Leaf

Chapter Four

Brian found his mother on a hospital bed. A respirator covered her face and a network of tubes disappeared under the blanket. She had arrived in an ambulance the night before after overdosing on drugs. Brian should have come earlier, but, well, he'd been busy.

Besides, what was he supposed to say at a time like this with his mother in a drug coma? She had been a worthless, drug-addled wreck for nearly half his life and had finally gotten what she deserved. But that wasn't the sort of thing you said aloud.

Aisha was there too, which surprised him. She looked up from her phone when he came in.

"Hey. I'm surprised you came."

"I'm surprised you came."

Aisha shrugged and looked back down at her phone. Some kind of mobile game or something. "I was nearby, so I figured I'd drop in to see how she was doing."

Brian doubted it, but if Aisha wanted to feign indifference, he wasn't going to call her out on it. He wished he could be indifferent about something like this, but instead he felt calculating, thinking about how this evidence of her relapse would affect the custody battle he was going to get into, and he felt angry at himself for being calculating at a time like this, and he felt angry at his mother for putting him in this position.

"How bad is it?"

Aisha shrugged again. "Don't know. No one knows what she was taking except for this week's boyfriend, and he hasn't shown up."

Which you wouldn't know unless you were here the whole time.

"Well, she'll wake up eventually." He couldn't consider the alternative. He couldn't imagine that someone who had always been gone in every way that mattered would ever leave.

"Yeah," Aisha said. "Sure. Maybe Panacea will wander by or something."

She wouldn't. The addiction was all in the brain, which Panacea couldn't touch. Healing an addict of everything else just gave him another chance to get high, and the New Wave decided that it was a waste of time and resources, like giving a chronic alcoholic a liver transplant.

It was justice. Cold, indifferent justice. Bad people did bad things to themselves, and the city was a better place when they were gone.

Only ... he had been there, just last night. He had died. His life didn't flash before his eyes, and he didn't see any light at the end of the tunnel. Just cold ... indifference. And for a few seconds, the city had been a better place with him not in it.

"How much longer are you planning on staying?"

"I'm gonna head out pretty soon," Aisha said. "Some friends are seeing a movie later."

He nodded. "Well, take care of yourself."

"Always do," she said. "Wait, are you leaving already? You just got here!"

"I'll come by later. There's ... there's something I need to deal with right now."

He didn't care about justice. He didn't care about the city. He wasn't a good person, he was a villain. All he cared about was himself and his own.

But right now, the woman lying on the hospital bed was his own, and there wasn't a damn thing either of them could do about it.

He just ... he just wished that some day, she would realize that too.

WWW

"Put that down," Rachel snarled, "or I swear to God I'll have my dogs rip out your throat!"

Lift hung on the wall nearly up to the ceiling, clinging to Wyndle with one hand and holding onto a bag of dog treats with the other. "I can regrow a throat."

"And my dogs can rip it out again!"

Beneath her, Rachel's dogs barked. They were a lot like axehounds only with fur instead of shells, and Lift had never liked axehounds. Axehounds were for people who wanted to sic wild animals on innocent thieves and then say stuff like, "I never thought little Ruktuk would go so far, constable! Usually he's so gentle."

Rachel wouldn't say something like that, though. She seemed the sort to feed people to her dogs and then mount their heads over the door as a warning to the rest. And Lift had stolen her food. Or at least her dogs' food, which was just as good. And bacon flavored, if what she heard was true.

"Hey, can we just calm down a bit?" Lisa said. "A five dollar bag of dog treats is not worth killing each other over."

"Like hell it isn't!" Rachel said. "I never wanted this little twerp here in the first place, and she's already taking my stuff! Those treats are for good dogs only, Lisa, and she has not been a good dog!"

Lisa turned to Alec. "Back me up here, would you?"

"Sorry, no can do," he replied from the couch. "I can't pause an online game. Seriously, you'd think someone supposedly as smart as you could figure that out."

"I just think that if Brian comes back and finds us all killing each other, he'll—wait, what do you mean supposedly?"

Meanwhile, Rachel took one of her shoes off and threw it at her.

"Ow!"

Rachel took off her other shoe and threw it too.

"If you keep this up I'm gonna get hungry!" Lift said. "And then you can say goodbye to your bacon treats."

"No! You—don't you—Lisa, where do you keep your gun?"

"Okay," Lisa said. "There is no way on earth—"

"Over on the counter in plain sight," Alec said. "I don't think anyone on the team has ever passed a gun safety course. But we all know first aid, so we're fine."

Lisa turned to Alec, a look of incredulity on her face. "Why would you tell her—"

"Found it!"

Alec shrugged. "You always get on my case for leaving my stuff out. It's only fair."

Fortunately Brian came back before things could escalate. Not that Lift had been worried, it was just that this was easier than whatever her backup plan was going to be.

He looked around the room, taking in the scene. "What the hell is going on?"

Alec didn't bother looking up from his game. "Rachel is being Rachel, Lift is being Lift, Lisa's being Lisa, and I'm being me. Honestly I don't know what else you were expecting."

Brian shook his head. "Rachel, put the gun down and call off your dogs. And Lift ... what are you even hanging onto up there?"

"Wyndle."

"What?"

"My imaginary friend."

Above her, Wyndle sighed. "While technically correct," he said, "that is still very false."

What, did he not think they were friends? Lift ought to do something nice for him some day, like water him or something.

"I'm not putting the gun down until she gives me back the dog treats!"

"Did you steal Rachel's dog treats?" Brian demanded.

"I found them," Lift said.

"Well, give them back. What were you even planning on doing with them? Eat them?"

"Maybe."

Brian stared at her. "Why?"

"They're bacon flavored!"

Brian gave a very Wyndle-like sigh and shook his head. "I swear, I leave for five seconds and ... Okay, look. Lift, lick one of the treats."

"What?" Rachel demanded. "No!"

"Don't eat any, just lick one."

Lift grinned and forced the bag open—no easy feat with only one hand—and gave one of the treats a long, exaggerated lick.

At that moment, a small part of her died.

During moments of desperation, curiosity, and both, Lift had tried to eat roof tiles, small rocks, and a rubber tire, but she had never tasted anything like that.

"Blegh!" she said, dropping off the wall where Brian caught her. "What was that? That wasn't bacon flavored! That was poop flavored!" She climbed up on his shoulders and tossed the bag to Rachel. "Keep 'em. I don't want 'em anymore."

Rachel caught the bag and lowered the gun. "You're not good enough for them anyway."

"Would you really have shot her over a five dollar bag of snacks?" Brian demanded.

Rachel glared at him. "She'd live. And they were mine, not hers."

"You don't shoot teammates. Period. Got it? And you don't steal from teammates either, Lift. Going out of your way to provoke Rachel is the dumbest thing you could do here."

Rachel nodded in agreement.

"And, god, Rachel, what the hell? I ... I don't even know what to say to you." He shook his head. "We'll talk later. Lift? You're coming with me."

"Neat! Where are we going?"

Brian went out the door, forcing Lift to either duck or jump down off his shoulders to avoid hitting the wall. She chose to duck.

He took a deep breath as they went down the stairs. "I ... I need to ask you for a favor."

WWW

Aisha was still there when he returned. "I thought you were leaving soon," he said.

A shrug. "My worthless friends ducked out at the last second. It looked like a pretty dumb movie anyway." She glanced at Lift. "Who's she?"

"She's ..." He had come prepared to tell anyone who asked that Lift was a friend of the family, but he couldn't use that with Aisha. Oh well. She already knew about his powers, which meant that she knew about Grue, and meeting another member of the team wasn't going to kill them all. Probably. "She's a friend from work."

Aisha's eyes widened, then narrowed when she looked at Lift. She didn't seem impressed, and even Grue had to admit that the kid didn't look like much. Lift was wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, which mostly fit, but she didn't have any shoes and didn't seem to want any.

"You don't look like Bitch or Tattletale, and I'm pretty sure you're not Regent. You new?"

"You don't need to know that," Brian said. He'd happily (or at least grudgingly) invite Aisha onto the team if she ever triggered, but until then he wanted to keep his work and home separate. At least that was the theory, but here he was taking his work to see his mother. "As long as you're here, you can be the lookout. Stand outside and warn us if anyone comes."

That wasn't likely. The general hospital was overcrowded and understaffed at the best of times, and the ER was even worse. A nurse probably came by once an hour to make sure that Cecilia's condition hadn't changed, and would keep on doing so until a doctor had time to see her or the heat death of the universe occurred, whichever came first.

"What? No! If you're gonna do something weird to Mom, I'm staying here to watch! You go be the lookout."

"Aisha," he growled. And it did come out as a growl. He must have been spending too much time with Rachel.

"It's okay," Lift said, speaking up for the first time since they came in the hospital. "Wyndle can be the lookout."

Grue turned to her. "I still don't know what that is."

She held out her hand, and a rod of silvery metal filled it. It was sculpted to resemble a warped piece of wood with spiraling grooves, the sort that a Tolkienesque wizard might carry as a staff, and it had drops of water condensing on its surface. "Brian, Wyndle. Wyndle, Brian." She knocked him on the head with the rod to emphasize the introduction, and then the rod disappeared into ... whatever it had been before. Water vapor?

Oddly enough, though, while Lift's eyes had been dark brown, they changed to a pearlescent white. Had that happened before? He hadn't been paying attention the first time they met. He had been ... distracted.

"He's invisible when he ain't metal," Lift explained. "He'll let me know if anyone's coming."

Well, as long as she was alright with it. Part of the reason he wanted Aisha out of the room was because he was already exploiting Lift enough to heal his mother without showing her off for his sister's entertainment, but the kid didn't seem big on secrecy.

Lift approached the sleeping woman and looked her over. She pulled off the respirator mask, causing the machine to start beeping, and she ... blew on her. Her breath came out as a white steam, and even though his mother couldn't breath on her own, the mist pushed itself into her nostrils.

Cecilia awoke with a start, gasping for breath. That was quick. Othala of the Empire Eighty-Eight could accelerate normal healing, but that didn't come close to what Lift could do. Even Panacea often took minutes to heal someone instead of seconds. What Lift could do ... it wasn't something that could be used to patch someone up after the fight, it could heal someone in the middle of a fight and send them back in.

He'd have time to ponder the implications of Lift's abilities later, though. Right now, his mother was awake.

"Aisha?" she said, blinking in the cold, bright light. "Brian?"

"Mom!" Aisha said. "You're al—awake!"

"Hey Mom," Brian said. "How's rehab? Those NA meetings working out for you?"

She looked around, still disoriented. He'd been there. It was cruel to talk to her like this now when she was still confused, but ... but it was cruel to have this conversation at all. In a better world, they would have taken the moment to rejoice in her miraculous healing and her second chance at life, but he knew better than to hope that something as simple as a brush with death would wake her up.

"I-I may have had a bit too much to drink last night, but I feel a lot better. What's that beeping sound?"

Brian moved over to the machine and switched it off. If someone came by to see what had happened, he'd ... he'd think of something. They had been waiting for Cecilia to get better on her own anyway.

"You weren't just drinking, Mom. What was it? Heroine? Crack? Did you even bother to check, or did you put it in you just to see what would happen?"

She stuck her lower lip out in a pout. "Oh, sweety, you're so mean to me. Don't be mean; I'm in a hospital! Can't you see I'm in a hospital?" Her voice came out in a whine. His mom never nagged them, even though according to every family sitcom he had ever seen, nagging was supposed to be a mother's main role. Instead, he'd ended up with a mother who whined.

"Yes, I know you're in a hospital. They called me, because for some reason I'm still on your emergency contact list."

"Well! If all you're going to do is yell at me, I don't want you here."

"I didn't come here to yell at you!" he shouted. He lowered his voice and continued. "I didn't. I came here to say goodbye."

It wasn't until much later that he realized that Lift had already left.

WWW

Lift could spend her whole life in hospitals with her powers. She'd thought about it while living in the palace. It was hard to steal things when the starvin' Prime Aqasix was willing to give her anything she wanted, and there were always hurt and sick people needing to be healed.

But that was the problem; always was the problem. She could spend all day every day stuffing her stomach and blowing on people, and there'd still be more to do. Every problem had a root, and unless you got the root, you always had more problem.

Not that Lift had any idea what the root was. Politics, probably.

She left Brian behind with his mother, trying not to think about her own mother. There weren't too many perfect people in the world, but she had been one of them. She always had time for people when they needed someone to talk to or just to care about them. People didn't care as much as they ought. Lift certainly hadn't, not until long after her mother had died.

Instead, Lift focused on one of the snack fabrials in the building. It was a big ol' box with a display of snacks behind a glass screen, called a vending machine. It would be easy to turn Wyndle into a Shardknife and cut her way to victory, and if she wanted to she could make the fabrial so Slick the screws holding it together would slide out and the whole thing would fall apart.

But that would be too easy. Instead, she turned Wyndle into money, a Shardcoin, and slipped him into a slot. The fabrial made a clicking sound, and then she had Wyndle appear in her hand again to send him back through the slot.

This is horribly dishonest, Mistress, Wyndle said.

"No it ain't. I'm paying money, see?"

I am not a legitimate form of currency. Using me as such is degrading in ways you cannot possibly imagine.

"Sure you're currency. You're a Shardblade, ain't ya? You're worth a couple kingdoms back home, and they got dozens of you guys already. Imagine what you're worth here when you're one of a kind!"

Wyndle sighed. There are numerous social and economic factors that do not apply to me or to this specific situation. I know that you have a short attention span, so I'll be brief. First of all—

Lift yawned.

First of all, the value of a Shardblade is determined by market demand, which while high on Roshar is severely diminished here due to both the abundance of long ranged weaponry and—

She yawned again, louder.

"The vending machine giving you trouble?" It was Brian's little sister. Aisha. "Try kicking it."

Also, you are not in fact exchanging me for anything, so my value, such as it is, is irrelevant.

"No, the fab—the machine's fine. Just figuring out what I want." The secret was in pressing the right buttons, and Lift could never remember the order. There was some sort of code that was written on the fabrial, but she'd never learned to read. "Want anything? I'm buying."

Conning is the technical term, and you're conning a mindless machine at that.

Aisha stepped up to the snack fabrial and studied it. Hopefully, she could read and Lift could just mimic her actions to get a snack of her own. "So what's your story?" she said. "Let me guess. You joined a villain team to kick ass and take names, only to find yourself dragged off into the Laborn family drama. Am I right?"

"Nah, I'm just in it for the snacks."

Aisha pressed a few buttons and the fabrial spat out a drink. So it's that button, that one, then beep, boop, bop. But what if I don't want a drink? How do I get that candy bar? Stormfather, it was almost enough to make a starvin' thief learn to read.

"Is your mom gonna be okay?" Lift asked, facing the snack fabrial. She loaded Shardcoins into the slot until it was ready. "Brian didn't seem too happy to see her."

Aisha shrugged. "Yeah, that's Brian for you. He's always there when you need him, but when you don't he tends to forget about you and gets annoyed when you exist."

Hm, Wyndle said in her mind. If you wait for the plant to wilt, it's often too late.

Lift had no idea what he meant by that, so she ignored him. "Well, you could just live your life in a perpetual state of peril. That would solve everything." She pushed a series of buttons and a drink came out in a metal can.

"I know, right? Finally, someone gets it." She took a swig of her own drink and gave her a look. "Hey, do you wanna maybe catch a movie later? The tickets are crazy overpriced, but the theatres are a piece of cake to break into."

"I'm listening." She had never caught a movie before, but she suspected it was a kind of chicken. Lift took her drink and ignored the complex lid mechanism, choosing instead to poke a hole through the metal can with Wyndle.

Ting!

Lift stared at the can and stabbed it again, harder. It let out a hissing sound as Shardblade, the sort of weapon that entire kingdoms fought over for its ability to cut through stone, steel, and souls without resistance, made the barest pinprick through the metal.

"H-hey, Aisha? What is this?"

Aisha glanced at her. "That? That's a tin can."

"It's made of tin?"

She rolled her eyes. "No, aluminum. Everyone knows that."

"Right. Everyone."

Just then, Brian came back, his phone in his hand. "Time to go."

"Already?" Aisha said. "But you just got here. Lift and I were just starting to hit it off."

"No. I don't want you being a bad influence on her, and we have work issues to take care of."

Aisha's jaw dropped theatrically. "You think that I'm a bad influence on her? Frankly I'm insulted."

"She has a point," Lift said. "I am a menace to society."

"Wait, what do you mean work issues?" Aisha asked.

"That's nothing you need to worry about."

"Is it something I need to worry about?" Lift asked.

He nodded. "Absolutely. He handed her a helmet and she put it on. She didn't need it, but if she fell off his motorcycle and knocked her head off, people might stare.

WWW

"Lung," Lisa said. Only she wasn't Lisa. When they were in costume, they weren't Lisa, Brian, Alec, and Rachel, they were ... Lift couldn't remember exactly what their costume names were, so she made some up. Knowitall, Skullface, Fancypants, and Fluffy.

"Tonight?" Skullface said.

Knowitall nodded. "The ABB have started harassing people in the area for information about us. I don't think anyone knows who we are or where we live, but enough have seen people matching our descriptions, people walking dogs, or even Bitch out of costume, and eventually Lung's people are going to put the pieces together."

"Man, we're going to have to move, aren't we?" Fancypants groaned. "All my stuff is here."

"What about the Boss?" Skullface asked. "Can he help?"

Knowitall shook her head. "I just got off the phone with him. He told us to keep him posted on any updates, and that he has absolute confidence in our abilities."

Fancypants laughed. "In other words, screw you, you're on your own."

"So we have to find a way to deal with Lung, Oni Lee, and ... what was the bomb Tinker's name again?"

"Bakuda, but you don't have to worry about her, Grue. She'll need a few days to make anything useful."

"How sure are you?"

Knowitall shrugged. "Ninety ... five percent. Ish."

Fancypants laughed. "Well, that has no chance of blowing up in our face. Well, maybe a five percent chance."

"Any chance we could tip off the Protectorate?" Skullface asked. "Let them know that Lung's making a move?"

Knowitall laughed. "If we told them what he was planning, they'd call it community service and what till he was done. But they'd be happy to offer us protective custody in a jail cell. We could run to Kaiser for help, but the Empire would definitely screw us over when they were done."

Fancypants raised his hand. "As long as we're getting screwed, I call dibs on the giant twins."

"Not like ... ugh."

"Are we still talking?" Fluffy growled. "Because I'm ready to start fighting something, and I'm not picky what." Around her, her dogs had gotten huge and ugly.

"You've been quiet," Skullface said, turning to Lift. Or Leaf, now that she was in costume. "Any thoughts?"

Leaf considered that. "Why don't we steal his dinner? Then Lung will be too hungry to fight us."

"Okay, nevermind," Skullface said.

"Wait!" Knowitall said. "That gives me an idea!"

The team went quiet. Until Fancypants broke the silence. "You're kidding me."