Summus Proelium

The next few days of finals went about as well as could be expected. I didn't know everything, and there was still plenty of stress around that whole thing. But I felt reasonably confident that I hadn't completely blown any of the tests. Unfortunately, I was going to have to wait about a week before getting my results online. In the meantime, I was just going to put it out of my mind and think about other things.

Or, more accurately, avoid thinking about as much as possible. After all, Paintball and the rest of Avant-Guard were supposed to be on vacation. If I was caught going out on patrol in costume, I would end up getting a talking to from several very disappointed authority figures. And I really didn't want to deal with that. It just sounded awkward for everyone involved.

Besides, Paige and Sierra were gone. They and Irelyn had left the city already, and wouldn't be back for a couple weeks. Which was good, really good. They deserved the time together. After everything they had all been through, all the lies and confusion, they deserved a chance to get to know each other for real so they could move on together.

On top of that, Rubi knew that Murphy and Roald were on vacation, and she was making damn sure they stuck to that. They were allowed to go to the shop and help Wren with the stuff she wanted to work on, but there was to be absolutely no active Touched activity. She, like so many others, insisted that we all needed a real break from all that.

For some strange reason, people were under the impression that we had been run ragged by everything that had been happening lately.

So, with Paintball officially grounded and school over, I had to do other things to occupy my time. And I wasn't even allowed to spend all of it helping Wren. She told me that she had plenty of help for most of it, she would call if she needed more, and that I was the one who needed the biggest break. She told me to spend time with my parents, or go off by myself, or do whatever. But whatever it was, I needed to relax. Her expression was just as stern when she expressed that as everyone else's had been. It was like everyone had gotten together and decided to gang up on me about this whole vacation thing. They all wanted me to chill for the next couple weeks.

My parents had come home by that Saturday, the day after my last final. Well, technically, that was just the first full day that I was around without anything else to do. They actually came home Thursday evening. That was when the doctors had finally been convinced that there weren't going to be any more side effects, and that the cure had been fully effective.

The quarantine was over too. Which meant the city was back to full speed. With the cure readily known, and the fact that there had been no new Sleeptalk cases since the initial outbreak anyway, the freeways were completely full of people driving in and out. Seriously, they were packed. To say nothing of the airport. Apparently every flight in and out for the next while had been completely booked. Which was probably making the airline people happy, after the past weeks of being shut down.

Then, of course, there was the little fact that we had a new cult here in the city. And not the stupid but ultimately fairly unimpressive Church of the Lamb that had been around for a while. No, this was one of those orb cults, the Garden of Badb. They were the ones who were all about setting up fighting tournaments and getting people to beat the shit out of each other in exchange for prizes that were specifically suited to them.

Yeah, that was going to be a thing, obviously. Especially considering they were the ones who had tried to blow up the cure. I still didn't know why they would be doing that. Why the hell would they want to destroy the cure and make targets out of themselves? Did they really want the city to stay on lockdown even longer? Maybe they thought that would make for some fun tournaments? Or maybe their main goal had been to take the cure for themselves and offer it as a prize? Whatever the answer, they had definitely made targets out of themselves. There were plenty of people here who were pissed off at them right off the bat thanks to that.

Of course, I was pretty sure they had known that would be a thing, which made me even more worried about what their eventual plans would be. But, fortunately, they didn't tend to ramp things up that quickly. Which meant I had plenty of time for my supposed vacation. Even if there was a part of me, a not-so-quiet part, that kept insisting that I was going to feel so guilty if people got hurt or died and I could have stopped it by going after this cult sooner. I had to tell that part to shut up, because I needed this break. Besides, it wasn’t like I had some magic way of finding them. If they weren’t going to show themselves very much, I just had to wait until they did. And I might as well get some sort of rest until then. That, among other arguments, was what I kept telling that part of myself whenever it tried to make me feel bad about not being out scouring the streets.

In any case, it was Saturday morning and I was making those same arguments in my head while eating some fruit with cream out on the deck near one of Mom’s flower gardens. There were a few men working on trimming one of the trees off in the distance near the east wall, and my dad was on the phone with one of his clients or business partners or something. Hell, for all I knew it was actually a hitman and they were discussing a murder contract using coded language in front of me. Somehow, at this point, I didn’t think that would be at all out of the ordinary for my family.

I wasn’t too focused on what my dad was saying, though I half-listened for anything that might stand out as important. Mostly I was thinking about what I had found out at Maki’s. Yes, yes, that did mean I was sorta dwelling on the whole Abyssal situation, but not for myself. I’d basically been convinced that it wasn’t actually me. No, I was still thinking about who it could be. The idea that there was someone here in this city who might be one of those monsters was… actually it made me wonder how Maki knew that. Or at least what had convinced them that it was a thing. They somehow knew (or believed) that someone on their list was an Abyssal, but those names were people of all ages from all sorts of situations. And it wasn’t like they were all tied to being one specific possible Abyssal. That whole list was just ‘people who could potentially be one of several Abyssals based on their proximity and lack of a ready explanation of their whereabouts.’

And for that matter, I’d had that whole question of why proximity mattered anyway. If Abyssals could potentially teleport elsewhere, why did it matter that I had been within a couple hundred miles of one of the Collision Points? Though I’d somewhat vaguely answered that for myself. According to what I could find out, the thought was that Abyssals didn’t tend to teleport much further than those two hundred miles or so when they had their big fights. I wasn’t entirely sure what that was based on, but people smarter than me were saying it after looking at the evidence, so sure. Maybe I would ask Paige about that whole thing when she got back from her own trip. And it didn’t explain why I would be a suspect for Collision Points that had been much further away. Except that ‘tended to’ wasn’t a rule written in--

My spoon hit something fleshy. Blinking down, I found my father’s hand covering the bowl, and looked up to see him raising an eyebrow at me with a slightly amused look. “Oh, that you notice.”

Right, maybe I hadn’t been paying as much attention to what he was doing as I thought. I’d really let my mind drift right then. It occurred to me, playing back the last few seconds in my memory, that he had said my name a couple times while I was zoning out focusing on Maki’s whole thing. His phone call had ended, the thing sitting on the table nearby, next to his own empty bowl.

At one point, I might’ve tried to make up an excuse about why I hadn’t been paying attention. Which probably would’ve seemed even more suspicious. Now, however, aside from a slight blush that I couldn’t control, I just squirmed slightly and replied, “Oh, sorry, what’d you say?”

“That’s my child,” Dad teased with a small smile, “always so keenly aware of their surroundings. A monk-like focus on the world around them. Cassidy Evans, at one with their environment.”

There was a lot I could’ve said to that, some of which wouldn’t even have meant exposing either of our secrets. Instead, I just lifted my chin a bit. “Well excuse me, maybe I’m just accustomed to tuning you out because everything you have to say is so incredibly unimportant and boring.”

At first, when my parents got back to the house, I’d thought things might be awkward or strange. After all, they’d been through something very… dramatic. They could have died, and there were so many things I never would’ve been able to tell them. Yeah, that had lasted for a few minutes, before Dad made a crack about it being the thought of me being able to drive very soon that had been what really put him and Mom into their comas. Then Simon said that must’ve been what happened to everyone in the hospital, so I kicked him in the shin. He grabbed me, Izzy grabbed him, we fell into what had to look like one of those cartoon dust balls fighting each other until Mom said our full names to make us stop. Then we went back to eating dinner and… and everything was normal. That was all it took to make everyone act like Mom and Dad hadn’t just been incapacitated by Sleeptalk for all that time. Just like that, everything basically went back to the way it had been. Or maybe I was just good at faking it. Maybe we were all good at faking it.

Adopting a scandalized tone as he gasped, Dad pointed at me. “Unimportant and boring? Well, last time I checked, you didn’t think that the LEAT games were unimportant and boring. But, if you’ve changed your mind, I guess we can just toss the tickets in the shredder and go on with--”

“Wait, what’re you talking about?” I managed, giving him a confused, disbelieving look. LEAT, in this case, stood for Larkin’s Enhanced Athletic Tournament, named after its founder, Dennis Larkin. It was basically a huge competition full of various physical events and games for people who were--well, enhanced. That meant either Touched themselves, or through having Touched-Tech installed. There were various tiers that you could join based on just how enhanced you were, with a very elaborate process for how that was judged. It was a national competition, basically, with people attending from all over the country. This year it was supposed to be held in Arizona, since they had really been pushing to become a big tourism place recently. I’d always wanted to go and see the games in person, but the problem was that they tended to hold it during the first few weeks of summer, and for the past seven or eight years, my parents had always had some big investors meeting or something going on in that time. And it wasn’t like they were going to send me off to another state without them, even with Simon.

My father was giving me a sly look. “I thought that might just catch your attention. I went ahead and picked up full passes for the whole event, and we’ll be staying there for all of it. That includes several meals with some of the participants and one-on-one discussions with the Techs who designed the best enhancements. So I hope you didn’t have any plans for next week. Because, well, you won’t be here to follow through with them. All of us are going.”

My head was already shaking. “Dad, I know you have business stuff to deal with. You were--uh--you know, out of it for weeks. You have work to catch up on. You couldn’t blow that stuff off even before you lost weeks-worth of work. I know how that is. You don’t have to--”

He interrupted me with a raised finger. “Stop, Cassidy. Why do you think I’ve been on the phone for the past hour and a half? Yes, we rearranged a few things that we might not have before. But this isn’t any ordinary year. You’re right, your mother and I have been… gone for weeks. That set us back. But the time we’ve lost with you and your siblings is a hell of a lot more important than work. That’s the time we won’t get back. Our business will always be there. Those people can wait. Those meetings can wait. We rearranged some of them, and others--well they can come to us in Arizona and we’ll meet with them between the big events. Or not, but that’s up to them. Either way, that’s where we’ll be. We’re leaving tomorrow morning and coming back next Sunday.”

He got all that out before visibly blanching. “Ehh you know, I meant that whole thing to be a fun surprise, but it occurs to me that you might actually have made summer plans with someone.”

Somehow, I restrained myself from immediately mentioning all the things I could have been busy doing. Instead, I smiled slightly while sitting up in my seat as I primly replied, “Ahem, I mean, I guess I could take rain checks for all those dates I was supposed to go on if you’re saying we can go see the LEAT games instead. I’ll just have a bunch of disappointed people on my hands.”

Dad made a noise in the back of his throat. “All those dates? A bunch of disappointed people? I think I have a new idea, we’ll check out boarding schools in Arizona while we’re there and see if they’ll take on a new student who happens to need twenty-four seven monitoring. Maybe one of those ankle bracelets and we can set it to sound an alarm if anyone else gets within an inch.”

“That’s what I like about you, oh father of mine,” I informed him with as straight of a face and flat of a tone as I could manage, “you never overreact to the idea of me having a romantic life.”

Miming plugging his ears with his fingers, Dad made a face at me before clearing his throat. “Ahem, since you haven’t said anything at all for the past twenty seconds, I’m just going to assume that you had no plans and you’re very eager to go see these games. Clearly you’ve just been hugging me so hard in gratitude that I blacked out from lack of air. That would explain it.”

Snickering despite myself, I pushed myself up quickly before moving to embrace him while he remained seated in the other chair. God, it felt good. And it felt even better when I felt his hand move up to rest against my back. “Thanks, Dad. You really didn’t have to do that. I would’ve been just fine watching it in our theater. I’m pretty sure that screen’s so big it makes them bigger than life-sized. They might look smaller than I’m used to if I watch them in person. It’ll be kinda weird.”

Dad snorted at that, giving me a poke in the shoulder with the hand he had been resting on my back. “What, you mean our nation’s top Touched athletes aren’t actually nine feet tall? I feel so lied to and manipulated.” He paused then before straightening up to rise from the seat while giving me a fond look. “Well, since that’s been taken care of and I went ahead and spoiled the surprise, why don’t you go tell Izzy what’s going on?”

Following my father's advice, I headed inside with our bowls, dropping them off in the kitchen before going to find Izzy. She was upstairs, just coming out of the bathroom freshly showered when I tugged her into my room to talk about this sudden trip. Then I made sure we were alone in there and that there weren’t any maids messing around in my closet or anything. I figured some subjects might come up that we didn’t want to share with the household staff.

And yes, the fact that it took more than a two second glance around the room to ensure that no one else was in there probably said something about the absurd size of the place.

“We… we're leaving Michigan?” The way she immediately blurted that out an instant after I finished explaining made me realize that she had probably barely even left the city limits now and then, basically only for Minority stuff, and had likely never actually ventured away from the actual state itself. And judging by the suddenly nervous look on her face, it was a rather daunting prospect.

Was it weird that I found that kind of cute? And a bit of a relief. This, at least, was something totally normal to be anxious about. There was no life and death terror, no horrible, stomach-churning stress about who might live or die based on what I did in the next ten seconds. This was just my new sister, being uncertain about going so far away from home. This was something I could actually deal with. Uh, hopefully.

Taking her hands, I squeezed them and offered her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “Hey, it's gonna be okay, don’t worry. We’ll all be there together. It'll be fun to be in a new place. I’ve never actually been to Arizona before. Other places sure, not there. We can explore and hang out at all those new tourist trap places they’ve been putting up lately. Besides, the games really are a lot of fun to watch. I bet they're even better in person when you can see stuff they don't put on the monitors. Seriously, some of those people really like to show off, and it can get pretty intense. Have you paid much attention to that stuff before?”

Izzy shook her head, still looking a bit apprehensive about the whole idea. “I've seen the games in the background a couple times, but I never actually watched them. They seemed really… uhh, intense?”

I gave her a quick grin, already thinking about some of the other games I’d seen over the past few years. “Oh you have no idea. They can get pretty ridiculous. It's awesome. I can't believe it's almost time for them. Usually I pay more attention. I get hyped up for weeks before the games even start. I guess this year I was a little distracted.” After a brief pause, my face twisted. “You know, for some strange reason.”

Izzy winced at that before squeezing my hands. “Well, I guess I'll need you to explain stuff so I know what's going on. Could you be my walking, talking event program?” Immediately after asking that, she adopted a thoughtful expression. “Though knowing you guys, you probably actually have life-sized robots to lead you around these places and tell you about everything. Or maybe the information is beamed directly into your heads from a devoted satellite. Do you have any sort of chip plugged into your head for that sort of thing?”

That made me laugh despite myself. “Nope, we don’t have anything quite like that, sorry. No brain chips to catch information from orbiting satellites. I mean, if we did, I definitely would’ve used that before finals. You'll have to make do with just having me to tell you what's going on. But you're good with this?”

She visibly swallowed, still a bit nervous despite clearly doing her best to push that aside and focus on being excited about this. “Uh huh, it's not like we're allowed to go out and patrol or anything for the next couple weeks, so I guess it's happening.

“We're going to the races in Arizona.”