Superheroes Anonymous (19 page)

He fumbled the sandwich. “You know about that?”

“Naomi called, and she set it to video. I'm surprised Chelsea went with pink and white.” I eyed him up and down, biting my tongue before I could ask him about the blast he'd sustained from Chelsea's stinging powers. Had it even hurt him? He looked tired and disheveled but not in pain.

“Were you expecting her to take up a costume?” Guy asked, giving me an odd look.

“Everybody does eventually, right? You have to stand out as a beacon. Part of the superhero-­slash-­villain way.”

“You have a point. Are you going to finish that?” Guy asked, pointing at the fourth sandwich. I pushed it over to him. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who could burn through calories faster than a fire through dry brush. I got up to refill my glass, pouring one for Guy as well. He accepted it with a nod of thanks since his mouth was full. While he ate, I filled him in on the conversation with Naomi, including the bits of the fight I'd seen and the fact that she wanted to meet.

“Have you considered maybe they're working together?” Guy asked once I'd finished.

“What?”

“They might be trying to draw you out. Their goal might be you, Gail. The bank may have been an elaborate setup, and this might be the final piece of the trap.”

I blinked at him. “But why? I'm not anybody special. Everybody who kidnapped or attacked me, they were always doing that just to get to you. I was their consolation prize.”

“Or collateral damage,” Guy said, looking grim. But he shook his head quickly, possibly to ward off dark thoughts. “Maybe it has something to do with Mobius? He did this to you”—­he gestured at me, vaguely—­“and then he disappeared, and nobody can find the bastard to get either a cure for you or an explanation. Maybe these two are connected. Didn't you say you met Naomi right before Mobius attacked you?”

“Yeah, but even if I did—­connected, Guy? I don't know if I can give Mobius that much credit. He seemed like he genuinely was trying to turn me into an addict rather than a Class C.”

“The man was in Detmer for a reason, Gail. He's crazy, and he's dangerous.”

“But it doesn't make sense,” I said, shaking my head.

“By its very definition, crazy doesn't have to make sense.”

“I was the one to seek out Naomi at that bank, not the other way around.”

“Subliminal suggestions?” Guy said. “Or maybe you were convinced to do so in that time you don't remember. You said there's a lot of time that's just blank.”

I thought back to the bank heist, and my conviction wavered. The timing
was
awfully convenient, given that I'd met up with Naomi twice and had ended up facing off against a villain shortly afterward each time. “I don't know,” I finally said. “It doesn't feel like they're in cahoots.”

He conceded with a nod. “All right. You're one of the best judges of character I know, so I'm inclined to go with your gut.”

I gave him a weird look. “Guy, I worked with you every day for two years, and I had no idea you were the one scooping me off railroad tracks and buildings alike.”

“So?”

“So I think maybe I'd have noticed if I'm such a great judge of character.”

“You're allowed one fatal flaw. It's the hero way.” He finished the last sandwich and gave me a tired grin. I shook my head at him, but, of course, I wanted to smile back. “What were you up to before I got here?”

“Just reading the Domino.” I got up to rinse off the plate, talking over the sound of the faucet. ­“People think you've gotten boring now that Jeremy's become a recluse, by the way.”

“They're not wrong,” Guy said.

I stuck my tongue out at him for that. “Well, there aren't any worries that ­people are figuring out you're a redhead anytime soon, so there's that. Bolt's been accused of taking up-­skirt shots again, and the Great Superb-­O has officially come clean about who he is. I mean, we all knew who he was after those pictures of Kirstie Wentworth kissing him with the mask off came out, but it's nice that they've decided to go public now.”

I'd meant to go on—­Kirstie Wentworth was pretty famous, and the gossip about her was always interesting—­but
something
made me stop though I wasn't sure what. I straightened like I could actually sense the change in the air. Curious, I turned around.

Guy had gone rigid.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

He shook his head, but I could see the tension in his shoulders and jaw. “No,” he said, and his voice was almost normal. I probably wouldn't have noticed the difference prior to my little run-­in with my isotope-­dosing supervillain, but now the unease was so obvious, it almost shouted at me. “No, I'm fine.”

“Uh, okay. Did I cross a line or something? What's going on?”

“Nothing.” Guy's jaw worked for a second. He wasn't glaring. In fact, he seemed to be struggling to keep a very pleasant look on his face. “I'm just a little tired after my fight, and I probably stink. I should have gone straight to my apartment instead of coming here and bothering you.”

“I don't mind the company,” I said, doing my best not to squint at him. “In fact, I'm glad you dropped by.”

For a second, the tension eased a bit. His smile certainly seemed less forced. “I'm glad.”

I opened my mouth to ask if he knew the Great Superb-­O or something, if that was what was bothering him, but he cleared his throat. “I've taken up too much of your time tonight,” he said. “I'm sure you want to get back to reading or whatever. Thanks for the food, and good night.”

He didn't sprint for the door, but he didn't amble, either. Ten seconds later, I stood in my kitchen with a wet plate still in my hand, completely alone. I looked around for any clue that might explain it. “What the hell just happened?”

 

Chapter Eighteen

S
OMETHING WAS UP
with Guy.

Outside, the world was wondering at a new supervillain powerful enough to fight off both Blaze and Plain Jane. At Davenport, I wondered about Guy. He'd sent a text message the morning after our incident, a brief apology and a thanks for the sandwiches, with no explanation. I'd replied, only to receive silence in return. Vicki, who dropped by on her way out of town for a fashion shoot in Milan, had mentioned that he had some project at his father's company to handle, so he was probably busy.

Without Guy's company, I threw myself into training with Angélica. We were still working on the core basics, but we'd switched training rooms to an obstacle course. Rather than sparring, we raced across balance beams, low walls, and various pieces of furniture, trying to beat each other. I hadn't a hope of winning, not against a member of the speed team, but it was nice not to take a beating. It wasn't enough to distract me from Guy's weird distance, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

“How come I'm doing this?” I asked Angélica a ­couple of days into the obstacle course, as we were leapfrogging over the same wall.

She leapt straight up to grab the edge of a high wall, while I bounced off a corner and used my momentum to do the same. “Teaching you spatial reasoning,” she said with a grunt.

“No, I got that part.” We both sprinted down a balance beam, her two feet ahead of me. “I meant all of
this
in general. Why didn't I go to Superheroes 101 like everybody else who starts at Davenport?”

We catapulted off the building and into a block pit. Well, I catapulted. Angélica launched herself, seemed to flicker in the air for a second, and in a blink was standing at the edge of the pit. I had to crawl my way free. I clung to the side, panting, since we'd reached the end of the course.

“We talked about this,” Angélica said, and I couldn't quite decipher the look on her face. “The adrenaline should be encouraging the Mobium to integrate faster.”

“But if I'm constantly getting hurt and healing, doesn't it have other things to do? Wouldn't it have just been smarter to wait a little while and see what it does?”

“You said you wanted to be a hero. It seemed the most reasonable to let the isotope integrate with a taste of how you might live normally.”

I gaped up at her and rolled to my feet. “When did I say that?”

“To Cooper? In Medical?” Angélica tilted her head. “You did say it, didn't you?”

“I said nothing of the sort. I said, ‘I have cancer' and possibly some obscenities that I won't repeat here, then you showed up and started beating the crap out of me.”

“Nobody asked you?” Her eyes narrowed.

I thought of Guy and his weird burst of moodiness before he'd vanished, of how I hadn't even realized I was in New York, and of the villains who'd spent years of my life gleefully abducting me. “Asking me things first isn't exactly common. Wait, are you telling me I could have said, ‘I don't want to be a hero' and I could be sitting in a classroom right now? Because right now, that kind of sounds amazing.”

She tossed me my water bottle. “You'll feel better after you hydrate.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Ray Goldstein doesn't have a class going on right now. So you're stuck with me, any way you look at it.”

“Oh, joy,” I said.

She nudged me with a none-­too-­gentle elbow to the rib cage. “Oh, c'mon, get some water in you, and let's try that course again. Maybe this time you'll beat me,” she said, and just like that, the subject was dropped as we ran the course again.

A ­couple of days later, four days into Guy's silence, Naomi still hadn't sent me a meeting location, Mobius hadn't surfaced, and Chelsea was keeping equally mum. Frustrated, I did something I'd never done before on my own: I hit the gym.

Davenport had a gym for general use near the training rooms. I'd never actually gone though Angélica had mentioned I could make use of it whenever I wanted. She'd given me a hard look, which I'd taken to mean that if I didn't hydrate and keep my metabolism balanced properly, those privileges would be rescinded. In truth, I was usually too tired after my sessions with her to bother, but now I was positively brimming with anxious, frustrated energy.

The gym had a small indoor track surrounding a ­couple of basketball courts and some ping-­pong tables. One entire room was dedicated to weight lifting, but I bypassed that in favor of some of the virtual-­reality equipment. I wanted to run on a treadmill like the one Cooper and Kiki had made me use in Medical that first day.

“Well, lookie here,” said a familiar voice, as I claimed one of the free machines, and I turned to see Jeremy grinning at me from the rowing-­machine station behind me. Around him, screens depicted what looked like a crew race. “Haven't seen you down here before. Or in any gym ever, come to think of it.”

“I know,” I said, dumping my bag by the station. I stretched out my hamstring, which had bothered me the day before after a fall on the obstacle course. It was fine now, but my body healed faster than my mind remembered these days. “You always tried so hard to convince me, but alas. It took all of this to get me here. Not that I can say I'm surprised to find you here, though.”

“Once a gym rat, always a gym rat.” Sweat glistened on his skin, and he was breathing hard, but unlike me, he'd always liked that sort of thing. He propped his elbows on his knees, the biceps that I remembered well all but rippling. “How's your head?”

“It's fine.” He'd asked me that every time he'd seen me since the disaster in the simulators. “Haven't felt that weird buzzing at all.”

“That's good. What brings you down here?”

I bounced on the balls of my feet, loosening up. “Wanted to go for a run.”

“
You?
”

“I run now. It's a thing.” Hoping to deter him from mocking my anti-­gym ways further, I turned and fiddled with the controls of the treadmill. I really wanted another desert run.

“So many changes,” Jeremy said, his voice rueful. He shut down the rowing machine and strolled over to pick up the disinfectant spray so he could wipe it down. “You run now.”

“Isotope,” I said. “What are you doing?”

“Thought you could use some company,” he said, looking up from the controls of the treadmill next to mine. When I narrowed my eyes at him, he grinned. “What, afraid you can't keep up?”

“I'm not the one that should be worried here.”

He spread his arms wide, his grin broadening. “Big words for such a tiny person.”

Forty minutes later, he lay on the ground, gasping like a landed fish. “I hate you.”

“I told you not to try to match my pace,” I said, switching my stride now that I wasn't holding back. Jeremy's face was bright red, and I could hear his pulse speeding, but other than that, he seemed fine. “Hydrate. You'll feel better.”

He flopped dramatically on the ground. “I hate all of you classholes,” he said between gasps. “Every single one of . . . you with . . . your stupid powers and your ability . . . to take a punch in the . . . face without even having the social grace to flinch.”

“That sounds really specific.” The hologram extended all the way around the treadmills, so it really looked like Jeremy was on the ground, being pulled along the desert roadside. Occasionally, the program glitched around him, pixilated lines of green and blue spreading over his skin like spiderwebs. They seemed to congregate around his hands.

“Yeah, well.” Jeremy sat up and wheezed. “You don't need powers around here to have an adjustment period.”

It still sounded way too specific, but I realized exactly whom he might have punched, and who wouldn't have flinched. “Jeremy, you hit Guy?”

“He deserved it.”

“I'm not arguing that, but
why
?”

“Because he manipulated me into moving to Miami and I'd kind of been looking forward not to being mistaken for an idiot who wears skintight green and black.” Jeremy guzzled from the water bottle and pushed himself back up, wincing as he climbed onto the treadmill and set it for a much slower pace. It messed with my mind a little since he was maintaining a limping walk and I was outright running, and the landscape moved forward at the same pace for both of us. “I didn't even hurt him. You should take more pity on me. I hurt my hand.”

“I don't think I'm going to pity you, sorry.”

“Worth a shot.” He walked on, still struggling to breathe. “So you're mad at your boyfriend.”

“No.”

“Definitely mad.”

“I'm not mad at Guy, Jer. And don't even start on the boyfriend thing. Everybody seems to think that, and it's just not true.”

Jeremy snickered, and I glared at him. But instead of apologizing, he grinned. “It's nice to know somebody else can miss the mark with Miss Demanding over here.”

I looked over and punched up the speed on the treadmill, easily adjusting my pace to match. He scowled.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You're special now. I got that after your trainer, that hot chick in Medical, your supermodel mentor—­”

“The one you have a massive crush on—­”

“—­and the greenie all lit into me after you passed out on me. And now you go running.”

I looked down at my feet, pounding into the treadmill belt below me. “I didn't ask for this. None of us asked for any of this.”

“But you were lucky enough to get powers out of the deal.”

I opened my mouth to point out that it wasn't exactly luck if my powers were also giving me cancer. But I was still watching my feet, mesmerized by the way my legs were moving easily, optimized for a long run. All of that had come naturally to me. I stood differently now. I noticed more and reacted quicker, and I moved with an economy that I'd seen Guy-­as-­Blaze exhibit. I stood differently. I ate differently. My sight, sense of smell, hearing, all of them had been heightened.

I felt powerful, a feeling I hadn't really experienced much since walking up to that ‘L' platform as a brand-­new Chicagoan. From the moment I'd picked up that beer bottle, I'd joined a game where every piece on the board had more strength and power than me. I wasn't their equal yet
,
and might never be, but I was no longer powerless.

“Yeah, I was lucky enough to get powers,” I said.

“Exactly. So let me have this small victory where I crow over the fact that Blaze has screwed up.”

“You're a very small, petty man,” I said, but Jeremy grinned.

“Seriously, though, what's he done wrong? I need to know what I'm gloating about.”

“Small,” I repeated. “Petty.”

Jeremy grinned and checked his watch, which was buzzing. “It's a little frightening how well they keep an eye on this place. You're wanted up in Medical. It's so nice to know that I don't have anything better to do with my day than be the Girl wrangler.”

“You do look like you're kind of done with your workout, anyways,” I said, since he'd sweated through his shirt and was still breathing hard.

“Now who's small and petty?”

We cut the cooldown short and because of it, I felt a bit weird when we stepped on the elevator together. The run had been nowhere near as satisfying as I'd been hoping for. Instead of allowing me to distract myself from moping about Guy, Jeremy had dug that topic right up and laid it on the treadmill at my feet.

Two floors up, the elevator stopped, and a woman stepped on. She was blond, stocky rather than lithe, and her eyes were infinitely familiar. From the way Jeremy tensed, he'd recognized her as well.

Jessie Davenport gave us both a nod. There was nothing of her twin brother's genial air about her though she wore a well-­cut pantsuit that spoke of the same wealth. Jeremy, she dismissed easily, but her eyes lingered on me. My tongue abruptly tied itself into knots, and I was struck by the fact that I was now riding an elevator with
the
Raptor.

“You're the Godwin girl,” she said. Her voice had a low sort of rasp to it, like she had been chain-­smoking from birth.

“Yes, ma—­yes, that's me. Gail.” Foolishly, I stuck a hand out.

“Jessie,” she said, shaking my hand. The minute she released her grip, she shifted, crossing her arms over the chest, and I recognized the stance as pure Raptor through and through. “You met my brother Eddie last year.”

“I did. It was . . . memorable.”

“Dunno why. He's rather boring, all told,” Jessie Davenport said, turning back to face the front of the elevator.

I wasn't sure how to reply to that, so I just said, “He seemed nice.”

“Then he's fooling you. But I can see why the Bookman kid would step in on your behalf.” The elevator doors opened on her floor, and she paused, looking me up and down again. “Welcome to Davenport, Miss Godwin.”

“Uh, thank you. Thank you very much.”

The minute the doors had closed behind her, Jeremy and I both sagged against the back of the elevator. “Is she always that intense?” I asked.

He nodded emphatically. “That's the first time I've actually seen her
talk
to anybody. Usually, she just stands there and glowers.”

“Okay, okay, drama queen.”

The brief, mildly absurd encounter with Jessie Davenport had only made me feel stranger. My instincts had categorized her as a threat so quickly that the fight-­or-­flight reflex had kicked in, and I had some leftover adrenaline. I kind of wanted to go run an obstacle course or two with Angélica to calm myself down. But instead, we disembarked on the right floor for Medical and made our way through the winding hallways once again. By the time we reached the now-­familiar door, I'd calmed somewhat. “You don't have to go in with me,” I told Jeremy.