Ivy

by William Dickstein

  How would you have helped me?

  The same way we always do.

  And how is that?

  How does the wind blow, or the rain fall from the sky? We do as we are able.

  Alright. What were you going to do exactly?

  The things we know how to do.

  There were other conversations with the voices as I sat in the recovery room. A lot of other conversations, actually. They all turned out about the same, though: the voices either agreeing with an assessment I made, disagreeing for some unfathomable, possibly whimsical reason, or answering a question I had about them so plainly that it seemed like they were being cryptic on accident.

  We would never purposefully deceive you.

  Perfect example of what I’m talking about.

  A day before I could get back to training, Hunter walked into my recovery room. He was in his plain clothes, and his sweatpants looked like he’d already run a few miles that day. He caught me by surprise as he walked in. I tried to stay calm in spite of myself.

  “Hunter!” I said excitedly. “What’s going on?”

  “I came to check on you,” he said, grabbing a chair and pulling it nearby. “The nurse says you’re back to training tomorrow. Wanted to see if you felt like that was the right call. Nothing wrong with resting when you need to.”

  “No, I feel fine. I’ll be alright.”

  “Explains why you tried to sneak out twice,” Hunter said with a smile. “I don’t blame you—it feels boring in here.”

  I laughed, but with the pleasantries out of the way, I knew I had the perfect opportunity to talk with him about Totem. “Hunter, there’s something I’d like to ask you about, if I could.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “I read the corrected mission report, which I assume you dropped off, about Totem. What happened to them?”

  “They changed names once or twice, had a couple of members come in and out.”

  “Did they… always wear those masks?”

  “They did, even after the name change. The man who founded the group was a big fan of Native American culture. Or at least a fan of what he’d seen on television. Why do you ask?”

  It was so weird, having him ask me as plainly as he did. Even though it was important to me, I hadn’t taken too much time to think about how certain I was that the members of Totem were the same people who had killed my father. The words were right there on the tip of my tongue, but something in the back of my mind made it difficult to say anything to him.

  “Uh…” I tried to think. “Just wondering, I guess.”

  My heart sank a little as the wrong words left my mouth, a physical response to the emotional pain I was inflicting on myself by not actually voicing my thoughts. I sat there, wondering what was wrong with me, totally unsure of why the reason I’d brought it up was suddenly refusing to come out.

  Hunter dragged his chair a little closer, and leaned in. “Ivy,” he said softly, “I think we both know why you’re asking.”

  I took a deep breath, my eyes threatening to tear up as I desperately willed them not to. It was so unlike me to cry in that moment; I grew up shedding less tears than so many of the other wards of the state. “I think I’ve seen Totem before,” I said.

  “The masks were familiar to you,” Hunter confirmed.

  “Yes. I saw them the day my…” I cleared my throat through the lump. “The day that I became a ward of the World Government.”

  “Have you ever read the report the Agent wrote about that day?”

  I sniffled, calming myself, my composure still intact. “No,” I said. “Actually, I’ve never even thought to ask for it.”

  “It’s my job to know the history of the recruits who come through this academy. It occurred to me when I read the report that it was likely Totem, possibly already going by the name Shame, who caused you to lose your father. I thought it would be good for you, maybe offer some closure, to read about all of the ways we beat down on their members over the years. Not every Freelancer is a bad person—some people just aren’t meant to be Capes. I thought some of the conversations in my reports with them might have helped you, too.”

  “Okay?” I wasn’t quite following where Hunter was going. “So, you thought knowing they weren’t that bad of people would help me deal with the fact that they killed my father?”

  “What? That’s confusing. Wait,” Hunter said, standing up, “You… you don’t know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ivy, what do you remember about your father’s house?”

  “Not much. The yard and the couch, my bed and my closet. I had a lot of clothes as a little girl, too”

  “Do you remember where the house was?” Hunter asked. His voice was still quiet, his tone indicating he didn’t want anyone else to hear what we were talking about.

  “Actually, no. I remember we had a big yard with tall grass, and I’m pretty sure there was no fence? The yard ended and turned into woods, I think.”

  Hunter looked at me as though I should be putting something together. I could feel the pressure in the conversation as he leaned in with his questioning, his body language clearly indicating that I should be coming to some sort of conclusion. Whatever he was getting at, I wasn’t following, and I wore that fact as clearly as I could on my face.

  “Does any of that sound weird?” he asked.

  “Hunter, I spent years living down the hallway from a boy who would remove parts of his body and put them back on. Once you’ve seen an eight-year-old pull his own arm out of his body and return it a few minutes later, your perception of what is weird skews a little. What are you getting at?”

  “Ivy, what do you think your father did? For a living. Even with those severely limited details, the house you just described would have been upwards of a few million, even back then.” Hunter raised his eyebrows, looking sad that he had to spell it all out to me so plainly. “In the field report, you told Agent Lochlan that your father had a suit. Do you remember that?”

  And that was the phrase that did it. The pieces of what Hunter was trying to tell me flew together like a vase shattering in reverse. I did remember my father having a suit, even though I didn’t remember telling the Agent who picked me up that day about it. The knowledge seemed to hang in my brain as I came to realize what Hunter had been implying, a question sitting right on top that I knew would seal my fate and force me to accept what the most instinctual part of me was desperately wishing to be untrue in that moment.

  There was something next to the suit, hanging on the wall, wasn’t there…?

  There are lots of things on lots of walls, Little One. What is on the ground is often more important.

  “I think I remember now… Did… My father have a mask?”

  Hunter took a seat at the foot of my bed, and his shoulders slumped a little. He looked completely apologetic. “Your father was Base, Ivy.”

  I leaned back against the headboard as the phrase left Hunter’s lips, my eyes shutting with the ultimate confirmation. I was fresh off a cracked rib and I’d just learned that my father was a Freelancer. I’d remembered him as such a loving man—he was always so gentle dealing with me. But then, I’d read the mission reports. I’d heard of Totem before that, even, and knew that the members were utterly ruthless. And so I had to wonder whether my father really was the gentle person I remembered him as, or if he was someone who’d used the abilities his Ch05En gene gave him for personal gain. Hunter could tell I needed a minute to process. It’s a big thing to suddenly find out your father was a well-known Freelancer—possibly even a Supervillain, depending on personal perception, and sat back on the chair beside the bed. As I dealt with the information, a part of me still not wanting to believe that someone I remembered so fondly could have been regarded by so many others as evil, I asked the voices what they thought. I’m not even sure why I did it. I guess I hoped they would tell me whatever it was that I wanted to hear, like they’d somehow choose to placate me for the first ti
me ever.

  We didn’t know your father at all, Little One. Is this man bothering you?

  No, he’s fine. Thank you anyway.

  “Hunter, do you think you could get me a copy of that report from Agent Lochlan?”

  “Sure. It might take a few days, but I can make some phone calls. Don’t let this get you down too much, alright? You came here to become a Cape. I’ll get the report for you, but you need to focus on getting out of the academy and going into the world to do some good. You get me?”

  “I do. Thank you for coming to see me. This was a good conversation for me to have.”

  “Alright. I’ll go make that phone call now. You come find me tomorrow if you need to. And, again, if you can’t get back to it tomorrow, just let the nurse know.”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  Hunter left and I was alone in the room all over again, free from even the sound of the angry nurse as she rushed around to other rooms. When the silence settled in and my ears perked up to the softer sounds around me, I came to the realization that the way I’d referred to my father in my head my entire life might not have been correct. I’d always called him a great man, like it was his title and he was Gerald the Great. I’d thought of him as being strong and protective—Gerald the Great Protector. I’d given him so many titles throughout the years.

  And so I had to decide whether or not my daddy was what I thought of him as, or if he was what the GHS and probably plenty of other people thought of him as. Was he a doting father, a strong role model, and a truly great man…?

  Was he just a Freelancer?

  Training went as well as it could after I finally got myself out of that bed and away from the angry nurse. My grappling felt fine even with the break, and I managed to hold my own against another recruit with a Bodymod gene in a sparring match that everyone nearby ended up watching. I didn’t ask the voices for help, either.

  The recruit could turn his body into rock, but only for a short amount of time. It made him deadly for a little over a minute, and after the minute or so had passed he needed to touch another chunk of rock again to turn himself to the same type of stone. He was intimately familiar with the length of time he could retain his rock body, and would force me to get back before he changed by picking up one of the boulders nearby to throw at me. The first time it happened, I was so startled that I nearly called out to the voices, but his aim was terrible. It was the first boulder he threw that caused everyone around to stop what they were doing to watch. We were given a lot of ground to work with until we were finished, some recruits going as far as to get on top of the academy.

  There came a point where, as he chucked another boulder in my direction, I managed to get myself out of the way and keep some forward momentum. There was a central boulder that my opponent kept making his way over to when his body would change back, and I nearly caught him before he made it. Instead, as I dove to pull him away from touching the stone, I was met with a stiff stone arm ready to push me into the sand, the recruit’s rock hands picking me up with ease to chuck me a few feet away. But with that throw, he’d made his fatal error. Even though his limbs had been turned to stone, I had been engaging the recruit in close quarters, and his body was top-heavy enough that when I was able to land a straight kick to his abdomen, he nearly fell over.

  Unfortunately, nearly wasn’t enough. The stone recruit got a good grip on me and tossed me aside easily, sending my body flying almost all the way across the pit. I was just thankful I hadn’t landed on the concrete. When he threw me away from him, I waited to get up, letting the recruit walk the full distance to me, his mouth a wide grin of orange, stone teeth.

  When he went to pick me up, I rolled backwards, tumbling onto my feet and bringing myself up in an instant. Before the recruit could finish righting himself, I reached both hands behind his neck and pulled his shoulders forward with my entire body, trying desperately to shift him off balance. It nearly worked, but he managed to right himself at the last second, swinging slowly into an uppercut I was easily able to dodge. I stepped back two more times as he continued to try and grab or strike at me, double checking my surroundings with the briefest glance I could manage on the second step.

  The recruit reached down for a boulder, his time nearly up, but there were none. He had already thrown all of the sizeable rocks in that portion of the sparring pit. As he looked back up, I jumped forward, bringing my foot straight into the side of his head. The kick did little to jar the recruit, but it felt good to hit him anyway, even if I bounced back quite a bit as a result. He began his slow turn back over to the large boulder he’d been using, and without having to worry about dodging any sort of missile, I followed him easily. His feet proved too heavy for him to step quickly, and he broke out into a run the moment his body changed back.

  I was right there when he did, swinging my leg to swipe his feet out from under him. He fell face first into the sand, and I thought that surely he’d surrender, but he didn’t. If I had walked away at that moment, I would have lost the match—an outcome I was unwilling accept. Sparring matches only ended when a Senior Cape said they did, or one of the people fighting made it clear they gave up or otherwise couldn’t continue.

  After the recruit fell into the sand, the moment I was certain he was refusing to give up, I grabbed his left arm and stepped over his back to flip him over. I dropping myself to the ground in the process with his arm running down the center of my body. My feet locked themselves in place across his chest and, with his elbow on top of my pelvis, I brought my hips up to complete the arm-bar.

  I noticed as my hips raised that his skin began to feel rough, and his body began to shake. I went to apply pressure, thinking that he would tap my leg to forfeit the match, but he continued to hold strong. Never in my life had I actually brought my hips as high as I had in that moment while grappling someone, especially not while sparring. I was as high as I ever dared to go, threatening legitimate hyperextension of the joint. Even with the intensity of the match heightened in that moment, a small part of me thought through the tunnel vision and I wondered why he wasn’t submitting, my hips rising higher still.

  And then I heard a snap.

  The recruit had taken the form of the sand beneath us, his body becoming hard but brittle. When my hips had come to their apex, he’d tried to roll away, I guess believing he had the same amount of strength as when he’d turned his body into the same rock as the boulder. I don’t know whether or not he did, only that he lost a forearm and a hand for the effort. The crowd went silent as the both of us stood up, the recruit asking politely for his arm back. He told me that had never happened before and Fibre came running over.

  “So it’s come off, eh?” Fibre asked.

  “Looks like it,” the recruit said.

  “Well, try putting it back in. And hurry up about it.”

  The recruit did as Fibre suggested, sticking his arm back into itself at the elbow. There was a faint pop and a distinct grinding, but as he held it in place, he began to wiggle his fingers.

  “Now hold it there until you turn back, and we’ll see what the damage is,” Fibre continued.

  The recruit breathed a sandy sigh of relief. “How did you know that would work?” he asked as he and Fibre began to walk over to the hospital wing.

  “When did I say I knew it would work?” Fibre responded, already in the distance.

  They left me standing in the sand, panting and sweaty in absolutely every place that I could sweat. I was sore the second my body finished pumping adrenaline, but nothing felt like it hurt any more than usual. My midsection, for what it was worth, felt totally healed.

  I was so elated after I cooled off from sparring that I took a somewhat lengthy run, absolutely sure that the good mood would help my distance. It turned out that no matter how great I felt about winning a match against someone who could tear a person in half, it wasn’t enough to get beyond the shortness of breath I eventually experienced, or the part where my stomach felt like it was going t
o fall out of my body. The muscle and bone near my stomach felt fine, but my running pace eventually slowed as the cramps crept in.

  After my shower that day, I went to one of the auditoriums for Tristan’s demonstration. There were quite a few other recruits in the audience, some of them with projects of their own to show, but many of them were simply there to watch. Tristan and I had discussed that all I needed to do was show up at the right time and be prepared to talk with the voices on stage. It wasn’t until I walked in that afternoon that I became aware of exactly how many other people would be present. I’d known knew there would be others, obviously, as Tristan and recruits with similar efforts were being judged by GHS officials to determine whether or not they possessed the skills to be effective Capes. But it was only when I walked in that I realized there would be a crowd, and that many of them were people who had no idea I heard voices in my head.

  I thought back to my conversation with Hilly, when she’d asked me if I was going to go around telling everyone. Ultimately, I didn’t bring it up with the other recruits, I guess because in spite of my coolness when she and I were talking, a part of me was just too used to keeping it a secret. And in a few moments, that was going to be over. I worked to stay calm and get through the presentation. Tristan had gone through all of the effort, after all, and he was trusting me to be a big part of his future. It wouldn’t have been right to back out.

  I sat down next to him in the audience as we watched another recruit finish up her demonstration. She was a Tinkerer like Tristan, and her demonstration was about the non-lethal weaponry she’d crafted during her time at the academy. Tristan told me as we sat together that the girl had a natural passion for building things that she found funny, and that the weaponry was more of a shift in focus brought on by her desire to help people, which eventually led to requesting that she be recruited to be a Cape. He said he was pretty sure she had built everything on display simply to graduate—he didn’t think she’d keep building weapons once she could build other things that would help people. It was a smart play, I thought. Had she built something less useful in the eyes of the officials, she might have been placed onto a team somewhere she’d have little influence. As I watched her describe and demonstrate the uses of the gadgets she had, it became clear to everyone, as far as I could tell, that she’d be placed onto a notable team in a large city. I was almost disappointed to hear that she wouldn’t regularly be building devices similar to what she had on stage, as I thought a lot of them might even the playing field for people like me who didn’t have super strength or speed.