Try as we might to avoid it, our past will inevitably come back to bite us in the ass, and almost exclusively when we least expect it.
I was having such a moment, gaping at the dead man walking up to shake my hand.
His auburn skin crinkled around a pair of gold-flecked green eyes that widened the moment he caught sight of me. I marveled at the uncanny crook of his smile, which tugged his features into an expression I'd gotten to know quite well while in sleep-away-government-psycho camp last year.
I took a tentative step closer as my mom's fingers tightened protectively around my forearm. Her heart rate (only detectable to me and my inexplicable supernatural powers) was sputtering with parental anxiety.
The waning afternoon light spilling through the picture window of my municipal apartment cut an angular shadow across the man I could have sworn I'd watched bleed out in a hallway eleven months ago.
"Rishi?" I breathed, knitting my brow to study the smart black cane he was leaning against.
"Ah, no," doctor Rishi's twin chuckled kindly as I accepted his outstretched palm. His skin was soft yet his shake was warm and suitably short (unlike most of the career bureaucrats I'd met lately.) "Arujn was my brother. My name is Varun Rishi, Arujn's older and much handsomer brother."
I laughed in spite of myself, a nervous sound that petered out into awkward silence while I was left holding Varun's hand.
All I could picture was doctor Rishi's terrified eyes wide with fear and pain as blood filled his lungs. He was helping me escape, and I left his little brother to die alone (not exactly how you want to start off a working relationship with someone).
My mom moved to Varun's side to gently unhooked our grasped palms. She was wearing a new perfume, something I didn't immediately recognize, but it had notes of jasmine.
"Varun's been helping us with the move," she said tenderly. "And his lawyers are fighting to bring you home. He's going to be working with the Department on your case to make sure nothing happens to you that you don't want to. We owe him a lot."
"I'm sorry," I shook my head to clear my thoughts. "Why did you call doctor Rishi Ar-roon?"
Varun's lips curved into the same smile his brother wore in my memories. "Arujn changed his name because people had trouble pronouncing it," he spoke of his sibling wistfully. The wound of his brother's untimely demise was obviously still fresh for him. "Eventually we all succumb to the follies that make us human, I suppose."
I shot Galen (my government provided nanny man) a sideways glance. He was stone-faced, leaning up against my laminate kitchenette counter watching with his toned arms crossed over his starched white shirt. Galen clearly wasn't super happy about Varun overseeing the deep science exploration of my altered genetic makeup on Project Scion.
"The department has been kind enough to supply what's left of my brother's research, and I will work tirelessly to find out how this happened to you, Ella." Varun's conviction was a little much for eight in the morning, but I had to give him the benefit of the doubt. He'd been helping my family while I gallivanted through South East Asia with Mac pissing everybody off. That counted for everything in my book. "What I am lacking is the proper equipment."
"Is our lab not up to your standards?" Galen drawled with barely contained spurn, pushing off the counter to join the conversation. "Whatever it is you need, we can get. That was the agreement."
His masculine stride gave off a tense energy that made me squirmy.
"I'm having some paraphernalia shipped out from my personal lab," Varun nodded his head full of salt and pepper waves in Galen's direction respectfully. "Your people are welcome to inspect everything upon arrival, per said agreement."
The undercurrent of testosterone was confusingly brash for such a civilized conversation about contracts.
My mom pulled my face up to inspect my hair, running her lithe fingers through my newly chopped curls.
"I like it," she declared. "Must be easy to style."
My hand automatically went to touch the phantom locks I'd snipped off with a pair of toenail clippers in a moment of willful defiance last week. Galen did his best to cover my hack job, but the only hairstylist he knew was a barber.
I ended up really digging the artful fade his guy managed to shave into the underside of my punky new bob.
Honestly, I was willing to do anything to fluster mister Jonathan Miller and his brigade of sycophantic politicians.
As soon as he brought me back from Malaysia, he'd been desperate to get me out in front of the American people, assuring them I was as wholesome as a sparkler on the fourth of July (complete with a spangled Scion getup and control-top hosiery).
Jonathan's image consultants told me that I needed to make myself less threatening by conforming to the normal 'human looks' most people want to see. My new hair was just the first in a long list of alterations I'd dreamed up to derail their plans.
I am many things, but normal was never top of the list (or even on it).
While all this was going on, my mom and brother (and Varun, apparently) had been working tirelessly to stymie Mr. Miller's reckless ambitions.
The tug of war over my future had granted me a brief, three-week reprieve, which was now coming to an abrupt end. Varun's arrival meant I was (once again) going to become a skin-pincushion in the name of science.
"Would you like to see where we will be working, Ella?" Varun asked, taking a step in my direction.
"I don't think I can say no," I smiled, flashing Galen another look.
Resentment burned through the fine tailoring of his woolen suit as Galen escorted us to the door. The secret service guarding my room tailed us down the mundane gray carpeting of the twenty-eighth floor, occasionally muttering into their wrist cuffs.
"Aaron's excited for dinner tonight, you have Varun to thank for that too," my mom whispered as we passed by one of the few unmarked doors breaking up the monotony of white walls.
"I know," I told her, pointing at the black band of chunky plastic hitched to my ankle, beeping like a tiny bomb. "I got this charming little accessory to mark the occasion."
In the event I took off without permission or used my powers, my ankle bracelet would alert the closest authorities. Everyone was aware that the thing would melt immediately if I used my supernatural gift, so it was mostly symbolic (and completely stupid).
We piled into a cubical of an elevator and waited for Galen to punch one of the blank buttons to select our undisclosed location.
Thirty-fifth row down, fourth button from the left (to be exact.)
Counting the buttons was a force of habit I'd picked up during my extended stay in this black-box building.
There was no way to confirm how many federal agencies worked here, or what kind of work they did, or what state we were in.
People weren't exactly chatty, and they clearly weren't big on labeling things. The only clue to our location was the gentile southern drawls of the security staff and the greenery decorating the sidewalks outside my comfy prison cell.
"So, to make it an extra special Valentine dinner tonight," my mom was giddy. "Everything will be cut into the shape of a heart. What do you think?"
She was messing with me, and it was adorable. I reached around her slender waist to give her a grateful squeeze. I hadn't seen her since their big move out to the East Coast.
"Aw," I giggled. "Exactly how I hate it. Thanks, mom."
"Crap," Galen muttered under his breath, painstakingly fishing his phone out of his pocket in the cramped space.
"You forgot it was V-day, huh?" I smirked as my stomach sank into my butt from the inertia of our ride. "How mad is your wife gonna be on a scale of one to ten?"
This oddly characterless building made it nearly impossible to track the passage of time. Of course, that excuse wasn't going to fly with Galen's wife when she found out he didn't have a gift.
"You don't like Valentines' Day, Ella?" Varun piped up, stealing my attention.
"Does anyone actually like the needless pressure of this holiday?" I joked lightly, looking around to garner support. "I mean, besides greeting card companies?"
"They do if they have someone to share it with," my mom reminded me.
My deep-rooted sarcasm was a defense mechanism I'd honed over decades of crappy life experiences, and it (rightfully) drove my mom up the wall.
I cringed as the free-fall of our elevator gradually slowed to a stop for the doors to peel open at the seam.
On the other side was a second, bright yellow perforated metal wall that split at a diagonal with a barely audible whoosh.
Galen stepped out first to trigger a series of lights embedded in the ceiling, illuminating the expansive area. The laboratory went on for hundreds of feet, or possibly took up the entire floor, it was impossible to know.
"Holy wow," I gasped, trying to figure out what the man-sized circular tube in the center of the room did. "It looks like the space station in Alien."
"Huh," Galen remarked, casting a doubtful look over the futuristic equipment. "Maybe we could hang some pictures of clowns and kittens to brighten the place up a bit?"
"That's the stuff of nightmares, man." I cautioned him with a wry smile.
I could feel Varun's eyes on me, but I kept my attention focused on the floor to ceiling computers housing large glass cases buzzing with electricity. Chrome accents bounced the pot lights off the speckled linoleum floor.
The distinguished clack of Varun's cane deliberately strolled into my eye line. The slender black wood with ivory or shell inlays forming recognizable Hindi symbols only added to his discreet charm.
"If anything in here makes you anxious," his lyrical accent was barely detectable. Varun was a good-looking older man with the wardrobe of a tech billionaire and the quiet aura of someone with studied serenity. "I will take you through the science until you feel comfortable. You are my patient and we are partners in this discovery, Ella."
In my peripheral vision, Galen buried his chin to snort at Varun's whimsical phraseology.
"So, you're a doctor too?" I was having a difficult time looking into the watery green pools that reminded me of his brother.
"A geneticist, actually," Varun answered, flashing his pearly whites. "The department's scientists, like Francis here, will also be assisting me."
A mid-western-looking man with light brown hair and rounded owl glasses gave me a subdued wave from his position in front of a circular monitor.
"Do people call you Frank?" I asked, reaching for something to say. Clearly, being sequestered from people had done nothing for my (already terrible) social skills, and I wasn't able to stop myself before making it worse. "Or Franky?"
"Uh, no," Francis' pasty white face was curdling with disapproval. "No, they don't."
"Alright, good talk," I mumbled, nodding absentmindedly and letting my eyes drift back to the racks and tubes surrounded by metal lockers.
If this weren't real life, ominous music would have gradually filled the background to audibly illustrate the sterile creepiness of the space age Scion lab.
"We can talk about our work together over dinner tonight," Varun suggested, giving my mom a smile that bordered on affection. "I understand Anne is making your favorite, vegetarian lasagna."
"Oh, so you're invited?" I asked carefully. "To our family Valentines dinner?"
"Varun is practically family at this point," my mom's edgy response let me know I'd crossed some invisible line (as usual.) "You could at least say thank you for everything he's done for us, and especially for you."
Not many people seemed to be acting in my best interests lately, but my mom was.
She'd fought tooth and nail to ensure that Hamm wasn't just taken off Project Scion, but dishonorably discharged from the military altogether. While singlehandedly torpedoing the forty-year career of a decorated colonel, she also ran the first (and only) Scion activist group to lobby publically for my rights as a new subspecies of human. My mom was a superhero whose powers far surpassed my own, and her glowing opinion of Varun didn't come lightly.
"No thanks is required when one is doing what is right," Varun chuckled amiably. "Now, why don't we head out? It sounds like agent Smith has some last-minute Valentines' shopping to do, and I'm getting peckish."
I was leaving the unexceptional building I'd been holed up in for a month to see my family's new digs (courtesy of Varun's confounding generosity), and enjoy a home-cooked meal. So why were my guts twisting the remnants of the tuna fish sandwich I'd had for lunch?
It could have been the guilt of having to look Varun in the eye for an extended period of time.
Or maybe it was the ankle bracelet digging into my flesh as a constant reminder of my self-sanctioned captivity.
Heck, it could also be the endless layers of administrative ambiguity Project Scion was steeped in (none of which I had the clearance to know anything about.)
I'd have to chalk it up to bad tuna for the time being.
WHAT IS UP?!?! First, THANK YOU for reading this story!
Second, if you're at ALL confused by what you just read, you should know that this is the second book in the Half Hero series. The first book is called, you guessed it: Half Hero. It's a kickass tale of a young woman's fight to keep her electrifying new superpowers out of the wrong hands.
Oh, BTW, happy National Superhero Day!!!