Frostbloom
Chapter 7
They spent the rest of the day on the island, when Homelander and Ashley weren't flying, playing tag in the sky, and she found that she enjoyed flight. It was the one fun power she'd gotten out of this entire nightmare. Oh, so being able to look at Homelander naked whenever you want isn't fun? her mind asked. She chose to ignore it. Due, presumably, to the lack of privacy he'd had in his Vought Labs upbringing, he wasn't body-conscious at all, as he'd proved that time she'd walked in on him naked, so what would he care if she could look through his clothes, especially since they were now fucking? As much as she would have loved that power back in the days when she was Madelyn's assistant and nursing a hopeless crush on him, it was part and parcel with the more destructive powers she possessed and Ashley wished she'd never walked into Dr. Harriman's lab. But she had to admit she liked not being physically terrified of Homelander the way she had been for years.
"I want to go back to my apartment before I check in at Vought again," she told him before they started the flight back to Manhattan. "Get a little sleep without having to worry about getting more abilities."
Something in his expression bothered her, but he just said, "Okay," before taking off and hovering in the air a few feet above the ground. "Race you back?"
Ashley smiled at him. "Until we get near the city. It wouldn't do for anyone to get video of me flying since I'm not supposed to be a supe."
"But you are."
She let a moment pass before saying, "Yes," and he smiled at her.
"That wasn't so hard, now, was it?"
"No." Apparently it was true, so it wouldn't make sense to keep denying it privately. Public acknowledgement of this was something else. She wondered if he registered her as lying, but his smile didn't waver, and she decided he didn't.
"It's not the end of the world that you thought it was, is it?"
Ashley shook her head. It was something she would have to accustom herself to, learn to handle, in a way that he had never had to do, but what choice did she have? She was stuck with these…powers. She should start calling them powers, no matter how much she didn't like it. And the whole idea of her being in the Seven, she'd have to deal with that too. "Are we racing or not?"
Homelander's smile broadened. "On three?" She nodded, and he said, "Three!" and exploded into the sky, vanishing into the cloud cover. Ashley took a second to laugh and then she was after him, the air cold against her exposed face and arms as she flew up to the clouds and into them. A cautious part of her mind told her not to beat him home. No matter that they'd had sex—his feelings for her couldn't be counted on to have changed. He'd never shown her anything but contempt and distaste before today, before she proved to him that she was stronger and faster. Deep down she suspected he wouldn't be able to deal with her as someone who could best him in anything. That she'd caught him, overpowered him on the island, he could maybe justify in his own mind as her fury making her stronger and faster, but under ordinary circumstances it was prudent to let him think he was still the strongest, fastest supe on earth. Even with her new abilities, she didn't know for certain she could take him in a fight.
He pulled up a few miles before they reached land and held out his arms. "This way it just looks like I'm flying someone somewhere. No big." She flew into them and they ended the trip back at her apartment on West End Avenue.
When he landed on the correct balcony, she asked, "So how did you know which one is mine from the outside?"
"You have no secrets from me," he replied. Ashley laughed a little and kissed him. No matter what reservations she still had about him, she couldn't deny he was an excellent kisser.
When they broke contact, she said, "Just remember you have to go out to Long Island tomorrow afternoon to shoot your interviews with the American Hero contestants."
"I remember. I'll be there, if there's nothing else going on with the Project Mirror situation."
"I'll let you know if there is."
He started to leave, then seemed to remember something. "As far as your flying goes, Ashley, if you're over populated areas you have to fly slowly enough so you don't create sonic booms. It cracks people's foundations and breaks windows and the public doesn't like it."
"I doubt if I'll do much flying where people can see, but I appreciate it." That got her another kiss, and then he took off for Vought Tower, leaving her alone with her thoughts. She wished they were happier.
In short order she stripped out of the Dead Kennedys T-shirt and jeans and tossed them into the laundry hamper. Doing laundry—a shiny normal thing that could maybe distract her from her lost humanity. Ashley fished a long T-shirt silkscreened with Oscar the Grouch from one of her dresser drawers and wandered barefoot into the kitchen to find a bottle of wine and a glass. After she took the edge off a little, she planned to take a nice hot shower to wash off the island sand and fall into bed. But would she be able to take the edge off with alcohol now that she was a supe? Queen Maeve had to suck down the entire wine output of France to get even a little bit buzzed. That brought her mood down even more and she stared at the glass in her hand. Then she got an idea and smiled, finding the corkscrew and keeping her new strength under control enough to remove the cork from the bottle.
The wine was an ordinary Beaujolais, nothing vintage, and Ashley took a sip once she'd poured some into her glass. It felt a little warm to her tongue. She held it out at arm's length and breathed "Fuck," and rotated the glass. Frost crystals formed instantly on its surface. Ashley took another sip and found the liquid perfectly chilled. "Looks like the cold is good for something else," she murmured.
She curled up in an armchair and stared at the view of the city through her balcony doors, her feet tucket under her and the frost crystals melting off her wineglass. So she'd slept with Homelander. Most of the women who worked in his vicinity had had the same hopeless crush, and even after he'd terrorized her by deafening Blindspot and threatening her, she'd still wondered what sex with him would be like. And now she knew.
Really, though, now that she was a supe and had his kind of strength, what were her other options? Even supes like the Deep and Big Game, who both had super strength, might take some injury if she lost control of herself during sex. Homelander, though—he'd taken everything she had on the island and not only survived it but loved it. Ordinarily she'd assume the incident was a one-night stand and would do her best to pretend it never happened the next time they met, but the whole situation just suited his interests too well for that. He had a CEO who was under his thumb and now he had a bedmate who could take his strength and enjoy it. There was no reason for him not to continue with what she'd started.
It would have been nice to find a man who didn't see her as just a prop in whatever fantasy he had. Adam Bourke had wanted her for the verbal humiliation she dished out, Cameron Coleman had wanted her for how well she pegged him, and now Homelander wanted her because she'd serviced his lactation and mommy kinks. Unless she missed her guess, he'd never been able to indulge his desires before this, and the fucking had blown some cerebral circuit-breaker. At least she doubted he'd try killing her until he'd gotten tired of her fulfilling his needs. It was always her doing things for her men, taking charge. Why couldn't she find a man who could take charge himself occasionally and let her relax for once? She didn't mind being a little submissive here and there, when she wasn't at work.
When her alarm went off the next morning, just for a moment she thought everything had been a dream—the lab accident, her powers, Homelander. Then she smashed the clock through the nightstand hitting the snooze button. "Shit!" And now the nightstand and clock were both coated in ice. Ashley wanted to rip her own head off but settled for taking another shower and getting dressed for work. Flying would have been the quickest way to get to work, and for a few moments she was sorely tempted, but getting caught flying on video from somebody's cell phone wasn't something she wanted to happen today, so she called for her usual driver.
Maureen was waiting in Ashley's office when she arrived. "What do you want to do with the bodies? We've had them on ice, which will interfere with a proper determination of time of death, but the situation just isn't sustainable for much longer."
Incredible. How had she managed to forget about the other people in the lab, the ones who had died? "What were their names?"
That got her a startled look from Maureen. "Were you never told?"
Ashley shook her head. "There was too much else going on, with all the powers I got and the situation with Dr. Harriman and Firewhirl."
"Dr. James McKenna. He was the project's virologist. The others were lab assistants: Jane Hong, Brendan Caine, Joel Roth, and Leonard Cordero."
"Thank you. Has Analytics given you anything on them that might be of assistance with the issue?"
"Well, Hong and Cordero were having an affair. He was married and she was living with someone. The others—well, they seemed to live for their jobs."
"Have any missing persons reports been filed yet?" Ashley moved toward the coffeemaker and poured them both cups of Kona roast.
"No. We were able to access their e-mails and Dr. Harriman had told them to be ready to work a week without a break—I imagine he was planning for the human trial—so the ones who had someone to advise of that did. We still have some time to decide what to do, but we need to hurry."
Ashley sat down at her desk and thought. "Hong and Cordero can just vanish. If we found out they were having an affair, so can the police. If we transfer their last checks to numbered accounts online and bounce them around until they can't be traced, that will take care of the question of why they didn't pull money out of their banks. Get a couple from Security who look like them for the cameras, have them drive Cordero's car upstate and send it into a river somewhere it won't be noticed easily. Their bodies can go into the incinerator. The other three—I'm thinking maybe a helicopter crash and resulting fire in an inaccessible area? We've got drone tech so the helo can be piloted remotely. What do you think of a trip to the satellite biological labs in Tonawanda?"
Maureen said, "There has to be a pilot. None of the three dead techs knew how to fly."
"We can put something in their employment files. Were any of them in the military?"
"Caine was in the Army. Afghanistan."
"Find some flying school that went out of business between when he was discharged and now. We can digitally insert some files of him learning to fly. We can give him a pilot's license while we're at it. That way there will be no questions about why he was allowed to fly the helo."
"Yes, Ms. Barrett. I'll get in touch with that branch of our Security division."
"Good. How are Dr. Rennie and Mr. Miller?"
"Dr. Rennie is conscious and lucid and still denying having slept with the Deep. Mr. Miller is still unconscious, as is the nurse he looked at while he was awake."
Ashley nodded. "Make sure I'm advised of any changes in their condition."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Is there any word on Dr. Harriman and/or Firewhirl?"
Maureen shook her head. "Nothing since the footage of them leaving after the accident."
"Does Analytics have any scenarios they think are likely?"
"They think that Firewhirl had a prepared safe house ready to go the day of the accident, where she took Harriman after she picked him up at the Tower. This safe house was probably stocked with food and water for a couple of weeks, so they wouldn't need to eat out or get delivery, just lie low until the heat was off them."
"And then what?" asked Ashley. "Did Harriman stage this whole experiment just for the purpose of running off with Firewhirl? It doesn't sound likely to me. If he just wanted to be her equal, like Homelander thinks, he could just have dosed himself with whatever that shit was in the lab. There was no need to involve anyone in this if that was his goal."
"What do you think he wanted if not that?"
"What any scientist wants—data, information, new knowledge. But I don't understand how he hoped to get that with how things turned out."
"Analytics is still working on it. Firewhirl's safe house isn't a hotel; they've been through the registers of every hotel in the Greater New York area and haven't found either of them. They're working on one-family rentals now."
"Good. Let me know what they find out."
Maureen got up to leave, then hesitated. "I've had…sort of an idea that I'm working on regarding Project Mirror. I'll need access to the physical file rooms downstairs."
"I'll let Security know. But since the electronic files for Project Mirror are gone, I would assume Mr. Edgar also took the hard copies."
"He may have. I'm thinking of approaching the project in a different manner. It may not pan out, but it's better than doing nothing."
"Agreed," said Ashley.
"But before that, I have something to show you. It's just a prototype, but it should give you some idea of what we're going for. It's in my office, if you could just give me a few minutes."
"Sure." She took a sip of coffee and hissed as the liquid proved too hot. "Fuck," she muttered at the cup. Frost formed on its surface, disappearing almost instantly in little curls of steam. When she tried the Kona roast again, it had cooled enough for her to drink. A little smile touched her lips. The cold power was proving much more useful in daily life than she'd thought it would. Ashley had time to call Security and instruct them to update Maureen's badge access to include the physical file rooms by the time the other woman returned, holding a garment bag. "What do you have there?"
"Please don't just say no right off. Try to keep an open mind. I'd really appreciate it if you could try it on and let me know what you think could be done better." An awful suspicion occurred to her, but Maureen was already unzipping the bag and pulling out what it contained before she could forbid it.
It was a costume. It was Frostflower's costume.
The design team—Ashley figured Maureen had pulled a team together and put a rush on the design after she got word of the Montauk rescue—had created something that wouldn't embarrass her to wear. More like Stormfront's costume than either of the skin-baring outfits worn by Queen Maeve and Starlight, it was made of stretchy red material with a subtle pattern of white snowflakes. It had white leather gloves, thinner and more supple than Homelander's, white leather boots to the knee, and the crowning touch: Frostflower's mask.
The mask was a 3-D rendering of a snowflake, raised jagged angles in geometric perfection jutting from its surface. The openings for her eyes, nose holes, and mouth seemed to grow naturally from the structure of the snowflake. It would cover her entire face, with space at the back for her hair to flow from. Ashley couldn't deny it was beautiful. She sighed. "Maureen, I already said—"
"I know, you want to table this until the Harriman situation is resolved, but there's no harm in getting a head start in case you decide that you do want to be a member of the Seven. This is what we want to use for the Frostflower costume."
"I already told you I didn't like the name."
"We can focus-group names for you once we get further into the process." Ashley said nothing, staring at the costume. "Would you do me a favor and try it on?"
She sighed, but she did want to try it on. Just to feel like a real supe, a member of the Seven for the few minutes she wore it… "Okay. Give me a minute."
Maureen almost clapped her hands in happiness. "Of course, Ms. Barrett."
In the bathroom, Ashley stripped out of her navy Armani skirt suit and white silk blouse and kicked off her Jimmy Choo pumps. The Frostflower costume's material was soft and stretchy, a one-piece that made her wonder how they expected her to take a pee in this thing if she needed to, but she put aside practical concerns and slithered into the outfit. It seemed comfortable, and she pulled on the boots, leaving the gloves on the bathroom counter as she put on her mask, pulling her hair through the opening in the back. She put on the gloves and looked at herself in the mirror. "Damn," she said. "I look like a fucking hero."
When she stepped out of the bathroom to let Maureen look, she found out, with an uncomfortable shaft of fear, that Homelander had joined her. Trying to play off her nerves, she struck a pose. "How do I look?"
"Wonderful, Ms. Barrett," Maureen said.
Homelander took a bit longer to answer, letting his gaze roam all over her. The fear subsided, to be replaced by an equally uncomfortable wash of desire. As much as she wanted to deny it to herself, fucking him was fun. She'd enjoyed herself. "You look…heroic, Ashley. Is this the costume you'll wear as part of the Seven?"
Why was he taking it for granted that she'd join the Seven? "If I decide to join, yes. But I don't like that it's a one piece. A shirt and pants would work better."
"I don't see why," said Maureen.
"She probably wants to be able to use the bathroom without taking everything off while she's wearing it," said Homelander. "I had the same problem when they first designed my costume. It was a one-piece too, and I didn't even have a zipper so I could take a leak. It took about nine hours for me to force them to sew one in."
"This is the kind of input the design team needs," she said. "I'm sure they won't have any trouble making the requested changes and getting a new prototype back in the next couple of days."
Ashley waved a hand. "That's fine." The whole subject still made her anxious, but maybe it was part of accepting who she was now. She still didn't want to be in the Seven, but if she had powers she might be required to use them, like at the house fire.
After Maureen left, Homelander moved over to lock the door. Her pulse rate jumped a few beats. "Are you free for dinner tonight?"
The question confused her. "As far as I know."
He noticed her confusion and laughed. "I'm asking you to have dinner with me, Ashley. Like a date. Is it really that unusual for you to be asked out?"
The answer was yes—men didn't tend to waste a lot of time on her—but she didn't intend to tell him that. "I've been dealing with the aftermath of Dr. Harriman's experiment. I was preoccupied with that." As far as it went, it was the truth. "We've got a plan for body disposal in the works, but there's nothing new on Dr. Harriman or Firewhirl."
"Pull her file from American Hero. That might give you some clues."
"I'm sure Analytics has already done that."
"But they've been focused on the victims and Harriman, not Firewhirl. Besides, you might have some insights that they don't."
It seemed better than doing nothing. "All right. That's a good idea."
He perked up at her praise. "So, dinner?"
"Well, I have to eat sometime, so yes." His expression darkened, making Ashley laugh. "I was teasing you. I do want to spend some time with you outside the current crisis."
"I should be back from the mansion around seven-thirty or eight."
"That's good for me."
Homelander moved closer and ran his fingertips over the contours of her Frostflower mask. "Tough to kiss you with that on. Is it comfortable?"
"Yes," she said, her voice wobbling a little when he found the hole in the mask for her mouth and caressed her lips.
"It looks very good on you. But I don't know how I feel about you being in the Seven. It might be too dangerous for you."
"We'll cross that bridge later. Nothing needs to be decided now."
Ashley's secretary interrupted them to announce her next appointment and Homelander left for a meeting about a new haircare line he might endorse. She fell into the rhythms of work, comforting and normal as nothing had been since the accident. The cover-up of the lab accident and the deaths of the scientist and lab assistants nagged at her, but she tried to tell herself that it was nothing more than she'd done for every single member of the Seven in the time she'd worked for Vought. And no word on Harriman. That bothered her more than anything else. He'd started this little experiment, his human trial, and run out on it? It didn't track. But there was nothing she could do about him or the renegade supe he was banging at the moment, so she tried to concentrate on the actual executive work that had built up in the time since the accident.
Late that afternoon, as Ashley was getting ready to go back to her apartment and change for dinner with Homelander, Maureen came into the office. "Where's Homelander?"
"Out at the mansion shooting his interviews with the American Hero contestants. He should be done in the next hour or two." Maureen looked around and tugged at one earlobe. "No, he can't hear us. Mr. Edgar did a lot of testing when he was still in the…compliant phase of product development, so to speak, and there's an eight-mile limit on his hearing. We can speak safely."
She sighed. "That's good. I don't know whether you want him to know this right away or whether you want to finesse how to tell him. It will give you a little time to think about it."
"Tell him what?"
Maureen dropped a thick manila folder on top of Ashley's desk. "Gerald gave me an idea, and I've been going through the physical files downstairs since we talked, and I did come to the conclusion that Mr. Edgar didn't pocket the Project Mirror files as he was leaving. Dr. Harriman did that. It's just our good luck he wasn't as thorough as he might have been."
"What are you talking about, Maureen?" Ashley tried to deny the foreboding she felt.
"Now we know why every single person in that room, including you, was there for the human trial."