By the time I awoke, both Atticus and I unanimously decided we would rather risk being promptly ambushed upon escaping our subterranean sanctuary than spend another minute wasting away in what was beginning to feel like a giant tomb. The first exit we found, Atticus forced our way through, his ice power rising to the surface in place of telekinesis from the day before. He manifested a massive glaciatic spear shooting out of the ground to cleave open the boarded up exit, a spectacle I observed with raised eyebrows and afterwards sarcastically applauded as being "extremely subtle."
When we emerged, we hungrily drank in the fresh air, or, at least, I did. Atticus was too dignified to show any outward signs of relief, but the last thing I had any use for was dignity.
A starless night stretched overhead, further reinforcing our temporal disorientation. What day was it? How many nights had passed since my most recent "kidnapping"?
Was my dad worried? How traumatized was Leigh after being forced to endure the same nonsense all over again? After all, as far as she knew, these were the third and forth kidnappings of her close relations at the hands of the same person. She likely felt as though Shade had a personal vendetta against her.
It did no good to dwell, so I cast my mind elsewhere. While we prowled through the poorly lit city streets after dark, I waited for Atticus to finally finish his story.
"What's the second worst thing you've ever done?" Atticus asked abruptly, breaking through the monotony of our footsteps on pavement and distant sirens.
"The second worst? That seems a little arbitrary." I glanced sideways at him through the curtain of my hair, unsure as to where he intended the line of questioning to lead, but opted to humor him anyway. "Are we talking about the second worst thing I've ever done on purpose, or the second!worst consequences to my actions?"
"Either, I suppose."
I considered. The first worst thing required little thought. Innocently annoying my brother caused a plane crash that killed dozens. An obvious choice.
The second, on the other hand, forced me to sift through my memories for anything that stood out, and nothing really did. All paled in comparison to inadvertently getting my own mother and brother killed, even if the events had been largely out of my control.
"I'm not really sure," I admitted. "At one time, I wondered if not turning you in to the Guild would turn out to be one of my greatest mistakes. Can't really say that anymore, because if I had, I'd be in prison, or worse."
"We still might end up in prison, regardless," Atticus pointed out with disconcerting cheer, "or worse."
"I'm not exactly one to rally the troops, either," I said, "but you aren't the type for motivational speeches, are you?"
"I'm only pointing out that there's still time for me to become your second worst mistake." A dark meaning lurking beneath his otherwise devil-may-care exterior.
I met his gaze, a slow-growing grin spread across my face. "Likewise."
After all, due to my curse, he'd regret meeting me soon enough.
He looked away first, appearing appropriately troubled.
"Anyway," I stepped off the curb as we crossed the street to avoid giving a trio of grown men sitting on their front steps a good glimpse at our very identifiable personages, "don't leave me in suspense. What about you? People don't ask those extremely specific types of questions unless they want them asked in return."
He made a good show of recovering from whatever it was that bothered him, and said, "It's not that I wanted you to return my own question. Rather, I was delivering unto you your question from yesterday, albeit in a different form. The second worse thing I ever did was willingly take Frost's power. Like I mentioned before, Frost had been a prisoner for several years. The Guild offered him his freedom in exchange for being their test of my power. It seemed fair, at the time. If he lost his powers, he wouldn't be able to cause any more unsanctioned problems in the outside world, so he could be cut loose with a clean conscience, allowing him to begin a new life for himself, his slate wiped clean. We thought everybody had something to gain from the exchange... at first."
"Sounds promising," I muttered.
He merely dipped his head slightly in acknowledgment. "I've basically already told you this story, in a roundabout way. I told you having more than one power in a single body goes against nature, and with the addition of Frost's ice ability, I had three, including my own. At some point, a couple minutes into my physical contact with Frost, my mind went utterly blank. I briefly forgot everything. My name, my purpose, my family, and everything in between: gone. According to the reports I heard after-the-fact, I became like a cornered animal, reacting purely on instinct to assuage a fear that never abated. And so, I..." he appeared to struggle over his next words, tone softening to a tender whisper, "I murdered everyone in that room. Frost. The lead scientist and her research assistants, the two primary Guild Supers sent along to supervise, and all four Super prison guards present, each with a power of their own. All dead. Everything from that day passed in brief, agonizing flashes of color. Frankly, I am glad I don't remember more of their terrified faces than I already do."
He paused, and I said nothing, my expression carefully devoid of both judgement and solace. If he sought absolution in me, he would not find it. Eventually, he continued.
"At some point in the following hours, my body adjusted to the additional burden I'd taken on. I woke up to find the Guild had covered up my mess, a new set of scientists at my bedside to uncover why I reacted so poorly. They kept me drugged, semi-lucid at best, for the first few weeks, until they could be sure I wouldn't go on a rampage again. Then they trained me to control the two recently stolen abilities, to mixed success. As you've seen, I can only control one at a time, and I'm not entirely sure why. All I know is that every second was a fresh misery. Every part of me hurt all the time, like my skin was being slowly peeled away and my insides were being crushed. I barely slept."
Unable to restrain myself anymore, I voiced my most burning question, what everything had always been leading up to anyway, "So why take Shadow's power? What was the point, when it sounds like you weren't exactly having the time of your life?"
Without warning, he slipped the backpack strap off his shoulder and relayed it into my arms. More annoyed than worried, he sighed, "We're being followed. Wait here while I deal with it."
He didn't need to tell me twice. At every opportunity, I ran in the face of danger. Even so, I pitied our three pursuers. I had a distinct impression that they would not have been on that stoop outside their apartment to think to follow us if my curse hadn't made it so, and now they were about to have possibly the worst day of their lives because of it.
"You don't want to do this," Atticus said amicably, sauntering closer to them with his hands tucked into his pockets. His hood - the normal kind, given I forced him to tuck away his cloak - cast his face into shadow, hopefully enough to obscure his identity. My own, likewise, was pulled up protectively over my hair.
A flash of metal caught my eye. "Look out-" I called, but Atticus had already abandoned diplomacy at the hint of weapons and sprung on them, slamming his fist into one of their jaws.
His hand closed around a second man's bare wrist, and the man's eyes rolled back in his head, out cold.
The third went not for Atticus, but for me, the seemingly weaker target. Did he presume I'd make a good hostage?
What did I do to make men think I was victim material? Was it my face? Pheromones?
I shoved the backpack into his gut when he got too close, and he staggered back, before kicking it away and lunging for my jacket sleeve, which he caught and used to reel me in closer.
"Stop fighting me," he grunted, as we both grappled for the knife in his hand that we both knew I stood no real chance of obtaining.
I slammed my head up into his nose with enough force that it made me see stars, blinking white across my vision.
Then unexpected warmth spread across my abdomen. Wet. I ripped the blade free as the brunette man- a boy really, in his youth - stuttered backwards in a daze, his fingers dotted with red.
"You tried to kill me," I snarled, torn between stabbing him back or traumatizing a stupid kid that probably thought to rob me by pretending to die dramatically in front of him.
I got the chance to do neither. Atticus approached from behind and brought a hand to the man's neck. In seconds, he was out cold.
"What did you do to them?" I panted, keeping my breaths shallow to reduce the jostling on my healing wound.
"I lowered their internal body temperature too fast. Sent them into shock. They'll wake eventually, though they'd deserve it if they didn't. Unfortunately, we can't leave a trail of bodies in our wake-"
"Which is why you didn't turn them into ice cubes," I finished, swaying heavily to one side. "Got it."
He noticed my impaired balance. "Are you injured? Wait... You are!"
In vain, I tried swatting him away when he pulled up my jacket and the shirt beneath to examine the wound that narrowly avoided grazing my lowermost rib bone. "I'll be fine, and we both know it. This is only slightly more serious than normal, so it'll probably take a bit longer to heal, but that's it."
"Let's hope so." Atticus ran a hand through his dark hair - a nervous habit of his, I noticed. "We should find some place to hide the daylight away," he said after a moment. "It's nearly dawn anyway, and you won't be able to go far until that heals."
I nodded. No use fighting that point. I felt like roadkill twice run over. A nap sounded fantastic.
Shouldering back on the pack with our provisions, Atticus caught me off guard by sweeping an arm behind my knees, the other beneath my shoulders, and lifting me off the ground.
Snidely, I said, "Not going to toss me over your shoulder again?"
A small smile tugged at his mouth as he resumed our original path down the road with renewed purpose. "And get your blood on my clothes? I think not. Maybe next time."
"There won't be a next time!"
"Somehow, I doubt that."
Just as the first waving tendrils of gold peaked over the horizon, we located a sufficiently abandoned looking building to break into for the daylight hours and did just that.
My stab wound, though still uncomfortable, reduced to a scabbed over cut by the time we rolled out the sleeping bag and unpacked our other essentials.
We were left with a problem. The same uncomfortable one we'd been dealing with for days.
"You sleep," Atticus said. "I'll keep watch."
"Oh, shut up," I said before I could censure my attitude. "I slept the last out of the two of us. I don't care about the chivalric thing. I care about fair, and for my own good, I need you in top form at all times. If you're too tired to keep us safe should the need arise, we're both doomed."
"It is fair," he tried to persist. "Using any power is exhausting, and you've had to use a great deal of yours to heal yourself. You need the sleep more than I do."
"You used your powers, too, to make those guys faint," I pointed out. "And every one knows intrinsic powers, like healing, are less straining."
"That's different-"
"Sure it is," I cut him off. "Look. We're fairly far away from where our phone signals would have led the Guild, so why don't we both sleep?" I saw the continued spark of argument in his eyes, so I opted to change tactics. "We both sleep, or I stab you for calling me darling yesterday, which I explicitly told you had consequences, didn't I? Yes, when we were back in the forest I clearly said that malevolent little pet names equals a good old fashioned stabbing. That way, you'll be forced to stay awake from the pain, and I'll stay awake, too, because I'm stubborn and like to prove a point."
After examining my expression for several long moments, Atticus said, "I can't tell if you're serious."
"Try my patience and find out," I said sweetly.
Obviously dissatisfied, he relented. "Very well. Whatever her majesty desires, she gets." Did I note a hint of sarcasm? "You take the sleeping bag. I'll figure something else out."
While his back was turned, I changed into a random shirt not wet with my own blood. After I'd finished and he'd turned back around, I wormed my lower half into the sleeping bag, analyzing his stiff posture with an even mixture of amusement and scorn. "You enjoy the concept of suffering for a noble cause, don't you? You seem like the type, ironically. Luckily, I am far more practical. There's enough room for both of us, and I know there's no way you could fall asleep on the cold, hard ground, which brings us back to the whole 'stabbing' conundrum. We both sleep, or neither of us do."
Something like panic flashed across his expression, there and then swiftly masked. "I'm fine."
I snorted. "Neither of us are fine. Now. Will I have to drag you? That seems embarrassing for both of us. Besides, I am lazy, and don't want to stand back up, so, really, the chivalrous thing to do would be-"
"I get it." His words came out clipped and he approached robotically, his steps almost too even, like he was too in control of his own movements.
"About damn time." I pressed myself to one side to make room for him to slip in behind me.
He was unnaturally still, his chest barely rising, and doing his best to achieve the impossible: maintaining enough distance between our bodies so that they miraculously didn't touch in the slightest.
Rather than continue haranguing him to relax, I rolled my eyes at his dramatics and let myself drift off, knowing he'd loosen up eventually.
We were only doing what the situation required. Nothing more.