Proton and Electron Pt 2 (of 3!)

Hey guys! This story is turning into a monster, haha. There's going to be another short story this weekend and then (hopefully) the last part of this 12k story on Tuesday! 

Thanks for reading :)

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“You’re not Proton,” Crane says in the new silence. Without the electricity blurring his words, his voice is harsh and demanding.

I put a finger to my lips. “Careful. Don’t know who might be listening.” The bars are soft to the touch after the surge of energy rushing through them and they’re molten red. I use Paulie’s helmet and hit them until they break and bend away from me. They cool too fast, but I can work with the results. Not a big enough hole to climb through, but, with a little luck, I won’t need to fit my whole body through it. Just my arm so I can pick the lock.

Crane made it to Team Leader because he’s smart and tenacious. “It was Proton who I called in. She used her powers at HQ. So how did you get here, Electron?”

He says my name like I’ve ruined his plan by not being my sister, like I did it to thwart his grand schemes. He says my name like he always does-- like an accusation. My teeth grind as I work a small length of metal from the edge of my sister’s helmet. Typical Crane.

In the old days, I might have answered him just to get him to leave me alone. The instinct is still there, but I’m not on his team anymore and I don’t owe him any information about the bond Paulie and I share. There’s no way to answer him without revealing Our Space anyway, and Paulie and I never talked about whether or not we wanted him to know.

Sure, he’ll figure it out soon enough--he knows about the telepathy already--but I’m not going to be the one to tell him. I’ve always been grateful Paulie and I got out before we had to. Switching through Our Space is...traumatic and I don’t think either of us would have handled switching mid-mission or any of the long-range ops Crane would have pressured us into very well.

So, instead of cooperating, I say, “I’m going to try to pick the lock.”

The metal I pulled from the helmet is sharp enough to cut my fingers. It’s not a lock pick, just a shard of the metal that had shattered when she was shot in the fucking head. I’m hardly surprised when it doesn’t work, not even managing to trip the first tumbler.

“I’ve got a set in my belt,” Crane says. He turns away from me, struggling with the arms of his jacket. They’re buckled in behind him, the ends closed, which I’d first thought would be enough to contain him. Must have been the concussion talking because, of course, it’s not. Most people think Crane’s ability to stretch his arms comes just from the shoulder and upper arm so that they lengthened but still behaved like normal arms. Very few ever think that his control over his limbs extended to which direction they could bend too.

It’s unnerving to see the sleeves of his jacket fill, knuckles pressing against the fabric where his elbow should be and snaking up towards where the jacket opens at his neck. Cracks and pops fill the air as he concentrates on getting his arms to the right length, sickening sounds. His fingers peek out of his collar and then creep over his shoulders to the back. I’d thrown up the first time Crane had done this in front of me and I’m pretty sure that set the tone for our working relationship.

That and his tendency to lie, omit, and outright deceive me at every possible opportunity, of course.

It takes him a solid minute to work the buckle pinning his arms to his back, but he manages to flip it open. His elongated hands retreat like slinkies back into the jacket, swishing down the sleeves as if boneless. He sighs in relief as his shoulders slump forwards, arms coming to dangle like noodles at his side. Pops fill the air as his joints reset and he grimaces, shimmying his shoulders. “Pins and needles.”

I’m sure.

“You said you had a set?” I ask, eyes flicking to the camera. There’s little doubt in my mind that they’re going to notice the lack of electricity any second now. It’s a small miracle that they haven’t come crashing in yet. 

Crane rolls the sleeves of the straitjacket up to his elbows. His arms are still struggling to shrink back to normal proportions. “One sec.” He fumbles at his belt, prying apart the side stitching. He pulls three pieces of metal from it—all a lot smaller than my metal shard— and tosses them to me. “Hurry, they’ll be coming any second.”

I pick up the picks. They’re all much higher quality than anything I’ve ever worked with and I frown down at them. He’d had them this whole time? With his ability, he could have easily gotten to the locks without touching the electrified bars. He might have had a chance of escaping if he’d just tried. Why did he—

“Hurry,” he hisses from the other cell.

I set back into the lock. It’s easy with the right equipment and it’s quick work to get my cell open. I hurry over to his as soon as I’m out. Something’s bothering me. “You could’ve done your own first,” I say. It might have gone even faster that way. Crane’s better at picking locks than I am.

“The jacket’s been slowing my circulation,” he says, holding up his hands. The fingers have all developed a second joint to stretch further than humanly possible. If I look closely, I can see the joint shrinking slowly.  “It’s taking me longer to get back to normal. Not much use like this, especially for lock picking.”

There’s something wrong with that too. I’ve never seen Crane have an issue using his extra appendages. In the two years we worked together, in fact, I hadn’t noticed him struggle to use his arms regardless of circumstance.

“Huh,” I say. He got the lock picks out of his belt easily enough. I have a hunch, but it’s not the right time. He’s not badgering me for answers about Paulie’s and I’s switch for a reason. We need to focus on escaping.  “Got it.” The cell clicks open.

“I think they left the door unlocked,” he says. I notice his arms are back to normal almost immediately when he tests the door. It creaks open, the long and slow creak only made by rusting hinges. “Damn, that wasn’t quiet.”

“We should assume they know we’re free,” I say. I press up behind him, peering over his shoulder. The hallway is dimly lit and entirely made of rivets and metal plating. Every arch to a new section of ship is a lot narrower than I think it should and I can imagine tripping on the metal sections if I try to run. “We need to get off this ship.”

“We’ll need to get to a lifeboat,” Crane says. “We’re at least a full day away from the coast. I can’t swim that long. Can you?”

I snort. “Not and be alive afterwards.” I draw him back, stepping fully into the hallway, ignoring his protests. He hisses when I inadvertently shock the hand he tries to pull me back with. When no one shoots me, I pick a direction. “Let’s try left.”

“I take point,” Crane hisses. He goes to grab my shoulder again, but thinks better of it at the last moment. He doesn’t want to risk getting shocked again.  “I’m the team leader.”

He’s pulling rank which, when I was a part of the team, meant I had to obey whatever he said or risk getting fired from the League. It used to be a very effective, unspoken threat. As minor heroes, Paulie and I were always living paycheck to paycheck and getting fired meant getting placed on a government watch list for AWOL supers. 

But I’m not working for the League now, I have a good civilian life, and I’m the only one wearing body armor. My breastplate can take a bullet better than the tatters of Crane’s straitjacket. 

“I,” I say, testing out the next corner, “am retired. Technically, I’m a vigilante since I don’t even have a consulting contract.”

“Electron,” Crane growls. He tries to slide past me and grunts when I just happen to swing my elbow back and catch him in the stomach. “Get behind me now.”

“No,” I say. My voice echoes down the next hallway and I make a conscious effort to keep my temper in check. “Arrest me, why don’t you?”

“Don’t tempt me,” Crane says. I can feel his frustration vibrating against my back. “This is why I recruited Proton. She knows how to follow an order.”

It’s a bad idea to react to that right now. 

I see red anyway.

I whirl ands see his eyes fly wide just a second before I slam him against the metal wall. I pin him with my forearm across his chest, my veins flaring with the electricity I’ve yet to release. “You don’t want to bring up how you used my sister right now, Crane.” The implied threat is all the more brutal for the roughness in my voice. I bare my teeth. “Do you?”

Crane watches me carefully, not struggling in my grip. I can feel him breathing hard, but that’s the only indication that he’s worried about what I might do. “No, I guess I don’t.”

“Because that would be really dumb,” I say. I should let him down, I know I should, and a little part of me is saying that I’m jeopardizing our escape. But my anger is nearly as bright as my veins and I can’t. “It’d be really dumb to remind me that you tricked my retired sister into getting close to Avarice.”

“I didn’t know Avarice was Charge’s mentor,” Crane says. He’s deliberately keeping tension out of his shoulders, but I can feel it building in him anyway. “I didn’t know he was that close. I swear.”

It’s the confirmation I was looking for. “But you knew she was involved.” He grimaces, panic flashing across his face. He didn’t mean to let that slip. I let my captive electricity spark in my eyes. “You always know.” I swear, bringing my other hand up as if to strangle him. My fingers are crawling with blue power and I hold them too close to his skin. “I told her not to trust you!”

“I know,” Crane says rather than trying to defend himself. He knows I won’t listen to it. “And you can yell at me all you want later, but, right now, we need to focus on escaping.”

“Why?” My voice is getting too loud again. I shove away from him, letting go before I give into the temptation to electrocute him. I might need the energy later. “She’s going to tell Foresight about this. Who cares what happens to us? Mission accomplished, right?” My voice is bitter and I look away, scouting out the next hall before he can see the twist of my lips. That’s always been the problem with Crane. Anything for the mission. I think that’s why he didn’t try to escape from the cell when he clearly could have. He needed to make sure my sister passed the message on to me to give to Foresight.

“No,” he says. “Mission not accomplished.”

That surprises me enough that I whip around, giving the empty hall my back. “What?”

There’s an expression on his face I’ve never seen before. He says, “The mission isn’t over.”

“What else is there?” I ask, shocked out of my anger. I gesture around us. “We’re captured! Do you want to try and disable the ship? Find out their numbers? What mission could you possibly still have right now?”

“That,” Crane says, eyes sliding away from mine, “is classified.” He clears his throat. “League eyes only.”

I stare at him for a long moment. “Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?” I’m tempted to leave him here, by himself, armorless to complete his “eyes only” mission. I nearly turn to go, but my feet won’t move. I swear, changing gears. “Is it important?”

Crane furrows his brow. “I can’t tell you what--”

“Is it important?” I press, teeth gritted. I don’t trust him, have good reason not to trust him with my sister’s safety, but I can trust him to know when something has to be done. It’s what kept me following him for so many years because, at the end of the day, Crane’s always been right about that kind of thing.

So when he looks me in the eye and says, “It’s the most important thing I’ll ever do,” I believe him.

God help me, I believe him.

“Fine,” I say and shove my helmet into his torso. “But if you’re going to lead, you’re at least going to wear this.”

Crane looks down at the helmet as if he doesn’t understand what it is.  “This is yours.”

I roll my eyes and shove him forward. “Put it on, genius. We gotta move.”

After another moment of hesitation, he sets it gingerly on his head. “You’ll follow me? Close?”

“Yeah,” I say. I shove at him again. “As long as it’s important.”

Crane shoots me another incomprehensible look and then turns on his heel, creeping down the next hall. I follow, a frown twisting my lips where he can’t see.

For a second, he’d almost looked...guilty.