Valentine's Day

Lisa Wilbourn/ Tattletale

February 6th, 2013

The inside of Heartbreaker’s manor is exactly as gaudy as the outside, with dark wooden paneling on the walls and ornate rugs over the floor of the long hallway, this place screams that it has always been a place of wealth. 

Stepping over the threshold of the window is more daunting than this place deserves, it has an air of nobility to it but even before Heartbreaker called it his castle, it was nothing more than a daycare for the canadian aristocracy’s children. Still, even knowing that… it’s still Heartbreaker’s home, still the domain of the worst Master the planet has ever known.

Landing on the rug feels like landing in an open grave, like I’ve just thrown my life away to be in here. I gulp and try to steady my nerves but it’s only when the others slink in behind me that the fear goes away.

Silently, Taylor takes the lead, her bugs are already scattered all over this place, the maids, butlers, and children have all been marked and though she doesn’t have enough ammunition to end this all now, she has enough to guide us to our lost teammate.

She walks normally until she gets to the edge of the hallway and then crouches low as she signals us to follow. I’m almost at her side when Rachel brushes by me, her muscles acting like my shield as I roll my eyes.

That raw strength was great when we had to face the rest of the Undersiders, but it won’t mean anything here. If anything, her strength is as much a threat as it is a comfort.

Taylor leads us through the maze of halls and corridors and every time we just barely catch a muffled conversation, we freeze. I have a lot of the capes here memorized but Heartbreaker is a lot more intelligent that lets people believe, I don’t know anything about the singer or the apparent tinker he has locked in his attic and I guarantee has at least a few more laying about.

Even given what has to be a five or so dozen people running this place, the enormity of this building makes all those people inconsequential. It still feels oppressively empty, even hearing the laughter, screams, and conversations just a few rooms away, we don’t actually see anyone for over ten minutes.

Granted, a lot of our lack in seeing anyone is because of Taylor. Randomly, she’ll pause and force us to stop and now, she has us doubling back.

Doubling back because of patrol, because of a cape my power informs me and I pick up the pace.

It’s a tight squeeze fitting us all into a forgotten bedroom, but I think we’ll be hidden for the time being. A thin layer of dust coats everything, from the desk by the window to the covers that are still balled up like someone just got out of bed. I don’t think anyone’s been in here for quite a while

Even nervous as I am, my eyes still wander over the knick knacks and posters this room has. The desk and a lot of the floor are covered in dolls, most of them are of one cape, a man with a black domino mask, dark red tights, and what looks like a tv antenna sticking out of his head.

The character is vaguely familiar but I wouldn’t have been able to place his name if it wasn’t for one of the posters displaying the same man. He’s waving at the camera and behind him is a tv he’s still got his foot going through. His smile is wide and full of teeth but someone has drawn a pair of dark black x’s over his eyes The name above him reads: PrimeTime but it takes me a moment to make that out because scrawled above it, in the same black as the background is a word I don’t know: bâtard menteur.  I don’t know why but looking at the poster fills me with dread.

My eyes are drawn to the door when a pair of people walk by it, one set of footsteps is light and the other is heavy. Neither of them are talking but their shadows stay at the door for a good second or two before the handle starts to turn.

I’m drawing my gun when it suddenly stops and a light voice speaks up from the other side.

“Non non. Frederick n'a pas pris ton jouet Bappy.” The voice is feminine and airy, with a slight rasp at the end that feels… inappropriate.

“Pourquoi ne puis-je pas y entrer?” The second voice is much smaller, I’d say barely eight at the most and maybe masculine but it’s hard to tell at that age. The shadows move under the door, one becoming bigger for just a moment before scooping up the second.

“C'est impoli d'entrer sans permission Bappy, tu ne vaux pas mieux que ça.” The maid or maybe sister given the affectionate tone gentle scolds what has to be one of Heartbreaker’s children. I want to think it’s the first voice that caused Taylor to lead us in here, the alternative is too horrible, that an eight year old has already triggered.

“Comment puis-je lui demander s'il est mort?” the smaller voice gets further away and with only one set of footsteps retreating into the distance, I know that the heartbroken child was just picked up.

We wait in the room for another five minutes or so and in that time, this room starts to feel more and more like a tomb. I guess that’s to be expected, I don’t know a lot of French and my French-Canadian is even worse but I can recognize some words.

I can also recognize names.

Alec never mentioned a Frederick and given that the desk is gray with dust, I think I know why.

How many children died in this house? Would I even want to know?

Would not want to know 

The silence is so loud that the mere whisper of my power makes me jump and the information startles me more. I'm used to my power sharing other people's opinions but usually it leaves mine alone.

It's the same way it doesn't tell me the color of objects, I'm able to see those, to tell me something I already know is just a waste.

But for it to tell me something I already knew? That almost always means that however bad I think something is, the reality of it is much worse.

Realizing that, it hits me all over again that this used to be somebody's room, a child's room judging by the decorations. And that child hasn't been here for a long time.

When Taylor finally gives us the go ahead to leave, I almost brush past her in my haste. This room— this whole house— we never went over what we were going to do with it once we killed Nikos but… no.

I want to burn it down, I want to make it a husk of itself but that choice isn't mine to make.

Taylor urges us to speed up and though my power doesn't say anything when we rush past an open door, I would swear the man inside looked right at me.

But the alarms aren't ringing and after a few more twists and turns, Taylor turns around to talk to us.

"His room's right on our left," she whispers, "neither of them are wearing costumes."

I take her admission for what it is and step around her, carefully leaning my head past the corner to take a look at the capes guarding Alec.

I suppose I should've known what I was going to see but… I didn't think they were going to look so much like him.

The one on the door's right is like someone took Alec, rewound the clock until he was fourteen again, and then covered him head to toe in scars.

The boy standing there must be proud of them given he's wearing a tank top. His skin is already pale enough that it looks like he'd need sunblock to get the mail but the scars crisscrossing up and down his arms are even paler.

Some of them are long and thin, others are wide and deep, some look like burns but the vast majority look like cuts and pebbling over all of it is a fresh layer of bruises and bandages.

He wrinkles his nose for some reason and when the corners of his eyes lift up angrily, I realize that though on the surface he might resemble Alec, a lot of the features are… sharper.

That's the perfect word for it, while Alec's chin might be pointed in a delicate way, the boy in front of me has one that looks like he could use it as a weapon.

His nose is crooked and bent, one of his eyes is swollen but the cut above it has drained a lot of the swelling. The ear I can see from here is torn, like someone bit it.

In short, it looks like he's been through hell and somehow, he was the one designated to guard Alec.

Romeo Vasil, my power tells me and I unconsciously nod.

His power is to make himself and everyone around him violently angry, to the point that they can't tell the difference between friend and foe. Each person under the effect becomes a minor Brute as well, maybe a one or two to the PRT.

If that were just it, he wouldn't be too big of a problem but like Taylor, I'm betting he double triggered. 

Every person under the effect of his power increases his strength and body heat, eventually it can make him a Brute 5, Striker 2, and Blaster 3.

According to the PRT files, Romeo Vasil, or Sanguinaire to Montreal is the Heartbroken's only Brute.

The person on his right draws me up even shorter, not because he looks so much like Alec but because he looks so much like his father.

His hair is a little too short for Niko's length and he doesn't have his father's beard but still, aside from his obvious youth, the resemblance is uncanny.

And worse than that, I have absolutely no idea who he is in costume, if he even has a costume. 

Fuck, I have no idea who he is but regardless we have to get passed him. I wrack my brain over all the roster I memorized yet still, nothing feels right.

I bite my tongue to hold in a sigh. Going in blind is a terrible idea but it's the only one we have.

"Okay," I lean back around the corner and gesture for everyone to huddle up. "The shorter one is Sanguinaire, he makes people pissed and—"

"We know," Rachel interrupts me and stands her ground when we turn to look at her. "Read about him, Beesh, Sarahma, and all the others. Know what they can do too."

Butchered French aside, I'm about to say I need to explain it for Brian and Taylor's sake when the Shaker in question speaks up.

"I've got the names down too," Brian confirms for himself and when I look at Taylor, she just gives me a nod. 

Logically, it makes sense that they would've also done their homework on the Heartbroken, but I'm so used to explaining other capes to them that it takes me a moment to catch my bearings.

"Okay, you know about Sanguinaire… that's— okay. He's going to be pretty straightforward, when he gets going, he's usually too pissed to do anything else but fight directly." I lean my head back one more time and wince when nothing comes to mind on the other guard. "I have no idea who the other one could be."

Brian groans at my honesty and I wince, I'd be pissed with me too.

"Okay," Taylor takes the reins and when Atlas scuttles over to her side, I realize she's about to engage. "We take him out first then.”

As far as plans of attack go, it’s not exactly a bad one, after all, an unknown variable doesn’t matter if it’s been removed from the equation.

“Grue, you’ll flood as much of this place as you can manage then—”

“Are you sure?” Grue cuts her off and even given the echoey ambience of his power, I can still hear the naked concern laced underneath. “I can’t pick and choose who’s power gets suppressed, if you—”

“The difference is we’re used to it and they aren’t,” Taylor interrupts him right back and her voice is hard. She might appreciate his concern but we’re at a point where we can’t second guess ourselves. “Try to keep this hall cleared—” she gestures to herself and everything behind her, “I’m going to find an empty room to hide in and after a few seconds, I want all of you to fight like hell, I’ll be disabling as many of them as I can but—” she pauses and gulps, her head briefly turned down before rising back up. “If this doesn’t go well—”

“Shut up,” despite the inherent harshness of her words, Rachel somehow manages to sound soft when she quiets Taylor. “We’re gonna be fine, Alec is gonna be fine, we’ll kill Heartbreaker and be out of this fucking town before tomorrow.”

Rachel has shrunk a lot since she made our entrance for us and she squeezes between Brian and I to lay a hand on Taylor’s shoulder, her honey pupils slowly starting to grow to encompass her sclera.

“We…” she gulps and as her horns rise out of her head and the beast inside starts to become apparent. “I love you, all of you.”

And just like that, the gnawing anxiety that was pooling in my guts… well, it doesn’t go away exactly but it’s certainly put itself on the back burner to make room for this new puzzling feeling.

Of course, I already knew it was going to reel its head up at some point but actually feeling it is miles different from knowing about it, I’d almost compare it to knowing how a gun works versus staring down a barrel if it wasn’t so morbid.

Actually… no, I think I will make that comparison because the sudden dip in my stomach feels exactly like staring over a cliff.

“Rachel…” I try to speak up but it’s only after I’ve gotten her name out that I realize I don’t have anything to say. Instead of breaking the silence, it just sits there for a moment, one that feels like it could stretch out for forever but before it can start to grow, my mouth moves on it’s own. “I love you too.”

Honestly, I have no idea where the words come from, I mean, I might like Rachel, I might sleep in her bed when the scar of my lopsided smile starts to itch, and maybe, in the past few days since our emotions got unfucked I’ve wanted to kiss her and—

Oh.

I suppose I do know where they come from.

Rachel and I’s confession causes a little avalanche between the four of us. It’s such a stupid thing when you really look at it, here we are, literally in the den of what might as well be our greatest adversary and yet—

“I love you too,” Brian and Taylor both give their own confessions at the same time, completing our quartet.  Despite it all, despite feeling like the next moment I could be dead, I still find it in me to smile before Taylor starts her plan, slowly walking into an empty room on our right.

With the door closing behind her, the three of us just nod and with a quiet flutter of darkness, Brian plunges the world into a black abyss.

I don’t mean to turn the corner with them, even if my power weren’t being bogged down by Grue’s it’s not like I could do much here. I suppose I have my gun but the dark promises me that will be a bad idea.

I don’t know why I turned the corner with them, maybe there’s some romantic reason, maybe I just needed to see Alec again and I was willing to take the fastest route to get there. Maybe it’s something more mundane like when Rachel ran past me, she brushed my shoulder and I just got swept up.

I don’t know the reason but I know I wish I didn’t.

Because somehow, even through the silent dark, something whispers in my ear, a voice I haven’t heard in years.

“Clever…” he— it because it has to be an it, it can’t actually be him. “Did you think the dark would stop me from looking at you?”

And instantly, the dark— it doesn’t fade away but it parts somehow, pushed not like a fog but like an actual shadow. Without the blackness hiding me, I have a complete view of the hallway and where just before I know Rachel, Brian, and Sanguinaire were, there’s just empty space.

There’s nothing in the hall except for me and then, with footsteps that sound like the end of the world, the shadows on the farthest side of the hall part to let someone through, someone I haven’t seen since I found him, laying on his bed and covered in blood.

He’s dead, he’s been dead for so long that I doubt there’s anything left of him besides an old leaky box under the ground. But there he is, standing in a purple and black letterman jacket, with his blonde hair still rigidly squared into a crew cut, is Reggie. My brother.

His eyes are still just as sunken as they were when I found him, his skin is still clammy pale, and somehow he’s smiling. It doesn’t reach his eyes and my throat clenches closed when I realize I’m not sure if I ever saw it reach his eyes.

“C’mon sis,” he says, letting one shoulder fall as he turns to the side. “You’ve gotta know better than that don’t you? Well… maybe you don’t actually, I mean after all, your power has to literally spoon feed you information to make the pieces click together.”

That thing at the end of the hall isn’t my brother, I know it isn’t, I know he— I know all of this is just in my head, that I—

My power isn’t working, I can feel it right behind my eyes but it’s like trying to fill a pot with a hole in it. I close my eyes tight and slap my temples with the heels of my palms, trying to shake my brain free. I’m still in Brian’s shadow, I know I am, this isn’t real— it isn’t—

Drip, drip, drip

The sound of a leaky faucet makes me open my eyes and I jump backwards when I see Regg— that the illusion is right in front of me. His smile is gone and in his green eyes all I can see is an overwhelming disappointment, he shakes his head and when he turns his chin down to stare at the floor I can see that his wrists are leaking a steady stream of blood.

The illusion doesn’t end with fake sights and sounds, the stench of copper hits my nose full force and when I instinctively try to leap back, my head hits a wall that wasn’t there before. Fuck, did I get turned around in the dark somehow? Where did the wall come from—

My power finally ‘fills up’ and the information it hands me is like a knife between my ribs.

Can create auditory and visual hallucinations, illusions grow in intricacy with time, grows in scope related to victim’s level of fear

That’s it, the wall isn’t real— well it is real, real to me, I can’t get past it and— and—

My chest constricts and bile tries to work it’s way up my throat, I can’t think, I can’t— where’s Brian? Where’s Rachel? Why haven’t they— can’t Taylor— what the fuck do I do? What the—

“Don’t worry,” Reggie says and even knowing it isn’t real, a part of me screams in relief to hear my brother’s voice. I haven’t heard it in so long, he was my age when he dies, he was going to go to college, he was going to play football and— “It’ll all be over soon.”

The hall contorts in a way that hurts to look at and in moments, it changes to a room I haven’t been in since I first heard the whispers of my power. An NCSU flag takes up a dark green wall, a wall he and dad painted when I was barely out of diapers. Reggie always loved green but here, with the stench of blood in my nose and the walls closing in, I wish he chose something else.

The blood keeps pooling and when i look at his wrists, the cut bursts even wider, the flow of red increases from a trickle to a fountain, the force of it strong enough to make his skin peel away from the muscle and splash onto the floor.

And somehow, despite it not nearly being enough, the room starts to fill with blood, the shag carpet is drowned in the red, the old clothes and drawings and fuck— he loved to draw, how did I not see when he stopped drawing? He—

The blood is almost up to my neck and just as I start to gurgle on it, Reggie leans down, his eyes gleaming with tears that suddenly turn red.

“I’ll miss you, but nearly as much as you missed me.”

And with that, he melts. His skin sloughs off his body in a moist crumble, his muscles slides off the bone and the wright of it takes his jaw just as the blood rises past my lips.

I scream into the blood, bubbles flowing out of me and even with him gone, I can still hear him laughing. I should’ve been a better sister, I should’ve been a better friend and he’s dead and he’s dead and it’s all my fault and I—

Just as my vision starts to go black, the hall changes again, the red vanishes and with it, so does the hot feel of it against my skin and the stickiness of it in my hair. The darkness left in the wake of the illusion is a comforting weight against my skin, the heaviness of Brian’s fog is just enough to be noticed and I cling to the feeling like a lifeline.

I know the others are fighting, I know I need to help but I can barely feel my legs. That illusion, the cape that crafted it, I remember it now, he was one of the few capes that chose an English name over French.

Boogeyman

It’s funny, when I first read that name, I thought it was silly and reading about his power didn’t change that. Of course, now I know his wiki is either deliberately misinformative or they really don’t know him that well. He doesn’t create fear, at least it isn’t that simple.

The illusions… they looked so real, real enough that when the dark fades, I’m terrified he’s looking at me again.

But when the dark finally disappears, I’m not greeted by Reggie’s old room or even the empty hallway, instead, it’s Taylor. She’s saying something I can’t quite make out yet, my head is pounding with my heartbeat and the frog in my throat has decided to drop into my stomach.

She’s lifting me up as gently as she can, her hands in mine when I look to my left.

Sanguinaire is halfway through the wall, rubble collecting over his eyes as he lays there, unconscious and mouth open. His chest rises and falls with a wheeze and I wince. He might be strong, but Rachel’s very recently put herself far outside of his league.

“Okay…” my voice doesn’t sound steady in the slightest but I don’t care. “That fight probably got everyone’s attention, Skitter did you—”

“I got a couple down,” she says, “I don’t know how many of them were capes but I know the singer and a few people with him are unconscious.”

“Good,” I awkwardly pat her back and start tugging her towards Brian and Rachel. “We’ve got maybe two minutes before they converge on us, c’mon.”

I point to Alec’s room with my free hand and jump over Sanguinaire’s legs as I rush past him.

“We need to get in there now.”

Brian’s already got his hand on the knob but when it doesn’t open despite his turning, he takes a deep breath and slams into the wood with his shoulder. The door caves inward and the lock bends away from the frame and the first thing we’re met with is an overpowering stench of sterility.

Alec’s room smells like bleach, windex, and latex gloves, the sharp cleanliness of it seems to stab at my nose but that annoyance falls away at what I hear.

“Brian?” the voice is hoarse, small, and raspy but I know it almost as well as I know my own. “No, non, Nicki, c’mon man… that isn’t… pas aujourd'hui, s'il te plait, pas aujourd'hui frère.”

Even given the smallness of his voice, my whole body feels like it’s being injected with pure electricity, a sudden raw energy stabs at my legs and even though I’m the last to squeeze into the room, I’m only a hair’s breadth slower than Brian.

I’ve never hated my height more than right now, with Brian and Rachel’s shoulders blocking my view of the room, I have to force my way through them to get a good look.

What I see breaks my heart.

It’s been eight months since I saw Alec last and he’s never looked worse. And the last time I saw him, he was as thin as a rail, his eyes were gray with a lack of sleep, a bruise was blossoming on his face and a pair of handprints were doing the same on his neck.

And all of that would’ve looked normal compared to how he is now.

He lays on the bed, naked, his body only covered by bandages, some of which wrap up the whole length of a leg and some barely wider than a bandaid. Most of them are new at least, a stark white that matches the sheets beneath him, some are darker though, brown with grime.

The bits of him that aren’t cut up are bruised into varying shades of green, purple, and blue and one of his eyes is dark with swelling. The other one is dull and lifeless, the icy blue of them somehow made even paler.

“You’re getting better…” he rasps, breathing in deeply and barely wincing at the pain that it must cause. “For a second there… I… that’s mean Nicki, I wouldn’t do that to… you’d deserve it though.”

“Alec…” Brian speaks up first, slowly stepping closer to the bed and hand outstretched towards Alec’s own. His hand… it’s so thin, I shouldn’t be able to see the knuckles like that, they… fuck… we left him here. We left him here for eight months.

“Oh…” Alec laughs, a small chuckle. “You’re getting better Nicki, you remembered they—” he gasps as he tries to resettle his back on the bed. “—they never called me Jean-Paul… well except for the end I guess but they… Grue was just mad… at me but mostly at the situation I think, he—”

“Alec,” Brian repeats and their fingers connect, Brian’s leather touching Alec’s bare digits. The contact gets Alec to still, his eyes getting a bit wider before a smirk curls up his lips.

“Wow…” he swallows, “That… you uh… that’s good Nicki, you’re learning you can’t rely on it… I told you it—”

“Alec,” Taylor speaks up next, one hand rising up to unbutton the spider silk shawl around her throat. She takes it off and gently layers it over Alec’s waist, offering him modesty and just like when Brian touched his hand, Alec’s eyes get wider, a touch more disbelieving. “It’s us, it’s really us.”

“No…” Alec gulps and shakes his head, his eye now shaking with a kind of manic energy. When he tries to reach for the spider silk with his left hand, the cuff binding it to the railing clicks dully.

I hadn’t even noticed that, they cuffed him to his bed, they… oh god.

Restraints mean more than just to bind him, restraints meant to make certain acts easier, restraints meant to make certain sexual acts—

I want to throttle my power, I want to throttle Heartbreaker, I want to burn this whole fucking house to the ground but first… I need to make sure he’s okay, I need to make sure he knows what’s going on.

“Alec,” I speak up this time and unlike with the others, his head snaps to me immediately, his throat bobbing as his breathing gets more erratic. “We’re going to take you home, okay?”

Almost instantly, he starts to calm down, his eye dulling and his chest slowly falling back into a normal rhythm. I want to be comforted by his comfort but there’s something off about it, it happened too quickly, too suddenly, even for someone like Alec, his emotions or whatever variation he has of them, shouldn’t just fall back with a single reassurance, it—

“Oh…” Alec chuckles and lets his head fall back to the nest of pillows propping him up. “I get it…” he swallows and another laugh comes up to chase his words. “Je sais que papa vous a dit de me tester, mais allez… vous devez le rendre un peu plus subtil que ça.”

“Damnit,” I almost snarl but manage to hold back the sound as I look towards Brian, “What is he saying?”

“He thinks it’s a test,” Brian says, his own voice just barely under boiling. “Heartbreaker probably—”

“No,” I shake my head and step forward, both of my hands lancing out to grab at Alec’s. “This isn’t a trick, it isn’t a test.”

“Okay,” he replies, his smile is back on but it’s still off, still fake, like someone slapped a sticker over the lower half of his face. “It isn’t a test ‘Tattletale,’” I can hear the air quotes in his voice, “And since it isn’t a test, I should tell you that I’m more than happy to stay right here, okay? I know my place, I—”

His bravado cracks a bit before reestablishing itself but in that brief instant where the mask wasn’t on, I could see it plain as day, in the shiver of his eyes, in the way they darted to the doorway behind me, Alec is… afraid.

“—I know my place,” he reaffirms, gulping a little as he tries to put the smirk back on, “I know better now and I’m happy to be here, I know what I’m supposed to do and I—”

“It’s me,” I cut him off and reach for my mask. The little slip of leather peels off my face with one motion and I let it fall to the floor as I look him in the eyes. “It’s Lisa, okay, it’s me. You remember me right?”

My question gets his smirk to fall completely but the recognition in his eye isn’t relieved. No, it isn’t relief at all, if anything, it’s the opposite.

“You…” he shakes his head violently, the bandage on his neck starting to peel away a bit as he hyperventilates. “Non, Nicholas, plus, plus de jeux, d'accord ? Je sais que tu me détestes, je suis désolé de t'avoir ramené mais je—”

“It isn’t Nicholas,” Brian speaks up, taking the reins now that Alec is speaking French. “It isn’t him, it’s us Alec. I’m sorry we let you go, I’m sorry we pushed you away but we’re here now, we’re—”

“No!” Alec screeches, his voice tearing raw and bloody. “I know it isn’t real you son of a bitch! I know they don’t want me anymore, I know you stole her name from somewhere, probably got Sammy to do it you—”

“Your helmet,” I realize and turn my head to Brian, “take off your helmet, he needs to see you.”

“Oh sure,” Alec mocks, but this time the smarm in his voice is barely noticeable underneath the fear. “Take off your helmet and show me a skull or snake or whatever the fuck you think will scare me you unoriginal hack, c’mon you—”

“Okay,” Brian nods at my order and gently lets go of Alec’s hand, needing both to take off the headgear.

Alec stares at him, transfixed and eye steely. He doesn’t believe this is real and the reason for that, like everything in this godforsaken place, makes me want to vomit.

They… the Heartbroken— his own family, they used their powers on him, used them enough that he can’t trust his reality, that the idea of us being here is so impossible, it’s more likely that one of his siblings is torturing him.

Rachel steps around Taylor and I to walk over to Alec’s right side, her hands fidgeting like she wants to reach out and make sure he’s real. Alec barely spares her a glance and when she tries to set her hand on his shoulder, he shrugs it off with as much strength as he can muster.

His breathing is slow and deliberate and the hand he lets me hold is gripping mine with all the strength it can muster. It isn’t a lot of strength, it’s barely enough to press into my skin but I hold it as tight as I can anyway.

The clasps of Brian’s helmet come undone with barely a whisper usually, but in the silence we’ve made, every little mechanism sounds deafeningly loud. He undoes the straps around his neck and then the two others discreetly tie his helmet down to his shoulders, and with those done, he slowly lifts it up off his head.

His dreads fall down to his shoulders in long coils and with each inch of exposed skin I expect to hear Alec gasp but the moment doesn’t come, even with Brian’s face fully unveiled. The brown eyed Shaker slowly opens his eyes to look at hurt friend and when I follow his gaze back to the boy we betrayed, I see that Alec’s eyes are screwed up tight.

“No,” he growls out, his head swaying back and forth, his hair bobbing “No, I’m not going to play your fucking game Nicki, Valentina, Marie, whoever the fuck is doing this,I won’t! You understand? I fucking won’t! go fuck with Samuel or Nathan, Nathan’s always good for a fucking laugh just not—”

“Alec, please,” Rachel speaks up for the first time since getting in here, her voice as soft as she can make it. “It’s us, it’s really us, we—”

“No you’re fucking not! Do you think I’m that stupid Valentina? Do you think I don’t remember what they said to me? You think I don’t remember getting kicked out of my own fucking house?! I know they don’t want me anymore, I know I wasn’t able to keep them, I know they hate me— I—” he sucks in a breath and my vision blurs as his lips tremble and his voice cracks. “I know—” he sobs and it’s an actual sob, one that racks his chest and makes my own sting with sympathy. “—I know they don’t love me… please…I know.”

The silence that follows is the worst quiet I’ve ever been a part of, it’s the kind that suffocates, that fills your throat like cotton and makes the whole world ring, it’s— what the hell are we supposed to do?

I had so much planned to say, I was going to tell him about what his father did to us, about how we weren’t ourselves, I was prepared to tell him any and everything but I didn’t prepare for this. I thought he’d be serving his father again, I thought Hijack would be making public appearances in Montreal, and that we’d have to sway him back to our side.

I prepared for if he was comatose, I even prepared if he was… if—

I didn’t prepare for this, I thought his father wanted him back because he was an affront to his authority, that he’d force Alec back into the fold as a kind of ‘look, this is what happens to those that disobey me.’

But trapped in here, locked down with cuffs that don’t have keyholes, he can’t be a symbol. He… that was never the point. Heartbreaker wanted him back because he… he wanted Alec in a way no father should want their son.

Knowing that, the anger that rises up inside of me is luminescent, it makes my skin tingle with heat, makes my tongue feel sharp and… no. I’m going to kill him soon, I will, but not now.

“Alec,” I coax and Brian sets his helmet down on the bed’s edge, taking silent steps towards Alec’s right side until he can cup bruised cheeks. The blue eyed boy doesn’t open his eyes, even at the gentle feeling of leather. His mouth trembles and even with them tightly closed, tears slip through his lids to fall down his cheeks.

Brian wipes them away with his thumb and even choked up, he still manages to force a solidity into his voice.

“Alec, please, look at me.”

The order is gentle, as gentle as Brian has ever been and with a shaky gasp, Alec listens to it and snaps his eyes open, a curse on the tip of his tongue when he takes in who he’s looking at. His eye widens and his breath catches as his whole face goes slack in disbelief.

He tries to get his hands to rise but again, his cuffs keep them down.

With a muffled snarl, Rachel reaches down for them, her massive hands barely able to get more than a finger and a thumb around the links of chain before snapping them, one after the other.

With his hands free, one of them goes up to his own face, the gaunt fingers overlapping Brian’s own and the other rises to meet Brian’s face, the pads of his fingers slowly mapping out a cheekbone before he sniffles.

“It…” his voice is numb, empty but with a quickly growing shake to the words. “It’s really you, it—” he turns his head to look at me, then Taylor and lastly to Rachel. “It… it’s really you guys, you— oh!”

He gulps and tries to get his hands underneath him to sit up straighter.

“Okay, okay, I— uh—” He clears his throat again and then looks back at me and though I want to find comfort in his eyes on mine, there’s something… different about them. Something not at all there. “I understand, okay uh—” he gulps, “Did something go wrong with Shatterbird or Ubermensch?”

“What?” Taylor asks, leaning a bit closer in. “No, Alec we’re here for—”

“Oh! You need me to Master someone I uh— you—” he gulps and tries to gesture towards the door but his hand just falls limply before it can make it halfway. “You must’ve talked to father about this, right? Set up some kind of payment plan, you know I can’t leave for long right? I— I’ll have to come back after the job is done but I—”

“What are you talking about?” I ask, lifting myself up until I can sit on the edge of the bed. “Alec, there’s no job okay? We—”

“What do you mean there isn’t a job?!” Alec sounds like he’s on the verge of panic, his breath comes shallow and rapid and he turns his eye between all of us. “No, look, I’m sorry, I promise I can— I didn’t mean to interrupt you just please, please don’t put me away again, I can— look my power’s different now but it’s still just as good I promise!”

His… power’s different.

“What—” Brian swallows past a lump in his throat and he falls down on to one knee to brace himself, the bed jostling a little as he leans on the railing.. “What do you… what do you mean your power’s different?”

Alec’s panic is briefly slowed as he tilts his head down at Grue, the fear in his eye subsiding a bit before he speaks.

“Did father not tell you?” he asks and when no one answers him, he continues. “It happened in… I don’t remember exactly but it was before the snow started falling I think. He… he wanted me to be a ball he was hosting and I—” he gulps, “—I didn’t do as well as I should’ve and he… he punished me for it and I— I didn’t take the punishment like I should’ve, I— my head— it— I—”

Second triggered

My power whispers what happened and the gasp I make clues everyone else in too. Taylor sways in place, her posture hollow and her hands slack at her sides, she’s seen a second trigger before, had a front row seat when Brian had to literally pull himself back together.

This is the second person she’s met that’s second triggered, the second person to have been a very close friend of hers.  First Brian and now Alec.

Rachel has a very similar reaction, despite the anger that was practically radiating off her just a few moments ago, now she’s still. She just stands there, her own legs turning to jelly as she stares down at Alec, at all the bruises and cuts running up his body. I try to get her to look at me but like Taylor, she’s dead to the world, both of them struck dumb by the reality of what we left Alec to endure.

That same reality is starting to crush me too, we— I forced him out of his home, I made him cry, I accused him of being the monster his father actually is, I told my friends that he was evil in the shape of a person and I… I made him cry.

That’s the part that really hits me.

He let me in, he showed himself to me, his completeness and then, after just a few glances from his father, I took those secrets, those desires, and self hatred, and I turned them into a knife. He begged us not to come back here, to do anything else but come back here and what did I do?

I sold him.

His father gave us money and we sold him.

And then, after months of abuse, after months of turmoil and loss, he… Alec broke, broke the way most parahumans only break once. Heartbreaker might’ve been the hammer but we… we’re the ones who did this to him.

A choked sob takes my thoughts away from myself and looking over at Brian makes the knife inside of me twist.

He’s kneeling now, on both knees and sobbing as he holds Alec’s knuckles in between his brows.

“I—” Brian tries to keep his voice steady, tries to put up something that won’t sound vulnerable but he can’t. “I’m so sorry, Alec, I— I’m so fucking sorry.”

“What?” the black haired boy asks, leaning just a little bit off to the side to get a better look at Brian. The Shaker lifts his head up enough to meet Alec’s eyes, tears falling down his face in waves. “Bri— Grue,” Alec corrects and it hurts to think he’s learned not to call us by our names. “It’s okay, I… I’m okay, it’s my fault anyway, I should’ve—”

“No,” Brian cuts him off and stands as straight as he can, his hands rising up to cup Alec’s face again. “What happened to you wasn’t your fault alright? You didn’t do anything to deserve what— nobody deserves what happened to you, okay?”

Alec hesitates for a moment and when he nods back, I don’t think it’s so much because he agrees with what Brian’s telling him as it is he’s learned to just agree.

“We’re taking you home,” Taylor says, moving to grab at the IV in Alec’s elbow.

“Home?” Alec asks, his voice filled with wonder before he squashes it down. “No, I am home, I can go to Brockton Bay but I really should make sure it’s okay with father, he’ll—”

“It’s okay,” I cut him off, giving him my best smile. “We already talked things out, alright? He said you can come with us.”

It’s one of the few lies I’ve told that physically hurts to get off my tongue, Alec has already been through so damn much and part of me is appalled that I would lie to him like this. But that pain is nothing compared to the idea of leaving him in this place for even a second longer than I have to.

The others don’t call me out on the lie even though I’m sure they feel the same way about, even saying we’d deal with Nikos Vasil in the hypothetical sense has my costume feeling slimy against my skin.

“Oh…” Alec sighs, relief filling him. “Okay, if he say it’s fine then— okay, I can go, I can—”

“No, he cannot.”

We all still at the voice coming down the hall. It’s been eight months since I heard it last, that imperious tone, that unearned ego that stains every syllable.

Rachel had her arms hooked behind Alec’s knees and neck but with one nod from me, she sets him back down as gently as she can.

I turn my eyes to Taylor and in less of a second, she understands my silent question and my power interprets her body language into something it can whisper to me.

Unsure how she lost track of Nikos Vasil, power says Nikos Vasil is still on his way here, sense of bugs have been scrambled, scrambled by a Heartbroken’s abilities, someone whose power influences nerves and networks

Damnit, I should’ve known Heartbreaker would’ve had someone capable of countering sensory powers. If it were this easy to be in and out, he would’ve been replaced by someone long ago.

“And last I checked,” the voice calls out, impatience, annoyance, and condescension staining his voice in equal measure. “I wasn’t accepting guests at this time… especially guests that brutalize my children.”

We can just about hear footsteps down the hall, dress shoes by the sound of the clicking. He’s getting close and just behind him is… someone loud, someone big.

I point at one side of the door and Rachel heads towards it as I pull out my pistol, Brian takes the other flank and without much cover to duck behind, I move towards Atlas, the enormous beetle meeting me halfway as Taylor does the same.

“Well?” Heartbreaker asks, his voice a dull echo on the walls. “Are you going to come out or am I going to have to drag you out?”

Again, none of us dignify him with a response and just as I gesture for Brian to flood the halls with dark, the worst Master on the planet sighs.

“Alright then, just know I did warn you.”

Distantly, something pops like a cherry bomb, the air warbling harshly and then, just in front of the door, a fireball explodes.

The shockwave does more than the actual heat of the explosion though that isn’t fun either, Brian and Rachel might’ve been mostly protected by their costumes and muscle respectively but neither of those will last long against the girl standing in the doorway.

She looks nothing like when I first saw her, cowering behind Jack when he revealed he already knew her scheme. Her hair has been chopped down into a brutal pixie cut, her clothes strain against her augmented muscle and where before she loathed to show off the disgusting tattoos Mannequin marked with, now she lets them see the sun in a sleeveless tank top.

Cherie Vasil growls at us like an animal and I can barely bring up my pistol before she’s lunging for me.