TORY: Tory chewed on the plastic straw of his iced coffee as he scrolled through his feed on his phone. His knees bobbed against the back of the hover car’s seat, his shorts a bit too short to protect his knee from touching the hot leather.
“Victor, darling.”
His eyes darted up to meet his mother’s.
She sighed and started rooting around in her bag. “Your undereyes are so dark and puffy. You’re going to have a facial before the interview. I’m sure we will have time after the laboratory. Oh—I was sure I packed some cooling eye gel—must have left it in my office.”
Tory loved a little pampering before his appearances. It was like putting on war paint before a battle against his self-consciousness.
He did not, however, care for anything his mother asked him to do before media appearances he was pushed into.
“I think I’m good.”
Her eyebrows knit together, her forehead wrinkling. “Don’t you want to look your best?”
“Most of my face is covered by a mask, mom. Not much point to it. I’ll need to do a post-mask skin routine anyway.” It had taken so long to set up a routine that prevented mask acne. It didn’t help that his suit was silver and completely unbreathable.
Her face hardened and her frown deepened. “Alright, then. I suppose I won’t force you. You know, more heroes would like you and think that you’re real if you just did what I said. Goodness, I can’t imagine what the Paragon Guild thinks of you—all surface and no substance. If you trained and patrolled, you could be popular to everyone, not just your fanbase.”
He rolled his eyes, his cheek pressing against the cool glass of the window. Good.
He didn’t want the guild to think he was a good hero. He wasn’t one. He was just his mom’s media sock puppet.
Though, it would be nice if Alex didn’t think Everlux was a shallow social hero.
It would be nice.
He closed his eyes. It would be a lie, and he didn’t want to lie to him more than he had to. If Everlux ever ran into Alex again, he was never going to pretend he was any better than he really was.
“You wouldn’t even have to put much effort into patrolling. Just be seen doing it on your own. I have access to the guild’s records of superhero patrol routes. I can set up a route where you have the highest chance of being seen by other heroes.”
“No, mom. Stop.” He shook his head. “I’m not interested in patrolling, let alone fake patrolling. My schedule is already full of appearances, interviews, and content creation. I’m behind in my classes.”
Her eyebrow twitched, and Tory knew he was pushing it. He’d said no twice in the space of a few minutes. He was going to need to say yes a few times before he could say no again.
His mind often looked like two stop lights when he spoke with his mom about his schedule. He had to fill all three lights in the first stoplight with green before he could have one red light in the other. If he filled up the red lights too quickly, things got bad.
“You know,” he sighed. “I’m really stressed out between the attack yesterday and this interview today. I suppose a facial before the interview would be relaxing.”
She grinned and clapped her hands together. “Great! You’ll be absolutely glowing in the interview, darling.”
His breathing came easier for the moment. She reached over and fixed his hair. It felt like spiders were crawling down his back, but he stayed perfectly still.
. . . . .
DOME labs was an old experimental science exploration center that specifically focused on the testing and training of paragons. It was fully funded by the city through grants that the mayor set up herself under the condition that she had access to every room in the building. Tory figured there were very few places she couldn’t talk herself into even without holding explicit financial power over them.
When he was a kid, he found the place a complete drag. Just another place she dragged him to when she had several appointments and wanted him along for at least a few. There was a large part of the building that was open to visitors, where tours would take place at appropriate business hours, and he had been through them all, while she went and tended to her classified mayor stuff.
These days, though, he actually looked forward to laboratory visits.
The mayor pressed her hand against the blue handprint shape on the door’s lock, and the door to the observation deck opened. She swept into the room, her white shoes, skirt, and suit coat even brighter and more sanitized than the white tile floors and the white coats of the scientists around the room. The bright observation deck curved around a room made of a deep black stone that shimmered with a thin marbling of green.
Tory ran up to the glass separating him from the room below the deck and grinned and waved at the experimentation subject inside.
A boy with wildly curly white hair and brown skin was draped across a comfy sofa, staring at the flickering holo-screen showing a brilliant display of an unarchived cartoon. Tory recognized it—he’d binged the season over a year ago with Alex. He grinned and tapped on the glass.
Gem looked up and beamed. He sat up, and Tory walked down the stairs to meet him at the Energy Conversion Box. He tugged on a black hazmat suit with a helm, boots, and gloves, then slammed the button that made a circular airlocked door slide open. He stepped inside and made his way to the EC box.
It was a narrow cube made up of the black marbled material and a glass window at the top and at the sides. It was divided by the black wall and a glass window. Tory watched Gem on the other side of the wall come to the EC box, sit down on the chair, and slip his hand into the rubber sleeve on the inside of the EC box. His fingers wiggled, and Tory slipped his hand inside the rubber sleeve on his side.
Dread began to well up inside of him.
He’d been so excited to see Gem, he’d almost forgotten about this part.
“Tory, my friend! How are you?”
“Hey, man.” He took in Gem’s round cheeks and soft, full face, his violet eyes framed with white lashes. Gem was a few years older than Tory, though Tory didn’t know exactly how many. Something about his white hair and youthful smile felt almost timeless.
The room behind Gem was filled with a collection of Gem’s things, meticulously organized. Shelves filled with merchandise and figurines for the television shows he watched and books he read—a grand mix of Gray American and Gale City-original content—collected around the black marbled walls.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been back to visit in a couple weeks. My mom’s had my schedule in a chokehold for a while.”
He frowned and nodded. “It’s alright. You aren’t beholden to me. I know how busy life can be.”
That was the thing—Gem didn’t know how busy life could be. His life was here. He was stuck.
“Tell me everything. How is school? How has Alex been?” He smirked a little. “Any progress lately?”
Diane’s voice blared throughout the room on an intercom. She smiled down at them through the observation windows a floor above, the other bustling scientists in lab coats working around her.
“Hello, Gem. Ready for practice?” She asked.
He swallowed, his violet eyes darting away to stare at their hands in the box. He was shy when it came to Tory’s mom. “Yes, ma’am.”
His voice sounded filtered and digital through the speakers in the wall.
“Excellent. Victor, you know what to do.”
Tory did know what to do. Sort of. He concentrated on the prickling sensations in his palm, trying to grasp a hold of the energy and break it down to its essential elements, the way he did with cement, wood, paint—any other substance he ran into as Everlux. Energy was completely different from those things, though. It didn’t sit still, and it was already in its rawest form.
His alchemy power worked by touch, and he wasn’t very fast. He had to touch something for at least a second to lock onto it and command it to change. His fingertips felt tingling heat, and then felt nothing, over and over again.
Frustrated, he tried to distract himself with conversation. “Hey. I saw that you were watching that show I told you about, Rainbow Crystal Deathsaves?”
His eyes lit up. Green sparks began to stir in his palm in the glass box. A flash of lightning cracked from his fingers to Tory’s. Tingles stirred the cells in Tory’s hand awake. “Yes! It’s fantastic.”
“How far are you into it?” Tory asked, focusing on the prickling sensations in his palm. He just needed to feel it long enough…or be quick enough…
“I am ten episodes in. Has all of it been unarchived?”
“No,” Tory sighed. “There’s another season that won’t be out until next April.”
“Why do we have to wait?” Gem sighed. “They should just unarchive everything at once. How closely does this season stick to the comics?”
“Well…” Tory hesitated, glancing at his mother through the window. She was focusing keenly on the energy conversion box’s activity.
He didn’t like talking in front of her about this stuff. He didn’t know why—every conversation he and Gem had were recorded, so it wasn’t like they were private. Everything Gem did was recorded by scientists and machines tracking his biometrics, including the embarrassing nerd ranting about their favorite shows and comics and Tory’s in-depth discussions on the qualities of a particular ongoing yearning for one Alexander Hale.
“I think the first season was pretty similar to the comics, but they added this extra romantic subplot that I don’t really like, and they made Jude take forever to decide to finally join as the green deathsave for extra drama. But I think they did it well, overall.”
“An extra romantic subplot?”
“Between Domino and Hera.”
“No-o-o,” Gem groaned. “Domino is obviously meant to be with Chris. Domino is the red deathsave, and Chris is the blue deathsave, and they have so much chemistry. Their character designs literally set them up to be together. And Hera is clearly a lesbian.”
“She should be with Jude! Orange and green!” Tory sighed and leaned against the glass. It was warming from the green energy flowing from Gem’s hands, and Tory’s own fingers in the box were growing numb from the constant, intense exposure.
He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the energy in the box. It was slippery, like water or sand, except he could definitely transform water and sand. Water into ice or gas, and sand into chunky molten glass or solid rock. They were certainly harder than transforming metals, but possible. Gem’s energy was impossible.
“Wasn’t Domino the character you were obsessed with a couple years ago?”
“Wha-a-at?” Tory laughed him off. “I wouldn’t say obsessed.”
The Rainbow Crystal Deathsaves were a Gray American interdimensional superhero comic that Tory and his friends got absolutely obsessed with in middle school. After reading that comic, he started reading every other hero comic he’d gotten his hands on, especially ones with queer characters. The queerness of Rainbow Crystal Deathsaves, unfortunately, had all been an in-between-the-lines fandom kind of thing.
It still took him until freshman year to figure out what his sexuality’s entire deal was, but reading about canonically pansexual characters in comics had helped him. And at fourteen, with an already growing social media presence and a mayor for a mom, he needed all the help he could get with the coming-out process.
Even in 2107, bigots still existed big time. They liked to come out of the woodwork and comment vitriol on Tory’s posts once in a while to remind him of their mediocre, pathetic presence.
It was honestly confusing—what did they think commenting hate on a queer teenage celebrity’s outfit of the day post was going to do? All he ever did in response was thicken his eyeliner.
“Yes, it was Domino. The red deathsave,” Gem smiled a bit. “You wanted to cosplay him.”
He was starting to think he told Gem too much.
“You will take that fact to your grave, Gem. Swear on your Princess Grapejuice figurine!”
Gem nodded very seriously and placed his free hand on his heart. “I swear solemnly on the honor of Princess Grapejuice to not reveal Tory’s secrets and taint his princely reputation.”
Tory snorted. For the most part, he didn’t really care about that sort of thing. He liked what he liked, and his close friends got the mega-blast of his geekiness when it came out, and whatever other interest or hobby caught his attention. Everyone else got the…princely reputation.
Still, since Gem knew about Tory being Everlux, Tory’s crush, and all of his discreet obsessions…he probably knew Victor Bartholomew James Burns better than anyone else.
He started to spill his guts to Gem about what had happened the day before with Vent.
“So, Alex met your alter ego. Do you think he hates Everlux less now? What if he could sense something about you that was familiar?” Gem grinned.
Tory tried not to let his smile falter. “I don’t think real life works like the comics. If anything, he probably finds Everlux more annoying. What have you been up to? Got anything new to recommend?”
While the laboratory had never allowed Gem internet access, communication devices, or access to the outside world—three things Tory could not imagine life without—they gave him plenty of material to entertain himself with. He had exercise machines in the far back, a device that had thousands of downloaded books from Gray America and Gale City, and access to a cloud that had an enormous library of movies, documentaries, and television shows. He had a holographic deck in front of his sofa that had hundreds of games programmed inside, as well.
While Gem had never gone to school, he had access to lessons, encyclopedias, educational videos, and documentaries, all of which he would absorb in his free time.
In short, Gem was the biggest nerd Tory knew, which was impressive considering his squad of friends. He knew more about heroes than Tory, Marisol, and Delaney combined, and only Alex could rival him when it came to Gray American music.
Gem held up a handwritten list of book, comic, and show titles with a big grin. “I just know Alex would love some of these. And I’m sure Marisol will adore these books—Delaney might like this comic. I know she loves animals. Oh, and Petunia! She liked that anime I recommended to her from 2012? I have a few with the same…” He gestured to the air, looking for a word. “…flavor.”
“Genre?”
“Genre is too vague. It has the same aesthetic. And about the same level of angst.” He sighed. “I had to write happy fanfiction to make up for it. Do you know what it’s like to watch a show from 2010 knowing that there might be 100-year-old fanfiction on Gray America’s internet that I can never access? Even if I got out of here. All of it is gone forever.”
Tory hadn’t ever thought about that. It was depressing to think of people’s lovingly crafted works of fiction being lost with Gray America’s long-gone internet. Though, based on his experiences with modern fanfiction of the fine citizens of Gale City, a purge now and then might not be an entirely bad thing.
Continued in next chapter.
“Wow.” Tory rolled his eyes. “You ship us harder than I ship us.”
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