My swarm danced, a buzzing, swirling bubble with us at the centre. The insects moved in sync, betraying the intelligence that directed them. Formations of moths flew in defensive spirals while phalanxes of ants and spiders assembled themselves around me. There was a subtle wrongness in the way they moved that had even disconcerted me at first. Living beings didn't move like this, not naturally.
I was showing off, I had to admit. This was the first time I'd ever revealed my power to another person. I was tracking everything in my range, flexing my power to a degree I had never attempted before. My range was pushing three and a half blocks right now. This felt good.
Victoria's jaw had literally dropped.
"You're a cape?"
"Yes. You're going to have to make a decision here. In two minutes, Emma's going to be in the school office. In fifteen the PSF will be here to take you into custody. Now, you could wait and go with them…"
Her jaw tightened, nostrils flaring with anger. "No. Fucking. Way."
"Or you can come with me. I made up my mind a while ago. I'm running." Curiosity flashed across her face briefly, but she put it away. Not the time.
"You have a plan?"
I hesitated. "I had a plan. It's just been shot to hell. Now I have the first step of another one."
She nodded and shot me a wry grin. "Not like I have much of a choice. Okay Taylor, what do we do?"
Relief flooded me. I hadn't realized how much having Victoria on board meant to me. Despite the situation, I found myself grinning back. The tussle with Emma had left me winded and covered in scrapes and bruises. My clothes were covered in dirt. There was grass in my hair. My smile widened, and I burst into happy laughter, while Victoria shot me a bemused look.
It felt like the fog over my mind was lifting. It was finally happening - not according to my careful plan, but screw the plan. For too long my world had been grey, and suddenly I was seeing in colour again. It was finally happening, and the thrill of it set my teeth on edge, sent my heart was racing. Around us my swarm was going crazy in uncanny symmetry. The cat was out of the bag - or would be soon enough - and I was alive again.
"I've got a place, nearby. I've been stashing supplies there. We've got to hurry though, they'll think to look there sooner or later. We've got a 15 minute head start, I suggest we make the most of it."
She nodded. "Lead the way, then."
"We should toss our phones first. The last thing we want is to be tracked because Julia gave up our numbers. We can pick up burners later if we need them."
We dumped them behind a bush and then took off across the field at a jogging pace. Vicky kept glancing behind us apprehensively, as if expecting the authorities to descend on us at any moment. I was tracking everything moving in my range, so she needn't have worried but it probably made her feel safer. I could sense Emma entering the school office and collapse onto a couch sobbing while her friends tried explaining what just happened. A smile flitted across my lips. Punching her had felt great.
As we left the school field behind us, I couldn't help but glance back at it. Winslow was a dump, but a significant portion of the last two years of my life had been spent there. It was a familiar piece of the life that I was about to leave behind. I tried to muster some nostalgia or sentimental feelings for the place, and failed. All I could think of as we left was that it was a pity I didn't have a jerrycan of petrol and a lighter handy.
We passed a few people on the street, but nobody spared us a second glance. We were still just two schoolgirls, skipping school. I'd been leading the way almost unconsciously so far, running a route I'd taken twice a day since the day I started school until the day my father died. When we turned the last corner I slowed, and so did Vicky beside me. We walked the rest of the way
"This is your house isn't it?" Her blue eyes were wide, scanning over the house before turning to meet mine.
"Yeah."
I said it casually, as if keeping up the facade would actually make it hurt less. The house was technically mine now. Kurt and Lacey were my legal guardians so it was in trust until I was of age, but I didn't plan on ever collecting this inheritance. No, this would be the last time I was here. Surprisingly, that thought made me feel a little better. It was as if I was paying my respects to the place before it became a shadow of the past. After we left, the house could sit here untouched as a shrine to a happier time.
I fished the key from the chain around my neck and unlocked the front door. As we entered into the living room, Vicky was still eyeing the street behind us to see if we were noticed.
"Relax," I said. "I'll know the instant there are cops or PSD within three blocks or so of us."
She raised her eyebrows at that. "That far?"
I led the way up the stairs to my room. The house was silent. Empty. A layer of dust covered everything now, disturbed only by the skittering feet of insects and runaway teenagers. We got to my room, and I headed straight for the closet. It was mostly empty - most of my stuff was at Kurt and Lacey's - but at the back was a large green duffle bag, a backpack, and two cardboard boxes. I pulled them out with a grunt - they were heavy.
"What is this stuff?" asked Victoria curiously, picking up a plastic wrapped packet from one of the boxes.
"Emergency supplies," I explained. "MREs, military blanket, first aid kit, water purification tablets, a canteen, and a roll-up tent. The backpack has a laptop, some clothes, potassium iodide pills, and a geiger counter. Everything you need to survive on the run."
She gave me a funny look. "That's… how long have you been planning this, Taylor?"
"A month."
"Wow. Okay, I still have literally nothing but the clothes on my back."
"I've also got about $500 in cash in here, we can get you something later. For now I can share."
I unzipped the duffle bag and tossed it to her. "Here, start emptying those boxes into the bag. Fuck! I should have packed earlier, but I thought I'd have at least another day." I stood up, and turned to the door.
"Where are you going?"
"The other room. I need to get something."
I made my way down the corridor to Dad's room quickly. That's how I still thought of it: Dad's room. Even farther back it had been Mom and Dad's room, but I could barely remember that time. It was untouched, bed still unmade. I hadn't been in here since that night. I pushed down the ugly feeling that was bubbling up in my stomach again. No time for brooding.
I searched the room. There was a little cash on the desk, twelve dollars. In one of the drawers was a watch with a silver bezel on a leather strap - an Omega Speedmaster. I remembered it, an anniversary present from Mom to Dad. It was far too large for my wrist, but I put it on anyway. Then I headed to the back of the closet. On the floor was a small steel safe.
It needed a six digit password. I tried Mom's birthday, then their wedding anniversary, then my birthday. No luck. He must have picked a random number and memorized it. Good security practice, but screwing me over right now. I was just about to try another combination when the door to the room slammed open so hard that it came off its hinges, smashing the drywall behind it.
"Taylor what is this?"
"Looks like a Beretta 96, Vicky."
"Is this… your gun?"
"I suppose so."
"Where did you get a gun!?"
"This is America. Don't they grow on the trees?"
My attempt at humour didn't take. Victoria did not look amused.
"I may have stolen it. Accidentally."
"How do you 'accidentally' steal a gun?"
"One of my neighbours is kind of an irresponsible gun owner. To be honest, I was just trying to work out if I could lift it off his table with enough bugs, and… "
"Now you have a gun."
"Yes. It was pretty difficult you know, I had to run spidersilk lines-"
"And you plan to use it?"
"If I have to. We're not exactly going for a walk in the park here, are we."
"Taylor, have you ever even fired a gun before?"
"It can't be that hard can it? Just point it and click until the thing runs out of bullets."
"Magazine," she sighed, "It's called a magazine."
"What is?"
"The thing that holds the rounds, Jesus Christ."
"Noted."
She seemed to mull it over for a moment before shrugging and handing me the gun with another exasperated sigh. "What're you doing in here anyway?"
"Trying to get this safe open," I said, eyeing the wrecked door before looking back at Victoria, "and I think I just figured out how to do that."
"How?" she asked, confused.
"You just sent that door halfway through the wall just by shoving it."
"Huh, wow…" She stared at her hand for a moment, just realizing it. "Looks like I take after Uncle Neil." She stepped forward gingerly, then dropped to her knees beside me, facing the safe. "So how do I do this?"
I shrugged. "Just.. try to pull it open, I guess?"
Bracing against the body of the safe with her left hand, she grabbed the handle inset into the door and pulled. There was a brief screech of twisting metal, and the door popped open effortlessly.
While Vicky sat examining her hands, I went through the contents of the safe. Dad's passport was of no use to me, nor was his chequebook, or the assorted financial documents. A small blue velvet box held a gold wedding band. I took it. Finally, there was a wad of cash wrapped in rubber bands. I pocketed it as well, then stood up.
"One last thing."
We made our way back to my room to collect the stuff. I pulled on the backpack while Vicky took the now full duffle bag - she did have super strength after all. We descended the stairs and and then I walked over to the basement door. Before I opened it, I put a hand on Vicky's shoulder.
"Just.. don't freak out, okay?"
"Freak out about what?"
"You'll see."
I opened the door and flicked the lights on. As we walked down the stairs, spiders moved obediently out of our way. I heard Victoria gasp behind me, and turned to see her hovering slightly off the ground, white faced and shuddering.
"Don't worry. They're all under my control."
She nodded, but kept glancing around the room uneasily as if they were about to jump on her at any moment. I walked over to the work table and started brushing spiders off the cloth, before rolling it up to put into my bag.
"Is that a bodysuit?"
"Yeah. It's woven out of dragline silk from black widows, reinforced with carapaces and exoskeletons for armour. It's still incomplete though, I haven't had time to dye it."
"That's seriously cool, but did you really have to use black widows?" She looked even more jumpy than before.
I shrugged. "It's the strongest silk I could find. And like I said, they're all under my control. Every single one."
I finished packing the costume and we headed back upstairs. I took a moment to give one last command my spiders, to return to their original hunting grounds all over the neighbourhood. That done, we stepped out of the house. I shut the door behind myself and locked it.
"Where do we go from here?"
"Somewhere quiet. I have an idea."
I didn't look back as we walked away.
"What is this place?"
She was examining the warehouse curiously, while I was examining our surroundings. Daylight was already waning; it got dark quickly at this time of year. I could detect twenty people within my range right now, most of them nowhere near us. Only six people were within a block of us, and none within direct line of sight. Still, something was tickling the back of my mind… I tagged the six with fleas, and then led the way to the back of the warehouse.
"My dad used to work around here, before he got bumped up to union management."
"Looks abandoned."
"It is. The resurgence of Atlantic piracy hasn't been good for the industry. The sinking of the Nimitz freaked out a lot of people."
It took less than a minute for Vicky to tear a discreet hole in the chain link fence for us to slip through. Next was a corrugated iron door at the loading bay, which was already rusted to flakes. A section fell apart as soon as she touched it, and we slipped into the building.
"Well, this isn't creepy at all." Her voice echoed weirdly through the vast space. It was filled with stacks of pallets and towering metal shelving units, all empty. In one corner was an old forklift; we were close to the ocean here, and the salty air had reduced it to a mound of rust. There was nothing of value here. Whoever the owner was, they'd just locked the doors and left.
"It's a place to spend the night," I said, glancing at her, "while we figure out what to do next."
We found an aisle between two rows of shelves that was relatively dry. I suddenly realized that the sun had set and I could barely see - I had been mapping my surroundings with insects subconsciously. I pulled a camping torch from my backpack and turned it on. Vicky set down the military blanket, and we sat facing each other. I pulled out a couple of power bars for us to chew on, and handed her one.
"I'm sorry I ruined your plan." Guilt washed over her face. "Maybe you should have just left me…"
"Hey, Vicky, no. I would never do that," I said earnestly. "You're my friend, and I'm glad you're here. Besides, it wasn't much of a plan in the first place. I had a Greyhound ticket to Chicago, and then I was just going to wing it. Head west."
She looked at me in surprise. "You want to leave Brockton Bay?"
I leaned forward, grabbing her hand and looking at her seriously. "There's nothing left for us here. We're free, Vicky. We can go wherever we want, do whatever we want."
She looked at me dryly. "We're wanted criminals with known civilian identities, and only a few hundred dollars to our names."
I grinned. "Okay, so we have to avoid the heroes. As for money, well, there are always people interested in our… unique skills."
"My parents were heroes," she said sadly.
I squeezed her hand. "I know. Look, we don't have to hurt people, but-"
"When you're a kid, you see your parents as the greatest, strongest people in the world. And mine were actual superheroes. They were brave, idealistic, stupid heroes, and they died because they couldn't see the tide turning. Yeah, of course I'm in."
I nodded, and looked up to see her staring at me intently.
"What about you though?"
"What?"
"Why are you running?"
I was silent for a second, trying to work out what she meant.
She continued, interrupting my thoughts. "Did you know they made me see therapists? As a 'high risk' case it was mandated. And to be honest, besides the thinly veiled propaganda they pushed, they weren't… bad. Their agenda was easy to see, and not completely false. The way the world is, joining the PSD is not even close to the worst deal you could get. That's why so many do."
"You're saying I should have just turned myself in?"
She grimaced. "It was never even an option for me. Even if I was willing to work for them they'd never trust me because of my family. I'd be shipped off to some containment zone or peacekeeping force on the frontier of civilization at the first opportunity - that's what they did with Crystal and Eric. But you could actually make it work. With your power they'd keep you stateside, doing intelligence work or something. Hell, you might even make bank like tinkers do, producing those silk suits for strike teams. So why?"
"Did I ever tell you how my mother died?"
She looked startled at the apparent non-sequitur. "No. I was curious, but never asked."
I nodded and looked away into the gloomy darkness that surrounded us. "It sounds bad but I barely remember it. Barely remember her. She was an English professor, at BBU. There was this American Lit conference in Syracuse, at the university. She went with some colleagues."
"Syracuse… fuck." I looked back at Victoria. Her face had gone pale.
"Yeah. Edge of the inner exclusion zone, 50 miles from Ellisburg. She had a chance. The army was moving in, evacuating people to Rochester before the horde got to Syracuse. She might have gotten out. Then they made the call to launch cruise missiles - at the time, they didn't know those things would multiply. I don't know if it was the ionizing radiation, or one of those creatures that killed her in the end. If her body was even recovered during the pushback, it would have been incinerated as hazardous biological material."
"Fuck, I- I'm so sorry."
"It's okay, it was a long time ago. The thing is, that was the turning point. Ellisburg is when people went from being wary of capes to scared shitless of us. Half of the Northeast is gone, lost to those creatures. If you're a hero in the PSD, they leave you alone because they need you to fight shit like that. You're tolerated and paid for it. You're told it's the right thing to do, what you're supposed to do with your powers. The rest of us are threats, too dangerous to be left alone."
Victoria seemed a little taken aback at my vehemence. It's not like we'd ever talked about stuff like this at school. It felt good to talk like this, to let out my frustration.
"And they're right, aren't they?" she said thoughtfully, "we are dangerous. But instead of just leaving us to live our fucking lives, they screw us, turn us into criminals if we don't work for them."
"Yeah. The paradigm the world operated by shifted the moment powers appeared, and they're still desperately trying to make it work, force it to work. They're just too myopic to see that they can't control us."
"Hmm. So you refuse to be a dog of the military."
I rolled my eyes at the reference. "Really? You're quoting terrible anime now?" I replied, smiling as some of the tension drained from me.
"I'll have you know, FMA is amazing."
"Huh, I've only ever seen the movie. It sucked."
She socked me in the shoulder for that. I noticed that she did it carefully; she could probably have shattered my arm otherwise. "Movie? What movie? Careful, or the Fuhrer will send you to the Fifth Laboratory for such sacrilege."
"I'll have to watch it sometime," I laughed. "Okay, this has been depressing enough. I don't sense anyone nearby, now's the perfect time to test your powers."
We walked over to a part of the warehouse that was clear of debris. I put two of the camping torches on one of the shelves to illuminate the area, and turned to face Victoria who was already hovering half a metre of the ground like she had been after she triggered.
"Woah," she exclaimed, wobbling precariously as the suddenly rose another metre.
"How does that work, exactly?"
"It's… like moving an invisible limb. I just think a direction, and I move." Her eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and then she yelped as her body swung upside down. I doubled over laughing as she flailed around with her feet in the air and her t-shirt falling over her face. She righted herself in mid-air, and shot me an indignant look, but couldn't keep it up for long. "Well, it looks I can control my body's positioning. I wonder how fast I can go?"
I sat down on a stack of pallets as she began to swoop around above the shelves with increasing confidence. I ballparked her speed at 10 to 20 miles per hour, and she could turn on a dime. She was being cautious right now, her upper limit was probably much higher. After about fifteen minutes, she seemed to tire out and came to hover about two metres above me.
"I'm flying," she said dreamily, "I can fly, Taylor."
"I can see that," I said with a smile.
With a whoop, she swooped down and had her arms around me before I could protest, and then we were in the air and my stomach was doing somersaults. The world turned into a kaleidoscopic blur of dark and light. I wrapped my arms around her neck and screwed my eyes shut so I wouldn't throw up.
"This is amazing!" she whispered.
"Ohfuckohfuckohfuck," I whispered back.
Our flight ended abruptly when Victoria crashed into a shelving unit with me in her arms. For a second I felt metal buckle under me, and I waited for the pain to come, but it never did. Instead, we slowed and Victoria lowered us to the ground. As soon as we landed, I stumbled backwards and turned to look at her. My eyes widened, and I pointed.
"Vicky, you're glowing."
She looked down at her body and then back at me. "Huh. So are you. Oops?"
I looked down at my hands and caught a glimmer of golden light playing over the contours of my fingers for a second. When I looked up, the glimmer had started fading from her silhouette as well.
"What was that?"
"I think… let me try something."
She reached out and grabbed my hand. The golden glimmer flashed over me again, and I felt a thrumming current wash over my skin. Suddenly, I couldn't feel the chill of the night air anymore.
"It's a shield," Victoria said. "I thought it was something like that, but I didn't know I could control it."
"Woah," I let out a pent up breath as she let go of my hand and the chill returned. "Can you extend it over objects? Inanimate things?"
"I think so," she said, frowning as she played with this new aspect of her power. "I think it's covering my clothes right now. Why?"
"Well, if-" I stopped. For the last half hour I had been letting my awareness of my surroundings fall away without noticing. I had thought we were safe - at least for the night - so I had stopped paying attention, let my focus slip, and we were about to pay for that mistake. Ten seconds ago I had noticed two people right outside the warehouse and headed this way. I landed a few flies on them and stiffened. Masks and body armour. They were capes.
"We need to leave. We need to get our stuff and go."
"What?" Victoria was staring at me, confused.
"There's someone here. We need to go now."
