BRIGHTON
Being Emil on social media is wild. He isn’t doing great in real life since last night’s fight, but he’s tracking really well online—really, really, really well. His Instagram profile is now sporting the blue verified badge, and he’s got over six hundred thousand followers showing him love and support. Some hate too, but he doesn’t need to know about that. His Twitter mentions are so out of control that I can’t keep up. Most notably, his Celestials of New York training montage has over three million views. BuzzFeed even cribbed my clips for their post! Between that and the twenty thousand new subscribers I’ve made overnight, I’m living the dream.
Last night, I handed over the full video of the battle against Orton to the Spell Walkers so they could figure out why Orton burned out. When people’s bodies react poorly to the amount of creature blood needed to turn someone into a specter, it usually happens at the beginning. Orton had his powers for at least two weeks. This was extreme. Lucky for them, I got most of it on camera. I stayed up editing the battle to fire it up on YouTube as soon as possible, but it sucks that I lost some moments, like when Orton’s blast was flying straight at me and Prudencia so we had to take cover away from the doorway, or when Orton was walking in place as if he were shackled like some rabid dog.
The video is blowing up within the hour. I rush out of the library and back to our room to show Emil. I find him shaking, with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, even though warm sunbeams are bathing him and Eva is sitting across from him with a mug of tea.
“Hey,” Emil says weakly.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Your brother and I are having a long-overdue talk,” Eva says. “Would you mind giving us some more time?”
“We tell each other everything,” I say.
The way Eva stares at me makes me question what I’ve said. “I’m happy to set up a time for us to do some group counseling, maybe even involve your mother, but this is a private session.”
Someone thinks she’s a real therapist.
“It’s okay. He can stay,” Emil says.
I’m tempted to throw an I-told-you-so smirk Eva’s way, but I keep it together and sit beside Emil. Emil gets me up to speed, though it’s nothing new—questioning his relationship with Ma, how he’s terrified all the time, how he couldn’t sleep last night because he feels so guilty over everything that happened with the factory. Talking it out with Eva is a solid idea because I refuse to grieve Orton and the acolytes, and Maribelle and Iris both received healing, so all’s well that ends well. Figuring out how he feels about the big family secret and feeling bolder in battles is going to take time, but Emil will get there. He has to.
“What if using my powers overloads me too?” Emil asks.
“Bro, you’re trying to talk yourself out of fighting. You see that, right?”
“Emil’s fear is valid,” Eva cuts in. “There’s still so much we don’t know about Orton’s situation. Did he die because he was a celestial with phoenix essence? Maybe the creature’s blood took longer to corrode his celestial blood.”
“I want to do the right thing,” Emil says. “But what if I screw up everything even worse than Keon did?”
Eva is about to tug a strand of hair and resists. “Back before there was so much disharmony between celestials and humans, our ancestors had a saying: ‘The strongest power above all is a living heart.’ Emil, your heart is powerful—you care, you ache, you feel. I don’t know what Keon’s intentions were, but his execution was disastrous. Your humanity is what makes you heroic, not your powers.”
As Eva tells Emil more about how she swears by this mantra as a pacifist, my mind keeps turning the words over and over: The strongest power above all is a living heart. Humanity is what makes heroes, not powers. The strongest power above all is a living heart. Humanity is what makes heroes, not powers.
The strongest power is humanity.
“I got it!”
“Got what?” Emil asks.
“The key to winning.”
I tell them to get everyone in the boardroom, and I run back to the library to get ready. I collect all the links and data I need to make my case. This is going to be a level up for the movement. My heart is pounding when I enter the boardroom to find the Spell Walkers and Prudencia gathered around. I haven’t been this nervous about a presentation since my Advanced Placement Computer Science final—which I aced.
I go to the front of the room and thank everyone for coming.
“What’s the big plan?” Maribelle asks.
“A six-part video series featuring all the Spell Walkers,” I say. Maribelle glares at me like Dad used to when I would urgently wake him up to tell him about some new fun fact I learned, a fun fact that always could’ve waited until he was out of bed. “Eva told us about that old celestial adage, the one about the strongest power being a living heart. Why don’t we post about why you all became heroes? Your origin stories. We can dispel all the rumors about how you’re building an army to take down the government or getting stronger to attack the city again.”
Maribelle stands up. “Dude, no one cares about us.”
“I disagree.” I share my report on the positive engagement I’ve seen across Emil’s accounts and my own. People are rooting for all of us. They didn’t know Emil two weeks ago, and now they’re starving for more details. I remember what it was like waiting for the next time any Spell Walker would pop up on my feed, whether it was a clip of the latest brawl or even a casual sighting of them out in the world.
“We’ve tried the media route before and after the Blackout,” Atlas says. “My own account included.”
“You built your following by shouting out how many lives you’ve saved or lost. They only see you as a warrior. Let’s take it to the next level and make it clear what you’re fighting for.”
“And you’re the one to do it?” Maribelle asks.
“My platform has grown since Emil.” I can’t say it out loud, but it does sting that my personal fame isn’t because of my own spotlight. The tables have now turned, and I’ve become Emil’s cameraman. “I can get people to pay attention. We start with you all, and maybe we can expand to the innocents you’ve saved.”
“Not every celestial wants to be exposed,” Prudencia says. “All the work they’ve done to blend into society gets thrown out the window.”
“Everyone will have a choice to prove they’re not walking weapons simply because they have powers. They can tell their stories through my Human Power campaign.”
I give them the rundown. We lead with a special feature—Spell Walkers of New York—on my channel and every video will be tagged with #HumanPower. When it trends—and it will—we’ll throw the question back at everyone: What’s your Human Power? Celestials can share their stories. Humans can prove they’re allies and energize others to step up their game.
Prudencia takes a deep breath and looks me dead in the eye. “I want to believe your campaign will work, Brighton. It’s inspired. I’m not all that confident that someone who’s a bigot learning that Spell Walkers have dreams and feelings will finally view them as equals. Then there’s the fake activism, which is exhausting. People show up for a hashtag, spend an hour preparing a picture to post to prove they’re good, and then they return to their regular lives where people don’t swing at them.”
It’s a conversation we’ve had before, but my cheeks flush having it in front of the Spell Walkers.
“It’s worth trying,” I say.
“I agree,” Iris says, and I hold back a smile. “Senator Iron is using the Blackout to silence Congresswoman Sunstar. It’s unrealistic to expect Brighton’s campaign to change everyone’s worldviews forever, but maybe now is the time to try. This could be a big push to get Sunstar in office, where she can continue her work on a greater scale.”
Everyone is talking over each other. Atlas is on the fence because not everyone’s stories are going to be received well by the public. Eva is worried about what this could mean for Nova if enforcers and alchemists find out there’s a healer on the team. Emil wants me to think about how this might backfire on me, but hateful comments are very different from what celestials face daily. Maribelle is resistant until she realizes the potential of this campaign catching fire—with a bigger platform, she can ask the world if they know the identity of the mystery girl who survived the Blackout. Wesley wants to talk it out with Ruth, but he’s open to it if she is.
There are risks, of course, but the Spell Walkers decide to give me a chance.
Maybe this war can be removed from the streets and won online.
I set up my camera on the auditorium’s stage, facing two chairs against the black curtains.
The Spell Walkers took the night to sleep on their involvement in my series, and now everyone is desperate enough for change that they’re honoring their yeses. I prep them on how this is going to go down: I’ll ask personal questions about their origin stories and lives, and the more honest they are, the better our chances will be at gaining sympathy for the campaign. We’ll each film for fifteen to twenty minutes, and I’ll stay up editing down to three to four minutes because of my viewers’ attention spans. Emil is my cameraman like the good ol’ days.
“Who wants to go first?” I ask.
Between his active Instagram and convention appearances, Wesley is the least camera-shy, but even he’s tense as I ask him about being kicked out by his parents at fourteen and forced to use his powers for survival on the streets. He admits to abusing his swift-speed for personal gain, but he turned it all around when he met Atlas, who gave him purpose, and later Ruth, who grounded him with love. He needs this war to be over so she doesn’t have to use her cloning power to raise their baby girl. Wesley will do whatever it takes to be the loving father he never had growing up.
Atlas hugs Wesley before sitting with me and opening up about his parents being locked up in the San Diego Bounds after using their powers to rob a bank, since no one wanted to hire them. At ten years old, Atlas was acting out as he bounced between foster homes, but after the high of saving someone at seventeen, he ditched Los Angeles to make a positive difference with the powers he inherited from his mother. He changed his name, dyed his hair, and set out to New York with the air of someone enlisting in the military. He prayed he would attract the attention of the Spell Walkers with his heroic deeds, all tracked on his @AtlasCounts account, and he’s committed to creating a world where celestials won’t have to abuse their powers to make ends meet.
Iris cuts in before Maribelle because she insists she has to get back to surveying specter activity to figure out what the Blood Casters are planning with the Crowned Dreamer. Iris tells the story of what it has meant to not only be a legacy Spell Walker, but to come from a line of women who are stronger with each generation. Leading the Spell Walkers after the Blackout has felt like impossible work, but her parents never shied away from the importance of the mission, even when the stars felt dimmest, so Iris will continue carrying the world on her shoulders instead of letting it roll away, hoping she can one day live as an ordinary twenty-year-old.
Maribelle joins me onstage with a photo in her lap. She defends her parents, saying that the media has got it all wrong about the Luceros and the Chambers. Instead of harping on how the Spell Walkers are responsible for the Blackout, she urges a deeper investigation on the girl everyone saw on the surveillance footage. She holds the missing pages of the story that the country is misreading. I’m about to ask her about what it’s like to be in a relationship that was born from tragedy, but Maribelle storms off with red eyes, and Atlas chases after her.
Two more to go.
Eva’s dark hair flows out from behind her rainbow cap, gifted to her by Iris to beat any urges to yank more strands from her head. She doesn’t make eye contact with me or the camera as she introduces herself as the hidden Spell Walker the world has never met because her healing power has made her too valuable. Three years ago, after losing her parents, who were working in a celestial shelter that was annihilated by a terrorist, Eva moved in with her lifelong best friend’s family. Eva had exposed her power to heal a child who’d been hit by a car, only to be followed by men who tried to kidnap her and sell her off to some shady alchemists. Her friend’s mother fought them off long enough for a celestial to come to the rescue, but she was shot in the conflict and died before Eva could heal her. Her friend watched, powerless, and soon after that, the friend sought out power to protect herself—she became a specter. Even scarier, she’s now the Blood Caster with hydra blood.
I had no idea Eva was once friends with Dione Henri. I’ll admit, I was curious how Eva’s videos were going to track compared to the others in the series, but once this story gets circulating, I’m sure everyone is going to be holding their breath to see what happens between the Spell Walker and Blood Caster who have so much history together. I know I am.
Emil comes out from behind the camera, and Prudencia takes over.
“How honest should I be?” Emil asks.
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe if I own up to my past lives, we won’t lose the spotlight.”
“Solid.”
Prudencia shakes her head. “It’s not solid. Emil, there might be a bigger bounty on your head to make you pay for what Keon did. Violence against phoenixes will only increase. It’s all too risky.”
So we go with what’s safe for the video. Emil talking about how he was excited for college and how things were picking up at work. It’s fine, but it’s all surface level. Everyone would lose their minds to hear about how he was adopted, how he was found on the streets. It was a plot twist that shook us greater than our favorite stories. It doesn’t matter, I guess. If Emil is in it, people are going to treat it like a gigantic deal.
I pack up and immediately lock myself in the computer lab to work on edits. Ma makes sure I’m eating, and Prudencia urges me to rest, and Emil keeps me company while flipping through Bautista and Sera’s journal. I pass out at the table while polishing Atlas’s video, and when Emil wakes me up to go to bed, I get back to work. I clock out around five in the morning, only when I’ve done all my edits. I review everything when I wake up and present it to the team. Everyone is good, so there’s one last thing left to do.
I hit upload.
The Spell Walkers of New York have broken the internet. The #HumanPower tag is trending globally, and people are taking it on like it’s the latest Instagram challenge. It’s only been fourteen hours, and Emil’s video is leading with over two million views. The others have all crossed one million too.
My phone is absolutely blowing up with media requests and follower growth. I love the high of notifications, but I had to finally turn them off. Shooting past one hundred thousand YouTube subscribers was the big dream, and now that I’ve crossed that line, I want more—I need more.
I’m getting some heat from this conservative vlogger, which isn’t that surprising—the so-called Silver Star Slayer is always spreading conspiracy theories about celestials. Anytime Senator Iron gets caught saying something that should work against his campaign, you can count on him to upload a video about how a shape-shifter probably posed as Senator Iron or some other celestial used their technological powers to manipulate the footage, as if that’s even a thing.
The Silver Star Slayer has got his political neck of the woods believing the following: it’s only a matter of time until Atlas follows in his parents’ footsteps; Wesley’s sob story about Ruth cloning herself to help out with their baby is a disservice to single mothers who are actually struggling; if Iris wanted to be a hero, she would disband the Spell Walkers; Maribelle is calling for an invasion of privacy of a young girl’s life because she won’t accept that her parents are murderers; Eva is selfish for not healing patients in need of urgent care; and Emil is being groomed to assassinate Senator Iron and any other anti-gleamcraft politicians.
“I’m sorry,” I say to the group. “People are buying into it.”
I never wanted to give anyone more ammo.
“But not everyone. Anyone willing to believe his lies isn’t ever going to change their mind about us,” Iris says. “This is a promising sign. You’ve proven that they’re paying attention to us with their hashtag. Now we just have to figure out how to leverage this platform to cause some real change.”
Prudencia walks over with bottles of cider and champagne. “You did it,” she says with a true smile.
Everyone gets themselves a glass, and they toast me.
I may not be throwing fire, but I’m just as much a hero as anyone else.