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“No, it’s really Lex,” Ellison agrees.
I jump out of the car without waiting for more and rush up to him. “Lex? Fucking hell. Oh my god, you’re okay,” I say as I grab him and smash his bloody face against my chest. It’s probably not the best thing I could have done in this instance, but I’m so damn relieved that I don’t even stop to realize that I could be hurting him.
“I didn’t even have to murder anyone to save you. You’re okay. You’re okay…” I say, unbelievably relieved and pissed that I was put through all that stress because we lost him. Because we caused him to get hurt.
“Yeah,” he says, sounding kind of uncertain.
“Are you really you?” I ask as I pull back to get a better look at him. “What was that thing you told me that you like to do naked?”
“What?” he asks, sounding alarmed. “What the hell kind of question is this?”
“Answer it so I know it’s you.”
Lex sighs quite loudly. “I didn’t say I liked doing it! I actually said Ididn’tlike doing it. I stupidly asked if… you ever… oh my god. I asked if you ever had any… power-related requests during sex after a guy asked if I could singe his butt hairs.”
“It’s really you,” I say as I give him another squeeze.
“I want to clarify we went on two dates, and I never saw him again after that,” Lex says, as if anyone cares about anything beyond the fact that he’s alive.
“How did you escape?” August asks.
“But did you singe his butt hairs?” Deus asks. Never mind… Deus cares.
“No! I didn’t! Dear god,” Lex says.
“Why don’t you answer the more important question about how you escaped?” I ask.
“Because now I’m worried people are going to see me as the guy who singes butt hairs!” he says. “I… don’t know. They had me blindfolded… I was taken someplace where I was forced to sit for a few minutes, and then I was tossed in another vehicle, but I think the person was different. I think it was a woman. They never talked or said anything, they just… dumped me out in the middle of the city. A homeless guy had to help me get untied, so I gave him all the money I had before remembering that I had no money to get home, so he paid for my driver.”
“This… is strange,” I say.
“They’re clearly amateurs at being bad people,” Deus explains. “Basically, what you’re seeing is someone who feels guilt for what’s happened. Maybe two people are working together and one of them thought the other had gone too far by taking a hostage. To make it far in a world like this and make a difference, you have to be ruthless… and sometimes that’s harder than people understand. A lot of people think that if something awful happened to them or someone they loved, they could tear the world apart to make it right, but that’s not always true. You can’t always change yourself no matter how much you want to.”
“Deus is right… and I’ll show you why,” August says as he holds a hand out to Lex to pull him to his feet. “I’m so sorry you got hurt.”
“I’m fine, I promise,” Lex says as he gives a shrug. “I could have… lit the car on fire or something… I was too nervous to do so. They didn’t realize that my fire won’t hurt me. They thought I wouldn’t do it because I would burn up too, but it doesn’t touch me, so I honestly could have gotten away at any point… if I was willing to kill them.”
“Whatever it is, I’m glad you’re back and okay,” I say as I usher him inside. “Let’s get you looked at.”
“I’m fine,” he assures me as he rubs at his face. “The guy only punched me when I lit everything on fire when he caught me, like he thought socking me in the face would stop the fire. It did not.”
Once inside the building, we don’t have to go far before a medical team member is on us. She pulls Lex after her and we follow along, watching quietly as she fixes him up and verifies that nothing is broken and he doesn’t need stitches.
Valerie still hasn’t returned by then but August leads us through the building and over to an area I haven’t been in very often. He goes over to a computer and types his ID into it to access it before sitting down in front of it. There, he starts fiddling with it for a good ten minutes or so before he seems to find what he wants and starts the video.
“It’s a video that momentarily reached the public eye before it was removed from the internet,” August explains. “This was about six months or so before we started hanging out, Landon. I was in the middle of dealing with something, I think it was a robbery, when I got an alert that a super who’d escaped from the authorities was seen in the city. The man had previously killed eight people when he crushed a bus they were in, so we knew he was a top priority.”
“Crushed… how?” I ask.
“He has the power of manipulating metal, so they dubbed him Alloy. He basically… compressed the bus… like someone crushing a pop can. Killed everyone inside of it. That time, I managed to stop him before he escaped the scene, but when he was on the way to prison, they hadn’t dosed him right, so he was aware enough that he tore the transport vehicle apart and escaped,”
“I remember hearing some about that,” I say. “But it was through Nolan who’d heard it through Marauder. They speculated that Superheroes United was keeping things under wraps.”
August nods. “Right. They didn’t have the correct safety measures in place that day. They also generally have a super in the vehicle when dealing with high-powered villains who keeps their mind blank or at peace so there’s no threat on the way to a cell that can withhold them. After his escape, it was two months before he was seen again. When it happened, I was in the middle of dealing with the robbery. At this point, rumors surrounding him had spread until people had begun to… theorize ways they could stop Alloy. It was… ridiculous. And it was primarily led by a group of supers who were discussing theories on the internet while having no field training. At the time, I was also dealing with issues with law enforcement who just… stepped back constantly, thinking it wasmyjob to do everything. With all of that happening, I couldn’t deal with the regular citizens who thought that by donning a mask, they were heroes who could do my job better.”
August takes a deep breath before continuing. “When I got there, I was made aware that there were four hostages in the building. So I knew I had to be extra careful. We already knew that he had absolutely no qualms about killing people. The plan was that I would freeze time, go in, and remove the threat. Instead, this is what I got,” he says as he starts to play the video.
The recording looks like it’s from a vehicle camera that catches August being escorted to the side of the building with no windows. There are people absolutely crowded around, eager to watch what’s happening, like it’s a superhero movie playing out before them. Valerie’s team seems to be doing the absolute best they can to get pedestrians back but they seem relentless. And the moment they can manage it, a group of hero wannabes slips past. It’s hard to tell if no one notices them or no one cares to stop them.
