Beta Sneak Peak

I didn’t like having my face so close to a public toilet. The ferry boat lurched beneath me and my stomach moved in tandem with it. It was all I could do to hold my hair back and hope that the galley bathrooms were cleaned nightly.

A gentle knock sounded on the other side of the door.

"Everything okay, Sammy?" Mom asked. She must have followed me in. 

"Going great," I managed to choke back between heaves. So much for breakfast. 

I'd been sick the last few days but I thought I’d been feeling better. The dizzy spells had mostly stopped, and even though I still got winded going up a single flight of stairs, I figured the sickness must have run its course. It totally figured that whatever stomach bug I had contracted would redouble its efforts the day we were supposed to move. A new city, new school, new home, and a new day with my head in a toilet. 

I wiped off my face the best I could and stepped out of the stall. I would've preferred to puke in private, but I was grateful for the bottle of water Mom handed me at the sink. I did my best to rinse my mouth out but I couldn't get rid of the bitter taste of stomach acid. 

"Still sick, then?" Mom asked, leading the way back to the passenger deck.

"Just nerves," I lied. 

A man stepped in front of us as we walked out of the bathroom. He pressed a flyer into Mom's hand.

"Excuse me, ma'am, are you aware of the Apex epidemic in the city?"

"Sorry, we're not interested." She pulled me past him as another passenger exited the bathroom behind us. He turned his attention to her instead.

"Excuse me, did you know the city is being held hostage by genetically altered super humans?"

I followed Mom back to the window booth where Dad and Avery were sitting. Avery pressed his hands against the window while Dad carefully surveyed the passenger deck. His shoulders relaxed when he saw us but he still looked tense.

Dad was usually a careful man. He was naturally suspicious and spent most of his time glaring at strangers from behind his tawny beard, from which I’d inherited my hair color. I always thought anyone would be an idiot to mess with him. He towered over most people at six and a half feet and his muscular arms were covered in tattoos. 

Despite always being a little on edge, the way Dad was acting, you'd think we were all moments away from catastrophic disaster. Maybe it was the stress of moving his family to the island city, although it was also possible he was just trying to cope with sending his very favorite daughter off to boarding school- even if I'd be less than a mile away from his new job at the university.

Or, maybe, and this might sound crazy, it was the woman who had been staring at us from across the ferry galley that was getting to him. She’d been there before I’d left for the bathroom and she was still there, carefully watching us, as I returned with Mom.

"Stop that." Mom swatted at Dad's hands as she sat down across from him. He hadn't seemed to notice he had completely balled up the morning paper in his fists. He exhaled heavily and compulsively stretched his fingers, letting the paper fall to the linoleum. He leaned back in the booth seat, trying to look more relaxed, but his foot bounced nervously as I took the seat next to him.

Mom waved the flyer the man had handed her in front of Dad.

"Can you believe this tripe? The Apex ruining the city? The Apex made that city."

The flyer was a simple dark blue sheet of paper. The words "No More Apex- No More Problems" ran across the top and bottom. In the center was an illustration of a dark gray helmet with a visor. It was crossed out under a big, red X.

Dad shrugged.

"They have a point." He'd never spoken highly of the vigilantes that ran rampant in the Floating City. Yet, here he was, moving his whole family to the city he grew up in. The world's most hero-ridden neighborhood. He glanced back at the woman.

To be fair, she was hard to ignore. She looked young but had waist-length, snow-white hair. I could see her in my periphery, carefully observing our family from behind her steaming cup of ferry boat coffee. She made no attempt to hide that she was watching us.

"What's wrong with Dad?" Avery pried himself away from the window, where he'd been watching the ocean froth up around the boat. Mom smiled and pulled my brother close to her.

"He's just a bit stressed. It's not easy moving to a new place," she said, brushing a long clump of hair out of his eyes. He needed a haircut.

"I don't think so," Avery shrugged with the kind of contempt only twelve-year-olds are capable of. "All the kids at my old school were stupid." 

"Those aren't nice words, Avery," Mom warned. Avery rolled his eyes and pushed away from her.

"Yeah, well, they were." He went back to his window seat to watch the water. There wasn't much to see, though, as the whole bay was shrouded in a heavy morning fog. 

I looked straight ahead towards the bow of the boat, but focused on the corner of my vision, where the white-haired woman took another long swig of coffee without looking away from our booth. 

"Samantha?" 

I jumped when Mom said my name and she scowled. 

"Calm down! You're just as wound up as your father!"

"I'm not wound up," Dad grunted while he continued to silently assess every other passenger on the boat. He was careful not to look directly at our observer. 

Now it was Mom's turn to roll her eyes as she turned back towards me from across the booth. 

"Are you feeling any better?"

Dad stopped scanning the room and looked at me, too. I shrugged.

"A bit, I guess."

“Faker," Avery muttered without turning away from the window. I suppressed a smile.

Truth be told, I still didn't feel great, but maybe it really was just nerves. Dad tried to press the back of his hand against my forehead but I ducked away.

"I'm fine," I insisted. "I promise. I haven't even fainted today!" 

"Is that the bar now? 'Not fainting'?" He scoffed.

I turned forward just enough to look for the white-haired woman in the corner of my vision, but didn't see her. I risked looking over at her seat, but, sure enough, she'd left. Her paper coffee cup was still sitting in the cup holder. My stomach fluttered. I'd rather have her staring than not know where she had gone.

There was a sudden stirring of skirts next to me and I flinched away. Dad grabbed my wrist. The white-haired woman had come back and passed next to me. She was at least six feet tall and had to stoop to pick up her coffee cup where she had left it. She turned back towards us and mouthed "oops" as she threw it in the trash before walking away, her yellow maxi-dress swirling around her ankles. 

"Vic," Mom said, using her trademark Mom Voice. "You need to calm down. She's just a lonely lady who forgot her trash. You're freaking out the kids."

Dad relaxed, but only a little bit. He looked at me and forced a grin. 

"Sorry, Sammy," he sighed. "This city is full of creeps. Can't be too careful."

"It's fine," I mumbled, not wanting to admit I hadn't liked her any more than he did. The thing was, I really wanted to believe she'd been watching all of us as a family. Maybe she was just a lonely weirdo who liked people watching. But the way the hairs had stood on the back of my neck and the way she sat motionless, except to drink her coffee...I just couldn't shake the feeling she'd been watching me.      

The fog horn split the low hanging fog as the ferry drifted through the mist. A great bronze smile materialized through the haze. I watched as the form of a colossal man took shape. 

His metal hair and cape could have been frozen in time. They looked wind-ruffled but neither moved. He was standing proudly on a barnacle-studded platform in the middle of the bay. "New Delos' Finest Hero" was engraved into the metal at his feet. 

"Mom, look!" Avery twisted away from the window to pull Mom over to him. "Look! It's Paragon! Mom, do you see him?" 

My younger brother wasn't the only passenger gawking at the great statue. Several other tourists were struggling to get a good picture through the foggy windows. 

"You should've seen the real thing." Mom leaned over Avery and set her chin on the top of his head. "He was much more impressive than some statue before he passed."

Dad snorted. He was the only one on the boat that wasn't pressing against the windows.

"He wasn't that great, dear." 

Mom turned back towards him so that he could see her scowl.

"You don't like any of the masked heroes."

The statue passed back into the morning mist. The city began to take shape, as if rising out of the water. The outlines of the skyscrapers formed slowly, pushing the glinting buildings forward.

Avery lost interest in the view out of the window now that we had passed the Paragon statue. He turned towards Dad, looking expectant. He held out a single, open palm.

Dad glanced up at him and sighed. 

"Fine." He wriggled a ten dollar bill from his pocket. "Get me a coffee, too."

Avery's eyes lit up as Dad extended the money towards him but Mom plucked it out from between them. She reached over Dad to hand it off to me instead.

"Go with your brother," she said. Dad opened his mouth in protest but she shushed him. "I don't know how you expect her to be on her own at school if you won't even let her go get coffee."

"Yeah, well," he said begrudgingly, "there's security at the school, not to mention she can't go ten minutes without passing out lately."

"Dad!" I groaned. "I told you, I'm fine now!"

"Here." Mom added a few more dollars from her own pocket to my hand. "You get yourself a snack, too. If you do get kidnapped, remind them your brother can't have peanuts."

Avery ran ahead but my head spun as I stood up. Dad grabbed my arm to steady me.

"Sammy?" 

I waved Dad away and hurried to catch up with Avery. Mom called out, "Avery! Wait for your sister!"

"Don't talk to anyone you don't know!" Dad said gruffly.

"I told you. I'm fine!"  I gave him a double thumbs up, crumpling the money in my hand. 

"Come on," Avery whined behind me. 

I led him towards the ferry's galley. Other passengers were yawning into their coffees and muffins. 

"What's up with Dad?" Avery asked as we walked.

"You'd have to ask him." I shrugged. 

"He was crying last night, you know."

I looked at Avery in surprise. Not to say that large, bearded men with tattoos didn't cry, but it was hard to imagine him even tearing up.

Avery quickly moved on from the topic when we entered the tiny cafeteria and he beelined towards the chips display. 

"Dad'll kill me if I let you get chips at eight in the morning," I said. "Don't you want hot chocolate instead?"

"That makes zero sense," Avery pouted. "Chips are just salty potatoes and Dad makes potatoes for breakfast all the time."

"You know it isn't the same," I smiled, pouring myself a hot chocolate at the nearby coffee station.

"Yes, it is!" Avery pulled a bag off the rack. "Look, they're basically crispy hash browns. And what about you? You're having liquid chocolate for breakfast. Is that really better than potatoes?"

"That," I said, grabbing a lid from the dispenser, "is a very solid argument." 

I handed Avery some of the money. He thought about it for a second, grabbed a second bag of chips and rushed over to the cashier. I pressed the lid down onto my cup. An advertisement was set up over the coffee station. An intense looking couple in suits stared down at me under the words "Have you or someone you love been negatively affected by under-regulated Apex activity? Call Ratcliffe and Ratcliffe, Attorneys at Law." 

So far, New Delos didn't seem like the Apex haven Mom had always made it out to be. Between the ads and the Anti-Apex campaigner stationed outside the bathroom, it was starting to seem like the last place I'd want to be if I was harboring secret super abilities. As if on cue, a hand grabbed my shoulder.

"Excuse me, miss, are you a student at New Delos prep?"

The man from outside the bathroom held his stack of flyers close as he glared down at me. Before I could say anything, he continued.

"Are you aware that New Delos Prep and New Delos University support unregulated Apex activity that puts the citizens of the island at risk?" His pitch sounded well-rehearsed.

"I-I'm sorry," I stammered, stepping away. "I don't-"

"Did you know they both take money from Adrian Schrader, a known Apex sympathizer?" 

The boat lurched under us and a sudden dizziness washed over me, flipping my stomach and spinning the galley.

"I'm sorry.” I tried to step away again, but tripped. I grabbed onto the counter to keep from falling. I hadn't fainted all day and refused to now.

"Did you know that by choosing to attend either school, you are inadvertently contributing to a system that protects The Apex from the justice they deserve?"

The boat shifted again. I slipped onto the floor. My hot chocolate splashed across the tiles beside me. 

"Hey! Did you just push her?" 

"No, she just fell, I swear-"

"I'm so sick of you people thinking you own the place!"

"We think we own the place?"

A fight broke out above me, but I was too busy trying to steady myself. I pushed myself onto my knees and grabbed my head in both hands as if that might make the room stop spinning. 

Just breathe, I told myself. I'd done this a half dozen times in the last few days. 

Someone touched my shoulder. A face swam into my vision, just inches from mine. A lock of white hair had fallen in her face. I stumbled backwards.

"Are you alright?" The white-haired woman asked. She was grinning. There was a crash overhead. The man with the flyers had been pushed into a postcard display. Photos of the city drifted down into the hot chocolate puddle.

"She's fine." I winced at the sound of Dad's booming voice. The white-haired woman shied away as Dad helped me to my feet. Avery stood behind him, wide-eyed and clutching his potato chips to his chest.

Dad ushered us away just as a security guard showed up.

"Aren't you going to pay for that?" A sullen cashier pointed at the spilt hot-chocolate. Dad scowled and slammed a five dollar bill onto the counter and kept walking. The Anti-Apex man continued to shout about inequality and abuses of power as he was cornered by the security guard.

Mom was waiting by the stairs that led down to the car deck. 

"I'm sorry," I said. Dad didn't look at me.

"It's okay.” Mom reassured me. "That man was weird. It wasn't your fault."

She opened the stairway door as Dad led the way back down to the family car. The ferry was almost to the island, but I still felt like it was my fault we were already headed to the car. Mom handed me an orange juice.

"I stopped by a vending machine for you." She patted my shoulder. "Might help with the lightheadedness." 

We clambered into the car. Most of our things had already been moved to the new townhouse earlier this week. There were only a few suitcases in the back along with my bags for school since I'd be living there. I wasn't too sure about the thought of boarding school, but Mom had gone to New Delos Prep as a teenager. It couldn't be bad if she was willing to send her daughter there. 

We sat in an uncomfortable silence that was only broken by Avery crunching his chips. It was a relief when the boat finally bumped up against the dock, signaling our arrival. Butterflies churned my stomach. Again, new city, new school. 

Dad looked at us in the backseat as he started the engine. He was smiling now, even if it did look a little forced. Hopefully it meant he was starting to relax. 

"Everyone ready?" 

The cars ahead of us started creeping forward.

"Gonna have to be at this point," I said, but I smiled back. Sure it was a brand new place for us, but what was there to really be nervous about?