The downpour mirrored my mood while I walked towards the clinic. I mentally dared every hypothetical mugger and rapist to try me, but I walked down the street in miserable safety.
Sadly, Frank Miller was too busy having Superman beat up the Sea King to write you some thugs.
I kicked a soda can into the gutter.
"We're not sure why the post office exploded."
I’d said I’d be gone for an hour. The clock was ticking.
Then you turn into sea-foam.
When I arrived at the double doors with the large red cross on them, I only paused for a second before continuing on my way down the street. I didn’t know where I was going.
Cringe law #432: Women in works authored by women must not give concious reasons for any action they take.
I passed the park where I’d once stopped a shooting, the office building where I’d chased a man who could chew metal and spit it out like bullets
That sounds like a bonkers fight.
(three people died that day)
Buzzkill.
As I approached a coffee shop called Café Stella, a customer opened the door with a jingle, and the swirling aromas of coffee and spices enticed me to enter. My hand met the door handle.
There was no way to justify this act of rebellion. What if a teammate saw me? But the café looked so warm and cozy, I decided to step in. Just for a minute or two. Patrick couldn’t punish me too harshly for just wanting to step out of the rain.
Patrick: Challenge accepted.
I'm still not sure if this complete isolation from even the most banal parts of civilain life really squares with the
Boys like celebrity culture we saw in the opening chapter. Actually, while we're at it:
The reporter referred to her notes. “Our viewers voted on our final question: any tips for prospective superhero leaders out there?”
What a stupid question. You were born into our life or you weren’t, and leadership was for men in elder families only.
How
did Patrick answer this question? Keep your
Psychonauts pimp-hand strong?
“What would you like, sweetheart?” The middle-aged man behind the counter smiled at me. His name tag read Lee. I bit my lip.
“I’ve never had fancy coffee before,” I admitted. “What’s your most popular?”
Actually, I’d never had coffee, period. It wasn’t available in the camp where I’d grown up, and if it had been, we probably wouldn’t have been allowed to drink it. Elder St. James often lectured to children that anything that alters the mind, besides medication, was dangerous, though he never explained why. The coffee smelled so good, and the old lady in the corner who sipped on a large mug seemed to enjoy it.
Great, now the superheroes are Mormon, too. For real, though, the FLDS seem to have been a big influence on this book. Funnily enough, though, from what I've read, a fair number of fundamentalist Mormon groups are actually less strict on the caffeine thing than their mainline counterparts. I guess still practising polygamy means you can psychologically justify minor discrestions against the text easier.
He thought for a moment. “If you’ve never had a specialty drink, I’ll start you off with a latte. It’s just coffee and milk, so if you want something more, I can give you some syrup or chocolate.”
He poured my coffee and gave it to me with a wink.
Lee seems like a nice man, but I wonder what he thinks is Jill's deal. Illegal alien? Sex trafficking victim? Fresh from the Sea Kingdom?
I handed him my money, donated by a thankful almost-victim of an armed robbery, and sat in the corner on a squishy loveseat, grateful for Patrick’s generosity. He allowed us to keep three percent of any money donated to team members. Because I didn’t spend often, I’d accrued about twenty dollars in six months.
If the team is registered with the city, you'd think they'd be paid a stipend. I'm sure Patrick could steal that, too, it just seems odd that donations are the team's only source of income. I doubt they have day jobs if even going into a cafe is haram. Does the wider cult pay for their upkeep? If so, where do they
get money? Do they charge for auditings with Cerebro? The thing about groups like the FLDS is that, while the rank and file members often live in squalor, they tend to be pretty economically productive. Heaven's Gate did web design for instance. The FLDS specifically are infamous for using child labour in construction projects for other people.
Eh, maybe the team has a Patreon.
A fashion and entertainment magazine rested on the table next to the loveseat. I turned it over so as to not be tempted to look at it, because looking at media not sanctioned by the camp elders was a very serious infraction, far more serious than sipping coffee. Coffee just temporarily intoxicated the mind. Most, if not all, movies, television, books, music, and magazines could pollute it forever.
Sometimes they compell you to review bad books until you die. It's been more than ten years and I still haven't quite gotten over
Billy and Howard.
If I thought hard enough, I could probably trace my character flaws to some rock song I’d overheard while grocery shopping with Ember.
I
think this is meant to be a sincere worry and not sarcasm? Either way, it was probably "Any Way You Want It." That song
sucks.
I settled back into the loveseat and started flipping through memories, looking for a song or image that had left a bruise in my psyche.
Welcome to the club, Jill. Moving on, a man called Benjamin walks in.
Lee and Benjamin shook hands and chattered for a few minutes. I didn’t normally listen in on civilian conversation, but Benjamin’s deep voice and bracing northern accent were pleasant to listen to.
Amerimutts, help me out here. What would "northern" mean here?
“Just my usual order, thanks. I’ll take a chocolate croissant, though.”
“You got it.” Lee got to work, and I couldn’t help but notice that Benjamin’s “usual” involved a lot of chocolate syrup.
I'm almost suprised Jill knows what that is.
After Benjamin paid for his order and took it from Lee, he looked around for a place to sit. I returned to mentally reviewing all the civilian songs I’d ever heard—it wasn’t a long list.
This implies that the superheroes have their own music they like to listen to.
...
“Do you mind if I join you?”
I startled and looked up.
Benjamin stood next to me, smiling pleasantly. He gestured to the empty spot on the loveseat. “Not to be weird or anything, but the loveseat is the best spot in the place.”
I doubted that. An identical couch sat in another corner near a pretty girl with spectacular hoop earrings. She’d been shooting glances at Benjamin since he’d come in.
I feel like a superheroine with basically no life outside of her vocation would be pretty suspicious of enourmous ear-ripping handles. Also, be glad this isn't Gaia, nameless stranger, or you'd already be ghost-chow.
I scooted closer to the arm of the loveseat, my own automatic smile stretching my face as I made room. “Er, no, that’s fine. Make yourself comfortable.” I certainly wasn’t comfortable. Speaking with normal people outside of strict superhero business was so forbidden I half expected to spontaneously combust.
If it weren't for... everything else, I'd be tempted to read this as a commentary on how so many modern superhero books completely sideline their civilain supporting casts, or how most superheroes these days don't even have regular jobs.
Because this is
so much better than Peter and MJ being married with a kid or two. Also, geddit, she said "jackpot" once! Benjamin asks Jill why she's so beat up. She calls it a "work accident." I assume it involved a screen door made of telekinetic energy.
We sat in silence for a few seconds. I tried to rework my face into something other than a grin. He seemed to search for a topic of conversation.
I glanced at the microwave. Thirty-three minutes.
Finally, he said, “So, first day of hurricane season. Scientists are saying we’re overdue for a big one. Do you think it could happen this year?”
“Don’t they say that every year?” I murmured into my latte.
Insert climate change joke here. Also, how the fuck does Jill know that? Is she talking about the mad scientists I assume she beats up.
He nodded. “Yeah, I guess they do. So, are you a student down at the university? I’m thinking about going there myself, and I wouldn’t mind an insider’s perspective.”
Well, that was forced. Might as well ask her if she's part of an abusive superhero team for how natural that sounded.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m an assistant gym teacher at one of the city schools.” My usual lie came out easily. The job was ordinary and explained bruises.
"I'm part of the supporting cast of a YA book about a school for giants."
Also, "one of the city's schools." I guess Patrick didn't drill them very hard on natural language. Or maybe he did and it gave them brain damage.
That’s exactly what happened.” I was purposely neither enthusiastic nor dismissive. It was best to let civilians think what they wanted to think. The conversation was focusing on me far too much for comfort, so I pointed to his book. “What are you reading?”
A woman outside the window answered a phone call. After a few seconds, she gasped and took off running in the direction I’d heard the sirens.
Now I was intrigued, but I had to wait for the call to report to the scene—I was technically supposed to be at the clinic, much too far from the sirens to hear them.
Oh, earlier, Jill heard an explosion in the distance. I'm guessing Danny is chucking a wobbly.
He held it his book. “A nursing textbook. I’m thinking about quitting my job and applying to the nursing school down at UGSC.”
“Nursing. Wow.” I was impressed—The University of Georgia at Saint Catherine was the largest university in the region.
There is actually a University of Georgia, but it's located in the town of Athens. I wonder if we're doing the Newport thing where Saint Catherine is basically just Athens but we don't have to bother with research because it's technically fictional.
“I don’t know much about it, but I’ve heard that it’s hard. Lots of long hours and cranky civilians. I mean, patients.” Whoops.
“It can’t be harder than my current job.” There was an edge to his words. He hadn’t appeared to pick up on my mistake.
“What do you do?”
“I’m an errand boy for my parents’ human resources consulting firm. And before you ask, no, the work isn’t hard. Being with my family all day is hard.” He sank back into the couch. “I’m actually supposed to be on a job right now, but I decided to ditch.” He looked sidelong at me. “I’m glad I did, though. Normally the company here isn’t so nice to talk to. Pardon me for being so bold, but I love your Georgia accent. It’s thicker than others I’ve heard.”
Benjamin's family are totally supervillains, aren't they?
Tell me about your bad boss and I’ll tell you about mine.”
His wide smile warmed my stomach. Against my better judgement, and the microwave’s half-hour warning, I started talking.
“My boss isn’t really bad, just difficult to work with. He…Patrick is kind of controlling. He yells a lot and gets really angry when I make a mistake. He’s just really hard to please. But it’s usually my fault,” I added quickly. “I mess up, a lot and there’s so much on the line when I do. I deserve what he does.” I picked at a spot on the couch. “You wouldn’t believe how much I mess up at work.”
Nobody had ever cared if a gym teacher does their job properly, we're just content if they don't fiddle any of the kids.
Benjamin raised an eyebrow. “I can’t believe that. And your boss shouldn’t yell at you. Although…I’m being hypocritical, because my dad yells at me a lot and I never tell him to stop. But Patrick’s not your family.”
Patrick actually was a distant cousin of mine.
With what we learn later, it does make sense that most of the supers are related in some way, though I do wonder how they maintain the whole hierarchy of elder families. Eh, the FLDS manage something similar, and they're probably even more inbred.
“Sometimes I think about quitting but then I feel terrible. Besides, Patrick would be so angry; he hired me and I owe him everything.”
Benjamin set down his cup. “Jillian, I don’t know what this Patrick guy has been telling you, but you can quit your job. And you know, if he’s such an ogre that you’re afraid to give two weeks’ notice, you may want to report him to the school board. That sounds like a really bad place to work.”
No shit. Time for Ben to share.
“I should start off by saying that my mom and dad are under a lot of pressure all the time.
"I keep telling them they don't need to put timers on
all their doomsday devices."
When things get bad, they lose control and start screaming their heads off.
"My mother's codename is Penanggalan."
Dad’ll get gruff, mom will say something nasty to my brother, he’ll reply with an attitude…” He trailed off and sighed heavily. “And then everyone jumps on the crazy train.”
"It's crazy because it flies."
“I—I’m sorry, that was a lot to unload on you.
Please, continue, I've got more shit jokes.
Smiling into the latte I was still drinking, I worked through his words, looking for the part that was supposed to be “bad.” Authority figures had a right to rein in their inferiors through any means necessary, and sometimes that included yelling, even hitting. It was just an unpleasant part of life, like hail or sickness.
Is hail a big problem in Georgia?
“So if you quit your job, where would you work? Could you teach something else?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what I’d do. This is all I’m good for.” The pain in my shoulder flared and I winced. I’d have to go soon, whether I wanted to or not.
From Ben's perspective, why would Jill have to teach something else. I'm sure more than one school has gym. Eager to change the subject, Jill asks Ben about his shirt.
He pulled the bottom of his shirt to straighten out the front. “Nirvana? They were a nineties grunge band. You’ve never heard of them?” He was surprised, but I didn’t hear any suspicion in his tone.
“No. Are they your favorite band?”
I could hardly judge him for enjoying a band, since he was a civilian and had no limitations on what media he could consume. I wondered what Nirvana’s songs sounded like. They couldn’t have been too bad, if Benjamin liked them—he was just so polite. Nearly all civilian music could corrupt, but I’d always gotten the impression from our lessons that some music could corrupt faster and more completely than others. Nursery rhymes and traditional ballads were alright—I even knew a few. Nirvana, whoever they were, were probably on the safe end of the scale.
Patrick's actually quite fond of "Rape Me" but only when other people sing it.
“Eh, not really. They’re okay. The shirt was last year’s birthday gift from my sister. She’s visiting right now, and I wanted her to see me wearing it.”
I sipped my coffee to hide my smile. I didn’t know what I’d expected from talking to this young civilian man, but such thoughtfulness about his sister’s feelings wasn’t it. I was moved.
I assume at the camps the only birthday present you get is being beating with a rod as thick as your pinky.
“What bands do you like?”
Dang it. “Um, there aren’t any specific bands, but I’ve always liked singing with my family. We used to sing around campfires when I was young.” Those days seemed very far away. “Singing while we played in the meadow…while we worked…while we ran through the trees. I love to sing.” I hadn’t sung in six months.
Oh, God,
Surface Breaks flashbacks! I'm drowning!
Benjamin’s eyes shone. “Were you in musicals when you were in high school? I wasn’t good enough to be on stage. I ended up doing debate and forensics, plus some other stuff. What did you do?”
I knew what “debate” was, but not the other activity.
You're telling me the superhero isn't familar with the concept of forensics? At least enough so she doesn't go touching shit at crime scenes?
However, before I could bluff my way through an answer, my phone rang. A quick peek at the screen showed that it was Marco. I mouthed to Benjamin to hold on a minute while I took the call over by the bathrooms.
“Hello?”
“Jill, come home. There was a break-in at a bank and Patrick is freaking out ‘cause you’re not back. Tell me you’re close.”
So there it was: a robbery. Didn’t criminals in this city ever sleep?
Robbing a bank in this day and age is a pretty shit idea. They usually don't carry that much cash on hand, and usually the staff can't even open the vaults. You'd be better off robbing an armoured truck. Obviously, most criminals are pretty stupid, just felt like pointing that out.
Benjamin jumped up, and I saw for the first time that he stood at roughly six feet, just like me.
I'm guessing Ben's some sort of super-dude himself, so is that meant to be a hint? Are there no short superhumans?
“I had a great time talking to you,” he said, taking my trash. “I’ll just come out and say it: would you like to meet me here again?” He looked hopeful and shy at the same time.
His words hung in the air between us.
Nobody had ever asked to see me socially before. Back home, my only friends had been other children in the camp. Here in Saint Catherine, I had to be careful. Everything about the situation felt wrong. Forbidden. I could think of a dozen reasons to say no, the first one being the risk of Patrick pounding my face in for breaking a cardinal rule.
Ford Cruller's dementia got really bad after the first game.
“Yes, I’d love to,” I blurted. “How about next week, same day and time? In fact, let me get your phone number.” I dug around in my pocket for my phone.
He told me his contact information and I saved it, making sure to label his contact file “Snitch #5” in case Patrick felt like randomly searching through it as he’d done in the past.
Again, apparently Jill does do some investigative work as part of the team, but she can't guess what "forensic" means?
When I was done, I stuck out my left hand. “It was great to meet you.”
He shook my hand and a spark of electricity traveled up my arm into the back of my neck and down to my thigh. “And you, Jillian. I really hope you’ll consider what I said about your boss.”
I nodded and we parted without another word.
I was walking out the door of the café when I realized that my shoulder didn’t hurt anymore.
Man, the coffee here is
really good.
I smelled blood the second I stepped through the front doors of the bank.
Nobody else on my team did, as they lacked my heightened senses.
I thought supers having more than one power was meant to be rare? I can see how you can justify super strength, durability, and speed as being basically the same thing, but enhanced senses?
“Where’s your sling? And your black eye? And all your scratches?” he whispered.
“I’m feeling better,” I whispered back. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
"And why did you expect me to come on a combat mission with my arm in a sling?"
Pools of thick, congealing blood fanned out from three bodies on the floor, each covered with bloodstained white sheets. My first guess was that the three victims had been shot point-blank in the head. I kept my face expressionless, but I felt sorry for the three people. They’d either died from massive head trauma or slow exsanguination, and neither of those options were ideal ways to die. The latter method especially made me uncomfortable to contemplate, for my grandmother, my namesake, had died after having her throat slit by a supervillain.
So, who wants to be the supervillains are actually goodies?
The police and technicians moved around the scene with calculated precision, snapping photographs and making sketches while skirting around the little red lakes to avoid soiling their shoes and contaminating the scene.
But remember, she doesn't know what "forensics" mean.
A plain clothes detective I recognized from two other investigations saw us and walked over, stepping over the blood as if he dealt with oceans of it every day.
Patrick shook the man’s hand. “I’m Atropos, the leader of this team. Are you the official police-super liaison for this investigation?” Patrick threw his shoulders back.
I stifled the urge to roll my eyes. We all knew each other, so this was nothing but posturing on Patrick’s part.
See, it's not that I don't think cult members can independently develop doubts or realise their leaders are arseholes and hypocrites, but this kind of inner snark feels weird when just last chapter she seemed painfully grateful for Patrick letting her keep twenty dollars.
“According to the branch manager, one of the guards heard something, a sound,” he looked down to review his notes, “—like ‘a fly in a bug zapper’—down here, so one went to investigate. When he didn’t come back, two more guards went down, and they also didn’t come back. The manager didn’t hear anything that sounded like a break in, so he went down to see what happened.
"He was a massive dumbass."
“Can you look at security footage?” I asked.
Patrick glared at me. I looked down at my boots.
Detective Burbine shook his head. “No, and that’s one of the things that made us call you guys in. The cameras were turned off via a massive program override. So were the sprinklers. We’ve never seen hacking like that.”
I didn’t think that sounded like Super work, but I kept silent this time.
I guess super-scientists aren't a thing here. Good, I don't think we needed to see the paragraph about how mad science is actually probably magic again.
Before Detective Burbine pulled back the sheet, he looked up at us. "I've seen a lot of stuff in my fifteen years on the force, but I don't mind telling you guys these bodies really give me the creeps." He uncovered the first body.
None of us had a problem with gore, but everyone flinched at the sheer strangeness of what was underneath.
My guess of a massive head wound wasn’t far off the mark, except the man’s head and neck were simply gone, as if someone had taken some kind of cosmic eraser and rubbed them away. The blood had poured out from the hole at the top of the rib cage, making a sight that was as fascinating as it was grotesque. Detective Burbine put the sheet back over the corpse.
I guess we know what happened to Utopia?
Patrick pocketed the card and gathered us in a far corner as not to be overheard. He looked at Reid and Marco. “Go talk to the residents from the adjacent house and see what they know. Marco, make that smile convincing. Reid, at least try to act smart.”
Both Reid and Marco turned pink but walked away towards the hole in the wall.
He turned to Ember, who tensed. “Find an animal, a bug, a bacterium, something, that saw what happened. I don’t want to see you again until you have a witness.”
I'm guessing Patrick's talking shit, but I would be really shocked if you could get useful testimony from a bacterium. A virus, though, those guys are all snitches.
Ember nodded quickly and walked off. He rounded on me and my heart rate increased. “I don’t want to hear from you unless you have something exceptionally important to say. Just get to work looking for clues and get out of my sight.” I nodded and took a few steps back, more than happy to get away from him.
I guess I got my wish for a book from Talia's perspective. Wait, did I wish for that?
The interior of the vault held no clues. There was no debris, not trace of the missing part of the door anywhere. The safe deposit boxes were all closed. The table and chair inside were undisturbed, a fine layer of dust covering them. In fact, a fine layer of dust covered a lot of the vault. That seemed odd to me—didn’t people go in the vault all the time?
I poked my head out of the vault door and called over to the bank manager. “Sir, when was the last time someone accessed the vault?”
“A patron came in to access her safe deposit box an hour before the break in.”
"Then Steelheart rocked up and killed everyone."
I thanked him and went back inside the vault. So someone had sat in the chair and probably put things on the table. Why was there dust on it? And why was there dust on the floor and the boxes? Snapping on a latex glove from my utility belt, I knelt down to examine the area by the vault door where the dust was thickest. I ran a gloved finger over the floor and held it up to the light.
The dark gray substance that covered the vault was the finest powder I’d ever seen. I blew on my hand and it swirled into the air, nearly invisible. I sniffed my finger and detected a whiff of metal, like the graphite in pencil shavings. I frowned and sniffed again. No, it wasn’t graphite. It was like the sharp, thorny smell of my knives.
...Fuck, so many
Reckoners jokes I could make that none of you would get. After confirming the dust is steel, Jill asks to see the body again. He too is covered in the dust.
I walked over to Patrick, who was talking to a computer technician working on the security terminal. “I need to talk to you.”
Patrick paused in his conversation and stared at me in disbelief. “What?”
“There’s something you need to see in the vault and on the bodies,” I said. For once my confidence superseded my internal tremor.
He crossed his arms. “Well, what is it?”
“There’s a kind of dusty residue around the holes and bodies. I don’t know what it’s from but I think it’s connected to the robbery.”
“Dust? You interrupted me to tell me you found dust?” I was sure that Patrick was about to launch into a rant about my investigative skills, but he saw the technician’s shocked expression and dismissed me with a wave of his hand. I knew better than to push the subject, so I tried Ember instead.
How the fuck does this team get anything done? Also, does it have a name?
She was crouched down in the corner and staring intently at something in her hand. I knew without looking that it was some hideous bug.
I glanced; yep, a large spider. Even though I’d grown up outside, I didn’t care for spiders.
“She’s friendly,” Ember said, tipping the spider back on the ground. It went back into a crack in the wall. “But unobservant. What’s the point of having eight eyes if you don’t use them?” She brushed herself off and stood up. “The spider was the only living thing in the room that survived the robbery.
And as soon as it's bitten by a radioactive human, she'll have her superhero origin over and done with. Jill gets Ember to find her a mouse to taste some dust from both the vault and the body, with Ember relaying its impressions. The dust from the body seems to be organic--meat and bones--while the vault sample is inorganic.
“Atropos,” I said loudly, striding towards the vault. There was no way he could get mad at me for interrupting him, not now that I was about to make him look good by solving a mystery on his watch. “I checked out your theory, and I’ve figured out what happened to the door, the hole, and heads.” The sentence sounded better in my head than it did out loud.
Everyone in the room stopped talking and looked at me. Patrick raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
I took a steadying breath. “They were disintegrated.” I scooped up a handful of dust from the vault. “Firelight confirmed that the substance in the vault and by the wall and the substance on the bodies are completely different. The first two aren’t organic, probably metal and stone. The dust around the bodies is bones and flesh. I’ll bet you anything that we’re dealing with someone who can reduce small areas to this stuff.” I tossed the metal powder into the air.
Okay, so Ember is her given name, and Firelight is her codename. Which again, makes me ask,
why? The fuck does fire have to do with telepathy and being Dr. Dolittle?
For once Patrick just nodded, his face blank.
While the police collected samples, my team hovered around me. “Any idea who could do this?” Reid asked Patrick.
Patrick pinched the bridge of his nose. “No.”
“I once heard about a supervillain who could melt stuff,” Ember offered. She looked at Patrick. “We learned about her from your dad, remember? I’m pretty sure she’s dead, though. Maybe she had a relative with similar powers. Disintegration is similar to melting, right? Or maybe it was a Westerner?”
Marco snorted. “Why would a Westerner come all the way to Georgia to rob a bank?”
We're way too busy inventing the concept of biological sex, homophobia, religous intolerance, and all other evil in the universe.
“Do you have a better idea?” Ember shot back.
“Stop it,” Patrick hissed. “We’re in public. Either pretend to agree or don’t say anything at all. And smile.”
We instantly obeyed.
Burbane: We heard that!
“A person who can turn someone’s head to dust is memorable,” I said through clenched, grinning teeth. “Maybe we should ask around. You know, hit up the usual sources.”
Dangle the bait…
Patrick cut in. “Everyone, go get into civilian clothes and start making the rounds. Firelight, you’re going to go to Northside. Helios, you have Downtown. Tank, you’re on the river. Battlecry, you have Old Town.”
Gotcha.
He was going to Saint Catherine’s Island, the biggest of many islands in the city and his usual patrol zone. But it didn’t matter where he was going, as long as it wasn’t Old Town.
Is this some American city terminology I'm not familiar with? Or is set in
Waterworld?
We said goodbye to the police officers and left the bank. I was unusually lighthearted since I’d contributed to the investigation and successfully lied to Patrick.
We went back to the dilapidated house we called base camp. The others ran to get dressed, but I was in no hurry.
This is a world where superheroes are both involved with the government and the subject of media attention. You telling me that not only can't they scrounge get better digs, the papparazi or crazed stalkers haven't noticed they live in poverty?
I walked up the narrow stairwell to my bedroom and pulled off my uniform, replacing it with the jeans, blouse, and glasses I’d worn earlier. I grabbed the sling from my bedside table and while I fastened it, looked around my small bedroom.
I’d grown to enjoy the feeling of confinement that four walls and a roof provided, though my bed, with its squishy mattress and green wool blanket, made my back hurt. I didn’t have any decorations in my room like Ember did, but if I ever personalized my room, I’d incorporate flowers into it somehow. Asters and borage grew wild in the open meadows back home, and once upon a time my brother Gregory and I had delighted in making flower crowns for our mother.
Yeah, when Jill talks about "the camp" she's being very literal. And I guess they didn't even have tents?
While I put my uniform away, I looked at the empty dresser top and thought maybe a sketch of Gregory would be nice, too. He’d been my favorite sibling, before he’d been murdered by the Westerners.
"Well, technically it was the Houthis, but I'm sure it was somehow the West's fault."
Marco and I walked in the afternoon sun towards our assigned zones. He kept glancing at me.
“Seriously, where did your injuries go? And if your shoulder is better, why did you put the sling back on?”
I elected to answer the second question only. “I’m wearing the sling to test out a theory.”
I couldn’t help but smile. I was still riding the high from my little victory at the bank and I was positive my next theory was correct, too.
“What theory?” He sounded skeptical.
“Don’t worry about it.” I used my big-sister voice, hoping he’d take the hint.
He didn’t. “Come on, Jill. You’re killing me. How did you heal so fast?” He widened his eyes in a clear attempt to pluck at my sensitive side.
“Nice try. Miracles happen, Marco. Even to a person like me.”
He snorted. “What is that supposed to mean?”
You'd think someone raised in a cult would be a bit less live and let live about this kind of thing.
We parted ways at High Street. Marco headed downtown while I made my way back towards Old Town, where Café Stella was. When I reached Davis Street, I pulled out my cell phone and pulled up Snitch #5’s number.
Patrick had been so eager to look decisive and important that he’d taken my suggestion to find leads and ordered it without thinking. Had he been a little more thoughtful, he would’ve remembered that my “usual sources” were hookers, dealers, and other denizens of the night. There was nothing I could do in early afternoon.
I also find it hard to believe someone as sheltered as Jill would be so good at wheeling and dealing with the urban underworld.
