He'd already lied to us for decades. What if he was still lying to us? The pens had been cool and I was proud of them, but were they really how he operated? I turned that thought over in my head a half-dozen times before I stood up and walked over to one of the windows.
A thousand stories below us walked the people of Thomaston. Kids held their parent's hand or cheerfully scampered a few feet in front of them, excited to see new sights. Few of them gave the Alliance building a second glance. It wasn't like back in Yarborough where people tried to avoid us as much as they could. I'd always thought that was the smart thing to do; you never knew when a superhero would zip out of the parking garage on their way to a job or blow past you trying to go help someone else.
Here, the Alliance building was part of the community, not looming over it. I ground my teeth together. I'd been a part of some lightly oppressive, mismanaged force, for a very long time. And I didn't even realize it.
What else was I missing? And what else was going to go wrong because I'd missed it?
"Edwin?"
I looked back at Cassie and found that she'd assembled everyone to surround the kitchen dining table again. I remembered the pancake launch and sighed, grateful that I hadn't been stupid enough to lay all that food out on that surface.
Squaring my shoulders, I tried to work some steel into my spine. I was about to ruin the way most of them viewed the world, viewed Scribe. He had been so much to us. For crying out loud, he'd discovered most of us and helped us through times that I wouldn't wish on our own parents.
They say that superheroes are professionals at delivering bad news. Somehow, I doubted that the Thomaston Alliance was associated with that kind of thing. But we -were-.
I wasn't a superhero.
I was just a guy.
But I faced down my co-workers, friends, lovers; my -family-. And I told them every bit of bad news I'd just learned.
Chapter 15
I don't know why it'd never occurred to us before. Yarborough was always the worst-hit area by the Kipas. They'd landed there, attacked there most often. I would hazard a guess to say most of the country was Kipa-free.
Though I understood using something as a ploy to try to keep yourself on the map, hurting all those innocent people to do it was madness. Had I known at some point? Was that why I'd been poisoned and kept in the Dream for so long? My memory was too badly damaged to confirm it; there were just too many blank spaces where things didn't make sense.
The sun fell further along the horizon as the others packed up again. I didn't have much to take with me and it'd meant all of ten minutes shoving things into a bag.
We probably weren't going to make it through this intact. I'd already lost Cassie once; just like she'd lost me. It'd nearly destroyed both of us. What would happen if everything really fell apart? We weren't going to have this bastion of safety like we'd had the past couple of days. There would be nowhere to go, no one to turn to except for each other.
Imagine; we might even have to pay our own insurance rates. You want to talk about breaking the bank, good lord.
Cassie tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up at her reflection in the window and raised both brows. She jerked her head toward the door. We still had the stolen car and Izzy's, but I wished we'd been given less noticeable transportation. Doubtlessly, Scribe would know we were coming the second we hit the edge of town; but anything that helped would have been worthwhile.
It was time to go and I wasn't ready for it.
I followed her off to the door, my bag over one shoulder. She pulled it open and Starseer blinked down at us and tilted his head. "Did you think you were leaving without company?"
Tears came to my eyes in an instant. I wiped them away before he could see and let Cassie do the talking.
"I assumed that we'd catch the interest of a few of you. Logan says you're on your own. That means paying your own hospital bills. You know that, right?" she asked
He shrugged. "We've all got more than that set away for a rainy day, and this looks like a hell of a storm coming in. Besides, he already knows we're coming. We told him so. And if Whirlwind was willing to die to protect you, it seems like shitty idea for his death to have been in vain."
"Well. I'm with you there." Cassie stuck her head out into the hallway and frowned. "Five of you? I didn't expect so many. Do you guys have a car or what?"
James pushed through the others to wrap his arms around her. "Three cars in case any of you needed to move anything. And a truck. I can't believe you all still suffer through transport issues."
"Yeah. Well. Maybe we can change that after we get things done back home," she said, then hugged her cousin back.
Adam snaked his arm around my shoulders. I eyed him and he smiled. "You just looked kinda lonely. That's all."
I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was right, but I didn't squirm free of him, either. We'd been friends when I was alive and I'd nearly scorched him when he'd tried to pin me down in that bar, but we loved the same woman. There are few things out there that bring people closer together than that; even if it's some stupid love triangle.
Kharmia had somehow managed to heal
