Reality Check

Against The Odds

One Foot (by Walk The Moon)

"Cross my heart and hope to die. Taking this one step at a time. I got your back if you got mine . . ."

___

Her father was here. Here as in Jupiter City. Here as in ten feet away from Bethany.

At first, she thought she might be imagining things. That her mind was playing tricks on her, that maybe she'd fallen asleep standing up and her brain projected the person she'd been hoping to see all this time. Had she lost her mind? No. No, she hadn't. The stasis chambers were right here. Her dad was right here.

Before she could even fully process what she'd seen, Bethany was already running forward, reaching out and touching the glass with her fingers. Her dad stared back at her, his green eyes wide and his mouth open. He looked scared. It never occurred to Bethany that he could be scared.

"Dad?" she whispered, but got no response. Right. He couldn't respond, not when he was inside that thing. She stared at him, horror growing inside her. Why was he even in here? The woman at the face-painting stand had said that Doc Twilight had been kicked out of the Lawful Legion, which she just assumed was all Nobody's doing.

But here was her father, in the stasis chambers. He'd never betrayed the Lawful Legion, and yet, they kept him in here. The only time he ever had was when he'd become the Dark, but everyone knew that hadn't been his choice. So her father had never given any reason why he wasn't a superhero, or why he deserved to be placed in here.

Had the Lawful Legion voted to put him in here, or had Nobody just decided to? Since he'd worked closely with the Lawful Legion, Bethany doubted it was the first option. It had to be the second. Had to be. She just couldn't believe she was seeing him here, of all places. She'd known Nobody had taken him somewhere. Known he'd captured her dad.

And she'd been in Jupiter City just recently, just a few days ago. Had her dad really been in the stasis chambers this whole time, or had he been somewhere else? If this was Nobody's way of getting rid of her dad, Bethany had to admit it was better than rewriting him to never exist. But being frozen in time? That wasn't much of an upgrade!

"Dad," Bethany repeated, swallowing hard. "It's me. I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm going to fix this. I'm gonna fix this, okay?" She blinked hard, surprised when she felt tears starting to cloud her vision. Her throat was tight. "It's gonna be okay. I promise, I'm gonna get you out of here."

She stepped away from the stasis chamber, a new motivation hitting her. She wasn't going to lose him again. She was going to get him out of here, no matter what it took. She just wasn't sure how to get someone out of a stasis chamber, exactly. Was there just a button she could push to unfreeze him?

Bethany's eyes flitted over to an array of buttons and symbols next to the stasis chamber her dad was in. She squinted at it. One of the buttons was glowing bright red, probably a signal that the stasis chamber was working and turned on. Above that was larger button, with the word "on" right above it. That must be the one to press to activate the stasis chamber.

So if there was that, there was something that'd do the opposite. A button that'd unfreeze him. Bethany glanced to the right and found what she was looking for. Holding her breath, she jammed her finger into the off button, praying that she'd pressed the right thing. If she hadn't, well, she might've accidentally messed up the machine.

She heard a beep. The stasis chamber made a whirring noise, and Bethany noticed some kind of steam started blowing into it, most likely warming up the stasis chamber. She'd never been inside one of these, but she knew they were supposed to be freezing. Probably a way of keeping the person from aging, if Bethany could guess.