Chapter 27

 

Penumbra wasn’t coming. It took Redshift a whole heart beat to come to that realization. Even that was too long. No more time to think. Time slowed to a crawl.

They grabbed the grenade and threw it as hard as they could in the direction of the nearest pond. Redshift wasn’t looking at its trajectory. Amaranth was coming to her senses, and Eric was doing his very best to do the hero thing. They spread their wings wide, blowing out the last of the flames around them. With a single beat, they fired themselves off towards their villain. 

The grenade hit the water, where it flashed brightly, before a cloud of steam billowed directly upward. Arsonal turned around to face an explosion that was coming from much farther away than he’d anticipated, just in time for Redshift to grab him by the collar and fly off with him. If he wasn’t going to listen while they were on the ground, he would damn well pay attention when given a bird’s eye view of the city. 

To his credit, he didn’t even scream. Redshift felt his hands on their wrists, but together, and especially while angry, there was no way he was going to be able to move them. If he made any kind of grunting noise, it was muffled by the sound of the wind roaring past them and the beating of their wings. 

There had been an expectation of weight. This was not a light man, after all, and Redshift had remarkably little mass for someone as strong as them. But anger and desperation were powerful motivators. 

I think this is high enough, Amaranth said. She sounded exhausted. That was normal. The symbiotes didn’t do well with fire, after all. They flew over to the side of an office building and slammed Arsonal into it, then planted the tips of their wings into. Going sticky would make this a lot easier to keep up.

“So,” Eric said, “I think it’s time we just have a talk, you and me.” He did his best to sound upbeat. Arsonal looked at him defiantly, but was clearly uncomfortable with how high up they were. “What,” Eric asked, “is your problem?”

“I’m bringing this whole system down, supercop,” he growled, masking the tremble in his voice really well. They were a good few dozen stories up. The cars below were small. Eric was annoyed at the hate with which Arsonal said the word ‘cop’. Like it was a slur.

“If you have a problem with the system,” Eric said, “maybe you could have brought that up with city hall instead of blowing it up.” He looked over his shoulder at the destruction Arsonal had caused. The whole park looked like a warzone, and several of the streets around it had been torn to shreds. It was a stroke of luck they were this close to the hospital. They could already hear the sirens.

“I did.” Arsonal said. His hands on her wrists tightened. He was clearly uncomfortable with his legs dangling this high above the pavement. 

Eric glared for a second. “Elaborate.”

“My house,” Arsonal said. “It was on the edge of the district. Just another townhouse. Just outside the jurisdiction of the district’s fire department.” His breathing was becoming more erratic. “And it didn’t fall under that of another district. I actually went to city hall several times to complain about it. Tried to pay insurance anyway. Not that it mattered. Bureaucracy made it clear that the lines on the map can’t just be redrawn.”

Oh no, Amaranth said. 

“So one day I come home, and my neighbor must have left a scented candle burning a little too close to the curtains, because it’s an inferno. The fire department is already there, putting it out. But not my house.”

“But, they would–”

“They wouldn’t,” Arsonal growled. “They would stand there and put out the house they were being paid to and didn’t touch the one that was outside of their jurisdiction. Because I hadn’t paid to a district that wouldn’t take my money. I wasn’t insured.”

“So your house burned down?” Eric said. “That’s what this is–”

“It was heroes,” he interrupted. “Cops like you. Heroes who stood there with their hands on their hips as my house burned to the ground. The boys in blue who held me down while I tried to get inside, and broke my jaw when I fought back. And it was the brave men and women of the fire department who stood there and did nothing while my wife and baby girl burned!! They didn’t want to take my money!!! So forgive me if I don’t put my faith in the system you serve, supercop!”

Eric was too lost in the horror of it to see that Arsonal pulled something from his wrist, and too late to stop him from putting the soldering torch to Eric’s chest. 

A pain blossomed in his chest he had never felt before. It was unimaginable. Deeply cold, at first as nerve endings were destroyed before they could even send a signal, only for it to turn to white-hot agony. Arsonal clearly didn’t care about hitting the pavement anymore. Amaranth screamed in Eric’s head. 

Gravity got a hold of them, swiftly and mercilessly. In movies, someone falling always seemed slow. In person, falling was the kind of thing that overrode all the other senses, with the exception, of course, of pain. They would hit the pavement in a matter of seconds. It was hard to think, their mind full of noise. 

If Amaranth could hold it together, Eric would be fine. If not, Eric would hurt, but survive. Arsonal was as good as dead. That wasn’t… that wasn’t very superhero, was it? Amy wasn’t even responding. The wings were falling apart. The suit was barely holding. 

Eric reached out, grabbed him as tightly as possible, ignoring the look of confusion, and rotated. Hitting the ground was unlike anything he’d ever felt. The pain in his chest forgotten for a second as he crashed practically through the hood of the car, reducing the impact only slightly before hitting the pavement with a two hundred and fifty pound man landing on top of him, barely held in place with tattered wings. 

The wind wasn’t knocked out of him. It was hammered, beaten, violently exploded out of him. There was a pressure in his head that he hoped for a second was Amaranth keeping his brain safe, instead of an aneurysm. That he could even think was a good sign. It meant he wasn’t dead yet. A weird wave of hysteria washed over him. This was such a dumb way to die. What a superhero he’d made.

“Jesus Christ,” Arsonal said as he stood up. Good. He was alive. “You saved me.”

“Yeah,” Eric tried to say, but it was more of a wet whisper than anything else. He tasted pennies. “Part of the job description.” Amy tried to say something, stop him from talking, but she didn’t have the energy, fading fast.

“Cops don’t protect and serve,” Arsonal said, just as the symbiote retreated. “Oh,” he said. “Shit.” Yeah, Eric had to admit. Shit indeed. He probably looked like someone had dropped a plate of spaghetti through a radiator engine from half a mile up. He tried to lift his head to say something witty back, but his neck wasn’t cooperating.

“You don’t look so hot yourself.”

“You’re not a cop. You’re just a kid,” Arsonal said. “Just a high schooler.”

“College, actually,” Eric said weakly. The man ignored him and threw off his jacket, threw away what looked like a whole bunch of weapons and tools, and grabbed him. 

“Someone’s little girl,” was the last thing Eric heard him say as Arsonal picked him up. The shock of it was too much. The pain speared into his skull and he passed out. There were moments of lucidity. Sirens, close by. The man’s face, covered in soot and blood and grime, looking determined. Blue sky, high above, sun beating down. 

This was absurd. Was he being rescued by the man who had tried to kill him? Dumbest superhero ever. He giggled, which got him a look of concern. 

There was a moment, Arsonal paused and ripped something off his shirt, putting it over Eric’s face. A mask? He wanted to tell Arsonal that it wasn’t necessary, nobody knew what his girl form looked like, but words were something that happened to other people now. 

Then darkness again. 

Lights. Bright, unpleasant, fluorescent lights. Something went ‘beep’ in the distance. Arsonal’s voice explaining who Eric was. A superhero. Who he was. There was a voice from a television and a voice on an intercom and a voice on a radio. Eric was being put on a stretcher. He stirred slightly and managed to look at Arsonal just in time for the man to be tackled to the ground by four police officers, one for each limb. One of his arms was bent at a wrong angle, and there was a knee on his neck. He didn’t make a sound. Just looked at Eric, his jaw tight. Eric tried to give him a thumbs up and blacked out again. 

More flashes of consciousness. The machine that went ‘beep’ was attached to him and the beeping got a lot more erratic. Someone tried to ask him questions but he couldn’t say anything. There were police around him. Clearly, they had either taken Arsonal seriously, or someone had recognized Redshift from the television. 

“-n’t even be alive. We all saw what happened on the television,” one doctor said to another. Eric tried to smile but his face wasn’t cooperating, please stay on the line, your call is important to us. “Something is keeping her alive. But what?” Someone tried to touch his mask and their hand was slapped away, almost like a mother keeping their kid’s hand out of the cookie jar.

He blacked out again. When he woke up the lights overhead were moving. There was a machine, at some point, that went ‘chunk’ instead of ‘beep’. He vaguely saw pictures of himself — or rather, his skeleton — being hung up on a light box. What were those called? He always saw them in the shows his mom used to watch. 

“What do you mean, hollow?” the doctor said. “And what’s this dark mass here? In her brain?” Someone else pointed at something. “It’s not just her brain. It’s everywhere. Every muscle and sinew has this… growth?” 

“Whatever it is, it’s trying to put her back together,” the other doctor said, “but it’s not going fast enough. We’re going to have to prep her for surgery. Help whatever that… thing is. Her body is failing faster than it can fix her.”

He passed out again. They were just getting to the good bit, too. That was too bad. For a while he floated in and out of reality, spending less and less time awake. Good. Being awake was a drag. It hurt like hell, with all the holes in his body and the bones in his lungs, heart and intestines. Amaranth was there, sort of. 

It was a bit like lying down in the sun, next to a pool, eyes closed, like this. There was the knowledge that opening his eyes would be an unpleasant experience, that being awake was going to suck. But right now, he wasn’t. There was something next to him. That would be Amy. Passed out on the pool chair next to him. She’d taken a hell of a beating, too. He’d have to make it up to her. Figure out what her favorite kind of food was, maybe. 

If they made it through this. The only time he’d ever gone into surgery was when he was younger. His father had taken him to learn to ride a bike, maybe a little younger than was necessary, and he’d fallen and broken his wrist. He’d been really scared back then. Mom had been angrier than he’d ever seen her. 

Hey, Eric heard. He turned his head, proverbially speaking, to listen in the direction of the voice. He was glad she was okay. Well, Amy said. Maybe not okay. But we’re both alive. A pause. That was a very stupid thing you did.

Yeah. He knew. 

Brave. Stupid. But maybe more importantly it was the right thing to do. I wasn’t sure.

He was a little confused. What wasn’t she sure about?

You might not have survived the impact. We might not have. You can help more people if you had let the bad guy fall. But you didn’t. 

Well yeah. Arsonal was a person, too. 

 If it’s you or a villain, you’ll choose the villain? 

He figured, yeah, he might. 

Yeah. Penumbra would be proud of you. 

Cool.

I’m proud of you.

Oh. Okay. That bit was cool. No sarcasm. 

You’re gonna have to do something for me. 

Oh?

You’re going to have to wake up.

Why?

They’re getting freaked out over there.

He opened his eyes. There was a room full of doctors and surgeons in front of him. More importantly, beneath him. Their necks craned up to look at him, they looked more than a little spooked. Very slowly, Eric dug his fingers out of the wall and lowered himself to the floor.