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That hadn’t been the nightmare I expected.

After the events of the previous night, I was anticipating nightmares in the near future. It wouldn’t be odd, under the circumstances, and I’d had vivid dreams on occasion. This was something else entirely.

It hadn’t felt like a dream at all, in fact. Sometimes dreams were vague, and sometimes they were sharp, but that whole experience had been a confusing mixture, with some details shockingly clear and others not so much unclear as difficult to remember. It was like anything that wasn’t vital had been blurred out, while critical images and information had been preserved. On top of that, while I hadn’t been in control, the sensations had felt shockingly real. I’d felt my heart pounding, sweat dripping down my nose and soaking through my shirt, and more. Even emotions had come through clearly, with fear being the dominant one. Even now, awake in my room, I was still keyed up, as if I expected to be attacked. I wasn’t still afraid, but adrenaline had definitely kicked in at some point.

I got up and looked out the window, then opened the door and poked my head out, looking out into the hallway, just in case it was some sort of extremely odd premonition. I didn’t see anything unusual in either direction; my room’s window looked out over the parking lot behind the dorm and into the small grassy area around it, and the hallway was pretty much empty, though I thought I heard a few people talking from the direction of the common room.

I closed the door again, locked it, and sat down in my chair.

“Leon, did you see any of that?” I asked.

“I assume you mean your dream?” he replied. I gave a nonverbal agreement, the silent equivalent of a nod. “No, I did not. I assume it was intense, given your reaction. Something related to last night?”

“No, it wasn’t,” I said. “Related to last night, that is. It was definitely intense. It didn’t feel like any dream I’ve ever had. I’ve got no idea what to think of it.”

“Can you remember what happened?” he asked.

“That’s part of what’s weird,” I said. “I remember the whole thing, start to finish. I guess I might be forgetting part of it and not know, but it feels like the whole thing. It was really strange. Vivid, alive, contiguous, and it was all pretty straightforward, too. I mean, I’ve never been one for interpreting dreams or symbolism or anything, but this didn’t feel abstract at all. It was literal. An experience. Does that make sense at all?”

“I think so,” Leon replied. “Can you describe it to me?”

I did.

Leon didn’t reply immediately, but I could feel his shock.

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Leon told me. “It’s not familiar, but I feel as if it should be. I don’t understand.”

“You don’t feel confused, you feel shocked,” I said.

“David, could you always tell what I felt?” he asked suddenly.

I blinked at the sudden change of topic. “Um, sort of? Maybe not so well.” I considered for a moment. “I guess it seems to come a little more naturally. Makes sense, though; we’ve gotten lots of practice.”

“I guess so,” he agreed. “But I think it’s more than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure, really. Just a hunch. But it’s not the only change. I wasn’t sure it was really happening at first, but lately, I’ve been getting a clearer sense for things – physically, I mean – than I used to. If I was plugged into your senses, this would be the equivalent of the connection getting upgraded. Everything is just a bit…more than it used to be. I’m not sure how else to describe it. Colors, sounds, smells, everything is more vibrant than I’m used to.”

I smiled a bit at that. As I’d gotten to know Leon, I’d come to regret the fact that only one of us could get the full experience of being alive at a time. It didn’t seem fair.

“Well, good,” I said. “We can try switching sometime today – I’d like to see whether it’s the same for me when you’re in control.”

Leon was pleased at that. “Thank you, David. And I agree, this could be important.”

“Getting back to the dream, though,” I said, “can you tell me why it’s bothering you so much?”

“I’m not certain,” Leon said. “But something strange did happen. It could be connected to either of the things we were talking about.”

“What was it?” I asked.

Leon hesitated for a moment, again, before answering. “I think I fell asleep.”

“What?”

I blinked and sat up quickly; it took me a second to realize that I was the one who had spoken aloud.

“But that’s never happened. You don’t sleep. I mean, you never have, right? Not since you moved in.”

“No, I haven’t,” Leon said. “I rest, and I can stop thinking, but I haven’t actually slept since I found you.”

That raised even more questions. “Um…how was it?”

“It was sleep, I guess,” Leon said. “I didn’t dream, that I recall, so there’s really nothing to remember. But I do feel good. Now, I mean. Rested, in a way I haven’t been since we met or before. I don’t have muscles of my own, but my mind feels a bit clearer and quicker.”

“Well…great!” I said. “That’s awesome. I always felt bad before, honestly, like you must be bored as hell when I was sleeping.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” Leon said. “A bit boring, perhaps, but it gave me time to think and rest, and lately I’ve used the opportunity to try to learn more about what Bloodhound has been teaching us. Still, sleeping – or rather, having slept – is pleasant. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much, in case it’s a result of some bizarre environmental factor or something, but it would be nice to sleep again.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I can understand that. Still, I think we have to figure that you sleeping and me having that…whatever it was I had are connected, at least probably. Not definitely, but it seems really damn unlikely that both things happening during the same night is a coincidence.”

“I’m not going to argue with simple logic,” Leon agreed. “There almost has to be a link. But it’s strange. If I’m sleeping when you sleep, I would expect that you having a dream – or vision, or whatever you want to call it – would also cause me to have it.”

“We can try to get in touch with Bloodhound’s friend again if and when we get a chance, and ask her about it,” I said. “Maybe get Feral and Raquel there too. If we all compare notes, we might be able to scare up some answers for a change.”

“It’s worth a try,” Leon agreed.

We fell into silence for a few seconds, just absorbing it all. After a solid minute of staring off into space, I suddenly remembered setting my alarms to wake me up for class, and I looked at the clock.

It was well into the afternoon, but I’d woken up before my alarms went off. No surprise there. I didn’t feel much more rested than when I lay down, either, though I couldn’t tell whether that was because of the short amount of time that had passed or the way I’d woken up. On the bright side, I didn’t feel any worse, at least, now that my breathing had slowed down and I wasn’t in fight-or-flight mode.

I stood up and walked to the window again, looking out. It was weird to think that my life had changed when someone came up the wall and knocked on that window. I didn’t think I’d made the wrong choice, at the time, but I was a lot less confident about some of the choices I’d made since. Looking back, I’d been rushing into things, not just once but over and over again. First, because Raquel was in trouble and, if I was honest, because she was the first person I’d met who was like myself. I think I would have helped her anyway, but it had certainly made the decision easier.

Then I’d gone after Blitz, both because of what they had done and because they were an ongoing threat, like a knife hanging over my head. I didn’t know if or when they’d strike, but as long as they were out there I would have to wonder if they would be back. Then Dustin had been grabbed. Through it all, I’d reacted, just jumping in without really asking myself if there was a better way to do things.

I was not remotely okay with how things had turned out last night, but looking back on everything that had happened, I wasn’t sure what I could have done differently. There had been no reason to worry about Raquel and Feral beforehand, and I didn’t see how I could have known what was going to happen, let alone prevented it. The fact that Dustin had attacked us, even under such messed up circumstances, only seemed to underscore the importance of getting him away from Michaels as quickly as possible. From what Stalker and Agent Miller had said last night, we cut things pretty close to the wire as they stood.

“He’s not cured,” Stalker had said. “This isn’t something we can just erase. I might be able to with enough practice, but frankly I don’t want to get that much practice messing with people’s heads, even for their own good.”

Miller had nodded, firmly agreeing with that. “We need to find this guy,” she said to Turner. “What he does, it’s scary. Permanent.”

“So what did you end up doing?” I asked. “Assuming you can explain at all.”

“We sort of cross-wired things,” Miller said. “Dustin should distrust Michaels if he ever sees him again, and anyone he associates closely with the man. If Michaels tries to mess around again, we think it will protect him, at least for a while.” She shook her head, clearly dissatisfied.

Stalker spoke up again. “I wish we could do more, but it would be too experimental. Everything is connected, in people’s heads. Making any more changes would risk more side effects, and he’s going to have it rough enough already. Poor kid’s probably going to have night terrors for a while. He’ll need serious counseling, I think. But it’s better than having us try to flip a switch to make it better and end up dropping his IQ fifty points, or making it so he tastes purple for the rest of his life.”

The short exchange had stuck with me, and now I knew why. It was about consequences. I’d thought I’d been adapting pretty rapidly after getting thrown into the deep end, but although I had started to plan a bit more, I wasn’t really anticipating consequences. Like the possible consequence of people getting seriously injured or killed when we tried to rescue Dustin.

I’d told myself that I was ready to see the people who’d taken him get hurt, and even to do it myself, and that still felt true. When I’d been upstairs, the guy with enhanced senses and I had been fighting pretty viciously – savagely, even. He hadn’t pulled punches, and I had held back just enough to try to avoid killing or maiming him. I was bizarrely okay with that. It was hard to say why. It had been fair, in a sense. I had my regeneration, but he was trying to kill me instead of just hurt me. That felt like it balanced out somehow, or at least like I hadn’t been doing anything morally objectionable, even if he had. I’d pretended to kill a man, later on, but that didn’t bother me much either. I’d been careful to make sure he didn’t even get nicked, and he hadn’t been. At worst, I’d given him a bruise when he fell to the ground. The asshole deserved much worse.

Feral, on the other hand, had been untouchable. Looking back, it was obvious she could have plowed through that house and killed every living thing in it, probably including Heavyweight and myself, if that had been her plan. Her claws had managed to cut Heavyweight, at least – or had that happened only after Menagerie turned into the cat? I wasn’t sure. Regardless, part of what had made the killing so horrifying was the ease of it. The man she’d killed outside hadn’t had a chance. If not for Heavyweight and Mary Wade, there wouldn’t have been a single person there capable of even slowing her down. I certainly couldn’t have, and from what I’d seen Feral could probably follow my smell if she wanted to.

It was terrible, something I couldn’t let happen again…but at the same time, my choices had led me there, played a part in setting the stage for that mess to happen, and I didn’t think I would change them if I faced those same choices again. Leaving Dustin wasn’t in the cards. Letting Raquel and Feral handle things without help was even less acceptable than it had been before. What else could we have done? Waited? Called for help? We had called the police as soon as we knew where Dustin was, and the only reason we’d gone in right away was because they’d detected us. I figured the guy with superior hearing or smell or eyesight had spotted me in the yard, or maybe heard Heavyweight. At that point, I didn’t think waiting was an option. Even without that pushing us, waiting would have meant leaving Dustin with Michaels for longer.

“What are you thinking?” Leon asked.

“Mostly just brooding, I guess,” I said. “Unproductively. You know.”

“Well, knock it off,” Leon replied. “We’re officially a super hero now, you know. And we don’t have what it takes to pull off ‘brooding avenger.’ Your past isn’t traumatic enough. Your parents are alive, you don’t have amnesia, you haven’t escaped from a sinister organization of dudes who have a lair or anything. You don’t even have a trench coat or a cape. And your voice isn’t gravelly enough, either.”

I laughed. “No brooding, yes sir. I’ll try to remember.”

“Good,” Leon said, amused. “So, let’s get ready for class. Proper education is vital and all that. Also, you should drink milk and eat your vegetables and do other healthy things, probably.”

I glanced at the clock. “We’ve got a bit of time to kill before class,” I said.

I grabbed my stuff to go shower. It would help me stay awake, and more importantly, I wanted to wash off all the sweat that hadn’t soaked into my clothes. No need to inflict that on whoever sat next to me.

…

When I got back after class, I found Shawn and Liz in our room. She was lying on Shawn’s bed, on top of the sheets, reading. He was at his desk, bent over his computer.

“Hey guys,” I said. “How’s things?”

“Fine,” Shawn said.

“Pretty good,” Liz agreed, lowering her book for a moment. “Just finished class?”

“Yeah,” I said. She’d spent enough time in our room at this point that she had some sense of my schedule, and I knew some of hers.

“You hungry at all?” she asked. “I’m trying to talk Shawn into early dinner. I missed lunch.”

“Me too,” I said. “Let me take stock for a sec.”

I sat down and popped open my laptop, checking my emails and my account on superstuff.com, and glanced at local news. I didn’t see anything about Dustin yet, but Turner had said they’d get him home ASAP, so I figured he was with his family, and the word just hadn’t gotten out yet, probably.

The only important thing was a message from Raquel, asking me to come by for dinner again or set up a meeting so we could talk. She said she’d okayed it with her mom already.

“We really need phones to use with each other,” I thought. “This weekend, we need to find something cheap.”

“If we keep going through clothes at our current rate, you know it’s going to be a problem,” Leon noted. “Even cheap, we can’t afford to replace stuff all the time. And when we start breaking phones – and let’s not kid ourselves, the way things have been going it’s going to be ‘when’, not ‘if’ – this is going to get out of our price range fast. Even renting that car was stretching things.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. And while mom and dad might be willing to help, that would require explanations that I haven’t given yet.”

“Explanations which you intend to keep procrastinating, I take it?”

“Don’t prod me about it,” I said. “I know I’m putting it off. Procrastination isn’t always the worst thing in the world.”

“What if we die next time?” Leon said, suddenly serious. “Say we get caught in, oh, just to be hypothetical, some kind of house fire. Let’s say, hypothetically, that our body gets recovered by bad guys looking to clean up the evidence, or burned and crushed so it’s hard to identify. You want them to hear that you disappeared, without knowing anything about why? You want them to maybe find out the truth weeks or months later?”

“No, I don’t,” I said shortly.

“Then we need to do something about it, instead of just pretending that the power of denial will keep us alive,” Leon said. “I’m sorry to be pessimistic guy, but this is something important and we can’t pretend it away. And frankly, I think it’s been eating at you a bit. We can set up something just in case, if you’re not ready to tell them. Some kind of letter ‘in case of my death’, or something, okay? But doing nothing isn’t dealing with the problem, here.”

He let me stew for a minute.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” I said. “Soon. Tomorrow, even. But don’t be on my case. You just finished talking me out of brooding a few hours ago, remember?”

“Yeah, okay,” Leon said. “Sorry about that.”

I looked back at the message from Raquel. “What do you think?”

“You have to ask?” he said.

I deleted it – we didn’t keep messages once they’d been read. They were probably still out there somewhere on the internet, and they weren’t supposed to contain anything that would let other people figure out who we were, anyway, but we were trying to layer precautions.

“No, not really.”

Raquel and Feral needed friends today. I still felt a little bad for leaving her at home, even if I thought we’d done a decent job (or the best we could, at least) of helping them regain their footing first.

I sent Raquel a message saying I was on my way. I hoped her mom wasn’t going to kick the crap out of me for delivering her daughter home in worse condition than when she’d left.

“Looks like I’m going to have to bail on dinner,” I said. “Sorry, guys. Maybe tomorrow.”

Shawn was almost frowning as he looked at me, but not quite. He glanced at Liz for a second, so briefly I almost missed it.

“Sure, man,” he said. “Catch you later.”

Liz gave me a little one-handed wave, and I went out the door.

The bus ride wasn’t that long, and I’d spent a bit more time on busses than usual, lately. I looked at my bus pass for a second before putting it away as I sat down. I’d been getting the monthly pass since I started at Berkeleyport College, so more trips didn’t mean more expense, which was nice, but it reminded me of the money issue. A phone to talk to Heavyweight, Raquel, and possibly the Philly Five would cost money. Depending on how paranoid I was going to get, it might make sense to have a separate phone just for calling the authorities, and possibly to replace them both every once in a while. Even on the cheapest plans around, keeping them active for any length of time would cost something whether I used them or not.

Then there was the clothing issue; as Leon pointed out, I’d lost a few articles of clothing since I met Raquel, to fire, bloodstains, and other damage. That would need replacing. And even if it didn’t, I should really come up with something to wear that would offer some genuine protection. Being able to regenerate wasn’t an excuse to ignore precautions. I had a feeling that if I was a member of the Philly Five, and I suggested that I didn’t need to wear anything protective, they’d laugh in my face.

Even if all of that wasn’t in play, there was the issue of a mask or helmet that was more durable. If I kept doing what I’d been doing, I might end up with the police looking for me. They might not look that hard, if I stayed on their good side, but all it took was one person in the right position to screw me over, if they found out who I actually was. The things I’d already done might be enough for someone who thought I was a menace to raise charges and start investigating.

I was a bit conflicted about the whole issue of concealing my identity. On the one hand, it was morally questionable, since I was basically taking justice into my own hands and answering to no one. That wasn’t something that drew me to keep going; it scared the shit out of me. On the other hand, I really didn’t want my life ruined because of bad luck and the proliferation of cell phone cameras. Even if I’d felt differently, Blitz was still out there. Collector wasn’t done with me, and if he found out where to find me I’d never have a good night’s sleep again.

So, if I kept going, I would probably need some cash to pay for equipment. Maybe it wouldn’t turn out to be that much, or maybe it would.

“I have a thought about the disguise issue, actually,” Leon said. “I think the way we use light might let us obscure our face. And Bloodhound showed us how to make a light. If we can just figure out a way to make the effect persist, without interfering with other things, then we could have an instant disguise available, and it wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone when we’re being David and Leon instead of Flicker.”

“That sounds awesome, if we can make it work,” I said. “That’s a pretty big if, though. Still, worth checking out. Something else to ask Bloodhound, see if he can give us some tips.”

“Agreed,” Leon said. “He certainly seems willing to share advice. A bit on practical matters like how to get protective clothing doesn’t seem out of the question.”

I suddenly wondered about the budgets of fictional super heroes. Of course, some of them were rich, and some of them were nearly indestructible, which helped a lot. Had anyone ever written a story with a super hero struggling to balance his private crime-fighting budget?

On second thought, that actually sounded really boring. No one wants to see Batman and Robin poring over the accounts to find out if they misplaced a crate of extra capes, or something. I wouldn’t want to see it. If I were in charge, I’d probably fire the guy who suggested it.

“What I really need is a British butler…and millions of dollars,” I thought. “I feel strangely certain that would help with a whole slew of obstacles.”

Leon laughed. “I suspect most people feel the same way, for some odd reason.”

I sighed, leaning back in my seat. Maybe Raquel, Heavyweight, and I could talk about this stuff. Logistics. They could have ideas too, after all. Maybe we’d get really lucky, and Heavyweight would secretly be a junkyard owner, fashion designer, and engineer in his spare time. After all, comic book super heroes seemed to have more than twenty-four hours in a day when necessary. Why shouldn’t we?

Here I was, napping between classes and moving like a sloth after one night of good guy-ing. Why hadn’t my powers come with the ability to compress my sleep? That would have been handy. Better yet, I could bottle it and sell it to the world’s overachievers, and become the richest person on the planet.

I blinked, looking out the window. I was definitely a bit tired; my thoughts didn’t get this way unless I needed sleep. I was rambling.

I was in a bit of a mental fog for the rest of the trip.

Finally, we arrived. I stepped off the bus, walking toward Raquel’s.

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If At First You Don’t Succeed 4

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I chugged what was left of my coffee before it could get cold, tossed the cup, and went into the classroom, sitting down. I’d managed a nap between getting back to my room and waking up again, but it had been a pretty short one. On the bright side, waking up early had given me enough time to eat and clean up thoroughly, so I wasn’t feeling like a zombie.

Still, Professor Krauss had less than half my attention, and that was mainly because I didn’t want to fail to notice if she called on me for anything. I loved reading and talking about literature, but it was hard to prioritize that at the moment.

My top five concerns: First, Dustin might not be totally cured of his willingness to do what Michaels said. That willingness had resulted in setting me on fire and burning down a house, and probably helped traumatize him for life, so that was an issue. It wasn’t one I could do anything about, though, and I was almost grateful for the fact.

Raquel and Feral were my second biggest concern. I wasn’t sure if they were okay with each other, or if they were at risk of freaking out and murdering someone again in the future, which had pretty serious life-and-death implications. On top of that, Raquel had seemed to transform into the big cat shape that Feral usually assumed, which was new, and it seemed like Feral had taken control during the fight despite a promise not to.

Thirdly, the four FBI agents I had met had not been giving me the friendliest looks last night. That could go in a lot of directions, and most of them were bad ones.

Fourth, I’d seen that doctor-looking guy run for it and had no idea who or where he was, which sucked. If he was running from the bad guys, that suggested he might have been willing to talk to us.

Fifth…actually, there wasn’t a fifth. I was a bit worried about keeping my grades up in the midst of all this crap, but that seemed to be going fairly well, so it wasn’t really a concern. Certainly not on par with the others.

I’d tried to make the list in the hopes that I could approach each item one at a time, figure out what to do about them, and then move on. When I felt lost, that tended to be a good way to start. Simplifying things, approaching them systematically, and differentiating between what I could affect and what I couldn’t was a way to get perspective.

It didn’t always work, though. I ran into a problem right away, this time. I couldn’t help Dustin, and even being around him was a bad idea, mostly because when he’d first seen me he’d been mind controlled, freaking out, and had tried to burn me after seeing a man die. At the same time, I wasn’t sure if he and his family were sticking around – if it was me, I’d be moving out of town as fast as possible, probably – but either way, there was a risk that the people who’d grabbed him before would try to do it again. Finding and freeing him was a good thing, of course, and it was possible that he would be left alone, but he might also need more protecting and/or rescuing. If Dustin and his family stayed in town, then we could try to protect him, but he’d be a relatively easy target. If they left, the bad guys might lose track of them, but I definitely would.

Our track record on the rescuing was a solid one success for one attempt, but the collateral damage was completely unacceptable. As for the idea of trying to protect him from an abduction that could happen anytime or never, I wasn’t optimistic. At best, it would keep us distracted while Michaels’ boss did whatever else he wanted. More realistically, Raquel, Heavyweight and I all needed to sleep sooner or later. We couldn’t guard Dustin. It was a practical impossibility.

I didn’t know if I could do anything for Feral and Raquel, either. I’d try to talk to them, and I knew Leon would too, but they both had to cope with killing, now. Raquel, I knew, hadn’t meant to; I thought she’d tried to stop and failed, so her conscience should be clean. Not that it necessarily would be. Feral, I wasn’t so sure about.

When it came to dealing with the FBI, I couldn’t think of any solutions there either. They might not trust us anymore because a man had died and a house had burned down, and because it happened after I’d promised to stay out of their way, or we might still have the benefit of the doubt. There wasn’t anything I could do about the doctor-guy either.

So, to sum up: I had a lot of problems, and no apparent solutions.

“Let it go for now, David,” Leon admonished me. “Focus on class. After what happened, I wouldn’t be surprised if Michaels’ boss takes a few days to think things over and absorb what’s happened. Mary asked us to lay low, and I’m sure she’ll be in touch when she can. All of these problems are things that time will help.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. I tried to push it all from my mind and focus on the class.

It wasn’t working, though. As I took notes, seeing my hand made me remember what it had looked like when it was burned. I’d only caught a glimpse, mainly because I’d been actively focusing on other things and trying not to see, but the image – blackened, with parts of the hand looking cooked and others wetly red – stuck with me. It hadn’t hurt as much as I’d expected, mostly because Leon (as he’d later explained) focused on healing the skin and tissue first, and the nerves last. I hadn’t even realized he could do that, precisely, but it was most likely all that had kept me functional, when the pain might otherwise have had me on the floor. If that had happened, I could easily have suffocated inside the house.

Regeneration had also helped to take care of my lungs, ensuring I wouldn’t suffer aftereffects of breathing smoke, and dealt with the other injuries I’d suffered. The more I got beat up, the more it was becoming my favorite power. Being able to hide was nice, and being able to cover ground was nice, but there’s nothing quite like a get-out-of-death-or-crippling-injury-free card. The only downside was that it made bigger risks sound acceptable, and I was afraid of getting myself killed if I overestimated my power. There was also the risk that I’d use up my power and then get hurt before I recharged.

“We need to try to avoid regenerating anything unimportant unless it’s before bed,” I noted to Leon. “And if we can, try to enlarge our batteries. Ideally, we should always have something in reserve in case we get struck by lightning or something.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Leon agreed. “Can you imagine if we died because we used some power to heal a papercut or bruise earlier in the day, or something?”

I stifled a smile. “I really don’t want my last words to end up being, ‘I could easily have avoided this,’ so yeah, let’s have that not happen.”

Leon chuckled. “Come on, try to focus on class.”

“Right. Sorry.”

I tried, but it was like that the whole time. Just when I was managing to tune in, I’d remember something from the previous night, a flash of the pain I’d experienced, or the way Dustin had looked, or Raquel’s broken face and voice. In the end, I managed to avoid freaking out in public and I had to count that as a partial success.

I went to the bathroom afterward and splashed my face with cold water, then dried it quickly. Checking my watch and thinking ahead, I had time to either eat lunch or maybe take a nap before my other class of the day, but not both.

The memories were killing my appetite, which made it an easy choice. Hopefully they wouldn’t keep me from sleeping. I headed back to my room and found the dorm quiet, as expected for the time of day. Shawn was out. I pulled out the stuff for my next class and set it aside, so it would be ready, then emptied my pockets before lying down. A quick check told me I didn’t have any important e-mails or text messages. I sent Raquel a quick message asking how she was doing, and offering to talk later if she wanted, and I felt a bit better. Then I twitched the blinds closed.

The room’s one window was on the small side, and didn’t let in much light at the best of times; on the bright side, that made it easier to nap during the day, keeping things dim in a way that was pleasant, at least when I was tired. The rest of the time, it could be a bit annoying. It was a common joke that living in the Berkeleyport College dorms was like living underground. Liz had once said that she thought the dorms were designed and built for vampires.

I checked to make sure my alarm was set, as well as the backup on my phone, before closing my eyes.

…

Time had passed. I didn’t remember it passing, or notice any changes, but I knew it was happening all the same. I stood up without deciding to do so. Normally the body obeys the mind; this felt like the opposite was happening, or maybe like I was a passenger.

I was in what looked like an office. As I leaned forward, left hand on the desk in front of me to support my weight and right hand reaching out, I got a look at the desk. It looked simple and expensive, and it was made of wood. Two computer monitors were situated side-by-side, and each had a few sticky notes hanging down or sticking to the side, covered with writing that looked elegant. It was cursive, but still very legible. On the desk I saw a cordless mouse, a keyboard, two speakers bracketing the monitors, a pad with more of the same handwriting on it, a coffee cup on a coaster, and a clipboard holding a bunch of papers. The coffee cup was a white mug with some sort of symbol or logo on it, but I couldn’t get a clear look at what it was. There were a few other items: paper clips, a loose pencil, and things like that.

My right hand grabbed a pad of sticky notes and I sat back down, opening the top desk drawer on my left to pull out a pen. I scribbled experimentally on one corner of the pad to check whether ink was flowing, then passed the pen to my right hand to write a quick note in that same elegant style.

“Check Tues meet time w/ Jason, reschedule if necessary to include Charlotte.”

When that was done, I put the pen down on top of the clipboard and stuck the note to the left-hand monitor, which I noticed had a calendar open. The right monitor, on the other hand, was displaying some unfamiliar program; before I could get a good look at it, my hand moved to the mouse and I logged out. I tried to will myself to look around, but nothing happened. I didn’t feel any resistance, but my decision had no impact on what was happening.

My hand reached for the coffee cup and brought it to my lips, and I sipped it.

“Hate it cold,” I muttered after the sip. I didn’t drink again, but I held the mug as I walked to the door of the office. It was a small room, maybe ten feet by fifteen, with a pair of tables parallel to each other, narrow ends facing the wall with the door set in it. The door itself was set near a corner, to my right as I faced that wall, while the desk was behind me and to my left, the monitors effectively hiding whoever sat there from the tables while still allowing him to see the door. As I stood up and walked away from the desk, I passed a few file cabinets and a bookcase on my left, and I glimpsed a second computer, this one a laptop, sitting on one of the tables. Everything felt a bit strange, somehow, but it all looked familiar. It all looked right. I had an odd sensation that the problem wasn’t with my surroundings, but with me, as if I were the square peg shoved into a round hole, while everything else was in its proper place.

I was just reaching the door when a high-pitched keening noise started up. My body reacted immediately, putting the coffee mug down on the nearest table and sprinting out of the office and down the hall.

My brief experience of the hallway didn’t tell me much. The floor was thinly carpeted, the walls were mostly bare, and I only saw down the hall for a few seconds before ducking into another room, where I found a few people waiting; others entered behind me. I didn’t recognize anyone, but they all felt like familiar faces. That’s not to say they were people I knew, but didn’t remember, or people I’d met and forgotten; I recognized who they were immediately, but the knowledge felt foreign to me.

It was at that point, looking at their faces, that I realized there was some kind of separation between myself and I. It seemed to fit, oddly, with the disconnection I felt from my body. I wasn’t in control; I was along for the ride in someone else’s life. I was, and was not that person. I felt what he felt, and his familiarity with the place and the people was clear as day to me, but at the same time I had never known them and I couldn’t recite their names.

We filed into the room from two sides – there was a second door identical to the one I’d entered through – and I lined up ahead of six other people, four men and two women.

On our left, those coming through the other door formed a second line of seven people, and I glanced over at them. They, and the ones behind me, all had a definite look to them. They weren’t bulky, but they were all muscular and athletic. Most of them – most of us – were tall, and none were short. I realized belatedly that we were all in uniforms of some kind, as well.

My head nodded to the woman at the front of the other line, and we simultaneously reached into our pockets, producing what looked like ID cards, then turned to face ahead and walked forward. I realized that the third door in the room – a reinforced metal door that looked like it was intended to seriously keep people out – had a pair of card readers near it, on the adjacent wall. They looked like they were too far apart for one person to reach both at once.

We stepped forward and swiped our cards, and I felt myself say something. I couldn’t make out the words; they weren’t quiet, or indistinct, but it was like they weren’t all there. I realized that other things were similarly hard to define; there had been patches of vagueness in the hallway, and even the room we were in. They lingered at the edges of my vision. The me who was acting either didn’t notice them or wasn’t concerned. As the door opened, the woman and I each stepped to one side, urging the two lines behind us through the door, and then we followed after them.

After we walked in, the woman and I shut the door behind ourselves, and I quickly surveyed the new room. I was paying closer attention now, and I realized that there were more of the regions of vagueness as we entered. The woman was clear enough, but some of the people who’d followed her were undefined, like living mannequins. They didn’t seem odd, though; just unimportant. Their whole side of the room was like that, in fact.

Meanwhile, those who had followed me were all…sharp, for lack of a better word. After glancing at them, my head turned to look at the wall to my right. Our whole side of the room seemed a little sharper, as did the woman with the card.

As I turned, I found myself looking at a locker of some kind and realized we were in an armory that looked a lot like a school’s locker room. I keyed an alphanumeric combination into the keyboard on my locker, pulling the door open as soon as the light above it turned green. Inside was armor, along with a rifle, a vest, and a few other pieces of equipment. I pulled it all on in a quick, practiced fashion, a glance to the left telling me that the others were doing the same. I performed a quick check on my gear, making sure everything was present, and then double-checked my rifle, dry-firing it once before loading it.

When that was done, I looked up again. Again, I felt my mouth forming words and my throat speaking them, but with that strange disconnection. The six people who had followed me answered, lining up again to follow me out, and the group on the other side of the room were doing the same, lining up behind the woman who led them.

We weren’t leaving the way we entered; the room was long, narrow, and straight, with doors at either end. The woman and I paced past our squads and lined up on the second door, opposite where we’d entered. The twelve men and women behind us all looked similar, and their gear seemed to be mostly the same as my own. I pulled on my helmet, tugging on it once to make sure it would stay, and pulling down the transparent visor.

The woman muttered something I couldn’t make out, and I heard something else – another voice, I realized, but it was vague. I had heard it earlier, but failed to realize that it was someone talking, maybe over an intercom.

After the voice stopped talking, I advanced to the door, followed by my squad. The woman and her squad backed up out of our way, preparing to follow us through the door, while my people took positions in front of the door or on either side of it. It was wide enough for two people to go through at once when it opened.

We waited on our side of the door for a bit – seconds, I thought, but it might have been a minute or two. After that, the voice came over the intercom again. I said something, and my people tensed, preparing for action. After a few more seconds, the door opened, swinging outward, and we followed behind it. Two of my people went right, two went left, and two went straight ahead, with me lagging slightly behind. We were through the door in seconds, all moving low to the ground as we entered the largest room I’d seen so far. It looked like a lobby, with chairs, what might be a receptionist’s desk on my side of the room, and large doors that looked like they led outside across from me. The two-person elements of my squad were each hiding behind small barricades that had popped out of the floor. Each was probably big enough for three or four people to hide behind it and be completely obscured if they were careful. I had a flash of knowing – or maybe remembering? – and I suddenly was certain that the barricades were meant to stop vehicles from driving through. There were others further into the lobby, closer to the front doors.

The aesthetic matched what I’d seen before the armory. Everything looked corporate, for lack of a better word. The receptionist’s desk was a funky curved shape, the tables and chairs in the lobby were standardized but looked fairly expensive, and off to my left there was a small waterfall feeding into a standing pool which, in turn, watered some plants. On my right, I saw mostly glass, much of it shattered, the broken fragments scattered both inside and outside. The floor was carpeted just like before, and a glance up told me that the two balconies overlooking the lobby (one on each corner of the interior side of the room) were both occupied by more armed men and women, dressed like me.

In front of us was a mess. I saw overturned and broken furniture and small patch of fire going out as the sprinklers’ persistence doused it. Off to my left, a man in a uniform similar to mine was holding his hands in front of him, outstretched and palms forward as if about to push something as he crouched behind another barricade, his back to me. Water from the fountain past him and the sprinklers above was gathering into a swirling mass between him and the entrance. Next to him a second man waited, similarly dressed and crouching. I could see that each had a pistol at his belt, but they had no other weapons. In the standardized gear, it was difficult to distinguish their features, but their images were sharp.

Ahead of us all, standing just inside the doors like they had nothing to fear, were three people. Their features were sharp too. In the lead I saw a tall, imposing man with wild brown hair. He was built, muscular to the point that it looked intimidating, and unnaturally tall, the kind of height that would stand out anywhere. He was olive-skinned, but covered with dirt and debris, with an old but noticeable scar on his bare left arm and a tattoo on the right, though I couldn’t make it out. It looked crude. He wore plain clothes, jeans and a t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off.

Behind him and on my right was a woman who looked pretty similar. Both of her arms were tattooed, instead of just one, and her blonde hair was tied back. She was tall for a woman, but not shockingly so, and her muscles were less exaggerated than the man’s. Like him, she wore jeans, and like him her shirt’s sleeves had been torn off, leaving ragged edges behind.

The third, on my left, was dark-skinned and either bald or close to it. His muscles weren’t particularly noticeable, but something about the way he stood very clearly indicated that he was just standing behind the other two, not hiding behind them, and he looked a lot more in control than they did.

It took a few seconds to enter the room and notice all of that. I wasn’t thinking particularly fast, but the information seemed like it was already there, like I had just needed to notice it.

My body shouted something, and I heard gunfire moments later, followed shortly afterward by an explosion. My people were in the fight. I peeked around my cover a moment later and saw the situation mostly unchanged. I could see where the explosion had destroyed some more furniture, but the three attackers we were trying to fight off didn’t look hurt at all.

A sudden scream drew my attention to the balcony above me and to my left, but just as I turned my head to look the floor cracked and the entire balcony broke off, falling down two stories to the ground and spilling people as it went. One man seemed to have gotten his arm caught under it somehow, and the weight pinned him; four others were scattering, and one was obviously dead as he fell. I couldn’t see the seventh defender, but there was another person falling with the balcony. He landed on his feet easily, picked up one of the security men, and broke him over a knee, throwing the motionless body at another who was running away. I found out where the seventh man was when not one, but several grenades fell from above. The explosion came before they hit the ground, and the man who’d thrown them fired down at the attacker as the smoke cleared. The attacker was another super, obviously; the grenades disoriented him but he seemed to shrug off the bullets. Before I could give an order, our supers were moving. The hydrokinetic sent a wave of water at the three hostiles who were standing together, more to blind them than anything else, while the other came up behind the enemy brick who’d just hit the balcony, kicking him in the back while he was looking up at the guy who’d dropped the grenades. The kick sent him stumbling, and our man followed up by kicking him to the ground and then wrapping his arms around the man’s neck to choke him. The enemy struggled for a moment, but couldn’t seem to get loose, and I looked back at the other three.

There was a second wave of water flowing toward them, at this point, but it seemed to break, splitting in half a few feet ahead of the man in the lead and parting to either side. The only good news was that our man was keeping control, and the water he expended seemed to flow back to him.

I shouted more orders and my men moved. The two to my right circled further right, and the rest of us followed, shifting toward that side of the room. We needed to give the other squad behind us room to move, and I didn’t want to get closer to the two bricks on the shattered balcony. I sprinted, low, to another barricade and slid into it, then raised my rifle and took two shots at the three enemies.

They were all deflected, and when my men fired the same thing happened again. The wild-looking man laughed as the bullets ricocheted.

The other squad had come in behind us, now, and they were finding their positions. The woman shouted something, and for a second I was confused as my vision was blocked. I realized quickly that I had just pulled a mask of some kind over my nose and mouth, when I saw two of my people doing the same thing. We kept shooting at the enemies, and they just sat behind their shield, smug, for a few seconds.

Suddenly, that changed. The woman grabbed the calm-looking man and shook his arm, saying something, and he nodded; after she let go, he took a deep breath, and then pointed to his left.

The two supers who’d been wrestling on the balcony’s ruins appeared there, and I felt a shiver of fear run through my body, but it was suppressed quickly as I stood and took another pair of shots. My men were doing the same, firing at irregular intervals, hoping to keep the attackers from advancing.

The blonde pulled our super off of her friend, kicked him in the face, and winced.

My breathing seemed to ease a bit, but then her hand lit on fire and she shoved it in his face.

He kicked her away and she clutched at her stomach as she was propelled into the air toward us, over my head. I took the opportunity to shoot at her when she wasn’t behind that shield, but she vanished almost immediately. When I looked again, the calm man was pointing, and she was lying on the ground next to him. The two bricks were fighting again, this time having a simple brawl. Our man seemed to have the edge in both strength and technique, connecting more often and getting more of a reaction when he did. The woman stood and fire shot from her hands toward all of us, in cover at the back of the room, but our hydrokinetic had it covered; without a word, he directed his water to follow the flames, smothering them.

We kept shooting, the shield stayed up, and the brawl looked like it was going our way, albeit slowly. The calm man said something, breathed and pointed again, and his brick reappeared next to him, leaving ours a few yards away. He charged at the enemies, who all moved together. The calm man pointed with both hands, and their brick appeared in front of him, serving as a living shield, while the wild-looking man appeared in front of our brick. The woman kept shooting flame, but reshaped it into a curtain that blocked her from sight.

My squad shot at her, since she was closer to our side of the room; the squad that had entered behind us shot at the brick and teleporter. I was reloading my rifle when I saw our brick veer to one side suddenly, a gash opening in his side. I knew he must have run into the shield that had been deflecting bullets before; apparently it was dangerous along the corner, forming a sharp edge. He managed to stumble away, at least.

The other squad leader shouted another order, and four grenades arced through the air from my left or behind me, into the area where the enemies were standing. Our brick leapt abruptly, moving away from all four attackers, but a stream of fire caught him in the air and he screamed. Still, he landed on our side of the room. At my direction, two of my men – the closest to him – pulled him behind cover and put a mask on his face to match those we wore already.

One of the grenades was knocked away by the enemies’ shield, and a second must have hit its edge, since I watched it get sheared in half. Still, all four spilled vapor into the air, rather than exploding, and in moments I could hear coughing. Our hydrokinetic was gathering water, and when the calm man stumbled from the smoke – finally looking ruffled as he hacked and choked – a wave of water crashed into him, sending him to the ground. I shouted, and the leftmost pair of my men ran forward, grabbing him and dragging him back toward us. One tazed him and restrained his arms with a set of plastic cuffs, and the other watched for other enemies; in moments, they were dragging him toward the rear of the room.

The woman came out next, but she was surrounded by fire. She lashed out in what looked like random directions, and I became even more certain that she must be immune to burns; she had absolutely no fear of burning the building down or setting herself on fire, that was for certain. One of our people tried to approach her and she attacked again; he lifted his gun and shot her in the chest, twice, returning to cover.

I frowned and leaned out of cover, putting one more round in her head. I felt irritated or disappointed.

Our hydrokinetic crouched down and pushed his arms out again, and his water parted into two waves, flowing left and right. Waves started crashing through the smoke from random directions, only to reform and do it again. The smoke began to clear, and soon we could see the area again.

The enemy brick was on the ground, bleeding; it looked like he had probably been hurt the same way ours was, probably knocked into the shield by a wave. He might be strong, and might be durable, but he didn’t seem to weigh more than an ordinary man, and that meant that unless he was braced properly he wasn’t any harder to push. With the waves coming from random directions, constantly shifting, and no way to see, he must have been caught unbalanced. Judging by the way he was bleeding, I thought he had a fifty-fifty chance of surviving, assuming he got medical care soon.

The last enemy, the wild-looking guy who made the shield, was soaked through and coughing on the ground, spitting up water. Rather than waiting, I quickly stood and fired.

My bullets deflected away. Apparently he wasn’t so distracted that he couldn’t defend himself.

The bullets from the balcony were similarly deflected, but when someone up there tossed a grenade just in front of the man’s shield, calling for us to cover our eyes and ears over the radio, his defense didn’t do him any good. The disorienting blast of light and sound left the man groaning and holding his head.

The next bullets hit him before he could recover.

I felt my fear subsiding, but it wasn’t completely gone as I contemplated our prisoners.

…

I woke up sweating in bed, looked around quickly, and recognized my dorm room before collapsing backwards. My heart was still pounding.

What the fuck was that?

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If At First You Don’t Succeed 3

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Driving away, I wondered if I’d made the right call. I remembered how Raquel had sounded, almost begging me not to leave her alone with Feral, but the truth was that I couldn’t do that. Even if I’d stayed the night on their couch, sooner or later I would have to sleep, or leave, and the two of them would be alone together, in some sense. Like Leon and I, they were always together, and in a sense they were always alone, too. She had seemed calmer before walking into her house, at least. I hoped being there, seeing her mother, would help her relax. Now that she wasn’t blaming Feral for everything that had happened, it shouldn’t be an issue the same way.

I focused on the road, not letting my mind wander. I was too tired to obsess about all of the things that I knew would be haunting me later, fortunately.

I got back to the park and found Heavyweight already gone, presumably heading home as he’d said he would. Comet and Bloodhound were sitting cross-legged on the ground, while Stalker still stood over Dustin, lying on his back on the bench. It didn’t look like she’d moved in the minutes I’d been gone. I looked at her, standing over the kid, but didn’t approach. I didn’t want to distract her in the middle of her work.

I wasn’t comfortable with the situation. Of all the powers I’d heard of, telepathy was one of the ones most ripe for abuse. If someone like Comet, Heavyweight, or Silhouette punched a hole in a man, there was evidence. They could be discovered and tracked down by the police, the same way a man with a gun could. Arresting and incarcerating them might be a problem, but they couldn’t just vanish without a trace.

Telepathy didn’t leave fingerprints, as far as I knew. It didn’t leave traces that normal people could detect. It was wrong to abuse that power, but the law couldn’t make it criminal in any meaningful sense. Could a telepath even be locked up if they were caught?

Someone like Michaels probably couldn’t. It was a thought I’d had in passing after Mary explained his powers, and I’d been trying to put off thinking about it ever since, focusing on Dustin instead, but as I stood there looking at Stalker I couldn’t put it out of my mind. If Michaels got caught, convicted, and imprisoned, how long would it take for him to subvert the other inmates with his powers? More importantly, how long would it take him to get control of the guards and the warden? If put in a conventional prison he might just be able to walk out after a couple of weeks, telling his new friends to erase the security footage behind him and give him their car keys for good measure.

It was a problem that hadn’t been solved yet. So far, only a few powered criminals had revealed themselves. Some had been caught, mostly people whose abilities didn’t let them just walk out of prison. The types who weren’t bulletproof, and who couldn’t punch through walls. One or two had been killed resisting arrest. If I was remembering right, there was at least one somewhere who could escape pretty much at will, but who had surrendered herself into police custody willingly. She was convicted and sent to prison, but in an odd way she was on the honor system; stuck there only because she allowed herself to be.

I’d heard of a guy the Philly Five had caught more than once, who kept breaking out of custody – he could apparently teleport or walk through walls or something. The first time, everyone had been scared, but now he was a joke, mostly because he insisted that people should refer to him as “Larcenous Leonard” and he hadn’t actually hurt anyone. He just stole stuff, always from very wealthy people who could afford it. Once, he’d accidentally surprised an old woman into falling over and breaking her hip during a robbery. He’d called an ambulance for her and waited with her until it showed up, and there were rumors that he’d contributed significantly to the fundraiser that was launched afterward to help her pay for the medical care that she needed as a result. Basically, he was the opposite of threatening. People didn’t approve of him, but he seemed so sincere that you couldn’t possibly hate him (unless you were one of his victims, I suppose). One reporter had said that he seemed to have “stepped out of a comic book.”

So, on one side there were guys like that. Leonard’s powers, whatever they were, let him make a mockery of the law, but most people didn’t see him as a serious problem because he never endangered anyone intentionally. In the long-term, it was still an issue, but for now, as long as he was the only one, he wasn’t a real threat to society or anything. He wasn’t destabilizing the economy, or murdering people, or leaving them with mental scars. I’d never heard of anyone else with powers sporting that attitude, though, and Michaels clearly wasn’t playing around.

If we caught him and turned him over to the police, we’d have to tell them what he could do and…hope for the best, I supposed. It wasn’t a satisfactory answer. In fact, turning him over to the police would be placing them in danger very directly, in a sense, and it was a danger they hadn’t signed on for, unlike most of those they faced.

Leon agreed with me, but he didn’t see any alternatives either. I remembered talking to Carmen, Bloodhound, Comet, and Raquel about what we did and why, and I found myself asking how much we should do. I couldn’t build a better prison, but someone needed to. There had to be some way to shut down powers, or contain them. But until we found it, we had a big fat problem with no solution.

I walked over to Bloodhound and Comet, sitting near them on the ground, and the three of us looked at Stalker.

I’d trusted Dustin’s mind and future to a stranger. The Philly Five were publicly known heroes, sure. Stalker was the least understood, but presumably still to be trusted.

Assuming that she didn’t use her powers on her teammates, anyway. Assuming she wasn’t using them on me to get me to trust her. Assuming a hell of a lot. Assuming, in fact, that I was still the one making my assumptions.

Damn telepathy. Paranoia fuel for all time.

I sighed. If Stalker was manipulating my mind, then there was nothing I could do about it. Subtle manipulation could leave the same evidence as no manipulation at all. Strong manipulation could leave me unable to notice it despite a lack of subtlety. It all depended on how her power worked, which I didn’t know. If I did notice something, then I could act. Leon would keep an eye on me, just in case. I would do the same for him. If someone’s power was strong enough, or far enough outside the box, there was no way to prepare for it in advance.

I didn’t want to mistrust the Philly Five. They hadn’t done anything to deserve it, as far as I knew. An obsession with secrecy wasn’t, itself, a good reason for mistrust. Not with the number of fights they had been in and the amount of attention they had received. For one thing, I was confident some people would try to sue them if they knew who the group was. For another, I had just gone from calm to completely paranoid on the mere suspicion that one of them might be a telepath. I could imagine that they didn’t want that. Presumably they had other lives that they liked to get back to, when they weren’t busy saving people, and that made sense too. Even if they’d been obsessed with becoming heroes, it wasn’t truly a full-time job. There had been entire weeks, maybe months when they didn’t even make an appearance, in the past.

I shook off the thoughts, turning to Bloodhound and Comet.

“Anything?” I asked.

Comet turned to look at me. “No news yet,” she said. “Not sure how much progress she’s making.”

“Okay,” I said. I turned back, watching Stalker and Dustin again.

“You all right?” Comet asked. “You all look a bit shaken up tonight.”

I almost laughed at the sheer understatement. “That’s one way to put it,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Sometimes things go well. Sometimes they don’t. Tonight they went bad very quickly.”

“Want to talk?” Comet said.

I shook my head. What had happened with Raquel and Feral was their business, and deeply personal. It was one thing to involve myself, to an extent. We were alike. We had a relationship – teammates, I supposed, though the team wasn’t official. I couldn’t tell the Philly Five the details any more than I could tell them to Carmen without Raquel’s say-so.

After a second, I reconsidered. Those details were out, but that didn’t mean I had to be silent about everything.

“The kid, Dustin, tried to attack me,” I said. “He was cornered with Michaels, the guy who messed with his head. We think he might have done something else, too. Sort of encouraged things to get violent, messier. Whether it was on purpose or not is another question, but it got pretty bad. At least one death, and a few serious injuries.” I looked over at her. “And I admit, I’m not used to getting shot. It doesn’t hurt anymore, but it still happened.”

I hadn’t meant to say that much. Looking at Comet, even through her helmet, I got the feeling that she knew that, somehow.

“Powers can make things about as unpredictable as they get,” she said. “Anything that hits your head instead of your body, it can be hard to deal with. I’ve been through that a couple times. It can leave scars on the inside.”

I didn’t have an answer to that.

“If you need to talk more, you can say so,” Comet said. “Anytime. I can’t drop everything instantly, but I know everyone needs a friend now and then, and it’s tough to talk about this with anyone who’s not in the business. That’s one reason we made a team in the first place,” she continued, gesturing to Stalker and Bloodhound. “Not just for the fighting, but for the aftermath. So we could have someone to talk to who would understand. Without that, I think we’d all be a lot less mentally healthy. It’s still different for all of us, of course. Different powers. The others can’t really relate to the fact that I can outfly a helicopter and punch it out of the sky, if I want to. I don’t really understand exactly what it’s like for Bloodhound, or Newton, or Tin Man. That’s unavoidable. But we all come closer than normal people, and that helps.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You need to think about how far you’re willing to go,” Bloodhound said abruptly. He turned to look at me. “We try to avoid killing people, but it’s possible you’ll face a choice at some point, between killing one of the bad guys or letting him hurt someone else. Even without that, there are risks. The more fights you get into, the more likely someone could die by accident – get knocked into the street and hit by a car, or hit by a stray bullet, or fall out a window. Can you live with it if that happens? Are you willing to risk your life to keep the bad guys alive? What about your friends’ lives? Heavyweight and Menagerie, I mean. It’s not one simple question.”

“I’ve been thinking about it a great deal lately,” I said.

“There’s another part of it, as well,” Bloodhound said. “Working with people who answer those questions differently can be a problem.” He glanced at Comet. “We don’t always agree on everything, but we agreed to play by the same rules – as a team. It’s one of the things that has kept us together. If you end up forming a group of your own, you may need to come to a compromise or two in the process.”

I didn’t answer him, but I didn’t think that would be difficult, really.

“Don’t take too long to decide,” he advised.

“Is that really something you can decide?” I said. “It seems to me like what you’re asking about is more a matter of attitude and emotion. We don’t pick our emotions.”

“True,” Bloodhound said, “but we can adjust our attitudes.”

Comet spoke up again. “The truth is, it’s better to know all that before the first time you go out. But most people just don’t know enough about themselves if they’ve never been in a life-or-death situation. Some things you can only learn the hard way.”

I remembered leaving the guy in the bedroom of the burning house. He’d been unresponsive, lying still, and I hadn’t detected a pulse or breathing. Still, I couldn’t help imagining him waking up on fire, only to find he couldn’t get away fast enough, burning as he crawled through the house until it finally collapsed on him.

“He would most likely have suffocated, first,” Leon noted. “It doesn’t matter now, though. You could only help one escape, and you didn’t set the fire or wound those men. We aren’t responsible for any deaths tonight. We did the right thing, within the limits of our abilities and the choices of everyone else involved. In the end, that’s all we can do.”

“I know,” I said.

I did, really. My life hadn’t included a lot of life-and-death situations before, but I felt pretty stable, overall. I hadn’t killed anyone, or put anyone in a position to die. If we were right in our suspicions, Michaels was ultimately responsible for the fact that anyone had died; if not, then Feral and Raquel were partly to blame, but Heavyweight and I were still fairly clear, at least as far as my moral judgment was concerned.

It felt like it should bother me more. I suspected it would, later, when I was more awake; regardless, I knew I’d feel responsible if anything similar happened again, now that I knew what to watch out for.

I closed my eyes for a moment, shaking my head to try to clear the thoughts, and then opened them again and looked at Stalker and Dustin.

Still no changes; she stood there without moving, and he lay there breathing. I sat and stared, watching them in silence.

Minutes passed. As I sat there in the dark, the last leftovers of my adrenaline deserted me, and I slumped forward.

I’m not sure when I drifted off to sleep, or how long I was out, but I woke to find Comet shaking my shoulder. I was lying on the ground, on my side, and I was cold. It was still dark out; probably the middle of the night.

Comet was standing, and so was Bloodhound. I stood up automatically, not thinking about it, and started to reach up to rub my eyes, but stopped myself as I realized that my hands were probably dirty. Instead, I blinked. I felt sore all over, and my eyes were stinging more than a little; combined with how dark it was, I knew it couldn’t have been too long. Maybe a few hours. My head started to ache as I stood, and it throbbed as I focused my eyes and looked around before settling down into a dull but manageable sensation.

I noticed Stalker sitting on the ground, leaning back against the bench – Dustin was still on it. At some point, he’d had a coat draped over him to help him stay warm.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Problems,” Comet said. “Stalker has been going for a couple hours, and she says it’s not working. Whatever Michaels did, she can’t just undo it. It seems to be permanent, and she’s worried that tearing out the stuff he put in could have side effects.”

“What kind of side effects?” I asked.

“She’s not sure,” Comet said. “This isn’t something we’ve ever dealt with before. Generally speaking, Stalker has a rule against rearranging people’s brains, so she’s never really tried to do it. The point is, we can’t fix this on our own. We’re going to have to see if we can get help.”

“Do you know somebody else who might be able to help?” I asked hopefully.

“Not for sure,” she said. “But the FBI has at least one telepath. We’re going to have to hope they’re willing to bend the rules a bit again. On the bright side, I’m pretty sure there aren’t any rules for this specific situation yet, so we won’t be asking them to break any.”

I nodded, then looked away to roll my head around in a circle, trying to stretch my neck; I was still feeling pretty sore. “All right. I’ll make a call, see if I can get someone to come meet us. Is there anything specific you want me to say?”

“Just to ask for Agent Miller to be one of the people who comes,” Comet said. “She’s our telepath.”

“Okay,” I said.

…

I guess we’d built up some goodwill, because when I said that we had something on Dustin and needed to see the FBI’s people – including Agent Miller – they agreed to show up without much prompting.

I suggested that we could come to one of the city’s police stations, if they wanted. I figured that would make them more comfortable than any amateur hour cloak-and-dagger idea I could come up with. They weren’t thrilled with that idea, presumably because they didn’t want vigilantes stopping by law enforcement buildings to be a regular thing. We ended up agreeing to meet up at the parking lot where Dustin had been abducted in the first place. I was too tired to think of anything clever, and it was a location we would both recognize. That was good enough for me.

I took a side trip to my rented car and popped the trunk to put on a change of clothes; I’d stashed those anticipating that what I wore for the rescue attempt might get beat up. I’d figured that I wanted to be wearing something clean when I got back home. I’d managed to stay anonymous largely due to luck, so far, and Leon and I had agreed that we needed to do more planning to keep out of trouble. After that, I reunited with Comet, Bloodhound, Stalker, and Dustin, and we left for the meeting.

“Shouldn’t he have woken up by now?” I asked, pointing to Dustin. Comet was carrying the boy.

“Normally, yes,” Stalker said. “Don’t worry, Bloodhound checked him and he’s not hurt. I just encouraged him to stay asleep a bit longer. I can’t do it forever, but since he was already tired to start with it wasn’t difficult.”

We got to the lot first. The FBI people pulled in maybe ten or fifteen minutes after us, in two cars. Judging by their appearance, they’d taken the time to wake up all the way before coming. Four of them got out: Cynthia Miller and Clifford Turner were the drivers, with Stephen Gallagher and Noah Valentine getting out of their respective passenger seats. From past encounters, I knew that Miller and Gallagher were partners, while Turner and Valentine were another pair.

Leon and I ran through a quick refresher on what we knew about the four. Turner had been in charge in the past, and shown some willingness to work with us to stop bad guys. I didn’t think he’d break rules, but he’d already bent them. At the same time, it was plain that he’d prefer to have us come work for him, or his bosses, rather than doing our own thing. He’d said it flat out. Lastly, we knew he had some sort of power that let him see the past, or something like that.

Valentine deferred to him. If he had any powers, we hadn’t noticed or been told yet. He seemed professional and dangerous, and I was fairly certain that he’d put a hole in one of the bad guys with a rifle when we fought Blitz. I wondered if he might have been in the military before.

Miller, the only woman in the group, definitely had powers; maybe more than one, like me. She could apparently destroy or erase anything that got too close to her, and I’d seen her use it both offensively to attack Skyscraper and defensively to block bullets, destroying them before they could hit her. She looked a bit younger than Valentine or Turner, and Leon was guessing she was newer and less experienced. And, of course, the Philly Five were confident she was a telepath. That fit with some things Menagerie and I had overheard, and apparently she and I registered oddly to Miller, which I assumed was because of Feral and Leon. I’d ask Stalker later – I should have done it before, but I’d been too tired to remember.

Gallagher, I’d barely seen any of. We knew basically nothing about him. Based on what I’d seen from the others, I was going to assume he was dangerous in some way.

“Flicker, Comet, Bloodhound, and Stalker,” Turner said. His head cocked to one side. “Bit of an odd group. Does this have something to do with a house burning down tonight?”

Maybe scratch that goodwill idea I’d had. Turner looked neutral enough, but the others were making me a bit uncomfortable. Valentine and Gallagher were hanging back, but I hadn’t failed to notice that both of them had clear lines of sight – and potentially clear lines of fire – between them and us. Miller, who was the most dangerous one up close, was standing next to Turner. She looked loose and ready; I recognized the general way of standing from my own martial arts experience. I had a sudden suspicion that she could kick my ass in a fistfight even without her powers, and the way she was standing said that she was ready to do exactly that. Given the way her power worked, even Comet couldn’t ignore her as a threat, if something happened. One swing at someone’s head and she could probably kill them outright, super strength or no.

“It has to do with Dustin,” I said. “We found him – and when I say we, I’m talking about myself, Menagerie, and Heavyweight. The problem is what to do now. When we went to get him, he tried to set me on fire. Which, yes, caused a house to catch and probably burn down. We didn’t sit around watching.”

“They found blood around that house, and a corpse on the second floor, not to mention a trashed car and other signs of trouble,” Turner said. “Did one of you kill somebody?”

“No,” I said. “Heavyweight, Menagerie, and I didn’t kill anyone.” I gestured at the Philly Five. “They weren’t even in town at the time.”

It wasn’t precisely a lie. Feral might have killed someone, but that didn’t mean Menagerie had. I wasn’t going to get into our suspicions about Michaels for the moment.

“Last time we met, you seemed to say you were going to stay out of the way while we did our jobs. What changed?” Turner asked.

“We found out exactly where Dustin was, and we weren’t sure if he was going to be kept there or not,” I said. I was trying to sound as calm as possible. Their suspicious looks weren’t helping, although my fatigue did, oddly enough. “We had a window of opportunity, and we didn’t know if it was going to stay open. I’m not happy with how things went. None of us are. But for now we have Dustin, and he needs help.”

“You said Dustin tried to burn you,” Miller broke in. “Why?”

I sighed heavily. “We’re pretty sure the guy who kidnapped him did something. Some sort of telepathy, or something like that, which could help to explain why Dustin went with him in the first place. Brainwashing. He attacked me, and later tried to burn Heavyweight. Everything went to hell, but I managed to grab him and run for it, and at that point whoever had him was worried enough about the police showing up that they ran instead of chasing us. I called them,” I gestured to the Philly Five, “hoping they could help figure out what the bastard did to Dustin and undo it.”

I turned to look at Stalker and stepped to one side, out of the way. She walked forward, carrying Dustin, and passed him to Comet before addressing Miller.

“I’ve tried, but I can’t fix it on my own,” Stalker said, taking over the explanation. “I don’t have experience trying to undo brainwashing, so that’s not really strange, although it is disappointing. I was hoping that either you could do it, or we could do it together.”

Miller and Turner looked at each other.

“What do you think, Cynthia?” he asked her.

She considered for a moment, and I noticed her fiddling with her watch as she did so, sliding it around her left wrist with her right hand. “I’ve never tried anything like it before,” she said. “I don’t know.” Cynthia frowned, turning towards us. “How did you know I was a telepath, anyway?”

“Because she’s their ‘telepathic countermeasure’,” Turner said, gesturing at Stalker. “Is that it?”

Stalker nodded. “Yes. You should be more careful whose mind you try to prod, Agent Miller. We talked it over and decided not to hold a grudge, but not everyone is so understanding, even among people who are trying to belong among the good guys. I couldn’t figure out exactly how your ability works, but I know my teammates very well. Shielding them from you isn’t very difficult, and your effort to check them out revealed you to me.”

“Hmmph,” Cynthia said. “Fine, you’re on the ball and I showed my cards. But look, I don’t know if I can help with what you want to do, here. I’ve never tried to undo brainwashing either. In fact, my abilities aren’t even what I’d call invasive. I can’t change what people think.”

Stalker shrugged. “I understand. It’s not where my gifts lie, either. But there’s a brain that needs fixing, and we’re here. I don’t know any other telepaths who are available. Unless you do, then I think we should try. If we can’t fix it, it’s entirely possible Dustin will wake up violent. We should have a while before that becomes an issue, but he won’t sleep for ever, even with my encouragement.”

Cynthia turned to me. “Can you help? I can’t read you, either, and I know she’s not keeping you protected. It feels different.”

“I’m not a telepath of any kind,” I said. “I have a guess why you can’t read my mind, but it’s only a guess. I can’t help with this.”

Cynthia sighed. “So it’s me or no one, is that it?”

“Yes,” Stalker said. “So, are you up for it?”

Cynthia looked at Turner. I couldn’t see her face well enough to tell if she was reluctant, or what, but he nodded after a few seconds.

“If you think you can help, you can try it,” he told her. “Just be careful.”

“Before we start, I have to ask what you can do on your own,” Stalker said. “In the interest of fairness, I’ll go first. What I’ve managed so far is mostly just communicating mind to mind, with people I know. I haven’t spent too much time trying anything on strangers, and when I have it hasn’t worked very well. Sometimes, I can manage to tell if they’re lying, or what they’re thinking about, but that’s almost it.”

“Okay,” Cynthia said. “I’ve done the lie detector thing too, a few times. It’s not reliable, though. I’ve never run into another telepath before, as far as I know, so I’m not sure how this is going to work. My main thing is…well, like I said, I can’t change what people think. But if I try to get into someone’s head, I can sometimes catch a glimpse of how they see themselves. Not literally. I just get an image of what kind of person someone thinks he is, if that makes sense. So if a guy really has issues, it tends to be unpleasant to see, and if I run into the most arrogant person in the world, he’s probably going to look like a god. It took me a long time to even figure out what I was seeing, but that’s my main thing.”

“That’s good,” Stalker said, sounding a bit relieved. “I know you’re not used to changing stuff, but at least you’re used to tying into a stranger’s mind. That’s the main problem I was running into when I tried alone.”

We all stood there for a few seconds.

“Ready?” Stalker asked.

Cynthia took a deep breath, then let it out. “Sure. Let’s do this thing.”

“Actually, before we start,” Stalker said, turning to look at the rest of us, “can we find someplace to sit? The rest of you are probably going to be bored, and I’m tired of standing.”

“All right,” Turner said. “Let’s get comfortable.”

…

We sat around, none of us really doing anything as we waited for Stalker and Miller to wake up. The two of them and Dustin were in the back of one of the FBI cars, with Gallagher keeping an eye on them. Valentine, Turner, Comet, Bloodhound, and I were just sitting around with nothing to do, it seemed, although occasionally someone would get up and walk around. At first, I found myself checking the time frequently, but it was pointless and I soon gave up.

For a bit, I thought I was going to fall asleep again, but my headache persisted and I felt simultaneously tired and unable to sleep. I was probably going to be screwed up for a couple of days as my body tried to catch up on the rest it had been denied.

I tried to think about my current homework, or anything else, but that wasn’t happening. I gave up after fifteen minutes or so. Soon it was back to checking the clock with nothing else to do. I wished that I had a deck of cards or something.

That made me wonder how the FBI agents and the Philly Five would do at poker. I suspected that however things went, I wouldn’t be the winner in any hand including all of us.

Hmm. Maybe Leon and I had different tells. That would be fascinating, but also make some sense. We were distinct personalities, after all. And if somebody got used to dealing with me first, then we switched, it might give them fits.

I sat there doing nothing for a while longer, and eventually a car door opened. We all perked up, some of us standing, and Stalker stepped out of the car.

“It’s not perfect,” she said. “But I think we did good enough for him to go home.”

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If At First You Don’t Succeed 2

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I could sense Leon communicating with someone – it had to be either Feral or Menagerie. I blocked it out. The heat washed over me in a wave, and for a few moments it was just about the only thing I noticed. My eyes were closed, and I checked on my reserves – they were a bit lower, and dropping as my body rapidly healed. I screamed for a few seconds, though I doubt anyone heard me. When the wave of heat had passed and I could feel the pain starting to recede I forced myself back to my feet, looking around.

Michaels and Dustin were walking toward the door together, trying to leave. All but one of the thugs was moving, now, trying to get out of the room, though they were all in bad shape.

“Menagerie, we’re going to need firefighters to go with the police,” I said, stunned. Things had gone very wrong, very quickly. It took me a moment to start thinking again.

I got up and sprinted at Michaels’ back, jumping over the reaching hands of one goon, and tackled him to the ground. The kid stumbled and fell forward, turning to look at us fearfully, and Michaels kicked backward, hitting my face. I bit my tongue and tasted blood, but stood again.

“Michaels and Dustin are heading downstairs. Almost everyone else is pretty messed up, and Michaels got to Dustin’s head,” I said.

I was about to follow them when I turned and looked back into the bedroom. The goons there were moving, but not in a reassuring way; if I left, they could burn to death.

“God dammit!” I yelled. I went back into the room.

“I’ve got to keep these assholes from burning to death, Menagerie,” I said. “You guys will have to stop Michaels. Is Feral under control yet?”

There was a brief pause. “Feral’s out of play for now,” Menagerie said. “Heavyweight and I will handle Michaels, then help you empty the house.”

I walked into the room, helping one of the thugs stand; he looked at me in shock.

“Help him get out!” I yelled, pointing to one of the other guys. Then I moved to a second. There had been five thugs in the room, and I had shoved one out through the hole in the floor; that left four. The one I’d just helped looked like he was in the best shape, overall, despite being a bit dazed. The guy he was helping was hurt worse, but looked like he was thinking more clearly; together, the two of them should be all right. The remaining two were another story. One was the guy who’d been under the door, and his leg was bleeding badly; it had soaked part of the carpet by now, and he was pale. The other wasn’t moving at all. I ran to him first, trying to feel for a pulse; I couldn’t tell if he had one or not. He didn’t seem to be breathing. I slapped him a few times, hoping for some reaction, but he didn’t move.

I looked at the other guy. I couldn’t carry them both. I made a decision.

I went over to the man under the door – actually, he was out from under it now. He took a weak swing at me, and I caught his fist.

“Do you want to stay here or not?” I yelled, pointing at the fire.

He looked a little dazed. I couldn’t tell if it was blood loss, surprise at what had happened, or something else. I repeated myself, shaking him a bit, and his eyes seemed to focus a bit as he shook his head.

“Then let me help you!” I said.

He nodded, coughing.

I got an arm under his shoulders and we managed to get him hobbling on one foot, leaning on me for support. We got to the stairs and I could see that the other two guys I’d sent on ahead were at the bottom, moving toward the front door.

We started down.

“Flicker, hurry,” Menagerie said. “Dustin is keeping Heavyweight back, and I can’t do much right now!”

The first few steps were a bitch, but the guy clinging to me for dear life was motivated; we got into a rhythm. At least we were going down; he was partially dead weight, but I just had to make sure I wasn’t dropping him. While one of his legs was a bleeding mess, the other looked fine.

It was still hard. I was focusing on one step at a time, blocking out almost everything else, and I was actually surprised when we reached the bottom; it felt like it happened too fast given the pace we were moving at. A glance back showed me that the fire was spreading fast. The two guys who had been downed by Feral were no longer in the area by the front door, though they had left bloodstains and a partially crushed gun behind.

We shuffled out the front door, and I saw the situation. Heavyweight was standing in front of their car, in the driveway, refusing to let them leave. Dustin had a little patch of fire on the ground in front of him, with one hand held out, palm down, over it. Michaels was next to him, with a hand on his shoulder, two goons standing next to him with guns – I recognized one of them as the same guy who’d given me so much trouble before, and the bastard had his shotgun back again, or another like it. The rest of them were sprawled on the ground, but one guy was bandaging the others, at least. I couldn’t see Menagerie anywhere.

As we came out, Mr. Shotgun turned toward us. He started to raise his gun and then lowered it again, eyes narrowed in anger, but he kept it ready as I walked my rescuee away from the building.

Then two cars and a van pulled onto the street and headed our way, at least one burning rubber as they squealed to a stop.

The doors opened and Mary Wade got out of the car, with three more armed guys. Two of them had pistols, but the third had what I thought was a rifle. The other two vehicles stayed further back, and no one got out of them. Mary surveyed the situation. For a few seconds we were all eyeing each other uneasily, trying to figure out what to do. The police would be along at some point; when that happened, things would turn in our favor. At the same time, we had serious problems. Dragging this situation out, even as a standoff, could cause some of the goons to bleed out. Given what I’d seen from Dustin so far, I wasn’t prepared to write them all off as “bad guys, don’t feel guilty if they get hurt,” and even if I had been I didn’t want them to die. Leaving the one guy upstairs was bad enough, despite my confidence that he was dead already. I didn’t want more on my conscience.

“Menagerie, where are you?” I asked.

“Across the street, behind the new arrivals,” she said.

“What’s Feral’s deal? Is she still flipping out?”

“I really don’t want to bring her back out right now,” Menagerie said.

Fuck. That was at least three different flavors of bad.

I set my rescuee down on the ground, bending down as if to help him, then vanished. I closed my left eye and checked my reserves – Leon was down to basically nothing, I was at about two-thirds. All that moving around while invisible had taken something out of me, and so had healing from the burns I’d taken, along with the shot to my leg.

Once I was invisible, I stepped back and to one side a few feet, then crouched. I tried to look at everyone at the same time.

Heavyweight seemed to take it as a signal, or maybe that was when he had his idea; in either case, he moved. He jumped up and back, over the car behind him – the one Michaels had used to get here. When he landed on the other side, he stepped forward and brought one fist down on the car’s hood in a crashing blow. I could see the metal dent inward. He hit it twice more like that, quickly, then leapt at Mary’s car.

I got it as he was moving; without the cars, they’d have a much harder time getting away from the police, who Menagerie had called. Even if he couldn’t get them all, they might have to leave some people behind. Plus, it would be easier for us to stall them. The wounded guys wouldn’t even want to run, if they were smart; without cars, being arrested was probably their best chance at prompt medical attention.

He stopped in midair, folding as if his stomach had hit something, and I noticed Mary; she was looking up at him, one hand outstretched. He hung there for a moment, then went flying back.

She’d said she couldn’t just let us win if it came down to it. Considering that she’d warned us she was coming, I was inclined to trust her. Still, she was the only one of them who could even slow Heavyweight down, except for Dustin; if I gave her a good enough excuse to “lose”, and I was right about her being on the level with us, then we’d have an advantage.

I stayed invisible and started walking toward her as quietly as I could, with her group on the street in front of me, the house behind me, and all the other bad guys plus Dustin to my left.

Mr. Shotgun spun towards me, his weapon coming up, and he pulled the trigger, at which point I remembered what Mary had said about his powers. I dove for the ground and felt another set of stings, this time on my left leg instead of my right, and I lost my focus. I became visible again, and he brought his gun up for another shot. Before he could do anything, Heavyweight came rushing in – Michaels shouted a warning, and he dived to the side, but Heavyweight grabbed him in both hands as he landed, ripping the shotgun away and then breaking it over his knee. The guy ran, and Dustin sent a stream of fire at Heavyweight, screaming incoherently with what could have been any emotion, or maybe just pure adrenaline.

Heavyweight retreated, and I looked up to see Michaels whispering in Dustin’s ear, still keeping a hand on his shoulder in an avuncular way that was profoundly disturbing under the circumstances.

Then an ear-splitting roar rang out. It sounded like Feral, but not quite. Everyone turned to look in that direction, and I shuffled out of the way as Dustin unintentionally sent his fire over a wider area in the process. One of the wounded goons was lying in the way; his jacket caught, and he ditched it immediately, crawling feebly away from the flames.

Menagerie ran across the street towards us all, but as she ran she dropped to all fours, her form distorting to look almost like Feral’s, and she sprang at Mary and her three guys. Before she could hit, she was struck in mid-air; she wasn’t stopped like Heavyweight had been, but she was launched up and over them. She spun and flipped in mid-air, landing on the wrecked car in the driveway on all fours, and I got a good look at her. She looked like Feral, now, but more solid somehow. Her front paws flexed and her claws lengthened, scoring gouges in the car’s roof and then tearing right through it.

She roared again and jumped at Michaels and Dustin.

Michaels fell backward and pulled Dustin down on top of himself, and a curtain of fire sprang up between them and the cat.

“Menagerie, are you okay?” I said frantically. “What the hell is going on? Is that Feral or you?”

There was no immediate reply, and Feral/Menagerie jumped to the side, running around the fire, then hit one of the guys with guns – three of them emptied their pistols into the charging form, but it didn’t slow as it tackled the middle guy to the ground. Claws slashed out at the guy on the left, and he stumbled backward, barely avoiding them. The cat bent over and the guy on the ground screamed for a second before he was cut off by a disgusting, wet sound. I couldn’t see him well, but he stopped moving almost immediately, and when the cat straightened it spat a mouthful of something on the ground.

“Help me!” Menagerie screamed. It felt far away, muffled somehow.

She felt terrified, sick, and angry, all at once, but the anger was the strongest. For a second, the cat seemed to twitch and shudder, crouching low and shaking its head, but then it roared again and attacked.

It stopped cold, hitting one of Mary’s orbs, and I realized that she’d moved closer when I wasn’t watching. I was standing in the open like a gawking bystander, but everyone was so busy watching the cat that they didn’t give a shit.

Michaels got back to his feet, pulling Dustin with him, and they started backing toward Mary. The other guys were doing the same, whether they were armed or not. One of them stumbled and the cat’s head swiveled toward him. It took a single step forward, and he screamed in fear, a high-pitched wail, before emptying his gun. He stumbled again, falling to the ground, and crawled away from the cat, staring at the ground in front of himself. He was obviously too terrified to even look at it.

Shotgun Guy came at me, and I only noticed because of Leon’s timely warning. I ducked under a hook punch and got kneed in the stomach. He grabbed my collar and wrenched me down to the ground, pulling a knife from somewhere and stabbing down.

I shoved a hand in front of my face, letting him impale it, and then yanked the knife away and pulled it from my hand. He punched me in the stomach with one hand while trying to keep the knife down on the ground with the other, and I covered his eyes with my free hand, then gave him another flash of light right in the eyes.

“Fucking lights!” he grunted. “Fuck you!”

It gave me a second in which his grip was weaker. I used my free right hand to grab his, letting me bring the knife into play again; he dove away from me, rolling to the side. Unable to see, he didn’t have much choice. I kicked his leg, tripping him, and he landed on his stomach. I put the knife to his throat.

“Don’t move,” I said.

He stilled, and I looked up, trying to see what else had changed.

The cat – I was trying not to think about the fact that Menagerie was in there – continued to prowl back and forth as the bad guys retreated, taking Dustin with them toward the three vehicles. He was out, and Michaels was carrying him; the cat was staring at the kid and looking angrier every step he moved with Michaels. Mary stopped retreating, looking at me.

Heavyweight came back. He jumped into the center of the group of bad guys, knocking them down as he landed. Mary had been looking at me and hadn’t seen him in time to stop him, but when his fist lashed out toward her face it was stopped cold again, inches away. When she hit him again, Heavyweight grabbed for Dustin and missed – then latched onto Michaels instead, taking him along for the ride. Dustin fell on the ground, clearly unconscious; he didn’t look hurt.

The cat sprinted after them, and I figured Michaels was a dead man. I let Shotgun Guy go, sprinting after Heavyweight, and bent space hard. I shot through the middle of the bad guys in a step or two, catching a brief glimpse of surprise on Mary’s face.

Heavyweight saw or heard the cat coming; as it lunged at Michaels, lying on the ground groaning, he hit it with an uppercut under the jaw and it twisted, nearly falling on its back. He kicked it twice, his heavy booted foot making a dull sound as it hit, and the cat was knocked onto its side.

“Get her out of here!” I said.

Heavyweight glanced at me for a second before turning back. He charged the cat as it regained its feet, tackled it shoulder-first, and jumped away. I saw him throw the thing away from himself before he landed out of sight. It looked like one of its feet hit him before I lost sight of them. I could still hear them fighting, though.

I bent over and grabbed Michaels, lifting him up by his neck, and put my knife to his throat, turning to face Mary and the guys with her. At this point, two of them were still in the fight. The others were injured too badly, or caring for those who were. One was edging toward Dustin.

I started walking towards them, shoving Michaels ahead of me, and the two who were in good shape pointed their guns at me. I wanted to run off and help Menagerie and Feral – or at least try to – but I had a bad feeling that if we left without Dustin they might not calm down at all. Not to mention the fact that leaving the kid with these people for any longer was completely unacceptable.

Leon and I conferred for about two seconds.

Before they could do anything, I swept my hand sideways in front of Michaels’ throat and kicked him to the ground, then vanished.

It was dark, and the faint, dark red light I’d held in my hand must have sold the lie; they all reacted like they’d just seen me murder someone and vanish into thin air. Before Michaels could talk and spoil it, I sprinted straight into the group, scooped Dustin up in my arms, and ran. I closed my left eye for a second, gauging how much energy I had: it dropped below one-third.

They shouted behind me and I heard a gunshot, but when I finally turned to look back – halfway across the lawn of the next house – Mary was hurriedly rushing the guys into the cars, including Michaels. One of them stopped and ran back from the van with a container, and I quickly realized he was spreading something – maybe gasoline – over the lawn and the wrecked car. They took two or three unmoving bodies with them; I wasn’t sure if they were dead or just unconscious.

They drove away, leaving the burning house and bloody ground behind them. I was too exhausted to move, but I gratefully let my invisibility drop – I had just a sliver of energy left as I sank to my knees, putting Dustin down for a moment.

Maybe a half-minute after they were gone, a figure came running out of the burning house, and I wondered if it was the last guard – the one I’d left for dead.

When he turned to look back, I caught a better look and realized it was the balding guy who’d picked up the drugs at the storage place. The one we’d thought might be a doctor, or something.

I stood up, holding Dustin in my arms, and started to circle the property, steering clear of the fire and the light it cast, trying to work my way towards where I’d last seen Heavyweight fighting…the cat. The doctor, or whatever he was, turned and ran. He didn’t look like he was going anywhere except away, and I couldn’t blame him. He’d apparently been scared enough to hide in the burning house until it looked like everybody was gone, and given that he hadn’t tried to join the cars before they left, I didn’t think it was Feral that had scared him. Or not just Feral, at least.

I soon heard the sounds of fighting again, as I got farther from the fire. I closed in cautiously, afraid of what I would see.

What I found was Heavyweight smacking the cat with a piece of a fence like it was a baseball bat, hitting it on each side. It was obviously disoriented. The wood broke and he dropped it, laying into the cat with his fists and feet. The firelight was mostly blocked, so I couldn’t see too well; my eyes were adjusting to the decrease in lighting.

I thought a quick prayer. God didn’t owe me any favors, but it couldn’t hurt to ask. This qualified as a time of need.

“Dustin’s safe,” I said loudly.

They both jerked toward me in surprise.

“He’s not hurt,” I said. I meant physically, of course. I wasn’t a doctor, but he seemed fine. Mentally was another matter; I wasn’t sure whether Dustin or Raquel would be more messed up after tonight. Fortunately, I was too exhausted to think it through right then.

The cat looked at Dustin, then me, then growled again.

“Feral, it’s over,” Leon said.

“Raquel, the fighting is done,” I said. “It’s done. Dustin’s here. We can take him home. Take him back to his mother.”

The big cat shook its head fiercely, then slashed at the ground.

A moment later it just dissolved away into nothing, and Raquel fell to the ground. After a few seconds she jerked her mask off and threw up, pushing herself to one side and falling next to the puddle of vomit. Lying there, she retched and sobbed. When nothing more came up, she caught her breath for a few seconds before shoving one hand, finger extended, into her mouth.

She threw up again, convulsively. When it was finally over, she stumbled to her feet and away from the spot, then fell again and kept sobbing, curling up into a ball.

I stared at her, then looked at Heavyweight. He looked back at me, frozen.

I walked up to him and held Dustin out, and he took the kid in his arms.

I grabbed Raquel’s mask, stuffing it in a pocket automatically. No sense leaving extra evidence. Hopefully the fire would destroy the evidence of us, along with the evidence of the bad guys. I walked over to Raquel, kneeling next to her, and put a hand on her shoulder gently.

She twitched violently, but not away from me. She just lay there, shuddering. I squeezed her shoulder. I couldn’t find the right words, assuming any existed. I wasn’t even sure if I could talk, let alone whether I should. I was exhausted.

Raquel’s shudders turned to shivers, then started to slow. After a minute or two, she turned toward me, but she couldn’t quite meet my eyes. It was too dark to see much, but her face was drawn. She tried to talk once, twice, then a third time.

Finally she just looked away.

“I’m sorry,” she said silently. I could feel her disgust, a powerful wave of nausea and self-loathing like nothing I’d ever felt from someone else. Leon’s emotions had never been that intense, and Feral always seemed to be a bit aloof when we’d communicated. Raquel felt like she was at sea, clinging to a piece of wreckage and wondering whether she ought to let go.

“It’s not your fault,” I said. I didn’t even know if it was true. I certainly didn’t believe she’d intended any of…that…to happen. My stomach was turning as I remembered, but I forced myself to focus on now, on helping Raquel. Everything else could wait.

“We need to go,” I said. “The cops will be coming soon.”

She didn’t react.

I squeezed her shoulder again. “Please,” I said. “I’ll take care of things, but I need you to get up. We need to move.”

Raquel sat up, looking up at me, and this time she did meet my eyes.

“I tasted his blood,” she said numbly. “I remember swallowing it.”

I grabbed her gently by the armpits and lifted her up, looking her in the eye, then took my mask off so she could see my face.

“We’re going to fix this,” I said. I gave it all the confidence and sincerity I could. More of the latter than the former. Leon backed me up.

Raquel closed her eyes, not saying anything else aloud or privately, but when I put an arm under her shoulders, she let me guide her as we walked.

We made it to the car before we heard the police sirens. It was a mostly abandoned part of town. Response times were slow. Besides, it hadn’t actually been that long.

There were towels in the trunk. I’d thought ahead a bit, and figured that we wouldn’t want to bleed on my rented car. I certainly didn’t want to answer any of the questions that would raise, or pay the fees. They went on top of the seats.

Heavyweight and Dustin went in the back. I eased Raquel into the front passenger seat, and the open doors triggered the car’s ceiling light, showing me her face.

She didn’t look hurt. She just looked horrified. Dustin was still out cold. In the dim light from the car, I finally noticed that my shirt was mostly gone, burned away by Dustin’s fire. I took off my mask, got into the driver’s seat, and got us away from that damned place, wondering what the body count was.

I’d have to ask Mary. I’d have to ask her a lot of things.

First things first, though. Get away from the crime scene. Help Dustin and Raquel.

Then I could try to figure out whether I was about to turn into a psychological wreck. I really didn’t want to answer that one yet. I wasn’t sure whether Heavyweight was calm, numb, or just locked up tight behind his mask.

We didn’t say a word as I drove away.

Raquel was still crying in the seat next to me, barely moving as tears dripped down her face.

Silence, for a few minutes. I got some distance, then parked the car when I thought we had privacy. I glanced at Raquel, and saw that her face was still wet. She wasn’t wiping the tears away, so I couldn’t say for certain whether she was still crying or not. I looked back at Heavyweight and Dustin. Heavyweight still wore his mask, and he had one hand holding Dustin upright in his seat.

I sighed.

“Okay,” I said. “Michaels probably got to Dustin. We need to figure out what to do about it.” I rubbed at my eyes absently as I thought. “I’m going to call the Philly Five, see if they can help.”

Raquel didn’t say a word.

Heavyweight cleared his throat. “We should hand the kid over to the police,” he said.

I looked back at him. I didn’t have my mask on, I realized, but it didn’t seem all that important at the time. He still wore his. “The police can’t help him with his brain, and the FBI is a maybe at best. If the Philly Five can’t help, then we can still go to them. If we take him to the FBI first, they might not be able to let the Philly Five try to help, even if they want to. It’s probably against the rules. Assuming they have rules that remotely cover this. If not, then one guy who wants to keep his job could screw him over,” I said, gesturing at Dustin.

He hesitated for a second before nodding. “All right.”

I pulled out my phone and put together a message to Bloodhound. Once it was sent, I looked at Raquel and Heavyweight.

I sighed. “I have no idea when they’ll see my message, or how long it will take them to get here,” I said. “If you guys need to go home, you can.”

Raquel didn’t react. Heavyweight looked at Dustin, then back at me. He didn’t speak, but I could see his answer plainly enough.

I played with my phone a bit, then saw that I’d gotten a message from Mary. Two, actually. One was from before, warning us that she was on her way. The second was more recent.

“Going to lay low for a few days, at least. Please don’t do anything else until we talk. Probably moving to new apartment, too; don’t try to reach me at old one.”

“Dustin okay?”

-MW

I sent back a quick reply.

“Got it. No noise for a bit.”

“Dustin not wounded.”

I showed Raquel the messages, hoping to give her something else to focus on, but she barely noticed.

“Raquel, talk to me,” I said. “What are you thinking?”

Nothing. I reached out with my right hand, gently taking hold of her left. Her head drooped forward, hiding her face from me, and I looked away.

She’d need to talk to someone, sooner or later. Heavyweight didn’t know as much about her as I did, and couldn’t relate to her connection with Feral the same way. Neither could her mother. As far as I knew, there was no one else who knew as much as I did about this part of her life, so I was nominated by circumstance.

So, should I try to talk to her now, or let it wait?

Hard to say. I generally preferred to be left to myself when I needed to think, or grapple with something tough, but that didn’t mean it was the healthiest choice for me, let alone for her. I didn’t really know that much about Raquel as a person, yet.

We could talk silently, but there was still a difference between conversing alone and talking with two people in the backseat. I decided to wait.

I didn’t let go of her hand, though. Hopefully, the human contact would help her stay sane for now.

It took more than an hour for Bloodhound to reply, but I was just grateful he had gotten to it that night. He said he was on the way with help. I had followed the rules we’d established previously, which meant I couldn’t describe the situation explicitly, but I’d managed to make it clear that we weren’t fighting anymore, and to hint pretty blatantly that the problem was mental tampering. I was hopeful.

“They’re on the way,” I said. “Shouldn’t be too long. I’m taking us to the meeting spot now.”

We went back to the familiar park spot, complete with remnants of a playground. We all sat in the car, waiting.

Bloodhound was as good as his word; they made the trip faster than I’d expected. Comet, Bloodhound, and a third person. Someone I didn’t recognize.

I got out to meet them, and Heavyweight joined me. Raquel stayed where she was. I offered her mask and helped her pull it on when she accepted.

“So, what’s the problem exactly?” Bloodhound asked.

I gestured back to the car. “The kid was kidnapped, held for days. One of the people who had him is supposed to be some kind of telepath or something. When we went to get him, things got messy and he attacked us. It was a pretty bad situation, but I think his head’s been messed with. Some kind of manipulation to make him more loyal, or something like that. We want to get him home, but if he’s just going to snap and start lighting everything on fire, there’s no point. Can you help?”

Bloodhound and Comet turned to look at the third figure. “Stalker?” Comet prompted.

Stalker was female, dressed mostly in black or something dark enough that I couldn’t tell the difference at the time, and shorter than Comet. That was about all I could determine, although I was distracted. Her whole body as concealed, and her outfit looked thickly padded enough that I couldn’t tell how much of her bulk was her body and how much was armor. Even her hair was hidden. It seemed to be a theme for the group, hiding as much as possible about themselves.

Her voice was a bit muffled, too. “Maybe,” she said. “I’ll need to take a look at him. Bring him out.”

The request was clearly directed at me. Heavyweight and I walked back to the car, pulled Dustin out, and brought him over. We set him down on a bench, lying on his back.

We were lucky he hadn’t woken up yet. I hadn’t even seen him fall unconscious. I wasn’t sure what had done it. I had checked his pulse and breathing, just in case, and he seemed fine.

Stalker stood over him, looking down, and didn’t move for a minute. Not wanting to disturb her, I walked over to Comet and Bloodhound.

“I get the feeling you won’t be specific, but does she have a power that might help?” I whispered.

“Yes,” Comet said.

Leon got my attention; he was thinking more clearly than me. When we’d gone up against Blitz, the Philly Five had said they had a telepathic defense, and that one of the group had set it off. At the time, the way they’d said it made me think of a device of some sort. Something one of them or an ally had built.

Now we had an alternative theory to explain it all: Stalker was a telepath. That might explain the odd, contradictory stories about her powers, the fact that she didn’t often reveal herself, and the reason they wouldn’t share a telepathic defense – they couldn’t. If Stalker protected them against other telepaths, presumably she had to be present to do it. Using her powers might not require her targets to see her, so anytime she was seen would be because it was unavoidable, and the rest of the time she would just hide. Why not? It was the smart thing to do. If I was a telepath trying to stop super powered bad guys, I’d just find the edge of my range and set up with a pair of binoculars or something.

We waited. I glanced at Raquel, sitting in the car, a few times. She stayed unmoving.

After a few minutes, Stalker sighed.

“I can help, but this is going to take a while,” she said. “Hours, at least.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Raquel, Stalker says she can help but it’s going to take hours at a minimum. Do you want a ride home?” I asked silently.

She didn’t answer. I walked over to the car, opened the door, and leaned down. “Menagerie, do you want a ride home?”

This time she nodded.

I looked at Heavyweight. “You need a ride?”

He shook his head. “No, I’m good. But I have to go. Work tomorrow. Early.”

“Okay,” I said. I looked at Comet. “I’m going to give Menagerie a ride, if that’s okay, but I’ll be back afterward.”

“Sure,” Comet said.

“Any of you need some patching up?” Bloodhound asked.

I glanced at Menagerie, then back at him. “No,” I said. I’d checked before; she wasn’t hurt. Whatever had happened, she’d been protected while it lasted, at least. “I’ll see you shortly.”

“I wouldn’t mind a little patching up,” Heavyweight said quietly. He glanced at Menagerie. I didn’t think she heard him.

Heavyweight walked over to Bloodhound, and I got back into the driver’s seat, starting toward Raquel’s house. I hadn’t driven there before, of course. I knew enough to get to the general area, though, and I managed to get her to talk enough to direct me the rest of the way.

That had been Leon’s idea. A way to get her talking without thinking, if it went well. Distract her.

I stopped the car on her street, before we got to her house, and reached out, putting one hand on her shoulder.

“We’re here,” I said. I took a deep breath before continuing. “When you want to talk about it, get in touch, okay?”

No reaction.

“Raquel,” I said, “promise me that you’ll tell me when you’re ready to talk about it. Please.”

She shook her head. “I don’t even want to think about it,” she said.

“But you are anyway,” I pointed out. “I have a feeling that’s not going to change if you try to just forget.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“Look, it doesn’t have to be me,” I said. “But you’re going to need to talk to someone about what happened. I probably am, too.”

More waiting.

“Don’t leave me alone with her,” Raquel whispered. “Please.”

Her? She didn’t mean her mother.

Oh. Of course.

She meant Feral.

Leon and I were the only ones who could even talk to Feral, besides her. There were others, presumably, but she didn’t know them personally. Bloodhound’s friend, whom we’d met before, might qualify. But she wasn’t around and Raquel didn’t trust her anyway.

Leon and I were silent for a moment, both thinking of what to say.

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” Feral said to all of us. “Raquel, I‘m sorry. You must know I didn’t mean it, that I didn’t wish for it.”

“Shut up!” Raquel screamed. Her hands went to her temples, as if she wanted to squeeze something out of her head. “You promised me. You promised that you would never do that to me, but you did. You locked me in my own mind!”

Her eyes were tearing up again, though I don’t think she noticed, and her face was contorted with grief and anger.

“You know I didn’t want to hurt them,” Feral said. “I’ve always tried to use restraint. Always.”

Leon broke in gently, trying to head off the argument. “I think neither of you may have been wholly responsible,” he said. “You’ve both displayed self-control in the past. Remember what Michaels’ powers are? I think he may have done something to you.”

That was a frightening possibility that I hadn’t considered.

“Leon may be right,” I said quickly.

If he wasn’t, then we were trying to absolve them of responsibility for murder. I really wanted him to be right. Regardless, I thought Raquel and Feral would be a lot less dangerous to everyone if they didn’t have a breakdown.

I felt a stab of sadness as I realized I would be keeping a closer eye on both of them from now on, regardless of what happened from here on out. Maybe Raquel had lost control because of how much she cared about Dustin. Maybe Feral had lost control for some other reason. Maybe Michaels had pushed one or both of them. It didn’t matter, in a sense; they couldn’t be trusted as much as before, at least around Michaels. Someone needed to watch them. Leon and I were there.

“Raquel, you were as angry as I was,” Feral said. “Both of us were blind with rage. Leon must be right.”

Now I was second-guessing how quickly she seized on the idea. Dammit.

I squeezed Raquel’s shoulder again.

“I know you both,” I said. “I believe in you both. You’re better than that. Michaels must have done something. Maybe it was part of trying to turn Dustin against us, or maybe his powers didn’t work right – he could have been planning something else entirely.”

“Maybe,” Raquel said. “I guess…maybe.”

There was a spark of hope there. Now we just had to keep it alive long enough for her to bounce back.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you both,” I said. “Maybe if we learn more, we can keep it from happening. But for now…you need to let it go. You guys set out to save someone – a kid. A lot went wrong tonight, but we still got him out. The Philly Five are helping him, and pretty soon he should be going home to his mother. That’s because of you guys. Without you, Heavyweight and I probably wouldn’t have gotten involved, and we wouldn’t have found Mary either. You’ve done some good work. Don’t beat yourselves up over things going wrong when you couldn’t have known they would.”

A second later, I realized I was holding my breath and let it out slowly. I didn’t want Raquel and Feral to realize how nervous I was.

The truth was that I remembered what the thing they’d become had been like. It hadn’t looked that different from Feral’s form, but it had felt different, somehow, and when it had torn out a man’s throat it had made the act look natural. I wasn’t over that.

“Thanks,” Raquel said.

On instinct, I pulled her into a quick hug. “Come on. You need to rest. Let’s get you home, okay? Tomorrow can take care of itself until you’ve gotten some sleep. I promise I’ll be in touch first thing, to let you know how everything goes with Dustin.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

I drove up in front of her house and let her out, and both of them thanked us as they walked to the front door. I saw Raquel’s mother open it before she got there, letting her in and sweeping her into a hug.

I guess she’d been worried. Part of me wondered if I should tell her everything that had happened, but there was no way I’d betray Raquel like that. Still, maybe I could encourage her to tell Carmen more, if she didn’t do it on her own.

That wouldn’t be remotely hypocritical.

Sleepy sarcasm. I needed rest too.

“Think they’re okay for now?” I asked Leon.

“For now, yes,” he said. “What about you?”

I snorted. “Right now I’m worried about Dustin, Raquel, and Feral. I’m in one piece and I don’t think I’m scarred for life. That’s good enough for now.” I rolled my shoulders, trying to release the tension I suddenly noticed there. “How about you?”

“All right, I think,” Leon answered. “Worried about them, like you. I guess we’ll see where things go from here.”

“Ready to head back?” I asked.

“Yes, let’s,” he said.

“Okay.”

I turned the car around. Carmen gave me a little nod before she closed their door.

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If At First You Don’t Succeed 1

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“Done. He should be moving soon.”

I glanced at Raquel, sitting in the passenger seat next to me. She put her phone away after reading the message.

“You ready?” she asked.

“Not really,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Let’s go see an asshole about a kid.”

I felt stupid after saying it, since we didn’t go anywhere right away. For lack of anything better to do, I checked my mirrors again to make sure they were in the right position.

Heavyweight – whatever his real name was – had turned to the side, his hood hiding his face from me. He was essentially trusting Raquel and I not to look at his face, since wearing any kind of mask in the car was likely to attract attention and defeat the purpose of using it.

I hadn’t expected him to show up; when we told him what was going on he’d been a bit unhappy with our handling of the situation, and he’d also said that he could only make it if he could trade shifts with someone. Apparently that had worked out.

I pried my eyes away from the mirrors. I wasn’t planning to peek at his face, but I’m not immune to curiosity. Raquel leaned back and closed her eyes, presumably so she could look through Feral’s and block out her own senses more easily. We were sitting in a Zipcar I’d rented; after some thought, we’d decided that trying to follow Michaels as Flicker, Menagerie, and Heavyweight was too risky. If he recognized us, things could go badly. If someone else recognized us, things could go badly. If someone else didn’t recognize us, but thought we looked suspicious, things could still go badly.

So I’d had the idea of renting a car instead. Flicker, Menagerie, and Heavyweight, running down the street and going over buildings, were blatant and suspicious; David, Raquel, and a random guy in the backseat, sitting in a car, were boring and unremarkable. Michaels shouldn’t know what we looked like. Feral, warned by Mary Wade (or whatever her real name was) of where to go, had been waiting for Michaels in the parking lot of his hotel, ready to hop onto the underside of his car and hang on before he could leave. We were in the parking lot of the McDonalds across the street and down a bit, waiting to see which direction he would go.

“He’s out,” Raquel said. “And…she’s on the car. Honda, green. Not new, but in good shape.”

I started my car and pulled out of the space, heading unhurriedly for the exit. I stopped myself from asking which way to go; she would tell me as soon as she knew.

“Our left,” Raquel said.

I pulled out, turning left. Traffic wasn’t bad. We’d had the advantage of coordinating with Mary and knowing when she was going to give the all-clear signal to Michaels, and we’d intentionally waited until traffic was low. School was over for the day for both Raquel and I, too, which had apparently made her mother happier, though I gathered that – despite our fairly pleasant first meeting – she was anything but happy about the situation. Resigned, maybe. Regretfully proud was the description Leon had come up with.

On the bright side, Raquel was less tense. She hadn’t said it straight out, but Leon and I had decided that her conversation with her mother must have gone well, overall.

I was wondering what kind of job Heavyweight had. I got the impression that it was normal for him to be working at these hours, when most people were home or headed there.

“We shouldn’t think about it,” Leon broke in. “Let him have his secrets. We keep ours, too.”

I acknowledged the little rebuke, and brought my thoughts back to the present, focusing on the road. The light turned green, and I put my foot down to get us moving again.

“Is the car in sight of us?” I asked Raquel aloud.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Hang on.”

She opened her eyes and leaned forward, looking around. “Yeah, there – you see it? Light green, one lane over, ahead of us.”

She pointed, and I spotted the vehicle; there were a few cars between us.

“I see it,” I said. “Okay. Looks like we’re turning.”

I moved over into the turning lane, thankful there was room already, and hit my signal. Less traffic didn’t mean no traffic, since we were fairly deep in the city, but I regarded that as a good thing; it should mean that we wouldn’t stand out too much.

Following a car without being obvious isn’t easy, but with Feral clinging to the underside of the trunk and Raquel sitting next to me I had a completely unfair advantage. We stuck behind Michaels, keeping a car or two between us for a while. When it was down to just our two vehicles, I turned right and then moved onto the street parallel to the one Michaels was on, trusting in Feral and Raquel to make certain I didn’t lose track of our target; we were moving out of toward the fringes of the city, and I was more nervous about the possibility of us getting recognized.

Michaels turned at one point, then drove in a little loop, doubling back on his own course. When we realized what he was doing, I almost panicked, fearing that he’d spotted us, but he soon returned to his previous direction.

“Maybe it was just a precaution?” Raquel said. “Even if he isn’t particularly worried about today, maybe what happened before is making him feel cautious.”

I didn’t reply.

We passed into an area that was nearly abandoned-looking, with warehouses, some empty lots, and a few other businesses that had closed. Almost no cars or people. Michaels’ car turned into the parking lot associated with a storage business; long rows of individual rooms (or lockers; whatever they’re called). I started looking for a place to park that was out of sight, letting Raquel and Heavyweight out first. I managed to park in a couple of minutes.

“On my way,” I told Raquel.

“He’s parked, but it looks like he’s waiting for something,” she said.

I walked away from the car and put on my mask and gloves – I’d bought a pair of leather gloves, figuring it would be nice not to leave fingerprints all over the place – and started sprinting toward the storage facility. It was surrounded by a fence, of course, and had a guard at the booth watching the entrance, but I didn’t think we’d have trouble getting around that problem.

I caught up to Heavyweight and Menagerie, waiting in an alleyway across the street from the storage facility. We couldn’t see the parking lot from where we stood. Heavyweight was leaning back against a brick wall, arms crossed, while Menagerie was crouched and hunched forward. As I got closer, I saw that her eyes were closed again. Both were now masked, and Heavyweight still had his hood up.

“Is Feral still with him?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Menagerie said. “He’s just leaning on his car. I don’t get it.”

“Waiting for something,” Heavyweight chimed in. “Someone?”

“Maybe,” she said.

Nothing happened for a few minutes.

“He’s on the phone, hang on,” Menagerie said. “Sounds like someone is about to get here.”

“Let’s get up high so we can see,” Heavyweight suggested, jerking a thumb upward.

“Okay,” I agreed. I didn’t think I’d see much – it was getting dark – but I remembered that Heavyweight had better eyes than me. He might spot something that Feral couldn’t without giving herself away.

“I’ll need a lift,” Menagerie said.

“I got it,” Heavyweight said. He picked her up easily and just jumped, going almost straight up. Despite how impressive it looked, he landed with surprisingly little noise.

I jumped after him and stretched. The roof wasn’t too tall, but I slipped and barely caught the edge instead of landing smoothly. Without words, Heavyweight grabbed my arms and helped me up and over.

“Thanks,” I said quietly.

“No problem,” he replied.

We both walked to the edge of the roof, looking out. After a couple of minutes, another car pulled into the lot.

“A couple people getting out,” Heavyweight said. “Looks like-”

“Shh!” Menagerie cut him off. “Feral can hear them.”

Heavyweight and I waited silently.

“Three guys,” Menagerie said quietly. “Looks like two are muscle, probably. Not sure about the other one.”

“They’re moving,” Heavyweight commented.

I couldn’t see well at all; there were some lights in the parking lot, but not much lighting elsewhere, and I quickly lost sight of them.

“We need to get in there,” I said. “Heavyweight, can you jump the fence while carrying us?”

He turned toward me. “One at a time, yes. Both is iffy.”

“Me first,” I said. “Now.”

Heavyweight picked me up and walked to the edge of the roof, then backed up a bit and got a running start before leaping; my stomach felt like it was somersaulting as I saw the street below us turn into the storage area, and I shrank the distance to the ground as much as I could, trying to soften our landing. I assume it worked, since there was less noise than I’d expected.

“Hey,” I whispered as he put me down, “I know it’s ridiculous to say, but try to be as quiet as you can. I’m going to get where I can see them.”

He nodded acknowledgment and jumped back the way we came, landing somewhere out of my view. I knew he hadn’t gone straight back up to the roof; presumably, he couldn’t, or at least he wasn’t confident that he could do it in the dark from so far away without making noise.

I turned toward the parking lot and ran to the closest row of storage lockers between me and it, going up the wall.

“What are they doing?” I asked. “Still walking?”

“Yeah,” Menagerie said, “they’re on the far end, moving away from the parking lot; they haven’t found their row yet, I guess.”

“Thanks,” I said. I walked over the rooftop; it curved, and I didn’t think I could run without slipping and falling. I didn’t think I’d fall off the roof, but it would be noise, and with no other customers apparently present, Michaels and his friends might hear me.

“We’re in,” Menagerie told me. “On the way.”

I reached the end of my row shortly afterward. I could see the four of them walking, with Michaels in front, and I got a good look as they passed me. Of the other three, two looked a lot like the guys we’d seen the other night, although they weren’t in uniform. I wondered if they were employees of BPSC. The last guy had a bag and didn’t look like he was there to fight. He looked like the kind of guy who would be wearing glasses if he were on TV, despite not having a pair. He was partially bald, and he looked nervous; I wondered if he was there by choice or if he had been pressed into service.

“They’re still moving,” I said. “Can Feral see them?”

“Yeah, she can,” Menagerie assured me. “So, how do we want to play this? Jump them as soon as they open their door, or what?”

“Let’s see what’s inside first,” I said. “Dustin might be here, but they also might be picking something up before they go see him. We can’t blow our opportunity.”

“Okay,” she said.

“If he is in there, alone, then we should make our move, though,” I continued. “I’ll go for one of the two guys with guns. Feral can take the other. Menagerie and Heavyweight hang back for now.”

A pause. “Heavyweight figures he should go first, with Feral,” Menagerie said. “You’re not bulletproof.”

“Is he?” I asked. As we spoke, I was following the foursome across the storage lot; Feral came up to join me on the roof, nearly scaring the crap out of me. Thankfully, Leon warned me she was coming.

“He’s not totally sure,” she said a second later. “He’s never actually been shot. But he got hit by Silhouette and walked it off, and she looked like she was in Comet’s weight class.”

“Not worth it,” I said. “For now, Michaels hasn’t seen Heavyweight. For all they know, he’s out of town on vacation or something. Let’s keep it that way unless we absolutely can’t; I may not be bulletproof, but I can heal a bullet hole if I need to. That’s good enough. Feral for one guard, me for the other. Then we take down the other two guys, call the police, and get Dustin on his way home. If he’s not there, we do nothing; we’ll leave and follow them when they finish here. If Dustin’s there with more guards…we’ll have to see what the odds look like.”

Another pause as she conferred with Heavyweight again. “Okay.”

I could feel her dissatisfaction, but I was pretty sure she was just unhappy with the situation, not with me. I couldn’t blame her for that.

I managed to keep up with Michaels and the people with him, and soon found myself on a roof, looking down at them. Feral was next to me, crouched low as if ready to spring, leaning down. I raised my eyes, looking around. “Where are you guys?” I asked.

“Across from you and on your right,” Menagerie said. I saw her wave, briefly, returned it, and then looked down again.

Michaels leaned down and unlocked a door, then opened it, pulling it up – like a garage door.

“I can’t see in clearly,” I said. “I’m hopping down.”

All of them were looking in. I dropped down, using my powers to soften my landing and then turning myself invisible as soon as I had landed safely.

“Leon, how are we doing?” I asked.

“Check for yourself,” he suggested.

Oh, right. I still wasn’t used to it, but we’d managed to find a way for me to track how much power I had left at any given time. Leon had come up with the idea. It was rough, but it worked.

I closed my left eye, calling up a visualization. Magic doesn’t look like anything, as far as I know, but since we’re so accustomed to relying on our eyesight, and I couldn’t know directly how much energy I had at my disposal, we’d figured that a solution I could see would be best. Leon, inspired by my love of video games and looking for a simple answer, had come up with one.

With a few seconds of focus, my closed left eye ceased to be blind, instead showing me a clear – if artificial – image. It wasn’t based on Leon’s ability to hide me from sight, or on what Bloodhound had showed us, except in the most general sense; those, as far as I could tell, involved manipulating or creating real light. This was an illusion. Since it was only for me, it was very easy to create. The hard part was linking it to the magical…reservoir, I guess, is the best word, inside me.

Between the two of us, we’d gotten it figured out. What I saw was simple enough – a pair of vertical bars, parallel to each other. One was labelled “L”, the other “D”, for Leon and David respectively.

Both bars were still nearly full. One nice thing about driving to get here; I hadn’t used up any power en route. I was fully rested, and so was Leon. The minimal rooftop-hopping we’d done barely counted, although I knew that being invisible would drain me constantly, especially if I moved around. Still, for now I was fine.

“Okay. Looks like we’re in good shape.” I noted.

I returned my full attention to the bad guys. The door was open, but I couldn’t see inside; the view was blocked by thin partitions, like the kind used in some offices. Michaels started to go around them, followed by the last guy, while the two dangerous-looking guys stayed outside.

I described the situation to Menagerie.

“I’m following them,” I said. “We need to see inside. If anything goes wrong, Feral can jump down and deal with these two clowns; they won’t be able to see me inside anyway, and guns won’t hurt her.”

“Okay,” Menagerie said. “Be careful. Heavyweight and I will lay low unless you call us.”

I walked as quietly as I could, hoping the two goons wouldn’t be that observant. I went past them and around the partitions, carefully. Inside, there were lights on already. I closed my left eye again, keeping an eye on my reserves. Leon’s were dropping steadily as I moved, although I thought it was still easier than during the day, which made some sense; there was less light now, after all.

Inside, I saw Michaels and the other guy walk over to a cabinet. It looked like the storage space was being used for its intended purpose.

“Dustin’s not here,” I said. “Back off for now. Heavyweight, Menagerie, you guys should head back to the car. I’ll stay close for now in case they say anything. Feral can wait by their cars; if we’re lucky, this is a stop on the way to the kid.”

The two men barely exchanged any words; Michaels helped the other guy – apparently a doctor, or something – find a couple of drawers. He pulled out a few bottles.

My stomach sank a bit. If they were stopping here to pick up something like that before seeing Dustin, that had implications I didn’t want to think about too much. Unfortunately, I couldn’t ignore them.

“It looks like a supply run,” I said to Menagerie. “Some kind of drugs or something. Not sure what kind, though.”

“Those fuckers,” Menagerie said. “I wish we could juts tear them apart instead of leaving them for the cops.”

“Me too,” I said, with more sympathy than honesty. “Priorities, though. Dustin first.”

“Absolutely,” Menagerie said. “Assholes can always wait.”

I hurriedly tip-toed for the door; Michaels and his friend looked like they were done.

I got out shortly before them, barely stopping myself from running. As they left, I instinctively started to follow them, then stopped myself; Feral should be waiting at their cars. I wasn’t needed there. I glanced back at the storage room’s number, noting it down on my phone for future reference, and then ran for the entrance, relieved that I could drop my invisibility.

“Heavyweight, can you give me a lift again?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You ready?”

“Yup. Same place.”

It took us a minute to meet up where we’d come in, but after that a safe, discreet exit was only one stomach-churning leap away.

I wished, not for the first time, that I could fly. Getting carried by a super-strong leaping guy isn’t a mode of travel I’d recommend to anyone, no matter how safe it may be.

We landed without incident. We got back to the car, we ditched our masks, and I got back in the driver’s seat.

“Michaels is getting in the car with two of the other guys,” Raquel said. “The last one is getting in the car he used to come here. It’s one of the goons. I figure we follow Michaels and the doctor.”

“Agreed,” I said. “Heavyweight?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Can’t see any reason to follow the other guy right now. Wish we could do both.”

“Me too,” I agreed, “but if he saw us and warned them, it might not matter. Besides, Michaels is the most dangerous one here. If he doesn’t lead us to Dustin, that should mean we have more time.”

Following the car was a bit more tense this time, since there were even fewer cars on the road now. It was all the way dark out, and while cities always have lights, Berkeleyport wasn’t all that busy. It was distinctly lacking in the nightlife department, and most of what it did have was localized – and we were in the wrong part of town for it.

With all that in mind, I tried to parallel the car we were following, rather than just pulling in behind them. Either Michaels or his driver was more paranoid than before, because they took a route that was circuitous at best and downright obtuse at worst, doubling back on themselves more than once. Without Feral’s timely warnings, we would have either been spotted or lost them completely at least three times. It made me wish I had someone who could teach me how to follow cars the right way, but for now I was just relieved we could cheat.

After at least a half hour of driving around, most of it spent going nowhere, they finally seemed to settle on a direction. With Raquel and Feral playing navigator, we kept up, and eventually they pulled into the driveway of a house on a street that looked abandoned. Feral warned us not to follow them, so we stayed back, parking the car on the previous street. When they stopped and got out, we did the same, putting our masks back on.

“They’ve gone inside the house,” Feral said. “I couldn’t follow them without being spotted. We need to either look for another way in or give up on stealth.”

I turned to Heavyweight and Menagerie. “I’m going around the back. You guys go where you can watch the front, preferably including both sides, and still stay together.”

“Okay,” Menagerie said. Heavyweight nodded. I took off.

There weren’t any cars in any of the other driveways, there weren’t any lights on in any of the other houses that I could see, and there were, in general, no other signs of human habitation except in the one house. All of them had gone inside, but if we followed they would probably know immediately, no matter how sneaky we wanted to be.

“Why can’t they be considerate and at least leave a freaking window open or something?” I wondered at Leon.

He sent me a burst of amusement, but I could tell that he felt frustrated, as I did. We needed a way in, or at least a way to see in.

I made it to the backyard of the house next to the one they’d entered and tried to look more closely. Behind Michaels house was an overgrown garden and a couple of trees, but no fence, at least. I could see the back door and a few rear and side windows. I started to walk over, slowly, looking at where I put my feet. I didn’t want to kick something by accident and make noise.

“Down!” Leon warned.

I dropped to the dirt immediately, tilting my head up so I could see and then staying still.

“I heard something,” Leon said.

I frowned a bit. Leon was using my ears…but then again I had been focused on my eyes and where I was going. It wasn’t odd for him to pick up on something I’d missed.

“What?” I asked.

“Not sure,” he replied. “I’m warning the others to be careful now. Menagerie isn’t happy about it.”

“We can’t wait!” I heard her say suddenly. I could feel her frustration and impatience in the words. “They have drugs, Michaels is a telepath or something, and there’s a kid in there getting brainwashed! We’ve waited too long already!”

“David, look!” Leon said. I focused on the house and saw a window open. Whoever was inside turned the light in the room off, so I couldn’t see them clearly. After a few seconds, the window closed again.

“Did he see us?” I asked Leon.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Maybe. We can’t be sure.”

“Menagerie, Feral, they might have just seen me,” I warned. “We should assume they know we’re here. There’s no point waiting long now; Feral, I think if you go in the front it should distract them. Heavyweight, you can join me back here and we’ll go in the other entrance, then work our way upstairs. Menagerie, keep an eye on the outside and warn us if any of them makes a break for it. Go ahead and call the cops; tell them there’s a disturbance or something. I imagine it’ll be true in a minute anyway.”

“Flicker, wait!” Menagerie said. “I just got a message from Mary – Michaels called for help. More guys with guns are on the way, and she’s coming too. She says we probably have a few minutes before they get here, but not long.”

“Dammit. Did she confirm that Dustin’s here at least?” I asked.

“Michaels said he is, yes,” she responded.

“Okay, then this is our shot. We need to take it. Everybody ready?”

“We’re good,” Menagerie said. “Heavyweight is on his way. Say when you’re ready and Feral will knock.”

Heavyweight didn’t take long to get to me; rather than going around, he just leapt over the house. I wouldn’t have seen him until the last second if I hadn’t been looking up to watch the windows, but I was, so I saw him – or rather, saw a dark, person-shaped blur – coming down. He landed a bit away from me.

I pointed to the door. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Go!” I said silently, and at the same time, “go!”

Heavyweight sprinted up to the door and kicked it without stopping, his foot striking just next to the doorknob. I heard something give way and the door was knocked open. I was running after him by then. A second later, I heard a shattering sound from farther away as I ran into the house behind Heavyweight.

I heard yelling and a few gunshots – I recognized that sound much better now – which seemed to be coming from upstairs. There were more crashing noises and a growl that I guessed was Feral, and I heard somebody scream and run – probably away from Feral, which was sensible.

Stepping in, I saw that we were in a living room or something like it, next to the kitchen. It was a pretty big house from the outside, I thought, but still in a city, so it wasn’t huge. Two stories. I expected the kid to be upstairs; this had been a sort-of long-term arrangement, and presumably if they were trying to make him loyal he’d have his own bedroom. Still, we couldn’t assume.

“I’m checking down here,” I told Heavyweight. “Watch the back door until I get back, then we go up.”

I didn’t wait for his reply. I figured they couldn’t get past him easily, and no one normal would be eager to jump from the second floor’s windows. I sprinted through the downstairs areas of the house, avoiding the bottom of the staircase, where I could see Feral knocking down another goon. There were two pistols on the floor. I barely registered anything about the downstairs rooms; all I cared about was whether or not they had people in them.

After less than a minute my circuit was over and I stopped in front of Heavyweight, nodding. “Done. Ready to go up?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Feral, we’re going to head upstairs. A distraction would be nice,” I said.

“Done!,” she replied. I caught a strong sense of anger from her; enough that I was a bit worried. When Heavyweight and I reached the stairs, I saw that the two downed goons were in bad shape: one was clutching a leg that had –

I barely managed to stop myself from throwing up. There was a piece of bone sticking out of the guy’s leg, and it was bent at a horrific angle. The second guy looked better off, but that was a low bar to clear; his face was bloody, and it looked like he was holding some of the skin on with his bare hands as he lay there whimpering in pain. I ran past them, feeling sick.

“Feral, what the hell are you doing? You don’t need to hurt these guys, just disarm them and stall them so we can get Dustin!”

“I know what I’m doing, David!” she snarled at me.

“Menagerie, rein her in! She’s going to kill somebody if you don’t!”

I wasn’t a doctor, but the amount of blood I’d seen on the ground was worrying. I wasn’t sure she hadn’t already killed somebody, even if they weren’t dead just yet. Heavyweight and I reached the stairs and I started running up; he just leapt straight to the top, going clean over me. I saw Feral rounding the corner out of sight as I set my foot on the first step.

More gunshots, and I saw Heavyweight flinch instinctively, although he didn’t look hurt and he didn’t start bleeding. Just the noise surprising him, I guess. I reached the top of the stairs, turning the corner to follow Feral, with Heavyweight just in front of me.

We were close behind Feral; as I turned I saw someone slamming the door shut and then she slashed with her claws – longer than I was used to seeing them – and I heard a scream as she tore a chunk from the door. She growled and leapt at it, and the door came off of its hinges, falling on the man on the other side, who had been trying to hold it closed. His leg was bloody too, though I couldn’t see how bad it was.

The first thing I noticed in the room was a line of four guys, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, each holding a gun. Two of them had pistols out. The other two had something else, and I didn’t wait to see what it was; I dove into the nearest doorway to any room other than that one, bending space as hard as I ever had, just in time to hear a deafening racket. Feral growled – in anger rather than pain – and I thought I heard Heavyweight grunt. I stood up, glanced around just enough to conclude that the room I was in was nearly empty – two twin beds were across from each other, each with a suitcase at its foot, and there was a single lamp, but that was it – and then cautiously moved back towards the door.

There was more shooting, and I saw Heavyweight walk past my doorway with one arm in front of his eyes. I assumed that he wasn’t sure they were bulletproof. He didn’t look hurt, that I could see, but he was moving fast. Feral roared and I heard another scream of pain.

“Menagerie, you need to control Feral!” I yelled again. As soon as the shooting stopped, I turned invisible and poked my head out to see what was happening.

“Shut up!” Menagerie yelled back. “Stop worrying about these assholes and help Dustin!”

In the room it was chaos. The lights weren’t broken. I could see Michaels and Dustin in the back corner of the room. Just inside the doorway, one goon was still on the ground, feebly failing to crawl out from under the door with one arm and one leg while the other hand tried to hold the gash on his left leg closed. Further in, two more men who had guns a minute ago weren’t moving at all, though one didn’t look bloody. The last two were standing in front of Michaels and Dustin. One held a pistol, and his hands were shaking, while the other held a shotgun. He looked steadier. There was something familiar about him.

In the middle of the room, wrestling each other, were Heavyweight and Feral. Feral wasn’t foaming at the mouth, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if she started; she looked like her name, now, thrashing wildly as she attempted to break free, but Heavyweight seemed to have her partially pinned. He was behind her back, with one arm hooked around her forelegs and the other around her neck. He couldn’t hold her still, but he was preventing her from attacking anyone else.

They rolled over one of the motionless goons and he screamed in pain, retching, then tried to roll and crawl away from them. One of Feral’s kicking rear legs hit him in the back and he grunted again, then crawled faster.

Michaels looked scared, but Dustin looked absolutely terrified.

“God dammit, Feral, you’re killing them and you’ve already scared Dustin shitless!” I yelled silently. “Fucking calm down!”

She either didn’t hear me, or didn’t care. I decided that my only chance at saving this clusterfuck was ending the situation; maybe if I could get Dustin clear and take away her excuse for going insane, Menagerie would have an easier time calming Feral down. Leon suggested that Dustin’s situation was probably making Menagerie emotional herself; that could be part of the problem. If he was safe, then maybe Menagerie could assert control more easily.

I could hope.

Besides, I wasn’t up to wrestling Feral. I would just get in Heavyweight’s way.

I jumped over the guy still half-buried under the door and ran across the room, trying to get behind the two guys with guns, but one of them twitched, and I realized where I’d seen him – it had been a poor view, which was why I failed to identify him immediately. He was the guy who’d found Menagerie and I the other night, when we’d been running away from Michaels’ house. The guy that I’d injured badly, who Mary had said wasn’t supposed to be here.

I got a sinking feeling in my stomach, and it intensified when he turned toward me as I took my first few steps into the room.

“Menagerie! Watch your back, Mary might have set us up!” I warned.

He was turning his shotgun towards me when Feral suddenly stopped struggling for a second, then roared again and slashed at the floor with her two free legs, even managing a flailing half-slash with the claws on her front paws.

The section of floor splintered, creaked, and gave out, and Heavyweight and Feral fell through into the kitchen. Dustin screamed in fear, Michaels stifled what sounded like a hysterical laugh, and the two goons jerked in surprise. The one with the pistol accidentally let off a shot towards the hole in the ground, and the guy with the shotgun lost his footing as the floor under him twisted, managing to fall away from the mess of splinters and the hole in the floor.

I stepped forward, next to the guy with the pistol – completely out of his line of fire – and grabbed him by the wrists, still invisible, as I kneed him in the gut. He moaned in pain and I yanked him forward, off-balance, then twisted his wrists until he dropped the gun. I kicked it into the hole and shoved him face first into the wall, then kicked the shotgun guy in the face twice while he was down, before kicking his gun down the hole too. He tried to grab my foot by feel, got my ankle with one hand, then let go when I dropped to my other knee and punched him in the stomach three times. I grabbed his head and slammed it into the side of the dresser he was next to, and he slumped to the floor on his side, dazed.

“David, check batteries,” Leon warned. I closed my left eye for a second, and found that Leon was almost out of energy, though I still had plenty. We’d determined that using the powers I’d gained from Leon drained him, but he could resupply from me if needed.

I glanced around to make certain the goons were all down. The one who’d been under the door was still moving, slowly, but he was unarmed. The others were in similar situations; none of them was doing more than moaning and clutching at injuries. I dropped my invisibility, standing back up and facing Michaels and Dustin.

“Let the kid go and we’ll leave,” I said. It occurred to me as I spoke that I wasn’t sure whether we could keep that promise, the way Feral was acting. I stood there, staring them down, but neither of them spoke for a moment. I felt a sharp pang of guilt as it occurred to me that Dustin probably wouldn’t feel reassured to be going with the people who’d caused the mess he’d just witnessed part of. I couldn’t blame him for that. We’d just have to get him to the cops as soon as possible, and hope that he’d be all right.

Still, the sight of the man downstairs, with the bone poking out, flashed in my mind. I remembered that at least one goon in that very room wasn’t moving. He might be dead already.

“David, he’s trying something,” Leon warned me after a second.

“Michaels, or whatever you want me to call you, give up the kid now,” I said. I tried to sound menacing. I’d never been a great bluffer, but presumably it works better when the other guy knows you can turn invisible. It was a less useful ability than I would have thought, but still potentially frightening, and if I could just intimidate Michaels into giving up, it wouldn’t matter that I was rapidly becoming less willing to hurt anyone that night.

Michaels finally moved, but he didn’t talk to me.

“I’m sorry, Dustin,” he said. I stepped forward immediately, afraid he would hurt the kid, but before I could act he continued talking. “I tried to hide you from them as long as I could,” he said.

What?

I opened my mouth, but froze for a second when I saw Dustin’s face – pale, drawn, and afraid. Currently, if I went by where his eyes were pointed, he was afraid of me.

I heard more scuffling below – presumably Heavyweight and Feral were still going at it – and then I felt a sudden pain in my leg and I fell backward.

I hit and my breath rushed from my chest, and then I felt fingers closing around my neck. The shotgun guy, the same bastard from the other night, dropped a table leg – that must have been what he hit me with – as he started choking me, straddling me so I couldn’t move. I twisted to try to loosen his grip, but I was slow getting my hands up and he was hanging on like his life depended on it. I couldn’t loosen his grip, and I lost track of time as my lungs started to burn with a need to be filled. I couldn’t think clearly.

“There!” Leon thought, the notion highlighting the discarded table leg. I groped half-blindly for it, barely able to see it in my peripheral vision, and then swung it as hard as I could at the guy’s head. I missed the first time, hitting his shoulder weakly. The second swing narrowly missed his eye, and he twitched in reflex, recoiling slightly. I felt a trickle of air flow into my lungs and started to swing madly, bloodying his lip and scraping his cheek, embedding splinters there, but he wouldn’t let go and soon stopped flinching. With my right hand I managed to seize his left thumb, and I tried to wrench it back in the wrong direction; that hand loosened and let go as he tried to stop me from breaking the thumb, and I yanked that hand sharply to the side, as hard as I could, while I bucked up and in the same direction with my hips. The force was enough to knock him off of me, and we both landed on our sides, facing each other. He managed to grab the wrist of my free hand and he kneed my in the stomach. For a moment my grip slackened. I’d lost the table leg, and he tried to push me over onto my other side, so my back would be facing him. I stopped another knee by letting it hit me in the shin instead of the stomach or the groin, then he managed to yank on my shoulders and turn me over, and his arm locked around my throat. I tried to kick him, but the angle was bad and I couldn’t see what I was doing, so I missed. I still hadn’t gotten my breath back, and I knew I didn’t have long.

In a moment of inspiration, I remembered the last time I’d been caught. I bent space again, and it gave me just enough room to get the fingers of my left hand, then the hand itself, between his arm and my throat. My right hand grabbed the table leg – which I could see again – by the undamaged end, and then I blindly jabbed it backwards at him.

He screamed into my ear in pain and his grip loosened; my left hand levered his arm away from my throat, and I rolled over my side away from him, then stood up.

He rolled the other way, and grabbed a shotgun – not the one he’d originally had – using it to lever himself up. Before he could point it at me I stepped forward and hit it with my improvised club, knocking it out from under him. He fell back to the ground, and I started kicking him while he was down.

He wrenched the gun around and pulled the trigger, but it wasn’t pointed up at me. I jumped onto the bed, out of the way, but still felt a twinge of pain in my right leg; he’d probably hit me there. He started to stand again and I shut my eyes tightly, checking my batteries again as I triggered a bright, instantaneous flash of white light.

That got another reaction, and when I opened my eyes Dustin, Michaels, and the shotgun guy were all blinking furiously. I grabbed his right wrist – the hand that was holding the weapon while his left instinctively rubbed at his eyes – and yanked the weapon away. From his reaction, I might have broken a finger or two. I tossed it down the hole, then wrenched his arm behind him and yanked upward. I’m not sure what it did, but it definitely broke or dislocated something. Then I grabbed him by the hair and slammed his face into the nearest wall three times. I glanced down in the hole and didn’t see Feral or Heavyweight – they must have moved somewhere else – so I dumped him down there for good measure, wanting to be absolutely sure he’d stay out of my way this time.

Then I turned back to Michaels and Dustin.

Michaels lunged at me, wearing an unpleasant expression that I couldn’t read, and my kick caught him in the chest. He fell onto his back, between me and Dustin, and twisted his head to look “up” at Dustin, grimacing and gasping in more pain than he should have felt.

“Dustin,” he wheezed, “help!”

Dustin, looking even more frightened and unhinged, was shaking as his hands came up. A few weak sparks cracked out into the air.

I unfroze and stepped forward, and Michaels crab-walked away from me, letting out a panicked scream, but he was almost smiling.

I stopped moving and tried to say something, but I couldn’t think of the rights words.

Dustin raised his hands and closed his eyes, and a wave of fire poured out.

I felt heat as I dived back behind the bed.

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Trust But Verify 8

Trust But Verify 7

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Raquel and I didn’t talk to each other out loud or in our heads as we walked. We left the little park and went back the way we’d come, past the bus stop and further down the street. We continued on past the BPSC building, across the street to our left, looking around for someplace discreet that we could wait.

“I’m not seeing anything promising,” Leon said as we passed it. “These are mostly more business buildings, not public spaces.”

“There’s a coffee shop up ahead,” I noted. “But I don’t think we could see the front door or the parking lot from there. What about the other sides? Maybe there’s something next to the building, instead of across from it?”

“Let’s go to the coffee shop first,” Raquel said. “I could use some anyway, and there’s always a chance someone is looking at us. If I were running BPSC, I’d be paranoid – especially today.”

“Let’s try to find a spot first,” I said. “If we do, we can always get some coffee afterward. If we don’t, we can head there while we think. Even if they’re paranoid, they have no way to pick us out of a crowd unless we start acting suspicious.”

“Okay,” Raquel acquiesced.

It took us maybe ten minutes to explore the immediate area. We were walking slowly, trying to make sure we didn’t look like we were in a hurry. BPSC wasn’t a fortress, by any means, but it wasn’t exactly situated to make spying convenient, either. We’d started across the street from it, then walked in a broad circuit. It was on a corner, so there wasn’t anything next to the building on two sides except the street. Across from it on those sides were a series of small businesses, on one side, and a larger, blocky office building on the other, between five and ten stories tall. I didn’t bother counting.

The bus stop, where we’d started, was on a fairly busy street. Moving past the BPSC building and away from the center of the heart of the city’s businesses, it was obvious at a glance that the roads were less crowded ahead of us than behind. After we passed the BPSC building, we could get a good look at what was next to it: a bank, then a clothing store, and finally a hair salon. We turned left, letting BPSC go out of sight, to see what else was on the block.

There wasn’t anything relevant on that side, so we kept going. The other two sides of the block were more of the same. Businesses, some local and some part of larger chains, but nothing helpful.

“I’m not seeing a lot of options,” I said to Raquel. We detoured a bit to take us out of sight of the BPSC building for the last part of our circuit.

“Me neither,” she agreed. “If we can’t be inconspicuous by just finding a bench, I’m not sure what our best option is.”

I looked over at the smaller businesses across the street, where we’d started. “Rooftop again? Go around behind those buildings, find a way up, and see if there’s a good spot?”

She agreed. We walked past the bus stop again, this time ending up almost where we’d started, then moved a bit further away from BPSC and behind the buildings across from it, into the parking lots. A brief search let us find one that was easy to climb, and up we went.

The rooftops weren’t all flat, but enough of them were that we had no trouble finding a comfortable perch. Once we were up there, we took a minute to get situated, and Raquel produced a small pair of binoculars.

“I guess you figured this might happen?” I said.

“Kind of, yeah,” she said. “I mostly grabbed them on instinct on the way out of the house, honestly. But I was thinking ahead on the way here. Feral, are you watching the back door?”

“Yes,” Feral said.

Raquel and I took turns watching the front door of the BPSC building through the binoculars. I’m not sure how long we were sitting up there on the roof, exactly, waiting to see if the woman who’d given me the business card would come out, but at least a few hours went by. At one point I hit the coffee shop we’d noticed earlier, getting us each some caffeine to keep us going. In the meantime, we barely talked; whoever was on watch needed to pay attention. When it wasn’t my turn, I was talking to Leon and trying to work on what Bloodhound had taught us. I didn’t make any light, since I didn’t want to draw attention to us or use up my energy – I’d learned that lesson after the previous night – but I tried to figure out if there was a way for me to keep track of how much energy I had left, so I wouldn’t need Leon to tell me.

Our amateur surveillance lasted well into the afternoon with no results other than making us bored and tired. I almost felt like I was travelling. There’s a weird, kind of lethargic feeling that you get sometimes when on a long car ride, on a train, or on a plane. It doesn’t make much sense, since you’re spending the time sitting on your ass, but it happens anyway. It felt a lot like that.

It wasn’t completely boring, of course; we saw a few people come and go from the building, confirming that at least something was happening there. We’d seen the cars in the parking lot, obviously, and been pretty sure, but we hadn’t dared approach the building closely enough to really look inside. While Raquel’s binoculars let us look at a few windows, the ones we could spot hadn’t given us any information. The light was wrong for us to see in.

“She’s here,” Feral finally reported. I glanced at my phone and saw that it was almost four in the afternoon.

“Is she alone? Heading for a car?” I asked.

“It looks like that’s a ‘yes’ to both,” Raquel said. “Not sure which car is hers, though; I don’t see the one from last night.”

A glance told me that Raquel’s eyes were closed, and the binoculars were lowered; presumably, she was looking through Feral’s eyes.

“Feral, can you latch on?” I asked.

“I think so – one moment,” she replied.

Raquel pulled out a piece of paper and a pen, and circled the car’s license plate. We’d written them all down earlier, not having anything better to do during the hours spent sitting there. We weren’t planning to go to the police, but it wasn’t out of the question, and we figured we might want to be able to identify the cars again ourselves either way.

Raquel opened her eyes a second later and looked at me. “She’s on. Looks like our friend is leaving.”

“Okay,” I said. “Not much we can do until we know where to go, then. Let’s hop down. You want to eat something? I’m starving.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” she admitted, “but I don’t really have cash.”

“It’s on me, then,” I said. “Don’t sweat it. I’m sure you’ll save my life one of these days to cancel it out.”

Raquel smiled. “Saving lives gets me free food? I wish I’d known that before.”

Getting back down from the roof wasn’t challenging; it was a short building. I used my power on us both, and the landing wasn’t hard enough to hurt. We’d looked down first, of course, to make sure there wasn’t anyone around to see us, and it seemed like we had good timing; only a few seconds after our feet hit the asphalt of the parking lot, a few people came out the back of the very same building we’d been on top of, walking to their cars. Rather than hiding, we just walked away as calmly as possible, figuring that they wouldn’t care about us unless we gave them a reason to.

We found a place nearby and got a couple slices of pizza each, figuring that we didn’t want to take too long; there was no way to know how soon we’d be able to move out again.

“Can Feral tell us where they are at all?” I asked. One benefit of being able to talk to someone mind-to-mind is that you can do it with your mouth full.

“She’s not sure exactly,” Raquel told me. “But kind of northeast-ish? More north than east.”

“Should we start following after when we finish?” I asked.

“I think we can, yeah,” Raquel said.

Once our food was eaten, we took a second to check bus routes and then found the appropriate stop to head north. We weren’t waiting that long. On the bus, Raquel closed her eyes and leaned against the window, sharing Feral’s perceptions again. I listened to her describe where Feral was being taken.

A while later, Raquel and I arrived near Feral’s destination, going the rest of the distance on foot. The car had gone to an apartment building in a middle-class part of the city, not too close to the beach but not too far either. By the time we got there it was almost dark out, and getting chilly. Feral, Raquel told me, had seen the woman we were following park her car in the basement and get out of it, then head inside. She couldn’t follow her too closely without being seen, which we all agreed we wanted to avoid for now, but she was able to see that the woman had taken the elevator up to the third floor.

“So, what now?” Raquel said. “We could just head in and start knocking on doors on the third floor, but I’m not feeling that trusting. I don’t know about you.”

“Yeah, I’d rather not show her my face either,” I said. “She gave us a hint and didn’t want to fight, but that only takes you so far. I think we should leave her a message – invite her to meet us somewhere else, maybe? Feral could lead her, or something. That way if she tries to call someone on the way, we’ll know. Feral can probably figure out which place is hers by scent, right?”

We talked it over a bit longer, but the plan didn’t change much; it just got detailed. In less than an hour, Feral opened a door to let Raquel in. Raquel went up the stairs to the third floor, tied a note onto Feral, then opened the door to the hallway and left the building. Once Raquel was back with me, Feral went down the hall, sniffing at each door until she was confident that she had the right one. Then she grew a bit larger, knocked loudly, and quickly shrank back down to normal cat size.

“It’s 307,” Raquel said. “Which one is that?”

I glanced down at the list in my hand; we’d copied the names of all the third floor residents from the buzzer at the front door.

“Apartment 307…Mary Wade,” I said.

We waited.

“She’s answering the door,” Raquel told me. A second later, she smiled. “Ha, she didn’t expect that, I think. She’s looking around. She sees the note…huh. She’s talking to Feral. Asking if she can understand her.”

I wished I could see what was happening for myself, but this did seem like the best option. We’d toyed with the idea of having me – invisible – try to sneak into her apartment, thinking that it might be too good an opportunity to waste, but decided against it in the end.

“Okay, she’s getting her shoes and stuff,” Raquel said. “Looks like we’re on. We should get there.”

“Right,” I said.

We started walking. We’d taken a bit of extra time beforehand to look around, trying to find someplace where we could meet with the woman privately. Mostly, we wanted to be able to hide our faces from her without attracting attention from other people.

What we had found was a copse of trees on the side of a bicycle path. There was probably someplace better, but we didn’t want to introduce ourselves by making her walk too far and pissing her off.

Raquel and I were nearly at the path when Feral invited our guest, so it didn’t take long for us to get to the copse. We stepped between a few trees, and then we were out of sight. On one side was the bike path; on the other was a chain link fence. The bottom was bent, making it plain that kids or animals went under it with regularity, or had at some point, anyway. We weren’t sure what the building behind the fence was, but it didn’t really matter. Some kind of factory or warehouse, maybe. It seemed abandoned, or at least empty for the day.

We put on our masks and waited, standing next to each other.

After a few minutes, Feral walked into the little space behind the trees, closely followed by Mary Wade, and I finally got a look at her.

She was wearing jeans and a hoodie, but she lowered the hood when she saw us. She was a brunette, and wore her hair tied back, with bangs that covered most of her forehead. She had a sharp sort of face, with prominent cheekbones and a nose that was a bit big. I guessed that she was a bit older than me, enough to have graduated from college already. Her face was closed off – an obvious poker face – and her eyes rapidly assessed both of us, then scanned the area around us. She wasn’t shy about it; she looked us over blatantly, and she was just as plain about the way she looked around and behind us.

Menagerie – with our masks on, I started to think of her as Menagerie, not even noticing at the time – held a small orb of light in the palm of one hand. We didn’t want to intimidate Mary, but we’d agreed that it would be good if she was a bit confused about what we could do. Her actions the previous night hadn’t been hostile, but it was a weird situation. The light wasn’t threatening, but it was a clear statement that we had powers.

It also let us see each other, of course.

While she studied us, Feral walked over to Menagerie and affectionately rubbed against her legs, growing to a slightly larger size – not unbelievable for a domestic housecat, but on the big side. Then she curled up on the ground.

Mary looked at us questioningly for a second. I sat down, still facing her, and gestured with one hand for her to do the same. She hesitated, glancing at Menagerie, then did so. Menagerie sat down a second later, and let the light in her hand dim a bit.

“I’m Flicker,” I told her, breaking the silence. “You’re Mary Wade?”

She nodded, still not speaking.

“My friend is Menagerie,” I went on, gesturing to my side. “You’ve already met Feral.” Feral lifted her head for a moment at the sound of her name, looking at Mary, then put it back down, closing her eyes. “Normally, I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but this is a bit of a weird situation. Am I right in thinking that you gave me your card so we could find you?”

“Yeah,” she said with another nod. “Didn’t think you’d necessarily find me at home, though.”

“After last night, we didn’t think you’d appreciate it if we showed up at your job,” Menagerie said. “This is the first chance we’ve had to talk. Why did you give Flicker your card, Mary?”

“You two found Michaels at his house,” Mary said. “My best guess is that you’re looking for that kid, Dustin. I want you to find him.”

Menagerie straightened a bit, involuntarily, and I could hear Feral trying to soothe her, to keep her calm.

“See what she’ll tell us for free first,” Leon said. “We can bring up the fact that she helped to kidnap him after.”

“We are looking for Dustin,” I said. With a split second to decide, I chose to take Leon’s advice. “So, can you tell us where he is? And maybe who took him and why? We know Michaels was involved, but not much else.”

Mary hesitated for a second, but then seemed to gather her thoughts – and maybe her courage – to speak. “There’s a guy. I’ve only met him once, in person. He’s out of town, I think, but not that far away. Michaels and I both work for him, and he’s the one in charge. I don’t know where he is, where he’s from, or much else. He’s had a few supers grabbed, not just Dustin, and not all from Berkeleyport. Then Michaels…does his thing.” She sounded like there was a foul taste in her mouth. Before I could ask what she meant, she looked up at us. “He does something to your mind. I don’t know all the details, how it works or anything like that. But he can take someone who hates his guts, and make them think he’s their best friend and they owe him their lives. I don’t know if there’s any way to stop it or reverse it. It takes time, though. I’d say Dustin has a couple days before he’s mindfucked, but I’m not sure if it’s different on kids. As far as I know, Michaels has never tried it on anyone so young before.”

Again, I could hear the byplay of Menagerie’s anger and Feral trying to help restrain it. Menagerie was furious, and I think only the fact that we were getting answers helped her cool off.

“He mindfucks people, you said,” I responded. “Makes them…loyal to him, or something?”

“Basically, yeah,” Mary answered.

“Then how come you’re talking to us?” I asked. “I can’t see why he wouldn’t do it to you.”

Mary’s eyes narrowed in anger. “He would, but I don’t hang around him enough. You remember I said neither of us is in charge, right? The boss has me stay in town mostly to keep an eye on him, but that means occasional check-ins. If he ever does try to redecorate my brain, I have permission to kill him, and Michaels knows it. See, he doesn’t just twist people to make them loyal to him. He can make it work for other people too. In our case, that means the boss.”

“You said it takes time to work,” I noted. “How much? It must be a lot if Michaels isn’t done by now.”

“It’s complicated,” Mary said. “I don’t know everything, like I said. From what I’ve heard him say, he can work faster than this, but the results aren’t as good. They’re more brittle, more prone to breaking down. He does it slow so that the work will last, in the long-term. With Dustin, it might be harder or easier, like I said, but I know he’s not finished yet – he’s scheduled to go see the kid again. When he does finish, Dustin will get shipped out of town. That’s our deadline, if you want to help him, ‘cause I don’t know where he’ll be headed.”

“Where is he?” Menagerie demanded angrily.

Mary looked at her. “I don’t know, exactly. He-”

“Bullshit!” Menagerie interrupted. “You helped grab him in the first place. Don’t try to sell us some innocent act. Feral could fucking smell you, you bitch. We know it wasn’t just Michaels who grabbed him – it was both of you. So tell me where the fuck he is.” As she spoke, Feral raised her head and yawned wide, exposing her teeth.

“Don’t threaten me,” Mary said calmly. “I’m not afraid of Michaels, and I’m not going to be afraid of you. The only one I’m afraid of is our boss. When he gives me orders, I follow them, because I don’t want to die. Now, you can back down, and I’ll help you find the boy – which I was already going to do – or you can try to play games and scare me, and this conversation will be over. If you can’t keep your cool, then I won’t risk dealing with you.”

Menagerie bristled, and I put a hand on her arm. “She came to us, remember?” I said. “She gave me her card. She let us find her home. Chill out.”

Menagerie yanked her arm out from under my hand, but she cooled off, settling into a sullen silence, and Feral relaxed again. After waiting a second, I looked back at Mary. “Why come to us instead of the cops? The FBI has powered agents in town looking for this kid. I doubt we can protect you from your boss any better than they could.”

She hesitated for a second before answering, and Leon noticed that her left hand – which she had been leaning on before Menagerie’s little outburst – was near her back. She put it back on the ground, but I had the distinct sense that she had been thinking about reaching for something when threatened. A weapon? Feral hadn’t seen her grab it, if so.

“The boss is dangerous in more ways than one,” She said finally. “I can’t just run away from him – he can find me. And if I betray him, he will find me. So I need to find a way to help Dustin without anyone else learning that I did it. I imagine the FBI and the cops can keep secrets, but they also keep records…and when this is all over, I’d like to be able to get back to my life. Besides, they might try to go after the boss now. It’s too soon for that. I’m juggling a lot of problems. You guys keep secrets already, though. So I’m offering a simple deal. I help you get Dustin out, now, before it’s too late, and in return you help me find a way to get rid of Michaels and the boss and whoever else is helping him. I figure that will mean going to the FBI at some point, but I don’t want to do it yet. I don’t even know where the boss is right now. I don’t think Michaels does either.”

I drummed my fingers on one leg, considering. “Do you have a plan already?”

“Yeah,” Mary said. “After last night, Michaels’ schedule got a bit disrupted. I convinced the boss that he should lay low, and he could finish the work on Dustin after we’ve had time to make sure no one followed him. That bought us a little extra time. I can point you at Michaels, and he’ll lead you to Dustin. I can help stall him a little longer, too, by insisting that he lay low so you won’t find him, if you need me to. And I can try to make sure that he doesn’t have too much backup there. But you guys absolutely cannot get caught, or drop any hint that I helped. When this happens, the boss is going to be pissed. Michaels is a coward, and he’ll try to pin it on me. If the boss looks too closely at me, I may not be able to lie to him, and that will get me dead. You understand?”

“I think we do,” I said. “So we help Dustin first, and then we start working on Michaels and your boss afterward, then?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Okay with you?” I asked Menagerie.

“Yeah, I guess,” she said. She turned to Mary. “I don’t trust you, though. Even if you’re telling the truth now, you still helped kidnap him in the first place.”

Mary locked eyes with her, and for a few tense seconds neither of them said anything. Some suicidal part of me was tempted to make a joke about cat fights just to see the looks on their faces.

“Are we done?” Mary said finally, looking at me.

“Just about, I think,” I said. “Tell us what you can about Michaels so we can find Dustin, and then tell us how you want us to contact you afterward. I think that’s it.”

“What if I need to get in touch with you?” Mary asked.

“There isn’t a good way to do that right now, unfortunately,” I said.

It occurred to me that we could try getting in touch with her through our superstuff.com accounts, but I didn’t really want to risk it until I’d had time to think it through and talk to Menagerie first. We didn’t really have proof that she wanted to help us or Dustin yet, and I found myself thinking that if her boss really was collecting supers, and really did have a way of brainwashing them, he might want us, too. Learning who we were would make that a lot easier. Leon backed me up on my paranoia.

“Alright,” Mary said. She paused for a moment to think. “I’m not sure what the best way is for you guys to reach me, either. Right now, I’m confident that no one is watching me. But once things start to go wrong, there’s a chance the boss will get suspicious, and he knows I don’t like him. I’ve never given him a reason to spy on me before, but it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist.”

“You have a balcony, right?” Menagerie said. “We can leave you message there without going through the building. Feral can just climb up.”

Mary winced. “That’s not the worst idea, but it’s a big risk – for me. If someone starts watching me, they could notice that.”

I was trying to brainstorm ideas when Leon broke in.

“Consider your arrangement with Bloodhound,” he suggested. “An email account dedicated to the purpose could work, at least for things that aren’t time-sensitive.”

I passed on the suggestion, and Mary seemed to like that idea.

“That works,” she said. “We can leave it at that, for now, if you guys want. But you won’t have any way to reach me in a hurry if something goes wrong with getting Dustin. Are you okay with that?”

“If something does go wrong, you won’t be able to help us anyway, will you?” I said. “From what you said before, I assumed you would be laying low at the time. If anything, Michaels will probably call you asking for help. The only thing you need to do is see if you can get stuck behind a red light.”

Mary laughed. “That would be convenient, yeah,” she said. She looked at me seriously. “If I make it there and you aren’t gone, I can’t throw the fight. Do you get that? Last night the boss was pissed at Michaels for getting noticed in the first place. When something happens twice he’ll be looking at both of us. I need to be able to look him in the eye and say that I did everything I could when I got the call, without lying, or he might kill me on the spot. I like living. I’m willing to take risks, but I’m not a martyr.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Just in case we do end up having to fight, though, why don’t you tell us how your powers work? It would make it a lot easier for us to win, and your boss wouldn’t have any way to know.”

She hesitated for a second, looking at me, then nodded slowly. “Okay. I can do that.”

She held up her hands, and two spheres – transparent, but still visible – formed above them. After a moment, one started floating around, seemingly at random, moving up, down, or laterally in front of her.

“I don’t know whether you’d call it telekinesis, technically,” Mary said. “It’s more like I can make force fields, but they can’t be big. Maybe large enough to cover my head, tops. I can make them move around some – actually pretty fast. I can use them to contain anything small enough. And I can’t maintain them too far away from me. I don’t know the exact range limit.”

They weren’t easy to see in the dark, but I could tell they were there. In effect, she made spherical projectiles. She’d used one to knock me down, and two to knock Feral off of herself. Thinking back, she might have used her power to protect herself when Feral hit her and knocked her to the ground.

“Are those tough enough to go through walls?” I asked. “I seem to recall someone punched holes in a jail wall and a police car not too long ago to break a super out. And someone tore up a certain golf course owner’s house when he disappeared. You?”

Leon noted that we might owe her some gratitude for pulling her punches. If she could put one of those spheres through a wall, then she probably could have put it through me, too.

She grimaced. “Yes. I broke the jailbird out on my own. Michaels was along for the other one, and he was supposed to keep it from turning into a fight. It didn’t work out that way. Unfortunately, Walker – the golf course guy – he transformed into something else. He was tough as hell, but once he changed he wasn’t smart enough to beat me. I tried to throw the fight, but it didn’t work.”

I got the sense that she was leaving something out, and Leon agreed, but we held back instead of prying further. “How many supers has this boss of yours collected? How many are in town?”

Mary shrugged. “I don’t know how many he has total. In town, only three that I know of: myself, Michaels, and one other – a guy who works at the same company as me. I think you destroyed his arm last night, actually, Flicker. The rest are somewhere else, even the ones from Berkeleyport.”

“What does he do?” I asked. Maybe he just hadn’t had a chance, but I hadn’t noticed the guy doing anything particularly super in our brief scuffle.

Mary shook her head. “I’m not sure, exactly. I don’t get told everything. I think he has some kind of improved senses, though. Probably smell or hearing, but it could be both, or a complete package. So if you do see him, try to stay downwind and quiet. He shouldn’t be out and about, though. You really did a number on his arm, and I think he’s leaving town to get it looked at, at least temporarily. So for a couple days, the only supers against you are Michaels and technically me…and Dustin, if we take too long or get really unlucky.”

“All right,” I said. “Good to know. Now, what can you tell us about finding Michaels and Dustin?”

“For starters, Michaels isn’t his real name,” Mary said. “The boss has us all use fake identities, just in case we screw up. I’m not sure how he sets them up to look real. Someone else handles that. Anyway, the point is that if you look for Michaels by name you won’t find him. After last night, he’s already shredded anything he had except for cash. The house he was living in is either going to end up in the hands of some bank or burn down in a random fire. I’m not in charge of that part, but I have a general idea what to expect. The boss is…paranoid. I’m not sure what he’s even after, but I get the sense that there’s something specific he’s trying to do, and someone specific he’s trying to avoid being noticed by.”

“Does that mean your name isn’t Mary Wade?” Menagerie asked.

“Yeah, it does,” she answered. “But you have to call me something, and that’s as good as anything else for now. You’ll note that I’m not asking for your real names, either.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “So, can you give us Michaels’ new address, or what?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Shit, I didn’t think to bring paper.” She hesitated for a second, then reached into her pocket and pulled out the note that we’d attached to Feral. “Never mind. One sec.”

She pulled out a pen and scribbled the address down, then handed it to me. As I took it, it seemed obvious that she was reluctant to let our fingers touch even for a second, but I couldn’t tell if she was afraid, nervous, cautious, or something else.

I glanced at the paper, then pocketed it. “Okay. You said Michaels will be laying low, but our only way to find Dustin is when he moves again. How long?”

“When’s a good time for you to follow him?” she asked. “I’m technically looking after him right now, keeping him out of trouble. I’ve got a little wiggle room.”

“Menagerie, Feral, what do you guys think?” I asked. “Tomorrow night is Halloween, and I’d rather not do it then. Not sure when Michaels will head over, but there will be a lot of people out if it’s in the evening. Tuesday?”

“The sooner the better,” Menagerie said, but she didn’t argue with my reasoning.

“Can you convince him to lay low tomorrow, then make the trip, say, Tuesday evening? Or maybe Wednesday?” I asked Mary.

“Wednesday,” Mary said. “If I tell him to get back out there too soon, it’ll look weird. I don’t know where Dustin is, but I know he’s safe for now. He’s getting fed and stuff, and he’s not locked in some cell or anything. I’ll tell Michaels that he has to lay low until Thursday for security reasons. Then on Wednesday I’ll change my mind. If you want, we can set up those emails, actually – you can send me a message when you guys are ready, and I can call him then. He’ll want to get out of his bolthole and get to work so he can finish. I’m not sure, but I think his power weakens over time, if he’s not around to boost it every once in a while, at least before he’s finished. So he should react predictably.”

Menagerie, Feral, and Leon all agreed.

“We’ve got a deal, then,” I said.

The three of us stood up, and Mary and I worked out the last few details. Before we could leave, Menagerie spoke up again.

“Hey,” she said. “Mary, or whatever. If you fuck us over or if anything happens to Dustin I’m going to find you, got it? I don’t care how long it takes or where you run.”

Feral stood and yawned again.

“Yeah, I got it,” Mary said. She sounded unimpressed.

We went our separate ways.

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Trust But Verify 6

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A little light from Menagerie’s hand allowed us to read the business card. It was laminated but not too fancy once we could see it, with “Berkeleyport Security Consulting” written in an easy-to-read font. Below that were a phone number and a web address. I flipped the card over, checking the back, but that side was blank.

“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t latch on without being seen,” Feral reported apologetically. “They’re gone now, in any case.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Menagerie said. “Not your fault anyway. If I’d just looked where I was going they might not have even realized we were here.”

Feral started to protest that, but Leon cut her off. “We need to decide what to do now. Do we want to look into the card immediately? I don’t know about you two, but we need to rest. If we do much more I think I might be in trouble.”

I winced a bit at that. “Sorry, Leon. I didn’t mean to push so far tonight. I should have figured it was possible, though.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” he said. “I didn’t really think through the risks either – I guess I didn’t think he would notice us, however he did that – but I think we need to be a little more careful from now on. Especially with Michaels. Right now, I think that means recharging before we go back out.”

“Yeah,” Menagerie said, “I guess you’re right.” She turned to look at me. “Did you get hurt at all?”

“That guy’s bullet grazed me, but I’m fine now,” I said. Only the first half was a lie. All right, fine might have been stretching it a bit when my left side was still sore, but I wasn’t losing blood and the wound was closed, so I didn’t have to worry about it getting infected. That was pretty good to be going on with, and I didn’t want her to feel guilty that I’d jumped in front of the gun. I could heal, and she couldn’t.

It wasn’t until that moment that it really sunk in that I’d jumped in front of the gun. I felt a shiver go down my back, and I started to sweat. It made me thankful that it was still dark and I was still masked, since she couldn’t see me well enough to tell.

I pushed the realization aside to pay attention to the conversation.

“I’m glad you’re all right, at least,” Menagerie was saying. “Thanks for helping me. I mean…you know what I mean. I appreciate it.”

“As do I,” Feral agreed.

“You’re welcome,” I said. “I guess it’s not fair that some of us get to regenerate and others don’t.” I looked around, trying to make certain we were still relatively inconspicuous. It was still dark, but probably not for much longer. We were sitting on a rooftop again, and I hadn’t even seen what sort of building we were on before climbing up. It had a mostly-flat, mostly-empty roof, and it was only two stories tall. We had been in a hurry. That had been good enough.

“In retrospect, we probably should have kept moving instead of hiding here, actually,” Leon noted, clearly following my thoughts. “If they’d been willing to, they could have just set this place on fire and waited for us to come down. With enough guys, that might have been enough for them to get us all, one way or another.”

“Shit, I hadn’t thought of that,” Menagerie said. “You’re right, though.”

That unpleasant thought killed the conversation. I found myself imagining the situation: if it happened, could we escape? Surrounding the building was a tricky proposition, especially at night. A fire would provide illumination, but that would cut both ways, and it could ruin their night vision just as much as the bright flash I’d used. If we did get past them, it would make it harder for them to spot us again.

On the other hand, rising smoke would have made it harder for us to do anything, including breathe, until we got down. I couldn’t use my powers to hide and affect distances at the same time, so I would be able to choose between a safe landing and an invisible-ish landing, but I couldn’t have both. Taking Menagerie with me would mean using up more juice, and I was pretty close to the safe limit, from what Leon had said.

Speaking of which, I needed a better way to keep track of my own limits. Something to ask Bloodhound about, possibly.

I shook off the hypothetical, but I didn’t like the odds. We’d screwed up and gotten lucky not to be tracked or followed.

“Let’s go home, David,” Leon prompted.

My mind was wandering a bit. Presumably due to fatigue and the post-adrenaline rush slowdown.

“Menagerie, Feral, we’re heading out,” I said. “Please don’t go looking for them alone? I know this is important, but I have a really bad feeling about either of us trying to push this without the other one for backup.”

Menagerie hesitated for a second, then sighed. “Yeah, okay. I need rest too.” She looked at Feral, reached out to scratch her behind the ears, and then looked back at me. “I want to go as soon as we’re ready, though.”

“We will,” I promised. “I don’t think this lead is going to disappear overnight, though. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can think straight, okay?”

“Deal,” she said. “Can I have the card? I want to look them up, at least.”

I hesitated, then handed her the card. “Just don’t do anything else, please. And message me the info on it.”

“Will do,” she said.

“And Menagerie? Maybe if you do look them up, use a library computer or something,” I said.

She looked at me oddly. “Feeling paranoid?”

I shrugged. “Yes. Please do it, though. As a favor to me, if nothing else. This whole thing seems pretty weird, and I’d feel better.”

“Okay,” she said. “I will.”

“See you soon,” I said. She was climbing onto Feral when I dropped from the rooftop, landing lightly on my feet.

I walked about a block without thinking, then pulled out my phone. I didn’t want to use my powers when Leon was worried about running out of gas, and I didn’t want to spend the time it would take to just walk all the way home. It only took a few seconds for me to get to the Berkeleyport public transit website…where I learned that I was screwed. I’d never wanted a bus ride at this hour before, but now that I did I learned it was too early. One of the downsides of living in a smaller city, I guess; there are times when the city sleeps, and you can’t get a ride.

I scratched my head. “Leon, am I right thinking we shouldn’t risk using powers right now?”

“I really don’t think it would be a good idea,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, resigned. “I guess we’re walking.”

I found someplace discrete to unmask, looked at my stomach, and tucked my shirt in so that the dried blood on the bottom wouldn’t show before setting out. I hoped that I’d be able to use my powers again safely soon enough to speed the journey home. I really didn’t want to walk the whole way unassisted, and the busses wouldn’t start running for more than an hour.

Either Leon had been feeling overly cautious, my batteries recharged quickly when unused, or he was just really, truly bored. After maybe a half hour, he decided that he felt comfortable using up more magic to get home.

I gave it another ten minutes just to play it safe. I believed him, but I was also feeling pretty cautious just then. Maybe it was an overreaction to the way I’d been acting earlier; I certainly couldn’t describe that as cautious.

The rest of the trip went a lot faster. I’d noticed my powers getting a bit sluggish at the end and walked the last few blocks back to campus without them, not wanting to risk Leon’s health – or mine, for that matter.

When I got back to my dorm, it was still before seven A.M., which meant that the busses still weren’t moving and the sun still wasn’t up. Shawn didn’t wake up when I got back to my room and climbed into bed. Leon reminded me to throw the slightly-bloody shirt I’d been wearing into a drawer so he wouldn’t see it.

As I closed my eyes, I realized that it was Sunday, which meant that the next day would be Halloween. I almost laughed when it occurred to me that my current, essentially-nonexistent super hero outfit would stand out on Halloween because of how boring it was. Normal clothes with a mask? That wouldn’t cut it.

…

“David! It’s all right!”

I woke up sweaty and looked around. It took me a moment to place my surroundings, but Leon’s “voice” was a familiar anchor, at least. It was part of me, in a way, and it provided a point of stability. From there, I quickly recognized my dorm room, and managed to lie back in bed and let my heart slow down.

“Are you all right, David?” Leon asked.

“I think so,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing is happening, David,” Leon said. “You were tossing in your sleep, that’s all. Shawn is out, by the way.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Shawn’s side of the room, and he was gone, along with some of his stuff: computer, backpack and maybe some more. I didn’t take inventory. I rolled back onto my stomach, closing my eyes.

“You up for trying to sleep again?” I asked.

“Yes,” Leon said.

I buried myself in the bed, determined to sleep some more. I needed it, for reasons that I didn’t intend to think about at the time.

It wasn’t clear, but I thought that being shot had figured into whatever nightmare had made me wake up. I didn’t really know, though.

After a few seconds, I sighed and grabbed my phone, quickly going online and checking to see whether I had any messages from Raquel, just in case.

Nothing except a copy of the information from the card. That was good enough for me. I turned the phone back off and closed my eyes again.

…

Next time I woke up, it was to hear the sounds of loud music through the wall. Well, I assumed it was loud, or else I wouldn’t have been able to hear it. That was simultaneously better and worse than the previous time, in a way. I wasn’t waking up in a sweat, feeling the need to look around for danger, but the downside was that I felt extremely annoyed, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep with the music on. I couldn’t tell exactly what kind of music it was or hear the lyrics, but the volume was still there. Lots of bass.

I made an effort anyway, closing my eyes and even putting my head under a pillow, but it didn’t work. I was awake, and the combination of the music, my irritation, and a growing need to use the bathroom were going to keep me that way.

I stayed in bed for a few minutes, trying to enjoy the comfort while it lasted, and then finally got up. One bathroom trip later, I was showered and feeling a lot better about things. The small amount of dried blood that had been stuck to the skin of my stomach had been a sobering reminder of the previous night’s activities, but on the bright side the wound was healed cleanly. It was hard to look at the exit wound in my back, but I’d managed, and while the area was tender it didn’t appear damaged. It just looked slightly bruised. Leon assured me that he’d essentially finished his repair work, and my eyes seemed to confirm that. It should be back to normal in a few hours.

As I got dressed, I found myself thinking about the injury. It hadn’t been too bad, and Leon could work quickly. The exit wound had been larger than the entry, of course, which made it harder to close, but Leon’s ability to guide my regeneration had some major advantages. For one thing, it allowed him to start by minimizing blood loss, which helped my long-term recovery. He could also close the wound before repairing all the internal damage, to avoid infection. But that only worked when I was hit somewhere that wasn’t immediately vital, like I had been last night. I needed my intestine working properly, sure, but I hadn’t needed the damaged part of it at that exact moment, which had given Leon some discretion. If I ever got hit someplace more important, like the heart or a lung, it would be another story. My healing was fast, but not instantaneous, and I thought that if someone trashed both of my lungs at once, or my heart, I might die before Leon finished repairing the organ in question.

It might be possible to resuscitate me, then, but I had no idea if Leon would survive in the process, not to mention the risk of brain damage if I didn’t get oxygen for a while. There was another possibility, too; if I suffered severe brain damage or got shot in the head, my body might survive even if I died. Would that leave Leon in control? If not, would it trap him in my brain-dead body? There were some disturbing possibilities. Oddly, I found myself worrying most about the last one. I didn’t want to die, of course, but the thought of Leon being stuck as a passenger in a body that wouldn’t even move on its own was a sickening one.

“Don’t worry about it,” he told me. “If anything bad happens to us, I’m sure Menagerie or Bloodhound or someone will check on us. We can ask them to next time we see them, just in case, but I imagine they would do it anyway.”

“They don’t know who I really am, except for Menagerie, and even she doesn’t know my last name, unless she looked it up,” I pointed out. “I don’t really want to tell them, either. But unless we do, you could end up stuck, and I want that even less.”

“Menagerie knows; that’s good enough,” Leon reassured. He felt a little disturbed by my morbid train of thought.

“Look, I love regenerating, I really do, but I’ve been shot twice now,” I pointed out. “All it takes is one lucky or good shot, and then this hypothetical scenario won’t be hypothetical anymore. We can’t afford to treat it as being so unlikely. Frankly, we should have thought about what we wanted in case something happens before the first time we masked up. That didn’t happen according to any plan, so I’m not feeling guilty about it, but now we need to make a plan. I’ve got a family, you know. If I get incinerated by a super villain, I don’t want them to think I just disappeared for the next fifty years.”

“Okay, you have a point,” Leon acknowledged. “I suppose I hadn’t given much thought to that problem, in my situation.”

I winced at the reminder that Leon didn’t have anyone other than me and, to an extent, Feral and Raquel. Not even acquaintances. I did feel bad about that. I’m a decent guy, but that doesn’t mean I’m great company all the time, and while Leon’s lack of family and friends wasn’t a sore point between us, it was a bit of an emotional bruise for him, more so ever since the disastrous and painful effort he’d made to remember back during that lesson with Bloodhound. He hadn’t tried again since, not wanting to repeat the experience, but I had a feeling he probably would at some point in the near future. He was aware of my suspicion, but I hadn’t actually asked, and he hadn’t chosen to broach the subject either.

I’d decided I wouldn’t try to stop him if he chose to keep trying to remember, despite the fact that it had felt not only painful but also dangerous. I hadn’t felt the pain, so it didn’t seem like something I really had a right to weigh in on. It was up to him to figure out how important it was to get answers, and whether he was willing to wait and try to find them elsewhere.

Once I was dressed, I left to get some food, checking for word from Menagerie. I still had the message with the info from the business card in my inbox. With it was a new one, at least an hour old, asking if I was ready to move or not.

Part of me was tempted to say “no” or put it off.

“Leon, how are we doing energy-wise?” I asked.

“Not full, but I think we have enough for anything less than a battle,” he said.

“Okay, thanks,” I said. I started typing my reply.

“Hey, I’m just about ready now. Did you do any research yet?”

-lionsroaring343

While I waited, I went to the website on the card. Berkeleyport Security Consulting (BPSC for short) was apparently just what it sounded like, a firm that provided security to both businesses and private citizens. I doubted that they had legal permission to send a bunch of guys running around the city while armed, but the website was pretty slick in a corporate, minimalist sort of way. I looked through a few pages, seeing if they had any pictures of company officers or anything, but nothing particularly helpful came up except for the address of their offices. Still, it seemed obvious that they were reasonably successful, and had some money. Combined with the evidence that they had goons with guns led by at least one super – even if I wasn’t completely certain she was an enemy – we would have to be careful.

I got a reply pretty quickly.

“Checked out their website. Not much help, except for the address. Are you ok?”

-catsarecool3399

“I’m fine. Not back to 100%, but pretty close. Where should we meet?”

-lionsroaring343

“Already checked, and bus stop is near their offices. Meet there?”

-catsarecool3399

“Sounds good. I can go as soon as I figure the route.”

-lionsroaring343

“Leaving now, then. Will take me a little longer to get there.”

-catsarecool3399

I grabbed everything I needed, again thinking that we should get phones we could use to call each other and wishing I had something better to wear in case of violence, and left.

“Even if we had something armored, we couldn’t wear it right now,” Leon pointed out. “It wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous on the bus, or the sidewalk.”

“Hey, I’m just never satisfied, you know?” I said. “I don’t want to stress about it, but we did just get shot. At the very least, a bullet-resistant helmet would be nice. Next time we see Bloodhound, I’m going to ask if he or his teammates have any tips on where to get good gear without drawing attention.”

“Probably a good idea,” Leon agreed. “I’m sure they won’t tell you their own sources, but they might be willing to suggest some things.”

I worked out the right bus routes to take on my phone once I was at the stop, and soon I was headed into town. The BPSC offices were further inside the city, in the business area downtown, but located a bit on the fringe. When I arrived at the bus stop Raquel had indicated, about a block and a half away from their building, I looked around to try to get a feel for the area. Standing at the stop, the taller buildings I’d just passed by on the bus were to my left, while the BPSC building was across the street to my right. I could see the entrance. It had a sign, though it was a small one.

Seeing the place made me a bit nervous, but I reminded myself that none of them had seen my face the previous night. The only one who’d heard my voice was the woman who had given us a lead and then asked me to hit her, so I suspected that even if she did recognize me somehow she probably wouldn’t tell anyone.

Still, I didn’t want to stare, so I looked back toward the taller buildings again.

Berkeleyport didn’t have anything that I would call a skyscraper. I’d have to check and see whether the word “skyscraper” had an official definition first, at least. Eyeballing it, I guessed that the taller buildings were no more than twenty stories high, with maybe one or two exceptions. They were tall, but not really impressive. It didn’t help that most of them were a bit old, relics of a post-World War II building spike that had died out quickly. I’d gotten dragged into a conversation about the city once, by accident. I couldn’t even remember the name of the guy who’d told me this stuff, let alone most of what he’d said. I’d been doing my best to forget it all as soon as I walked away.

Still, I tried to keep the tidbits I did remember in mind as I looked around. The buildings closer to the BPSC offices did look newer, in general, and the BPSC building itself – a two- or three-story structure, rounded and longer than it was wide – looked pretty modern and recent. I could see their parking lot, and all of the cars there looked pretty nice, too. I saw lots of black, most of it clean and relatively shiny, although it wasn’t a particularly bright day.

I wasn’t watching the time, so I’m not certain how long it took for Raquel to arrive, but soon enough she was stepping off the bus. Once I knew she’d caught sight of me I stepped off to one side, getting out of the way of the disembarking passengers, and she peeled out of the line to meet me.

“Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”

“In one piece, so I can’t complain,” I said with a smile. “How about you? Get any sleep?”

“Yeah, I’m all right,” Raquel said.

Without really discussing it, we started to walk, heading down the sidewalk away from both the building we were there to check out and the crowd at the bus stop. It was a fairly busy one, so there was always going to be somebody there.

“So, how do you want to do this?” I asked silently as we walked. “I was thinking maybe we start by walking around the area, then go past the place. See if there’s anywhere we can watch the building from without being obvious. To be honest, I’m not really sure what our next step should be, though. I mean, she gave me the card, so she obviously wanted us to at least look into the company, but I’m guessing that we don’t want to walk in. I doubt she’d thank us, either.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it too,” Raquel said. “I think the right thing to do is watch the place and have Feral camp out near the exit if possible. Then try to follow her when she leaves, and see if we can talk to her in private. From what you and Feral told me, I guess she wanted to talk to us more, but didn’t think she could do it last night. It’s kind of weird, though – I mean, she was the one giving orders to the guys in the uniforms, it seemed like. So you’d think she was in a position to do whatever she wanted.”

“Maybe, but remember before that?” I said. “When they first showed up and she talked to Michaels, she had to call someone else to ask for instructions. It didn’t seem like she was Michaels’ boss, but I don’t think he was her boss, either. So I’m thinking both of them are working for someone else, and maybe she doesn’t want to be.”

“I think that holds together,” Raquel said after a moment. “We know she’s got powers. Michaels’ might, too, though I’m not sure. Do you think their boss has powers too?”

“He might not be that kind of boss,” Leon pointed out, entering the conversation. “I’ve thought about this as well. It could be a matter of blackmail, or some sort of indirect threat. If she doesn’t like the situation she’s in, but is afraid to do anything openly, then appealing to us for help would actually make sense. Maybe more sense than simply going to the police.”

“In which case we should have some leverage when dealing with her,” Feral noted. “If she is desperate for assistance, then we should be able to get her to give up some answers before promising it, at the very least.”

“It could be something else, too, though,” Raquel said. “I mean, if the bad guys have a police informant, or she thinks they do, for example. Then she wouldn’t want to go to them. Even if the odds of her talking to the one wrong person out of a hundred, I wouldn’t want to gamble my life on that.”

We were still walking, passing buildings slowly. I raised an eyebrow and pointed left, to a small park. It was mostly filled with tables and benches, which I guessed were meant to accommodate various office workers on their lunch breaks.

That made me stop and think.

“Hey, I just realized; if she works in the BPSC building, she might leave it for lunch,” I said. “That might be our chance to get in touch with her, if she’s alone. If not, we could still confirm that she’s here. Otherwise, we might not get a chance until they pack up for the day.”

“Would she even be here today, though?” Raquel asked. “It’s a Sunday, and the day before Halloween.”

“Maybe?” I said. “I don’t know. After last night, I’m sure someone is having a meeting or conversation about what happened. I don’t know if it would be here. I would have guessed no, but the guys who came last night showed up in uniform. I’m thinking it’s a real possibility.”

“It is also possible that she will be here today, even if she is not normally,” Leon noted. “Giving us the card led us here. The website provided peripheral information about the company. I think we can assume that she didn’t expect us to call the BPSC phone number and ask if they’ve been involved in any kidnappings. Given that, the only thing that makes sense is the idea that she wanted us to find her, and for that she has to come into the office.”

“Hey, do you think security firms have to worry about Mischief Night?” I asked. “If they do, then that might be another reason for people to be in today. Anyway, I think for now we should head back and try to find a place to watch the parking lot from. Maybe send Feral first, if that’s okay with you guys? I’m pretty sure there were a few bushes she could hide behind without getting noticed. It wouldn’t let her eavesdrop on much of anything, but she could probably spot who was coming out of the building, and maybe smell them.”

“Let’s do it, then,” Raquel said. “I need a bit of privacy to bring Feral out, and this little park is probably the best we’re going to get.”

We walked into the grassy area. The park was basically a rectangle, with a straight sidewalk running the length in the center, dividing it in two smaller rectangles with the same length, but less width. Around the edge were hedges, tall enough that you could only see over them if you were standing up. Inside, there were flower beds in a thin layer that followed the hedges, but the rest of the area was grassy, with a few trees providing shade. It was like a little enclave, walled off from the surrounding city, and it was almost completely unoccupied. Raquel and I picked a bench in the shade, under a fairly large tree, and sat down.

We sat there for a minute, making sure that the other people in the park were out of sight; the wait was necessary because one elderly couple was walking around, apparently looking at the flowers. The man had a cane, and they weren’t moving quickly.

Once they were gone for long enough, Raquel focused and brought out Feral; the cat stalked away lithely, without a further word.

“Give her a minute before following?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Raquel said. She seemed a bit hesitant.

“Um, listen,” she said, sounding uncomfortable. “This is kind of weird, but…my mom asked if she could meet you.” She looked at me, on the other side of the bench. I hadn’t thought about it when we sat down, but we’d sat almost at opposite ends. Not quite as far as we could be from each other, but pretty close.

I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it again, thinking.

“How come?” I asked.

“She knows…what I do,” Raquel said. “Um, in a general sense. She knows you’re helping me try to find Dustin. I think she just wants to know who I’m spending that time with? And um…” Raquel hesitated. She took a deep breath before continuing, and when she did she sounded miserable. “I think she hopes you might tell her stuff I haven’t. I haven’t lied or anything, but I’ve…left some stuff out. I think she’s hoping you’ll tell her the truth.”

I leaned back, closing my eyes for a second. I could feel the moral dilemma coming already, not to mention the headache. “Okay. What do you want?”

“I don’t know,” she said, sounding even more unhappy. “If she hears everything, she’ll tell me to stop, I think. And…I’ll have to say no. I can’t walk away from this. And I don’t want to have that conversation, for a lot of reasons.” She sighed.” But I can’t ask you to lie to my mom. It’s…it’s just worse than if I do it. Um. I know that’s crazy.”

“No, I think it makes sense,” I said.

Not too long ago, I’d resolved to tell my parents I had powers, and how I was using them. Since that decision, I’d put off following through, with the reasoning that I wanted to have that conversation in person, for both emotional and practical reasons, such as the fact that it would be hard to demonstrate my powers over the phone, and the fact that I didn’t want to leave records of it anywhere, just in case. I also didn’t want to scare the shit out of them.

Since then, I’d committed crimes. Or maybe just the same crime twice. I didn’t think they’d be really upset with me committing breaking and entering to try to find a kidnapped child, once they had time to process it all, but it wasn’t the sort of thing I’d ever figured out how to admit. I could leave out the breaking and entering, of course…but then I would be lying to my parents again (or at least omitting important parts of the truth, if I wanted to be technical about it), and if I was willing to do that, was it really much different from just lying to them outright?

On top of all that, they might count as accessories after the fact if I told them I’d committed a crime and they didn’t turn me in, which was a real problem since I could still get caught. At the moment, the only people who knew what had happened were myself and Raquel (not counting Leon and Feral because they didn’t even exist, legally speaking). I was the only one who’d gone in the house. Feral had helped me and gone in, so in a sense I guess Raquel had gone in too, but either way I didn’t feel responsible for her choice or worried that she’d rat me out. I trusted her.

Not that I didn’t trust my parents, but…well, it wouldn’t make them happier to know, that was for sure. I suspected that they’d be happier knowing I was leaving out some details than being told flat-out that I was a criminal. Breaking and entering alone might not be too much of a crime, but it was enough for a well-intentioned super to get prosecuted. That had already happened at least twice, I thought, though in one of the cases I remembered hearing about, the guy was actually breaking into a crime scene under investigation. That changed things.

I shook off the train of thought with difficulty, returning to the conversation; this was about Raquel, not me. I could work out my parental issues later. Hers was apparently pressing.

“I’m not sure what to tell you,” I said. “I mean, I have no objection to just the idea of meeting your mom. But I don’t think I’d feel right lying to her or telling her the truth.”

I sighed and looked at Raquel. “You’re basically asking me to either lie to her or betray you. Don’t take this the wrong way – I know you’ve been doing this longer than me – but the fact that you’re in high school doesn’t make me feel better about that.”

Raquel grimaced. “I kinda figured you might say that,” she said. “I’ll…”

She didn’t finish the sentence. We stared at our feet.

“Dammit,” she said. “Why isn’t it easier to figure out the right thing?”

I chuckled. “Don’t jinx us. I think it’s usually easier to figure out the right thing – and do it – when the stakes are higher. I mean, you wouldn’t let someone take over the world for a thousand bucks…but would you let him slap an asshole for a thousand bucks? A lot harder to say no. Give me the moral dilemma any day. It usually means people aren’t in too much trouble.”

Raquel smiled. “I never thought of it that way. Heh.”

It occurred to me in passing that what I’d just said applied to our little brush with crime. I hadn’t really thought twice about breaking into Michaels’ house, and I didn’t feel like I’d done something wrong, under the circumstances. If he’d been a mere thief himself, I might have been more concerned.

We sat there for a few moments. I was still wrestling with the idea of talking to her mom when Feral spoke up.

“I’m in position,” she reported. “But I’ve noticed a backdoor entrance to the building. I think maybe I should cover that, while you two watch the front.”

Thank god for interruptions to awkward silences.

By silent agreement, we stood up and started walking out of the park and toward the BPSC building.

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Flicker: a superhero web serial

Eleven years ago, people with superpowers began to make the news, and everyone held their breath. Although things have calmed down, the question remains: How much of an impact will supers have?

Tag Archives: David

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