Things didn't exactly get better for me throughout the rest of that flight. If anything, the longer we were in the air, the worse it was. I kept feeling more nauseous as it went on, to the point that I couldn't really keep it secret from my family. My mother noticed first that I had stopped playing the game with Izzy and was lying back against the seat, staring at nothing. My stomach was rolling and it felt like the whole world couldn't keep itself right side up. I wasn't barfing or anything, but it was pretty close. I couldn't focus on anything except for how awful this was.

Mom stepped over and took my temperature with her hand before telling me it was probably just motion sickness. Which made both Dad and Simon decide I must be dying, because since when did I ever get motion sick? I had been going on the most nausea-inducing rides since before I was technically tall enough to do so and I hadn't had any problems. I had certainly never had any issues with being on a plane. I just wasn't affected by that sort of thing at all, at least until now.

Yes, I did immediately worry about that. My paranoia spiked, fears that they would realize the truth just from that. But there wasn't much I could do about it. I mumbled something about probably eating something bad earlier and just focused on not losing my lunch. It was all I could do. Hopefully, once we were back on solid ground, I would feel better. Which didn't exactly solve the issue of what I was going to do on our way back if it made me feel sick again, but I'd have to cross that bridge when we came to it. Maybe I’d take a pill and sleep through it or something.

Finally, after what felt like days, the plane came in for a landing. I was curled up in the seat with my mother reaching across the aisle to run her hands soothingly through my hair. But at that moment, as soon as the plane touched down and began to brake, I felt better. No, I felt just fine, perfect really. In that second, all the mounting nausea I had felt throughout the entire flight completely vanished. It was like I had never felt sick in the first place. All of it was just instantly gone, as though the plane touching the ground had simply flipped a nausea switch in my head.

I sat up so quickly my mother audibly gasped, and had one of those barf bags in her hand held out to me. Apparently she thought I had moved like that because I was about to throw up. Even Izzy, sitting beside me, looked concerned as she shifted to pick up my glass of water if I needed it. But I just shook my head, waving off the bag and the glass as I looked around to get a glimpse through the window at the runway we were rolling along. “I'm okay. So, we made it?”

Dad turned in his seat, only noticing right then that I was sitting up. He raised an eyebrow while holding his phone in one hand. “Well hey there, my little scoundrel. You feeling any better? I've got a doctor ready to come take a look at you as soon as we step off the plane over there.”

Oh, fantastic, that was just what I needed. As my stomach rolled for a completely different reason, I quickly shook my head once again. “Nope, don't need them. See, I’m totally fine.” To demonstrate that, I rolled my head back and forth, bouncing up and down in the seat while shaking my upper torso and waving my arms out. I honestly wasn't sure what that was supposed to prove or how it helped, but it was the only thing I could think of right then. I had to do something to show them that I really wasn't feeling sick anymore. I absolutely didn't want one of their doctors to start paying too much attention to me. This was supposed to be a nice little vacation, not a new way to add on even more stress than I had already felt, damn it.

Granted, it was probably also dangerous to show them that my nausea had vanished the very second we landed. That probably wasn't completely normal. But hey, it couldn't be that bad, right? Sometimes people just felt sick on roller coasters and then recovered as soon as they stepped off it. True, I had never experienced that before, but I was pretty sure it was a thing.

Obviously, my parents weren't content to just leave it at that, no matter how much I would have preferred it. No, Mom felt my forehead again, which was redundant since she'd already determined I didn't have a fever back when I had been nauseous. But it wasn't as though I could simply tell her that. I had to play along with this and try to keep it as casual as I could.

As soon as we were able to step off the plane and onto that private airfield, Dad waved over a man who was waiting. Sure enough, he was a doctor. I had no choice but to stand there while he examined me. He asked me a bunch of questions about what I had eaten, if I ever got air sick before, and so on. All while he shined his light in my eyes, ears, and mouth, and checked my heart rate. The entire time, I was struggling to tell myself to calm down. There was no way he would be able to tell that I was Touched just through this simple physical examination, right?

If he could tell, the man had a very good poker face, because he basically didn't change expression at all throughout the entire examination. He simply ran me through his tests before informing my parents that he couldn't find anything wrong. Given I had demonstrated just how much better I was already feeling, his best guess was that I had just experienced a simple, if rather intense bit of air sickness. But, of course, we were supposed to let him know if I started feeling any effects again while we were in the city. Other than that, he couldn't really do all that much. He did give me a bottle of motion sickness pills and told me to take two of them if it started getting bad again, or before we went on any roller coasters or anything like that.

Simon, of course, piped up to point out that if I needed to take motion sickness pills every time I did something that might require it, I would run through the bottle in a couple days, tops.

My eyes rolled and I insisted that I was just fine. It was nothing to worry about. And I kept telling myself that was true, even as I shoved that bottle of pills deep in my pocket. That whole situation had to be a result of my powers. It was the only explanation. My extra sense gave me a subconscious knowledge of the scenery around me. When we were that high in the air, it couldn't sense anything, and that gave me some weird feedback or whatever. It made me feel sick.

It reminded me a bit about that time when I had jumped onto that car when those Oscuro guys were fleeing from the crime scene. They’d had some sort of Touched with them who had been able to make the car enter hyperspeed or something. From what I had been able to pick up later, his name was Drive. No one really knew too much about him. He didn't actually participate in fights. He was just a, well, driver. He used his power on getaway vehicles. And when I had been dragged along for the ride after he used it, I’d been left feeling pretty loopy, like I had been drugged. Honestly, he could have done a lot of damage to me when he saw me laying there after I fell off the car. But he didn't. He just left me alone and kept going. If I had the chance, I'd thank him.

But in any case, I was going to guess that both me feeling loopy after that trip, and feeling sick after being in the sky were connected to that extra sense. It really didn't like when there was a dramatic change to my surroundings, apparently. Which was just another thing to get used to.

Fortunately, my parents seemed satisfied after the doctor said I was fine. Maybe me doing another couple cartwheels and a backwards handstand helped with that. Either way, they left it alone and seemed willing to accept that it had just been some sort of weird momentary thing.

Of course, soon as that was over, the heat seemed to sink in for all of us. It was almost noon, and the temperature here in Arizona was hovering somewhere just over a hundred degrees.

Yeah, it was pretty damn hot. So, we all quickly piled into the waiting car with its incredibly helpful air-conditioning to head for the hotel. I had no idea how people lived here on a regular basis throughout the summer. This place was just too damn hot for anyone to be comfortable.

Even after deciding it had been because of the flight, I still held my breath a little as the drive got underway. But the nausea didn't return. Thank God. I had no idea what I would've done if I started feeling motion sick that easily. Especially considering I was finally just about to get my actual legitimate drivers license. It would have been just my luck to find out that a delayed side effect of my Second Touch was very severe motion sickness while inside a moving vehicle.

The hotel we were going to in Phoenix was called the Grand Legend. It had been built in just the past couple years, and was a combination resort and Casino. The state had legalized gambling recently, probably in an attempt to lure in more tourists who wouldn't want anything to do with the heat otherwise. If I remember right, my family had invested in that too. I had no idea if that was simply because it had seemed like a good business move to dump money into a casino in another state, or if this was part of some sort of plan to expand the reach of the Ministry this far. Honestly, I wasn't sure if that even made sense, but I also didn't want to totally dismiss the idea. I felt like there probably wasn't much that my family would put millions of dollars into if it wasn't in some way connected to getting more Ministry power and influence.

Yeah, all I could do as far as that went was keep my eyes open. Maybe I would spot something useful. Or maybe it would amount to nothing. Either way, I wasn't going to let myself obsess over it too much. After all, this whole trip was supposed to be a vacation from all of that. Also, there was a part of me that was certain that Paige had convinced Izzy to spy and tell her if it looked like I wasn't treating this like a real break. They would probably both scold me for it.

So, I did my best to push those thoughts out of my mind and told myself to focus on just having a good time over the next few days. I wasn't going to be Paintball on this vacation. I was just going to be Cassidy, and let all that extra stuff sit for now. It wasn't like the entire world would fall apart into complete anarchy and violence just because I took a break for a little bit, right?

After being dropped off at the hotel, we had a couple bellhops come help carry our stuff in. We were heading to the top floor penthouse, obviously. It took up fully half of that highest level, facing the golf course behind the hotel with a view of the totally remodeled and renamed Jackpot street to one side. That was where all the Vegas-style casinos with all their fancy lighting, fountains, and statues were. The city really had embraced their new tourism draw over the past couple years. I could see the covered walkway along the sidewalk in front of the casinos. From here, it simply looked like a canvas roof supported by poles every ten feet or so, covering those walkways. But apparently there was Touched-Tech in use keeping the area under them relatively cool. Not as cool as being inside the casinos themselves, of course. But at least cool enough to walk around out there without immediately disintegrating into a puddle, paint powers or no paint powers.

The penthouse had three separate bedrooms, enough for our parents to take the main one, and for Simon to take another, while Izzy and I shared the last one. Which was only about half the size of my regular room, but still. It wasn't as though we would be spending much time there. Not when that tournament was going on. I was planning on watching every race I could from right up front in person. I wanted to be down there in the action as much as possible.

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Technically, saying that Simon had a room to himself wasn't actually right. He was sharing with his new cat, Bailey. I still felt like I knew her somehow, but I was resigned to the fact that it was just my weird paranoia about everything poking its head up. She was just a little gray cat, there were plenty of those around. And she kept staring at me because I was something new and that was just what cats did. There was nothing untoward about Simon having a freaking cat.

Clearly the idea of going on vacation was turning my brain inside out. It was frantically looking for some sort of problem to focus on, and for some reason, it chose Simon’s new pet. I really needed a distraction, that much was obvious. Fortunately, we had to come to the right place.

My mother wasn't quite ready to believe that I was perfectly fine now. Not after she had spent so much of the flight over here seeing me curled up in a helpless ball, obviously queasy. Before letting us leave the hotel, she insisted on giving me her own once-over, doctor’s words be damned. She asked me a bunch of questions about how I was feeling, meeting my gaze with that ‘Mom knows if you're lying’ expression. Fortunately, in this case, I didn't need to lie. I really did feel perfectly fine now, and I showed her that by jumping around and turning in circles.

Finally, between all that and what the doctor had said, Mom was at least satisfied enough to give up on her brief idea of having me stay in the room for the afternoon. She did, at least, insist that I stay with Izzy and that we call them if I started feeling even a little sick again. Especially considering the heat out there. We both pinkie-promised that we wouldn't push things, I endured a little more teasing from Simon, and then we were set free to explore.

Today would be about just looking around. The actual games wouldn't start until early tomorrow, so we were just going to check out the hotel and the surrounding area for a bit.

As we left the penthouse and descended on the elevator, Izzy looked at me. I could tell she wanted to ask about that whole weird thing with my nausea, but held off. There were cameras in the elevator, and I was absolutely certain that my family had access to them. Given the way my mother had clearly been worried about me, she probably wouldn't even hesitate to tap into them to make sure I hadn't just immediately collapsed the second I left her line of sight.

So, Izzy held off on getting into any of that. Instead, she shook her head. “This place is ridiculous. I'm pretty sure our room by itself is bigger than the ones that most people stay in with their entire family.” After a brief pause, she looked around before gesturing with both hands. “Actually, you know what? I think this elevator is bigger than most of those rooms!”

Snickering despite myself, I patted her on the back while taking my own look around the stupidly fancy elevator with all the padded seats, gold designs, and the mirrors on every wall. It really was a bit too much. And probably twice the size of a normal elevator. Honestly, I wasn't even sure why it needed to be bigger than usual aside from showing off. But then, showing off was basically the reason for this entire hotel’s existence. “You might be onto something there. But hey, at least there's no real chance of us getting claustrophobic on the way to the lobby.”

With a snort, the other girl replied, “Well, yeah, it is a pretty long ride. Maybe we should've packed a lunch for the trip. I mean, what floor are we even staying on, the six thousandth?”

My head shook. “It's not quite that bad. There's only seventy-two floors in the entire hotel.”

Even as I said that, the elevator stopped to let someone else on, a tall man with an eyepatch over his left eye, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. This was definitely a guy who was here to enjoy himself. Or maybe he was a pirate. Not like the old parrot and peg leg type. There were gangs that went around some of the freeway areas between major cities and attacked shipping trucks. They were like gangs in the cities, but they roamed around freely instead of being tied to one area. People called them pirates for obvious reasons. And some of them embraced that with the old cliché imagery. But I was going to bet that this particular guy was probably just a normal person who happened to have an eyepatch. Again, brain, knock it off.

Obviously, I needed a distraction. This was getting ridiculous. Every time I looked at anyone new, my paranoia was going off on a rant about them being pirates or an ordinary gray cat being familiar. My parents had been right about one thing, I clearly needed a real break from all of that stuff. And they didn't even know a tenth of what had actually been going on in my life.

The man with the eyepatch glanced my way, offering a faint smile that revealed a few gold teeth. Yeah okay, he was definitely leaning into that imagery. Maybe it was a costume for a party or something. Or he just liked looking that way. Whatever it was, he spoke up just before the elevator reached the ground floor. “You two must be headed straight for the casino.”

“Oh yeah,” I agreed sagely, as both of us bobbed our heads. “We’ve got a real gambling problem. She lost her car the other day.”

“And we were both twenty-eight before we got here last week,” Izzy put in brightly. “I had no idea you could gamble away your age.”

Giving a loud guffaw, the maybe-pirate replied, “Believe me, kid, if they could do that it would definitely work the other way around. Let’s just be glad it doesn’t, cuz we’d have eighteen-year-olds walking in this place and leaving in their seventies a day later.”

The doors opened, and he gestured for us to go ahead. As we were walking out into the lobby, a couple resort employees ran over. At first I thought they were going to cause trouble for the guy. Instead, they started asking him all sorts of questions about event scheduling, maintenance, and other things. And they called him Mr. Legend.

Oh. Oh, Mr. Legend. As in the Grand Legend, the hotel-casino we were in right now. The guy we had just been talking to wasn’t a pirate. He was Lysander Legend. Yeah, that probably wasn’t his actual birth name, but it was what he went by. He had been some sort of lounge singer and magician for awhile, made it big, invested in one of the smaller motels about ten years ago, then sold that in order to invest in this casino as soon as gambling started to become a thing in Arizona. He was, as far as I knew, my parents’ primary contact here in the city for their Phoenix investments.

Which probably meant he was at least aware of the Ministry, if not directly involved in it. So maybe my paranoia had been onto something after all. But either way, there wasn’t anything I could do about that right now.

Instead, I looked over at Izzy and offered a slight shrug. “Well, I guess we’ve got some time to fill before dinner.

“Let’s go find something fun to do.”

******************************

Amber And Her Mother React To What Happened With Whamline

The house had been empty and quiet when Amber arrived. Probably because her mother had expected to pick her up from the Minority headquarters once her debriefing was over. But Amber hadn’t been able to even think about facing her. She’d slipped out the back, asking one of the staff in there to let her mom know that she was going home. Then she’d taken a rideshare on a roundabout path, stopping at a coffee shop for a drink before actually going back to the house. A house that stood dark and silent as Amber entered. The coffee, barely touched in that time, was already cold. She set it aside on the counter and forgot about it almost immediately. Getting the coffee had just been something to do, a familiar action within a world that was suddenly so unfamiliar. She put it on the counter, then walked into the living room. Her father’s chair was in the corner. The chair he always sat in. Neither she or her mother had been able to bring themselves to move it or sit in it at all over the past year since his death. It just stayed there.

Amber still didn’t sit in it then. She sat in front of it, dropping to the floor with her legs crossed under her. She sank down, head lowered to stare at the carpet, and remembered. She remembered staying in that spot, sitting there as a child watching television with the comforting presence of her father behind her. She could imagine crinkling pages from her dad reading his book, and his occasional chuckle at an amusing line. He read novels while she watched her cartoons. He was just… he was there. He had always been there, right behind her.

Now he wasn’t. And he never would be again. He had been gone for a year, but now… now they knew why. They knew what had happened to him, who had killed him.

She heard the key in the lock, followed by her mother’s entrance. Though it was still fairly dark in the living room, Amber knew her mother could see her there, illuminated by the streetlights outside coming through the partially-curtained window. But she said nothing. Neither of them spoke for a moment. They knew they were both aware of each other, yet silence reigned.

Finally, Diane O’Connell slowly walked over. Her bag was left on the table by the entrance, as the woman made her way to where her daughter was sitting. She too didn’t take the recliner that had been her husband’s favorite spot. She simply sank down to the floor by the girl, hesitating very slightly before reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder. It was a touch that made Amber flinch.

The teen girl said something then, a soft mumble that was indecipherable. Diane had to lean closer, gently squeezing the girl’s shoulder without speaking, without interrupting.

It came again, that mumble. Then again, and that time Diane understood it. Amber repeated herself again and again. Her shoulder, under her mother’s hand, was shaking.

“--sorry… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” The shaking continued, as Amber forced herself to turn her head, forced herself to look her mother in the eyes. She deserved that much. The misery of her broken soul was on full display, the tears in her eyes blinding her to the point that her mother’s form was completely indistinct, a blurred figure near her. “I didn’t know.” Her voice was so cracked, so shattered, that it was barely decipherable. “I swear… I swear I didn’t know.”

Diane had thought that her heart couldn’t break any more after the death of her husband. But this--seeing her daughter and hearing her words, it was so much worse. A soft gasp escaped her, and she slid her hand from the girl’s shoulder to her arm, squeezing it before taking her other arm. Gripping her tightly, she pulled Amber around and into an embrace. “Oh baby, no, no, not that. It wasn’t your fault, no. You didn’t know. They didn’t know, nobody did. Nobody but him.” Just saying that word, ‘him’ without any name at all still made her voice crack.

That boy, that child had shaken her hand. She’d met him, spoken to him both in costume and out of it. He was her daughter’s frie--her daughter… teammate. And all that time, throughout the entirety of their relationship, he had known who she really was, and what he had done.

Amber’s face was pressed into her shoulder, the tears immediately soaking through Diane’s shirt. But she didn’t care. She held her daughter even tighter, clutching her as they both sat in front of her husband’s chair. Pressing a kiss to the top of the shuddering girl’s head, she murmured soft reassurances. She told her daughter she loved her, that her father had always loved her and always would. She told her it wasn’t anyone’s fault but that boy’s. They didn’t know. Amber didn’t know. Only that boy did, and he was… he was…

“He’s gone,” Amber murmured, though there was no relief or pride in her voice. There was nothing but disgust, loss, and emptiness. “J… Jer--he’s gone. He’s dead. He won’t…” She trailed off, clearly barely managing to get the next words out, her voice hollow, empty. “... hurt anyone else.”

Yes, Jerry Meuster was gone. He was dead. And so was Carson O’Connell. They were both gone, and what had actually been accomplished with their loss? Was there any real sense of justice with the boy’s death? Was there any sense of relief, of closure? Had his death actually made either of the women feel any better about what they had lost?

It was too soon to say for sure, the wounds too fresh. But as she sat in the dark and held her daughter, a single thought was all Diane could hold onto.

She missed Carson. She missed her husband, Amber’s father, and his killer being dead didn’t fix that.

It didn’t fix anything at all.