“What?” Nigel asked.
Becca had seen almost every side of her father in her relatively short life. She had seen him at his highs, and unfortunately, at his lows. She had seen him ecstatic when he got a promotion, to struggling to hold a cigarette because of his Parkinson’s. However, she saw something far worse than that on her father’s face that afternoon.
“When I injected Carol with the NaU, I didn’t know what I was doing,” Robbie said. “It was more or less a Hail Mary. She was going to die, so I thought why not try and use the NaU to bring her back. I had been denied trials on mice, but I felt confident that it could work. A clump of nanites within someone that banded itself to their DNA and removed anything that compromises the DNA or the organism itself wasn’t as safe as I first thought.
“So when Carol went into cardiac arrest, I decided to try and see what would happen. I injected her with the prototype NaU, which activated itself within her body. What I didn’t count on was it spreading.”
One second, they were all staring down at Carol’s light-filled body; the next was pure darkness as they all were knocked out on the ground. Becca fell unconscious like the rest of them, even though there was no NaU within her.
Days afterward, the powers started to emerge, and that’s how they found themselves in the living room at that moment.
“What do you mean by cell decay, though?” Nigel said.
Getting powers had done nothing to change or alter the man’s attitude. Becca could admire his stubbornness and persistence, if she was only slightly annoyed at his demeanor.
“I’m getting to that,” her father said. “When I first thought up the NaU, it was only supposed to fix people’s bodies and health, nothing more. However, as I’m sure all of you can see, each of us has a different rendition of the NaU.
“Carol has the ability to shoot bright energy breaths from her mouth. Matt has the ability to feel the things around him and move them. Peter can recover from any injury. Danni has super strength. Jolie can conduct energy and fly. Nigel can construct objects out of thin air. And I can re-distribute kinetic and other energy forces.
“All of them are unique and were never part of the original code of design. However, I fear that they are each coming with their own problems.”
He motioned to Peter.
“Peter, would you like to speak now?”
Peter stood up.
“A few weeks ago, after the car accident,” Peter said. “I approached Doctor McCarthy with my concerns about our powers. While I physically felt all right, my brain has been feeling fuzzy lately. It takes me longer to think things through. I forget where I am. I lose track of who I am sometimes.”
“I took his concerns at being limited to only him,” Robbie said. “It would make sense that someone coming back from the dead more or less would have some mental issues.
“However, I took a longer look at the NaU and all of us. Jolie, you’ve been reporting to have nausea of late, and Matt informed me that you had a seizure last night. Is that correct?”
Jolie shot Matt a death glare, but he only stared back at her.
“I would need to do further tests to be sure,” Robbie said. “But, I’m afraid that our NaUs are negatively affecting our bodies even as they help us.”
“Dr. McCarthy,” Kent said.
Kent rolled back his sleeves. Shining pink veins reached down his arms and legs. The skin around them seemed, not to be rotting, but drying out.
“Dear God,” Carol said.
Robbie turned pale.
“So, what are you trying to say?” Nigel said, standing up.
“I’m saying,” Robbie said, “that I think all of us are dying.”
The room was quiet enough to hear a pin drop.
Suppose it’s a good thing I didn’t get powers, after all, Becca thought. It made her feel slightly better, but the ground had still opened up beneath her, and she felt her mind falling and tumbling down into the darkness and depths below.
****
Becca sat on the fire escape outside her window.
The leaves had already fallen off all the trees around their house, and there was a cool breeze and chill in the air. There wasn’t any snow yet, but they were forecasting a large blizzard in a week.
The school year had been a pleasant one so far. The classes were incredibly easy, the people mostly boring. Becca spent most of her time reading in between each class and during lunch. Her brother and his friends were supposedly having a good year, though superpowers can do that to a person. Make them feel invincible, which they were, at least for a while. Now though, things were different.
People were fighting downstairs. Even from outside the house, Becca could hear her father and Nigel going at it with one another. Nigel, who had praised Robbie when he brought Carol back from the dead, was now yelling at the man, calling him some sort of mass murderer. Her father was yelling back that it was a theory, and that there was still time to come up with a cure.
Over by their car, Danni and Peter were talking. If Becca had a NaU, then perhaps she could hear them, but she didn’t besides, as nosy as she was when people on death row were having intimate conversations, she didn’t want to interrupt. Besides, she had been the blessed one, after all, the one without any powers.
“Hey.”
Becca looked to her right.
Matt was levitating there, looking over at her. She desperately wanted to fly with him to go somewhere else. But she couldn’t. Maybe this is how Matt used to feel when he was in the wheelchair.
“Hey,” she said.
Her brother moved over toward her.
“Your father is a little angry,” she said.
“So is yours,” Matt said, smiling a little, the kind of smile people make when they aren’t exactly happy or sad at the moment.
Jolie had gone to the bathroom after
