Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
LEO
My life was finally moving forward, finally turning in the right direction.
Alex was everything—she was salvation. She’d seen the worst parts of me, and accepted all of it, without even blinking. I didn’t burn her, didn’t make her flinch away from me. I craved her touch, her voice, that calming presence that made everything else meaningless.
There was only one thing left now. The one thing that could make everything collapse around me.
I should have told her first. Before we went too far.
“We’ve been going over the footage of the Splinter attack,” Dahlia crossed her hands over her desk, and I went rigid.
It was only us; Reed and Alex waited in another room, and I knew it couldn’t be good. Dahlia only wanted to speak to me—the anxiety was flooding through me, setting my body on high alert. Still, my watch didn’t go off, and I didn’t burn the new couch that had replaced the last one.
“That Villain you fought, Glitch?” she asked.
I nodded, hesitant.
“We assumed he didn’t have a chip.” Dahlia turned her computer monitor around, the screen set on the VIA database of Variants.
“But that’s not the case. He does have one, except it’s been tampered with.
From what we can gather, it looks like a new Villain tech, something messing with the feed.
There’s a reason why they didn’t take it out, and there’s a reason why they don’t want us to know who he is. ”
My head cocked, and I wasn’t sure if I was following.
Alex was the smart one, the one who could read between the lines of what people were saying, or dig the information out of them.
I followed orders; destroyed what I was told to.
That was the problem, though, why my stomach turned to iron as a heavy weight sat in my gut.
The orders weren’t always correct. Sometimes, they got people killed. The wrong people.
“I need you to locate him,” Dahlia’s voice was hard. “He’s the key. There’s a reason Heroes are going missing instead of bodies showing up.”
“What are you saying?” I swallowed, my skin pricking with unease.
Dahlia laced her hands together and tucked her chin on top, her glasses sliding down her nose.
“If they can tamper with chips, they can tamper with Heroes. The VIA designed them to ensure Variants could be monitored—abilities, statistics, locations — if anyone decided to turn against society. Villains started finding ways to remove them, or managed to evade getting them to begin with. But if they studied the tech, if they could alter the code, the uses could be endless. Disastrous.”
I frowned, struggling to follow, and she sighed.
“We’ve been working on something for the past few years.
Highly confidential. But science has shown a link, a correlation, between brain function and someone’s capacity for certain behaviors or tendencies.
The criminal mind has been studied for centuries.
We finally have the science to back it up, and the tech to change it. ”
“—to turn Villains into Heroes?” I gaped, finally realizing what she was saying.
They’d done it to me, in a way. I was born bad.
Burning everything I touched, always angry, with no real moral code aside from ‘try not to hurt people I care about’.
The VIA didn’t alter me, but it shaped me.
If they hadn’t taken me in, put in restrictions and forced me into socialization I never wanted, I could have been a Villain, too.
If they could change someone’s brain? Set up our chips to guide us away from crime, or negativity?
It was intrusive, invasive, and unethical. At the same time, it could create peace like humanity had never seen before.
“We’re nowhere near close enough to actually creating a prototype; we’re still researching, testing. But Villains, these organizations, don't have guidelines or ethics to follow. If they could do the same, but in reverse… it would be devastating.”
I shifted. “This Glitch guy, could he be…”
“I don’t know. We need him and his chip.
We have to study it, see what’s been changed, and how it’s affected him.
For all we know, they just found an easier way to disable it.
But… removal would be easier. There’s a reason why he still has it, and why he’s made an appearance.
Splinter settled down after the Crowns Club; fewer reports and arrests were being made until they attacked. It wasn’t a warning. It was a test.”
Dahlia and I stared at each other, and my palms started to sweat. I wasn’t overheating—I was fucking terrified. Things had finally started to go right. I finally felt safe. But a world where Heroes disappeared, and VIA tech was being messed with? A war was brewing.
“Have you discussed with Daydream… about Hopper?” She finally broke our silence.
My veins turned to ice as I swallowed hard. “… No.”
She glanced between the monitor and me, her lips pursing. “I don’t like to make things personal.”
“Clearly.”
Dahlia rolled her eyes before she slipped off her glasses and folded her hands on her lap.
She leaned back, and she looked older. All those late nights, all the emergencies and dumpster fires that the VIA put on her shoulders, were finally wearing her down.
Dahlia had always been cold, and truthfully, I didn’t mind.
I never felt like there was a mystery with her; only hard truths.
“I’ve been checking your data too, you know. With all this suspicion around chips and Villains…”
My neck tensed. “You think they’ll want me next?”
She shrugged. “I think you’d be a goldmine to them, but you’re a bigger fish to catch.
They wouldn’t risk it so soon, but the thought crossed my mind, yes.
For three years, your data has skewed in June.
It’s no surprise after what happened. Your power output spikes, your percentage increases closer to a burnout, before dipping down to your normal levels. ”
“But June is almost over, and your data… it changed, Leo. You did tip the scales massively in that fight. You shouldn’t have been able to come back from that, and yet you did. Before that moment, you’d been down trending. And after?”
Dahlia’s lips pulled, and it was the closest thing I’d ever seen her come to a smile. It made me almost uncomfortable; this was her way of ‘getting personal’ — that slight slip of emotion.
“This is the most stable you’ve ever been,” she said. “Your chip hasn’t shown a trend like this since you were three. It’s a massive step forward, even if it’s only been a short time.”
I’d felt it, but the confirmation was the greatest relief I’d ever felt. There was proof now. I was changing; my ability was regulating, and it was no secret why.
“I was only a grunt when the VIA took you into custody, you know,” she sighed, eyes glazing over. “We all heard the whispers; we all watched that room of yours get built. I can’t tell you how many meetings there’s been, trying to decide what to do with you, re-evaluating the risks and reward.”
Like I was a damn stock trade.
“What I’m trying to say,” Dahlia cleared her throat, “… is that we did you a disservice. All of that research we’ve done, all of the psychology that has been studied before, and proven.
It was ignored, when it came to you. There is a reason why prisons aren’t meant for rehabilitation—they don’t work.
We took a child and put him in conditions that were equivalent to a prison.
I don’t know what they expected, to be honest.”
My knee started to bounce, and I wasn’t sure how to feel.
It was all kind of obvious, wasn’t it? But at the same time, I had been dangerous.
There was no way they could have put me in some foster home after what happened to my mom, after what I did to her.
I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if they’d placed me in a public school.
Even the Variant ones, where difficult children were sent, ended up in disaster.
By the time I was fourteen, they had given up, and the isolation set in.
My education was within the VIA, taught by Heroes that excelled in defense instead of knowledge.
The ‘school’ was a room that was durable, loaded with sprinklers, and not a ‘Kindness Matters’ poster in sight.
Boxes of pencils were the only decoration, because I charred at least five of them a day out of frustration.
My peers were agents who guarded the doors, my recess was training, and my curriculum was on how not to piss off the government.
I didn’t have a fucking chance, did I?
I hadn’t cared before; it was what it was. But now? It made me angry. Not enough to set the room on fire, or send Dahlia running for the hills. Just enough to simmer, and fixated on the resentment that had always been there.
“Well, I’m glad someone finally admits it, I guess,” I forced out a laugh, as if it would wash everything away.
Dahlia had flipped the script, creating a strange connection that I couldn’t understand.
Alex had friends, she had family; she had people who cared.
I didn’t think I had that before. But now I had her, and because of it, more people were beginning to show up.
Doors were being opened. The isolation… it was over.
All because Alex saw me as a person, instead of a weapon.
“I hate this stuff.” Dahlia rubbed her neck and pursed her lips. “We aren’t built for it, you know. Emotions.”
I smirked, and there was an ease between us. Dahlia was like me. In our work, we had to be reserved, had to leave our humanity at the door, so we could take on the horrors.
“Imagine how I feel,” I murmured. “This is like talking to a grandma, or something.”
Her nose pinched, and she held out a pointed finger. “Watch your mouth before I regret this.”
I nodded. “Got it, my bad.”
She shook her head, and now she was really smiling. Hell had frozen over.
“I’m blabbering—this isn’t my area of expertise. Data is easier to deal with, so let me just say this. Since we’ve brought Daydream back, you’ve gotten better, Leo. This… connection — it’s given you stability. I don’t want it to reverse. I’d like to keep seeing this trend.”
My stomach twisted. She was gearing up for something; I could see it in the way her eyes squinted, how her shoulders tensed. The brief moment of empathy between us?
Gone.
Stifled.
Completely disintegrated.
“We’re going to be facing unprecedented times,” her voice went chilly again.
“It will test you both—all of us. The business with Hopper, it needs to be settled. I can’t give you advice on how or when, but as a woman I can say with certainty that secrets will dismantle any growing relationship.
Daydream is competent, and unfortunately, I’m quite fond of you as well.
We need to move forward as one solid unit if we’re going to survive what’s coming for us. ”
A sharp pain split through my head, and I winced as the memories started to rush in.
Everything that had happened, every wrong move and bad call, the disaster that I helped create.
This was the moment that really terrified me.
The promise between Joon and me? That was a smaller piece of my shame, the one that was easier to justify.
“You have to tell her,” Dahlia said finally. “Before we take the next step. We can’t have another failure like the one with Hopper. The stakes are too high to gamble with now.”
My head dropped as I looked at my palms, at the hands that had destroyed so much.
“I know.”
It was time.