BY THE TIME the Captain’s car trundles to a halt, my heart no longer feels like it’s trying to pump glue. Guess I should be glad about that. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I’d gone full shutdown back there. If Sherman had left me.
I force that thought from my mind. The last thing I wanna feel for her is gratitude.
We’re outside a new duplex on the edge of Bridgebrook, part of the suburban sprawl that laps at the feet of the Andoridge range. A wall of a man blocks the drive. He’s big. Not like the Supers, with their triangular torsos and trim little waists. All beef, all over, like a heavyweight boxer in the off-season, milky skin and ginger beard.
Oddly, he doesn’t seem fazed to see a gang of henchmen pull up in the middle of the night. In fact, he marches right over to the car and bangs on the window until the Captain rolls it down.
“We agreed,” he says, in an upmarket voice that wouldn’t seem out of place at Ralbury High. “We said the next colleague you brought to meet me wouldn’t be bleeding.”
The Captain rubs the back of his masked head. “Birnbaum ain’t bleeding.”
“I am,” Birnbaum quavers. “Just a little.”
“… Sherman?”
“Bleeding here, too.”
“Jones?”
I examine my throbbing arm. “Sorry.”
“Fuck.”
The big man tuts. “Language. Kids are awake. Now, who needs stitches?”
Turner burbles.
“He’s not bleeding anymore,” the Captain tries. The giant’s not having it. He reaches through the Captain’s door to unlock Turner’s from the inside, then catches him by the shoulder to stop him flumping out. He examines the tourniquet.
“That’s because you’ve cut off circulation to his arm. It hardly counts.”
“Hi,” Turner croaks. “I’m Turner.”
“Good for you. I’m the sucker who took your boss as my lawfully wedded husband, for better or worse. This is, unfortunately, the latter.”
“I possibly deserve that,” says the Captain, while the rest of us process. He seems unconcerned by the whole husband revelation, and like the nice, well-adjusted closet dweller I am, I do my best not to be jealous.
“He won’t appreciate me telling you that my name’s Aaron,” the Captain’s husband continues. “But I’m going to do it anyway, because he woke our kids by calling the house at ass o’clock in the morning and is now showing up on our doorstep with a car full of injured henchmen, despite promising this would never happen again. Especially not when I’ve been on ER call for the past week and am in dire need of sleep.” He sighs, rolling his big shoulders like he’s shrugging off stress, and tries on a half-hearted smile. “But hi, Turner. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” manages Turner, with a feeble waggle of his fingers. Then his body goes slack, and he’s out.
We rush Turner into the house, where the Captain shoos two kindergarten-age kids from the banister at the top of the stairs, using uncharacteristically gentle threats that don’t contain a single expletive. Aaron carries Turner straight to a spare bedroom that seems to be kitted out for this purpose. I glimpse a table draped in disposable plastic sheets.
“You owe me dinner,” he informs the Captain, pausing on the threshold. “Just the two of us. We can leave the kids with my mother.”
The Captain slumps. “Yes, dear.”
“I’m talking steak. Filet, not porterhouse.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Can you please stitch up this shithead before he bleeds out?”
Twin gasps from upstairs. “Swear jar!” calls one of the kids.
“That ain’t sleeping!” the Captain hollers back.
Aaron frowns. “Keep your voice down, darling. The neighbors will complain again.”
“The neighbors can fuck themselves!”
“Swear jar!”
“Macy, Tyler—I love you very much, but please go the ever-loving f-frick to sleep!”
“That still counts,” floats down from the upper levels of the house, along with several giggles. Aaron shakes his head with a fond smile.
“Take your friends to the kitchen,” he says as he shuts the door. “They can wait their turn.”
That’s how we wind up sitting around the Captain’s kitchen, in uniform, clutching our various injuries, staring blank-eyed at the dining table. The tablecloth is cornflower blue. A stain of what looks like old bean juice discolors one corner, and three of the four plastic mats are Frozen-themed. The fourth sports a shiny red fire truck. A shaggy husky lumbers up to the back window, roused from his kennel, and snorts longing clouds on the glass.
“Well,” says Sherman. “This is cozy.”
I can’t look at her. Sherman never claimed to be a Normie. She just let me assume. That moment when she shot the heroine off the Flamer’s back means nothing now.
I’ll hate her for it in the morning. Right now, I’m too tired. Too freaked out. Too everything. No matter how hard I shake my head (Birnbaum shoots me a weird look), Amelia’s screams won’t fade.
“Make the most of it,” says the Captain. “You ain’t invited back.” He sits, tapping his feet and twiddling his thumbs, before surging upright and striding for the fridge. “Nope, I gotta do something. Who wants pancakes?”
“Pancakes?” Birnbaum repeats. He’s dismissed his mask, as have the rest of us. It only feels polite, like taking off your shoes when you enter someone else’s house. The Captain, however, keeps his intact. No clue of the face beneath.
“Yeah, pancakes.” He mimes flipping one. “You know: flat things, served on a plate? Taste real good with syrup?”
We all stare. He groans at us.
“I’m stressed; you’re hungry. This solves both. Now—pancakes? Yea, nay?”
“Yea?” I try.
Five minutes later, we’re watching him beat batter like a man possessed. It looks pretty cathartic. Reminds me of Hernando, before he took on more hours at the Mart and I had to step into his shoes as head chef. Perhaps he’d get along with the Captain.
Or not. The gay thing and all. Don’t know how he’d deal with that. Really don’t know and am so not ready to find out.
We munch through as many pancakes as the Captain puts in front of us. They’re the miniature, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth sort, golden and perfect. This doesn’t detract from the fact that this silence—this peace—is worse than the insanity that preceded it.
When I was dodging falling chunks of roof, my mind couldn’t wander. Now there’s nothing to drown out the snapping, crackling bonfire as Amelia Lopez dies in my head, again and again and again …
I stuff my mouth with pancake. Syrup coats my tongue, metallic like blood.
Project Zero. The sheet crinkles in my shirt pocket when I breathe. Aaron returns before I get a chance to smooth it over the table, ask the Captain if he knows what the Flamer’s trying to hide.
His curly auburn hair brushes the top of the doorframe as he steps through, snapping off medical gloves and pinging them for the trash can—hole in one. After informing us that Turner needs to stay under observation, he leads Birnbaum out back, who nurses a scraped shin and an asthmatic wheeze.
That leaves me alone with Sherman, since the Captain’s more interested in his next batch. He can keep them coming—I spewed up yesterday’s lunch and dinner.
He left his car keys on the table. A bunch of bronze medallions dangle off the ring. Eleven. I count them as I pick splinters out of my arm with my nails, wincing at the sting. That’s an AA thing, right? For years of sobriety?
Mom was never an alcoholic. Chain-smoking was more her style. Her pre-crash bender was only, like, the third time I saw her properly wasted. That binge was just another way to run away from consequences, I guess.
Whatever the Captain might’ve run from, it’s not my business. But I’m glad he’s stopped.
Sherman’s gaze ticks back to me like the needle on a metronome. Her knife scrapes her plate. We flinch in synchrony. I’m about to snap, but she beats me to it.
“Sorry.”
I creak back on my chair. “Oh, you know that word?”
The Captain pours the next pancake. “Careful, girls. The thermometer just dropped ten degrees.”
Sherman’s eyes are hard as pebbles. “Yeah. I apologize when I’m in the wrong.”
I tap the time on my phone display: quarter to three in the morning. “Well, you better start soon. I wanna be home by seven.”
Her attempt to glare a hole through my head (figuratively; don’t think that’s included in her Superpowers) is interrupted by a ribbeting frog. We stare at the Captain’s phone, which jiggles and croaks its way toward his keys, until the Captain snatches it up and squashes it to his ear, balancing his spatula on the pan.
“Yeah?” Pause. “McCarthy? Uh-huh.” Pause. “Yeah. I see.” Pause. “Mm-hmm.” He hangs up. Then says, very succinctly: “Balls.”
“That bad?” I ask.
“Worse. Most of the laser was impounded by the Super Squad, but a few brave, overachieving sods managed to sneak components out of the observatory. They salvaged enough that our boss wants them returned to the warehouse by tomorrow night.” He yawns, cracking out his spine. “Means I gotta head round the city tomorrow, collect ’em up. Could use a hand to unload, Sherm.”
Sherman doesn’t look at me. “Could use more. I’ll bring Jones.”
“Um,” I say. “What?”
“Good plan,” says the Captain.
“Do I get a choice in this?”
“You’ll get money,” says Sherman quickly. “And Captain’ll buy us dinner.”
“Hey, I never said—”
I narrow my eyes at Sherman. What’s her game? She must know I’m not her biggest fan right now. But money is money, and I won’t turn it down.
“I’m in,” I say as the Captain grumbles that we only like him because he feeds us. I steal the last pancake, Amelia Lopez blazing in one corner of my mind.
By the time Aaron tweezers out the final splinter, slathers my arm in antiseptic gel, and smooths gauze over the top (surprisingly dexterous with his dinner-plate hands), it’s almost four. I elect to walk home, though it’s at least three miles. Less awkward than asking Sherman for a lift.
Amelia wails in my head, loud as La Llorona, as I trudge up the stairs. I pull out the papers she gave me. Lists of numbers, compiled in a table, comparing percentages from 2015, 2020, and beyond. The title is made up of several words that contain too many syllables for my post-midnight brain, plus one mention of Clearwater River.
I could muddle my way through it. I could call the Captain, ask whether he knows what the Flamer kept Amelia from revealing. Or, as soon as I’m through the door, I could stuff the papers into the trash, to join the last letter from Blair Homes.
It’s the sensible option. Strictly no heroics, etc.
Project Zero got Amelia dead. I don’t wanna wind up the same way. The rest of her precious research is being distributed over the mountains by the wind, and these pages should have followed. If she saw a hero in me, she saw wrong.