by J Bennett
“I think you’ll appreciate this.” Leo turns to me, his brown eyes peering into mine. It takes me a moment to look down at the object in his hand. When I first moved to Biggie LC, I’d never seen a check before except in the old historicals. Everyone pays by direct cryptocurrency transfer these days, usually with Loons. Not in Biggie LC. Everyone, from the waitress at the diner to henchmen and sidekicks, is required to cash real checks at the bank for paper dollars. It gives vils a clear target to hit, something real to steal from townies.
“Your first paycheck,” Leo says, since I’ve been staring at him mutely.
“Uh, thanks.” I take the square of paper stamped with printed letters and numbers. Those numbers are important. This will be enough to get me through my current semester at school and renew Alby’s therapy program for another month.
I laugh. “I tried out for the show because I needed money to get my degree so I could actually start helping people,” I tell him. “But all I’ve managed to do is hurt the people I care about most.” It doesn’t matter what I say to Leo now. I don’t need to impress him or play a part.
Leo is quiet for a few moments, and my weak laugh hangs between us. Finally, he says, “Helping people is dangerous work.” He looks over his shoulder. I follow his gaze. There, sitting on the desk is the blurry pic of the skinny children.
So that’s what Leo went back to his apartment for after I freed him from Lysee’s grasp.
“What were you doing there? In Tanzania?” I ask.
Leo smiles and his eyes are so sad. “You could say I was trying to help people.”
I shiver, but I hardly feel the wetness of my clothes. I hear only the ice in his voice.
“Tell me,” I say because I have nothing to lose.
Leo glances at me, and I notice that his face is drawn. It strikes me that he must have spent the whole night stitching together our next ep, which is due tomorrow… no, technically today. Normally, it would have been enough to showcase our kidnapping of Ash Anders and call it a day, but with Beacon’s death echoing across the entire world, everyone will be rushing to push out their own eps of the brawl.
Leo would have had to capture everything—Anders’s kidnapping, Shine’s escape, my showdown with Lysee, the brawl, and finally the impromptu memorial—all in a single ep. I wonder if he negotiated with the City Council to make it a double ep. I’m sure they’d be glad to give him the extra Stream time.
He must have been working all afternoon and all night on the eps. How long did he edit and cut the scene of Beacon’s death for maximum shock value and trauma? How many mins and hours did he take to carefully sculpt our devastation at the memorial? He’s spent the whole night stewing in those images of death, all that genuine fear and pain. They’ve worn him down. I can see it. And I can see something else.
Leo is sad.
“I used to produce news,” he says softly. “Real news. Not gossip. We reported on stories across the world.”
“Even in Tanzania?” I ask.
“Yes.” Leo turns and walks to the desk. He picks up the framed picture and holds it gently in his hand as if it were the most delicate thing in the world. “This was taken four years ago. The Arabian Vanguard was trying to cleanse the rebel insurgency with bombing campaigns. They claimed it was a massive success, but we heard rumors they were bombing civilians, desperate to show they were accomplishing something. We tried to get the story out.” He tucks the photo closer to his chest as if it somehow needs protecting.
“We were a small crew. Me, a reporter, a cameraperson, and a freelance photographer who kept crowding in on our story.” His face softens and he looks down at the picture. “This was the last photo she ever took. The village was hit during a raid.” He looks at me. “I was off in the woods taking a piss. That’s the only reason I survived.”
“Lucky piss,” I say.
“Was it?” He gently places the photo back on the desk, and this is when I know I’ve been right about Leo all along. He is broken. Just like me. That’s what I recognized in his eyes the first moment I met him. The agony of the survivor. This is why I’ve been drawn to him.
He doesn’t say it, but I know he loved that photographer. He’s so handsome and poised that I bet she loved him back. Maybe they dreamed of saving the world together, or at least that little village full of skinny children.
“After that happened, they started sending robos and drones to report in war zones,” Leo is saying. “Not that they even report much international news anymore. Poor ratings.” He gives me a crooked smile that is so sad my heart nearly shatters.
All I want to do is take a step forward, tilt my face, and kiss away all his pain, but some instinct warns me off. He’s still hurting, still grieving.
He loved her. Not me.
And so I look down at my feet and mumble, “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
“What was her name?” I ask, “The photographer.”
His voice is so quiet I’m not even sure he knows he says the words out loud. “Ella-Ann.”
Ella-Ann. I feel like I can almost see her, a spark in Leo’s eye, the sad twitch of his smile. I wonder if she was beautiful. I bet she was.
I mumble a few more pointless words and then duck out of the office, away from that tragic photograph and all those frozen shots of our fight, including that singular image of Beacon so alive. I look at the door to the guest bedroom but I can’t go in.
I can’t stay here. All of me is trembling and cracked.
My feet move. I pass The Professor’s door where the faint light still flickers beneath and then cross through the living room where Sequoia sleeps in peaceful bliss. The air is cold outside, but the rain has stopped. The clouds are parting, and a sliver of moon sits low on the horizon.
By the time I make it to the fancy, well-manicured neighborhood, my teeth chatter and my hands ache with cold. I knock on Adan’s door knowing he would never be drooling enough to come back to his house. Even if he was here, he wouldn’t be awake at this hour or inclined to open his door to some lobotomy person with the audacity to knock instead of ping him through his Band like a normal human being.
But he is home, and he is awake, and he does open his door, because suddenly he’s standing in front of me shivering in his damp clothes just as I’m shivering in mine.
“You were dim to come back,” I hiss at him. “I could have set traps. I could have told someone where you lived. The Professor.”
“I trust you, Alice,” he says simply. I thrust myself into his arms. He leans down to kiss away my hurt and I kiss away his.
We cling to each other as we stumble into his house, filling the other’s despair, using our bodies so that our minds and souls can rest. We move through his living room, and there’s a desperation in the way I tear that ridic zipper shirt off his muscled torso, how I put my mouth on his damp, cold skin. He said that he trusted me, and even as this is happening, I realize that I trust him, too. I couldn’t do this otherwise.
I feel his need as he peels away my t-shirt, and his shivering fingers fumble with the zipper of my jeans. We totter into the bedroom, past a pleasant greeting from Martha, his house robo. He tosses me onto the big, soft bed, and then his body is pressing against mine, his hungry mouth on me.
Leo’s face flashes through my mind, but I push it away. Leo doesn’t want me, and even if he did, I couldn’t do this with him. Not this way. Not with my fingers clawing at him with an almost panicked desire for release.
Adan and I use each other, our eyes agreeing without words. His hands press against the bruises he put across my body. I cry out, but I don’t want him to stop. And then he’s inside me, filling me, and I wrap my legs around him trying to press him in further, deeper. After he pulls away, the tips of his hair now dark with sweat, we move more slowly, languidly as we explore each other’s bodies. I don’t want to let go of him. I need the feel of his hot skin, the touch of his lips, the physical connection. There’s some lobotomy part of me that believ
es as long as we’re connected nothing can hurt us. Nothing else exists except the two of us in this bed.
But eventually my body begins to feel numb and heavy, and I lay with my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. We are quiet, and he gently strokes the small of my back, now careful to avoid my bruises.
Here. Forever here. Where shadows do not linger.
My Band buzzes on my wrist, pulling me from my drowse.
“No news,” Adan says. “I don’t want to see anything.”
I turn the screen of my Band toward me and read the message Bob has sent. “You’ll want to see this,” I tell him.
With a little work, I sync my Band to the Pod in his room. Sitting up in bed, we watch the Phoenix shuttle hurtle down through the atmosphere of Mars. This is the most treacherous part of the journey, the phase where two previous shuttles burned to ashes.
I grip Adan’s shoulder as we watch the shuttle miss its landing site and tumble roughly across the barren landscape. The shuttle comes to a halt in a plume of dust, and we wait six agonizing minutes until finally the voice of Thane-Ambrose Garcia, the shuttle’s commander, crackles over the grainy satellite image.
“Houston, we got a little shook up and we have a few minor injuries, but The Phoenix has landed.”
My heart squeezes painfully in my chest. Something is blooming inside of me. Something dangerous. It feels like hope, and it terrifies me.
Our first interstellar pioneers are on Martian soil, ready to create a human colony on another planet.
A new start. A new day.
I can’t help myself. I yelp with joy and feel tears prick to corners of my eyes.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” Adan says
“Cry? Of course I can cry,” I tell him.
“No.” He looks at me with a wide grin on his face. “I didn’t know you could smile.”
Chapter 30
The criminal known as Shadow is a threat to everything that makes this city great. You have my word, he will be captured and brought to justice. ~ Mayor Grimbal Wisenberg, Press Conference
~
The desert finds me in my dreams. Burning sand crackles under my feet while the sun reigns in the sky overhead, its eye never turning away. In the dream, I am not a spindly teenager, and my brother, Alby doesn’t stagger next to me, panting out futile reassurances. Instead, I am Beacon, except my costume is made of metal instead of a flexible, adaptable polymer complete with a highly intuitive temperature control interface.
The metal costume heats, and I begin to cook inside. It sears my skin. Burns. But I can’t take it off and reveal my identity to the world. And so I walk through the endless, rocky dunes. My tongue swells. My eyes are dulled by the cascade of white light. One little cam drone buzzes overhead recording my pain. Around the world, audiences watch in delight. They wait for me to die.
I shudder awake. For a moment, I don’t know where I am. I expect to find gritty sand beneath my cheek, but I feel only the softness of an adaptable gel pillow.
“Shhhh,” a voice says somewhere in the darkness, and an arm hugs me in close to a warm body.
My muscles tense, and then I remember. Shine. Adan.
“Bad dream?” he asks. I turn in his arms. I can only see the outline of his face in the darkness, liquid eyes, frown lines puckering his forehead.
“No,” I lie.
“Sure seemed like it.” His voice contains no cobwebs of sleep. Those eyes are bright and awake, staring at my face.
My heartbeat is slowing, my eyes growing heavy. My body aches for more sleep, and I feel myself slipping back down. Fuzzy thoughts drift through my mind like delicate bubbles. But even as sleep struggles to claim me again, I know what we did was a mistake. I shouldn’t be here. Especially with him. Yet, I snuggle closer into his body where it feels safe. Where he will protect me from my nightmares.
“I still despise you,” I lie, the words sticky on my tongue as my eyes sink close.
I feel laughter rumble through his chest. His lips press lightly on my temple. “I know. Go back to sleep.”
And I do.
***
When I blink awake next, sunlight pours into my room.
Blight! I’ve got school. I rocket up into a sitting position, and then I remember.
Beacon is dead.
I’m at Adan’s house, in his bed. Classes were canceled today.
The Phoenix.
I smile then remember something else. Soft words spoken in the night. A gentle kiss at my temple. The feeling of safety. I look over, but the other side of the bed is empty and already neatly made. What does it mean? Where do we go from here? Instead of dealing with those questions, I shake my Band, and Bob peers out at me with a skeptical expression.
“What?”
“How is the Phoenix doing?”
Bob yawns and takes his sweet time compiling a file filled with vids, articles, and recordings from the crew. “Long story short, the settlers made it to Martian Biosphere 6. There are reports of eight broken bones, eleven sprains, and two concussions from the landing, but other than that, everyone’s okay. Thane-Ambrose Garcia is set to hold a press conference in three hours. The settlers have already started harvesting the garden and have even made a loaf of bread. Want to see the recipe they used?”
I shake my head. It’s enough to know that they’re safe and beginning their new lives on a foreign planet, something that has seemed just beyond our grasp for so long.
Such risk. Such courage.
Now it’s time I show a little courage of my own. I slip out of bed and notice that my clothes are folded neatly on top of Adan’s fancy dresser. When I pull on my shirt, I can tell it’s been cleaned. The armpits smell like unicorns and angel smiles.
I’m guessing that Martha, Adan’s house robo, had something to do with this. Not that I’m complaining. Clean clothes beat dragging still-damp, stinky jeans over my legs. I visit the bathroom and when I look in the mirror I laugh at the bruises on my body and my messy hair. I can’t do anything about the bruises, but I run my fingers through my hair, breaking the worst knots.
And then it’s time to face Adan. The thought of sneaking out is tempting, but I’ll see him in chemistry class eventually, so best not to leave things any more awkward than they already are. And there’s something else. Adan was kind to me. I keep wanting him to be an arrogant, empty striver, but he’s not. He has a heart, and I suspect that heart’s bigger than I’ve ever given him credit for.
I find him in his too-perfect living room, pacing as he speaks softly into his Band. His dark head is bowed, his face serious. He’s in uniform, his costume dazzling this close, but he doesn’t wear his helmet. Sweetheart sits on his shoulder, proudly displaying her gorgeous silver chest and indigo wing feathers. Adan glances up at me and then back down to his Band.
“I need to go. Can I ping you back shortly?”
“We have a lot to do,” the voice on the other end of the chat says. The words are barely perceptible. Adan’s lux Wyvern Band clearly includes audio focus capabilities. Yet even that soft murmur sounds familiar.
“I know. I’ll call back soon.” Adan ends the call and looks to me. “I was expecting you to sneak out.”
I walk into the room and sit on the edge of his fancy couch. “I almost did, but…”
“Did you want breakfast? Well, I guess it would be lunch. Martha can make you something.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
“It’s fine. I need a break anyway. Things have been… moving fast.” He sits down on the other end of the couch. Sweetheart walks to his other shoulder and trills a soft, perfectly pitched note. He strokes her head.
Of course Adan would be busy. Beacon’s death will create a huge power vacuum. Biggie LC will need a new top hero. Everyone will be fighting for that role—The Crusader, the remaining Dragon Riders, Lobo… and Adan.
I know I shouldn’t be surprised by how quickly he’s trying to step into the boots of his m
entor. That’s just the Fame Game. You see an opportunity, you grab it, Tickles the Elf says on his blog. And you don’t let it go. Sometimes you only get one chance for glory.
Now, the biggest prize of all is up for grabs. The fight will be ruthless.
I stand up. “I’m not hungry,” I say coldly. I remember the suffocating crowds circling the statue of The Hero last night and Adan’s tears. He really did love her. I believe that, but it won’t stop him from taking her place.
“You sure?” Adan’s eyes are questioning.
“I just wanted to say goodbye before I left, and thanks for last night.” I feel myself blushing. “I was in a bad place.”
“We both were,” Adan says.
I look into his green eyes, and my emotions tumble inside me. Adan’s eyes, but Shine’s glowing costume. How can I admire, even care for one and hate the other?
“Alice…” he begins.
“Shining luck on taking Beacon’s place.”
“There’s more at play than just that,” Adan says. He sounds tired.
“I’ll see you in chem.” I turn and walk through the pristine kitchen. Martha greets me, but I ignore her offer of food and slip through the back door.
***
First, I walk to The Professor’s mansion. Matthew isn’t in his penthouse, though Betty still rests in the corner. With some struggle and more than a few unladylike grunts, I manage to drag her to the charging port inside a hallway closet. At least when Matthew returns she’ll be ready for him.
I send him yet another vid message begging him to ping me back so we can meet. I’m sure he’ll ignore this one too.
My apartment is similarly empty. I’ve sent almost as many messages to Lysee as I have to Matthew, and she hasn’t responded. When I open the kitchen cabinet to grab a nutra-pack, I see that all her special shakes and powders are gone. The bathroom looks so different without her paste-on jewels, glowing lipsticks, and shimmery skin powders lined up like soldiers along the sink. I don’t really need to, but I step inside her room. The bed, dresser, and nightstand are still there, but the clothes, jewelry, Pod, personal cam drone, and massive skin rejuvenating system are all gone.
