“And that’s what the healers are for,” I stretched my arms above my head and yawned. “We’ll get them fixed up once the collection units come and then send them off for interrogations. Keep an eye on them; I’m taking a smoke break.”
“For someone who’s on their way to having no lungs, you don’t seem to give a damn,” Reed grumbled.
I ignored him as I sat up, stepping over the groaning men on the ground. The red and white pack was in my hands before I got to the entrance of the alleyway, and a small flame from my finger lit the cigarette I shoved between my lips. A stick of tobacco couldn’t compare to the damage my organs received every time I burned myself out. Every night, a healer worked to repair the damage, and the best they could muster was slowing the progression. If they couldn’t fix me, my bad habit wouldn’t make a dent in any possibility of recovery.
I needed something to get me through the day.
“No matter how many of these guys we catch, they won’t crack, you know,” Reed mused as he walked up beside me. He leaned against a brick building, casting his narrowed gaze from the alley to the street as we waited for collections. “We’ve been at it for two years, man. Not a single one has talked.”
“AndI’vebeen at it for almost four.” I took a long pull from my cigarette. “Maybe that means we need better interrogators.”
He shrugged. “Or that this organization is bigger than we thought, with more to be afraid of than Heroes or the VIA.”
We didn’t know their name, but we knew their sign, that S made of bones. They started making a mess of Nightmyre almost four years ago. We’d spent nearly a year gathering intel when they first appeared, and we thought we had them after we discovered a warehouse with unusual Villain activity. The VIA organized a sting operation—it was supposed to be cut and dry. Four teams of Heroes went into what we thought was their hideout, and only half of us came out. I lost my partner that night, and six months later, Reed replaced him.
The world kept turning, and my ability had been out of control ever since.
“Catching them won’t bring him back,” Reed pushed. “You know that, right?”
I sneered at him. “Doesn’t mean I won’t make them pay for it.”
It had been three years since Joon died, but vengeance still burned my insides. He was good —all about justice, and the pride of being a Hero. The VIA didn’t fool him; he wanted to rebuild the entire system. Joon was the guy that everyone wanted to be friends with, the one everyone could rely on. We had our spats through the years, but I respected him. He was better than me, better than most of us. I wasn’t careful enough back then.
I didn’t have his back.
Firetrucks began to pull in, with cop cars and black SUVs from the VIA right behind them. Reed ran over to meet them, but I stayed, fixated on the city. Nightmyre was alive at night; neon signs and traffic flowing through the streets. Citizens walked by, barely glancing up from their phones as they passed the chaos. This was society’s new norm, and people without abilities learned to look the other way.
A low rumble sounded from the street, and my ears perked before settling on an all black motorcycle that sat beneatha stoplight. It was a sleek model, but the engine screamed horsepower; the type of bike that guaranteed a crash in the future. The rider leaned over the handlebars, dressed in tight black riding gear as her head bobbed to whatever music was playing through the speakers in her helmet.
Distracted driver, exactly what this city needs,I thought.
A sliver of pale skin showed at the base of her back, and a long black braid reached down to touch it. It was the hair that made me squint, that deep, shining black that I could imagine being pulled into a ponytail. I noticed the shape of the helmet, then; two small black horns carved out of the plastic. I’d seen similar horns before, only those were blue.
“…Daydream,” I whispered.
Reed appeared next to me again, irritation on his face as he snapped his fingers in front of my eyes. I wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there before I noticed him.
“You with me, or did you finally lose your mind?” He paused and turned, following my gaze. “Hot, I agree, but definitely not what we need to focus on right now.”
I blinked, the light turned green, and the rider sped off. That black braid sailed behind her, whipping in the wind as she sped between lanes and cars, before disappearing into the distance.
“Sorry, I just…I thought I saw someone I knew.” I shook my head, pushing away the thoughts. “She’s gonna get herself killed.”
It was June; my mind always got muddled in June. That’s when Joon had died, and when Alex had gone off the grid. The last I remembered of her was when she was dressed in all black, that long hair cascading around her shoulders as she knelt in the dewy grass beside his gravestone. She was sobbing—and I didn’t dare approach her. All I could do was watch from a distance before turning my back on the scene. It was too much.
I tried to check her location occasionally, but my clearance in the VIA’s database wasn’t high enough for that. We were never friendly—but it gnawed at me, so damn irritating. He would’ve wanted me to check on her, wouldn’t he? Or would he have wanted me to keep my distance and assume she was doing fine? My temper hadn’t gotten any better, my control was even more laughable than before.
Stay away from Alex.
His voice was in my head.
I had to say something, had to explain what happened, face-to-face. That’s what Joon would have wanted—he always told her the truth, no matter how ugly. But… he wouldn’t have wanted the truth to come from me, would he? She wouldn’t want to hear me out, right?
Why would she after everything I did?
It had been eight years since Joon and I graduated from the Academy. Alex graduated the year after us, and I was glad to hear that she was put in third-class status. She’d never see a battlefield, would never go toe-to-toe with a Villain in the streets. I still remembered how she sat in front of me in the academy with that long black hair, how those blue horns on her head would spark right before she spoke like she was reading from an encyclopedia. I remembered how much she irritated me, and how Joon swore she was more than she seemed.
We always argued about that. Alex was too small, too breakable to see what really lived in the streets of Nightmyre. The intelligence sector was where she was meant to be, but the VIA decided our placements. There was always a possibility of Alex becoming first class, and they never thought of the risk. Thewhat if.
