Capítulo 2444: 27
Chapter 27: Collateral 4-3
Collateral 4.3
Dad was gone when I got home after my morning run on Saturday. His truck was missing from the driveway, and when I made my way back into the house, there was a hastily scrawled note pinned to the fridge with an old, worn magnet that had once depicted a yellow smiley face.
Taylor, it read. There was an emergency at work that I had to go and handle. I'm not sure when I'll be home, so there's leftovers in the fridge and twenty dollars under the cookie jar if you need to order out for dinner. Love, Dad.
The note went back on the fridge, and when I checked under the cookie jar, sure enough, there was a pair of fives and a tenner pinned beneath it.
With the mystery solved, I went and took a nice, long shower, staying perhaps a little longer than necessary so that I could enjoy the stream of hot water on my shoulders and neck and down my back. By the time I turned the water off and finally stepped back out, my fingers were wrinkled and prune-like and the bathroom mirror was covered in a thick fog.
The fog was slow to fade, but by the time I'd finished toweling dry, the mirror was clear enough that I could see myself in it. When it was only the long, dark hair of which I was so proud that remained damp, I stopped and let my towel fall to the tiled floor so that I could examine myself, as I had just over a week ago.
It must have looked silly, me standing there, naked, flexing my arms and my legs and staring at my own bum. It wasn't about vanity, although I could admit that I was in the best shape of my life and I liked it. The paunch that had clung stubbornly to my lower belly was gone, my stomach was flat, my legs looked like they went on forever… My face may not have changed and my boobs might not have really developed much, but I was…happy with the rest, I thought.
I wasn't trying to admire myself, though, I was trying to find some sign of what Amy had been talking about, some hint or clue or detail that would clearly mark me as superhuman. Something, anything, that would make it obvious that I could do things that would make professional athletes jealous.
There was nothing, though. No grotesque, exaggerated muscle mass. No protruding veins. My pectorals hadn't taken over my chest and my abs weren't so chiseled you could grate cheese on them. I was fit, and I could freely admit that the me of a year ago would have been envious enough for three people of how I was now, but I looked, at most, like I worked out and stayed in shape.
Yesterday afternoon, I'd spent several hours training with Lisa, teaching her the same martial arts I used. In the course of that time, I'd shot up from just below B-Rank to a hair's breadth from A-Rank. It was a massive increase, easily triple as much as I would normally get in a single day's effort by myself — and, in light of that, it was now obvious that I would learn a skill quicker if I was also teaching it to someone — but in spite of that massive jump, there was nothing different about me.
No bulging muscles. No great increase in height or weight. No sudden desire to eat a whole cow for dinner. I felt the same now as I did yesterday.
"Maybe Amy was wrong?" I muttered to myself.
But that didn't quite ring true. After all, Amy had some sort of sense for biology, some sixth sense that came from her powers that let her "see" muscles and bones and stuff, so she would obviously be able to see it all in better detail that my normal, unaided eyes could. Just because I didn't see anything like what she was talking about didn't mean she was wrong.
For that matter, Amy also happened to live with a whole team of superheroes, at least one of which was an Alexandria Package. Undoubtedly, she had a better grasp of what "superhuman" looked like than I did.
In the end, I decided I wasn't going to find anything, gave up my inspection, went back to my room, and got dressed. I thought about going out and getting some more training in or something, but I didn't feel like doing anything like that, today, so I grabbed one of my unfinished novels instead and plopped myself down on the couch to read.
Right around noon, I heard a distant rumble, heavy and echoing, that reverberated through our old house and rattled even the coffee table a little. I frowned, marked my place in my book, and went over to the window to look outside, but the sky was only a little overcast. There were no stormclouds in sight, and I couldn't remember hearing it was going to rain anytime today.
I shrugged — Dad had always said that meteorology wasn't an exact science, anyway, and maybe I just hadn't been paying enough attention to the forecast — and was heading back over to my seat when my new cellphone rang. I picked it up without really checking — there was only one person who actually had my number, after all, and that was Lisa — and pressed the button on the screen that looked like a green telephone.
"Hello?" I said. "Lisa?"
"Taylor, good, you answered," Lisa said, sounding rushed. "Are you near a tv?"
"Um, yes? There's one right in front of me."
"Good," said Lisa. "Turn it on, any channel. Now."
"O…kay…"
I grabbed the remote with my free hand and turned on the tv. Immediately, I was looking at a newscaster sitting at a desk, the Brockton Bay News Network logo blown up behind him, with a banner at the bottom streaming something that I wasn't really watching. I was paying more attention to the grim expression on the man's face.
"— ring you this special news bulletin," he was saying. "Just minutes ago, three large explosions rocked Brockton Bay. One occurred in a parking garage near Brockton General Hospital. Another struck the headquarters of the Dockworkers Union, the local chapter of the International Longshoreman's Association."
For an instant, my heart stopped beating.
"The third and final explosion hit the iconic Medhall building downtown, causing it to collapse," the newscaster continued, heedless of what he'd just done to me. "At this time, there is no information regarding how many were injured or killed in the explosions, nor what caused them. However, Medhall CEO, Max Anders, was last known to be in his office near the top floor, and there has been no word, yet, about whether or not he survived the explosion or the subsequent collapse."
I felt my mouth drop open, and the remote fell from my hand and clattered to the floor with what seemed to be a thunderous clang.
"Taylor?" said Lisa's voice, tinny and distant. "Taylor, are you still there? Taylor!"
"Dad," I whispered.
Heat gathered in my eyes, burning, and my knees were suddenly too weak to support me. I landed unceremoniously on the couch, staring, unblinking, at the television that had just told me I was now an orphan.
I was alone.
What was I going to do? Dad… Dad was all I'd had left, in the world. All the family I'd still had. I didn't… How was I…
"Wait," said the newscaster, lifting his hand to one ear. "Ladies and gentlemen, I've just been informed that BBNN has received a video and a claim of responsibility from Brockton Bay's pan-asian gang, the Azn Bad Boys, also known as the ABB. We have not had the time to watch the video ourselves, but we will show it to you here, unedited.
"Please, keep in mind, it may not be suitable for some viewers and some may find the contents disturbing. Parents are strongly advised to remove their children from the room, and those with weak constitutions should be aware that the following footage is likely to be unpleasant. Viewer discretion is advised."
The image on the tv changed to black, then flickered on to reveal what looked like some mad scientist's workshop. There were wires and spare parts and half-finished contraptions laid out all over the place, and standing in the middle of the chaos was a woman. She had long, black hair and wore a set of large goggles and what looked like a gas mask.
A cape, definitely.
The embers of anger started to burn through the despair.
The one who had killed Dad.
"Hello, Brockton Bay," the cape said. Her voice had a mechanical rasp to it, like she was talking from down a long tunnel or maybe wearing a modulator, like from those spy movies. "If you don't recognize me yet, then you'll come to know my face soon enough. My name is Bakuda, and until Lung is free, I am the leader of the gang known as the Azn Bad Boys."
She made a grandiose gesture, drawing my attention to the braided cords of wire that stretched over each of her shoulders. With the various gadgets and such arrayed around and behind her, it was pretty obvious that she was a Tinker.
"The three bombs you just experienced were my creations," she went on with a note of pride. "Those were just to let you know how serious I am when I tell you not to fuck with me. I've already set up several more around the city, just waiting for my signal to go off and really fuck up someone's day. If you don't do exactly as I ask, well, the three examples I just gave you should tell you what will happen, then."
She'd kill more people. Tension began to make its way through my body, and I wanted to get up and move, to go find her and take her down, so that she couldn't do to others what she'd done to Dad, so that I could stop her from taking anyone else's family away.
So that I…
I was already thinking of what hero I would use. Which one would be guaranteed to succeed. Siegfried, King Arthur, all of my knightly, frontline fighters were immediately out. I needed someone who could reach her without any chance of being stopped or delayed.
So that I could…
"Tomorrow, I'll send another video with my demands. Rest assured, one of them will be letting our glorious leader go. For now, the ABB has some unfinished business with the upstart hero responsible for his current condition. We have to take care of that before we can get on with all of the other stuff."
Bakuda leaned forward and towards the camera menacingly. The bright red of her goggles gleamed in the light of her dimly lit workshop, giving her an almost devilish appearance.
She was talking about me, I realized, moments before she started speaking again. She was doing all of this because I'd gotten Lung locked up.
"To Apocrypha, I send this message," she said. There was something like glee in her voice. "I hope I have your attention. This time, I let daddy dearest go. I could have blown him to pieces with all his work buddies, but I just wanted to make sure you were listening, because I do know who you are. I'll be expecting you at the warehouse tonight at midnight — you know, the one you've been practicing your powers at — and for every hour you're late, I'll detonate a bomb. If you show up more than ten minutes early, I'll detonate a bomb. If you bring the Protectorate or those New Wave cunts, I'll detonate a bomb."
Bakuda let out a low chuckle. "And if you still haven't shown up by noon tomorrow? I'll blow up your house, with you inside it."
She wasn't leaving me any way out. She wasn't giving me the chance to bring help or call the authorities. She was forcing me to either come alone or let her destroy more people's lives. And if I didn't go, she was going to kill me and Dad anyway.
Not that I was planning on staying away.
As the tv switched back to the newscaster, I lifted my phone back up to my ear. "Lisa."
"Oh thank God, you're still there," said Lisa. "Taylor, listen —"
"Is my dad okay?" I asked, cutting across her.
"What?"
"Is my dad okay?" I asked again.
"Fine, he's fine," she said quickly. "Bakuda did exactly what she said she did. Dockworkers HQ is ruined, but no one was hurt inside."
I let out a breath of relief and sagged into the couch. Thank goodness. Dad was okay.
"Listen, Taylor —"
The home phone started ringing, suddenly. My heart jumped — it had to be — and I dropped my cell onto the couch without even bothering to end the call. I was up and picking up the kitchen phone as quickly as my legs could carry me.
"Dad?"
"Taylor?" said Dad's voice.
The last of the anxiety drained out of me. "Thank God. Are you okay?"
It wasn't that I hadn't believed Lisa, but… I hadn't really believed Dad was okay until I heard his voice for myself. I couldn't lose Dad, too. Not after I just got him back.
"I'm fine," Dad said. "I'm alright, Taylor. I wasn't even in the building when the explosion happened."
"Are you…?"
"I'm with Kurt and Lacey. Kurt let me borrow his cellphone so I could call you and let you know I'm okay. Oh — wait, hang on."
I heard movement from Dad's end of the line, and someone's voice said something that I couldn't quite make out. Dad said something in reply.
"Listen," Dad began when he got back to me, "things are pretty hectic, out here, so I don't have much time to talk. We're still trying to find everybody and make sure no one's hurt, check the damage and see what's fixable and what's not, and that's gonna take at least a few more hours. I'm not sure when I'll make it back home, tonight."
"Oh," I said simply.
"Definitely before midnight, though. You gonna be okay by yourself? You got my note, found the money under the cookie jar?"
I nodded, even though Dad couldn't see me. "Yeah. I'll be fine."
"Good. I've gotta go, now. I'll see you later tonight, okay?"
"Okay."
"Alright, then."
"Dad?" I said before he could say goodbye.
"Yeah?"
I hesitated, but only for a few seconds.
"I love you."
It felt like forever since I'd said those words to him.
"I love you, too, Taylor," Dad said softly.
"Bye."
"Bye."
I hung up the phone, and for a moment, I just stood there, staring blankly at the receiver. My thoughts felt like they were all over the place, and I didn't know whether I should be relieved that Dad was okay, worried at the threat to our lives, guilty for having apparently brought all of this upon us, or angry at Bakuda for breaking the unwritten rules and involving Dad in this mess.
I felt my lips pull into a thin line. Probably angry. Relief and guilt could wait until this whole thing had been handled and Bakuda was no longer an axe looming over mine and Dad's necks.
I walked back into the living room, picked up my cellphone, and took a seat back on the couch.
"Lisa."
"Taylor?" came Lisa's voice. "Your dad okay?"
"He's fine," I told her. "…Sorry."
I wasn't sure whether I was apologizing for not taking her at her word or for leaving her on hold like that.
"It's fine. Don't worry about it." There was a short pause, barely a second. "You saw Bakuda's message, then?"
I looked back up at the tv, where the newscaster was still talking about the bombs. "Yeah."
"I wish I could tell you not to go, to leave it to the Protectorate and the PRT," Lisa began.
"— but we both know I wouldn't listen," I finished for her.
Not after she threatened my dad. No way was I going to leave it for the heroes to handle while I sat back and waited.
"No," she said, "it's not even just that. Bakuda is deadly serious about this. If anyone but you shows up tonight, she will cut her losses and start blowing stuff up. And it won't be the tame, conventional explosives she used already."
I hesitated.
"Conventional explosives?"
"She's a Tinker specializing in bombs, Taylor." Lisa didn't need to add 'duh' for me to hear it. "Who knows what kind of crazy shit she can build? That's why I'm going to stress this: be careful. Bakuda has already proven she's willing to ignore the rules and escalate, so expect for her to have stacked the deck in her favor."
Which had to mean traps and mines and all sorts of stuff prepared to make sure that she could get me exactly where she wanted me. She'd probably be bringing a bunch of flunkies with guns, too.
"Any other advice I can use?"
"Yeah. Something pretty simple, too. Bakuda doesn't know what your power is. No one outside Armsmaster and Miss Militia do, maybe the Director of the PRT does. You'll have the element of surprise, and all she'll have to go on is a few vague accounts from those thugs you knocked out before fighting Lung. Do it right, make her drop her guard by letting her monologue, and she'll never know what hit her."
For a moment, I was silent, and I contemplated the tabletop in front of me. The thing with Glory Girl notwithstanding, I'd only ever been in one real cape fight, and that was with Lung himself. Now that I'd had a minute to calm down and come off of that moment of despair and fury, I realized that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to just run off and hope for the best, the way I basically had that first night. I'd been lucky to have a powerset that gave me an answer to him fairly easily, but that wouldn't carry me through my whole career as a hero.
Undoubtedly, Bakuda had planned this whole thing out. If I just went in and winged it… I wasn't sure what she would really be capable of, when you had a bombmaker with access to the kind of high-tech, futuristic stuff that was characteristic of Tinkers, but the sorts of things Medea and my other casters could do gave me a healthy enough imagination for some of the possibilities.
"What did you have in mind?" I asked Lisa.
And if Bakuda could do even half the things I imagined, then the absolute worst idea would be to confront her in an area of her choosing after she'd had who knew how long to prepare it and get ready for me.
"Well," Lisa hedged, "I don't have a perfect read on her, because I've been using my power way too much, recently, and I already have a headache because of it, but I picked up quite a few things just from that video alone. So, this is what you should expect…"
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
I had to wait almost ten more hours for Dad to get home, and no amount of going over the plan again and again could distract me from a mounting feeling of worry and anxiety. I couldn't stop myself, now that Bakuda had played with one of my deepest fears, from imagining all of the things that could go wrong on his way home.
Bakuda could decide to screw with me again and just kill Dad outright, this time. She'd already proven willing to attack me outside my costume, and her biggest threat was that she'd kill us both if I didn't show up within twelve hours of the deadline. There was nothing, really, stopping her from putting a bomb in his truck while he was helping out with whatever emergency had called him in, this morning.
Or he could get into a car accident. Just…random chance. No rhyme or reason, no grand scheme, just the bad luck of getting t-boned by another truck driver or something. One guy drunk after the horror of the day, one idiot running a red light at sixty miles an hour — that was all it would take, and they'd be calling me to the city morgue to identify him.
Or maybe it would just be a mugger, trying to make a few bucks. Some guy who'd spent a little too long down on his luck or some strung out druggie desperate for the money to buy his next high, it didn't matter. It just had to be someone with a gun who wouldn't take no for an answer. Dad wasn't bulletproof, after all.
Over and over, my brain imagined scenarios for how he could be killed on his way home, from the frighteningly plausible to the bizarre and impractical. I was, suddenly, keenly aware of the number of ways he could be torn away from me, and now I could do nothing but think of them all as I sat in the living room, the tv on in the background, and waited.
It didn't matter how it happened, really. Whether it was Bakuda or a mugger or a reckless driver, the end result would be the same: Dad would be gone, and I would be alone.
My heart skipped a beat when I heard what I was sure was the door of his truck slamming shut, and Dad hadn't even managed to get all the way in through the front door before I had stood, run over, and thrown myself into his chest. Maybe a little harder than I should have, really, considering that I apparently had superhuman strength; the sound of Dad's breath escaping his body was almost explosive.
"Oof!" Dad stumbled backwards, a little, but managed to keep himself upright. After a moment, his arms came up and wrapped around me, too. "Hey, I'm happy to see you, too, but maybe be a little less rough, next time? I think I heard my ribs creak."
I buried my face in his chest, but loosened my grip a little bit. "I saw the news," I mumbled into his shirt. "I thought…"
I thought I'd lost you, too.
"Hey." He gave me a comforting squeeze. "I'm okay, alright? No one was in the building when the bomb went off. Everyone's fine. I'm not even singed, okay?"
I held on for a few minutes longer, as though to assure myself that he was really there and not a hallucination or a fevered daydream. Eventually, though, I had to let go, so I stepped back and let him come the rest of the way into the house. When the door closed, it felt like he was finally home and safe.
"How bad was it?" I asked quietly.
How close did I come to losing you?
Dad's mouth twisted into a lopsided grimace. "Did you eat?" he asked instead, changing the subject. "I'd understand if you weren't hungry, after what happened today —"
"Dad," I cut him off. "How bad?"
For a long moment, Dad just stared at me, mouth pulled into a thin line, and it was easy to tell he didn't want to say. At length, though, he let out a long, loud breath through his nose and ran his hand through his thinning hair. I thought I heard him mutter something like, "You're just like your mother," but I might have been imagining it.
"Bad," he decided on eventually. "No one was hurt, but most of the building is either rubble or barely standing. The city will be sending an inspector in a few days to decide whether or not it can be fixed, but I'm not holding my breath."
And if he'd been inside the building, he'd almost assuredly have been in as many pieces as the building itself was. They'd have had to send him home to me in a cigar box.
"Oh," I said lamely.
A hair's breadth away, it felt like. Not quite the same as, "an inch in either direction," but it felt like the closest of close calls.
"And…everyone else is okay, too?"
"Everyone's fine," Dad reassured me. "Someone called in a bomb threat, so we were all outside, waiting for SWAT or whoever to show up, when the explosion happened."
"O-oh."
Was that what Bakuda had meant, when she'd said she'd let Dad go? She called in the threat on her own bomb, just so that she could prove a point?
"Anyway, enough with the serious stuff." Dad gave me a tired smile. "Did you eat? It's a little late, but I could make you something real quick."
I gave a tiny shake of my head. "No, I ate. I just made myself some soup."
"Oh," said Dad. "Good. That's good."
We fell into an awkward silence. Neither of us seemed to know what to say, and I couldn't think of anything to really talk about that didn't bring up the bombing or how worried I'd been. Once again, I considered telling him about my powers, about how I was Apocrypha, but I knew it wasn't the time, either.
Dad would stop me, if he knew. He'd tell me not to go. I didn't want to think about what might happen, then, if I would obey and stay put, risking probably hundreds of lives, or if I would use my powers to put him to sleep and leave anyway, straining the relationship we had just started rebuilding.
"Well," Dad said at length. "It's been a long day. I'm going to head to bed, okay?"
Dad started to head down the hall, but I reached out to grab his hand and stopped him.
"Wait," I said as he turned back around. "Hang on. I… I've got something for you."
I let go and made my way past him, practically sprinting down to my room and to my desk. I nearly tore the drawer off when I pulled it open, I yanked on it so hard, and when I'd grabbed what I came for and slid it closed, my whole desk seemed to rattle.
"Everything okay?" Dad asked as I came back down the hall. "I could hear that from here."
I felt my cheeks flush a little. "Everything's fine," I told him. "I was just… Anyway, here."
I thrust out my hand, from which dangled a glimmering golden amulet. Dad's eyes went wide.
"Taylor," he whispered as he took it gingerly, "this is…"
He examined it carefully, turning it over in his hands and inspecting the craftsmanship. It wasn't exactly very masculine, being that it was identical to mine, but I hadn't had the time to go about making a new one, and when I was making this one, I hadn't been particularly concerned about whether or not it was manly enough.
He looked back up at me. "Where did you get this? It looks…expensive."
"I've been saving up," I told him, because I had been working on it for a while. "Lisa helped, too," I added, for good measure. It was even sort of true, too. "It's part of a matching set."
I reached down my shirt and pulled my own amulet up to show him. "See?"
"It's beautiful," Dad said. "It really is. I just…what's the occasion?"
"Oh, ah…"
I scrambled to think of a lie, something simple and easy that made sense enough he wouldn't question it.
"I guess…" I began. "It's…been a while since I actually got you a present. You know, for Father's Day."
I fought down a cringe. That was terrible.
"Oh." Dad seemed to buy it, though. "Well, it's very nice. Thank you, Taylor. I'll be sure to wear it."
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to trust that he really would, that he'd do exactly as he said.
But I couldn't.
It was one of those easy, careless promises people made all the time. In reality, he might wear it once or twice, maybe whenever he remembered it, but it would probably sit on his dresser or in one of the drawers, most days. It wouldn't tarnish, it wouldn't lose its luster, but it would just sit there. Forgotten, left behind.
Useless, in other words. It wouldn't do what I'd made it for — couldn't, as long as he wasn't wearing it. If I wanted it to protect him, as Lisa's protected her and mine protected me, then he needed to wear it every day. Every day.
I swallowed thickly and hated myself for what I was about to do.
Because if I couldn't trust him to consciously choose to wear it, then I needed to take away the option to go without it.
"Do you promise?" I asked him meekly.
"Promise?" Dad parroted.
I took his hands in mine, then looked up and into his eyes, just so that he wouldn't see the black bodysuit that wrapped over my fingers.
"Promise you'll wear it every day?" I said.
Dad gave me a reassuring smile. "I promise."
I reached out and twisted the world, and just to make sure it took, I asked him, "You really promise?"
Dad pulled one of his hands from mine and traced a cross over his chest. "I promise."
The geis wound itself around his heart, binding him to his word. I hated myself for doing it to him, for taking away even the slightest bit of his free will. First with Lisa, now with Dad… It felt like a slippery slope I might slide down, if I wasn't careful.
But… I was scared, and I couldn't take any chances. This was Dad's life, his safety, at risk. Bakuda had already proven exactly how easily he could die, how easily he could be taken from me, and I had already lost Mom — I couldn't, I couldn't lose Dad, too.
So, my geis wound itself around his heart, and I stole away a little of Dad's free will. Maybe, when it was time to tell him about my powers, I would undo it and trust him to wear it on his own. For now, he would never go another day without wearing the amulet that would protect his life.
The undersuit faded away. I let go of his hands, but I couldn't meet his eyes, anymore.
"Goodnight, Dad."
I'm sorry.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Watch your step, Taylor. That slope you're looking down is like ice.
How many of you actually thought I'd killed Danny, there?
I was hoping everyone would have forgotten about Bakuda by the time this chapter rolled around, but it wasn't to be. Oh well.
As always, read, review, and enjoy.
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