Chapter 17: Crossroads
STAY WITH ME: A Superhero Novel
Bits of silver flutter like bats at the bottom of a glass vial, a syringe pulling every last speck in like a vacuum. The silver reacts and rebounds off the sides of the vial continuously, trying to escape. As if it had sentience.
A scientist with tinted glasses gently plucks the syringe out of the vial and eyes the tip. Her voice projects through the convention hall, amplified by the microphone strapped to her jaw. Her name tag reads Terra.
“For millennia, mankind has developed astonishing weapons,” she says, “But many, as powerful and life-changing as they are, don’t make an impact on society. Why?” She throws her hands to her hips with a stoic expression. “Cost. Most weapons cost too much to mass produce to be effective. ”
High up in the rafters, several stories high in fact, Nightmare leans over the edge of a steel beam. The convention hall is massive. The walls are white as a padded cell, and the floor is concrete, not doing much for the aesthetic. Assembled down below, seated in a grid of cushy chairs, is a vast arrangement of military officers from different countries.
After reviewing Welles’s profile in the Old Guy’s database, she learned that Welles owns and operates dozens of shady affiliates who have better access to the criminal underworld than their shiny, name-brand company does. One such affiliate, Terra Labs Inc., is auctioning off some new super-weapon today. What the weapon is, she doesn’t know, but surely it’s big enough to drag so many nationals from their mainlands. And how exactly did this plan become exposed to the Nightmare?
Clancy stifles a yawn down below and leans against the stage, not knowing that he has once again blown the operation. His arms are crossed at his chest, his eyes glazed over.
“What I’m presenting to you, gentlemen, is an alternative,” Terra drawls. She struts across the stage and stops beside her subject: a pasty, white-skinned man, clean-shaven and gangly with wavy blonde hair, stripped down to his jeans. “This… is Bruno.”
Terra tightens a rubber strap around Bruno’s arm, squeezing it tight. Bruno clenches his fist, his veins pushing against his weak, translucent arms.
“This is so boring,” Nightmare groans, “You said it’d be juicy.”
“Patience,” the Old Guy replies briskly.
The syringe sinks into Bruno’s flesh, and the plunger falls. The silver redirects itself into Bruno, fluttering into his bicep and promptly disappearing. All the while, Bruno convulses. Whips his head backwards, eyes cracked open wide. He clamps down on his jaw, the tension increasing by the second.
“This chemical we’ve concocted, ladies and gentlemen, it’s not a weapon,” Terra announces, “It’s a supplement.”
Bruno stamps the floor and screams. Bows his head downwards while his shadow extends itself across the stage. It takes Nightmare a moment to realize that it’s not a trick of the light: Bruno is actually getting bigger. Muscles painfully erupt all over his body, twitching his limbs erratically. A six-pack builds itself into his formerly paunchy stomach, and he gets to his feet, at first advancing forwards like a Frankensteinian monster. His eyes fall back down to the audience, and Bruno smirks. Strikes a heroic pose with his muscles flexed.
Terra scampers off stage to get something.
“Whoa,” Nightmare says, mystified. She laughs nervously, “So despite everything Welles told me, they’re mass-producing a super-soldier serum? Woof. I don’t know if I buy it.”
“Welles has always been focused on reverse engineering The Suit,” the Old Guy explains. Meanwhile, Terra wheels over a stack of bricks that go up to Bruno’s newfound barrel chest. “Though they’ve always focused on the more…”
KER-CHOW!
Without any hesitation or warm-up, Bruno chops the stack of bricks cleanly in two. The two halves collapse to the floor.
“...violent aspects.”
Nightmare blinks. Fidgets her hands against the rafters. Clenching and unclenching.
“I mean, uh, I can do that,” she tries to humblebrag.
“With The Suit? Duh.”
“No!” she scoffs, “On my own. Kenpō, dude!”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” the Old Guy says with the cadence of a shrug. “Explain what feels off to you.”
She furrows her brow. “It just feels… a little show-y? Even… cartoonish?”
Down below, the military officials are largely unimpressed. Lots of hmph!s and harumph!s. Several of them get out of their chairs to leave.
Nightmare shakes her head. “Okay, so it’s not just me. So if this isn’t real, you got any theories?”
“I do, but I’ll let you figure it out.”
She groans. “You play hardball, Old Guy.”
Terra cringes and waves for Bruno to come up to her. He nods and approaches her from behind. Grabs her by the hips, she squeaks, and he alley-oops her into the air. She soars several feet above him and drops down. He extends an arm over his head and catches her, with just one hand. He balances her on his palm, his arm steady and unphased. He feigns a yawn, and the officials look over with curiosity. The group quietly sits themselves back down.
Nightmare rolls her eyes and finally tears herself away from the scene to check the stage. Fitted to the Nightmare’s face is a metal mask with a slit matching the cloth mask over her eyes. A glass lens slides across the eyehole, projecting the exact same monitor layout from before. It’s uncomfortable having something so form-fitting stuck to her face (and it pinches in the nose), but it’s a total game-changer.
She zooms in on the metal canister that Terra pulled the supplement from. Hooked up to it is a transparent hose. The silver bounces within as if it were a popcorn machine, desperate for release.
“It’s trying to bust out,” she remarks, “That’s… strange, right?”
“I think you’re on point, Kitty Kat.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Then please refrain from the Old Guy, please.”
“Not on your life.”
She hurls a Nightblade across the showroom, and it strikes the tube, slicing it open. The silver pours out in a flood, washing all over the wooden table Bruno sat at. Immediately, silver consumes the entire table’s surface. The wood crumples inwards, shrinking fast.
“Wait…” Nightmare mutters to herself, “...how could a human being hold that inside them?”
“You’re so close.”
“Close, huh?”
She zooms in on the collapsing table, but it doesn’t help. The silver, shimmering texture moves so quickly, it’s hard to pin down. The way the glitter devours everything in its path reminds her of cartoon termites. To see something so unreal unfold before her eyes, it makes her stomach churn.
She looks back up at the crime scene and zooms out.
Terra squawks and hops off of Bruno’s hand. He catches her by the waist and lowers her to the floor. Pushes her aside, stepping forward. A calm yet grave expression on his plain face, he sticks his nose in the air and sniffs loudly.
“Uh,” Nightmare frowns, hiding behind one of the rafters, “...okay?”
Clancy rushes to Bruno’s side and uses his fingers to follow the trajectory of the Nightblade so he can pinpoint Nightmare’s location… but Bruno swats Clancy away, breaking his concentration.
“Yo, buddy!” Clancy growls, “You can’t brush me off, I’m—”
Bruno leaps into the air.
Bruno leaps into the air really high.
He jumps all the way up to the ceiling and lands on the same rafter that Nightmare is on. He hits it so hard that the steel beam vibrates loudly, nearly making Nightmare lose her balance.
“Holy Hell,” she grunts, “Talk about leaping tall buildings in a single bound.”
“Ah, it’s the Übermensch. Lucky us.”
She considers that. “Yours is better.”
Bruno rears backwards, snarling at the Nightmare with skin-crawling rage.
Nightmare blinks rapidly while backing away slowly. “Is he… a robot?!”
“Bingo.”
“Old Guy! I hate robots!”
“Katrina, The Suit is right here. It can hear you.”
“Oh. Uh. Sorry?”
Bruno lunges at her with a punch to the face, and she raises her gauntlets to block it. Its fist strikes her armor head-on and despite all the protection, from both The Suit and the Old Guy, she feels a pain far more acute than usual. The armor bashes against her flesh, a bruise blossoming over her skin. She recoils backwards, waving her arms frantically.
Down below, Terra nervously twirls her ponytail around her finger. “Well, if you weren’t interested before, here we are! Terra Labs Inc. technology vs. the Nightmare!”
“Oh cool, let’s sensationalize it,” Nightmare groans, “Too bad it won’t last for long!”
The strength enhancers flare throughout her body. Moving at half-power, she twists her foot into a roundhouse kick to Bruno’s jaw. Bruno doesn’t even try blocking it, it just eats the hit, head jerking back before rubber-banding back in. Nightmare’s foot drops down to the rafter, and she shimmies backwards.
“Uh. Okay. Let me try that AGAIN!”
The strength enhancers flare, this time to their maximum, and she goes for another roundhouse kick to the face. The air around her foot shifts like a mirage, and KER-CHOW! she kicks Bruno across its big dumb robot face—
—except she doesn’t.
Instead, Bruno grabs her leg with just one hand. It raises her foot higher, dragging Nightmare closer to it. Meekly, she waves at Bruno with just her fingers.
Bruno drags Nightmare off the rafters and twirls her around in a one-eighty swing. Momentum builds behind her, and it feels like her body’s about to snap clean off the hip and tumble into the showroom below. The moment is fleeting though, and Bruno tosses her back onto the rafter. She stumbles forward, legs searing with pain, and flops into a steel pillar. She turns around, tries to defend herself, but Bruno is faster. It closes the gap between them and shifts into a vicious flurry.
Bruno hits her in the stomach, the chest, the shoulder, the face, right across her right eye. She howls in agony, stumbling backwards. Bruno follows and doesn’t relent. Over and over, it batters her. She bobs in and out like a ragdoll.
The Old Guy takes control. She feels his iron will seal itself over her, and just like that, the pain dissipates. Bruno continues to wallop her, but the pain becomes lesser and lesser.
“Old Guy, stop,” she pants, “You can’t keep—”
“Not now,” he scolds.
She grimaces as some of her consciousness returns to her. With less pain, it becomes easier to think. She looks ahead warily and sees an escape route: under Bruno’s arm and off the rafter.
Bruno goes for a left hook to her face, and she bows under it, cape fluttering behind her. She dives off the rafter just as Bruno’s fist swings into the pillar she had been leaning against. It hits the steel so hard that it sets all of the rafters a-rattlin’. They ring like bells.
“Wow, fuckin’ Quasimodo over here,” Nightmare pants. She fires a grapple line across the showroom, it hooks onto the joint of one of the rafters, and she escapes. Leaps off the rafter and arcs through the air. Suddenly, there’s a loud CRASH! and THWOOM!
Bruno vaults directly past her, as if this were a race. It lands on the exact rafter she grappled onto.
“Are you kidding me!?” she squeals, “Okay, so we can’t run. Any ideas?”
“I’m going to give it another minute.”
“A minute?! I’ll be—” She lands on the rafter. Immediately backs away from Bruno as it lumbers over to her. “—pulverized by then.”
“That chemical inside Bruno: What does it do?”
“It, um—” she blurts out and stops herself, focusing on Bruno’s movements. “—it enhances muscle mass?”
“But it’s a robot.”
Bruno moves in and pounds Nightmare right in the shoulder. Her flesh and bone ignite in white hot pain. She stumbles backwards, tripping over her cape, head swinging into one of the rafters. She clutches her head, inching herself backwards while Bruno advances on her menacingly.
“Oh my God,” she gasps, “Right, right, robot…”
“Remember what we learned together: Pain is but a function of the mind.”
“No. Old Guy,” she rasps, “Bruno’s actually… hurting me… like badly. Help me.”
Perhaps the Old Guy, so used to pain, didn’t notice her actual flesh igniting in pain and bruising heavily. Or perhaps he knew but had forgotten himself for a moment, not realizing how much duress this was doing to her.
“Do you need me to take over?” he asks seriously.
She hesitates, her gaze sharpening and drifting. She stares hard at Bruno’s bicep where she can see a tiny little hole where the injection sent the “supplement” into robotic flesh. If the supplement is some kind of monster that eats anything it can, she merely needs to unleash the supplement into Bruno’s body. Assuming of course that Bruno’s hide isn’t tough enough to be impervious.
Legs shaking, she slowly boosts herself back up.
“No,” she says with measured breath, “I got it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Down below on the showroom floor, Clancy lines up a shot with his pistol. He trains it right on Nightmare’s head. But if he were to take that shot… despite everything he’s been through with Welles, it would be over.
Clancy scrambles about, trying to get a better vantage point for a safer shot, but none exists. The only way to stop Nightmare is to kill her.
Which means his hands are tied.
Clancy gnashes his teeth in frustration, sliding his gun back into his holster.
Up above, Nightmare dodges blow after blow from Bruno, searching for an opening. She doesn’t backpedal away from the mechanical beast as she has been, she draws it in. Ducks, jumps, bobs from side to side, anything to avoid impact. Her flesh arm is already nearly useless. The bruises from Bruno’s assault have blossomed across her shoulder. To move that arm in any direction triggers severe ripples of pain..
Nightmare finds her opening and hits the rafter at a roll. Bruno attempts a two-fisted spike downward, and its arms crash into the metal behind Nightmare. Rafters once again set a-rattlin’, she keeps her balance and rolls between Bruno’s tree trunk-like legs. She pops up behind Bruno. Backs up to give herself space, all while clutching her banged up shoulder. The pressure helps steady the flow of her pain. She calls for a Nightblade. Releases the shoulder as the blade slides into her palm.
She grins. “You gettin’ a little rusty, eh Bruno?”
Bruno turns around. Readies a punch to her forehead, but she’s faster this time. She lunges at the robot. Stabs the Nightblade into the injection point and cuts it inches deep into Bruno’s shoulder. Within Bruno, the Nightblade crashes through its pseudo-flesh. Through wires, gears, and circuitry. The steel inner-workings crumble into shrapnel. Shrapnel spreads and cuts through more of Bruno, and a fire sparks within its core.
On the outside, Bruno curls its arm at its chest and grabs onto Nightmare’s breastplate, lifting her high into the air. It whirls her around, trying to buck her off. She stays strong and shimmies the Nightblade around until…
…it smashes into a glass vial held deep within Bruno. The “supplement” injected into Bruno, actually just a cluster of nanites, escapes and spreads fast. The nanites are hungry beyond compare and very quickly, more and more of Bruno whittles away, chomped into microscopic pieces.
Bruno staggers, momentarily freezing up as it collapses from within. Nightmare hoists her legs up to her chest and kicks Bruno in the stomach. It falls backwards, she slips out of its grip, and Bruno falls off the rafter like a ton of bricks.
Nightmare wipes at her brow.
And then CLANK! Bruno grabs onto the rafter with one arm
Nightmare drops her hands to her sides. Gestures at Bruno with aggravation. “Really?!”
Bruno’s arm sparks and smokes. It blows smoke from its nose like a locomotive. Swings back and forth with its legs, then boosts itself upwards and pulls up its chin to the girder. Inches its hand towards Nightmare’s cape, to grab her and drag her to Hell with it…
…when the nanites finally get to the arm curling it up.
Metal panels burst off the bicep, and the arm snaps clean in two. Bruno flounders fast and falls down to the floor, sent a-spinnin’ by the sudden tumble. It falls—
—the audience clears the floor below, just in time for Bruno to smash into four different chairs at once and—
BOOM!
Fire flares upward in a spectacular explosion.
Smoke curls up towards the ceiling, and Nightmare looks down below. Sees the remains of Bruno sprawled out across the chairs, the skin having burnt off its metal frame, revealing a cartoonish set of googly robot eyes balanced above rows of metal teeth.
Despite her pain, Nightmare laughs. She kicks the rafter, clutches her stomach, and cackles wickedly. Loud enough for everyone to hear her. She wipes the tears from her eyes and shakes it off to look down to the audience.
“So not only was the supplement you injected fake, but so was the test subject? Ouch.”
The audience turns towards Terra, staring daggers at her.
Terra giggles despite herself. “Uh, some disgruntled employee must have, erm, replaced everything with, ah…”
Nightmare shrugs. “Drop it, lady. No one’s buying it.”
Terra gulps and falls into silence.
Nightmare looks over the audience. Despite these people’s clear and blatant hatred for her, she did just do them all quite the solid in showing them the truth. Sensing the pull she has, she makes her play.
She says, “Terra Labs Inc., as I’m sure you all know, is just an affiliate to Welles Corps. And Welles? They lie, lie, lie. Empty promises.”
What Nightmare doesn’t notice, what nobody notices really, is that two of these so-called warlords in the audience are actually a pair of familiar faces. Ike and Amicia stick close together, dressed in trench coats, discreetly filming everything through the cameras strapped to their chests.
“I can’t prove it yet,” Nightmare continues, “but Welles controls the police. They fund them, even though publicly they call for defunding. And I am making it my sworn duty to stop them. At all costs. For the people of Estreya!”
No one cheers.
“I don’t know what I expected,” she sighs, “Not my people.” She shifts about uncomfortably. Makes an aside, “Was that good?”
“Very. But I would’ve started with: Someone better call tech support, because this guy just crashed.”
Nightmare blinks. “Oh! Yes! Nail on the head, Old Guy, that’s totally what I should’ve said!”
“Years of experience. You’ll pick it up.”
Hector Welles’s office is larger than most apartment units in town and takes up practically the entire fiftieth floor in Welles Corps. Tower. A long burgundy carpet reaches across the office’s length. The walls are lined with Baroque originals, while the back wall is entirely glass. From Welles’s desk, they can see Estreya—or at least the more lucrative side of Estreya, home to the elite. Up here, skyscrapers glimmer under the sun. The streets are clean, and the people are happy.
Welles’s desk itself is humble. The wood is chipped and unpolished, marked up with notches. Yet despite the desk’s small surface area, the billionaire’s setup is complex, with a self-built computer and five different monitors. A multi-tasker until their dying day, Welles is always at work.
Welles sits at their desk, finger curled over their mouth. Occasionally, they clench their teeth, and wrinkles crinkle their eyes. Before them, Terra cowers. She clutches a clipboard to her chest.
“We would appreciate it if you gave us some leeway, Mz. Welles,” Terra trembles, “Getting nanites to fortify a body to become stronger is not as simple as one-two-three. We need more time.”
“I understand that,” Welles growls, “but replacing the test subject with a robot?! Do you have any idea how bad we look right now to our buyers?”
A cold sweat shines down the side of Terra’s head. She’s at a total loss of words.
Welles exhales. Shakes their head and draws back. Drums their fingers against their desk.
“Okay,” they say in a voice they hope is calming, “Deadlines.”
Terra frowns. “I—I don’t feel comfortable giving you one.”
“One week,” Welles announces as if Terra hadn’t said anything.
She pales. “A week!? That’s…”
Welles silences her with the gesture of the hand. “A week to give me something better than what you have now, it doesn’t need to be perfect. Try to see it my way, please. If we don’t act fast, the market will be gone, just like—” They snap their fingers. “—that. You got it?”
Terra’s lips pinch inward. She clutches her clipboard closer. “If it’s one week… you’ll be paying us an extraordinary amount of overtime.”
Welles scoffs. “Did I say work overtime? No, I don’t want sloppy work, I want good work. Hire more people if you need to, I don’t give a shit how many or how much. I just need this fixed—”
Bang! The double doors to Welles’s office fly open, and Clancy barges in. Welles stops Clancy in his tracks with a palm outstretched to the air. Shaking their head, the billionaire turns on Terra.
“Now run along and talk to your people,” they say, “There’s work to be done, Doctor.”
Terra nods, flashing an odd look at Clancy on her way out.
The moment the door shuts, both parties speak at once, but it’s Welles who holds strong while Clancy putters out.
“Did you know about the robot thing?” Welles asks in a knowing voice.
Clancy looks away. “Yeah. Not my idea, Boss.”
“Uh huh,” Welles says with half-lidded eyes, “You should’ve told me. Your job here is to clean up messes for me, and yet I find myself constantly needing to clean up after the fallout of your blunders.”
“Well, I—” Clancy gulps.
“You should be thankful I’ve tolerated your antics, old friend,” Welles says, “Shooting Lucius Gawain. Chaos in the streets. Botched deals with our associates. And this.”
Welles slaps one of their monitors around, the screen broadcasting a screenshot snagged from security footage of the showroom brouhaha before things went hogwild. Clancy blinks stupidly at what he’s seeing, that being an image of the Nightmare quite clearly camping out in the rafters, extremely visible from Clancy’s vantage point at the stage.
“How the fuck did none of your people see her? Huh?” Welles hisses.
Clancy pats his bald head. “I don’t know, Boss. Listen though, I need to tell you something.”
Welles ignores him. “I understand there’d be some growing pains to your little operation now that the Nightmare is once again part of the equation, but do you not understand that you’re killing me?”
“Hector, come on,” Clancy whines, “I’ve done everything you’ve asked. I mean—okay, sure, I didn’t see her up there before shit started, but I did eventually find her!”
Welles stares at Clancy with a dead-eyed expression.
Clancy’s lip twitches in hesitation. “I had a clean shot on her, but it would’ve killed her, so uh…” He takes a weak, prissy jab at the air. “I didn’t do it. Didn’t kill her.”
“Wow,” Welles says to themself. They pull themselves away from the scene and retreat to their desk. “You want a gold star for not killing a trans kid in her twenties?”
Clancy growls, gnashing his teeth. “Oh my God, I’m so sick of this! It wasn’t a hate crime!”
Welles’s face sacks in dismay. “What? What are you talking about? I… I can’t do this with you right now. I really can’t.”
Clancy grabs onto Welles’s desk in a failed bid at getting their attention. “I shot Lucius Gawain because if he was rat enough to give up the Nightmare, how soon would it be before he ratted on us?”
Welles turns on Clancy. “Lucius wouldn’t—listen. If Gawain was working with the Nightmare, the last people he’d turn to would be the police.”
Clancy crosses his arms at his chest. “You’re naive, and need I remind you, when you hired me, it was to take care of loose ends—”
“Things are different now!” Welles shouts.
Clancy continues, nonplussed. “—and I’m taking care of them! When we didn’t get The Suit, hey, I followed up. I moved mountains for you, man. Didn’t work because of the brat, but you gotta give me some credit, Hector.”
Welles narrows their eyes. “We operate differently now.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” Clancy growls. He storms off, pacing in furious circles while waving his arms like a passionate conductor. “All of a sudden, we just change the terms of our entire operation!”
“We weren’t killing people before,” Welles challenges.
Clancy whirls on Welles, a force of nature. “No! We got people sentenced instead… where they’d die on the inside. And I hate to be the one to break it to you, Hector… but what we used to do? It was a helluva lot worse than whatever the fuck it is you’re trying to accomplish with Nightbrat, so I don’t understand why you got hang-ups!”
Welles stares at Clancy with their jaw clamped tight, the pressure making their face twitch in rage.
But Clancy’s not afraid. “I don’t understand it, man. You said we’d cut this bloody path together to forge a better future… and now all of a sudden, it’s like you want nothing to do with the work!”
Welles sighs, their voice gravelly and aggravated. “It’s because she’s part of my vision, Clancy,” they mutter.
Clancy blinks. Double takes. Leans in closer. “The fuck?”
Welles growls inwardly, their talons scratching away at the desk. “She’s a good person. Just like the last Nightmare. Of course, she’s misguided. Her vision on how to save the world isn’t realistic. It won’t work. You can’t just abolish the police, and—besides, coming at them like a crazed lunatic every night isn’t going to make them go away… it’s just going to make them come back stronger than ever.”
“Which presents a problem for us,” Clancy says, “An ever-growing. Uncontrollable. Uncontainable. Problem. That you won’t let me solve.”
“We have different definitions of the word solve, Clancy.”
“Yeah?” Clancy taunts Welles with their eyes, baiting them into anger. “What’s your definition then? What are you trying to even do?”
Welles gets up from their chair and marches past Clancy, headed towards the door.
Clancy whirls around to follow Welles. “Are you just going to let her run rampant while she destroys us? Because I gotta say, Boss, if that’s the plan, then count me—”
Welles turns on their heels, exasperated beyond belief. Yet they speak calmly.
“I want her to work with us,” they say.
Clancy freezes mid-sentence, their jaw momentarily running slack. He shakes it off. “Whoa, what? You want… Hector, the kid hates your guts.”
“So did the other one,” Welles spits, begrudgingly making their way back to their desk. “But not always. I messed that one up, but her? We both want the same thing.”
Clancy stares at Welles in disbelief, struggling to find his words. “She wants abolition.”
“For now,” Welles says with confidence, “She’s still new at this, she’ll learn.”
Clancy rubs his scalp in confusion. “Will she? I mean, she’s working directly for the first one. I’m sure he’s already indoctrinated her with all his bullshit.”
Welles stops before their desk. Pushes their arms against the monitors, stretches their leg backwards.
“You don’t understand, Clancy,” Welles says. They reach for their keyboard and mouse. A few keystrokes and the monitor facing Clancy now displays something else: footage of the new Nightmare, dressed only in a hoodie and jeans, fighting a cop in an alleyway.
“You see this?” they ask.
Clancy wrinkles his nose staring. “Oh, so she’s a crazy person.”
“No!” Welles scolds, “She’s a—she’s a fucking superhero. She takes risks that no one else will take. Because she gives a shit about this city. She hasn’t given up hope yet. And we need that.”
Clancy gives Welles an odd look. “I thought all we needed was The Suit.”
Welles shakes their head ruthlessly. “It’s not that simple, you know it’s not that simple.”
Clancy frowns. “So then what?”
“The kid has nearly died many times over,” Welles explains, “and yet every time, Katrina Gawain gets back up. Can you say that, Clancy?”
Clancy blinks rapidly. “Well. Uh. I mean—”
“Can I say that?” Welles gestures at themself, rapidly drawing closer to Clancy, who in turn backs away from them. “We need to take our time here. This is a slow burn. We can groom her for it… and eventually, she’ll make the right choice.”
Clancy’s arms fall slack at his sides. Disappointed, perplexed, and defeated.
“Okay,” he says quietly, “Just know that until that day comes, there’s not much I can do, Hector. And if you let her… she’ll destroy you and Welles Corps. before she ever walks with you. You get me?”
Welles sneers at the notion.
Clancy raises his hands defensively. “Just… think about it. Okay?
Welles exhales, the fight deflating within them. Their face falls into a more neutral expression, and they nod.
“Sure,” they say, turning back to their desk for a final time, signaling for Clancy to take his leave. “I’ll think about it, Clancy.”
Clancy nods and slowly turns around. Walks out the door, but not before sending one last parting glance Welles’s way. But the duo don’t make eye contact. Welles sinks back into their desk, and Clancy closes the door behind him.
Welles grabs onto a pencil and gently raps it against their desk. Over and over again, like a metronome. Their eyes scroll up to the ceiling, and they sigh.
It’s quiet in their office for hours.
Crickets chirp in the suburbs. Occasionally, a car passes by, or a soft breeze comes in, blowing against blades of grass. The tree in the backyard sways. Dressed in a scarlet tank top, thin black jacket, and dark set of skinny jeans, Nightmare sticks to the shadows. Occasionally, she grabs at her shoulder. Massages it through the fabric. Despite The Suit’s protection, the flesh is raw and scaly.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” the Old Guy says through her earpiece.
“It makes sense, I mean The Suit’s old, right?” she whispers, “It was only a matter of time before it met its match in the modern era. How long do you think this will take to heal?”
“A week maybe. I did the best I could with it.”
“Thanks,” she says. For a moment, she considers saying more. Really, she should take the week off… but the people of Estreya need her. She escapes into the large bush just behind her bedroom and slings her backpack over her good shoulder. Lets her eyes wander up to her window.
“Can I ask you something?” she whispers.
“Always.”
“I started doing this with you because… well, you know, I wanted to help. And I know we’re helping.” She looks off to the side, working her jaw left and right. “I knew it’d be tough. I knew I’d get hurt. But shit is escalating really fast, Old Guy. That’s the second battle droid I’ve been up against, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.”
A quiet pause. “I understand.”
“It’s like Welles said,” Nightmare sighs, “War is coming and… I don’t know.”
“What?”
She holds the answer within herself for a moment, wondering if she should really say it.
“I don’t know how much longer I want to do this,” she says. Immediately, there’s a catharsis within her chest. She allows a faint smile to cross her face before continuing. “I never even thought about it until now. Like, if I wanted, I could just call it. But I don’t want to do that.”
“It would be okay though,” the Old Guy says quickly, “That is, if you did want to.”
She lowers her head slightly and becomes fixated on a particularly long blade of grass.
“You want me to quit?” she murmurs.
“I want what’s best for you.”
She wishes he weren’t so loving. It’d make this easier.
“I just don’t know how much is enough,” she says, “It’s not like we’re going to be able to abolish the police in our city, no matter how hard we try.”
“But we can make an impact.”
“I know that,” she says defensively, “I’m just saying… the endgame isn’t something we can ever attain, so how do we know?”
The Old Guy stays silent, as if he knows what she’s about to ask him.
“How did you know?”
She feels the all too familiar rush of the Old Guy’s thoughts. Defense mechanisms, harsh truths, and conflict abound. Though she can’t sense his intent, the sheer amount of thought going into this one answer tells Nightmare a story. One that she’s not quite ready for.
“It had gotten to a point where I was hurting the people I wanted to protect the most,” he says.
She imagines herself laying in the snow. Pinned down by a radio tower. Bleeding, bleeding, bleeding.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “I have one more question, if that’s okay.”
He waits patiently for her.
“I have to assume there’s something different between what you and The Suit have together versus what I have with it,” she says hurriedly, “You were gone for fifteen years. The Suit… um, did you…”
“What’s the question?” he rasps.
“...Did you feel it all?”
Another rush of emotions.
“Yes,” he says darkly.
She bites her lip. “Will that be me too? If I do this for long enough?”
“It’s not a matter of time,” he says seriously, “It’s a matter of choice.”
She furrows her brow in confusion.
“A part of my soul permanently lives within The Suit.”
She had always assumed it was something like that, though she figured it had more to do with the brain. For something as metaphysical as a soul to be a real, scientific thing, that redefines her world.
“What is that like?” she asks in amazement.
“It’s traumatic.”
“Ah.”
“You sever a part of yourself off, a part that you can only recover by being one with The Suit. Otherwise, you’re someone who’s not quite themselves anymore.”
She winces. Thinks about her father. For just a moment.
The Old Guy continues, “It’s a choice I made so that I could better protect people. What we do together wouldn’t be possible if I hadn’t.”
She pinches a leaf from the bush and twirls it about by the stem.
“Will I have to make that choice?”
“If you ever do, I will be gone. May it be a bridge we need never cross.”
She nods slowly. “You said you hurt people, and I don’t want to pry but… I’m hurting people. Char and Dad. Honestly, even the cats.”
“The cats?” he repeats with an edge of humor.
“They’ve been needier, like they’re all over me whenever I’m home, and I think it’s because I’m not around as often. I know it’s not, like, the worst thing to ever happen, but—”
“I understand.”
“And Char,” she says, “She always looks at me like she knows I’m lying about something, and uh, we’ve already been in kind of a weird place? Dad too, actually.”
“Sounds like you’re on weird terms with a lot of people. Maybe it’s a “you” problem.”
She snorts. “What can I say? I have a strong personality.”
“Really? Never noticed.”
“Ha ha,” she laughs dryly. “But how do you let people in without hurting them?”
The Old Guy takes even longer to respond than he has been. His emotions make her feel cold inside, and she wonders how much damage he’s done to her… and what is yet to come. There’s a strange tingle in her mind then where her feelings of self-doubt and distrust intermingle with the Old Guy’s. He senses her.
When he speaks, his voice is heavy and worn. “I don’t know.”
She swallows something strong. Tries to shake it off but still… that something lingers.
“Well… on that cryptic note, I guess we both better get going.”
“Good night,” he says.
“‘Night!”
There’s a retreating rush as he leaves her for the evening.
Huddled underneath her window, she gives the leaf she plucked a few final spins. Gently casts it aside and boosts herself onto her knees. Presses her palms against the glass. She pushes it up a half-inch then slides her fingers underneath… and up it goes. Nightmare carefully climbs through the gap, and it’s Katrina Gawain who lowers her foot into her bedroom.
She drops her backpack to the floor, the added weight of The Suit making the landing loud enough to wake her father. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to stir.
She smiles weakly to herself. The numbers on her alarm clock blink slowly. Ten-twenty-five. It’s much earlier than her usual “shift”. This leaves time for homework, playtime with the boys, or maybe even a nice, cleansing shower…
Staring at the bed makes it harder. She creeps towards it slowly then gives herself over to it. She teeters forward on her heels, holds her arms out in a cross, and faceplants onto the mattress. She bounces off it and rolls onto her back. Stretches her limbs out, jacket flapping open, exposing her banged up shoulder.
The grotesque, purple bruise spreads across her shoulder socket like continents on a globe, with pale blue, translucent patches of skin in-between. The wound burns hot, and she feels the cold, dry air of her bedroom creep onto her wounds.
Suddenly, Gloves slings his upper body onto the bed, sticking up like a puppet. He kicks frantically to climb up. Stretches his disfigured paw out and launches himself towards her. He climbs across her hair, claws pulling against the strands. (She needs to trim his claws, she decides.) She smiles, despite the pain, and lets her fingers dangle by her ear. Gloves purrs and smooshes his whole face into her limp digits then slings his body onto her beaten shoulder.
She shrieks in pain.
Gloves’s sheer weight plus the sharpness of his claws irritates her banged-up shoulder into white hot pain. She flips onto her side, clutching the shoulder in agony. Gloves falls off her, looking around rapidly with wide eyes, tail stuck up straight.
“Kat?!” Lucius calls out through the walls, startled, “Everything okay in there?”
“Yeah, Dad, thanks!” she says hurriedly, “Gloves just, uh, touched a burn I got from the oven at work!”
“Was it Tito’s fault?” Lucius asks.
She raises an eyebrow. “...I don’t think so?” She thinks about it. “I think it was just capitalism.”
“Damn,” Lucius swears, “I really wanted it to be Tito this time. Fuck that guy. Uh, good night.”
“Good night,” she calls out.
Katrina scrunches her legs in and checks her shoulder. Thinks about what this means for the future. If the challenge keeps escalating… her time might be more limited than she wants it to be. Hell, things might get bad enough that the Old Guy benches her.
She can’t have that. She needs to be tough.
She looks back at the wound and finds it impossible to not wince in disgust. Her mind races, sorting through tomorrow’s schedule to see if she has time for an urgent care visit. But would going there with this kind of injury put her on some kind of list? The wound is brutal, clearly born from intense violence. She’s heard rumors of hospitals giving up patients with telling injuries to the police.
It’s too much to risk.
She rolls onto her back. Thumps her head against the pillow, absently petting Gloves behind the ears while he tries to find balance on Katrina’s ever moving body. He gently lowers himself onto her chest with an innocent expression on his face.
His weight on her chest is enough to keep her awake. Despite the intense fatigue and pain, she sacrifices her sleep to be with Gloves just a little longer.