For the past several hours, myself and my supersuit have been bombarded with enough soap to scrub Lower Olympus so clean you could eat off the concrete. I stood on the roof of the coffee shop now, a place I hadn’t been in what felt like years. I didn’t really mind that my suit was hanging off a useless satellite antenna, catching the breeze, because my hair was doing the same thing, and with a sweet mango smoothie in my hand, it almost made me forget about yesterday. If anyone saw, it just looked like some teenager was simply standing beside a tattered American flag, and wearing sunglasses as she looked over the city. Completely normal from afar. Human, almost.
My suit would be dry soon, and was probably dry right now, but I needed the time up here. Music was coming from my phone, food was in my stomach and rest—real rest—was in my blood.
The sun was sinking through the sky, now just over the waters, making it shine. The city was as noisy as ever, but sitting on the ledge, my feet dangling above the street, made it seem like I could catch my breath for a second, and hell, maybe I could just about catch the breeze and let it carry me off to wherever it wanted to. I hadn’t checked in with Lucas yet, and mom had left about a billion texts and missed calls. Oh, hell, and you should have seen the look on Dennie’s face when I knocked on the front door at three in the morning covered in blood. Poor guy nearly had a heart attack, what with the shotgun primed and ready in his hands. He might be old, but he knew how Lower Olympus was, especially at the dead of night. Then I ate, I slept, and thoroughly washed.
I passed by Peacemaker Memorial just an hour ago, but the media was swarming the place. The children were famous, but the hospital was strict about its occupants being filmed. Seeing that Frankie’s sweat was still clinging to my suit, I had gone as Rylee, and the guards didn’t even let me get anywhere close to the doors with the rest of the herd. The hospital’s windows were tinted with special reflective gloss, making them one way and impossible for superhuman reporters with x-ray vision to see through. I had to trust they were okay, and for once, I felt like maybe someone I saved would be okay. The walls of the hospital might be thick, but I swear I had heard Sam telling stories to the other kids in the hospital about how a superhero had kicked ass, with Kit excitedly helping.
I didn’t know if I was going to see them again, but I’d keep tabs on them as best as I could.
Nope, a few hours’ break isn’t so bad, Ry. I think you deserve it a little. I set the smoothie down beside me and leaned on my palms, letting the wind push my hair over my shoulders. The sun was warm on my face and buttery smooth against my skin. I had no other option than to soak in the bands of yellow light. A couple was on the old boardwalk not too far away, alone at the edge of the pier and whispering sweet nothings that were swept up by the wind. An old Italian guy was selling cotton candy to a kid whose mom was forced, grudgingly smiling, to pay. I had to say, Earth wasn’t entirely all that bad. At least not at this moment, and I wasn’t going to ruin the break I had by overthinking. Earphones in, music on. I scrolled through my missed calls and texts, then the news headlines and whatever was going on with Atomville. Canceled indefinitely. No new season.
Maybe I should call Em and ask her how she’s holding up. She’d sent only one text since Witchling had booked me a ticket to hell. I hope you’re okay, superhero. It was three days old now.
But there was also Bianca and her messages. A pile up of worry and questions that had turned into voice messages sprinkled with cheesy Hang In There memes of a little cartoon Shrike hanging off the side of a skyscraper. Even now she was typing something, with the three little dots hovering at the bottom of my splintered screen. There were almost too many messages for me to reply to, and hell, where would I even start? I’m sorry for making you think I died in the Kaiju attack. Anyway, lunch tomorrow? I sighed and switched off my phone, leaving it beside me.
I would text her soon, maybe even call her if I got my act together. But there was another girl on my mind right now, and the strange feeling bubbling in my gut solidified into hatred.
The question I had now, of course, was what came next for me and her.
And that was simple: Avarie Rivera needed to die for my life to go on.
I knew she couldn’t technically die, but I also knew that leaving half of her body on the moon and the other half at the bottom of the Atlantic should keep her busy for a few years. I would squeeze (maybe literally, who knows) some more information out of her, run her dry, then put her aside when I was done with her. Yeah, I figured, sipping my smoothie, that I could do that in about one afternoon. That would leave me free to focus on Caesar and figure out what he wanted with my blood. Stuff, stuff, and more stuff to do. I stood up on the ledge, precariously balancing on it.
Fall was creeping ever closer. You could see it in the leaves and feel it in the air, smell it in the softness of the wind and almost taste it in the scents coming from more food stands popping up on every street corner that sold hot chocolate at absurd prices to tourists, and I would love to have a very clean city for Christmas. This summer hadn’t been great in the slightest, but I was still alive.
And considering how close I’d gotten to not making it, I was grateful for that at least.
“Jeez,” I muttered. “You’re starting to sound like one of those Earth hippies, Ry.”
“Nothing wrong with loving the peacefulness of this world.”
“Yeah, I guess. At least the sun isn’t as painful as…” I frowned and turned to look over my shoulder, expecting to see Dennie, but…nobody was there. I would have heard him or his walking stick ages before he even got close. I looked around once more, but I was alone with my costume. I looked down into the alley and found a homeless guy busy digging through the trash for bottles, far too occupied to give a damn about how bright the sun was and how great the wind felt. Maybe it was just downstairs in one of the other apartments, or someone on a phone call passing by.
Whatever. I shook my head and drank my smoothie, my free hand in my pocket and my ears picking up the sounds of the new messages Bianca was sending me. She was a temptation. A habit I needed to let go of for now. I had made a deal with some creature, nearly died, crawled my way through hell and seen kids get murdered by mercenaries all in the span of a few weeks. Just when I had come back to the city, thinking I was going to take control of my life, shit hit the fan. My human side said it was normal to want a distraction, to want someone to be that distraction.
But if I had wanted Bianca in this part of my life, then I would have told her who I really was by now. Now just wasn’t a good time for me. For either of us. She had committed to Olympus U for the fall, and being a superhero was going to be my life for, well, ever. I had to be realistic about this at some point. Some minimum wage job, then save the city on my off hours, get a statue before some supervillain finally figured out how to put me in the ground (hopefully not soon), and then that would be curtains on my life. Bianca had years ahead for her. Years of life and love with someone who wouldn’t have to up and leave in the middle of breakfast without a single warning.
Vanishing during lunch back in high school had sparked enough arguments. Committing to someone on…that level and doing it again and again for years was shitty, even for the likes of me.
Your girl had never been in a relationship before, and friends were the closest I was willing to let myself get with most of the humans. They freaked me out a little with their emotions, so fluid and expressive and not connected to their brains but their hearts instead. The Grand Admiral would hate this place, I thought, finishing my smoothie. The humans just ticked a little differently than the rest of the universe, but hey, I guessed they weren’t all that bad if dad had fallen in love with one.
A new message, another vibration, another ping. I glanced at the screen, seeing nothing except my reflection and the clouds burning a soft orange as they floated above my head in the sky.
One day, B. I promise. Let me just make it safe enough for you to stay here with me.
By here, I meant Earth! America. New Olympus. Whatever, you know what I meant.
I yawned and stretched my arms over my head as I floated back onto the gravel littered roof. I needed to grab a few things for Dennie from the convenience store down the street before I left to visit my favorite little supervillain. When I last checked about thirty minutes after Witchling and I had gone our separate ways, the Golden Guild had been empty. Not entirely empty, but a skeleton crew was in the hallways and on the surrounding rooftops, in alleyways and in casinos, skulking around not so discreetly with their concealed weapons and hidden superpowers. Nobody of substance who had any info on where Ava was, though. But I had made sure to leave her a message. I just hoped the intestines matched the couches and the drapes. I always sucked at decor.
The thing that chilled me the most, though, was that Cedric, O’Reiley, Damsel and Ace had vanished, too. Mr. Campbell hadn’t been in the Guild for a while, judging by the whimpering pleas from the mercenaries I had prodded for answers. Hunting her down with a teleporter on her team was as good as trying to find a superhero who was active back in the 80s who wasn’t already dead right now. Lucas was my only option for information, and then the night shift would start.
“Here we go,” I muttered, tossing the empty smoothie cup into the dumpsters below. The homeless guy got startled, and I waved at him before turning to grab my supersuit off the antenna.
I had been caught enough times without it on in the past few weeks, and in a blur, I had it under my old varsity jacket and jeans, meaning I had to stretch a little to get the uncomfortable wrinkles out. I had no idea how other superheroes walked around with an entire other layer of clothing pressed tight to their skin from morning to evening with all their sweat and bodily odor soaking into it (like a certain spider-person I knew, but I wasn’t pointing any fingers), but I would rather be safe than sorry. Nobody was gonna notice it, anyway. In a city full of dirty blondes, I was just the short one with the freckles. Hell, I’d seen people look more like Olympia than I did before.
The worst instance had been stumbling across Harper doing an Olympia cosplay for her followers, which, to this day, is still haunting my dreams. Totally why I was always exhausted.
I already had the list of things that Dennie wanted—painkillers, light bulbs, a case of beer and some sodas, and a bunch of other stuff I couldn’t really care about—in my pocket, so, with my hands in my pockets, I made my way down the rusted fire escape, hovering some sections, leaping most, and finally landing softly on the ground. I walked out of the alleyway into a trickle of people heading home for the night, and being Lower Olympus, most heads were bowed, and most eyes were lined with grit from working construction or at the docks, so nobody paid any attention to me. I slipped my way past them, their heartbeats synchronous in my ears, their smells and sounds noise that slowly faded deep into my surroundings. When a super silently flew through the air—an Asian girl in shorts and a t-shirt, carrying a boy around the same age as her, both grinning the only way young people can during summer—the people around me flinched and glanced upward, swearing.
“Miserable, every one of them. Hunched and scared, frightened of every corner they take.”
“Of every sound and tremor and gust of wind.”
“Afraid of their own kind.”
“What the—” I narrowly avoided a pot-bellied man who grumbled past me. It was that same voice I had heard on the rooftop. Whispers so clear it felt like a shard of ice in my brain.
I had gotten pretty good at distinguishing voices in large crowds. The first few months with my superpowers on this planet had been hell because the orchestra of noise had kept me awake through countless nights, no matter the amount of sleeping pills I tried consuming. School had been impossible, more so middle school, and walking through the city might have well been asking me to have a panic attack on the spot. It was all about letting it bleed out into the silence, like lowering the volume on command, but those whispers had felt so…near, so close it was right in my ears.
Maybe I’m paranoid of everything now, too, I thought, continuing on. I wondered what Florida looked like around Christmas. Maybe after I was done here I could take a proper vacation.
I walked past groups of teenagers loitering outside of a cramped diner serving half-priced Barbaria Burgers and blue Poseidon slushies that nearly made me double back, until I remembered how empty my pockets were right now. Under Grant’s billboard advertising expensive hair gel to people who wouldn’t use it to shine their shoes, and past a new poster showing off Velocity in new Adidas sneakers. Grant’s billboard was being taken down, actually, and some kid with the ability to fly must have defaced it with spray paint, anyway. I kept wanting to look at more, at the posters on the walls, even the ones advertising Madam River and her campaign trail, but the street vendors selling off brand merchandise to tourists wouldn’t let you stop and stare without getting into your face. The city had a tempo to it, a heartbeat thumping through the streets. You had to be the blood flowing through its veins and not try to clog it. Hell, follow the pavement I was on for long enough and you would reach the river splitting the city in two parts, and then it would be the fancy parts.
And Gods, wasn’t it just so perfectly normal here? I hated to be that person, but could you blame me? This time a few days ago, worms were chewing right through my calves, and I still had the tiny scars to show for it. But things just kept chugging along in this city, not any better, maybe a little worse off, but forward. Still standing. I hadn’t caught up on the news yet properly, and had only caught Adam talking shit about Olympia leaving the city again to defend for itself before I had grunted and turned off the radio. The Olympiad was on some kind of slandering campaign against me for some reason, but to be fair, I had been at all the big battles in the city lately, but not as myself. Who were they to point fingers though? All they ever did was sit around and watch.
Don’t ruin your own day thinking like that, Ry. I shrugged it off and pushed open the door to the store, making the bell above me jingle. The sun was already on its way over the horizon, casting soft purple light over nearly everything in the store. The teenage girl at the counter wasn’t looking so good, either. Maybe it was the lighting, or the lack of it, that was making her so pale. She was mindlessly staring at the tiny tv screen behind her, watching some old superhero flick from the times when companies used Normals dressed up like us. A string of drool was hanging from the corner of her mouth, and I had to tap and then shake her shoulder to get her attention.
Amy, her name tag said, blinked and looked at me passively. “Yeah, can I help you?”
“Just checking if you were still alive,” I said, only half-joking, but she didn’t laugh, so not that great of a joke. “Are you sure you’re alright? You look like you’re gonna pass out or puke.”
She shrugged and turned back to look at the tv, scratching the back of her neck vigorously, with enough force that I smelt the moment her skin slightly split and bled. “I am fine, thank you.” She picked up the remote and changed the channel, flicking through them absentmindedly, each channel reflecting in her glossy eyes until she landed on a few days’ old interview with Adam.
I stayed for a moment longer, smelling her—it wasn’t as weird as it sounded—and waiting to see if my nose picked up anything weird, but she just smelt sweaty, maybe a little tangy. Drugs, I figured. Something she took to numb the boredom of manning a near-empty convenience store for the better part of your spring break. She scratched her neck again, then rolled her shoulders, too. The tv was silent, the volume turned to zero. All I could make out was that Adam had the entire studio audience laughing at something, but she just continued staring at it, drool shining on her lips.
In the dimness of the store, it was myself, Amy, and an old lady who was trying to choose between which can of beans she wanted most. Music was playing from tiny scratchy speakers, and the stink of disinfectant was all over the floor like someone had dumped it on the tiles. It took about ten minutes to get everything I needed, because I had to call Dennie over and over again to figure out what kind of beer he liked the most, whilst also avoiding the judgy look the old woman was giving me as I pulled it from the shelf. The lights flicked on, humming quietly, making everything a stark white from the floor to the ceiling, and only slightly tinted blue to dampen the shine of things.
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“Hey, young lady,” the old woman said. I peeked around an aisle, inquisitive, but also wondering what was making her voice so harsh. “Are you listening to me? I said separate bags.”
Amy was leaning against the counter now, clutching a glass bottle of milk so tightly her knuckles blossomed white. Her other hand was on the metal register, her fingertips digging into it.
The old woman kept arguing, trying to snatch the bags away from Amy to do it herself, but as soon as she got close, Amy would jerk a little, making the old woman yelp and step backward.
Is she having an Awakening or something? She looked too old to have one, but maybe she was a late bloomer, and if that was the case, then…fuck, what did they teach us about it in school?
All I knew was that it could range from a cold for a week to being in a coma for a month.
And sometimes, like Amy, here, you shattered a glass bottle of milk so easily and so suddenly that she didn’t even react to the shards of glass that sank deep into the flesh of her palm, making blood burst from her skin. Milk poured onto the floor, soaked into her tattered trousers. The old woman stepped away, smart enough to know that hey, maybe standing close to the girl holding a register in her other hand wasn’t such a great idea, and she took it a step further and bolted out of the empty store, leaving behind her items. I set down the basket of groceries and the case of beers, slowly getting closer to Amy. She was breathing heavily, panting, looking even paler and swaying from side to side. Her stomach growled, and you didn’t need super-hearing for the echo of her very angry and uncomfortable organs to reach your ears. She retched once, put a hand to her mouth.
Fuck, fuck! What am I supposed to do right now? Take her outside? No, too many people, especially if she’s got something explosive. Better here. Then what, Ry? Freaking fight with her?
“Hey, uh, it’s alright,” I said, very quickly realizing I wasn’t the kind of superhero great at talking people down from things. “Just…keep breathing, and focus on me. Right, focus on—”
Amy retched again, and this time a foul—very, very foul—smell erupted from her mouth, but nothing else followed. Maybe her power had something to do with being able to spew gas so putrid it could kill? Not much of a winner with that. I got a little closer, but not too close. I knew that getting into their personal space was just asking for them to keep panicking, which would just make the process faster, and a lot more violent. The last thing I wanted was some poor girl’s blood on my hands because I got her frightened. But she was still swallowing air, clutching at her neck, then scratching her throat and back and arms so intensely she was starting to rip through her skin.
Forget what I said. I grabbed her gouged wrists and pinned them to the counter.
Amy suddenly froze, blinked at me. Her eyes were bloodshot. No, blood red. The whites of her eyes swam with blood, so liquid and so much of it that it turned like water around her irises.
Then she vomited on me, and out came a slew of thick, meaty, mangled purple tentacles.
They splattered onto the counter, drooping from her mouth like limp appendages drenched in saliva and mucus and, oh, Gods, the smell was like something rotting and wet and old. I blinked, trying not to inhale the vomit that was on my chest and arms, and trying very, very hard not to be sick at the sight of the tentacles spilling out of her maw. Her jaw was broken, you could see the bones being forced open wider than they normally are. Then one tentacle twitched. Her blood filled eyes blinked, then looked at me, stared at me, nearly right through me. I wanted to speak, to tell her something, maybe that help was on the way? Fuck, what the hell would anyone do now?
Amy, instead, lunged at me, vaulting over the counter and slamming her entire body weight against me. I stumbled back, caught off balance. We crashed into a sunglasses stand, which sent me sprawling onto the floor before I shoved her off and skidded onto one knee. She laid still on the ground, the tentacles coming from her mouth flapping and squelching and moving on their own. Then her body jerked as if she’d just gotten electrocuted. Faster than most normals, she scrambled to her feet and charged, arms flailing and nails clawing. I caught her wrists, not really wanting to hurt her, because she technically hadn’t done anything wrong. We were face-to-face now. Close enough for the tentacles to do the one thing I didn’t want them to do, which was go for my face.
They engulfed me, wrapping so tightly around my head I let go of Amy’s wrists in revolt. I choked and panicked, then I was on the floor, whipping around as she jerked her head one way and then the next. I smashed into the side of the counter, then again on the floor, before she dug her fingers into the tentacles and thrusted me up into the ceiling, dousing myself in dust and smashing apart the fluorescents, making them spark and spit as Amy threw me hard into the freezers at the back of the store. I flew through the air, briefly weightless, then I came to a sudden jerking stop as soon as I hit them. The tentacles let go of me, thank fuck. I gasped and collapsed, coughing and trying desperately not to puke because of the gray saliva she coated my entire freaking head with!
I hurriedly wiped at my face and my eyes and stumbled onto my feet, tripping only a little because of the soda cans underneath me. My sneakers crunched on glass, and so did Amy’s as she limped down the aisle. The lights were flickering, casting shadows in explosive bursts. She dragged the appendages along the floor, her eyes wide and full, almost too alert. I didn’t know if I should raise my fists or keep them low and try to talk things through with her somehow. Closer, shuffling and stumbling, tentacles shuddering, clenching and unclenching and excreting that gooey gray saliva that was slowly dissolving her t-shirt and jeans, her shoes and the groceries spilled all over the floor. Something was wriggling around her body, shifting like a growth of worms under her skin. I swallowed bile, glanced at the store windows and saw nothing except my reflection.
The cameras in the store were on, too. Whoever would see this would know I had super strength at least, but I couldn’t slip out of my clothes. I’m not planning on killing her, anyway.
Amy wasn’t on the same wave. She lunged for me, and I threw myself to the right, rolled, and watched as she slammed into the freezers. I grabbed a can of beans and threw it as hard as I could at her head, which meant it was hard enough to knock her off balance, but she slipped at the last moment and the can grazed along the side of her forehead, slicing it open. I swore as blood gushed down the side of her face and drenched her hair. But it didn’t matter. She ran at me again, then caught my ankle before I could bolt with one of those gangly tentacles. Pain shot through my leg as she jerked me back, then swung me around and back into the side of the metal freezers.
Then she threw me, and threw me really fucking hard across the store.
I careened right through the counter and into the wall, my face biting into the red bricks.
Groaning and shaking my head, letting dust fall from my hair, I glanced over my shoulder. I wanted so, so deeply to be angry, to get this over with, but Gods, she hadn’t done anything wrong.
I killed supervillains, not random people who turned into…that.
She didn’t give a damn about that, not as she charged me, wailing a hellish sound.
What happened next was an honest to the Gods mistake. I wanted to tackle her, to put her onto the floor and choke her unconscious long enough for me to get the chance to call the SDU.
Instead, I kinda went right through her torso, ripping her in two.
She splattered onto the floor, her organs gushing out of her body as if I had grabbed her stomach and squeezed it like a wet towel until everything gushed out. I swore, swore again and stood up, hands in my hair and panic in my stomach because I was covered in parts of her guts and muscles and my hair was dusted with spinal and rib cage fragments, and I couldn’t help but double over and puke a little in surprise and foul disgust. I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand and stared at the shiny red wet gleam running down my jacket’s sleeve. Amy reeked. I knew what dead bodies smelt like, but not like this. She smelt freaking sweet, like I had my nose in a honey jar.
“Oh, Gods,” I whispered. “Oh, Gods. Oh, crap, what the hell? Why’d you die so easily?”
I didn’t know, all right? I figured she wouldn’t be so…soft, so pudgy on the inside.
Okay, okay, I just had to put her two parts back together, and then call somebody. Lucas, he’d know what to do, he’d understand, but this was a mistake that I had made. A girl was dead.
In the half second it took for me to switch off the sparking lights, lock the door, and flip the sign over to closed, I had also dragged her body back together. I stood over her, then crouched, massaging my temples and trying to think of some way I was going to explain this to the police. Did she count as a Kaiju? Since when did people suddenly turn into them? It wasn’t my fault that she attacked me, and it also wasn’t my fault that she looked tougher than she actually was. The entire store was destroyed. The ceiling was falling apart behind me, and the shelves were scattered and broken into bits and pieces sprinkled along a floor covered with vomit, blood, and gray gruel.
“Fuck, Ry. Fuck.” I pushed the hair out of my face and looked at Amy, at the limp purple tentacles and the organs she still had that were pressing against her chest and lower body, like…
…what the hell?
I backed away, and my mouth sealed shut, as those tiny things I had seen crawling around just underneath her skin spilled out from both sides of her torso. Like tiny worms, they wriggled and frantically curled around each other in one large clump along the torn flesh. I stared at her, disgust in my throat, my saliva bitter, as they dragged her body back together. When the two parts of Amy met and mended, the worms dissolved into her skin, making it look like she was kept together by flesh-colored wire mesh. Sick. I felt sick. Wanted to leave, to not look back and get on with trying to find Ava, but my skin itched, and my stomach was only dropping lower in my body. She looked like tiny fingers were knitted together along her midsection, forcing Amy together.
Her eyes snapped open, and this time, I was working on autopilot, on instinct, hell, on the fear of not knowing what to do or how to react to something like that, as the tentacles, now thin, barbed, bristling with tiny shards of glass that had embedded themselves into their meat, shot at me.
My conscience told me not to do it, but my hands were already on them, twisting her around, and sending her flying through the air and smashing through the large glass windows. It was reflex, not knowing what to do. I followed my gut, and that’s what happened, and now she was a crumbled mess of broken limbs on the street that was jerking and spasming, and Gods, why was she still alive? One of her arms had been lacerated, and stringy bits of flesh kept it connected to her shoulder. Her torso had a gash running from her throat to her spine, spilling blood and goo on the street. I gingerly stepped outside, watching with everyone else on the street who got their phones out or sent it packing as they ran away screaming at the sight of those worms patching her back together. Now her arm was longer, more limp, held by cream-colored worms that moved and slithered and let people see how the muscles of a shoulder worked as Amy staggered to her feet.
Under the dim street lights, she looked horrific, covered in blood, her mouth oozing tentacles that lurched and grew and forced against the thick walls of her throat, almost making it rip apart right in front of us. Amy screamed, and this wasn’t some animal—it was her, a girl’s scream.
The tentacles in her mouth rose around her, flaring to their full length, rising and rising.
Then a car came barreling down the street, the driver a girl on her phone. She looked up just in time to catch the moment Amy’s head snapped around, her blood-filled eyes shining in the car’s headlights, and then the front end of her car cut Amy clean in two again. The girl slammed on the breaks, making the car swerve to a juddering halt until it stalled out on the street. The crowd made a collective groan at the sight of the gory skidmark Amy left across the hood of the car and the roof. Her upper body was laid out on the street, and her lower half was firmly hooked to the pointed Mercedes badge at the front of it. The girl screamed and swore, tumbling quickly out of the car, her green eyes wide, her mouth hanging open as she looked at the corpse spread on the street.
“Wait a second,” she said. Her heartbeat was getting slower by the second. I walked a little closer, panting, feeling sick to my core as the girl gingerly walked over to Amy’s top half and nudged it with her shoe. “Oh, it’s just a Kaiju. Thank God. I thought I just murdered someone.”
“You literally just did!” I said, crouching next to Amy, not knowing what to do, but it felt appropriate, because people were still filming, taking pictures, their cameras shining like blinding tiny white eyes as they babbled amongst each other. “So what if she was a Kiaju? She was—”
She put her hands on her hips, annoyed. “They’re animals. It’s like hitting a deer. Daddy’s gonna kill me for denting the Merc, but that’s what I get for cutting through the poor side of town.”
I blinked at her in disbelief, because a couple of other people nodded and shrugged, too.
Gesturing toward the store, I said, “She was working right there, totally normal. Like you.”
She snorted. “Me? Work in a convenience store? Right. Anyway, one less thing around.”
“What the fuck is your godsdamned problem?”
“You’re one to talk,” someone in the crowd said. “I saw you throw her onto the street.”
“She attacked me first!”
“So you technically also killed her then. You’re an accessory to murder, if you’re so mad about it,” a woman said, not filming, but wearing a pencil gray skirt and glasses. “Fifteen years.”
The girl with the hands on her hips said, “Who cares, anyway? You can find ‘em everywhere. They’re, like, on sale or whatever. I shouldn’t even be out here without my mask.”
Now that she mentioned it, most of the crowd had surgical masks on. Thinking back to it, Amy had a mask on the counter, too. What the hell had I missed? People wore them around Lower Olympus sometimes because you never knew what supervillain would be trying to pump poison into the wind, or simply because the collection of rotting garbage that gathered on the streets and the alleyways would nearly choke you to death if you weren’t careful with where you walked.
But right now, everyone was wearing a mask, like some deathly virus was going around.
“You probably shouldn’t touch that,” the girl said. “Unless you want to turn into one.”
“What?” I whispered, my head buzzing, trying to figure out why this was normal to all of these people. “You can’t turn into a Kaiju by just touching one, smartass. Doesn’t work like that.”
The crowd was even giving me a wide berth, nevermind Amy’s limp corpse.
Something had happened when I left. Something Kaiju related, and…of course, just another thing I was going to have to deal with, because it was a problem that was getting a little too big for what it usually was. And on the other hand, hell, most of the Kaiju weren’t bad, just a few.
But… “This was someone’s freaking daughter,” I said to her quietly. “Someone’s kid.”
The girl snorted and turned on her heels—her literal heels, shiny and red—and started walking back to her car. “I freaking doubt it. Who’d want to keep a Kaiju for a kid? Gross.”
In just a few minutes, the street started to empty, and a couple of guys wearing thick construction gloves dragged Amy’s lower half off the girl’s car for a quick buck. They dumped Amy in an alley beside the store, whistled at the damage inside of it, and went on with their day, because why should they care? They had families to get back to, kids to tuck into bed, and charity wasn’t going to pay them for fixing up the place. And all I could really do was take the woman’s card—the chick with the nasal voices, pencil skirt, and thin glasses—as she left. “Just in case you get in any legal troubles, I deal with anything—if you need a dead person sued, I’d make the family sell the coffin if need be,” she had told me. I was too numb to not take her card and nod.
I stood in the alley, looking at Amy. One half slumped against one wall, the other against a dumpster, like she was garbage that had just been thrown out for the night. A rat skittered up to her gut and sniffed it, then vanished back into the dark. Cars passed behind me, illuminating the streets in flashes of yellow and white, all of it just about grazing Amy’s torn flesh and mottled tentacles. The city had a heartbeat, a bloodstream, a pulse, and anything that clogged it was a virus destined to be tossed away, I guessed, and these people didn’t even really care to glance into the alleyway.
I felt like I was losing my mind, or maybe going soft, because I wouldn’t have either at the start of summer, just a few weeks ago. Just another body, just someone a little down on their luck.
Oh well, right? Tough luck, maybe you’ll get a better chance at it next time.
Was the city that fucked up now? This was normal?
But I figured I wasn’t one to talk.
If you’d just been better, not followed the instincts they taught you…
Gods, Ry. What are you?
Found her phone about ten minutes later digging through her handbag. I avoided anything personal—her wallet, pictures, nothing to make her stick to my mind—and…didn’t know who to call now. I decided on the police, because Gods knew that Damage Control wouldn’t give a crap without Amy being on their premium plan for such a small problem. I left an anonymous call about finding a body in an alley, yeah, a Kaiju, and I immediately heard the hesitation in the woman’s voice before telling me a unit was on their way, but it would take a while, you know? It was the roads, they were terrible, and there weren’t that many cops in my area, either, and I just had to understand that these things happened sometimes. Don’t worry. Just sit tight. Thanks for doing the right thing. I did wait ten minutes, then twenty, then left the body in front of the NOPD building.
I needed that update from Lucas, and now.