Seeing Dad taking notes on his stupid clipboard while he examines the latest victim of a superpowered serial killer shouldn't be something I could get used to.
Good thing that, so far, I haven't.
"So… Your dad's working with my dad, and Emma's mom switches departments whenever convenient?" I ask the pile of tanned muscles that's slightly shorter than the other pile of tanned muscles.
Gustavo. I ask Gustavo.
The Hispanic guy nods and Emma (the not-red-haired one, second of her name, long may she usurp the other's throne) assents. There's something about the way she does it that definitely leans more towards assenting than nodding. It must be an Emma thing.
It may also be the shivering girl in her arms.
Brooke… Has taken it hard. Which shouldn't be a surprise, given we all just learned she and the late Mr. Branson were lovers, and… Well.
He's very definitively the [late] Mr. Branson.
And he'd also been fucking quite a few other teenage girls.
Which is not only quite a bit yucky, but a shitty thing to learn about your boyfriend when he's currently not in any position to get yelled at for his—well, for his [anything].
Dad and Gustavo's father are still taking pictures of the scene, of the artistic display that has Mr. Branson's corpse as the centerpiece. The almost invisible threads are no longer glinting in the carefully arranged cones of the spotlights discreetly hanging off pine branches, the blood now a rusty red rather than the vibrant, glimmering thing it was earlier in the night, but with the right angle, the right superposition of threads, one can still see the artfully arrayed lines taking the shape of—
Enough. I've looked at it enough.
"It's like we've got the whole junior investigative team," Noah comments, still not quite sober, but thankfully far more cogent than when the whole thing started.
Emma's hand hesitates over Brooke's hair before resuming her calming caresses.
Nobody has been able to contact Brooke's father. The Mayor.
I would be worried this means he's another victim, but, apparently, his leaving his teenage daughter alone and without any means of emotional support is nothing unheard of.
Hey, Brooke! At least there's something we have in common!
… Yeah, I don't think that would go over that well.
"Do we?" Audrey asks in a somber tone.
"What?" I ask, like a moron.
"Do we have a junior investigation team? Or are we just targets?" she says, pointing out the obvious.
There's an uncomfortable silence among the gathered rejects from the nearest supermodel agency—I mean, my new classmates.
Seriously, at least wear something other than your swimsuits if you don't want to be typecast.
"We can be both," Emma finally says.
Audrey looks at her with perhaps a tad more intensity than the comment warrants, and Noah sits up straighter, like someone just waved a treat in front of him.
"Yeah, I don't see that working out," Jake says, pointing with a thumb at the hanging body.
"Maybe we shouldn't draw attention to ourselves. The last thing we want to do is to paint a target on our backs," Will says, a tad more diplomatically.
"We… may not have much of a choice," Gustavo finally says.
And we all stare at him.
Given he's half-naked, it would be a bit awkward under most circumstances, but murder has a way to do away with social taboos.
Maybe I should have tried it in Winslow.
"Explain," I finally say.
He looks at me, his head tilted down, like a wolf evaluating a threat—or like a sulky teenager. Yes, I think I will go with the latter one.
For the moment.
"The two murders have targeted people from school and revealed secrets that imply the murderer is digging up everything they may consider worthy of being exposed. They are judging this town, this generation, and they are doing it with the haunting ghost of the past generation's crimes. We are all targets," Noah interjects. That is, acts like Noah.
I swear, it's not even been a full day since I met the guy…
"That, and this is a PRT case. The PRT in this town is basically two guys and whatever they can borrow from the local police. And no offense, Taylor, but I don't think your father is much of a scrapper," Gustavo continues, as if used to the other guy's tendencies. Which, if he's had to listen to him hijacking classes since the school year started…
Yeah, it's either getting used to it or murdering the little flannel-wearing twerp.
"You would be surprised. He attacks dirty dishes like a man with a mission," I comment on my father's scrappiness.
And everybody, Brooke included, stares at me.
… What? I'm one of the few people here who's not almost naked, so that can't—is that it? Am I infringing on a cultural taboo of the natives?
"What?" Emma says. And I get the urge to facepalm.
"Scrapper. He scraps things off dirty dishes. He's a scrapper," I explain, feeling rising heat with every damning syllable.
Everybody groans.
"Oh God, you're such a dork…" Brooke moans.
Which is the first thing she's said since I saved her from certain amputation and likely death, so… victory?
Also: ungrateful little bitch.
And Noah is giving me a thumbs up.
Which fills me with shame.
"Right. Now that Broody's revealed her true colors," Audrey, bi-panic or not, I will get my vengeance, "do we all agree that our only protection is an undermanned department whose descendants are all gathered here?"
There are a few nods from the circle of teens sitting on the forest floor. I'm standing with my back against a tree, by the way. Because I don't feel like getting pine needles on my clothes, but I guess that isn't much of a concern for most of them.
I would be more worried about their actual concern if I were in their not-shoes, but to each their own.
"What choice do we have?" Emma the Second says.
… This is getting tiresome. From now on, Brockton's Emma shall be referred to as Emma Prime. Because she's a prime bitch.
"We can put together information, theorize, speculate. If we stumble across anything pertinent, we just have one of the three scions contact their parental units," Noah explains.
"Parental units?" I can't help but comment with an arched eyebrow.
"You're one to talk, Broody," Audrey says.
Keep talking. It's not like the whole state became a death trap the moment I walked in. Aside from the serial killer, I mean.
Or in addition to.
Ugh. Fine, no more jokes about murdering my classmates. This will take some getting used to.
"I think Noah has a point," Gustavo says for, probably, the first time in anyone present's lives.
We all stare at one another, weighing in the respective reactions. Even Brooke manages to raise her head enough to do some proper staring.
"Fine. But I swear, if this ends up with us riding around in a van and taking masks off old people…" I say.
And Audrey smacks me upside the head.
"Hey!"
"Sorry. It's a conditioned reflex from dealing with Noah."
"… Are you being serious or—"
"She is!" Noah cheerfully clarifies.
… I'm suddenly rethinking this whole 'teaming up with clearly unhinged people.'
"Moving on," Gustavo says, probably trying to silence his own doubts. "What do we know, and what do we suspect?"
"Oh! I like that one. Mind if I quote you?" Noah… Noahs.
"Quote—" I start to ask.
"He has a podcast about horror movies. Guess what he's been working on since this afternoon?" Audrey, once again, acts as an interpreter.
And I glare at Noah.
He has the grace to fidget.
"It's not like I will get many other chances to live through a legitimate horror movie, you know? I need to capitalize on this one."
I look at Audrey half-questioning, half-imploringly. She shrugs.
And I smack Noah upside his head.
"Hey!"
"Shut up. It's therapeutic."
"Smacking me or having me shut up?"
"Yes." I take a deep breath and try to regain a modicum of gravitas. The corpse hanging behind me in the distance should help, but I really think this audience has been desensitized at some point. "We know the murderer or murderers want to make a show of it. We know they are tying the murders to this town's history. We know they use tinkertech. We know they have access to some kind of town-wide surveillance. We know they like setting up traps. We know they are ramping up—"
"Know?" Gustavo cuts me off.
"The first corpse was from someone who disappeared days ago and was properly prepared over what we can guess has been a long stretch of time until the murderer felt ready for its unveiling. That," I point over my shoulder with my thumb. Brooke shudders, and Emma hugs her, "is far more elaborate and done to someone who was alive this very morning. It's a message about how quickly they can move, that they don't need to take their time, and that we have yet to see the full extent of what they can manage. And…" I look at the shivering blonde, who looks back at me in a way that she didn't when she called me a dork.
Right.
Too intense.
I take a deep breath and let the façade slip a bit. Let the fear and apprehension always held at bay by ever-present rage and snark surface, even if just a bit.
Let myself be… human. I guess.
"Brooke," I say with a voice that's softer but also jagged, cracking around the edges, "how did they lure you there?"
She looks at me, something in her face shifting in a way I can't quite read, because I no longer can—
"They sent me messages from Seth's number."
Of course. A dead end.
"Can we see them?" I push myself to ask.
Her breath hitches, and she tenses. Then she nods and hands me her phone.
It's… I do not look at past messages, so I can't compare the writing style, but the double meaning behind the lines is obvious in hindsight.
"They… have a personal grudge against you. And they are…"
"Sick? Twisted? Monstrous?" she adds, each adjective dripping with more bile.
"Yes. The implication is that this was a trap, that they would've been perfectly content to let you cut yourself against the lines, but that they also were happy to watch your reaction and not intervene. ['I'll be sure to make it last for you…'] they say—"
"Broody. Enough." There's a warm hand on my shoulder, and when I look up from the phone, I can see Audrey's blue eyes looking at me. Not unkindly, not even reproachfully, but…
The circle's silent.
"You need police custody," Emma says, purposefully taking the attention away from me, from my detached analysis—
The hand on my shoulder squeezes.
I look up after realizing I was staring at the ground, and both Noah and Audrey are looking at me with… I don't know.
Something I can no longer name, I guess.
"You can stay with my father tonight," Gustavo says.
And the other pile of tanned muscles, Jake, bristles.
"I…" Brooke looks between the two boys, and I'm sure I must be missing some context, because nobody else looks surprised by the reaction. "Thank you."
"No problem," he says, completely unfazed by the hostility—ah. No. His fist is clenched.
… Teenagers, I swear.
Speaking of which, Audrey, you can take your hand away whenever you want, you know? People are going to get ideas.
"Right, going back to our speculative session," Noah says, his priorities clear, "the technology makes it unclear, but the sheer focus on aesthetics, the way it directs the spectator's eye toward a particular angle to understand the message… That's not just slasher, that's a revindication of the giallo genre. It even has a crazed murderer and a narration filtered through madness—"
"Narration?" Oh. I'm the one asking. He has me engaged.
… This is awful.
"If Gustavo would explain? I do believe this is his area of expertise," Noah says, ceding his speaking turn and making me think he's been kidnapped and replaced.
The Hispanic boy cocks an eyebrow and looks around a circle of people suddenly very interested in whatever he has to say.
"He means I draw comics," he clarifies. For people who understand what he's getting at, because I, personally, don't have a single clue. "The two… victims have been framed as if inside a famous painting each, and when you put two drawings together in sequence… Comics. Narration."
"Precisely!" Noah cheerfully exclaims. And then drops his head at the sheer intensity of the stares he gets for it. "Okay, okay, this may not be obvious, but the murderer is not just sending a message, but telling a story. The mask of Brandon James—"
"Who?" asks the only person in here who apparently doesn't know the name. That is: me.
"Brandon James…" Emma starts. And then stops for a moment. "Brandon James was a man born with a deformity. He underwent multiple surgeries throughout his life, but he was relentlessly bullied for it until, they say, he snapped when a girl he liked rejected him at the school's Halloween dance."
"A trigger event?" I ask. Because that would be the obvious conclusion given—
"No. No, just… He was beaten up by the girl's boyfriend and his friends. The friends later on were murdered one by one, until he was lured by the girl so he could turn himself in… But the police shot him."
"Uh… That's…"
"And he survived." There's something defiant in Emma's eyes as she says that, something that flashes before being buried.
"How?" I say. Because she demands it. Because she wants me to ask her to continue the story.
"He fell into the lake with more than one bullet inside him. He should've been dead two times over… but he dived. He hid beneath the water, at night, almost freezing to death before he dragged himself back to shore and to the girl he loved, the one whose boyfriend had beaten him so badly he seemingly snapped after years of abuse.
"He found them both. And the boy finished what the police couldn't… Or so we think. Because he, once again, fell back into the lake, and his body was never found."
We all look at her, and we only need a campfire to set the scene. Because that's not a retelling from something from a newspaper, no, this is a [story], and those have a rhythm completely unlike mere facts—
"The girl was my mother, the boy, my father," she says. And now we all look at her, but in a completely different way.
"… What?" Brooke says, shifting around, incorporating herself away from the comforting hug she's been on the receiving end of since we calmed her enough that she could be touched.
Emma sighs.
Noah vibrates, but let's not focus on that.
And Audrey, seriously, you can let go of my shoulder.
"You never told us," Will says in a way that clearly implies the 'us' should've been a 'me.'
And Emma looks at him like one may look at something that shouldn't be mentioned in polite company.
"Lives were never at stake," she finally answers.
"You're also a target," Audrey says.
And there's… Ice. Steel. Both. Something hard and brittle.
Emma smiles at her, and I'm willing to bet she's never looked at Will with this tenderness.
… Is this my Gaydar? Does it count as a Thinker rating?
"Yes. Yes, I am," the girl says, softly, almost sensually.
I shiver, and I don't know why.
***
Dad's still busy with whatever it is he, Gustavo's dad, and Emma's mother are doing over there. Brooke has been taken away by Gustavo, who now has a PRT issue radio to directly call in case of an emergency, and Audrey and Noah have been taken away by their respective parents.
I don't know where Jake and Will have gone to, and I frankly don't care too much.
Because Emma has dragged me into the woods, and I really think I should make that a priority.
"You are a parahuman," she says when we are out of hearing range of any responsible adults. And Dad.
"What?" I ask, not even having to fake being stunned.
"You reacted when you heard the scream, but halfway there, something clicked, and you started running much faster, pushing yourself till you couldn't push anymore. Something entered your range, and you felt Brooke was in danger."
"I—I usually think people screaming in the woods at night aren't doing it for the sheer shock factor."
She smiles at me. There's warmth in there, something tentative, and I—
"It was the blood, wasn't it? You felt it; it was how you knew where the threads were, how you knew to pull Brooke to the ground."
"I…"
"Your trigger event. It was that other Emma, wasn't it?" She takes a step forward, her hand raised to touch my shoulder reassuringly like Audrey had, but she says that [name,] and I—
I take a step back. And she looks both hurt and reassured.
"I won't tell anyone," she whispers.
My heart is thundering, my breathing ragged, and my vision narrows, diffuse black at the edges, and I—
I'm kneeling on the forest ground, pine needles lightly pricking me through my pants as a cold feeling rushes inside my skull and—
Emma's hugging me, cradling my head against her chest. She's getting some practice today.
"It's all right," she whispers. "It will all be all right."
She sounds like she believes it.
I don't.
But… Maybe I can pretend I do.
***
I'm sitting, now that my scheme to keep greenery out of my clothes has finally failed, with my back to a pine tree.
The bark is smooth everywhere save for the very edges, and the slight roughness is soothing, an anchor of tactile feeling that drags me back to the present, to the moment, to the forest of fragrant earth and—
Right. Conversation. I should also focus on that.
"Take your time," Emma says. And she may even mean it.
"No. No, it's… Fine."
"You… Don't need to be. I understand trigger events aren't… Just, take your time, all right? We aren't going anywhere until they decide what to do with Mr. Branson."
"Did you… know him?"
"Just… a teacher. Brooke had been bragging about her mysterious lover, but none of us knew… [that]."
"Right."
I lean back and close my eyes, the tree touching me more fully, the sensation reassuring, as if I had my own roots to anchor myself with.
"Creepy," I finally say.
Emma chuckles.
"There's a serial killer on the loose, and you think the teacher having affairs with his students is creepy?"
"I'm far more used to one than the other."
"Ah. Right. Brockton," she says as if that explains everything.
Which… I mean, fair.
"You're the first person to figure it out," I finally say.
"Your dad doesn't—"
"God, no. Let's not even start with that."
"Right…" she looks a bit dejected at my answer. Guess I'm still being a bit…
Well, [me].
"You know a lot about capes," I finally say.
"I… I always was interested."
"Trigger events. They aren't… I also was a cape fan since I was a kid, but I didn't learn what that was until very recently. It's usually only talked about in academic circles."
Emma shrugs.
"Are you a cape, Emma?"
She looks at me with shock and then bursts out laughing.
"Sorry! Sorry, I'm not laughing at you, it's just… the idea… I've never—"
"Fine, fine! I get it; you can get it out of your system and start breathing!"
And she does, laughing for quite a while in fits and bursts, seemingly calming down only for her to look at my pissed-off face and start guffawing once again.
… I'm starting to think this is personal.
"Are you done?" I finally ask.
She holds a finger up, her shoulders shaking.
I sigh and make a wasp pinch the tip of her nose.
"Eep!"
"Changing the subject: that's my power. I control and sense through any kind of arthropod in a radius from where Brooke was standing to the spot where I started running like someone's life depended on it."
Emma stares at the wasp hovering in front of her. I make it wiggle its front leg in a wave.
She squeals.
"That's absolutely adorable!"
"… That's the last reaction I ever expected someone to have after learning I control plagues."
"Can you do butterflies?" She says, turning and looking at me with the kind of intensity one expects from somebody who's about to tell you about good news at length and won't take 'I'm agnostic' for an answer.
"Sure?" I finally say, slightly intimidated.
Emma squeals once again.
… Having someone learn my secret identity before I even have one is, so far, not going, at all, like I expected.
***
[Emma]
Taylor's dad drops me off at home long before mom is done with Mr. Branson's corpse, because she says she will still take quite some time and doesn't want me to lose even more sleep over this than the mere memory will already do.
Dad will be home, so… It's hard to argue I won't be safe there.
He's, after all, the third cape in the city. That I know of.
And I know the secret identities of two of them.
… I suspect something from Noah must've rubbed off on me. This isn't statistically normal.
I say goodbye to both of them, Taylor much more at ease with me than whenever she talks to her father, and I hide a sigh at the whole mess that I'm now tangled in. Because, at least until Taylor feels close enough to Audrey and Noah, I'm the only one she can go to for help regarding her unique circumstances, and I'm not about to turn her away when…
Let's just say I have a unique insight into the psychology of parahumans. And they need all the help they can get.
The family of parahumans… Well, that's not quite the same, but… I would like to give Mr. Hebert some pointers. Some badly needed pointers, if our short time sharing a car is any indication.
Speaking of cars.
There's a lime thing that I always think looks far too tacky parked in front of our garage, and I can feel the smile stretching my lips as I open the door.
As soon as I take a step inside the house, someone tackles me, and it's only sheer luck that we don't end up on the floor.
"Emma! Are you all right?!" Piper screams in my face.
The smile on my own is now a bit shaky as I let the whole day finally hit me now that I don't have to comfort anyone, and there's someone here who wants to take care of me.
"Yes, sis. I'm… Thank you. For coming."
She looks at me as if I've gone insane. Which, to be fair, the circumstances make far more likely than I would like.
"Of course," she says. As if it should be obvious that she would leave everything behind and rush to this little town in the middle of nowhere at the drop of a hat just because she's worried about her little sister, who doesn't even share her surname.
Which, knowing her…
Yes, it is.
So I hug her and allow myself to cry.
And Piper Shaw rocks me back and forth like she did the first time she met me.
My big sister rocks. And she rocks me.
… I hope Taylor's sense of humor isn't contagious.
===================
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