Solstice Survivors_Book 1_Superhero Syndrome

by Caryn Larrinaga

  “But right then, we reached my stop,” I told her. “So I had to go. But it’s weird… I felt something. Like a spark, I guess? I don’t know how to describe it.”

  “Holy crap. You have to find him somehow,” Angie said. “I mean, it’s like a meet-cute. If you don’t chase him down, you’ll miss starring in your own real-life rom com.”

  A montage played in my head. Reed and I on a date, eating ice cream in the park, laughing as we exit a movie theater arm-in-arm, grabbing him by the drawstrings of his ever-present black hoodie and pulling him into my bedroom…

  Heat crept into my face, and I hid my redness in a pillow. “I have no idea where I’d even start,” I said, my voice muffled.

  “Easy. You know where he works. Just stop by the ER and ask to see him on his break.”

  “Sounds a little stalker-y.”

  “Well, what’s your alternative? Take the train every night, getting on at that exact same stop at that exact same time and hope you get lucky?”

  She had a point. One option seemed more likely to work than the other. And unlike spoiled Will, I didn’t have an unlimited transit pass. Visiting Reed at the hospital was the most cost-effective and least creepy way to see him again.

  Plus… he worked in healthcare. He might know how I could find out who else had Solstice Syndrome, or at least the cities where other severe cases like mine had been reported.

  “Okay, I’ll do it. But if he laughs in my face, I’m coming after you.”

  “He won’t laugh. You’re going to end up owing me a favor, and I’d like to collect on that next week.”

  “What? Are you stalking somebody, too?”

  Angie tossed her dark curls back over her shoulders. “Hardly. My prey comes to me, kitten.”

  I rolled my eyes, but I knew it was true. Every guy in the office would turn to watch Angie’s curvy figure pass as she walked to the break room. She had confidence oozing out of every pore.

  “No, I want you to come to a rally with me next Saturday.”.

  “Seriously? Do I have to carry a sign, or something? What’s it for?”

  She leaned toward me, and her eyes flashed. “It’s to show support for The Fox!”

  As she spoke his name, my wall of sketches popped into my head. It was growing larger by the day, spilling onto the two adjacent walls. If I was home, I was drawing him. My fingertips were perpetually gray from the pencil lead.

  “He’s a hero. Why does he need a rally?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you.”

  Angie picked up her TV remote and cued up a recording on her DVR. It was a news broadcast from the night before, and she fast-forwarded through highlights of yesterday’s high school football game before hitting play.

  “…where the undefeated Wildcats will be taking on the Spartans,” the sportscaster was saying. “Back to you, Jim.”

  “Thanks, Ron.” Jim Jenkins, his hair slicked back with so much gel it reflected the bright studio lights above him, tapped a stack of papers against the top of his desk. “And now for tonight’s top story. The chief of the Weyland City Police Department announced today she’s putting together a task force dedicated to the identification and capture of the vigilante known as ‘The Fox.’”

  Footage from an afternoon press conference appeared on screen. A slender woman stood behind a podium in front of the entrance to police headquarters. Her curly hair was cropped short around her face. Her name and title appeared at the bottom of the screen as she began speaking: Katharine Steele, Chief of Police.

  “Every resource at our disposal is dedicated to determining the identity and intentions of this individual,” she said. “There are many citizens and media groups who are romanticizing this vigilante’s actions by giving him nicknames such as ‘The Fox.’ I would like to urge everyone out there to remember that this individual is a criminal who is acting outside of the boundaries of the law.”

  “Chief Steele,” asked a reporter from the front row, “can you comment on the fact that this ‘vigilante,’ as you’re calling him, has so far been able to shut down a human trafficking front and an illegal gambling establishment? We’ve also heard reports that he’s brought in several drug dealers—how is it possible that The Fox is more effective than the police?”

  The chief narrowed her eyes. “I think you’re overlooking the fact that each of those criminal enterprises had been under investigation by the police for many months. Our officers were carefully gathering evidence to ensure an airtight conviction against everyone involved in each scheme. The Fox’s actions, while perhaps better for headlines, destroyed our ability to collect additional information about the extent of the illegal activities that were occurring.”

  “But it’s obvious The Fox is on your side. I mean, he’s trying to bring in the bad guys, too,” the reporter pressed. “Yet you’re moving forward with a manhunt?”

  Chief Steele pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “Again, the motives of this individual are unclear at this time. While it looks on the surface like he’s trying to ‘help’ the police, the damage he’s caused to our investigations suggests he might actually be protecting the people at the top of these criminal organizations.”

  Angie stopped the recording. “See? That’s what the rally is for. I’ve met a whole bunch of other people who support The Fox. We’re going to protest outside of police headquarters and try to get them to call off the manhunt.”

  The end of the chief’s speech rang in my head. The Fox, in league with criminals? It didn’t feel right. I couldn’t believe it. Despite never even having met the guy, I couldn’t shake the feeling he was trying to do something good for our city.

  When I thought about The Fox, a fire ignited inside of me. I wanted to find out everything I could about him. I wanted to meet him more than anything, to find out if he was like me. If he was, he might know something about how this had happened to me. And if there was even the slightest chance attending this rally could bring me closer to him somehow…

  “I’m in,” I said.

  The smell of hospital disinfectant pricked at my nose, and I realized I was scrunching up my face in disgust. It wasn’t the most attractive expression in my limited arsenal, so I rearranged my features into what I thought was a relaxed smile. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the wide glass window behind the information desk, and my mouth wasn’t curving upward by even a millimeter. Resting bitch face had struck again. Baring my teeth in a too wide, too fake grin, I tried to recreate the sweet, happy smile Bethany had managed to capture at the bar. Reign it in, I heard her say, and to my surprise my face settled into the kind of normal expression that probably wouldn’t frighten small children.

  The receptionist in front of me hung up the phone and looked up at me just as I nailed the smile.

  She returned it, her voice twinkling brightly as she asked, “Can I help you?”

  “Uh, yeah. I’m looking for Reed.”

  “Last name?”

  Her fingers were poised over the keyboard, waiting to type a last name I couldn’t possibly give her. Instead I stood there, open-mouthed and dumbfounded. South Weyland General was huge; it was practically the size of an airport and contained thousands of people at any given time. People scurried behind me, hurrying to an appointment in one of dozens of outpatient clinics or rushing to visit someone in one of the inpatient wings. People were born here, died here, and I expected to be able to find him by his first name alone?

  “Ma’am?” The receptionist looked at me, head tilted. “I’m afraid I can’t direct you to any of our patients without a last name.”

  “Oh! I’m not looking for a patient. I’m looking for a radiology technician. Reed… something. Does that help?”

  “Are you here for test results? What’s the name of your doctor?”

  “No, it’s not like that.”

  I was getting nowhere, and the receptionist’s friendly demeanor was rapidly cooling. I racked my mind, trying to come up with a good re
ason to be here. Anything but the truth, because telling this girl I was here so I could ask out a handsome guy I barely knew… well, it just sounded stupid in my head.

  Is it? I eyeballed the receptionist. She was young, probably a college student at WU. She looked naive and bubbly enough to hope for the kinds of real-life meet-cute moments Angie had been gushing about, the kind of chick who might sit on a couch watching Nora Ephron movies, holding a pillow to her chest and wishing she was kissing Tom Hanks on the Empire State Building.

  I rolled the dice. “Listen, this is going to sound crazy—because it is—but I met this guy on the train and we had… a moment. Like a single, perfect, magnetic instant when lightning struck, and I just knew—knew—we have something. But all he told me about himself was that his name is Reed, and he’s a radiology tech in this hospital. I’m here…” I took a deep breath and hoped I wasn’t overdoing the twitterpated girl act I was going for. “I’m here to ask him out on a date.”

  She gasped and rested a hand on her chest, and I knew my gamble had paid off. “Oh. My. God. That is so romantic.”

  “Can you help me out? Please?”

  “Of course!” She bounced up and down in her chair, looking like she wanted to jump up, grab my hand, and personally escort me around the hospital to make sure my love story had a happy ending. Instead, she turned to her computer and typed something into her keyboard. After frowning at her screen and clicking around for a few seconds, she let out an excited squeak. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! There is a Reed who works in radiology, and he’s on shift. Let me page him!”

  She picked up her phone and dialed in a few numbers, and I expected to hear her voice calling out to Reed on the hospital’s loudspeakers. They must’ve had something a bit fancier than that though, as nothing seemed to broadcast through the whole hospital when she said, “Reed Azeri to reception. You have a visitor.”

  Azeri. That was his last name? It sounded exotic.

  The receptionist put her handset back into its cradle and gave me a double thumbs-up. “He should be out as soon as he has a chance. You can wait for him over here, okay?”

  She pointed to a small cluster of chairs directly in front of the reception desk. I looked past them to a much larger waiting area on the other side of the lobby, then looked back at the girl. She was practically glowing, and I realized that sitting smack-dab in the middle of the busiest part of the hospital was the price I had to pay for her help. She obviously didn’t want to miss the big moment when Reed and I would presumably fall into each other’s arms and kiss deeply before he dropped to one knee and asked me to marry him.

  When Reed reached the lobby a few minutes later, I leapt out of my chair and dropped my cell phone. So I guess that’s kind of a good story for her to tell. I just hope she embellished it a bunch when she recounted it to her friends and co-workers later, because that’s pretty much all she got.

  He must’ve known I was the “visitor” he’d been paged about, because he didn’t bother stopping at the desk. He came straight over to me, picked up my phone, and placed it into my hand.

  “Hi,” he said. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. Shouldn’t it be?”

  He shrugged. “You’re at the hospital, right? So either something’s wrong with you, or something’s wrong with someone you know.”

  “Oh. No, I…” I took a deep breath, and this one wasn’t for the benefit of the girl behind the desk. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  Reed raised one heavy eyebrow. “Sure. Come on.”

  I looked back at the receptionist as I followed Reed out of the lobby, returning her thumbs-ups with a smile. She clapped her hands and bounced in her chair until we rounded the corner, and I lost sight of her.

  We rode the elevator up a few floors in silence, and then Reed led me to a cramped but empty break room at the end of a long hallway. He closed the door behind us, then turned to me with seriousness written all over his face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What? I told you, nothing is wrong.”

  “Oh.” He took a seat at the small round table in the center of the windowless room and gestured for me to sit down opposite him, which I did. “Well, what’s up then?”

  “Listen… this might sound kind of stupid.”

  He smiled, and his dark eyes twinkled with humor. “I love stupid stuff.”

  That didn’t help me much. I stared down at my hands and reminded myself I wasn’t some ordinary girl trying to ask out a way-too-hot-for-her guy she barely knew. I was a superpowered girl trying to ask out a way-too-hot-for her guy she barely knew. Superheroes were, at their core, badasses with questionable fashion sense. The Fox wouldn’t be all limp-wristed and shy in a situation like this. He’d pin somebody up against the wall, shout at them that they should catch a movie sometime, do some karate kicks, and then backflip away down a long a long dark hallway.

  I knew I should, at least, be able to accomplish something somewhere in the middle. I lifted my gaze, locked eyes with Reed, and went for it.

  “Do you have plans tonight?” I asked, managing to almost keep my voice from wavering at all.

  He shook his head and grinned. “No, I’m off work at five. Why?”

  “Would you like to go with me to this rally? It’s for The Fox.”

  The grin faded into a smile, which then disappeared completely. “Oh,” he said.

  Oh? I waited for something more, staring at him until the silence grew into an awkward elephant that threatened to destroy the tiny room. Yet still, he said nothing. My heart sank, and my shoulders followed suit. I’d obviously misread our conversation on the train. The spark must’ve been one-sided. He wasn’t interested in me, after all.

  “Okay then.” I pushed back my chair and stood up. “Well… see you around, I guess.”

  “Wait.”

  Reed reached out and grabbed my wrist, and I felt it again. A tiny jolt of electricity ran up my forearm, zapping my elbow and making me shiver.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to spend time with you.” He stood so he once again towered over me. “It’s just that rallies aren’t really my thing. Can we do something else? Like dinner, maybe?”

  “I’d really like that.”

  His shoulders relaxed. “Phew. Okay. Good to know. Can I call you next week?”

  I nodded, and we programmed each other’s numbers into our phones. Then he walked me back to the elevator and pushed the button for me.

  “I’m really glad you came by,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about you all week.”

  With that, he turned and strode off down the hall, leaving me to blush and stare after him like a preteen girl.

  “Hold the door, please!”

  My hand shot forward and hit the button to keep the doors from closing. A blonde woman stepped into the elevator with me, panting from having dashed down the hospital hallway. She lifted her head to smile at me, and her hazel eyes lit up in recognition.

  It was Bethany.

  “Tess! What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  She put a hand on her chest. “I’m still catching my breath,” she wheezed. “You go first.”

  My mind clicked through possible explanations for my presence at the hospital. I didn’t want to tell her about Reed. It was still too new. But the alternative was lying, and I was getting tired of all the skeletons I was piling up in my closet.

  “I was just visiting a friend. He works here.”

  Bethany’s eyes went wide. “He?”

  I’d known she’d zero in on the pronoun. “He’s just a friend,” I said. “Seriously. Settle yourself.”

  “All right, all right.” She was smirking in a too-knowing way that made me squirm. “I get it.”

  “Your turn. What are you doing here?”

  Her smirk turned into a smile so genuine it infected me, and I found myself grinning with her without knowing why. Warmth and joy emanated from her, lighting up the entire elevator
.

  The word radiant popped into my head, and I knew what she was about to tell me. I had to fight to keep the smile on my face as she spoke.

  “I was seeing an OB/GYN. I’m pregnant!”

  She squealed and clapped her hands together, but my mouth went dry. I hadn’t seen her this happy since she’d come home and told us Bruce had proposed to her at their Senior Prom. She’d been thrilled to be marrying the big football star. In her mind, their life would follow a dream path: she’d work while Bruce played football for Weyland University on a full ride, then she’d be the perfect stay-at-home mom once he went pro.

  The only flaw in her plan? She set up her life to revolve around her asshole husband. The guy who’d famously developed a drinking problem at the tender age of seventeen, throwing wild parties that became South Weyland High legends. The guy who got drunk and rammed his dad’s Volvo into a statue of the mayor during his second year at Weyland U, fracturing his left leg in three places. The injury, coupled with his underage DUI, ended his football career before it even started. He was expelled and had to get a job at the fish processing plant.

  I’m pretty sure that was when the beatings started. She’d shown up to my sixteenth birthday party with a black eye. My parents, bless their hearts, actually believed her bullshit story about catching a tennis ball in the face. They refused to listen to me when I told them I thought Bruce might be hurting their daughter. He was a high school hero; they’d won the State Championship with him on the team. He was the golden boy who could do no wrong. Even when he got arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct, followed by another DUI, he somehow managed to avoid going to jail.

  If his boss at the plant hadn’t taken an interest in Bruce and wanted to help him climb out of his hole, I doubt anything would ever have changed until Bruce killed himself—or worse, both himself and Bethany—in a drunk driving accident. Thanks to his supervisor’s intervention, Bruce enrolled in an anger management program and Alcoholics Anonymous. Bethany swore up and down that the violence had been a short-lived episode in their marriage. He’d gotten better, she claimed. But as he’d shown at my eighteenth birthday, even sober Bruce was still a dick.