I fumbled around my pockets for the house key, finally fishing it out and inserting it into the lock. The door clicked open, allowing me inside.
It was sort of a rule that I didn't get blood all over the place if I decided to come home instead of going to Tryxel, so I did my best to staunch the blood dripping from my neck as I made my way towards the bathroom. Phil got angrier at the fact that his carpet was ruined more so than the fact that I got hurt.
The pain was starting to set in. Adrenaline had kept me from feeling the full force of the wound, but now that I was home, it was starting to die out. Each step made me wince. I tried my best not to move my head too much.
I got to the bathroom and stepped in, only to see Wilbur washing his face at the sink.
"What in the---" Wilbur yelped as he leapt away from the basin, spraying me with water. "Techno?"
"Who else would it be?" I asked sarcastically. "Uhm... can you please step away from the sink before my blood gets on the floor and Phil throws a fit at me?"
Wilbur obeyed wordlessly, stepping to the side to let me take his spot in front of the sink. I exhaled and reached my sore hands forward into the stream of water, watching as the blood on my hands ran down the drain.
"What happened this time?" Wilbur asked, regaining his composure. "You look like an angry dog attacked you."
"Nah, it was a skeleton," I said mildly.
I glanced up at the mirror to see the reflection of Wilbur's disbelieving look. I also saw how completely drenched I was. Well, at least a wet carpet was better than one stained in blood.
"A necromancer?" Wilbur guessed, stepping forward with a clean cloth to help me wash the wound.
I winced as he ran the fabric across the shredded skin. "Yeah. Not something you see every day, huh?"
"Don't count yourself as lucky," Wilbur grumbled. "I can't believe you got hurt so badly. Aren't you supposed to be good at this?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, it's not like I've ever fought a skeleton before," I scowled.
Wilbur rinsed the cloth and gave me a hard look. "You were distracted. There's no doubt about it. Techno, you're skilled enough to take on anything, even if you haven't fought it before. The only reason you could get hurt this badly is if you weren't paying enough attention to your surroundings."
He was right, but that didn't mean that I had to like it. You'd think that having a hyperactive brain would allow you to notice everything all at once, but I had been so focused on George that I had forgotten the bigger threat of the skeleton.
"Is Phil home yet?" I asked, hoping he'd say no.
"Yep," Wilbur said, much to my dismay. "Came home a couple hours ago. He should already be asleep, actually."
Now that he mentioned it, I could hear the distant sound of Phil's snoring, even from downstairs. The mention of sleep made me suddenly reason that Wilbur should've been asleep, too. "Wait, why aren't you in bed?"
He shrugged. "Couldn't sleep. Ate a cookie, went outside and sat on the ground for a while, looked at the stars. Been a busy night. I just came back into the house."
I watched as he reached into the cabinet and pulled out a roll of bandages, turning back to me and beginning to bandage my wound. Of course, I hated that I was taking up his time, but I knew how he liked taking care of me when I returned home all bruised and in pain. It was like his way of apologizing for all the times he hadn't been there for me. I appreciated the gesture, and so I let him do it.
As he took care of the wound, I turned my attention to my reflection in the mirror. I looked like a mess. My hair was all tangled as well as wet, water still dripping down onto my shoulders and down my back. The white sterile bandage didn't look right on top of my grimy appearance. The only thing nice about my current appearance was the blue crystal earring hanging from my left ear, a gift from Phil from way back when. I always wore it. I was sentimental like that.
"There," Wilbur said, finishing up. He took a step back to look over his work, then patted me on the back and smiled. "See? I'm a professional now."
"You are," I said, for his sake. "What a legend."
"Only because I've had so much practice."
"That felt like you were leading up to it."
Wilbur smirked at me before returning to a more serious demeanour. "You've got to be more careful, Techno. Especially with the stories going around about the recent deaths...."
That caught my attention. I turned to face him with newfound interest. "What stories?"
My brother raised an eyebrow. "Well, people are saying that the deaths of Storm and Lapis might be connected to the deaths of the eleven others we've seen, as well as the death of another bounty hunter yesterday. It's been a long time since there's been so many consecutive deaths all together, and the way that the ones shown on the news died...." He shook his head. "Well, it looks like the work of one person."
Did he... really just... connect literally all of the dots in ten seconds?
"Techno? You look a bit pale."
"I'm perfectly fine," I said, a bit dazed. "I just didn't realize that you were so smart before."
Wilbur blinked. "I'm not sure if I should be happy or offended."
"You haven't seen any pictures of the bounty hunters, though," I pointed out. "How can you make that connection logically?"
"I can't," Wilbur sighed. "That's the thing I'm not too sure about. But with the bodies shown on the news, I'm fairly certain that it's all one guy's doing. Maybe the bounty hunters had been going after them and failed."
I buried my face in my hands.
He reached over and touched my shoulder in concern. "Don't do that. It'll aggravate the wound on your neck. Are you sure that you're okay, Techno?"
No, not in the least. Why didn't you become a detective or something instead of a celebrity? The popstar business doesn't deserve you.
"Perfectly fine," I repeated, which probably wasn't all that convincing with the muffled sound that came with having your face in your hands.
"You work for Tryxel," Wilbur said, wisely choosing to ignore me. "I mean, so does Philza, but he's an old man and I don't want to bug him---"
"Oh, so you'll bug me instead?"
"---so I was wondering if you know anything about what's been happening and whether or not you can confirm the stories as truths or myths. You know, for knowledge's sake."
The thing was, I did want to tell him. The first time I had realized what was happening was during Wilbur and Niki's photoshoot, and I had said that I would tell him when I got my info straight.
But his words made me think of my encounter with Smiley. The only reason why he hadn't attacked me was because he thought I wasn't a Gifted. If he found out later that he had been mistaken, I got the feeling that he'd be angry.
I wasn't the only Gifted, though. Phil was one too, and not only that, but so was Wilbur. I had to protect my family. Telling them about what had happened would only make them more worried. Especially Phil. Wilbur was smart, but he could also act rashly. It was the same reason why I was nervous about Tommy going after Smiley by himself, as farfetched as it may seem. If Smiley knew that I wasn't normal, he'd come after me, and if he came after me, then he'd snipe the Gifted around me as well.
"I don't have anything to tell you yet," I said with a shrug. "Later, okay? Not now."
Wilbur narrowed his eyes at me. "You're not going to take on this problem all by yourself, are you? Like that Greek guy who carried the world on his shoulders... Atalanta?"
"Atlas," I supplied. "And no, I'm not. I don't even plan on getting involved."
If possible, Wilbur's eyes got even narrower. "So... you're not going to do anything about the crazy killer going around poking people with a sharp metal thing and drawing nice flowers with their blood," he said slowly.
"Nope," I said. "I'm not a hero."
My brother stared at me for a solid ten, awkward seconds, then frowned. "Techno, do you remember the night that you were going after that dude?"
"Bandanna Guy?" I surmised, because honestly, he could've been referring to literally any one of the bounties I had chased after in my entire career.
"Yeah, that one. That night, I told you that you should find a new job because being a bounty hunter was just too dangerous. I hated how you were constantly getting hurt."
I remembered. I also had the distinct memory that I hadn't really been taking him seriously, and had probably cracked a joke to lighten the mood at the worst possible time ever.
"You told me that it was what you did," Wilbur continued, "and that you were good at what you did. That you helped protect people. You said that you were like a vigilante."
...and then I trash-talked Spiderman. It's all coming back to me now.
Wilbur placed a hand in my shoulder, looking me square in the eyes. "I'm your older brother and I should be the one protecting you, but I can't protect you from your job. You always told me that, and because I believed you, I didn't try hard enough. But now... I see that you were protecting a lot more people than I could by only protecting you. Every bird needs space to stretch their wings. Now that I'm finally giving you that space, are you really going to let all those people die?"
My conscience wriggled around uncomfortably inside of me. "Well, uh, yes, because what other option is there? It's not like I can go up against---"
I bit my lip, forcefully cutting myself off, as I realized my mistake. Wilbur raised an eyebrow at me. "Ah. So you do know who it is, and not only that, but you have a good grasp of their skill level."
"Thank you, Sherlock," I muttered.
"Protect our city," Wilbur said, giving me a sad smile. "Not us. Okay?"
I tried not to frown at him. Of course I needed to protect my family. Who cared about the random strangers mingling in the streets? I didn't know them. I didn't care to know about them.
But now Wilbur was trying to turn me into a hero.
I wasn't a hero. I couldn't save people. When I said that I was a vigilante, I had been joking. As a bounty hunter, the most I did was catch the bad people before they could hurt more civilians. I didn't go out of my way to save people when it would only put the people I actually cared about in trouble.
Was I selfish? In a way, I could see that. But I was also human.
"No promises," I said, looking away from Wilbur.
He sighed, but he knew that that was the best he was going to get out of me. I raised a hand to my neck and gingerly touched the bandages, then let my hand drop down again. "Thank you," I said sincerely, before leaving the bathroom and heading up the stairs.
As I approached my room, the sound of Phil's snoring got louder. I smiled to myself as I glanced over at his closed bedroom door before slipping into my own, silently closing the door behind me.
My knees buckled out from underneath me. I leaned back against the wooden door and slid down into a sitting position. My head hurt like crazy. I hadn't known that I was this tired.
The adrenaline has finally run out, I reasoned. I need rest.
An obvious answer, but sometimes I needed "obvious" to keep me on track.
I stood up on wobbly legs and took off my cloak, tossing it onto the ground before slipping off my mask and placing it on its hook on the wall. I changed into dry clothes and promptly collapsed on the bed.
As I slowly drifted off, my mind suddenly latched onto one thing from my conversation with Wilbur: he had said eleven more deaths. I only remembered a total of nine innocents.
Smiley was on a roll.