Super•Villainous

LII

Aware that I may well have been destroying weeks of painstaking work on a moment's paranoia, I took all our plans to flame. Our maps crinkled and blackened  in my hands before falling away to ash over our gas lamp.

At least, if nothing else, it gave me a few moments of fleeting warmth in that increasingly chill room. A ghosting comfort. There and gone again.

It had been foolish to keep physical proof of our villainous activity in the first place, I reasoned. We had most of it memorized already, so even if it was a false alarm, this was the best course of action anyway.

I hoped.

I hoped I was wrong, and that Atticus would walk - or teleport - through that door any minute now. I'd feel foolish for jumping to conclusions and laugh at my own idiocy, but he would be safe, and that was the only thing that mattered.

Without ventilation, the smoke stung my eyes and burned the back of my throat, almost as though the universe willed me to cry out all my fear and frustration. I refused. I refused to be so dramatic about something I couldn't be sure was actually true. I willed those feelings back, almost as hard as I willed Atticus to return.

On the second day following his absence, the voices came, at first distant but growing louder, and when they were close enough for me to make out words, I heard the unmistakable cadence of my name riding the wind, echoing down the long, open air corridors of the storage facility we chose to hide in that week.

We set up shop in places of varying glamor, the highlight having been a summer beach house, abandoned for the winter season. It had been drafty, but comfortable, though we knew we couldn't stay for long. We remained nowhere longer than five days if we could help it. Preferably less, to be safe.

I barely had time to verify that Atticus had chained up the rolling door last time he left before those very chains were severed in a single swipe, clanging loudly to the cement ground in even pieces. The door rumbled a jarringly thunderous sound as someone on the other side dragged it open, the cacophony made especially intolerable compared to the relative silence of before.

I winced, too far beyond rational thought to attempt to cover my ears.

"Lily!" called a familiar voice, adrenaline loosing my name from their tongue in one quick burst. "Lily, it's me. You're safe!"

My eyes adjusted to the sudden burst of light casting the three before me into shadow to make out Tempest; the emotion-reading Super, Empathy; and, of all things, a Guild Elder by the name of Flicker that I knew could teleport at will. Unlike Atticus, he relied on no shadows to get around.

I tried to conceal the horror on my face at their arrival and, by extension, Tempest's haggard appearance. His suit hung tattered off of one shoulder, that same arm pulled up at a right angle in a tightly bound sling across his chest. His jaw showed a broad spectrum of bruising, one eye nearly swelled shut.

"How did you find me?" I choked out, with the belated hope that they understood the question as coming from a place of relief rather than alarm. "What happened to Shade? Where is he?"

He can't be dead. He can't be.

Then I remembered, in a sudden rush of clarity so sharp I couldn't believe I hadn't considered it before: Atticus literally couldn't be dead. On average, he retained borrowed powers at their fullest strength for between one and three days, therefore, at the time of his disappearance, when he was presumably attacked and apprehended, he would still be using my power to heal himself.

The extent of my relief nearly stole my breath away.

Empathy watched me carefully, her perusal anything but casual, and I instantly understood why they brought her along, despite her generally working the front desk at the Guildhall when not accompanying the Constable to press junkets. They meant for her to read me. Had I fallen so far in their esteem already? Were they suspicious?