The sound of heavy, rushing footsteps filled the night air as Simon Evans all-but charged down the cement steps leading to where his Mercedes was parked with the roof down. One of his friends, a Korean-American guy named Kevin Bu, was waiting for him in the passenger seat. As he approached, Kevin grinned. “Hey, dude! Did you get that stupid Luciano fuck sorted out and on his way? I hope so, cuz I’m starving. What do you say we hit the--”
“Out,” Simon ordered, yanking his door open before getting in. Thanks to the key in his pocket, the car started on its own as soon as he was behind the wheel, humming faintly with electric power. There was a way to disable that, but Simon preferred it this way. It was cool. Normally, he took a moment to revel in that sort of thing, even after all this time. But now he was too distracted to care. His hand pointed out of the car. “I gotta be alone, dude. Can’t deal with any of this right now.”
“The fuck?” Kevin stared at him. “Come on, man, I just worked like six hours doing shit for your mom and I’ve got a test in the morning. I can’t walk home, we’re in the middle of nowhere.”
Simon gave him a look. “My parents pay you two grand a week, plus take care of your apartment and your college tuition. Pretty sure you can afford to pay for a taxi.” Even as the words left him, he sighed and gave a quick shake of his head. “Sorry, fuck, it’s not your fault. Here.” From his pocket, he produced several one hundred dollar bills. “Take whatever sort of ride you want. Hell, call a limo and cruise for awhile. And get food on me. I just-- I’ve gotta be alone for awhile.”
For a moment, the other boy simply stared at him, clearly wondering if he should ask more. But in the end, he took the offered cash and stepped out of the Mercedes. “Yeah, okay, I get it. But uhh, you know, if there's anything you need to talk about or whatever--”
“Not now,” Simon assured him. “Just gotta chill for awhile. I uhh, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Without another word, he shifted the car into drive and hit the gas to send it screaming out of the lot. He was up near fifty miles per hour before he even hit the exit, and a glance at the dashboard for the advanced sensors showed that there were no cars or pedestrians on the street beyond. Nor were there any police within several blocks, and Star-Touched patrols weren’t anywhere near his spot at the moment.
Well, none that the Ministry actually had control of.
It was that last thought that made the boy push the gas even harder, raising the car to a good sixty miles per hour as he hit the exit. The slight incline there made the vehicle launch itself into the air several feet before coming down on the street beyond as Simon spun the wheel to send it into a left turn. He narrowly kept it on the road, grimacing before his fist smacked the wheel a couple times in frustration. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
His anger had nothing to do with the car, the street, the near-wreck, or anything like that. Those things barely even registered. His focus was entirely centered on what had happened twenty minutes earlier, when he'd been face to face with that independent Star-Touched, Paintball. The boy who had clearly seen too much that night back at the motel. The boy whom Simon’s parents had decided to leave alone so long as he didn’t make too much trouble for the Ministry. The boy who had been making a name for himself so much lately, and who had been there that night trying to stop Luciano from getting away. The boy whom Simon’s parents were still convinced they could shift over to their way of thinking with enough patience.
The boy who wasn't a boy at all.
Checking his dashboard once more to see where the nearest cops were, Simon took a left turn to avoid them, accelerating up to a good ninety miles per hour or so. A quick shift into the (currently empty) oncoming traffic lane gave him just enough room to pass right by several other cars that would have been in his way, before pulling back onto the right side just in time to avoid a truck that was turning onto that road. Ignoring the red light, he shot straight through, threading the needle between two cars that were trying to cross. Their horns filled the air, but Simon still wasn't paying attention. Well, he knew they were there. He was too well-trained and such not to be totally aware of his surroundings. But he certainly wasn't paying them any care.
Even now, in his mind’s eye, he could see it. He and Paintball had been struggling. The kid may have been younger than Simon (though not nearly as young as he was supposed to be), but that paint made him a hell of a lot stronger. Still, Simon had managed to get him in what amounted to a headlock, intending to throw him to the ground. But in that moment, the back of ‘his’ jumpsuit had gone down and the mask/helmet combination had ridden up just enough for Simon to see part of his neck. A part which revealed a small, almost imperceptible star-shaped scar on the bare skin. A scar that was almost invisible unless you were right up close to it, and which very few people would have recognized.
But Simon was one of those very few people. He knew what that scar was, because he had accidentally given it years earlier when he was still a young teenager, wrestling in the kitchen with… with his sister. She’d jumped on his back and he jerked backwards, sending her falling against a piece of the counter. It was--it had… been a big deal. He’d apologized over and over, and the two of them had been found by one of the maids, who helped take care of it. She assured them that it wasn’t enough to go to the hospital over, and bandaged it herself. So their parents never found out about it.
Cassidy. There was no question about it, none. Simon had spent far too much time looking at that scar while his sister was asleep. It had been years since he’d done so, but still. He looked at it to remind himself to always be aware of what was around him and how he was throwing people around, what they could possibly hit. He knew that scar better than he knew the back of his own hand.
Paintball wasn’t a twelve-year-old boy. He wasn’t some stranger. He wasn’t a nobody. He wasn’t a he at all. He--She was Cassidy. Simon’s sister. All this time, after everything that had happened, and all that the so-called ‘kid’ had gotten involved with, it was Cassidy. It had always been Cassidy. She was the one who had--she was--fuck.
Did she know? Did she know who she was working against? She had to, right? That was the only reason it made sense for her to keep all of that secret. If she didn't know, she would have gone to their family immediately to show off her powers. That was just who she was. Hell, she would have gone to them for help dealing with… with what she had seen that night at the motel.
Fuck! She had to be so confused. What she’d seen, back at the motel, what she thought she had seen, the… she didn’t have the context, the information that--she didn’t know the full situation. No wonder she’d--and then she had probably been somewhere in that alley when Simon had--oh God damn it!
It was his fault. She had been there, she had to have been. She was in that alley when he had… fuck. That was why she never came to them about getting powers and all that. It was why this whole situation had developed. She had heard him in that alley, and then probably found out more when she went out the next night and found him and… and oh fuck, Dad had been there. Not immediately, but he did show up as Silversmith and unmask himself. If Cassidy had actually been anywhere nearby at that point… fuck. Fuck, fuck!
It all made entirely too much sense now. Simon knew exactly why things had developed the way they had, why Paintball had stayed away from any of the teams in town, why--why all of it had happened. His stomach rolled as he replayed events over the past couple of months in his head. So many questions were suddenly answered, and yet with each one the boy realized yet another way that this situation had spiraled out of control. It was so much to take in, he felt like his head was going to explode.
What was he supposed to do now? What was he supposed to say? He was certain that Cassidy had known exactly who he was throughout all that. Some of the ways that Paintball had reacted to things made more sense that way. His mother kept Cassidy out of the illusion-casting just in case she happened to see them under its effects around the house. And, of course, because she was never supposed to be anywhere near where the Ministry conducted business. She had seen and recognized him all this time. Everything that happened--all the--fuck!
Yes, he just kept coming back to cursing. What else could he do? Every time he thought he had absorbed the full weight of the situation, another thought sprang to mind and made it even worse. He was so lost in his thoughts at the moment that the boy didn't even really know where he was going. He was simply driving as fast as possible, as though if he pushed the car hard enough, he could outrun the entire fucked-up thing. Which was impossible, of course. He had to do something. He had to make a decision about how to react to all this. And yet, he had no idea what that could be. Even as his hands grip the wheel even more tightly, knuckles turning white, the twenty-year-old made a sound deep in his throat. It wasn’t quite a growl, or a scream. It was somewhere in between those.
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He wasn’t angry. Well, he was. He was angry a lot, yet this was something more than that. He was reeling from this entire situation. He had no idea how to react, what to do, or even what to think. He didn't want to think. Not about this whole thing. He just wanted to turn off his brain and throw himself into the mindlessness of driving. The car was something he could control. He could lose himself in this and forget… well, all of that. At least for a little while.
So, that was exactly what he did. For the next hour or so, Simon simply drove and let his mind wander. He didn't think too much about the actual situation, pushing his thoughts away from it whenever they started to creep that way. Instead, he thought about various moments with his sister as they had grown up. She was four years younger than he was, and his earliest memories that involved her was when he was seven and she was three. He had been heading out to the car to be driven to school, sometime during the first grade. It wasn't his first day or anything, but for some reason, the three-year-old Cassidy had demanded to come along. Not just in the car, she had wanted to go into school with him, insisting that she could learn anything he did. He had said something dismissive and insulting about her smelling like dead frogs, and she had kicked him in the shin before hitting him in the face with his own lunchbox.
They had fallen to the pavement, wrestling, when they were interrupted by… by Robert Parson. The large man had picked both Simon and his sister up, one in each hand, and held them away from each other. He made them stop swinging and then set them down, before calmly reminding the two that they had to depend on each other. He’d told Cassidy to go ahead and get in the car, that they would take her brother to school and then go to get ice cream. Then, once she was mollified and had gotten in, he focused on Simon. He told the boy that Cassidy looked up to him, that she only wanted to go to school so she could be like him. He made Simon promise to take it easy on her and, no matter how much they argued and fought, to always remember that she was his sister.
Eventually, he had taken Simon’s hand and made him promise to look out for her if she ever got in real trouble. He told the boy that he could be as angry as he wanted to be, but when it came down to it, Cassidy was his sister and that meant something. No matter what happened or how mad they got at each other, he would always be her big brother.
Simon had been far too young to really think too much about it at the time, of course. And Robert had used smaller words. He wasn’t quite that dramatic about the whole thing, to the point that Simon hadn’t even really understood the weight of what he was saying until he was older, looking back at it. He just made sure the boy understood that his sister depended on and looked up to him, even if she didn’t admit it.
A quick shake of his head in the present-day scattered the mental image of Robert back then, like throwing a rock into a puddle to break a reflection. Now, he wasn't even in the city anymore. Simon had driven all the way out to the freeway, and was heading west. He still had no particular destination in mind, yet accelerated even more. He just wanted to go. He wanted to put all of this behind him. He wanted to ignore the whole thing and just… drive.
And yet, he couldn't force his thoughts away from his sister for long. Within a few more miles of driving down that freeway, Simon found himself thinking about the past once more. Not about the first grade this time, but somewhat more recently. Specifically, five years ago. He had been fifteen years old, two years into taking martial arts and weapons handling courses. He hadn't known at first exactly why his parents wanted him to take those classes, only that they insisted he learn to take care of himself. Not that he had objected. Learning how to fight, use knives and swords, and even how to handle guns from as early as thirteen had been amazing. He hadn't even really paid that much mind when his parents told him to keep his extra classes a secret from Cassidy, saying that they didn't want her to be too jealous about the whole thing. Not wanting to risk his mother withdrawing her permission for the classes, he had kept it a secret, suppressing the urge to brag about all of it to his sister.
That had been going on for two years by the time he was fifteen. Two years of those classes by the time he finally found out the truth about what their parents did and why they wanted him to know how to fight. By the time… by the time everything changed, when Simon and Cassidy’s grandfather, their mother’s father, had made his move. It was in the wake of that attack, when Cassidy’s friend had been murdered along with the rest of his family and household staff, that Simon had finally been sat down and told exactly what their family did and how they had gotten into the business.
He remembered that as though it was yesterday, sitting in the kitchen with his father, being told everything. His dad had still been in his Silversmith costume, itself a massive shock. Meanwhile, eleven-year-old Cassidy had been up in her room, being held by their mother and rocked back and forth.
For over an hour, their father had talked to Simon, telling him the whole truth. Not only about their family’s business, but about what had happened that night. He wanted Simon to tell him if he ever had any contact with his grandfather, especially over the past couple of weeks. So, he told the boy everything. And when his mother had joined them after Cassidy had fallen asleep, she had talked some more about the way she had grown up. Her father, Simon’s grandfather, was a real-life Mafia boss. She was a Mafia princess. And then she and Simon’s father had taken over the business and converted it to what it was now. They made it into the Ministry.
From there, Simon’s training had only accelerated, and he had rapidly become an integral part of the organization. His friends, those who could be trusted, had been brought into things as well, while those who could not had been… phased out. That wasn't his parents' call. They had not forced anything of the sort. It was Simon. Knowing what his family did, what they were, made him realize that he had to be selective. He moved away from people he couldn’t trust, and surrounded himself with friends who were in on the whole thing. There were multiple tests just to make certain of that, and the ones who failed had their memories erased by Kent Jackson.
And yet, it was one other moment with Robert Parson that Simon kept going back to as he drove along the freeway. Shortly after that whole… horrific night, fifteen-year-old Simon had been using their house’s indoor basketball court, taking foul shot after foul shot, when Robert had come to see him. He told Simon that he was going to be leaving for good, asking to sit with him for a few minutes. They had moved to the bleachers, and Simon sat down, listening as Robert talked to him about Cassidy. He told the boy that he couldn’t be around anymore, and that she was going to need someone to look after her. She was going to need her brother. Especially now that their parents had decided to erase her memories of that day, a choice Robert disagreed with.
Over the past five years, Simon had gradually let that moment slip away a bit, especially as Cassidy had gotten older and it was clear that she had totally forgotten what happened. Well, to an extent. Though their parents didn't really seem to notice, perhaps because they didn't want to, Simon had seen the way Cassidy kept all the people from school at arm's length. She didn't really keep any close friends, not the way she'd been with Anthony. She might not actively remember what happened, but subconsciously she was certainly trying to avoid losing someone else she cared about as much as she had that boy. Sure, she was friendly enough. She had school friends, but nobody but she really confided in and totally opened up to.
Still, even though he had acknowledged that, the intervening years bled into one another, and Simon had eventually stopped thinking too much about what Robert had said about taking care of his sister. And yet, that moment was right back in his head now, as he drove mindlessly along the freeway. He was a good forty miles outside of town, and still driving further with no idea where he was actually going.
The car had three-quarters of a charge, so it could have gone on for another eight hundred miles without needing a boost. Simon might have gone the entire distance, given the mood he was in. But it was at that moment that his phone rang, the car’s computer announcing it as his father.
Letting it ring several times as his mind raced, Simon finally told the computer to answer. He spoke immediately. “It’s done. The guy’s on the bus and Troy’s taking care of him. They’ll go underground until it’s safe to move him. I took his last payment before sending him through.”
There was a brief pause before his father replied, “I hear there was a bit of a run-in with Paintball. Are you okay?”
Was he okay? Simon glanced into the rearview mirror, watching his own reflection briefly before turning his eyes back to the road as he replied, “Yeah, I’m fine. I handled it. That guy’s a real piece of shit, but I still handled it.”
“And Paintball?” his father prompted. “I heard he had someone else with him tonight. Not the sidekick, some new girl. Probably a Prev, from what they were saying. Is there anything with that situation we need to worry about?”
For a few seconds, Simon didn’t respond, until his father said his name. Then he started a bit. “Sorry, some asshole cut me off. Uh, what?”
“I said,” his father repeated, “is there anything with the Paintball situation that we need to worry about right now?”
Hands tight on the wheel, Simon stared straight ahead, though his mind was far away. He thought of that moment in first grade by the car, when Cassidy had hit him with his own lunchbox because he wouldn’t let her go with him to school. And the moment sitting in the kitchen five years ago when his parents told him the truth about their business. And when he had sat in the bleachers at the household basketball court as Robert talked to him one last time before leaving. All of that passed through his mind in those brief couple of seconds before he spoke. “No. We don’t need to worry about Paintball.
“He’s just some little boy playing hero.”