Daughter of Zeus ✔

17.5

"Asshole, Grandpa still hasn't called." Darcy's continued brand of prodding failed to distract the robot man. His attention remained on the road, broken occasionally when he glanced in the rearview mirror at Ada, then back at the road again.

"Very astute of you," he said, the lights from the other cars highlighting his face in fragments.

She pointed at the front dash. "The power gauge is on low."

"No, it's not."

Distracting the asshole is going to be a chore.

The distraction had to happen. She thought again of Ada and how the release of electricity had incapacitated their father. A conventional distraction seemed necessary with a gene pool like Darcy's.

Barely breathing, she slowly reached her hand out in front of her. Her fingertips got closer and closer to his neck. Deep concentration brought back the blue current she had seen on her skin earlier, but maintaining the current was hard. She poured sweat, and it had only been a few seconds.

"What are you doing?"

He caught her arm. As soon as he touched it, she felt the current unite them for an instant. Then he threw her arm away and slumped in his seat.

"Asshole?" She peeked her head around the driver's seat. Her captor snored, as unconscious as her sister. Good. "Hello car."

Her greeting was a command prompt common with most interfaces. The car recognized her authority by responding, "Hello. How may I help you?"

"Re-route to Kressick's townhome."

"Re-routing," the car confirmed. "Manual or automatic?"

Darcy assessed the useless adults, one in the front and one in the back. "Automatic please."

"Of course."

Two hours later, the car was back in Kressick's underground parking lot. Darcy shook Shylar. Still sleeping. Ada? Still sleeping too. Darcy hoped they would stay asleep for a little bit longer.

Upstairs, Kressick's home was empty. She righted the overturned lamp and chair. Things shouldn't be left like that. Chair in hand, she tried not to think of what she was going to do next. Home was the obvious choice, but not the choice she wanted. She was a freak, and he seemed to know of and accept freaks. Where was he?

She walked through every room again. For a second time, her search yielded no one. She sat in the dark of her grandfather's bedroom. Could she go home and face her mother and brother? They wouldn't understand how the world was a new place now. Everything had changed for her, yet for everyone else, everything stayed the same. Ada's anger didn't seem misplaced anymore. There were plenty of things Darcy could forgive her sister for. In a random flood of affection, she wished Ada were awake and next to her, able to explain things.

Through her intense stare into the abyss of the dark bedroom, Darcy detected the gleam of the household interface. Of course!

"Hello, house." She sniffled.

"Hello. How may I help you?"

"Where is Kressick?" She kept her voice steady, but inside she quivered.

"In the house."

Her sadness disappeared instantly.

"He is? Where?"

"He collapsed in the bathroom approximately four hours ago."

Four hours. Either Grandpa's sleeping, or— Her thought remained un-thought. "Why didn't paramedics arrive?"

A high-class citizen like grandpa was assured a two-to-four minute response time by medical teams in times of distress. Something or someone had seriously delayed his access to medical care.

The house told her, "I have been programmed to never alert response units of any kind."

"Why would he do that?"

Darcy asked her question more to herself than to the machine. Still, the house responded with a long- winded speech, one she ignored. The droning electronic voice masked the steps of another person in the house.

Shylar was able to grab Darcy's arms for the second time that night and pin them behind her back. She thrashed, yelling curse words. Her anger fueled her dormant ability, and blue currents ran in jagged lines over her skin. When his grip remained tight, she stopped struggling.

"What the hell?" Emitting sparks drained her, but she kept trying anyway.

She was amateur, but even she knew the shocks to his skin should have dropped him hard.

"Rubber gloves." She heard the creak of the rubber as he tightened his grip. Darcy looked at his arms for confirmation. Yup, his arms were protected up to the shoulder by a thick rubber coating. "How does rubber..."

He picked up the rest of the question and answered, "Rubber's an insulator with no free electrons." He spoke as though Darcy knew what he meant. "These gloves weren't meant to use against you."

She licked her lips. Her upper lip was bleeding from when she'd bit it while trying to fight off Asshole.

"They're for Ada?"

"Kressick was more worried about your father."

Shylar threw the past-tense casually, but Darcy couldn't process. "Was" meant the past. "Was" meant you were, but aren't anymore. She focused on a less ambiguous topic to keep her sanity for the moment.

"My father can do what I can do?"

She heard his smile in the dark. "His powers are at a more advanced stage, but yes, he can."

She couldn't think of anything else to ask. The rubber gloves dug in, cutting off the circulation to her arms.

"Let me go, you're hurting me."

"I can't trust you," he said.

Carefully, he nudged Darcy to stand, leading her to the bathroom door. He spoke the command to dissipate the barrier.

The bathroom floor was Kressick's mausoleum, his body lying face down in his own excretions.

"Hello, house!" Shylar yelled.

"Hello." The female voice sounded startled.

"Is he dead?" Darcy whimpered.

The answer seemed obvious.

"There is no heartbeat," the interface confirmed.

She buried her face in Shylar's shoulder, not caring that he acted more like a robot than a human being.

~*~