“Can you put her in a coma?” I asked. ”I read about it.”
“No. I wouldn’t feel confident in doing that without knowing the substances in her system.”
“Then do a blood screen first,” I said. ”If it’s a question of money-”
“No,” Dinah was the one who spoke. ”Has to be the hard way.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because there’s a seventy point one five nine percent chance that I relapse if I don’t. The cravings get too bad and I can see more cravings in the future and it gets to be too much and I go looking for some eventually,” there was a hint of hysteria in her voice.
I sighed. ”Okay. No induced coma.”
“One bad week,” Dinah said. ”Six days.”
“Okay then,” the doctor said. Still chipper, strangely sounding pleased at this situation. ”I’ll go prepare a room so you have a place to rest. I’ll grab some things to help quiet your tummy, too.”
A moment later, she was gone.
“I can stay with you,” I said. ”At least tonight.”
“You need to go and help the others with Noelle.”
“I will. But first I’ll see you through tonight, okay?”
She nodded.
We sat in silence for a few long moments. The doctor stopped in to say something to Grue, and there was something about her voice, the higher pitch…
“Hey, Dinah, since I can’t see, can you do me a favor and tell me if you see anything around here that says ‘Medhall’?”
“Medhall? No. I don’t think so. Why?”
“These guys are too comfortable around supervillains, and this place is too expensive. Medhall was the company that Kaiser ran, and he also ran the biggest gang of villains in town, before Leviathan came. I’m just wondering if this was the place the white supremacists went to when they needed medical care.”
“Oh. I don’t know.”
“If it is, I’ll have to have words with Tattletale. And I guess I can see why you saw me possibly causing trouble. If they said something to Grue, that’d probably do it.”
Dinah nodded.
I sighed. ”A week to recuperate?”
“Six days. Eight percent chance I need another day to rest,” her voice seemed a touch tight, maybe a little anxious. I wasn’t sure I could blame her.
“I’m not leaving you in their care, okay? We’ll spend enough time here for me to get the details on what to do and what to look out for, and then we’ll find another place to rest up.”
“Okay,” she said, and her voice was far quieter than it had been since we’d rescued her.
It caught me off guard. The quiet. I’d pegged the changes in volume as being tied to her confidence, but the way she’d dropped her voice, it suggested she was anxious about something. Something she apparently wasn’t sharing with me.
“Mind if I run a few more questions by you?”
“I should save my strength, so only a couple more?” She was still quiet as she replied.
I wasn’t sure if Dinah was aware, but the bugs I’d placed on her shoulders sensed the movement, the way she drew her shoulders in.
She was afraid? Was it the impending withdrawal?
“Okay,” I said. ”Chance we come out of this okay?”
“Sixty four point two percent chance.”
“And chance the rest of the city does?”
“…Not as high. It depends how I ask the question, but if I do-”
“No. I get it. If you could ballpark it?”
“Eighteen point two two five eight percent.”
“Okay. There’s going to be some catastrophic damage, then?”
“It’s very likely.”
I sighed. I still had to figure out what we were doing about Noelle. There were roughly eight hours before we had to address that issue. Five or six hours before we really needed to act on the knowledge, calling in help, hiring assistance or notifying the heroes. This was a threat just one step below an Endbringer. Hopefully Ballistic would brief us on her powers, and Tattletale could get us on target as far as her location or weak points.
Tattletale might have been the ruler of Brockton Bay in a general sense, but I was still team leader of the Undersiders. I was blind, we had a pseudo-Endbringer to tackle, and the lives of everyone in the city potentially hinged on it.
Just had to consider my options.
“Fifty eight point five,” Dinah said, and there was a hint of emotion in her voice.
“What? What’s that number?”
“It’s my chance of getting home.”
“Why is it so low?”
She shrugged.
Did that mean she didn’t know, or she wasn’t willing to use her power to find out?
Then I sensed her lean slightly away from me, and I got an inkling why.
Me.
It was so seductive, when I thought about possible risk to my dad, to the people in my territory, to my teammates and friends, and even to me, to think about drawing on Dinah’s assistance. With Dinah’s help, we could avoid the worst case scenarios. And maybe in some not-quite conscious way, I was thinking about how to retain her help, one way or another.
If she was sick, after all, I could look after her while dealing with the situation. Just a week of keeping Dinah close, drawing on her abilities to help everyone, and to ensure her safety. With that in mind, and the way she’d clutched at me for security, I’d been assuming she’d stay with me for just a little while.
She knew that. She saw the numbers changing.
And just with that, there was a breach in trust. The savior wasn’t quite what she’d expected? Dangerous, even? It explained why she was anxious.
“Dinah, listen,” I said. ”I can guess what you’re thinking. I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to trick myself into believing it’s right or better to keep you, that it serves the greater good or whatever. Because that’s a slippery, fast road to doing what Coil was doing.”
She turned her head to look at me.
“We’ll get you home as soon as possible, okay? Within twenty-four hours. And if there’s more risk, if there’s more danger to me, or to you, or everyone? I’ll shoulder that, okay? I’ll make sure we come out of this okay. You can go home. You deserve to go home.”
A full minute passed before she responded with a murmured, “Thank you.”
18.02
“They won’t take me back.”
“They will.”
“I saw it,” Dinah whispered. ”Before I ever met Coil. The fear in their eyes. When I said the numbers and I was right. They’re scared of me. They were relieved when I got taken. They won’t want me now that I’m free.”
“They will want you. Just wait,” I said. ”They’ll welcome you with open arms, and there won’t even be a hint of fear.”
“I look weird. My hair’s all dry and dull, and I haven’t been eating that much. I always felt sleepy, or edgy, and was never hungry, even when my stomach was growling. And maybe I didn’t eat some because it was my only way of fighting back, the only time I could choose something, even if it was bad for me.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does!” There was a note of desperation in her voice. ”They’ll see me and I’ll look different and they’ll think about all those moments when I left them feeling nervous and how there’s a bunch of stuff I haven’t even mentioned because it’s that bad. I’m not even human anymore.”
“You’re definitely human, Dinah.”
“Then why do they call us parahumans? Doesn’t the ‘para’ part mean half? Paraplegic, only half your body works. Parahuman, half human.”
“Not exactly. It means beside, which is how it’s used with paraplegic, or paragraph. It can also mean extra or beyond, like paranormal. We’re next to human, or more than human, depending on how you look at it. I think it’s pretty apt. Powers, in a lot of ways, make the best and worst parts of our humanity stand out. And that depends on the choices we make. Your parents c
an’t judge you for stuff you didn’t choose.”
“How… how do you even know that?”
“Which?”
“The meaning of the words.”
“My mom taught English,” I said. ”So I was always sort of introduced to that stuff. And after she passed away, I maybe started paying more attention to it because it’s the sort of thing she would have done. A way of remembering her.”
“Are you an orphan?”
“My dad’s alive. I don’t have as much contact with him as I should.”
“Why not?”
“It seems like every time I get closer to him, he gets hurt or put in danger. Or I only get close because of the hurt. I don’t know.”
“You should get back in touch with him. Parents are important.”
“I know.”
“My parents won’t take me,” she said. She made a croaking noise, and I touched the bucket she was holding to ensure it was in position, held her braid so it wouldn’t get in the way as she tried to empty her stomach of contents that were no longer there.
I sighed, waiting until the worst of it had abated. When it looked like she might tip forward and fall with the puke bucket into the space between the back seat and the front seats, I caught her shoulders and leaned her back, carefully.
“How’s the pain?” I asked.
“It ends later.”
“I know it ends. But how is it now?”
“Hurts all over. Painkillers didn’t do anything.”
“Yeah,” I said. They couldn’t give her anything narcotic, not with the way the doctor was suspecting that Coil had dosed Dinah with a mixture of opiates and tranquilizers to keep her artificially content and mellow.
“They’re not going to take me.”
It was becoming a refrain.
“They will,” I said. ”I know you can’t use your power right now, but they will.”
“And even if they do take me, it’ll be weird, because they can’t ignore my power now. They pretended I didn’t have one. Pretended I was an ordinary kid. Pretended the headaches didn’t mean anything, like they pretended the heart disease wasn’t a thing.”
“Heart disease? You?”
Dinah shook her head. ”Not me.”
She didn’t elaborate. Related to her trigger event?
“Don’t worry,” I said. I might have gone on to try to reassure her, but I wasn’t sure what to add. I didn’t know her parents.
“They’ll turn me away. I’ll have to come to stay with you. Or Tattletale. And then it’s like it was with Coil. Not as bad. No drugs, no being locked up. But I’ll know I can never go home.”
She was shaking, I realized. Trembling.
“Dinah, listen. That’s the drugs talking, okay? That’s all it is. As relaxed as they made you before, they’re making you rattled now while you’re in withdrawal.”
She made an incoherent noise in response.
I leaned towards the front seat. ”Do you have a brush?”
The driver, supplied by the doctor’s office, responded with only one word, “Comb.”
“Comb will do.”
He opened the glove compartment and reached back to hand me a small comb, not even as long as my hand.
“Here,” I said, “Let’s get you more presentable, so there’s one less thing to worry about.”
I pulled off the elastic that held her messy braid together and began combing it straight.
There wasn’t much time left, and still so much I should be saying, doing or asking.
Do we come out of this okay?
We’ll come out of this okay.
Can we stay in touch?
I’m sorry I played any part in this happening to you.
Either I didn’t have the courage or I couldn’t find the right words. Dinah wasn’t in much of a state to converse, either.
I settled for tidying her hair, braiding it from scratch, and putting the elastic band in place. Maybe it wasn’t as nice as it would be without the braid, but this would be easier to manage while she was recovering.
Not even a minute later, I was holding that braid back while she hung her head over the bucket, the both of us waiting to see if she would start heaving up mere teaspoons of bile or if this latest spell of nausea would subside. I was avoiding putting bugs on her skin, but I was aware of how she was drenched in sweat to the point that it was soaking through her clothes. She was feverish, too. My swarm could tell the difference in her temperature, even through her clothes and scalp.
The car pulled to a stop.
Dinah startled, as if shaken by the realization of what it meant.
“Can you go on your own?” I asked. ”Or maybe we could sit you down on the edge of the front lawn and beep to signal your parents?”
“Go,” she said.
“What?”
“Go. I’ll stay in the car. You see if…”
She paused. I wasn’t sure if it was because of nausea or something else.
“If?”
“If they want me?”
I thought about arguing. About assuring her that they would. Then I reconsidered. I got out of the car and crossed the front lawn to the front door of her house.
I hit the doorbell, but neither I nor my bugs could hear a sound. No power, or it wasn’t hooked up.
I gripped the heavy iron knocker and rapped on the door.
Two stray fruit flies found the parents in a bedroom on the ground floor. They stirred, one sitting up, but they didn’t approach.
I knocked again.
The dad got a cast iron pan for an improvised weapon. It was almost comical, cartoonish. Through my swarm, I could almost make out his words as he assured his wife, ”…don’t know…”
Whatever started or ended the sentence, I didn’t catch it.
I stepped back before he cracked the door open, pan held like a weapon out of sight.
He saw me and slammed the door shut in the next instant.
I pushed the door open before he could lock it, winced at the pain that caused with my fractured rib.
He moved as if to swing at me, then dropped his arm as he reconsidered in the face of the thick cloud of bugs that stirred around me. I wasn’t sure how much he could see. There weren’t any streetlights, or lights on inside, but I would be backlit by moonlight.
“I’m not here to cause trouble, Mr. Alcott,” I said. ”And I don’t mean to scare you.”
“What do you want?”
“I brought Dinah.”
He froze.
“If that’s alright,” I said.
Not turning away from me, he shouted, “Anna!”
His wife exited the bedroom to stand in the doorway, peering out into the hallway. She reacted as she saw me.
“Extortion?” he asked. ”We don’t have anything. You can take anything we have here, but it’s not much.”
“Not extortion. The man who took her died. I’m bringing her back.”
“Please,” the mom said. ”Where is she?”
“Before I go get her,” I said, “You should know. There’s no sign he touched her. He didn’t hurt her, not physically. He did everything he could to take care of her, in a utilitarian sense, but she was still a prisoner.”
Without working eyes, I couldn’t see their expressions. Horror? Grim acceptance?
“She was drugged, often and heavily. She’s in the middle of recovery, and it isn’t pretty. No narcotics, no painkillers, and no tranquilizers, maybe for the rest of her life.”
The mom made a subvocal noise.
“She’s an addict?” the dad asked.
“Yes. And she’s a touch malnourished, and above all she’s scared. I wouldn’t have brought her yet, but I thought it was more important that I get her away from anyone who would do what Coil did, using her for her power. I wanted to get her home.”
“She has abilities, then?” the dad asked.
Why else would Coil take her and keep her?
“An ability, to be specific,” I said. �
��Does it really matter?”
The dad shook his head.
“I’ll go get her, then.”
I walked out to the car and opened the door next to Dinah.
“They don’t want me. They won’t.”
“Come on,” I said. I extended my hand.
“Maybe we should wait until I’m not sick anymore. If they see me like this, they might have second thoughts.”
“They won’t. And we agreed you should go home sooner than later. Come on.”
She put her hand in mine, and I could feel it shaking in the half second before I got a firm grip. I supported her as she got out of the car, then walked her back toward the house.
Mrs. Alcott made a noise somewhere between a moan and a cry as we approached the front door. I moved my bugs out of the way and let go of Dinah the second her mother embraced her, right in the middle of the front lawn. The father was only a step behind, dropping to his knees to wrap his arms around them. A family reunited.
It was a rare thing, I was finding, that a family was both intact and functioning. Too many of the people I’d interacted with so far were separated from the families they should have by death, by pain, misunderstandings or abuse.
I turned to leave.
“Thank you,” the dad called out.
I almost stopped. Then I kept walking towards the car.
“Don’t thank me,” I said, without looking back. I wasn’t sure if I was loud enough for him to catch it.
It didn’t feel good, but it didn’t feel bad, either. I’d played a part in her being taken from her family. Maybe a small part, but a part. I’d done something to make up for that. The real sacrifice, the real atonement, would be dealing with what came next. Dealing with Noelle and the end of the world without using or abusing Dinah’s powers.
I wasn’t sure I felt good about that. I’d gotten this far by making the most out of every resource I had available, and by being smart about things. This was throwing away a resource, tying my own hands. The decision felt dumb, even as I knew it was the right thing to do.
I climbed into the car. Settling into the middle of the back seat, I swept my bugs over the area as a matter of habit.
Worm Page 272
