Damage Control

The short story contains minor spoilers for The Apex Cycle 1: BETA.

“I’ve got a tip that something might be going down on the loading docks tonight, and I might need someone to watch my back.”

She smiled at me hopefully.

“You want me to go with you. How do you even know if an Apex will show?”

-BETA, Chapter 6

Wesley had learned a long time ago, at the young age of six years old, that no matter how hard he pressed his hands against his ears, he would still be able to  hear everything happening in his suburban family home. Now that he was seven, however, he knew that crinkling candy wrappers next to his ears worked much better to drown out the sounds. That was what he did now, knowing that his parents and aunt were talking about him downstairs.

He sat on his mattress in the dark of his bedroom with his knees drawn to his chest and the wrappers from two Santa-shaped chocolate bars he’d received in his Christmas stocking that morning in hand. A crash shook the floor.

“Well, dammit, Tara! Don’t you know what we’ve been dealing with for the past year?!” His father’s voice thundered and Wesley crinkled the Santa wrappers louder.

Wesley screwed his eyes shut, blocking out the view of his carefully stacked Christmas presents, all of them still in their boxes. The remote control robot his Aunt Tara had brought for him looked particularly fun, but he didn’t dare open it. When he did, he was sure to break it. It was safe in its box and Wesley could at least look and imagine playing with it. 

He didn’t know how long he sat like that, curled in on himself with his eyes shut and Santa wrappers in hand, but he couldn’t ignore the gentle tremble of footsteps that reverberated through the floor and through the mattress.  

He opened a single eye. Aunt Tara’s silhouette took up the doorway and Wesley slowly lowered the wrappers.

“It’s kind of dark in here, bud.” Despite the fight she’d been having with Wesley’s parents downstairs, her voice had a chuckling lilt. 

“It doesn’t hurt if the lights are off.” When he’d explained that to his parents, they’d shaken their heads and called him dramatic but Aunt Tara nodded and tried to close the bedroom door behind her. Of course, Wesley had ripped the doorknob off so many times that his dad had given up on replacing it, so it bounced back open, leaving a sliver of light from the hallway.

Aunt Tara sat down on the mattress next to Wesley. Her hair was dark  and short like Wesley’s father’s and she had the same sharp features, but they somehow looked kinder on her.

“Here.” She pulled her glasses from her face. “Try these on.”

Wesley hesitated. They were probably expensive. He would break them. She would yell. She’d take the robot toy back to the store. Aunt Tara’s eyes crinkled and a sad smile broke across her face as she lifted the glasses to him.

They were a bit too big for his small head but the ache that was always there behind his eyes dulled just slightly. The bedroom, which had stood out in agonizingly sharp detail just a moment before, softened.

“You’ll need a pair that fits you better,” she said, “but you keep those until then.”

Wesley nodded and the glasses nearly slipped off his long nose. Aunt Tara laughed and pushed them back into place. 

“Look, bud, there’s something we need to talk about.” 

Wesley shrank back on the mattress. He knew it. He was in trouble. 

“I didn’t mean to,” he mumbled out of habit. He didn’t know what it was he’d done yet, but whatever it was, it had been an accident. It was always an accident. 

“Ah, Wesley. I know. You’re okay. I’m not here to yell at you.” Her eyes glittered. “Your parents were telling me about how you’ve been and I have a question for you. Do you know what Apex are?”

Wesley perked up. 

“Paragon was an Apex.” The coolest kids at school had Paragon lunchboxes. One kid had even gone on vacation to Paragon’s island and had brought back Paragon keychains for the whole class. Of course, Wesley had broken the clasp on his almost immediately, but the medallion sporting Paragon’s picture was still somewhere in his closet. 

“Yes, he was.” Aunt Tara smiled and ruffled Wesley’s hair. “Do you know anyone else?”

Wesley shook his head and Aunt Tara leaned in close like she had a secret.

“You.”

Wesley’s head buzzed with a strange dissonance until the reality of what his aunt was saying washed over him in waves of terror.

“And now Paragon’s going to come put me in jail?”

Aunt Tara’s smile fell from her face and she shook her head, moving off the mattress to sit on the floor and face Wesley.

“No! Wha—why would you think that?”

“Because he fights bad guys,” Wesley gulped. “And I—”

He cut off, remembering the sound of his brother’s arm snapping in his hands. If anyone was a bad guy, it was Wesley. 

“No. Wesley, no. You are not a bad guy.” Aunt Tara put her hands on Wesley’s shoulders. “You are wonderful and you can be a hero just like Paragon.” 

He mulled over her words, his heart rate slowing down as he realized no one was coming to arrest him for being a supervillain.

“But how do you know I’m an Apex?” 

“Because,” she said with a twinkle in her eye, “I know a fellow Apex when I see one.”

Wesley’s mouth dropped in awe.

“You—”

She nodded, her smile inching back into place.

“Oh, yes. Just like you. And I’m going to guess that just like me, you are very good at hearing and seeing and are much stronger than your friends.”

“I’m not strong,” Wesley admitted.

“No?” Aunt Tara raised an eyebrow at him. “Most seven year olds don’t break doorknobs.”

“It was an acc—”

“An accident, yes! Because you, Wesley, are super and you don’t know your own strength. But now you know and you can work on control.” 

Aunt Tara repositioned herself so she was sitting back on the bed and Wesley stared at his hands. He was an Apex like Paragon. He was strong like Paragon. He wasn’t a bad guy, after all. 

“Where did they come from?” he asked suddenly. He needed to know everything and he needed to know it now. 

“Your powers?”

“Apex.”

Aunt Tara laughed and leaned back against the wall, running a hand through her short-cropped hair. 

“No one knows for sure. Some say they’ve always existed, as long as normal people have, but others believe they were created by an ancient warrior.”

“How?”

“Well,” Aunt Tara grinned, dropping her voice theatrically, “they say he was called Adrestus the Unkillable because he’d discovered the secret to immortality and that secret gave him the power to gift his followers with Apex powers.”

Wesley’s mouth dropped in awe. 

“And? What happened to him?”

“The Scourge Queen!” She raised her hands and curled her fingers into claws. “An evil woman from the north discovered the source of his power, stole it, and killed him!”

“No!” Wesley breathed.

“Yes! But his Apex warriors lived on and passed their powers down through their family tree until they came to you and me.”

Wesley looked back down at his hands, marveling at the secret power they hid.

“And the Scourge Queen?”

“Some say she died,” Aunt Tara nodded dramatically, “but others say she’s still out there, waiting to strike down the Apex. And that is why we need people like you, bud. Even if the Scourge Queen isn’t real, we will always need heroes and I’m thinking you would be perfect for the job.”

“And if she is real,” Wesley balled his little fists, “I’ll be the one who defeats her and saves the Apex!”

Aunt Tara laughed and ruffled his hair. 

“I don’t doubt that for a second, bud.”

Wesley held his breath, wondering if he was standing too close to Samantha as they looked up at Adrestus’ marble statue. Her heart hammered in her chest, its thumping already a familiar sound to Wesley after a few, short days. He hadn’t meant to stand this close. It had just sorta happened but their shoulders were nearly touching. Wesley stood as still as the statues in the exhibit around them, afraid if he so much as brushed his project partner, she’d figure out he had been the Apex at the Welcome Back Festival. 

“‘The Scourge Queen Eydis: Destroyer of The Apex’,” Samantha read from the plaque on the empty pedestal next to Adrestus’ statue. She pushed  a lock of tawny hair back behind her ear. “Well, she sounds like she’s a good time at parties.”

“Unfortunately, the Scourge is away for routine cleaning.” The museum curator appeared behind them and Wesley jumped. It wasn’t like him not to hear someone approach from behind but he’d been so focused on the distance between his and Samantha’s shoulders and thumping of her heart.

“Why would you have a villain in the Hall of Heroes, though?” Wesley gave the empty pedestal a dubious glance and the museum curator nodded thoughtfully, though something about the way his blue eyes drilled into Samantha made him uncomfortable. 

“Without adversity, we wouldn’t have heroes and as long as we have something to stand for, there will inevitably be someone who stands against us. She’s an important reminder of that.”

Wesley chewed on his lip, remembering something his Aunt Tara had said a long time ago. It was a good enough answer, but it still somehow seemed sacrilegious to have the greatest villain in Apex history grace the same hall as Paragon. 

“We’ll have to come back once she’s out of cleaning.” Wesley tried to sound polite, even if he didn’t mean it. He made a show of checking his watch. “Hey, Samantha, it’s almost four. We should head back to the bus.”

The curator nodded and stepped aside so they could pass, but Samantha continued to stare up at Adrestus with a confused scowl.

“Samantha?” Wesley said. She shook her head, as if pulling herself from a reverie and tried to smile.

“Sorry. Just a cool statue, you know?”

“You’re always welcome back,” the curator said, escorting them back to the main hall, though Wesley wished he wouldn’t. “Students get in free and, really, you should see the Scourge Queen once she’s done with her cleaning. She’s quite something.”

The bus idled at the curb in front of the museum and Samantha left Wesley on the bus to sit with her roommate Winnie. Luckily, Anthony was already saving a seat for Wesley. 

“Can you believe I got paired with Charlie?” he hissed before Wesley had even fully sat down. “C-Plus-Charlie! Might as well resign myself to failing this project now!”

“His name isn’t Failing-Charlie,” Wesley pointed out. 

“A C-Plus is failing to some of us,” Anthony snapped, waving his notebook in Wesley’s face. “We got almost no work done. He spent the entire field trip looking at a medieval ax collection.”

The last of the students piled into the bus and Wesley rubbed at his temples as the bus filled with excited chatter.

“—helmet exhibit on the fourth floor? Maybe for Halloween—”

“—food poisoning at the cafe. When I tell my parents—”

“—going down on the loading docks tonight, and I might need someone to watch my back.” 

Wesley’s eyes darted to the back of Winnie’s head and he tried to zero in on her conversation with Samantha but Anthony tapped his shoulder.

“Are you even listening to me? My academic career could be over. I’m going to be doing this project all alone!”

“Right,” Wesley nodded, pushing his glasses up his nose. “That sucks.”

Anthony rolled his eyes.

“Whatever. Hey, I heard Dylan say a bunch of people are going to Froyo when we get back.”

“You hate Froyo.”

“I hate that it pretends to be something it’s not but I’m not going to say no to it, either.”

Winnie’s voice drifted back to him. Something about a weapons deal. He sat up straighter.

“So you’ll go?” Anthony asked. 

“What?”

“To Froyo? We can ask her to come with us.” He nodded at Samantha and Wesley blushed.

“Why?”

“Because you’re staring at her.”

“No, I’m—”

“You won’t even have to do anything, probably,” Winnie was saying. “I have an emergency key to Amanda’s car, so we just sneak over to the campus, taker her car, park a few blocks away from the docks, and—”

“Wesley?” Anthony asked. 

“My project partner is going to get herself murdered,” he groaned, sinking back in his seat. Fleming had put him in charge of making sure no harm came to Samantha. That sounded easy enough, but now it sounded like Winnie was determined to put Samantha in as much danger as possible. “I can’t do Froyo, I need to tell Fleming—”

“You better not be eavesdropping,” Anthony rolled his eyes.

“Not on purpose!”

“Whatever it is, it can wait until after Froyo.”

“You just want to go because I’m guessing Bethany is going.”

Anthony flushed all the way to the tips of his ears and he turned to the window.

“So maybe she is,” Anthony shrugged. “Why can’t you tell Fleming whatever it is you need to tell him now? He’s right there.”

Wesley looked up at Fleming in the front seat of the bus, going over his clipboard.

“Yeah, fine. Wait here.”

“We’re in a moving bus. Where would I go?” Anthony called after him as Wesley struggled to move down the aisle while the bus bumped and jostled. A crumpled page of paper hit him in the back of the head and he turned to see Andersen laughing with his friends.

  He’d get back at Andersen later, though. He had more pressing matters at hand.

Fleming looked up as Wesley reached the front seat.

“You need to stay seated while—”

“Winnie and Samantha are going to sneak out tonight to watch a weapons deal at the loading docks.”

Fleming gawked at Wesley for a moment, then shifted over to make room for him.

“That’s—how do you—”

Wesley tapped his ear and glanced back at Samantha and Winnie, but they were both on their phones, no longer talking.

“Winnie is trying to get Samantha to go with her. I think she’s probably trying to get more pictures, like she would last year—”

“Samantha has more sense than that. I’m sure her parents instilled—”

“Samantha, maybe, but Winnie?” Wesley stared down his teacher. Summer couldn’t have been so long that Fleming forgot just how meddlesome Winnie Hendricks could be.

“Maybe,” Fleming admitted. “But it’s equally possible that you want a reason to be put on patrol tonight.”

Wesley felt his cheeks warm.

“I mean, sure, but both those things can be equally true.”

Fleming sighed and pushed his glasses up his forehead to better pinch his nose.

“It is much too early in the year for this. Yes. Fine. You can patrol tonight, but just so you know, Andersen is on Call Duty so he’ll be in your ear while you’re out in the city.”

“What!? No! You have to reassign it!” Wesley looked back at Andersen, who crumpled more papers to throw at Anthony now that Wesley was too far. “I’m not working with him.”

“He’s on the schedule for tonight and that’s where he’ll stay.” Fleming gave him a warning look. “He’s your teammate. Learn to work with him.”

Wesley gritted his teeth but didn’t press the matter. If he was going to have to work with Andersen all night, then Winnie better be right about the weapons deal.

“This is Seven, checking in at Sector One.” Wesley’s words transcribed themselves onto his visor screen as he spoke them. He bounced on his toes in the dark to keep warm against the biting chill of midnight. A wind rolled in from the open ocean, making it hard to hear the surrounding area, but he at least had a good view of the rows and rows of cargo containers from his spot on top of the guard station.

“I can see you on the map,” Andersen’s voice drawled in his ear. “You don’t need to update me.”

Wesley scowled and stretched, pulling one arm across his body with the other. Wesley come from campus on foot, which was no small feat since the loading docks were clear across the island.

“I’m following protocol.”

“It’s annoying. Everyone else gets to nap while they’re on Call Duty so of course of you come up with some stupid reason to keep me awake all night.”

Wesley scanned the tops of the cargo containers and did a double take when he saw a soft glow forming a halo across the docks. Weapons dealers, maybe?

“And weapons deals aren’t even in our wheelhouse!” Andersen complained in the ear piece. “Unless they’re Apex, which they won’t be, we aren’t allowed to engage!”

“We aren’t here to take out weapons dealers,” Wesley pointed out. “We’re making sure our classmates don’t get murdered.”

“Oh, yes, because Winnie is so worth saving.”

“Everyone is worth saving.”

Andersen made gagging sounds on the other end and Wesley flicked off his audio. A series of random letters scrolled across the visor screen as the audio-to-text translator tried to make sense of Andersen’s fake vomit noises but Wesley ignored it and focused instead on the ring of light across the docks. 

If Winnie and Samantha were here, they’d see it, too, and like moths to a flame, that would be the direction they headed.

Wesley leaped down from the guard building, landing lithely on the balls of his feet, and creeped further into the rows of shipping containers. The low, dulcet rumble of talking voices carried on the wind, but it was far off and he was only able to discern a snippet of conversation.

“—but if you think I’m going to go risk being murdered by mobsters—”

“Mobsters? Please, Sam, this isn’t the 1920s. But if you want—”

Wesley got a running start and then hoisted himself up onto the nearest shipping container, his Apex-level strength giving him the power to do it in a single leap. He rolled over the container lip, trying to minimize the sound of his landing.

He had exactly one friend who talked to him outside of training and as great as Anthony was, Wesley had liked having Samantha around the last few days. She was nice and funny and not as intense as her roommate and Wesley did not want to see her hurt by mobsters. Or weapons dealers. 

“I think I found them,” Wesley said, turning his audio back on. “I can hear them.”

“Great. Grab them and get them back here so I can finally take a nap.”

He kept low to the roof of the shipping container and crawled as quickly as the awkward position would allow him. Roughly a hundred yards ahead, two high-schooler sized shadows hunched over the lip of a container. Good. Now if they stayed there, Wesley could watch them and make sure—

The one on the right slipped from view and Wesley swore. 

“Don’t let Fleming hear you talk like that,” Andersen chided. 

“I’ve heard you say much worse.”

“I’d never.”

Wesley ignored Andersen and continued his painstaking progress across the containers. As long as the second shadow, who he assumed must be Samantha, stayed in place—

She disappeared. Wesley swore again.

“What is going on?” Andersen groaned.

“I lost them.”

“You had them?”

“Not exactly.” Wesley risked standing straighter so he could move more quickly across the containers, jumping across gaps when he came to them.

“Winnie?” 

Wesley froze at the sound of Samantha’s timid whisper. It was far away and barely discernible even to him, but she sounded scared. He stood on his tip toes, craning his neck to see into the shadows between containers. Even with the visor’s night vision and his super-sight, the maze of containers made it impossible to see far.

He ran faster. Hopefully they both had the sense to stay away from the glowing lights ahead and whatever weapons dealers lurked there.

“Winnie?”

Her second whisper was closer and Wesley dropped to his hands and knees when he saw Samantha’s ponytail flick around a corner up ahead.

“Got one,” he whispered into his helmet. “Just need to find the other.”

“And then what?” Andersen asked. “Tell them to leave and hope Winnie doesn’t snap a good picture while you’re in front of her? Carry them out on your back when they refuse?”

“One step at a time.”

Andersen snorted and Wesley winced at the sharp sound of static. He crawled forward until he could see Samantha. Her eyes glowed in the night vision of his helmet and she stared into the dark, searching for Winnie and whatever danger lurked in the shadows. It killed him to keep going, but as much as he wished he could take Samantha and run, he needed to get Winnie out, too. 

Samantha looked too terrified to wander far, so he silently willed her to stay put and scurried across the next cargo container, scanning for Winnie. 

“Done yet?” Andersen asked.

“Can you stop?”

“Can you not suck at your job and wrap this up, please? You’d think you’d try harder since it’s your new girlfriend on the line.”

Wesley’s foot slipped just as he went to bridge the gap between two containers. He fell twelve feet to the wood of the docks and gasped at the night sky as he struggled to remember how to breathe.

“She’s not—I don’t—” he managed to croak.

“Sure.” He could hear the eye roll in Andersen’s tone. Wesley rolled onto his hands and knees, rolling out his right shoulder, having landed on it funny.

“She’s just my project partner.”

“Right.”

Wesley pushed himself to his feet and leaned against the nearest cargo container. 

“I don’t want to see any of my classmates get—”

“Another sound and you die, little bird.”

Wesley fell silent at the hoarse voice that echoed between shipping containers.

“Did you hear that?” he hissed at Andersen.

“No, I’m not the one who tells anyone willing to listen that he has super hearing.”

“Shut up, Andersen!” Wesley snarled, hoisting himself back up the shipping containers. “They’re in trouble!”

He sprinted back the way he’d come, searching for Samantha between the containers.

“What’s—”

“Shut up!” 

There, up ahead. A flick of long hair.

But as he hurried forward, he saw his night vision had played tricks on him. It wasn’t Samantha’s tawny ponytail, but Winnie’s strawberry blonde streaming behind her as she sprinted towards the exit with the haste of someone being followed.

Good. If Winnie was being chased, then maybe they hadn’t found Samantha in the dark yet. In the meantime, Wesley would make sure no harm came to Winnie.

But then, she stopped, and instead of looking back, she pulled out her phone and hammered out a message. The glow of the screen illuminated her stoic expression and then she marched forward, pocketing her phone and lazily flicking through the photos on her camera. Wesley scanned the aisle, searching for whoever she’d been running from, but Winnie was the only person there.

“Am I allowed to talk now?” Andersen asked.

“No.” 

Winnie kept going, approaching the guard station alone. But where was Samantha?

“She’s leaving,” Wesley said blankly, watching Winnie slip out the gate without a glance back. “She’s just leaving Samantha behind!”

And if Winnie was escaping without Samantha, that meant the owner of hoarse, threatening voice was probably with—

Crap.

Wesley turned around and sprinted back towards the orange glow at the far end of the loading docks, making no effort to keep quiet. His boots thundered and clanged against the tops of metal containers and somewhere behind him, he heard the distant sound of a car door slamming and the engine revving to life.

Winnie was really leaving her own friend at the mercy of weapons dealers. Samantha was with the weapons dealers!

“Wesley, you have to tell me what’s happening! I can’t see—”

“I’m gonna fight mobsters,” Wesley gasped as the loading docks hurtled past in a blur. “I gotta. I’m sorry I—”

“WINNIE!” Samantha’s muffled scream sent a wave of panic through Wesley and a surge of adrenaline pushed him to run faster. “WINNIE, RUN!!”

She didn’t know her roommate had already left her. She wasn’t yelling for help. She was yelling a warning, telling Winnie to get somewhere safe. Winnie truly didn’t deserve her friendship. 

“Mobsters?” Andersen repeated. “Wesley, what the hell—”

Wesley crossed the last three containers in a dead sprint, hastened by Samantha’s screams and the growing lights of two parked cars. He catapulted himself off the final container and arched through the air, landing the roof of the nearest car. 

Two woman stared up at him, dumbfounded, standing in the headlights of the second car.

“Hackjob, get back here!” With long, white hair that framed a youthful face and a long white skirt swishing at her ankles, the woman looked nothing how Wesley had imagined a weapons dealer might look. The second woman, squared up for a fight, her ginger locks fastened in a tight bun.

A hulking figure barged from the deep shadows between two shipping containers, filthy hair swinging at his ears and heavy fists ready for a fight. Wesley grinned as he sized up his opponent. He towered over Wesley and while Wesley might not have fought bigger, but he was sure he’d fought stronger. 

“What’s happening? Is Samantha there?” Andersen asked.

“Give me a sec.” Wesley launched himself off the car. He could hear her somewhere nearby, though she’d stopped screaming. He’d memorized the sound of her heartbeat by now and it was thumping somewhere nearby, racing as quickly as it had at the Welcome Back Festival. Wesley’s feet had barely touched the pavement before he had the ginger woman in a headlock. The man charged and Wesley spun, the woman still in his arms, to avoid the attack. “I can’t find her!”

“You have super senses, how can you not find her?” Andersen hissed, as Wesley dealt the woman a swift, albeit gentle, blow to the back. She crumpled in his arms and he let her fall to the pavement, as he ducked out of reach of the man.

“There’s a lot happening!”

Plastic splintered to Wesley’s right and he caught a glimpse of a shattered-out taillight framing Samantha’s pallid face.

“Ah, crap, she’s in the trunk!”

“Then get her out?”

“I’m working on it!” Wesley spun. Gentle, he reminded himself again as he struck the giant man down with a round kick that he wished Coach Reiner had been here to see. 

He was too gentle, however, and the man struggled back to his feet. Wesley kicked him in the chest with a little more force this time, and the man fell backwards into the woman with the long white hair. 

Wesley rushed back to the car before either of them could get up and recognized the sweetly sharp scent of rust. It was subtle, but it was there and it was definitely coming from the car. Perfect. He jumped up onto the trunk, wrapped his hands around the lip, and yanked upwards. 

The latch broke with a satisfying pop just as the white-haired woman regained her footing. Wesley didn’t wait to see if Samantha was crawling free of the broken car trunk. He charged the woman, maneuvering to get the upper hand before she’d so much as caught her balance.

“Stop!” Samantha cried out. “She—”

Wesley reached out towards the woman but she side-stepped him with surprising speed. Her lips curled into a grin and her slate-gray eyes glinted as she struck his throat with an open palm. 

Every nerve in Wesley’s body went rigid and every muscle buzzed and vibrated, fighting the invisible hold that had overtaken him. He couldn’t move. He could barely breathe. Wesley was trapped, immobile, staring at the woman’s wide grin. She was an Apex and Wesley was under her control.

“Wesley? What’s going on? Did you get her?”

Wesley couldn’t even open his mouth to respond to Andersen. He’d never felt this helpless before, at least not since he was very small. And now he felt small all over again. Not in control. At the mercy of powers he didn’t understand.

“Adrestus is going to love meeting you.” The woman cocked her head to the side and her eyes caught the glint of headlights. “You’ll have to ride with me, though.”

Adrestus? Adrestus the Unkillable? Or more likely, someone abusing his name. 

“Hey!”

Wesley’s heart sank at the sound of Samantha’s shout. She should run. If she did something stupid—

Too late. 

Samantha collided with the woman, wielding her jacket ahead of her like a shield and trapping the woman’s free hand as she tackled her to the pavement. 

The woman’s hand slipped from Wesley’s neck and agency returned to his nerves in a rush. He took a shuddering gasp and flexed his fingers, testing that they worked. They bent when he willed them to but the panic remained, permeating his every nerve.

He bent over, grabbed Samantha by her shirt collar and pulled her to her feet.

“Run.”

And she did, without looking back. Wesley scooped up her discarded jacket, feeling the woman’s hands scramble at the back of his boot. He struck backwards with his heel and took off after Samantha, following the sound of her hammering heart through the dark channels of shadow that ran between the shipping containers.

“Wesley, are you out or not? Do I need to call Fleming?”

“Why haven’t you already?” Wesley seethed between breaths. 

“You need help?” There was a hint of a self-important laugh to Andersen’s tone and Wesley felt his temperature increase several degrees. 

“No! We’re leaving but—”

“Then I don’t need to call Fleming.”

“We’ll need a car to get back to—”

“I can’t drive,” Andersen sniffed. 

“Then find someone who can!”

The city glowed up ahead and Wesley could see Samantha’s silhouette slip out the gate but he knew they weren’t safe yet. She doubled over, her shoulders heaving, and Wesley patted her back as he caught up.

She yelped and stumbled away, staring at Wesley with wide, frightened eyes. Relief at having escaped and harrowed fear at how the woman’s Apex powers had completely immobilized him churned into a confusing turmoil that bubbled up and released in a wave of anger.

“Are you crazy?” He took several long strides towards Samantha, trying to catch his breath. “Are you actually crazy? What are you doing out here?”

“I-my friend, she—” Samantha cut herself off, her mouth opening and closing in silence as she tried to find a good explanation. 

“Your friend?” Wesley snarled. “You mean the same friend that took off twenty minutes ago? That friend?”

Samantha’s face went slack and her shoulders dipped. 

“She what?” Her voice cracked and suddenly Wesley felt a little bad about laying into her as hard he was. “No, she can’t have. She drove me—”

“And she drove away.” Heavy footsteps and labored breathing echoed in the distance, the sound bouncing off the sides of cargo containers, still too far to be detectable to Samantha, but clear as day to Wesley. “Keep moving. The big one is trying to follow us.”

But Samantha didn’t move. Instead she stared at the pavement blankly. Wesley reached for hand and tried to pull her towards the city.

“Andersen said you need a pick-up! I’m ten minutes out,” Isabelle chirped in his ear. Her dot on the visor map zipped across the city and Wesley suppressed a groan. Anthony’s cousin Isabelle was one of his favorite upperclassman, but she was a notoriously scary driver.

Samantha pulled her hand back out of Wesley’s but she continued to follow him. He led her through the shadows as old warehouses of the industrial district gave way to taller, sleeker buildings. 

“I was out here because my friend was looking for you,” Samantha said after a quiet minute. “She wanted to prove some stupid theory about Apex at the school.”

Anger spiked through Wesley, not at Samantha, but at Winnie. For being nosy and reckless and almost getting Samantha kidnapped. 

“Winnie’s an idiot,” he snapped, turning around to face Samantha. “You shouldn’t listen to anything she says.”

Samantha’s eyebrows shot up her forehead and she pointed an accusatory finger.

“You know her?” she exclaimed. “You know Winnie! You are a student!”

Crap.

“Good job, Isaacs,” Andersen snarled in his earpiece.

“No, that’s just the name you were shouting from the car.” It was a decent excuse but Samantha was still looking at him with her head slightly cocked, as if trying to remember him from somewhere. 

“Fine. But then who were those people at the docks?”

“I was hoping you would know.” Definitely not weapons dealers, whatever Winnie had said. “We got a tip that something was going down at the docks tonight but didn’t put much stock in it. Tips are usually a load of crap, but they sent me for surveillance to be safe.”

“We?” she repeated. “Who’s we? Is there a secret Apex team at school?”

“You ever consider not talking and ruining things for the whole team?” Andersen asked, back in Wesley’s ear. “Maybe this was Winnie’s plan all along? She figured out who the weak link was and is using her roommate to worm it out of you.”

“There is!” Samantha continued. “That’s why you were at the pier last weekend! You weren’t keeping the protesters in check, you were at the carnival!”

“If you don’t fix this, Wesley—” Andersen warned.

“It’s easier if you don’t ask questions right now,” Wesley said. 

“No.” Samantha planted her feet and crossed her arms. “I think now is the perfect time for questions. I almost got kidnapped because my idiot roommate was looking for you so I think I have a right to know who you are.”

Now Wesley was getting angry at her. 

“You’re the idiot that followed your idiot roommate into a dangerous situation so you don’t deserve answers at all! And I’m the one who is going to spend the next day doing paperwork because of this whole mess you made!”

“Well, fine! Next time, let them kidnap me since you obviously hate paperwork so much considering you don’t shut up about it!”

She marched past him and Wesley stood dumbfounded for a moment.

That’s not really what she thought of him, right?

“Now you really better hope she doesn’t figure out who you are,” Andersen taunted, “or you’ll end up doing your project on your own.”

Wesley spun and chased after Samantha. His visor map showed Isabelle was two blocks away and he could hear the steady thrum of the approaching engine.

“That’s not—I don’t think you— I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Sure. Well, I’m sorry I don’t care about your paperwork, but maybe you shouldn’t have gone into the hero business if that’s your biggest concern right now.”

He grabbed her shoulder and was relieved when she let him turn her around to face him. 

“You’re right and I’m sorry and I’m very sorry about this, too.”

“About what?”

Isabelle came careening around the street corner in the black team sedan. Wesley pulled Samantha back as the front tire mounted the sidewalk.

“I know you’ve already been forced into one car tonight,” Wesley said, “but now you need to get in this one.”

Samantha took a step back.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“I’m trying to help you!”

“I’ll walk, thanks.”

“So someone else can kidnap you?”

“Maybe my next captors won’t complain so much about paperwork.” Samantha turned to walk away.

“Hurry up, Wesley,” Isabelle growled in his ear. “I want to go to bed.”

Wesley scrambled forward and grabbed Samantha by the wrist to pull her back. She spun on her heel, her gray eyes wide with terror, and lights popped in Wesley’s vision as Samantha’s knuckles smashed across his jaw.