Burden of Solace Read online

  He shrugged again, looking down.

  “I guess bringing girls back to your room isn’t a regular thing for you, huh.”

  He shook his head, still not looking up.

  “That’s… actually refreshing,” she admitted. “A lot of guys would probably have undressed me under the pretext of ‘making me comfortable.’ So, thanks. Thanks for not being that kind of guy.”

  How could he be so powerful and also so shy and adorkable? He most definitely wasn’t like Martin.

  Martin tried to kill me.

  She pushed that thought away again. She wasn’t quite ready to pile onto her issues the fact that she had a murderous boyfriend. Boyfriend? Only two dates and she thought of him as a boyfriend? Maybe it was time to rethink that label.

  “I don’t really have anything in your size,” he said, standing up and crossing to a cheap Ikea dresser. He opened a drawer and rummaged around, finally pulling out a faded Atlanta Flames hockey jersey. “This might work. It’s probably too big for you, but it’ll do until I can get you something else to wear.”

  “That’s sweet, but if you can just fly me to my place, I can grab something...”

  That’s when it hit her. She’d left her purse at Martin’s place, which had her keys. Before she could explain this new complication, he interrupted. She sensed more worry in him.

  “Yeah, about going back to your place. There’s something you need to see.”

  *

  “... and divers continue to search the river downstream for Dr. Whelan’s body after her tragic fall from millionaire Martin Ballantine's balcony. Police say they do not suspect foul play at this time.”

  Nate turned the television off. Cassie sat perched on the counter of the small kitchen area, clutching a mug of coffee under her chin. She’d seen the news report three times now, on different channels, so it wasn’t likely she’d learn anything more from the coverage. It wasn’t like they were going to find her body. She slipped down off the counter to the floor, pulling the jersey back up to cover her shoulder when it slipped off. The bottom of the shirt came almost to her knees. She felt like a child again, raiding her dad’s closet to wrap herself in his scent like an evening gown.

  “I need to call someone, let them know I’m okay.”

  He shook his head.

  “Nate, they think I’m dead.”

  “So, you’ll just tell them you didn’t die from that fall because you simply floated away? Are you really ready to go public as an exohuman? ‘Cause a couple of days ago you lied to me about it.”

  That brought her up short. Then it all hit her at once, everything that had happen to her in the past week. It was too much. She had tried to push it down, to deny the reality, but there was no turning away from what had happened. He knew her secret, the one she wasn’t ready to tell him. Everything was unravelling.

  “Are… are you going to arrest me?”

  “Of course not,” he said. Her question pained him, and that pain echoed with her own. “But I can’t say the same for the XAC Enforcers if they find out. And until you know what you’re going to say to them, you can’t take the chance of being seen in public. You need to stay here.”

  “Hiding,” she said. “Is this what my life’s become? Pretending to be dead so I won’t have to go to jail?”

  He shrugged. Not an indifferent shrug, but one of frustration. She could feel his concern, his desire to help her. He simply didn’t have a solution. His shrug came from a sense of helplessness, like she felt about her inability to save…

  “GranDa,” she said.

  She couldn’t go back. Not home, not to work, not even to visit Riley. The precious little time left to share with him was gone, ripped away. He’d die alone, not knowing why she’d abandoned him. This was a nightmare.

  Even if she did find a way to explain her way out of federal prison, what then? A gray uniform with a number stenciled on her chest? A nameless drone stripped of her human rights? And once it became known what she could do, everyone would be clamoring for her to heal them, to save them. Even the ones she couldn’t help, the ones she couldn’t cure, would line up for her touch. She wouldn’t be able to show her face in public without being mobbed. Privacy was a thing of the past. She’d never be a doctor again. The goal, the dream that had guided her life was gone.

  Her life. What a laugh. That was over.

  It would only be a matter of time before her other side - those destructive blasts - accidentally killed someone. Then she would live out her days in one of those special prisons where they locked away the evil overlord wannabes. And she would deserve it, because she had broken her vow and taken a life.

  To her credit, she didn’t break down and sob. She didn’t want Nate to see her cry. She didn’t want him to see her fall apart. But like so many things lately, the tears that rolled down her face didn’t care what she wanted.

  Nate moved to comfort her, then stopped, uncertainty tinging the sympathy he was feeling. She wanted him close, but the memory of Martin’s arms - gentle around her waist and then savagely grabbing - made her feel cold again. She wanted to be held, to feel that warmth again, but at that moment the thought of being touched frightened her. Her head bowed and she wept in silence.

  “I can’t do this. I just can’t fucking do this.”

  Nate took a step closer. She expected him to lift her chin to face him, that romantic thing that the movie hero always did. Instead, he pulled up a chair and straddled the back to sit backwards, placing his face in her line of sight. Had he sensed her feelings? No, she was the one with the super-empathy, not him. He was simply a good guy with a gentle heart. Apparently, that species wasn’t extinct after all.

  “I want to help,” he said. “But I need you to be honest with me. Please. I can’t help you if you won’t trust me.”

  Trust was a lot to ask, especially after Martin.

  Martin tried to kill me.

  And Nate had saved her, protected her. She looked at him and into him, not shying away from the damaged side of his face. His eyes were soft and blue, and she felt his sincerity. His desire to help her was more like a need than a want. He was a hero, a good guy. Even so, he was also an instrument of the law, and the law was heartless and cruel, especially to exohumans. Even if he didn’t turn her in, wouldn’t he feel compelled to enforce the law by getting her to register? She didn’t know.

  It occurred to her that in the space of a couple of weeks, she had come to know three interesting men and only one had tried to hurt her - the one she thought she could trust. Maybe the ones she was wary of were the ones who actually deserved trust.

  So, she told him. Everything. From her first date with Martin to her mystery attacker. She told him about waking up covered in her own blood. She told of all the secret miracles she’d performed, and about the white fire from her hands. He sat and listened intently - taking in her story, sharing her pain. Only when she told him about last night on the balcony did he react.

  “That son of a bitch...”

  “I wouldn’t have died, even without the floating thing. It would have hurt - a lot - but he had no way of knowing I would survive the fall.”

  Nate stood up and began to pace, his anger coming at her in waves.

  “He’s a dead man. I’m gonna go and drag him to that balcony and do to him what he tried to do to you.”

  "No," Cassie said. "You won't.”

  “Cassie, he tried to murder you.”

  “But he didn’t. And even if he had killed me, I’d still say the same thing.”

  Nate raised his good eyebrow.

  “Fuck’s sake, you know what I mean. Don’t be an asshole. My point is that even though I don't know you very well, I don't think you're a killer. Am I wrong?”

  Nate stopped pacing and stood still. She still felt the storm of his anger, but his concern for her came to the forefront again.

  “Okay. You win. He gets to keep living. For now.”

  Cassie decided that was as good as she would get
from him. It would have to do.

  “Good, because he’s the least of my problems right now.”

  Nate came back to the chair, back to her level.

  “I want to help, Cassie. I really do. Just tell me what I can do.”

  “Then tell me how I can get rid of my powers. All my problems started with these damn powers. The healing, the burning, the floating - all of it. I want them gone."

  "Cassie, you've been given an incredible gift - a precious and rare power. You can help people in ways the rest of us never could. There’ve been only a handful of exos with healing powers. And it sounds like your power is far beyond what they could do. Why would you want to throw that gift away?"

  She slipped past him and walked to the windows. Nate's home base was on the top floor of a nondescript office building in the heart of downtown. Across the way, she could see the ruins of the old Bank of America building that had been destroyed a few years ago during a massive gang war. The war had ended with Ironhorse sacrificing himself to stop a dirty bomb. A memorial statue to that hero stood in Centennial Park, but the BoA ruins stood as a stark reminder that sometimes valor and strength weren't enough to save the day. Sometimes good people died.

  "Because I can't control the dark side of my powers,” she finally said. “Sooner or later I'm going to hurt someone, hurt them bad enough that I can't fix them. And no matter how many I save it won't make up for that one life. No, the price is too high. If I can get rid of just the dangerous side, then that's what I'll do. But if it's all or nothing, then I have to go with nothing."

  Nate came to stand behind her, close enough to touch her but far enough away that he didn't. She saw them both reflected in the glass. He towered over her, but it wasn't his size that made her feel small. He was strong in ways beyond the physical and she envied that.

  "I'm not sure it's even possible to remove your powers. I've heard rumors, stories about it being done to dangerous criminal exos. But even if the stories are true, the process is excruciating, and it takes away more than just your abilities. It takes away a part of you. Our powers come from deep inside us, from whatever it is that defines us. You might lose the thing that makes you care about others, the quality that makes you a good doctor and a good person. You might lose yourself."

  She turned to face him, looking up into his eyes as tears streamed anew from hers.

  "And if the price of holding onto myself is someone else's life? Hell, it could be a whole crowd of people I end up killing. No, my mind's made up. I don't want this. Can you help me? Will you help me?"

  She saw the conflict playing out in his eyes. Moreover, she could feel it as if it were her own. She couldn't read his thoughts, but his emotions were open to her. She knew his answer before he said it aloud.

  "You won't," she said.

  He looked down. His decision pained him, but he wasn't the kind of man who shied away from the hard things. She felt resolve under his reluctance to disappoint her.

  "I don't even know if I can. I'm an engineer, not a biologist. Hell, you probably have a better chance of figuring out something like that. Your power is more suited to tinkering with people's insides. But even if I could, I wouldn't help you throw away this gift - it's too precious. Yes, I understand the danger. Every time I shake someone's hand, I run the risk of breaking bones. A friendly slap on the back could be fatal. But it's part of the job, the price I pay for the good I can do. So, I've learned to control my strength. You'll learn to control your powers too."

  She turned and stared out the window, walling herself against his arguments. But he persisted. His voice was soft but, as gently as he framed his words, she felt the steel behind them.

  "You think of these energy bursts of yours as destructive, but what about the scalpel you use to do surgery? In the hands of a drugged-out maniac that scalpel was a weapon, a source of harm. But in your hands, applied with skill and experience, it saved a little girl from almost certain death. If you learn to control your energies, to focus them, then they'll do good things, like that scalpel."

  Now she felt trapped. Her need to rid herself of this thing that she despised felt selfish compared to the good she could do with her healing.

  "What if they can't be controlled? The only time I used them was because of fear and it was purely a reflex. Maybe they aren't even under my conscious control."

  She saw that these ideas started a thought process in him. His eyes took on a faraway quality.

  "Energy is something I can deal with. I might not be able to remove those powers altogether but controlling them is a different matter. I’ll need to get some readings when you're using them."

  She stiffened as he stepped away from the windows, his body angling toward the business side of his home. Only a small portion of the building’s uppermost floor was devoted to living areas. The single bedroom and attached bath were the only rooms with walls. The kitchen and ‘living room’ were a mere sliver at the edge of the vast open area that was Nate’s workshop. The rest of the floor’s space was filled with computers, workbenches and all manner of engineering equipment. As he talked through his idea, she took in all of the resources he had available to him and realized that Nate Gorman must have access to decent money in order to afford all this.

  "We'll need a controlled environment, and lots of sensors,” he continued, oblivious to her reaction. “I'll want both wave and particle profiles. Once I have an analysis of the energies, I'll run some simulations using counter-resonance..."

  He stopped speaking and his eyes came back into focus. The hard look she was giving him had finally gotten through the expanding spiral of his thoughts.

  "You want me to use them? On purpose? What if they get out of hand? I might trash this entire building."

  "We'll do it someplace safe,” he argued, “someplace far away from other people."

  "What about you? I don't want to hurt you."

  He laughed. It was a good laugh, and it made her feel better despite her pain. There was something behind it, something she couldn't quite name, and it made her want more of it.

  "Yeah, if you can hurt me, that'll be a first."

  It felt like a joke to him - she could tell that - but it didn't feel that way to her. Maybe she was sensitive on the subject. For all she knew he was truly invulnerable, even to the kind of power she believed - feared - that she possessed. But she wasn't up for finding out she was capable of frying the city’s beloved Guardian. He was Atlanta's hero, filling the very large shoes Ironhorse had left.

  That invulnerable legend had been an Atlanta institution since the First World War. Even as far back as the Civil War, there were local tales about a mysterious masked hero - stronger than twenty oxen, who could not be harmed by any weapon known to man. Ironhorse – later designated as “Guardian One” - had also worn a full helmet. Because both Ironhorse and Guardian 175 concealed their features, a number of people had speculated that Nate was actually a repackaging of Ironhorse, a re-branding of the same hero for a more modern audience. Sure, he was taller and thinner than his predecessor, and showed a much more modern sensibility, but the conspiracy nuts couldn't be bothered with that kind of logic. They honestly believed this man was the same undying entity who had guarded their city since the Reconstruction Era.

  Now, this symbol of the city wanted her to unleash her deadly abilities so that he could study her and satisfy his scientific curiosity. He thought nothing at all about the dangers. His world was definitely going to take some getting used to.

  "Okay, whatever. But first I think we need to figure out what to do about my current state of deadness. What are we going to do about my murderous ex-boyfriend? And don't say you're going to kill him."

  It was obvious, even without her empathy, that Nate didn't much like having his options limited. She wasn't aware of any incidents of him, or any Guardians for that matter, actually killing someone, but that kind of thing might not have made the news. She imagined that stories of their pet Guardians offing people was one of
those things the government would try to cover up.

  "Since you're the one Ballantine tried to kill, I'll do as you say. But if he's what I think he is, then he earned a death sentence long before he threw you off that cliff."

  "What do you think he is? Besides a psycho bastard?"

  "Do you remember when we spoke outside of Marissa's room, about the murder/suicides and the unregistered exohuman we’re looking for? You said that on your date how you felt like someone was controlling you at the mentalist show? At the time, we thought it was Leclair, but Ballantine was your date that night, wasn't he?"

  "Yes, I was with Martin that night. That night…”

  Cassie thought about her odd behavior since meeting Ballantine. It all started with him, when she agreed to go out with him. She had been about to decline when the words just came out, words that started her down this rabbit hole. Dinner, the show. Since meeting with Etienne Leclair, she'd not thought much about that night. But Nate made a good point - Leclair hadn't been the only one there when she raised her hand.

  Now that Nate had pointed them out, the pieces fell into place.

  “Oh my God, it was him. He's the reason I volunteered to go onstage. I would never have done that."

  He had somehow forced her to go out with him in the first place. And last night Martin acted like she was supposed to be doing something and he was surprised she wasn't doing it.

  "He was trying to control me last night too, but it wasn't working. That's why he flipped out."

  Nate's expression was grim as he nodded his agreement.

  "It's Martin,” she said. Her eyes darted about as her mind beheld the assembled puzzle. “He's the one that's been taking control of all those people. He’s behind all of that."

  "I believe so,” Nate agreed. “Of course, the real question is: why couldn't he control you? Is it simply that you're also an exo? Does that mean he wouldn't be able to control me? Or is it something particular about your powers?"

  Cassie considered the question. He was able to control her at Etienne's show, which was before she Emerged. Then she remembered what the Warlock had said that night, about something touching her mind. The memory reminded her what he had said later, about protection.