by Dunne, Lexie
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” I asked.
I felt his smile, the weary edges of it, so I raised my head. The bandage across his forehead made some of his hair stick up goofily, and he had a black eye I hadn’t noticed earlier. “Kind of a rough day,” he said.
“You’re a master of the understatement.” I reached up to try to fix his hair, and he ducked his head to give me better access. The number of bandages made me feel sick to my stomach. “Seriously, though, how bad are you hurt?”
“I’m sore, but I’ll heal. It looks worse than it is.”
“You scared me.” I was going to see him plummeting toward the ground whenever I closed my eyes for a long time. I gave in and rested my forehead against his, careful to avoid any of the bandages. He smelled like whatever ointment Kiki had used on the burns. I really, really wanted a hug, and possibly to hold on and never let go until this unending nightmare went away. But I’d been hurt in too many hostage situations over the year. I knew comfort afterward could feel worse with his type of injuries.
Indeed, he sighed, his hand sliding up my arm and resting on the back of my neck. “It’s part of the business,” he said. “And I suspect we’ll only have more scares in the future.”
“We could get away,” I said, leaning back a little so I could meet his eyes. “You’re rich, you can fly, that’s all you need to get us to some tropical island far away from all of this.”
He laughed a little and leaned forward to kiss me.
“Redhead, remember?” he said.
I gave him a look. “Fine. You can buy me a ski chalet and support me in the manner to which I intend to become accustomed. But you should know, you’re giving up me in a bikini and with these muscles, that’s a sight to behold.”
“There’s always hot tubs. Mind if I switch to the couch?” he asked, grinning. I gestured for him to help himself, and he moved over, groaning a little. He settled back gingerly. “Nice try. The manner to which you intend to become accustomed, my ass. You’re the most independent woman I know.”
“At this point, I would be willing to give all of that up for some mai tais and sand. Or Irish coffee and skiing.” I moved as close to him as I dared with his injuries. I had so many questions. As much as I wanted to pretend everything was okay and keep flirting, they were pressing against the back of my mind. I didn’t know where to start, so I asked the first thing that came to mind. “Who’s Brook, Guy?”
“Starting with her and not Mobius?” Guy asked.
“I am choosing one problem at a time. Mobius didn’t do this.” I ran my finger gently next to one of the bandages. Guy didn’t shiver. Right, not ticklish. Which made sense, given that I’d once seen him break a knife on his own hand out of surprise. “Somebody named Brook did. She meant something to Sam, didn’t she? The look on her face when you came in, in Sam’s costume . . .”
“She’s what I was scared would happen to you.” Guy rested his elbows on his knees and faced forward.
You’re like me, aren’t you? Those had been the words Chelsea had used when she’d held me up by the throat. “What do you mean?”
Guy shifted, looking at the wall opposite rather than at me. He took a long time to answer. “I got my powers in high school. I was a sophomore. I was shy, I liked cooking more than I liked people most days, and Sam was—you know how it is. Every class has the king, right? Quarterback, could do anything, good-looking, all of that.”
“In my year, it was a guy named Mike Roman. I hated that asshole.”
“Asshole’s a good way to describe Sam. He even had the, you know, the perfect girlfriend. Brooklyn Gianelli. They were together all of their junior and senior years, before the explosion. They stayed together a couple years after it, too.”
“Wait, Chelsea’s real name is Brooklyn? Did she—she just picked a different place in New York. That’s . . . okay, I have to respect that a little. I still want to kill her, though.” I shook my head when a ghost of a smile touched the corner of Guy’s lips. Brooklyn. Wow. I would never have called that one. “Wait, when you say explosion, you mean . . .”
“The one that gave Sam, Pet, and me our powers,” Guy said.
“Pet?”
“Petra. My sister.” Guy’s voice hitched. “That was what we called her. She hated it, and we were idiot boys, so of course we only used that more. She’s in the Annals, you know. They never found out she had powers before she was killed, so she’s in the family members section. It doesn’t exactly . . . I don’t . . . I don’t like it. But maybe it’s better.”
“How did she die? If it’s okay to ask, that is. If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”
“We don’t know.” Guy sighed and leaned back, wincing as he did so. Since it was growing uncomfortable to sit the way I was, I scooted over on the couch and pulled my legs up into a half lotus. I rested my elbows on my knees and propped my chin on my fists. “She disappeared. Sam’s never stopped looking for her. He and Brook, they tried to stay together after the explosion, when we got our powers, and I think for a little while, it was working for them. But then Pet disappeared, and Sam became somebody else.
“Brook was devastated. It was really hard to watch it all go down, but what could I do? I was just the little brother. I could fly, and I could turn my entire body into fire, and it was neat, but Pet was gone, and my parents’ marriage was falling apart because of it, and Sam was so busy trying to get to the bottom of it. And Brook, she wandered into the world of superheroes the same way you did.”
I frowned. “By throwing a beer bottle at a psycho?”
“By getting kidnapped,” Guy said, chest shaking with silent laughter. The smile disappeared from his face quickly, though. “Villains started kidnapping her about a year after we got our powers. Sam would usually show up to save the day. You know”—and his voice turned bitter—“if he wasn’t out looking for Pet or her killer. It took him hours sometimes, and it was like he didn’t care.”
“That’s why you always came to get me so fast,” I said, as years of rescues began to make sense. There had always been a sense of panic to Guy’s first entrance into saving the day, even after I’d long grown weary and sometimes completely unafraid of the villains altogether. History could only repeat itself so many times without growing dull.
“Yeah,” Guy said, his voice flat. “That’s why. She put up with it for a lot longer than she had to. But that’s love, I guess.”
“What happened to her, Guy?”
“She died. Or we thought she died. It was Deathjab. Sam had a strong lead on where Pet might be, and he didn’t want to give it up. We didn’t get there in time. In either case.” Guy’s throat worked. “Deathjab killed Brook, and Sam killed Deathjab. It was one of the hardest battles I’ve ever fought. Even without my blaze mode, he was still able to hurt me. I should have realized it—Brook, or Chelsea, or whoever she is now, she has the same powers. Felt like bees were trying to kill me. That’s not something you should forget.”
“How is Brook alive? How did she get Deathjab’s powers and—wait, when was this?”
“She’s been dead seven years. Or I thought she was. It was after our fight with Deathjab that Davenport found us. Raptor showed up, took one look at the—god, we were kids. I’d been out of high school maybe two years at that point. I didn’t even really have a uniform yet, I was just wearing a T-shirt and some cargo pants, with a ski mask. But Raptor found us, brought us in.”
He paused for a long time, and I stayed silent, letting him think. Grief and anger were both carved into his face now. “I don’t know why,” he said. “I don’t know why I didn’t think Chelsea was Brook right away, with those powers. I guess I tried not to think about her too much. Anyway, Davenport brought us in. Angélica was my trainer. Sam didn’t want anything to do with Davenport at first, but I . . .” He rubbed his wrist, where a bandage had begun unraveling. “I liked final
ly having a community where I didn’t feel like a freak. A couple years later, you started getting kidnapped all the time. It’s horrible, but it established me as one of the bigger names in the heroing business.”
“Wow,” I said, leaning back as I tried to filter all of the information in ways that made sense. Guy’s past had always been a big mystery to me. I knew he’d grown up in Chicago thanks to an offhand comment he’d made over dinner one time, but the origins of his powers had never been explained. “So you have no idea how Chelsea—how Brook can be alive?”
“Or where she’s been. But I can understand why she would want to kill Sam, and me, I guess. We were supposed to save her, and we didn’t.”
“That doesn’t make anything that she’s doing right,” I said. “There were people injured in that mall, and Naomi was unconscious for nearly a week. She killed Angélica. She might have been the victim, but she’s the villain now.”
“I wish it were that black-and-white.”
“Yeah, nothing ever is,” I said. “Even if she blames you, that doesn’t give her the right to kill you.”
Guy worried the edge of a bandage on his wrist. “I wouldn’t blame her, though.”
“I would.”
Guy smiled and looked down. “Never change.”
“Doing my best.” I stretched my neck out since it still felt a little stiff, and the air felt heavy. I stretched my arms out, too, to free up some of the tension in my back muscles. My hand brushed against plastic tubing, and I turned to look. The IV that I’d ripped out of my still-aching hand. Right. I was so used to waking up in hospital rooms, attached to IVs, that I hadn’t even given the matter any thought. I looked up at the bag and froze now, though. “Guy.”
“What is it?” He sat up, already alert.
I pointed. “Why isn’t that clear?”
The liquid in the bag was a murky sort of gray that almost looked like mercury. And it had been filtering directly into my hand and my bloodstream.
“Oh,” Guy said. “It’s okay. It’s Mobium.”
“What?”
“Kiki said you . . .” Guy paused and licked his lips. “Maybe I should go get her. It’s a lot to explain. I don’t think I can do it justice.”
I stared at the IV bag. Mobium. So that was what it looked like in its liquid form. It had changed my life and my body, down to my cellular composition. I’d been told it was a mistake from a mad scientist with unexpectedly amazing side effects. Mobius had told me it was a drug that would cause debilitating addictions.
I’d never really known which explanation was right.
So why was Kiki administering it to me through an IV?
“Do you trust her?” I asked.
Guy shook his head. “I don’t know. When she explained, it all made sense, but . . . I don’t know, I’ve always steered clear of her and so have a lot of people at Davenport. Villain Syndrome’s no laughing matter, and she’s got two generations of it behind her. I’m surprised they even let her work at Davenport.”
“It’s because I’m family,” said a voice in the darkness, and Guy and I jumped. A light in the hallway flicked on, and Kiki entered. She’d swapped the Cubs shirt for a band T-shirt, and her pajama pants had unicorns on them. Her hair was a mess. “They felt guilty. But they give me the same looks everybody else does. Everybody thinks it’s only a matter of time before I become a villain.”
“Pro tip,” I said. “Lurking in hallways and eavesdropping on private conversations doesn’t exactly reinforce the whole ‘I’m not a villain’ shtick.”
“I heard my name as I was getting up to get a glass of water. I wasn’t listening in.” Kiki belatedly seemed to notice the IV needle on the floor. “Did you pull that out? You shouldn’t have done that, you need it—”
“I’m not putting anything else in my body until I get some answers.”
“That’s fair,” Guy said, giving Kiki a hard look.
“Okay. Okay, yes. You deserve answers. And I’m sorry I couldn’t give them to you before. Hell, I’m sorry in general. I didn’t know you were caught up in this until after you showed up at Davenport, and I didn’t realize they had specific plans for you until—” Kiki abruptly stopped and took a deep breath. “I need a drink,” she said. “Let’s go into the kitchen. You’ll start getting hungry soon.”
With a start, I realized she was right. I wasn’t hungry, which had been kind of a first until recently. I knew it had been a long time since I’d eaten. But I didn’t feel particularly weak or in pain.
“I can cook something,” Guy said. He groaned a little as he got up.
We moved into the same kitchen I recognized. I’d eaten in there before, during my captivity with Mobius, and it made my skin crawl. But I took a seat at the table while Guy searched through the refrigerator, and Kiki leaned against the wall, looking like she was trying to figure out how to continue.
“Well?” I said.
“I’m not sure where to start, except that—oh, wait, here.” She crossed over to a drawer and rummaged through it. She handed over a small photograph. “This should explain some things.”
I gave her a final suspicious look before I turned my attention to the photograph, which was one of those studio portraits. The old man in the photograph had aged quite a bit between this photo and his time kidnapping me, but I’d recognize that ghoulish Halloween mask of a face anywhere. I didn’t recognize the pretty, auburn-haired woman standing behind him with a hand on his shoulder, but the third face, a girl that looked to be about four of five, I knew that face.
I looked up at Kiki again, mouth dropping open a little. She’d grown up, but she still had the same eyes and nose as the four-year-old in the picture.
“Yes,” she said. “What you’re thinking is right. That’s me, and Dr. Christoph Mobius was my grandfather.”
My first thought was that she should be grateful she’d gotten her looks from her grandmother. And then I stared. “You mean to tell me that Dr. Mobius and Rita Detmer did the nasty?”
“What?” Kiki asked, gawking at me.
“You said he’s your grandfather. She’s your grandmother, so—”
“I have two sets of grandparents!” Kiki planted her face in her hand. “Mobius is my maternal grandfather. Kurt Davenport is my paternal grandf—Nightmares. I’m going to have nightmares about my grandparents and ‘doing the nasty’ for a long time now.”
“Believe me, it’s not something I want to think about either.” I shuddered. “Hold up. You’ve known who he is the whole time? How come you didn’t say anything? You knew Davenport was looking for him.”
Kiki took the picture back, looked at it for a second, and moved to return it to the drawer. “It’s complicated. Nobody trusts me at Davenport. No reason they should, I guess. Dad blew up half of the New York complex when I was three, Grandma Rita is Fearless herself, and hey, would you look at that, my other grandpa is a mad scientist—not that they know that part. And I’m not really that anxious for them to. Would you trust me?”
“Probably not,” I said, “but I think that has more to do with the fact that you’ve been lying to my face since I first met you.”
“I’m not the only one. My grandfather lied to you, and I’m pretty sure—well, no, Grandma Rita actually didn’t lie to you, probably, but she likely twisted the truth. The Mobium you were given? Cooper’s known all along what it was.” Kiki took a deep breath.
“What?”
“My grandfather told you he was turning you into an addict. That was a lie. He knew you wouldn’t—well, probably wouldn’t—need more injections. And he picked you specifically.”
“Why? He told me it was because he had a bone to pick with Guy,” I said. Guy looked up from heating a pan on the stove, in alarm. “I thought he just hadn’t received the memo that villains weren’t kidnapping me anymore.”
Kiki shook her head. “
He chose you because you were Hostage Girl, not because of Guy. You’re too famous to kill.”
“Okay, that’s a new one,” I said. Villains liked to take me because they had vendettas with Blaze, or they wanted their fifteen minutes of fame on the front page of the Domino. Or, as I’d most recently, to get an easy stretch of time in Detmer Day Spa. But because I was too famous to kill? Yeah, I hadn’t come across that one before. “When you say too famous, you mean . . .”
“I mean, Guy would raise a stink if you were dead or vanished for too long, and that made you valuable to Mobius.”
“Why? What was his plan?”
Kiki pushed both hands into her hair and left them there. “He picked you to receive the Mobium because he wanted to expose Cooper for the fraud he is. His goal was always to give you the Mobium and set you free so people would know the truth about his work. That’s why he went through so much trouble to set this place up. He even set up two houses: the place Lodi thinks he kept as his lab is next door. He put fake notebooks and staged your escape from there, but everything’s really in this house. It’s all been hidden here, right under their noses, this whole time.”
That explained some of my memory problems and the confusion between the two houses, but: “Why go through all this trouble? Why not just get straight to the point and tell them Cooper’s a fraud?’ ”
“Because,” and Kiki took a deep breath again, like she was about to reveal the biggest secret in her arsenal, “he was following orders. All of this has been my grandmother’s plan all along. And Grandma Rita? Does not believe in simple plans. Welcome to the hell I’ve been living for over a year.”
“Okay, maybe you should start over,” I said, since my head was starting to hurt. Mobius had picked me? Because of Rita? There were two secret labs? “And maybe draw, like, a diagram. I have a feeling it’s going to be that kind of—”
Thumping upstairs cut me off. I looked at the ceiling. “What’s that?”
Kiki looked puzzled for a second. “What’s wh—oh my god, she can’t do what I think she’s about to do.”
