A/N: I sure hope all this makes sense... I swear I am going somewhere with all this lol.
Thanks to my two reviewers! So happy you like this! Hope I don't disappoint...
/
What a pretty little thing, Travis thought as he stalked Shane down the street. Finding this little mistake had been much too simple. Travis had wondered how he would find an invisible girl... But Cole had led him right to her. At least, Travis assumed she was the one. He watched as she walked easily down the sidewalk, humming a happy little tune to herself.
It was just something in the way she walked, the way her silver blonde hair shined as the sun hit it... True, there was a nasty gash on her forehead, but it hardly diminished her attractiveness.
Travis snorted to himself, pulling his hood up over his head. He'd seen her hugging Cole before she'd left him... did she have a thing for him, for that unstable experimental specimen? Whatever, didn't matter.
He kept following her, always keeping at least a block behind. However it wasn't long before her footsteps began to slow. He saw her pressing her hands to her chest like she was worried her heart would fall out if she didn't hold it in. She had long since stopped humming to herself.
Shane turned down an alley and Travis grinned to himself. She was making this way too easy... He turned the corner, but then immediately ducked down behind a dumpster, because the girl had stopped moving. She was leaning up against the brick wall and panting as if she had just run a marathon.
The wall she was leaning up against had the words Death to MacGrath spray painted on it, which Travis found slightly ironic. Shane glanced at the spray paint, then turned away, looking like she was about to be sick. She dug a hand in her pocket, dragging out some papers.
Travis watched, somewhat puzzled, as the girl continued to simply stand there, crushing those papers in her fist. And then it happened. For just a moment, the girl completely disappeared. And then, as if she were nothing but a projected image, her form flickered back into existence.
"Ah..." Travis whispered under his breath, his mouth twisting into a smile. "And what are you, then?"
The papers she'd been holding had fluttered to the ground. Shane bent over to pick them up with shaking hands. The first time she tried to grab them, her hand went right through them. She took a deep breath and tried again. This time, she managed to grasp them. Then she slumped down against an electrical panel box. She appeared to be reading whatever was on the paper.
"Low hemoglobin..." she murmured. "That's not good..."
Travis watched as she pulled out her phone and dialed someone.
"James," she choked, the papers in her hand were shaking so badly Travis wondered how she could read them. "I can't make it back to your station. I have the results of your patients here..."
She began reading out numbers, her voice about as shaky as her hands.
"I'm alright," she said, once she was done with that. "Don't come looking for me. Please. Stay there. Those people need you."
She quickly hung up, grimacing as she stuffed the papers and her phone hastily back into her pocket. As Travis watched, she pulled her knees up to her chest, gripping them tightly. Her eyes were wide and staring, as if she were looking at something absolutely horrifying. But all that was in front of her was a trash can.
"I'm sorry, Cole..." she whispered. She released her knees and drew her army jacket tightly around her. "I don't know what I am. I wish I could help you more... But I can barely help myself."
She stopped talking as it happened again... She shimmered and vanished, then reappeared looking even more terrified. She touched a hand to her abdomen, probing the pale flesh under her shirt.
"Am I dead?" she murmured, letting her head rest on her knees. "I should be dead."
The man's eyes narrowed as he watched her. It seemed like this girl had much less control over her power than the boy did... So she should be dead, huh? Travis privately agreed. Kessler had finally shown him what he'd been missing in the footage of the ray sphere upon its detonation. A tiny girl in a skirt, skewered through the abdomen. A girl who had then disappeared, right in front of Cole.
"Who am I anymore?" she mumbled. "Am I still... me?"
She shivered, curling up almost into a ball. She seemed so tiny, so fragile... Travis sensed that she was struggling to hold herself together. She definitely looked like she could up and vanish at any moment.
"Or am I Samantha?" she finished, sky blue eyes still staring straight ahead. "Which is it?" she hissed through her teeth. "Which one is real?"
Travis wondered, as he watched the girl having her own little existential crisis, how exactly would one go about putting and end to this chick if it came to that. She'd been impaled during the explosion, and judging by the fact that he was now looking at the same girl and she was very clearly not dead... How could she be killed, then?
Travis fingered the gun at his side. Well, Kessler did love experiments...
He had absolutely no problem with killing. He merely viewed it as a means to an end, nothing personal. Sometimes obstacles had to be removed, even if those obstacles happened to be young women.
So what would happen if he gunned her down right here in this dingy alley? If she could survive a metal spike through her stomach, could she survive being shot full of lead? Travis wanted to see her regenerative abilities first hand. Cole's abilities had been observed extensively... their organization had a fairly good idea of what his powers were. But this girl was a mystery. Well, Kessler had said to see what he could learn...
Travis stood up, unhooking his pistol from his belt. This was just as Shane started to move, staggering away from him. Travis raised his gun.
Three shots rang out, slicing through the air, slamming into her back. He heard Shane gasp, her hands going to her chest. She managed one more step before she fell forward, landing face down on the pavement. A red blood stain began creeping over the back of her army jacket.
Shane's hand grasped weakly at the asphalt. Travis stepped forward, eyeing Shane's broken body with interest. A bubble of blood burst at the corner of her mouth.
"Show me what you can do..." he murmured, watching her twitching fingers.
And sure enough, just as the life seemed to go out of her... she began to dissolve. It took mere seconds, and she had broken apart and vanished, leaving behind nothing but a small blood smear on the ground. Travis grinned. So it was true... then... this was incredible! The girl might not have the raw power of the boy, but... she'd practically gained immortality! She couldn't be killed, at least not by conventional means.
Travis was still standing there contemplating all the fascinating implications of Shane's abilities when the wind picked up.
It started slowly at first... a few loose pieces of newspaper floated by. Then a garbage can got blown over, scattering trash everywhere. Travis's hood was thrown back. He threw up his hands to try and block the dust that was pelting his face.
"Asshole!" the girl's voice howled out of nowhere, sounding agonized. "Oh, I'll show you what I can do!"
An invisible force slammed Travis against a wall, as if a giant hand had punched him in the chest. And then the dumpster he'd been lurking behind started to move. It plowed forward, crashing into his body, crushing him against the side of the building. Travis screamed, struggling to free himself.
"Bitch!" he groaned. "You're fucking dead!"
Shane's cold laughter echoed off the walls. The temperature around him seemed to drop twenty degrees.
"How will you kill me?" she hissed.
Travis still had one arm free. He aimed his gun straight in front of him.
"I'll figure something out," he growled. He thought he saw a form beginning to solidify in front of him... a female body with wings... he fired his gun. Bullets punched holes in the wall in front of him, but the figure merely bared its teeth before dissolving back into mist.
"I'll see you in hell then, won't I?" the girl's voice snarled.
Travis felt the pressure on his body increasing... This chick was going to crush him to death. He'd end up a grease smear on an alley wall. It occurred to him that he may have made a mistake provoking this girl when he didn't know exactly what she could do... Bullets couldn't harm her... but maybe he could manipulate her into releasing him.
"You kill me now, my friends kill your new boyfriend," Travis spat, his lungs straining to get enough air.
The pressure on his body stopped increasing. Then it completely halted, allowing Travis to slip out from between the wall and the dumpster.
"You hurt him... and I'll rip you into a thousand pieces," Shane's voice hissed in his ear.
"Tell me what you are, and we won't hurt him," Travis wheezed, bracing himself against the wall. No need to tell her that nobody in his organization had any intentions of destroying Cole, not when he was such an important investment of time and money.
A cold blast of air hit him in the face, sending him careening sideways until he tripped and fell to the ground.
"What an interesting question!" the girl shrieked, sounding slightly hysterical. "I'm afraid I don't know! If you figure it out, do let me know, won't you?! In the meantime, you and your group of thugs stay away from us, or I'll make your death far more painful than being crushed into a pancake!"
The wind rushed by him and then died down. Travis simply sat there on the ground, wondering how many of his ribs were broken. Kessler was going to be pissed... He was only supposed to investigate the girl, not get into a fight with her.
You may not know what you are, but I think I do.
Because now Travis had witnessed her powers firsthand. She could dissolve into nothing but mist, she could control the wind... Even though he'd somewhat botched this mission, he'd still learned one thing... Just as Cole had been bonded to a specific element, so had the girl... The girl, it seemed, had been bonded to the air itself.
No wonder she was so afraid...
/
Cole was walking towards the park, a slightly smashed can of soup in hand. He popped the top on it, sipping it cold.
Before he knew it, he was at the graveyard. One other man was there, kneeling by a homemade cross. He didn't even look up as Cole approached the grave he'd dug for Trish.
Shades and spirits were everywhere. Cole was a demon among ghosts. Spirits drifted by him as he crouched down by Trish's grave, but for once Cole paid them no attention. He had something else on his mind.
"Hey," he whispered to Trish's picture. Her face looked serenely back at him. It was an old picture, back from when they had first started dating, and she was actually happy...
He'd come here to see Trish, to tell her all the things he'd never gotten a chance to say before she'd died. But now that he was actually here, he wasn't sure how to put those thoughts into words. Maybe he just wasn't meant to have closure with her...
Either way, she was dead. There was no getting her back. Maybe if he wasn't trapped in a God forsaken city with lunatics and bandits and a populace hungry for his blood, he could have spent a month moping and grieving... but this new city wouldn't allow it. Time to get this shit off his chest. It was now or never.
"Look, Trish... I'm sorry for how things fell apart between us," Cole mumbled to the makeshift cross. "I hope wherever you are now, you know the truth. I... I loved you. I really did."
He paused. Sam might be here, listening to him pouring his feelings out like a heartsick teenager. Then he decided he didn't care. He smoothed out the dirt he'd disturbed when he'd buried her, making the surface of the grave nice and even.
"I don't know what I'm doing anymore," he continued, staring at her smiling face. "But I know who my friends are... Shane cared about me when no one else would, not even you."
He took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of rain and soil, trying to soothe the anger building up inside him. Glancing upward, he saw storm clouds gathering. He had to control his emotions before he stirred up another disaster... It had been a while since he'd had the energy and the emotion to cause a storm like he had at Archer's square. But that didn't mean that it couldn't happen again...
"That really hurt, you know," he added, clenching his empty can of soup so tightly his knuckles turned white. "It hurt when you couldn't trust me..."
Something rustled nearby. Cole quickly scanned the area for potential threats. A spirit was standing near him, looking at a grave site. Cole shuddered and looked away. He'd have to keep moving soon before any Reapers spotted him. Not that he was too worried if they did... His abilities only seemed to be growing, and his fever had gone down.
Killing Reapers hadn't fixed anything. They just kept coming. The only options left to him now were 'escape this city' or 'lay down and die.' Cole preferred the first option.
"I'm going to try and help her escape with me," he continued. "I don't know how we're going to do it, but... well, yeah. That's my plan," he finished lamely. "I just wanted to say goodbye."
Cole reached into his pocket and set a small bundle of clover flowers on the grave site. One last peace offering to her spirit. She hadn't come back to haunt him yet, but he didn't want to take the chance.
He stood up, feeling the air beginning to move around him. So, Sam had been listening... He'd started to understand something about the voice... whatever she was, she used the wind to travel.
He expected to hear some curious comment or question hitting his ears, but instead he heard something he'd never heard before... sniffling. The voice was crying.
"Um..." Cole said hesitantly, unsure of what to do. Was Sam crying because of what he'd just said to Trish's grave, or was it something else? "What's up?" he added weakly.
"Sorry," the voice whispered shakily. "Bad day."
How does a disembodied voice have a bad day?
"You okay?" he asked, feeling the air twisting around his body, like it was trying to grip him, or maybe trying to hold him. The voice was real, but... what was it? Samantha wasn't a ghost, that was one thing he was sure of.
"Cole..." Sam began faintly. "If I had a body... would you still want me around?"
Cole wasn't sure where she was going with this... was she thinking about Shane? Was it possible that the voice was jealous? Cole felt a little bit bad about that. Both girls had helped him a lot...
If he was being honest, he liked both girls. Maybe he was just gravitating towards Shane because she had a body. She was somebody he could see, and somebody he could touch.
"Yeah," Cole said, knowing full well that if Sam was flesh and blood, he couldn't just leave her behind after all she'd done for him. "I would. But we're sticking together, okay?"
"Yeah?" Sam mumbled.
"You drive me crazy, but I wouldn't leave you behind," Cole said, a smile tugging at his mouth. "I don't care that you don't have a body."
"Thank you," Same whispered. "And if you're really planning on escaping... I'll help you as much as I can."
Cole nodded, sensing a pressure against the palm of his hand. Was Sam trying to hold hands with him? He flexed his fingers, hoping to feel something... Then a thought occurred to him.
"Hey, when you said that Shane could help me..." he began, but then he stopped. The one other man who had been kneeling by another homemade cross had suddenly stood up. The man turned to face Cole.
Black gunk was dripping from his mouth. There was a crazed look in his eye that Cole could see even from fifty feet.
"Cole," Sam began in a low voice, "You need to leave now."
Cole began to back away. But that man had been acting normal just a second ago...
And then a single thought snapped into place in his head. Maybe it was his proximity to her grave, but Trish's words came back to him now... He'd known about this all along! How could he have forgotten? Trish had said when he'd first woken up... People start vomiting black fluid, and they get very weak and disoriented... and then go absolutely crazy. They start attacking other people. She had been describing the Reapers.
"Shit," he said, all the horrifying pieces falling into place in his mind. "The sick people... they're becoming the Reapers, aren't they?"
Cole could kill this guy now... but... he'd been in mourning here too. His face was wet.
"You mean you hadn't noticed?" Sam whispered. He could feel the wind pushing at him, urging him to move faster.
Cole started to run. He sprinted out of the park at top speed, wind cutting through his ragged clothes. A frustrated howl followed him... Cole glanced over his shoulder. The man was following him, but at a much slower pace. Cole turned down another street, breaking the man's line of sight with him.
"You've got to find some place to hide!" Sam hissed. "That one will call the others!"
Cole quickly took in his surroundings. Any building he went inside, he ran the chance of running into more Reapers or bandits. They tended to lurk in places like that.
And then he saw his old apartment building. He still had a key to Trish's place, but he decided he wasn't that desperate... yet.
"In there!" the voice breathed in his ear. "It's still inhabited by normal people."
"I can't go in there!" Cole snapped back.
"Why the hell not?!" Sam's voice shrieked at him. "You want to live, don't you?"
Cole grit his teeth.
Well, he'd just tried to make his peace with Trish... maybe if he hid there for a day, her ghost wouldn't terrorize him. And he could change out of his shredded clothes, and maybe trim his beard... Steeling himself, Cole wrenched open the front door and dashed inside, scaring a middle aged woman half to death. She shrieked at the sight of him and cowered behind the front desk.
"Jesus!" Cole cursed. He veered off course, heading for the stairs. "You didn't see me!" he shouted back at her as the door slammed shut behind him.
Cole tried to open multiple apartment doors, hoping to avoid his own, but of course every single goddamn one of them was locked.
Cole ran up the stairs and down the hall to apartment 507A, slamming his hand into his pocket for the front door key. Before he knew it, he was slumped against the inside of the apartment door, trying to catch his breath. Cole pinched his eyes shut, not sure if he wanted to see the inside of this place again. What if he opened his eyes, and Trish's ghost was ready to rip him a new one?
Crap. What was he thinking coming back here?
"It's alright," Sam said gently. "I don't think they followed you in. You can relax."
"Look, you don't get it," Cole seethed. "I didn't want to come back here."
"Sorry... I didn't know this was your old place," Sam mumbled, sounding embarrassed.
"It's okay..." Cole began slowly. "Just don't go anywhere. Please." He didn't want to face this place alone, and a disembodied voice was better than no company at all.
"I'm not going anywhere," Sam reassured him. Cole exhaled slowly. He would have to move sometime... See you later, sanity. I held onto you for as long as I could. It was nice knowing you... He opened his eyes.
And there was nothing. Cole breathed a sigh of relief. He got to his feet, and his first move was the go to the kitchen and see if there was any food left... he was starving. Cole dug around in the cabinets, coming up with a box of granola bars.
"Do you, uh... eat anything?" he asked Sam, one hand already in the box. The voice snorted, causing a blast of air to blow the cabinet door shut.
"Do I look like I eat anything?" she said sarcastically. "Would be nice, though..."
Cole didn't respond except to quickly devour two of the bars and stash the rest of them in his pocket for later. A shower and a change of clothes was next on his agenda. He did not want to stay in what was sure to be the perfect place to lose his sanity for longer than he had to.
"If I get in the shower, do you promise to stay out here?" Cole asked, shedding his blood stained jacket.
"Does it matter? You've already stripped in front of me," Sam said happily.
"Thanks for the reminder," Cole grumbled, tugging off his muddy sneakers. "That was your fault anyway, you made me think I'd gone off the deep end."
"Oh sure, blame me when I was only trying to help," Sam said, and Cole imagined her to be pouting.
"Whatever," Cole mumbled. He decided he had bigger things to worry about than whether or not his imaginary friend saw him without clothes on. He went into the bathroom and began stripping off his shredded, bloody, muddy and filthy clothes until he was standing naked in front of the mirror.
Despite his healing abilities, he still had that damn scar on his face that made him look like a thug. His hazel eyes had a haunted look to them, like he'd seen just one ghost too many. Cole frowned, dragging his fingers through his tangled beard.
I had an idea of how my life would turn out, and I never thought I'd be a mutant freak who lives on the streets because I'm afraid to go back to my own apartment. Oh, and I'm being followed around by a voice. I have got to find Shane and get the hell out of here...
Cole shook his head. The more he thought about his situation, the more pissed off he got. He got in the shower, cleaning himself as fast as possible to give Sam less time to gawk at him. The water sizzled on his skin as he shocked himself again and again.
Calm down, he told himself sternly. Easier said than done. Lightning bounced around in the tub with him until he was done.
Wrapping a towel firmly around his waist, he went into the bedroom, determinedly not looking at Trish's things. He quickly grabbed some clean underwear, jeans and a long sleeved T-shirt and put them on.
"Sam," Cole sighed, pulling on clean socks. "You can come out now."
"Um, I never went anywhere?" Sam's response echoed in the quiet room. "You told me not to."
"Well, we're leaving," Cole snapped, feeling the back of his neck burning. "I am not staying here, and the Reapers are probably gone now."
"But it's getting dark out... maybe you'd want to sleep some place warm tonight?"
If Sam had been visible, Cole would have glared at her. As it was, he settled for scowling at the darkness spreading outside the window.
"I can't," he spat.
"Listen, it's alright," Sam said gently. "I promise I won't leave. I'll be here when you wake up. Then we can go."
Cole glanced at the bedroom. The bed was made as if Trish had just been in there... He couldn't sleep in there. No way. It would hurt too much. But Sam was right, it would be nice to sleep some place warm for once. He hadn't slept in a warm home since Shane had saved his life...
"Fine," Cole consented, sitting heavily on the couch, which he knew from experience that he barely fit on when lying down. "But as soon as it's daylight again, I'm gone."
"Works for me," Sam said, a light breeze brushing his cheek.
Cole curled up on his side, staring at the moonlight coming in through the window. He'd spent many nights on this couch, banished to the living room after fights with Trish... Cole didn't want to close his eyes. He feared that if he closed his eyes... yeah, that's when Trish's ghost would come out and kill him. It'd be like a horror movie, his blood splattered all over the apartment walls... his severed head in the kitchen sink...
That was when the voice started singing.
It was soft and sweet and soothing... it was a familiar pop song, but the way Sam was singing it made it seem like the most beautiful thing ever written. Almost against his will, Cole felt his anxiety leaving him. His fingers twitched as he felt the air moving around them.
"Am I imagining all this?" Cole mumbled, pressing his face into the couch cushion.
The voice giggled, pausing in her song.
"No, I'm really here," she whispered. He could feel something brushing against his arm.
"What are you, Sam?" Cole muttered, staring out the window, wondering if he'd finally see her... Sam merely continued her song. Cole felt his eyelids growing heavy, listening to her singing. Her voice filled every part of him, erasing his irrational fears,
"I'm your friend," Sam whispered softly once her song was over. "You know me, Cole."