Summus Proelium

A look at an Autistic Star-Touched and how their condition affects their life and work.

Present Day, Somewhere In Chicago

“Everybody just shut the fuck up!” The man bellowing that demand wore a gray and red ski mask and an old army surplus coat with obvious armored plating added to it here and there. He also carried a shotgun, which he panned back and forth in front of a group of huddled, terrified hostages. They were all kneeling together on the floor of a parking garage in downtown Chicago. The same parking garage that they had all, as employees of the company who occupied the building above, been on their way through at the end of a long workday to go home and spend the evening unwinding, or enjoying the rather busy Chicago nightlife. A few of them even had plans together.

And yet, now it seemed as though they might never actually make it home after all. They had all either been grabbed as they walked to their vehicles, or dragged out of the driver's seat, and forced over to this spot in the center of the room. The man shouting was one of six similarly armed and dressed figures in sight of the prisoners. The other five roamed that part of the parking garage, searching for any person who might have managed to hide through the commotion. They already had other people stationed at the exits, who had caught a couple trying to flee and dragged them in to join their coworkers.

Once he was satisfied that things were quiet enough, the shouting man cleared his throat and lowered his gun a bit with a muttered curse about how it was easier dealing with children than these people. “Now, if you wanna just be quiet enough for me to explain what's going on, maybe we can get through this. Look, this ain't about you. It's about the scum-sucking corporation you throw your lives away for.” He paused, a soft chuckle escaping him. “Maybe more literally today than usual, but hey. What else can we do to get the attention of the public? These corporations are making billions off you sheep, and the only way to really bring them down is to show everyone out there how utterly pointless it is, and how little they give a shit about people. So here's what's gonna happen. Do you see those numbers we gave you?” He waited until the hostages all stared down at the laminated cut-out numbers they had been forced to take, ranging from one all the way up to forty-six. One for each. “We're going to be auctioning you off to your dear employers. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars each. We’ll go in order, one, two, three, four, and so on. So, to get every single one of you back safe and sound now they’ll just have to pay eleven million, five hundred thousand. It shouldn't be anything at all for a place like that, right? Not with the sort of profits you helped bring in over the past year by itself. I mean hell, that’s not even half of your CEO’s golden parachute that’s waiting for him if the merger they’re working on goes through. You know, the merger that might just mean half of you lose your jobs anyway. You all did know about that, right? Or did they keep it a secret so you wouldn’t fuck up the negotiations they’ve been working so hard on?”

He waited for a moment before continuing. “Now, you might be thinking that this isn't a very fair test, since public perception is going to change their response and there’s no way they’d just let you die with the way all the innocent civvies would react. But here's a little secret. The public doesn't know about this yet. Nope, no one else besides the people at the very top of the corporate leadership knows exactly what’s going on, that you've been taken prisoner, and we're monitoring all communications out of the building. We made it clear to them that this has to be an in-house thing. They think it's because we don't want the authorities involved, or for the public to ever know about it. In fact, we’ve actually given them a financial incentive to write you off. If they don't pay, then we're going to collapse in this parking garage. And with evidence the construction firm cut corners, they'll be able to sue that firm into the ground.

“So, to recap, they can pay eleven and a half million dollars to get you back safe and sound, or they can pay nothing, and end up getting a hell of a lot more money without any blame coming back on them. Or so they think. But as soon as they decide to keep their money and let you die, well, then everyone will know the truth about it after all. And everyone will see that they need to burn these corporations to the ground. So don't feel bad, you all might die today, but you'll be instrumental in bringing about the downfall of an evil, soul-sucking evil company like the one you work for. Honestly, when it all comes down to it, I think you'll end up with your own statues commemorating the occasion. Maybe they'll put them up right in this spot.” He used the shotgun to gesture around the area they were sitting. “They could tear down this entire building and put a nice, pretty park here. Your statues can be arranged around in a circle so no one ever forgets your sacrifice.”

“You are very rude.”

The statement came not from any of the hostages, but from a figure who emerged from behind one of the concrete pillars nearby. She was a slender woman, about five and a half feet tall. She wore dark burgundy pants with intricate dark gold patterns which almost looked like very elaborate cursive writing without ever actually being able to be deciphered as real letters, as well as a loose, long-sleeved shirt that was the opposite in coloring, dark gold with two burgundy lines running up the sides and down over the outside of her arms. Her gloves were dark to the point of almost being black, matching her boots. Her head and face were entirely encased within a dark burgundy helmet, with a gold visor that made seeing her expression impossible.

“Making me side with the scum-sucking corporation,” she continued, “is annoying.”

“Wh--Lexeme!?” The man who had been so calm and collected while explaining his murderous plot to the helpless prisoners spun that way and raised his shotgun. All around the newly-arrived figure the other five did the same. They surrounded her with their weapons pointed that way. “How the fuck did she get in here, you morons?! You were supposed to be watching all of the entrances and backing each other up! But some fucking Star-Touched Conservator cunt strolls right in? How incompetent are you assholes?!” With those bellowed words echoing through the garage, he focused on the costumed woman. “Now you listen to me, this doesn't have to get ugly. No one has to get hurt.” Even as he said that, his voice shook, betraying his nervousness.

The Star-Touched in question tilted her head slightly. She wasn’t looking at the guns that were all leveled at her, or at the man addressing her. Hell, she wasn’t even looking at the hostages. Instead, her attention seemed to be directed toward a spot in the distant corner, where a damaged pipe was leaking bits of water onto the concrete floor below, with a soft, almost imperceptible dripping sound. Every time a drop hit the gathered puddle, her head rocked a tiny bit. It was almost like a slight, yet physical blow.

“Uh, hello?” The man in charge stared at the woman for a brief moment as he tried to figure out what she was doing before grunting. “Fuck it, take her down!” He was already putting action to words, squeezing the trigger of his shotgun. “We’ve got the--”

In that instant, just as the surrounding criminals took aim to fire and bring down the Star-Touched who had interrupted their plot, she spoke a single word in a voice that seemed to reverberate through the whole area. “CATCH.”

Despite what some might've thought, it wasn't an instruction or a warning. Not exactly. Instead, along with the sound of that single word came the visual manifestation of it. Glowing blue letters manifested in the air in front of the woman, spelling out that word, ‘CATCH.’ Each letter was about a foot and a half tall and several inches thick. In an instant, as those triggers were being pulled, the word broke apart. The first C grew to several times its original size and planted itself in front of her, while the A and T also grew and moved to either side. The second C and the H flew around behind her, covering the woman’s back. In the time it took from when the surrounding armed gunmen began to pull their triggers, to when the rounds actually emerged from the weapons, the physically-manifested word surrounded its creator.

That was when the sound of gunfire (Touched-Tech muffled, yet still rather loud within these confines) echoed throughout the garage. Every single gunman there had a perfect shot at their target. There was no way she could survive being mowed down from six different angles. They were even careful enough not to be aiming at one another through her.

And yet, their careful aim meant nothing. Lexeme stood throughout the following barrage of gunfire, utterly unmoved and undisturbed.

When they finally stopped shooting, the men stared as every bullet and slug they had sent that way lay trapped against the letters that surrounded their target. The word ‘catch’ had literally caught the incoming bullets. A moment later, the letters vanished, and the bullets and slugs all rained down on the cement with a series of metal tinkling sounds.

Before they could recover from that and shoot again, the woman spoke three more quick words in rapid succession. “TAKE. PUSH. DETAIN.”

Just as before, glowing physical manifestations of the letters for each of those words appeared. TAKE was a green, cursive word with a white outline, the letters blending into one another. That word extended out, the letters themselves merging as the word became a long whip, which lashed out across the front of each armed figure in a wide circle. Every time the end of the ‘whip’ came near one of the men, the gun he was holding would be torn from his grasp and brought together into a bundle. That bundle of guns all dropped into a pile at the costumed figure’s feet.

The hostage-takers didn’t have a chance to react to their guns being taken away, let alone try to reclaim them. The word PUSH manifested in bright purple letters, appearing bold and even thicker than the previous words. An instant after appearing, the four letters which made up the word broke apart, each splitting to fly off to the woman’s front, back, and either side. And as they did so, a concussive blast of energy erupted from each letter to slam into the gathered men. All six of them were struck by one blast or more, sending them flying several feet before they crashed down onto the floor.

Finally, there was the third word, DETAIN. That one appeared in gold lettering, each one three feet in height but as thin as paper. As soon as it manifested, each letter of the word broke apart, much like the previous one. In this case, however, there were six letters. One for each of the six men. Those letters flew off, each slamming down onto one of the fallen figures before they could pick themselves up. No matter how much the men struggled, they couldn’t free themselves. The letters pinned them to the ground, keeping them trapped. Or rather, detained.

Once those men were all taken care of, Lexeme turned to look at the gathered hostages and spoke another word. “SNIP.” Those four letters appeared in small, green form before the word bent in half like the blades of a pair of scissors. The scissors formed from that word flew over and began to cut the ropes that were keeping the prisoners bound.

As soon as they were freed, the people all scrambled to their feet and began to lavish praise, thanks, and questions on the woman who had saved them. The voices coming from all sides blended into one another, making individual sentences impossible to pick out. Unhelped, of course, by the continued presence of that dripping pipe in the background. Worse, the trapped criminals were shouting threats, adding to the auditory chaos. The words all came at different volumes and in different tones, but each was piercing no matter how quiet or loud. It was like trying to listen to five different songs at the same time, all at different volumes, and while an undercurrent of sharp static played throughout.

Thank sssssskkkk COULD HAVE kkkksssss KICK YOUR FUCKING ASS

UPPITY CUNT kkkssshhh get my gun

drip drip ssskkkss people would kill sssss

drip sskkksss so much kkkkssshhhssskkk bravest thing I ever

think you’re such hot shit kssssskkkss

ssssshhhhssss need to call ssssskkkkk

drip sssss guns and they sssskkkkksss if you hadn’t

I love your costume, who ssskkkss BLEEDING AND CRYING

kkksssss my son was drip drip

sssskkkk LOSE THE ONLY MOTHER sssssss any idea how dangerous kkksshhhhsssss

THANK YOU THANK YOU kkssssshhhhkkkssss

drip told them to put security

drip drip call them right now.

kshhhhsssskkkkkk IF ANYONE COULD FIND

drip drip sure they don’t have help

Forty-six incredibly grateful, ecstatic, and loud people surrounding her and talking all at once, mixed with the very ungrateful and unhappy voices of the bad guys she had captured. Their voices assaulted her, seeming to slam into her from every angle as she stood with her head down, staring at the floor. Her body rocked back and forth a little while she held her arms out and down at an angle slightly away from her body. Her fingers stretched out and up, as far apart as they could get, then closed in on one another in something approximating a fist before opening and widening apart once more. Her arms gradually moved up and down through that whole process.

Through all of that, the woman looked around, making absolutely certain that the area was clear. The bad guys were contained, they had no more backup (she had already taken care of the ones standing guard at the exits), and the civilians were safe. It was hard with all the sounds assaulting her, but she forced herself to focus for those few seconds, powering through the cacophony.

Finally, once certain that everything was under control, she pressed a button on her glove to send a message outside of the garage, then spoke another power word. “QUIET.” In this case, the word manifested as large, almost six-foot-tall, very fluffy letters in soft yellow coloring. Immediately, the word wrapped itself around its creator, blocking her off from all the former hostages clamoring to thank her, as well as the trapped gunmen who had been shouting their own curses and threats.

And just like that, all that outside noise disappeared. Within the confines of her cloud-like lettering, the woman was left in blessed silence. She continued to stand like that, eyes closed as she quietly hummed the jingle from an old cereal commercial that hadn’t actually been on the air for at least a decade. Her hands continued to open and shut like that while she rocked herself for the next minute or so. The commercial jingle wasn't very long, but she hummed it to herself three more times before stopping. Finally, she opened her eyes and took a deep breath. People. People were there. People were waiting. She was okay. She could do this.

How was this supposed to go? What was she supposed to say? Reassure them. Yes, she could do that. It was the right thing to do after what they had been through.

Finally lowering her hands back to her sides, Lexeme made the quiet word fade away and prepared herself to be assaulted by sound from all sides. And yet, she didn't find herself surrounded by dozens of former hostages after all. They were being taken care of by several police officers and paramedics who had made it into the garage by that point. Other officers were trying to pull the trapped criminals out from under the letters pinning them down. Seeing that, she quickly made those disappear as well, watching for a moment as the would-be mass murderers were handcuffed and taken away.

“Hey, you okay?” One of the cops spoke up from a few feet back, his attention on her. “I know that was kind of a lot to deal with. But hey, you saved all those people.”

“I… I am--wait.” Before continuing that, Lexeme glanced toward that dripping pipe and spoke another word. “STICKY.” The grayish-blue letters went flying off to envelop the pipe, forming a glob against it that would prevent more drips and remain at least long enough for her to get through this interaction and leave so it wouldn’t be pounding through her head like a hammer anymore.

That done, she turned her attention back to the officer. “Yes, I am fine.” The words came bluntly, which almost immediately made her rethink them. Wait, was she supposed to say something else? Was thank you something that was supposed to be added onto the end of something like that? When someone asked if you were okay, that meant they were expressing concern for your well-being. The polite thing would be to thank them for that concern, right? For a moment, she ran through other, similar conversations she remembered hearing, both in real life and in movies and television. Several seconds of silence passed before she settled on playing it safe. “Thank you.” Better to come off as awkward than rude. People thought she was rude far too often, even when she tried to explain that she didn’t mean to. Unfortunately, there were plenty of times when she didn’t even realize that there was anything wrong until far too much time had passed to even try to sort things out. Sometimes someone would tell her she had been rude or annoying to another person days or even weeks later, as part of some completely different subject. Which she didn’t think was very fair, because how was she supposed to do something about it then? She had tried before, but the people she tried to talk to about things that had happened weeks earlier were always baffled by why she was bringing it up again. Sometimes they even thought she was intentionally being rude again by talking about it, as if she was rubbing it in or something.

Pushing those thoughts aside, Lexeme focused on the friendly police officer who had stopped to check on her. She didn’t extend a hand that way. It probably would have been the proper thing to do. Shaking hands was definitely on the list of appropriate social responses, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it. The sensation of having her hand held by another person, their fingers clasped against one another, just felt wrong. Sometimes she could manage it for a quick moment, but not now. Nor did she meet his gaze. But that fact, at least, was hidden by the colored visor she wore. He couldn’t see where her eyes were pointed, as long as the helmet was turned in his general direction. Instead, she continued to look at a spot slightly past the man while offering as politely as possible, “It's nice to meet you, Officer…” She leaned closer a bit and moved her gaze from the pillar in the distance to the uniform long enough to read his nametag. “... Johnson.”

Officer Johnson, for his part, gave a very soft cough. “Ah, we’ve met actually. A few different times. You helped clear out that sniper nest a couple weeks ago and I asked you if you knew any good Greek restaurants around the area because I just moved here a few months back and my wife’s parents were about to visit?”

Lexeme gave a bit of a double-take, looking him up and down. “No,” she reflexively started in a blunt tone. “You’re not--wait.” She gave him another look, running through her mental catalog of visual features. Looking at his face didn't really help. It was just a face. Two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. She was pretty sure the eyes were dark from the brief glimpse she’d gotten before looking away, but a lot of people had dark eyes. How did anyone look at one face and magically tell it apart from any other face? He was a blond-haired, dark-eyed policeman in a uniform like so many others. Even the name Johnson was incredibly bland. Which was completely unfair. No name should ever be repeated, especially not as commonly as Johnson was. It was just impossible to tell them all apart by name, and names were supposed to be how you did that.

But she did, at least, remember the event he was talking about. It wasn't him though. He wasn't the one she talked to about Greek restaurants. And yet, why would he lie about that? It didn't make sense, and that was starting to make her feel paranoid. Fortunately, in the next moment, she realized. “Hair. You cut your hair. It's different.”

“Oh.” The man touched the back of his head. “Yeah I guess it was a few inches longer and a bit more curly. It was getting in the way, so I had one of my barber friends shave it down for me.” Immediately after acknowledging that, he blinked back to her. “Ohhh, shit, sorry, that’s why you didn’t recognize me, huh? Yeah, I heard you’re a umm… sorry, what’s the right term? A person with autism?”

“Autistic person,” she corrected him, her gaze still fixed on a spot roughly six inches to the left of his face. “Identity-first language. IFL. That’s what we prefer, usually. But you should ask the person. Others are different. We’re not all the same. You have blond hair, that doesn’t mean you like the same things as every other man with blond hair. We don’t have a hive mind. Your world is safe from invasion.” She smiled a bit at her own words before realizing that her flat tone might not have conveyed the intention, and her face was hidden. “That was a joke.”

“Oh yeah, thanks.” Officer Johnson hesitated before coughing awkwardly. “And that was a dumb way to respond to it, huh? Sorry, it was funny, I just… is it hard? You know, doing what you do while being--I mean having--you know.”

“No--yes… not…” Lexeme started and stopped trying to respond a couple times, before falling silent briefly as she thought it through carefully. “It’s not difficult to be a Star-Touched. I enjoy helping people. I can do it. I have the ability, and people need help. The um, what you would call difficulties exist in everything, everywhere. Going shopping can be loud and bright, driving, being outside when others are, just being part of the world can be challenging. I… work through it. Sometimes better than others. Sometimes I… I see something and I think it’s strange. I don’t understand it. But I don’t know if… if it’s strange because it’s just strange, or because I don’t understand. I don’t know if it’s me or… or them, it, the thing. And it’s hard to ask. People don’t like it when you ask if what they’re doing is normal or strange.

“So, yes, there are challenges. But the challenges don’t exist because I use my powers to help people. They exist because the world is challenging. It just is, and it would be no matter what I did for a living. Oh, living. I have to go.” She started to turn away, paused, then turned back to look at his nametag again while speaking carefully once more, though taking the time to choose her words probably made it sound stilted and unnatural. “I--ahh--appreciate your question and this conversation. I’ve had much worse interactions, especially with police. I don’t like you very much.” Once again, she began to turn to leave, then reversed her motion to add an even more stilted, “The--police you, not you you. I’m sure you’re fine. I told you I was fine to start my part of this conversation. Now I’m telling you that you are fine to end it. Symmetry. Goodbye.”

Finally, she strode away quickly. All around her, police officers were talking at one another, radios were going off, police cars were sitting with their colorful lights playing across the dimly-lit garage interior, and people were taking pictures, their irregular bright flashes making her flinch a little each time.

Instead of going out the front exit where there were bound to be reporters, even more police cars with those flashing lights, and witnesses all with their own questions, she walked to a nearby elevator. The same one many of the former hostages had taken to get down to the garage in the first place, and the one she herself had ridden to make it there in time to intervene.

There was a camera on the elevator, but it was already disabled. She knew that, because she was the one who had disabled it. Or rather, she’d transferred the feed from the next elevator over to the camera for this one several minutes earlier. So no one sitting in the security room would see as she pushed the stop button when the elevator was halfway from the parking garage to the first floor.

With the elevator stopped, the woman reached up to undo the clasps on either side of the helmet at her neck. She unlatched it, pulling the helmet open and off to reveal a dark-skinned figure in her mid-twenties, with straight black hair that was cut short, barely falling past her ears. Her eyes were dark green, and clouded with worry and stress at the moment as she set the helmet aside on the nearby bench. But she herself sat on the floor, tucking herself into the corner with her knees drawn up. A phone, tugged from a hidden pocket in her costume, rested against her legs as she held onto the corners of it with her index fingers to keep it in place. “Kindry,” she spoke the command word for her phone’s digital assistant. “Play Soft List One.” Even as she said it, her body was rocking back and forth against the wall, and she could hear her own heavy breathing.

There was an affirmative beep, before her YouTube app opened and a video began to play. It was an old cereal commercial from the nineties. Not the same one as the jingle she had hummed to herself earlier, but from the same general time period. As the commercial played, her lips moved along with the words, silently mouthing every line. That video gave way to another, about an entirely different cereal, and by the time the second was done, her breathing had eased significantly. The turmoil in her eyes lightened, and she even smiled as the third video began. The smile lit up her face, and she stopped rocking. Once that third commercial was over, she put the phone back to sleep, slipped it into her pocket once more, and rose to pick up her helmet. But she didn’t put it back on. Instead, she turned to face the nearby closed elevator doors and used her power, speaking another word. “CLOSET.”

This particular manifested word appeared in a form quite different from the previous ones. Each letter was about two feet tall, with the C and L next to one another on the floor, the O on top of the C, S nestled within the open space of the L, and the E and T on top of the O and S. It formed a rectangle of letters, essentially, two on each ‘level.’ The letters themselves were a few feet thick, creating a structure in front of the woman that took up much of the space within the elevator.

As soon as the jumbled word appeared, she reached out to put her hand against the S-shape and tugged at it. The entire front of the structure opened up, revealing an interior which looked like… well, precisely the word it was. It was a closet full of shoes, shirts, pants, and more. Whenever she manifested this particular word, it always contained whatever she had previously put within it. Where the stuff went while the word wasn’t in use, she wasn’t entirely sure. But the stuff was always safe and in the exact same condition she had left it in.

Her power worked through a combination of the word spoken and her silent intention. Her imagination created the effect the word had, but that effect had to have something to do with the word. She couldn’t just say ‘pillow’ and make a word that would cut through stone. Intention and word had to work together in some way.

Over the next thirty seconds or so, she quickly changed clothes, exchanging her costume for the simple jeans, tennis shoes, and black button-up shirt she had been wearing before all this happened. The costume itself, including her helmet, were placed inside the ‘closet’ and then a simple thought made the manifested word vanish.

Now, she wasn’t Lexeme anymore. Instead, she was Kiara Weston, freelance website designer and IT consultant. The entire reason she had been able to appear in the parking garage as quickly as she had, before any call had gone out to the police, was that she had already been inside the building doing some work on their servers. When everyone’s phones had shut down, she checked the security feeds, found out what was happening, and changed to her costume before sending the call out to the authorities on her own secure radio that wasn’t blocked or monitored. She had told the police to wait until she sent an all-clear signal. Which she had done just before encasing herself in the ‘Quiet’ word back in the garage.

Safely anonymous once more, Kiara hit the button to allow the elevator to proceed upwards. As it reached the first floor, she kept the doors shut while checking the feed for the cameras there to assure herself there was no one waiting. The employees were all locked down in their offices upstairs still, and the lobby was empty save for a couple policemen standing around talking to one another. She had already muted the elevator’s arrival bell, and ensured that it wouldn’t be announcing its movements or arrival on this floor. The elevator was mostly out of sight from the chatting cops, so she simply waited until they turned to look outside, then allowed the doors to open so she could slip out and move down a nearby side hall. That led her around to the server rooms where she had been working to begin with.

Only once she was safely back inside the room she had started in, surrounded by computer equipment and the reassuring hum of a nearby vending machine, did Kiara allow the building’s cameras to go back to normal. The whole situation would probably confuse their security people, especially given she had intentionally blacked out or manipulated more camera feeds than just the ones she needed, in order to avoid letting them track her movements that way. But they could deal with that. Her entire focus was on her phone, which she finally used for its actual intended purpose: to place a call.

“Hi!” she greeted the person on the other end once they picked up. “You heard? Yeah, I’m just running a little late. I’ll get out of here as soon as I can. Do you mind--yes. Thank you so much. Goodbye.”

Disconnecting the call, Kiara slumped back in a swivel seat, dropped her phone next to the keyboard, and let out a long, deep breath. Now all she had to do was sit here in the nice, quiet room, play innocent civilian, and wait until it was safe to leave.

That couldn’t take too long, right?

***********

Two hours. It was two hours before she was able to leave. The police had everything locked down, and while she could easily have left the place as Lexeme, the fact that Kiara Weston was gone might have raised questions with the people who had hired her to come and work on their servers in the first place. Especially considering the timing. Some criminals show up to try this on the exact same day that she happened to be working on their systems? That was bad enough to start with, but if she happened to disappear before they were officially released, it might prompt people to look into her. And that was something she’d rather avoid. Yes, being part of the local Conservators group meant such a situation would be dealt with, but it was still a complication.

On top of all that, there was the interrogation with one of the cops who stopped by the server room to check on things. Oh, sure, it probably wasn’t much of an interrogation from his point of view. She wasn’t really a suspect in their minds, and he almost certainly saw it as a casual conversation. But the fact was, face-to-face casual conversations with strangers could be difficult at the best of times. And in this case she had to get through the conversation without appearing… different. She couldn’t calm herself down with any of her preferred stims like humming commercial jingles or her finger exercises, because this particular cop wasn’t cleared to know her identity. She didn’t want him to start thinking about how the woman in the server room and Lexeme the Star-Touched just happened to exhibit similar behaviors. But the problem was that she didn’t always know what sort of behaviors came off as strange to other people. She was afraid of saying or doing something that seemed perfectly normal to her, but would stand out to him. So, for the most part, she simply sat there as rigidly as possible and gave him one or two word answers. Which probably either came off as suspicious or like she was traumatized by the experience.

It was another complication. But finally she was allowed to leave. Gathering up her bag from the corner of the room, she quickly exited through one of the side doors, avoiding any contact with other people. This had already taken long enough as it was. She was late. She was so late. Kiara hated being late. It was wrong. There was a time for things, a time you were supposed to do them, when you had agreed to do them. She had a schedule, she had plans. In this life, doing the things she had to do often meant breaking that schedule. That was something she had come to peace with (mostly) long ago. But that certainly didn’t mean she liked it. It was always grating.

After escaping the building and sending her report to the supervisor who had hired her in the first place, Kiara quickly made her way to where her car was parked down the street and soon she was driving away at the fastest acceptable limit. She used Kindry to send a text that she was on her way, and apologized again for taking so long.

A few minutes later, she managed to find a parking spot near the apartment building in question. But a quick squint across the street revealed that old Mrs. Drexler was sitting out on the front stoop again. The woman was nice enough, but she didn't understand the concept of personal space, and she was always trying to take Kiara’s hand to guide her around like she was a child. She even talked to her like a child. After everything that happened, Kiara just wasn't in the mood for that. So, she went around to the building next door and took the elevator all the way to the top floor, then took the stairs onto the roof.

The buildings were too far apart to easily jump, and the window she was aiming for was still a couple stories higher than where she stood. But that didn’t matter. Giving a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching, she spoke another word. “ESCALATOR.” And just like that, two foot wide letters spelling out that word appeared in a diagonal formation, with the bottom letter, the R, situated directly in front of her at the edge of the roof. Stepping forward, Kiara waited as an invisible force on top of the letters moved her from the R to the O. At that moment, the R dropped below the rest of the word, made its way underneath it all the way up to the opposite side of the E, and waited there. The same thing happened to the O when the invisible force carried her past that and to the T, and so on. Soon the word ‘ESCALATOR’ had completely rewritten itself a second time, allowing her to rise along that invisible force to reach the window she had been aiming for. Standing there on the E for the second time, she reached out to gently tap the glass there.

“Kiara!” The window was pulled open, as a tall, red-haired woman with broad shoulders and a ready smile beckoned her. “Come on, come on, before someone sees you out there! Is everything okay? We saw something on the news, but--”

“They’re all fine, Audrey,” Kiara confirmed, slipping in through the open window before hopping down to the kitchen floor. “No one died and the criminals are going to prison. Thank you for watching her for so long, I know that wasn’t our agreement.”

“Oh pish tosh,” Audrey insisted. “She’s an angel. I’ll take her anytime you need. Lord knows, you do plenty enough for others.”

Before Kiara could respond, a new voice called from the doorway into the kitchen. “Mama!” A small, five-year-old mixed race Black and Asian girl ran into view before all-but jumping into her waiting arms. “You were a superhero again!?”

“Some people needed a little help,” the woman confirmed, holding her up with a smile. She stared that way, marveling a bit. Even now, she could see Qian in those eyes, three and a half years after her husband’s death. Still, she pushed off those thoughts. They would just make her sad, and her daughter didn’t deserve to think that she made her mother sad. “But that doesn’t matter, Megan. Why don’t you tell me about what you did in class before Miss Audrey picked you up?”

So, they went into the living room and Megan told her mother all about what they had done that day in Kindergarten. Kiara sat on the floor and played with the girl for a bit longer, before they put the toys away in Megan’s pink backpack and got ready to leave. Kiara thanked her babysitter once again, to which Miss Audrey assured her that she was ready and willing to help any time.

Together, mother and daughter took the actual elevator downstairs and walked out of the building. Mrs. Drexler was still there, but Kiara was able to use the excuse that she had to feed Megan to keep going straight to her car without slowing down to chat.

On the way home, they stopped to eat at a McDonald's. By the time Kiara had typed their order into the self-serve kiosk and picked up their drink cups, Megan already found them a table in the back corner, away from anyone else. The two of them sat together and Megan took a sip of her drink before happily asking, “Mama, why is Ronald McDonald a clown if he owns all the McDonald’s? Are clowns rich?”

Kiara’s mouth opened before she paused. “Real or fun answer?” It was a system they had worked out through trial and error so she would know if her daughter wanted her to play along with something or be serious and actually answer her.

“Real,” the five-year-old firmly replied, taking another sip of her drink.

Drawing from a truly encyclopedic knowledge of fast food restaurants gained largely thanks to a fascination with them that had developed from spending so much time in them as a child to parents who didn’t have much time for her but knew it was a good way to keep her busy for an hour, Kiara launched into her explanation. “Ronald is more like the mascot. You know, like Benny the Bull at the basketball games? He cheers people up. Way back in the nineteen sixties-- that’s how old you are times twelve. Twelve Megans old. Anyway, back then, in Washington DC, there was a show about another clown named Bozo. And a man named Barry convinced the McDonald’s there to make commercials and put them on with the Bozo the Clown show so people there would go buy their food. But then the Bozo show was canceled. They didn’t make any more of it. So that Barry guy convinced the Washington DC McDonald’s to hire the man who played Bozo to make some commercials for them. But he couldn’t be Bozo because that was another show and they didn’t want to confuse everybody. So they made his new name Ronald. He was Ronald McDonald. And after they made a few commercials for those McDonald’s in DC, the rich people in charge of all the McDonald’s saw how popular he was, so they decided to make him the mascot for everywhere.”

By that time, their food had been brought out. Kiara barely paid attention to that beyond helping Megan open her Happy Meal box and get herself situated. The flood gates had been opened, and she proceeded to explain the origins of Grimace (as the bad, milkshake stealing Evil Grimace), the Hamburglar (originally known as the Lone Jogger and previously paired with the pirate-themed Captain Crook), Birdie, and even the long-since unused Mayor McCheese. For the next twenty minutes, she regaled her daughter with stories about where these old characters had come from. Megan had given her permission to talk about one of her favorite subjects, and the information just kept pouring out of her.

They were just finishing their dinner when the phone buzzed in her pocket. Checking the ID, she answered. “Do I need to go somewhere private?”

“Probably a good idea once we get into it,” came the answer from Jonah Gardner. Better known as Big Top, one of her teammates on the Conservators. “First, sorry to interrupt. Heard you did some good work earlier, but I wouldn’t have called about that, not when you just picked up Megan. It’s about that thing we talked about the other day. Do you think you’d be up for it? Because they’re really pushing it now.”

Kiara paused, looking at her daughter for a moment before letting out a breath. “Megan and I talked about it and… and if they need me, we’ll do it.”

“They need you. They need both of us with everything going on,” Jonah confirmed.

“So I guess you should pack your bags. The two of us have gotta go help stop Detroit from falling apart.”