Humans: Book IV

XIII

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Destiny leads us to Shaw with ease, the smell of burning gasoline and rubber seeping into the air as Erik slams the pedal. He drives like Peter. Or, I guess Peter drives like him. I rest my chin against the car door, watching the evergreens blur by as we race away from the mansion.

We arrive at a lighthouse, the sun a bursting orange on the horizon. The air smells of salt and warm sand, dunes fluttering with grass. Erik pulls the hand break up and we all take in the white wash of the light house, the yellow glow spinning across the top and searching out into the sea.

"Shaw's up there," Destiny says. She glances over at Erik, "Is there any metal in the lighthouse?"

"It's mostly concrete and brick, but there are aluminum reinforcements. Want me to take a stab at him?"

Hank lunges forward from the backseat, "No, we can't kill him. Not yet. Not before we transfer Firefly's energy back to her. We have to capture him and bring him back to the mansion."

"A shame," Destiny mutters.

"Erik will go up there first to hold him down while Destiny and I try to hit him with his sedation," he holds up a vial from his back pocket. "Firefly will stay in the car where it's safe."

"Woah, wait a second—" I start.

"Sound good?" Hank asks the two of them. They both nod and the three of them are gone before I have the chance to argue anything else. I roll my eyes. Stay in the car.

That's definitely not happening.

I'm slow, but I make it to the base of the lighthouse. Every step still feels like agony, my breath short and my skin still drained of color. It's been so long since I've sensed anything now. It feels like I've been in an eternal winter, even with the sun burning my eyes and a late spring heat radiating the ground beneath my feet. I find the door Hank must have busted open. My head lifts up. Row after row after row of staircases.

"Good lord," I grumble.

So I start the endless hell of steps, my lungs wheezing for air. I don't need my powers to know the small bump in my stomach is not doing well either, my muscles feeling like they're tearing apart. Eventually the pain becomes meditative, my mind slipping away from my body as it carries on.

I think about Bo. The evening I found his shop and the evening I met him. I was ten and he found me listening to Jimi Hendrix, streams of my energy dancing in colors across the aisle. He said he would never tell. He said he was like me and to not be scared and to pick a tape off the shelf for free, just for being so outta sight, lil lady. The memory is crystal. I swear for a moment I can feel his energy back here, like a scarf wrapped around my shoulders.

I barely notice when I reach the top of the lighthouse.

The door parts with barely a touch, but it emits a long creak that gives me away as I step into the enormous, circular room, windows winding all the way around. Hank and Destiny are unconscious on the floor. Erik is dangling by the throat by an energy forcefield. Shaw turns to me with glowing, radioactive eyes.

"Oh shit," I state.

Shaw lets out an obnoxious laugh and sends Erik back into a concrete wall. He has the yellow vial of mutant sedation, loading it into the needle and stabbing it into Erik's blood.

"Oh shit. Oh shit," I repeat, clutching the wall because my knees feel like they're going to collapse beneath me.

His hungry eyes latch onto me, "You know, I have to commend you. Your powers are no easy feat to live with. Constantly sensing every little emotion of every little thing? Exhausting. It's why I set up here, where nobody else is around." He pulls up a metal chair and offers it to me, because he thinks I'm no threat. I take it because I need to, because I'm sure if I don't I'll fall from the mountain of stairs I just climbed. "There's something I admire about your stubbornness though," he tells me, toeing a blue Hank in the ribs to make sure he's fully out. "I find it wildly entertaining, how you're pregnant and dying and still think it's wise to come up here and try to stop me. It's cute, even."

I cross my arms, "I'm pregnant and I may be dying but I'm not cute. I'm pissed off and you're going to pay for it, asshat." The back of my heel bumps the metal leg of the chair and I hear a screw fall out.

I get an idea as he inches toward me, jabbing his thumb against my forehead until my head tilts back, grumbling in my face, "Thank you for giving yourself up so easily. You've really saved me so much eff—"

I use everything left in my body to sweep the chair from under me and crash it into his chin. He stumbles backwards into the floor, his face bleeding and bruised. The chair is shattered and scattered across the floor.

He grabs my neck, his veins and skin full of orange light as he starts to suck what energy and power is left right out of my body. I start gasping for breath, my vision eaten away at the sides by an inky blackness. I feel my limbs go limp, dangling there like a rag doll. I close my eyes and search my soul for something. Something that can save me.

"Firefly..." I hear it from a strained voice behind me. It's Erik, still caught in the concrete debris of the wall. "Firefly..."

My eyes open ever-so-slightly to take him in.

"It's your energy." He coughs and he repeats, "The power belongs to you, to your DNA. You don't need a bloody machine. Just take back what's yours. Absorb it back."

I close my eyes and lose myself in the pain again. Take back what's yours. I focus on the points where Shaw's skin is touching mine, his fingers wrapped around my throat. I will the flow of the energy to reverse, flowing back instead of being stolen back out. I can see flashes of light beyond my lids. When I open the orange glow is seeping out of Shaw, moving back into myself. He lets go because his hand is burning, trying to back away.

But I grab him.

I hold him in place by the shoulders, transferring back all of the energy and then some. I keep going because I'm addicted now, because I can't stop the beacon of light forming around my body, my energy field expanding and expanding until I'm burning up hot, until Shaw seems to become smaller and smaller and his skin paler and paler and withering away as I grow so strong, taking back everything in a great rush of wind and brilliance, as streams and stars of energy burst and surge into every part of myself. It gets so bright that the light is a blinding white, pure like baby's breath on snow. Shaw disintegrates  in my energy field but my light is still expanding, shooting out through the windows of the lighthouse and glittering the sea, even though the sun has set and the sky is dark with purple. I shine and I shine and all of the windows break, glass raining down outside.

And then it all folds into my chest. All at once.

I drop down to the floor, the room now only lit by the silver blue comets of moonlight on the floor. I can sense everything again, with the ease of breath. I hear footsteps rush over to me and notice all three of them are free of any cuts or bruises, fully healed from the light. Hank stares at me, bewildered by something he sees in my face.

I blink at him, "What is it?"

He just shakes his head, still staring in utter curiosity as he tells me, "Your eyes are glowing."