Podcast of a Teenage Super-Villian

Chapter Ten: Panic

A fun fact about superpowers: you don't get to blackout for long after getting hit a few times.  Your body will go limp, leaving your muscles weak and liquid, like you're less a person and more a splat of sentient gook on pavement. But after a few seconds of darkness, your brain is back online, even if your body isn't. You can tell me if this is a good or bad side effect of the whole superpower shtick, but to me, becoming a mass of helpless limbs is a recipe for panic. Hysteria. That type thing.

Gideon scoops me off the sidewalk and slings my arm over his shoulder. When my eyes first open, all I'm aware is the grayness of the city. The gray sky and the gray clouds rolling across it, the gray, twisting skeletons of decayed buildings and the sidewalks gray with dirt. Those first few seconds fill me with the suffocating sensation that I'm standing inside someone else's nightmare where the colors drip shades of gray and I'm all darkness, too. Like I'm some evil thing in someone else's story. Like what I am is wrong, but I can't help it, can't help it.

My mouth opens to scream, but I cool the impulse by reminding myself that I don't need to draw any more eyes, being a, you know, teen fugitive and all.  Also, I'm probably having an existential crisis. And you know who else has existential crises? Everyone. 

"So, I'm fine. I'm fine," I say, stumbling. One foot, then the other, until I'm stable enough to snatch my arm off his shoulder and rest it I smile, digging my fingertips into the book's cover, pages still damp with my blood. Gideon grips my elbow and pulls me off the grating, his hands gentle. There's a strength to him, a strength I've only gotten the faintest impressions of behind his gentle mannerisms and friendly voice. He frowns, his eyes trailing the curve of my blood-smeared cheek. "Who got to you?"

"Everyman Cult."

His face drains of color, his eyes widening and his mouth cracking open with a gasp. His hand tightens on my arm, and I can't tell if it's involuntary or if he wants to behind me, or if he wants to protect me, even. I  let my eyes fall to his fingernails, chewed to ragged squares, and push him off me. He stumbles. I feel nothing.

"We'll be fine," I say, less a thought and more an offering of words to fill the silence. I'm thinking of the address whispered against my earlobe, the secrets I'm keeping from the person who offered me his home. I'll have to sacrifice the stranger, and the thought makes my chest tighten. I glance up and down over his body, the black, wrinkled clothes. The square jaw and the dark eyes under a head of black curls. The white flames winking off his forearm. "Fine."

His strides quicken. His chest heaves, his hand groping for my shoulder as if to lean on. I don't let him touch me, matching his galloping pace with my own clumsy strides, enough space left between us that we're taking up the sidewalk. His shoulders have begun to shudder.

"I'm sorry you got involved with this, Max." His head is lowered, and he's murmuring behind a face full of hair. "Thank you for saving me, man, but I'm sorry."

"S'alright," I say, wincing at the pain rippling from the backs of my knees. Turns out knife-slashes ache when no one with magical healing powers fixes them for you. "Glad to have met you. Trust me on this one, I'll make sure they don't get you," I say, lying through my smiling teeth.

His breathing sharpens, spiraling out of him in quick, gasping gulps. His fingers snag the sleeve of my hoodie and he unfurls himself into a run. We're shoving through people, Gideon's speed picking up and up until my new wounds are searing, and I'm the one struggling to follow him.

"I'm gonna protect you, right? Remember? It's gonna be okay." Lying through smiling teeth again. "And even if you do lose your powers, that's all. They're not gonna kill you or anything."

The apartment building sways into view, and by now, I'm already shaking and gasping with the sort of pain that's more internal than external. Like there's glass in my lungs. He runs all the way home, dragging me while I choke on blood and bite back yelps. My feet thump against the stairs on the inside, and I don't even have time to admire the rats in the daylight, though I can hear their scrabbling on the torn carpet. Lights flicker, hissing, and then Gideon's shoving the key into the door lock, both hands still shaking, and the city melts behind my eyelids.