Black and Blue

by Nancy O'Toole Meservier

  “Undid it all,” he said, then winced. “Listen, I know it doesn’t make up for everything. For what douchebag…for what I did to you. But it’s all I can think of.” He paused. “Marty should be fine too.”

  I nodded. According to Dana, now that Calypso didn’t have any powers, there shouldn’t be anything binding the two together.

  “Marty?” Callie said with a frown. “Marty Tong?”

  “He’s been looking for you for weeks,” I explained.

  “Since I died, or something close to it.” Callie shuddered.

  “Um…did you realize that the drones were still connected to you?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, her gaze dropping. “It took me a few tries before I was able to piece it together, but I was never truly able to break the bonds between myself and my followers. Just lessen it, starve them off. The same must have happened when I fell in the Grand Bailey.” She shook her head. “What a monster I was.”

  “That’s not your fault,” Amity said. “You weren’t in your right mind. You were barely coherent. If I hadn’t urged you in that direction to begin with—”

  Calypso reached out and placed a hand on Amity’s own.

  “Amity, I can take responsibility for my own actions,” she said, then looked to Dana. “It wasn’t like with you. I was still myself. The worst version of myself maybe, but still myself. And to think, I had wanted to protect this city once.” She turned to me. “Perhaps it’s best that that job went to you.”

  “Um…I’m certainly not perfect!” I protested.

  “Given the past few weeks, I would know better than most. At the very least, you’re far better suited for the job than I ever was. I have…a bit of a habit of holding grudges. Looks like Father Harrison has other reasons to be ashamed of me.” She paused, her gaze hitting Alex’s. “Not to mention my tendency to manipulate others.” She turned back to Amity. “And I am so sorry Amity, for how I treated you.”

  “That’s my line.” Amity shook her head. “And now they want me to erase it all.”

  “What?”

  I swear, I could hear Jane’s weapon charge up from behind the glass. And maybe it was because I had been spending so much time in Calypso’s mind, but I felt a shot of resentment.

  “It was the agreement, Callie,” Amity said. “Dana reverses the transferences, and in return, I erase all of your memories of the Forgers, of your time as Calypso. All of it.” She let out a sigh. “Despite my greatest efforts, I believe I’ve found myself backed into a corner once again. And well, you know me.”

  “I understand,” Callie said with a nod. “How do we do this?“

  Amity explained that thinking up a whole new life for Callie would take some time, so we started with Marty. Given that the guy had spent most of his exile in abandoned buildings, we found one nearby and broke in. Then we placed him and his laptop inside the building with a couple of leftover protein bars from Colossus Fitness before Amity did her thing.

  We saw him wandering out minutes later from across the street, looking confused but otherwise normal. He reached into his pockets, clearly looking for his phone, then cursed. I watched as he tried to flag down a car. Hopefully, it was someone up on the local news.

  “You actually did it,” Alex said. “I thought that you were going to try and wiggle your way out of it.”

  “I was going to erase that moron’s memories anyway,” Amity replied. “And you’re welcome, by the way.”

  I watched Alex blink in surprise. That’s right. The reason that he had been looking for Amity in the first place was to erase our secret identities form Marty’s mind. Had that really been just a week ago?

  “Now for the more complicated part,” Amity said.

  It was easy to forget how little effort Amity’s powers took, given the damage they could do. I watched as she reached out and rested a hand on Calliope’s cheek. And then, the fair-haired woman blinked.

  “I…” Callie shook her head. “What happened?”

  Amity took a breath before responding.

  “You’ve had another upset, Ms. Saunders,” she said. “We found you out on the streets.”

  Callie blinked once, twice, and for a moment I was reminded of Dana, and how it had taken a few seconds for his new set of memories—or in his case, an old set—to sink in.

  “You’re one of my doctors…Doctor Graves. Why do I feel different?”

  “A side-effect of the medication. Let’s discuss that back at the facility,” Amity said with a curt nod. “I can take you there.”

  Callie nodded and moved to her feet. “I…yes. But really…I think that’s something’s different. My head…”

  And with that, they walked from the room.

  Minutes later, I watched from the window, creeper-like, as Amity, Calliope, Jane, and Riley entered their white van for what I suspected would be the most awkward car ride ever. I didn’t want to think of how Amity was going to explain the injured Forgers to Callie.

  “I guess that’s it, then,” Alex said.

  I looked up at him in his tattered armor and nodded.

  “I guess,” I replied.

  “Almost feels like a shame,” he said. “That Calypso—Callie.” He shook his head. “She feels like she should have gotten a second chance. Maybe this is one?”

  I watched as Amity opened the passenger-side door for Callie. In response, Callie looked up and…

  I frowned as Callie’s eyes met Amity’s, at the level of focus, the steadiness in her gaze.

  Wait? Had Amity really—

  I blinked, and the steadiness was gone, making me doubt my own eyes. We were two stories up after all. And from this distance…

  “Well, now. That was something!”

  Dana came up behind us and slapped his hands down on our shoulders with a large sigh. I jumped. Alex’s response was a little less tempered.

  “What the hell? Riley isn’t the only one injured here,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said with a wince. “Sorry about that…”

  “That’s not—”

  “Yes, we can be awkward and apologetic later,” Dana said. “Time to see if I actually did some good for once.”

  “Some good?” I turned to him with a frown.

  “Time to check on those drones.”

  19

  Alex

  The sun was out when I pulled up to the Cupcake Cafe the next morning. I stepped outside of my worn-down Jetta, regretting my leather jacket. It was warm for mid-November, a time of the year when most people were starting to think about snow, but every now and then life threw you a bone. It would be a crying shame to throw it away.

  Dead leaves crunched beneath my feet as I pushed open the swinging door and walked up to the counter. Ignoring all the pumpkin spice options, I ordered a cinnamon roll for myself and a cupcake for Dawn. With sprinkles. She had ordered those before.

  Maybe not a good call for the guy who had been unemployed for the past several weeks. But I had woken up this morning with a phone call from my old boss at Colossus. The place was reopening, and he was more than happy to offer me my old job back.

  I took a seat at one of the high tables, feeling kinda ridiculous perched on those tiny stools, and set our plates on the table. A television screen hanging from a nearby wall played the local news.

  “Doctors are still baffled by the sudden recovery of all forty-two individuals commonly referred to as ‘drones’ and believe that more testing will be necessary in the coming weeks,” the news anchor, Deanna Sommerville, said. “Now we turn to our second story of the day, an update on the attack on mayoral candidate Edison Kent’s campaign headquarters. But the rescuer isn’t who you’d think.”

  The camera cut to a clip from outside of Kent’s office. Noel White stood with a microphone stuck in his face.

  “It was Faultline,” he said, looking off-camera. “Faultline and some teenage girl with this giant electric gun.”

  “Do you believe that this is a sign that Faultline has switche
d sides?” the interviewer asked.

  “Faultline…” Noel paused. “I think things have been more complicated for Faultline for a while now. If he hadn’t turned on Calypso, who knows what would have happened to all of us?”

  “But he did kidnap Marty Tong.”

  Annoyance sparked in Noel’s eyes.

  “Listen. I don’t know what’s going on in Faultline’s head. All I can tell you is if he hadn’t been there…” He paused. “I’ll never be that guy’s biggest fan, but I’m grateful. That’s all.”

  “You’ve heard it first,” Deanna said, the camera cutting back to her. “Could Faultline, not Hikari, be Bailey City’s true hero? And how will this upset impact Edison Kent’s anti-Actual campaign? More on that when we get back.”

  I shook my head. The news still didn’t have it right. To them, it was black and white, good and evil, heroes and villains.

  Therefore, mostly bullshit.

  If anyone had it right, it was conflicted Noel White, trying to get that microphone out of his face.

  I checked the time on my phone before pulling up the text function.

  “You’re late,” I typed.

  “No, I’m not.” The reply was almost instant. “Look up.”

  I looked up at the ceiling of the Cupcake Cafe, then found myself smiling.

  Clearly, Dawn was thinking a little bit higher than that.

  Minutes later, I was making my way to the top of the rickety-ass fire escape, very glad that the building was only a few stories tall. When I made it to the top, I found Dawn standing at the edge, wrapped in her jacket and red scarf, staring out over the city. When she heard me approach, she turned and gifted me with a small, shy smile.

  Christ, she was pretty. It was why she had grabbed my attention in the first place. But now I knew so much more.

  I stopped a few paces away from her.

  “I take it you didn’t take that death trap up here?” I pointed back at the fire escape behind me.

  She shook her head. “You know, you’re a little paranoid about things breaking on you.”

  “If you could see what I could, you would be too.”

  “If you’d like, I could help you down another way.”

  “No way.” I raised both hands. “Once was enough.”

  Dawn laughed, then looked down at the bags in my hands. “Did you already…”

  “One cupcake with sprinkles.”

  “That’s so thoughtful of you!”

  “That was the goal,” I replied. “Showing you my more thoughtful side. You did say that you wanted to learn more about me, after all. I thought we’d start that off on a good note.”

  “As opposed to…”

  “Well, there’s my general mistrust for authority figures and the fact that I don’t like people telling me what to do.”

  Dawn laughed. “Well, I like following the rules a little too much. In fact, I made a whole set of them for myself back when people were still calling me Red and Black.”

  “Hmmm, so you like following rules,” I said, taking a step forward. “Unless that involves breaking into certain houses, or spending time on people’s rooftops, which might be considered trespassing,”

  “Well…you can’t be too inflexible. Any other horrible flaws I should be prepared for?”

  “Oh, just you wait,” I replied with laugh. “I’m more flaws than anything else. You sure you’re up for it.”

  She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Yes, I am.”

  She didn’t hesitate for even a second.

  “I’ve got a temper,” I said. “As a result, I make stupid decisions. It was worse when I was a kid. I’d get into a fight with anyone who looked at me the wrong way. My mother was always being called into the principal’s office.”

  “When I was a kid I let everyone else fight my fights for me,” Dawn replied. “It was usually my brother who did the defending, in his own way.”

  “Big brothers are supposed to stick up for their little sisters,” I protested.

  “I’m not talking literal fights, I’m talking about any type of challenge,” Dawn said. “Whenever I approached something that was too big for me, too intimidating, I would just run away, letting my fear control me.” She paused. “I still let it control me.”

  I licked my lips, then continued. “I’d like to say the reason why I dropped out of high school was due to some tragic learning disability or something like that, but I just didn’t see the point of it. In truth, I never really applied myself to anything before working on the benefit heist for Calypso. I had to become a bad guy in order to give a shit.”

  “I take my own wealth for granted. Took me years to understand that owning a multi-million-dollar summer home and having parents that could afford to send you to the nicest colleges in the country was not normal. Even now, I shudder to think of the actual good I could do with the money I just spend on comic books.”

  “Oof, I’m not going to lie, that one hurts a little,” I said, reaching out and thumping my chest with the flat of my hand.

  “I hate the fact that I’m so scrawny, even though so many women are desperate to lose weight,” Dawn said.

  “And I am physically flawless,” I said.

  Dawn let out a laugh.

  “Okay, and maybe a little bit shallow.” I paused, licking my lips. “It takes me forever to learn from my mistakes. Even though I promised myself that I would stop trying to control my sisters’ lives, I still find myself slipping into older brother protective mode, even when they’ve proven themselves to be perfectly capable.”

  “I take my mother for granted,” Dawn said. “I don’t appreciate all that she’s done for me. We’re not as close as we should be.”

  “I took my mother for granted too.” I looked down. “Was probably responsible for every gray hair on that head of hers. And now there’s no way that I can make it up.”

  “Alex…” Dawn said, taking a step toward me, reaching out and resting her hands on mine.

  “No, it’s fine,” I said, ashamed to discover that I was starting to choke up. “I’m not good at talking about it.”

  “You can always talk with me. When my…” she swallowed. “When Dad died, I became very depressed. Shut everyone out of my life. And that just made things worse. We’re not meant to get through life alone. Sometimes it’s necessary to ask for help. And that’s something I always find myself forgetting.”

  I overturned my hands until they were grasping hers.

  “Like talking about your abduction?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” Dawn said, squeezing my hands. “Michael actually called me this morning about that. He said that seeking help when you have a secret identity is pretty difficult. But he knows this woman who works with Actuals all the time on these sorts of things. He said that she could be trusted.”

  “And are you going to believe him??” I asked. “He wasn’t exactly right about the Forgers.”

  “He wasn’t exactly wrong either,” Dawn replied. “And it’s not like I can talk to a regular therapist when I have a secret identity.”

  “We could always get Amity to wipe their minds after,” I said with a chuckle.

  “Right,” Dawn said, voice soft. I was about to ask her if something was wrong when she moved her hands, pushing back the sleeve on my jacket to reveal the bruises hidden there. She visibly swallowed.

  “I did this to you,” she said, her voice small, quiet. “Alex, I’m—”

  “Hey,” I said, wrapping her hands in mine again. “You were literally being possessed by an evil supervillain. I’m pretty sure that makes it excusable.”

  “It’s never excusable,” she murmured. “I mean, your armor—”

  “Is pretty much destroyed?” I shook my head. “To be honest, I’m kind of glad. Running around in costumes? That was never for me. That’s your thing.”

  “So…you’re not going to become Bailey City’s next hero?” Dawn said, a small smile on her face.

  I shuddered, rememb
ering the clip from the news story. Dawn had been up here. There was no way she could have seen the screen.

  “Please don’t tell me that other people are saying that,” I said with a groan. “The entire concept is ridiculous.”

  “I dunno, I kind of liked the idea of taking down crime together.”

  “Dawn, my powers, by definition, involve the wanton destruction of property. The cops aren’t going to appreciate that. Better to quit while I’m ahead. But don’t worry, I’m not done atoning for my sins yet. In fact, I’m hoping to help you.”

  “How so?”

  “Well…I can’t help but notice that while you’re incredibly strong, the fact that you’re not the greatest fighter can hold you back. That’s where I come in.”

  “As a superpowered trainer?”

  “I do have years of experience, after all.”

  Dawn chuckled, then dropped her gaze. “To be honest, I was kind of hoping you’d be able to help me out in a different way.”

  “Hmmm? How so?”

  In response, she kissed me.

  And well…damn.

  In my twenty-four years of existence, I’ve kissed my fair share of girls. I’m not a pick-up artist or anything, but when it comes to pretty girls and there’s nothing standing in your way, what’s the point in holding back? But with Dawn…it was different.

  Sure, to start off with, it was just a damn good kiss. The second her lips were on mine, my arms wrapped around her, pulling her close. The kiss was gentle, slow. Not rushed or anxious as you might expect from someone like Dawn, who always seemed so embarrassed.

  But that’s not what made the kiss so great. No, it was the road we had taken to get us here in the first place. Running into each other on the street. Cupcakes and cinnamon rolls. Failed first dates. Finding out each other’s secrets. Working together to find Marty. Dawn being possessed by someone who hated me. And even with that all behind us, we still found our way to each other. Despite our flaws and our differences, we both knew that this was a road worth taking.

  And there was something about that that couldn’t be replicated.