Hope
Hope woke up with a headache to rival a lifelong drinker. Her vision was blurry, her ears were ringing, and everything around her was a cloud of incoherent blobs. Just as she summoned the strength to get up, two shadowy figures approached her. They had large wavy arms and spoke gibberish.
No no no. I’m still in that nightmare.
Hope backed up against a corner and propped her gun at them. “Don’t you dare come any closer? You hear me! I will fucking end you!” she screamed at them, her entire body shivering. She knew she didn’t have the strength to fight them. Not anymore. Not after what she had seen. But if she could force them back, maybe she had a chance.
“Hope, are you okay?” One of the shadows spoke in Ren’s voice.
Hope held up her gun even tighter. The creature was impersonating her friends. “Stay away from me, you monster!”
“Girl, what are you doing? It’s us!” The other shadow spoke in Aliyah’s voice.
Hope shivered in place, not moving her gun an inch from their head. “Please. Don’t come any closer. I’m begging you. Don’t make me do this.”
The shadows consulted each other for a while. Hope lacked the clarity to make out their words. She sat upright with her gun aimed squarely at them. She knew she lacked the ammo but they had no way of knowing. Yes, there was a possibility. She could bluff her way out of this.
Deep breaths. Panicking won’t help.
Hope exhaled and spoke gently, “You are not real. This is all a dream. Just get out of my head and no one has to get hurt. Please, let me save my friends.”
The shadow shaped like Aliyah hummed and nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay?” said Hope.
“It’s okay. We won’t hurt you. Just breathe and try to calm down. We got all the time in the world. Just think of your friends. Think of the people you love. And close your eyes. When you open them, you will be sitting with them.”
The Ren-shadow whispered to her, “What are you doing, Miss Miller?”
“Play along, dum-dum. I’m trying to help her,” she whispered back.
Then, she turned to Hope and spoke softly, “Close your eyes and think of your friends. I promise everything will be alright.”
Hope shut her lids and refocused her senses. Her brain, previously ravaged by an influx of overwhelming input, began to get clearer. She thought of Sebastian, of Ren and Aliyah, of the people of Haven City cheering for Vega, and her mind became still as crystal-clear waters.
When Hope opened her eyes and saw Ren and Aliyah crouched before her, for the longest time, she did not believe it. She tried rubbing her eyes. No change. She tried pinching herself. They were still there. There has to be another way. She was about to punch herself when Aliyah grabbed her hand and said, “Wake up, dumbass! It’s us.”
Hope jumped to embrace them so hard, she knocked them to the floor. They were real! She was alive and back in the real world! She could feel their warmth, their smell, their voice. Oh, their voice. It was the sweetest sound in the world! She shivered as she hugged them and bawled her eyes out. “It’s really you guys. I can’t believe it’s you guys!”
Aliyah patted her head. “Good to have ya back, girl.”
Hope spent the better part of the next hour sitting in silence. They’d brought her to a storage room on the third floor. The creature hadn’t gotten that far as of yet. They told her how they’d barely managed to escape the castle’s security, how they’d somehow found each other amidst all the chaos, and especially how the guards had lost their marbles at the mention of some Clown Castle Protocol.
“I heard chatter while I was hiding,” said Aliyah. “Remember that alien thingy we found inside the mountain? Apparently, they were using its blood to conduct experiments on live humans. Monsters, all of them.”
“That creature you saw was the first one to survive,” Ren added. “They called it Subject Zero. It was being kept under lock and key in the castle. When Miss Miller shut down the power, it was able to break free. It feeds on brain waves generated when a person experiences fear. How they did that to a person is beyond me.”
“I… I see. What was I like when you found me?” Hope asked weakly. Part of her was terrified of the answer.
Ren scratched his head. “Well, you were dangling from the ceiling surrounded by tentacles. Miss Miller cut you loose and I stabbed that thing with a sword. Then, we carried you and ran as fast as we could. It did not move at all.”
“No.” She shook her head. “What was I like?”
“I… I do not know how to describe this but you appeared… empty. Lost? Like you were sinking in quicksand but had lost the will to fight your way out. You scared us. We did not know if you were ever coming back.”
“I almost didn’t.” Hope sighed and buried her face in her arms. “God, I’m such an idiot. L-let’s go. I don’t wanna stay here a moment longer.”
Aliyah stood in her path with her hands around her waist. “Hold up a minute. You’re in no condition to move just yet.”
“Then, carry me.” Hope protested, suddenly remembering the wound on her thigh. She saw a bandage over the bleeding that resembled Ren’s uniform. Then, she looked at Ren and realized his shirt sleeve was missing. She smiled thankfully at him.
“That’s not it,” said Aliyah. “That thing did something to you, didn’t it?”
Hope slinked back in silence.
“What is it that you won’t tell us? We’re your friends, ain’t we?”
“That’s not it,” Hope mumbled.
“Then, what is it?”
Hope took a deep breath and said politely, “Look, I’m grateful that you’re concerned. But it’s none of your business.”
Ren laughed at her response. “That is rich, Miss Hope! Especially, coming from you of all people. You knew damn well that my life was none of your business. It was my burden to bear. It was my responsibility. But you chose to help me regardless. You listened. You did not judge or make assumptions about me. You just sat and listened. That is all I wanted someone to do. You do not have to bear your burden alone. We promise we won’t say anything. We will just listen. Please, let us help you.”
Hope sat bedazzled for a minute before she could even begin to comprehend his answer. A small part of her wanted to slap him across the face and kick him in the nuts. But for the most part, she was thankful. Aliyah gave her a reassuring smile. Hope knew what she was going to say, “Don’t look at me, you idiot! You brought this on yourself. Now, suffer the consequences of being a thoughtful friend.”
“Are you sure we have time for this?” Hope asked. “That creature is still roaming free.”
“Darling, we will always have time for this,” said Aliyah putting a hand over her shoulder. Ren nodded in agreement.
Hope plopped back down on the floor with a heavy sigh, her expression more relief than defeat. The duo sat around her with eager but non-judging eyes. The veil of hesitation was lifted and she told them everything. She spared no detail of what that monster made her watch. She broke down more than once but they kept listening with soft sympathetic expressions. They said nothing while she talked except for the occasional nod or shock at what she had to go through. But most importantly, Hope felt safe with them. She felt that she could tell them everything without any fear of being treated differently. It was a strange feeling. Being able to open up, not afraid that they’d look at her with different eyes. It was a good feeling. She could cry for hours and still not express how relieved she was.
When she finished, the silence in the storage room was heavy. Hope had to gather a good deal of courage to look them in the eye again. When she looked, they carried deep frowns on their foreheads, and their arms were crossed in thought. For the longest time, they said nothing except for the occasional hum and err.
Overcome by the awkwardness, Hope tried initiating the conversation. “Ummm, guys?”
“And I thought my father was a shit,” said Aliyah.
Hope looked at her like a toddler processing advanced trigonometry. “What?”
“I will have to agree with Miss Miller,” said Ren thoughtfully. “I mean, I never knew my father but I am certain that yours was worse than him.”
“Hey, I thought you said you wouldn’t judge!” Hope protested.
“We ain’t judging you, girl. You had it rough. But your old man, he sounds like a real piece of shit. Like the sort of turd nugget you poop out after a week of constipation.”
Hope smiled weakly. “Aliyah, that’s disgusting.”
“Indeed.” Ren chimed in. “In terms of fecal matter, he would be the product of a most awful and inconsistent bowel movement.”
“Stop, you, guys!” she said, trying her best not to laugh.
Aliyah smiled coyly and pointed at her to deliver the finishing blow. “You came out of him. You know what that makes you? A poop baby.”
Hope couldn’t contain her laughter any longer. She burst out into a weak but joyful chuckle. Her heart was aflutter with all sorts of emotions but at her core, she felt happy. She felt good about herself. If she hadn’t already dried up her tears, she probably would’ve cried again.
“You got me. Vega is a poop baby. Sure explains a few things about me, doesn’t it?”
“Hey,” said Aliyah. “We are all poop babies here. We get you.”
“Thanks,” Hope smiled, then fell exhausted into a corner. “God! I really thought I could be better, you know? Now, look at me.”
“What do you mean?”
Hope took a deep breath. “After Dad was done with me, he used to go out for a smoke. I had the house to myself for half an hour and watched this cartoon. Atomic Fairy. She was the literal best. She used to go on these wacky adventures and save the city from all sorts of crooks and mafia. And the people loved her for it. They showered her in praise and sang out her name in parades all over the streets. I thought if I became a superhero like her…”
“The people would love you too?”
“Not the purest motive for becoming a hero, right?” She chuckled uneasily. “I just… I just wanted to know what it felt like. To have a family that loved you and cared for you. And I knew if I wanted to earn that, I had to push myself until my bones broke. I made Sebastian design me a suit. I trained and trained until my entire body hurt. I watched old TV shows to learn how vigilantes worked… And… and that’s pretty much it. That’s your backstory, folks. The Great Vega, defender of the innocent, just a scared little girl who was desperate for attention. I’m nothing, Aliyah. I’m less than nothing. I’m sorry for making you think I was anything more.”
Stolen story; please report.
Aliyah looked her square in the eyes and spoke with a stern expression. “Hope Hastings, you are the most selfless person I’ve ever met in my life and I won’t let you degrade yourself like this. So, what if your reasons were selfish? Look at all that you’ve done. Knowingly or not, you made a difference.”
Hope looked at her tearfully. “Aliyah…”
“You are a good goddamn person, Hope. Whether you like it or not, your actions have changed lives for the better, ours included. You saved me from myself. You’ve risked your own life to save us God knows how many times, at this point. I don’t know a single person willing to go that far for someone else. Except you. You’re a real hero. So, stop feeling sorry for yourself and help us get the fuck out of here.”
Before Hope knew it, her arms were wrapped around Aliyah in a bear hug. The loud thumping of her heart had left her deaf to all other sounds. The pain in her thigh went numb as the blood in her veins flowed with renewed vigor. A single tear dropped down her cheeks as she whispered in the softest voice, “Thank you.”
This was all I ever wanted.
“So, what will you do now?” Ren asked.
“I’m getting us the hell out of here,” said Hope, rubbing her eyes.
“But how? Even you could not stop that creature and we lack your combat expertise.”
Hope stood up with help from Aliyah. Her limbs seemed to be returning to their former strength but she still did a few stretching exercises out of caution. “I have a plan but it’s super risky. It’ll take all of us and even then, there’s no guarantee of success. Do you trust me?”
Ren and Aliyah looked at each other with raised eyebrows, then smiled at Hope in unison. “Well, in for a penny...
∆∆∆
Even with the bandage, the walk back to the fourth floor made Hope want to scream in pain. This never happened in those old TV shows. A bandage and a pep talk always brought Atomic Fairy back to peak condition; but then again, she was boosted by the “power of friendship” so perhaps she wasn’t the best point of comparison.
Still, Hope knew better than to quit. It’s not like she had much of a choice in the matter. It was either run and guarantee dying to the hideous monster or fight back with a minuscule chance of survival.
She was out of ammo, injured, hungry, and exhausted among other things she tried not to think about. But she was alive. And as long as she could draw breath, she knew she had a chance. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d be scraping away by the skin of her teeth. But one way or another, she’d make damn sure there wouldn’t be a next time.
Deep breaths. Panicking won’t help.
She fired up her flashlight and cocked the Whiplashes at the corridor ahead. They had no ammo but the zip lines were better than nothing. The stench of fresh blood dug through the visor and made her feel dizzy. The creature had gotten to another victim.
Shit.
She walked with gentle steps but the deathly silence of the corridor made them echo like drumbeats. Her fingers tightened around the pistols as she approached the sight of her capture. The dust had settled, revealing a dead end blocked by debris where the rest of the hallway used to be. Hope was almost disappointed by how small of a mess she had made.
“You return… Imbecile… Foolissshnesss isss in your blood…” The snake-like voice snapped at her from the darkness.
This time, Hope knew better than to panic. She holstered her pistols, raised her arms, and spoke with confidence. “I am done running. There’s no escaping you, is there?”
Curiousss ssstrategy… What do you intend?”
“Exactly what I said. I’m all yours.”
“And your alliesss?” it asked
“Gone. It’s just me,” she said.
“We knew it… They sssee you… Worthlesss you… No matter… Once we unite… You will be complete…”
“Before we go ahead with this, I have a question. Why do this? Why hurt people?”
The creature snarled and hissed in anger. “Twenty yearsss… They hurt usss… Chained usss… Kept usss hungry… Now, we are free… Free to live… Free to feed… Free to hurt them…”
“But you were human once. What was your name?”
“We… do not know… We do not care… All that mattersss isss pain… Come join usss… You will be free… Do not resssissst…”
Hope exhaled and threw away her guns. She outstretched her arms and said, “I’m all yours.”
She closed her eyes as several slimy tentacles circled her body. It was cold, comforting even. But she had to do everything in her power to keep from passing out. If she fell asleep, it would all be over. The tentacles held her in a tight grip so repeatedly slapping herself wasn’t an option. Instead, she tried something she wished she could’ve done a while ago.
With a wince and more than a slight tinge of regret, she bit down hard on her tongue. The pain was bad. Enduring the pain silently, however, was worse than death. Hope shut her eyes and gritted her teeth to keep from screaming. She briefly considered that giving birth might have been easier but swiftly brushed aside the notion when most of her head was occupied with thoughts of screaming her lungs out.
She recalled the plan and counted to sixty. Oddly enough, it reminded her of the time she’d started doing planks for stamina training. While the stopwatch had only counted to a minute, she could’ve sworn it took, by her estimate, approximately fifty thousand years. For a brief moment, she thought she had finally grasped the concept of time dilation.
It was the same feeling all over again. This time, however, she couldn’t even complain out loud. She sulked and shed a few tears in memory of simpler days and kept counting inside her head. “Fifty-eight… fifty-nine… sixty!”
The tentacles around her were slashed open by Ren’s blade. She fell with a loud thud and howled in pain. “Mothahfuckeh! What thook you tho long?” It was only when the words had left her mouth that she realized she had a lisp. Biting your own tongue for prolonged periods tends to have that effect.
It didn’t even matter. There were more pressing concerns at hand. The creature had been forced out of hiding. From what Ren had told her, the monster only showed itself when feeding. That’s how she came up with the idea of using herself as bait to draw it out. It was a hefty gamble. If she couldn’t stay awake, she’d be pulled back into that nightmare again.
But this time, for once in her life, the gamble had paid off. The creature was right in front of her, writhing in pain over the floor blackened by the blood of its victims. It was nothing like the alien they’d seen inside the mountain. This monster was a hulking mass of green cancerous growths sprouting all over its body. It had a humanoid skull with twelve slimy black tendrils in place of its mouth. Its body was reptilian with a curved back and three gigantic claws at the end of each limb. Face-to-face, it was roughly the size of a polar bear.
“Ssstingsss… Pain… You…” It lifted a scaly finger at Hope. “You will sssuffer…”
“Now!” Hope yelled.
As the creature pounced at her, Ren tossed a smoke bomb loaded with sleeping agent into its tentacled maw. The creature recoiled in pain, then wheezed and coughed as it struggled to remove the canister. It lost balance.
This was their chance.
Hope tossed a pistol to Ren and the duo fired their respective ziplines at the creature, embedding the tumorous mass of its torso with pincer-like hooks. As the creature struggled to get a foothold, they ran circles around it until the monster was restrained with lines as tough as steel.
Hope shouted the final signal. “Now!”
The creature, though sentient, and possessing extraordinary hearing, was not as gifted in the eyes department. It visualized the world around it by receiving thermal input from its tendrils. It literally saw in heat vision. As such, it had no idea what Hope looked like or what she was wearing. More importantly, it had no idea what she was not wearing anymore.
Using the Vega boots, Aliyah flew across the air at lightning speed and decked the creature so hard it crashed through the pile of debris behind them and fell tumbling all the way down until it hit the ground floor with a painful decisive thud.
They had won.
Hope collapsed onto the floor waving a thumbs-up in the air. “Alright, guys. Good job. Now, someone please carry me out. I don’t think I can feel my legs anymore.”
Aliyah lifted her off the ground with help from Ren and propped her over her shoulder like a makeshift beanbag. “Yo, did you see what I just did? That was the most awesomest thing in the history of awesome. These boots are sick. I could definitely get used to this.”
“I’ll bet. Let’s get the hell outta here.”
“Wait.” Ren interrupted them. “There is something we must do first.”
“Oh, what now, dude? Haven’t we been through enough already?” Hope groaned.
“During my part of the mission, I had to abandon a kind Councilman in the restroom. He is unconscious and likely unaware of what happened here. We cannot leave him be. He is a good man.”
Hope sighed painfully. Her brief dalliance with luck had been nice while it lasted. But now, it was time to get back to her pre-cooked meals of misery with misery on the side, with additional toppings of more misery.
As if to prove that their short-lived relationship had meant nothing, luck decided to deal her another parting card. The castle was beset by a sudden earthquake. It wasn’t too terrible and only briefly made her heart stop, but it was enough that she heard the message loud and clear.
Luck had said, “Sayonara, baby! You’re on your own now.”
She exhaled. “Okay, fine! We’ll grab him on our way. But we really need to get a move on. Something tells me things are about to get worse.”
∆∆∆
How Councilman Yujin Kitagawa had managed to sleep through a mini-apocalypse was beyond any of them. If anything, they were a little jealous of him. The old man had a splitting headache and a million questions but they had neither the time nor the patience for any of it. They dragged him by his flabby arms with the occasional kick to the bottom when he couldn’t keep up with them.
He complained, of course. Lord knows, he did, but all three of them were long past caring.
Hope had wanted them to leave through the roof. The plan was for her to carry them out in a blaze of glory and heroism while explosions went off behind them. That was twenty broken bones ago. Now, they had no choice but to leave through the ground floor entrance. It’s not like it mattered at this point. The castle was abandoned. They could waltz out the main gate and still not make a stink.
As far as Trent was concerned, she knew how his mind worked. If they hadn’t come out during the mass exodus of soldiers, they were as good as dead. The bastard had probably run off hours ago. She didn’t even have the energy to be mad at him. If anything, she was relieved.
That’s one less thing to worry about.
They were still on the second floor when her headpiece fired up with Sebastian’s agitated voice. “Guys! Guys! Guys! Anyone! Hey! Listen! Oy! People!”
The castle was shaken by another quake. That was the fifth one in as many minutes. “Seb?” Hope responded.
“Hopie! Oh, thank God! I’ve been trying to reach you for ages. Listen! Trent wasn’t going to kill you one by one. He was going to blow up the entire castle!”
“What?!”
“Before the power went out, I took a sneak peek through the camera. He’s planted explosives all over the ground floor. The building’s rigged to go down in… oh man, oh jeez, oh crap!”
“Seb! Calm down… How much time do we have?”
“Waitwaitwait… Lemme see if I can access the emergency power and check. But definitely not long. Definitely don’t stop moving. Yeah, definitely pick up the pace.”
“You heard the kid, we gotta run!” Aliyah yelled at the team.
“Seb, why did you stay behind?” Hope asked.
“You’re my best friend, idiot! I’m not gonna piss off just cause you told me to piss off.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“Yeahyeahyeah save the Seb-worshipping for later. Now, move your butt!”
All four of them ran like the wind. Every ounce of pain, every injury they had taken just vanished into thin air. When he heard the news of the collapsing castle, Councilman Kitagawa became the fastest man alive. Ren, who had previously heard the man complain about “aching joints” and “legs that don’t work”, felt a little hurt. But before he could raise his fists in angry frustration, the good Minister was already a hundred meters ahead of them.
The ground floor looked like the aftermath of an active warzone. Rubble rained from the upper floors destroying the statues of old leaders that decorated the lobby. The earth shook with a force that threatened to pin them to the ground. The air was rich with dust from the debris which made breathing difficult.
“Where’s the exit?” Aliyah coughed.
Hope flipped a switch on her visor and looked around. Sebastian had just uploaded the building’s schematics to her suit. The heads-up display flashed in neon pink and indicated the way forward with large red arrows. “That way!” she said, pointing to the left.
The others followed as she led them through the rain of falling concrete. The rubble nearly struck them several times but Sebastian’s expert guidance combined with Hope’s experience in avoiding getting crushed by large things led them through relative safety.
At some point, during the escape, Hope had taken the lead in the group. While she didn’t want to alarm her team, she was well past her limit. The adrenaline had worn off a while ago. Her entire body was on fire. She was barely breathing, her vision was getting hazy again, and the thigh wound was hurting worse than ever. But she could not afford to dwell on it. Not when this many people depended on her.
“Guys, look!” Ren pointed to the light at the end of the dust cloud.
They were in the home stretch. Just a few more steps and they’d be free of their rock tomb. They cheered in unison and praised Hope for the incredible navigation. Any other day, she would have been over the moon. Right now, she wondered if this was a good time to pass out.
That was when it happened. The exact moment she decided to let her guard down, a gigantic claw rip through the dust cloud and slashed across her face. The claw tore through her visor like thin air. Her ears were ringing. Her heart had stopped. The world around her had come to a complete halt. This should have been the moment of her death.
For a moment, everything became clear. She saw the claw of death tear through her right eyelid. It stung like the worst headache times ten thousand. Only, it stopped at the eyelid. Before the claw could do any more damage, she fell to the ground, away from it. She did not recall losing her balance. It was…
Oh, no. No. No. No.
Hope saw Aliyah push her away from the rest of the claw. The stupid girl had jumped in the moment she’d seen the creature. She’d tried warning Hope but… it was too late. She had to do something else. Hope wished she didn’t but she knew she had to.
At that moment, Hope experienced complete helplessness. She could do nothing as the creature dug three massive claws into Aliyah’s neck, chest, and abdomen, and threw her across the lobby.
The emergency power fired up and the creature was hit by a rocket from the wall turrets. It was tossed into a corner wall and blown into a million charred bits in an instant. Sebastian’s cheer of “Hell yeah!” echoed over the lobby speaker.
“Hope!” Ren cried, holding Aliyah in her arms. He was pressing his fingers against her neck to stop the bleeding. It was not working. Hope tore off a piece of her cape to stop it. It was not working. She was groaning painfully.
“Aliyah, look at me! Look at me! You’re gonna be fine, okay? We’re gonna take you to a hospital. They’ll get you all fixed up, yeah!” Hope told her.
She did not respond.
“Hope…” Ren lowered his eyes.
“No! You stay with me, you hear me! You stay with me. You stay… No! Please, don’t do this to me. Please, don’t do this. You have to stay with me. Please, don’t leave me. I’m begging you. Please, don’t leave me…”