Destia Jayden March 1st,20XX

“Joyce, you need to go rest. I’ll take over watching them, so you should go take a nap.”

In between taking care of Archer and Tillo, Joyce had run herself ragged. She tried to shake her head and wave me off, but her eyes closed for a second too long to consider the action a blink, and she dozed off.

I’d noticed this in the past, but Joyce had a surprisingly healthy sleep schedule for someone as busy as she was. Even when we’d driven the entire day to meet Aaron and the others at that amusement park, she’d gone right to sleep and had only confronted him the morning after.

Having stayed up the entire night before must have strained her a lot.

Archer and Tillo watched as I pulled her arm over my shoulder and eased her over to a spare bed. Tillo tried to get up and help, but I glared him down. Joyce wasn’t that heavy in the first place, but even if she was, there was no way I would let a patient help me.

The stark white bandages around his neck and the bruises on his arms made it difficult to look straight at him, but I tried my best not to avoid looking at him. When I’d gotten hurt before, it had been the worst feeling when they had all desperately avoided looking at my legs.

It had made me feel like I didn’t know something that they did and had made the injury feel more severe than it was.

Joyce had rented out an entire section of the wing for Archer and Tillo to recover, so there was an extra bed. I’d arrived at the hospital in time to see a nurse begging her to leave the space for the other victims of the situation. While Archer and Tillo had the worst injuries, the criminal had taken a few casualties on his way into the building.

There were no fatalities, thank god, but this would compromise people’s lives.

Kaja and Eva shared the last of the four beds that Joyce had reserved. She’d tried to put them on bed rest, but the doctors had assured her they were okay.

I wondered when Eva and Kaja had gotten that close, but didn’t question it much. It was natural to bond with others in traumatic situations.

While I was glad that they were okay, I felt even worse about not having insisted on transferring schools. If I’d been there, then I could have dealt with the situation better than the complicated plan I’d heard Kaja explain to Joyce.

My sneakers’ soles were so worn down that I could feel the hard hospital floor through them. I’d put on unique thick socks that were lined with a thin but solid layer of plastic, so I hadn’t worried too much about scratching my feet up again.

They’d already wrapped things up before I’d known anything had happened, so I hadn’t run over remarkably quickly, but it looked like in my panic, I’d gone much faster than I’d thought I had.

I chugged down the fourth energy drink I’d had in the last half hour and chased it down with a chocolate-covered marshmallow. The two snacks didn’t taste great together, but they gave me the energy I needed.

“Archer, do you need anything?”

I noticed the younger boy staring at me with a complex expression. It was likely just repulsion for the food that I ate, but I thought to ask, anyway.

It was currently slightly past five in the morning. Early enough for Tillo to drift in and out of his sleep state, but late enough for me to worry about Archer, who had metaphorically tossed and turned the whole night.

They had hooked him up to so many machines that his movement was limited, but I didn’t think that was why he’d stayed up the whole night. He’d faked sleep long enough to avoid making Joyce sad, but I’d volunteered at the hospital long enough to know the difference between a sleeping patient and one that was faking it.

Right now, we were the only two awake. I was awake since I’d taken over Joyce’s caretaker duties, but I didn’t know why Archer refused to sleep.

Maybe the events of earlier scared him too much to go to sleep?

It was easy to forget because of how mature he acted, but he was only a fifteen-year-old; there was no way he would have adjusted quickly.

“Can I ask you a question?”

His voice crawled out of his voice box like a shy butterfly, and I had to strain my ears to hear him properly. I picked up the chair and brought it to the side of his cot. While I didn’t know what he wanted to ask, I saw little harm in listening to a question.

I also figured that talking might tire him out enough to get some sleep and heal properly. Besides, this seemed like an excellent way to get to know each other and eventually get closer.

“Yeah, what do you want to know?”

“Why did Joyce have to pick you up from the police station?”

His face was so dull, and his voice was so quiet that I questioned if I’d heard him correctly at first.

“Sorry?”

“When Joyce first dropped Eva and me off with Aaron, she got a phone call and had to leave. I ended up ‘hearing’ that she was going to the police station to get you. Why were you there?”

The way he emphasized the word ‘heard’ made it clear that he hadn’t used his ears to perform the action.

“Don’t worry, I can barely use my powers right now, and even if I could, I wouldn’t use them on you.”

I was taken aback and slightly scared. I hadn’t known that any of the others had known about my jail stint, and I was afraid of what Archer would ask me.

But no, wait. I should calm down and not get too much into my head. From how he spoke, he’d known about it for a long time. He’d definitely known for a while, but he hadn’t said anything to me until now. That meant that there was a specific reason he wanted to know.

“Well. I came across a couple of hoodlums surrounding a younger schoolmate of mine. I decided to interfere, but I ended up going too far and getting caught.”

“Don’t you have invisibility powers?”

Ah, hearing about how I’d allowed myself to get caught by the local law enforcement was embarrassing enough without having the event analyzed. I’d already decided to justify it by thinking I deserved to get punished for my actions because otherwise, there was really no reason for me to have stuck around after I’d rescued the kid.

Yeah, I hadn’t wanted anyone to see me using my powers, but the mask and the hoodie had entirely covered my face. Even if I’d used them, no one would have known it was me.

“Yeah… but I couldn’t really use them under the circumstances. Anyway, why the sudden curiosity?”

He noted my attempt to change the topic but went along with it; it was clear that questioning my usage of my abilities at the time wasn’t why he’d brought up the incident.

“Did you end up… hurting them?”

I debated lightening the truth and making it seem less grave than it had been, but that wouldn’t be fair to anyone. I’d already done the crime, so I should give it the service of being truthful about it.

“Unfortunately. I got carried away, and they all ended up hospitalized… for a while. Joyce helped me take care of the hospital bills, but they got hurt pretty bad.”

“Why… why did you do that?”

His face was still blank as he asked, but his voice grew quieter and devolved from the soft slither into a whisper.

That was an intense question and not one I’d thought about since Joyce had asked me the same one.

I’d given a hostile and unapologetic answer back then, but I took a softer approach this time.

“Honestly, I don’t have a perfect answer or even a solid reason. One reason was I was already in a foul mood that day, so I took it out on them. Another reason was revenge-based. They’d stolen a lot of money from me I was younger, so seeing them do the same thing to that young kid made me angry. And the last reason was that I was angry that they were bullying such a young kid and wanted to make sure they couldn’t do it again.”

“Do you… regret it?”

Yet another troublesome question.

“I regret going as far as I did… but even if I turned back time, I don’t think I could have let them walk away completely unscathed. I’m not saying that’s right or that it’s the only way things can be done, but it is the truth.”

I didn’t know if that was the answer that he’d wanted, but he seemed to have come to a conclusion that he liked. His features slightly loosened, although he still looked burdened, and he gave me a soft thank you before closing his eyes and trying to sleep.