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ME!
Not the bitch who thought she’d stab the city’s greatest hero butme.
“You fucking broke my arm, goddammit!” Hannah yells as she sees me.
“Let’s get out of here now,” Valerie says.
August seems uncertain. “I am so sorry, it was a mistake. Landon thought you were going to hurt me or something,” he says to Hannah.
The woman gapes at us. “Thought… thought I was going to hurt you? What was I going to do? Chuck my coffee in your face?”
“Out,” Valerie demands as she starts shoving me toward the door. “Get out. Now. Out to the car.”
“August, it was…” I say but Valerie has separated us. “Dammit, Valerie, stop. It’s not safe for August to be alone. Valerie—”
She strong-arms me out the door and I would have fought her more but Valerie stuffs her phone in front of my face that gives me an extremely clear view of Hannah. She’s apologizing, and then just like that, she doesn’t evenmoveand I’ve flung her off the stage.
“But… she had a knife…” I protest.
She’s gotten me outside now as I keep replaying the video while trying to understand what I’m seeing. “Does it look like she had a knife? Just… Wyatt, take Landon back to headquarters,” she says.
“Of course,” Wyatt, Valerie’s right-hand man, says as he directs me toward the car. Feeling confused, I let him put me inside, and before I can ask about where August is, I’m being ushered off.
“I’m not lying,” I say to Wyatt.
“Never said you were.”
“Clearly everyone else thinks I am. Fuck… I don’t like August being there alone. I assumed he was coming with us.”
“Trust me when I tell you that August can protect himself quite well,” Wyatt says.
I know this but it still bothers me.
About halfway back to headquarters, we near a Superheroes United facility I’ve become quite accustomed to these past six months, and I decide that I have no interest in going to headquarters.
“I want out.”
“No, you’re going to headquarters,” Wyatt says.
“No, I’m getting out,” I growl, and the moment he stops at a red light, I unlock the back door, grab Zacia, and run out into the road. From pure inactivity, I’m not the quickest of runners, but maybe Wyatt doesn’t care much because he doesn’t come after me as I reach the secure facility. When I stop at the front door, I’m let inside and have to go over to the bulletproof glass to check in.
The woman behind the counter recognizes me and knows that I’m allowed access but calls someone to escort me. The man who arrives has the authority to take me through the building and over to the very last room on this wing where he stops at a door with a keypad on it. He has to use his fingerprint as well as a code to let me in, but once the door is open, I slink inside alone.
“Oh, how delightful. The way you smacked that bitch across the stage brought a smile to my face,” Nolan says as he sits in a chair watching TV.
Nolan, my oldest brother, got wound up in Marauder’s attack on headquarters about six months back. Born with the ability to read minds, Nolan was steadily driven to extremes by the constant noise that plagued his every waking moment. And when he found out that Marauder could nullify that noise, he jumped on the villain bandwagon… hell, it’s what our parents wanted for us anyway and had encouraged us to do since we were young.
But I hated the idea of my brother being imprisoned, especially when it was his power that drove him to do what he did. So they agreed that he could stay here, a research and medical facility that’s connected to Superheroes United with a main focus of helping supers. In Nolan’s case, they allow him to stay in this room that’s as far as possible from other active rooms in exchange for allowing them to monitor his gift in the hopes of helping him. They also were doing some trials with medication to assist, but so far, the most it’s done is make his head feel like mush, so they took him off it.
“It’s not funny,” I say.
“I… beg to differ, it was absolutely hilarious. But I also hate that woman,” he says as he shuts the TV off.
I kick my shoes off and carry Zacia over to Nolan’s bed where his cat, Nemesis, is sleeping. He’s all white with gorgeous long hair. I have to guess he’s part Persian with the length of his coat, but his face isn’t as smooshed, like he’d just gotten done running into a wall. Zacia absolutely loves him and immediately decides to just flop down on him, but Nemesis isn’t as thrilled by it.
I crawl into Nolan’s bed that’s tucked in the corner of the room and pull the covers over my head. “I think I fucked up.”
I feel the bed dip as Nolan lies down next to me, so I peek out from under the covers as he stares at the ceiling. I feel awful that he’s forced to stare at the same ceiling every day, but I don’t know what else to do to help him.
