The water spilled from the showerhead, swirling in circles around my feet as it drained. I watched it through my detached, unfocused eyes. It was tinged red from the cut on my arm, along with a bit of dust and a few days' worths of grime.
The past five hours had been a blur. I'd talked to the police while Taliyah did the same in the opposite room—going over the events in detail, being asked about the others who were kidnapped, and going over the events for a second time. By the time I got back to the hotel, I was, to put it simply, fed up.
I sighed and sponged the shampoo from my hair. The suds crackled in my ear like distant thunder. Steam covered every inch of the hotel bathroom, fogging the mirror next to me until I couldn't see anything.
Kidnapped. I had been gone for a week and a half, and I didn't know how to feel. I brushed a finger through my hair to untangle the knotted mess it had become.
I took my time in the shower, trying to wash the evidence of the past few days. Trying to rewind time. But my head kept thudding and thudding, and thoughts kept flinging around in the husk of my brain like a million tiny explosions shattering around me.
I shut off the water and wrapped a towel around my waist, savouring the soft fabric against my skin. I needed a hug, or maybe a year-long nap. Either would do, right about now.
I chewed on my lip as I got dressed, pulling on a pair of lounge pants and a loose sweater that belonged to Eleni. It smelled like coconut body wash and perfume, and for some reason, I was hit with a wave of emotions again. I willed myself to focus—to calm down—I was safe now. I had gotten Taliyah out. With her, we could figure out a plan.
My mouth tasted like metal. Belatedly, I realized I had chewed so hard it had started to bleed.
I dabbed my lip with the towel to clean it, my eyes flickering to the bathroom mirror. Taliyah had explained that her mind-link became a string of visions and colours when she contacted me from further away. The sensation of familiarity I'd felt were Taliyah's feelings breaching through the connection, and not a superpower showing itself. Wouldn't that be nice? (It'd be like an apology from the universe: 'Sorry you got kidnapped or whatever, but here's an ability! That should make it better, right?')
I lifted a finger to my hair. When it was wet, it looked practically black, like Aunt Halley's did. Only the frizzy curls drooped over my eyebrows and stuck out at the sides. I scanned the hand towels and Nia's travel kit. A pair of scissors shone in the light underneath a bottle of nail polish remover and mascara.
I glanced at myself, challenging the reflection. Without giving it too much consideration, I grabbed the ends of my hair and sliced it off. Clumps of brown fluttered into the sink until I'd gotten it to shoulder length.
With a sigh as if letting go of something heavy, I exited the bathroom. Sitting around the double beds was Aunt Nia—who'd finally got on a flight as soon as she could—Jax, and Taliyah.
"Hey!" Nia smiled softly at me and ushered me over, tossing both of her hands around my neck to squeeze me into a crushing hug. I folded into her body, fighting the urge to cry again. I didn't think I was going to last much longer without breaking down. "I was worried about you, Kacie. I am so sorry. I should have been there. If I hadn't... if someone had been there to..."
I sat at the edge of the bedsheets, smoothing them between my shaking hands. I knew what she wanted to say, even though she didn't cement it into existence. Someone to protect me.
I'd been helpless. Powerless. So many words to describe it. I had faced my fears with Midnight, and I was such a fool for thinking that meant it was over. That my worries would magically disappear, and I never had to think about it anymore. As if I had left my hopelessness behind; locked it in my enclosure of a glass case.
"Don't apologize," I said, squeezing my hands into fists. Cleared my throat and breathed.
Nia patted my shoulder and stretched her legs across the bedside. She'd been here since I'd returned to the hotel, and it didn't seem like she planned on leaving. I didn't know what it would take to convince her I could handle this, and I didn't know I could handle it either. It was ironic, in a way, but I wasn't ready to laugh about it.
"I think we should call Kieran," Nia said, tentatively reaching for her laptop bag. Stickers and buttons referencing her favourite TV shows coated the surface, along with glittering peace signs and rainbows. "He's been... well, you know what he's like, but I don't think I've ever seen him this worked up before. I think if we don't bring him up to speed now, he'll fly all the way here to lecture me."
Jax smiled weakly and said, "I can see that happening."
Light shined through the window behind him. The wind was gentle, tugging the curtains back and forth. Taliyah traced her fingertip across a patch of orange rays on the floor before she stood and excused herself. When Jax didn't budge, she grabbed his sleeve and dragged him out of the room. "Some things are private matters, Jasper. Got it?"
He grumbled something under his breath about nobody calling him by his full name before the door clicked, and I couldn't hear them anymore.
It reminded me of Riley's words outside the hospital room with Nia, over a year ago. Sometimes, things don't involve us. Sometimes, they're private. I still didn't understand it. Maybe I never would.
Nia's fingernails, painted with a pink polish that was half picked off, tapped against the keyboard. She opened a video call and turned the sound to the maximum. The sound of it ringing carried through the room and made my heart lurch.
The call was accepted instantly. My dads appeared on the screen, seated on the couch. Kieran's hand held steadfast to Riley's. Never of them seemed angry, at least.
"Kat," Riley said, his tone wobbling as though he was afraid I'd disappear like a figment of his imagination. His eyes were heavy with the purple shadow of sleepless nights. I'd missed my parents—I wanted to force my hand to reach through the screen so I could reassure them that I wasn't going anywhere. I stuck my hand against the bedside instead. Searched for a lifeline and found Nia's hand through the guilt searing at my chest. "You're okay."
"I'm okay." My lip trembled. And maybe part of me believed it this time. Maybe I didn't have to convince myself of that. "I'm still me."
"That's a relief." Riley's gaze softened, and he allowed himself the slightest chuckle. "I was starting to worry that you might come back and not be you anymore." As he spoke, he was fiddling with his hands—pressing his nails into the palm of his hand before picking at the cuticle repeatedly. It was a nervous habit I'd never seen before, at least not from Papa.
"I don't know what I would have done," Kieran said. The bubble of silence enveloped us. "I don't know. If I could have been there..."
Riley bit his lip and nodded. "I know." He turned his gaze back to the screen, his eyes staring underneath the camera—like he was looking at the image of me instead of at the black dot on the monitor. My heart clenched. I really let them down. "I'm sorry. I wish I could change it. You shouldn't have had to go through that."
"It's not your fault." My voice was faint, but I knew he heard me. That he understood. We spoke without words. It's my fault, was what I meant. Spark would never do that, was what I wanted to say. "I should have told you what I was doing. It was, um... I felt like I needed to do it. I don't know. Like I wanted to."
"You should have told us, that's true," Kieran said softly as my scratched my neck, ducking my face towards the floor. "Can I tell you a story?"
I nodded weakly. Lifted my eyes towards my parents and caught the relief on Kieran's face. Gesturing with his hands, he continued, "When you were in middle school—it feels like a long time ago—I stopped a bank robbery a few towns over. It was packed with people; the workers, the customers... and about five or six robbers. There are times when I think about it. All of the decisions I had to make. All of the ways I could have changed it. I have the benefit of hindsight now, where I can run through the options I should have taken or not taken. Options I never would have thought of in those moments, but regardless, I felt like I should have. There will be those moments. Maybe a lot of them. But I did what I could. And you know that you did, too."
I did what I could. I shut my eyes, trying to block the thoughts out. Shifting in my seat. Crossing my legs and uncrossing them. "I love your stories," I whispered. He used to tell me about his adventures with powers before bed, like a nighttime storybook. It made me feel like a kid again, peeking out from the comfort of three blanket layers. "And I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It's okay to feel this way. There's nothing wrong with emotions," Kieran said.
"Give it time. Don't be so hard on yourself, you hear me?" Riley added softly. "I feel somewhat responsible for this, knowing that Kieran's powers are weaker. There must be something we can do to learn why Kieran's powers are back. I have a hypothesis—"
"It's a boring science theory," Nia interrupted with a terse scoff, drawing relaxing circles against my shoulder. I leaned back slightly, as if to release the pressure in my lungs. "For starters, it's dangerous, and I'm not sure we need danger right now."
"It's reckless, I agree, and right now it's the only theory we have," Kieran said. Teasingly, he added, "Unless you have a better one?"
She rolled her eyes but said nothing. Riley's gaze cut away from Aunt Nia before he deigned to continue. "But it's a solid theory. JC-18 caused you both to lose your powers. By every technicality, your genes should be altered by the serum"—he coughed—"or whatever concoction it was. As I understand it, Thomas has one vial of it left in a safe at MARS."
Thomas was the name of Riley's work colleague, who'd stolen the serum in a last-ditch effort to keep Phantom from obtaining it. I swallowed at the memory which replayed itself in my mind of that day. I didn't know what it was like to lose an ability, but I'd seen it happen more than once. There was only one word that could describe it: emptiness.
"I thought Dad destroyed it," I said.
Riley's fist clenched. "He did. This is the last of it. I made sure of that." When I nodded weakly, he continued, "Being able to examine those altered genes could help me. At the very least, I might be able to find out what circumstances cause that light switch to turn back on. It shouldn't have been able to do that, to begin with. JC-18 was created to break the circuit. The fact that Kieran's abilities came back means the sequence was able to... reconnect, sort of. To break free. But I'd have to find willing participants to test every avenue, and right now is not the best time for that. And Nia is right. It's too risky. I don't want to take my chances and make things worse."
The concept of the light switch was one Riley had taught me before as an explanation for superpowers. It worked on the assumption that just like every house had a light switch, every person could develop an ability. Once a light switch turned off by injecting JC-18, it was intended to suppress superpowers permanently, but it hadn't.
Someone worth protecting. I carefully broached the subject of Lexi's opinion article, gesturing between my dads and myself. "She thinks that powers are... that they come back—"
"That the gene is re-expressed."
"Yeah, that. She thinks it's influenced by certain factors. And it worked for Dad, right? So why wouldn't the same thing work for Diamond?"
Riley shrugged. There was a glimmer of pride in his smile. He flattened his hands against the couch. "Look at you, Kat. You're becoming a smart little hero."
***
I grimaced as I scrolled through the notifications on my new phone, crossing one leg over the other. Three messages from Grace, which I was going to respond to, once I figured out the right words. Over a dozen from my dads (each). But it was a text from the group chat that made my eyes prick with tears.
It's not the same without Kacie, Vivian had said.
I lowered my phone as a figure appeared in the hall. The door was open and Nia was keeping guard, since I needed space to recuperate. Instead of her, it was Jax; he carried a smoothie in one hand with a candy bar sticking from the pocket of his sweatshirt. Flannel pyjama pants, which were a few inches too short for him, swished over his socks-and-sandals combination. He stretched to reach the doorframe and offered the smoothie to me.
"The chocolate's mine," he said, shooting me a wry grin. "Sorry. Lydia wanted you to have something healthy."
"You shouldn't have," I said sardonically, grabbing it from his hand. "I got you ice cream when you—ah... and I also got candy! And this is what I get in return? Really?" I wasn't actually mad about it, but it felt good to pretend. I held out my hand and Jax begrudgingly placed a square of the chocolate into my palm. It was filled with sweet hazelnuts, and I savoured the taste of it as we sat in silence.
"I didn't agree with her," he pointed out. "I think every success should be celebrated with sweet foods. And you just escaped from a dumb villain, so the calories don't count." He followed my gaze to Vivian's text message, hesitated, then said, "It's true, y'know. Everyone missed you, just like they missed me and my awesome jokes."
"Yeah, I..." I turned my phone off and set it at my side. Kicking my feet against the carpet, I admitted, "I need to know who did this to me. Does it get better from here? It does, right? Now that I'm out of it?"
"It does. Just a little, at first. But, one day, you get up, and it seems so distant. It's strange, but I almost forget about it sometimes."
Outside the hotel window, the sun formed an amorphous mass of blinding light. I stuck my hand through a beam, striking through the window, curling my fingers around it. The adjacent buildings covered most of the skyline, save for the contrail of a plane ascending.
"If you want to talk about it, I'm here," Jax continued. "I can't promise my advice will be the best or anything like that, but I can promise that I know what it feels like. Maybe you, me, and Taliyah can start a support group. We'll call it Only the Cool Get Kidnapped."
I angled myself over the bedsheets and kicked him in the ankle. "Not funny."
"Weird, because I think it is." He rolled up his sleeve and cracked his knuckles, producing a purple vortex. Reached through it to grab my camera—where did he find that?—and wrapped his hands around it as if pulling a rabbit from a hat. "It's lucky that you kept this with you. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to figure out that Midnight was at the subway. See?"
He turned the camera on and scrolled to the last video. The camera had fallen free from my grasp and fell. Suspended in midair, like a stretching elastic band. My mouth opened, but I couldn't find the words. In the video, the ground was spinning beneath me and my pulse skipped. Erratic and trembling. Because I could see a splotch of black and the outline of a girl, dressed in a cape like on the video feed Halley sent to me.
She knows who I am. And she wants me. To defeat me? To speak to me? To make me into a villain? There was no way she wanted me to develop powers like Jax had. There was no way she wanted to lure Orion to Crystal City. She wants something more. More than just controlling the city. More than just controlling the heroes.
"Yeah," I said hoarsely. "If I said I had a plan, would you believe me?"
"Does this plan involve self-sacrifice? Because if you're going to sneak out to bring Midnight out of hiding, it won't work. The last time I tried to teleport out of here when you were gone, Mr. Ashford threatened to put me in detention again. I mean, it didn't stop me from leaving and... and I'm in trouble to the fourth power by now, but still."
"It doesn't involve self-sacrifice. Or sneaking out. We can't leave until Lyndon is safe, anyway. The trip is postponed."
"No sneaking out? Damn it." Jax snickered and held out his hand. I placed mine on top of his to complete our secret handshake, then cleared my scratchy throat and finally told him everything.
I decided to start with the basics: that Aunt Nia was Diamond Prism, that I was here on a mission for Kaleidoscope, and that the clues I'd pieced together seemed to lead to nowhere in particular. Jax absorbed this in a way only he could—he was pensive at first before he tapped a finger to his chin.
"That's Diamond out there?" He pointed at the doorway, sweeping a hand towards Aunt Nia. After a short pause, he shrugged. "Yeah, I figured that out already."
"You absolutely did not."
"I absolutely did." He nodded sagely, as if that settled the matter. "Anyway, continue. You were going to tell me your master plan for saving the world."