“I’m not sure we’re either okay with or expecting to confront that level of violence, Peter,” Seth said, gently.
“It will find you,” Peter replied, seemingly oblivious to how ominous it sounded. He looked at Seth. “Every association of Islanders has found itself confronting violence, if not always in the same way. If you think about it, you’re already expecting it. But you don’t need to exercise violence, yourselves. I can help you be prepared for it, as an eventuality.”
“Well,” Decon said, “this got a lot scarier than I had assumed it would be this morning, and this morning I thought we were only going to meet an alleged murderer.”
“That never went to trial,” Peter offered. Then, to Decon’s shocked silence, he replied, “Oh, you meant him. He did it. We just don’t know why.”
“Dude…” Decon said.
“So that was an act – before?” Seth interjected.
“Yes. It was best I appear unobtrusive and non-threatening to better observe your behavior – to be forgettable. You did forget.”
He paused, the battle between dead-eyed practicality and utter humiliation – or maybe utter practicality and dead-eyed humiliation – stewing just under his neutral expression.
“It will be useful for you to learn how to obfuscate your intentions better, too, though that’s not my specialty. But if you hadn’t been to our expectations I would have found a way to go along with Firmament anyway, as a safeguard. Dr. Hardwell doesn’t want any more bad press for Islanders – and she doesn’t want Firmament to lose his progress. She says that he’s been here long enough. Mr. Tenor is rich enough to avoid consequences, so it’s Firmament’s best chance at getting out. And mine, probably. Better it be cooperative effort than subterfuge.”
“Lying to us isn’t a great way to earn our trust,” Seth said.
“You’re lying to everyone,” Peter replied. “Or you should be.”
“Dang,” Decon said, with a nervous laugh. He raised his hands between them, “maybe we should take a step back from this conversation for a minute? Or like, talk a little bit more about murder and allegedly?”
“He’s right,” she said, but not about what Decon had said. Seth glanced at the floor, then at Firmament, then at Peter. “And he’s right that we could do a better job.”
“Look,” Decon said, “I sort of get where this is coming from, but I’m not in for covert ops – for one thing I’m not any good at any of that stuff. But honestly, is that really going to work out for us?”
“You don’t have to do it,” Seth said. She met Decon’s eyes. “We both know what we want this to be, and we can both work together on that in the way we see fit. But I think he’s right. We ought to be prepared. And if we are taking Firmament – which we have to – we need to be prepared to handle him.”
“Then we need like, a tranquilizer gun like at the zoo, or a net or something. We don’t need… instant murder… I think…”
Decon’s nervous glance to her side alerted her to the fact that Firmament had again turned to face her, without any prompting.
“Okay, and this might be a good thing he responds to us but it is really kind of creepy,” she said.
“I’m a good shot, too,” Peter said. “If you get a gun. Legally you can’t,” he said, and went and left the whole world of implications unsaid but quite clear.
“But you’ll still need somebody who can hold him down. His powers are physically cued – if he can’t move he can’t get a lot of force behind them. It’s the difference between flicking pebbles and pulling down buildings. So if you get a gun, I can hold him down, but then you’ll need to be good shots. Which I can also help you with.”
“We are not getting a gun,” Seth said carefully to Peter. “We are not going to shoot anybody.”
But then, with equal deliberation and care, “We are in a skyscraper,” Seth said, looking at Decon. Firmament’s gaze weirdly followed hers, so now they were both staring at Decon. “If he starts doing anything at all with his abilities, it’s a lot of people’s lives at stake.”
“True,” Decon said, putting his hands up, gaze locked on Firmament. Talk about things going to fast… “I mean, I’m just the repairman. I’ll let the action heroes decide what’s safe.”
“Good,” Peter said. “Firmament, let’s go.”
He stepped out of the room, and slowly, with a shuffling gate, Firmament followed after. Decon gave Seth a worried glance, but followed after. Seth shut off the little television, and walked into the hallway, determinedly opening the file.
“This has a lot more information than the one we received,” she said. “I’m going to need time to read it.”
“I’ll get you a copy,” Peter said.
“Dr. Hardwell said if we couldn’t leave with it?”
Peter looked at the file, then at Seth, but said nothing.
“Somehow I feel like legality isn’t his first concern, Seth,” Decon said.
Peter’s glance at him was sharp, but Decon’s smile seemed to put him at ease – for what counted at ease for him, anyway. He didn’t move in quite the hunching-shuffling-fidgeting way he had before, but at least some of his evenness and confidence in the room was a hard-fought act.
Seth just tucked the file back under her arm. “Have you read the file? I wonder why he responds to me…”
“Yes,” Peter answered. “And it’s hard to say. I think it’s how much he likes you. You might remind him of Lamb. She was the leader of his last team.”
“Oh!” Seth untucked the file to flip through it, then thought again. “Oh.”
“What?” Decon asked.
Peter raised brows at him, brought his palms together in a squishing motion.
“Ugh,” Decon said.
“There’s pictures in there. Don’t look at them.”
Seth closed the file.
“But wait – Dr. Hardwell knows what we’re up to, but doesn’t think there’s any danger, does she?”
Peter shrugged. “She suspects – she can’t know or she would be legally obligated to report you. And it can’t be that similar, or Mr. Tenor would be arrested. And she did ask me to go with Firmament.”
That hung portentously between them for a moment.
“That’s the deal, though, right?” Decon said, into the silence. He glanced at them. “I mean – it’s a mystery, isn’t it? What really happened? Nobody alive but him knows, and he ain’t talkin’ – that sort of thing. That’s what we’re all banking on – that if he did it, he had good reason to do it, or it was an accident, or something. Right? We’re all sort of… it’s like a leap of faith, in this dude.”
By her expression, Seth seemed very unhappy with this idea, but her silence condoned it. Peter seemed undisturbed. Maybe that’s why he got along so well with the Firmament; they both displayed a very distinct lack of reaction to things that would give most people at least a little pause.
“Oh – dang,” Seth swiftly handed the file to Decon, “here comes that room.” She set herself glowing, glancing apologetically at Peter. “Sorry about your friend – I just don’t like being messed with.”
“Don’t worry,” Peter replied, nodding towards Firmament, shuffling beside them. If anything about his gaze could be said to be fixed, it was fixed on the window of the door they now passed, his head slowly turning as he passed. “Firmament doesn’t like it either.”
Nothing popped up. Nor did the lights flicker. As they passed out of reach, Firmament’s gaze returned to a spot indistinctly in front of them.
“Wow,” Decon said. “What’s that about?”
“Dr. Hardwell’s theory is that Firmament reacts to active use of… mind-abilities,” he shrugged around the word. “But only active – that is, they have to be actively reaching out to him, and when they do, he puts them through walls.”
“Up against them firmly,” Decon joked back.
“Only because they’re brick, and it’s hard to put soft things through brick,” Peter said. Decon’s look of horror went completely unnoticed, but since he stopped walking, they all stopped walking.
“Dr. Hardwell says her ‘conspiracy theory’ about the accident is that Firmament is the first Islander to manifest multiple abilities; his original ones came unusually early, and with explosive and devastating effect, so this secondary set coming slightly late for the regular development of Islander traits makes a kind of sense. Then it makes sense, too, that his second set of powers would come with debilities the first didn’t. She thinks that’s what went wrong – Lamb, who was found next to him in the accident, was a very skilled telepath. Dr. Hardwell thinks something must have manifested in Firmament, that caused Lamb to reach out, that caused an explosive reaction of Firmament’s new powers. It was luck he wasn’t killed, too. Lamb was right next him, and was crushed under a support pillar, which kept enough of the debris from falling directly on Firmament so he wasn’t crushed, only buried. In her Lifetime movie version,” Peter said, as if this phrase were a unique term, strenuously practiced, from another language, “Lamb must have been pushing him out of the way, because her hand was right next to his.”
“Very sad,” he added, the way an ATM might say ‘have a nice day’.
“That’s very messed up, Peter,” Decon said.
“I think he just killed them for some reason,” Peter said, confused.
“I don’t know if that’s less messed up, Peter.”
“Also, that’s not my name,” Peter – apparently not – said. The cringing blush returned. “Sorry.” Before they could react, he shook his head, as if to clear the embarrassment away. “If I’m around to watch Firmament, I should warn you that whatever you do, you shouldn’t recruit a telepath or an empath. He might be okay around a telepath for a short time, but empaths should probably just be avoided.
Decon and Seth exchanged a worried glance.
Decon ventured first. “Uh… why is that, P– what’s your name, then?”
“While no two Islander traits are exactly the same, studies indicate empaths are far more likely to have passively extended abilities. Whereas a telepath, like Lamb, would have to reach out to someone to exert influence, empaths tend to need to expend effort to reign in their abilities. They will have constant effects, like Emily’s sweating or a passive glow. That’s why Fred hides. She’s an empath. If she doesn’t hide she gets bounced off the padded walls in there.”
Decon and Seth looked at one another again, mirrored expressions of concern.
“Wesley,” not-Peter said. All three sets of relevant eyes turned to him, watching him fight off a deep, miserable shame. “She’s usually fine. And I’m Wesley. Call me Wes.”
“Wes,” Firmament said.
“Christ!” Decon jumped.
“Fuuu—aaaah!” Seth saved herself at the last minute.
A cackle sounded from the padded cell, then a soft thump.
“That’s a first,” Wes said. “We’ll need to tell Dr. Hardwell he spoke. Nice to meet you.”