Chapter 22

Danny awoke to a familiar ache throughout his body as if his muscles were rebuilding themselves from scratch—as if he’d pushed himself too far on nothing but fumes, so he had to pay for it tenfold in his recovery. Which was exactly what had happened. Again.

A soft groan left him as he fluttered his eyes open, vision blurry for a moment until his surroundings came into sharp focus. He was in the hospital bed in the morgue, tucked into the med room. His shirt was off. And his shoes. He was wearing socks and slacks that he was pretty sure he’d had on…yesterday? Only what day was today?

He peered around for a clock, a tablet or computer to see the time, but instead his groggy mind took in the sight of a small gathering through the door next to the glass window that remained frosted.

Danny’s dad stood talking with Captain Shan. Then John shifted out of the way, gesturing broadly as he talked, and Danny saw Mal amongst them.

The full memory of what happened the past twenty-four—forty-eight?—hours assaulted him as he roused fully, and while a fresh ache ricocheted through his body, he felt alert, determined. He was so hungry but finally rejuvenated thanks to an IV running through him.

Now, he tore the IV out, ripped the heart monitor from his chest, and the machines around him screamed. The men through the doorway turned and as a whole bolted into the room. Somehow, Lynn beat them to the bed, though Danny hadn’t seen where she came from.

“What are you doing?” she scolded with just as much authority as ever despite the state of her arm, more properly set now in a cast after Ludgate broke it. She gently pushed on Danny’s chest with her good arm when he stood from the bed. “You should—”

“I’m fine,” Danny said, willing strength to fill his voice rather than the rasp that left him. He felt stronger than he appeared once he was on his feet. He was the Energizer Bunny, damn it; ever rechargeable, ever ready to face what lay ahead—he had to be.

John came forward first, who Danny was so glad to see was okay. He wanted desperately to ask if everyone else was too, since no one new appeared, but he couldn’t help that his eyes strayed to Mal.

Captain Shan stood back inside the doorway, while Lynn turned the machines off to silence their squealing. John hugged Danny, and Danny sagged against him gratefully, though it also made him aware of how much he needed a shower.

And breakfast. Lots of breakfast.

“What’s going on?” Danny asked when no one said anything.

“You should be resting,” Mal said.

“I’m fine,” Danny repeated, wishing Mal would come forward to hug him too. Everyone looked skeptical as if he painted the saddest, sorriest picture in just socks and pants and his skinny frame, and maybe he did, but he’d had enough pity.

“I’m not fine. But I will be. I’m awake. I’m here. Now, tell me what’s going on. Where’s Ludgate?”

Finally, Mal came forward, and Danny reached for him reflexively, fingers curling into the other man’s shirt. His shirt, not his bodysuit, not his Prometheus gear. He wore one of his long-sleeved shirts and jeans—casual, even in the den of his once-enemy.

“He escaped,” Mal said, like he feared Danny might barrel out the door in search of Ludgate. Danny wanted to, wanted to get his hands on the man so badly, but he knew better than to think that was a good idea without a plan.

“Everyone’s safe though, right?” Unless Danny had missed something terrible after he passed out.

A smile cracked Mal’s expression. “We’re safe, Danny. Moved into the morgue for a while in case Ludgate tries to target anyone. Including Carla and the kids,” he added with a hesitant shrug. “Joey’s giving ‘em a tour. Should have seen Michael’s excitement meeting Zeus’s younger brother.”

Danny chuckled at the image that conjured. “He’s barely had a tour. What about the others?”

“Some still asleep. Pretty early yet,” Mal said, confirming it was indeed the next morning. “But everyone’s fine. Vaughn and Priestly are working on tweaks to the Miasma Maker.”

“The rest of the neighborhood too?” Danny joked, half-serious, because a few days ago he wouldn’t have believed any of these people could be in the same room together, let alone team up to save the city, to save him.

“Can’t move everyone in,” Mal smirked. “Oz is keeping an eye on the streets. Most the others already knew your identity. Had to tell him and Dom though. And, well…” he raised an eyebrow at Shan.

“Sorry I had to give up your hideout, Grant,” Shan said. Danny hadn’t realized he knew that much, though he shouldn’t be surprised.

“It’s okay. You’re more than welcome here, sir. Sorry to involve you like this.”

“That’s my fault too,” Mal said. “I needed help—”

“I have free will, Cho,” Shan cut in. “It was my choice. Ludgate needs to be stopped.”

“Yes, he does,” Danny said, “which means we need a plan. That’s what Andre and Hephaestus are working on? What you were talking about?”

The silence that followed clanged like a gong.

“Mal?” Danny turned to him, anxious for an answer.

“We are working on a plan,” Mal said. “We know we need to act within the next few days or we’ll be at a disadvantage. We can’t give Ludgate time to work out a better plan against us. Between Vaughn and Priestly and the ideas you worked on with Joey, we think we have a chance. We also think…” his expression hardened as if broaching no argument, “you should sit this one out.”

“What?” Danny surged forward. “No way. I just need a good meal and some rest, and I’ll be fine. You can’t face him without me.”

“Danny—” John tried.

“I have to help. I have to,” Danny pushed on. “You need me. I’m the only one who can take the worst he might dish out and still walk away.”

“He tortured you,” Mal’s near-shout startled Danny, leaning away from the visible fury in the mist emanating from Mal’s fists. “Ludgate had already done enough, was cruel enough. Then he replaced you, got inside your head, made you think…” His voice cracked as he struggled to contain his emotions, something Danny had seen so rarely that he stood stunned.

Catching himself, Mal stuttered back and reined in his powers. “I don’t care how he tried to mess with me. He kidnapped you and was going to let you waste away to nothing for vengeance I still don’t understand. If you weren’t you, the state you were in when you passed out last night…”

Going twenty-four hours without nourishment for Danny was like a normal person going three to four days. Without food, he was weak. Without water…

“If I didn’t have this metabolism, a single day wouldn’t have been a big deal,” Danny tried to lighten the load of how bad it had been, but Mal’s expression was too open as he returned Danny’s stare.

“I’m not only talking about the physical. That monster wanted to break you. I know what it means to do that to someone, where the line is to do just enough so they’re compliant without pushing too far. Ludgate doesn’t give a shit about that line.”

“No. He doesn’t,” Danny said, “but keeping me out of the fight won’t change that. He’ll target you, target everyone else, and still try to get to me, you know he will.” Refusing to let Mal back away further, Danny grasped his hands that still felt chilled. “He did get into my head, and maybe he’ll always be there now. I know this isn’t something I can heal like my body heals, but if I’m going to have any chance at beating this, then I have to be a part of beating him. I need to do this, and you need my help. Please, Mal.”

The one reprieve he got was that Mal didn’t pull away.

“We figured you’d say that,” John said with a sigh.

Danny looked at his father, looked past him to find amusement in Lynn, despite her silence, and maybe some of that fond exasperation from Shan, but it was Mal who looked resigned like he wished he could convince Danny otherwise.

“Thank you,” Danny said. “All of you, for everything. But we do this together or we don’t do it at all. I know what he’s done to me,” he pulled Mal closer with a tug of his hands, “what he’s been trying to do to us. Bringing him to justice is one of the few things I might have some control over in my life, and I need that. I won’t let you risk yourself to protect me when I’m the best weapon we’ve got. Stopping Ludgate, putting him away, it won’t fix me, but I need to prove to myself that I can do it, that I can beat someone like him without…turning into him.”

“Danny…” Mal said softly, but Danny wasn’t drowning in his sorrows; he didn’t need pity or protection, he needed support.

“I’ll be okay,” he said, mustering a smile. “Now, what’s the plan so far?”

“Oh no.” Lynn came forward with a click of her heels, decisively but gently knocking Mal out of the way so she could push Danny toward the bed. “After I’ve given you a thorough exam. Then gotten some food in you. Then—”

“Gotten you into the shower, dude, coz wow,” Andre’s voice spoke over her, causing Danny’s head to whip to the door to find his friend wedging himself inside with Hephaestus on his tail. “Your hair always stick up that many directions in the morning?”

“Yes,” Mal and John answered in unison, which made Danny and Andre sputter into laughter. Hephaestus—Priestly—joined them once he noticed John’s scowl, until Andre smacked his shoulder.

It was strange seeing the young man for the first time since Danny had tried to put him away. Oz was the first member to leave the Titans, but Priestly had been the last to join.

Catching Mal’s anxious gaze, Danny smiled as genuinely as he could. He didn’t care whether his father approved of them. Nothing could ruin that Mal was here, that he’d said things didn’t have to end between them. They could start again. Once Ludgate was taken care of, they could start again without any lies or disasters looming. That’s all Danny wanted. The rest, the real healing, could come slowly.

He allowed Lynn to settle him back on the bed, sitting this time, not lying down, if only to briefly appease everyone, but he was not staying out of the fight. He was done hiding, done running from the responsibilities that lay ahead.

“Okay,” Andre moved in beside him despite Lynn’s scoff that he could wait fifteen minutes for her to finish her check, “Joey is a certified genius and definitely the new team mascot. We have a lot to fill you in on.”

R

“You found a teal contact?” Danny said after Andre had explained events since last night.

“I didn’t know what it was at first, not ‘til Cho mentioned Ludgate having one teal eye and one grey.”

“He has heterochromia?”

“There have only been cases of that happening among leaning people, not Elementals,” Lynn said. “It’s possible, but more likely he’s a Metal Elemental instead of Light and didn’t want anyone to know.”

“His mother was Metal leaning,” Danny recalled.

“Maybe he forged his records,” Priestly said, hanging by the door as if uncomfortable getting too close to Team Zeus, despite working with Andre all night. “People don’t care as much if someone’s leaning is listed wrong. It’s only a felony if you Awaken and don’t update your status.”

“None of that matters now,” Danny said. “So he has a different element than we thought. We still don’t know what his power is. We should focus on what we do know—that he uses mirrors to travel. His actual powers don’t matter as long as we can trap him and keep him from escaping.”

“And on that note…we built the Miasma Maker into Prometheus and Helios’s amplifiers,” Andre said, nodding with camaraderie at Priestly. “Once we realized our technologies were working on similar principles, it was easy, but Joey was the one who suggested it.”

“This way they’ll know exactly how far the radiuses extend,” Priestly said.

“But won’t they need their eyewear for that?” Danny asked. Mal hadn’t been wearing any lenses last night; Ludgate might have been able to use the reflections against them.

“Notice anything?” Priestly tapped the side of his glasses—his glasses, Danny realized with a jolt—with lenses that, despite the Miasma Maker being on, weren’t fogged over. “The trick is for them to not be reflective. I can tweak the goggles and mask to be the same by tomorrow easy.”

“Then we, what?” Finally allowed to hop down from the hospital bed, Danny eyed his friends skeptically. “Are we supposed to get into the mirror world and turn on one of the fields?”

“That’s a big no,” Andre said, and Priestly likewise shook his head. “We don’t know what this mirror world is. If you cut off the reflections while inside it, you could seal yourself in there forever.”

“Or cease to exist,” Priestly added matter-of-factly.

“Okay…so the amplifiers are for after we get Ludgate into the real world,” Danny said, trying not to feel nauseous over the many unknowns to this plan. “Meaning, we start with Joey’s and my idea, create a fun house out of town too tempting for Ludgate to resist—”

“While the Miasma Maker is on,” Andre interrupted.

“And when we’re ready, we turn it off,” Danny said, understanding where they were going now. “Ludgate shows up, we close off mirrors as needed to limit where he can go with Mal and Helios’s amplifiers, then we just need to get him out of the mirror world before we seal him off for good. It’s perfect.” He smiled at the engineer and technician before him. “So how do we lure him out of the mirror world?”

Andre and Priestly shared a pinched expression before both shrugged.

“We’re still working on that part,” Priestly said.

Danny’s mind spun with the many moving parts and team effort that would be required to pull this off. The plan wasn’t foolproof, but they were working on it—together. Team Zeus and the Titans, even Captain Shan and a few too many civilians. A sense of liberation accompanied the culmination of this support, even with Ludgate still on the loose.

Released from Lynn’s care, Danny scarfed down the quick breakfast she handed him, feeling better by the minute just from a few normal calories hitting his stomach that an IV could not replicate. Through the door out into the main room he saw John talking with Shan again. Andre and Priestly had fallen into a tense discussion about ways they could trick Ludgate out of the mirror world, while Lynn busied herself with Danny’s test results, muttering about how miraculous his metabolism was.

It was only then, as Danny was finally ready to take a shower, brush his teeth, and change into fresh clothes to feel something like a normal person again, that he realized Mal had left some time ago and was nowhere to be seen.