Which was racing into a confrontation with a guy who had me so grossly outpowered as to make my fight with the Terminator look completely fair by comparison. But hey, I’d almost beaten the Terminator, so … I had to at least stand a chance with this guy … right?
I tried not to allow myself the luxury of negative thoughts, but reality is a mean mistress, and she came crashing in on me while I tried to accentuate the positive. This was madness, possibly suicide, which was a phase I thought I was past since I’d crawled my way out of Rose’s clutches.
The Explorer shot under a rusted railroad bridge draped with ice stalactites and through an intersection where someone blared their horn at me for failing to acknowledge the rules of the road. Give way, idiots, I’m trying to save lives here! Or possibly kill myself in a blaze of glory and martyrdom.
How had my life gone so far off the rails? A year and a half ago I’d been living in this city, I’d been the most powerful meta in the world, I had a boyfriend, I had friends who were like family, I had half a billion dollars in the bank and was secretly working for myself, lived with my surrogate mom Ariadne, I was a hero who was instrumental in stopping the tide of metahuman attacks, was respected, and was just generally …
Happy.
Shit. I was happy.
Now I was on the run from the law, and Ariadne didn’t even remember me thanks to the machinations of the villain who’d borked my life from the highest office in the land. I had almost no powers. Who even knew what had happened to my boyfriend, my family and friends were beaten down, I’d lost most of my money and couldn’t access the rest, and I was pretty much thought of as a villain throughout the world.
As the Minneapolis skyline appeared in the distance between a couple of leafless trees, I had to ask myself …
Was this really the consequence of some shitty decisions I’d made back when I was eighteen?
Did this really come down to the bad press I’d gotten from killing Clyde Clary, Eve Kappler, Roberto Bastian, and Glen Parks? From my intemperate actions as a metahuman superhero law enforcer, when I’d occasionally lost patience with people like Eric Simmons? From Cassidy’s character assassination campaign against me a few years ago?
I was wanted. Hunted. In spite of my best efforts to save the world, I’d been framed for things I didn’t do, and tarred because of the things I had done years ago.
Was this just the deal? Was I a villain, now and forever? Irredeemable?
I mean, it wasn’t like the law was likely to just forget the Eden Prairie incident, since that was the pretext for my arrest. It was somewhat compounded by the LA nuclear incident (thanks, Greg Vansen) but astute eyes had at least blasted all over the internet the fact that “Sienna Nealon can’t produce a nuclear blast!” which had apparently staved off any charges there, though I was still very much a person of interest in that investigation.
All the things I’d done, both good and bad, seemed totally weighted against me. The good counted for nothing, the bad weighed tons and was pressing down on me with the force of a dumpster filled with plutonium. And on fire, because my life was a nuclear dumpster fire.
I was passing the occasional house now, zipping past stores as I shot over Interstate 35W. I flew through more intersections, got more honks, flipped the occasional bird in response. Traffic was picking up in the opposite direction, and I was passing in the center lane, laying on the horn anytime I caught up with someone who was traveling the speed limit.
After blowing through a whole series of intersections, things started to build up. Condos and apartment buildings began to rise around me. Newer restaurants and stores had sprung up through this part of town. Disused industrial and light commercial sectors gave way to an aging and refurbed cityscape, the kind of neighborhoods where hipsters dwelled with their lumberjack beards and flannel shirts (no, seriously—a guy in a flannel shirt, in a perfect imitation of the Brawny Paper Towel man, was hauling ass down the street in the opposite direction).
I hit the split of Hennepin Avenue and 7th Street and raced on, joining up with 1st Avenue. A few blocks later, downtown Minneapolis was rising above me, just ahead.
Home.
Almost home.
A little farther ahead and I saw the bridge onto Nicollet Island.
And suddenly … I was there.
The bridge ended, and I was in downtown Minneapolis.
I turned left onto Washington Avenue and raced, ignoring the honks as I pushed my way through vehicles that were blocking the intersection, forming a line to escape the carnage on Nicollet Mall. I went straight ahead on Hennepin and hung a left on 6th, fighting through another string of stopped traffic. People were getting out of their cars and fleeing on foot, some wrapped up tight, some dressed completely inadequately for the occasion.
Here I abandoned my car on 6th, pulling it onto the sidewalk and honking to get people to get the hell out of the way. There was definitely not going to be any escaping from this by car, so … I just left it, hitting the cold air as I got out, letting it pour over me, infuse my bones as I stared down to the intersection with Nicollet Mall.
The little dome of rock waited, cracks in it that provided an opportunity to see the big bad guy’s self-constructed oven. Flames were crawling slowly out of the sides, and that shimmering veil of water waited.
“Take my car,” I said to a woman who was struggling under the weight of trying to drag along four kids, two of them very young and the others maybe six or seven, tops. I grabbed her by the arm and got her attention with a sharp shake as I pointed to the Explorer. “Go south. Hit 394.” I pointed to the 394 signs just down the street. “Go the wrong way if you have to, just get out of downtown.”
Her eyes were frightened and yet somehow dull as she stared at me. She blinked, then squinted, almost in recognition. “Aren’t you …?” she asked, like she was trying to put something together.
“Take the car, get out of town,” I said. “Hardly anyone is coming this way, so take advantage of the empty lanes.” I turned my back on her. “The Explorer’s running, just get your kids in, buckle up and go.”
“Thank you!” she called after me as she hurried them into my car. I didn’t stick around to watch the operation. The crowds on the street were thinning already, the buildings around us probably near empty. The city of Minneapolis had seen enough metahuman incidents that no one wanted to be caught at ground zero when one was brewing right outside their door.
I took to the street at a run, passing the big Murray’s sign, passing under the Ike’s awning and then, once I’d gone past a couple garage entrances, past Oceanaire’s windows.
Snow remained in the gutters, frozen in spite of the city’s best efforts to clear it. Piles remained, draped on the edges of the sidewalks, waiting for some sucker to try and step over them.