Cassie's head hurt the next day. It was like the ceiling was falling on her brain. All of a sudden, while she was busy focusing and trying to isolate the pain, and not concentrating on her poise, she fell. Before she could hit the ground, Virgil and Richie each grabbed an arm to pull her back up.
Her headache suddenly worsened, and memories of others flooded her mind.
A girl was telling the memories owner that "Mommy wasn't coming home again, Virgil." The memory changed.
It was an image of Static removing his mask. Even though she saw it from behind green tinted glass, she could still recognize Virgil. The green tint was suddenly removed and every thing went fuzzy as a blond spike of hair flopped into her vision and a pair of oval glasses were put in place and clarified the vision in the memory. Virgil spoke, "You like Cassie, don't ya Rich?"
"Yeah, so? It's not like she likes me. Not after the way we met."
Memories flashed by, every secret of the two boys revealed, all in about seven seconds. It was like someone had given the remote to a person with a very short attention span. The pain was too much for Cassie at this point. It felt as though her mind would burst. She screamed. The boys dropped her to the floor from shock at what had just happened.
She looked at the boys and ran. She was running away from all her problems. She ran to the docks, her own… shall we say "special spot." It was what had caused her to flee the school in the first place. The docks, it was a place to hide, where almost no one could find her. It was where she had gone when she'd been tripped over by Richie.
She closed her eyes, thinking about the previous night. :flashback/reflections of a sort: At fist she'd thought that the faint purple mist was her imagination. Now she knew what it was. She had been there for the second big bang, it was bang baby gas, and she was what her parents despised more than anything else, she wasn't Cassie to them anymore, or at least wouldn't be if she told them.
Yesterday she'd just thought the dye in her hair had just come out. After all, her hair was it's original black color, and her pillow had been covered in the burnt sienna color of her dye. Her eyes, well, how many of us are wondering, at 6:15 in the morning mind you, if our eyes are still the same color? She spent the larger part of that day attempting to convince her self that she was normal.
A couple of years ago, when she'd had layered black hair, she'd stood out. After getting about her hundredth suspicious glance from a storeowner, she had died her hair all brown to make her more invisible. That's what she'd always loved. Invisibility, no matter what she'd said to Richie the previous day.
The only times she'd gotten noticed was when her father hit her, and when she talked to Viv and now when she talked to Richie and Virgil. Having gotten more of the foremost than the latter in her lifetime, invisibility was preferable whenever possible.
She thought about the memory she'd accidentally transmitted to Richie and Virgil while she had been involuntarily reading their thoughts.
Flash back"You get back here!" Her father was in a drunken fit.
"No, I'm sick of you hitting me. I'm leaving."
"And what do you want me to tell your mother!"
"THAT YOU BOTH HAD YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE!" Cassie knew she sounded like a brat, but if anyone thought that, their point of view in life was out of context. Hoping her father would rot in prison for all he'd done to her. As always her mind translated it into the words of a song. 'Isn't enough for your family. Isn't enough to for your family. But is it enough to break your spirit?' It was too close, her soul had nearly been crushed.
She fled to the docks, one of the few places in Dakota her cell phone would work. She needed somewhere to stay, and Viv would help. And then it happened.
End Flash BackAt the Gas Station (again)
"What happened today Rich? Do you think she knows who we are? Who Static and Gear are?" Virgil was looking extremely afraid, but it was partially hidden by his mask while they finished getting ready for patrol.
"I thought you said I was being stupid and paranoid. Admitting that I was right means admitting that you are stupid and gullible." Richie was still annoyed at what his friend had said when he had voiced his apparently correct theories about Cassie.
"OK! Sure fine. You were right and I was wrong. How many times will I have to say it before you can FOCUS!" Now Virgil was getting annoyed.
"A few hundred times should do it. Or just once so long as you wait a sec. For Backpack's voice recorders to come on, cuz if I trust you with the first option, I'll probably never hear it again."
"Hel-lo-o! Is brain-boy there or do I need to leave a message at the beep? FOCUS!"
Richie's face was suddenly cast in a deep troubled frown. "If she saw what I saw, she knows." The two boys flew out of the gas station. Both of them were thinking about the same person: Cassie. "Virgil? Maybe…maybe she didn't inhale that much gas. We saw how far away she'd been. Maybe it didn't mess with her brain. She… she might be good…like us."
Virgil looked at his friend with a very subdued look on his face. "Maybe…"
Cassie at the Docks
There she sat at the end of the docks, and she cried. For the second time in all that she could remember, she felt salty tears roll down her cheeks and off her chin, crashing to the ground. She'd always been there for her friends to lean on, she just didn't cry. The last time she'd cried, it was because she was moving and leaving behind all of her friends. She'd just finished preschool. Considering that this was the age when most kids were crying because their parents hadn't bought them the exact right kind of candy bar, she'd had the right to cry then. She had that now too.
Cassie had just lost the two people who could've really been her friends. She still had Viv, but Viv was always so… well, Viv-ish.
A last tear rolled down her cheek before she turned around to be enveloped in a dark shadow that felt solid as it closed in on her and began to cut off her air supply so that she would pass out. It was always easier without a struggle. The shadow master spoke.
"You know something that I need to Cassie. I don't know how, but you know. I'm eager to learn, and knowledge should always be shared." That was the last thing she heard for several hours, as white began to eat away at the corner of her eyes. As she lost her vision, she looked up and met the shadow master's eyes. She immediately stopped struggling. Those eyes seemed to be burned into her vision. They were cold and cruel. They were missing pupils, but they were missing something else too. They were heartless. And soulless.