Post by deo on Apr 19, 2016 2:03:36 GMT
The dream always starts the same. Peacemaker is dying, and my sister and I are standing over him. We didn’t beat him. Alone, we wouldn’t have even been able to stop his regeneration long enough to make him notice us. It took eighty-two metas working together and dying together to do that. But, none the less, there he was, dying, and there we were, two fifteen year olds, the only ones left.
He was bleeding from every orifice, both the natural ones and the many newly acquired ones. He had arrow wounds in his chest, acid burns on his legs, petrifaction marks spreading from his wrists, and speed rift tears attacking his very existence; you name it and someone had thrown it at him. But it was left to Kate and I to finish the job.
He looked at us with his remaining eye; it was swollen red around the outside with a great wide grey pupil staring out. He stretched out his hand.
Then that bastard cursed us. He cursed our very souls. We would be strangled by our victories; whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean.
It’s been twelve years and three months since then, and I haven’t had the dream for awhile. I haven’t been a ‘hero’ for awhile either, so I guess that’s it. Maybe when your teenage hormones wear off you start carrying less about capes and crime fighting, less about dead legends and their curses, and start to care more about paying your dues and taking care of your kids. A few of them still have dreams about putting on spandex and saving the world, I can never tell them not to, I’d be a hypocrite. But I still try to push back in other ways. Capes and cowl heroism brings on the temptation and addiction for power, or fame, or infamy. It brings out drugs too in some cases. In Elle’s case it was a mix of addiction for fame, validation, and something called Xcell.
-------------------------
She had been gone for a week or so, and I had hunted her down to Janus Valley. Janus is about three square blocks that constantly reek of whiskey, sweat and other fluids. Her friend Cory, one of my ‘normal kids’, said she was hanging out at a meta club called Liberté. There was a lot of Mahogoney and Red Velvet around me. There were two floors. The first level had a sunken dance floor differentiated by a single step, with a long crowded bar curving around the pit. The second floor balcony overlooked the floor, and had the very distinct look of ‘too VIP for everybody else’. I suppose there was a reason it wasn’t called Egalite.
Below my feet there was a solid plumbing set up; water flowed in old solid pipes to the bar and the bathrooms on the first level, and I could sense another potential source of water above me in the sprinkler systems.
There’s also water in people, but that didn’t actually help distinguish one girl from a crowd. Besides I could see Elle from where I was at the bar. She was looking down enviously on the dance floor from the VIP balcony.
Elle could maybe pass for twenty one, if it was dark enough, and you weren’t too interested in thinking about it. I assumed some of the kids at Safe-Harbor had fake i.d.s, and I had let it slide. I’m not their dad, and so long as they stay ‘relatively’ safe, I try and let them make their own mistakes. Mostly they’re just young metas who need a safe place to figure out their powers without killing anyone. Most had bad or worse family situations, and some no families at all. Elle’s father was apparently a real asshole, though the story changed every time she told it. But that doesn’t mean it was a lie either. As Elle looked down on the floor I saw a copper-toned woman with black pupils and ebony nails slide up to her and place a long slender hand on her shoulder. As they looked over the balcony I quickly turned around and pushed my way past a throng of people.
The bar was fully stocked with some of the old temptations. The bar tender was a young meta in a double breasted black vest. There were a few more copies of him working along the bar; it was rare to meet even a low level duplicator, but even rarer when the best thing they can think to do with their powers is serve drinks.
I flashed a fifty-dollar bill between my knuckles and flagged him down. He nodded towards me.
“What’ll it be?”
“Tonic water and a question.”
He pulled a highball glass off the rack and rinsed it.
“It better be one hell of a question,” he said just loud enough that only I could hear him.
Without turning around I pointed over my shoulder to the balcony.
“The woman upstairs, tall, slender, black, with uh black eyes and nails, and”
“Mamba,” he said, “Trust me, she isn’t your type.”
“Yeah I bet. But what’s her deal.”
“Bad tipper,” he said, “she’s a friend of Gaspar though, so”
“She’s a meta right? What can she do? What does she do, you know, professionally?”
He gave me a hard look, analyzing me, then started filling the glass with tonic from the hose.
“Poison you mostly. She’s got venom in her nails, teeth, blood, you know. Faster then you’d expect too. She works in the coliseum, she fights a little, but mostly trains and manages now.”
He topped off the glass and pushed it to me, leaning in as he did.
“Its weird though. Her team is made up of nobodies with lower end powers, but all of a sudden they started a big winning streak. Made a lot of money, and made a lot of people unhappy. They even started beating guys they had no right fighting in the first place. Good coaching maybe?”
I nodded and took a sip of tonic. The whole thing made more sense now; Mamba wasn’t just Elle’s dealer, she was her agent too.
I handed the fifty to him. He took it but didn’t leave.
“You mind if I ask you something back?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Are you Torrent?”
I nodded.
“Yeah, I was.“
He slid the fifty back.
“Tonic’s on the house. See you around.”
--------------------------------------
I took my money back, nodded and turned around. Mamba had left the balcony while I was talking, so I started pushing through the crowd towards the stairs. There was a thick built man with a ponytail standing next to the stairs. He saw me and gave me the “no further, sir” look.
I just pointed to the balcony and shrugged.
“I left my coat.”
He nodded and I brushed past him. The balcony had even more red velvet and the lights were dimmer. There were a few semi-famous faces from the meta-crowd lounging about. Zapp, Snap-Dragon, and Xander Cash all pushed past me without recognizing me, and I was able to reach Elle’s table without a scene. She looked like she was half there, her eyes big as a Doe’s. I sat down.
“Elle,”
‘”Danny?” she asked, “what the hell are you doing here?”
“I just want to talk,” I said. I was rubbing my hands and trying to not look like I was looking too closely. Her pupils had started turning grey in patches; she must still be on the Xcell. She picked up a vodka and tonic on the table and sipped it.
“Talk about what?”
“About what’s going on. Cory said that you were getting in with some people.”
She gave me a look, placed the glass back onto the table, and moved her other hand onto my knee.
“You jealous that I’ve got new friends Danny?”
I placed my hand on hers and carefully pulled it off.
“People who give you drugs to make money off you aren’t your friends, Elle. Come on, this isn’t you. Lets go back to Safe-Harbor and we can just talk somewhere quiet and.”
“I am not going back to some run-down warehouse loft to live with a bunch of low level meta wannabes and a burn out loser.”
“Elle, look, I,”
“My name’s Phase now, and I want nothing to do with you!”
I could sense someone slither up behind me before she could lay her hand on me. I turned and grabbed her thin black wrist before her poisonous nails could touch my skin. She looked back at me
“Mamba, right.”
She smirked.
“And you must be Torrent, or well I guess you’re nobody now.” She laughed, “But whatever you are I think you aught to be leaving.”
“I’m leaving with Elle.”
I sent some of the water in the pipes above us to push their way against the sprinkler head, till it was wedged open. Water began to drizzle over us, the drops swaying in the air around my hands and torso, building larger by the second. Mamba opened her palms into claws. Everyone else took a few steps back, accept for Elle, who moved behind Mamba.
“The girl clearly doesn’t want to go with you. She doesn’t need a white knight to save her, so why don’t you find someone else to give you a good time.”
If I could hit her early it might be over quick but it would require a lot more busting pipes. And even then, I would have started a fight in a Argus protected club; fighting her here would only create more trouble. But if Elle left with her, she’d just keep feeding her Xcell.
Then I sensed someone else pop in behind me. They hadn’t been there a second ago, which meant teleportation. It had to be Gaspar.
He stood smiling at me in the makeshift rain. His stance wasn’t aggressive, but it was prepared; from where he stood I’d have to turn my head to keep eyes on both of them at once. He could have hit me from across the room with his telekinesis if he wanted to. I’m not sure, why he hadn’t yet; it was hard to get a read on him from behind the shades.
“Torrent. Good to finally see you again. ”
“Same here, Gaspar,”
“Mind if we take this outside?”
I’d have enough trouble fighting Gaspar on my own, but without a better supply of water and another opponent to worry about there wasn’t much point. I released my hold on the swirls of water around me and they fell to puddles on the floor.
“Sure. No trouble.”
He placed a hand on my shoulder and I felt the room shift away.
--------------------------------
He had teleported us to a back alley. The air was dry, and no plumbing save a sewer far out of my influence. Gaspar tucked his cane under his arm and removed the sunglasses.
“You really have changed. Time was you were too good to even step into my establishments, and now look at you. You’re sneaking in and starting fights with my friends.”
“I just wanted to talk to Elle.”
“It looks like she didn’t want to talk to you, and Mamba has a right to protect her investments.”
“People aren’t investments.”
He chuckled and blew my off with a wave of his hand.
“Just keep it out of my club. Or next time I’ll just let her rip our throat out.”
That line seemed just dramatic enough that he would teleport away on it. If I wanted an opening, I had to talk to him on his level, offer something that a man like that would get.
“Even if Mamba keeps cheating you?”
Gaspar paused. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a plastic bag with a single white pill inside and handed it to him.
“You’ve noticed how her teams keep winning despite being underpowered. How they always seem to get the upset. This is how.”
“We test for power enhancements for everyone at the coliseum. If they were using,”
“You don’t test for this one.”
He took the pill and rolled it in his palm. It was stamped with a small XL.
“Its called Excell, it’s a new power enhancement,” I said, “its stronger than Drive or Splice and since its new, no one knows how to stop it.”
“Uh huh,” he said, “and I’m sure since its untraceable you have iron-clad proof that Mamba is using it.”
“Well, not exactly. But I know she’s giving it to Elle, and that means she’s probably giving it to her other fighters. Just let me go back inside and the two of us can.”
He shook his head.
“I cannot accuse a fellow Argus member without more… but you’re not an Argus member, so I suppose whatever you do is up to you hero.”
He placed the pill inside his coat jacket.
“She has a match at the coliseum tonight, she’s debuting Phase, or Elle. After its done, you might try looking for her at the building at 700 Levant. The penthouse suite.”
“Awfully generous of you Gaspar.”
He smiled.
“We are what we are; I’m a killer, and a gambler, and a sinner. But I don’t deal to kids… See you around hero.”
And then he was gone. 700 Levant wasn’t too far from here.
--------------------------
I few hours had passed and the bath had been running for the past twenty minutes. When Mamba opened the door to her apartment all she could hear was the rush of the water flowing. I sensed her walk across the threshold then heard the door close. She stalked down the hallway then opened the door to her palatial white tile bathroom. She found me waiting on her toilet, and twenty gallons of water hovering patiently n the air.
“Hey there.”
A watery fist threw her backwards into a wall which dented. She seemed to scramble back to her feet. A tendril of liquid slipped around her neck and coiled up to her mouth. She held her breath.
I lifted the tendril and pulled it back just far enough she could speak.
“We’re going to talk about Xcell, but before that you’re going to promise to leave Elle alone. Deal.”
A sick grin slithered across her face.
Elle had overdosed a half hour I had last seen her. She took a double dose of Excell before her first match in the coliseum and it stopped her heart. The coliseum patrons were displeased with the inconvenience, but apparently Mamba was able to find a replacement last minute.
I think she told me how she died just to hurt me, but it wasn’t the only thing she told me, though the rest took more persuasion to rip out of her. The trick to waterboarding someone is to get the water ice cold, then you fill their lungs with it. Then pull it all out the way it came and let them talk. Then you keep doing it. Eventually I got a name, the man behind Xcell.
----------------------------
A few days later my sister showed up unannounced at Safe Harbor. I guess that’s just what the police do.
Safe Harbor was a converted warehouse with a few bunk beds, some drapes over the broken windows, and the basic amenities. It had taken years but it was starting to seem less like just a shelter and more like a home. There were six kids staying here for now, four metas, and two with just no place to go.
It had been at least a year since Kate and I had seen each other. Corey happened to be home when Kate showed up, and quickly ducked out the back when she saw a woman in uniform. Not all of the kids had had golden records with RPD, but Kate wasn’t here for them. I was folding laundry in a back corner when she eventually found me; not that I was hiding.
My sister was just a little bit shorter than me, with big green eyes and the same tow white blond hair. Ever since she used to be Nova-girl and I used be Torrent, people could see the family resemblence.
“Hey Danny.”
“Hey Kate. How’s the job.”
I kept folding my laundry. She stared into me. She seemed incredulous as to my answers before I ever answered.
“Its not great,” she said, ”In fact its about to get a lot worse. Did you know a girl by the name of Elle Woods? People called her Phase.”
“Yeah I knew Elle.”
“Knew,” she said, focusing on the tense, “so then I guess you know what happened to her.”
“She died.”
“You know what from?”
I shook my head and kept folding my laundry.
“We’re not sure either,” Kate said, “but I think it looks like a overdose, though at first we weren’t sure to what.”
“Uh-huh”
“But,” she said, “then we had another body to follow up on. A woman connected to Elle, a suicide maybe. She had drowned in her bathtub. And she he had quite a supply of unknown drugs in her apartment. Apparently she was Elle’s manager or friend; we’re not entirely sure. Someone named Mamba.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did Elle ever talk about her?”
I stepped back from the dryer, and shook my head.
“No I don’t think so, but I don’t know everything the kids get up to; I’m not their dad.”
“That’s odd,” Kate said. She had to drag out what she said next, “because a lot of people at Liberte said they saw the three of you arguing two nights ago. Just a few hours before they both died. That true?”
“Yeah,” I replied, “I wanted Elle to come back here. She said no, then I left. That was the last time I saw her.”
“Then how did you already know she was dead when I came in here?”
“Word travels fast,” I said, “and Safe Harbor is filled with lots of kids who like to gossip.”
“Really. You sure you didn’t know because Mamba told you?”
“How could I? You just said Mamba was dead.”
“Don’t play stupid with me.”
I laughed. It still hurt, but I still laughed.
“Kate I swear, one of my kids just died and I had seen her a few minutes before it happened. I tried to help and I couldn’t even get close. If I don’t feel stupid now, then I don’t know when I aught to…”
Kate didn’t say anything. A lone voice haunted the inside of my head, and I couldn’t stop it from coming out.
“We will be strangled by our victories. That means that no matter how hard you fight, they’re going to die anyway.”
She shook her head.
“You can’t still let that get to you.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” she said. She was lying.
“Look,” she said, her voice turning stern, “If we had enough to arrest you, I would. And if I have to come back again it will be with the rest of meta-squad, and we will take you in, so if there’s anything you to say before then, do it now and I will do my best to look into it.”
“Right. Well there is one thing… I don’t know much about drugs, but if you think Elle OD’d, then there’s someone you should look for. John Krugman.”
She sighed, exasperated.
“Who’s the fuck John Krugman, Danny?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “all I could get was a name. But I wish you the best of luck, hero.”
He was bleeding from every orifice, both the natural ones and the many newly acquired ones. He had arrow wounds in his chest, acid burns on his legs, petrifaction marks spreading from his wrists, and speed rift tears attacking his very existence; you name it and someone had thrown it at him. But it was left to Kate and I to finish the job.
He looked at us with his remaining eye; it was swollen red around the outside with a great wide grey pupil staring out. He stretched out his hand.
Then that bastard cursed us. He cursed our very souls. We would be strangled by our victories; whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean.
It’s been twelve years and three months since then, and I haven’t had the dream for awhile. I haven’t been a ‘hero’ for awhile either, so I guess that’s it. Maybe when your teenage hormones wear off you start carrying less about capes and crime fighting, less about dead legends and their curses, and start to care more about paying your dues and taking care of your kids. A few of them still have dreams about putting on spandex and saving the world, I can never tell them not to, I’d be a hypocrite. But I still try to push back in other ways. Capes and cowl heroism brings on the temptation and addiction for power, or fame, or infamy. It brings out drugs too in some cases. In Elle’s case it was a mix of addiction for fame, validation, and something called Xcell.
-------------------------
She had been gone for a week or so, and I had hunted her down to Janus Valley. Janus is about three square blocks that constantly reek of whiskey, sweat and other fluids. Her friend Cory, one of my ‘normal kids’, said she was hanging out at a meta club called Liberté. There was a lot of Mahogoney and Red Velvet around me. There were two floors. The first level had a sunken dance floor differentiated by a single step, with a long crowded bar curving around the pit. The second floor balcony overlooked the floor, and had the very distinct look of ‘too VIP for everybody else’. I suppose there was a reason it wasn’t called Egalite.
Below my feet there was a solid plumbing set up; water flowed in old solid pipes to the bar and the bathrooms on the first level, and I could sense another potential source of water above me in the sprinkler systems.
There’s also water in people, but that didn’t actually help distinguish one girl from a crowd. Besides I could see Elle from where I was at the bar. She was looking down enviously on the dance floor from the VIP balcony.
Elle could maybe pass for twenty one, if it was dark enough, and you weren’t too interested in thinking about it. I assumed some of the kids at Safe-Harbor had fake i.d.s, and I had let it slide. I’m not their dad, and so long as they stay ‘relatively’ safe, I try and let them make their own mistakes. Mostly they’re just young metas who need a safe place to figure out their powers without killing anyone. Most had bad or worse family situations, and some no families at all. Elle’s father was apparently a real asshole, though the story changed every time she told it. But that doesn’t mean it was a lie either. As Elle looked down on the floor I saw a copper-toned woman with black pupils and ebony nails slide up to her and place a long slender hand on her shoulder. As they looked over the balcony I quickly turned around and pushed my way past a throng of people.
The bar was fully stocked with some of the old temptations. The bar tender was a young meta in a double breasted black vest. There were a few more copies of him working along the bar; it was rare to meet even a low level duplicator, but even rarer when the best thing they can think to do with their powers is serve drinks.
I flashed a fifty-dollar bill between my knuckles and flagged him down. He nodded towards me.
“What’ll it be?”
“Tonic water and a question.”
He pulled a highball glass off the rack and rinsed it.
“It better be one hell of a question,” he said just loud enough that only I could hear him.
Without turning around I pointed over my shoulder to the balcony.
“The woman upstairs, tall, slender, black, with uh black eyes and nails, and”
“Mamba,” he said, “Trust me, she isn’t your type.”
“Yeah I bet. But what’s her deal.”
“Bad tipper,” he said, “she’s a friend of Gaspar though, so”
“She’s a meta right? What can she do? What does she do, you know, professionally?”
He gave me a hard look, analyzing me, then started filling the glass with tonic from the hose.
“Poison you mostly. She’s got venom in her nails, teeth, blood, you know. Faster then you’d expect too. She works in the coliseum, she fights a little, but mostly trains and manages now.”
He topped off the glass and pushed it to me, leaning in as he did.
“Its weird though. Her team is made up of nobodies with lower end powers, but all of a sudden they started a big winning streak. Made a lot of money, and made a lot of people unhappy. They even started beating guys they had no right fighting in the first place. Good coaching maybe?”
I nodded and took a sip of tonic. The whole thing made more sense now; Mamba wasn’t just Elle’s dealer, she was her agent too.
I handed the fifty to him. He took it but didn’t leave.
“You mind if I ask you something back?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Are you Torrent?”
I nodded.
“Yeah, I was.“
He slid the fifty back.
“Tonic’s on the house. See you around.”
--------------------------------------
I took my money back, nodded and turned around. Mamba had left the balcony while I was talking, so I started pushing through the crowd towards the stairs. There was a thick built man with a ponytail standing next to the stairs. He saw me and gave me the “no further, sir” look.
I just pointed to the balcony and shrugged.
“I left my coat.”
He nodded and I brushed past him. The balcony had even more red velvet and the lights were dimmer. There were a few semi-famous faces from the meta-crowd lounging about. Zapp, Snap-Dragon, and Xander Cash all pushed past me without recognizing me, and I was able to reach Elle’s table without a scene. She looked like she was half there, her eyes big as a Doe’s. I sat down.
“Elle,”
‘”Danny?” she asked, “what the hell are you doing here?”
“I just want to talk,” I said. I was rubbing my hands and trying to not look like I was looking too closely. Her pupils had started turning grey in patches; she must still be on the Xcell. She picked up a vodka and tonic on the table and sipped it.
“Talk about what?”
“About what’s going on. Cory said that you were getting in with some people.”
She gave me a look, placed the glass back onto the table, and moved her other hand onto my knee.
“You jealous that I’ve got new friends Danny?”
I placed my hand on hers and carefully pulled it off.
“People who give you drugs to make money off you aren’t your friends, Elle. Come on, this isn’t you. Lets go back to Safe-Harbor and we can just talk somewhere quiet and.”
“I am not going back to some run-down warehouse loft to live with a bunch of low level meta wannabes and a burn out loser.”
“Elle, look, I,”
“My name’s Phase now, and I want nothing to do with you!”
I could sense someone slither up behind me before she could lay her hand on me. I turned and grabbed her thin black wrist before her poisonous nails could touch my skin. She looked back at me
“Mamba, right.”
She smirked.
“And you must be Torrent, or well I guess you’re nobody now.” She laughed, “But whatever you are I think you aught to be leaving.”
“I’m leaving with Elle.”
I sent some of the water in the pipes above us to push their way against the sprinkler head, till it was wedged open. Water began to drizzle over us, the drops swaying in the air around my hands and torso, building larger by the second. Mamba opened her palms into claws. Everyone else took a few steps back, accept for Elle, who moved behind Mamba.
“The girl clearly doesn’t want to go with you. She doesn’t need a white knight to save her, so why don’t you find someone else to give you a good time.”
If I could hit her early it might be over quick but it would require a lot more busting pipes. And even then, I would have started a fight in a Argus protected club; fighting her here would only create more trouble. But if Elle left with her, she’d just keep feeding her Xcell.
Then I sensed someone else pop in behind me. They hadn’t been there a second ago, which meant teleportation. It had to be Gaspar.
He stood smiling at me in the makeshift rain. His stance wasn’t aggressive, but it was prepared; from where he stood I’d have to turn my head to keep eyes on both of them at once. He could have hit me from across the room with his telekinesis if he wanted to. I’m not sure, why he hadn’t yet; it was hard to get a read on him from behind the shades.
“Torrent. Good to finally see you again. ”
“Same here, Gaspar,”
“Mind if we take this outside?”
I’d have enough trouble fighting Gaspar on my own, but without a better supply of water and another opponent to worry about there wasn’t much point. I released my hold on the swirls of water around me and they fell to puddles on the floor.
“Sure. No trouble.”
He placed a hand on my shoulder and I felt the room shift away.
--------------------------------
He had teleported us to a back alley. The air was dry, and no plumbing save a sewer far out of my influence. Gaspar tucked his cane under his arm and removed the sunglasses.
“You really have changed. Time was you were too good to even step into my establishments, and now look at you. You’re sneaking in and starting fights with my friends.”
“I just wanted to talk to Elle.”
“It looks like she didn’t want to talk to you, and Mamba has a right to protect her investments.”
“People aren’t investments.”
He chuckled and blew my off with a wave of his hand.
“Just keep it out of my club. Or next time I’ll just let her rip our throat out.”
That line seemed just dramatic enough that he would teleport away on it. If I wanted an opening, I had to talk to him on his level, offer something that a man like that would get.
“Even if Mamba keeps cheating you?”
Gaspar paused. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a plastic bag with a single white pill inside and handed it to him.
“You’ve noticed how her teams keep winning despite being underpowered. How they always seem to get the upset. This is how.”
“We test for power enhancements for everyone at the coliseum. If they were using,”
“You don’t test for this one.”
He took the pill and rolled it in his palm. It was stamped with a small XL.
“Its called Excell, it’s a new power enhancement,” I said, “its stronger than Drive or Splice and since its new, no one knows how to stop it.”
“Uh huh,” he said, “and I’m sure since its untraceable you have iron-clad proof that Mamba is using it.”
“Well, not exactly. But I know she’s giving it to Elle, and that means she’s probably giving it to her other fighters. Just let me go back inside and the two of us can.”
He shook his head.
“I cannot accuse a fellow Argus member without more… but you’re not an Argus member, so I suppose whatever you do is up to you hero.”
He placed the pill inside his coat jacket.
“She has a match at the coliseum tonight, she’s debuting Phase, or Elle. After its done, you might try looking for her at the building at 700 Levant. The penthouse suite.”
“Awfully generous of you Gaspar.”
He smiled.
“We are what we are; I’m a killer, and a gambler, and a sinner. But I don’t deal to kids… See you around hero.”
And then he was gone. 700 Levant wasn’t too far from here.
--------------------------
I few hours had passed and the bath had been running for the past twenty minutes. When Mamba opened the door to her apartment all she could hear was the rush of the water flowing. I sensed her walk across the threshold then heard the door close. She stalked down the hallway then opened the door to her palatial white tile bathroom. She found me waiting on her toilet, and twenty gallons of water hovering patiently n the air.
“Hey there.”
A watery fist threw her backwards into a wall which dented. She seemed to scramble back to her feet. A tendril of liquid slipped around her neck and coiled up to her mouth. She held her breath.
I lifted the tendril and pulled it back just far enough she could speak.
“We’re going to talk about Xcell, but before that you’re going to promise to leave Elle alone. Deal.”
A sick grin slithered across her face.
Elle had overdosed a half hour I had last seen her. She took a double dose of Excell before her first match in the coliseum and it stopped her heart. The coliseum patrons were displeased with the inconvenience, but apparently Mamba was able to find a replacement last minute.
I think she told me how she died just to hurt me, but it wasn’t the only thing she told me, though the rest took more persuasion to rip out of her. The trick to waterboarding someone is to get the water ice cold, then you fill their lungs with it. Then pull it all out the way it came and let them talk. Then you keep doing it. Eventually I got a name, the man behind Xcell.
----------------------------
A few days later my sister showed up unannounced at Safe Harbor. I guess that’s just what the police do.
Safe Harbor was a converted warehouse with a few bunk beds, some drapes over the broken windows, and the basic amenities. It had taken years but it was starting to seem less like just a shelter and more like a home. There were six kids staying here for now, four metas, and two with just no place to go.
It had been at least a year since Kate and I had seen each other. Corey happened to be home when Kate showed up, and quickly ducked out the back when she saw a woman in uniform. Not all of the kids had had golden records with RPD, but Kate wasn’t here for them. I was folding laundry in a back corner when she eventually found me; not that I was hiding.
My sister was just a little bit shorter than me, with big green eyes and the same tow white blond hair. Ever since she used to be Nova-girl and I used be Torrent, people could see the family resemblence.
“Hey Danny.”
“Hey Kate. How’s the job.”
I kept folding my laundry. She stared into me. She seemed incredulous as to my answers before I ever answered.
“Its not great,” she said, ”In fact its about to get a lot worse. Did you know a girl by the name of Elle Woods? People called her Phase.”
“Yeah I knew Elle.”
“Knew,” she said, focusing on the tense, “so then I guess you know what happened to her.”
“She died.”
“You know what from?”
I shook my head and kept folding my laundry.
“We’re not sure either,” Kate said, “but I think it looks like a overdose, though at first we weren’t sure to what.”
“Uh-huh”
“But,” she said, “then we had another body to follow up on. A woman connected to Elle, a suicide maybe. She had drowned in her bathtub. And she he had quite a supply of unknown drugs in her apartment. Apparently she was Elle’s manager or friend; we’re not entirely sure. Someone named Mamba.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did Elle ever talk about her?”
I stepped back from the dryer, and shook my head.
“No I don’t think so, but I don’t know everything the kids get up to; I’m not their dad.”
“That’s odd,” Kate said. She had to drag out what she said next, “because a lot of people at Liberte said they saw the three of you arguing two nights ago. Just a few hours before they both died. That true?”
“Yeah,” I replied, “I wanted Elle to come back here. She said no, then I left. That was the last time I saw her.”
“Then how did you already know she was dead when I came in here?”
“Word travels fast,” I said, “and Safe Harbor is filled with lots of kids who like to gossip.”
“Really. You sure you didn’t know because Mamba told you?”
“How could I? You just said Mamba was dead.”
“Don’t play stupid with me.”
I laughed. It still hurt, but I still laughed.
“Kate I swear, one of my kids just died and I had seen her a few minutes before it happened. I tried to help and I couldn’t even get close. If I don’t feel stupid now, then I don’t know when I aught to…”
Kate didn’t say anything. A lone voice haunted the inside of my head, and I couldn’t stop it from coming out.
“We will be strangled by our victories. That means that no matter how hard you fight, they’re going to die anyway.”
She shook her head.
“You can’t still let that get to you.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” she said. She was lying.
“Look,” she said, her voice turning stern, “If we had enough to arrest you, I would. And if I have to come back again it will be with the rest of meta-squad, and we will take you in, so if there’s anything you to say before then, do it now and I will do my best to look into it.”
“Right. Well there is one thing… I don’t know much about drugs, but if you think Elle OD’d, then there’s someone you should look for. John Krugman.”
She sighed, exasperated.
“Who’s the fuck John Krugman, Danny?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “all I could get was a name. But I wish you the best of luck, hero.”
