The Mask Effect (EDITING)

Chapter 6- The Art Of Reading Faces

Dedicated to @sammykitkatcat for Shift, my favorite supervillain- and supervillain book- ever!

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Noah's POV

The next time the world blinked into view, my sister took up most of it. One of her hands gripped a half-empty glass of orange liquid. It corresponded with the bad taste in my mouth perfectly.

"Are you okay?" Maddy's words were less directed to me, more to the glass.

I rubbed my eyes, happy that my arms worked again- albeit burned and tired. "As okay as I can be." My hand slipped off our nightstand and into thin air. How... "Where's Brian? Is he... okay?"

"He will be." I hobbled up, supporting myself on the edge of the bed. "Maddy, how long was I out?"

Maddy avoided looking at me altogether and started putting the ORS supplies into one pile, her back to me. A spoon. The half-empty packet of ORS. A container of sugar.

"Maddy, how long was I out?" She kept ignoring me, shoulders heaving silently. "Maddy-"

Maddy whirled around, eyes red-rimmed as tears made their way down her cheeks. My eyes widened. "Three hours, Noah," she said bitterly. "You were out for three hours, okay?"

"And Brian?" I remembered crashing through the kitchen window, dropping both of us into the kitchen- but that was it.

"He..." Maddy smudged the tears on her face even further. "He still hasn't woken up."

All the muscles in my body froze at the same time, leaving my palms slipping on the edge of the mattress.

"You need rest, idiot." Maddy crossed her arms, but her eyes never left me.

"I'm not your younger brother, Maddy," I pointed out, staring at the floor. "I'll be fine." I balanced on both feet for a moment, then pain shot through me.

Maddy bit her bottom lip. "Would you be angry if I said this whole thing was my fault? If you knew what I did to get us in this mess... "

My laugh sounded like it was scraped against my throat. "Why? The Black Cat is out of the picture, and the identities of our supers-"

"It's not him," she interrupted. "We... er... interrogated him before getting into trouble, and he made a valid point- exposing the identities of Phaonix's supers would expose his own. He seemed highly against that."

I winced at the memory. "I don't want to be there when he wakes up."

"Agreed. Do you..." She hesitated. "Will there be charges on you and Brian? For... this?"

"Charges?" I tried to find the best way to say maybe. "Probably not. There are advantages to being one of Phaonix's superheroes, especially if you're close to the top like the Force is." I tried to wink. "There are plenty of angles we can play this, if he presses charges at all. The concerned superheroes, the older brothers, the-"

Maddy held up a hand. "Do you want to see him? Brian, I mean."

I nodded, and Maddy offered me her shoulder. We'd just reached the bedroom door when I saw Maddy gritting her teeth. Half-healed cuts- from what?- reopened and formed thin lines of red. She jolted when I touched one gently. "How did this happen?"

"Kitchen window," she told me. "In case you're wondering how we got inside a locked house, since you couldn't have kept the door open, here's your answer. Bailey and I climbed through that hole you so conveniently made yesterday- found you both passed out on the kitchen floor. Then we phoned Mom."