Do you know what I never expected I would have to deal with once I set on being a superhero?
Prank calls.
"Look, if you're gonna try and convince me that you're the Tinker murdering people for shits and giggles, maybe do something more impressive than using a gag voice garbler from the closest dollar store you could find. Fuck off," I say.
And hang up.
Nervously, I stare at the phone in my hand. It sounds once again after just two seconds.
I think. Note to self: buy a pocketwatch and keep a small spider on each of the hands to get supernaturally accurate timing.
Huh. That sounds almost cool. Also, it seems like coming up with the idea has taken long enough that it will look like I shoved the phone in my pocket and took it back out after letting it ring a couple of times.
Fingers crossed that's plausible.
"Yes? Any slightly more believable claims? Maybe you're a Nigerian Prince in dire need of financial assistance?" I say, relying on the power of snark to carry me through.
"Taylor! Taylor, help! He has me!" Audrey's panicked voice screams from the other side of the line.
And I run.
Streetlights flash past me as I pound the asphalt as hard as I can, trying to get there just a bit faster, just in time, like I did with Brooke.
And then I realize I don't know where I'm going.
There's garbled laughter coming from the phone tightly clutched in my hand, and I, trembling with nerves and something I dare not name, lift it up to my ear.
"How is that for proof, Taylor?" he asks.
"I… I… What do you want?" I say, walking slowly, trying to keep the blood flowing, to not get lightheaded with adrenaline and a sudden lack of air as my pulse races in my ears.
"Your attention, but also your opinions. I did ask, after all."
I look at a night sky devoid of stars, still light enough that they can't show up.
And, amid the rustling of trees that suddenly look that much more menacing, I head toward the nearest bench on the sidewalk and drop down on it.
"OK. OK, I'll say whatever you want. Just… Just let Audrey go."
Loud laughter crackled with static shots from my phone so suddenly that I almost drop it.
"I really got you, didn't I, Taylor?" he says, almost genially.
"Got me?"
"Oh, well," Emma's voice says, "it's just that you insulted my technology, and I felt I should give you a little demonstration. Not to mention make you question if, from now on, every single person you talk to on the phone is secretly me standing over the dead body of one of your new friends."
My breath catches at the sheer casual cruelty coming from the one Emma that shouldn't be talking to me like that, not after a night in a dark forest and—
Right. Not her.
I briefly close my eyes, resting back on the white-painted bench, feeling the condensed moisture of the cooling evening punctuate my shirt.
Then I get up and walk.
"For somebody asking for an art critique, you're surprisingly abrasive," I say, trying to hold my tone steady as I pace around, going through each bug in reach of my senses to try and find somebody talking on the phone in the vain hope the creep is spying on me, close enough to keep an eye on my movements.
And not, you know, using cameras or drones to do so, given I've just gotten confirmation that he's a Tinker of some kind.
… Great, because we needed another nerd in here for Noah to latch onto. I swear, at the rate things are going, the school's pariah will have a bigger social circle than the popular crowd.
"Let's just say I like to have a captive audience."
"Right. And I guess the creepy, menacing overtone of that is entirely accidental, and you'd just like to become a friendly acquaintance."
"Truth be told? I wouldn't mind being your friend, Taylor. You've been hurt, unjustly persecuted by others for things that were never your fault… Really, I think you've got more of Brandon James in you than most of your newest friends."
Don't react.
It can be entirely coincidental. He's obsessed with Brandon James as a motif, a symbol, so bringing him up doesn't mean he knows anything about what I just learned today.
"You've been investigating me," I say instead, focusing on the one thing that a Taylor Hebert who didn't know anything about Brandon James would point out as I quickly walk around the block, deciding to try and trace a spiral pattern, to broaden my area of awareness.
There are thirteen people making a call inside my range right now. So far, none of their breaths on the fruit flies atop their phones match the killer's timing.
There [could] be some time shenanigans involved, seeing as with Tinkers nothing's ever off the table, but… Occam's Razor. I'll never get anywhere if I assume everything's not only possible but likely.
So I turn right at the next corner, going through new houses, searching for all their occupants, following the clouds of carbon dioxide to find which ones of them are talking, and wait for him to do so.
"A lonely girl shows up on the very day I unveil my first piece? And then proceeds to [interfere] with the next one? Of course I have investigated you, Taylor. And I've found such interesting things…"
He's baiting me. Trying to see what I'll jump to, what I'll assume he knows.
Cold reading. Orson Welles was famous for it, back when people believed that powers were something mysterious and not… what they are.
Misery, despair, and the people who succumb to them.
"Your first piece? It was poignant. Simple yet evocative. It was… straightforward enough to get the message, the image of dead, innocent Ophelia returning to nature twisted and perverted into whatever that blonde's name was. The second? I'm kind of iffy about it. Don't misunderstand me, the aesthetics were on point, but it was far too elaborate. A Baroque thing, if it makes sense—though I guess that may have been the point, given the time period of its inspiration?"
"Did you catch the reference?" he asks, voice more animated than when prodding at me and hinting at darker secrets.
None of the people in my range speak with that timing. And I move on.
"The reference?"
He tsks, clear disappointment in the simple vocalization that makes me…
Uncomfortable.
"Velázquez. The painter of light, Taylor," he says.
And I…
"You seriously couldn't have expected me to know that," I say.
"To know? No. But to investigate, to find out? How do you expect to get the deeper meaning of my pieces if you don't do that much?"
I look around. The sky is darkening by the minute, and only the streetlights and my bugs remain to orient me. I can see people through the windows of their houses, moving in and out of view, dark silhouettes against bright backgrounds.
Light…
"The wires. The wires and the blood," I whisper despite myself.
"Yeees?" he goads me on.
And I close my eyes.
I… I'm determined. Focused. I want to find him and stop him.
But what I'm currently doing is not working, and there's so much ground I can cover by walking around. It is… a long shot.
Futile.
So maybe I can allow myself this? Maybe I can talk to him? Understand him?
And, maybe, understand what it is that Noah and Audrey claim to see in me?
"The threads were invisible, guides for the blood to drip down before you illuminated them, [revealed] them. Each carefully positioned light? Each angled beam? That was a choice, a step in uncovering what was there. A light shone in the darkness."
"Yes. Yes, that's precisely it, Taylor. What else?"
There's something eager in his tone, his voice, his cadence, no matter how mangled it all becomes through the distorter he uses.
Something I… don't understand, not really.
But I still resonate with it.
"That's not the message of the piece. No, that one was clear, straightforward enough: it was a punishment and a reveal, Brandon James' mask yet again contemplating what Lakewood's corruption has tried to bury like it buried him. But… if Velázquez was the painter of light? Then that's a statement about the artist, not the piece."
"Tell me more," he demands with a hunger that spurs me on, that niggles at that part of me they all seem so worried about and lets it loose.
Free.
"It's a statement about you. About your mission. It's… It's mixed, because what you're doing is bringing light to dark places, and your work reflects your identity. It's about who you [are], the man behind the artist, or, rather, who you want to be. Yes. Yes! It's aspirational! A message from yourself to yourself, that you're no longer trapped in the dark, that you can fly free, that you can [hunt] rather than be hunted, that you can… can…"
I stop.
In shock.
In horror.
Seeing myself.
"That I can stop being a frightened girl trapped in a locker, Taylor? Is that what you were going to say?" the murderer says with what should be a mocking tone.
I hang up.
And look around me, at the deserted street blotched with pools of white, cold light, the night's silence broken only by a buzzing that is only partially under my control and sounds like the laughter I desperately want the killer's last words to have been mired in.
But no. As usual, Taylor Hebert can't get what she wants.
Because, as I turn back toward my new home, where my father won't be waiting for me despite the late hour, what accompanies me is the true message in the killer's words:
Gentleness. Caring.
Acceptance.
***
[Noah – Racing Mind]
"So, we're agreed something weird's going on with your latest crush," I speak into the phone as I take down one of the photos of Mister Branson's murder.
A pity. He always let me talk.
"What, you mean aside from her coming from the criminal cape capital of America, being a parahuman, and somewhat capable of vibing with you, Virgin? Nope, nothing comes to mind."
I smile despite myself. It's good to have Audrey back.
"Come on, Bisexual, drop the snark for a moment and focus. You know what I'm talking about," I prod her, remembering the moment of revelation she had in Emma's house while—
Brandon James is [alive]! I can't believe I missed that! All the signs—OK, no, that's not fair. To deduce that I should have known about his parahuman ability. It wasn't a reasonable jump in logic to make, which is kind of frustrating, because detective fiction used to have rules, even if one of them was not to use a 'China man.'
"I… I saw, yes. But I don't think I have the words for it," she says, her tone dropping low enough that—
Let's see… emotional context, Audrey's behavioral patterns, her deviations from neuronormativity…
Yeah. She knows.
"Stop lying. At least, to yourself."
She doesn't answer. A sharp breath? Huh. I may have been too brusque. How do regular people do this? It's so simple to see the thread and pull at it… Maybe that's the issue? That they don't like to be pulled? I… I don't like bothering Audrey, much less hurting her, but sometimes it's so easy not to notice despite everything else that's so blindingly obvious—
"You're lucky I'm not there to punch your arm," she growls.
Ah, threats of violence. OK, everything's all right; I haven't pulled that much.
"That's me, always getting lucky. That's why you call me 'Virgin' [ironically], isn't it?"
She chuckles, because God forbid she giggles and shatters her carefully constructed façade of strength grown as a response to—hmmm. Better stop. I've never questioned her about that, and I still don't think this is the right time.
I would if I thought it was ongoing, but… She's healing. In her own way, at her own pace, but healing.
Even I know not to pull at scabs.
"OK, ironically Virgin, if that's your real name, what do you think is going on with Broody?"
And [that's] a good question.
I look at the picture in my hands, the one taken from the angle Taylor was in when she became transfixed. The angle from which it was [meant] to be looked at.
The perfect angle to see all the blood-dripping threads align, to see every intersection turn into flawless curves, graceful, stylized representations of human-like guises that only Gustavo readily realized the source of.
And I remember Taylor's look when we found her, despite the excess of beer clouding my sight and memory far more than I'm used to.
I remember the fascination. The wonder. The… appreciation.
And I smile.
"Honestly, Bisexual? I could go on and on about what I think Broody's deal is, but… you've seen it. Do you really want me to explain?"
She, on the other end of the line, likely clutching her knees to her chest in the safety of the corner of her bed that's framed by two solid walls, sighs.
"No. I guess I don't."
And I grimace.
Because I expected it, of course. Otherwise, I wouldn't have offered.
But it's always irking when people refuse to listen to me.
***
[Taylor – Home Sweet Home]
I open the door, and the inside of the house is dark, only lit with the sparse light coming in from the large windows.
I'm still getting used to them. When we first came here, I was horrified at the lack of metal bars covering them, but I ended up (grudgingly) accepting Dad's explanation about this being a safer place, a more trusting one. That they weren't needed.
Yeah… about that…
I suppress yet another sigh as I walk in, careful to turn on the lights even if I don't need them because I don't know how far the killer's interest goes, and it would just be my luck to be outed just for trying to save on the electricity bill.
So I turn on every lamp on my way to the kitchen, to making myself some kind of dinner.
And then everything hits me.
Again.
My recently uncovered attraction to girls. The mess that is Emma and Audrey's non-relationship, my outing to Emma's entire family, Emma's entire family outing to me, their prisoner that I don't care about, Noah and Audrey looking at me like there's something [wrong,] inherently wrong with the way I see the world, and Noah [liking] it.
As does the killer.
Of all people to show me compassion…
I give up on making dinner and grab a pear and a banana from the fridge before going to the living room and plopping down on the sofa.
And I…
I'm not really hungry.
I still take a bite out of the pear, the sweet juice staining my chin yet not bothering me that much as I lean back against the sofa's backrest, the tough, blue fabric ceding to the weight of my head until I'm looking up and munching on the white flesh of the fruit.
I…
I don't understand them.
Yes, I [know], on an intellectual level, that there's something wrong with me. That I shouldn't find such sublime beauty in murder, that I shouldn't stare and contemplate color choice, composition, and thematic relevance of [corpses]. I know that.
But what use is knowing when it goes against the truth?
And… There's an explanation. An easy one.
That I'm damaged. That my empathy doesn't work. That I see those victims as… objects. But what kind of hero looks at the world like that? What kind of hero would stare at a Nine's attack and only criticize the criminal lack of originality?
At the same time… I don't think that's quite right. Not when I felt that surge of panic at Emma being in danger. Not when I almost dislocated my shoulder trying to save her. Those are not the actions of someone without empathy, so… what is it? What is in me that works… [differently?]
I swallow the mashed pulp in my mouth and take another bite, the green skin crunching before breaking as my mouth fills with a spray of sweetness.
I… savor it.
And… could it be that simple?
Could just that be the difference? That I [savor] things? That I allow myself to experience? That a door was shoved open inside my mind, and now I feel things others reject out of hand without ever stopping to try and contemplate them?
After all, there [is] beauty in his works. There is… something insightful, keen, [poignant].
I… I can enjoy that part, that beauty, without failing to recognize the horror, can't I?
Can't I?
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I drop the banana in my lap to fish it out with a hand that is not sticky with pear juice, expecting another excuse from Dad about why he's not here and won't be later still.
['Thank you for the lovely chat, Taylor. Although brief, I think you offered me some things to ponder, and I now have an idea for my next work. I hope to hear your opinions on it soon.']
I stare at the screen in horror, a part of me aghast at the mere idea I've unknowingly pushed him to another murder, to another [way] to murder.
I stare with… with helplessness. With regret and despair.
And anticipation.
===================
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