Action Figures - Issue Six: Power Play

by Michael Bailey

  “Fine. You’re right: we didn’t make the hardware ourselves. We got them from a supplier in the city. You get the charges against me dropped and I’ll give you an address.”

  Concorde smiles behind his visor. Got you, you smug SOB.

  “Here’s our counter-offer,” he says. “We leave. You sit in your cell and think about whether you want to cooperate with us. Because we’re such nice guys, we’ll give you until noon Wednesday so you can enjoy Christmas with your cellmates. If we don’t hear from you by then, we head down to the courthouse, tell the judge we have a concrete lead on our case, and he issues us a search warrant.”

  “A very special search warrant,” Mindforce says. “One that legally allows me to go into your head.”

  Van’s arrogant smirk withers away.

  “That’s your deal, Van,” Concorde says. “Talk to us voluntarily and maybe, maybe the DA cuts you some slack, or Mindforce pulls it out of your brain and you get your three hots and a cot. Win-win situation, the way I see it.”

  They give Van a minute to break. He doesn’t.

  He will, Concorde thinks.

  “Noon Wednesday. Call us if you decide to get smart,” he says. Despite himself, he can’t resist one last little poke. “Have a Merry Christmas.”

  ***

  Matt hangs out for a while, then leaves to go spend some time with his girlfriend Zina before she forgets what he looks like. Missy heads out with him to meet up with her band for a casual jam session. Once they leave, Meg and I call out for pizza and enjoy a casual dinner. After that, we stretch out on the bed, our hands intertwined. We don’t speak, but I’m good with that. I don’t want to talk. I want to lay here and hold my girl’s hand and pretend I have everything figured out.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I confess.

  “I had a feeling,” Meg says.

  “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “Go home. Go home and try to work things out with Christina.”

  “Meg...”

  “She cares about you,” she says, sitting up, “and with Carrie gone, she needs you. And you need her.”

  “What I need is someone I can trust,” I say, simmering. “What I need is someone who doesn’t make life-altering decisions about my life without even talking to me about it. Meg, she took my control away from me.”

  None of the pivotal events in my life have happened because of a choice I made. I didn’t choose to move to Kingsport when I was little. I didn’t ask for my powers. I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to be a lesbian. I sure as hell didn’t want a serial killer turning my life upside-down. As grateful as I am to them for taking care of me, I didn’t ask to live with Carrie and Christina. It wasn’t my idea to convince my friends to reveal their deepest secrets to their families, and it wasn’t my idea to let Ben in on it. My life has always been defined by other people’s choices.

  No more. Never again.

  “If you want me to go,” Meg offers.

  “I don’t.”

  “Okay,” she says. She lies back down and wraps her arms around me and kisses me on the temple. She’s so good to me. Too good; all I’ve done is take from her. I haven’t given as much as she has.

  The thought should depress me. It doesn’t; it gives me a small measure of strength. It gives me a reason to figure this mess out and get my life back in order and be the girlfriend she deserves.

  “I’m going to be okay,” I say. It’s more than a declaration, more than an affirmation; it’s a sacred vow. I will do this. For Meg.

  She smiles. “I know you will.”

  EIGHTEEN

  I wake up to someone knocking on my door. I open my eyes and look around, wondering at first where the heck I am. Right, hotel room.

  “What time is it?” Meg mumbles.

  I check the twenty-year-old clock radio on the nightstand. “Little after eight.”

  “Whoever that is, murder them and throw the body out the window.”

  Man, she’s violent when she wakes up.

  I crawl out of bed and shuffle over to the door. Matt, Stuart, and Missy march right in without being invited. Rude — but they have coffee so I’ll forgive them.

  “We come bearing breakfast goodness,” Matt announces, handing me one of those party-size boxes of coffee from the Coffee Experience. “Thought you might want something better than whatever horror this place calls a continental breakfast.”

  “You thought correctly,” I say, “and for that reason I’ll let you live.”

  “I got the pastries,” Stuart says, showing me a wide, flat cardboard box with the Coffee E logo printed across the lid. “And we brought enough for everyone,” he says, nodding toward the bed.

  “Oh,” Matt says at last noticing Meg.

  “Morning,” she says, sitting up.

  “Morning. Didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Had to make sure my girl was all settled in.” She gets up and heads toward the bathroom, pausing only to grab her jeans off the floor. “Excuse me a minute. Have to go make myself presentable for mixed company.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Meg closes the bathroom door. Matt, Stuart, and Missy level the exact same curious yet slightly accusing expression at me.

  “She stayed the night. We slept. That’s it,” I say. “Nothing happened.”

  No one challenges me. Not openly, anyway.

  Matt pours the coffee while Stuart graciously gives me first choice of pastries. I claim the two maple-frosted coffee rolls in the box. The setting aside, breakfast is a comfortingly familiar experience. I’m with my girl and all my — most of my best friends, eating and chatting and joking and laughing like nothing’s wrong.

  “I miss this,” I say. “Feels like we don’t do this kind of thing much anymore.”

  “Who would’ve guessed we’d all get real lives?” Stuart says. “Me and Matt have jobs, we all have friends outside of the group, you and Matt have significant others...”

  “Speaking of which, how’s Zina doing?”

  “She’s good. She missed me like crazy,” Matt says, smiling.

  “Did you get a chance to talk to her? You know, about our, um, recent development?”

  “I planned to but I never got a chance to bring it up.”

  “You didn’t? What did you two do all night?”

  Matt’s cheeks turn pink. “Stuff.”

  “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Stuart says.

  “You need to tell her,” I say, “sooner rather than later.”

  “I’m going to. Actually, I was planning to talk to her right after — oh, yeah, that’s what I was going to ask you. Bose Industries is holding its holiday party tonight. Want to come with?”

  “What about Zina?”

  “She’ll be there. She works there too, you know. I just thought you might want to get out of here for a while, and I’m sure Edison won’t mind.”

  “Mm. Tempting, but I have things on my to-do list I want to take care of.”

  “Like what?”

  “Personal business.”

  “Or is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Stuart quips.

  “Stop it. I’m serious. I have some stuff I need to take care of. Alone.”

  “And after that?” Matt says.

  “I don’t know. Probably come back here and relax.”

  “Alone?”

  “Not alone,” Meg says.

  “Meg, no, I can’t ask you to put your life on hold like that,” I say. “Besides, tomorrow’s Christmas Eve; you should be home with your family.”

  “So should you,” Matt says.

  “Matt...”

  “Go home, Sara. Go home. Talk to Christina. Work it out.”

  I grunt. “Easy for you to say.”

  “If it is, it’s because I’m speaking from experience. Remember what I was like after I caught Dad screwing around on Mom? I stayed away from home, I avoided Dad like the plague, I refused to talk to him...guess what all that ac
complished?”

  “Same thing I accomplished by avoiding my dad after I found out he made me in a lab,” Missy says. “Give you a hint: it rhymes with — huh. You know what? Nothing rhymes with ‘nothing.’ That’s ironic.”

  “Come on, Sara, we’ve all been down this road before and we know where it leads,” Matt says. “Not talking doesn’t do any good. It never has.”

  I look over at Stuart, who has yet to offer an opinion. He purses his lips in thought and then scowls, like he’s not sure he wants to weigh in.

  “Stuart?” I prompt.

  “I think you’re the last person in the world who should be stingy with the forgiveness. I’m not saying Christina didn’t screw up because she did. She screwed up royally,” he says. Then he drops a ten-megaton truth bomb. “So did you once.”

  Matt shoots him a reprimanding glare, but he can’t say Stuart’s wrong because he isn’t; I did screw up royally once, and despite all my apologies and efforts to atone, I’m still dealing with the consequences.

  On that note...

  ***

  Meg drives me to my first stop of the day. She offers to come in with me. I decline. She offers to wait in the parking lot. I decline. She offers to wait for me back at the hotel. I decline.

  “Sweetie, please,” she says. “I want to be here for you.”

  “I know you do and I love you for that, but this is something I have to do alone,” I say. She makes an unhappy noise. “I’m not pushing you away. I swear I’m not.”

  “Like I’d let you.”

  “I know. I also know you respect me and you wouldn’t force me to do anything I honestly didn’t want to do.”

  Her expression hardens. “Never.”

  “I honestly don’t want you to put me before your family. Believe me,” I say, touching her face, “I’d love to crawl into bed with you and hold you and stay like that through New Year’s, but that would be selfish of me. I don’t want to be selfish with you.”

  She smiles. “You’re a good girlfriend. Don’t ever think you aren’t.”

  I kiss her goodbye and climb out. Reluctantly, she drives away.

  Kingsport Cove is what’s called a long-term care facility. It serves a lot of different types of patients, including those who are in persistent vegetative states — people in irreversible comas or who suffered such severe brain damage they’ll never again be fully functional human beings. My parents were transferred here from Kingsport Hospital several weeks ago, once the doctors determined with absolute certainty they’d never recover from — well, as far as the doctors knew, my parents nearly died of carbon monoxide poisoning. That’s the official cover story. The real story is, I had a psychotic break and, in a fit of blind rage, erased their minds. I’ve known from day one they’d never recover. No power on Earth can undo what I did to them.

  That’s why I hate mucking around with people’s brains. Extenuating circumstances aside — and I acknowledge there were a metric butt-ton of extenuating circumstances — what happened with my parents is a sobering example of what kind of catastrophic damage I’m capable of inflicting, and I’m terrified I might do that again. Even tiny things like pushing that hotel clerk to overlook my age make me physically ill. I can’t risk hurting someone like that ever again. I won’t.

  Nancy is at the front desk today. She greets me by name. I try to visit at least once a week, so all the receptionists and a lot of the nurses know me pretty well.

  My parents’ room is in the back of the facility. It’s nice and quiet, and their room gets a lot of sun in the afternoon — not that there’s much to illuminate. It’s a plain white room with two hospital beds, a TV no one ever watches, and some generic paintings of country landscapes neither Mom nor Dad can appreciate.

  They don’t react at all when I enter. They never do. They rarely ever move. Occasionally, they’ll shift in bed, and sometimes they’ll open their eyes and look around, but there isn’t a flicker of consciousness behind it.

  I don’t talk to them. I’ve always heard people in their condition can still hear people, but I honestly don’t see the point in holding a one-sided conversation, so I just stand between their beds and hold their hands for a while.

  My friends think I do this to punish myself. That’s not the reason. It’s to remind myself of what could happen if I ever lose control again.

  Control. That’s always what it comes back to, isn’t it? Having control over myself, over my powers, over my life. Losing control sucks, and it sucks ten times worse when someone you thought you could trust wrenches it away from you — but that isn’t how Christina saw it. She didn’t think about how her decision impacted me. She didn’t think about me at all; she couldn’t see past her own need to have someone to confide in, someone who could comfort her in ways Dr. Quentin never could.

  I say goodbye to my parents and walk up the road to Kingsport Hospital for the next stop in my Sunday morning depress-a-thon.

  My destination is not, as I anticipated, the intensive care unit, which is a welcome bit of news. I enter Sgt. Prescott’s room and gag on the overpowering smell of fresh flowers. Every flat surface has a bouquet sitting on it. Countless get-well cards hide among the vases, and a small stuffed pig in a police officer’s uniform sits on the nightstand.

  Sgt. Prescott opens her eyes. “Hello,” she says, a question in her brittle greeting.

  “Sergeant Prescott. Hi,” I say. “I hope I’m not disturbing you. I wanted to see how you were doing.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “Yeah, but the last time you saw me I had a black cloak on.”

  “Psyche?”

  “Sara. My name’s Sara Danvers.”

  She blinks at me and does a tiny drug-addled double take. “Did I miss something? Hm. Could be,” she says, answering her own question. “I’ve been on some heavy-duty meds.”

  “Yeah. You got tagged pretty good.”

  “Or pretty bad, depending on your point of view. I hear it would’ve been a lot worse if it hadn’t been for you.”

  I cringe. It would’ve been a lot better if I’d been on my A-game that day. I could have thrown up a shield sooner, saved Sgt. Prescott from taking seven bullets to the chest and abdomen.

  “I know that look. Don’t go there. You did what you could and I’m grateful for it,” she says. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything. Anything.”

  “Why am I talking to Sara Danvers instead of Psyche?”

  “Phew. Long story.”

  She shrugs. “I ain’t going anywhere.”

  Good point. And I owe her that much at the very least.

  When I finish telling my tale, she says with a note of pity, “You are growing up way too fast.”

  “It feels like it.”

  “Sounds like you have some good people in your life, though.”

  “I do, and it helps. It helps a lot. I’m very grateful for them.”

  “Mmm,” she says, nodding. “Then why in God’s name are you staying in a hotel instead of with one of them?”

  She waits for an answer. I got nothing.

  “Sara, you’re a good kid and I like you. I do, so believe me when I say I mean this in the most respectful way possible,” Sgt. Prescott says. “Grow up.”

  “Is that an order, Sergeant Scotty?”

  She laughs. It quickly turns into a wet cough. “It’s a sincere, heartfelt suggestion from a former teenager who didn’t always have the good sense to accept help when it was offered.”

  With a sigh, Sgt. Prescott settles back into her pillows, exhausted. I take that as my cue to leave.

  “Sergeant?” I say, pausing in the doorway. “Would it be okay if I visited you again?”

  She smiles. “You better,” she says. “And next time, I want to hear some good news. Got it?”

  I smile back. “Yes, ma’am.”

  ***

  After returning to the hotel, I stop at the desk to see if maybe another guest left a phone charger behind since, in my rush to l
eave home, I forgot to grab mine. I’m in luck; they have a half-dozen forgotten iPhone chargers sitting in a box under the counter.

  I head to my room and plug in my dead phone. The first thing I see is a notification of seventeen missed calls from Christina. The last one came in about an hour ago. I set the phone aside and lie down, fully intending to think long and hard about my next move. That plan falls apart the second I close my eyes. I fall asleep hard.

  I awake hours later to a dark room and the sound of someone rapping frantically at my door. I glance over at my clock radio. It reads 9:09 PM.

  “Hold on,” I say. It takes me a minute to muster the will to get up.

  Matt stands in the hallway in his all-purpose black suit, his hair badly mussed and his eyes wide with excitement — and not necessarily the good kind.

  “You are not going to believe what happened,” he says.

  NINETEEN

  “And only an hour late,” Matt says, pulling into his parking space. As trivial as it is, he has yet to tire of seeing that metal sign reading RESERVED FOR M. STEIGER.

  “Are you complaining?” Zina says.

  “Oh no,” Matt says, smiling.

  “Mm. Might want to wipe that big stupid grin off your face or everyone will know why we’re late.”

  “You started it.”

  “Excuse me? I gave you one little kiss hello.”

  “Like I said.”

  “Come on. Let’s go show the old people how to party.”

  Signs reading BOSE HOLIDAY PARTY guide them to the employee cafeteria, the main floor of which has been cleared of chairs and tables. A DJ stationed atop a small stage presides over the dance floor, pumping out music tailored to their older colleagues’ tastes. It reminds Matt of a high school dance — uncomfortably so, considering how his one and only school dance experience ended.

  “That DJ better have some Beyoncé or Sia to spin or we’re leaving,” Zina says. “Let’s find a place to dump our coats.”