Valentine's Day

Alec Merceau/Regent

April 1st, 2012

March comes and goes before I can blink, the whole of the first month of spring passes like a bad dream, completely god fucking awful in the moment but unrememberable right after. I suppose that’s not exactly true, I could do some digging and pull up dozens of bad memories but I’d rather let those moments float down my consciousness. 

Things aren’t getting any better here, if anything, the pattern that was just starting to take hold at the end of February is only getting stronger.

I feel like a ghost in my own home, conversations happen when I’m not there and they die the instant I’m noticed. They don’t stall or become stilted, they fucking die. Instantly. 

Everytime I walk out of my room, everytime I sit down for breakfast, everytime I try to bridge the gap between the five of— between the four of them and me, like a fucking gunshot, conversation dies like a witness in an alley.

It’s an awful feeling, knowing your own fucking presence is radioactive, knowing that the mere act of being near causes them pain. It’s an awful feeling but that’s just the beginning of it.

It was gradual, their stilted attempts to talk with me became silence and then that became something worse. They’re… colder now.

Not with each other, never with each other it seems. No, just me.

The rolled eyes and small chuckles became exaggerated groans and then those became actual grunts of annoyance, the jokes that they used to— that I used to find charming just won’t fucking land anymore. It only took Lisa telling me to shut up once to know I shouldn’t do stand-up anymore.

The lack of jokes fixed things for a little while. Well, if by fix I mean patching holes. Truthfully it didn’t do much but let things stagnant for a day or two. Shit didn’t get better but it didn’t get worse either.

Of course, without the jokes, I lost my main way of talking. I didn’t realize before how reliant I was on humor to open, end, and expand conversations.until I couldn’t do it anymore. I guess those days weren’t all that good in retrospect, I spent most of it trying to rework my brain before I could open my mouth.

And of course, by the time I got that figured out, the others had only gotten colder, denying any of my attempts with one word brush offs and grunts of acknowledgements.

Laying here, having stayed up to catch my alarm before it could ring, all I can do is stare out the window. The bay looks beautiful in the early morning, the sun rising up slowly and bathing my room in a warm amber light. 

The way it bounces off the room is pretty, my white sheets and canvas in the corner are turned a rusted orange in this lighting. My tired eyes scan over everything, noting the crumple of my sheets and the glare of some paint cans as I hear my teammates start to stir.

The walls in the tower are thick but I doubt anything can truly blot out the thunderous steps of our Shaker, especially when he’s just woken up and is still fumbling into walls. 

I toss and turn as he goes through his routine, his disquiet probably causing a domino effect with the three rooms on the other side of his bathroom. I’m not gonna get any sleep today, I already slept so much yesterday that I doubt there’s a point.

I lay there, waiting for the sound of his door clicking open and closed before I even start thinking about my day today. I’ve learned to do this, they’re not all that nice during the rest of the day but early morning crankiness ratchets it up a lot. 

I wish I knew what I did. The thought plagues me as I turn on to my side, staring out the window as my thoughts try to pick up speed, try to break through the molasses in my head. 

I know I did something, I had to have done something pretty fucking bad for them all to suddenly hate me. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out what the fuck that is. I replay every fucking conversation I can rememember, taking apart each word and dissecting it’s tone, influence, cadence, and any other fucking thing about it.

I inspect everything, down to the way I walk, I don't know what's done this to them, done this to me, but it has to have been enormous, it’s gotta be something like that, right? It wouldn’t make sense if it wasn’t something like that.

But if it is… why the fuck won’t they just tell me?!

I slam my fist down on the soft bedding, the force of my blow fizzling out in a frustrating anticlimax. The ringing in my ears starts to pick up again and I force myself to sit up against the headboard.

If I just knew what I did, if they would just tell me how I fucked up, I could fix things between us. I’d apologize, I’d say whatever they needed me to say, I’ll do fucking anything to slip back into the way it was before.

But they’re not telling me and I know asking directly’s just gonna fuck things up even harder. If you ask about the problem, that acknowledges there is a problem. And nine times out of ten, when you do that, people aren’t ready to talk about it and that just makes things even worse, because now, the problem can’t be in the background anymore.

But regardless, things are getting worse every day anyway. I’m getting desperate for some real conversation but I’m not suicidal enough to ask that question… yet. But that’s fine because today, I have a plan.

I’m going to help them today, I’m gonna talk to them individually, push past the coldness and find the thing that needs doing. It won’t be the nicest approach or the most subtle but it’s the only option I’ve got left.

I’m not gonna be smug, I’m not gonna poke fun or tell jokes, I’m gonna try to be as cordial as possible when I approach them. And when I’ve gotten what I wanted out of it, I’m just gonna work. I’m not gonna ask for a reward or overstay my welcome. I’m just gonna show that I can still be useful, that I can be valuable if nothing else.

The plan’s worked before, back when we first met, the other Undersiders didn’t want anything to do with me. And as okay as I was with the silence back then, there was only so many bad looks and passive aggressive comments I could take before I fixed it.

When you get down to it, friendships are built off what you can give to each other, it’s a transaction. I needed to prove my worth then and it looks like I need to do so again.

I imagine it’s gonna be a bit harder this time, I doubt Lisa will need me to find one of Coil’s men again, given that their employer has long since become worm food. Well, worm food and wasp food and roach food and just about every other kind of bug’s food.

But I have a pretty good idea on what I can offer the four of them and after an hour or so, I slowly get myself out of bed, avoiding the breakfast I can hear downstairs.

I dress even slower, taking my time until I can just barely hear a few doors open and then close again. I can’t talk to them all at the same time, if this has even the slightest chance of working, I need to spread it out. 

And so, hearing the footsteps in the hall start to retreat, I make my move. 

The heavy door to my room opens silently and it’s only with the first step into the hall that I feel a rock form in my gut. I’m really gonna try something else, even though the last half a dozen fixes only made things worse. What the fuck am I thinking?

This is only going to make things even worse, the apathy has already become dislike, do I really wanna push it even further? What if this is the final straw? What if they—

I tamp down on that thought like a pillow on a sleeping man’s face, smothering the what if’s until I can find my center again. Cool numbness washes over me like ice water, taking everything else with it as I gingerly shut the door behind me.

Lisa’s got a thing in her territory today, probably some business that thought they could trick our protection racket. She won’t be home for a while I figure. Rachel’s definitely with her dogs in the shelter below and I’m 90% sure Taylor’s working on her swarm just a few floors beneath this one. 

That makes my first stop Brian.

The numbness in my resolve shakes a little as I realize this but I push forward without the slightest hesitation. Brian and I… we only recently got on good terms and now we’re pretty much back to where we started.

He’s a lot like me in some ways, we both try to remain stoic as much as possible, keeping our emotions close to the chest in nearly everything we do. But the difference there is that I do it because I don’t really have a hand to play, and he does it because of some programmed idea that he doesn’t have another option.

For a while, I’m pretty sure we hated each other. Lisa would say it’s because of how similar we could be but weren’t, that despite our reluctance to be truly open, I cut it down with humor and he just bottled it up.

I don’t if I put much stock into that personally, it sounds a bit too much like Lisa’s ‘I’m gonna supplement what my power tells me with some psychobabble to make it sound more plausible.’ Okay, that might be a little reductive and mean but that is what it is. That technique might work really well on most people but I’ve met too many shrinks to fall for it.

All I know is that for a lot of the early game, Brian just sort’ve tolerated me most days. Honestly, the only reason we got better at all was by chance.

I had just come back home from the store, programmed in a new controller, and booted up some game to play the day away. I don’t even remember the game if I’m being honest, Cogs of Conflict 3 or some shit like that, I hadn’t played the first two in the series but there’s some games you can just look at the cover of and know it’s gonna be mindless.

The memory makes something stir at the base of my throat, something… weird, warm and cold at the same time. As the memory keeps playing on, that feeling only gets stronger as I reach the second story balcony.

I can hear Brian grunt in frustration downstairs and the noise echoes what I can recall from that first time we got along. I lean on the railing and swallow the feeling as much as I can.

He’d just gotten off the phone with Aisha’s school I think, she’d skipped yet again and he just barely argued an excuse out of the receptionist there when he slammed his phone down. I don’t know what compelled me to lift up the controller I sorta broke the day before, but Brian took the offer of distraction for what it was, unbothered by the x button’s slight stickiness as we played on for hours.

It’s a nice memory but that doesn’t change the feeling in my chest, it’s like ice is sliding up and down my nervous system, making everything too cold to pick apart but leaving my heart far too warm.

I do my best to ignore the feeling, heading for the staircase as loudly as I can. I’m usually quiet at the worst of times but lately, I’ve found myself having to constantly announce my presence. It’s annoying having to measure my steps like this, making them louder instead of silent, but it’s better than the alternative.

That being, ‘sneaking up’ on one of my teammates. You’d think, especially given their recent attitude adjustment, that they’d be on guard whenever I’m around, that they’d know to keep an ear open for me. But confoundingly, it’s the exact opposite.

Despite everything, they can still relax around me… just so long as I’m not directly in their line of sight or making noise. That sounds pathetic but I’m going to jot it down as a good thing, at least until we’re back on friendlier relations.

I crest the bottom of the stairs and Brian looks at me just as I put my foot down on the last step. The slightly older teen is still dressed in his pajamas, sweatpants and a worn t-shirt I mean. His brown eyes blink once before he turns his attention back on the table in front of him.

I muse for a moment about this place’s layout, for three floors, the penthouse isn’t as spaced out as I thought it would be. I take a second to think on that as I make a brief detour into the kitchen.

The uppermost floor is mostly for our rooms and a decently sized lounge on the other side of the building, right above the elevator’s entrance. There’s a lot of unused space up there, as in, places where the floor could’ve continued but instead didn’t, just to give spots in the first floor a higher ceiling.  

The floorplan for the top story is shaped almost like an hourglass, with the lounge on one end and the bedrooms on the other wall, with an opening in the middle to stare down into the living room.

The second floor is a lot more filled out I suppose but I think I would’ve done something differently with it if I had the choice. 

When you first walk in, the thing that immediately catches your eye is the den and tv within it. The wall that takes on the burden of that enormous flatscreen serves as support for the upper floor. And behind that wall, probably connecting to Taylor’s room if I’m betting on it, is a good sized library.

Why the fuck do we have a library exactly? I have no fucking idea but Taylor squealed when she first saw it and I was sold with that. I think my old… place of residence used to have a library, but a lot of it was mulched to make way for whatever kink my dad was obsessed with that week.

The thoughts trying to creep into my mind makes my hand shake as I reach for a glass, the cabinet door swinging off its hinges for a moment as I collect myself. I brush it off and let my mental architect continue.

To the right of the elevator, taking up that whole side of the floor is a meeting room, probably leftover from when Max and his company used to run this place. Minus the table of course, can’t have meetings with that many poorly carved swastikas.

Honestly, it’s too fucking big if you ask me. Maybe LIsa meant it to be inspiring, with so many goddamn chairs there’s a lot of empty spots that could be filled at some point. But right now it feels a bit presumptuous given that we could put every single Undersider in there and barely fill one side up.

We could’ve used that space for something else, for example, we could actually separate the kitchen and the dining room a bit more. With my glass in hand, I head for the fridge, getting myself some ice and trying to chance a casual glance at Brian.

It looks like my wariness was unneeded because he doesn’t even look up from the papers strewn out in front of him. He just grabs at one, squints like he could force it to reveal its secrets, and puts it back down without a word.

I let my thoughts continue, trying to give myself a little distraction before I have to force my brain into action.

The lowest floor, the one I rarely head down to myself is more of a leisure area. There’s a workout room, a sauna, and dumbest of all, a fucking pool takes up most of the space. Now I’m all for gaudy displays of wealth and throwing around cash like it doesn’t mean anything but having something that’s twice as big as what a suburban family might have in their backyard is too much, even for me.

The attached hot tub is nice though, I’ll give it that.

Without any more floors to list, I take a sip of my drink and use the swallow to disguise the gulp as I head over towards Brian.

His eyes dart to me for barely a second before looking away, like a big cat might ignore prey too small to be worth it. I try not to let the cool dismissal bother me as I look at everything he’s got laid out in front of him.

Documents and photographs, printed out PHO posts and interview transcripts, a mugshot and a far grainier silhouette of a well built sniper. The mugshot says it all, a blonde haired blue eyed thug masquerading as a master class in everything. This must be before his identity got leaked, the shot there still has him wearing the domino mask.

Victor, the Empire’s skill thief, if there’s a discipline on Earth that can be shoved into a box, he can steal it and make it a part of his arsenal. The guy could shoot a flying bird with a bow and arrow with his feet while doing a ski flip.

Okay, that might be an exaggeration but a pretty damn slight one. The guy’s gotten pretty good at fucking people up that underestimate him as just a really good grunt, granted, I’d say most of the Undersiders he ain’t shit. But that says a lot more about us than it does about him.

“Victor?” I ask Brian, not taking a seat as he grunts out a confirmation. I wanted to try and start this off with a casual conversation but that ship sailed about a week ago, now, if I want him to talk at all, I need to be direct. “Where was he last sighted?”

“Miami,” Brian answers with a single word, refusing to elaborate any further.

“Any proof of that?” I ask, wincing a little when he actually looks up at me, his gaze boring into mine. It’s a fair question and I bet if it were coming from anyone else he’d acknowledge that. Victor’s not just an excellent soldier, he’s just as good a spy and tracker. Guy like him probably knows to put some false leads out.

“A police report,” Brian answers, a lot more tersely as he turns his jaw back to the work in front of him. “Lisa confirmed it’s real.”

His tone is full of quiet anger, the kind people keep behind clenched jaws when the person behind them is talking on their phone too loud. There’s a ringing in my ears and I shake it clear as I try to rationalize what he’s feeling. I hit a nerve there, of course he got things checked out, Brian isn’t an idiot.

I shove the spikes in my gut to the side as I run a hand through my hair, hindsight is 20/20 and if I spent all my time focusing on my past fuck ups, I wouldn’t get the chance to not fuck up in the future.

“So you have a location?” I ask, trying to get something a bit more distinct than Miami. 

“No,” Brian answers and he starts to trail off before speaking again, probably realizing I’ll just ask something else if he doesn’t continue. “That was his last known sighting but our feelers down there aren’t hearing anything about him in the local scene, he just vanished.”

Yeah, that sounds about right. Victor pulled that same shit when Coil finally bit it, used the changing of directors and arrival of Alexandria to hop ship as quickly as he could. With that done, he disappeared entirely, trail stone cold the instant he left city limits.

“What was he doing down there?” I ask, resisting the urge to lean on the table and invade Brian’s personal space.

“We don’t know,” Brian answers, “there weren’t any high profile deaths or major shake ups around that time, Lisa thinks it was corporate espionage, maybe blackmail.”

That… doesn’t sound right to me. Parahumans can get away with a lot of shit if they know how to play their cards right, and the ones that don’t know how to do that are usually swallowed up by those that do.

I’m sure there’s plenty of white collar crime going down in the parahuman underground but I guarantee the vast majority of it is money laundering. There’s probably a few heists and sabotages done every year but I remember the lesson I was taught in Montreal.

Money makes people talk, enough money can make people lie, and a lot more of it can make people tell the truth. With the truth, people can get names, not the ones people put on with their dumb costumes but their actual fucking names. And once you’ve got that… well, let’s just say companies like Coca-Cola and Disney have buried a lot of bodies for shit like this. 

The point is, the corporate world is about five shades deadlier than normal street crime and you’d think a guy like Victor would know that. I quirk my lips to the side and chance a look at Brian, internally debating whether or not I should share what I think on it.

It doesn’t take me ten seconds to realize it’s a bad idea. Brian probably already went over that possibility with Lisa and if I force him to repeat that, he’ll probably snap at me. The idea of that makes me… I don’t know what to call the feeling but it’s like an ice cube running down my spine and a gurgling sludge in my gut.

Things get a little hazy and I swear I can hear his shout in my ears even though his lips aren’t moving. The feeling gets worse and drives me to speak before I can really think about my options.

“Y’know…” I start and immediately trail off, hoping he didn’t hear me. That hope is dashed as he looks up at me, an expectant look on his face as he leans back in his chair. I swallow thickly and gesture behind me with a thumb, “I could help with the search.”

The look Brian gives me is smoldering, hot like a fire that’s nearly breached the stone circle around it.

“Alec,” he replies, pushing his chair back enough that he can turn to face me fully. “If this is a joke, I’m not in the mo—”

“No!” I answer hastily, putting my hands out and only realizing I’m still holding the mostly full cup when some of its contents swell out, splashing on the floor and soaking into the waistline of Brian’s sweatpants.

“Alec,” Brian suddenly stands, wiping at his pants, “Goddamnit!”

His volume makes me wince and that spiky feeling comes back ten times as hard, cutting in on itself in jagged formations as I set my cup down on the kitchen counter behind me.

“I’m sorry,” I apologize as quickly as I can, “I just wanted to—”

“What?!” Brian interrupts, his eyes… full of anger as he speaks. “What Alec? What do you want to tell me?”

I can’t get the words out fast enough but when I open my mouth to speak, nothing but a strangled cry comes out, too short and quiet to be called anything other than a whimper. I grab at my throat, confused as I try again, just barely able to say anything.

“Shatterbird,” I utter, each syllable feels like it should clunk to the floor with how hard they are to say. “I could— we could use Shatterbird. It should be hard for anyone to hide from glass, we could listen in, find him in a day or two.”

Brian steps back the tiniest amount as I stare at him, one of his hands rising up to cradle his chin as a thinking expression takes over his face. He clearly wasn’t expecting that, wasn’t expecting me to offer up anything of note.

He sits back down, his eyes turning away from mine to scan over the myriad of documents strewn on the table. They jump and flick from each printout with a lightning dexterity, barely looking over one before jumping to the next.

His jaw unclenches and for a moment, I let my chest hope for an answer. It won’t exactly be a nice vacation, just him and me flying down to Miami to investigate the tail personally. We’d have to bring a lot of sedatives for Shatterbird, sleeping in shifts to make sure the monster stayed dormant when I inevitably fall asleep. 

But we could do it, it would horrible at first but it might get better after that, if I prove that I can be useful, that I still have value, maybe things can go bac—

“I’ll…” he cuts my thoughts off and I don’t need the rest of his words to hear the sigh in them. “I’ll think about it.”

Fuck

‘I’ll think about it’ is just no with extra steps. He’s not gonna bring this up again, I know him too well for him to break the pattern I’ve set in my mind. He’s going to let this sit forever until it starts collecting dust, hoping that neither of us talk about it and it can be quietly forgotten.

I almost give into routine, just barely start to nod when I stop myself, locking my head in place as I gulp. 

“I think—” I start, ignoring the quiet sigh that leaves Brian’s lip as he looks at me. “I think we should go through with it.”

He doesn’t give the words a moment to sink in before he replies.

“Why?”

The one word answers feel like bullets being fired out of a gun, the loud and simple dismissals sting worse than they should but I power on through it. I bring a hand up and start listing down the reasons as I slowly pace around the dining table.

“She’s a silicanetic, sure, when she was running the show she was all about the performance and raising alarms but her power can be a lot more subtle than that.” Brian doesn’t reply with my back to him and I take it as a sign to go more in depth. “She only has to scream once and then that scream propagates off every bit of glass in the city, tagging each and every window, cup, and dish to her— to my senses.”

Just thinking about the information overload makes my head hurt, it’s so much useless noise, garbled conversations and electronic buzzing of microchips. That might be why Shatterbird broke things almost instantly, just to make things quieter. I dash the explanation, no, she’s just a fucking psychopath is all. 

“Victor’s got a very distinct voice,” I explain, “and I heard him talk enough last summer to pick him out of a lineup.”

It goes unsaid that the lineup in question is going to be miles long.

“I think—” I’m not even halfway down my hand when I hear the scraping of a chair behind me. The hole in my chest, the everpresent pool of nothing inside me starts to expand as I turn around, becoming a sinkhole as I watch Brian start to scoop up the print outs in front of him. “Bri—”

“Alec,” he interrupts me, actually letting his papers fall down onto the table in a loose pile as he steps around it. His brown eyes seem pensive as he slowly approaches me, his footsteps far quieter and face relaxed as he puts a hand on my shoulder. “Listen,”

His voice is soft, too soft, like when an actor has to give bad news to the audience. His eyes are an equally kind sandtrap, soft and warm around the edges, inviting me to get lost in them were it not for the hardness locked in the middle. He wants to say his piece gently but he’s determined to get the less gentle message across however he can.

“I…” he quirks his chin a little as he finds the words “appreciate the offer, but this is something I think I have to do by myself.”

I want to call bullshit as soon as the words leave his mouth, I want to point out that he’s literally told me he already got Lisa’s help on this. I want to argue, I want to tell him that I can still be a part of this relat— a part of this team if he would just let me!

But I don’t let the words form, I don’t even think of how to say them before Brian speaks up again, squeezing my shoulder with a reassurance I used to find comfort in.

“Thank you though, I mean it.” he let’s go of my shoulder with a final squeeze and I can’t bear to look into those brown eyes anymore. “Do you understand what I’m trying to say though?”

Snark bangs against my teeth like an angry mob but I swallow the back talk and try to reply in an even tone.

“Yeah, I get it. I won’t bother you about this again.” There’s something… wet in my tone and I only notice the rock in my throat when I have to speak around it. I’m not the only one that notices and Brian tries to put his hand on me again, probably going for the same gesture but I shrug it off just as fingers graze me.

I look up and his face is twisted into a genuine expression of distress, eyes a bit wider and mouth agape for an instant before slowly starting to harden.

“Alec—” he tries to talk but I can already hear the frustration starting to overtake the pity. I don’t need either and start marching towards the elevato.

“I’m fine,” I answer the question I’m not sure he would even ask anymore as I take a right at the couch. “I’ll be back… whenever.”

I click the down button on the elevator and feel my spine stiffen at the sigh I hear behind me, trying not to remind myself that if I were one of the girls, he’d be following me, apologizing the whole while.

The rock in my throat makes my face shiver for some reason, a small but definitely audible gasp leaves my throat but I suck in a breath and force my face to relax back to its usual expression. The elevator dings open and I step into it, almost hitting the button for the lobby when I think better of it.

I fucked up here, that’s a fact. I came on too strong, I didn’t give him his own sense of agency, I just… nothing went right and I know it’s my fault. It’s fine though, I can help him another day, right now, I need to keep going. 

I hit the button for the floor directly under the penthouse and after a moment, the doors slide open to the bug jar. The name is uninspired but accurate as I feel goosebumps rise up my flesh. 

The elevator opens to a long hallway, but instead of walls on either side, an undulating wave of chitin moves like the tides. Roaches, beetles, maggots and all other forms of unsightly creepy crawlies shake and shiver behind the thin glass, the writhing of their bodies and scrape of their shells isn’t muffled at all.

The tens of thousands of bugs suddenly quiet as I start to walk between the two enormous terrariums. Even knowing that these bugs are just meant as food for the ones further inside doesn’t do anything to make the goosebumps go away. All I can focus on when I turn my head is the millions of beady eyes watching me, the girl further within the complex already having a full 360 degree view of me.

The hallway splits to the left and right but for a second I’m stunned by the terrarium in front of me. Unlike the farms behind me, this one isn’t completely full to the brim. The tank I’m staring at is actually done up like a large snake habitat, with decorative branches and vines hanging inside, forming pathways for whatever creature lies within.

The monster makes itself known just as I wonder about it and I flinch at the creature looking up at me. It’s a fly with eyes that feel too human to be natural, the normal hexagons replaced with a black fluid and even darker disk floating in the mire. Oh, that and it’s about the size of a dog.

I try to calm myself down and wave at the monstrosity, taking a little comfort as the thing’s eyes roll before it turns around, scuttling off behind a fallen tree trunk. That creature was definitely one of Amy’s monstrosities and though I’m glad she’s getting used to flexing her own power, does she have to make things like this?

I start walking to the left as my thoughts wander to the former New Wave heroine. On the one hand, it’s good that Amy is finally coming out of her shell, slowly hating herself less and less with each passing day.

Amy used to be a bigger hardass with her powers, didn’t do anything besides heal the team for the first few weeks she joined up. But then the Nine came a knocking and healing just wasn’t gonna make the cut.

She had to break a lot of her rules then, the first being getting rid of that scar tissue in her dad’s brain. Flashbang is a lot more active these days, you’d think given the loss of Brandish that he’d be more subdued, maybe even retire like Lightstar before him. 

But nope, the Blaster’s one of the few reasons New Wave is even around nowadays. Everyone thought that Brandish’s drowning was gonna be the end of the group and when Victoria and her sister hopped ship, that just looked like another nail in the coffin. But then he shows up to kick Mannequin’s ass with his in-laws just to prove people wrong.

The halls keep stretching out and I resist the urge to groan, this place is like a damn maze. I try to tell myself I’m taking the scenic route as I take a right.

I sigh when I’m reminded of Flashbang, despite his efforts to reach out to his adopted daughter, despite his overwhelming thanks for being ‘fixed’, Amy has yet to give her surrogate father any response.

After the no brains rule came the mutations, again, it was during a time of crisis but Amy beats herself up somedays for making the relay bugs. She’s since come up here to work with Taylor every weekend and though the two of them probably get along like a house on fire, I doubt Taylor has completely extinguished Amy’s self loathing.

But, if that fly’s anything to go off of, our brown eyed housemate has gotten Amy to bend her rules a bit.

Granted, that might have a lot more to do with her girlfriend than anyone else. Okay, so calling her a girlfriend might be jumping the gun a bit but I see how those two stare at each other, I give it two more months before they start to get it on.

Thinking about that secret actually gets me to smile a little, something flighty in my chest reminds me that I'm one of the only people on earth that knows about Amelia Lavere's crush on her sister.

Actually, ew, not sister, never sister. Truth be told Amelia's never seen Victoria like that, the two of them met when they were sixish and neither of them jumped at their parents orders to see each other as such.

Without the pressure of the elder New Wave and the privacy being a villain affords you, the two of them are starting to acknowledge that thing between them.

Granted, moving that issue along means getting Dea— Diane out and… yeah, that's not happening anytime soon. The former Ward follows Victoria around like a lost puppy and she dotes on her just as much.

Regardless of how much Amy's rules have bent, I doubt she's anywhere close making something like Atlas.

From what I understand, Atlas was the ex-healer's first living thing and though the Hercules beetle is essentially brainless, he's a damn good first try.

Stronger than a lot of low tier brutes, about the size of a smart car, and able to fly with two passengers, as it stands he's Amy's magnum opus.

That's not to say he doesn't have his problems though, the guy has nothing going on up there, and without a brain to piggyback off of, Taylor uses a lot of her focus on her favorite bug.

Too much focus if we're being realistic. We've been able to work around it so far but our enemies have to have caught on to Skitter's limitations.

She can either control all bugs within six blocks (courtesy of her relays) or she can control him and about a block's worth of creepy crawlies.

There's simply no in between, Atlas just takes up too much brain power.

And that's what I'm gonna offer her today. 

Like any living creature, Atlas has nerves, little highways of sensation that I can tap into. It might take me a little longer than usual, given his six (eight if you count the wings) limbs, but I've tapped into bugs before.

Driving him around though? That's… a different story. Truth be told, once I get Ubermensch under my thrall, he and Shatterbird will be pushing what's comfortable for me.

I mean, I'm sure I'll be fine, the others probably won't even notice any stiffness to me.

Besides, I've controlled a lot of people before, a few Christmases ago dad made me do a whole ballet recital for him.

It was hell, controlling a dozen people at once, making them spin and twirl in rhythm was nearly fucking impossible. I got it done though, even if I had to lay in bed for weeks after, my muscles slowly unwinding.

I can do this, I have to do this.

I turn another corridor and resist the urge to sag in relief when I find it's the right one. 

I'm lead into a large room, the whole of the enormous wall opposite me is covered in bugs, shining black carapaces wriggle over each other in a wave not dissimilar to Grue's power.

The only thing that breaks it up is the stark yellow beetles in the center, tens of thousands of them form into the shape of two angled golden eyes. I realize immediately that they're meant to resemble their queen.

I resist the urge to snort, it would be just like that dork. For someone who claims to hate playing it up, Taylor does it an awful lot.

Then again, what else was she supposed to do with one whole side of the building?

Looking down from the second floor, my eyes dart to each of the raised terrariums beneath me, the myriad of vermin living in perfect harmony with each other, regardless of their natural spots on the food chain.

It doesn't take me long to spot the sole other human on this floor. Taylor is dressed in her bodysuit, the chitin paneling opposite for some reason as she forces Atlas to turn his enormous head to me.

Taylor's got her hand dipped in one of the terrariums, her back to me as a hundred or so abnormally sized ants march up to her elbow. Well, abnormal for New England, I have no idea where she gets her bugs from.

"Alec," she greets, voice… robotic. A sinking feeling starts inside me and I swear things start to get quieter as I descend the hanging staircase. "What do you want?"

The bluntness of her question makes the feeling worse, changing it from a sink into a fall as I try to remember my internal phrasing.

Only to realize I was too fucking stupid to think of how to word my offer, even when the maze getting here gave me plenty of time. I take the steps a bit slower, stalling as every single pair of eyes in the room turn to face me.

All but Taylor's that is.

"What do you want, Alec?" Her voice nearly makes me flinch. Her tone, the lack of tone, reminds of my sister, Juliette.

She's the only other person I know who sounds like this, dead to the world, unable to fake even the slightest lilt of emotion. But Julie has an excuse, she was fried by dad, fried worse than any of us.

Julie doesn't have a choice, she can't sound normal. But Taylor? She's choosing not to, she's forcing her emotions away because… because of me.

The realization feels like a knife in my gut, twisting a bit as I reach the bottom of the stairs and catch the deadness in her brown gaze.

She's looking over her shoulder at me, eyes expectant but glazed.

She’s forcing herself into her bugs, I don’t want to think about why she would do that, why she wouldn’t want to talk with her emotions but the thoughts form all the same.

She doesn’t want you to be here, she doesn't want anything to do with you, she doesn’t want— I tell the thoughts inside my head to go die with Antionette and force myself to take the subtlest breath I can.

“I thought I could help with something.” I begin as I step towards Atlas, the proposal on the tip of my tongue when Taylor speaks up, head turning away from me again.

“I don’t need your help,” she says, without emphasis, “Not unless you can convince Amy to come here.”

Her words stop me cold, something… boiling in my gut, something with a heat that makes my knuckles clench. I… I actually recognize this feeling, that little itch inside my chest whenever someone gets a cheap kill on me in a game or whenever one of my men thinks I won’t notice a thousand dollars missing.

I’m… annoyed, really, really fucking annoyed that she would just… dismiss me like this. Like I’m just a tool to get other tools. It takes a good three seconds for the feeling to fall away but even then I can still feel it slightly, tugging against the skin of my heart like a drowner under a pool cover.

I brush past it as calmly as I can, even managing an amused snort before I speak.

“Fraid not,” I answer, “It’s her day off and y’know how Vicky gets about bothering her during down time.”

Taylor doesn’t acknowledge me at all and I know the silence isn’t to offer me to continue. I take it like it is though, hoping that this will work.

“Actually, I came down here to talk about this big guy.” I run my hand over Atlas’ horn, surprised by the smoothness of the chitin on the topside but reminding myself that it’s razor sharp on the underside. “I know he takes a lot of focus to control.”

Almost as if he has a mind of his own, Atlas turns his head slightly, tilting it until I have to place my hand somewhere else, the tips of my fingers almost grazing against the mauler that is his nose.

“I figured it might be smart if you let me handle it, you could keep control of your whole radius and I’d make sure he’s still just as terrifying to our enemies as ever.” The suggestion sounds courteous to me and when Taylor’s shoulders slack, for an instant, I think I’ve struck gold.

That brief relief is struck down when she actually looks at me, nose scrunched and brows lowered in a vicious anger, eyes like smoldering copper and voice full of distrust.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” she asks, turning fully, the ants along her arms are buzzing with a horrific fury, shaking like a dust storm. I swallow thickly, taking a step back as she takes one forward. 

“I…what—” my questioning is put off when Atlas suddenly jolts, his wild movement startling me and sending me to the floor. My elbows bang against the hard marble of the floor and I barely have a moment to rub at one before Taylor is standing over me.

Every single bug is writhing in hate, their shells banging against each other, their legs sharpening, their wings flaring, there’s so much hate in this room and there’s only so many reasons why. 

“Taylor—” I try to start again, getting my nerves settled as looms, bugs coming out from under her hair and forming an angry mask on her face. I can barely see her eyes behind the chitin and their shaking seems to make her voice a terrifying vibrato. 

“I’m not an idiot Alec,” she cuts me off, “You think I don't know what you’re trying to do, you think I can’t see why you’d want Atlas?” She gestures to her mount with her off hand, the one not coated in ants. “What? Do you think I need Lisa to see something so transparent?”

I don’t know what the fuck she’s talking about, why is she making this about her intelligence? I thought I laid it all out, didn’t I?

“No, Tay, I swear—” the shortening of her name pisses her off and I know somewhere in my chest that I’m not allowed to do that anymore.

“You just want more, isn’t that right?” She frames the question like an accusation, a sharp and cutting one at that. “You’ve already got Shatterbird, you’d probably have had Ubermensch by now if you actually worked on it—”

I want to refute her jab, to tell her I’ve been working on that Nazi fuck almost everyday for the past month, that he’s practically mine already. I want to tell her this isn’t about control, that I—

“But now you want Atlas? What, did you promise some whore a joy ride?” This time, the heat that rises up my throat is too hot to push back down, I’d sooner swallow molten slag than hang on to this for a second longer.

The anger comes out of my mouth like liquid steel, pouring out of me and into my words like an ironworks. 

“I would never,” the vehemence in my words catches her off guard, actually stopping whatever tirade she was about to go on as I climb to my feet. “Abuse that, I would never take from you, I never have! I…”

Forcing myself to swallow the heat and pain, almost feeling the scorch it runs down my throat, a fragile numbness tries to reinstate itself, like ice around a molten heart.

“I just want to help, that’s it. I just—”

“I don’t need your help.” Taylor cuts me off, her monotone slipping back in place and the bugs on her person flitting away and back to whatever terrariums they call home. “Please, leave.”

The simple command draws me up short, I didn’t like where we were heading just now but at least we were going somewhere. But now she… just wants to stop? Pretend this never happened? I… aren’t I enou—

For no reason at all, Taylor’s eyes widen just before she turns away, her spine frozen in the half motion as she looks over her shoulder at me. Something clogs my nose and I try to suck it in, surprised when the girl in front of me wilts at the sound.

She turns to me fully, her arms relaxed at her sides and her face twisted up in… regret? Her brown eyes are soft, wet with something I can’t identify before she crashes into me. At first, her arms feel like a vice, the silk of her body suit pressing against my clothes and feeling like the warmest thing ever. 

I almost sink into the gesture, a light behind my eyes starts to dim and I can feel my brain shout to just let go, to lose myself in the embrace. 

But then, almost just as suddenly, something… is ripped away. The hug gets a little less tight, her body pulls back just enough to not be pressing into me, and though her breaths are still shallow, I can tell there’s something off about them. A different resonance or pitch, or something that’s changed it.

“I…” she says, holding me closer for an instant, maybe trying to find the feeling that was just here a moment ago. She doesn’t find it but she holds on all the same as she continues. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry Alec.”

I want to latch on to her apology, I want to hold it, let it lift me up out of wherever we are right now but I know instinctively it’s not gonna do us any good, like a deflated life preserver. The words, the gesture, it feels…

“I—” she sucks in a gasp and tries to hold me tighter, probably wanting me to return the hug. I comply, raising my arms up to loosely wrap around her back, my hands threatening to fall back down any moment. “I’m gonna try to be better, I just… I have a lot on my plate right now.”

Hollow.

That’s what this feels like, that’s why I couldn’t name it, it doesn’t feel like anything. Maybe a month ago this would’ve meant something to me but I know better now. It’s nothing to me, nothing to her, it’s… empty.

This hug doesn’t comfort me, probably doesn’t even comfort her, it’s just a… performance. A suffocating one at that.

I let my arms fall and try to excuse myself as politely as I can, slipping out of her hold and feeling something ache when I get a clear look at her red rimmed eyes. I want to brush those tears away, I want to hold her again, I want to try and reignite that warmth, I want… so much.

She’s right.

That’s all I ever do, want, want, want.

I gulp and put a hand up, putting on a plastic smile as I try to allay whatever she might be feeling.

“It’s fine…” ‘dork’ is on the tip of my tongue but I learned my lesson. “We just had a misunderstanding and…” I clap my hands together softly, half turned to the stairs. “We’ll talk later.”

She doesn’t reply and I try to ignore the everpresent gaze of her swarm as I walk up the staircase, through the corridors, and finally back in the elevator. 

The doors ding closed behind me and I let myself have a moment to sigh in private. Things… aren’t going well. Brian and Taylor, they… I can’t say they don’t hate me. I think I might’ve been able to say that this morning but now, now… I’m not so sure.

I lift my head up and stare at the fluorescent lights above me, my eyes refusing to sting at their glow. 

I’ve still got two more people to talk to today, sunk costs and all that. 

I hit one of the lowest buttons on the panel. Maybe they’ll be different, maybe they’ll actually accept my help, maybe… maybe.

I suppose I can’t help being like this, it’s like Taylor said, all I do is want, and it looks like I’ll destroy whatever I need to to get it.

The floors seem to tick by slower than usual, a whole three seconds between each little stop. It reminds me of a firing chamber, the way a revolver’s cylinder, click, click, clicks.

And as they go by, as my hand starts to mime turning an invisible gun around, I can’t help but hope, hope that, maybe… Rachel will listen to me. She has to, right? She… she has to.

I swallow a lump in my throat.

The shelter is only a floor above Shatterbird’s cage, but unlike the Nine member, she has a lot more than a short hallway and a cell. 

Rachel’s new home for wayward dogs is just as big as the warehouses she used to use. Formerly, this complex used to be a hidden parking garage for the Empire’s upper echelon, with enough false tunnels and entrances that an enterprising nazi could duck into an alley and be at work just as he had to clock in.

As I step out of the elevator, I don’t immediately bolt to the floor beneath me, instead, I lean over the railing a few feet opposite my entrance. 

The shelter is pretty fucking gigantic, although that might be exemplified by the fact I’ve never seen an underground space of this size. The floor I’m on is little more than a balcony for the space below, a large u-shaped catwalk that clings to three of the four walls. There’s two doors on either end of the U, probably leading to food and toy storage if I were betting.

This whole room is designed like a prison’s courtyard, with this open upper floor and drab, gray concrete walls. Thankfully, the almost depressing atmosphere is offset by the barking and yipping below me.

Chancing a glance down, I can feel something try to poke through my calm, something that wants me to forget what just happened with Taylor. The sight I’m welcomed to doesn’t quite make me smile though.

The dogs are running as if they were outside, wildly playing with reckless abandon. A pitbull and a doberman chase each other in wide looping circles, their bodies tilted at an angle to compensate for their speed. A pair of labs is playing tug of war with an old rope, tails wagging and low growls coming from their throats.

Not every dog is active, some are just lazing about or making meandering strolls between the younger dogs. A pair of preening chihuahuas are lounging at the feet of a mastiff, an old basset is slowly making the climb on a raised platform against the wall, a mother carries a mewling pup between her teeth.

The dogs roam around like it’s paradise but there’s still one big problem.

This space might be a lot nicer than her old warehouses but it’s still an enclosed space with dozens of dogs, ergo, she’s always looking for another pair of hands to help her with the menial stuff.

Lifting up food, keeping her dogs energized and happy, even picking up shit, it’s usually something handled by a good sized group of people but when Rachel doesn’t have any work to do, she sends those guys home to give her hounds her personal attention.

Why Rachel likes spending her down time picking up shit and giving baths to hydrophobic animals I’ll never know. But an opportunity to help is an opportunity to help, and I won’t look down my nose at it.

This is gonna be shitty work (no pun intended), but for once, I’m willing to do it without complaint. 

The thought draws me up short, making me lean even further on the railing as I try to think. Could that be it?

I mean, I’m reaching out now, offering to help, but that’s only after I’ve let things get this bad, only after I’ve let my laziness take me over. That has to be it, reaching out now looks disingenuous, that I’m only doing it for my benefit. 

Fuck, I’m sure of it now, that’s why Brian and Taylor got so pissed so quickly, they saw right through me.

The thought is sobering, that they knew what I was about before I did. It makes me grip my head, makes me run a hand through my hair as I finally spot the queen of this shelter.

In the center of it all, with a scooper in one hand and a trashbag in another, is Rachel Lindt. 

She doesn’t look up at my arrival and I hope it’s just because she can’t hear me under all that barking.  Leaning up, I slowly bring my hands up to my mouth, ready to cup a yell down to her. 

With the others, I try to be as silent as possible, but with Rachel, there couldn’t be a worse option. Sneaking up on her is more likely to get me a black eye than anything else.

“Rachel!” I shout down at her, bringing my hands down when she looks over her shoulder at me. She doesn’t speak of course but my heart races when she gestures for me to come over.

It’s embarrassing how fast I head to the metal staircase, I shouldn’t be this eager to help Rachel, she’d accept it from anyone.

I'm walking up to her a bit too fast to be called casual, my steps loud enough that all the dogs, even the ones playing, spare a glance at me.

She joins their eyes, turning to face me and sizing me up with an impassive look. 

"Hey," she greets, voice gruff but not curt. "What do you want?"

Her question immediately puts me at ease, with the others this kind of bluntness would be out of character, it would only be dismissive.

But with Rachel, it's pure efficiency, the least amount of words to convey her thoughts. The patter between each other is a comforting thing, one I desperately want to throw myself into.

But I don't, I can't afford to drive her away like I did the others. I can't act different either, she'll know and she'll see how ugly my requests are, just like Brian and Taylor did.

"Had a free day," I tell her, "Thought I'd see if you need help."

She stares at me for a long moment, her amber eyes boring holes into my blue. I look away first, deferring to whatever judgment she'll cast on me.

My stomach clenches into something tight, a pressure building in on itself until it's almost painful. Every second my thoughts tell me that this was stupid, that when she tells me to go, I should be more polite than I was with the others, that I should just leave—

"Okay," she finally answers.

Her words make my head jolt up, my eyes wide and suddenly realizing that my mouth has become a desert.

"Really?" I wince at my own question, almost flinching when her mouth opens, probably to retake her affirmation.

"Yeah," she says, thrusting the handle of the scooper towards me. "You know how to use this?"

I nod and that's enough for her, she passes me on her way to the stairs and shouts over the hounds.

"Then get to work, I need to get another one."

I don't reply, I know better than that now.

The work is tedious, monotonous, and a hundred different other words for boring. But it's mine, my work.

I shouldn't be like this, shouldn't be this close to grinning as I scan my eyes over the turf on the floor. But I… I feel it anyway.

This work sucks, making sure my bag is open enough sucks, cleaning literal shit sucks, but it's… I'm actually helping her.

I mean, she doesn't need this help, not really but she's letting me help. Because she doesn't hate me, because I'm not so repulsive she'll turn me down.

This is… this is great. 

It’s my in!

I’ll just do this for another few hours and then I can come back tomorrow or the day after, or whenever the fuck she’s here. I’ll be useful, I can prove that I can still be useful.

I keep at it for maybe half an hour, the muscles in my back twinge a little as I’m forced to bend over but I deal with it well enough. I’ll have to get used to it after all, I’ll be back and I can—

I’m picking up another turd when there’s suddenly a hand on my shoulder. My back pops as I stand up to my full height and I let my bag fall to the floor as I wipe at my brow, brushing away bangs that have somehow gotten in the way of my face.

Rachel’s looking down at me, her jaw tight and her eyes angled in determination. Her hand on my shoulder squeezes tighter when she opens her mouth, letting loose a small sigh as she closes her eyes.

“You need to go.”

The world loses color when she speaks, everything else falling away as I stare into her closed eyes. My grip on the scooper goes slack and my arm whips out to catch it before it can clatter to the floor.

With nothing else to hold on to, I bring it to my chest, the long metal rod has gotten warm under my grip as it presses into my sternum, offering me nothing as I speak.

“Why?” I ask, craning my head over her shoulder and looking at the ground where I just was. “Did I miss a spot, am I not doing a good enough job? Do you need me to do something else—”

She brings a hand up to silence the word vomit, letting the quiet she brought in reign as she uses that same hand to rub at her eyes.

“No, you did a good job.” Her compliment means nothing to me, especially when her voice is so frustrated. “But you have to go.”

She gestures over her shoulder and my eyes follow the finger to the dogs cowering in the corner, the two dozen or so pressing into themselves as they… try to back away from me.

I didn’t even notice their absence, didn’t even think that I wasn’t constantly watching my step for a chihuahua or terrier. They didn’t get in my way at all, they didn’t because… because they’re scared of me.

Later, that thought might hurt me a lot worse, but right now it doesn’t bring any stabs of ice or drops in my chest, right now all I can think about is what I was doing. What I was trying to do. 

I just want to help, why isn’t anyone letting me help, why isn’t anyone just— fuck!

And just like with Taylor, I fuck it up.

“They’re just dogs!” I shout, uncaring how the hounds in question flinch at me. “THey’re fucking dogs Rachel, two months ago they fucking loved me, who gives a shit if they hate me now? Tomorrow they’ll—”

My heart is replaced with a solid chunk of stone as I look back at Rachel, hard and unforgiving and tugging like a black hole with each beat.

She’s staring me down but unlike Brian’s resigned calmness or Taylor’s sorrow, the girl before me only has one emotion on her face. Anger. And lots of it.

“Get out,” she orders, her upper lip trembling into a snarl. “Get the fuck out of here.”

I gulp, her words… they feel like a slap, like a punch. Her amber eyes look at me the way a wolf might look down at a rabbit. She’s pissed, more pissed than I can recently remember, 

Fuck, what the hell did I just do? Her dogs aren’t just dogs to her, they’re… like a family. Brothers and sisters, her dogs mean more to her than most people. They probably mean a lot more than me.

“Rachel…” I try to take the words back, my own voice filled with something… alien. It’s wet and cold and…I’m sorry, I want to tell her that, that I’m—

My hands hurt as she wrenches the scooper away from me, aggravating the small blisters that were already forming.

“Just shut up,” she orders, turning away from me and stalking off. “Fucking…” she flexes her arms at her sides, her knuckles turning white as she leaves me with one last remark. “Just fucking get your head on straight.”

Like a wounded animal, I force myself to walk away from her, knowing that if I poke that bear she’s only going to get angrier. 

I don’t even remember climbing up the steps, nor do I remember getting in the elevator. One moment, I’m down there staring at Rachel’s back and the next, I’m in this tiny metal box, the fluorescents above me glowing overhead.

I take a moment to sit there, the coldness of the floor against my legs feels like a freezer, cutting right through my jeans and making it impossible to get warm. In another moment, I stop feeling the cold, not because it’s not there but because… nothing’s there.

I don’t feel it, I don’t feel anything. I can’t hear anything, the buzz of the fluorescents that were driving me crazy a month ago sound like nothing now. The scent of Rachel’s shelter should be thick in here but I don’t smell her dogs, I don’t smell the shit I just picked up, I don’t even smell her and that apple shampoo Lisa buys for her.

I don’t know how long I sit there, it could’ve been minutes, could’ve been hours, it could’ve been days for all I know. But regardless of how much time I take, I eventually get up, I eventually drag myself to the panel and I eventually work up the nerve to hit the uppermost floor. Back to the penthouse and maybe… to Lisa.

My last chance.

I’ve struck out with the others and there’s a voice in my head chiding me for saving Lisa for last, she’s a Thinker 7, probably a Thinker 8 if we’re being realistic. If the others could see through me, what chance do I have with her?

It’s infinitesimal, it’s nothing.

And yet, I have to try, don’t I?

The motivation isn’t so much uplifting as it is practical, I’ve already burnt three bridges so, fuck it, why not make an island?

The ride up fills me with a icy slime, my skin doesn’t feel like my skin and my eyes don’t feel like my eyes. The numbness from before has become a horrible itch, a horrific feeling over… everything, inside and out and it just makes me want to drag my nails against my whole being.

The hands running through my hair don’t feel like my own, they’re attached to my arms but they’re not mine. I force them to tug at my hair, trying to wring out something and my voice hitches at the pull on my locks.

The pain is good, the pain is something, something to fill the gap, something to help me not think about today. 

And the pain makes things clear… too clear.

The full weight of everything has only been pushed off me enough for me to look up at it. Everything I’ve done today, everything I’ve done for the past month and a half, all the failures and mistakes and moments I wish I could take back, all of it looms over me like a tidal wave, a black wall of pain already teetering, threatening to shatter me like a rickety boardwalk against Leviathan.

And like a mouse trying to hide from a cat, my head jumps to the side, into the first distraction available.

A third of the way up the building, I’m close enough to Shatterbird that I can tap into her senses, her nervous system opening up to me like a reliable laptop. The Mass Murderer is an imbecile, she could’ve used her powers for so much more.

Yes, her silcakinesis is only applicable when she can tag it, when the sounds leaving her mouth vibrate off the glass, but she’s a fool not to focus on what else her power can provide her.

It’s not far-fetched to say I can use her power better than she can, at the way things are going, I’ll be using it a lot longer than she ever did.

I close my eyes and focus on her completely, on the sense within a sense.

The woman on the bed floors below me stiffens, she can feel me intruding on her power, can feel me creep into her body like a ghost. She’s powerless to stop me but sags in relief when she feels her muscles stay under her own mind.

I don’t need her body, not today anyway.

Her senses are dulled, when I first tapped into them I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I was perceiving. Her awareness of glass is synesthetic, that is to say, it’s somehow both the ability to hear and see through silicon. 

I still don’t have it completely down yet but that’s fine, I doubt she does either given all she ever wants to do is smash those little looking glasses into powder.

But even without having tagged them, most nearby silicon is well within her ability to look through.

“—ictor? Why did he—”

I jerk my head down, clenching my eyes shut tighter as I try to find that voice again. It was Lisa’s, I could tell based off the alto, her higher voice sends a vibration down into… I think it’s a cup?

Trying to focus on that one glass is nearly impossible, it’s like trying to keep your eyes fixed on a single grain of sand in a monsoon. The surrounding vibrations blend into each other and I lean against a wall as a headache starts, it’s like an old radio, with a hundred different stations all coming from the same speaker.

I slam my fist into the wall of the elevator and wince as that adds to another set of fucking vibrations, the chips in the elevator’s circuitry scream at me, giving me a wireframe model of myself and the nearby floor.

No, wait, the wince is mostly because of the ache in my hand and… the sting in my scalp? My eyes part slightly and I stare at the clump of hair falling from my fingers. Oh, I didn’t let go before I—

“—e’s just… I—” 

There, another voice, this one is Taylor’s. It’s louder somehow, maybe from her glasses?

With two reference points, I force myself to let go of everything else, all the other noises don’t mean shit. The only thing that matters are the people in the penthouse, my teammates. 

“Thanks for the warning,” Lisa says, a relieved sigh heralding her continuation. “Dealing with SInclair was already enough of a pain, I do not want to deal with him too.”

Sinclair? The name reminds me of… someone, Lisa and I haven’t really talked one on one in weeks but I’ve eavesdropped on enough conversations for the name to ring a bell. I think he’s an entrepreneur, some investor trying to bring in a casino now that the laws here are a bit more… flexible.

I remember thinking he was a nutjob, the casino, the… Mountain Mother (I think that was the pitch name anyway) is very obviously a gift meant for a friend of his.

“That guy’s creepy,” Taylor agrees with my thoughts and I barely make out the smudge in my sixth (or would it be seventh?) sense when she pushes her glasses up her nose. “Does he know he’s being co—”

“Conned?” Lisa finishes, the smirk in her voice obvious, even halfway up the building. “He knows,” there’s something else in her tone, maybe a grudging respect. “He’s a got a nasty surprise for them too, I’d warn Vera but I’d actually like it if her boyfriend went through it anyway. That guy could use the punishment.”

“Whatever it is,” a third voice replies, the baritone of his speech a little muffled by whatever he’s pouring in his mug. “I agree, Domino’s a scumbag.”

Domino? Again, another name I vaguely recall, I think he’s a singer maybe.

“Sabah said he tried to make a move on her,” the laugh in Taylor’s voice makes me smile, something wants to come out from behind my eyes. When was the last time I heard her laugh?

Lisa snorts with her and though Brian’s mirth would be undetectable if I were in the room with him, the glass he’s holding shows that he’s barely stifling his own chuckles. I can’t blame him, Sabah couldn’t be gayer if she had a neon rainbow over her, hell, since the Empire’s remains have been scattered to the winds, it isn’t uncommon to see Parian in a lesbian flag colored ball gown.

“That sounds like him,” Lisa agrees, her giggles coming to a stop as her glass turns, her arm moving as she faces the third voice. “Thanks again though, seriously. I didn’t have the energy and—”

“It’s no problem,” Brian cuts her off, his tone telling me this isn’t the first time he’s had to brush off thanks. “I just wished I’d warned Rachel in time.”

Warned her of what? 

My breath hitches, coming out faster for some reason as a static fills the space between my lungs.

“That’s not your fault,” Taylor assures him, her voice sympathetic. “If anything, it’s mine, I told him off too harshly and he’s probably taking it out on her.”

I shake my head at the words, my control slipping for an instant before I yank it back. They can’t be talking about what I think they are, they can’t, they wouldn—

“Fuck,” Brian sets his cup down on the counter and the lack of vibrations coming down his arm make his voice muffled, like I’m trying to listen through a stone wall. “Do you think she…”

Whatever he tries to say is cut off when the elevator dings open. I hold my breath, hoping they didn’t hear the sound when I slowly open my eyes.

The sight of the living room doesn’t greet me, instead, the smell of chlorine hits me as I stare at the pool in front of me. A quick glance to the panel says I hit the wrong button, that instead of the penthouse proper, I hit the button just below that, the one for our leisure area.

I shake my head at the mistake, and immediately try to find the exact glasses again.

It’s easier this time and I can feel the eyewear shake on Taylor’s head as a frustrated grunt leaves her mouth.

“I just feel so fucking guilty,” she says, "he's just… clingy."

The stress on the word makes me falter, I know who they're talking about and yet—

"Don't," Brian replies, "don't feel that way, Alec is… I don't know." He sounds resigned, tired. I can almost picture him rubbing at his eyes as he adds. "But we need him."

For a second, there's a flicker behind my eyes, something bright. But like a spark, it dies quickly when Brian clarifies.

"We need Shatterbird and if we want to expand operations, we need Ubermensch."

The words feel like punches, each individual syllable slamming against me like a jabs and hooks.

They don't need me, I… don't think they'll ever need me ever again. It's… not pain to realize that.

It's not calming, it's not angering, it's not saddening, it's not anything. It's the truth.

They don't need me, they need my power but they could do without me. If they could give my power to someone else, I don't think they'd hesitate.

I know what I have to do now.

I click a button on the elevator, my spine stiffening as I listen to Taylor's sigh.

"I just…" she says, her hanging words the only reason I haven't stopped listening. "I just wish he'd get out of the way. There's so much to do and—"

With a thought, the world is limited to my own senses again.

I know what I have to do.

They don’t need me, I don’t think I can convince them I’m worth it anymore. But they need my power, that’s useful, so long as I can show that… I’m useful.

It won’t be a great life, it might not even be a good one. But it’ll be a life that’s a part of theirs and even if it is something so miniscule, to just be a part of it? Yeah, I can deal.

The elevator dings open and I walk past the two armed guards on the way to this floor’s sole patient. I don’t know why we even have them here, it’s not like they’d even be a speedbump to the man inside.

Ubermensch is exactly where I left him, the gargantuan seven foot Brute is still laying on the hospital bed, his once immaculately cut hair and mustache have grown out and given him a caveman like look.

On one of his arms is a large tinkertech cuff Chariot built, the needle that pierced his skin was supposedly moving ten percent the speed of light and it just barely went in deep enough to give our doctors the line for an IV.

I can see why Brian wants him, this guy alone almost drove us back by himself. Well, him and that Thinker I can’t recall. When I get through his defenses, I doubt Alexandria herself will be able to slow him down. I mean, this is the guy who fought the three Blasphemies for fun.

He’s an idiot but a damn useful idiot, we could place him in a city like a Jack, his power alone would give us a foothold to match the veteran groups in that area. We’d spread ourselves, we’d become something like kings.

I fall into the chair opposite the Brute and start working on him.

I work on him until I can’t think, I spend hours on his torso, on the muscles there. My arms fold into my chest as a deep pain wracks them, I keep going until I’ve got a twentieth of it mapped out. 

My legs come up onto the chair as I get another twentieth done, they feel like they’re on fire, like someone’s injected them with acid. I ignore it, my spine bends and curls like a roly poly, or a dead spider. 

I think I throw up at some point but it’s not a lot, I haven’t eaten anything today anyway.

I don’t know when I fell asleep and I don’t know when I woke up, but I kept working on the cape in front of me, even when something in my chest snapped like a twig. Eventually, when a nurse comes in to change out his fluids, she makes me leave, tells me that if I don’t, she’ll call down Amy.

I don’t need that, don’t need her to talk to Taylor.

I end up in my room at some point, smiling to myself as I look up at the ceiling. 

It’s good to have a purpose again.