“Epione!” I yell. “There’s- there’s a fucking person in here! In the machine!”

I claw at the pod, ripping out handfuls of wires like I’m plucking vines. Careful not to hurt the person inside, I unearth them from the dampener.

The door opens again and footsteps sound on the tiles, Epione’s familiar boots. She arrives just as I reveal the form of a gaunt, almost skeletal man, his face grown over with flesh so that he has no eyes, no ears, no nose.

He has no face. Just a lump of skull and skin.

But he has a beating heart. Somehow, despite no way to breathe, eat, or speak, this pitiful thing isn’t dead. He smells awful, like someone gone unwashed for months.

“He’s alive,” I say, and I begin to pull him from his prison. The wires tug at his back and arms, where they seem to hook right into his skin. He, if it really is a he, begins to writhe and make a series of muted screams. The cables in his skin hum with power and I’m suddenly overwhelmed by a strong sensation of terror.

His cry makes me let him go. As soon as I do, he goes inert again.

He has no fingers, no body hair, and his skin color is alarmingly gray, but looks like it used to be a dark brown. He doesn’t have any genitals at all, just a flat pubic bone, like some kind of Ken doll from a kid’s nightmares. If it weren’t for the beating heart and the flesh, I really would have thought he was some kind of skeleton.

And I mean, does a beating heart really mean he’s alive? He isn’t moving, isn’t acknowledging us. The only time he did anything was when I tried to pull him from the machine. Besides that, does he have any sense at all?

“What the fuck is this thing? Why is he in the dampener?” I gesture to the other nine pods, where I hear more heartbeats, now that I’m listening for them. “There’s someone in every one of these!”

“They theorized they’d need an Affect to power it,” Epione says, her tone hauntingly empty of emotion, but full of implication.

I whirl around at her, filling my hands with heat. She would have made me unwittingly murder this person in the machine. “Did you know that there’d be people in this thing?”

“I didn’t know for sure. I suspected.”

I can’t do this secrecy bullshit anymore. “How do you know so much about PK Resonance?”

“The capes are coming and—”

“I could not give less of a shit about them right now,” I hiss. “You know where they keep their weird secrets. You know how their doors work.”

Epione smooths her coat, folds her hand behind her back. “Helping me does not entitle you to answers, Home Run, especially not when you’re keeping secrets yourself.”

“Then fuck you and fuck the Front. I’m getting out of here. Good luck with whatever awful fucking abomination this is,” I say, marching to the door. I can find my own way out of this place.

“Wait.”

I still can’t feel a single whiff of emotion from Epione. Her empathic control of her emotions is immense; she’ s the most blank person I’ve ever felt, even more than Paul. And her words now don’t convey fear of me leaving, or anger in trying to make me stay. It’s not even a command, it’s just a word. And for that reason, I stop. Because I really don’t know what leaving will mean.

“Explain,” I demand. “One sentence. Since the capes are coming.”

“I am connected to higher ups in PK’s company, and because of that I am privy to much information that not even capes have.” She stares at me, her hands still folded, her posture still upright and practiced. I can’t sense anything from her Affect… but her heart tells a different story, hammering away in her chest.

Man. First Kitsune and now her? Why am I getting tied up with all these well-connected ladies?

I look back at the dampener, at the skeleton man inside it. “Is he even alive?”

“If I understand it correctly, they are in a kind of trance of emotion. They have no agency and will never see, touch, or taste again. They’re not really connected to our world.” Epione turns her pink gaze to the man, her vibes becoming inscrutable again.

“Why’d you stop me then?”

“I… was shocked. To actually see it.” She turns back to me, and then gives the world’s tiniest nod. “But it would be a mercy. Kill the people in the pods, ruin the wiring. It’ll take them months to rebuild.”

Fuck. Fuckity fucksticks, this is so fucked. My instinct is to book it, to hit the bricks and never look back. But there’s a part of me that can’t turn away now. I need to see it through. Once I’m back home, I can decide what to do. “Damn it.”

I make it quick. A single punch through each of the pods, through the beating hearts inside. It doesn’t feel like murder at all, but it doesn’t feel good, either.

As soon as it’s done, the machinery whirs down, the omnipresent hum of Affect technology silenced by the… batteries’… removal. The strange feeling of dread, the slight disconnect to my power, goes with it.

Then, I set about melting everything down, ripping wires out, pulling all the stuff that makes this work. But after the second or third one, an alarm begins to blare on a hidden speaker. A red light strobes with a warning: We’ve noticed. We’re coming.

It’s then I notice the names emblazoned on the plates. PK Resonance, of course, but there’s another logo on the machine, too.

Lilac.

There’s a button next to the logos that reads “Manual.” I press it without even thinking. A small hologram appears of a man I recognize very well, despite the difference in age.

Paul. I’ve rarely seen him smile, but here he is, doing just that like he’s trying to sell me something. This version of him from the past is only just beginning to lose his dark brown hair, but his sense of fashion remains untouched – he still wears a plaid button-up and slacks.

“This is the Park-Lilac Affect Suppression Field Manual. Ask me about and topic and I’ll help you,” the recorded Paul says, still smiling.

“What in the shit?” I reach down as if I could wrangle the hologram’s neck, and my fingers pass through the illusion. He never takes his eyes off me, as if he’s aware I’m there. I know what this means: it had been him after all, in that memory.

“We have to go. Whatever this man means to you, it can wait until later.” Epione ushers me to the door, but I can’t help looking back at the little recording.

“What is that thing?” I ask as we get to the hallways in the basement.

“An Affect echo: a bottled ego, presented as a recording. PK tech to ensure that instructions can be replayed even if the power in the building goes out.”

I can’t even bring myself to say anything. Paul’s lied to me. All this time.

Epione looks at me, still with unimpeachable emotions. “That man means something to you.”

But what is there to do right now but run? “Later.”

#

I breathe in the fresh Houston air, hot and muggy. It’s a damn sight better than the air underground. Lilac’s involvement, the memory of Paul in a place of authority, it still hangs over my neck like a sword poised to strike.

No time to smell the city, though, as Epione waves us on silently into a jog. We make it back to the club, safe but not at all sound.

In the Front’s private room, Silent shields us from the electronic music bumping up from the club. I can’t help but think that the people down there, dancing the night away, have no clue that something about Houston has just fundamentally changed.

“Tell me about Lilac and PK,” I ask Epione.

“So it does mean something to you,” she says.

“Just tell me.” I snap her a glare and let her really feel my animosity.

It works. Epione glances away, and while I can’t feel it from her Affect, her heartbeat quickens. “As I said. PK’s initial research was done at Lilac, which has somewhat of a reputation among the Vanguard’s academic circles. Often they experimented on the unwanted, the undesirables. The detritus of society, as they call them. They passed off torture as research.”

My brothers. My fellow clones. Not just us, apparently. An entire mountain of corpses came out of those labs. I lean onto the windowsill, feeling the unweight of all their lives on my shoulders.

“I was there.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Epione’s façade fails here. Amazement wafts from her. Saw Off says, “Holyyyyyy shit.” Silent says nothing, but I can feel her normally aggressive energy soften.

“It sucked more than anything else has ever sucked.” There’s a knot in my throat. My chest is tightening. Tears well in my eyes. This night ruined everything for me. It has ruined my hope of justice, of revenge, of avenging my dead brothers. Because it wasn’t just some isolated lab workers.

It was the entire Vanguard. It was every fucking cape. It was Metis, it was Megajoule. It was the entire damn world that did it.

It was Paul.

I shudder, unable to really grasp this, and I walk out of the room, slamming the door behind me.

I thought I’d rush off, but instead I just lean over the balcony railing and stare up at the city. It doesn’t really look any different, now. The faces of Houston Heroes are still projected onto the skyscrapers. The night sky still plays weird tricks, making eyes and mouths and hands out of the stars, and undulating with color even though there are no clouds. A permanent dark aurora pulsing over everything.

I restrain the tears. Not out here. It just all feels so heavy.

The door opens behind me. To my surprise, Saw Off joins me on the balcony. She lights up a cigarette and offers me one. I shake my head. Can’t take off the mask.

Saw Off leans her back on the railing, looking at me. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ve got no clue. This kinda ruined my whole life.” I sigh and hang my head, studying the pavement below us. If I decided not to absorb the energy, could I just splat and end it all? Nah. That ain’t me. I stand up straight. “It’s not y’all’s fault, though. And I’m sorry I’ve been a dick.”

“Life’s a fucking bitch. Before I met you, I was part of a mask gang. I found out we were getting money from the Vanguard capes to patrol Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. I’d wanted to get even with the capes for a long time, but when I found that out, it felt impossible. We were practically capes ourselves.”

I nod. “What’d you do?”

“I killed a couple of ‘em, and then I met Lugs.” She stares off at the city. “I really hope he’s okay.”

I don’t have the heart to tell her what I think. Pandahead, trafficking, all that business… if Lugs is alive out there, he’s probably been through more pain than we can imagine.

“It all feels so impossible.” I shake my head, not sure how to word it nicely, since Saw Off is being so nice to me. But judging this conversation, I think she wouldn’t mind if I was a bit blunt. “It feels suicidal to do anything but run away.”

She finishes her cigarette and tosses the butt off the balcony. “Maybe. You ain’t gotta do shit today. Just think about it. You know where we are.”

“We?”

Saw Off glances at me, and I feel her worry that I might disapprove, so I shake my head and extend my hand for a shake. “I’m glad you’re part of something again,” I tell her.

Her grin returns and she shakes my hand. “I think you’re a lot nicer underneath that bastard exterior than you let on. You should just be nice.”

#

I make it back to the junkyard and find that the lights are off in the house. I’m a fuming mess, and I don’t know how I’m going to talk to the man that might have been ultimately responsible for super eugenics and torture, on not just me, but on dozens of innocent people.

“Shit, he rescued me, didn’t he?” I whisper to myself. “But he never told me the truth, either.”

Inside, Pawpaw greets me right away, tail wagging, body bouncing with each happy step. He licks my hand and I pat his head, and that just makes me want to sob even more.

I put my goggles and mask on the counter for what feels like the last time. Hang my jacket on the coat rack by the door.

I turn some of the lights on. It’s late, almost 1 AM.

Mateo comes out of the bedroom, I guess having heard me, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “Ey, how did it go?” he asks, and then he sees my face, and says, “Oh, shit. Are you okay?”

And then Paul comes out of his room, too.

It’s been more than a week since his seizure, only a few days back on his pills. He looks only a little worse than before, still old as fuck, still wrinkly as a raisin, still guilty as a murderer. I can’t believe I never noticed how much guilt he carried, but now I can feel it all over.

“Gabe?” he says, seeing how I’m looking at him.

“Who… who were you at the lab?” I manage between shuddering sobs. Whether they’re from sorrow or anger, I don’t know.

Paul gasps, stammers, unable to answer my question. Then his expression turns sour. He shields himself in anger. “I- I was just a grunt. Made coffee. I’m not gonna talk about the days I spent as a cog in a machine I had no control over-”

With a growl, I shove my hand against his chest, and with a tiny burst of kinetic energy, I push him against the door. “You’re a lying piece of shit! I saw you in that place. A recording of you, giving instructions on how to work their fucking evil machine! Which had people inside it, by the way… did you know about that, too?”

Paul stares at me like I just told him the date of his death.

I press into him with my power. “You told me it was done. You told me there was no one left. You told me that you were nobody! Did you take my memories?” He’s an empath, some of them can.

“Gabe!” Mateo shouts. “Ease up on him!”

“Who were you?!” I’m this close to taking his head off his shoulders.

I must look like a demon, because Paul grabs my shirt, his face frozen in terror. “Please, let me make it up. I’ve done everything I can, but I’ll do more, kid! I’ll do more, I promise. Gabe, please. I promise. I love you. I fucked it up, but I’m trying to unfuck it so I can help you live a normal life. But you can’t go after it. Leave it all alone, leave it alone and stay with me.”

I grit my teeth so my voice won’t break. “You can’t make it up. Unless you tell me the truth.”

Paul grimaces and curls into himself. I forget how old he is. He’s frail, brittle with age, his skin marred by liver spots, wrinkles, and scars from old wounds. He winces, closing his eyes.

“Woah, uh,” Mateo says, backing toward the bedroom. “I’m gonna-”

I point at him. “Stay right where you are. You deserve to hear this, too, because you could have ended up at Lilac, just like me. A lab rat to be tested on. Brought in by that Pandahead, whose still doing this.” I turn back to Paul and jab my finger in his face. “Did you know about him, too, you piece of shit? When I asked you who he was, did you remember him in the lab, too?”

Paul can’t look at either of us, so he looks at the ceiling. There’s a cocktail of emotions wafting off him so strong I can’t even begin to decide what it’s called.

Mateo, too, actually. He’s afraid, sidling toward me, away from Paul.

“Kid, I’ve never told you to protect you. You don’t want to know this,” he pleads. “You can’t know this, it’ll… it’ll ruin you.”

I straighten up, grab my mask from the counter. Paul recoils, as if he’s terrified I’ll wrench his head from his shoulders. And Metis, I want to. “I’m already ruined, you old asshole. I’ve been ruined for years. Now, you tell me what you’re so scared of telling me, and maybe you and I have some kind of future. If you don’t, you’ll never fucking see me again. You’ll have to wallow in what you did, alone, and I’ll find out any other way I can.” And then the tears really come, for both of us.

Paul tries to reach a hand out to me and I bat it away. His face contorts in grief and he nurses the hand as if I’d broken it, as if I’d stripped away the skin and left him with useless, agonized meat. “I… don’t know…” he says, his eyes wet.

Pawpaw is at our feet, whining at our yelling match.

“What?” I ask.

“I can’t-”

I slam my fist into the wall above his head. “Tell. Me!”

He shoves me, hard. I step back from him, shocked he’d even try to push me. “No!”

I stare daggers into his face. “No?”

“I’m not gonna tell you, kid, because if I do, it’ll all be for nothing. The scraping by, the hiding, all the years of a somewhat normal life I bought for you. If I give you what you want, you’ll never be able to help yourself going after it all. You’ll die and everything I did will have been in vain. So, if I have to bear you leaving and sulking forever, I’ll do it.”

“That ain’t fair,” Mateo says in my defense. “I’ve seen everything Gabe does for you. You wouldn’t even be alive without him.”

“You’d have choked on your own tongue without me,” I growl. “I don’t fucking care if you think it’s noble, because it’s not.” I’m moving while I’m talking, heading into my room to grab a backpack and whatever spare clothes I can find. Stuff for me and Mateo. When I emerge with a hastily packed bag, it sinks in for Paul, and he crumples where he stands. Pawpaw nuzzles into his lap, but the old man can’t even bring himself to pet the dog.

“You’re just a coward,” I say, finally, putting my bag on.. “I’ll find the truth on my own. I’ll find out who you were, who everyone is, and I’ll burn it all down.”

“C’mon,” Paul whispers.

“I should fucking kill you for what you did,” I hiss at him, raising my fist. He flinches, cringing against the wall. “I saw you in that desk, telling Mr. PK himself his research was just beginning. I remember it now. If I remember more and I find out you clipped it out of my head… you should clear outta town.” I spit, and slide my mask back on.

I look at Mateo, who is also scrambling to put stuff together in a trash bag. “You ready?” I ask.

He slides his white mask on. “Yeah.”

Pawpaw doesn’t chase me to the door, but he watches from Paul’s lap as I close it behind us, his tail wagging, and I get a pang in my heart. I’ll never see the old pup again.

#

The doomsday bunker isn’t much, but there are a couple of choice spots to put a sleeping bag. Hopefully we’ll find something nicer, soon.

I picked us up some canned food and I’m a living stove top, so we’re able to enjoy a nice warm meal even in this dark hideout.

I’m not very hungry, though, so all I can do is stare at a can of baked beans and think about everything that happened.

We’ve been silent for a while. I told Mateo what happened with the Front, and I think he’s waiting for me to say more. The kid plays with an Old States quarter in his now-healed hand.

“It’s all evil.”

Mateo looks up from his coin. He’s just a kid, but he’s a good kid who supported me when I needed it. “Yeah,” he agrees.

Tears stream down my cheeks. “I never wanted to believe that.”

Mateo doesn’t waver. He stares at me, frowning. “But here it is, dude.”

I slam the concrete with my fist, wanting to crack it and the world beneath. I pass energy into the floor, heating it until it glows, and then I back away, sitting on my knees. “What can I do now? It’s so impossibly large. I’m not strong enough to bring the entire Vanguard down.”

Mateo kneels down next to me and wraps his arm around me. He sits with me. “I know you’re not.”

With nothing left to say, I sob it out. I sob for my brothers and for the years I’ve spent keeping my head down, thinking I’d ever buy them justice by offing some men in lab coats.

When the tears stop, I say, “You weren’t supposed to say that. You were supposed to say ‘You’re totally strong enough.’”

The kid laughs. “But I didn’t.”

“I guess I walked into that one.” I pat his shoulder. “Y’know, I think I’m gonna try to be nicer when I meet new people, now.”

#

When Mateo falls asleep, I decide to go on a night walk to clear my mind some more. Outside of the bright downtown streets, Houston is quiet and dark. There are no bright skyscrapers here and there never will be. There are no capes. The outer night belongs to the masks, or worse.

I sit down on a bench in an overgrown park near the bunker and try to breathe. I remember my brothers and let the tears flow freely. There’s no point to stopping them, and in fact, I think it would be worse if I didn’t cry over this. For the first time, I grieve for the family I lost in Lilac.

What am I supposed to think, now that I know the truth? Would finding Lilac even help me at this point? How can I solve any of this, between Pandahead and the Vanguard, PK and Lilac, and all the rest? I’m not up to that, I’m just a shittier version of Megajoule.

I feel at the mask on my face. Simple, made of many scraps. The goggles are woven into the fabric to secure it to my face. Combined with my baseball jacket, this might be the most famous mask look in Houston right now. But what do these things mean when someone else sees them? What runs through someone’s mind when they see this mask… when they see me? Not the face underneath, no, that doesn’t belong to me. But this does. This one thing is mine. It has to be, right?

This idea churns my mind. This idea that Home Run could become someone people think about. Someone that people count on. Someone who isn’t just another shitty cape.

There’s a piece of me that wants to be like Megajoule; to take flight into the sky and set people’s fears at ease. Another part of me wants nothing to do with him. I don’t want to be defined by who he was. I want to be myself. But lately I wonder if I’m even a good person. Would a good person do what I did to Paul?

This line of questioning turns in my brain along with the name Home Run, dirty laundry rattling around in a busted washing machine. Questions, questions, questions. Besides this mask, what else do I have?

Am I just a sum of questions? If I answer them, will I disappear?