I screamed and scrambled backwards as fear surged through me, driving me to run—to flee. Canary fell to the floor of the truck with a thump, but if she had cried in pain, then I couldn’t hear it through the setup muffling her. I fell out the back of the truck but managed to marshal my power to grab myself mid-air before I smashed the back of my head into the pavement. Instinctively I began to reach out to the nearby metal and grab as much as I could, the urge to defend myself overwhelming me. I couldn’t grab it all, the weight making most of it slip between my fingers, but I kept grabbing at it all over and over anyway in a futile effort.

No no no! I thought, gagging on nothing as memories of choking on salt water invaded my thoughts, fueling my fearful frenzy. Stop it! Stop it!

“Meteor?” I heard Faultline say in alarm over the comms. “Are you okay? What’s happened?”

I tried to double tap the comm in my ear but couldn’t manage the necessary coordination with how badly I was shaking. The truck began to breakdown as I inadvertently ripped and tore its components apart at the seams. Canary rolled herself out of the truck as best as she could in her heavy bindings, and the mystery prisoner bent down to pick something up before jumping out as well, her bindings apparently broken by accident in my scramble for metal. As she landed in a crouch, I noticed one of her feet was bare and she was holding one of her boots and a sock.

“Sweet, wasn’t sure you’d actually manage to free me,” she casually remarked with a hint of something sinister in her tone. She began to pull on her sock and boot and idly glanced over her shoulder towards the cape fight. “Would’ve been good for a show, regardless. Say, those guys aren’t looking too hot over there.”

The feeling of choking on water was still constantly washing over me, but at that remark, I looked over at where everyone else had been fighting and blanched when I saw how bloody and beaten everyone was now. They were somehow still on their feet and fighting, but Shade had huge gashes in her makeshift costume revealing freely bleeding wounds, Gregor’s left arm was hanging limp and useless at his side, Newter’s tail had somehow been shorn off altogether leaving him with a stump oozing with red blood, and Faultline’s right arm was bent at a strange angle and had a bone jutting out of her skin. The heroes had bloody patches on their costumes but otherwise seemed to be fine as they continued to fight at full strength.

“Meteor, I repeat, what happened over there?”

Nonono! I’ve got to help them! I thought in panic as I raced through the air to them. Shade was the closest to me, and now that I was closer, I realized with horror that she was bleeding badly from her throat. “Omigod, your neck!”

“Huh?” she said while tossing a brief glance towards me but keeping the majority of her focus on Assault, who had paused with a look of consternation. Vaguely remembering you were supposed to put pressure on wounds to stop bleeding, I immediately touched down and reached out to put pressure on the wound.

“No, wait, don’t!” the hero yelled while dashing towards us with suddenly wide eyes and no trace of the jovial cadence and timbre from earlier in his words.

It was too late. I touched Shade, and she shrieked and slapped away my hand. All the gashes and blood were gone in an instant, leaving a battered but otherwise whole Shade, who fell backwards onto the pavement as her skin swarmed with shadows and began to warp. “What the fuck?!” she screamed, as her body settled into Gregor’s form, her pupils blown wide.

“Shit,” Assault swore, coming to a halt a few feet away and holding up his hands in a calming gesture. “You’re okay, just don’t—”

Shade and I were both turned our powers on him in an instant, freaking out at his proximity. The barrage of my orbs kept him still long enough for Shade to spray him with some kind of orange liquid that made him scream in pain as his costume and exposed skin began to hiss and bubble. I gasped in horror and felt bile rise up in my throat at the sight. Unbidden thoughts of everyone on the team wailing in agony as they dissolved began to fill my mind, and I fell to my knees as the trembling became too bad to support myself.

“Everyone stand down!” Faultline yelled in the comms. “Gregor, stop that acid now!”

“Don’t touch them!” Boudicca cried out as she sprinted over at normal human speed, seemingly not boosted for the moment. She had a bit of a British accent coloring her words. “They’re being affected by Loki’s power!”

Just as Gregor began to spray Assault with some sort of water that was a vaguely unnatural shade of blue, the prisoner from earlier appeared in Boudicca’s way already in the midst of tapping her hand. “Tag, you’re it, Boudibitch.”

As suddenly as it all came, the unnatural fear that had been filling me winked out, leaving me feeling almost hollow. The horror at the damage done to Assault was still there, but the heavy, panicked breathing and choking feeling of drowning vanished and left me feeling a strange combination of drained and jittery. So this is what Loki really looks like, I thought, remembering the name from our briefing. She was a solo villain with known sadistic tendencies with striker, shaker, and stranger ratings. She could make minor visual illusions and, more importantly, was a striker who instilled fear that chained with the power to spread exponentially to no known limit. Only time or her using her power on a new victim would dispel the effect. She was one of the capes Faultline had mentioned we might run into, though so far as we had been aware, Loki was free. None of us had expected she would be in the convoy. At most we had expected we may have to deal with a crowd driven to terror by the cape for shits and giggles.

Boudicca stumbled mid-run but managed to not fall, and she took several wild swings to try and hit Loki, but the swings were at normal human speeds and poorly aimed, so Loki easily dodged while cackling.

“Meteor, get Canary and get to the transport,” Faultline tightly ordered, drawing my attention. “Everyone else retreat there now.”

I hesitated for a second, turning to Shade in worry before remembering the gashes and blood disappearing in front of my eyes. Illusions. She probably wanted me to touch someone on the team and was banking on me trying to tend to their injuries, I thought. I pulled myself straight up into the air and turned my gaze to the remnants of the truck, which were littered around one end of the skidmarks left behind by the truck as it ground to a halt. I easily found the bright yellow of her hair and the orange of her jumpsuit, promptly wrapped her up in spare metal from the truck, and lifted her into the air, eliciting a shriek from her.

“Aw, you’re all leaving?” I looked down and saw Loki was glancing towards the rest of the crew with a dark smirk. “But we’re just getting started.”

I hastily formed a barrier using my orbs to block off her line of sight to the rest of the crew. Faultline hadn’t known if Loki needed line of sight for her illusions, and the blindfold she’d been wearing in the convoy may have just been something she tricked me into seeing to feel sorry for her and come closer, but it was worth a shot. Still, I double tapped my ear piece, thankfully no longer held back by shaky hands. “Loki’s got her sights set on you all. Trying to block her sight.”

“Copy that,” came Faultline’s reply as Loki pulled a gun from somewhere and took aim at me. I immediately reached for control over it and frowned when I realized there was no weight there. An illusion then.

Off to the side, Boudicca rushed over to where Assault was still lying in a heap on the ground and demanded, “Punch me, hurry!” He groaned piteously but smacked her on the arm. I winced when I remembered how many marks he had around his neck—easily seven or eight. If that smack counted as a true hit, then the hero was now super charged for offense again. She blurred into motion, proving her power was definitely leaning into offense now, and kicked straight through where Loki’s knee would have been. The blow swept clean through, revealing the Loki we saw was just an illusion, but the image lingered and cackled silently at the effort.

The illusory Loki began to morph into something else, but I focused on sending my orbs sweeping through the area. I wish I could have set them to bounce around at random to make it harder to dodge between the cracks—I was covering a large, open area—but I couldn’t really multi-task. It was like trying to rub my belly and pat myself on the head at the same time. I could sort of get the orbs to do separate things, but there was an awkwardness to it that hampered the individual efforts. It didn’t help that I was mostly focusing on grabbing Canary, so we could get the hell out of here. Faultline had the right idea—we were being paid to free Canary and get her to Montreal, not to duke it out in the streets. Fortunately for me, Canary hadn’t gotten far with how patently ludicrous her bindings were, and I started to scoop her up.

I felt a metal disk being thrown at me at speed from behind and pushed myself a bit to the side to dodge, but with my attention mostly on Canary, I didn’t account for the fact there may be more to what was thrown at me than just metal. The tire slammed hard into my left shoulder, and I screamed as I felt something pop. The momentum from the tire and my loss of concentration sent me spinning to the ground, and before I could even think about trying to grab hold of the metal pieces hidden in my costume, I was tackled out of the air. I would have screamed again at the feeling of my left arm being jostled and the overwhelming fear from earlier returning, but the air was knocked out of my lungs by my attacker—presumably Boudicca. I felt her arm rear back for a punch before my eyes had begun to catch up, and I tried to hold it back by pulling the metal plating attached to her leather bracer away from me, but the armor caught for only a moment before continuing to plow forward, the leather snapping under the opposing pressures and sending the metal plating rocketing away. Her punch connected with my already abused left arm, and it snapped.

I thought I had screamed before. I was wrong. That wasn’t a scream—this was a scream. I had never broken a bone in my life, and the pain was excruciating. Combined with my throat seizing like I was choking on salt water, my conscious mind was being overrun by pure instinct. Boudicca threw me at the ground, eliciting another pained cry when my abused arm hit the paved road, and I started grabbing metal from all over the area and sending it hurtling at her. It hurt, and I wanted it to stop. Boudicca froze and stared down at me with a pale face, almost like she was surprised to see me, then a steel rod, perhaps a remnant from the drive shaft, slammed into her back lengthwise and sent her flying away. Someone else released a short, loud yelp from nearby, and all at once the fear left me again, leaving only the agonizing pain behind. I forced myself to lift my head off the ground to look for Loki, and I saw her on the ground and dazed a handful of yards away. A large sheet of metal that had likely once been a portion of the truck’s side paneling laid nearby. She was starting to get up—I had no room to hesitate. I immediately reformed the sheet into a crude cylinder by rolling it length-wise then bashed her over the head with it. She crumpled to the ground instantly, and for a second I worried I had killed her. Wouldn’t that be just my luck in my first fight under my cape name? Thankfully, I could see she was still breathing from that distance.

“Need to trap her again,” Boudicca spoke up from nearby, her words strained. Probably with pain, seeing as I had just clobbered her in the back with a makeshift baseball bat not a minute prior. The hero moved past in a strangely fast lumbering gait. She had hit me and thrown me, and I had also hit her back, so presumably her power had slid back towards baseline but not that far. I tried to keep a wary eye on her as she set about binding the unconscious villain using some zip-ties she pulled out of some hidden area in her costume, but the pain made it difficult, and I had more pressing matters. I turned my attention to Canary, who was looking a bit beat after hitting the pavement hard several times, and I retrieved her for what would hopefully be the last time and brought her over towards me. I tried to lift myself by my costume and gasped at the pain that shot through me like a bullet. There was no way that was happening.

I double tapped my ear with my uninjured arm as I settled Canary down by me and relayed, “Need backup. Too hurt to fly. Loki is down, but Boudicca is still active.”

“Sit tight, Meteor, we’ll be right there.”

“Only place you’re going is a cell,” Boudicca growled. I started in surprise when I realized Boudicca was almost on top of me, apparently having finished up securing Loki and approaching while I was distracted.

My teammates and the van had never left my range, and from the feel of things, the roads were still jammed full from traffic that had ground to a halt in the wake of our fight, but that didn’t stop them. They drove around the other cars and past what I readily identified as a fire hydrant—they must have mounted the curb.

“No thanks,” I quipped, unable to keep the pain from leaking into my voice. “Orange isn’t really my color. Washes out my complexion.”

The van was close enough now that Boudicca noticed it and looked up. I leapt into action—at least metaphorically—and sent an orb from my hip case rocketing towards her face. Her hand damn near blurred as she moved to bat it away, probably expecting it was the same orbs I had been using the rest of the fight. I tore it open, sending the powderized pepper spray flying into her face. Her raised hand blocked some of the cloud, but the majority of it stayed on course. She half growled half yelled and made the regrettable and seemingly instinctual mistake of rubbing at her eyes, which only served to further spread and rub in the chemical. She made a blind rush towards me, and this time I sent my regular orbs slamming into her at speed. Knowing she could heal herself relatively simply, I purposefully didn’t hold back, but that didn’t make hearing her bones shatter any easier. I winced in sympathy as she howled and collapsed while the van screeched to a halt nearby, the doors already flying open as Shade, Gregor, and Faultline rushed over to retrieve me.

“Oh fuck, she got you bad,” Shade said in my voice as they reached me, revealing she had morphed into me. To carry Canary more easily?

“Gregor, take Meteor,” Faultline ordered, wasting no time. “Shade, get Canary. I’ll grab her equipment.”

“I’m sorry, but we’ve little time to be delicate,” Gregor said in obvious regret. “This will hurt.”

“Just do it,” I hissed, trying to psych myself up for it. A futile effort. It hurt—a lot, I cannot stress that enough—but in less than a minute’s time, everyone was in the van and we drove off, leaving the battered heroes and villain behind.

You know what hurts worse than a shattered, probably dislocated arm? A shattered, probably dislocated arm when the adrenaline finally wears off. I was in agony, and everyone was trying to figure out what to do next. The original plan had been to drive straight up to Montreal and back with detours at the border for me to fly us over the line in an isolated area, hopefully under cover of night. With the way things were now though…

I whimpered as the van went around a curve, the movement making my body move in relation to the shifting forces. I tried valiantly to hold back the tears, but they carved their way down my face in spite of my efforts. Shade was doing her level best to help stabilize me with the arm she had wrapped around my back and holding my side, but there was only so much she could do. Newter had been moved up into the passenger seat so that Faultline could examine my injuries, and Canary had been shoved in the back with my equipment.

Faultline finally finished cutting open the arm of my bodysuit with the scissors from the first aid box and stowed them before retrieving the small flashlight she had been holding still over the injury site using her teeth. The metal inlaid in the body suit tugged down in a new direction now that it hung free, and I winced at the new pain. “This is a very serious injury,” she gravely confirmed. I turned to look, afraid of what I would see, and paled at the gruesome sight. The upper half of my left arm was essentially one giant bruise and hung unnaturally. Now that the black body suit and its inlaid metal plating wasn’t obscuring it, we could now see I had a shard of bone jutting a few inches out of a bloody hole in the back of my arm.

“I’ll make it,” I tried to argue. I probably wasn’t being very persuasive given the underlying whine in my voice.

“Absolutely not,” she disagreed. I could practically feel her glare through her mask. “We can’t go to Montreal with you like this. You need medical attention.”

“How bad is it?” Gregor asked from up front.

“Compound fracture. Bone has punctured the skin. Significant bruising. Only saving grace is the wound’s already begun to clot around the bone.”

“How’s your pain?” Newter asked as he twisted around in his seat, his concern apparent. “Need me to knock you out?”

For the first time since we had met, I was sincerely tempted to take him up on the offer, but Faultline shook her head. “We should wait until we have a plan before making any actions we can’t easily take back. We can’t afford to go straight to a nearby hospital—the PRT will absolutely check there first after Boudicca informs them of the damage she did. Brockton Bay is less than an hour away, but even that might be too obvious a location, given it’s an open secret we’re primarily base out of the Bay. Nevertheless, Newter, reach out to P and have him confirm wait times at the local hospitals.”

‘P’ had to be a reference to Pierce, the lead bouncer at Palanquin. When Newter nodded and pulled out his phone to make the call, Shade spoke up, her words strangely subdued for once, “She’ll take ages to heal that way. I’ve got a better idea.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Faultline replied in a dubious tone.

“It would work!” Shade argued, some heat slipping back into her voice. “I’d only need to be around her, like, one or two minutes. Less if I talk to her.”

“You’re not just talking about copying any person’s power, Shade. You’re talking about Panacea’s power. There could be serious repercussions if you were caught.”

“So what, you think I’m gonna get caught? Oh please. How would anyone catch me? All I need is a convincing disguise and to copy someone on staff. S’long as they know the layout of the hospital and where to find her, I’ll be gucci.”

“Hospital will have badge access doors,” Gregor chimed in from the driver’s seat. “And you would need to copy someone who could reach Panacea but others would be unlikely to remember and also avoid copied person. Your idea is more involved than you believe.”

Getting healed now rather than needing to wait weeks or months for my arm to heal would be really nice, I had to admit. I was feeling pretty goddamn shitty, all things said. I was doing my best to stay still and minimize the pain to admittedly still awful levels, but I couldn’t even manage that much. Just driving down the highway with the moderate winds brushing into the van made the van shift just enough to move my arm and magnify the pain, and the same happened if I breathed too hard, which in itself was more likely to happen because I was feeling worse. Talk about a vicious cycle…

Shade opened her mouth to retort but stilled when I put my good hand on hers. “Please… It’s okay. Maybe we can figure that out later, but for now, a regular hospital will have to do. We have to get to Montreal.” Her expression was sour and mutinous, but she stayed quiet after that. Nobody else had any ideas other than a hospital, and Newter hung up with Pierce and confirmed the hospitals in the Bay were backed up as usual. Bayside, the most well known hospital in Brockton Bay, was apparently even worse off, since Uber and Leet, two independent villains in the area who were dedicated to video game themed antics, had apparently decided to recreate Grand Theft Auto of all things and injured a bunch of hookers and innocent pedestrians both during their stunt and while fleeing from Armsmaster. I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around how moronic that was.

Faultline and Gregor began to discuss what hospital to stop at, and I did my best to tune them out. Labyrinth sat silently on the seat next to Faultline, positioned sideways with her full face mask turned just enough to make it apparent she was looking at me. If I hadn’t known her better and that it was a bad day for her, I would have been freaked out by the silent treatment. It was still somewhat unsettling as it was, but I held my tongue. I was in too much pain to temper words right now, and I knew I would regret it the moment I opened my mouth.

I turned my focus on Shade instead. “I’m glad you were here for this. Might’ve been a whole lot worse otherwise.”

She smirked a bit. “You must not’ve looked at your arm, ‘cause girl, that thing is jacked.”

I tried to grin, though it probably came out as more of a grimace. “Hell yeah it is. Do you even lift, bro?” That earned me a cackle, and I felt just a tiny bit better. Still pretty fucking shit though.

Newter’s phone rang, and he answered with a, “Yo, P, ‘sup? … Woah, wait, what?” That drew everyone’s attention. “What’s her name?” He twisted around in his seat and looked right at me. “Meteor, what’s your… Ah shit, forgot Canary was in the car. Um. Okay, right—your relative. What’re the first and last letters of her name?”

I blinked in confusion. “‘M’ and ‘O’…?”

“Right, thought that was right, but still… She’s at the club. Says she wants to speak with you and make sure you’re going to the hospital?”

“I don’t… What even…?” I stared at him, utterly uncomprehending.

“Sec,” he said, holding up his finger. His eyes drifted to the side as he listened to something Pierce was saying on the other end. “Woah, wait. For real?” He shook his head, his expression one of disbelief, then looked back to me. “She’s asking for Meteor.”

“Um… I’m confused. How did she know to go to the club?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” he asked, leaning forward just a bit. “She’s asking for Meteor.”

Oh.

“Put the call on hold. Now,” Faultline hissed at Newter, and he hurried to oblige. “Meteor?”

“I don’t fucking know!” I hissed right back, answering her unspoken question. “I sure as hell didn’t tell her! She saw me with Gregor, but that shouldn’t have been enough!”

“She may have noticed when you used your power that night,” Gregor disagreed from the front seat, the dirty, dirty traitor. “But it was brief. I am unsure if it would have been enough of a hint.”

“You used your power in front of her?” I cringed away from the disappointment in Faultline’s tone.

“She was swinging a frying pan at Gregor. I just… thought if she overswung, then she wouldn’t notice?” I wasn’t really thinking it through at the time, but the excuse sounded reasonable enough.

“We will talk about this,” she replied, the words promising a lecture. “For now, we need to send her away. We’ll work out a plan to keep your identity protected after.”

“Wait, hold up!” Shade butted in, a gleam in her eye as she turned to face me. “Ain’t she a nurse?”

“Um, yeah? Why does that matter?” I responded.

“Does she work at a hospital?”

“Have P call my phone,” Faultline said, her eyes firmly locked on Shade and me. Newter passed on the command, and a few seconds later, her phone rang. She answered on the first ring with, “Put her on the phone.” She waited a moment longer then continued. “Stay quiet, listen closely, do not use real names, and answer only when I ask you a question. Step out of line, and I’m hanging up. Is that understood?” After a brief pause, she put the phone on speaker. “You are on speaker. Meteor can hear you, as can others. Again, do not use real names. Do you work at a hospital?”

There was a brief pause on the other end before Masuyo’s voice carried through, a steely determination there. “Yes.”

“Which one?”

“Bayside.”

“Is Panacea there this evening?”

“She’s there every Sunday.”

“For how much longer?”

“If she sticks to her normal schedule, then for maybe another three hours or so.”

“Would you be able to get someone close to Panacea without suspicion?”

Another pause, but briefer this time. “Possibly, but not likely.”

She didn’t even question why? I thought in disbelief.

“Reason?”

“Administration keep a few plainclothes security staff nearby just in case. They might know most of the staff by heart or something. I wouldn’t know, I’m not privy to that info.”

“And if the person looked just like someone on staff?”

No pause this time. “Then yes.”

“Can doctors in the ER assign Panacea to particular cases?”

“Yes, but they don’t just ask her to take care of anybody.”

“Speak only when I ask questions. Was that unclear?”

“Not at all. You asked a question, and I answered. I just gave you more info than you asked for, which isn’t against the rules.”

I blinked. Was this really Masuyo? I hadn’t known her for long, but she had never acted like this before.

“That’s true,” Faultline drawled, and I could hear the smirk in her voice. “You wish to help?”

“To help you? Absolutely not. To help her? One hundred percent.”

Masuyo…

“Very well. Then this is what you will do…”

“She is here,” Gregor quietly announced from the front seat of the parked van.

I nearly groaned with relief. Faultline’s plan didn’t have many steps, but we couldn’t get started until we were actually in the hospital. She kept prescription strength painkillers in the van’s first aid kit, thank god, but they only helped the pain so much. Faultline reached over and slid open the side door revealing Masuyo, mild surprise on her face and her hand poised to knock. This was the first time I had seen her in scrubs, though that really wasn’t so surprising when I stopped to consider just how little time the two of us had spent together. After all, I had moved out within a week of moving in with her and had not seen her since that disastrous last night. Her midnight blue, patternless scrubs were so dark they almost completely blended into the night, and she had with her a hospital issue wheelchair as well as another pair of scrubs that matched her own lying in its seat.

She recovered quickly from her surprise and scooped up the scrubs before tossing them at Faultline. “Here. I brought what you asked for.”

Faultline passed them back to Shade. “Put the blindfold on our guest then get changed.” Shade leaned over the seat towards the back and began to blindfold Canary. Our ‘guest’ was visibly not thrilled she was going to be blindfolded, but she didn’t have much say in the matter.

“Where is… Meteor?” Masuyo asked. Her tone wasn’t quite demanding, but it was just shy of it.

“Hey,” I spoke up, my unease bleeding into my voice. The hell am I supposed to even say in a situation like this? “Um. How’s your Sunday going?”

She leaned forward into the vehicle to see me better, and a sort of constipated expression crossed her face. “It’s been taking one weird turn after another. How was… was caping?”

“Not that this awkward ass conversation isn’t entertaining and all, but can y’all get her outta the van? I ain’t got room enough to change without bumping into her.”

“Help me get her out,” Faultline ordered Masuyo as she rose into a hunched over stance and gave me a hand with getting up off of the shared seat.

To her credit, Masuyo didn’t bat an eye as she maneuvered the wheelchair into a better position and locked its wheels in place before standing by to help me step down. She sucked in a breath when her eyes landed on the bone jutting out of the back of my arm. She shot a glare at Faultline and hissed, “You didn’t say she was hurt this badly!”

“And if you follow the plan, then she’ll be right as rain in short order.” Once I was sitting in the chair, she helped me push down my scarf and remove the mask underneath, my goggles, and the vest of my costume. There was no way to feasibly take off my black bodysuit, but Faultline had already cut off both sleeves near the shoulder as cleanly as possible, and together with my silver scarf and skirt, I was left oddly dressed but would not be clocked as a cape.

Something in Masuyo’s gaze changed once my face was revealed, and I defensively asked, “What’s with that look?”

“It’s one thing to know it’s you under there, but… it’s something else to actually see it.”

“Yeah, well, it’s me. Ta dah.”

“So is this still what you want, even after this?” she quietly asked while gesturing lamely at my arm.

I frowned and gave her a defiant glare. “You gonna try and stop me?”

Masuyo didn’t respond immediately. Eventually she slowly replied, seemingly choosing her words with care, “No, I won’t stop you. I don’t agree with this at all, but I… I want to be a part of your life, and if this is how I can be, then I’ll take it.”

I stared at her in shock, but eventually my mouth started to work again. “Huh. Then… we’re alright, I guess.”

I swore Masuyo’s eyes widened for a moment, but I blinked and her expression was schooled once more. Fucking arm was probably making me imagine things. Shade—or Aisha now, since she wasn’t in costume any more—stepped out in the scrubs. Faultline turned to her and asked, “You remember the plan?”

“‘Course I do,” Aisha said, waving away her concerns. “O’ ye of little faith.”

“Then get to it. Clock’s ticking.”

Masuyo took hold of the handles of the wheelchair and started moving me towards the elevator of the parking garage, and Aisha followed, humming something that sounded like the Mission Impossible theme under her breath. Actually, scratch that—it was definitely the Mission Impossible theme. I chuckled, and she smirked but otherwise didn’t acknowledge me. Masuyo tossed my friend a look when we reached the elevator but otherwise didn’t comment. Once the elevator arrived and we started to descend to the ground level, Masuyo spoke up. “So. Um, I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Nooope,” Aisha drawled, popping the ‘p.’

“I’m Masuyo.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Um… W-Well, I suppose you wouldn’t want to tell me your name. Either of them. What with being unmasked right now.”

“Nah, I’d be chill with it.”

I blinked and tossed Aisha a look, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Masuyo, not knowing Aisha, gave my friend a small smile. “Oh, that’s a surprise. A good one, I mean!” A couple of seconds passed with no one saying anything, and a confused Masuyo asked, “Are you going to tell me your name?”

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open to the ground floor of the garage. The entrance to Bayside’s emergency room was within sight, just a short jaunt down the way. Masuyo pushed the chair forward, and Aisha followed with a hint of a spring in her step. “Nuh uh.”

“Huh? But you sai—”

“You gotta guess it.”

I snickered before grimacing, the movement having jarred my arm a bit. Still, I couldn’t resist chiming in with, “Lemme guess, it starts with a letter between A and Z and ends in a letter between… hm, could it be between A and Z?”

“Why Junebug, you read my mind!”

Masuyo coughed, poorly concealing a laugh. “‘Junebug’?” she asked, the smile obvious in her voice.

Goddammit. “Not you too,” I moaned before giving the now cackling Aisha a baleful glare. I needed to stop reacting to it. She was probably just trying to get a rise out of me or something.

We had almost reached the doors by that point, and the blond haired lady smoking a cigarette by the entrance gave Aisha a funny look before rolling her eyes and looking away as she took another drag from the stick. Masuyo kept up a steady pace as the doors slid open, steered around a person on their way out, and started towards the check-in counter.

“Bathroom?” Aisha asked.

“Down that hallway and on the right,” Masuyo replied, nodding towards a hallway branching off from the waiting room. Aisha broke off that way while once again loudly humming the Mission Impossible theme, and Masuyo brought me up to the counter.

“Name pl— Masuyo?” the lady sitting behind the desk started to say before glancing up and doing a double take. “What brings you back?” Her eyes trailed down to me and widened. “Oh, and who’s this? My goodness, your arm!”

“Hey, Nancy,” Masuyo greeted the lady. “This is June, my cousin. I think I mentioned her before? We need to get her checked in.”

Nancy frowned. “I remember you mentioning a cousin, but I coulda sworn you mentioned a boy?”

I waved my right hand and gestured at my left arm. “Definitely a girl. Can we get back to the part where I get checked in, so my fucked up arm can get fixed?”

Nancy’s eyebrows shot up, and Masuyo hastily said, “Sorry, Nancy. She’s, um, not exactly feeling well and all.”

“I see… Okay, do you have her ID with you?”

Faultline hadn’t acquired ID for my real name yet, since I hadn’t been willing to part with any more of my advance than I already had, but thankfully she had prepared me on the drive over for the likelihood this question would be asked. “It got lost when I fell into the bay last month,” I said, speaking up before Masuyo tried to bumble her way through some other excuse. “It’s been one thing after another in this shithole city.”

“Quite a mouth on you, kid,” she replied in an unamused tone.

The words were out of my mouth before I could help it. “That’s what she said.”

That got me a dark look, and Masuyo coughed somewhat loudly before placing her hand on my shoulder. “June, how about I move you over to the waiting area, and I’ll take care of getting you checked in?”

I looked up at her and smirked. “Sounds less entertaining.”

“In other words, it’s perfect,” she replied without missing a beat, turning the chair and pushing me towards the waiting room.

“You’re no fun.”

“Broken bones jutting out of your skin is pretty much the definition of ‘no fun.’”

“Exactly,” I argued as she parked me in an empty, out of the way spot and moved around to the front of the chair to look me in the eyes. “All the more reason why I need to double down on the actually fun stuff.”

“I see,” she remarked with a roll of her eyes. “Well good luck with that. I’m going to go finish checking you in.”

She walked past my line of sight, and I took stock of the area. Lots of sick or injured people were scattered around the room along with a smattering of people who didn’t have anything visibly wrong. Visitors or companions, perhaps, but maybe they weren’t suffering overtly. There were no magazines, which confused me because that was the one ubiquitous presence in waiting rooms on TV. Speaking of, there were a couple of wall-mounted TVs in sight, but they were secured behind unsightly cages presumably in place to deter theft. How many got stolen before they decided to do that? I idly wondered. You’d have to have a pair of legs on you to get away lugging one of those though. Both TVs in sight were set to the evening news, which was covering the still on-going repair efforts in Barcelona after the attack by Leviathan a few months ago. The newscasters moved on to local news shortly after, so either the Barcelona story hadn’t been that long or else I had only just caught the end of it. It was difficult to say.

My phone buzzed in my left pocket, and I had to contort myself somewhat painfully to pull it out with my right arm. It was an odd feeling. The pain meds didn’t actually make the pain go away, per se. They just made me care less about it.

[goooood, how long does it take to check in?]

I grinned and texted back.

[u just missed the best that’s what she said joke]

[come on, 4 real? deets, junebug]

[lady @ desk said quite a mouth on u kid]

[i've trained you well, padawan]

[wtf is a padawan]

[JUNEBUG NO]

[what]

[dont do this 2 me]

[what???]

[movie night when this shit is done. got it?]

[ok?]

“All checked in,” Masuyo declared as she came back over. She crouched down by my arm and started to examine it before whispering, “So what’s next?”

Was she trying to be subtle by making it look like she was just taking care of me? Or was she actually doing the latter and accidentally stumbling into the former? I sent one more text, [ready], before locking the phone and slipping it back into my pocket. The right one this time. The right right one. God, these pain meds were even making me think weird too. I think. If this was what Mom had always felt like strung out on drugs on the couch, then I definitely didn’t see the appeal of taking them when my bones were still inside my body. “Is doctor whatshisface still on duty?”

Masuyo blinked. “If you mean Doctor Saltzman, then yes.”

“Yeah, doctor whatshisface.” She laughed a bit at that, the sound equal parts anxiety, hysteria, and actual humor.

Aisha strolled up and tapped Masuyo on the shoulder, drawing her attention. “Yo, ready to show me the ropes?” she asked, a smirk on her face. “I’ve been sooo looking forward to meeting Doc Saltguy.”

“At least that’s closer than ‘doctor whatshisface,’” Masusyo said with a roll of her eyes. “So who am I introducing you as?”

“Nurse May, the new intern. Doc Pepperman saved me as a little girl, and I’ve aaalwaaays dreamed of being a nurse since that day!”

I snorted, and Masuyo groaned. “Right,” my cousin replied. “However could I forget? Well let’s go, ‘May.’”

The two of them left, and I sighed. I glanced at the TV, which was currently in the middle of an advertisement for a prostate medication. Can we say, ‘Ew’? I pulled back out my phone and started to pull up PHO to check what had been posted about our job in Providence, but someone walked into my periphery and in a familiar voice said, “Fancy seeing you here, Jake.”

My head snapped up to meet Tammi’s smirking visage, and I scowled. “Not my name, fuckface. You really wanna fight here of all places?”

“Certainly not,” she replied as she took a seat in the empty chair to my left, crossing her legs and twisting slightly towards me. The smugness of her expression remained firmly in place. “Only a barbarian would do such a thing. But then, I suppose that would be fitting for you.”

“The fuck do you want?” I hissed at her.

“Can’t I just be passing by and happen to see you?”

“Bullshit.”

“Such rudeness, Jake,” she declared, a hand to her chest and faux shock displayed on her features. “See? Barbarism is quite fitting for you.”

I grit my teeth. “You really think I’m gonna buy that you just happened to ‘be passing by’? I’m calling bullshit, Tammi. How did you know I’d be here?”

“Let’s just say a little birdie told me a hero put the beatdown on you in Providence.” She eyed the bone jutting out of my arm, and her smirk widened. “I’ll admit we didn’t know for sure you’d come here, but…”

‘We,’ huh? “So you had your nazi buddies keep an eye out, then flew over the moment you got the call. Which brings us back to what the fuck do you want?”

“Do you know about the unwritten rules, Jake?”

“My name is June. And yeah, Faultline told me about them. What’s your point?”

“My point,” she said, leaning in and dropping her voice to a whisper, “is Meteor is now open season. I’m looking forward to breaking your other arm to match.”

“You can try,” I snarled, “but remember who got beaten to a pulp and left to rot last time.”

She laughed, the act obviously fake and lacking emotion. “The question is, will I even get the chance with you stuck in prison?”

“The fuck are you talking about?”

The faint sound of sirens reached my ear and began to grow louder. “The PRT received an anonymous tip the capes who attacked the prison transport in Providence are seeking medical care here.”

I stared at her with wide eyes. “You— but the rules!”

“I didn’t tell them who you are,” she remarked as she rose to her feet. “But then, I’m sure they can put two and two together when they search the area. Catch you later, bitch.”