Powerless (The Girl in the Box Book 40), page 12
Walking toward Aniya, I crossed by that pillar and caught the carpeting just right with my foot. I stumbled slightly, my metahuman dexterity vanished in the haze of suppressant and my sorry ass reduced to human reflexes and foibles.
My pinky toe hit the pillar in my stumble, and I swear I heard a mighty crack louder than some of the occasions where I'd actually had my skull fractured.
I almost screamed, my mouth leaping open and the yell trying to fling itself out before I could ram it shut. It was a near-run thing, but I managed to get it closed before the shout could escape, and instead I let out a half-hearted mewl that cut off in a second or so.
Tears came to my eyes, threatening to stream down my cheeks. I wanted to grab my foot and cradle it, hopping on the other one, but instead I slammed a hand into the pillar and steadied myself, holding my breath and keeping my eyes tightly closed.
“What happened?” Olivia asked from behind me.
“She kicked the pillar,” Aniya said, with – unless I was much mistaken – a hint of glee. “With little toe.”
My entire chest was tight, tight like someone had wound up a variety of springs in me and left them at maximum tension. I wanted to shout, to howl, to bellow so loud that the fields around the apartment building, filled with stalks of corn that were grown a good foot or so above the ground by now, would shake at my barbaric yawp.
“Are you all right?” Olivia asked from somewhere in the hazy distance behind me.
“I hate being vanilla human,” I said, once I'd gotten control of myself and the pain. Jamming my toe into the pillar was a strange thing, somehow more painful than some of the metahuman punches and kicks and whatnot I'd endured. Which was weird. “This lack of dexterity – it didn't let me avoid the surprise attack your pillar launched on my little toe.”
Aniya giggled. “It is funny how you blame it upon the pillar, as though it moved.”
“It leapt right out at me,” I said, flexing the toe experimentally. “No warning. It was an ambush.” I got my eyes open slightly. The world went on, somehow, after this calamity.
“I found food,” Olivia said. She was suddenly next to me, thrusting a red box at me. “You want some?” She had one of the golden brown crackers in her hand, then nibbled. “They're really g – uh – uh–”
She bolted for the bathroom but, finding it locked, made for the trashcan, spitting out the crackers. When she brought her head up again, she looked at the bottom of the box, then dropped it into the trashcan. “They expired six months ago.”
“Great,” I said, trying to put the stale crackers incident behind us to talk about something more interesting. Like the beige shade of Olivia's blank walls, or how long it would take my toe to heal.
The bathroom door opened behind us with a clunk, and Traverton came out, announcing, loudly, “You're out of TP.”
Olivia blinked. “I...I am?”
Traverton shrugged broadly, his slumped shoulders rising to almost an inch below his neck, clearly the high water mark of a shrug for his lanky ass. “I couldn't find any.”
I made a face. “What did you wipe your ass on, then?”
Traverton stared at me blankly, then flushed almost imperceptibly. “Nothing.”
I hoped it was one of Olivia's towels or washclothes, and not the wet socks I'd just hung in the shower. You know, right next to the toilet. I tried to control the boiling desire to seethe. It was probably nothing to be mad about. He was probably just walking around with a filthy starfish. Traverton seemed the type not to care about such trifling details of hygiene; he was an animal, after all.
“What were you talking about when I was in the can?” Traverton asked, throwing himself into one of the empty chairs. “Sounded kinda heated.”
“I stubbed my toe,” I said.
“Uh, there was plenty of toilet paper under the sink,” Olivia said, emerging from the bathroom. “And also, a whole bunch in the tower just beside the toilet. Five rolls.”
Traverton did his deep shrug again. “Didn't see it.”
Olivia did not speak to this, but her face told me what she was thinking quite clearly: Are you blind? Did you even look?
My toe was throbbing, and I caught an intense look from Aniya. She was watching me during this whole ordeal. Not saying anything, just watching.
“I was thinking,” Olivia said, plopping down in the seat next to Traverton, “we're probably going to have to hunker down here for the night.”
My face had been beneath my hand as I tried to compose myself from the onslaught against my toe. At her words, I snapped my head up. “What?”
Olivia's eyes were glowing, her face showing all the signs of an incredibly enthusiastic teenager. “It'll be okay. We can order some pizza, and we can lay out some sheets on the floor–”
“I have a hotel paid for,” Aniya said, “and am not worried about my safety presently.”
“Oh, great, we can get you a rideshare,” Olivia said, not a bit taken aback, “and then the rest of us can hang out, eat pizza–”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, waving a hand in front of my face as if to ward off a bee that was trying to assail me. It certainly felt like something deeply annoying was circling, looking for a place to land and jab me with a stinger. “You're proposing a sleepover.”
“I got nowhere else to go,” Traverton said, oh so helpfully.
I looked to the curtained sliding glass door at the far end of the room, which was, in reality, only ten feet away in the tiny living room. The sun was still shining out there because it was midafternoon at best.
Spend the rest of the day here? Then the whole night?
I felt a tightness in my chest that came seemingly out of nowhere. The room suddenly felt infinitely smaller, as though the walls were closing in.
“...And we can make s'mores in the microwave!” Olivia said. “I can run out and get some food at the supermarket, and we'll be all set to–”
Blood pulsed in my ears, raging and roaring as though it were a mighty river running through my head. My breaths were coming short and shallow, and my eyes were tightly closed.
“Hey, are you okay?” Traverton asked. His voice sounded like it was echoing.
“Sienna?” Olivia asked.
I didn't feel compelled to answer them. My heart was pounding wildly.
Traverton stood, rattling his chair as he did so. He took a couple steps toward me, then–
PAIN.
A lancing, agonizing sting shot through my body from my little toe – the one I'd just annihilated in the run-in with the pillar – up my foot and through the rest of me.
I slashed a hand up in fury and it made hard contact with something – Traverton's jaw, I realized when I snapped my eyes open. He looked at me in shock, mouth open, stinging from the blow but not seriously hurt by a human-power, half-ass slap.
“You piece of shit,” I said, some well of anger tapped within me and given a direct conduit to my mouth. “You show up at my door and bring your crap with you. Now I'm sitting here with you – you – you–” I tabled the broad-based smear that was about to follow, switching tacks to direct my fire at Traverton again instead of splashing Aniya and Olivia, who sat watching my explosion in amused silence and wide-eyed horror, respectively. “You self-involved little twat. I don't even want to know what you wiped your ass on. If you wiped your ass at all. But if I find out it was one of my socks, as soon as I get my powers back, I'm going to take my boot and ram it up your ass at the most inconvenient angle possible for your rectum's continued structural integrity. I–”
The look on Olivia's face finally got to me, and I cut off the next bit. I sat, breathing heavily, watching Traverton stare at me in mute horror. “Just...” I flung a dismissive hand in his direction, not to strike him, but as if I were an imperious queen, seeking to dismiss him from my presence. “Stay away from me for a while.” I snapped a look at Olivia. “I'm a little on edge.”
She managed not to say anything for a cold second. “Yep.”
“Can I hang out in your room until I cool off?”
She nodded. “Absolutely.”
“Great,” I said. “Keep dipshit out of trouble until I get back.” I gestured at Traverton, then turned on my heel and headed for her bedroom. It was a very short walk, and once I was there, I slammed the door so as to leave everyone with the distinct impression that even now, without a drop of my powers available, they still really, really didn't want to mess with Sienna Nealon.
And no one did.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Hey, Brianna's voice slipped out of the haze as the sun was sinking lower in the sky, creating a fiery orange coronal effect on the edges of the blinds in Olivia's room.
I buried my face in the pillow, which smelled of sour apple shampoo, the same scent that Olivia's blond locks carried. “Hey yourself,” I whispered, hoping no one out there could hear me. They'd been fairly quiet since my blowup, but I could still hear them speaking in hushed voices here and there. I couldn't pick out a single word of it, and so I'd existed in a semi-conscious haze, a twilight state wherein I wasn't really sleeping – though I wanted to, given how much I'd missed last night – but not fully awake, either.
So...you want to talk about THAT? Brianna asked.
“Not particularly,” I whispered, then switched to speaking in my head. But we might as well. I am sick to death of Traverton and I've only dealt with him as a human for less than a day.
Mmmhm. And?
I sighed into the pillow. And Olivia is like a damned child. What grown-ass woman wants to have a sleepover?
Probably one that had a rough upbringing.
I had a rough upbringing. My desire for platonic sleepovers? Zero.
What do you call what you're doing with Ariadne?
I softened just a titch. Being roommates.
That's probably what Olivia's looking for, too. I mean...take a look around you. This is pretty grim.
I took Brianna's advice. Olivia's room was indeed grim, just like the rest of the apartment. There were two bedside tables with a collection of magazines and a single reading lamp upon them, plus a half-drunk bottle of water. The closet doors were partially open, and her wardrobe – a collection of bargain basement outfits that ran the gamut from disastrous to frumpy – were visible within. Also, she had like three, four pairs of shoes, and I could see them all from here. No heels, not that I'd judge a girl for avoiding that masochistic trap. Two pairs of tennis shoes that looked like they were for running, and a couple pairs of dress flats. That was it.
Yeah, okay, it's pretty rough in here, I agreed. But whose fault is that?
Dunno whose fault it is, all I'm saying is it makes sense why she'd want to try and connect with a fellow human being. Especially one she thinks of as a – and hold onto your hat for this one, because I know you've never heard it before vis a vis yourself – a hero.
“Knock that shit off,” I muttered into the pillow.
Hard to hear?
Right now? Yeah, I said. In case you didn't notice, I got darted like a rabid animal by the cops this afternoon. I don't remember seeing that in a Marvel movie.
I'm sure it's coming. Probably in Iron Man 37.
Iron Man's dead, I said.
Is that what's up your ass?
“What's up my ass,” I said, then switched back to thinking it in my head, is that I've got these damned yahoos on my back. My life has literally gone to shit, and I've got these losers hanging onto me like gremlins, trying to drag me down as I drown.
You're...swimming with your life in your hands, but it's turned to shit...?
Oh, stop it.
But you have creatures on your back...
It's an imperfect metaphor.
It's not a metaphor at all at this point, Brianna said, it's so mixed it's like you sloshed a Cosmo together with an Old Fashioned.
That would taste amazing right now.
Knock it off, Brianna said. Stay strong.
It's hard to stay strong when nothing is going right.
You've had things go wrong before, Brianna said. What's so different about this?
“This was when it was supposed to all turn around!” I said, hissing into the pillow.
A pause. Silence, including from the other room, where they'd apparently just heard me and hushed themselves.
It was supposed to be different now, I said, taking care not to speak aloud. Now that I'm free of the Network. Things were supposed to get better. The government was finally off my back. No one was hanging on to me, I was supposed to be...free. And I was going to turn my life around, Brianna! Put things back together! With Reed! With the rest of the crew, but...
The silence was permeating. But they're kind of...living without you at this point, right?
Did you see how fast Reed blew out of here with his mission? I asked, face pushed tight against the pillow. I mean, I get it. He's busy being engaged. And I knew Perugini didn't like me. I just...figured I'd see more of him, y'know, outside of work now that we're back in the same state. And Augustus and Jamal–
Oh, no.
–All my friends, really. I get it. They lived their lives without me for a good long while, and now it's...it's weird to have me back, maybe. But with the stress of the business and all the debt...and stupid Traverton showing up out of nowhere... I sighed into the pillow. It's lonely, Brianna. But also tiring. And...and...
...And Harry? she asked.
I nodded slowly, brushing my face, now wet, against the pillow. I thought I could count on him. I sniffled pathetically, and hated myself for it. Guess I was wrong.
For a long time you could, Brianna said. I gotta admit, I don't know what the hell happened with Harry. As a somewhat impartial observer, that came out of left field for me. Guy sticks with you through thick and thin on the run, then a war, then through a criminal conspiracy at the highest levels of power, and the minute you're free he hits it and quits it?
I'm kinda thankful at this point for that last hit before he quit it, to be honest. It was a loooonng drought before that, y'know.
Still, him leaving was just weird timing.
Not really, I said. My face scrunched up against the pillow. He can see the future, Brianna. With the path cleared, he realized what I should have known way, way before now.
...Which is?
That maybe I'm just not wired to be happy, I said, and a strange calm fell over me. That I'm just too different to really be able to have the things other people have. Family life. Relationships. I bit my lip. ...Friends, even.
You've had friends for a long time.
At a distance, sure. Where they can't see my flaws. But the people who do get close? They always back off. Harry. Reed. Augustus, Jamal. Even Kat. And definitely Scott. No one wants to be close to a nuclear bomb when it goes off unless they've got a death wish. I mean...can I really blame Minnesota for not wanting me around?
What about your grandmother?
I sniffled. That was a good point. I could call her. But...
All I need right now is to drag her back to Minnesota, I said. She'd probably get darted by the cops, too, and then anything that happened to her...God, could you imagine? Living for thousands of years and then getting taken out by something stupid, like a stray car, or a pissed-off Hercules because some rookie cop darted you?
Umm...yeah, I can imagine that. Because it's the exact same fear I'm harboring for you right now.
Yeah, well, it's the same fear I'm harboring for all the other people in my life right now, too.
Except Olivia...? Brianna asked slyly.
Don't be an ass, I said. She can't be hit by a dart. You know this. That's her power.
She can't be hit if she's expecting it, Brianna said. I'm not sure how her powers work if someone catches her off guard. They might be able to slip one through. Plus, she's not impervious to that big mook you ran into earlier.
I nodded, face brushing against the soft cotton pillowcase. True. But I can't leave her out of this, especially given how much trouble I'm already getting. Between Moose and Squirrel, the local cops, and Oberheuser still lingering out there, I'm kinda juggling enough.
Speaking of...what now? Brianna asked. You've got a room full of people out there. Including a very watchful Russian.
I rolled my eyes. They were already starting to develop that dried crust. I'll deal with her as I get time. The clear and present danger is the mooks, Oberheuser, and the State of Minnesota.
True enough. How are you going to handle all of them?
I grimaced, but only because I knew that no matter how I sliced this task up, it was not going to be easy. “One at a time,” I said. “One at a time.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Hey,” Olivia said, on me the second I opened the bathroom door. “How are you feeling?”
She'd shouted this same invitation to conversation when I'd crossed from the bedroom to the bathroom earlier, and I'd ignored it. Now that I had soaked my puffy eyes with a cold cloth and put on my still-damp (but free of Traverton's ass-wiping) socks and boots, she must have considered me fair game.
“I'm better now,” I said, drawing on my not-vast reserve of calm. “Just got a little overwhelmed was all.”
She nodded. “Glad to see it. And your powers...?”
“They're back,” I said. “Toe's all better, too, thanks to healing.” I glanced past her, where Aniya stared at me from the recliner. “You ready to go?”
Traverton popped up out of his chair like his ass was spring-loaded. “Where are we going?”
“You're going to stay with Olivia tonight,” I said, drawing once more on that dwindling chill. I looked at Olivia. “If that's all right with you.”
She looked...well, honestly...crestfallen. “You want me to babysit? Like...alone?” She didn't make it sound like it was the worst thing in the world, but it was clearly top five for her.
