The news coverage showed several phone videos taken of the Legion meeting the previous day. The Legion gathered and then Paris attacked with a team of his own. The people filming were too far away to pick up much audio, but after a new member joined the Legion, Paris was forced to flee.
Light Master glared at the screen.
I should have been there.
"Why can't the military arrest all those freaks?" his mom asked, clearly annoyed.
"The Legion are the good guys, Mom. They can't be arrested," Light Master replied coldly.
"Oh yes, very good guys who conscript children." That was obviously sarcasm.
"I was given a Miracle! I was chosen, Mom. I should be there with them, not stuck here watching."
"Tanner, you are too young."
"Who says?" Light Master stood and spun to face her. "I'm already twelve!"
"You have five years and two months until your eighteenth birthday. You can do whatever you want then."
"Mom! I'm old enough to do it now."
"No, you are not. How many times must we go over this?" His mom glared at him, and Light Master figured she was about to send him to his room. Again.
"You're holding me back, Mom! In all the stories, it doesn't matter how old you are. When you're chosen to save the world, you just have to do it!"
"You are not chosen to save the world, Tanner."
"Says you! Look." To demonstrate his point, Light Master pointed a ray of light at the wall. He did his best to increase the intensity, hoping to burn a hole in it.
"Put that away, Tanner. Now."
"What is this if not proof I'm chosen?" Instead of listening to her, Light Master widened the beam.
"Tanner! Do you want to go back to your room?" His mom was mad now. And there went the famous 'Go to your room' line.
"See if I care!" Light Master stopped the ray and ran to his room, slamming the door and locking it. Next he grabbed his tablet - the only piece of tech he was allowed now since he needed it for school. Parental controls kept him from browsing the web as he pleased, but they couldn't be that hard to disable.
He fiddled with the touch screen, getting to the parental controls menu. Behind this password-blocked door was a list of approved sites he could use. And the switch to turn off parental controls.
Which password had they used? It couldn't be that hard to hack. He started with 'Tanner'.
Invalid password.
Four more tries before the device locked and sent a notification to his mom's phone. So three tries to be safe.
Light Master flopped on his bed, desperately thinking of what the password could possibly be. He'd let his parents restrain him until now because he figured it was a phase. They'd release him for the next Legion meeting, when they realized just how vital he was to the world.
But now that they seemed stuck on restraining him, he'd just have to break the shackles.
Cleo only saw the news about the attack after it had happened. Not Phantasma's attack on June 19, but Paris' on June 24. When the news showed phone camera footage of the fight, she didn't know how to feel. She just stared at it blankly, a million - no, a billion - things dancing around in her crowded head.
"Those guys with phone cameras shouldn't be standing there gawking and filming," her dad had muttered. "If you ever see something like that, Cleo, you run as far as you can as fast as you can. Hear me?"
She'd been unable to respond, trying to filter through the images that had been and the images that could have been. In the end, it was like too many coloured line drawings layered on top of each other to the point that nothing made sense.
"Cleo?" She'd pushed everything out of her mind to focus on her dad.
Her wonderful, kind dad who would do anything for her. But there had been a rift growing between them ever since she got her stupid 'gifts'. The things she couldn't tell him kept piling up. Not because she didn't trust him. No, Cleo kept it to herself because she knew Dad had enough on his plate already.
"I know," she said. "I'll run. That kind of stuff is for idiots." Even as she said it, her words seemed to ring hollow to her. They satisfied her dad, who settled back into the couch and skipped the rest of the news story.
Was it just for idiots? Sure, Achilles was a right fool. But he was a trusting fool. And Phantasma had taken advantage of that. Maybe he needed to be more cautious, but from what she'd seen she didn't see too much to fault him with, other than him being a little eccentric.
Lightning and Jumper didn't seem like idiots, though. Nobody knew much about the fourth guy who'd showed up to the fight on the Legion's side, so she'd reserve judgement.
No!
The images tried to show her what the fourth person was like, but she imagined herself batting them away. All she got was an image of a wrestler, and that was more than she wanted. She didn't want to get involved. She wouldn't get involved.
No.
No.
No!
Keep the images out of her head. If she never saw a dismal future, she couldn't be faulted for not preventing it.
Focus, Cleo. Focus. Start naming the elements of the Periodic Table.
The activity helped calm down the voices as she continued passively staring at the TV. Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen...
Was the Legion just a fools' game? Or was it a game for those who were too kind, those who would risk their lives for strangers? Because really, this was risking their lives. Cleo knew she wasn't brave enough for that. All she wanted was for the voices to go away, for space to stop ripping open whenever she thought she wanted to go somewhere.
She just wanted to be normal again.
Cleo wasn't scared of her dad finding out about her abilities. He'd be as confused as she was, and they'd figure it all out together. No, the scary thing would be other people finding out. Throughout school, Cleo had always been weird. She hadn't had many friends. It had always been her and Dad against the world.
She didn't know much about her mom. Dad didn't like to talk about it. All Cleo knew was that her mom had never been in the picture. Maybe she was dead. Maybe she just wanted nothing to do with them. And her dad's family wasn't too fond of him, meaning Cleo had never even met any of them. It truly was her and her dad. Their little world had always been so safe.
And then that purple freak had granted her a so-called birthday present. A miserable existence that would alienate her even further from everyone. She couldn't work with the Legion. She refused to consider joining the likes of Paris and Phantasma. And no one else would understand her.
Cobalt. Nickel. Copper. Zinc. Gallium. Germanium.
Cleo was the one weird kid who'd memorized the entire Periodic table back in middle school. As she got older, she went beyond knowing the names of the elements to learning their properties. She could tell you which ones were always safe, which ones were too dangerous and couldn't be found on Arx, and which ones could kill you.
Somehow it comforted her to be able to recite all that from memory. Her dad had called her his little scientist, and now that she was in the Arx Tech program - training for the duty of keeping the flying city from plunging to the surface - he was prouder of her than ever.
So she had to keep pushing on. No matter how loud the voices got. No matter how difficult her school work was. He'd sacrificed so much for her to have this opportunity and she wasn't going to waste it.
The images started crowding her mind again and Cleo shook her head before declaring that she was going to bed.
Sleep was the only time she got a break from her curse.
