Flash Fire by T.J. Klune

12

The ride home was, in a word, excruciating.

Dad didn’t talk. Nick didn’t either. He wanted to, but he didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t come out in fierce accusations that he’d later regret. Regardless of what some people thought, Nick did have the presence of mind to know that some things said aloud—even if he didn’t mean them—could never be taken back. He couldn’t sit still. His leg jumped. He tapped his fingers against his thigh. He looked at his phone and set it down, only to pick it up again a few seconds later. He glanced out the window, watching the city pass them by, careful to only look at his father out of the corner of his eye. A headache was coming on, but that only made him more furious. Was it because he was stressed? Or because he hadn’t taken his pill? Or was it his telekinesis, struggling to break free?

Nick opened his mouth more than once but closed it before he could speak. He wasn’t going to go first. He’d done nothing wrong. It was Dad who needed to explain himself. And it’d better be good, or Nick was going to make him wish he’d never been born.

I’m a drama queen, he texted to Seth.

I know <3 Need help?

Thanks, boo, but I’ve got this.

Jfc Nicky. Don’t call me that.

Nah. You told me u luuuuv me so it’s official.

I did. And I do.

When they got home Dad went in the kitchen. He never looked back, expecting Nick to follow. The Christmas decorations were gone. Dad must have packed them away. He and Jazz had left a mess when they’d fled the house, but most everything looked back in order. He wondered if the tapes were still in the attic.

A rectangular box sat on the kitchen table. Nick eyed it warily as Dad leaned against the counter, chin against his chest as he breathed in, held it, breathed out, held it. Just like he’d told Nick to do time and time again when things got bad. It struck Nick, then, that he might not be the only one on the verge of panic. He didn’t know why he’d never seen it before. Did Dad have panic attacks too? What if he’d gotten that from his father, like he’d gotten his abilities from his mother?

Nick stood in the entryway to the kitchen, unsure of what to do. He waited. He wouldn’t be the first to break. Stubborn, both of them, through and through.

Dad spoke first. Without looking at Nick, he said, “Open the box.”

Nick stiffened, overwarm and uncomfortable. “What is it?”

“Do it, kid. Please.”

Nick approached the table slowly. His mind whirred, the knot in his head writhing. Each step felt as if he were walking underwater, movements slow and lethargic, even as he thought he would buzz right out of his skin. The box was big, white, and made of cardboard. He settled his hands on the lid but didn’t pull it off. “Dad, I—”

Dad shook his head. “Box first, then we’ll talk. I swear. I’ll tell you everything, but you need to see what’s inside.”

“I’ve never seen this before,” Nick said, stalling for time, trying to figure out what the box could contain.

Dad laughed hollowly. “That’s because I kept it in a storage facility. Same with most of the tapes you found. I brought them home because I was—” He sounded like he was breaking into pieces. “Because I was missing her. I needed to hear her voice, and I—you weren’t supposed to find them. I forgot they were there when I—” He shook his head, blinking rapidly. “Open the box, Nicky.”

He did as he was asked. He pulled the lid off. And froze.

There, resting in the box, was a cerulean-blue Extraordinary costume, complete with a mask with white lenses. He recognized it almost immediately, even if he’d only seen glimpses of it caught in grainy photographs.

Guardian. It was the costume that had belonged to Guardian. To his mother.

“She wore that,” Dad said, words coming out forcefully, as if they pained him, “when she went out. Said it always made her feel safer, because hiding her identity meant keeping those she loved safe while still being able to help those who needed it. It made her feel … powerful. I told her that it was her powers that made her feel that way, but she said I didn’t understand. That it wasn’t about what she could do, but what she could do with it. And that costume was a symbol of it. She said that, in a way, it was like the uniform I wore when I was a street cop. It meant something.” He looked away. “Or at least, I thought it did. I’m not so sure anymore.”

Nick touched the helmet. It was harder than he expected it to be, the material dense. He grappled with the thought that this was something Mom had touched, something she’d held in her hands, something she’d worn, and he had to stop himself from tearing through, trying to find out if it still smelled like her, like sunshine on a warm day, like wildflowers and something so distinctly Jenny Bell that Nick couldn’t find the words to explain it.

He didn’t. “You kept this,” he said in a hushed, reverent voice.

Dad looked up, eyes swollen. “I did.”

“Why?” A slow wave of anger rose in his chest, and he didn’t try to stop it. “You got rid of everything else she wore, so why keep this?”

Dad scrubbed a hand over his face. “Because she—I couldn’t bear to part with it. I hated it, Nick. I hated everything it stood for because it terrified the hell out of me. Every time she put it on, I wondered if that would be the last time I saw her—that one day, late at night, I’d get a phone call saying she’d been killed trying to protect the city. I didn’t want her doing what she did. We fought over it constantly. She said I wasn’t being fair, that she had a gift and that meant she needed to do what she could with it.” He made a pained noise, low and harsh. “Stubborn. So stubborn, like you. She was right, of course. She didn’t know—at least, at first—that the only reason I became a cop was to try to help her as best I could. I told myself that putting on the uniform meant I was doing the same thing she was.”

“That makes you a hypocrite,” Nick said.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Dad snapped. “But it was the only thing I could think of to do, because she wasn’t going to stop. No matter how hurt she got, no matter how many times she came home bloodied and bruised.”

Nick curled his hands into fists, a headache pulsing behind his right eye. He tried to focus on his father, but it felt as if his vision was frenetic, jumping, always jumping. “Do you know what it did to me?” Nick said, voice cracking. “When I got the call that you were in the hospital? That you’d been hurt when an entire building collapsed on top of you? It killed me. It killed me because I thought you were gone and I was going to be alone. That you left me, just like she did.”

Dad hung his head. “I’m fine, Nick. I’m okay. I’m always going to be okay. I’m always going to come home to you.”

“You can’t promise that,” Nick said. “No one can. You go out there every single day, and there are people who don’t give two shits about your stupid promises.” Dad took a step toward him. “Don’t. No. Don’t come near me. You stay right where you are.”

Dad fisted his hair. “That’s not fair, Nick. I have a job to do.”

“So did she,” Nick said coldly. “Yeah, it scared you, but she did it anyway—not because she didn’t love you, but because she knew it was the right thing to do.”

“I know,” Dad spat. “Believe me, I know that better than anybody.”

“Do you?” Nick asked. “Because she eventually stopped, didn’t she? You must have worn her down until she couldn’t—”

“She stopped because she found out she was pregnant with you.”

The lightbulb above them flared. Dad looked up, eyes wide and spooked. Nick ignored it, staring at his father. “What?”

“You,” Dad said in a low voice. “We lived in a shitty apartment on the East Side, a hole with faulty wiring and never enough hot water for a shower. But it was ours, and we didn’t care. We were out of school and making the most of our lives. I was a cop, and she was a lawyer during the day and Guardian at night.” He began to pace, the cracked linoleum creaking under his feet. “I came home late one night. I expected her to be gone already. There was this group of people—we didn’t know who they were. They were robbing banks all over the city, but it wasn’t about protecting banks. People were getting hurt, and she couldn’t stand for that. She never could. She’d been getting close to figuring it out, and I thought she’d be on their trail. She wasn’t. She was sitting at the kitchen table. She looked up at me as I walked in, and she was crying. I thought someone had died.”

Nick swayed back and forth, his heart in his throat.

“I rushed over to her,” Dad continued, still looking up at the light. “I asked her what was wrong—just tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it, I swear I’ll fix it. It took me a bit to see that while she was crying, she was also laughing. And when she looked up at me, she smiled and said that she’d taken three different pregnancy tests, and all of them showed the same thing. You, Nicky. They showed you.” He lowered his gaze to Nick. “Eight weeks. She was eight weeks pregnant with you. You weren’t planned. You weren’t something we’d done on purpose, but oh, there was this light in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before. You changed everything for us, Nick.”

“She stopped because of me?” Nick asked dully.

“She didn’t want to take the chance,” Dad said, “that something could happen to you while she was acting as Guardian. She said that at least for the length of the pregnancy, she wouldn’t go out anymore. It hurt her, even though she tried to hide it. But I never made that choice for her. I never told her she couldn’t still be Guardian.”

“I bet you didn’t try and stop her,” Nick said bitterly.

“You’re damn right I didn’t,” Dad snarled. “Because I wanted to be selfish. I wanted us to be more important to her than other people. If that makes me the asshole, fine. I accept that. But I won’t apologize for it.”

“It didn’t matter though, did it?” Nick said. “Because they still found her. Eventually. It wasn’t random, was it? Who are they? Did you lie to me about them too?”

“They don’t matter,” Dad said. “They’re locked up, Nicky, and they won’t ever be getting out. They can’t hurt anyone again.”

“And I’m supposed to take your word on that?”

“It’s the truth. It’s over, Nick. It’s been over for a long time. But that’s the reason for all of this, okay? That’s the reason we—I—made the decisions that I did. You … it was little things, at first. You were a kid, just a baby, and I’d come to your crib, and the mobile—this cheap plastic thing the guys at the precinct chipped in for—would be spinning, even though it was turned off. You were kicking your legs and watching it as it turned and turned and turned. We didn’t know that what she could do was genetic. We knew nothing about Extraordinaries because there was no one to ask.”

“You knew,” Nick whispered, “even then?”

Dad hung his head, slumping in on himself. “We didn’t know what was going on. But the older you got, the more things … happened around you. Stuffed animals floating in midair. Your little toy cars racing around the room. Your blocks, little wooden blocks with numbers and letters painted on them, would spell out words even before you could spell. They’d say things like DADDY and MOMMY and LOVE and HOME and she was so scared for you, Nick. We both were. We knew what she’d been through, knew there were people out there who, if they knew who she was, would stop at nothing to destroy everything she loved.”

“What did you do?” Nick asked, and the bulb began to blink slowly, light and dark, light and dark. The pain in Nick’s head lessened slightly, but it was a good ache, a good pain.

“We went to the only person we thought we could trust. The only person who knew what she could do.”

“Burke,” Nick said. “Simon Burke.”

Dad nodded, looking at the floor. “You were … four, maybe five. We told him that we were worried that her abilities had passed on to you. That we wanted to—not stop it, but suppress it, if we could.” He held up his hand as Nick started to sputter angrily. “You were diagnosed with ADHD, Nicky. Do you have any idea what could have happened, since you had ADHD”—he exhaled explosively—“and telekinesis? We didn’t make the decisions we did to stop you from being who you are but to try to keep you safe until the time was right. When we could help you figure things out.”

“I’m sixteen years old,” Nick said. “When the hell were you planning on—”

“You’re still a minor,” Dad snapped. “I don’t care if you’re six or sixteen, you’re a kid. You should be focusing on school and boys and thinking about what comes next, not worrying about exploding shit with your mind.”

“I can do both,” Nick retorted. “I have been doing both. What were you thinking when you found out about Owen and Seth? That I was going to walk away from everything? That I wasn’t going to get involved? If that’s what you thought, then you don’t know me at all.”

“I know you better than anyone,” Dad said, taking another step toward him. The table stood between them, and Nick thought if he pushed, if he really pushed, he could send it flying. He could probably destroy the entire kitchen if he wanted to. The entire house. “I’ve watched over you every day of your life. Everything I’ve done—everything I am—is because of you.”

Nick laughed, the sound harsh. “Don’t put the blame on me. You did this. You took this—this part of me and tried to keep it from me. You went to Simon fucking Burke—and why the hell don’t I remember that?—and found a way to take something from me that you had no right to.”

“We wanted to keep you—”

“Safe? By crushing me? By shoving this thing so far down behind a wave of pills that I wouldn’t be able to find it? Do you have any idea the kind of violation that is? What if you’d been a homophobic dick, on top of everything else? Would you have tried to find a way to kill that too?”

“No, Nicky—oh god, no, it’s not like that. It’s not—”

“And what about after she died?” Nick demanded. “After everything we went through, didn’t you ever stop to think that I had a right to know about her? About myself?”

“I couldn’t lose you too!” Dad cried, and Nick flinched, heart shattering. Tears were falling freely now. Dad, too, his face twisting as his chest heaved. “Oh my god, I couldn’t lose you too. All I ever wanted was to have you grow into the man I knew you could be, kind and loving and so damn brave. Did I make mistakes? Yeah, Nicky. Many, many mistakes. But I couldn’t have the same thing happen to you. Hate me all you want, but I did what I did because I love you more than anything on this earth. I would do anything for you, even if that meant squashing the part of you that you think makes you extraordinary. You were already extraordinary. Every single piece of you. Every single part.” He moved around the table. Nick couldn’t make his feet do what he wanted them to do. He was rooted in place, and his father stopped before him, shaking, shaking as he gripped Nick by the elbows. “Nick, please. Okay? Please try to understand—”

Nick took a step back, shoving Dad’s hands away. “Burke knew. And you did. When I started dating Owen, you both knew. When I found out about Pyro Storm and Shadow Star, you knew. When I was fighting for my life, you knew.”

Dad scowled. “Burke. Goddamn Simon Burke. If he hadn’t—”

No. No, no, no. “Don’t. This has nothing to do with him. This is on you. At least he had the balls to tell me the truth, in his own way.”

“He’s trying to tear us apart. Can’t you see that? This is exactly what he wants. He’s never forgiven me for what happened to Jenny, and I—”

“We don’t need Burke to tear us apart,” Nick said, his words clipped. “You’re doing that just fine on your own. How am I supposed to ever trust you again?”

Dad was shaking his head even before he finished. “That’s not—I don’t know, Nick. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Nick tasted bile in the back of his throat. Even as angry as he was, he couldn’t stand to see his father so beaten down. He startled when Dad slumped to the floor, wrapping his arms around his knees, pulling his legs to his chest.

Part of Nick’s anger—a small part—dissolved as he took a step forward. He stood next to his father, racked with indecision before putting his hand on the top of Dad’s head, fingers curling into his hair. “I can be both,” Nick said softly. “I can be a kid and still do what I can. You taught me to be brave and selfless, and while the whole selfless thing is probably up for debate, I still listened to you. I always have.”

“I know,” Dad said, wrapping an arm around the back of Nick’s knees, anchoring him in place.

Nick took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I’m going to ask you something, and you can’t lie to me.”

Dad nodded against his leg.

Nick hesitated. Then, “Did you tell Simon Burke about Seth? About who he is and what he can do?”

Dad lifted his head, looking up at Nick. His eyes were watery, but he seemed as if he was in control. “I never told him who Seth is. I never told him what he could do. The only thing I did was keep him apprised of Pyro Storm’s movements, and even then, I kept it vague. I never gave him even a hint about Pyro Storm’s true identity.”

Nick glared at him. “That’s still pretty messed up. Burke could’ve used the information you gave him and done something to Seth. If that’d happened and I’d found out, you really think I would’ve forgiven you?”

“No,” Dad whispered. He let Nick go, hands resting in his lap. “I know you wouldn’t have. And you would’ve been right.”

Nick nodded slowly, parsing the words, trying to find any hint of deception. Dad was good, but Nick had spent far too much time clicking through Wikipedia and knew what to look for. Dad’s eyes never darted away; he didn’t try to embellish by filling in the blanks. It struck Nick, then, that he was trying to see if his father was lying to him. Dad, the one person he never thought he’d have to think that way about. “You’ll need to talk to Bob and Martha,” Nick finally said. “They deserve to hear all this from you. Seth is their kid, and since you were giving Burke information, they need to do what they can to make sure Seth is protected. And I’m going to do the same.”

“What are you talking about? Nick, you need to stay the hell away from Burke. I don’t know what he’s doing, but you can’t get involved.”

Nick swallowed thickly. “A little late for that. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I won’t let the stupidity of adults get in the way. You screwed up. We’re not going to pay for your mistakes.”

Dad looked at him for a long moment before finally nodding. He reached for Nick but aborted the movement at the last second, hands falling back to his sides. “Where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know,” Nick admitted. “I love you, but I don’t like you very much right now. I’m probably going to feel that way for a while. And I’m not taking the Concentra again,” he said, reaching out and touching the costume on the table in front of him. The material was soft. No cape, as far as he could see. He approved. He’d gotten his good taste from her. “That’s not up for debate.”

Dad looked like he was about to argue but deflated instead. “Okay, Nick. We’ll—we’ll figure it out. No more Concentra, but you have to get something to help you out. It’s not a bad thing, but if it can be managed, then we need to make sure it’s done so you can focus. I’ll make an appointment. We’ll get it sorted.”

“Nothing from Burke Pharmaceuticals.”

Dad’s jaw tightened. “No. Nothing from Burke Pharmaceuticals. I’ll make sure of it.”

Nick relaxed incrementally. “Sorry about the light bulb.”

Dad chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. It’s the reason we got a Costco card—to buy them in bulk. Your mom did the same thing whenever she got upset.”

He couldn’t let this moment pass him by. “Will you tell me about her? I want to know everything.”

For a moment, Nick thought he’d refuse. Instead, he said, “Yeah, kid. Everything.”