Summus Proelium

So, for the second time in short order, I found myself at the entrance into the Seraphs’ hospital compound. This time I was going as a complete civilian, and kept telling myself that I wasn't supposed to know where anything was around here, or who people were. Oh, and I had to act like I was overwhelmed about being in a place as amazing as this. On top of all that, I wasn't supposed to know what had happened to Izzy just yet. Which meant I was going to have to act as though Simon telling me was my first indication that anything was wrong, and react accordingly. But not too over the top.

If it ever got to the point where all our secrets were out, or at least mine, maybe I could see if I could be granted any free acting credits in a drama course. It certainly felt like I had earned them by this point. Then again, if people actually got what they’d earned, Pencil would be in an anonymous unmarked grave somewhere rather than holed up in an apartment building keeping a bunch of innocent people hostage because he was worried about his sister. Hell, to that end, this whole bio-attack wouldn't have happened. So maybe thinking about what people had earned wasn't very helpful.

Hearing my name called by a familiar voice while I was standing next to the guard (one I knew by name as Paintball) at the gate, I forced those thoughts out of my mind and turned to face my brother as he approached. “Dude!” I injected clueless enthusiasm into my voice. “Don't tell me you went and started volunteering here. I know Mom said you really needed to get some charity work on your record, but I figured you'd find a way to turn attending some basketball games with little kids into your service credit.”

I really hoped I wasn't laying it on too thick. I just didn't want to give any impression that I knew something was wrong. Yes, I officially knew that Izzy was Raindrop, but it wasn't like the news had announced that they had been kidnapped and drugged. Besides, I didn't monitor the news constantly anyway. As far as Simon knew, I had just been out skating when he sent me the message. I was certainly dressed for the occasion, wearing tennis shoes, baggy shorts, long socks with built-in shin protection, a baggy jersey, and knee and elbow pads. Different ones than what I wore as Paintball, of course. My helmet, which was also different and only meant to cover the top of my head instead of my full face, was tucked under my arm. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like I had been at the park doing some tricks and came right over here. I was even quite sweaty and dirty, a fact I had apologized for to the rideshare driver who had brought me here. I made sure to tip him extra for that.

Simon took a moment, clearly trying to decide how much to say while we were right there by the guard. In the end, he offered a somewhat forced smile, though one that was probably made easier by Izzy being given that cure. I couldn't even imagine how he would have given me the news if she had been in the same condition as Mom and Dad. On the other hand, I didn't think I could pretend to be this clueless in that case. “Hey, Booster,” he greeted me before gesturing. “Come on, let's take a walk. I've gotta show you something. Better if you see it for yourself, it’s really cool.” To his credit, his voice barely cracked at all with that. If I hadn’t known him so well, and known the situation he was disguising right now, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed.

Pretending I had no idea what he was about to show me, I waved at the guard and followed my brother in through the gate. I was looking around the whole time, head craning to stare at the buildings around us like I was a tourist. I would’ve taken my phone out for pictures, but that probably would’ve been a little too much. “Holy shit, the actual, real Seraph hospital compound. I didn’t-- Wait, this isn't some sort of trick to show me all the hurt people around here just so you can scare me away from skating, is it?”

Simon snorted. “You know, now that you mention it, that's not a bad idea. But no, come here.” Taking my wrist, he pulled me off the sidewalk and over behind a nearby tree for some privacy. Looking around, seemingly to make sure we weren't being watched, he spoke quietly. “Cassidy, you can't freak out right now. It's okay. She's okay. You understand? Stay calm and just know that she's safe and she’ll be completely fine.”

Okay, I couldn’t pretend to be that clueless. He’d start to wonder if I had some sort of head injury. It was time to really go for the gold. Wait, did acting have go--never mind. I made my eyes widen dramatically, as though the realization had just come to me. Taking a step back, I turned to look around quickly, this time without any touristy motivations. “Izzy. Izzy, where is she? What happened? She was fighting someone, wasn't she? Was it the Scions? Is she okay--what--how did she--why is she--”

Simon caught my hand again and pulled me back. His grip was gentle yet firm. “Cassidy, Cassie, listen to me. She's okay. I'm gonna tell you what happened, what we know anyway. But first, she's been given a cure. So she's alright. She's conscious and we're going to go visit her. You’ll see her in just a minute, but you have to keep yourself under control. Take a breath and let me fill you in, okay?”

My mouth opened and shut a couple times as I acted like the completely overwhelmed, worried, and shocked girl I figured I would’ve been if I genuinely didn’t know any of this stuff. Especially with our parents being in their condition. That had to make this whole thing even worse. Still, I didn’t play it up too much before visibly swallowing as my head jerked a few times in an anxious nod. “Just tell me, please.”

So, he did. Well, at least as much as he could while acting like he hadn’t actually personally been there. Come to think of it, that was kind of funny, wasn't it? In a dark way, at least. We had both been there and knew exactly what happened, but he was pretending he had heard about this whole situation second-hand and was just relaying what he had been told, while I was acting like I didn't know anything about it at all.

Simon told me that Izzy and the rest of the Minority had been betrayed by Whamline when he decided to join the Scions, and that they had been drugged with some sort of prototype version of what our parents had been given. But he immediately and firmly assured me that the stuff wasn't as potent as what had been used before, and that someone had produced a cure for it already. Actually, he told me that Paintball had given the authorities the cure, though no one knew exactly where he’d found it. Which added a whole new layer to this performance I was putting on, when I gushed about how lucky we were that Paintball had had the cure. I tried not to lay it on too thick, and ignored the awkwardness that came from praising myself. It was all just weird. But I pushed that aside and focused on playing like Paintball was amazing for helping our sister. With, of course, a very light bit of wondering where he had found it.

Wait, come to think of it, that was yet another layer to this conversation. Simon was talking about Paintball, who was secretly me, having a mysterious cure. A cure Paintball had been given by Simon. But I wasn’t supposed to know that, and he had to-- yeah it was all just deception after deception.

Simon, for his part, simply shrugged. “Heroes have ways of finding things. I guess we should just be grateful for it, because if he hadn’t--” He visibly stopped himself from continuing, a slight grimace crossing his face. “He did. He gave the authorities the cure, and it worked. He’s a good kid, and Izzy’s okay. She’s conscious now. So you wanna go see her?”

I confirmed that I absolutely did, so Simon walked with me over to an unmarked building. It wasn’t the one that Izzy was in, as far as I knew. But I pushed that out of my mind as we passed a couple guards and orderlies and walked through a confusing maze of narrow corridors until we reached the back of the building, where we stepped on an elevator.

“Here.” Simon passed me a ski mask, which confused me briefly. “Put that on so no one recognizes you until we’re actually in the room. We have to keep Izzy’s identity secret, you know.”

“Oh, hehe, I thought we were about to rob the place.” With that weak joke, I stared at the mask. Now this was even more unnerving and awkward. I was going in there as Cassidy, but wearing a mask. One that wasn’t too unlike the one I wore under my helmet as Paintball. Damn it, everything was just getting so blurred and… and weird. Also please God don’t let Simon notice how much I looked like Paintball when my face was covered.

But, with a deep breath, I pulled the mask on just as the elevator stopped. Simon had already donned his own, and we stepped out into an underground tunnel. Right, of course there were tunnels between these buildings. This way no one who wasn’t supposed to know who Raindrop was would see Simon and Cassidy Evans walk into the building where all the Minority people were being tended to.

We walked through the tunnel, while I took a moment to pretend I was super-enthused about all the cloak and dagger secrecy stuff. “When Mom and Dad wake up, we have to tell them about this. Dad’s gonna be so jealous that we got to go through a secret tunnel to visit Izzy, and--wait, you’re sure she’s okay?” I allowed a hint of nervousness to jump into my voice.

“She’s awake and talking, so yeah,” Simon confirmed. “They just want to keep her until they’re sure there’s no residual effects or anything.”

Keeping my thoughts about that to myself, I followed my brother down the tunnel to one of the other doors. There was a man standing outside, but he simply nodded as we approached and gestured for us to go in. “Third floor, then follow the same directions you used before.” He was addressing Simon there, clearly. “Don’t press any other buttons, go through any other doors, or talk to anyone outside of your designated area. If they talk to you, report them at the desk. But they won’t. We know better.”

Sure enough, the door there led onto another elevator, and Simon hit the button for the third floor. There were a few people in the hallway that led us to, but as promised, none of them spoke to us. They didn't even really look at us aside from a glance here or there to make sure they weren’t about to walk into us. It seemed like they had been extensively trained not to pay attention to people coming off that elevator. There were a lot of secrets being kept around here. So the two of us probably fit right in.

Simon steered me through another maze of corridors. I thought about making a joke about him getting both of us so lost in here we’d end up arrested for accidentally stumbling across one of their other secrets, but the words died on my lips. I really didn’t feel like trying to be funny just then. This whole situation was just too awkward. And I had to pretend it wasn’t awkward, which was just worse. But at least I had the excuse of being worried about Izzy to explain my silence.

Speaking of Izzy, we found our way through those corridors to the room where she was staying. She was already out of her costume and dressed in the normal hospital gown, and when the two of us came in, she was holding up a cup of orange-ish jello while staring at it doubtfully. “I think it’s Cheeto flavored. Is that a thing?”

“Izzy!” I quickly dove that way, plucking the jello out of her hand and setting it aside before embracing her. Belatedly I remembered to take the mask off, dropping it haphazardly before returning to the hug. “Are you okay? What--I mean are you really okay? Simon said something about Whamline being a bad guy and there was some sort of situation with the whole Scions thing and--but you didn’t get anywhere near the real Scions, right? I mean they’re locked up in that apartment building and I don’t think you were in there but I’m not sure how that all went down and--and--and…” Leaning back, I stared at her like I had absolutely no idea what was going on. “You’re alright?”

Izzy’s head bobbed quickly as she returned the embrace. “I’m okay, Cass, I promise. I didn’t even feel anything, not really.” She offered me an awkward, self-conscious shrug. “I was asleep for basically all of it. I didn’t help. I didn’t even--” A dark, annoyed grimace crossed her face as she looked away from me. “I didn’t know what happened until someone in here told me after I woke up. I was useless.”

“Hey, you are never useless.” That was Simon, moving to sit on the opposite side of the bed before putting his hand on her shoulder. “Do you have any idea how many people’s lives you’ve saved since you started being Raindrop? Because I had some nerd at my university do the math--” He stopped and held up both hands as we both squinted at him. “Hey, they like being called nerds now, it's not an insult. Anyway, I paid him to do the math, and it's up in the high hundreds if not thousands. Depends on how much you interpret as an immediate effect. You know, the way people you save have helped others and so on. The point is, you’ve saved a lot of people. Just because you got jumped from behind by a fucking psychopath traitor doesn’t change that.”

“He's right,” I put in with a gentle nudge. “You're out there making both of us look bad. Come on, you’re a full-fledged superhero and the two of us are basically nothing but spoiled trust fund babies.” I managed to get that out with a straight face, though I couldn't look at Simon in the process. “If you keep this up, we might have to get jobs or something just to keep up with you so we don't look like completely useless lumps.”

“Hey now, let's not go crazy,” Simon teased. “I happen to like being a useless lump. Maybe you could just take it easy and try donating your allowance to charity or something. You know, so you feel like you contributed.”

“Oh just my allowance, huh?” I shot back while making a face at him. Which made him give an even weirder face back at me, and I couldn’t help but snicker before stretching my eyes out while making a weird combination Wookiee/garbage disposal noise that even I didn’t know how I did it. Then Izzy made a weird face of her own, and we all started laughing. Simon yanked me by the hand just so he could tickle me, then used my body to pin Izzy’s arms down so he could tickle her too. We countered and teamed up together to yank him down, and it all devolved from there.

Eventually, we just started talking again, then all sat together on the same bed to watch a movie on the big TV in the corner. It was one we had all seen before, but that didn't really matter. The three of us were together, and I forgot all about the crazy extra stuff for a little while. I forgot about the Ministry and superheroes, and just focused on being there with my brother and sister. It was… nice. Better than I expected.

After a couple hours of that, Simon had to leave to go do something. Maybe it was Ministry stuff, or maybe he just needed to get out of there. It didn't really matter, not right then. To be honest, I didn’t care. All that other stuff could wait.

Izzy and I stayed on the bed like that, watching an old episode of some cartoon. We didn't dare talk about all the things we needed to, not knowing for certain whether any of this was being monitored or recorded. It wasn't worth the risk. There’d be time to get into all that later. For now, all that mattered was hanging out and vegging, even if we had to do it in what amounted to a hospital bed.

The nurse came in a few times through all that to check on Izzy and take recordings, of course. She was one of the few people in this place who was cleared to know Raindrop’s real identity. And she was really nice, even to the point of bringing us both some non-Cheeto flavored jello.

By the time a couple more episodes of that show were over, Izzy had slumped down with her head nestled into my shoulder. I didn’t want to move and disturb her, so I just lowered the volume with the nearby remote and lay there, half-watching the next show and half just… zoning out. I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. Maybe it was weird to see just laying there as some sort of vacation, but after the past… God knew how many days, it really was.

Later, I would think about all that other stuff that we needed to do. I would worry about where Amber was, how Bobby was doing, what was going to happen with Pencil and the other Scions, how the Minority was going to recover from that betrayal, and… and all of it. I would worry about it then. But for now, for this moment, I was here with my sister.

And that was enough.