The waitress on the other side spotted her empty mug and held up a finger. “Just a sec, hon.”
“It’s fine.” Red sent her a smile and settled in to wait. The sugar of waffles and chocolate was helping, but truth be told she wasn’t back to full strength yet. She didn’t normally perform and then ease Rooster’s pain in the same night; it had sapped her, truly.
She took note of the men seated on either side of her: one was young and blond, her age, maybe, having an omelet and a Coke, paging through a hefty textbook and smearing the pages with grease. The other, on her left, was someone who reminded her, at least a little, of Rooster. Mid-thirties, powerful build that wasn’t well hidden under his windbreaker and busted jeans. He wore a ballcap, but what she could see of his hair was dark and clipped military short. A little scar curled down from the corner of his near eye, pink and shiny, still almost fresh. Military, his bearing screamed, and she’d know – she’d spent the last five years sharing Slim-Jims and hotel beds with a Marine.
Tired as she was, something in her tightened. Not fear, exactly – she had enough juice to raze someone to ashes, if she needed to – but a disquieted sort of feeling.
She swore she could feel the heat of Rooster’s scowl behind her. Damn. Always so protective. Like the world’s biggest brother…who thought she was totally helpless. The self-sacrificing idiot.
Then the blond boy turned toward her and choked on his next bite of omelet. “Oh shit. Um. Hey. You’re that girl. From last night.”
Red turned to him with a wide, pretend smile in place. Smiles always set people off their guard, helped them forget details. It was Rooster’s fierce scowls that the Institute people always remembered. That and her red hair…
“You’re her, right?” the boy asked. “With the fire?” He lifted one greasy hand and spread the fingers in a little exploding gesture.
“Yes, that’s me,” she said. “Did you like the show?”
“Dude,” he exclaimed, grinning wide. “That was badass. How’d you do that?”
“Magic,” she said, with an answering smile of her own that she hoped was coy. She’d never actually seen a coy smile, or been shown how to execute one, but in the paperbacks she picked up in grocery stores – “What the hell is going on in this book?” Rooster had demanded once, scandalized, when she got out of the shower and found him sprawled back on one of the hotel beds, paging through her current romance novel. “This is,” he’d spluttered, face going red along the high ridges of his cheekbones, “this is – you’re not old enough to read this.” But of course he hadn’t forbidden it, only gave her pained, sidelong glances when she read in the truck. – women were always smiling coyly at men. If the books were to be believed, it was a means of getting your way – or, in her case, pulling off a deception.
He laughed, half-delighted, half-frustrated by her evasion. “No, but seriously. How do you do that? Is it, like, Roman candles or something–”
“Here you go, hon.” The waitress topped off her coffee.
Red gave the a woman a quick smile. “Thank you.” And slid off her stool.
Started to, and the boy darted a hand out like he meant to touch her.
She wasn’t a jumpy person, all things considered, but no one touched her. No one but Rooster. And before that –
“…shows promising development…”
“…experiment had little to no effect…”
“…weaponize its abilities…”
She shied away from the enthusiastic blond boy, a hard leap off her stool, and collided with the man on her other side. Her hand bumped his shoulder, and hot coffee slopped all down his arm, and onto his bare hand.
Red froze a moment, horrified. The man hissed through his teeth, but otherwise remained admirably still. Unlike her, he wasn’t panicking, even though he had to be in pain. She could already see the bright pink of a terrible burn coming up on his skin.
The waitress gasped. “Oh, let me – here, hold on–”
The blond boy knocked his own stool over as he scrambled to his feet, saying, “Whoa, whoa.”
Red didn’t think. Her awareness shrank down to the sight of an injury – an injury that she’d caused – and she reacted. She laid her hand on the stranger’s forearm and funneled a burst of energy into him.
“Ah–” He made a short, sharp, aborted sound, and then went still, the way Rooster did, when–
Oh no, Rooster!
It was his arm, she knew, that went around her waist from behind. He grunted as he was hit with a bit of castoff energy, but didn’t let go, dragging her back from the man, breaking the contact. The second her hand left his arm, the power surge drained out of her, like a bathtub with the drain pulled. She sagged back against Rooster’s chest, panting, and for a moment, the entire diner was dead silent, save the slow spinning of George Strait on the radio.
It was just the chaos, she told herself: the fallen stool, the leaping boy, the gasping waitress, the man’s cry of pain. Rooster, looking big and threatening, lifting her up off her feet. There was no way anyone could know what she’d just done, that she’d used her powers – that she even had any.
Then one of the little soccer players went goggle-eyed and said, “That’s the fire girl.”
“Fuck,” Rooster growled, “come on.” He bulled his way to the door, shoulder first, carrying her, and everyone scrambled to get out of his way.
Red tossed a look behind her as they fled, and saw the stranger she’d healed staring down at his hand in open-mouthed shock. His skin steamed, a little, still hot from the coffee, but there was no burn.
Oh no, she thought.
A carnival act could be explained away, but not a miracle.
*
Jake stood in the alley that ran alongside Mosby’s Diner, slowly opening and closing his hand – his unburned hand. He could still feel the heat of the coffee, and a tingling, bright warmth that he suspected was part of-of whatever the target had done to him. But there was no pain. No side effects – he didn’t think.
He realized he was panting – stress, rather than exertion – and closed his mouth, pressed it tight.
Dr. Talbot had told him that their target had undergone experimental treatment not unlike that used on Jake himself and the rest of his team. They’d given him a team, Dr. Talbot and Agent West, other ex-military serum recipients. They seemed competent, so far, though he hadn’t really bothered to get to know them. This mission was a means to an end, a chance to prove that he was perfectly capable of serving again.
A video posted to Facebook, mined by one of the nerdy techs back at the Manor, had indicated that the target was in Evanston, Wyoming, and Jake’s team had left right away, flying through the night. He’d followed the target and her bodyguard-partner-boyfriend-creepy uncle-whatever he was from the Holiday Inn to the diner, told his team to take up a holding position and wait. This was just recon, really. He hadn’t expected to contain the two of them. According to their briefing packet, the target was highly dangerous and great care would need to be taken to subdue her somewhere where risk of civilian casualties was minimal.
He’d known she was only a girl, a little redhead with a sprinkling of freckles over her nose, but he hadn’t realized, until he’d seen her eating chocolate chip waffles, just how small she seemed. How fragile.
He’d had a moment, hiding under his ballcap and listening to the target and her companion – Corporal Rooster Palmer, Marine Corps, medical discharge, Purple Heart – talking about a TV show, one of those obnoxious singing contests.
She was barely twenty, and she put too much syrup on her waffles, and thought someone named Devon deserved a record deal, and her laugh sounded like the quiet flutter of bird wings.
What the hell was he doing? How was this kid a threat?
But then she’d spilled her coffee on him, and touched him, and-and…