One More Day (11 page)

“Maybe it was faulty, or old, or something?” Dani said. Her voice was a little hoarse, which wasn’t surprising after the damage she’d just done.

Jenson was staring fixedly at Maddoc. Then she walked over to Maddoc and took his original dampener off. It sat below the two thin metal rings we’d just put around his throat. She held it in her hands and inspected it closely.

“I’m going to see if Beta will take a look at this when he gets back. If it failed on its own, we need to know that so we can work on making sure it doesn’t happen again. And if it failed thanks to someone messing with it…”

“I do not even want to think about that,” I muttered.

“That makes two of us, but we need to consider it. We’ve never had one of these fail. Ever. Not even the one you had Marie re-size with her power when you tricked Alpha. That one’s still working perfectly.” Her brow was furrowed, her mouth a thin line.

“How would that even happen?” I asked. Dani leaned in, looking at the faulty tracker.

“I don’t know. If someone disabled it remotely, figured out how to do that somehow, maybe? Or messed with the circuitry somehow. It’s probably nothing. Probably just wore out or something. But I don’t want to leave it to chance.”

I nodded.

“What’s going on with the girl you brought in?” Jenson asked.

“I don’t know. Portia and Steel were walking her down to her cell last I saw.”

“Oh. They had to leave. A call came in about some guy threatening to use his telepathy to destroy his enemies just after the Maddoc stuff started.”

I shook my head and stalked toward the women’s wing again. “I promised her she wouldn’t be locked up alone,” I said. “Damn it.”

“You should rest or something,” Jenson called after me. I didn’t bother answering. I entered the women’s detention wing again, peeking through the cell windows as I walked past them. I found Darla in one of the last cells on the left and hit the button to open the door. She wasn’t manacled into the chair, thankfully. She was sitting, hunched into a little ball, at the far side of the cell.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” she said with a sniffle.

“They made a liar out of me. I promised you wouldn’t be in here alone.”

“They were about to go help you, I think, but then they said there was another bad guy they had to go after. Is it always like that here?”

I shrugged. “Some days are crazier than others.” I sat down near her. Not too close, but close enough that she could talk without raising her voice. And, on the floor, she wouldn’t have to crane her neck to look up at me. Hopefully, it would put her more at ease.

Like that was even possible.

“I’m gonna be stuck here forever now, aren’t I? They can’t just let me go, because what if I hurt someone? They’ll be worried that I’ll be the type of person they have to chase down.” She closed her eyes, then rested her forehead on her knees.

“Look, the stuff you did was pretty minor, right?” I asked her. I mean, considering the damage she could have done, setting one house on fire when she was under stress wasn’t all that serious. “Just sit tight for a while, and Steel will work something out so you can get out of here.”

“Yeah?” she asked. Her eyes were still red from crying. Big brown eyes, full of fear and innocence. Had I ever been that young? I wondered. I doubted I’d ever been that innocent.

The one thing I did know is that having a kid here felt every kind of wrong. I remembered, way back when I’d first started working with Damian, that his dream had been to open a school for super powered kids, a place where they could feel like they belonged. Where they could feel safe.

It really sucked that he was a villain now. Because undoubtedly, if his little dream ever happened at this point, it would be to train a bunch of little super villains. Maybe it was something we should think about, though.

And as soon as I had the thought, I wanted to laugh. Yeah. Us. StrikeForce. We could barely manage ourselves, let alone training and being responsible for anyone else. We were a national, and probably an international, joke. Until very recently, the team had gotten its collective ass kicked almost every time it faced off against a villain. Now, our problem, more often than not, was that when a fight broke out, our enemies were usually whisked away by the teleporter they had on their side. So now the jokes were about how often we lose our villains.

So maybe we shouldn’t be the ones to train the next generation of super heroes. But somebody should. Because then we wouldn’t have to wonder what to do when an eleven year old girl sets a house on fire because she’s stressed out over the crazy way her powers make her feel, which was what I guessed had happened.

“I know this is all kind of scary, probably,” I continued. “You’re not going to be here for long, Darla.”

“I didn’t mean to do it,” she said in a tiny voice.

“I know you didn’t,” I said. I rested my back against the wall. “I made a big mess when I first got my powers. Way worse than what you did.”

She looked at me, and I was relieved to have grabbed her interest. Anything was better than the terrified way she’d looked since we’d brought her in. “Yeah? What are your powers? I mean, I know you can fly.”

I nodded. “I can fly. Super strength, super stamina.”

“Were you scared when your powers showed up?” she asked, looking down.

“At first I was. It’s scary. You feel all messed up inside, right? Like you’re going to burst, and you don’t know why.”

She nodded, watching me.

“I felt like I forgot how to just do normal things, at first. I’d go to open a door, and I’d end up ripping the knob off, because my strength was more than I was used to. Sometimes, I’d open a door, and I’d end up taking it off of its hinges.”

She laughed.

“And don’t get me started on the first time I flew,” I said, shaking my head.

“Tell me!”

So I told her. About how free I felt. And then about how I couldn’t figure out how to land. I told it all, including the way I’d face-planted into the field behind a local school when I’d finally made it down. By the time it was done, she was laughing freely, and I couldn’t help but laugh along.

“So how’d you manage to deal with it?”

I paused, shrugged. “The thing with the crazy, full feeling is that you have to use your powers. It’s the only way to not feel like you’re losing it. Obviously, you’ll have to be careful about that. See if your parents can track down a big steel drum or one of those patio fire pits or something. Set fires there to release some of the pressure. The rest of it is just trying to be calm. I’m not good at that part.” I told her about some of the calming exercises my doctor had given me after my injury from fighting Maddoc. I knew it was essentially meditation, but she didn’t call it that, probably because she figured I’d brush it aside. At this point, though, I’d try just about anything to make the nightmares and anxiety go away.

“I destroyed our house,” she said in a small voice, as if she’d just realized it.

I thought of the money sitting in the accounts Luther had helped me set up. Much more than I could ever use. More than StrikeForce would need for a while. I’d gotten a good amount of it before Jenson had frozen Alpha’s accounts. I could keep the team afloat with some of it after we lost access to Alpha’s money, which was bound to happen eventually. I had plans for a bit more of it, but there was still a lot left.

“We have a program… thing,” I said. “We’ll get you guys into another house. I’m pretty sure yours is not livable anymore.”

“You’d do that?”

I nodded. “Um. When you get out, tell your parents about it, and once you guys find a good place, have them call me here.”

She studied me. “Well, how much can we spend? I mean, what’s the budget?”

I shook my head. “Tell you what. You guys find something in a neighborhood that works for you, and then tell me how much you need for it and we’ll go from there.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Well, I’m assuming you aren’t going to go nuts. No gold toilets or any shit like that.” I winced. “Excuse the language. Damn it.”

“I’ve seen videos of you fighting. You say a lot worse than that,” she said with a laugh.

“Shh. They’re going to take away my official superhero badge if that gets out,” I said with a laugh, and she joined in.

We were still laughing when the doors whooshed open, and Amy and Jenson stepped in. “I’m sorry we had to step out on you, Darla. Your mom and dad are here,” Amy said. “I talked to them, and we’re going to let you out of here now, but we’re going to keep an eye on you. We need you to be careful, okay? I don’t want you back here like this.”

“Same here,” she said.

She stood up and Jenson, Amy, and I walked her out to the lobby, where her parents, the woman we’d met at the scene and a graying man with the same kind eyes as his daughter, waited anxiously.

“We talked, we tried to give her some ideas for how to handle the stress,” I said to her mother, who nodded, and kept her arms around her daughter. “As we’ve seen now, stress seems to trigger it, which is totally normal,” I assured her. “So I gave her some things to practice for calming down, things my own doctor has me doing to help me deal with stress.”

“Thank you so much,” her father said.

“It was no problem at all. We were happy to help, and, more importantly, happy that we were able to talk to Darla before she started fearing her powers.” I met Darla’s eyes. “Your powers are nothing to fear, kiddo. They’re you. One more facet of you, but you’re still the person you’ve always been. Just… more.”

She nodded, then reached out and hugged me for a moment before pulling away.

“Call if you need anything,” I told her. “If you need to talk, or you’re feeling stressed, or you just have questions or whatever. Call the StirkeForce line, and if you want to talk to me, they’ll put you through to me or have me call you back. Or if you want to talk to Steel or Portia or Jenson or whoever. And about the other thing we talked about.”

“I can really do that?”

“You really can. Don’t hesitate to call if you want. Okay?”

After a few more moments of chatting, Darla and her parents left. Jenson and I watched them walk out, past the guards.

“You were very good with her,” Jenson said quietly. I shrugged. She nudged me with her elbow. “That’s the Jolene I know is in there. That’s the Daystar I believe in. You’re holding onto the thief thing, and I think you don’t even know why anymore, do you?” she asked, and I didn’t answer. “You’re so much more. I’ve seen you grow into who you are, bit by bit over the last few weeks. You need to let that old crap go. Be the hero everyone other than you already knows you to be.”

“It’s easy for you to say that,” I pointed out. “Look at you. Former soldier, police officer. I bet you started as a safety patrol kid in elementary school or some shit like that, didn’t you?”

Jenson rolled her eyes and started walking back toward the elevator.

“You did, didn’t you?” I asked with a laugh.

“For your information, my first position was lunch room helper.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “Did you have a badge?” I teased.

“You bet I did,” she answered.

“See?”

“See what?”

“You were born to be the hero. You’ve probably never done a stupid thing in your entire life. You’re the most sickeningly together person I’ve ever known, Jenson.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Ugh.”

Jenson laughed. “I was a good girl growing up. And I stuck to the straight and narrow mainly because my parents put the fear of God in me at an early age. They were strict, and I never stepped a toe out of line.”

I watched her. Jenson never talks much about herself. She’s probably my closest friend on the team, with Caine coming in a close second, probably, but I know almost nothing about her.

“But I’ve done stupid things. Made mistakes,” she said with a small nod. “There are things I’ve done that I’d love to go back and undo, but I can’t. All I can do is keep moving forward and trying to be the best version of myself I can be.”

“The best version of yourself,” I murmured. “That sounds like you’re pretending, or acting, or something.”

She shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes, all I want to do is haul off and smack some of the people we work with, not to mention the ones we try to apprehend. Sometimes, all I want to do is walk away, take my savings and find a nice little tropical island somewhere where nobody needs me to do anything for them.”

“You could do that,” I said.

“I could,” she agreed. “I definitely could. But that’s not the person I’m trying to be. It’s not the version of myself that I’m working toward. You’re right about me. I want to at least try to be a hero. I want to be the type of person people know they can count on. That’s not the kind of person who runs off when they know they’re needed.”

The elevator doors opened on our floor, and Jenson and I walked down the corridor toward where our suites were located.

“I mean, you must have had bigger dreams for yourself once upon a time,” she said. “No little kid grows up saying ‘I want to be a thief when I grow up!’”

“I did.”

“You are so full of shit, Faraday,” Jenson said. “Wishing you and your mom had more money is not the same as saying that you dreamed of being a person who stole stuff from other people.”

We reached my door and I pressed my thumb to the keypad. “You’re right,” I said.

“Of course. So what did you want to be when you grew up?” she asked.

“A space pirate.”

Jenson shook her head and gave me an irritated look that I couldn’t help laughing at. “You are the worst,” she said.

“I know.” I grinned at her.

“Seriously. Just the worst.” She started walking across the hall toward her suite.

“And you’re always hanging out with me, so what does that make you?” I shot back, still grinning.

She turned to look back at me after getting her door open. “I represent the better angels of your nature. Good night. Try not to steal anything.”

I gave her a one finger salute, which she returned, and then I closed my door and peeled off my uniform as I made my way to my bedroom. I wanted salty, crunchy snacks and something to watch that had nothing to do with heroes or villains or anything even remotely resembling my life.