Shadow of the Cape

Shadow of the Cape

           The light flickered and buzzed unceasingly in the small, stuffy room with gray block walls and a steel table bolted to the floor. My hands pulled gently on the silver cuffs encircling them for what must have been the millionth time in the last hour since the agents had left me here. I could feel them watching me through the mirrored glass, the hair on the back of my neck was pricked and I could hear the blood rushing past my ears in time with every ragged gasp my lungs allowed me to take.

           What had they done with Ash?

           Everything in me screamed at me to run. Sweat dripped down my collar and I pressed my lips together to keep from screaming. Screaming didn’t get you anything. They had time to wait. I needed to find Ash.

The door opened and my head whipped around to see a middle aged woman with thin glasses perched on a pointed nose. She smoothly came around the table and sat down in the chair opposite me. She set down a blue folder and flipped open the cover. My school picture stared up at the ceiling.

“Saige Marie O’Conner. Age 17, average student, not much online presence. Just a regular nobody, right? Do you know why you are here Saige?” The woman had a deep voice, slow and smothering.

I bit my lip hard and tugged at my manacles again. I violently shook my head. “I didn’t do anything. Where’s my brother?”

The woman smiled like a viper.

“Your brother already confessed. He told us everything.”

“You’re lying!” I licked my lips and shifted my weight, “Ash wouldn’t tell you anything.”

“So sure Saige? Let me ask you this…” the woman leaned forward and steepled her fingers, “When did you develop the ability to teleport?”

My heart flip-flopped. How could she know that? Ash wouldn’t have told her. My fingers curled into fists under the table. “If I had the ability to teleport then what would I still be doing here.” I got out between gritted teeth.

The woman laughed.

Right in my face. I jerked back, my chair tipping precariously. “Do you think I’m stupid? The reason you are still here is because you don’t know where your brother is and due to a singular sense of loyalty you wouldn’t leave without him.”

“For someone with a lot of questions you already have a lot of answers.” I growled tossing my hair over my shoulder. The woman sobered.

“True. You and your brother have been on a certain list of ours since you left that last foster home and ended up two states away.”

I swore under my breath, testing my hands again.

“There are others like you. Others who can do things they shouldn’t be able to do.” A strange gleam entered her eyes and a shiver sild down my spine.

I knew there were others.

Before Dad had died and Mom vanished they had told me stories. The glory days when the world believed in superheroes, when they worshiped them like gods. Then something went wrong, the protests started and turned into a witch hunt. People with powers were jailed, killed or worst of all they were collared.

A shiver ran down my spine and I bit my lip.

Dad had been a hero, he was fireproof so he joined the fire department and he helped people. The department found out after the laws changed and they collared him. They killed him. A collar to a superhuman was…

My fingers clenched tighter.

It blocked your powers. It made you someone you weren’t. Dad changed, he used to laugh, and then he didn’t.

The woman was watching me with her head tipped slightly to the side.

“I don’t know what you are talking about. There is nothing I can do that is extraordinary.” I fell into the ease of a well-practiced lie. The woman’s face soured. She smacked the table suddenly and half rose from her chair.

“Don’t be stupid girl! We know what you are. We know what you can do and we know what your little brother can do.”

Ice froze my stomach and I felt my breath hitch in my chest. I needed to find Ash. If they knew what he could do they would want him. They would want to use him. He was only fourteen. The woman must have seen the panic in my eyes, because the smile returned as she sat down.

“That’s right. We finally figured it out. He is the one we’ve been looking for. The one who could set everything right.”

“No.” I trilled, “He’s a kid, he doesn’t understand. He’s autistic, he doesn’t understand.”

The agent tapped her forefinger to her chin, “He can control people, whole armies of people. He can make them do anything, reveal anything. Do you know how dangerous that is?”

“Ash isn’t like that. He’s not violent, he doesn’t control people.” I hyperventilated the words, trying to get them out as soon as possible. I tugged on my wrists again.

“There have been reports Saige, a truck driver in Arizona who bought two kids dinner and hotel room without really knowing why, a police officer in New Jersey who thought he saw two runaways, but decided for some reason not to report them. Then there was the train conductor in Ohio and the…”

“Stop. Please stop.” Tears were burning in my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them fall. “What do you want?”

The woman flipped the file closed with a soft thud, “What I want is for this all to be set right. There is a man by the name of Harley Jones, he is very important to the opposition and were he to have an accident, say careless driving; it would certainly go a long way in breaking the opposition’s will to…oppose.”

I swallowed hard against the bile that rose in my throat.

“Why would we do that?”

The agent pulled out a photograph from the back of my file. She turned it so that it was facing me and slid it across the table. It was a young man standing in front of an old farmhouse. He had his arm around a woman with pigtail braids. It looked like someone had tried to take a family portrait, but they were too genuinely happy to be formal enough. I swallowed hard.

“You would be free.”

My heart thudded in my chest, echoing like it was empty. I met the woman’s eyes. I thought about it. I actually thought about it. I was the one Ash would use his powers for. I was the one who told him what to do and what to say. He didn’t understand that it was wrong or stealing. He thought it was a game.

I knew better.

My hands clenched so hard my nails dug into my palms.

“I need to see Ash.”

The woman’s lips pulled over her teeth, “I knew I could count on you Saige. Your mother is so proud.”

The air fled my lungs suddenly and I gasped. “Don’t talk about her.”

The woman stood up and straightened her file on the table. “Study that picture Saige, that’s where you will be going. One of our agents will be coming too, if you even think about running things will end up going really badly for your little sister, really quickly.”

The door clicked behind her and I stared down at the photograph in front of me. I ignored the people and focused on the house and surroundings. The farmhouse was painted white with a cherry red door and shutters. Flowers overflowed from window boxes and the land behind stretched to the horizon where a smudge of trees signified a windbreak. It reminded me of Texas, the scrubby grass and big sky. I could see it in my mind now, I could almost smell the heat. I jerked my wrists to remain here.

I shook the image from my head.

 Damn.

What was I playing at anyway? I needed to protect Ash. I needed to find Myka hide somewhere far away. Somewhere where they couldn’t find me.

They could always find me. They had her.

Another agent came in and unlocked my cuffs. He led me through the building to another room.

Ash jumped up when he saw me. I put my arms around him and he stood as ridged as a board for a moment before his delicate fingers reached up and traced the vertebrae of my spine. I could hear him counting in my ear before I pulled away.

I cataloged his face and saw no marks. I relaxed slightly as someone behind me cleared her throat. Ash’s eyes widened, “Mom?”

I spun around and she was standing there. Just standing there. She looked the same as she did four years ago. Her blonde hair was done up in a braid and her blue eyes were serious. It was like looking at a ghost. I moved in front of Ash, but he sidestepped me.

“You went to get milk, eggs, bread, snacks, pudding mix, toilet paper…”

“Ash, that’s enough.” I hissed. I hated it when he recited that list.

“You said you’d be back. You didn’t come back. Dad died. Did you know that? There was a funeral, it rained. I was wearing a black suit, but I had to wear my red sneakers because they didn’t have dress shoes in my size. His headstone said he died a hero. That was a lie, Saige said he died a coward. Only cowards kill themselves.”

“Ash stop.” I whispered and the specter that used to be my mother was looking at me with rapt horror.

Ash wasn’t listening to me, “We had to live in this foster house with this lady that smelt like tuna. She laughed at me, she said I was as thick as a concrete wall. I didn’t like her. Saige took us away from there, but we had to leave Myka behind. She was too little, she would be safer there. We toured the country. You would have liked it Mom. Saige said it was an adventure.”

Mom’s lip was quivering now. I wanted to hit her. She didn’t have any right.

“That sounds…nice dear.” Her voice shook me. I clenched my hands to keep them from trembling. “We should be going. There is work to be done.”

Mom reached out her hand, but I ignored it was I turned back to Ash.

“We are going to leave now okay? We’re going somewhere else.”

Ash nodded with a little jerk and tapped his foot on the ground a few times. I folded his fingers into mine and called up the image of the farmhouse. I allowed Mom to take my other hand.

I transported.

Ash tapped his foot on the ground a few times. “Solid ground, solid ground.”

Mom was already staring at the farmhouse in front of us. She cocked her head at me. “Stay here.” She ordered and then became invisible.

I strained my ears to hear her quite footsteps as she walked towards the house.

“We should go Ash.”

“Mom said to stay here.”

“Screw her, she isn’t in charge of us anymore.”

“Mom said to stay here. The agent said we’d be doing good work here. I like my work to be good.”

“I know Ash, but it’s more complicated than that. It’s not about good it’s about what’s right.” I knew he wouldn’t understand me. Concepts of morality always escaped him.

He furrowed his brow, “What is right?”

“I don’t know. The agent I talked to said that if we did this we could be free. We could stop running Ash, we could find Myka.”

“Myka has to be left behind. She is too little to bring with us on our adventure. She would be safer here.”

I swallowed hard around the clog in my throat, “Yes.”

“She cried. She wanted to come. I miss her.”

I wiped my hand across my eyes, “me too.”

“But we can be free. We can find Myka and be a family again, right Saige? If we do this?”

“Yes.” I whispered looking over to the house again. There was a sign staked down into the lawn. 

Harley Jones for Texas Senate: stand up for human rights not mutant rights.

There was another right next to it.

Control the mutations, make collars mandatory.

An accident.

Mom reappeared beside me and I started.

“Coast is clear. He’s home alone.” She barked and I wondered what happened to her. The Mom I remember had been outspoken, but not a zealot. She disappeared when collars became at an employer’s discretion and reporting became mandatory. Dad said she went to follow her heart.

She broke his.

I resented her, even hated her.

We had been her family, we should have been her heart.

Not this.

Not this.

“Come on.” Mom hissed and Ash stepped forward.

Mom rang the doorbell and I could hear a man’s voice ringing from inside the house.

He opened the door and his eyes widened, “Can I help you?”

Mom surged forward, her face a twisted mask of rage. “Yeah, you can help us Senator. Ash tell the man what the agent told you. Convince him.”

Ash knew convince meant to use his power. He opened his mouth.

“Wait.” I shouted and Ash froze to look at me. He tapped his foot on the ground a few times.

“Ash, convince him.” Mom shouted over me and Ash put his hands to his ears.

“Sit quietly please.” Ash spoke in a voice that sounded like a hundred whispers all at once. Mom and Jones sat down on the floor. I swayed on my feet as I shook my head to clear it. The two adults looked expectantly at Ash, Mom with burning eyes and Jones with fearful ones.

“What did the agent ask you to say Ash?” I asked.

Ash tapped his foot on the ground as I cautiously pulled his hands away from his ears.

“Tomorrow morning go driving, speed, lose control of your car, hit a tree, and die. It will be an accident. You will be free.” Ash recited and my stomach twisted.

“Do you want to say that Ash?”

Ash regarded me with my mother’s eyes, but these were not angry eyes. They were innocent.

“I want to be free. If we are free, we can see Myka. Right Saige, you said.”

“I know what I said.” I swallowed hard, I looked down at the two people in front of me.

Who was right? The man who sought to destroy my humanity or the woman who traded hers for a cause?

I wanted to be free, but could I be free knowing what it cost.

I looked at Ash, his steady eyes were still watching me.

Everyone was watching me.