Perennial

Chapter 18 -- Perennial

"I'll admit, when I first saw you headed towards the staff building, I just thought you were lost again."

I glance up at Aether. We're both inside now. Our wet boots squeak on the tile floor with each step. It's a struggle not to be too loud.

"You of little faith," I chide him. "Navigating outside is easy. It's all those maze-like corridors that I find confusing."

"I heard you made it to criminal psychology on time."

I don't respond to that. Admitting that I prefer his company because crowds make me nervous is high on my list of things I find embarrassing. (I was raised to be independent! Admitting I need help at all is embarrassing!)

Aether grins at me and the look in his eyes says that he knows. He knows that I know my way around, but my personal fears and weaknesses have kept me from saying it, just like he knows my pride will keep me from admitting that.

I scowl at him, but there's no heat behind it. "Well I don't know my way around this building, so you might want to find a viable computer terminal, and quickly. Who knows how long it'll be until someone sees us?"

This sobers him a little and he moves faster, guiding me down unfamiliar halls once again.

The hallways in the staff building are different from the main school building. There's a lot less school pride memorabilia, that's for sure. It smells different too, like chemicals and cleaners. The main building smells more like rubber and too many teenagers in one place.

The room Aether leads me to looks almost like a museum; with outfits of popular super-human heroes from as far back as when DSHA was founded in the mid-1800s.

I might not be their biggest fan, but my jaw still drops in wonder at the pure history stored here. These should be in a museum.

I instantly recognize Pulsar's. (He was famous in the eighties.) I see the Trident Three's uniforms. (A group made entirely of women in the sixties.) I even see Valor's uniform from the early nineties.

Aether walks past all of these without sparing a second glance. He must come here often. As my eyes track him, I notice something else: next to the display cases, there's an easel. On it are sketches of uniforms I've never seen before. The sketches are of faceless models, both male and female, of several different body builds and shapes.

All the outfits are modest and practical, clearly made for super-humans to comfortably kick butt in, even the designs for girls. That alone impresses me more than anything else. Right now, the page it's turned to has six figures drawn on it, all in matching black outfits, which somewhat resemble the pop culture ninja. The only real difference between each outfit, aside from the various body shapes, is which color is being used as a highlight around the eyes and sleeves and other hems. All six primary and secondary colors are accounted for.

Interesting.

"Over here." Aether beckons me away from the easel and display cases and over to a modest wooden desk with a laptop resting on it.

"Whose is it?" I ask as I walk around in front of it.

"This is Megan's office," Aether explains. "This is where she talks to the kids who need counseling. The display cases and stuff are supposed to remind us of the legacy we have to live up to."

Kind of like the Overlords' trophy case. Jason, Digit, and I used to spend hours staring up at all the knick knacks and junk our parents kept in there and pretend we were going on adventures with them.

"I see." I take a final glance around the room, only to jump back with a small screech when I see Megan Werner nonchalantly leaning in the doorway of her office.

Aether follows my gaze and tenses immediately upon seeing our lovely (pink-haired) and devoted school counselor casually watching us.

"Do you two have an appointment?"

I shake my head slowly.

"No," Aether verbally confirms.

Megan just raises a brow (did she really go through the trouble of dying her eyebrows pink?) and takes a bite from her apple. To my surprise, she doesn't seem surprised. She doesn't even seem angry. Just... kind of bored. Like students pull this kind of thing all the time.

"Let me guess... you're lost." Her tone is flat, but at the end her lips quirk up, and she winks at Aether.

"That's right. We're lost. Very lost." Aether nods. It takes me by surprise when I realize he's being sarcastic right back at Megan. I didn't know he had that in him.

She shakes her head, pink curls bouncing. "I hope you weren't looking for a make out spot."

I'm not sure if our perception filters hide blushes, but I sincerely hope that they do, because my face feels like it might be on fire.

"No! Meg!" Aether's voice raises an octave or two.

"Right. Sorry. Wouldn't want to embarrass you in front of your girlfriend." Megan snickers. (Is it just me, or is she being really unprofessional about this?)

"Not my girlfriend. Actually. I came here to talk to you. Alone. Can we walk?" Aether speaks through clenched teeth. He takes a step forward.

Megan smirks. "Sure thing. Is your girlfriend going to be okay here all by herself?"

I nod vigorously.

"Not my girlfriend, Meg. And she's a big girl; she can take care of herself." Aether stalks out the door, grabbing Megan's arm on the way.

She laughs and waves her fingers at me as she's dragged away.

Before he disappears from sight, Aether looks back and gives me an apologetic look, then his gaze shifts to the laptop, and I understand. He's bought me time.

Oh, Aether, you are a saint.

I sit and swipe my finger across the mouse pad of Megan's laptop, waking it up. I don't know how long they'll be gone, so the sooner I get this over with the better.

Except the background wallpaper makes me pause. It's a photo of a young family, smiling and happy. There's a grainy quality to it, but in it I can still see a young woman, grinning and hugging her daughter with one arm, and who I assume from the matching rings is her husband with the other. The little girl looks to be about six, with curly brown hair and startling blue eyes, obviously from her father. She looks a lot like Megan, only with more baby fat.

In Little-Megan's arms is a squirmy-looking two-year-old with curly black hair, smiling so wide his eyes are closed. He's wearing a t-shirt with a rocket ship on it and has a scrape on his knee. This must be Megan's brother.

I may not know how he looks now, but it's clear that he was ridiculously cute as a child. Megan said he was in my grade, right? He would be about sixteen now.

And he apparently knows me well enough to know of my terrible sense of direction.

Kind of like Aether, who also has an older sister.

I blink and then laugh. Now wouldn't that be perfect? It would certainly explain why they act so familiar with each other. It would also explain the link between him and Megan, why they both have impenetrable minds.

But I don't have any real evidence, and in the end it doesn't even matter. So I move on to the internet tab which, to my delight, is already opened to the DSHA database.

Thank you, Megan.

And she's not even logged in. That's even better. It means I can log on using the information Taboo (an information broker the Overlord occasionally works with) gave me months ago for the mission I got arrested on, without worrying about how to log Megan back on when I'm done.

Searching Eclipse and the year she disappeared brings up a list of mission reports right up until August 17. After that, there's an update logged in by some Miscellaneous DSHA Agent detailing her lack of check-ins. Then there are witness reports from the members of the team she was working with at the time of her disappearance.

All of them say roughly the same thing. She said she was making a run to the store. She seemed normal. She had been acting normal all along. We don't know where she really went. Wasn't she on a mission for DSHA? That's what usually happens when one of us goes off the grid without warning.

The process of cycling through all the reports is tedious and time consuming and frankly, is getting me nowhere. I don't know how long Aether and Megan have been gone, and I don't know how much longer Aether can keep Megan distracted before they have to return. Time is running short.

There's one last file I haven't checked, tagged at the very end of Eclipse's profile. When I click to open it up, a lovely little box pops up to let me know that I need a super high security clearance to read this one. I snort and type in the clearance code I have.

Amazingly, it's enough, and I'm in.

And then my face pales in horror as I read through this final document.

It's a series of documents, really. Each of them is an experiment log. DSHA was performing experiments on Eclipse to see how her powers worked, and how they could possibly be replicated.

My stomach feels sick. I thought these kinds of experiments ended with the Cold War. I thought they ended with the Overlord.

But no. It looks like they just got sneakier.

Two words keep being repeated throughout the pages: Ability Negation, the power that can cancel out the powers of other super-humans.

At the very end, there's the note I find to be the most disturbing: a date and time of death, and a notation of where the body was being moved to for storage.

I don't have time to memorize any of it; I hear footsteps in the hallway.

I quickly log out, nearly whining in frustration as the computer lags.

I can hear Megan's voice echoing down the hall.

I slam the laptop shut.

Aether says something back to her.

I stand up and push the chair in.

They can't be more than five feet from the door.

I walk over to the easel and am intently staring at the sketches by the time Aether and Megan come back in.

I glance up at them and give a light smile.

Aether nods back, but he looks worried. 'Did you find it?' His eyes seem to say. I give a slight nod, but I have no idea how much I'm going to tell him.

Megan smirks when she sees I've been looking at what I assume is her art.

"It's a little rude to go through an artist's work without their permission," she says.

"You did leave it out in the open. I assumed it was fair game." I defend myself, but there's no fire behind my words.

She considers this. "I suppose you're right. Did you enjoy looking at them?"

For the .02 seconds I glanced at them? "Sure. They're pretty good."

"Thank you. Most of them are commissions from the Department," she says.

"Commissions from DSHA? That's impressive," I reply.

"Yeah, Meg is really proud of her work. It's her passion," Aether speaks up now.

"Being a student counselor for super-humans doesn't quite cut it?"

Megan grins. "It's not the same, no."

She moves over to the easel and flips to a blank sheet of paper. "I was hoping to get some more done before I commuted home for the night. You didn't need me for anything?"

I shake my head. "No, I was just tagging along."

"She gets lost easily." Aether explains in an exasperated tone. "Come on, it's getting late. We should get going."

I agree with him.

Megan lets us go with a teasing goodbye. She clearly doesn't really believe Aether's story that I still get lost easily.

Once we're out in the hall, we don't even bother to try and move quietly again. We've already been caught, and we're already on our way out.

Aether doesn't speak until we're safely out of the building, and back out in the rain.

As I raise the umbrella over our heads, careful not to hit him in the process, he asks, "What did you find? Was it related to Juggernaut?"

Uncle Archie. I had forgotten about him.

"Not that I could see, I mean, other than the dates being a match."

Aether frowns. "But you did find something else?"

I wince. "Kind of. I... She... "

Aether stops and brushes a hand against my shoulder, effectively shutting me up and freezing me in place. I gaze up into his eyes. (Fake) Brown eyes.

"Was it that bad?" His voice can barely be heard over the rain. (He looks so sad.)

I nod.

"Tell me. Please."

I open my mouth, but I'm interrupted by shrieks of surprise and laughter.

We turn to look. Dinner must be over now. The other kids are coming this way, running through the puddles.

We start walking again.

"Do you know why I was in that school where I got arrested?" I ask.

Aether shakes his head. "You were turning in a late assignment?"

I wish. "No. There was this professor. I'd heard that he used to work for DSHA during the Cold War, and had a bad habit of never deleting anything, not even old records from back then."

"What was he working on back then? They had a lot of projects in those days," he prompts. I think he's just trying to be patient and hopes this story has to do with his mother somehow.

"It was the one where DSHA wanted to create the ultimate super-human weapon. They would use live people in those experiments. I... know one of them. That's how I knew who I was looking for. I wanted to see what kinds of things he had left over in his office. At the time, I had kind of... assumed that the experiments were over. Mayb DSHA wouldn't even care if they discovered the breach of security." I pause to breathe.

A couple of guys run past us, apparently in a race to see who can get back to their dorm faster.

"And?"

"Today I found out they never stopped." I say, simply. "They just moved on."

Aether stops dead in his tracks. I step around to stand in front of him. When I glance around, I see that we've made it to Building 4.

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" His voice is low and guarded, but it's hiding something vulnerable.

I can't look him in the eye. "I think so."

"Why would they do that?" He asks me.

As if I would know.

... Do I know?

Why would they want to figure out how Ability Negation works? Why would they want to replicate it?

It's simple: they want to know how to take away our powers.

The thought sends a chill up my spine. "I'm so sorry."

"It's... not your fault." His voice is so, so quiet.

I step away. "Psaqua will be wondering where I am. Aether?"

Our eyes meet.

I take a breath. "Thank you. For giving me a chance."

I slip inside.