The drive back to Detroit took eighty-seven thousand years. Or at least that's what it felt like. I would have put my hand on the constitution and sworn to everything I knew that we ended up going through some sort of time vortex that turned every second of that trip into a full day. It was truly excruciatingly long. Sitting in that van, knowing that Bobby was laying in that hospital bed behind us while the others were dealing with the Scions ahead of us, and we couldn’t actually help any of them was one of the worst, most anxiety-inducing experiences of my life. We were just stuck in that van, forced to drive across that entire distance bit by bit even though we had a teleportation machine literally in the back seat. What level of irony was that, exactly? An incredibly painful one, that’s what. I may or may not have spent an extended time glaring at the damn thing for being entirely useless in this particular situation.
Obviously, we had been getting constant updates from the others in Detroit about everything that was going on, mostly through Sierra’s connection with Paige. Which was at least enough to stop me from completely falling apart. They weren't actually fighting Pencil and his merry band of killers. They couldn't. Even if my team had suddenly become far more suicidal than I thought they were, those psychotic pieces of shit had put some sort of forcefield up around the apartment building they had taken over. An apartment building where Peyton lived, and where her mother still was.
I had agonized over and over again through a pretty long part of the drive back there about whether that was intentional, both with myself and with Paige. Obviously it was possible, and right in keeping with who they were, for Pencil and Cup to deliberately target the family of one of my team. Especially considering how angry they had to be with us after we had exposed their identities. Hell, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised about them deliberately targeting our families if they had any idea who those families were. But did they? I didn't think so. Not in this case. If they knew who Peyton was, they would've made sure to grab her instead of just barging into her building while she was gone. They would've started this while she was home. And putting up the forcefield over the whole building, searching the whole place where they already had everyone in the basement, all of that didn't really fit with the idea that they were deliberately attacking my friends or their families.
All I could guess was that it really was just a coincidence. Whatever the real reason was for them to be there, the fact that they had chosen Peyton’s apartment building for it was just really bad luck. But maybe not horrifically bad yet. After all, as far as Sierra had been able to tell with her infrared vision, they hadn’t been killing anyone before the forcefield went up. That didn't mean Peyton’s mother and the rest of those people were completely safe. Not by a long shot. But I felt like the Scions going to the trouble of gathering everyone in the basement was something close to a positive sign. Or at least as close to one as we could hope for given the situation. When the Scions were involved, ‘weren’t killing the hostages immediately’ was pretty much as good as it got. Hell, there had to be a reason they put up a whole forcefield around the building. This wasn’t one of their usual games. This was something big. They knew that this would attract a lot of attention. Sure, the city was understaffed, but the Scions taking over an apartment building and putting a giant obvious forcefield around it? It wasn’t how they did things. This was something different.
Honestly, that made me even more worried in some ways. Sure, maybe Pencil wasn’t there just to slaughter those people and move on. But then, what was he there for? Why make a big target out of himself? Something definitely didn’t add up.
Unfortunately, no answers were forthcoming. At least, not from where we were in the van on our way back. As for the others in the city, they made it clear that they knew something important. But they wanted to wait until we were back before getting into it. From the sound of things, they were afraid that saying too much, even on a communication channel as encrypted and safe as this one was, might be a bad idea. Wren said something about being worried that Cup might have some sort of Touched-Tech to intercept or identify if certain things were said. She made it clear that it was a big longshot and that the odds against the Scions having anything like that were about a million to one. But apparently whatever information they had was too dangerous to risk the one million, especially for any signal going all the way out of the city. They were going to wait and tell us the full story in person.
“Cops just tried explosives again,” Paige informed me while keeping her eyes on the road. She was getting updates through Sierra. “No effect. Whatever they're keeping that forcefield charged with, it's effective. No one can transport through it, and they haven't been able to knock it down.”
Qwerty bounced up and down a bit on the dash while shaking his tiny head. “But what are they doing? Why would they just take over the whole building like that? They haven't made any demands or anything?”
My head shook. “Apparently not. Sounds like they haven't answered any calls at all. Other people saw them take over the building and reported it. A couple even managed to get out in time. But since the forcefield went up, it's been completely silent. We were talking to the others through Sierra while you were asleep earlier and they said there was one spot where it flickered a little bit near the door for a minute and everyone thought something might be happening, but then nothing.”
The three of us were silent for a moment, taking that in. I finally sighed. “How much longer till we get there?” My voice was quiet. I knew it was nobody's fault that we weren't there. Hell, even if we had been, it wasn't like anything different would have happened. I didn't have some magical ability to get through a force field. If it had been a physical wall, then maybe my pink paint could have helped. But an energy shield? I would've been stuck sitting on the outside just as much as everyone else.
Unfortunately, logic didn't really help when it came to feelings, and I felt like I had messed up somehow. If anything happened to Peyton’s mom and it turned out I could have helped in some way, I wasn't sure how I would deal with that.
Of course, that was ignoring the fact that we’d had to take this trip to try and save everyone who was affected by Pittman’s little biological attack, including my parents, and Paige and Sierra's sister. Not to mention like half of the important Star-Touched in the city.
Paige answered, again without looking away from the road. “Four hours, assuming we don't run into any problems. Then we just have to hope that the kid’s teleportation works.”
Right, Wren had been working on the way to bring us back into the city along with the machine we had picked up. The idea was that as soon as we were within range, she would be able to transport everything that had one of the badges we’d used to transport out in the first place. But she hadn’t been able to test it across that long of a distance or with something this size. So, it was going to be an adventure. But then again, that was basically our whole lives at this point.
To distract myself from the terrible worry about basically everything, I talked with Qwerty for a little bit about what was going to happen once we got there. Not the big stuff, the personal stuff. I told him he would absolutely be able to stay at the shop with Wren and Fred, and that they were going to love him. I assured the nervous little parrot-squirrel that he had nothing to worry about as far as that went. From what Paige had said, the others were already anxious to meet the little guy. Almost as anxious as he was to meet them. Again, I had the impression that he had been incredibly lonely. I wasn't sure if that was simply a product of being on his own for a few weeks after becoming what he was, or if his separate animal selves had been lonely too. I wasn't sure about squirrels, but didn't parrots usually travel in flocks? I thought they were social creatures. The fact that part of him had been a parrot on its own out there in the middle of Utah probably wasn't good for it. Maybe that had contributed to his loneliness.
In any case, we talked about that as well as what we were going to do about registering him. We were going to claim that he’d Touched in Detroit. It was just better that way in the long run rather than trying to explain how he got from Utah into the closed off city all the way over in Michigan.
So, we would simply lie and say he was always in Detroit. There was some sort of whole legal process that had to be gone through to register a TONI and give them full citizenship rights. I felt like it would be even more complicated now with everything that was going on in the city. But we were going to get it done as soon as possible. He deserved that much. Hell, after everything he had done, he deserved a lot more than that.
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Eventually, he sat down in the back with the stack of activity books that we had taken the time to grab from the store when we were picking up supplies. While he busied himself coloring, I looked at Paige again and had to bite my lip before asking, “Did you ever talk to Anthony about me? I mean, about my… you know, about who I am.”
Glancing over to me, Paige met my gaze. “A little bit. Nothing huge or… we weren't trying to talk about you behind your back. He was just confused about how you could be sort of a girl sometimes and sort of a boy other times. He had questions.”
That made me snort out loud. “He definitely wasn't the only one. The whole thing is one big question. Or a lot of them. Buckets and buckets of huge questions. I thought I was getting closer to answering them, or at least understanding them, then everything happened, and my memories…”
I saw Paige’s hands tighten on the wheel visibly before she spoke again. “Your parents didn't mean to hurt you like that. They thought they were helping with your trauma. They didn't even know about that part, about any of that.”
“Yeah, just like how they didn't know about you.“ My voice was soft as I closed my eyes and leaned back in my seat. “But just because they didn't know what they were doing doesn't completely excuse them. They still made choices about what they thought was best for me without giving me the chance to speak up for myself. I was eleven years old, not two. I deserved the chance to tell them whether I wanted my memories or not. They didn't even give me the chance to say anything. They brought that man into my room and let him erase my memories, completely against my will. The fact that there were some consequences they couldn't have foreseen doesn't make that better. It was wrong, no matter how I was feeling. I was upset. Of course I was upset. It was traumatic. But forcibly taking my memories away, erasing Anthony completely without giving me any choice? That was wrong, period. No matter what they knew or didn’t know about everything else.”
Paige made a noise of agreement and then the two of us were quiet again. That went on for a while, just listening to the radio while getting the occasional update from Sierra about the situation in Detroit. Not that there was much for her to say. The shield was still up and nobody could get through it. That was about the sum total of things. Eventually, once we were under an hour away, the rest of the team left the shop and went to our prearranged spot so they could set up to transport us back. The original plan had been to transport straight to Wren’s place with the machine. But between how big the thing ended up being, and the fact that we were bringing Qwerty with us, Wren had decided it would be better to make things as easy as possible. So, we were going to try to make it across as short of a distance as we could. Well, as short as we could without attracting attention, anyway. If we had been willing to be obvious about it, we could’ve showed ourselves at the nearest checkpoint and then teleported straight across. But something told me that wouldn’t go well. The National Guard troops who were manning those checkpoints were probably a bit anxious after hearing that the Scions were up to something inside the city. Hell, for all they knew, Pencil and his people were trying to transport themselves out of there for some reason.
Whatever they were doing, it was bound to make everything worse. And that was definitely going to make the guards patrolling the area around the city have pretty itchy trigger fingers. Now was not the right time to start freaking them out even more. So we were going to try to be as careful and quiet as possible. On the plus side, the rest of the team weren't likely to run into any problems on their end. Between all the big guns trying to break through the forcefield around that building, and dealing with all the rest of the fighting, there wasn't really anyone left to poke their noses into the quiet old print shop we had transported from in the first place when we left. Wren and the others would already be setting up there, putting together what Wren had described as her ‘landing platform.’
As far as Qwerty went, Wren had been working overtime to get her transportation system ready for him so he could come across too. Thankfully, Paige had been able to send her all of his physical stats, scanning him from the tip of his nose down to the end of his tail. She gave the girl his weight, body dimensions, all of it. If he had been human-sized, it probably would've taken the girl too long to get him programmed into the transporter. But as it was, she finished with time to spare. And boy was he looking forward to his first time teleporting. He kept jumping from one end of the van to the other while making whooshing noises and calling for Captain Kirk to fire phasers.
Obviously, that had raised all sorts of questions in my mind about what sort of pop culture TONIs came equipped with. When I’d asked, he said he remembered watching the old Star Trek and a few other shows when he was a parrot. Not really watching obviously, but at least being in the same room while it was on. Even though that version of him couldn't really process what was happening on the show, he still remembered bits and pieces of it. Enough to make references. That had made Paige bring up an article she’d read that had said TONIs tended to remember things that they saw or encountered before they Touched and now had the required context to understand. Like if a dog spent a lot of time laying in front of a television that played a bunch of baseball games, then Touched, he’d understand the rules of baseball without being told. Stuff like that. Which was just… fascinating really. If I hadn’t been so worried about Bobby, my parents, Peyton’s mother and all those other people being trapped with the Scions, and… and all of it, I could’ve spent a lot more time digging into the details. And I probably would, once I could focus on that and didn’t have a dozen other things competing for my immediate attention.
So yeah, maybe in another eighty-seven years or something.
Eventually, Paige pulled off the freeway about ten miles away from the nearest checkpoint. It was already dark, and she turned off the headlights to avoid drawing any attention. She didn’t exactly need them anyway. We drove across the bumpy field, keeping an eye out for any helicopters. But honestly, I didn’t expect to run into too many problems. They would be paying most of their attention toward making sure people didn’t get out, or just stopping idiots from sneaking in.
We were sneaking in, yes. And we were, in many ways, idiots. But still.
Once we were as close as we could reasonably get, the three of us piled out. Qwerty jumped down to the ground, running to the nearest bush to relieve himself before frantically sniffing everything he could see. He kept asking if this was Detroit dirt, if that was a Detroit rock, if that beetle had Detroit citizenship, and so on. To say the little guy was excited was a bit of an understatement.
Paige and I got the machine out of the van and put the pieces as close together as we could. Then she carefully put several of the teleportation badges Wren had made on them. We hadn't come with enough, but the other girl had sent new ones through my special bag.
Finally, it was all ready. We had our own badges on, including Qwerty. Paige had carefully clipped it onto the end of his fur right under his chin, and he stood up straight, proudly displaying it.
“You're sure all my stuff is okay?” Qwerty asked anxiously. I had sent his activity books and all that through the same bag that we used to get the new badges from Wren.
“Yup,” I assured him. “The others already said they got them on the other end. Murphy says you did better on the crossword than she could have.”
The squirrel-parrot beamed at that, and blushed a little bit. He bounced anxiously on his hind legs, asking, “Are we going now?”
I started to say yes, before Paige spoke up. “Wait, something’s going on in there.” She held her phone up and showed me a news broadcast. Qwerty bounded up to my shoulder to watch as well. There was a reporter standing in front of the building with the force field around it. He was already talking. “--- found on a USB drive delivered through a hole in the field that appeared momentarily. Here's that message now.”
The view changed, and we were looking at Pencil in his costume. He was staring at the camera intently, unnervingly so. That was obviously the point, because he kept it going for a few seconds before speaking. “Boy, times are tough, aren't they? Seems like every time you turn around, someone's trying to fuck you over. First a gang war, and now we've got this plague knocking out half the heroes in this city. I mean, even I think this is a bit unfair for our side. It's no fun without a challenge.”
The words sounded like things he would say, but there was something wrong with how he was saying them. It was like he was going through the motions in a way. If I didn't know better, I would've said he was anxious and worried about something. Yeah, he was definitely on edge.
“I mean, in these hard times, we all need someone to lean on,” he continued. There was even more anxiety in his voice. I was pretty sure anyone would pick up on it. “Me? The person I lean on is my sister. I think you all know her, but let's take a look. Say hi, Amanda.”
The camera moved, and we saw the girl in question, Cup without her costume. But she didn't say hi. She was laying on a bed in some random apartment. And she was mumbling. The person with the camera stepped closer, and we could hear Cup--or Amanda-- saying random things about being a police officer for some sort of time travel organization. At first I thought she was using her power, but no, she was just talking in her sleep.
Wait, oh no. This was like my dad doing the whole Indiana Jones thing. Cup wasn't just asleep, she had been affected by the biological attack, which meant it was outside of the building where it originally happened.
“There are three hundred and four people in this building,” Pencil announced when the camera turned back to him. “Find the cure for this shit and bring it here. And in case you need some motivation for that, we’ll all use that number. After forty-eight hours, if you don't bring the cure, each of those seven candidates who have been trying oh so hard to earn their spot with our little family are going to kill three hundred and four people every single day until you do.”