--XVII--

The Everglades Hospital emergency room was black and gray. Either that or my eyes still hadn't recovered.

"Chris." Caleb's voice.

I was facing a wall, which had some kind of painting of some sunflowers. I liked sunflowers.

But they were black and gray.

"Danny," said Caleb. "Come on, it's me."

The second I turned around, he folded me in his huge caucasian arms. Remember when all I wanted was an embrace? Hurray. I got one.

I broke his little prison of muscle and hair and walked toward the exit. "I fucked up your jacket, I know."

He let me take two steps further.

"Does it ever occur to you that people need you?" said Caleb.

The light on the ceiling was gray. The nurses' desk was black. There were chairs on the plain tile floor and they were black. But not black- not a color, but a void. The new tears that wet my face were the color of ash. I turned around despite them.

"Can you make that make sense to me?" I said.

He walked toward me slowly. His gaze met mine- I was staring daggers at him without meaning to. About half an hour ago, he telepathically told me to "stay where you are." Behind a gray curtain, fifteen feet in front of me and to my left, were the amazing people that wore gray gloves and masks, trying to fix the exact same damage that was inflicted on me, years ago. I saw no shade of blue in Caleb's eyes. Just gray, everything was black and gray. I automatically wondered how Crayon was doing, how Skittles was doing. Naturally and out of habit, I felt excitement- imagining me hugging the big white dogs with fluffy tails that wagged whenever I would go to Malcolm's house again, imagining me getting to pet the lovable, cute things that manipulated no one. Then I coughed, the pain from the poison in my chest digging a frozen hook through my spine and dragging me back into reality.

"Hey," said Caleb. He put his hands on my arms, gently. "Are you all right?"

That was literally the dumbest question someone could have possibly asked me.

"I'm so sorry," Caleb said, telepathically this time. "Stay with me, Chris."

That was the same exact thought I had myself, less than two hours ago. My head pounded. I wanted to just crumble. To crumble and to let someone else take care of me, maybe for once.

I cleared my throat.

"I'm sorry about your jacket," I said. The words were barely audible; I spoke physically and the gas from the canister was still on my throat. "I'll get you another one."

"Naw," said Caleb. "Don't. I'll give you another one. Mine."

I didn't want another jacket. I wanted the warm fluffy things that made up half my family. I wanted not to be in a world where the young were manipulated, or murdered for refusing to be manipulated. I wanted the pain to stop. I wanted to lie down. I thought about the experiments, and then I started remembering Nightingale. I wished that the jump off Century Spire killed me; that the Experiment took my life.

Caleb yelled at me. "Chris!" His voice was heated, fuming. Something enraged was taking over the sound of what he normally always sounded like when he talked to me. I didn't realize his hands were on my shoulders and shaking me until he spoke the next words. "Don't think like that!"

I double-flipped backwards without the triple spin, whipping back on the first landing, taking the perpetrator's kunai-like dagger out of my black jeans' back pocket and arming myself as I did on the second.

I looked Caleb in the eye- the exact same way I did on my last night with the unnamed man from the Lowdown, the unnamed evil creature that used me as nothing but a source of income for his abuse chain.

"Hands off, mind off," I said, my voice still sounding like broken rocks scraping sandpaper. "I have an SRA I have to fight in."

I sounded like a subtly croaking marshmallow- but behind it, now a growl instead of a faint whimper.

I flexed my fingers and wrists; glanced over at the blood on them- some of it fresh, blood which the rain hadn't managed to wash away at all. There were cuts on the sides of my face and shoulders from smashing through walls and through glass. I was almost fascinated- earlier on the same day, they were still some shade reminiscent of red; now everything was gray.

I cleared my throat, then continued.

"An SRA I have to fight in injured," I said, "and I'd really like to regain color vision before then."

--

James's voice boomed through the announcer speakers, which were embedded in the walls of the seemingly boundless arena.

"The champions are decided when all Fasci Littori are stolen from one Ground of Territory..." He was on an elevated seat, in an elevated platform, in a glass box that overlooked the huge room designated for SRAs- the Coliseum. "...or one party surrenders, or is unable to continue." I watched him smile on the screens above us. His voice was as pleasant and light as it was the day he gave me that first box of antidote vials for Malcolm's Vystir poisoning; the day Danny wasn't my name anymore. "As most of you were informed through the agency's server message, this Srazhenye will be two-versus-two." It was difficult to hear James over the roar of the crowd. I knew these people; did they have nowhere to go on Sunday? "Introducing the blue corner: Elyza Cobb!"

There were cheers from the laboratory people.

"Christopher Midnight!"

Enormous applause- there was always enormous applause and loud cheering whenever my name was announced. People were excited to see me in pain, I guessed.

"Introducing the red corner: Wyatt Shafer!" said James, who let people cheer before he said "Belinda Klein!" which got no response from the audience. The only sound was me, clapping for her and saying, "Go, Belinda!" And then I coughed because there was gas on my throat.

I didn't plan to win through points.

I dashed into the ring, fast, the moment the transparent wall in front of me lifted and retracted upwards. I still wasn't breathing normally. My head still ached. My eyes were still watering. I could've sworn I still felt the broken piece of bone and torn ligaments. I still felt like a torture victim- though that could've just been the rest of my memories.

And I rasped way too much when I spoke.

"What?!" shouted Cobb.

"I said keep them away from the rings," I responded, but telepathically this time.

"You don't feel like your normal self," Elyza replied through the telepathic connection.

"Define 'normal,'" I said.

I felt the smile in her telepathic energy. "Normal," she said. "A word created by geniuses for something that doesn't exist."

--

The arena was mostly empty space. I never thought about how that worked in my favor before that SRA.

I picked up speed, into a roundoff to a back with a half, and remained in flight.

I saw Shafer, standing in the center of the line that ended our Ground of Territory and started theirs, and the other way around.

Wyatt Shafer.

Tentacles. He had ten of them. Ridiculously long, horrendously dark purple, slimy things that would come out of his back- somewhere between his shoulder blades- that could grab you and slam you or choke you, or choke you and then slam you and then steal your locker keys. He did that to me, once. And then he apologized.

There was good in him, and of course I always saw it; there is good in everything, and in everyone- but I could not feel it at that moment. I knew there was good and that good things existed; I could not feel any of the good.

I flipped, twisted, and spun- the more I did these things, the faster I cut through the air. My current target was a Mr. Wyatt Shafer, and I did not want to make this match last.

I wasn't going to give anyone a show. I didn't care that Scott and Kaylee were in the audience- Henry was too hungover to come to the Webwork, and Caleb knew I didn't want him anywhere near me at the time- or even that the rest of the Union of Stars' Overwoods division was watching. I had only one objective.

The Coliseum was one of the many floors of the Webwork, and as usual kept secret from the rest of The Overwoods. It looked exactly like what a place called the Coliseum would look like: pillars, stone, flat ground. But that was only because James didn't activate any of the hundreds of simulated training environments. He had the option to do this, and the arena was huge.

I remember walking into the Webwork that day. Using my card to access the elevators to the 47th floor, walking out the elevator doors, walking up the stairs that led to the arena. Not without first breaking down in a restroom and crying. I put on my own black jacket that fit me much more accurately than Caleb's, and walked into the enormous space- the space now full of workmates and acquaintances; full of people watching every move. I remember Scott put his hand on my back as a sign of reassurance, and Kaylee hugged me. They wished me luck and I said nothing.

--

No visibility on Belinda Klein, at least not yet.

"Do you see her?" I said to Elsie, telepathically.

"No, I'm holding point where our Fasci Littori are and I see no movement."

"Keep your ears peeled, Elsie."

"I know. She might be behi-"

The telepathic connection broke for a split second.

"All right, she's got me," said Elsie.

"Do you need-"

"No, I can handle her." I felt the grit, the fight in her telepathic energy. "Don't look back, Midnight."

Elyza Cobb.

In addition to an extraordinary IQ and being a telepath, she had other abilities: she manipulated water and ice, and could sense nearby bodies of water, and could also sense nearby sources of lower temperatures- without having to see them; without any tools. I called her Liquid Nitrogen.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Belinda Klein, on the other hand, had an ability even I had never seen, despite all of my messed up experiences back at the Lowdown and other scary places, and Experiment Nightingale: her tattoos came to life. Anything she had a tattoo of, beware of it.

I focused on Wyatt.

"Don't wanna fight you, Midnight!"

I skidded to a stop after letting my flight and distance go, tumbling forward until finally stepping out of a front handspring and walking. "What?" I said telepathically. "Wyatt? You're a telepath?"

"You haven't been paying attention."

"You do interrogations. It's not my business."

"You think they'd give interrogations to a non-telepath?"

"I don't know!" I replied. "I mean, they kill children! Does anything make any sense to you?"

His eyes met mine, the tentacles on his back like a mutated animal's dark wings, wings that he constantly kept moving as long as they were out in the open.

I continued. "Don't wanna fight, you say but the tentacles are out. Is it predictable monster hour?"

Then he grabbed me with one of his tentacles- it was that quick. He was making a mistake. The tentacle was around my left arm and he dragged me across the ground, past fallen pillars and blocks of stone, towards him. It was almost pulling my arm from its socket, but somehow I knew he'd do this.

I was still ten feet away when he yelled, "I'm trying to be nice to you! I always ha-"

I was in front of him and this was the mistake. One of my abilities: if I struck someone, and I chose to do it, there would be two results from the hit. One was the impact from the actual strike. The second was a severe burning sensation- not an actual burn, not a mark left externally on anyone's skin that anyone could see, but a lingering agony, a discomfort that caused people to be impaired and incapacitated. As far as I knew, I only had this ability after Experiment Nightingale. So, in some way, Nightingale gave me an ability that protected me- something I needed badly, especially at eleven years old, and especially if I was somewhere at "home" at the Lowdown, with the man that prostituted me. It didn't take long to finally get out of there.

Nightingale damaged me, yet it seemingly gave me a gift... assuming the superpower was really a result of it. My brain could never figure it out.

A strike of the palm, hard, between his eyes so I wouldn't break his nose, and he let me go, and then a switch step forward to an even harder kick to his forehead, so I wouldn't break his jaw or his chin.

I could almost hear the burning feeling inside him. I felt no guilt.

"Fuck!" He groaned and moaned and grunted and winced on the ground in front of me. He was in pain and I could see it, anyone could. The deafening roar of the crowd was almost as abstruse to me as the fact that someone was willing to kill animals and people to get what they thought they wanted. Almost, but not quite. "Chris!" he was whimpering now, something I had never ever heard from him before. "Fuck!" he repeated. He made guttural pain noises from somewhere in the back of his throat. "I was... I was going to let you win!"

I turned to walk away.

"I mean it!" he said.

The anger I felt gave full resonance to my voice, like it came back to me in that one instant. "Explain the tentacles."

He groaned, his face in his hands, trying to soothe a pain that was located nowhere on his skin, one he wanted so badly to tear out, but couldn't. "I needed... Belinda to believe I was on her side and fighting. So she wouldn't be suspicious." He groaned in pain again, and this time it sounded like some kind of animal sound. "So... so she wouldn't tell James. Call the fight off."

From a distance I saw Elyza and Belinda in what to me looked like an enthralling, almost spellbinding brawl.

I looked back at Wyatt. "I'm supposed to believe you?"

"I'm telling you the truth."

"You stole my locker keys. You're sick. Don't pretend you don't remember it."

"I said I was sorry. You knew I was. We've... gotten better."

The tremor in his voice broke whatever defense I had on me. "I need to be on this case," I said. "I need to be on this case, without losing my job."

"I know," he said, barely able to speak evenly. He forced his eyes open to look at me. They were bloodshot already. "Chris," he pleaded. "Can you...?" he trailed off and gritted his teeth.

Did I really inflict that much pain?

"I will," I said. "After I win."

I had one objective.

"Chris," he said. "Just... a little."

"No!"

"Please."

I took his hand and locked my fingers between his. His dark tentacles slipped back into wherever they went, in his back. He was big, fairly muscular. As far as I could tell, he wasn't afraid to hurt people. Those were people I felt I understood in some capacity, yet also didn't understand.

Just when the color was starting to finally return to my vision, I let my eyes turn gray and counted to sixty. A snake was wrapped around Elsie's throat; she was on the ground and defending herself from further harm by surrounding herself with spikes of ice that protruded long and sharp off the ground, diagonally and pointed in Klein's direction. I looked from the screens above us, the ones that captured all that took place, to James in his glass box, to the roaring crowds around us, to where Scott was. He was easy to make out. He was holding Kaylee's hand, his eyes fixed on mine. Kaylee was on her feet beside him, cheering loudly for both me and Elyza. In her free hand she held up a cardboard sign. "WIN AND WE GET ICE CREAM," it read.

"Take slow, deep breaths. Kinda like waves on the ocean," I told Wyatt. I guess I felt some kind of guilt- not too much. I remembered other SRAs Wyatt was in. He won almost all of them, the tentacles combined with his brute force a threat as large as he was. I sighed. "You're a strong man and you know it," I said. "You got this."

Or he acted like one, anyway. Around me at least. I omitted saying the part where I thought he was a total asshole almost all the time, if not all the time, period.

He slowed his breathing.

"No stronger a man than you are," he said, with the hint of a smile and a wink.

I almost puked.

"Shut the fuck up."

I let go, took a moment to position my feet, and pushed off. It took a little more energy and power, than it did without a run or roundoff or handspring or all three. I wanted this to be done- any moment I spent without information was a moment I spent unable to stop this murderer. A child could die. There were enough unprotected innocent people; there was enough evil in the Overwoods. In the world even, perhaps. I wouldn't know.

"It's nice seeing you, Belinda!" I said as I hovered and spun in the air above her. I landed quickly and without any dissent from the dust on the ground, about twelve feet beside both her and the spikes of ice, intentionally. "If you make me do it I'll push you straight into that. Surrender, now."

Belinda Klein glared at me. "Why don't you try it?"

"Why don't you come here and make me?"

From the corner of my eyes I saw Elyza stab the snake with one of her ice spears, again and again without finesse, until it loosened its grip on her neck.

She walked toward me. Vines, with a few roses and thousands of deadly thorns materialized behind her as she did, following her, a dozen times the size of the actual tattoos.

And then a tiger launched from her right leg and bounded straight at me. For just a moment, I wore a small and subtle smile on my face; probably just enough for the crowds to make out the dimples on my cheeks.

Most tigers sprinted at approximately fifty to sixty-five miles per hour, if they were hunting fast prey. This was going to be easy.

"Cobb, now!" I yelled, just as the snake around Elyza's neck died and turned to dust, and just as I moved my right shoulder and head and neck back and toward my left side. I stepped back with my right foot. Principles of twisting: wrap, pull, stay tight for maximum spin. This was going to be both a twist and a thrust with the arms.

The adorable fluffy tiger gave me a hug and tried to bite me to show its affection, but I grabbed both its left legs and spun- the tiger flew towards Belinda, who instinctively stepped backward. But one step behind her was a curtain rod of ice, horizontal, parallel to her hips. She inadvertently flipped backward and onto her hands as her fluffy adorable pet tiger landed on top of her, squishing her and her vines and roses and thorns, making the animal cry out in some kind of roar of discomfort.

Elyza hastily contained both the tiger and Belinda in a cage of ice, tiny droplets and vapor coming off of the bars. Elyza smiled at me, her blond hair and blue eyes shining in the daylight from the large glass windows and the glass ceiling above us, above James's platform. For a few seconds as I looked at her I wondered if I really was even gay anymore.

"We make a pretty good team," she said to me, raising her hand for a high-five.

"That," I said. "I will agree with, Liquid Nitrogen." I met her hand with mine, and then held it for a while, just because I wanted to. I was smiling; it was my cheery smile, letting the cameras and the people in on my biggest insecurity- my imperfect teeth, and of course the dimples that came with any smile of mine.

--

Inside the ice cage, Belinda tumbled down from on her hands and head and onto her stomach.

"Congratulations, Belinda!" I said, clasping my hands and jumping up and down. "Elyza and I kinda just taught you a back handspring! We can do them together now on weekends for exercise if you want."

She looked up and gave us both the evil eye.

"This match isn't over yet!" she screamed at us. There were boos from the audience.

"Can you surrender?" I said. "I sucked a dick for you, just like you told me to."

Elyza burst out laughing.

"Or," Elyza said, before bursting out in laughter again and then composing herself, "Chris can just kick you in your sad and probably tattooed buttocks."

I laughed because the word "buttocks" was funny to me.

Belinda glared at us.

"I'll go get Shafer. You make your decision here." I turned to hop back over to where Wyatt was.

Just as I positioned to start a vault run, I heard the click and the beep that indicated someone had turned off one of the trackers we had on each of our arms- the combination of sounds that incidated someone had thrown in a surrender.

"I hope you have fun at that hotel, Midnight," said Belinda in what by far was the most threatening voice she ever used on me. She sometimes used it with James.

"If you're concerned about my safety," I said, "I won't stop you from coming along with. We can use a smart person."

"Let me out of the cage," Belind muttered, barely audible. "Icicle Bitch."

I looked at Elyza and raised my eyebrows.

She smiled back. I remember thinking I might marry her if I wasn't gay.

"Yes, Queen Belinda," she replied, an edge of contempt to her voice; a tone of disgust and antipathy. "Unintelligent asshat of the fugly, cheap pink hair dye, and dollar store makeup, bomb sniffer and limping swamp donkey."

An orange rose, its stem cut clean of any thorns, hit me in the face- a gift from an admirer in the audience, from somewhere in the crowd.

Surely it wasn't for me...?

I flinched, surprised, and then I caught it with my torso and both my hands. I gave it to Elyza.

I personally didn't agree too much with the "unintelligent" part of her scornful and very snide comments, but I supposed... I somewhat agreed with the rest of it.

Elsie gave the rose a sniff and waved to the crowd- which was still cheering madly. She gave Belinda Klein some kind of look; a vicious leer, eyes almost malicious behind her aquamarine glasses which she had strapped on for the SRA fight.

I looked up, and immediately noticed that James Tobler, head of the Union of Stars' Overwoods division, had his eyes locked on me. As our eyes met, he gave me a smile that felt... almost genuine; maybe sweet- but there was something about it that bothered me. I remembered Skittles and Crayon and didn't smile back, and then turned my attention instead to the ice cage which my partner still hadn't unfrozen.

Elyza remained there glowering at Klein a moment longer before turning to walk away. Wyatt Shafer's eyes were watery and red, he limped his way slowly toward us from the other half of the arena- steering himself toward us with the support of two of his inordinately strong, dark, creepy purple tentacles.

Cobb glanced back at Belinda, as she took the light blue strap off from her glasses.

"By the way, Belinda!" she hollered, over her shoulder from where she stood. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her finger. "One more thing. Fuck an unmarried man next time."

--

Kaylee ran over to me as I held Wyatt's hand with both of mine.

Wyatt was sitting on the floor of the arena. I still didn't believe I inflicted that much pain. I didn't feel much... even as I used my pain steal on him. Did he?

"That was amazing!" Kaylee screeched.

"It had to be done," I replied.

"Just let me surrender next time," Wyatt said.

Kaylee sat next to me on the floor, tucking her skirt and then brushing the dust off her black Civil War Era Ladies' button boots. She scowled at Wyatt.

"I don't even know why he's painstealing you," she said. "Apart from he's nice. You know you don't deserve it."

"It's fine," I said.

And telepathically to Kayles I said, "You're right. No, he doesn't."

I remembered when he stole my locker keys, or my lunch money. And he was twenty! Can you imagine being so miserable you have to do that to people? Can you imagine picking on someone you barely know and younger than you- being an asshole at all?

Well, he SAID he was twenty.

Guess what: he really wasn't.

To me it was extra strange- because if Wyatt wasn't being totally horrible to me, he was extra nice. No, not like Kaylee or Caleb were nice to me; he was extra sweet and companionable. To me it made no sense. That was part of the reason why I rejected most offers to be an interrogator- sure, maybe people thought I read criminals or threats or psychos well, because of my experience. But that would have meant hours alone in a room, with Shafer and a sociopath.

...so basically with two sociopaths.

For a while the three of us sat there- me letting my eyes turn gray as the superpower use took color off my vision- all of us watching the crowds wave at us, at me, and then smile as I waved back, as they left the arena.

I remembered Skittles and Crayon again. Crayon would lick my face if he were here and Kaylee would give Skittles something totally random, like a lima bean or a cauliflower.

"Your dad went home to check on Henry?" I said.

"No," Kaylee said. "He went to the office."

"There's a million offices."

Kaylee laughed. "His."

"So where do we go for ice cream?" I said.

"Pacifico?" said Kaylee.

"Ice cream sounds so good right now," Wyatt said. Even then he sounded like he was still in pain. "You have no idea."

I let a few seconds pass, watching the faraway T-shirts of the audience members disperse and move toward the exits.

Color was slowly coming back to me.

"Join us," I said. "And..." I smiled. "I've made a decision; you guys get to be in on it."

Kaylee grinned as she and Wyatt glanced in my direction. Wyatt tried to smile at me but it looked like a grimace.

"I'm not waiting for 'Monday,'" I said.

Even thinking about any hotels caused me flashbacks- anything with a bedroom and where one might be alone with someone else.

...Or multiple someone else-s.

"I'm not waiting for tomorrow. I'm investigating the hotel tonight-" I took Crayon's old collar from where it was in my pocket and ran my thumb over the shiny, golden bone-shaped tag that still had his name on it. "And you guys..." I looked up again to the booth, the glass platform of the microphone, desks, screens and the chair where James sat- to make sure he wasn't there anymore. "...are going to come with me."

--