Chapter Four
Suddenly, Erika knew how Mia from Princess Dairies felt when she'd been told that she was a princess. Except Erika couldn't turn away from what she was: a speedster.
She listened to Barry with rapt attention, soaking in everything he had to say. A tight knot of fear and confusion began to tie itself even tighter in her stomach.
The day had started out absolutely normal, with Erika longing for a super power so she could be a hero, but now … now she didn't know what she wanted.
Her uncle was the Flash and her second cousin whom she had gotten into a food fight with (though she didn't remember it) was Kid Flash. That alone was a lot to process, so let's top it off with finding out that she was a speedster as well.
When she thought about it, she would take being told that she was a princess over this; even if it meant wearing loathsome dresses and acting proper. At the least, it would be better than being told she'd been a meta-human all her life and she hadn't even known it. Not to mention, being a princess was something she could have turned down, but being a speedster - a meta-human - was something she could not turn down.
"You okay?" Barry asked, and Erika found that question a little redundant. Of course she was not okay. She had just been told that her uncle was the Flash, which she still didn't believe even with his cowl off and his face as clear as it could be when she was without her glasses. To say that Erika was shocked at this recent development could have qualified as the understatement of the year.
"No, not really," Erika replied honestly, pulling her knees to her chest. How she longed for her glasses as she squinted around the room, her vision was extremely blurry and she couldn't make out even nearby objects in great detail. The only thing really assuring her that her uncle and the Flash was the same person was the sound of his voice.
Barry nodded in understanding. "You feel hungry, don't you?"
Surprisingly, Erika did feel hungry, really hungry. She nodded eagerly at Barry's offer and her uncle was off in literally a flash, leaving Erika alone with her thoughts.
This cannot be happening,she thought, desperately hoping that she was just experiencing a pre-dawn dream that had taken a weird turn. But, somewhere deep down inside her, Erika knew that this was reality, that this was real.
She knew that she was indeed a speedster. She knew that she was actually in a Justice League facility called Mount Justice, (where exactly Mount Justice was she didn't know and really didn't care at the moment.) Somewhere, deep inside her, Erika knew that this was reality and that she desperately needed her spare pair of glasses.
Erika stared at the ceiling in boredom. She knew she ought to be asleep, but she just couldn't.
The Cave (the informal name of Mount Justice) had some programming that turned its lights out at a designated bed time or something. Erika's internal clock didn't harmonize with this programming; it was still on Mountain Time, so instead she lay on the bed doing nothing.
She had been at the Cave for days, possible a week, Erika couldn't tell. Barry had moved her from the medical area of the Cave to an unoccupied room. He'd told her that this would be her room, for how long she didn't know.
With a deep sigh, Erika rolled onto her side and pulled the light switch for the lamp on the nightstand. She squinted at the many books that her family had sent her, plus the few she requested, and chose The Tale of Despereaux.
To pass the time she had been confined to her bed, Erika had been reading anything she could get her hands on. She read books that she'd never before opened, or that her mother had read to her, or that she had read before and wanted to read again.
Erika had trouble adjusting to her new power, but speed reading felt a lot like regular reading. Somehow she was able to slow down just enough so that the words didn't blend together. Though she read books clearly, she had noted that she was reading faster than she did when she wasn't a speedster.
At the moment, Erika was overhearing the Mouse Council sending Despereaux to the dungeons of the castle. She was told that the little mouse would have to be brave, very brave. Despite knowing how the book ended in the triumph of the smallest mouse, Erika found herself enthralled in the story again as if she were a nine year old.
She found the ending a little too quickly for her tastes. Squinting over at the digital alarm clock by the lamp, and it declared that she'd been up too late or at least by the time wherever she was.
Erika set the book down again on the stack of other fairytales and adventures with a yawn; well her internal clock was finally in some form of agreement with the clock. Her body finally wanted to go to bed.
It felt like months since Erika had seen the sun, that was something that she hated. Sitting in a bed, in a room that she wasn't allowed to leave was getting to her, whether the confinement was an actual rule or just something that Erika had yet to get the courage to do, she was about to find out.
Her wounds had closed, possibly had fully healed by this time, but she hadn't been out of her room since moving from the medical bay to the room.
Erika slipped out of bed and her feet came in contact with a floor as cold as stone. Probably was too, despite that it appeared to be tile.
She grimaced slightly finding that her injuries were still somewhat there. Though her right ankle still hadn't fully recovered from the sprain, Erika could not let that stop her from getting up. She grabbed her spare pair of purple glasses from the night stand and pushed then onto her nose.
Erika didn't know exactly where she was going, but it was time to explore. She hadn't seen many people during her stay at the Cave, so she assumed that there were very few people here. She could be the only one in the base.
The door to her room slid opened automatically for her as she tiptoed out of the room. Cautiously, she maneuvered through the maze of corridors, trying to figure out where she was going.
She was tempted to start running, but the temptation was not great enough to overcome her fear of what could happen. Erika had become accustomed to her brain working at unattainable speeds thanks to all the reading she'd done, but she just didn't want to test her physical abilities yet, at least not without someone else there to help.
So as slowly as she could Erika crept through the Cave going hither and thither, trying to learn the layout of the place. Erika had found many bedrooms much like hers though most were unoccupied but a few looked lived in; she'd found a room with many shelves most had nothing on them but the top most had an odd collection of stuff, such as three masks all of different styles, an eyeball, a mechanical arm, a weird metallic stone-like object, a piece of cloth, a videotape, and many other interesting things; and much to her delight a library with shelves full of books.
I didn't know the League collected books, she mused scanning the titles. Most were aimed at adult readers, but there seemed to be a good mixture of both young adult fiction and teen fiction. Unfortunately, the fiction collection was in short supply.
Figures. She shrugged. Heroes would need more non-fiction stuff than fiction.
Erika would have enjoyed spending hours in the small library, but the impulse to explore was far greater than her desire to read. She made a mental note to come back later as she exited the learned atmosphere.
Not long after finding the library, Erika stumbled into the kitchen. The area was neat and looked as if it had been used recently, because there were still unwashed dishes in the sink.
Adjacent to the kitchen was a very up-to-date living room. Erika stared at the big screen T.V. for a moment wondering if it had a satellite connection. When she'd moved to Arizona her mother had decided that no satellite connection improved grades and it did, but that hadn't stopped Erika from desiring it.
A broad smile appeared on her face as she inspected the video game console and the extensive collection of games.
Wonder who stays here? she thought before moving on.
She stuck her head into a serene room. It had comfy chairs and a running fountain in one corner. Erika decided against venturing into the room further because in such a neat, peaceful setting she knew that she was bound to disturb something.
Closing the door softly, Erika noted that down the hall she could hear someone. It sounded like the speaker was giving a lecture on something.
Curiosity triumphed over caution because instead of heading back to her room, Erika slowly moved towards the noises.
She wondered if this was how Bilbo felt when venturing into the Lonely Mountain towards Smaug's den. Staying well within the hallway, Erika peered into a spacious, rotunda-like room.
Her eyes grew as wide as her glasses when she saw who was in the room.
Decked out in full costume were heroes whom she'd only seen on T.V. Black Canary, Rocket, Aqualad, the female archer, and many others whom she had yet to learn their name. Among them was her second cousin, Kid Flash.
"Do any of you know where Robin is?" Black Canary asked the young heroes. None of them seemed to know where the Boy Wonder was and they also hadn't noticed Erika yet.
Erika decided that it was time she head back to her room, interrupting hero lessons or whatever was going on was probably not the best way to get acquainted with them.
Slowly, she back pedaled, but at about her third step a disembodied voice asked, "What are you doing out of bed?"
Erika yelped in surprise and spun on her heals to see who was addressing her.
"What's going on?" asked someone from behind her, undoubtedly one of the heroes she had seen in the room, but Erika didn't really care.
It mattered not if they discovered her; she'd already been caught by a hero: Robin.