by Lexie Dunne
“Fair. Do me a favor, though. If you’re going to needle Guy, don’t use me as a conduit. I want nothing to do with it.”
“Sorry,” Jeremy said. His lips twitched in the way I remembered they did when he was trying not to smile.
I scooped up my final bite of lasagna and carried my plate to the sink. “So they really have simulators here? Like what pilots use?”
“Better.” Jeremy gave me a nerdy grin. But he didn’t, as I’d feared, launch into a long stream of chatter about coding and other undead geek languages. “The interface is just—we can do so much with it, and it’s light-years ahead of everything, you know? We can implant images and sensations directly into your brain with these headsets, make you feel like you’re flying, things like that.”
“You could really make me believe I was flying?”
“With one of those headsets on you, I could make you believe you’d died and come back as a chicken,” Jeremy said. “A purple chicken.”
“There are worse fates.”
“Want to try it out? Not like either of us have anything else to do right now.”
I eyed Vicki’s plate, which still had half of her food on it. “What about Vicki?”
“Bet you anything that in about two minutes she comes back in here and tells us she has a hot date.” Jeremy lifted his beer to his lips and eyed the door, which had not yet opened.
In turn, I studied him, my eyes narrowed. “Oh for the love of—you’ve got a thing for her, don’t you?”
“Shut up!” he said. When I gave him a puzzled look, he mouthed, ‘She’s got ears like a cat!’
“Oh.” I lowered my voice. “How long?”
“I can’t talk about this. Not with you.” Jeremy gave his beer bottle a broody look. When he saw my steely-eyed look, he sighed. “Fine. But not here? Away from . . .” He trailed off and jerked a thumb at the door.
My ex. In love with Plain Jane.
Somehow, the thought of Jeremy and Plain Jane together was even weirder than seeing all of those paparazzi photos of him with Vicki Burroughs, supermodel.
“So I’m guessing she has no idea?” I asked.
He mimed zipping his lip and throwing away the key just as the door opened, and Vicki bubbled back into the room. “I’m going to have abandon you,” she said without preamble. “Something came up.”
“I bet it did,” Jeremy said.
I shot him a look, hoping to express that sarcasm wasn’t going to win him any favors from the girl he was crushing on. He ignored it.
“Is it okay if I take a rain check?” Vicki asked me, ignoring Jeremy as easily as he ignored me.
“Sure, it’s no problem.” I gave her a smile and a little wave. “Go on, enjoy your ‘something.’ ”
“Oh trust me,” she said, “I will.”
She sailed out, leaving a cloud of jasmine perfume in her wake.
Jeremy polished off his beer with a final scowl at the door. “Let’s go play with the simulators so that I can get my mind off her always being at that dumbass’s beck and call. What’s with you women, anyway? Why do you always go for losers?”
“Do you really want to get into that conversation with me?” I asked.
He considered that. “Point taken.”
DAVENPORT ENJOYED CONSTANTLY subverting my expectations. After the futuristic training rooms, with their quiet tech, I expected the simulator rooms to be dark, full of green and purple light, and possibly filled with obstacles. Instead, Jeremy led me into a spacious, well-lit room with curved walls. There were mats on the floor.
“I know,” he said without looking at me, “you’d think it would be some sci-fi junk or whatever. Nope, this is it.” He jerked his head at the wall. “Eternity walls. Trust me when I tell you that once I start programming bad guys coming at you, you’ll appreciate not smashing your face into a corner.”
“I thought I was here to fly,” I said. I’d had more than my share of bad guys.
“You are,” Jeremy said. “But, you know, if you get bored and want to fight some bad guys . . .”
“And have Angélica tear me to tiny little pieces when she finds out I’ve wrecked the form she’s been teaching me? The woman may be small, but it’s like getting gut-punched by a bear. Nothing but flying tonight.”
“Fine.” Jeremy heaved a giant sigh. “If you insist.”
“I do.”
“All right, then we’ll put this on you.” Jeremy held up a headset that he’d gone into a smaller room to retrieve. “Fit that over your ears and cinch it down in the back so that it’s snug. I’m going to put these on your forehead. They’ll help you get the sensory part of the simulator.” He held up a couple of vividly green suction cups.
“Fashionable,” I said dryly.
He grinned. “They do the trick. Besides, I thought you liked green.”
“Ha, ha.” It was the wrong green. Blaze’s uniform was a little darker. I stood still as he fixed the suction cups onto my forehead. “So . . . you don’t mind it here, do you? Like really mind it?”
His hand stilled on the suction cups. “You’re probably the last person I want to talk to about this, okay?”
I understood. It was my fault, indirectly, that he was here. So I nodded.
“Don’t move your head, I’m still getting these on you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He caught the subtext. This time, he sighed, a drawn-out noise. He stepped back to look at me. Not intensely. Just so that he could make eye contact. “Oh, well,” he said. “It’s not like it’s your fault, really. Not like you were asking to become Hostage Girl, right?”
“Yeah, that was a gift I always wanted to return.” And now I was living and existing near said superhero and that was a little weird for me. I frowned when Jeremy pulled out his cell phone and aimed it at the suction cups on my head. “What are you doing?”
“Calibrating the interface.” Something buzzed in the back of my head, and I frowned. It hurt a little, but the pain faded almost right away.
So instead I stared jealously at Jeremy’s phone. “I wish I had one of those.”
“A holographic interface?”
“No, stupid. A phone.”
He lowered the phone. “Davenport didn’t issue you one?”
I grumbled under my breath. “I’m in a media blackout. My TV doesn’t even work, and they’re not telling me anything, so I have no idea what happened to the guy who did this to me. It’s really annoying.”
“Is it? I’m feeling really disconnected from everything, but mostly I just want a phone so I can play games again.” I wasn’t the gamer that Jeremy was—he liked first-person shooters and role-play games, and I was content trying to get to new levels on Happy Pigs—but I bet with my new, isotope-given reflexes, I’d have some killer high scores. “You never really know how much you miss having a phone until you don’t have one.”
“Media blackout? That’s weird, even for them.” He pocketed the phone and adjusted something on my headset, and the buzzing in the back of my head started up again.
“How’d you lose the old one?”
“Not sure, but I’m going to guess Dr. Mobius trashed it.”
Thinking about Dr. Mobius made me wonder again. My memories from the night he’d woken me up and drugged me were still patchy, but I distinctly remembered that he’d said “they’re here,” not “Blaze is here.” Though maybe it was a good thing that my memory wasn’t the greatest as I really didn’t want to relive getting hit with a minivan in stark detail, honestly.
“Girl.” Something touched my shoulder, and before I knew exactly what I was doing, I’d grabbed it and twisted it around. Jeremy yelped when I shoved his arm behind his back, expertly pinning him to the wall. “Uncle! I give! Let go!”
“Oh.” I dropped him and stumbled back a step. “Sorry—sorry
, reflex. I, ah. Just, sorry.”
Jeremy wiggled his arm to bring circulation back and whistled. “Wow. I am never sneaking up on you. Ever. Damn.” He hopped around, still shaking his shoulder and arm. “What were you even thinking about?”
“I, ah, I got distracted, sorry. I didn’t mean to, just now, with you and the wall . . .”
“Either way.” He sounded a bit strangled, and naturally so. His five-foot-tall ex had pinned him to the wall. Something in his eyes told me he hadn’t really put it together that I was superhuman now. He kept a healthy distance from me. “I’ve connected the electrodes, and they’ve started their currents. How do you feel?”
“I think I’m okay.” The buzz was growing a little, but I figured that was just part of the hologram program.
“Okay. I’m just going to be in the other room. If it gets to be too much, just shout, and I’ll end the program.” He grinned. “But yeah, let’s see how you fly without a superhero carrying you.”
He left me alone, closing the door behind him. I didn’t see any observation windows in the walls, but that didn’t surprise me. There were cameras in the corners. After a second, I heard the tiny whine that preceded an announcement over a loudspeaker, and Jeremy’s voice filled the room. “Activating the program now. Brace yourself, okay? It’s a bit of a shock.”
I nodded, since I figured he could see me, and settled into a resting stance.
“Three . . . two . . . one . . . Activating.”
The lights in the room dimmed. My fingertips started to twitch inward, a tic I’d never noticed before. “Is, um, something supposed to be happening?”
“I’m not—actually, just wait for it, it’s taking a minute to load . . .”
“Okay.” My insides began to tingle, starting in my chest. I felt a bit short of breath as the twitch in my fingertips grew bigger, moving from my palm, traveling up my wrists and into my elbows. My arms began to shake.
“Jeremy, I don’t think this is such a good ide—” was all I got out before darkness crashed in, taking me away from the room and its eternity walls.
Chapter Fourteen
“DID I SAY it was okay for you to try the simulators?”
“No, Angélica.”
“Did I in any way, shape, or form even hint that it was okay for you to go anywhere near the simulators?”
My back hurt. “No, Angélica.”
“So what I want to know, in that case, is why you did, when you knew full well that you’ve got an isotope that has to be considered in every move you make?”
“Angélica.” From where he sat, across the room, Guy looked up from his book. “Give it a rest. She had no idea what the simulators would do to her.”
While I was grateful for Guy’s support, I had to bite my tongue before I pointed out that I could fight my own battles. He had two years’ worth of anecdotes to prove that wasn’t actually the case. And besides, my battle at the moment was with a very irate Angélica, and I’d already learned trying to win against her was a long charge headfirst into futility. At least she’d stopped swearing at me in Portuguese.
“In my defense,” I said, wanting to move my feet and knowing better, “I told Jeremy that I didn’t think it was a good idea. I just realized it too late.”
Angélica scowled and did another backflip. That was how she controlled her anger, I’d discovered. She’d been at it for hours while I worked on my standing strength. Oh, yes. Hours and hours. I knew that because we were rounding hour three. Guy’s watch, on my wrist, said so.
I’d woken up in a strange room to find Kiki at my bedside. “You have visitors,” she’d said once she’d checked that I was awake and cognizant. “Jeremy sent you flowers. I said that it wasn’t a big deal, but he was pretty insistent. I kept them on the nightstand for you.”
“Thanks,” I said, and promptly tried to crack my jaw open with a wide yawn. “Where am I?”
“Medical. You’ve been out for twelve hours or so. Want me to let the visitors in?”
“Um, who are they?”
“Angélica and Guy.”
Slowly, I sat up. For the first time in forever, I appeared to have woken up in a hospital room and nothing hurt. “Can I take a rain check on that? I need a hairbrush and a minute.”
“No problem.” As if by magic, Kiki produced one from her satchel.
“You must be psychic,” I said as I tackled my curls.
“You’re hilarious.” She’d brought breakfast with her, and she sat with me, chatting about what had happened. Apparently Jeremy had short-circuited me by accident. When I finished relating my take on the incident, Kiki gave me an assessing stare.
“And why didn’t you try to stop Jeremy?” she asked.
I felt an invisible pressure against the front of my head, so I leaned back, away from her. “I thought it was part of the simulation.”
She paused. “You felt that, just now?”
“Yeah, it was weird. What was it?”
“Your brain is a fascinating one, that’s all,” Kiki said.
“Was that you? Were you—were you trying to read my mind?”
She rose and brushed crumbs off of her pants. “I’m going to let Guy and Angélica in. Brace yourself. She’s on the warpath.”
“What for?” I asked. I hadn’t done anything wrong. It hadn’t been my fault that I’d blacked out.
Angélica hadn’t seen it that way. Which was why, hours after sharing breakfast with Kiki, I was back in the training room, working on my standing strength with my trainer routinely doing backflips to control her temper and my own personal superhero sitting across the room with a book in his lap.
His reaction, by the way, had been the opposite of Angélica’s ire. He’d come into my room that morning with her and laid his single rose on the bedside table by my empty breakfast plate. And had said in a mock-weary voice, “I go away to play guardian of the city for one night, and you manage to get yourself in trouble.”
“Just proves I don’t need you around to make trouble, that’s all,” I had said.
He’d laughed.
Now, six hours later, Angélica gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Why aren’t you at a board meeting or whatever it is you spoiled rich boys pretend to do during the day?”
Guy looked absolutely relaxed in his khaki shorts and T-shirt. His feet were bare, just like mine. “I called in sick. I missed you and your sunny personality,” he said, smiling sweetly at her.
“Hah,” she said, but I felt her laugh. “You’re just here for Girl.”
“Too right I am,” he said, and I felt a trill of excitement up my spine.
Angélica whipped around to glare at me. “Let’s review,” she said, and Guy shot me a sympathetic look that she ignored. “Are you allowed anywhere near the simulators?”
“No,” I said, not bothering to sigh. She would only scold me for it. “And if I’m thinking about changing my diet, sleep schedule, workout schedule, if I want to have sex”—I did not look at Guy—“if I want to go on a three-day bender, if I want to visit Miami and dance naked on the beach. Any of that, I check with you first.”
“Damn right you do,” she said.
I noticed that Guy was staring rather intently at his book. He hadn’t turned the page in a while. I wondered if he was thinking of the Negligee Fiasco. Great. And I was thinking about the Negligee Fiasco. And about just how well Guy filled out that T-shirt, and his skintight uniform and . . .
To make myself focus on my stance and back on matters at hand, I took a deep breath. “Why do superheroes wear such bright colors?” I asked without thinking. “I mean, you have to admit most of the outfits aren’t the least bit fashionable. Look at Shark-Man.”
“Sharkbait,” Angélica said fondly, grinning.
Guy’s intent look turned into a scowl.
“His outf
it has to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen,” I said, trying not to concentrate too much on the fact that Sharkbait was the one Guy had beaten up over my life-or-death odds chart. Whoops. “I mean, does the man just love the color gray or something?”
“Sharkbait’s the odd man out,” Guy said, closing a finger in his book to mark his place. He regarded me. “We wear bright colors so that people will see us coming.”
“But won’t the villains see you coming, too?”
“That doesn’t matter.” Guy shrugged at my dubious look. “Bright colors signify the hope we’re bringing to the people we rescue.”
I remembered how safe I’d always felt whenever I’d seen the flash of green streaking the horizon, knowing that Blaze had arrived at long last to pull me out of whatever stupid situation the villains had created. And I totally understood Guy’s point.
Guy wasn’t finished. He nodded at Angélica. “If you want to talk about bright costumes, ask this one here.”
Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Don’t you dare.”
“Bright, burns-your-corneas red,” Guy said. “A one-piece with a little red sash and a red headband. Quite a fashion statement.”
I turned my head to gawk at Angélica. “You were on active duty? How come you didn’t tell me? And why are you in here training me when you’re good enough to be out there saving the day?”
“One question at a time,” she said, still glaring at Guy in a way that promised payback. “Yes, I was on the front lines, as you put it. I was happy there, but you have to follow your calling. My calling, Gail, is to help my fellow superheroes. Many of us come here without a clue of what we can do, how far we can push ourselves. If we know that, then we know what we can do to help. I like helping people discover that.”
“By punching them in the face?” I asked.
“We do,” Angélica said, “what we can do to help. And for that little bit of attitude, you can spread your feet wider.”
I sighed and obeyed, though my thighs ached like nothing else.
“And you’ve never heard of me unless you’re familiar with the Rio de Janeiro lineup of superheroes, so there’s no need to bother you with my alias,” Angélica said in a tone that signaled that this was all she was going to tell me about that.
