Wake-up Call – Chapter 106

[Piggot]

A last goodbye with Jasmine.

It's… tempting. To confess. To tell her just precisely who Emily's niece is. To admit that, yes, I've been monstrously stubborn. Needlessly antagonizing. That I could've saved myself and so many others plenty of grief if I'd just…

Accepted help.

It's not that easy.

I stare at my hand holding the empty cup of paper taken from the water dispenser near the elevator. It has a colorful onomatopoeia set inside a flaring dialog bubble, something drawn with colored dots like you'd see in pop art pieces or, of course, in old comic books.

My steady hand. My slender hand that isn't bloated with poison and fluids by a body without functional kidneys.

I fill it up with a twinkling stream of overpriced mineral water and then drink from it.

Then I do it again.

And I suppress the shudder that still goes through me when I overindulge in drinking [water], of all things. When I feel the cool liquid flow over my tongue and down my thirsty throat. When I do this and no longer have to face hours stuck to my dialysis machine, the rumbling of the motor purging my blood a constant reminder of my weakness, of the price of my overindulgence.

For drinking water.

I look at the paper cup.

Wet. A couple of tiny droplets cling to the round rim, glittering with the sun coming in from the window in front of me, facing the ocean.

And I crush it.

Easy.

So easy.

I turn away from the window showing me a soothing, picture-perfect vista of Leviathan's home, throw the crumpled paper into a trash bin, and go back to the elevator that I always complained about when I was responsible for its maintenance budget.

I still don't call it.

It's just pushing a button, isn't it? A round piece of textured metal with an inset red light that signals the machine being on its way to get me to wherever I choose to be. Simplicity itself. I just have to ask for it.

Ask for help.

I'm tempted to take the stairs.

Because that's the one thing about things being easy when you aren't in control: they aren't. They are horrifying. They are yet another reminder of how little your choices matter when something, [somebody] else decides to take them away from you. Of how much you had to struggle for every little smidge of independence and autonomy you had to claw out of the mess that your life turned into because of…

I close my eyes.

Mike. Carl. Jones. Jess.

"Fuck it," I mumble.

And, without pushing the goddamn button, I turn on my heels and walk to the stairs, opening the grey metal door and realizing that it's the first time I'll be taking them since the first fire drill the PRT went through under my management.

It's almost liberating, just hearing the muffled echo of my sneakers hitting every step as I take in cool air and—

Mint?

I blink as I flex open the ammo pouch set in my forearm and slide a ball bearing down my inner wrist and to my ready fingers before I reach the landing and—

"Took you long enough," Hannah says.

She's leaning with her arms crossed against the ceiling-to-floor window facing the city behind her, the sun reflected off Medhall's glass façade playing across her profile.

Her power is a sword, resting upright by her side, the pommel on the floor, the tip precariously balanced against vertical glass, the black and green playing across the gleaming blade with a light stronger than that of the indirect sun.

"I didn't know you were waiting," I finally answer without taking the last few steps toward the landing she's on, standing three stair steps higher than she is.

Not like it matters. At all.

"Would you have come if you knew?" she asks.

And she's not wearing her bandana, the one thing that forces her to emote with her eyes that she always slightly resented, so I can see her mouth turn into a purposefully flat line that doesn't tell me anything other than withheld tension.

"Tattletale didn't prep you," I say, walking down until we share the same landing, and I can look down at the surprisingly petite woman who, nonetheless, has muscle tone to rival my own back in my prime. Back before my prime was earned rather than given.

Her eyes narrow just a bit, but she doesn't push away from the wall of glass that she's resting her shoulders on. She wears a denim jacket and a black top, and… And it would be easy for anyone who saw us walking down the pier to mistake us for college-aged friends before they noticed the slight hints of aging and stress marring her gorgeous skin.

And so, now I look younger than Hannah.

It feels surprisingly bitter.

"Should she have?" she asks.

I close my eyes.

Her scent… She sometimes likes to cook things that remind her of her origins, as much as she's embraced her new country. Today, she had that mint and yogurt thing that she sometimes favored for breakfast, and the strong smell of the fragrant herb clings to her fingertips after having minced it manually, cutting it with her power like she always did.

['I'm stuck with it. May as well make it my own,'] she once told me with a bright smile while we shared a cup of tea and a bowl of dipping yogurt in a breakroom that very few people used for its intended purpose, least of all me.

She's not smiling right now.

And, under the scent of mint, I catch what she, [Hannah], smells like, but my new senses don't stop there, and it's trivial to discover the cloud of anxiety clinging around her still frame. The apprehension at meeting me this one time when I'm yet again leaving my former place of employment.

"I'm still proud of you," I say. "But not any more than I was the last time I told you. I always knew you had it in you."

And now her mask of stillness shatters.

"You have no right," she says.

I agree.

"Of course I don't. I'm Emily Piggot, the spiteful woman who mismanaged the superpowered population of this city for years and perpetuated a conflict that a rookie Thinker just showed up as trivial to solve. My opinion holds very little weight around these parts."

"No," she says, and now she finally shakes her head, even if slowly enough that her fringe barely sways with the motion. "That's not… You let me go through that without… Where were you?"

And… And I see something in her green eyes that I didn't expect to catch, even with all the warning and insight that my senses have given me.

Pain.

It catches me off-guard, and I almost take a step back, but… but something tells me that's the last thing I should do. That retreating now, at this very moment, from her… would be unforgivable.

"I am sorry," I say, as little as that means.

"That's not enough," she answers, yet again, like she always did, catching the hint of my thoughts behind my words.

"Hannah, I… I thought I was doing you a favor—"

She stands up, away from the glass, a step closer to me, and now our eyes are almost level as her power leaps to her hand, turned into a sap that she clenches with paling fingers until fake leather creaks.

I know it's not a sign of aggression, just stress.

But I still make a show of sliding my forgotten ball bearing back into my arm.

"A favor," she says, her tone reverberating on the empty stairs.

"I am… I am not a good person," I tell her, repeating some of the last words I told her. "I am a mess, a broken reminder of a bad day. I can't [help] people, just… I can hurt the bad ones. The ones that deserve it, but…"

"You enforced the Endbringer's truth. While Colin was… almost dead."

"Yes. That. I can do that. I can—"

"You could've called. Visited. Told me… Told me how to work through loss," she says, and I feel a sharp stab going through me that I doubt Amy could ever dull when I see the start of tears in her eyes.

Amy.

I… Nights. Talking. Listening.

Why didn't I think to offer that very same thing to Hannah?

"I'm sorry," I repeat, my tone weaker than I expected.

Her hand clenches tighter around the creaking sap.

I almost wish she would hit me.

"That's not enough," she says, and a part of me can't help but think that she's talking about hitting me. About how that would still not be enough to make amends.

It's a part I find surprisingly convincing.

But… But silence falls around us, and I can only stare into her green eyes, trying to find something in there other than the spike of adrenaline and cortisol that I can smell all around her as her breathing goes unnaturally steady and deep enough that I just know she's doing the same breathing drills she does when practicing with her antimateriel rifles.

I should have Amy check her hearing. Tinnitus can be really annoying.

I almost laugh at the unexpected thought, then I think about the two of them meeting and talking, and the humor dissipates as I'm only left with the image of two young women knowing how much of a ruin of a human being I am despite years of training and sheer bloody-minded refusal to ever give up. Despite my need to keep fighting to the very end, no matter how ludicrous the odds.

So I…

I allow myself to shift my shoulders minutely, no longer squared off against her, but at a slight angle as I tilt my head down and wet my lips in a nervous gesture that was rendered superfluous four upgrades ago.

"What…" I start with an almost creaking voice, not quite believing what I'm about to say. "What [would] be enough?"

She looks at me. Green eyes that don't gleam like her power. That don't reflect the sun coming in from behind her, shining through her short hair. Green eyes that don't have anything supernatural or extraordinary about them other than a hint of tears and bitter disappointment at me failing at a duty I didn't even realize I had.

"I don't know," she mutters.

My throat clenches.

And I reach out with a single hand to hold hers over her clenched weapon until she relaxes the almost trembling grip.

"Will you let me find out?" I ask, more scared than any of the times I've faced a squad of E88 goons.

***

The scent of the sea assaults me, reminding me to close down my extra set of olfactory receptors as I walk out of the PRT building.

I'm… unsteady.

I wish I could just blame it all on Tagg being [himself], but the infuriating man is almost a fond memory after the draining confrontation with Hannah, and I definitely wasn't ready to talk with her about… about all the things we talked.

I remember our last meeting. The one where she'd gotten me fired, even if I turned that into a comfortable retirement. Where she reproached me for leaving without saying goodbye, out of all the other things she had the right to blame me for. The one where I kept thinking about how little the opinion of yet another broken parahuman should've mattered to me.

It… It wasn't that long ago, yet it seems like a lifetime after everything that I've gone through since then. My new body, my new self-imposed mission, my hopes for leaving a better mark on this world than years of mismanaging a city that could be a national threat all by itself.

And Amy.

Amy is not at all like Hannah. Never was, and never will be.

But it's maybe thanks to Amy that I can look back on that day, the day when I took my first step into becoming who I now am, and…

It was a joke. A stupid, flippant joke that I didn't even say out loud in the middle of an emotional confrontation.

['Damn it, is this a biological clock thing? How ridiculous would that be?']

Very. It would be very ridiculous.

Yet the past hour has been spent with Hannah and me going over our shared life and just how much little things can mean to an orphaned girl facing adulthood in a foreign country. How… How much an older woman with no family could come to enjoy seeing someone like Hannah growing up and becoming…

More than I ever could've hoped to be.

I let out a shuddering breath, and I don't care how many independent lobes Amy has installed into my lungs because I still have to shudder at the nervous release of… of things said and unsaid. Of how much I really messed up without even taking the time to acknowledge what I was throwing away to focus on the new life I had been granted by a ludicrously powerful parahuman.

My bike's parked a couple of blocks away from here, in the backstreets. But I need to clear my head.

So I turn to my left and follow the concrete promenade that precedes the boardwalk, overlooking the sea and the streak of glimmering sunlight playing over cresting waves that seems to constantly point at me as I keep moving away from the building I just left behind.

And, like so many times that I've been filled with too much energy to go back home and rest while looking at this stretch of ocean, I take out my phone and, out of sheer habit, call Amy.

"Hey," I greet her.

"So? How did it go?" she asks, more anxious than—ah.

"Good enough," I say. "I think making a standardized package may be a long-term prospect, but the cognitive enhancement… they couldn't sign up fast enough."

I can hear her [deflate] with relief, and I have to remind myself that… that she's placed a lot of trust in me with this project.

"So… I'll be working for them? Is that it? No more NEPEA to deal with?"

"There'll be trials, but they'll be [paid] trials. I think Tagg understands precisely how unique you are, Amy," I say, unable to stop the flattery from coming out.

It… It's almost a reflex, at this point. Her adoptive mother has deprived the girl of positive reinforcement, and I feel the urge to, at the very least, ameliorate that deficit. With mixed results, seeing how hard it is for her to believe any kind of compliment.

"Every parahuman is," she says, proving my inner musings right and making me sigh yet again as I turn to face the sea and stop walking, the sole of my sneakers shifting minutely over the grains of sand spread over the concrete by a wind with very little regard for urban planning.

"You know what I mean," I say.

I wait for her to answer. To acknowledge the truth that I think I convinced her of when I talked her out of even trying to attend Behemoths' last fight.

A seagull lands to my right and starts pecking at an abandoned burger wrapping before giving me a distrustful side-eye that I may deserve.

"No. No, I don't think I do," she says in something just shy of a whisper.

And…

Nights spent talking with her, listening to her, being uncomfortably aware of how much she was relying on me and what my new body could feel at times when the second puberty she inflicted on me acted up.

I take a step forward and lean on the banister, my left arm resting over wood unvarnished in weathered patches as I keep holding the phone to my ear.

"How are things? At home?" I ask, not mentioning Victoria.

But still dragging her into the conversation.

"Well enough," she says with a disappointed note.

I, despite myself, smile.

She's the second young woman I've disappointed today, but I feel much better about not giving her what she wants than I felt about not giving Hannah what she needed.

***

The conversation is short after that, more of a promise for a later meeting to talk in-depth about the ramifications of her future career as a cape for hire than anything of substance.

I don't look forward to seeing Carol Dallon once again. The woman was unpleasant enough back when I was somebody with power rather than… what? An advocate for her daughter's decisions? The instigator of said decisions? Somebody that a parent would, by all rights, want to get as far away from their daughter as humanly possible?

I snort at the idea.

And…

And I look back at the PRT building. The gleaming tower of glass that stands by itself in front of the beach, a small barrier between the city and the ocean.

A barrier I'm no longer part of.

I keep staring, just trying to find… something. Anything. Anything at all that tells me about the Emily Piggot that used to work there, that never realized what kind of bonds she'd actually fostered with a kind secretary who just wanted to help and a young woman who matured despite myself.

I would like to see that there are none. That Emily Piggot, [that] Emily Piggot, is no longer there. That all those years of fruitless fighting and bitter weakness have been erased with the touch of a parahuman remolding my body and life, finally letting me leave behind all that I never wanted to become.

It, of course, would be a lie.

I've lied often enough. It was part of the job, to keep fooling myself and others when balancing a greater good against a concrete evil. When I took every single questionable choice that was handed to me.

And I've kept on lying, now that I'm my own niece.

But I never liked it. Lying. I was, like Mom always complained, direct by nature. Straightforward. Honest, not by virtue, but by lack of tact.

And I think… I think it's time I stopped lying. At least to myself.

So I turn away from the building and walk to the small side street where I parked my bike, acknowledging that Emily Piggot lived and lives. That I'm not rid of her plentiful baggage.

But that I'm also… lucky.

Free.

Healed.

Not… Not entirely. Not from everything. Not by far.

But maybe enough that I can do more good than harm when I finally allow myself to… to acknowledge the people who, for reasons I don't understand, want me in their lives.

There's a bit of a smile tugging at the left corner of my lip as I finally reach the intersection I was aiming for, and I feel that—

My bike.

My bike is [dismantled].

It's… It's a pile of pieces, all chained up together or locked in a series of plexiglass coffers set around a lamppost with a single wheel mockingly secured to it with [my own chain and padlock].

People are taking [pictures].

My eyelids twitch in a wrathful tick that I'm too far gone to even think about repressing, and I stop toward the—and [now] it's on fire.

[Because of fucking course it is].

"What the fuck!" one of the tourists says, jumping away and almost dropping his phone to the sidewalk as he frantically pats a shirt sleeve that isn't actually burning.

I take another step forward, and, lifted by the warm draft, a rigid piece of paper flies out of the burning pile surrounded by perfectly safe, transparent cases that are [full of burning pieces of my bike].

I angrily snatch the square of paper out of the air, and, of course, it's a picture. A goddamn picture. A fucking, goddamn picture of a [mudguard pierced by one of my steel bearings].

['Now we're even. Toddles!']

My teeth grind. My fingers clench around the now crumpled picture of Lisa Wilbourne's motorbike. My eyes twitch. My nose catches the hint of cherry lip gloss emanating from the kiss mark on the lower corner of the picture.

And I [swear] I will have my vengeance.

========================

So. Show of hands: how many of you expected Lisa to hold this particular grudge and caringly nurse it until it was ready to blossom upon an unsuspecting bike?

And yeah, this was part of her latest conversation with Dinah. Foreshadowing? What's that? Can you eat it?

Okay, on a more serious note, I'm slightly loopy after barely finishing a 10k chapter from Dragon's POV (https://www.patreon.com/posts/wake-up-call-108-94699242) that is a direct follow-up to next week's 3.5k chapter from Dragon's POV (https://www.patreon.com/posts/wake-up-call-107-94234083). I'll leave the contents up to your imagination (though I'll be somewhat shocked if you can guess even one of the twists that will show up). Let's see how you do; you'll be graded on a curve.

As always, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true): aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, and Xalgeon. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!