Jasmine’s eyes went wide as she realized what I was going to do, and as she opened her mouth-either to accept or protest, I wasn’t sure which-mine came down atop hers to mimic the way my mother had once settled upon mine. I shut my eyes and concentrated on transferring all the remaining aura in my body into hers. I gave it all up, and as it reunited in her body, I felt every ounce of power that had made me super, the Kairos, even the energy keeping me standing, fade away. I fed the entirety of my aura into Jasmine’s soul, reuniting the severed chi. As for my powers…well, they went somewhere. The Universe. Ether. I didn’t know. But even as I sagged with the loss, my senses dulled, I kept my lips fastened tight…and focusing on sending one final pulse of superpower arching from my body into Jasmine’s.
I’d been near death enough times to know I was experiencing it now. This time, though, was both the best and worst because I was choosing it, meeting it full on, playing chicken, but with no intention of dodging at the last minute. I simply gave myself over to it, a release like falling backward into a pool, though the feeling that the pool had moved-that it was farther away than I’d judged-was disorienting.
I felt the tunnel shake above and around me, and realized Jasmine was freeing herself with that final beat of power, ripping her restraints from the wall, her victorious cry sounding like it was coming from my own throat. There was a pounding like walls cracking. I heard the Tulpa screaming in the voice of a monster. It made me want to smile.
I was the Kairos-racing through the tunnels beneath my city, choosing my battles, putting a mortal life above-always above-mine, but the word didn’t only signify some preordained savior of the Zodiac. The kairotic moment was defined as the critical time to act. The abandonment of hesitation, the appointed time.
Fate, I thought, and I began, peacefully, to sink.
What’s one person?
Warren’s words, spoken so callously under a bulging sky at the entrance to the pipeline, were the first that I remembered when I woke.
In a ditch.
On the side of the road.
Alone.
And while it appeared I’d been left in the wake of a flood for some mortals to find, I tried not to give in to the feeling that I’d been thrown away, like refuse, for the second time in my life. After all, I thought as I rose to my knees, Warren wouldn’t just dump me anywhere. He always had it well planned out.
Squinting beneath a full blazing sun, I tried to stand and figure out where I was. The latter proved the easiest of the two tasks. I was in the Las Vegas Wash, the end point for all the debris and unwanted things that were pushed out of the city. But I was surprised when my knees buckled and I toppled forward in that wash, surprising myself again when I discovered my arms couldn’t hold my own weight. It was, I thought, with a sense of detachment, as if my muscles hadn’t been used all year.
Of course, the unyielding earth stopped my fall for me, and I rose again, more slowly this time, with a mouthful of mud, palms cut where they’d landed atop shattered glass. I knelt among choked weeds and stripped tires, slouched there for at least an hour. I stared at my palms the entire time, sunlight glinting off the cut glass in front of me, finally drying the blood that stained it-though I knew someone, somewhere, would still be able to smell it. But I was anosmic. My muscles were atrophied.
And my palms didn’t heal.
I reclined on the slope of one bank, head on a boulder, and decided to lay there just a bit longer. Maybe another hour, like I was sunning myself under that beautiful, sweeping blue sky. Just until some curious mortal came along, a homeless person, or maybe some kids looking to see what the storm had washed away. Someone who’d be wondering, as I was, if there was anything in the wash that could be salvaged.
Finally, I closed my eyes, giving the worry up to someone else’s keeping.
26
“How do you feel?”
Feel, I thought numbly, how do I feel?
I stared at the scrubs of the traveling nurse, and after a long moment nodded. It was an inappropriate response to the question, but one I could always blame on being the notoriously flighty and spoiled Olivia Archer.
Formerly the Archer.
Xavier’s former personal physician, now mine, had told me the day before that I’d make a full recovery. He didn’t understand why I laughed so bitterly at that, but he was mortal and had no true understanding of what, exactly, a full recovery entailed. Perplexed by my reaction, and perhaps annoyed, he finally gave me a sedative, and we both went away for a few hours.
With a cheerfulness that was a little more forced, the nurse tried again, chattering about how she was brand new to the valley, but that she’d seen the storms and clouds on the television and wasn’t it great that things were back to normal? I turned my head to the window, mentally checking out. Beyond the pane lay a tender blue sky and a sharp winter sun. I knew it was bright and clear, but to me it appeared dim, like blinds had been drawn across my vision. I sighed, wondering if I’d ever get used to mere 20/20 vision again.
The flowers sent by well-wishers were now addressed to me instead of Xavier, though I could no longer scent them moldering in their vases. The equipment left by the physical therapists sat nearby, though I’d refused their help and hadn’t touched it yet. On my more positive days I told myself I’d learn to move through this world as a mortal again by myself, and that if my mother could do it, so could I. I was still an Archer, I would think, and I’d strive to make her proud.
At other times I wondered why Warren hadn’t just let me die.
Because you’re mortal. It’s his duty to protect you now.
And he probably would. Like an owner would protect a pet, just because it was theirs. At least he’d leave me alone now that I had nothing he could profit from. To think I’d been worried about him finding out about the powers I’d gambled away in Midheaven. Maybe if I’d told him I was broken, I could have deterred him sooner.
So as the fog of injury and shock gradually lifted, I began to put the events leading up to Jasmine’s near drowning in order. So much of what transpired in these last weeks had been planned by either the Tulpa or Regan or Warren that I finally came to the conclusion my real weakness as a superhero hadn’t been lost powers, or being a target due to my kairotic status, but that it was my ignorance, my innocence. I was the only one who’d ever gone into that tunnel without a secret agenda. I’d actually believed that with a weapon at my hip and a clear sense of right and wrong, I could blast through any problem or person I came upon. Instead, brains had won out over brawn, and I found out belatedly that I had too little of both.
I didn’t yet know the details of everything that’d happened after I gave the rest of my chi over to Jasmine, but the sky was evidence enough that I’d succeeded in healing the changeling, and a quick Google search unearthed a news piece about a young girl’s miraculous recovery.
Plus, the city hadn’t collapsed in on itself like a soufflé.
Meanwhile, in lieu of something as interesting as the weather to talk about, the local reporters used the news of my near drowning in a flash flood to reignite a discussion about the Archer dynasty and its future here in the valley. There was a summary of Olivia Archer’s notorious party life, complete with glossy images of her at clubs, with different men, always smiling and beautiful and looking like she hadn’t a care in the world, which some reporters pointed to as a moral lesson. The insinuation was that carelessness and excess had nearly cost Olivia Archer her life; the subtext was that she deserved it. And if the inexperienced heiress couldn’t even avoid a dangerous seasonal flash flood, then how on earth could she be expected to run a multi-million-dollar company? Archer, Inc. stock prices plummeted and John’s blood pressure soared.