Your friends despise you. Vincent's accusation pierced my skull with hot needles and popped my guilt like a bubble.
Fuck it. I yanked my mask from my pocket and tied it on. My damp fingers smeared the leather, and I wiped the sweat away. Vincent was right: my family already scorned me. And so did Glimmer. What did I care if I gave them one more reason?
Because it's always just one more reason. Then another. And another, until the little reasons pile up so high, they smother you. That's how villains are made.
What the fuck ever.
Ten minutes later, I stalked down a narrow street in Castro towards a place I knew, an underground dive where masks were just one way people hid from each other. Rats snickered in the garbage at my feet, and I kicked them aside. Down greasy steps, through the rusted door.
Inside, dark shapes hunkered in dim blue light, a snatch of meaningless sounds: music, groans, sobs, vacant laughter. Chains hung from the ceiling in drifting smoke. I inhaled, let the stinking air numb my senses, stumbled up to the bar.
Triple brainfuck with a twist of sordid, thanks, and keep the change.
The guy on the next stool—thin, his once-proud muscles wasting, nice clothes but old and unwashed—clinked his glass against mine, and we drank. Like Glimmer, he bore scars on the inside of his wrist. Unlike Glimmer, he looked ready to try it all over again. Search human disintegration and you'll get a picture of this guy.
His phone lay beside him on the bar. One of Vincent's creations, an obsolete model with cracked glass. He wore his wedding ring with that wishful air that bespoke failure and tragedy. Probably carried pics of his estranged kids in his wallet, or on that ancient phone. Too young, I thought as I gulped harsh alcohol, to be so broken.
Aren't we all?
I banged the empty glass down. "Rough day?"
He lit a cigarette, ash flaring. "Fuckin' A."
"Same shit, different year."
"Sing it, sister." He offered me his smoke. Not one from the pack. I took it. What the hell, right? If this was his pick-up routine, I was about the best he could expect.
I inhaled, relishing the horrid gritty flavor, and let my special senses sparkle. I didn't taste augment. Only sour despair. He met my gaze, the wide brown eyes of an animal caught in a trap.
Was that what Vincent saw when he looked at me: prey? An inferior creature, fit only to be exploited or consumed?
I passed the cigarette back. Glimmer's eyes aren't brown, I thought mistily, alcohol already muddling my underfed brain. They're blue. Darkest midnight blue, the shade of the sky beyond stars. I didn't even know Glimmer's real name.
And that was relevant how?
The guy pointed at my glass and signaled to the barkeep for another. He took in my mask, my scarred cheek, let his gaze wander down to my chest. "You got real superpowers?"
Augments, idiot. I didn’t bother to correct him. I just grabbed his throat with an invisible fist of force, and dragged him in. “What do you think?”
By the time I got home, orange dawn slanted through the trees, and I was wide-eyed and popping out of my skin after a gutful of drink and a couple of hours of muttering sleep. I hadn't been followed, or detected by Sentinels. I was pretty confident of that. I was remorseful, disgusted, so furious at myself I could scream, but that didn't make me an idiot.
That guy from the bar—I'd filed his name under too much information—had been sweet, and totally on board with my sordid-brainfuck plan, but by the time we'd gotten down to business, he was too drunk to finish, and I'd been too restless. He wept on my shoulder. I threw up in his bathtub. Altogether a fitting experience. I should be satisfied.
But I wasn't.
Birds chortled and trilled as I stomped through the forest, and I scowled up at them with half a mind to tear their tree down. "What in hell are you so happy about?"
They didn't answer. Typical. The world's divided into two kinds: happy people, who don't need a reason, and the rest of us, who can't find a reason to save ourselves.
I slouched into the refectory, where the family Fortune (plus assorted hangers-on) were getting stuck into breakfast. Uncle Mike was sitting straight-backed at a table, munching peanut-butter toast and thumbing through messages on his Glimmer-hacked Blackberry. He waved at me, a wry grin on his lined face.
I shrugged, and Mike shook his head in mock scolding. My uncle looked as I imagined Adonis would in thirty years' time: weathered and wise but still handsome, a mesh of silver through his blond hair, his eyes clear with nary a blue twinkle faded. One of those hip older dudes who has to fight off ambitious young tarts with a scythe, if Mike was into that sort of thing, which he wasn't, and for good reason.
Silver anti-conducting don't-kill-everyone bracelets glinted around my uncle's wrists. Static electricity crackled over the pale metal, his latent power battling to escape. It's tricky to be a playboy when you're such a lethal weapon.
Mike can fire lightning bolts. He's a menace, really, and it was only good luck for Sapphire City that all those years ago he and Dad decided to fight crime, not commit it. Blackstrike and Illuminatus, merciless scourge of Gallery villains from Oakland to the Bay.
Dad was the eldest, and with his power over shadows and darkness, he'd always been the thinker in their ass-kicking double act. These days, Mike was content just to give advice and let Adonis take charge. One of those rare, lucky people who managed to sustain both an augment and a life, or at least he did, before all this happened.
I wondered if Razorfire had ever tried to recruit Mike, and snorted. Good luck with that. Dad had a dark streak—no pun intended—but Mike is one of life's genuine good guys. Not a saint. Just a profoundly sensible man, who instinctively understood the difference between right and wrong.
But as I looked at him, my heart twisted. Mike looked so much like Dad. Except Dad would've speared me on his shadow-licked blue stare, and made some cutting remark about how some of his children—he meant Adonis, who aside from failing to marry some “nice girl” and crank out a brood of grandkids could do no wrong in Dad's eyes—could party all night and still show up in time for work.
Dad had loved me. In his distant way, he'd loved us all. Didn't mean he'd put up with our shit.
Thankfully, Adonis hadn't yet made an appearance at breakfast. The smell of baked tomatoes and French toast churned my abused stomach, but it watered my mouth, too, and when Peggy—cooking, of course, apron and oven mitts and all—offered me a plate, I steeled myself and took one.
"Thanks," I muttered, dredging up a watery smile. "You're a champion."
Truth was, my vision still blurred and my head hurt like someone had mistaken my brain for a hockey puck. Peg's existence was particularly infuriating this morning. But aside from a few extra throbs in my temples, politeness cost me nothing.
"You're welcome," Peg chirruped, like she meant it. Perky as usual, in cargo pants and a clean t-shirt, her ginger hair pulled into a cute ponytail. She was one of those stray augments who'd run to us for protection when Vincent got elected mayor, and it took Adonis about five minutes and a flirty smile to latch onto her. Dad would've approved of Peg. A “nice girl”. Pretty face, I admitted. Good cook. One of those happy people.
But this was all I knew about her. I frowned. Who was this chirpy cartoon housewife who was screwing my brother? What was her augment, even: baking