Wordsworth – Chapter 27 – Prisms 2

Miss Militia

The streets are calmer than they should be.

So I don’t have to speed up toward the nearest crisis. I can go at my leisure, my motorcycle just a bit over the minimal speed for this avenue near the Boardwalk, as I wave at some of the fans taking pictures and pretend that I’m doing the PR part of my job while I just…

Enjoy myself.

Because Lung is behind bars, and Emma is starting to look like a human being after she and her family managed to get some time together, even if they are still under protective custody. Because Othala is awaiting her trial, and that will make the Empire’s foot soldiers too nervous to press their perceived advantage.

Having a healer on call boosts your confidence, knowing that you’ll be able to bounce back from whatever doesn’t kill you outright. Having that confidence taken away? It makes it worse than if you never had it.

So, yeah. Two key pieces of the two biggest gangs in my city are currently out of the playing board.

There are no dispatch calls.

And I’m in a good mood.

But…

Okay, truth be told, I may have a bit of a case of butterflies in my stomach because the two most stubborn men I’m currently working with are finally bonding through something other than barely disguised hostility (or unambiguous hatred at times) on one side, and the closest thing to puppy love that Colin has ever expressed near me.

And… And I’m so damn glad I managed to get it through their thick skulls, but that means spending quite a bit of time with both of them, and I don’t have much of a private life nowadays, so…

Well.

Butterflies.

I stop as the streetlight goes amber rather than speed up and smile through my bandana at a kid with, what else, an Armsmaster plushie who stares at me with wide eyes and a pointed finger.

Then his mother gives me an embarrassed, somewhat grateful wave as the kid starts rambling at her while pointing at my power taking the shape of a cavalry saber attached to my bike with a gleaming scabbard, and I wonder just how much of a cape nerd he is.

If he’ll follow Danny’s unveiling next week.

If the plushie of Overseer will soon join Armsmaster’s on his bed.

Then my mind goes places, and I feel like I’m blushing up to my hair roots.

Okay, Hannah, settle down. They are just friends and not even particularly close right now. I mean, yes, Danny has already started to manifest Colin’s shade and collaborating with him in his workshop, but, well, he already had my own ghost help him with target practice, so that isn’t a particular indication of closeness.

I think.

…

Stupid green-eyed men with soulful stares that scream, ‘Fix me,’ I swear…

So.

Yeah.

I’m in a good mood, if a bit embarrassed at part of what brought this particular mood on, and the traffic light is about to change to green—

Everything explodes.

I catch the flash of light out of the corner of my eye and dive to the side, my bulky motorcycle acting as a shield for a shockwave that rushes past it almost immediately, buffeting me with howling winds that last far longer than any given bomb should.

I am disoriented.

But not enough to stay down.

I push myself up, my power leaping to my hand immediately in the form of a fighting staff that helps me stand as the world blurs and something keeps howling in my ears, the familiar whistle of tinnitus turning into something more elaborate, deeper, as everything around me seems to melt like clocks hanging from tortured branches.

The kid.

I force myself to remain upright as I turn to my right, limping away from my bike as my power seems to be the only thing in the world that is steady and firm, the texture of fake, polished wood centering my senses away from sight and hearing that don’t work as they should.

Tinker. Tinker explosives. The terrorist from Darnell University.

I force myself to let go of my power with my left hand and reach for the communicator in my ear, tapping it to an emergency channel.

“Miss Militia reporting. Bombing attack on my current location. Suspected usage of tinkertech. Requesting backup from Armsmaster. Unable to hear response confirmation, use the buzzing function of my coms to confirm.”

Something vibrates in my ear.

Twice.

Backup incoming.

And I see the mother and child, lying on the ground amid people struggling to crawl away from the blast’s source.

Then the next blast comes.

A spire of crystal erupts from a manhole in slow motion, devouring the matter in its path as it grows taller and taller, twisting toward the heavens in a dazzling display of sunlight trapped and refracted over and over.

It takes people with it.

Those still crawling around, still too weak to move, are consumed by it, their mouths moving in agonized screams that I can’t hear over the persistent cacophony that is not tinnitus, the thing interfering with my eyes adding more horror to their distorted faces.

I can’t save them.

So I rush.

I almost fall to the floor yet again, but my power is as precise as ever, helping me aim toward the floor, steadying and supporting me.

Until I reach a mother and child.

I can’t save them. Not all of them.

But… Just these two.

Please, please, just these two.

The mother clings to her son, and I’m thankful for that much as I manage to slide an arm under her, helping her up, to lean against me as we three try to outpace the growing crystal that keeps devouring everyone in its path, that is now taller than the house on either side of the street, that…

It slows down. As it keeps growing, it slows down, and I’m almost sure it must have something to do with its volume, with—

Doesn’t matter.

It slows down.

But not enough.

And I look at the mother desperately clinging to her son, to the one who was so childishly awestruck just with my silent greeting mere moments ago, when the world made sense, and I was in a good mood for stupid reasons.

I push them.

Away from me.

In front of me.

They fall painfully to the floor, rolling away, and I intend to follow, the sidewalk too hard as I’m in no condition to use my training to blunt my dive and roll properly.

I stumble down the street, almost reaching them, the two people I helped in the middle of this much horror.

But my left foot gets caught.

Just… just on the verge of the spire slowing almost to a stop, my flesh and uniform turning to glittering light under my blurry eyes as I’m inexorably devoured.

Killed.

I…

I look.

At the mother and son. The two I managed to save. The two I choose to save.

I smile at the kid. The brave smile a hero should show a terrified civilian. To tell them that, no matter what, we are here to hold back the tide. To keep them safe.

Tears gather on the corners of my eyes, doing nothing to worsen my vision.

The crystal is up to my calf, my other leg bent over my body, my knee reaching up to my chin.

And…

And I hope the kid looks away for the next part.

My power takes the form of a Barret M82, the kind of thing I should never have reason to fire inside a city, and…

I bite on my sleeve.

And shoot my leg off under my knee.

I howl at the pain through vision-blacking agony, my power falling from my hands as I—

As I’m too weak, on the verge of fainting from blood loss, shock, agony. My attempt to save my life useless as I will just remain here, unable to move until the spire touches me and undoes my sacrifice—

Two hands grab me.

A fearful mother drags me away.

And I can only hope Colin gets here on time.

***

Panacea

It’s a massacre.

“Can… Amy, this is too much,” Vicky says, bringing me another person with a missing limb that I manage to save on the verge of bleeding out with a practiced touch that seals their circulatory system, veins and arteries looping back and around, reconnecting as they retreat inside of a ruined elbow.

We’re the first ones in here. I can hear the distant sirens of first responders approaching, but they won’t get here on time to do even a fraction of what I can do now.

“It is,” I grit out. “So stop pointing out the obvious and bring me more.”

Vicky shoots me a startled glance as I waste time doing more work than strictly necessary, dulling pain response and closing off the wound in its entirety in the time I could have done three patch jobs to actually save people.

So I snarl at my sister, and she flies off as fast as she can, pushing crashed vehicles from the first bomb out of the way as she heads toward the sounds of agony and screams.

We need to—I don’t fucking know. Priorities. Triage. Who needs the most urgent help, who can no longer be saved even with me here, who needs to be moved away from the growing crystal before we add another amputee to the tally, who—

“Here,” Vicky says, kneeling down to set two women clinging to one another, too pale, barely breathing, bleeding from the side of their heads—

Damn it.

No, no, no!

The—the first one is all right. Just take away the clot at the base of the nape, pressing down on the brainstem, and her breathing stabilizes as her face relaxes while I send her to untroubled sleep.

So that she won’t wake up to her girlfriend dying.

Because their salivary microbiota is all but identical, and that… That…

The second one…

Brain trauma.

I can… I stabilize her, not even noticing Vicky taking off as I seal off all the internal hemorrhaging and clear everything wrong with the meninges meant to protect her precisely from this kind of thing, but…

But whatever’s wrong inside her head is…

I…

I’m still touching both of them, still feeling all the traces of a life spent together, of love enduring for… for years, if…

I…

Emma.

What would Emma say if she knew I could’ve saved somebody and was too afraid to?

What would… what would that silver mist show her the next time I healed her? The next time she started to look at me with wonder in her eyes but found…

This.

I… I have rules. Reasons for these rules. I shouldn’t…

I…

I catch Vicky out of the corner of my eye, her jacket flaring behind her like the short cape of her uniform would if this wasn’t such an emergency and she’d had time to get changed.

There’s a limp woman in her arms, a tourniquet around her mangled leg.

Miss Militia.

Hannah.

Something catches in my throat, and I make to stand from where I’m kneeling in the middle of the road, surrounded by all the wounded that Vicky has managed to throw my way through what feels much longer than the few minutes we’ve been here.

And then, somebody comes running from a side street, from behind Vicky.

And the world fills with light.

With colors.

It washes over Vicky, and she falls, catching herself at the last moment as red overtakes her, and her face twists in sheer rage. She looks down at Hannah, and I fear—

She throws her.

Her limp body crashes against my chest, and we both tumble to the ground, my hands shooting toward her neck by sheer reflex, immediately mending the worst of her gruesome injuries, shards of bone refused into a single thing that doesn’t tear at her flesh as repaired arteries wrap around it, muscle turned into a protective shell that… that could…

There are so many things I could do.

I dive into her body, tweaking things along the way much like I did for Emma just days ago, but this time, I allow myself to get more creative as a part of me keeps whispering a constant stream of questions, of what ifs, of what could this do if I tweaked this other thing to turn it into this other thing—

I barely notice the orange light glowing around my frame, barely realize how Vicky keeps howling and the street shaking with every single one of her blows raining down on the asphalt.

Barely notice the gold crawling over Hannah and how her heart steadies even before I reach for it.

But then I notice a woman lying unconscious beside her life-long lover.

And I…

I’m curious.

***

Anne

Mom and Dad are glued to the TV.

I’m stuck to my phone.

Because…

They are watching the news, the unfolding horror of this terror strike, but I…

I’m checking on people, on every single one of my friends, on who is giving signs of life on social media and who isn’t answering increasingly worried messages.

And I keep waiting for Emma to show up in the middle of things, for a third bombing to catch her, for my sister to be listed as a heroic casualty.

For Taylor to try and be the hero this city needs, and… and maybe fall short.

For my sisters to die while I’m in the safest place of the city, uselessly stuck to my phone, just trying to reassure myself that nobody I know is part of this tragedy, that—

The walls shake.

Something freezes in the pit of my stomach.

And the door to our holding cell glows orange before it melts into a puddle that flows too fast to be metal, no matter how hot.

Standing in the middle of the empty doorway is Oni Lee.

And I…

Mom stands up, arms spread, between him and me. Dad follows a second after, yelling and swinging a wild, useless punch that misses and gets him backhanded and thrown to the floor.

And then Lung walks in.