Well hey, we weren't even halfway to our destination and we already had those energy crystal things, which was going to help in the long run. That had to be a good sign about how our trip was going to go, right? Unless it was more of a consolation prize because we were going to completely fail and-- no, Cassidy, don't let yourself think like that. It wasn’t going to help anything.
I sort of drifted between positive and negative opinions about the whole situation over the next while, as Paige continued to drive down the freeway. Sometimes we talked and other times we simply rode in silence, watching the cars around us. But it wasn't an awkward sort of silence. It felt comfortable and just… easy in a way I hadn't around people that weren't my family for a long time. Of course, Izzy was included in my family by now, and I had definitely felt comfortable with her. But being this comfortable with Paige? This was new. Unless it wasn’t. That whole thing was still messing with my head. I had this long history with her that I couldn’t actually remember. But maybe my subconscious did and that’s why it was so easy to sit with her like this despite the history I did remember? Yeah, no wonder it was so complicated and headache-inducing whenever I stopped to think about it.
So, I tried not to think about it. Doing so wasn’t helping right now. I just had to live in the moment. To that end, I pushed all those thoughts out of my head and focused on what was actually happening right now. The two of us were going to get to that town in Utah, find that house, get rid of whatever defenses Pittman had on it, and take the thing back to Detroit.
We made our way across Iowa while playing various car games, or just talking. Not even about anything important, honestly. We chatted about nothing in particular, about movies, games, people at school, that sort of thing. There was a whole fifteen minutes devoted to debating one actor versus another for the role of a hypothetical movie. It was dumb and pointless. And honestly, it was absolutely wonderful. I was so stressed about my parents and that whole situation back home that letting go of that and simply talking about absolutely nothing important was exactly what I needed. Once in awhile, she passed along a question from Sierra through their connection about how she should react ‘as me’ to something in school.
After another few hours in the van following the whole restaurant incident, I was finally too tired to keep my eyes open. It had been a long night, to say the least. We’d had to leave the city, walk a good distance to reach the van, and now we had been driving for about twelve hours by that point, with an interruption for that fight in the middle. Sure, the fight hadn't taken that long, but it was still draining. I found myself leaning against the far side of the seat, staring out the window as my consciousness gradually left. Cars were passing us, the signs were all the same, the lines along the road blurred together, and the soft music Paige had put on filled the back of my head just enough to lull me even more. She had entirely stopped talking by that point, clearly realizing that I was drifting off. I tried to tell her she should help me stay awake so I could keep her company, but she simply replied that she was fine and that I needed to sleep.
And eventually, I did. I was completely out of it, dreaming about something to do with visiting the zoo with a couple friends when I was younger before gradually coming out of it. I wasn't leaning against the other side of the seat near the window anymore. I was laying down with my head on something soft. My eyes opened, only to find myself looking up at Paige. I was laying with my head against her shoulder. She raised an eyebrow while looking at me, waiting until I was clearly fully conscious before calmly noting, “You really are accustomed to having a big bed to roll around on.”
Yeah, if I hadn’t already been fully conscious, that would’ve done it. Eyes widening, I felt my face turn pink as I quickly sat up and shifted around. I’d completely changed position to turn that way and ended up sleeping against Paige while she was trying to drive. How had I done that without waking up? Why didn’t she stop me, or push me back the other way, or--ugghh I was never going to sleep in the car like that again. My face was burning even more as I composed myself. “Sorry,” I murmured, shaking my head quickly. “I’m really sorry. You should’ve woken me up.”
“You needed to sleep,” she reminded me flatly. “If you’re going to be the one heading into that place first, you can't do it while you're exhausted.” She still sounded like she wasn't that happy about the whole idea. She wanted to be the one going in ahead, but that wouldn't work. Not when we were pretty sure there would be at least some sort of Biolem defenses. Because Fred had a point. Pittman had to have planned for that. He had been the one who wanted us to go there in the first place, back when he was pretending there was a chance we could work together. He had to have planned for Paige to be in the house. So there was no way in hell I was going to let her go in until I checked the place over thoroughly. Yeah, it wasn't the most perfect plan in the universe. It wasn't like he couldn't have security measures to deal with me too. But at least those couldn't include his voice saying a couple words and completely turning me off or switching me into some sort of obedient kill mode or something. At least, I really hoped they couldn’t.
Once I calmed down from my embarrassment, I checked what time it was. Late afternoon running into evening. Paige informed me that we were about six hours outside our target, and that she was going to pull over in the next hour or so to get some rest herself. She had been driving for a long time by that point, and wanted to be completely fresh before we had any chance of running into any of Pittman’s goons, be they human or Biolem. We genuinely had no idea what trouble we might run into, but whatever it was, we both had to be ready for it.
Over the next hour and a half or so, we talked a bit more. I very specifically avoided any discussion of what we were going to find once we got to that house. Instead, I focused on asking Paige a little bit more about Anthony and how that whole situation had been. She’d already told me about how we met, including the part where I had run right into Pittman while playing with Anthony at his house. So basically my relationship with the man had started out with me slamming right into him headfirst to stop the guy in his tracks. Yeah, that uhh… that was weirdly appropriate. Which made me wonder how he would feel if he knew who I really was. Not that I was quite curious enough to risk him finding out. But still, just the thought of how freaked out he might be to learn the truth kind of made me smile a tiny bit inwardly. I’d had a taste of it back in Paige’s Biolem brain with the virtual Pittman, but this would be the real thing.
To be fair, I didn't make Paige do all the talking the entire time. As curious as I was about the whole Anthony relationship, it was only fair that I talked some too. So, I told her a bit about what had happened with me after I Touched. She already knew the basics, and I had told her some of it along with the others back when I explained the Ministry situation, among other things. But now I just talked about all the little stuff. Things like how I’d tested my power in that unfinished rec center, about the first time I had realized I could paint my skates, or how I had first yanked myself to the top of a building. I talked about a lot of firsts, and about how terrifying and yet fun it had all been. I told her about how I probably threw myself into those early death-defying moments specifically to stop thinking and worrying about my family. Hell, I was still doing that even now. Shutting off my brain to focus solely on jumping and flinging myself from rooftop to rooftop gave me the chance to stop obsessing over the Ministry and just live in the moment. I had to admit that living in those moments, scary as they might have been, helped me keep myself somewhat put together.
Of course, Paige pointed out that given the person I was, I would’ve thrown myself off roofs anyway even if I didn’t have a reason to want to be distracted. And she was right. There was no way that I could have these powers and not use them the way I was. It didn't matter what the rest of my life was like. How could I possibly not run around from building to building? I had to shudder inwardly at the thought of what a boring person I would have to be for that.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Eventually, we pulled over at a motel. There was some debate about using a rest stop instead, but we both wanted to shower after walking and then sitting in the van for so long. We felt disgusting. Which, to be fair, I also felt that way emotionally about going to this house in the first place. But at least with a shower I could feel physically clean again.
Paige used a fake ID to check into the motel, then we headed inside. She showered first while I sat on the edge of the bed and turned on the television. With the news talking about some random traffic report, I called Izzy back in Detroit.
After a couple rings, she answered with a quick, breathless, “Hey Cass, hang on gotta put Simon in the trunk and try to put out the fire. Do you think your parents will notice a couple cars missing, or like six… seven rooms in the house being destroyed? Eight at most. Sierra did a really bang-up job containing that fight, considering how many guns were involved.”
Catching myself after a second with the realization that she was absolutely messing with me, I blurted, “Okay, that’s not funny.” My words were met with a disagreeing snicker from the other girl before I rolled my eyes. “Right, I take it that means things are okay over there?”
“As okay as they can be,” she confirmed a bit more soberly. “I'm in your room right now. We just had dinner and Sierra's getting cleaned up. She really likes your shower, for the record.”
“Our shower,” I reflexively corrected while glancing toward this bathroom as I heard the one here running. “And what a coincidence.” Shaking that off, I pushed on. “Does that mean you guys ate with Simon?” Obviously we’d known that would happen, and there was no reason to think that simply sitting at the same table would allow my brother to instantly realize Sierra wasn’t me. But it was still a thought that made me tense up a bit reflexively. There was too much riding on this. If he even got a little suspicious and paid too much attention to me… but no, I couldn’t focus on that. There was nothing I could do to affect that situation right now, so obsessing wouldn’t help.
“Yeah,” she replied. “He made a big deal out of wanting to eat together. He was a little weird during dinner, but we're like ninety-eight percent sure that's just because of everything else going on. You know, it’s like he’s trying to hold everything together or something, doing what he thinks your--” She paused briefly. “I mean our parents would want. He left again as soon as dinner was over. I um, I don’t think he’s been sleeping that much.”
Great, now I was worried about my brother for a completely different reason. Absolutely fantastic, really. A wild thought went through my head about calling him to say he should get some sleep and that everything would be okay. But seriously, me calling from some random number and telling my brother he looked tired probably wouldn’t go the way I wanted it to. Especially if he happened to find out the call was coming from some other state halfway across the country. Which, considering how weird that whole situation would be, he would almost certainly look into it. But hey, on the other hand, at least ‘someone claiming to be his sister calling from several states away to tell him to sleep more’ would probably fairly effectively distract Simon from worrying about our parents.
Okay, yeah, that still probably wasn’t worth the trouble it would cause.
Izzy promised me things were going okay. Sierra had gone to school as me and didn’t act completely different, according to what Amber had told her. Apparently the other girl had stuck pretty close to my doppelganger whenever possible, just in case, but nothing weird happened. Or nothing too weird, anyway. Thankfully, with everything that was going on, people would probably excuse ‘me’ for behaving at least a little oddly.
“Yeah,” Izzy agreed when I expressed that thought, “and if anyone does start to suspect that anything weird is going on, she can just hang-glide from a skyscraper straight onto a jetski or something and everyone’ll believe she’s you again.”
Flushing a bit at that, I snorted. “Okay one, you guys need to stay out of my dream journal and don’t you dare let her steal that idea. And two, you guys are completely sure it’s going okay? You’re not just saying that so we don’t come right back? Because you could tell me if everything already fell apart.”
“It didn’t fall apart,” she insisted. “It’s fine, Cass, I swear. What about you guys? How’s the drive? You guys didn’t really get in a fight at a burger place, right?”
Oh right, Sierra. Paige would have told her what was going on. So, I confirmed that it was the truth, and told her about the energy things. Which just made Izzy vocally wonder if I was absolutely certain that one of my powers didn’t involve a type of paint that could attract trouble.
“I guess I’m just lucky that way,” I murmured before changing the subject. “Seriously though, it’s fine. We’re…. somewhere in Wyoming, a place called Laramie Falls. We’re gonna rest up here for a bit and let Paige sleep, then head down. We should get there early in the morning, before things get too busy. Hopefully before it’s light out. Then we can sneak in, get the machine, and get out before anyone even knows we’re there.” That was maybe being a bit optimistic about how the whole situation would go, but hey, I had to at least try.
“Yeah, good luck.” From the sound of her voice, Izzy had her own doubts about how simple it would be, but she didn't voice them. We just talked a little bit more about how the day had gone over there, and she let me know that she and Sierra were going to head over to the shop to check in. I talked to my doppelganger as well once she got out of the shower, and she asked a couple clarifying questions about some people from school just to make certain she hasn't said anything wrong in the brief conversations she’d had that she hadn’t already gotten info on through Paige. From everything I heard, it was all normal and under control. I just hoped that it actually would stay that way the whole time I was gone. Just a few days. The city just had to stay relatively calm for a few days. They could handle that, right? They could stick to the normal, Prev-style crime for that long. Just avoid completely blowing up into a maelstrom of Touched destruction until Paige and I finished this.
And while I was dreaming, I really wanted a diamond pony with a rocket saddle.
In any case, eventually I let them go and went to take my shower once Paige got out. When I was done and emerged, she was buried under the blankets, sleeping. I kept the TV turned low and sat there watching for awhile to see if they said anything about the situation back home. But there was only about a quick sixty second piece about how things back there were still under control and how the authorities were doing a fine job maintaining order. Which, yeah, of course that was all they were going to say. I managed to get a little more details thanks to posts from people from school whose accounts I followed, and things were a little more dicey according to them. There was still a lot of crime in the streets, even if the Fell gangs were staying quiet. Everyone knew the other shoe would drop soon enough, and the longer it took, the worse they all assumed it was going to be.
In the end, I slept as well for another hour or so, just to refresh myself. Once we were both awake again, we got some food at the nearby diner in this small town, avoided running into any robberies this time, and then got back on the road. Driving through those final few hours, we talked about what we were going to do, the sort of things I needed to look for and disable. She gave me a list of passcodes that might work, which I recorded on my phone just in case. And mostly, she just warned me over and over again to be careful and to let her know the second anything went wrong.
Eventually, we drove through Salt Lake City. Tooele was about thirty miles south-west. Which also meant we had to drive past the actual Great Salt Lake, and that was a real treat. It smelled horrible, to the point that we had to roll up the windows. Not that doing so helped completely. Seriously, how did people live around that?
“It’s the dead algae,” Paige informed me. “I mean, the algae feed off the wastewater with all its nutrients, then they die and the bacteria eat them. That produces hydrogen sulfide, which is what we’re smelling. That’s the rotten egg stench.”
“Well I wish it’d knock it off for awhile,” I replied, shifting in my seat. “How long till we get there?”
She nodded ahead of us. “Here comes the city limits right now. You sure you’re ready for this?”
“I’ve gotta be, right?” I shrugged, offering her a small smile while we cruised right into Tooele, population forty thousand. “Come on, it’ll be okay. We’re gonna handle this, grab that machine, and get out of here.
“But for the record, when we drive home, we’re taking a route that doesn’t go past that smelly freaking lake.”