Frostbloom
Chapter 4
Ashley didn't know how long she stood there, staring at the untidy mop of miraculously regrown hair on her head, until Homelander got impatient and knocked. "What's going on in there?"
She whipped around to stare at the door until she remembered she had X-ray vision and looked through it. Homelander was standing there, looking back at her. "You're looking through this door!"
"So are you," he said, unrepentant. "Nobody's innocent here."
With a sigh of exasperation, she unlocked the door and swung it open, remembering at the very last instant that she had to touch everything like it was an egg. He stepped in, his eyes moving from the discarded wig on the bathroom counter to her new hair. "I'd forgotten your actual hair is a little lighter than what you chose for the wig. Should we call that a new power, accelerated healing, maybe?"
"I don't know. I guess. Do you have accelerated healing?"
He nodded. "I never had much call for it after a certain point, once I hit puberty and nobody could hurt me anymore, but I did have it. Do you know how long it took your hair to grow back after you got your powers?"
"No idea. I just noticed it now. I've had other things on my mind." Ashley started opening drawers and rummaging through them until she found a hairbrush, shoved into the back after she'd pulled enough of her hair out so she no longer needed it. When she raised the brush, his hand covered hers.
"Stop that, Ashley. You still have super strength. You'll rip half your hair out with one stroke."
"Great, just great," she muttered.
"Don't worry, I've got it." He took the brush away from her and turned her to face the mirror. Warily she watched him as he paid no attention to her face, taking a handful of her hair in his hand and drawing the brush through it. She felt the tug on the roots from its bristles and tensed, but the brush simply passed through to smooth. "It's not tangled. It just needs brushing."
The sensation of his hands on her hair as he brushed dissipated her tension. He felt her relax and asked, "Do you like this?"
"It reminds me of my mother. She used to like to brush my hair after she got sick. She said it soothed her."
"She died of cancer when you were seventeen, right?"
"Yeah. I'm surprised you remember that."
"I can surprise you sometimes."
Ashley laughed a little. "You aren't kidding."
When he was finished, he ran his hands over her hair to smooth it and then stepped back. "Is that okay?"
She looked at herself in the mirror. It had been so long since she'd seen anything but her shaved head or the wig she used to conceal it. "It looks fine. Thank you."
"You need to report this back to Dr. Clay. He's quite interested in any new powers you manifest, in case you didn't realize that."
A sigh escaped her before she could stop herself. "I'll do it tomorrow. I just want to go home. If you want to tell him that's okay. I just want to avoid thinking about this for a little while. I want to go home and sleep." Too late she remembered that sleeping seemed to be correlated with her…abilities manifesting. But she couldn't avoid sleep forever, and she must have gotten all of Homelander's powers by now, except for the laser eyes and the flying.
He restrained himself from mentioning that. "I can do that. I can check with Maureen too, see if her secretary's come up with anything else regarding Project Mirror."
"I would be very grateful if you would. It's—been a day."
Homelander laughed. "You're right about that."
Ashley didn't trust how helpful Homelander seemed to want to be during this crisis, but she also didn't want to question it as she knew she did need his help. She dreaded the moment when the laser vision would decide to manifest itself. When he left for the clinic to tell Dr. Clay about her new ability, she got her car from the garage and took off.
Halfway home, she decided it wasn't far enough away from Vought to suit her, so she headed for I-495 and her weekend place at Montauk. It would take her a couple of hours to get there, but it would take the same amount of time to get back to Manhattan, which would give her precious hours where she didn't have to think about the fucking lab accident and her fucking goddamn powers. It was one thing to be born with them—getting the Compound V shots when one was a baby amounted to the same thing—and another to acquire them as an adult. Soldier Boy and Stormfront did not make a good argument for adults being given superpowers, in her opinion. Was Homelander going to be mad that she'd decided to go to Montauk instead of going back to her place on West End Avenue? Whatever—he was always mad about everything, so it didn't really make that much difference.
A new thought occurred to her: could he hurt her now, physically? She'd apparently gotten dosed with his DNA, so she had the invulnerable skin and the super strength, along with the unaccounted-for cold powers. Was he a viable physical threat to her anymore? But she didn't know what his laser vision might do to her, so she couldn't count on being invulnerable to him. But that could come with time, said an insinuating voice in her mind. The BDSM interlude that had ruined Stormfront's apartment occurred to her and her mind cringed from the memory. Shaking her head, she turned on the radio and tried not to think about anything, especially that.
Ashley drove on autopilot until she got off Route 27 to take the back roads to her place. She didn't really think Homelander would have decided to chase her down, but if that happened she didn't want to be on the main road. Night had fallen quite a while ago, and Ashley was a few miles away from the isolated road where her beach house was when she saw an odd flickering ahead of her. Applying the brake gingerly, she pulled her Mercedes to a stop on the side of the road.
In the three years since she'd bought her beach house near Montauk, she'd driven past the three-story Victorian every weekend on her way there and back, but tonight there was a difference. Tonight the house was on fire. She fished her cell phone out of her purse and was about to call 911 when she saw two people staggering out the front door, leaning on each other for support. Fighting back a surge of fear, she jumped out of the car and ran toward the two people.
They turned out to be a fortyish woman with long, messy brown hair and a teenage girl with multiple facial piercings and neon-pink hair. "Are you all right?" Ashley asked. She had to pitch her voice significantly higher than usual. Who knew that a fire made so much noise? Her experience with those had been limited to bonfires in high school.
The pink-haired girl nodded and the older woman said, "She's still in there. My baby's still in there!"
Ashley looked back at the house. The third-floor windows were lit by fire and smoke poured out some of the second-floor windows. "Your daughter? How old is she?"
"Seven," said the girl. "We called 911 but they won't get here in time."
She sighed. "Okay. What's your name?"
"Candra."
"Okay, Candra. Where was she the last time you saw her?"
"We thought Emma was in her bedroom on the second floor, but we couldn't find her and the smoke was so bad we had to get out."
"All right. I'm going to go in the house to find her, but I need you to come with me so you can show me where her room is. If a child is small enough and there's a fire, sometimes they'll hide under the bed, or in a closet."
She'd thought the mother might object, but she'd gone into some kind of fugue state on the lawn, staring blankly at the road and at Ashley's Mercedes. Candra swallowed and said, "I'm with you. We need to hurry."
No shit, she wanted to say but decided against it as counterproductive. Candra took her hand and pulled her around the house, toward what Ashley assumed was the kitchen door. There was smoke downstairs but not enough to impede sight. "The stairs are through the door, in the living room." The girl started to pull her up the stairs, but she dug in her heels. "Is there a bathroom on this floor with towels?" Candra nodded, looking confused. "We need to soak a couple of towels and put them over our heads. It looks like there's a lot of smoke upstairs and that will help us breathe." Not to mention it would be better for a towel to catch fire rather than a person's hair, but she didn't say that part of it.
The half-bathroom turned out to be under the staircase, with a few towels. Ashley turned the cold water on full blast and threw two towels into the sink, one sky-blue and one a Christmas pattern, red with snowflakes. "Here." She thrust the blue one at Candra when it was thoroughly wet. "Put that over your head." As the girl did what she was told, Ashley pulled the dripping red towel out of the sink and draped it over her own head.
When they emerged from the bathroom, the smoke had gotten noticeably thicker. Candra ran up the stairs screaming, "Emma!" Ashley followed, wondering if her X-ray vision would help under the circumstances and decided she needed an actual room to aim at. Fear kept growing inside her, from the smoke and the heat and the sounds the old house made as its structure surrendered to the flames.
Candra wrenched open a door halfway down the hallway and disappeared from sight, but her coughing could still be heard. "Check under the bed, check the closet," she shouted. "Is there anywhere else on this floor she might be?"
"Maybe Mom's room? Two doors down on the other side of the hall."
Ashley ran toward that door and ripped it off its hinges. Goddamn strength. She took a guilty look over her shoulder, but the teenager was still in her sister's room and hadn't seen. And, from the rate at which the house was burning, there would be no evidence of her mistake left. Choking clouds of smoke billowed out and she thought she could see fire reaching down the wall. Taking her own advice, she got down on hands and knees and looked under the bed, finding nothing but dust. The room didn't have a closet, just an antique chifforobe, but when she tore the door off its hinges, she saw a blond child in pink pajamas in the bottom, her knees drawn up and head bent. "Emma?"
The little girl raised her face, which was streaked with tears. "Where's my mama?"
"She's outside, baby. Candra's in your room. We'll get you back to your mama right away." Ashley held out her arms and Emma came to her. Picking the girl up, she rushed back out into the hallway, where Candra had just emerged from the other room. No problem now, Ashley thought to herself. Just back down the stairs, out the kitchen door, and we're good. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
That was when the ceiling at the far end of the hallway collapsed.
Ashley managed to grab Candra, remembering to touch her like an egg, and drag her away from the falling roof without dislocating anything. The force of the collapse sent sparks and fire throughout the hallway and the second floor began burning in earnest. "We can't go that way."
"There's a window at the other end of the hall. It looks down on the lawn. Maybe we can lower Emma down and jump once Mom has her?"
"Good plan," said Ashley, and handed the little girl to her sister. With her elbow, she tried to break out some of the window glass but wound up shattering the entire frame, which fell to the ground below with a crash. The mother of the two girls still sat on the lawn, rocking back and forth. "Lady! Lady!"
"Mom!" Candra screamed. It still didn't get her attention.
"What's her name?"
"Heather."
Ashley decided to bust out the CEO voice that had cowed a number of Vought employees today. "Heather, you dumb bitch! Your daughters are going to fucking die if you don't get off your ass! On your fucking feet, bitch! On your goddamn feet, right the fuck now!" As slowly as a glacial advance, the woman's head turned toward the house. "Now, bitch! Now!"
Heather scrambled to her feet and ran toward the front of the house. "Okay, you take one of her arms, I'll take the other, and we'll lower her down as far as we can."
"Then what?" asked Candra.
"When your mother's in place, we drop her. Then her mother catches her. Then I can lower you down and repeat."
Heather grasped the plan without having it explained and got into position below the window, her arms extended upward. Ashley and Candra started to lower Emma out the window, who chose that moment to begin another crying fit. "No, sweetie, it's fun," Ashley told her. "It's like a carnival ride, only it's free."
But the child didn't believe that at all and kept crying. The heat of the flames in the hallway was scorching and left them no choice but to lean halfway out the window and drop the little girl to her mother, who was knocked to the ground by her weight. "Get her clear!" yelled Ashley. "I have to get Candra out next!"
Turning to the teenager, she said, "I'm going to lower you out the window just like we did Emma. You're taller, so you won't have so far to fall."
"You're not strong enough!" she protested.
Ashley gave her a grin. "I'm stronger than I look." Candra didn't agree but climbed up into the hole where the window frame had been scant minutes ago. There was time for her to take one of the girl's wrists in her hand before more of the roof landed in the hallway. When Ashley turned to look, the flames billowed toward them.
"Shit!" Ashley screamed, and the entire hallway froze.
Ice covered every surface from about five feet in front of their position, huge thick slabs of it over the debris of the roof and upper floor, sheets of frost covering the walls, and icicles dripping from what was left of the roof beams overhead. In the temporary silence, before the upstairs fire made its way downstairs again, Candra said, "What the actual fuck?"
Shit was the right word. Now someone outside Vought had seen her use her powers—abilities—and the company's power to limit knowledge of her had been compromised. "Listen, you can't tell anybody about this, Candra, okay?"
"Are you a supe?" The teenager's eyes were glowing with excitement.
"Not really. It's a long story." And she'd better get an excuse in place if she didn't want the internet and every organ of mainstream media in the country going off about this brand-new supe with cold powers. "My husband, he's a supe too, but he's crazy. He's violent. I ran away from him and I'm living under a different name as a normal person, but if he hears about this he'll know where I am. He'll come after me. He'll hurt me. Please don't say anything to anybody."
Candra asked, "What am I supposed to say happened?"
"Everything happened just the way it did, except you got your sister out of the chifforobe in your mother's bedroom, lowered her down, and then jumped yourself. All this ice and shit will be gone by the time the fire department gets here. There's no need to bring me into this." She felt sure it would leave traces for the arson investigators to find, but it was so weird she thought they'd probably just note it in the report and let it go because how could ice form in the middle of a blazing fire? And just what the fuck would Dr. Clay say if he knew she'd used her ability? Hell, what would Homelander say? It didn't bear thinking about.
She nodded. "Okay. I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt you after you saved Emma's life."
"I appreciate it. Now let's get you out the window." Ashley took her other hand and lowered her until she was within a few feet of her mother's grip, then let her go. Heather overbalanced again and they both fell. Ashley took one last look behind her, into the hallway, and she saw moisture beading on the surface of the ice and the frost was almost melted from the walls. When she looked at the drop to the ground, a new thought occurred to her. Jumping from the second floor won't hurt you now, since you're at least partly supe. Did she want to try it without lowering herself down to the women? Candra was talking to her mother, excited, and Ashley took a chance, leaping from the window frame into space. Homelander could fly—maybe so could she?
Not today. She crashed straight into the ground and it hurt, but the fall hadn't done her any damage at all that she could see, except that the heel of her left shoe had broken off and she was covered with dirt. The wet towel over her head had stayed on somehow. She would have traded that to keep her Jimmy Choos intact. When she got to her feet, Heather caught her up in a bearhug. "You saved my babies. Thank you! Thank you!"
Ashley didn't mention the fact that one of her babies had been outside the burning house before she'd requested help getting around. "It's no problem, ma'am. Just please don't tell anybody I was here. It would cause a lot of trouble for me."
"But we never got a chance to thank that masked man," Heather said before letting out some hysterical laughter. "Do you have any silver bullets?"
"No, but I could go to a liquor store and get you some Coors Light."
Heather opened her mouth to say something, but Ashley heard the fire engine siren and said, "I have to go now. If you want to repay me for saving their lives, just don't mention me. Candra did everything alone. Can you do that?"
Her daughter answered. "Yes. We'll keep you a secret. Thank you for saving Emma."
"You're welcome." They obviously wanted to continue talking, but she ran for her Mercedes and got in, twisted the ignition key, and took off as fast as the car would allow. Just before the road curved and blocked her view, she saw flashing red lights behind her as the fire engine arrived at the burning Victorian home.
Her hands slipped on the wheel, her palms sweaty, as she asked herself what the fuck she had just done. Had she decided to be a hero? Why the fuck hadn't she just called 911 like the mother had and kept her nose out of it like a good New Yorker? Because that girl would have died if you hadn't been there. Either the mother or the sister would have gone back in and they would have still been on the second floor looking when the roof came down, her mind told her. She knew it was true but didn't like it. In a spasm of anger, she ripped the snowflake towel off her head and tossed it into the passenger footwell. Maybe it had kept them from getting a good look at her. Maybe she was still safe. Maybe. She still hadn't decided what to do when she made the turn onto Sandpiper Lane and her house came into view.
This place was the first and only splurge she'd had since she became CEO of Vought. Ashley loved the beach, and she credited her weekend getaways here with preserving whatever sanity she had left. The house had an attached garage, where she could conceal her car just in case the burning house women got talkative and the police decided to look for a white Mercedes.
Once she was inside, she didn't realize for some minutes that she was shaking. The old human body, her mind declared. You had a trauma and it's reacting out of fear of death. It doesn't understand that you're a supe now. You can't be killed since you have Homelander's powers and he can't be killed either.
Objection, she told her mind. Assuming facts not in evidence.
"Talking to myself," she said aloud. "If Dr. Clay heard me, he'd put me right in the mental ward like I threatened to do with him." Drinking wasn't her usual thing, but then neither was saving little girls from fires, so she thought she could make an exception. There was a bottle of Beaujolais in the refrigerator and she wanted some liquid oblivion.
Of course she forgot about her strength and ripped the refrigerator door off. "Goddamn it!" she screamed, and in addition to being without a door it was also now covered in a sheet of ice. With a sigh and a shrug, she tapped one finger on the ice and it fell into pieces. Once the bottle of wine was in hand, she went into the bathroom, stripped out of her business suit that stank of fire and smoke, and got into the shower. There was nowhere to set the opened bottle of wine except on the shower floor, so she did that, picking it up at intervals for deep swigs. Once she'd washed the burning house off herself, she threw the suit into the laundry hamper and found a concert T-shirt for the Dead Kennedys, which she put on before she curled up on her bed with the wine bottle and went to sleep.
Homelander was standing at the foot of her bed when she woke up. "Why do your clothes and the inside of your car smell like fire?"
She rubbed her eyes. "What time is it?"
"Three-fifteen AM. And why do you have a half-empty bottle of wine on the nightstand?"
"You can't overdose on wine and I wanted to sleep. And why are you here?"
"You're needed back at the Tower." Homelander picked up the wine bottle and dropped it into the garbage can near the bed. "Dr. Clay is requesting your presence. He's also pretty pissed that you left the building."
"Fuck him. I'm not his prisoner." Ashley got out of bed and pulled a pair of jeans out of her dresser. "Did he say what it's about?"
"Dr. Rennie has regained consciousness. She's had some interesting changes happen."
"What about the lab assistant, Miller?" She shoved her feet into a pair of Converse sneakers and stood up.
"He was awake. Briefly. The good doctor wants to give you the story himself, and I agreed since he asked very politely."
"How courteous of you. It'll take a couple of hours to drive back, so if you want to tell them—"
"Uh, no, Ashley. We're flying. This is an issue that actually requires you to be there ASAP."
She kept herself from rolling her eyes. "I'll get my purse."
"You do that. And while you're doing that you can explain why you decided to do a half-assed hero routine and save some crotchgoblin from a house fire."
She froze in place and he smiled. "All over the internet and the news. They're calling you Mercedes Mystery Lady, but I'm sure they'll come up with a better superhero name later on"
"It was at hand. There was nothing else I could do. That little girl would have died if I hadn't been there." Why was she justifying herself to Homelander?
"You should stop denying you're a supe, Ashley. That's what we do." With one of his usual quick shifts in mood, his eyes darkened and he held out his arms. "Time to fly Homelander Airlines straight to Vought Tower."
"Can you just not tell anybody? I don't want anybody at Vought knowing."
He flashed her a grin. "I'm sure I can, in exchange for a favor to be designated later."
Shit. But there was nothing she could do about it now. All she could do was let Homelander put his arms around her and take off like a speeding missile for the source of all her problems: Vought Tower.