There is some saying that goes a bit like whoever speaks first, loses. It's relevant in business and those sorts of things. What I'd been doing for... longer than I wanted to admit, what I planned to do to fix it, was irrelevant.
I just wanted to piss Lamar off.
And he did. He broke first. "Fine. It's not for me to watch you do whatever. But you're late with your report. Are they coming for me or not?"
"I don't know."
"What the fuck do you mean you don't know?"
His voice held a note of panic that made me clench my teeth. "You sound like a civilian."
That was enough. Scribe cleared his throat and waited on the other end of the line. I didn't take the bait, instead hanging up and tossing the phone up on the couch once more. The damn thing was on silent, he could wait until I was no longer busy.
I tucked my head against Cassie's and looked into her eyes.
I looked into her eyes. Oh. Fuck.
"I heard that," she murmured.
The world ended, just like that. Everything was fucked. I stared down at her. "It's not what you think it is."
"Were it what I think it is, I'd be beating your head in right now. But I'm waiting. I'm listening."
She meant it, too. A Blitzer probably had the edge over a Pyro like me. Someone strong and fast, with too much speed and too much force? Sure, I could blind her or fry her, but I didn't have the heart to do either. God, we'd just gotten back together. Couldn't the world give us a break?
Sighing, I nestled her. "I'd rather tell everyone at once. That way, if they all decide I'm an idiot, I can just deal with it once."
"You don't have that option. You just told me you told him to go fuck himself when he asked you to spy."
"I -did-."
Her eyes narrowed. "And, so what? He blackmailed you or something?"
"Why would I really tell him to go fuck himself when I could play double agent?" I asked, watching for her reaction.
It wasn't entirely true, but I couldn't trust that she would understand the fine details. Cassie was brilliant, gorgeous, and everything my heart desired. But she was blunt, rash, and she was not the sort to play games. I knew, when Scribe approached me, that I had a golden opportunity to not only work through whatever the hell was going on at HQ, but to get closer to him and try to understand his motivations.
The thing was, they didn't seem to be rational ones. I had a theory, but I hadn't confirmed it. Given where I was, with the tools I had, I doubted that I was going to be given the chance to do it, either.
"You have some way to prove that you're really out for us and not for him? You playing double agent sounds like a great way to dismiss anyone's concerns, Emb. And I don't think we have time to work with someone we can't trust. We're not punching a bad guy we're going to war with our own people."
I ran the tip of my tongue over my top lip and thought it through. "We could put it to a vote, I guess. But there's nothing else that I can do to prove to you that I'm on our side, not his. I tried to get close to figure something out. I failed, but I have plenty of evidence of what I think is happening. I just can't prove it without a shadow of a doubt."
"And what do you think is happening? Scribe's gone nuts. My cousin's a traitor. She's dragging the entire Alliance down with her even after she's freaking dead," Cassie snapped. "Adam almost died and I don't even know if I can trust you now."
"I think it's the Kipas."
Her head tilted to the other side than it had before, staring at me as if I'd lost my damn mind. And, had I been on the other side of it, I would have felt the same way. The Kipas had landed on Earth a long time ago. It had been a full-scale invasion, killing thousands. But in the end, they'd narrowed in on a few Alliance-guarded areas. Why? My theories supported the idea that they were drawn to superhero power, whatever that extra was that we had over the common guy. But I didn't know for sure.
"You're losing your shit," Cassie frowned. "The Kipas are an annoyance. Yeah. Sure. But they're just like, space-station grunts. They come down, we kick their asses, and ship them off to Area 51. ...Or Area 52, or whatever. At this point, they probably have a bunch of different areas just... just to..."
The frown deepened. I nodded. "Hell of a lot of Kipas the past few years. They don't seem to be slowing down and our problems only get worse. You ever notice we have Kipas show up right before someone loses their shit? And they're almost always in close contact with them."
"Scribe wasn't."
I shrugged. "Scribe was in close contact with someone who had been in close contact with them. Maybe whatever space stuff is in them fucks up superheroes. Because it isn't doing it to the general population."
"You think we're infected with some kind of weird space sick that makes us nuts?"
That one took me a second. It was one way to put it, but it didn't feel quite right. "Maybe not that exactly, but something like it? More like, maybe their general energy conflicts with ours and causes some kind of reaction. Adam's nosebleeds only got worse after they showed up. You poisoned me. Allison went nuts. Your folks have been incredibly distant-"
"Well, they weren't the best parents to begin with."
"That's beside the point," I said,
