Accelerant

by Katelyn Beckett

  Scha-WEEEEEEE-

  Nishelle grabbed the back of the chair and I slid out of it, hitting my ass on the floor. I looked up at her and sighed. "Cassie's gonna be pissed. She hates it when I'm all bruised up."

  "Used to kiss my bruises better, buttercup," Nishelle said, sending the chair rolling off across the lab. "Too bad for you."

  There was a touch of jealousy in her voice. I went to go get my chair. "Yeah, but you've got 'used to'. I've got 'she'll do it for me later tonight.'"

  "Not if you're in a burn ward."

  Edwin snapped his fingers. "Please. Not in the lab. If you two want to strut, take it outside. There are far too many combustible chemicals in here for a Pyro to start flinging fire around."

  "But not me," I said, totally doing finger guns, pretending to fire them, then blowing off the ends. "Pew pew."

  Nishelle's utterly disgusted look sent so much joy through me. She was just so serious. Sure, finding out about what you'd done while under the control of some villain Psychic was probably important. I wouldn't know. I'd never been in the situation. But there was no reason for her to get so many bees in her bonnet.

  So I got on my chair, put my hands on the back of it, and kicked it across the lab. I sailed past her, head in the air, as majestic as a whale or a sealion or, you know. Something like that.

  She rolled her eyes and turned her head back to the computer. Nishelle choked and leaned in. I leaned in over her shoulder, curious as hell, when the alarm went off full blast.

  "This is an all-hands alert. Repeated. All-hands alert. A potential threat has been spotted outside the building. Again, this is an all-"

  Edwin moved out of the way and saved the page before shooing us out the door. "Go on. We can always pick this up afterward."

  "Should she? We just recovered her from whatever is going on with this Psych stuff," I asked.

  Nishelle walked past me without a response. Edwin shrugged at me as she left. "Fifty-fifty odds she doesn't stab us in the back. It's not like she'd have a choice if she did."

  Convincing as ever, Edwin was just the sort of guy I could count on to bring the mood down. I shook my head at him and made my way up to my room to change as quickly as I could. I didn't know where Nishelle's stuff was but I hoped she was doing the same thing, not opening the front door for whatever asshole was out there causing trouble.

  Into my apartment, yank open the closet doors, pull on the suit. Was it really necessary, I wondered, to continue hiding my face behind a mask? It wasn't as if my friends and loved ones were civilians and it hadn't kept them safe, not really. I wrestled with it even as I slipped the hood over my head. It was important, I guessed, from some news perspective.

  But given to the fact that I'd lost my sister to it all? It felt... I guess I felt betrayed by it. I went to so much trouble to protect her before Cassie had come home. And it hadn't paid off.

  Speaking of my sister, I slid out my door and nearly ran over her. She was already suited up in her old emerald and gold suit. I grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back toward her apartment. "Absolutely not."

  "You don't own me, Adam," she snarled, pulling away.

  The glass over the nearby fire alarm shattered and she flinched. I jerked my thumb at it. "Don't have the fine control down again yet? Yeah. That's why we don't need you out there. You, Cassie, Lex-"

  "Nishelle's going."

  I sighed. "I can't stop her. I can stop you."

  "What're you gonna do? Sit on me?" Melody drawled, folding her arms across her chest.

  Giving her the flattest look I could muster, I opened her door. "If I have to. I'd prefer you work with me on this, keep yourself safe, make it a non-issue."

  "And I'd prefer you let me do what I'm made to do," she said, closing the door again.

  The alarm blared again. We didn't have time to stand there and argue. "If you get out there and get killed, I'll never forgive you."

  "Yeah? And if that's Allison and she steals you, I'll never forgive myself for not being out there. Even if I do have to deal with Sosie."

  She swished her hips as she walked away from me, entirely too satisfied. I followed her down the way I'd come, elevator taking us to the bottom floor. There was no sign of Cassie or Nate as Isabella and I wove our way through the crowd of superheroes down in the lobby. Most were chatting among themselves, trying to figure out where the threat was.

  "There's no one out there?" I asked.

  The girl, no more than seventeen or so, looked up at me. She smiled, showing a missing tooth and swelling that said whenever she'd lost it, it'd been recent. Weird, usually our insurance got new teeth in pretty quick. "Nobody that we see, Creed."

  "You're Sparkler, right?"

  The smile widened. "Light, darkness. All that kind of thing. Thought I was a Zap for a little while. I lucked out."

  "You sure did," I said, patting her shoulder.

  I was going to have to talk to Scribe about that when he got out of the damn hospital. What a mess. I let go of the kid and moved closer to the windows. Melody followed me with polite, bright, smiley words and answered no one's questions about why the hell she was in the building after what she'd done. Good for her. She should have been a journalist or something instead of a superhero. Maybe some kind of superstar.

  Outside, the world was a strange, simple kind of hazy; the sort of thing that happens to a city in summer right after a rainstorm. The streets steam and the sky seems to vibrate just on this side of being visible.

  Then an elephant walked by and I looked back for Melody, for any of the others.

  I was alone.

  "Fuck me sideways," I sighed and rested my head against the glass.

  I went straight through it, thumping down on the sidewalk outside. Hovering above the ground even a few inches made the buildings shoot into the sky, as if I were a child again and they towered over me at some impossible angle. I rubbed my chin. Well, that wasn't going to work.

  Maybe if I walked through the city? It was possible that I'd be trapped somewhere else if I did that. When you were alone and lost, you were supposed to sit still and scream for help. That's what you were taught when you were in scouts and those after-school specials weren't as prevalent yet. Somehow, I didn't think that would work, either.

  So, door number three. I did what you do when you need to wake up during a nightmare.

  I punched myself in the face.

  The world shattered around me like it was made of sugar panes; the stuff they use in action flicks so nobody gets hurt. I lay on the Alliance building's lobby floor, my cheek hurting. Outside, the world looked more normal than it had. Izzy wasn't there, but no one else was either. I got up and checked the window.

  My fingers touched the glass and stayed. The glass lacked the give the Dream had, offering me no way to throw myself through it without some significant help.

  "Is that actually you or are we in another layer again?"

  Cassie came up behind me, touching my back. I stiffened and turned on her. "Tell me something only you would know."

  "That doesn't help when the bitch is a Psychic, Creed. She can just pull whatever she needs out of my damn head."

  Nate looked down at her, then back at me. "You asked me about a bump on your chin when you were sixteen, just after I'd gotten into medical school, because you were worried it was mono."

  "What, you had mono?" Cassie blinked, then rolled her eyes. "You knew I had a thing for Nate before your sister went nuts. I don't know."

  I nodded. "I don't know what's going on. I left my apartment with Melody. I came down here and met a kid who could wield light, said her name was Sparkler, and then I fell through a window and an elephant went by."

  "You get all the fun shit," Cassie muttered, walking over to smack her hand against the window. Again, it held. "This looks solid. Pretty sure we're probably in the real world."

  "That's just what a super spooky Dream Cassie would say," Nate said, which helped my confidence so much. I shoved him
.

  There was a sigh across my communications unit. "I assure you, you're in the real world. You lost communication for a little while there. Everybody's all right?"

  "We're peachy, Edwin," Cassie said. "Something is all kinds of screwy down here, though. You have any track on Wreckless, Melody, or Ember?"

  Her voice faltered on Ember's name. I frowned at Strikeout but she shook her head at me. Something to investigate later, then.

  Edwin's tap-a-tap-tap of his computer terminal was something I was reasonably certain couldn't be faked with that much accuracy. "Ember's headed your way. Wreckless is on the roof. Melody's... I don't know what Melody's doing there, but she's outside in the alleyway."

  My blood pressure spiked. Taken, gone, tortured. My sister was in trouble and there was no time to lose. I flung myself out the front door, much to Strikeout's cavalcade of curses, and ran around the side of the building.

  Melody stood there, her head back against the nearby wall. Her eyes were shut, as if she were listening to a song. The problem was, she wasn't wearing her earbuds. I grabbed her, pulled her to my chest, and hugged her tight. "Hey. Hey, listen to me. Wake up. Whatever is happening, it isn't real. I'm here, Iz. I'm here."

  She smiled up at me, her eyes slowly opening. They were wide, dark pits that reflected the horror on my face. I drew back, but her arms wrapped around me like a snake, crushing me in her coils.

  "You never found me," she said. "You never found me and you let her do whatever she wanted."

  I didn't try to break away. It was smart to assume that squirming or fighting her would cause her to hurt me worse. Breathing slowly, trying to calm down the situation, I tucked my chin over her head. "I tried to find you, tried to figure it out, but there were so few clues. You have to understand, Iz. There was no way to know where you were."

  "Look at me."

  The command was impossible to ignore. I tried to fight it but there was nothing left in me. My head slowly turned to stare down at her and I gazed into her eyes. They drank me in and in them, I drowned.

  Around me, the world was an ink spot. There was nothing. I was nothing. And even when I lifted my hand to look at it, to examine the gloves I'd been wearing, all was darkness. I stood, I slept. I moved, but I stayed still. I suppose I could have started with the whole up is down, left is right, but I felt as though the place I was in didn't really understand directions.

  "You've been a problem this entire time. I had no idea you were Isabella's brother."

  Voices. A voice, all blending into various octaves and confusion. Every syllable was like being blinded by a rainbow colliding with a star. I put my hands-that-were-not-hands on my face, which only tangentially existed, and tried not to scream.

  "You're still fighting me, Creed. Adam. The longer you fight, the worse the Dream gets. It doesn't respond well to those who are so brittle, who refuse to bend."

  I shuddered. "I'll break before I give in."

  "If I really must, I will. But a broken man like you serves a lower purpose than the one I intended for you. Aren't you even a little curious?"

  There was a playfulness to the voice, something that soothed me. I looked up to see what I could. Though the world was still an endless wasteland of shadows, there were two portals in the distance. I walked toward them and peered through the leftmost one in an attempt to see, to understand what was really going on.

  All I saw was myself in a mirror, staring as I turned on what we'd named sneakmode. It was something that Scribe had demanded Edwin program into our new suits, making us harder to track and less easy to spot on the streets. I'd thought that we were taking up some kind of combat contract with the local cops or the military.

  Now? I wondered if the person who'd trapped me was the cause of all of it.

  I watched as she crept around me, sliding her arms around my broad chest. She was a blonde and, in a few ways, resembled Cassie. They had the same nose, the same smile, yet Allison's was somehow slimy. Like I'd just tossed Cassie in a pond and she'd ended up face down in the muck.

  "That's so much better, isn't it?" she asked, petting me like a dog.

  I got enough of that shit from my fellow superheroes.

  "You're a good boy," she whispered and I'd had enough.

  Reality snapped around me and I was no longer looking through my eyes so much as I was myself again. My fist whipped up and snatched her by those golden locks. I bent her back, yanking until I heard her scalp start to give, letting each perfectly yellow ribbon go falling from its root. I bore her down until my open hand wrapped around her neck and we found ourselves on the floor.

  "I'm not your pet," I growled, trying to bring myself to pop her head off her shoulders.

  To be fair, I'd stop all of this. I'd end it and we'd all be free. I'd be able to worry less about my sister, concern myself with my girlfriend and maybe Edwin's hot ass. A free life, a normal life, just punching bad guys in the face and going home to wrap myself in Cassie's arms.

  But murder? I...

  It was one thing to have to break someone down in the heat of battle. We still tried to avoid killing them, but sometimes bad things happened. This wasn't in the middle of a fight trying to protect the innocent, the downtrodden, or those who didn't have any glimmer of hope.

  This was me, protecting me and maybe a few of the others, for my own gains and nothing else.

  Allison smiled up at me, tears in her eyes. "You won't do it. I know you won't. You're too much of a fucking coward."

  Something twisted in my stomach, a cold, dark, sinister thing that begged to be let loose whenever I was in the middle of getting my face caved in. It wanted the blood to spill, for me to go stalking through cities and smashing whatever I wanted.

  For once in my life, I unleashed it.

  With a sickening crunch, I dislocated Dreamweaver's skull from her neck. She twitched twice and there was nothing left, her eyes glassy and seeing into a place that I could only dream of. Anger, bright and painful, welled up within me. I drove my fist into her face once, twice; I lost count of how many times. She'd been crying? I damned sure was. How much had she taken from me? Had all of our foes over the years taken? Friends, relatives, girlfriends, boyfriends; I was a fountain of death and little else.

  I was a monster.

  And the people loved me for it.

  "Thank you," purred Allison.

  It came from everywhere and my heart sank. I stared at her broken, battered body. I stared at the blood on my hands, the crimson dotting the carpet. Her corpse lay inches from me.

  But she was still inside my head.

  Oh, God.

  "You freed me from that awful prison. I just wasn't bold enough to do it myself, you know? So messy, so inconvenient. Now? Now they'll know what you really are. How you are deep down, when pushed beyond your comfort zone." There was a mad little chuckle that echoed inside my head. "I can go wherever I want. Wherever I need to be. And none of you can do a single thing to stop me. Thank you, Adam. Your sister is an asset but you?"

  She paused and, for a wonderful second, I thought I'd just gone insane. That maybe all of it was a dream and that I was dealing with some sort of short-term trauma from killing her. They had wonderful psychiatrists on staff for that, when we made the mistake and accidentally killed someone in the line of duty.

  Fretfully, I made myself count to a hundred in record time. It'd worked for Cassie when I'd carried her off during that panic attack. Maybe it would work for me, too.

  But no. No, I wasn't that lucky.

  "You're perfect."

  I felt her wrap around my consciousness even as I fought it. I screamed as she dragged me back into the Dream.

  Chapter 19

  I'd been in the Dream before, but never like this.

  The world fluctuated around me, out of control and confused. First, I was in my grade school. I picked a kid up and threw him across the playground. He'd slapped another girl and I'd known then that I had to protect her, had to stand up for her and do som
ething.

  Everything was so much bigger when I was seven. I stared around at the monstrous monkey bars, the too-tall playhouse that I could never quite reach the top of. The other kids looked at me like I was a freak. When I moved toward them, they shrank back as one.

  Despite knowing that the Dream wasn't a real thing, it still hurt. It hurt as bad as when it'd been my reality, when the world had learned that I wasn't a Psychic, like the rest of the family. That I was just some worthless Blitzer, bound to burn out at the least opportune moment. Like the idiot Blitzer who'd gotten my grandmother killed.

  What was that? I'd ended up being the least respected superhero type in the entire Clark dynasty? Of course I had. I was worthless, pathetic, undesirable in every way. I-