Chapter Thirteen: Eve (2)

  I shuffle out of the clinic bathroom in jeans that reek of smoke and terror-sweat and a borrowed hoodie that's two sizes too big. My actual jacket is gone, burned and ripped to shreds during the attack, and the absence feels like a missing tooth I can't stop tonguing. My skin still feels like it’s wearing yesterday, smoke ground into pores, adrenaline dried into salt.

  The nurse, a tired woman with the kind of face that's seen every variety of human stupidity, catches me at the door.

  The hoodie they gave me is gray and says "PROPERTY OF UNIVERSITY HEALTH SERVICES" across the back in faded letters, which is both depressing and vaguely threatening. Like I'm institutional property now. Like I've been claimed.

  "You need to rest," she tells me, exhausted patience in her voice. "Concussion symptoms can worsen. You could have a seizure. You could collapse. You could. . ."

  "I'll be fine," I lie, because what else am I supposed to say? Sorry, can't rest, my best friend is missing and I'm the only person who seems to give a shit?

  The nurse's mouth thins into a line. She knows I'm lying. I know she knows. We're both pretending this conversation matters.

  "Your body will make you rest eventually," she says, something almost sympathetic in her eyes. "Whether you want to or not."

  "Great," I mutter. "Something to look forward to."

  She sighs and hands me discharge instructions I'm definitely not going to read, plus a bottle of painkillers that rattles when I shove it in my pocket. The instructions are printed on cheerful yellow paper with a cartoon sun in the corner, which feels wildly inappropriate given the circumstances. The sun is smiling. Which feels obscene. Like, yes, thank you, Clip-art Sun, I'll be sure to avoid strenuous activity while my best friend is missing.

  "Good luck," the nurse says, before leaving.

  Outside, the university looks like a military base wearing a costume for Halloween.

  Humvees squat on the quad like metal predators, obscenely out of place next to bike racks and wooden benches. Their tires have torn up the grass, leaving muddy tracks that cut through what used to be a nice lawn where people played frisbee and pretended to study. Soldiers stand at every building entrance, checking IDs with the kind of thoroughness that makes you feel guilty even when you haven't done anything. Yellow caution tape flutters in the cold wind, wrapped around trees and lampposts, making a soft plastic rustling that sets my teeth on edge.

  Someone's set up a checkpoint at the main path, complete with metal detectors and a table where they're making students empty their bags. A girl in front of the line is crying quietly while a soldier rifles through her backpack, pulling out textbooks and a lunch container and a stuffed animal keychain that looks handmade.

  A helicopter passes overhead, low enough that I can feel the thump of the rotors in my chest. The rotor wash tugs at the caution tape like even the wind wants to peel it off and run. It rattles my ribs like it’s checking for loose parts.

  Welcome to campus. Please enjoy your education in our newly militarized hellscape. Coffee and existential dread available in the student union. A student union banner flaps in the distance, and I want to laugh until I choke.

  I'm halfway down the clinic steps when I hear footsteps running up behind me.

  "Eve! Eve, wait!"

  I turn, and there's Cindy, not in her Lumina costume, just in jeans and a North Face jacket, ponytail bouncing as she jogs toward me. She looks normal. Like the girl I've known since freshman orientation, not like the newly government-sanctioned superhero with a marketing team. Her cheeks are flushed from running, and there's a coffee stain on her jacket sleeve that makes me feel weirdly emotional. Like, yes, superheroes get coffee stains. They're still people under the branding.

  "Go away," I say, but there's no heat in it. I'm too tired for heat.

  Cindy catches up, slightly breathless, and falls into step beside me. "I'm walking you home."

  "I don't need an escort."

  "Too bad. You're getting one anyway." She adjusts her jacket, and there's something determined in her expression that I recognize, the same look she gets when she's decided something and no amount of arguing will change her mind. It's the look she had when she insisted on being my lab partner in Chemistry 101 even though I told her I was terrible at science. We nearly set the lab on fire. Fey had yelled at us for being careless, but she still helped us clean up.

  I sigh, too exhausted to fight. "Where's your watcher?"

  Cindy laughs and holds up her wrist. A slim silver bracelet catches the afternoon light, a tiny red light blinking steadily on its surface. "Oh, it's right here."

  "Cindy. . ."

  "It's okay," she says quickly, seeing my expression. "Really. It's a small price to pay to have powers. I mean, yeah, they know where I am all the time, but..." She shrugs, like she's trying to convince herself as much as me. "It's worth it. Right?"

  The bracelet looks expensive. Sleek. Like something Apple would design if they got into the surveillance business.

  "Does it come off?" I ask instead.

  "Technically, yes. But if it's removed for more than sixty seconds they send someone to check on you." She says it casually, like having government agents show up at your door for taking off a bracelet is just a normal part of life now.

  "What can you do? Your power, I mean."

  Her face brightens a little, and I feel guilty for changing the subject but also relieved that she's letting me. "I can glow, like really bright. Like, my whole body. It's not super useful in combat or anything, but they said when I graduate they have an assignment for me, they weren't super specific."

  "So where do you go? After?"

  Cindy kicks at a loose piece of concrete. "No idea. They don't tell you till you're done with the training." She glances at me, then away. "Could be anywhere. Like, literally anywhere. Another state. Overseas. Wherever they decide they need you."

  "And if you don't want to go?"

  "I mean. . . you don't really get to say no. That's the whole thing. You get powers, you register, you train, they tell you where to go, what to do." She shrugs, but her shoulders stay tense. "That's just how it works."

  The way she says it, so matter-of-fact, like signing your entire life over to the government is just normal, makes something twist in my stomach.

  I take a breath. Letting some of the anger leak out with it.

  We walk in silence for a moment, passing another checkpoint. The soldier manning it looks about nineteen, barely older than us, and he's holding his rifle like he's not entirely sure what to do with it. His eyes track us as we pass, and I resist the urge to flip him off.

  And that's when I see it.

  Behind Cindy, maybe twenty feet away, the air opens.

  There's no warning, no buildup, no dramatic music. One second the quad is normal, and the next second there's a hole in reality.

  The edges of the hole stretch and twist, reality bending around it like fabric pulled too tight as it grows wider and wider. The air around it shimmers with heat distortion, and there's a sound, low and grinding, like tectonic plates scraping together, like the universe is clearing its throat. Symbols appear around the hole, familiar ones. . .

  "Oh fuck," I say, realizing it’s the same portal from the stadium. My mouth says it. My body agrees.

  My blood turns to ice.

  "Cindy. . ." I start to say.

  Yelling erupts from inside the portal. Distant, muffled, like it's coming from underwater or through walls. Multiple voices, overlapping, frantic. I can't understand the words but I can hear the tone, panic, desperation, the kind of screaming people do when something's deeply wrong.

  The portal coughs. Reality gags. And then it spits.

  A giant squid monster is ejected from the hole in reality, tentacles flailing, trailing something that might be slime or blood or both. It's moving fast, launched like a missile, like something on the other side picked it up and threw it through the portal with enough force to send it flying.

  Its skin is dark blue, almost black, I can't tell and I don't want to look close enough to find out. Its tentacles, writhing independently like they each have their own brain. Its circular maw is the size of a car door, snapping open and closed with a sound like breaking bones.

  And it screams. A sound that shouldn't come from anything with a mouth, high-pitched and grinding and wet all at once.

  The monster crashes into the quad in front of us with an impact that shakes the ground, that I feel through my bones, that makes car alarms start wailing in the parking lot. The sound is enormous, a bass-drop crunch that I feel in my teeth, in my spine, in the back of my skull. Chunks of concrete and dirt spray everywhere. A bench gets crushed flat. A bike rack crumples like aluminum foil.

  But it's not fully through yet. One of its tentacles is still trailing back through the portal, still reaching into the darkness on the other side of the opening, still connected to whatever's on the other side. The tentacle trembles like it’s being held on the other side, like a hand hasn’t let go yet. It’s stretched taut like a grotesque umbilical cord linking it to wherever it came from.

  Cindy screams.

  Her hand clamps around my wrist and she's pulling, dragging me away from the portal, away from the monster, running on pure instinct.

  "Move move move!" She screams.

  But I'm not looking at the monster.

  I'm looking at the portal.

  Because I know, somehow, that's where Fey is.

  The portal's still open. I look closer and I can see movement on the other side. Shadows. Shapes. Something that might be buildings or might be trees or might be something else entirely. It's like looking through a window into a room that's too dark to see properly, where you can sense there's something there but you can't make out details.

  I tear my hand out of Cindy's grip and sprint toward the portal instead.

  "EVE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"

  I don't answer. Can't answer. Because, I know, somehow, that Fey is on the other side of that portal. My legs are pumping, heart hammering.

  "IT'S RIGHT THERE!" Cindy's voice cracks with panic. "EVE, THE MONSTER IS RIGHT THERE!"

  She thinks I'm running toward the monster. She thinks I've lost my mind, that the concussion finally broke something important in my brain, that I'm about to get myself killed running toward the giant squid thing instead of away from it.

  I'm maybe ten feet from the portal when I hear Cindy's footsteps falter behind me.

  "Wait. Wait, what is. . ."

  Her voice changes. Goes from panicked to confused to something uncertain.

  "The air looks. . ." She trails off.

  I risk a glance back. Cindy's slowed to a jog, then a walk, her eyes fixed on the space in front of me. Her head tilts slightly, like she's trying to see something from a different angle. Like when you're looking at one of those optical illusions and your brain can't quite process what it's seeing.

  "Do you see that?" she says, quieter now. "It's like. . . it's shimmering. Like heat waves, but. . ." Her eyes keep sliding off it like it’s an optical trick her brain refuses to host. Then, like a picture snapping into focus, her attention hooks, and she goes still. She takes a step closer, and her expression shifts. Confusion giving way to something else. Her eyes widen slightly. Her hand comes up, pointing, but the gesture is uncertain, like she's not sure what she's pointing at.

  "There's something. . ." Her voice is barely above a whisper now. "Eve, there's something wrong with the space there. It's. . . it's not. . ."

  Another step. Her eyes are locked on the portal now, and I can see the moment she starts actually seeing it.

  The hole in reality.

  Her face goes white.

  "Oh my god." Her hand goes to her mouth. "Oh my god."

  She rubs her eyes with her free hand, hard, like she's trying to clear a hallucination. Like her brain is refusing to process what she's seeing. When she opens them again, the portal's still there, and the look on her face is pure horror.

  "That's. . . that's a. . ." She can't finish the sentence. Can't make herself say it. "You weren't. . . it was real. The portal was real."

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Her voice cracks on the last word.

  But I'm already turning back to the portal because I hear something. . .

  Fey's voice. Unmistakable. It has the same tone, the same expression.

  "Close close close close CLOSE!"

  Desperate. Terrified. So close it's like she's right there, like if I just reached through I could grab her hand. . .

  "FEY!" I scream, lungs burning. "FEY, I'M HERE!"

  Behind me, the monster roars.

  It's wet and grinding and furious, like a building collapsing into a garbage disposal, like metal tearing underwater, like every nightmare sound compressed into one impossible noise.

  The ground shakes as it gets to its feet, or whatever passes for feet when you're a giant squid monster from who knows where. I hear concrete cracking, metal groaning, people screaming.

  I'm five feet from the portal when a tentacle the size of a tree trunk slams into the ground beside me.

  The impact throws me sideways. I hit the pavement hard, shoulder and hip taking the brunt of it, pain exploding through my side like someone set off a firecracker under my skin. My head bounces off concrete and the world goes white for a second, sound cutting out, vision swimming. There's a taste like copper in my mouth. Blood, probably. Or maybe I bit my tongue. Hard to tell when everything hurts.

  When my senses come back, the portal is closing.

  Like an eye winking shut. Like reality stitching itself back together, pulling the wound closed. The black void shrinks, edges pulling inward, and the monster's tentacle is still trailing through it, still connected to who knows where.

  The portal snaps shut. No ceremony. No mercy. Just the universe deciding the conversation is over. A door slammed in my face by someone who knows I’m outside.

  The tentacle severs.

  There's a spray of something dark and viscous, too thick to be blood. It arcs through the air in a grotesque fountain, splattering across the quad, across the concrete, across a parked car that immediately starts to smoke where the liquid hits it.

  The monster screams.

  The sound is even more horrific now, pain layered over rage, and it's thrashing.

  "No!" I try to push myself up but my arms won't cooperate, won't hold my weight. Everything's shaking. My vision's doubled. "No no no, FEY!"

  And I can still hear Fey's voice, fainter now, distant, fading. I could hear her. . . faintly like someone trying to speak underwater. She was still screaming, saying a name. . . one I didn't recognize. Not mine. Not hers. Someone else’s, someone on the other side.

  And then she's gone.

  Again.

  The monster thrashes, tentacles smashing into benches and lampposts, and students are screaming, running in every direction, and somewhere in the distance sirens are wailing.

  And then the heroes arrive.

  Mudman and a second hero I don't recognize appear. Mudman drops from the sky and lands in a three-point superhero pose. His black costume is somehow even darker in the afternoon light. Then a woman in red and gold with lightning crackling around her fists floats down towards the ground, her costume all sharp angles and metallic accents. She is hovering about three feet off the ground, electricity arcing between her fingers, and her mask covers her whole face except for her mouth, which is pulled into a confident smirk.

  Camera drones swoop in from nowhere, little flying robots with lenses that catch the light. They circle the heroes like mechanical vultures, getting the good angles.

  The monster roars again and lunges toward a cluster of fleeing students.

  "MUD WALL!" Mudman shouts, slamming his fists into the ground.

  A wall of mud erupts from the earth like a breaking wave, shooting up between the monster and the students. It's massive, easily fifteen feet tall, three feet thick. The tentacle hits it mid-swing and the impact cracks the hardened mud but holds.

  "CIVILIANS, EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY!" the lightning hero shouts, voice amplified and echoing. Her voice has that processed quality, like it's being run through speakers.

  I'm still on the ground, trying to get my body to work, trying to breathe through the pain in my ribs and the ringing in my ears. Everything hurts. My shoulder feels like someone hit it with a hammer. My head is pounding in time with my heartbeat.

  The fight explodes around me.

  "LIGHTNING STRIKE!" The red-and-gold hero throws her hands forward and a bolt of electricity arcs from her palms, bright enough to leave afterimages. It hits the monster's center mass with a crack like thunder, and the smell of ozone floods the air.

  The monster catches the lightning.

  One of its tentacles whips up and the electricity just. . . absorbs into it. The tentacle glows for a second, crackling with stolen energy, and then the monster throws the lightning back.

  "SCATTER!" Mudman yells.

  The lightning bolt hits a Humvee and the vehicle explodes, flipping end over end, windows shattering, metal shrieking. Soldiers dive for cover. Someone's screaming into a radio.

  The monster is fast. It slams a tentacle into the spot where Mudman just was.

  "MUD SPEAR!" Mud erupts from the ground behind the monster, a massive spike of hardened mud shooting up like a javelin, aimed at the monster's back.

  The monster twists and bats the spear aside with a tentacle. The hardened mud shatters, chunks flying everywhere.

  One of them hurtles toward me.

  I see it coming.

  Time doesn't slow down. There's no dramatic music. My life doesn't flash before my eyes. There's just a chunk of heavy compacted mud, flying at my face, and my brain screaming MOVE but my body won't listen. . .

  And then my hands come up on instinct.

  And fire explodes from my palms.

  An inferno.

  It erupts from my hands like I've opened a gate to hell itself, a roaring column of flame that shoots forward with enough force to knock me backward, bright enough to turn the gray afternoon overcast into blazing noon. The heat is immediate and overwhelming, a wave that makes the air shimmer and warp, that I can feel in my lungs, in my bones, in every cell of my body.

  The mud ceases to exist. One second it's there, the next it's gone, not even ash, just gone.

  And the fire keeps going.

  It streams from my hands in a continuous blast, and I can't stop it, can't control it, can't do anything but feel it pouring out of me like I'm a broken hydrant and fire is water.

  The flames hit the monster.

  And the monster screams.

  "WHAT THE!?" Mudman's voice, shocked, distant.

  The monster thrashes, tentacles flailing wildly, trying to put out flames that won't go out. It slams into the ground, into buildings, into itself, and the fire just spreads. One tentacle catches another and suddenly both are burning. It rolls and the grass ignites. It crashes into a bench and the wood explodes into flame.

  And I still can't stop. I try to think of water, of snow, of anything cold, I try to clench my fists and the fire just squeezes out between my knuckles.

  My arms are shaking. My whole body is shaking. There's something inside my chest that feels like a furnace, like I've swallowed the sun, and it's trying to get out through my hands. The fire keeps coming, keeps pouring out, and I'm dimly aware that I'm screaming.

  "EVE!" Cindy's voice, terrified. "EVE, STOP!"

  I can't.

  I don't know how.

  The monster is fully engulfed now, a writhing mass of flame and dying flesh, and the smell is horrific, burnt rubber and rotten fish and something sweet and wrong that makes my stomach heave. But the fire doesn't care. It eats. Consumes. Destroys.

  "She's out of control!" the lightning hero shouts. "Someone stop her before. . ."

  "MUD WALL!" Mudman slams his hands down and hardened mud erupts around me.

  But the flames are so hot the mud starts to glow. Cracks appear. The wall is melting.

  And then something inside me breaks. Like a dam giving way, like a rope snapping, like whatever was holding the fire back just lets go.

  The flames explode outward.

  A shockwave of heat and light that blasts in every direction, that shatters Mudman's wall like glass, that makes the heroes dive for cover, that turns every window in a fifty-foot radius into glittering rain.

  The monster doesn't scream anymore.

  Because there's nothing left to scream with.

  When the light clears the monster is gone.

  There's a crater where it was. A perfect circle of scorched earth, still glowing red-hot at the edges, smoke rising in thick columns. The concrete is melted, pooled like wax. The grass is ash. Even the air looks wrong, shimmering with residual heat.

  "What the. . ." I start, but my voice comes out hoarse, raw, like I've been screaming for hours.

  Maybe I have been.

  "EVE!"

  Cindy's running toward me, face pale, eyes wide with something that might be fear or awe or both. She catches me before I hit the ground, her hands on my arms, and she's saying something but I can't hear it over the ringing, over my own heartbeat thundering in my ears.

  "Not even twenty-one yet. . ." Her voice cuts through, high and shocked. "You're not supposed to. . . how did you. . ."

  The manifestation age. Twenty-one. I'm twenty.

  I'm not supposed to have powers yet.

  I'm definitely not supposed to have powers that can do that.

  The heroes are staring at me.

  Both of them, standing at the edge of the crater, costumes singed and dirty, expressions ranging from shocked to wary to something that might be afraid.

  Mudman's the first to move. He approaches slowly, hands visible, like I'm a wild animal that might bolt. Or attack. "Hey. Hey, it's okay. You're okay. You definitely overcooked that squid."

  "I couldn't stop," I say, and I hate how my voice shakes. "I tried to stop and I couldn't."

  "That's normal," the lightning hero says, but she doesn't sound convinced. She's hovering a few feet off the ground, ready to fly away at a moment's notice. "You'll learn control. That's what the Hero Training is for."

  Training.

  Right.

  Because I just manifested powers in the most public, destructive way possible, in front of cameras and heroes and everyone, and now I'm going to be registered and tracked and. . . owned.

  My stomach lurches.

  "I need to. . ." I pull away from Cindy, stumbling. "I need to go. I need to. . ."

  "You need to stay right there."

  The voice is calm. Professional.

  A man wearing army fatigues is walking toward me across the scorched earth, clipboard somehow still pristine in his hands. The clipboard is so clean it feels obscene.

  "Eve Hart," he says, stopping a careful ten feet away. Close enough to talk. Far enough to dodge if I lose control again. "That was quite a display."

  The way he says it makes my skin crawl.

  "I'm not. . ."

  "Your friend Fey," he says, and my blood turns to ice. "The one who was taken through the portal."

  "What about her?"

  "She's now been classified as a Villain."

  The words hit me like a physical blow.

  "What!?" I screamed, coughing from the effort.

  "She clearly manifested powers during the stadium incident. She failed to register within the mandatory window. She failed to present herself for assessment. And worst of all, she clearly just used her abilities to send a monster into a populated area. Under the Powered Individuals Act, that makes her a Villain." He says it like he's reading a grocery list. Like he's not talking about my best friend's life.

  "She was. . . We don't know. . .” I start to say, barely able to speak from the shock.

  "That's the law." He says, interrupting me. "You, however, manifested during a crisis event. Defended civilians. Neutralized a threat. There's no better origin story to have for our new hero.”

  "I don't want to . . ."

  "What you want is irrelevant." He says, interrupting me with the same tone a parent would use on a child. He turns, then pauses. "You will register within 24 hours. We've made sure of it. Mandatory Hero Course enrollment begins Monday. Don't be late."

  "Wait! You don't understand, Fey isn't!"

  "Oh, and Miss Hart?" He glances back, speaking over me. . . his tone suggesting he could care less about anything I could say. "If you want to help your friend, I suggest you cooperate. Heroes have resources. Villains have prison cells. I fully expect to have an obedient, friendly, and happy new hero on my doorstep within the day, choose wisely."

  He walks away.

  Just like that.

  Leaving me standing in a mess of my own making, hands still smoking, body still shaking, while soldiers secure the perimeter and heroes whisper to each other and Cindy just stares.

  And that's when I hear it.

  Voices. Shouting. Getting closer.

  "Over there!"

  "Is that her?"

  "Get the shot!"

  I turn, and my stomach drops.

  The media.

  They're everywhere. The crowd moves like a single organism with a hundred mouths, hungry for the same thing, my face, my compliance.

  This is what he meant by 'making sure of it'.

  Reporters with microphones, cameramen with equipment, photographers with lenses the size of my arm. They're pushing past the soldiers, ducking under caution tape, shoving each other for position. And above them, dozens of camera drones, circling like mechanical vultures, red recording lights blinking.

  All pointed at me.

  "MISS HART! MISS HART!"

  A woman in a blazer shoves a microphone toward me, her smile too bright, too eager. "Channel 7 News! How does it feel to be a hero?"

  "I'm not. . ."

  "Did you know you had powers before today?" Another reporter, male, pushing closer. "Were you hiding them?"

  "No, I. . ."

  "What's your hero name going to be?" A third voice, younger, breathless with excitement. "When does your training start?"

  "I don't. . ."

  Flash. Flash. Flash.

  Cameras going off like strobe lights, blinding, disorienting. The drones swoop lower, getting close-ups, getting everything. I can see myself on someone's phone screen, wild-eyed, covered in ash, hands still faintly smoking.

  "Miss Hart, what do you have to say to the families of the people you saved?"

  "How did it feel to manifest during combat?"

  "Will you be working with Mudman?”

  "I. . ." My voice comes out strangled. "I need to. . ."

  I run.

  I turn and run, shoving through the crowd, past the wide eyed Cindy being ignored by the reporters, hands up to shield my face from the cameras. Every flash leaves a ghost image behind my eyes. A stuttering slideshow of who they’ve decided I am. Reporters shout after me. Drones follow, their little motors whirring.

  "Miss Hart, wait!"

  "Just one statement!"

  "How does it feel?"

  I don't look back.

  My feet pound against the pavement. My lungs burn. My hands are smoking again, trailing wisps of gray that the cameras are definitely catching, that will definitely be on the news tonight, that will definitely be everywhere.

  Hero Manifests Powers During Monster Attack!

  New Pyrokinetic Saves Campus!

  Who Is Eve Hart?

  I run until the voices fade.

  Until the flashes stop.

  Until I can't hear the drones anymore.

  I run until I'm alone in an alley between buildings, back pressed against cold brick, chest heaving, hands shaking so hard I have to clench them into fists to make them stop.

  And even then, even in the silence, I can still hear it.

  How does it feel to be a hero?

  How does it feel?

  How does it feel?

  I slide down the wall until I'm sitting on the ground.

  Fey is out there, classified as a villain, being hunted.

  And I'm here, being turned into a hero whether I want it or not.

  I look at my hands.

  They're still smoking.

  Still glowing faintly at the edges.

  Still ready to burn.

  And I think, with a clarity that cuts through the panic, through the fear, through everything:

  They want a hero? Fine. I'll be their hero.

  I'll smile for their cameras and answer their questions and wear whatever uniform they give me.

  I'll learn everything they can teach me about being a hero.

  And then I'll use it to find Fey.

  And if I have to burn down their whole system to do it?

  I look at my hands again.

  At the smoke.

  At the heat still coiled inside me, waiting.

  Well.

  Good thing I got fire.