Cold

by Robert J. Crane

  “That’s cold,” Reed deadpanned, only a little hint of a smile to betray his snideness.

  “Well, revenge is a dish best served at that temperature,” I said, “to quote—hell if I even know what that’s from.”

  “Star Trek, I think?”

  I made a scoffing noise low in my throat. “Geek. Then it’s your fault I even know it.”

  His smile grew a bit wider. “I only led you to the font of wisdom. You drank from it, and ‘Sokath, his eyes uncovered.’”

  “I hate you so much for bringing me down to this level,” I said, but then we both laughed. “I’m heading back to New York in the morning.”

  That raised his eyebrows again. “You’re just going to walk away from this case?”

  “I guess,” I said. “I was ordered to, after all.”

  He snorted. “And you’re such a stickler for following orders, of course, you have no choice but to do so.” He adjusted in his seat. “Actually, this comes at an interesting point, because one of my people is going through something similar. Olivia Brackett? You remember her?”

  “Blond, kinda tall, quiet, stuff bounces off her?”

  “She’s got a kinetic bubble around her,” he said. “I sent her and Veronika to Vegas to deal with a speedster. Well, Veronika’s in the hospital for the second time now, their clashes have trashed a couple places around town, and I pulled ’em back because Olivia has all the confidence of a sweating, seventh-grade Poindexter.”

  “Ouch for her.”

  “Yeah, she’s got a bad history,” Reed said. “I don’t think she’s going to make it doing this unless something changes in her. She feels…lost, I guess. Scared of her own shadow. But it strikes me that if you’re thinking about going rogue and finishing the job in front of you…” He raised his hands and arms in the perfect picture of the shrug emoji. “Maybe you could be a goodish-bad influence on someone who clearly needs that kind of influence from a strong, female, not-her-boss role model?”

  “You really just want to go back to dreamless sleep, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, these evening confabs really take it out of me. Hanging out with you in dreamwalk is cool, but it’s like not sleeping at all.”

  I chuckled. “Fine. I’ll talk to your problem child and see if I can steer her right.” I paused. “If I can figure out what’s right.”

  “I know you’re distrusting of your instincts,” Reed said, now pensive, “but look, if you’re not colossally arrogant, it’s easy to spin yourself around wondering if you’re right or wrong on these things. We’ve both been betrayed by people, so I get it. But when it comes to getting the bad guy, Sienna…” He smiled. “You’re the best there is. Go after whoever you think is bad. The right way, of course.”

  “What if I can’t do it the right way, Reed?” I asked, and my genuine nerves were showing now. “I’ve never really played it that way before, not in the big leagues. Sure, I tried for a while after the war, but I never really had to go all out with anyone, push myself to the limits, while hewing to these rules.” I smacked my lips together. “What if I’m not good enough to do it legit?”

  He smiled. “You’re the Slay Queen. You’ll figure it out.” And with that, he was gone, leaving me in the darkness of my dreamwalk alone, wondering why the hell he believed so much in me to do the right thing when I couldn’t figure out how to do so for myself.

  68.

  Olivia

  I fell asleep hard, after fighting it off, lying on the bed for a while, unsure of what to do, what to say, who to say it to…

  Unsure of who the hell I was, honestly. And desperately unsure of what I wanted to do and to be.

  When I drifted into the darkness of sleep, finding myself not in darkness was a little bit of a surprise.

  Finding Sienna Nealon staring at me?

  Not even doubly surprising, that. Infinitely surprising, more like.

  “You’re Olivia, right?” she asked, dark hair wet like she’d just gotten in out of a good rain. She was pale as ever, pale as death, maybe, but her blue-green eyes reminded me of the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida panhandle on a crystal-clear day.

  She had a few freckles, faded but present, and though she’d lost some weight in the last couple years, her proportions would never allow her to squeeze into anything below a size 10. Which was how she seemed to be in every regard—a mold breaker.

  “Um,” I said, tending toward sputtering. “Um. Hi?”

  “You seem unsure whether you’re actually saying ‘hi,’” she said. “Might want to get definitive on that. It’s a little thing. Maybe go ahead and commit and see where it leads you?”

  “Hi,” I said. “Uhm…what are you doing here?” I looked around. The place we were was not my terrible motel room on the outskirts of Vegas. It was a calm place, like— “Hey, this kinda looks like Dr. Zollers’ office.”

  Her eyes widened just a hint. “Good catch. Does his current office still have this layout?”

  “Sorta,” I said, looking around for the fish tank. It wasn’t there. “Missing a few things, but it’s close.”

  “I modeled my dreamwalk space after the place where I first met him,” she said, looking around, taking it in. “Because I talk to him here, and because early on in my journey, it was the place I felt most comfortable.” Her piercing eyes narrowed in on me again. “You see Zollers? As a patient, I mean?”

  “When he’s available and I am,” I said, my heart beating a little faster. “Reed recommended him. Sometimes he travels to do…stuff. You know how that goes, I guess.” My voice trailed off the longer I talked, the more I realized I was rambling.

  “He’s good,” she said. “Really good. What do you talk to him about?”

  “Stuff…?” I realized that became a question a little late, heat flaring my face because, let’s face it, I’d already opened up to Veronika on this trip under pressure, and I really didn’t want to do that again, especially not to someone who I respected. Admired.

  Okay, kinda idolized at this point.

  “Really?” She didn’t miss a beat. “Because I talk to him about being raised in captivity, the struggles to control my violent reactions to external stimuli, and trying to maintain normal relationships in spite of my myriad issues.” She nodded slowly, eyes up like she was running through them all. “And there are so many.”

  “Oh. Wow.” I blinked a couple times. “Every time I see you, like on TV—hell, even in Scotland—you always seem so put together. Fighting, sure. Under attack, yeah, maybe. But put together.”

  She laughed out loud. “That’s hilarious. I had no idea it looked that way from the outside, because most of the time I’m just running around like a crazy person either attacking or trying to survive the person attacking me. I guess I never gave much thought to how I look while I’m doing it.”

  “Wow,” I said, sitting down on the edge of the chair Dr. Zollers usually used for our sessions. It even looked like his chair, and I almost felt like I was invading it, even in his absence. But I wanted to talk to her, so I ignored that silly bit of discomfort. “All I can think about is how I look to people. How I’m misbehaving. What kind of trouble I’m going to get into for doing bad.” I looked around, the slightly shadowed edges of the room darker than the real thing. “I feel like there’s people watching me all the time, judging me. For every stupid thing I do. And I do a lot of stupid things.”

  “Lots of people do stupid things,” she said, shrugging.

  “It doesn’t feel that way,” I said.

  “Go on YouTube. It’s the 2010s,” she said. “You’ll find no shortage of videos of people taking the ‘Being Idiots and Broadcasting It on the Internet Challenge’ every day. Anything you do, compared to those morons, well, it’s gotta be absolutely brilliant.”

  I bowed my head. “I don’t know about that. I got people hurt today.”

  “Oh? How?”

  “A speedster used my power against bystanders,” I said. It was hard to even say it, and once it was o
ut, I didn’t dare look up at her, because I knew the condemnation had to be coming. Sienna Nealon didn’t truck with people hurting the innocent.

  “Once upon a time,” she said, low, a little anger creeping into her voice, “a real sonofabitch blew up a town with thousands of people in it to tell me how serious he was about something. A whole damned town. Kaboom. Gone.”

  I looked up. Her eyes were unfocused, staring into the distance. But I didn’t see any condemnation there.

  “How did you get over that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know that I ever have,” she said. “And before that, another sonofabitch killed his way through two hundred and fifty people to get me to leave the place I was hiding, to surrender myself to him. Wasn’t my idea to hide, but I went along with it, and those people died. So that’s on me.” She put her hand on her heart. “What happened to you today?”

  “I have a bubble around me,” I said, waving a hand in front of my body. “The speedster hit a bar, it broke into splinters, they ricocheted off me at higher speed…into a bystander.”

  “But she’ll be all right?” She was watching me intently now.

  “Yes, after some surgery.” I nodded, not sure how we’d gotten to this point. “But how do—”

  “This speedster,” Sienna said, staring me down. “How bad are they?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. “Well, they keep talking about chaos, unleashing chaos—”

  “Yeah, that’s probably not going anywhere good,” she said. “So I guess it comes down to a simple choice for you: stand back and let the cavalry sweep in and handle it—”

  “What if they can’t?” I asked, because the question just bubbled out. “This speedster…they’re fast. New to the powers, I think, but fast.”

  “It’s a real danger,” Sienna said, nodding along. “Your powers are probably better disposed to dealing with a speedster than anyone I’ve ever met. And I’ve met quite a few metas.”

  “But mine are defensive, only,” I said, and I hit a vein of frustration I’d not even realized was there. “Yeah, it’s great if someone comes at me, but what about when they’re whizzing around, hurting other people? All I can do is stand there and look useless.” I bowed my head. “And feel helpless.”

  “Look, they’re your powers, not mine,” Sienna said, “but if I may say something, as probably one of, if not the, most dangerous metas on the planet.” Her lips curled in a very slight smile. “Have you really explored your powers? Thought through the permutations for how you can use them in every circumstance?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “So, for example,” she said, standing up, “let’s say I had your powers, and I was in a fight. I’d throw myself backward against a wall, an object, whatever, to trip that momentum reflex—”

  “But against an immovable object, that’d send me flying,” I said, instinctively.

  “Exactly.”

  “But I don’t like to go flying,” I said. “Most days I really try to avoid it. Except for commercially.”

  “But it gives you speed and strength if you’re going on the offensive,” she said, feinting with a lightning-fast punch. “Think about what you could do to this speedster if you got them trapped in a confined space and just started swinging at them. You could basically pummel them into death or surrender without even being that good of a fighter.”

  I blinked a few times. “Not sure I’m really looking to pummel anyone to death.”

  “Your powers seem to contain unlimited possibilities,” she said, ignoring my clearly stated desire not to kill people. “Like this bubble around you—can you expand it?”

  “Expand…it?” I almost choked. “Most of the time I’d prefer to contract it down to zero, not make it grow.”

  “Or control the vectors of speed manually?” she went on, still ignoring my protests. “Think about that. If you could guide the power rather than just have it trigger randomly when you’re beset by a case of the nerves, you could really direct it somewhere. Or at someone, rather. Or even move yourself without having to throw yourself against something. You’d almost be like a mini speedster yourself.”

  I laughed. “I don’t think it works like that. Any of that.”

  Those piercing blue-green eyes seemed to spear me in place. “How do you know if you’ve never tried? I’m still discovering powers I didn’t know I had until recently. It’s not like they come with an instruction manual. And my guess is, given your upbringing, you never had a chance to really ‘explore the studio space’ with them.” She shrugged. “You’re in Vegas now. The desert is just out there. You might want to take a little time and really see what you can do.”

  “But…what if I’m not good enough?” I asked, and boy, did my heart start pouring out. Again. In spite of my desire not to say…well, any of this. “What if people get hurt?”

  “When someone’s bent on causing ‘chaos,’” she said, “people are going to get hurt. What you need to decide is if you’re the type of person who is willing to step up and use the power you’ve got to put an end to the chaos. Because most people? They abdicate that responsibility every day in favor of living their lives. And that’s a fine choice, to admit that stepping up and trying to do these things—these dangerous things—is not for you.” She pointed a finger at me, and it felt like she really was spearing me with it, even though she was feet away and this was all a dream. “It takes a rare person to be willing to step up and say, ‘I’ll do it,’ knowing there are dangers, knowing that things can go badly, knowing that you could die.”

  “But…I’m afraid,” I whispered. And there it was. The sum total of my past, reaching out to infect my present, all boiled down to one feeling that I couldn’t ever seem to shake, no matter how far behind I thought I’d left it.

  “Fortunately, doing this doesn’t require you to be fearless,” Sienna said with a smile. “It just requires you to have courage, and fight through that fear. You can do it—if you want to. But it’s a choice you have to make.” And she started to fade.

  “How do I know if I’m the kind of person who can do that?” I asked, a little quiver in my stomach causing a flurry of doubt.

  “Anyone can be that type of person,” Sienna said, disappearing into the darkness as the walls and furniture faded around us. “You just have to choose to. So decide quickly…” Her voice turned stern, more serious, and it didn’t help my nerves. “Because if this speedster is looking to cause chaos? They probably won’t wait around for you to find your courage.”

  69.

  Brianna

  She awoke in the easy chair that her father used to sit in, the TV flickering in front of her, the ten o’clock news playing. She blinked a few times, trying to re-acclimate to her surroundings.

  It was one of the safe houses she’d bought with the family fortune. This one was outside Baton Rouge, in a town called Arnaudville. It was a little off the beaten path, but that was good. This would give Brianna a chance to really hunker down, decide what to do now that her plans had twice failed.

  There was an itch in the back of her mind that she hadn’t scratched yet. It called to her, this thing she’d bent her whole life toward. It had formed after she’d gotten back from the Olympics the last time.

  The Olympics. She’d put her whole life into that, into competition. She was good, too, could have been the best, she felt. Especially after she’d made that little tweak to her genetic code, the kind that no drug test on the planet could read—yet.

  Metahuman powers straight out of a bottle. She hadn’t done it for the competitive edge, though.

  She’d done it after she’d found out what was eating Emily.

  She’d done it after she’d vowed revenge.

  Brianna hadn’t had a clue what went wrong with Emily. It was the mystery of her youth, an unsolvable puzzle that, looking back, should have been so obvious. Their mother said she was just “feeling blue.” Their father attributed it to her becoming a teenager. Emily had gone from normal, h
appy, confident, excited to listless, tired, skittish, and dark in the course of what felt like a moment. Like she’d gone to bed one night her normal self and woken up the next a depressed shadow of her previous self.

  She’d limped through her teenage years like that, Brianna wondering, her parents wondering, all of them wondering together what had gone wrong with Emily. Mood swings, depression, a slow drive toward drinking and drugs. They thought the latter had driven the former. Occasionally, she’d seem almost normal for a day or so. Then she’d be back to darkness, back to hell, and none of them could get at her.

  Brianna had buried herself in competitive shooting, because what could she do about her sister’s burgeoning emotions? She ignored them, got on with her life, went to the Olympics and looked at turning pro.

  Then she got the letter.

  It had come right after she’d returned from Rio de Janeiro with the silver. Written in Emily’s own hand, scrawled from the shaking, the mark of someone trying to fight the need for a fix long enough to excise the demons in her soul.

  Brianna read it. And read it again, her own hand shaking like her sister’s when she’d poured the wavy scratchings out of her tortured soul and onto the page.

  And Brianna got angry.

  She hadn’t been this mad when she’d failed her shot and ended up with the silver instead of the gold. She hadn’t been this mad…well, ever.

  Of course they’d all missed it—Emily had gone to bed one night perfectly normal and woken up a hot mess, but before she’d gone to bed that night, she’d been babysitting for the Warringtons.

  She hadn’t gone to bed normal at all. They just hadn’t seen her when she came in, her clothing askew, cheeks flushed, hair all mussed up from Ivan Warrington laying his dirty, lecherous hands on her in the back of his wife’s minivan after offering to drive Emily home.

  And Brianna had just gone on with her life, oblivious to any of it. Like it was happening to someone the world away instead of the sister who slept in the bunk bed above hers.