Chapter 19
Twelve seconds.
I counted not because I wanted to intimidate, but because I needed time to think. My finger traced the hole I had made in the table. It didn’t take a genius to figure out I had strength beyond the average man. Yet Booker didn’t ask the obvious as he waited for me to speak.
I reached twelve, and I still hadn’t come up with the words to start the conversation. Every phrase walked down a dark path, one we’d never recover from. Ms. Keyes might have pulled back the curtain, but it was us who made it possible.
“When did you know you were different?”
Sitting on the wrong side of the table, Booker looked up from his lap.
Every time he entered the interrogation room, it had been with his shoulders back and chest leading the way.
I think he knew what it meant when he saw me sitting in his chair.
The confidence had faded from his body, and he did everything to avoid my stare.
He pointed at the camera. A second later, a black orb swallowed it.
The blatant use of my abilities didn’t register on his face.
The lack of response told its own story.
Booker knew some of my secrets. It came with a sense of relief tangled with worry.
How far could his powers reach? Did they climb into the closet where I locked Hellion away?
Had they opened the trunk and touched the rage?
“My mother had it. She referred to it as the sensation.”
He lifted his hands, eyeing them as if seeing them for the first time.
I expected an aura, or a tinge of color, as he used his abilities.
They were hands, the same ones that had carried me home and put me to bed.
Those hands had traversed my body, making me feel things nobody ever had.
Had I been subjected to his abilities this entire time?
“She prayed it would skip a generation. I thought I was broken.” He dropped his hands to the table. His eyes stayed focused on his fingers as they tapped a rhythmic pattern.
“I celebrated my twenty-first birthday in a dive bar with friends. When it happened, I thought I had died. The loneliness. Anger. Joy. Desire. She called it the sensation because there are no words for what we feel.”
The words caught in his throat. I could almost feel the pain in his chest. This wasn’t an origin story. For him, it was a confession.
“Is this the first time you’ve…”
A slight nod. “Other than Mom, nobody knows.” Forty years old, and for the first time, he revealed a secret that permeated his entire being.
Ms. Keyes had predicted this moment, this very second.
The truth had been revealed, and she wanted me to explode, to hurl accusations and claim betrayal.
I could throw down my fist and let my insecurities drive a wedge between us.
Like the rest of Secret Identities, fear sat between us, ready to be weaponized.
I recognized his fear, a feeling with which I had an intimate relationship. It reared its ugly head every time I looked in the mirror.
“I was thirteen,” I started. The fear had to stop.
“A bully chased me after school. I ran behind a house. I couldn’t climb over the fence and get away.
” Decades later, my origin story still made me cringe.
“I wished I were invisible. I prayed.” While I bit my lip, my chest heaved as I remembered that scared boy.
“I got my wish. Nobody ever saw me again.”
Booker’s fingers rolled into a fist. Powers or not, hurt called to hurt.
He looked up. “I see you. I have felt every emotion, every fear, from the beginning.”
Ms. Keyes be damned, I believed him. He had seen through every mask I presented. Booker hadn’t shied away from the messier moments with me. He had been on this journey by my side… and yet… he stayed.
“You are the one who stopped me from killing Cypher.”
“It was something more than anger.” To save him, I had been willing to let Hellion take over.
It’d have torn away a piece of my soul, but I’d do it again.
When Nails threatened Janet, I was ready to cross the line to save the people I loved.
“Rage. Unbridled rage. I can feel it now. It’s always there. ”
When I removed the costume, tucking Hellion away in the closet, I imagined doing the same in my head.
For a while, he waited patiently, satisfied with our nightly patrols.
As of late, he refused to stay tucked away.
The divide between me and my alter egos had eroded until even I didn’t know who I was.
“You’re why I saw his daughter?”
“I found your guilt,” he admitted. “Fear. Compassion.” He wiped his eyes before tears could form. “I used them to overwhelm your rage.” He let out a steadying breath. “I manipulated you.”
“Is that why you stayed?”
He nodded. “I felt the loneliness. The confusion. I couldn’t leave you alone.” He leaned forward, his hand half across the table. “I wanted to tell you… But I couldn’t face what I did. That’s why I left in the morning.”
I didn’t need to be an empath to see the guilt.
There were no detective powers on display here.
We were two broken men navigating a harsh reality.
I could be angry that he used his powers on me, but knowing he found guilt and compassion while I tried to kill a man did the opposite.
In the quiet of my mind, there were moments when I feared who I had become.
At my worst, in the throes of rage, he found what I feared I had lost.
I took his hand.
“Do I say I forgive you or thank you?”
An eyebrow perked up. “Thank you?”
“You know this.” I held up my free hand and created a red square, and let the colors slowly shift. “Only a few people know about this secret.”
His head cocked to the side. The cube vanished, and I let the colors along my clothes shift to crimson until it looked like Hellion’s suit. At this distance, he might see the texture of my dress shirt, but he’d understand the meaning.
“You’re the only one who knows about this.”
His eyes widened. “You’re scared.” His eyes dropped. “Sorry. Occupational hazard.”
There was no point in hiding the truth. I wasn’t just scared.
I experienced an identity crisis filled with terror whenever I thought about my worlds colliding.
When I lost control, I didn’t want to see the disapproval.
I didn’t want Janet’s eyes on me again. His fingers gripped mine, tightening until he pulled me from my thoughts.
“Drew, I’m sorry.”
He needed absolution. I might be one of the few people who understood uncontrolled emotions.
How long had he hidden himself? How long had he learned to tuck away a part of himself for the sake of being accepted?
For a moment, it was as if I stared into a mirror.
Our secrets were laid bare, and now we had to sift through the rubble.
The tension in his fingers didn’t relent.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” I said.
Every emotion, every revelation, I imagined it flowing down my arm. He needed to feel my intentions. I wanted him to know how much I wanted him to stay that night. There were no words to express how much I valued him. Instead, I wanted to speak a language only he could decipher.
His fingers loosened, and his jaw hung. He understood.
“She’s praying on our secrets.” Catherine had weaponized our insecurities.
She believed we were broken beyond repair.
Booker’s face had wet streaks where the tears vanished into his beard.
We were broken. Very broken. She thought we’d hold on to secrets until they crippled us.
Instead… somebody saw my shattered pieces.
He didn’t try to fix me. He accepted it.
She underestimated us. If it were just Booker or me on the case, maybe she’d have hidden away long enough to get away with her plan. I don’t think she understood the value of being seen.
“Keyes is behind it all.”
“Of course she is. She’s an emotional void.”
He had suspected her all along, but couldn’t explain why without outing himself. Yet again, our secrets had caused problems. “Funny you say that. She kept saying she was going to feast on me.”
His head turned to the side. Scooting to the end of his chair, I could tell something had triggered that analytical brain. “Not a void. A vampire.”
“Like bats and capes?”
He transformed as he went into work mode. If not for the tears, I’d say they were two different men. The man who walked into the room vanished under procedure and detective work. How fast could we have solved this problem if we hadn’t had to hide behind masks?
“First, Dracula is going on our reading list.” He hadn’t let go of my hand. “Second, some people are natural emoters. They broadcast their feelings. But Mom told me about the people who draw on emotion. Kind of like a succubus.”
“Oh, she’s definitely a succubus.”
“So she’s been doing all this… for what?”
My eyes went wide. “Chaos.” She had given me the answer as if we’d never unravel her secret. “She feasts on chaos.” Keyes had suckered me into a classic supervillain exposition, and I didn’t even realize it.
“Vanguard.” Booker sat back in his chair. He had connected the dots, but I needed a little nudge in the right direction. “She’s behind the villains. She’s sowing chaos across the city.”
It had never been about stealing Synergy’s property. Catherine Keyes wanted the world to descend into chaos. Instead of seeing the bigger picture, we had been chasing the symptoms and not treating the cause. We had been played from the beginning.
I growled. Knowing the Centurions were being created for this very reason, I couldn’t help but be angry at Carmen. I should call her and demand that she activate this so-called team of heroes. I had to wonder if Catherine and LaToya had an arrangement.
“Nobody’s coming to save the city,” I whispered.
“Nobody has to.”
His fingers slid from my hand. The cool air made the absence of his skin hit harder. As he crossed his arms, I found the smirk, that grin that said he had a plan. Our laundry had been aired, and if anything, I thought we were stronger for it. Whatever he had in mind, I’d follow him anywhere.
“I know of another team of heroes.”
The smirk widened.
Okay. Anywhere but there.