“How did you get here?” I asked, not really meaning to ignore her command. I had just thought Luna was secure up to that point.
She held up her left wrist and showed me a clunky looking mechanical bracelet. “This is—was—a prototype teleportation device. This is the only one we had around, so I took it.”
“Okay, how did you get in here? My room.” I set up a barrier between my neck and her sword, though it wouldn’t have been very effective against someone of her strength. She’d rip through the thing like an eager kid through wrapping paper on Christmas morning.
“I don’t have time for these questions right now.” She pushed her sword forward where it hit my barrier. She looked confused for a moment. With just a bit more strength, she slipped the blade right through it. I felt that in the base of my skull, but the rest of the barrier stayed up around it. Her face softened a bit, and she pulled the sword back, sheathing it on her hip. Without the sword pointing me, I was able to turn to face her, turning my barrier with me. “Please, you all have to prepare.”
“Why would I bring anyone I care about to you? You killed my best friend’s best friend. You helped McLeod destroy an entire city.” I took a step toward her, bringing down my barrier while trying to hide the fear I felt. Despite the fear threatening to paralyze me, I managed to create the same kind of ball I used to kill Eric. Not wanting to kill someone again, I made sure it wasn’t nearly as strong. Her eyes widened for a moment before she threw up her arms to shield herself, meaning she saw it too.
The attack struck her in the arms with an audible shattering noise. Her arms got pushed back into her chest from the force, and she was sent through my door. That poor thing got destroyed on impact and she crashed into the wall in the hallway. There was a large crack where she hit, it spider-webbing out. I winced at having to explain that to Shelly if I even lived long enough to have that talk, showing how great my priorities were.
“You glad...you got that out of your system now?” She asked, raising up her head from behind her crossed arms. Her wrists already had purple bruises on them and there was a small trickle of blood running out of the corner of her mouth. Her black, metal band shirt wasn’t torn from the impact. I thought it was a weird shirt choice for a killer, but I guess even killers listened to music. “You’ll need more than that to down me. I’m not as fragile as Eric.”
“I would tell you not to speak ill of the dead, but he was a huge asshole.” I had another ball formed, both surprised and horrified at how easily I could create them after only making two before.
“He did worse than what he did to you, trust me,” she said, standing up straight. It was still weirding me out to see her in a metal band’s shirt, and I noticed she had some ripped jeans. I had to concede it made sense she couldn’t be in armor all the time. “You don’t want to think about the nightmares he would have inflicted on those two with you. His powers didn’t give him any extra durability. That’s why he couldn’t take what you just hit me with. Consider yourself lucky he didn’t get his knife to that kid.”
“Do you want to test that durability theory out again? I don’t think you can take that many more of these.” I tried to sound more confident than I felt. Even if she had properly blocked it, the amount of damage she showed was minimal compared to Eric. My element of surprise was gone too.
“No, I don’t want to test it out,” she snapped, her cold eyes sending chills throughout my body. “I want you to get your damn allies here. If I wanted to kill you, I could have done it when you walked in. Here I thought you’d be the levelheaded one.”
“What do you mean by that?” I didn’t let my guard down even though she was right about being able to kill me if she wanted. Her blade at my throat wasn’t just for show.
She sighed and it was obvious her anger was growing with each second that I didn’t listen to her. “The guy is strong enough to fight me equally and the girl was prepared to shoot me, even if it was a stupid idea with my armor in such a tight space. I assumed you were the best one for a reasonable discussion. Maybe I was wrong. This is really testing my patience.”
“You break into my house and have the nerve to complain that I’m not being compliant? Excuse me for testing the patience of the woman who had her sword at my neck.”
She seemed to understand what I was saying and relented just a touch. “Okay, fine. You’re right. I apologize. I have critical information that’s important to you and your allies, so I am asking you, can you please call them here? Everything will be easier to explain with all of you here. You can bring as many as you want. I already know that they’re more than capable of defeating me through sheer numbers.”
“Fine,” I finally said, keeping the ball up in front of me. I pulled out my phone and sent out a text to everyone that could come, which wasn’t a lot of people. I still wasn’t the most social guy on the planet. Mrs. Carmichael, Shelly, Lori, Lizzy, Alex, and Rebecca. “There, message sent.”
“What’d you tell them?” She looked at me suspiciously.
“That the black knight that helped attack three cities is in my apartment, to get here as fast as possible, and to all enter at one time. Even if you kill me, you aren’t going to pick them off one by one.”
She exhaled sharply through her nose and shook her head. Then she nearly moved faster than I could keep up with. She spun me around again, pinning my left arm between my back and her stomach, while her blade found its way to my throat once again. Her left arm wrapped around my chest and held me close to her, ensuring I couldn’t move much unless she wanted me to. Her strength was absurd. My focus broke and the ball dissipated, leaving me with just the uncomfortable feeling of being touched.
“Let go of me!” I yelled, trying to wiggle free, entirely unable to budge even an inch. I tried to stomp on her feet. Even without armor to protect her, my stomps didn’t faze her.
“Stop that! I just need them to not kill me the second I walk in. You’re my insurance for that.” She walked us out to the living room, positioning us behind the couch and facing the front door. “I’m trusting that they won’t kill you to get to me.”
I decided that it wasn’t worth it to mouth off anymore. Since she held me right against her body, I didn’t trust my control over my Anomaly to get her off me without severely injuring myself, and she may as well have been immune to my kicking and stomping. I resigned myself to just hoping my friends wouldn’t do something stupid to get me killed.
I was still wondering just why she was in my apartment. If McLeod and his goons could teleport there that easily, why hadn’t they done it before? She was so ready to kill us in Missouri, so what could she have to gain just by taking me hostage? I was getting warm from being pressed so close to the knight which made my issues with being touched worse. I almost asked her if she could just let me go for that, only stopping myself when I realized how weak and silly it would make me seem. It wasn’t like I was looking strong anyway, though.
I’d never paid attention to the sound our doorknob made, but the moment I heard it, it was one of the loudest things I’d ever heard. It turned slowly, and I felt both of us tense up in our awkward hostage situation. While it didn’t surprise me in the slightest to feel that from my own body, I wasn’t expecting it from her. I don’t think I feared death so much, but I didn’t want my sister to see it happen, and I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt on my behalf. That’s why my heart started racing and beads of sweat started to form on my brow.
The door groaned slightly as it cracked open. There was a moment of silence before it flew in. Mrs. Carmichael, Shelly, and Lori all burst in with handguns pointed at the knight. Well, pointed at me with the knight behind me. Alex, Lizzy, and Rebecca were next, though that trio didn’t carry any weapons. Alex’s fists were glowing with the other two trying to get out of the way. It looked like Rebecca was eyeing ways to get around the apartment to us, but everything was too in the open for a sneaky approach.
“If you hurt so much as a single hair on his head, I’ll send what’s left of you back to McLeod in bags,” Lori threatened. She was doing her best to contain her anger, and I appreciated that, because I was the first thing between the barrel of her gun and the knight. “I don’t fucking care if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Jesus,” the knight whispered, only audible to me. “I’m not going to hurt him if you just put down your guns and let me explain. I’ll put down my weapon and he’ll be free to go. All I need you to do is promise that you won’t attack.”
“You’re not going to hurt him if I put a bullet between your eyes either,” Lori replied, raising a decent point. She inched closer and aimed the gun higher.
“Please, just give me a chance to explain,” the knight said, her voice not being as soft as I would have made my own when trying to plead at gunpoint.
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“You killed my best friend!” Lori yelled, taking one step closer. I saw Mrs. Carmichael glance toward her with a worried look in her eyes. “He was like a brother to me, and you bastards took him away. You took him away!”
“I was wrong!” the knight yelled back. The yelling right in my ear made me jump, which almost got the blade to dig into my neck. The jump prompted everyone to refocus their guns—and fists—on the knight.
“She could have killed me if she wanted to. She told me to send the text message to bring you all here. Can you please put down the guns and let her speak? I’m tired of this stupid sword on my Adam’s apple, and whether it kills me or not, I’d rather not turn my damn living room into a firing range.” I knew that she wouldn’t be able to make it past Alex and Rebecca no matter what happened, so I hoped the whole thing could just be defused.
Lori looked at me with nothing but hurt in her brown eyes and I felt terrible. The first interaction that I’d had with her in a while, after she’d done nothing but try to help me, was to tell her to put her weapon down in front of the person who killed someone special to her while that same person held another one of her friends as a hostage. Her expression made me want to apologize immediately, but that would have to be done later. There was a lot of apologizing I felt like I owed her. I did consider us a bit closer to even considering she had been pointing a gun at me.
Still, despite her clear hatred for the woman behind me, Lori complied. She holstered the gun inside the jacket she was wearing. Mrs. Carmichael and Shelly followed suit, though Shelly kept hers on the counter nearby. Alex never lowered his fists and Rebecca had taken up a spot next to him. All she had to do was tag the knight to take away the scariest parts of her. Then she was just a really tall lady with a sword.
“I think that’s the best you’re going to get,” I spat out, trying and failing to shake free again.
“Fine.” The knight slowly stretched her sword out in front of me before dropping it. It landed on the couch with a gentle thud. She then released me and backed away slowly, holding up both her hands. I carefully made my way back to my group, where Shelly gave me a quick hug. “No tricks, I swear on my life.”
“Your life means nothing to us.” Lori’s words came out laced with venom and got a small sigh out of the knight.
“Yeah, that makes two of us.” She rubbed her wrists where my attack had hit her and looked toward the ground.
“Exactly who are you, how did you get here, and what do you want with Ethan?” Mrs. Carmichael asked. Her eyes were as hard as stone.
“My name is Val,” she said, not giving us a last name. “I...I was wrong for what I did. I know that won’t mean anything to you. It shouldn’t. I’m here to tell you all everything I know about McLeod and the threat you face going forward.”
“Before I can tell you about them, you need to know why I’m here, and that’s a longer story,” Val said. She started to walk forward, but when Alex took a step closer and Lori reached for her gun again, she backed up. “Okay, I’ll stand here.”
“Stop wasting our time and tell us your piece before we decide what to do with you,” Alex said. His fists were glowing brighter than I’d ever seen before, casting odd shadows in my living room. Their light was reflecting off Val’s blade, something I was positive she was regretting putting down.
“Relax, I’ll give you my full story. I have no real memories of my mother or father. Only little bits and pieces of them in a haze, if they’re even real memories. Besides them, my only memories are from where I lived. I was left alone in a small town in Canada. Nothing more than a village, really. I ate scraps and garbage, stole clothes and lighters to stay alive in abandoned buildings. Whatever I could to just make it to the next day. The winters were almost impossible to survive, but survive them is what I did.”
“Do you expect us to feel sorry for you?” Lori asked.
“No, I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for me, let alone you lot.” Val shook her head and composed herself before she lashed out. “Anyway, I believe I was around seven, I found another young girl named Emily. While I was hidden away in abandoned buildings, afraid of everyone else in the town, she would always bring me what food she could. Sometimes she’d be able to sneak clothes and blankets to me. When we were just girls, she did her best to teach me how to read. For seven years, she was the closest thing I had to family and a teacher.
“When I was around fourteen, that’s when a gang attacked my village. They were people like us, people with powers. They left no one alive. No one. No men, women, or children. I watched Emily and her family get slaughtered like cattle in front of my eyes. That’s when I awakened my flight and strength. I tried to chase after them, but they were able to flee.”
Val paused to take a breath after rushing through her words, which let all of us absorb the information. I looked at Mrs. Carmichael, whose eyebrows were knitted low. I had the feeling she at least knew of the incident that Val was talking about.
“While I was holding...what was left of Emily,” Val continued, “that’s when McLeod showed up. He told me that I had to be special to survive. To survive so long on my own and the attack. He told me that I should go with him because he was special too. He’d keep me safe, make me strong, and we could prevent that gang from wreaking havoc freely like they’d done. He told me that the people who slaughtered my village were from Luna. He said that Luna would do anything to keep the secret of Anomalies from spreading, including hunting down and killing anyone with powers if they thought they were too old to be properly indoctrinated.”
“I know the incident you’re talking about, but no one from Luna was involved. We had to cover it up.” Mrs. Carmichael frowned and shook her head, the tiniest shudder running through her. That had to bring back some unpleasant memories. “It was a mess from top to bottom. Before the attacks on Vancouver and Seattle, that was the closest Anomalies had come to being outed.”
“Now I know that it wasn’t your people, but for a decade, I’ve harbored resentment toward you from that moment. McLeod...became like a father to me, or at least the closest thing to it. Whenever I faltered in my beliefs or stumbled in my growth, he reminded me that I was getting stronger so people like me didn’t have to suffer the same way I had as a child.”
“And you stopped that suffering by attacking three cities!?” Lori screamed. I had to place a hand on her shoulder to keep her from charging Val and probably getting someone killed.
“I always thought it was for a future where people like us would live safe and happy!” Val shouted back, her voice a mix of rage and despair. “I thought that no matter what he needed us to do, it was all for the benefit of our lives in the end. He always told us that the only way to be taken seriously was to make our power known, and yes, I believed him. I believed the man who I thought saved my life when I was a child. I believed him about the cities and about you here at Luna.
“The day in the Tomb, when I learned we lost Eric, I went to watch the footage from the night my village was destroyed. It was a frustrating defeat, and I’ve always watched the footage of that village being destroyed to keep me grounded and focused. I’d watch it when I needed to remind myself what I was doing there. The footage was old security camera footage mashed together, so it was a bit grainy and sloppy. I could always see the gang there, but after Eric died, it was different. Instead of the gang, it was McLeod slaughtering everyone. He was the one who cut Emily to bits and waited to ‘find’ me when I held her remains.”
“The security footage was one of his illusions,” I said, remembering how Eric’s power shattered into nothing when I dealt him his deathblow.
Val nodded in response. “To make sure it was really one of his illusions, I checked other things that I knew he had masked with an illusion previously. A hole in the wall, a damaged vehicle, or anything else he might have masked. All of them were returned to their states before he used his power. Once he died, all of his illusions went with him.”
“And that’s when you decided to find Ethan,” Shelly said. Once again, Val nodded. Mrs. Carmichael ran her hand over her pulled back hair. Alex seemed to relax just a bit, still not anywhere near dropping his guard fully.
“This thing was a prototype teleportation device,” she said, pointing to the same thing on her wrist that she showed me previously. “It worked the same way that the stones you had in the Tomb did, but with less precision. A few years back, someone brought it to McLeod as a token of goodwill. McLeod is very proud and peculiar about what tools he’ll use, and he considered this too ‘dishonorable’. The guy who brought it didn’t care for how dismissive McLeod was. What happened to the guy after that was messy. I ended up in Ethan’s room instead of directly with Ethan, like I had originally hoped, and it looks like this was only good for one trip.”
That alarmed Mrs. Carmichael. “Dii Consentes has their own devices that can teleport them anywhere?”
“Not anymore. McLeod does have a teleporter. I’m not sure why he doesn’t use her more often. To him, these kinds of gadgets are just junk that inferior cowards would use.” She took it off her wrist and tossed it next to her sword. “Well, I guess it is just junk now.”
“And you expect us to believe he just operates on these stupid rules he’s made up?” It was Alex who spoke up.
“McLeod’s biggest follies are his pride and his need for theatrics,” Val explained. “To him, teleportation should only be used as a statement to show power. That’s why he did it for Vancouver, Seattle, and Pittsburgh. He doesn’t like surprise attacks, so he doesn’t like surprise teleportation. That way, when people inevitably try to fight back, he can stop them. He thought something like this device was underhanded. You lot should consider yourselves lucky his arrogance gives him a weakness like that to exploit.”
“I still can’t believe we’re even dealing with this,” Lori mumbled. She pointedly looked at Val. “You know, everything was fine for us before your handler decided he needed to be a tyrannical world leader.”
“Fine?” Val scoffed. “You live in a metal box in the ground because you all feel the need to hide. You’re living this cute little idealistic fantasy that everything would have just continued to go perfectly here.”
“And it’s still a good life!” I thought Lori was about to charge Val right there.
“Good? Are you kidding me? Tell me how many times in all of human history that groups hiding away because of how they were born have been a good thing.” Val grabbed the back of our couch and leaned forward. “McLeod has done enough monstrous acts for countless lifetimes. I have been a willing accomplice and ally to him during many of those atrocities. He isn’t wrong about people like us being able to live our lives. We absolutely shouldn’t be confined to the mountains like we’re some cult. We shouldn’t have our memories wiped because we lost control of our powers when we were kids. We shouldn’t just be covered up.”
“What was it about him that you wanted to tell us?” I asked, sitting down in a chair, hoping to diffuse the brawl I sensed coming on. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy, but after having a sword at my neck twice in less than an hour, I wasn’t going to be any more uncomfortable than I had been there.
“That they’re on their way here.” Desperation and panic filled Val’s blue eyes. “I don’t know how long they’ve been traveling, so I don’t know how long you have. I don’t even know where this facility is. They know where this complex is, and McLeod is ready to attack.”