An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Chapter 5.03
That afternoon, I wrapped myself in Isolation and let myself into the principal's office. With the password I'd found before, I logged onto her computer and started going through the school's records. Time to go looking for the 'Tash' Ryo had talked about. He said she filmed things, so she would be a good lead. And if I could get my hands on her camera, the cops would have to do something.
I found her face on the third "Natasha". She was in the year above me, so it wasn't a surprise I didn't know her. I copied down Tash's full name, "Natasha Amanda Wells", along with her home address, her father's contact details, her medical notes – she was allergic to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, whatever those were – and everything that I might need to track her down.
The notes in her school records made interesting reading, too, as I sat there in the office that smelled of old paper and a hint of cleaning fluid. My notebook gained more than a few pages. Tash wasn't a stranger to this office, but it always seemed to be for minor things. Her disciplinary record was cleaner than I would have thought for someone who seemed to be so involved in gang stuff. Most of it had been in the past six months. Her freshman and sophomore years had been basically clean, and it was only more recently in eleventh grade that she'd started getting in trouble.
Sitting back in the principal's chair, I glared at the screen, tapping my fingers on her desk. God, she knew almost nothing about what was going on in the school. She had second-hand reports and notes from teachers in a text document. How useless. If I'd been in her place, I'd be maintaining a proper record of things. No wonder my case had slipped under her radar.
The sound of fumbling keys brought me to my senses, and I quickly closed the window and locked her computer. Rising, I waited in the corner as Principal Blackwell awkwardly made her way through the door, trying to carry a box full of files. Mr Li followed her. She dumped them down on her desk, running her hands through her bowl-cut dirty blonde hair, and sat down heavily in her chair.
"Huh?" she said, blinking. "Did I leave this on?"
"Let's just get this over and done with," Mr Li said. "I've got marking to do."
"Yes, don't we all?" the principal sighed. "So, you know there's been another incident with those two. Beyond the thing at lunch, that is?"
"Yes. Ellie told me about the fight at the gates. Are you going to exclude either of them?"
"If I can get it past the school board, I want both of them gone. I'd settle for one."
"You said it," Mr Li said, sitting down. "The fight at lunch damn well nearly happened in class this morning, and neither of them showed up for detention. I can't teach people who want to kill each other, and it's not fair on the other students. The ones who care, that is."
I silently drifted out the door, ignoring them, and headed home. Rather, I headed in the direction of home. The bus to Natasha's was the bus I used when I didn't feel like walking. She lived all of four streets away from me. That weirded me out a bit. It wasn't anything like Ryo's cramped one room apartment in the Little Tokyo slums. The front garden was trimmed and well-maintained, but when I snuck around the back of the house hadn't been repainted in a few years.
I could see the back door keys through the window, so I had a cherub fetch them for me and let myself in, wiping my feet. The house smelled of varnish and wet dog. The latter was what was worrying me. A big Labrador came ambling up to me, and I felt Phobia squirming in my stomach. Sometimes I wondered if she was starting to take up her own independent existence. I breathed out the invisible metal-tasting presence of Cry Baby, and made the dog sleep. It was too much of a gamble that the dog really was as soppy as it looked.
Picking up the opened mail on the counter, I rifled through it. Fundraising letter from the Maine Republicans, bills, bills, letter from the health insurance company. I checked the calendar – dental appointment, the last two weekends marked with 'SUSAN' which presumably meant something to the people here, a church gathering next Sunday, and of course since she was in the year above multiple days were marked in red as 'EXAM!!!'. This place was so domestic and mundane that it was hard to keep in my head the fact that Ryo's father would still be alive if Natasha wasn't a member of a skinhead gang.
On the kitchen table, there were a scattering of magazines with names like The National Review and Conservative Thought and Real America. The headline of the top one was screaming about 'FEMA Grabs More Authority'. I picked up Real America, flicking through it. Articles about 'Lessons In Japanese – The Ruin of Our Schools' and 'California vs Jameson: A Blow Against Your Rights' and 'How The Socialist Party Is Taking Over The System Via The Wedge' met my eyes.
Man, Dad would have conniptions if I told him I was reading Real America. I couldn't help but grin. He'd probably go nuclear. Literally nuclear. Nothing left of Brockton Bay but a crater and radioactive mutants. Some might even call it an improvement.
This… wasn't the sort of household I'd expect to see a skinhead coming from. It was too calm. Sure, the magazines on the table were the sort of thing Dad would probably burn if they ever crossed the threshold of our place, but skinheads listened to menk and other genres of music with angry men screaming into the microphone. They didn't live in houses that were so… domestic.
Maybe Natasha's mother didn't know what she was getting up to. Maybe she just thought she cut her hair like that to look 'trendy'. If that was the case, I could probably use that.
I wandered through the house, rummaging through their stuff as I hunted for Natasha's camera. It wasn't anywhere – not even in her room. There was a computer in her room, though, and maybe she'd transferred the files onto it. I turned it on, and was promptly met with a password screen. I glared at the humming CRT, and looked to see if she'd written down her password anywhere.
She hadn't. And attempts to force an Idea into the computer to pull out information from it just didn't work.
"I can't believe you're better at keeping your computer safe than that guy in the sweatshop or the principal," I muttered to the absent Natasha. I guess what they say is true; young people really are better with technology.
At least her room wasn't very much like mine. She didn't even have any bookshelves. There were a few books stacked on her desk, but they were just crappy teen romances. You could tell the difference because it'd take three of them to be as thick as the books I read. There were posters of pop stars on the walls, but there were also snarling menk artists glaring down at me. A large free-standing mirror was positioned on a swivel stand next to the window.
Tilting my head, I considered the mirror, and let myself sink into the Other Place. The cold reflection of the room was shabby and there were old stains on the walls that when I sniffed them smelt like Isolation. They weren't fresh, though. So she used to feel lonely, but not anymore. There wasn't time to make a corridor from here to the hall of mirrors – and it probably wasn't a good idea anyway. But where it was positioned, it could see all the room. Biting my lip, I tried to put my thoughts together. Maybe I could use her lipstick to draw my Panopticon mark on the back of the mirror and trap a cherub in the glass so I could watch her.
My nostrils flared as I checked behind the mirror. The smell was rotten and pungent and slightly fruity. It didn't seem to be going from anything in particular, though. No, that wasn't quite right. It was coming from an oozing power pack that was plugged into a charging cable. This wasn't an easy place to find it - I guessed it'd been hidden behind here. Squatting down, I ran the cable between my gloved fingers, sniffing it. The smell was an unpleasant mixture of glee and pain. I didn't like it at all. It left oily grey stains on my gloves.
"Found you," I whispered, reaching in my pocket for my mirrorshades. I exhaled Sniffer into them, trapping the creature in the reflective surface. Through her eyes, I could see a thin vapour trail of the ooze, leading out the door. I followed it downstairs, where it led into the door under the stairs. It was locked, and when I sent a cherub to see what was on the other side, I found that what I had taken as just a small storage area with stairs that led down to a basement. I'd need a key – or to bypass it entirely with an angel.
I shuddered. I'd really prefer a key, all things considered. Angels hurt. As I headed through to the kitchen to look in the same spot where I'd found the backdoor key, I heard a car pull up to the drive.
Crap. I hadn't got my hands on the camera yet, but everything would be so much harder if there was someone else in the house. I should go, and come back some other time.
But I didn't. Because there was another thought surfacing in my mind, and that the person in the car would probably know where the key was. I could probably make them open the door for me. So instead of leaving, I made sure that Isolation was nice and tight.
Keys scraped at the front door. "Natasha? Calvin?" a man called out. There was no response, and I heard the door slam shut. I could taste metal in my mouth, and my heart felt like it was trying to tear out of my chest. The footsteps weren't even; the man was limping heavily, and I could hear something clicking.
Peeking through the gap in the door to the utility's room, I took him in. And he looked like Dad. Oh, not in the real world. He was shorter and fatter than my father, with blocky features and he walked with the aid of a crutch. There were traces that he'd once been in better shape, but now he was waddling to obesity. But in the Other Place he burned with restrained anger that was almost as bright as Dad's. He wasn't quite the same, because more black-blue fear smoke swirled around him, but the two men were more similar than I'd have liked.
Leaning against the wall, arms crossed, I watched as he dumped the mail he'd picked up from the letter box on the kitchen table. He sat down heavily, resting his crutch against the wall. Running his hand through his light brown hair, he started to sort it, muttering under his breath. I edged my way around, to peer at them over his shoulders.
"Bills, bills, bills," his hand paused on one, wincing. He was reading it in silence, so I sent a fat bloated pale worm to squirm into his brain to make him vocalise what he was thinking. "Oh, crap, another one from Susan's lawyer," he said out loud. "What does that bitch want this time? Nathan says she doesn't have any grounds to contest the custody arrangements and…" he scanned the letter, "… she wants more time with them over the summer for a holiday? Damn teachers getting things so easy on the state dime with their long holidays. The rest of us get one paid week…"
I frowned. If they'd just got custody settled, I wondered if maybe the timing lined up with the way Natasha started winding up in trouble at school. Damn it, that was far more sympathetic than I'd have liked.
He limped over to the fridge, while I thought about how best to get into the basement so I could get my hands on the camera. He probably wasn't thinking about it right now, so I couldn't pull an Idea out of his brain. I'd need to get him to think about it.
My eyes drifted to the dog. That might do it. The mind of a dog wasn't a complicated thing. It was much easier to make it sleep than it was to make a human sleep. Maybe I could make it try to get in.
I took a deep breath, and thought of what I wanted the dog to do and how it didn't have any choice but to obey me. With a steady exhalation I unwound rusted iron chains from inside me. They slithered down my body and across the ground like grey-red snakes and sunk their barbed hooks into the dog's skin. The other end of the chains wound themselves around my wrists.
"Get up," I whispered, and the dog pulled itself to its feet, oozing blood from the barbs. "Sit." It sat. "Roll over." It did that.
What were the limits of what I could do with this? Dogs were pretty smart. Would it obey me even if I told it to do something dangerous?
Well, I wasn't about to do that. It wasn't its fault its owners were bad people.
"Go on," I whispered to it. "Go to the door under the stairs, and paw at it, barking as loud as you can until the door gets opened."
It did exactly that. And now that it was moving about, I got the distinct feeling it wasn't the animal obeying me. Not exactly. It didn't move quite right in the Other Place. The chains pulled on it, moving it like a puppet. Poking my head around the door, I watched as the chains wrapped themselves around its throat and the dog started barking and scraping at the door.
With a grunt, Natasha's father levered himself out of his chair and hobbled over to the stairs. "What is it, girl?" he asked the dog. "What's the matter?"
The dog just kept on barking, clawing at the door to the basement.
"It's just the shelter. Calm down, Jesse," he told her. I sent an Idea to suggest that there was someone down there. It wriggled in through his ear, and you could see from the way his postured shifted that he'd just had a thought he hadn't wanted. "Better not be a burglar," he said, shuffling over to a drawer, opening it, and recovering a pistol and a set of keys.
Slowly he unlocked the door to the basement, and eased it open. "Go on, girl," he said. "What d'ya smell?" Of course, the dog didn't care anymore. Just to make sure, I breathed out Cry Baby and sent her back to her basket to nap again.
Natasha's father growled in annoyance. "You stupid thing," he said, locking the door back up again. "Make your damn mind up. Did you hear something or not?" He put the things back and went back to sit down in front of the TV. But I now knew where the key was.
The air down there smelt dry and slightly stale, with a hint of old sweat and unwashed clothing. The harsh fluorescent light from the strips in the ceiling revealed that it wasn't the usual mess of cardboard boxes, utilities and stuffed shelves you found in most basements. Half the space was filled with one of those pre-fab Endbringer bunkers that some people installed in their homes if they weren't living close to an official shelter. That made sense. It didn't look like the father could run on his injured leg.
But the other half had training mats and weights and a punching bag. But in the Other Place, it wasn't a gym. Not just a gym, at least.
All around me, the weights and the walls were covered in faintly yellow-glowing handprints. Six-fingered hands.
I felt my throat unconsciously, remembering the pain of the freezer burns from similar hands.
"No," I whispered. "No. This doesn't make any sense. 'Tash… she can't be a cape. This could be her dad's. Or her brother's."
Oh, but it did make sense. I hated to admit it, but it did. Ryo had said that she'd been there, filming it, just before he'd got his powers. And I was vaguely aware that you tended to get power 'clumping'. That'd been one of the things that had been special about MIT – Boston used to have an abnormally high number of people developing technology-related superpowers, and it'd probably had something to do with the university. And in movies and stuff, you'd usually get the younger character getting an offshoot of the power of the old mentor, although maybe that was just so they could replace older actors with a younger one.
It was painfully clear that I hardly knew anything about what was going on here. I didn't even know if it was really her that'd been practicing down here. I rummaged through the area, and found a whole crate full of old cameras and handycams of all kinds of makes and models. Someone in the household was a photography and home movie buff. One of the video cameras was coated in the same sickly-smelling oil as the charge pack upstairs. That must have been the one she used. So she was certainly coming down here to borrow cameras.
Biting my lip, I decided that I'd just have to keep sending cherubs to check on her. It'd be painful for my body, but I could take it. Plus, if she was a parahuman, I'd get to see her using her powers and that'd help make up for any aches I got.
And with that decided, I locked up the basement, let myself out and walked home.
"Uh, Dad," I said that evening. We were in the kitchen, preparing dinner. The sun was setting, and the windows were steamed up. The air smelt of oil and mushroom and chicken stock.
"What's up?" he said happily. "Having a problem with the leeks?"
I put down the knife on the chopping board. "No, it's not that. They're all sliced up."
"Good, good. The mushrooms are nearly browned, so just pass them over." He added the cut leeks to the casserole dish, then added the canned tomatoes and the stock. "See, it's another simple and cheap recipe from when I was a poor student. Now we just cover it up in foil and stick it in the oven for twenty minutes, then remove the foil and leave it in for another twenty to boil off the juices. You can put pretty much anything in something like this. If meat's too expensive, mushrooms work too. Before I could afford a casserole dish, I'd cook things in a frying pan then use a cheap baking tray in the oven." He paused. "You're going to have to know how to cook and look after yourself when you get out of this town."
Dad was acting weird. He'd announced that I needed to know how to cook properly, should learn some cheap recipes, and of course needed to do well in my exams. He must have been stressing about the riots. "It's not about the food," I said, as he covered the casserole dish and put it in the oven. "It's about…" I paused and rephrased it. "There was a girl I used to know, before the… the bullying and all that started. So I hadn't talked to her in ages, you know?" I lied. "And I saw her again today and she's gone full skinhead. She's got the sides of her head shaved and she's hanging around the gangs. And I don't understand why she'd do that. I mean, I heard her parents broke up, but… I don't know."
Dad winced. With a sigh, he stuck the pan he'd been using under the tap, releasing a hiss and a cloud of steam. "I don't know either," he said. His shoulders were hunched as he leaned over the sink. "I wish I did. I know too many people who buy into Patriot crap. Uh, lies."
"Dad, I know what that word means. You don't need to act like I'm six."
He washed his hands, drying them on the dish towel. "No, I guess not. But I don't have an answer for you, Taylor. She might have been your friend back then, but that was then. Too many good people buy into the things they get told because it makes 'common sense' or because they read it in trash like the Brockton Bay Times. All it does is set people against each other. It's just what they want. People who haven't got jobs and people who are just about scraping by have far more in common with each other than people like," he scowled, "that Anders man who was on the radio when I was heading back from work. He's a real scumbag."
"Who?"
"He owns a medical company. He was being interviewed, going on about how immigrants are reducing wages." Dad's knuckles whitened as he twisted the dish towel, throttling it. "He's the one reducing wages! Last year Medhall fired all their teamsters who wouldn't join the 'official' union who're all a bunch of stooges who roll over for the big dogs!"
"You're allowed to do that?"
"No! It's illegal." He put down the towel with a wet slap, shoulders slumped again. "But the government doesn't enforce shit against big companies who put any effort into being sneaky about it." He sat down heavily. "It's people like that who're the heart of the Patriots. Union-hating corporate scum. And people I know and like buy into their bullshit and… and you're either going to avoid talking about politics when you're around them, or you're going to get into flaming rows." He paused. "Where was I?"
I wasn't sure myself. It sounded like he'd just wanted to vent. "So you don't have any advice for… for changing her mind or why she's become a skinhead or anything?"
"Who knows?" Dad shook his head. "Because her friends do it. Because she gets those kinds of ideas from her parents. Because she likes the kind of music they listen to and got sucked in. How close were you as friends?"
"Not too close," I said, "but it just worried me how much she'd changed and…" I spread my hands. "I don't know. I was hoping you might know a way to snap her out of it."
"Sorry to disappoint you," he said, face twisted into a bitter smile, "but I'm not a miracle-worker. I wish I could just change people's minds like that. If you hadn't drifted apart, you might've been able to talk to her, but that time's passed. I guess, just be there for her if she approaches you, but don't let her talk you into things."
"I'm no skinhead," I said. I flicked my head. "I'd have to cut my hair in the horrible way they do it. But… I suppose you're right. I guess I'll just try to forget about her."
Reaching over, he squeezed my shoulder. "It hurts, I know," he said. "Ian was one of my buddies for years. I was godfather for his kid. Now he's canvassing for the Patriots and works for a corporate union. The last time we spoke, he called me a socialist and said I was a patsy for the UN and FEMA." He laughed, a hollow noise. "God, I wouldn't mind that. I'd be on a government salary if FEMA was paying me."
Wrapping my fingers around his hand, I held his hand. I could see the pain in his expression. He looked as helpless as I felt sometimes. It made me feel like I understood Dad a bit better. "Yeah. Yeah." I took a deep breath. "I'll see if I can get a practice paper done before dinner, then I'll probably have an early night tonight. The first exam's tomorrow."
"Good idea." He grinned, this time more genuinely. "I've got ice cream in the freezer. I'll teach you how to make that too."
"Isn't that just scooping it out of the tub?"
"Well, if you don't want it…"
"I think I could do with some extra practice," I said hastily.
It was fully dark outside by the time I'd eaten and finished my studying. I felt about as ready for the exam tomorrow as I could be. The fact that I'd ripped an Idea from my notes and pinned it in my brain helped a lot. It was a lot like a mind map, only more literal.
So I told Dad I was having an early night, changed into my pyjamas, and then sat myself down in front of my mirror. Inspecting my face and hands, my scars were still red and inflamed. They didn't feel infected. Just… healing. It was a sensation I was all too familiar with. I ran my fingers delicately along the raised bumps. It wasn't a trick of the light. They really did feel more prominent.
Like how they were still fresh in the Other Place, I thought - and then wished I hadn't.
Dammit. I could see where that chain of thought was going, and I didn't like it. I was going to have to talk to Kirsty. She might know what the hell was going on. Both with how I'd taken power from Ryo, and why my scars were all tight and fresh.
I took a deep breath of clean air, and sunk down into the chill of the Other Place. It sunk into my bones. The paint flaked from my walls, falling like snow, while mould grew across my mirror. Reaching out, I breathed onto the filthy mirror. "Go on," I whispered to it. "Show me Kirsty."
My powers ate away at the mould, revealing that the mirror wasn't reflecting my room. It wasn't really a mirror, not anymore. I'd used it enough that it was a gateway.
Kirsty was sat cross-legged on her bed, a copy of the Bible on her lap. She turned the pages rapidly enough that I didn't think she was really reading it. Her lips moved, whispering words I couldn't hear. All around her, the walls burned. My personal hell was cold and dark and rotten, but hers was constantly aflame. She looked up, and jumped. "T-Taylor?" she asked, the smoke dancing in the air around her.
"Yes," I said. "Uh. Is this a bad time?"
"N-no time is a bad time when you come to talk to me. Is s-something wrong? Are w-we not going to be able to go see the movie?" Her face fell, already anticipating disappointment. Dark clouds of smoke embraced her.
"Of course we are," I reassured her. "This is something else." I paused, aware that I shouldn't just jump into things. "How are you? Have you been sleeping well? Eating properly?" I realised only after I said it that it might have sounded like I was patronising her.
But of course Kirsty didn't see it that way. "That you f-for asking," she said, lips flashing into a small smile. The smoke dispersed as she brightened up. "I w-wish someone else did. I've only had a few nightmares this week, and I have b-been eating when I remember, though s-sometimes I have to take food from the kitchens when they forget about me."
I winced at that. "Look, if you're having problems with that, I can… I don't know, send you bread or something."
"That is very kind of you, b-but you don't need to do that. I d-don't want to be a bother," she said, averting her eyes. "G-God reminds me when I forget to eat for too long."
That only made me more certain that I probably was going to have to do something like that. At least she wasn't exactly starving - in fact, she was more solidly built than me. I'd have been much more alarmed if she was Leah-thin.
"I s-see you have come into your inheritance, Taylor," Kirsty said, before I could say anything.
"My what?"
"I can see it in you." Kirsty stared at me with her watery green eyes. "You t-took the bliss of Heaven into yourself, and embraced it. We are angels weighed down by the s-sin of Eve." She smiled, hesitant and flinching as around her fire licked at her blackened hospital pyjamas. "G-God is so proud of you. I w-wish I could have a chance to do it."
Took the bliss of… oh no. "I wanted to talk to you about that," I said softly. "I… I didn't know what I was doing. He… he was trying to kill me and…"
"There is no need for guilt." she said, eyes drifting down to the bible on her lap. "Your angels c-can tell you that. Listen to them sing. I can hear them exulting, so happy for what you did. They l-love you as their sister. Do you not hear them?"
I listened. But of course I didn't hear a thing. The Other Place was as it always was, filled with the warped sound of the city. There was no rasping breath or hisses or screams from my creatures. Go… gosh. She nearly had me there. "I don't understand," I said, because I didn't want to lie to her.
Kirsty met my eyes. "We're the daughters of Heaven, Taylor," she said. "When we do what God wishes, w-w-we come closer to escaping Original Sin, like the prophets of old. Like Elijah and Ezekiel and Jacob."
"Yes, but what does that mean?" I asked. I almost sounded plaintive.
"It means Heaven has embraced us. Heaven loves us. Heaven remembers us." Kirsty wrapped her arms around herself, squeezing tight. "N-not like the false heroes of this sinful world. D-do you remember Exodus 7, Taylor?" I didn't. "They are the Egyptian sorcerers, and we are like Aaron. That is the d-difference between us and them. The p-p-parahuman idols who d-demand worship are s-sinful sorcerers. G-God has blessed us."
"Oh," I said. There was a Bible in the house somewhere. I should move it to my room, so I had something to help me translate from Kirsty-ese. And then my brain kicked into gear. If there was one thing I complained to myself about, it was that my powers didn't tell me anything directly. They left the interpretation up to me. And I was more stable than her. I just had a breakdown in the locker. Kirsty had been broken down and never built up again. "There is something different about us."
"Yes. That is what the angels told me."
"Something that means that our powers hurt us. Like we don't have enough fuel to make things work properly. Something that we can fix by taking power from the… the sorcerers."
"No!" Kirsty's eyes flashed. It wasn't a metaphor - in the Other Place, sudden burning anger lit up within her sockets. The flame rolled off her, and now her room burned with the sudden rage that had consumed her. It was a redder fire than the usual hell of her Other Place. The flames danced like demons, moving with malicious intent. Smoke started to drift through the mirror, invading my space. "The flaw is with us, T-Taylor! We are the children of Heaven, but w-we are not creatures of Heaven yet and we are sisters to the angels but we are still wrapped in flesh and and and… and it is our weakness and the sin of Eve that means the grace of God hurts when we are weak and bad and horrid and sinful!"
"Okay, okay, okay…" I said hastily.
"Never ever ever ever say it's the fault of God! It's never His fault!" She shuddered convulsively. "Only G-God never hurts people. People who d-don't know God can't really be trusted. It d-doesn't matter if they're normal or they've listened to f-false gods or or or…"
"It was just a mistake of phrasing," I managed. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry!"
And like that, the anger was gone, as if it was a gas fire that had been turned off, and there were just tears running down her face, flashing into steam as they dripped into the blackened ruin. Her shoulder was turned up defensively and she held up her bible as if it was a shield. "I g-get so scared that y-you're just a dr-dream or a trick or G-God is t-testing me and I'm not m-m-meant to get angry b-because good girls d-don't get angry and…"
"Kirsty!" I tried to keep my voice low, to stop Dad from hearing me, but I had to get through to her. "I'm not angry… I'm not angry with you. I'm… I'm just new to this. I don't know everything you know."
"You're too nice to m-m-me. Y-you don't shout at me."
I felt awful, because I often wanted to shout at her. "I'm not too nice," I muttered.
"You d-don't forget me. Please. Please. D-don't go away because… because I got angry."
"I'm not going to go away," I said. I dreamed up an angel, and let it take away my anger and fear and annoyance and everything that would stop me making time for her. I felt its claws scraping at the inside of my skull, but I had neither the time nor the capacity to worry about that. "Kirsty. I'm not angry. I'm not going to go away. I have an exam tomorrow, but soon I'm going to take you to the cinema. You want to do that, don't you? And we can go to the park, too. And you can get food from a place that isn't the hospital cafeteria and… Kirsty, I promise you, above all else, I won't forget you. You're the only person like me. You're the only person who can explain these things to me. And you have helped me. I was very scared about what happened and… listen to me Kirsty, you helped me."
She nodded, a little bob of her head. Arms wrapped around herself, she trembled like a small scared child. "I need to pray," she muttered into her knees. "I need to pray and I need to ask God what to do and tell Him that I'm sorry for losing my temper and I m-mustn't lose my temper and that I'm helping you and I won't fail Him again. I w-won't. I won't!"
"You're not failing him," I said.
"You say that, but that's only b-because you're a better person than me." Kirsty gave me a sad smile, the scars on her cheek twisting up, and wiped her running nose on her sleeve. "Goodbye, Taylor. G-good luck w-with your exam."
And like that, fire roared and the image of her in my mirror vanished. My own face started back at me. Touching my head, I let my dream of an angel make my brain whole again, and lay back on the floor, staring up at the bare concrete of the Other Place. I could still smell smoke.
She scared me when she got like this. But it was something to think about. I hated feeling so useless. She didn't want to be helped. Kirsty was a mess, and I could just about patch her together while I was there in person, but that wasn't enough. This was probably how doctors felt.
I needed to clear my head. And I couldn't do that here, not with Dad in the house. So once I'd ensured he was asleep, I had an angel open my corridor to my hidden base. Down in the gloom, I busied myself with cleaning up the place a bit, added the new information on Natasha to my board of notes, then began working on a little project. If Natasha could leave her marks on the Other Place by testing her powers, then so could I.
Yes, I knew I had an exam tomorrow, so some people would say I should have been studying, but I'd be in bed by midnight. I just had to calm myself down and playing around like this was calming. I needed to de-stress after talking with Kirsty. That was all.
"There," I told the mannequin. The female figure was dressed up in my dusted-off cop uniform, but now I'd acquired a white theatrical mask. I carefully added a little more red lipstick around the mouth of her mask. "Nearly done."
I leant back, and took in my work. I'd made a good job of it. In the low light of the abandoned basement, the mask could nearly pass as a real person. I adjusted the set of her blonde wig, and bit my lip. The idea here was that maybe by making her nearly into a real person in the real world, the Other Place things I used with that disguise would work more effectively. If I thought of her as Beverly Marsh and made up mannerisms and quirks, then maybe I'd be able to fill the mask and the outfit with enough of a residue from repeated use that it'd remember it in the Other Place.
Plus, it was easier to think about these things when I had someone else to talk to, and an inanimate mannequin was a better sounding board than Kirsty. I deliberately put her out of mind, because otherwise I'd have more of the dark thoughts I hated when I lingered too much about what she'd been through.
"So, Natasha is probably a parahuman," I told her. "She's training down in her basement and she's not registered. I don't know if her family knows, but I'll find out. Her power is probably something telekinetic, and she's not any of the registered female Wards in Brockton Bay. I checked online – she's not Vista, Shadow Stalker or Flashside. And I'm betting that she isn't registered because her dad doesn't trust the government. I mean, there were articles talking about how FEMA indoctrinates parahumans on behalf of the UN."
Beverly didn't say anything. Obviously.
"Maybe I should report her," I said. "I mean, I know she's linked to crimes. I could get my hands on her camera. Or I could just document her training room and… I don't know, leave it in some PPD bigshot's office, on their desk." Except the problem there was that it wasn't illegal to be an unregistered parahuman. It was just an aggravating factor in any crime you committed, just like how carrying a gun made a robbery more serious. And would they really consider 'filmed some kids being beaten up' to be a real crime? Especially when most of their targets were Japanese and she wasn't using her powers to commit the crime.
"Yeah, I don't think you'd care so much. You'd say there were more important things," I said, filling in Beverly's imagined half of the conversation. "I mean, there are people killing each other out there in the streets." I knocked some dust off her shoulder. "The cops can't even stop the killing, so why are they going to arrest some bully? They don't care about it. Not one bit." I grabbed one of the glowsticks from the ground, playing with it. The sick green light washed over my face. "I'm the only one I can trust."
No comment from the mannequin.
I sighed. "God, this is useless. I'm just talking to myself here. You know, some people say that's a sign you're going crazy? They're wrong, of course. Everyone does it. I read that in a book. It's not a sign of insanity at all. Children who start talking to themselves earlier have more developed vocabularies when they're older."
But if you asked anyone else, my vocabulary was already developed enough. And I really did want someone to talk this over with. Kirsty was useless; even if she wasn't in a bad state at the moment, she wasn't good for moral judgements. Or talking about doing cape stuff. I didn't believe her when she claimed parahumans were evil. She was from one of those crazy fundamentalist cults who believed that, but I didn't need to. God, I wished I had someone who I could talk to about the whole Natasha thing, but I didn't.
So I'd have to sort it out myself.
Or maybe not entirely by myself.
I wandered up and down the hall of mirrors, playing with the glowstick as I put my thoughts in order. That might work. That might work. I'd take it slowly. I wouldn't rush in. This time I wouldn't go off half-cocked. I'd find out about the skinheads and who among them hurt others and who was just there because their friends did it. I might even be able to pry some of less bad ones away so they wouldn't get their lives ruined.
And once I'd done all that, no one would mind if I unleashed the Other Place on a criminal.
"I'll need to make sure that her camera is on her, full of juicy footage," I said to my reflection, the green light from below casting long shadows over my face. "And I'll need her to be in the kind of state that'd make her want to confess. And oh yes. Once everything is in position, I'll need Glory Girl too."
