they all had the same star on their right shoulder, though in different colors.
There was a tense silence until one of the men said, “So…where’s Ed?”
I sat up and rested my arms on my knees. “If you mean Edward Yazzie, he’s in the cafeteria. He’s fine.”
They relaxed. The youngest woman, whose long brown hair had been partially shaved to facilitate surgery, narrowed her eyes as she looked back and forth between Jillian and me. “I’ve seen you two before. You’re from that video that’s been going around. The one that started all of this.” Her accent was identical to that of Topher’s, all broad New York vowels. She even looked like him a little bit.
At that, Jillian took a deep breath and climbed out of bed, holding her chin up and surveying the group with cool, distant interest. “I’m Jillian Trent, commander of the Saint Catherine, Georgia team. Since you came into my room, you’d better start identifying yourselves and telling me what the hell you want.”
“Commander?” the other woman said. “Are you k—”
The remaining man held up his hand to his teammate, who nodded once and stepped back. “We’re the Burlington, Vermont team, and we have a really good reason to be mad at you. Your speech last week caused the civilians of our city to turn against us.”
“Your names,” Jillian drawled, though there was an edge to her tone.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” the skeptical woman said.
“I think I’m the leader of two joint teams at the moment, plus a very capable killer in my own right. Now, your names, or you will be meeting said joint teams a lot sooner than you’d probably prefer, and you’ll very quickly find out how they defeated a strike team.”
Superhero sword-measuring contests never ceased to amaze me.
“Danielle Cannostraci,” the woman growled, confirming my suspicion that she was relative of Topher’s. If she had to find out that Topher was dead, she wasn’t finding out from me.
“Luis de la Cruz,” said the man missing half an arm. “I’m SIC.” He was obviously southern, but since Jillian didn’t know him, I placed him from Occonee instead of Chattahoochee.
“Julia Kettlethorpe,” said the other woman. Another New Yorker.
“Bobby Campbell,” said the final man. His accent was southern, but not like my Georgia teammates. Ozark, then.
Jillian’s eyes narrowed slightly upon hearing Bobby’s surname, but she recovered and looked at Luis. “Why are you here?”
“They came for Ed’s head, and when we jumped in, they attacked all of us.”
“You seem fine
to me,” Jillian said with a smirk, looking them up and down. “Even your stump is sealed up,” she said to Luis. “Should I go congratulate the surgeons?”
Their eyes flickered downward simultaneously. “Uh, that was him,” Danielle said.
Jillian rubbed her chin. “So let me get this straight. My team uncovers a decades-long conspiracy and reveals the corruption in our camps, then goes public about it so the perpetrators can be brought to justice. After that, a group of civilians—whom I have never met and have no control over—go berserk and attack you guys. However, it’s okay because my teammate actually broke the rules to save your lives.”
She tutted her tongue and tapped her foot as if she were thinking extremely hard. “Now, what’s the phrase people typically use when they want to show gratitude for someone else’s hardships and efforts on their behalf? Civilians are always using it when we save them from muggers and stuff.”
“I am not thanking the woman who ruined everything,” Danielle snarled. “Do you know how much trouble all the teams are in? Do you know how many protests there have been? Can your tiny mind compr—”
A tiny knock on the door cut through her tirade. Luis opened the door and stepped back.
It was Abby.
She was biting her bottom lip and standing on her tiptoes, craning her neck to look for something or someone. When she didn’t find it, she seemed to deflate. “Where Edward?” she asked the Burlington team. “Abby smell Edward. Nurse say Burlington team hurt. He live?” She took a step closer, her eyes growing large and wet with worry. “Edward live?”
Jillian and I exchanged a confused glance, as did the Burlington team. Luis recovered quickly and replied, “He’s unharmed. He’s out in the main part of the hospital, Miss…?”
“Calhoun,” I supplied. “This is Abigail Calhoun, of the Baltimore team.”
The reaction was swift. An electric shock ran through the Burlington team, and they almost tripped over themselves to help Abby out the door.
“Here, let’s go find him—”
“—want to see you—”
“—he’s fine—”
“—heard so much about you—”
The door slammed shut, leaving Jillian and me in silence.
Without missing a beat, Jillian slid back into the bed next to me. “I have no idea what that was about,” she said while rearranging the many tubes and cords, “But if it got the Burlington Brigade out of my room, I don’t care. Also, I kinda like the idea of Abby being famous.” She settled into the bed and turned on her side to face me again. “Now, I think you were telling me something about how pretty I am?”
I had no idea what they’d given my wife, but I needed a large dose of it. I kissed her before saying, “You’re exquisite, and I’m glad to see you happy again. You were pretty rough after we found you.”
A shadow passed behind her eyes. “Can we talk about that later?”
“Of course. What do you want to talk about instead?”
She closed her eyes and breathed in and out for a few seconds. “What we’re going to do when we get home.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, too. The way I see it, even the combined teams aren’t big enough to tackle all the supervillain families. We’ll need to get as many city teams as possible on our side, and maybe even the government. I could call Eleanor, too, and arrange a meeting with the Sentinels. Of course, if the feds are already investigating their little militia activities, then—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I hesitated, trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong. “What did you mean?”
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” she whispered. “I’m tired.”
I pulled the blanket up over her shoulder. Of course she was tired; she was recovering from torture and pneumonia. We didn’t need to have strategic conversations now. “You should go back to sleep, sweetheart,” I said. “I’ll stay right here with you.”
Jillian stared at me for an interminable moment, multiple emotions swimming in her eyes. Finally, she said, “What I meant was, I don’t want to be a superhero anymore.”
Item Twenty-One
Excerpt of letter sent from Levi Fischer to his mother, Avigail, dated April 5, 1935
Those bastards. Those damned bastards. I spoke with Calhoun, and you know what he said? He doesn’t want “Yids” in the camps. The camps aren’t even built yet and we’re already being treated like vermin even though the Fischers were the first family in all of California to fight. There’s been some rumors that we’re being sent to Idaho to freeze to death along with the Indians and the Mormons, but I’ll tell you what: no. I’m not going, and neither is Leah or the children. Simon, Reuben, Levi, Morty, and Rebecca are all sticking it out, but I’m not going to be treated like this.
But don’t worry, I’m not going to do what Hannah did. Last I heard, she and Eli met up with some other anti-normals and have holed up near the Canadian border…
21
I was too shocked to speak.
Jillian continued, “I almost died at your family’s hands, and then I caught pneumonia. The last year of my life has been nothing but almost dying, either by attempted suicide, bombs, Patrick, lions…I’m tired. I’m so tired.”
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “I just want to go to sleep and wake up tomorrow in another life. I thought I was going to die in my cell, or on the interrogation table, and I realized that I wanted to grow old and die in my bed, surrounded by my grandchildren. I want to make a new life with you.”
I didn’t know what to say. Jillian had always been my driving force—the driving force of the entire team, even. She was the ball of energy in our engine, pushing us forward to fight crime, be heroes, and keep going even when everything looked impossible.
Now, at the dawn of a new era for superheroes, she was poised to be the engine for an even bigger “team,” the team comprising all American superheroes and government agents as they fought the rot of the camps.
But I also wanted that new life for her.
Oh, who was I kidding? I wanted it for us. As soon as she’d said “grandchildren,” I’d imagined tiny faces with hazel eyes and black hair.
Before those people could exist, though, there was one more job to do.
“Sweetie, we still need to fight my brother and find the JM-104,” I murmured. “You can’t quit now.”
A hard, calculating expression overtook her face. “We’ve had this conversation before.”
“What? When?”
“A long time ago, over coffee. You told me to quit my job and stick it to Patrick. I said I couldn’t quit. You didn’t know it, but I was thinking about more than just how scared I was of him. I was also thinking about my vows, plus all the people who relied on me. But I don’t think that would’ve mattered to you, if you’d known. You cared only for me. You saw my bruises and fear. You saw that I was in danger.”
Guilt squirmed in my stomach. Not only was she right, but I’d considered advising her to simply quit by not showing up to work. While I’d believed that she was an assistant gym teacher at that time, the heart of the matter remained the same: she needed to get away from her abuser, and quitting was the easiest answer. What was the entire superhero structure if not an abuser?
But…what was Saint Catherine without Battlecry?
“You can’t quit now,” I repeated, ashamed of myself.
“Yes, I can,” she said, her voice low but clear. “A crimefighter’s mission doesn’t have a natural end. I’m choosing to end mine now. I’m not Battlecry anymore, I’m just Jillian.” Her gaze bounced back and forth as she appeared to think over a troubling thought. “Do you still want to be with me if I’m not a superhero?”
I stroked her cheek and tucked the stubborn lock of hair behind her ear, then placed a soft kiss on her lips. “I’m not going anywhere,” I whispered. “Unless you’re going with me.”
She entwined her fingers with mine under the blanket and closed her eye
s again, her peaceful smile slowly relaxing into untroubled sleep.
When her breaths had become slow and even, I carefully maneuvered out of the bed, tucking her in and tiptoeing out of her room. When the door had clicked shut behind me, I dashed to the wooden double doors and slipped through them into the main hallway.
Reid and Marco were sparring in the gym, adjacent to the main rec room. Marco looked up as I walked in and released Reid from a choke-hold. Reid collapsed and gasped for breath while Marco jumped to his feet. “What took you so long? You missed the best thing ever.”
I rocked back on my heels. “Edward’s team is fine. Jillian’s still recovering, but she’s in good spirits, all things considered. Thanks for asking.”
Reid clambered to his feet, a goofy grin plastered on his face. “Oh, we know the Burlington team is fine. They came into the cafeteria earlier with Abby in tow—”
Marco cut in, “—and as soon as Edward saw Abigail, he jumped to his feet and said, ‘Abigail! Sweet pea!’” Marco clasped his hands in mock delight and fluttered his eyelashes. “And then little miss Sweet Pea literally skipped to Edward, and they just stared at each other for a freaking long time. That guy had heart eyes, man. Flowers were blooming in the air around him.”
Reid sat on a bench and began to towel off his forehead. “I asked Edward what was going on. Apparently, he met Abigail on a courting swap to the Ozark camp years ago and asked for her hand, but her father put the kibosh on that really fast. He’s the elder, you know, so there was no higher power to appeal to.”
“Why’d he say no?” I asked, sitting on another bench.
If Edward was really the upstanding guy Reid had described, I’d have guessed that any father would’ve approved the match, as long as his daughter agreed, and it sounded like Abby would’ve enthusiastically agreed. I personally couldn’t see any romantic appeal in her—how did they converse?—but if they were in love, then more power to them.
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