Shattered (The Superheroine Collection Book 1)

by Lee Winter

  Nyah dropped her gaze, focusing with a scary intensity on the pot. She didn’t resume stirring. Just stared at it. “Who was it?”

  Lena stared at her in complete incomprehension. “What do you mean?”

  Nyah looked at her in surprise. “Never mind. Did your mother ever get past it? Find a way to make the pain go away?”

  “Yes. She did.”

  “How?”

  Lena didn’t answer immediately.

  “Well?” Nyah asked again, impatiently. “What did she do?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “We’re just talking.”

  “No, we’re not.”

  Nyah shook her head. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

  “I’m getting at the fact that you and my mother had this condition in common.”

  A gamut of emotions crossed Nyah’s face, and Lena saw the truth behind her blustering words. “We… What! No.”

  “Your expression in all the old vids? It’s the same. Identical. Even the way you hold your head and try to make the pain go away. Always in crowds, and the degree to which you look in misery is always dependent on how many people are around you. It’s a direct correlation. And I swear, it’s like a mirror reflection, the way you and my mother looked when the pain was at its worst.”

  “I don’t get migraines.” Nyah said, voice tight.

  “Not anymore,” Lena suggested. “Not out here, far from people. Right?”

  Nyah didn’t reply. Her grip on her spoon looked tight enough to crush it to metal filings.

  “It’s also how you knew the other trackers were coming for you,” Lena said. “And the scientists encroaching. You heard their thoughts from miles away. But not mine, right?”

  Nyah glanced at her sharply. She wrenched the spoon from the pot, tomato juices running down the handle, and laid it flat. She took the pot off the fire with precise movements, but Lena could see her shaking hands.

  “Before your mother, did anyone else in your family have this ability?” Nyah asked. Her expression was scarily intense. It made Lena uneasy.

  “No. Just her. It’s a pretty crappy skill you both share.”

  “It’s not a skill.” Nyah said sourly. “It’s a curse—unlike the few guardians who were born with it and have mastery of it, it’s one I only acquired when we landed here. None of my people know why. Suddenly I went from having peace to enduring human thoughts crowding my head. They drown all other thoughts. It’s disturbing to know the petty, base, and dark imaginings of your species. Especially the impulses of younger, testosterone-filled males and those you call rednecks. It was quite an education.” Her revulsion was written all over her face.

  “No wonder you hate our people so much,” Lena whispered.

  Nyah didn’t answer. She put a lid on the pot to keep it warm and eyed her. “I do know why I allowed you to stay here, even knowing you were a tracker. It’s because you were the only human I’ve ever met who does not leak their thoughts. I need to know how you block being read. And I especially need to know how your mother found a cure from her curse.”

  “No,” Lena said, feeling queasy and gross. She stared at her hands, shocked to find them trembling, and curled them into tight fists. “I can’t do that. You’d need my life history for that. And I’m private.”

  “Private,” Nyah repeated incredulously. “I’m not asking for prurient reasons. I need to know.”

  “I know that!” Lena cried. “You want peace from humans? A way to silence their thoughts that drown you and crawl around in your head? I know that. I get that. But I won’t tell you.” Lena unclenched her fists and tried to force herself to calm down.

  “Lena, somehow you, alone, have a rare skill among billions. Just tell me how you do it?” Nyah’s brows were drawn darkly together, and a frustrated edge crept into her voice.

  “No. You don’t know what the cost is. It’s too high.”

  “The cost?” Nyah repeated flatly. “Ah. Now I see.” She regarded Lena stonily for a moment before adding, “I’m prepared to pay whatever the price.”

  Lena stared at her in dawning realization. She felt numb at the implication. “The hell? You think I’m holding out for money?”

  “Some prices are not monetary,” Nyah said, her voice cool. “I am open to hearing any proposal. I assume you wish me to go to that anniversary ceremony? Correct?”

  “You think I’m blackmailing you?” Lena could barely contain her shock.

  “Is that the price?” Nyah pressed her, distaste coating her features.

  “No,” Lena snapped. “No, it’s not the price! And screw you for thinking I’m so mercenary. There is no price. There never would be. I meant the cost was too high for me to pay.” She stood. “I’m going t-to stretch my legs.”

  “Lena…”

  “No! I think you’ve said enough. I can’t even look at you.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Lena headed for the back of the cave, desperate to put some distance between her and Nyah. Anger pounded in her head in a matching, staccato beat to her feet pounding along the cave floor. Of all the fucked-up, crappy things to say. Lena had a bunch of flaws, Christ, a truckload of them, but blackmail was not one of them. Especially not over something so close to the bone as this. Something that had the power to snap her in two if she wasn’t careful and didn’t watch herself to make sure she didn’t slip back. Her rage at Nyah’s heartless, ignorant allegation rose anew, and she picked up the frenetic pace.

  Lena followed the narrowing path, wondering where the twists and turns led. Sounds of running water began getting louder, so she headed toward them. A shaft of light drew her attention, diverting her, and she discovered an opening, little better than a wide fissure, which she turned sideways into and squeezed through.

  She emerged on the far side of the mountain, on a ledge protected from above by a small, jagged overhang that kept the worst of the rain off. Stubborn stubbly bushes clung to the cracks on the ledge, shaking under the high winds. Lena squinted into the distance. In the strange, not-quite darkness, she could see more mountains below, studded with clumps of spiky green plants. As she stared, she realized she was really seeing hundreds of dragon blood trees, bent almost in half by the wind, their trunks invisible in the half light. Wrapping her arms around herself, Lena shivered at the sheer unrelenting force of the wind, only too aware of how vulnerable she was to its fury.

  Hours ago she’d fallen off a mountain, for God’s sake. She should be dead. It was hard to still get her head around that. She would be dead, if not for Nyah.

  The rage that had been knotting Lena’s insides seeped out of her, little by little, at the memory of her rescue. She exhaled shakily, suddenly feeling weak after being drained of fury. She dropped to her haunches, leaning back against the rock wall, and smoothed her hands over her knees and calves, again and again, trying to get her emotions back under control.

  The irony was that at work they thought the great Silver had no emotions. Out here, though, it was as though she barely knew herself; everything was so close to the surface. She’d felt more anger, uncertainty, doubt, humiliation, and pain in the past two days than she had in the past two years. What the hell was happening to her?

  There was an eerie light over Socotra—the clouds parted briefly and then swallowed the sun once more. The skies returned to brooding black, with a brown, angry smudge where the sun should be. The wind swirled and changed, flinging a brief burst of rain at her. She pressed herself back harder against the mountain, shaking with cold, but not ready to retreat inside yet. Not ready to resume that conversation.

  Lena couldn’t tell Nyah her story. Her life was as messed up as it came. She’d taken years to recover. But she’d gotten herself together. Found a job and thrown herself into work to the exclusion of all else. She’d honed her skills, learned the secrets to knowledge and control. She’d built up a good intelligence network across the various Facility operations worldwide, and had eyes and ears everywhere.


  Outside of the office, away from that bureaucratic, political world that hid all the guardians’ imperfections and secrets, she’d turn into someone else entirely: a ruthless, empty tracker who reveled in the chase and the win. Over the years she’d become addicted to the thrill of winning. No guardian’s story was too sad or too awful for her not to use it to score another winning notch on the board.

  Their stories never bothered her for long. And, yes, she definitely knew where the broken guardians went all right, after trackers brought them in. The unstable ones such as Beast Lord? They’d be twenty-two subfloors down by now, doped up to their eyeballs indefinitely. Never to see daylight again.

  Carefully enhanced and edited images of them at various distant, unspecified disasters would be drip-fed to the public for the rest of their days, maintaining the illusion they were still off doing hero work somewhere far, far away. They did that for the splats too. As far as Earth’s people knew, the aliens that walked their planet were immortal.

  Lena’s wet fingertips dug into the thin layer of dirt beside her, scraping and heaping it into a small mound. She turned up a rock and flicked it into her other hand, before batting it lightly from hand to hand. The repetition helped her think.

  The faking of heroic deeds wasn’t new. They’d been doing their digital sleight of hand for longer than Lena had been alive. Hell, they’d been doing it with Shattergirl too, now she thought about it. No wonder she hadn’t realized the guardian had been missing for eighteen months. The Facility was all about maintaining the illusion. They were damned good at it. But did she care?

  That was the question. Lena polished the rock against her jeans, cleaning it as she considered the ugly decay and muck in her own life.

  She’d made a concerted effort in her career not to think too hard on certain things going on in the periphery of the Facility. Besides, technically, she shouldn’t even know any of this. She had decided not to dwell on anything long enough to have an opinion. Nothing she’d heard whispered on her network had been enough to give up a career, hell, a life, which held her only purpose for getting out of bed.

  There were occasionally stories of a few trackers developing a conscience and letting some of their targets run. She hadn’t given them much thought either. They were replaced soon enough. Besides, why would she care what men and women unable to do their jobs thought?

  Naturally, no such rumors ever swirled around Silver. Hell. No.

  The wind bit at her now numb face as Lena acknowledged an unsettling truth. She had never really been bothered enough to ask certain, deeper questions. The guiding principle she’d lived by was that the best trackers didn’t wonder whether the talent had a reason to run or fret about what might happen to them on their return. Whether it was right.

  The best trackers didn’t doubt. Lena had worked out years ago that to be the best, she needed laser-like focus. They wanted a tracker? She gave it everything. She didn’t question what she did, or its impact on her. She’d never for a heartbeat wondered whether it was worth the cost to her as a person. She told herself she didn’t need friends to prosper. She didn’t need anyone.

  Sure, she admitted sometimes, in the darkness in her own bed, that maybe, just maybe, it’d be nice to be connected with someone. To actually have a lover she could trust. Someone to share stories and days and worries with. A woman she could enjoy a beer and a laugh with after work, and shoot the breeze. A woman who got her. Even just for a little while. But that couldn’t happen because that wasn’t who Lena was.

  Because Lena Martin didn’t trust anyone.

  She threw the rock with all her might, almost wrenching her shoulder. It sailed over the ledge, disappearing from view. She rubbed her suffering arm. Trusting people? No. That wasn’t her at all.

  Besides, Lena told herself, thudding her head back against the hard rock wall, she was fine with how things were. Once the storm passed, it’d be a new day. She would consider the assignment over, pretend she’d never clapped eyes on Shattergirl, move on, and need never face such troubling thoughts again.

  Because doubts were the real enemy. You lost focus, you were no longer the best. Doubts were like the past; they could turn the strongest person into a shell, and she couldn’t face that. Not again.

  A memory curled into her brain before she could stop it, and suddenly she was back there.

  Dread filled Lena and she squeezed her eyes tightly shut, willing this not to happen now. Tears pricked her eyes and she repeated in her mind on a loop, “Not now. Not here. No.”

  The wind was howling, and she no longer cared if it swept her from the ledge. Another gust, more powerful than the last, ripped around her, threatening to do just that. It made her whole body shudder.

  “You know, there are easier ways to die,” a voice said beside her.

  Lena stiffened, her eyes flashing back open. She hadn’t even heard Nyah approach.

  “In fact, if you’re going to offer yourself up as a sacrifice in a cyclone, you’re making me wonder why I bothered saving you earlier.”

  Lena stared sullenly into the bruised skies. “It’s in your job description. That’s why.”

  “Much as I hate to admit it, that’s true. So what do you see in those angry clouds? What are you thinking?”

  Wasn’t that the question? She was suddenly too tired to bother with any more clever little answers, always neatly side-stepping the truth. Her reserves were shattered.

  “I’m thinking about who I am as a human being. And all the ways I am not a worthwhile person.” Lena tilted her head towards Nyah and added flatly, “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Silver.”

  There was a silence and a sharp intake of breath behind her.

  “You’re…her.”

  Lena looked away, unsurprised at her visceral reaction. All guardians had heard of the infamous, ruthless Silver, the world’s top tracker. She was as bad as a curse to a guardian on the run.

  “I’d like to say pleased to meet you,” Nyah said coldly, “but that’s a lie.”

  “Don’t blame you,” Lena said, shutting her eyes. The rock wall felt nice and cold against her warm head.

  “You’re the one they say has never been beaten.”

  Lena’s lip curled in derision, and she fluttered open her eyes. “Actually you did beat me,” she said tiredly. “Before the storm started. I was heading home, about to report you as untraceable. Congratulations.” She gave a hollow laugh. “You broke my winning streak.”

  “I see.”

  Lena could hear the shuffle as Nyah edged closer. “Do you even like your job?”

  A sudden brightness made Lena squint, and she marveled at a fork of lightning on the horizon. It was beauty and devastation combined. “Being the best means something to me,” she said flatly, suddenly wondering if that was even still true. “You should see me when I’m really in the zone. I can talk anyone into anything. It’s all about winning. Nothing makes me feel better.”

  At the prolonged silence, she turned to find Nyah studying her, not the storm.

  “Nothing? That’s sad.”

  “I suppose. Actually what’s sad is I’m a winner who hates everything and everyone. I’ve come to the conclusion out here that I’m a lousy human being.”

  Nyah’s reply was sardonic. “Well, I hate everything too—including my job. You at least like yours.”

  Lena said nothing for a moment. “It’s not that I like it. I just like to win. The feeling I get from that is why I do it. Especially since I never won shit as a kid. I lost the life lottery, but won in the end.”

  “You wanted to prove them all wrong.”

  “Yeah.” Lena stared at the rain. It was getting heavier. “I think…somewhere along the line I stopped caring about the things that matter. I look at you…you stopped caring too. So much so that you even walked away from everything. But the big difference is, you never lost your compassion.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do,” Lena said.
She glanced up at the hooded eyes watching her. “You carry on like you’re so confident and smart and better than us all, but I look into your eyes now and you know what I see? A fraud. You’re full of shit. You still think we’re worth saving, don’t you?”

  “That’s just the thing, I don’t.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Lena said. “You saved me.”

  “It was a reflex.”

  Lena scoured her face, wanting to see the lie for what it was. She was stymied when she couldn’t read her expression at all.

  “You’re desperate for that not to be true, aren’t you? I warned you about the masks we wear. I meant it when I said I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “I hear that, and I understand needing a break. A long one. Hell, a year or two, even. But I really don’t get giving up on everything, on life, all of it, forever. That’s such a long time. I know you felt forced into this hero thing, but the Pact was supposed to be a fair deal. It was never meant to hurt you. It was only meant to ask a small price for us giving you a new home.”

  “I’m well aware of the debt owed,” Nyah said sharply, “because the people of Earth never let us forget it. Every day, in big ways and small, they reminded us that we would be dead without their generosity. But it’s a debt without end. How much is enough?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “How much blood will commons extract from us before they agree we’ve paid our dues and should be allowed to be free? And when will our opinions not be sorted into guardian or common? Alien or human? Will we always be outsiders?”

  “But you don’t even like commons,” Lena said slowly. “Why would you want to be considered one of us?”

  “It would be nice to not always be singled out as ‘other.’ It’d be nice not to be me. Alien. Different. Special. Someone to point at.”

  Lena studied her in surprise. “You just want to be average? To blend? Come on.”

  “I’m tired,” Nyah snapped. “I know you’re just a common, but don’t you actually get that?”