Embers and Icicles

Chapter Fifteen

Frank leaned back on the bed. It creaked under him, but it was comfortable enough. When Slate walked in and saw the bed occupied, his eyes flicked to the gap between it and the floor. Frank slapped on a lazy smile to hide the flicker of anger that threatened to take over his expression.

When he had looked through the rest of the photos, the picture they painted was far from palatable. The photos dated back years, starting almost immediately after he had taken two injections of elemental power and started his run from both the government and Silver. That was almost six years ago.

The photos from the first couple years weren't as frequent. There were only seven in a three year span. Recently, the number of photos had increased. The last year alone contained a set of eighteen polaroids. Some were more innocuous–Frank walking down the street, sitting alone in a bar, pissing in an alley.

The ones that unnerved Frank the most were intimate moments–times when he thought there was no one else around. There were pictures of him in hotel rooms, and ones from so close he was astounded that he hadn't seen the photographer.

The worst were the last two photos. The first pictured him wandering Edgeline the day before he was abducted. The last was an image of the alley where it had happened. The details were shoddy at best, especially since the picture was taken in the dark, but Frank swore he could make out an indent where he was pushed up against the fence. He clenched a fist.

After all his years of avoiding capture, the way it had happened felt underwhelming as hell. Then again, it had allowed him to make the serum that would hopefully save elemental lives. Everything happens for a reason and all that bullshit.

He shifted on the bed again, causing it to creak louder.

Slate looked at Frank. Looked past him. Opened his mouth to say nothing.

Frank got up. In the living room, Helium and Jenny were sitting hand-in-hand, talking in hushed tones. Jenny got to her feet when she saw him.

"Can I get you something? Water, tea, some food?"

How was Frank supposed to reconcile this Jenny, the perfect host, with the Jenny who presumably stalked him for years and lied about it? It almost felt more reasonable to think she had no idea about the stalking. But she was watching him before the abduction. He thought back to the butterflies in his stomach that fluttered when he saw her staring from across the bar. And he killed every last one.

Jenny observed him blankly, and he realised he still needed to answer the question. "I'm alright." He wasn't.

Helium stood from the couch and twined her fingers through Jenny's. Frank thought of the way a spider's limbs curled up together when it died. Legs wrapped around each other, muscles contracting when the liquid that normally flowed through them stopped.

Dieing wasn't too different from falling in love, he supposed. Everyone expected it to happen one day. When it did, it felt like an inevitability.

Frank thought he had finally met his people–the ones who were going to change the world. They curled back up together on the couch, casting him strange glances as if they didn't have a shit ton of photos they could look at instead.

The flame rising in Frank's palm didn't register in his brain until the screams did, and those screams only crashed into the space between his ears after sparks rocked against the walls, the table, the ground. It ate at them with the gnashing teeth of a starved lion. Frank was nothing. He was a spark flying off a campfire. A tinderbox forest ready to explode.

Then he was a blink, and a deep breath of air. The apartment was fine. There was no fire. Jenny and Helium stared at him with wide eyes. One of them was talking, but he could hardly make out the words.