"Imira! Get up!"
I opened my eyes to find Fatima jumping up and down on my sleeping bag. Forget an alarm clock, Fatima was even more annoying in the morning.
I guess I should mention – I have a room with Fatima. Girls and boys sleep in separate rooms – it's always been the family rule. I didn't have a proper bed, though – again, because Mom. I had a sleeping bag on the floor. I used to complain about it, but the times I ran away and wound up sleeping in the streets gave me quite the perspective on it. As in, it could be a whole lot worse. I could have been next to a trash can.
"Fatima," I muttered. "Five more minutes?"
"Papa wants you up now!" she squealed. "Your boyfriend came here asking for you. He's here to pick you up."
"He's not my –" I cut myself off, both because there was no explaining it to Fatima, and because I was totally confused. Knuckles? Here? Hadn't we agreed to nine o'clock to meet –
Oh, crud. I must have overslept. Mom would be onto me now. Why she hadn't addressed me before, I didn't understand.
Once I was awake and dressed, I headed down to the shop. Pop was indeed there, looking at the stairwell. I didn't see Mom, and instead of being relieved she wasn't here to tell me off, I was just more confused.
"Why didn't Mom wake me up?" I asked.
"I think she had an… encounter last night," Pop said. "Someone from heaven, she suspects."
What was that supposed to mean?
Honk! Honk! The Blazer's horn, no mistake. I was almost glad Fatima had awakened me, because I would not have wanted to get up to that.
"I'd say it was your friend come to pick you up, if I'm not mistaken," Pop said. "Well, behave yourselves."
"You think we wouldn't?" I said in retort.
Honk! Seriously, Knuckles could be even more impatient than Sonic.
"I'm coming!" I yelled, quickly pulling my hijab over my head and around my neck.
"Bye, Imira!" Pop said as I left.
I glanced at Knuckles. "I overslept, okay?"
Knuckles frowned. "That's a first. Get in."
Once we were on our way, Knuckles opened fire. "How did your stepmom let you sleep in? I didn't get the impression she did that normally."
"Something about a vision," I said. "Although Pop's word was 'encounter.'"
Knuckles frowned at that, muttering under his breath.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing." He lied even worse than Achmed. "Let's just get to the Hangar."
"Wait, why?" I had not gotten any memos that we were meeting up there so soon. Had something come up while we were gone?
Dumb question, Imira. Of course, there was the drag story hour.
"DJ wanted to check something," Knuckles said. "She and Amos were up early, and Amos brought something up that bothered her. At least, that's what she told me."
"Okay…" I didn't ask why DJ was there early. As the head of VLADJI, it would have set a bad precedent if she didn't show up. But if Amos had been there too… he must've had the same zest for the job. Strange, then, that they hadn't broken the truth to their families yet.
Once we arrived at the Hangar, Knuckles whispered the new Hangar passcode to me. We used changing passcodes to get into the Hangar, to ensure that only we – or anyone else we took into the Hangar – could get in.
"Password?" the screen on the armored door asked when I tapped it.
"Justice or bust," I said.
"Verified," came the reply, and the door slid open.
I scanned around the hallways as I went in.
One thing VLADJI and the avatars have in common – we both like to preserve history. And let me tell you, the Hangar's was quite well preserved. The place was still roughly the same as it was before the school closed permanently. The pastel flowers didn't agree with my tastes, but that's just me nitpicking, as everything else was intact. (Which is all that matters to me.) The tiles were untouched and free of dust – mostly from us traversing back and forth between rooms – and there was absolutely no mold or water damage. (Amy had made sure of that one.)
It was all beautiful, and it was all there. If only someone besides us could actually see and appreciate it.
"Where were they when they sent you to my place?" I asked him. "I mean, where are they, now?"
Knuckles concentrated. In addition to being freakishly strong and powerful, avatars' senses are much better than normal humans. In fact, they actually have a two-part sixth sense that allows them to intuit more about their environment and even locate people within a certain radius. Knuckles' sense wasn't the greatest, but it didn't matter in a close range like most of the rooms in the Hangar. "Library."
Well, then. I set out there, while wondering what the other VLADJIs might be doing in the library. I never took them for bookworms.
Like pretty much every room of the Hangar, the library had been both repurposed and preserved at once. Amy and Tails had brought back the disrepaired shelves, working together. Those shelves previously would have carried some kids' reading material. Now they stowed that along with other books on various subjects – mostly philosophy and religious readings, not much of it after 1972. Anything after that was leisure reading in case we got bored in the Hangar – although I wasn't sure why we bothered with those. This was our HQ, not our house.
Once I entered, I found Amos and Vinny Lee but not DJ, which surprised me. It wasn't like DJ to ditch her friends in here. Unless she had some business to attend to in another room? Amos was dutifully reading Tom Sawyer. He must've had a rough day to indulge in Mark Twain. Vinny Lee was twirling back and forth as usual, decorating the room with broken-Christmas-light garlands. You couldn't take that one anywhere without her playing with trash.
She'd switched back to female overnight, I could tell. I always had ways of telling which ones she'd assumed. Of course, those methods weren't perfect. Sometimes, I'd slip, and then she'd tease me to no end. Because compatriots.
When she saw me, she grinned and waved. "¡Hola, Imira!"
"Howdy," I said in reply. "Where's DJ?"
"Checking the Holo with Tails," Amos said, looking up from his book.
"Tom Sawyer?" I asked, pointing to the book. "Why?"
"Seemed like wholesome reading."
"And I'm not questioning it!"
Amos glanced sideways at me, then shrugged. "Shame no one gives the classics any sort of respect. It's their time, not ours. Doesn't need to be corrected for our time."
"Oh, are you still sore about the thing with Roald Dahl?" I asked. (Oh, boy, could I understand that.) "Why's DJ helping Tails with the Holo?"
"Checking for any major activity on the net. You know how it goes. I was on the task first, but she took over."
"Why's that?" I wasn't sure why Tails needed our help with the Holo. I swear, he's the only one in this building who even gets that thing. He did build it, after all.
"She thought my patience was being strained. Which it actually was. Lemme tell you, if I have to read one more 'pronoun' –" he put pronoun in air quotes – "that doesn't fit in my bubbe's lexicon, I'm gonna scream."
I raised an eyebrow. "Okay… but I didn't mean why DJ took over for you. Why did Tails need help at the Holo?"
"There's the last of that," DJ said as she entered, with Tails in tow. Judging from the way the books were rattling on the shelves, whatever he'd read hadn't been good for his mood.
I guess I should have mentioned this before – avatars have separate groups of abilities. Tails' intellect and flying abilities were gifts, things he already had. But there were also powers, abilities they picked up later on in life and which weren't exactly canon. And Tails is capable of more than you'd think. Telekinesis and shapeshifting are just some of his powers.
"What did you find?" I asked.
"About what I guessed." DJ's voice was hard. "Someone at the McPherson Square Library thought it was a good idea to have a mature performer reading to the kids. Or so Amos informed me."
"Drag story hour?"
Vinny Lee nearly dropped a Christmas light strand. DJ turned to face me.
"How'd you hear about that?" she asked.
"Achmed. He was returning a book to that library and was going to check out the scene – if from childish curiosity –"
Amos dropped Tom Sawyer, which landed on the pages. "That was your brother?" He let out a sigh that was half relief and half dread. "Boy, am I glad I pulled him off that den of thieves when I did."
So he had led Achmed away! I was quite proud of him – although I guessed he knew I wouldn't have forgiven him that easily if he hadn't done that. Needless to say, that didn't stop me from worrying about my brother – and not just him, but the next innocent who'd fall into that trap. Achmed had been darn lucky a VLADJI had been in the neighborhood. The next kid wouldn't likely be. I was going to have words with our librarian.
"Madre de Dios." Vinny Lee blanched.
The books rattled even more violently. I guessed Tails wasn't too happy about it, either. And could I blame him?
DJ wrinkled her nose like she'd smelled rotten eggs. "As if I hadn't read enough radical queer bellyaching about the subject. Now I find out that Imira's brother –"
"Half-brother," I cut in.
"Same difference. Now he almost got into that?"
"What's your problem?" Amos asked.
"Imira's problem is kind of our problem, amigo," Vinny Lee said, setting down her Christmas garlands so she didn't drop them. Smart girl. "I may have trouble with my gender, but I don't parade that around like it's a blessing. I certainly don't associate with people who parade their problemas like a good thing. And this impacts all of us, not just Imira."
"Thank you," I whispered.
Tails growled. I mean that literally – he growled like a dog warning a trespasser: Get off my territory or you die. "I researched the library. It offers kids normal story hours on the day, like any other library. But this – I don't like it. If your family goes to that place, they might just be considering other options for getting books."
"I take it you two picked up more left-wing material than you would've liked?" I asked.
"More trans supporting material than is good for our health, I'll tell you that," Tails said with another low growl in his voice.
"Sheesh," Amos muttered.
"I know," Tails said.
"No, I mean, sheesh, I don't get why a shapeshifter would be so opposed to shifting genders – Ow!"
This time it wasn't a blow from me. One of the books – a Little Golden Book, by the spine – flew off the shelf and hit Amos in the eye. That sort of question must've really worked up Tails for him to get that violent.
"Aside from most of them being some of the unreasonable humans behind our problem," the fox said, his voice becoming quiet and slow, like a jaguar in the moment between it getting wounded and it lashing out, "there are quite a few reasons I should hate the idea. One, I can't shift my gender. It's a limitation on my powers. I stay male, no matter what animal's form I take."
"It's quite a reasonable restriction, if you ask me," DJ said.
Saying anything while Tails was in this state was a risk, but I could tell she'd said one of the few things that could appease it. The aggression in his eyes dialed back a few notches – from I will destroy you now to I will destroy you soon. The book quake went down to DEFCON 5.
"Another reason," Tails said. "The Vortex may generate rainbows, but he doesn't operate on one – not in regard to gender. Avatars are either male or female – hard on. There can be some blends from different genders, but one of the binary's gotta trump out. There was a boy and a girl in the Rainbow. Anything beyond that – I can't accept it."
Amos rubbed his newly black eye. Who knew a Little Golden Book could pack that sort of punch? "Now I understand. You're just like your computers. And with Vinny Lee having the problem – yeah, that's not sitting too well with you."
Did the boy ask for trouble?
Tails glared at Amos. Vinny Lee got low to the ground, perhaps not wanting to be decapitated by a flying paperback (which, again, I could understand).
I cleared my throat. "While I would be quite amused by a slugfest in the library, are there any other problems to address?"
Tails looked more than relieved that I'd changed the subject. "Not that I know of."
I remembered Knuckles' expression when I'd mentioned my mom's "encounter." Then I remembered the words Pop had said: Someone from heaven, she thinks. Knuckles would not have reacted that way to such a thing, unless…
"You didn't hear anything from your… creator?" I pressed.
Tails' expression shifted from relief to concern in a split second – the same amount of time it would take for him to turn into a hawk or bear. "Is something the matter?"
"Imira took a while to get here," Knuckles said as he entered the room. "Overslept."
"And boy, did she need it," Amos said. Then he did a double take. "I mean, what did you do to your parents to make them let you sleep in?"
"Not what I did," I muttered. "My stepmom – she had a vision of some sort. Whatever it was changed her mind – somehow –"
"She didn't say what it was over, did she?" Tails asked.
"I got this from Pop."
"I'm guessing he didn't give full details?"
"No, but he did use the term 'someone from heaven –'"
Knuckles cursed under his breath. "If it is divine intervention – this was going on longer than I realized."
"This?" Vinny Lee asked. "You mean the abuse?"
"Unfortunately," I said. "She was picking on me too much. I didn't even tell her about you guys, I told Achmed. I trusted him more –"
"Oh, congrats," Amos said, then picked up an accent like the Count from Sesame Street. "One member of your family knows. Now make it two. Then three –"
Tails jolted in alarm.
"What is it?" I asked.
Knuckles muttered another curse. "Alert Sonic and Amy. We're under attack!"
