She fell through the opening face first. As Beth dropped through the air, she heard John's scream.
"No!"
In the air, instinct took over. She twisted her body, and a split second later her feet hit the floor. Beth flexed her knees, absorbing the impact, before standing to her full height. She waited for pain to come. Like with the gunshots, it never did.
John's footsteps pounded down the stairwell. As she looked up, the guard's face peered at her through the gap, thirty feet above her. He froze as he took in the sight of her. The dim light of the room shimmered off her blond hair and the stretchy material of her costume, radiating an almost mesmerizing aura around her. The blue and white outfit hugged her slender form, revealing her toned arms and flat stomach. The short skirt only accentuated her long legs.
Beth looked ahead as John rushed to her. His mouth hung open, but no words came out. The footsteps sounded on the stairs above them. Beth whipped her head to the right and spotted a glass door. A dark city street waited on the other side.
"Move!" she yelled to John. When he didn't move, she pushed him toward the door.
He lumbered toward the exit, reaching it as the two guards turned the corner at the bottom of the stairwell. John leaned against the push bar and stumbled outside when the door opened. Beth turned back toward their pursuers.
The first guard was upon her. As her icy blue eyes locked with his, she tried to call up memories of a few martial arts courses from college. She wished she had taken them seriously.
The man reached for her and she pivoted, grabbing his arm and using his momentum to slam him into the wall next to the door. He hit it with a crunch, and blood flew from his face as he hit the floor.
She spun, acting on instinct, and lashed out with a kick. Her foot connected with the ribs of the second guard, driving him backward. He landed on his back and his head whipped into the floor. He lay unmoving.
Beth tensed for another attack, but none came. No other guards had found them yet. She rushed through the doorway, not noticing the cold air of the autumn night. John looked at her with his mouth still hanging open, and confusion in his eyes.
"Let's go," she said.
------
Beth drove John's car as they left the Fizzure building behind them. She needed to get medical care for John.
"What the hell was that?" he asked.
"That was the consequence of going somewhere we shouldn't have," she replied. "I should have listened to you."
"That's not what I mean. Beth, you just fell from thirty or forty feet up. They shot you multiple times. You got into fights with men much bigger than you. Yet you don't have a scratch on you. What is going on?"
"I have no idea, but I'm driving you to the hospital." Thoughts of the gunshots and her fall edged into her consciousness, but she forced them back.
"I feel better already," John said. "It must have been something I ate."
She glanced at him. "Really?" she asked with a frown. "You were in agony back there."
"I just have a minor ache in my stomach. I don't want to deal with a hospital tonight. It will be a zoo. And you can't go wearing that. The men there will love it. You might not."
She glanced down at herself, remembering she still wore her superheroine costume.
"Oh, yeah," she said with a murmur. "Okay, but promise me if you don't feel better in an hour, we're going."
"I promise."
"Where to, then? The police?"
John shook his head. "I don't want anyone to know we were there."
"You're kidding, right?" she asked, her voice dropping with disbelief. "They shot at us. We have to report this."
"No harm, no foul, right? Let's just go home. I'm not in the mood for the party now."
"We can't just let this go."
"If we report this, then they find out I was there, and I can kiss my job goodbye."
"Oh my gosh," she muttered. "I can't believe you're worried about that job. They just shot at you."
"Beth, just take me home, please."
She wanted to argue the point further, but she had gone against his wishes once already, and it had almost gotten them killed. No matter how deplorable the company, it wasn't her call.
"Fine, we'll go home."
They drove in silence for several moments. Beth felt John's eyes on her the entire time.
"Enjoying the view?" she asked with a smirk.
"Yes, but that's not why I'm staring."
"Oh?"
"This will sound weird, but if I didn't know it was you, I don't think I'd recognize you."
"So now your head hurts, too?"
"Very funny. It's not that. When we were hiding under the cylinder, and you kicked out the metal panel from our hiding place and let light in, I looked over at you. It took me a few seconds to remember it was you. You looked . . . different. I almost asked you who you were. I can't explain it, or even put my finger on it, but you were different."
"Probably the side effect of whatever you were feeling."
"I guess."
A few minutes later they arrived at his apartment building. Once inside, he lowered himself onto the sofa. She studied him, looking for signs of pain or injury.
"You're okay?" she asked.
He nodded. "Now can we talk about what happened?"
"I guess so," she said with a shrug. "But I have no clue what happened."
"Did you feel those bullets hit you?"
"I didn't feel a thing. And I didn't feel any pain when I landed after falling from the stairs, either."
"And you tossed the guys around like they were nothing. And you kicked that metal panel half way across the room. It was almost like you were - "
"A real superhero," she finished his thought.
John starred at her, chewing the inside of his cheek.
"Do you think the cylinder we hid under did this?" he asked. "Maybe that's why they shot at us. It was their big secret."
"Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound? How is that even possible?"
"I don't know," he replied. "But everything you did shouldn't be possible, either."
"You were under the cylinder, too. Shouldn't it have affected you?"
He shrugged. "Maybe it did. I didn't get shot or fall off a stairwell, so I didn't get a chance to see if it affected me."
Beth tapped a finger to her lips and scanned the room. She walked to a large easy chair, and bent to grab it from the bottom. She lifted one end, and it titled up in the air. After lowering it to the floor she turned back to John.
"That was easy for me," she said. "Now you try."
John rose from the sofa with a wince and walked to the chair. He bent and tried to lift it. He grunted and only moved it an inch or two off the ground.
"Holy shit, I forgot how heavy that thing is," he growled between breaths. He walked back to the sofa, rubbing his back.
"This is really weird," he said.
She nodded slowly.
"I need to process this," she replied. "I'm getting a shower. Do you want to go first? You probably can't wait to get that makeup off."
"No, you go. Although I'm tempted to go first to keep you in that costume longer."
Beth grinned, before turning and heading for the bedroom. She closed the door behind her and started stripping off the costume. She slid the gloves from her hands first. After unzipping and stepping out of the boots, she unclasped her necklace. Upon removing the necklace a slight tingle, almost a shiver, coursed across her body. It was barely noticeable, and if she hadn't been paying attention she wouldn't have noticed it.
Beth furrowed her brow and eyed the dresser a few feet away. She stepped to it, bent, and tried to lift it. Nothing. She moved back to the bed and dressed herself in the rest of her costume again, except the necklace. Once dressed she tried lifting the dresser again, with no luck. She retrieved the necklace, fastened it around her neck, and tried again. This time she lifted the dresser with ease.
"Woah," she said to herself as she stepped back from the dresser.
So many thoughts flooded her mind that she felt as if a haze had enveloped her brain. She removed the necklace and stared at it, dumbfounded, for several minutes. Finally she tucked it into her suitcase.
John was dressed as a zombie, but she was the one who moved slowly and mindlessly as she stripped out of the rest of her costume again. Her body movements were robotic, as if it was only her years of dressing and undressing that allowed her to remove the costume. Her brain was not operating.
Forgetting she wanted to get a shower, she slipped into a pair of jeans and a sweater, stuffed her costume into her suitcase, and headed back to the living room to reveal her discovery to John. What she saw when she stepped from the bedroom froze her in her tracks. John was sprawled back on the sofa, with green bile oozing from his mouth.
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How do you find Beth as a character so far? If you can, please fill in that empty star in the corner if you liked this chapter. And fire away in the comments if you have questions or feedback.
~CJ