Hev.

"H-h-el... p?" 

I'd slung my mother's armor over my shoulders, gripping her gloves so tightly the armor's metal plating gashed my skin. They held a faint trace of vanilla and polish, faded from years of disuse. My heart clenched up in my chest. It was undeniable; my mother was Nebula. And for a few moments, I didn't want to return what had been given to me. My inheritance. My mother died in it, so I should have it.

Then came Angel's muted scream, still just as raw, still just as distinct as it had been when he was thrashing through the air as he tumbled down, down, down by the windows of Death Tower.

My superhearing, to keep me sane, filters out what I don't want to hear. It's a trick that took me years to hone. But now, I close my eyes and let the mental barrier down. A quietness settles over my mind. I hear the creak of pulleys, the murmur of tenants, the hum of electricity as it surges to hundreds of apartments. A thousand heart beats, a thousand pulls of breath. "I low-key think I got a one hundred on the test."... "Naw, man. You're an idiot."... "What do you want to eat?"... "Uggggh....school."..."I love you, Jessa."..."My daughter? What the hell do you want with her?"... "Pretty simple. I'm surprised Fallout hadn't ordered us to do it before."...  "No more treaty, no more rules."... "Help!"

The distant smell of smoke draws my eyes open, and then I'm running toward the elevator where Angel's scream mingles with Jaylin's and the thump of his wings resounds through me with such clarity its echo rings under my skin like the strike of a tuning fork. I'm hurling myself through the hall, elbowing through copper doors without as much as flinching when they crumple around my form or crush against the dark walls of the elevator shaft. There's an eerie smell of lilacs and cotton candy come the farther I drop, but to me, all that matters is saving Angie and Jay before they paint the elevator's insides an alluring shade of red. "Hey!" I shout, my body becoming a missile as I free fall. "Guys!"

The screaming cuts off, forms taking shape around me. Angelos, bent backward by the weight of his own wings, with his waist bridging and his knees and elbows knobbed forward. Jaylin, so pale she glows against Angel's crumpled form with her ear pressed to his chest. I swoop down, a muscly arm catching around my friend's waist, letting his weight bring the bone clicking downward in its socket so I don't bring his tumble to a stop as I spiral to the ground. Jaylin heaves, her voice a rasp of a scream. "Gass!"

"Jimmy these doors open, wontcha?"..."What's goin on in there?" A pink mist fizzles around me, making my head spin and my eyes droopy. I hold my breath, a perk of having bigger, better lungs that work in high altitudes. Angel's gone all limp and still, his eyes shut and his short, shaggy hair fanning out around his head. When his chest doesn't move, I lift his head and elbow him in the stern with just enough force that will, hopefully, open up his airways without breaking a rib or two. One, two, three, four, rescue breaths, so quickly, he's gasping, choking up a chalky pink powder that dusts the floor. I slap him, once, twice, but he's out, his breathing quick and shallow.

"Bastards," I growl, sparing a glance at Jaylin whose sprawled on her hip. Colors have begun to take shapes behind my eyelids, thick and sprawling. A bird, a house, a boat, a sea, crashing and swelling into fuzzy little crawling creatures. Purple and green. The smell of peach sherbet. I teeter on the toes of my tattered sneakers. Angelos, hefted over one shoulder, Jay slung over the crook of the opposite arm. Fingers have crept through the doors, edging them open with a low creeeak that pours a milky, artificial light across Angel's curled body. He groans, raising a meek hand that latches onto my shoulder with the painful tenacity of a leech.

"Get out of here, girl," says a man I can't quite see, his towering form casting a dark sheet of shadow over the elevator floor. When I squint, I make out the squareness of his body, the thickness of shoulders and the silhouette of sagging jowls that sink against the chest, all of him cast in a black, watery hue because of the dark of the basement.

I lift my chin, raise my knee to my chest, and ram the doors open with one swift kick that tears through the steel hinges. Flings the man thirty feet behind the crunched up metal. A woman, with a weathered white face and frost-blue eyes, glances at me, straightens the collar of her wrinkled button-up, and books it across the floor.

There's not much here to see but for a boiler and a steel staircase, both wound up with thick sheets of white cobwebs. I take two stumbling steps and lower my friends on the concrete, where they'll be free to breathe the stuffy air untainted by the sleeping agent. The groaning villan crawls out from under the detached elevator door, his palms leaving greasy smudges on the floor. He's bald and his face is shaven, his eyes sunken in and dark under swollen creases of skin. Pupils, a smoky sort of black. Charcoal.I press my fingers to Jaylin's pulse to stall for time. She sighs in her sleep, her lips curling into a grin, small and pretty on her heart-shaped face.

"Great," I say, prodding her away and running my fingers through Angel's hair, which has become too short for me to stick with ribbons or put up in pigtails, bristly and thick under my fingertips. "You guys need an antidote, don't you? I'll have to talk to June."

The click-click of the man's boots fades into the hum of the boiler and the upstairs chatter I've tuned out again. I level my ear against Angel's chest, shivering with relief that's almost palpable at the steady gasping he makes, sound like a paperbag being filled with air and then cinched shut. I wait for another string of his heartbeats, which, though drawn-out, makes a dependable ba-BUMP, ba-BUMP. "Stay alive," I say, as if he can hear me. When we return to school, I think this is what all the notes I pass to him will say.

Rising, I note the ache behind my knees. This superheroing has taken a toll on my body. I can feel it in the knots in my shoulders, the cramping in my legs. The darkness around me is blanketing in its thickness, and I'm speeding through it, so much momentum flung into my strides my feet don't hit the ground as much as glide across it. "Hey! I have a few questions," I say as I step into the columns of light cast by a window slashed into the door. My voice is husky as I race up the stairs, eyes shut so I can focus on the sound of a stumbling, desperate gait and the pacing of the security guard. The same security guard who found me in a sobbing, bloody puddle when Gats was taken.

I shake my head as he morphs into a red and black blur. What the hell is it I've lived through? More than a few kidnappings, more than a few betrayals, more than a few moments I thought my world would shatter all around me. How am I supposed to settle back into my life after everything I've seen?

He's muttering, soft curses with a repetition of "dang" and "has the world gone crazy?" There's something soothing about his quiet incredulity. A stranger, rocked, if only a little, by the same force that crumpled our worlds, reacting just as a normal person would, with a 'what' and a 'huh?' It's soothing to know that somewhere beyond this place, the normal and seductively ordinary still exist.

I skid across marble tile, bunch up the scarlet runner, and send the door flinging open with a hard push of a flexed shoulder. It's a delicate art, learning how to run through stuff, without, well, running through stuff.  When I first decided I'd superhero, it was one of the beginning lessons I taught myself, that and how to stay sane with the whole super-sense thing. It's still vivid, running into Toby's arms, sobbing: there are voices everywhere....it hurts!

My eyes are still closed. I know the city, the smell of exhaust and cigarettes and pidgeon scat, all mixed with the evergreen of the park, so fresh and clean. The rain drizzles now, running cold rivulets down my skin. There's a thousand hearts, a thousand breaths throbbing in my ears. Then the voices are back. "Good job, back there. The man will have our hides."... "He's reasonable. Young though. Y'know they say he's only on his first life cycle? Eighty-something!"

I dig my heels into the sidewalk, lift into the sky, and rocket after the two miserable creatures. My eyes blink open. The sky is a pink, but it's an ugly color, splitting across gold-white clouds like a raging wound.

"Hey!" With my toes wiggling in the bottoms of my tennis shoes, I hover high above an empty sidewalk and an even emptier street. It's eerie. Like looking at Starlight after the apocalypse, still and silent and dead. The figures were lock-armed and heaving as they race ahead, not suspicious at all. 

The streets are blackened with choppy, slow-to-drain puddles. I drop down in front of the villains in a modified superhero crouch with my fist just raised over the sidewalk. My own take on the hero landing that didn't break so much concrete. I let my lip curl up into a smirk at the wide-eyed stares I'm captured in, though I'm far from a smirking mood. "Wait," I say. "I have questions."

The woman slouching in the crumpled button-up gulps audibly, her fingers fumbling with her Peter Pan collar as beads of sweat appear on her partner's brow, the man who called me "girl." I press my hands to my hips, all my body weight propped on one hip. It's something so Galaxy-like, a huff of relief quivers on my lips. And then I smile. I think I missed playing Galaxy, being all brave and cool and powerful. I lean forward. "Where's Fallout? What is he planning for Angelos? Were you trying to kill him?"

The man's eyes narrow. "I could kill you."

"No," I say, "you couldn't." My footsteps rattle the cement and the sidewalk breaks under my heels with the sound of rock grinding together. I wince. So maybe I am a little rusty, but the man quivers and the woman's hands freeze on her throat. "I've seen a lot worse than you," I continue. "Tell me what I want to know, and I'll let it slide that you almost murdered my best friend. You don't and I'll..." I shrug, let the threat hang in the air unfinished. The woman lifts her hands while her friend glowers down at me.

"The man just wants his son. He has a right to him."

"Oh." I snort. "Yeah. That totally justifies trying to kidnap him." I'm shaking, fist balled.

The woman rolls her eyes, flicking a strand of white hair over her shoulder. "Oh, don't act naive. You're the superhero type. You think a deranged psychokinetic should just be left walking around?"

"He's not deranged or psychokinetic... most of the time." I snatch the woman up by that collar she won't stop playing with and pull her up against me, her feet dragging on the sidewalk. She blinks at me, her widened eyes going slim and the color returning to her weathered face.

"You were doing good until you got all cliche on me."

"Where's Fallout?" I pull her so close our noses touch. Her mouth presses into a hard line. "Speak up, woman!" I give her a hard shake that has her eyes rolling back in her sockets before I remember my strength. She offers me a wry smile.

"You're Galaxy, aren't you?"

"Or maybe I don't need information from you." I think back to the car ride with Poison, trying to remember roads and landmarks, but thinking of him puts a pain in the chest that hurts a heck of a lot more than a punch in the heart. Love him? How can I love him? "Maybe I'll just use you as a hostage."

"Galaxy." The woman's lazy smile broadens. "You're the one that got crushed under the weight of her armor and swooned for Fallout's other kid."

My grip tightens so hard my fingers tear through the fabric. "I-I—"

"Look out!" the man calls. I whip around, the woman's body banging against mine, limp and dangling from a tattered collar that tears out of my hand easily. She drops to her feet, shooting that snide smile back over her shoulder. A little canister spritzes pink mist at my eyes that smells like sugar and burns on contact. Blinded, I swing for the man's wrist, the gas already fuzzing up my vision.

My knees give out. I collapse on the sidewalk in a sleepy puddle, digging my fingertips into my skin to keep from passing out. Us Brooks, minus my brother, can't sleep. Shouldn't. And I'm not in any particular mood for going into a coma.

It takes minutes like this, with my head in my hands, this sugary sweet seeping into my brains. It takes long, horrible, minutes for the sensation to pass, all of it mixed with the terror of that first long sleep, this deep self-loathing sliding loose in my gut, and the thought of Katris making breathing a wheeze.

I have to save him, I figure, the kid who makes my brain an existential melt. But when I rise, I turn away, toward the darkened building at the end of the street where my friends lay asleep, knowing that with every step, the pain should ease.