Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
ALEX
Nightmyre spread out in front of us, twinkling with neon lights and street lamps.
Joon sat beside me on a rooftop, and his image kept flipping. Black hair, to white. Flawless skin, to scars. Dark eyes, to that hazy purple. It was hard to keep hold; he was slipping through my fingers. His eyes would turn purple, he’d break through my power, and I’d have to reel him back in again.
I was beyond my limit of frustration. Each time we were getting somewhere, he switched up on me, and we were back to square one. A mantra kept repeating in my head, keeping me calm, warning me to stay patient.
Joon was stubborn; Glitch is going to be worse. Don’t rush it. Don’t fuck it up.
He gave me a gentle smile, Joon’s smile, just before it turned crazed. “If you let me go, I won’t kill you. I don’t like being trapped, y’know.”
“I mourned you,” I spat, keeping my eyes on the horizon, my fingers digging into brick. “You have no idea what these past three years have been like. For me, or for Leo.”
He kicked his feet, and his mouth kept switching between a smile and a sad frown. “And you have no idea what I’ve been through, either. You keep looking at me like I’m a stranger, little dreamer. It hurts.”
“You are a stranger,” I admitted. “I don’t know who you are anymore. So tell me. Talk to me, and I can help you.”
His hair went white as a grin spread across his scarred cheeks.
“We’ll end the age of Heroes. Splinter is going to make it fair—they’re going to make us free.
” The image flashed, and his hair turned dark again.
“Burning alive hurts like a bitch. I can’t stop thinking about it — the last thing I was able to smell.
My hair burning, flesh being cooked—I can’t forgive that. ”
The image made me want to vomit, but he kept going.
“They were nice to me, my new friends. Even bought the shampoo I wanted; that lilac one I like. They haven’t been able to repair my nose quite right yet, but they will. When they do, I’m gonna fucking bathe in that shampoo. Do you think that’ll make my skin dry?”
There was a lilt to his voice, as if he was battling between the insanity and things that Joon would actually say. His vanity hadn’t gone away, at least.
“They’re going to make everyone suffer,” I pleaded. “Just like you did. He didn’t know you were in there—he tried to go back for you.”
Joon cocked his head, and the white and black started to meld together. “But he didn’t. He left me, and Splinter were the ones to rescue me. They rehabilitated me.”
“They brainwashed you,” I spat.
“Tomato, potato,” he shrugged.
This wasn’t Joon anymore. I knew that, but I couldn’t help the way I stared at him, trying to find the missing pieces to put him back together again. I reached out, linking our arms together as I pulled him close.
“You still use that shampoo?” I asked.
He grinned. “Of course. It’s my favorite because you picked it.”
“You realize I’m a Hero, too, right? When Splinter comes—when they tear it all down, I’ll be one of the targets. It’s not just Leo, not just the VIA.”
Joon went rigid. “They won’t touch you. I’ll make them promise. You’re still third class, right? Imagine what Splinter could do for you, too. You’d be a real asset, Alex. They’ll put you on a pedestal, treat you like a damn queen because of what you can do.”
“Queen of the Villains,” I sneered. “Sorry, I’ll pass.”
That pissed him off. He stood, glitched, and ended up on the opposite side of the roof. Violet flashed, and I tried not to flinch as he appeared beside me, looming over me with a shadow across his face.
“Then you’ll die,” he rasped. “We are sick and tired of having a boot on our necks. They’re monsters, Alex.
Taking babies, testing them to see if they were born different, then giving them that damn chip.
We’re tracked like animals, shown off in a zoo, made into tools.
They called me a Hero when I ‘died’, made me a fucking martyr to use for their propaganda. IT WAS THEIR FAULT!”
The image I’d created around us trembled, shaking, cracks forming in the sky that hadn’t changed, although the sun had long past set in the real world.
And then, it all collapsed around us. Shards rained down, pieces of sky and buildings reflected in them, creating a black mass around us.
He shouldn’t have been able to do that—my daydreams should’ve been untouchable.
But Joon was screaming now, clutching his head between his palms, and he looked as if he’d split in two.
It’s too much. His mind is slipping. He won’t come back at this rate.
So I pulled back.
When I opened my eyes, Leo was there, and I could still hear Joon’s screams.
“What happened?” he cupped my face in his hand, searching me frantically, as if I’d come out wounded.
“I can’t get through to him,” my voice croaked, and I was desperate for water. “He’s too… twisted up inside. I don’t know how to break through.”
Leo sat me up against him, letting me lean against his chest as he put a bottle of water in my hand. I tipped my head back, chugging it, as my stomach clenched with hunger.
“How long?” I asked, wiping my lips with the back of my hand.
“Eight hours, and counting,” Dahlia answered, spinning herself in a chair beside us.
On the floor, cushions and blankets surrounded Leo and me. I didn’t have to wonder if he’d moved at all while I was down—everything was warm. He’d been pouring heat into me for hours. His arms wrapped around me, and I eased into it.
“You need a break,” his voice was hoarse.
Bright yellow light flashed in the room, and I jolted up. A large two-way mirror spanned across the wall. The room was set up similarly to the PD—only much, much larger. Someone screamed, and another voice roared back. We all stood, racing to the glass.
Behind it, lightning bounced off the walls, zipping in every direction before meeting its target.
Joon thrashed in a metal chair welded to the floor.
His arms were pulled behind him, and steel cords wrapped around every part of him.
Ankles, knees, hips, arms and chest. Even his neck was restrained, and his face grew red as he resisted against it, choking himself.
Running along the thick cords was visible electricity, sparking against his skin and scars. His white hair stood on end, and his eyes flashed that intense purple. Reed faced away from us, his arms raised and body tense. Sweat poured down his back, and his red hair was plastered to his skin.
“Cut it out, asshole!” Reed shouted. “You’re gonna kill yourself!”
Joon spat at Reed’s boots. “More blood on the VIA’s hands. No skin off my bones.”
Beside me, Leo cocked his head. I wasn’t sure what he’d processed in the time we’d been under, how he was handling things. The scene made me weak, and my heart raced.
But Leo leaned in, his eyes scrunched as he watched them. “Jesus, does he think he’s in a freakin’ mob movie, or something? Idiot.”
I smacked him in the gut, and he actually wheezed. “This is serious!”
He winced at my tone. “I know, I know, I’m sorry. I just… we’re all exhausted, Sweetheart. Joon never took anything too seriously on the field. He was professional, but he didn’t let it get to him, you know? I guess I was trying to channel that a bit. Bad timing, my fault.”
Leo bowed his head in remorse, and something sparked in me.
Could that work?
“Chill out, and I’ll ease up,” Reed’s voice filtered through the speakers. “You think they can’t see you right now? You think this doesn’t hurt them?”
Joon’s eyes flashed, and he seemed to simmer. Reed did just as he promised; the lightning died down, condensing into the binds, and only the gentle hum of static crackled through the speakers. We were all silent; watching, waiting.
“Weird, I thought I was the only one exploring electric bondage right now,” Joon quipped, panting. “I’m not sure if I’m into it or not.”
Leo and I glanced at each other, both of us smirking. That was Joon. Not Glitch, not a mutation of his old self. Unfortunately, his humor had always been… particular.
“You’re sick, you know that?” Reed leaned against the glass, and I had to shift to the side to see around his shoulders.
His skin was red, and the pulse in his neck beat frantically.
“He won’t be able to hold this much longer,” Leo ducked his head down, whispering in my ear. “Lightning makes him tachycardiac. We have to watch his output before he has a heart attack.”
Joon had his eyes set on Reed—fixated, interested.
His type.
“I have an idea.” I pulled back stray hairs that had fallen from my ponytail, took a deep breath, and straightened my shoulders. “I need a snack, a shit ton of water, and then we’re going back in.”
“We?” Leo’s brows pinched.
I nodded. “Yep, all of us. Joon is still in there; we just have to sneak him back out before he realizes it.”
“Updates?” I leaned over Dahlia’s shoulder, four laptops set up in front of her.
A croissant was stuffed in my mouth, muffling my voice. We decided to break for an hour—enough to regain some of our sanity, but not enough to lose whatever progress I’d made with Joon.
She typed frantically, bouncing from screen to screen, her glasses reflecting red and green bars. “Here, you see this dip?”
I frowned, inspecting the giant bar of red she’d pointed to. “Sure.”
“That’s June, three years ago. The moment we thought that Hopper had died. Those straight points across, the flatline? No activity. The VIA doesn’t track people we think are dead, so then we missed this point here. Still in the red, but do you see that bump?”
Dates lined the bottom of her graph, and on the one-year anniversary of his death, the small dots turned into a minor spike. It was miniscule, and wouldn’t have registered in my mind until she pointed it out.
“Six months later, and there was another one,” she started scrolling through the months, now, “Every six months for two years, and in the past year? Six turned into four, then three, two, one. They’ve spiked every week for the past eight weeks.
They grew every single time—we just weren’t paying attention. ”
With every blip on his graph came an immediate return to that dotted line, the one that was supposed to mean death.
But our chips monitored our abilities and output—Variants had a constant flow of power, there was always a trend line to follow, and the spikes signaled when we used it.
Joon had nothing between those rises, no baseline flow to show he was alive.
“They were running tests,” I breathed. “Keep him under somehow, just at the limit before it would register on the database. Then wake him up when they wanted to try again.”
Leo leaned in next to me, his hair damp from a shower in the locker room. He’d spent a half hour in there, attempting to freeze himself beneath the cold water.
“Why wait so long between testing?” he asked.
Dahlia turned to another screen, where she’d layered charts on top of each other. When she put Joon’s beside them, a pattern was formed.
“When we looked into Heroes that had been labeled MIA in the past ten years, we found twenty in our system with this same pattern. Twelve of them lasted only two cycles, and then four years ago, two more went dark after a four-cycle run. I don’t think they’re missing anymore.
The most they seemed to last was two years until Hopper.
He’s survived three, and after him, the trend skyrocketed.
AngelDust, too. She’s popped up every seven months; the latest was this February.
” Dahlia ripped off her glasses, her frustration permeating.
Leo went rigid beside me. Joon wasn’t the only one who had an empty box buried in his honor.
My eyes cast across the screens, memorizing the names, dates, and where they were last seen.
I thought of my time across seas, all the times I’d helped dismantle organizations like Splinter.
They never got a chance to grow as big as this—they slipped up, and we would pounce.
They have resources.
“He’s the only first class Hero among them,” Dahlia sighed. “The VIA tracks first class Heroes more closely; they started with third, then second.”
They knew who was expendable.
“Joon is their pilot,” I said. “The first functional prototype—he’s just the start. They must have found something about him that changed how they did things and applied it to the Heroes they took after him. ”
They’d been building up to this, experimenting, seeing how far they could go with him. But it was only in the past year that his data sped up; a year was still fresh. We weren’t as far behind as I’d thought; we still had a chance to save him.
“Daydream,” Dahlia looked at me, her eyes weary, exhausted. “This needs to work.”
I nodded. “I know.”
Her frown deepened, and she turned back to her computers, clicking on one last graph. It was a world map, and thousands of small pins had been dropped on top. Thousands of dots flooded the map, a sea of red, but nearly twenty percent of the markers were green.
“No, you don’t,” she sighed. “I checked across seas, too, like you suggested. Every marker is a Hero that’s gone missing. The green? Those are the ones who show these same patterns.”
“So Joon is their pilot,” Leo snarled, his face contorting with rage. “And if he passes this test?”
My stomach turned to stone. “Hundreds of Heroes will be unleashed, just like him.”