Summus Proelium

My parents were awake! They were conscious and aware, and no longer affected by that stupid Sleeptalk shit. They had been cured. No more daydream comas for them. It was finally, finally over. Well, that part of it anyway. There was still plenty of other stuff to deal with--more than I even wanted to think about honestly. But my parents were safe. After all this time, after so many feelings of hopeless despair and fear, after all the time I had spent worrying that they would never wake up, it was finally over. They were fully conscious and capable of knowing what was going on. In fact, the cure had been so effective that it was like they had never been affected at all. Was that intentional? Had Sleeptalk deliberately been made so that it could be cured without any lingering effects? Part of me thought that made sense, especially if Pittman and Amanda had wanted to be able to prove how effective that cure was once the time came to administer it. At the very least, I didn’t think it had been an accident.

Of course, the doctors weren't exactly satisfied with that. At least, they didn't simply wave and tell my parents to head out and have a good life. No, there wasn’t a chance in hell that they were just going to leave it that way. They weren't going to let them leave the hospital just yet. For all the money, influence, and other power my parents might have had, they were unable to make the doctors budge on that fact. Sterling and Elena Evans would be staying in the hospital for at least another few days under observation, just to be on the safe side.

Actually, in this particular case, having all that money and power probably worked against them, to be honest. The hospital wasn't going to take the chance that those two could potentially relapse or show other traumatic side effects. Not only would that reflect badly on them (and probably have legal ramifications of some sort), but it would also hamper future investments. My family probably contributed at least half of all the money the Seraphs here in Detroit had relied on for the past ten years. They had an entire building of the campus named after them. So yeah, these doctors were going to take every precaution possible when it came to my family. And to be honest, I couldn't disagree. They should go ahead and run every possible test they could think of.

Oh, sure, I wanted my parents to be home. I wanted everything to go back to--well, not normal. It couldn't actually be normal, not with all the stuff I knew, and what they didn't know. But at the very least, it could go back to the normal we'd had before all this Sleeptalk stuff. I wanted to see my parents back home where they belonged. As for the rest of it, we could simply go from there. One step at a time. And the current step was making sure they were actually completely cured. The last thing we needed was for it to look like they were safe and then have Dad pass out in the middle of a meeting.

Or worse, while he was out in the field as Silversmith. That was a thought that sent a shudder through me. If he was out fighting Cuélebre and fell asleep, it… no. No, that wouldn't happen. The doctors were going to be certain of that before releasing them.

On the other hand, while my parents might not have been able to go home that night the way they might’ve wanted to, they insisted that we do so. Once we had some time with them, the doctors wanted to run more tests, and it was getting pretty late. Beyond late, really. They insisted we go home and get some actual sleep. And from their tones, it was clear this wasn't something to argue with. We were not to spend the night at the hospital waiting for them. We were to go home and sleep in our own beds. The next day, we could come back and find out more about what was going on.

And speaking out the next day, even as Simon was driving us home, with Izzy and me whispering to each other in the back, I got a text on my phone from the school. It was a message letting me know that they had been notified that my parents were conscious, and they didn't expect me to show up for finals the next day. Or rather, later today, given it was after midnight by that point. Yeah, that was a relief. I absolutely wouldn’t have been able to take those tests. Given how tired I would probably be at that point, I might’ve tried to eat the paper.

Fortunately, we wouldn’t have to find out. The school gave me a make up schedule, pushing my finals back a couple days. They were supposed to be on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to finish out the school year. In my case, and presumably others whose family members were being woken up, like Paige, they were allowing us to skip Monday and Tuesday, and actually take the finals Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Then we would be done with the school year.

Thank God, that was one thing I didn't have to worry about. Though, to be entirely honest, I hadn't really thought about finals at all since the moment I’d gotten the text from Simon that our parents were about to be woken up. It had completely slipped my mind. Now I would have a couple days before needing to focus on not failing out of school. Go me.

I also had messages from Paige, letting me know that Irelyn was not only awake as well, but also out of the hospital. Apparently she hadn't been deemed a big enough risk to be forced to stay. Or maybe she had simply been more insistent about leaving. After all, she didn’t have quite the level of risk for the hospital that my parents did. Either way, she was out. And, more importantly, actually aware of what Paige was. Plus she knew about Sierra. Which was a whole other can of worms. They hadn't told her about my true identity, or anything like that. But they did tell her about the Ministry. They told her the truth about all that.

Good, after everything she had been through, after everything that happened to her because we had been keeping all those secrets, she deserved to know at least that much of the truth. I had no idea what was going to come from that, what she would do with that information, but I did know that she deserved it. We would deal with whatever came when it happened. There was no sense in obsessing over it right now. Especially not when I was already this emotionally overwhelmed and physically tired.

Which, to be honest, probably had something to do with my overall ‘sure whatever’ reaction. There was a part of me, a very quiet and exhausted part, that was screaming in the back of my head about how dangerous this was. But I just couldn’t focus on that now. It was done with. Irelyn knew, and I couldn’t exactly stop her from knowing.

And speaking of being tired, Paige also informed me that there was some sort of situation with another gang that I had missed while sitting around the hospital, but people were dealing with it already. I didn't have the energy to even think about that too much. To be entirely honest, the very thought of suiting up and running out there to try to help would have been overwhelming even if this situation hadn't happened hours earlier. No, there was nothing for me to do about that now. It was over and I would get more details later. Maybe when I could actually see straight.

There were probably other things I could've done, other ways I could've helped, even if it was just by going on a quick patrol while the other Stars were busy cleaning up after what had happened. But it just wasn't going to happen tonight. I sent back a couple messages letting her and the others know that I was out for the night and that my parents were safe. Then I put my phone away as Simon pulled into the garage. He turned in the seat to look back at us, seeming to pause as though trying to put his thoughts together. Finally, he offered a weak shrug. “At least they're awake, right? Relax, get some sleep. I mean, do your best. We’ll go visit them as soon as the doctors say it’s okay tomorrow.” His finger rose to point at us. “And it's probably going to be a long day, so how about you two try to get some actual sleep instead of staying up all night giggling about boys or whatever you do in there.”

My eyes rolled at that and I kicked the back of his seat. “Yeah, I think we're all good on that front. You try to keep your music low enough that it doesn't shake the entire house so we can actually get some of that sleep.” With that, I stepped out of the car, with Izzy right behind me.

The two of us grabbed a snack from the kitchen, then headed for my room. We would be going to sleep soon, tired as we were. But we were still just a little too wound up to crash immediately. Besides, I still had to talk to her about what Paige had said. We couldn’t exactly talk about that in the car, not even in whispers.

So, we sat on my bed, eating pretzels while I went through all of that. She was worried about what would happen with Irelyn too, but agreed that there was no sense in obsessing over it for the moment.

Apparently she’d also received a message about some sort of fight going on. Her message explained that it had something to do with the people who had attacked that other lab and tried to destroy the cure before. Which, honestly, was the one thing I’d heard about the whole situation that actually made me feel tempted to go out after all. Maybe that was why Paige hadn't told me that part of it.

Part of me felt a little annoyed about that, but I pushed that feeling down. It was stupid. Of course she wouldn't want me to focus on that when my parents had just woken up. And if I had tried to go out there to help, I wouldn’t have been focused on it anyway. Not to mention coming up with an excuse to leave right then would've been incredibly suspicious. She knew I wouldn't be able to pull myself away, and wanted me to be able to focus on my family instead of feeling guilty about not being out there helping. It made all the sense in the world. I was just feeling a bit… emotional about everything. Especially the whole idea that there was even the slightest remote possibility that I could be an Abyssal. I wasn’t, of course. Everything I’d gone over, with the help of Izzy, made that clear. Seriously, my parents would have known if I had a habit of turning into a giant rage monster. There was no way they could possibly not know that. And if they knew it, they wouldn’t let me roam free like they did.

But on the other hand, there was a very small voice in the back of my head pointing out that even if they did lose track of me for the amount of time that a Collision Point had happened a couple hundred miles away, they might not actually know for certain that I was literally one of those monsters. They might think I’d simply gotten lost or something and then been found later. And if I had disappeared back then for a couple hours, would that even be something they’d bring up at all? How could I even bring that up to question it? What could I say, ‘Hey Mom, do you remember that one vacation? Did you guys happen to lose track of me for, oh, an hour or so at this exact time? Hm? Oh no reason, I’m just trying to figure out if it’s actually possible that I could be an Abyssal. Which, kind of a funny story, would mean that I’ve actually Touched three times instead of twice like I thought, but who’s counting at this point?’

That was the real question here though. Was it possible that I could have wandered off without them knowing, come into contact with another Abyssal, and both of us were somehow transported a couple hundred miles to have our big fight without my parents realizing?

Yes, as much as I hated to even think about it, that was still a possibility. No one knew for certain exactly what the rules were for these things. It was possible, however remotely, that I had become an Abyssal at some point much earlier in my life. Then I had come into contact with another Abyssal, both of us were transported to a new area a couple hundred miles away to fight, before I came back and my parents found me without ever realizing just where I had been during that time. It could’ve happened. I wanted to smack myself for even still considering it as the faintest possibility, but I had to exhaust the idea entirely. I had to be absolutely certain. It was just--I had to know.

When I brought up that possibility as Izzy and I were sitting there on the bed with our pretzels, she opened her mouth, then shut it. “Well, you could prove it wasn’t you just by finding every other instance when either of those Abyssals who were involved with that particular Collision Point showed up somewhere else and finding at least one for both of them that happened during a time you actually can account for. Find out which Abyssals they were and then prove you couldn’t be either of them.”

Sitting there with a pretzel in my mouth, I blinked twice, then chewed and swallowed before leaning over to embrace her. “You’re awesome. I was just thinking about how if my whereabouts could be proven during any other time, Maki would’ve crossed me off the list instead of putting a question mark next to my name. The question mark seems like they couldn’t actually verify my whereabouts during every other time those Abyssals showed up. But you’re right, I’d know more about where I was or how to prove it than they would. I mean, I’d hope I would.”

Obviously, I was exhausted. So was Izzy. But I knew that if I tried to go to sleep right now, it wouldn’t work. I wanted to know for certain. I wanted to prove to myself once and for all that I absolutely could not be an Abyssal by looking at every single time either of the possibilities had been active and seeing for certain that I had to have been somewhere else during at least one of those times for each of them.

So, we took a few minutes to look that up so we could at least try to put my mind (and Izzy’s, I was sure) completely at ease. And straight off the bat, we were able to eliminate one of the two Abyssals entirely. The Collision Point that Maki had been potentially linking to me involved one Hidden and one Wanderer. So yeah, that latter one couldn’t be me. If I was an Abyssal--not that it was a possibility I even wanted to entertain, but if I was, it had to be as a Hidden. My mental state was too coherent (much as certain people would have disagreed with that) for me to be a Wanderer. Plus I wasn’t constantly traveling all over the place. Wanderers always acted very out-of-it and spacey, like they weren’t aware of where they were or what was going on. And they were always trying to get somewhere.

On that note, I definitely wasn’t a Stalker either. I would’ve known what I was if I was a Stalker, and I would be much more… violent and murderous. So that was right out from the start. I couldn’t be a Stalker and not know about it. I could’ve been lying to others but I would know.

That left a Hidden, who were the ones who tended to have their memories wiped or replaced or whatever. I wasn’t sure about the details. Well, honestly, no one was completely sure about the details. All we had was what could be pieced together. But from what much smarter people had been able to find out while doing that, Hidden had no idea what they were, and their memories of being a giant rampaging monster were replaced with normal memories that would fit into that time.

So, speaking very, very hypothetically, if I was an Abyssal, it would be a Hidden. Which meant I could only be one of the two Abyssals involved in that particular Collision Point.

Izzy gave my shoulder a squeeze. “See, one down already--wait. Why is Maki considering you as a possibility for that Collision Point just because you were within a couple hundred miles if Abyssals can end up being teleported elsewhere anyway? I mean, both of these Abyssals have been involved in other C-Points in different locations before then and since, right? If you were one of them, you would’ve had to have been teleported to those locations too, even from Detroit.”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted while shaking my head. “Let’s take it one step at a time and just prove I can’t be the--which Hidden was it?”

“Gagana,” Izzy replied, and we both winced.

Yeah, that wasn’t a great choice. Gagana, named after some Russian legendary bird, was a humanoid-avian figure who stood about twenty feet tall. She had a very… feminine form with a pronounced bust that had feathers covering very strategic locations. Her arms and legs were mostly human with a few more scattered feathers, and she had broad, enormous wings sticking out of her back. But the thing about her body, the wings, and the feathers in general was that they all seemed to be made of different metals. She looked like a statue of a winged angel that had come to life, or like an automaton or something. She was a metal angel. Her powers all revolved around controlling, manipulating, creating, or otherwise doing something with various metals. Magnetism included. Gagana was all about metal. Which also meant that she tended to do a hell of a lot of damage to infrastructure and stuff.

Yeah, the possibility that I could be her really wasn't helping my mood. Though to be fair, there wasn't a single abyssal out there that I would choose to be. They were all bad.

Either way, the two of us looked up every time that she had appeared. Of course, the first thing we checked was when her first appearance had been. Unfortunately, it was eleven years earlier, which meant I wasn't disqualified on the count of being too young. Granted, I wasn't expecting it to be that simple, since it seemed like that would've been the first thing Maki checked too, but still.

She had made six appearances in the time since her first attack, which put her around average. Of those six appearances, most of them I couldn't definitively account for. And I was starting to get even more anxious. But then I found one that had taken place in Alabama. I would have been thirteen at the time, and my heart immediately leapt when I saw the date. That was the weekend that I’d had my wisdom teeth taken out. It wouldn't have been a matter of public record, of course. At least, not normal public record. But I definitely knew that I had been under close observation, literally having teeth taken out of my mouth, while that particular Collision Point happened.

I was safe. I wasn't one of the Abyssals.

And yes, Izzy smacked me the second I started to say that I could have disappeared and the memories of the dentist and his assistant could've been erased or something. I rubbed my shoulder and thanked her. Yeah, this seemed pretty definitive to me. At least as definitive as we were going to get. I wasn't the Abyssal that Maki was looking for. Which was at least one huge thing off my mind.

Or maybe just partially off, because that still meant that one of those people on the list probably was an Abyssal, and they were here in the city.

Yeah, I was just going to set that aside and accept that I couldn't do anything about it for the moment. It wasn't like we were lacking in stuff to deal with anyway.

And right now, the thing I had to deal with was getting some sleep. Izzy and I were both so tired by that point that we could barely keep our eyes open. We laid down there together, I told the lights to turn off, and we drifted off. Our parents were cured, we would go back to see them again later today, and I wasn't an Abyssal. All in all, a pretty productive night. We were making some real progress when it came to dealing with everything.

Which, of course, probably meant that the entire city was going to explode in the next twenty-four hours or something.