TORY:
TORY: The hover car pulled up to Wingstate Apartments, one of the most central and stately buildings in Gale City, white and modern with some Rococo flourishes. Tory could see his little brother and sister through the sheer, parted curtains of the tall windows before the balcony. Dexter was a sleepy heap on the sofa, and Petunia was watching something on the holo screens of her phone with wide eyes.
Diane turned to Tory and nodded toward the balcony door. “I need to make some phone calls. Go ahead, darling.”
He went in, shuddering at the rush of air conditioning. Petunia looked up from her screen, her eyes bloodshot, her twelve-year-old body swamped in one of Tory’s sweaters.
Which was actually one of Alex’s sweaters.
At least, Tory was pretty sure it was Alex’s?
“You’re home!” She beamed. “Fin-all-y. What happened? Why did mom have to go get you?”
“Stuff. Hey. What did I tell you about stretching out my clothes?” He sat down next to her on the floor and poked her knee. She pouted at him and pulled her curled legs out of the sweater.
“Are you cold?” Tory squinted. “Do you want the air conditioning turned down?”
“No!” She shook her head, her long, tangled blond curls falling around her shoulders. “I just wanted a sweater. What stuff?”
On the coffee table, there was a tower of cards, about two feet high. This wasn’t unusual—Dexter had been getting into cardstacking ever since Tory had shown him a video about a Gale City record-breaking tower of cards.
“He wanted to show you when you got home. It’s the highest tower he’s ever built.”
“Aw. Good job, Dex.” He got out his phone and snapped a picture. “You two should both be in bed, you know. It’s past midnight.”
“We wanted to see you,” she whined. “Are you going to tell me about the stuff?”
She folded her arms, her eyebrows drawn together in the most impertinent pout Tory had ever seen. It was impressive.
“There was…” He sighed loudly. He didn’t want to tell Petunia anything. “The party was like, so boring. Alex wasn’t having a good time, so we wanted to go home.”
“Then why was mom freaking out? Why did she have to come get you?”
Tory could not imagine his mom “freaking out.” It made his chest feel warm.
“There were some supervillains nearby, and emergency responders showed up and shut everything down. Mom must have been worried that I’d get arrested or get some bad press. But it was fine. Everyone just left quickly, and I ended up without a ride.”
“Oh.” She grinned. “That sounds scary. And cool. Being so close to a supervillain.”
“You are the epitome of empathy.” He snorted. He looked at what she was watching and sighed loudly. “Nihon Ghoul? Again? You know how I feel about you watching Nihon Ghoul. You’re not old enough.”
“But it’s so cool! Gray American cartoons are the best.”
“It’s Gray Japanese.”
She flapped her hand. “Whatever, it’s all the same.”
Sometimes it seemed like there wasn’t much point in distinguishing between the two—Gray Japan and Gray Utah were about the same level of foreign to people who hadn’t left a dome in a century. Gray American was sometimes incorrectly used as a catch-all word for anything from the pre-dome past.
He grimaced at the cartoonized bloodbath on screen and covered Petunia’s eyes. “No more. Gross. This is way too much for you.” He really needed to start going through his friend Gem’s recommendations before giving them to Petunia. He hadn’t been wrong to recommend it, though—she’d liked it so much that she had watched it twice.
She whined and he took her phone, turning off the holo-screen. “Anyway, it’s beyond bedtime. Where’s Sofia? She always makes sure you guys go to bed at a normal hour.”
She glared at him until he handed back her phone. “Mom sent her home early for the weekend.”
Sofia was the housekeeper. She took care of most of the daily chores, especially when it came to Dex and Petunia. She cleaned up most of the house, but she left Tory’s room and Diane’s study alone, which was the way he liked it.
“Okay.” He stood up. Petunia pouted at him and lifted her hand, so he pulled her to her feet. “Come on. Bed.”
He walked over to Dex and carefully scooped the six-year-old up, tucking the dark, touseled head under his chin and bracing his arms under his behind and around his back. He was getting too big to carry, but Tory was a superhero, and so he figured he should be able to carry his siblings pretty much forever.
He started taking Dex up the steps to their bedrooms, and the door slammed open. The stack of cards on the coffee table collapsed from the impact.
He sighed. He was glad he had taken a picture.
“Come to the office when Dex is in bed,” his mother called from the doorway. He nodded.
Thanks to Sofia, Dex’s bedroom was a neatly organized menagerie of toys and memorabilia, with a mix of themes for whatever Dex’s current obsession was. There were cards scattered on the floor, along with a cape and hat. He’d been a magician for Halloween the year before, and now he wore the cape to school sometimes and brought his cards. Sometimes the cape doubled as a superhero look.
Plugged into the wall beside the nightstand was an Everlux nightlight—a golden light with a black silhouette in a powerful flying pose, cape at its back. It reflected an interesting silhouette on the wall.
As it turned out, Everlux was Dex’s favorite superhero. It was a fact that both brought Tory secret joy and complete, unabating dread.
One day, Dex would grow up, and either he’d be brought in on the family secrets, or he’d figure it out—Tory was neither a good older brother, nor was Everlux a good superhero.
Tory was going to let him down twice.
He tucked the blanket around Dex. Dex’s hair framed his freckled, chubby cheeks and dark lashes. He rubbed his nose in his sleep. Tory squinted around the room, then found the stuffed plushy Dex slept with—a silver doll with a cape and mask, a white grin, and wild blue hair. He put it next to Dex’s head.
Tory went to Petunia’s room, and she was in bed, still on her phone, her hair up in a bun. He stopped at her bedroom door.
“You didn’t tell me the truth,” Petunia said by way of greeting. She glared at him, her eyes crusty and red. He couldn’t tell if she was tired, or if she’d been crying.
She was surrounded by her army of plush dolphins of many shapes, colors, and sizes on her large, circular bed of blue and purple scale patterns. She’d been obsessed with the friendly aquatic creatures ever since they’d gone to the aquarium and watched holograms of them swim in huge, chlorinated tanks. Gale City didn’t have access to real dolphins, but the holograms had been real enough.
Tory was a little afraid of her dolphins. There were just so many, and they had beady, black eyes. They were also surrounded by some fairly dark anime posters, which somehow made their vibes more menacing.
“You said you just needed a ride. There are pictures of you and mom at the hospital all over my newsfeed.”
Tory cringed. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“Why did you lie to me?”
“I didn’t want to make you upset.”
“Want to know how to not make me upset? Don’t lie to me!” She picked up one of her stuffed dolphins and threw it at him. It bounced against the door.
“You missed,” he said. She grabbed ten more dolphins and threw each one, hitting him until he used the door like a shield.
“I’m not a baby. Don’t treat me like one.”
Tory gathered up an armful of the dolphins. One of them was a puppet.
“Not a baby,” he said, using the dolphin puppet to enunciate his words. “Got it. Tory’s sorry.”
She glared at him magnificently. She was really starting to turn into a little teen.
“Tory’s a butthead,” Tory said with the dolphin.
She cracked a reluctant smile. “Yep.”
He dumped the dolphins on her bed, and she took a moment to kiss them and apologize to them for throwing them, then put them back in their arrangement on her bed.
“What, you’ll apologize to them and not to me for throwing them at me?”
“You deserved it,” she said, looking quite impertinent again. He chuckled.
“Sorry. I know how much it sucks when adults lie to you. It hurts.”
She frowned and up-downed him. “You’re not an adult.”
“Almost. Just a couple months until my birthday.”
“Yeah, but like, barely. Not really.”
He sighed. That was the truth. He would still be here, he would still be Victor Burns, son of the mayor who kept stirring the damn pot. He would still be Everlux. He was trapped.
“You have a tendency to accidentally say things that are incredibly hard-hitting, Miss Burns.”
“You have a tendency to be stupid, Mr. Bums.”
He snorted. “O-kay. Enough outta you.” He picked up a large toddler-sized dolphin off the floor and shoved it in her face. She growled like a tiger—this was something she had been practicing—and threw another dolphin at him. He laughed and got up and went to the door.
“But you’re okay, though, right?” She said suddenly. He paused and looked back at her.
“Yeah. I’m all good. There was just this supervillain, who, uh…well, he tried to get me. But Everlux saved the day.”
“Really?” Her eyes grew wide. “What do you mean he tried to get you?”
“He…tried to…” He blinked.
Vent had tried to kill him.
His chest seized with panic.
Things tried to kill him all the time. Shiftbeasts, homework, Arizona weather. He remembered being on the soccer team and how the drills the team ran would make him feel like the coach was trying to kill him. His mom threatened death when he was late from curfew and hadn’t texted. Super villains had attacked Everlux before a handful of times, but they never honestly tried to kill him. They just wanted him out of the way.
Vent, on the other hand, had really tried to kill him. Him. Not Everlux. Tory.
Maybe he hadn’t wanted him dead—he hadn’t thrown him off the building, after all—but he had hurt him.
He looked back at Petunia, who had gone pale.
“It’s probably nothing. Besides, mom will make sure he stays in jail.”
“Right.” She shrugged. “Yeah. She won’t let him get away with it.”
“Okay. Good night!”
“Night.”
Tory shut her door. He slumped against the wall. He still needed to talk to his mother, but he wanted to go to bed and burrow in his covers.
He wished he was with Alex. They could talk about what happened together, and Alex could put up a hologram of stars on his bedroom ceiling, and they could just watch them. They could play video games and think about absolutely nothing.
The good kind of nothing. The together nothing.
They could wake up the next morning to Alex’s parents listening to music in the kitchen and teasing Alex about how angsty his taste in Gray music was. Alex’s dad could badger Tory about his grade in math. There would be no discussion of the Paragon Guild, superheroes, whether he was keeping to his diet, or how often he was showing up in people’s newsfeeds in a mask and without one.
He sighed and wandered to his mother’s office, where they would talk about all of those very gross things.
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