Atonement: A Superhero Reverse Harem Romance (The PTB Alliance Book 1) Page 2

  “You did that when we were in 10th grade,” I reminded him.

  “I don’t hear you complaining.”

  “I didn’t hear Abigail Tate complaining, either. But half her teeth were up by the teacher’s desk, too.”

  “Look, I miscalculated a little. And besides. She was out of school for three months instead of trying to slam doors on your fingers,” Edwin shrugged.

  I tucked my head against his side and closed my eyes. An old memory, one without anything painful attached to it other than the three Fs I’d taken on my homework that week. I could cope with out-of-school suspension or even the shocked look on Abigail’s face when I’d finally put her down. I let Edwin lead me up the stairs and off toward his laboratory; 2nd floor, 3rd door on the right just like it always had been.

  God, it was good to be home.

  Chapter 2

  The Clark family was well-connected and well-known among the superhero world. A bunch of Psychics, no one expected their youngest to come to PTB as a Blitzer. And how far had she come? I watched her out of the corner of my eye as we climbed the stairs. A survivor, a warrior, made to win. She was everything I wanted, everything I wanted to be, and nothing that I could have.

  Having a big brain doesn’t mean anything when no one is on your level. I don’t mean that in some sort of egotistical way, but I’d had the highest IQ from anyone I’d ever known. Math, geometry, engineering? Passed by the time I was 8. I flew through 6 different doctorates by my 21st birthday but I spent it getting wasted with my books.

  People expect a lot from you when you’re smart. That kind of expectation can ruin your sense of fun, but Cassie had been the one who had made sure I remembered it.

  “Do you remember that time we went bowling?” I asked, swallowing the temptation to twirl her hair around my finger. “Right after you first got here?”

  She thought about it for a moment or two before she answered. “Yeah, we went down to Taylor’s old place, didn’t we? And you got sick all over the cheese curds. It’s how we found out you were lactose intolerant.”

  She put a spin on the word intolerant that made her tongue flick just so. I lifted my head, hiding my blush as best I could. It wasn’t as if I was inexperienced with women, but Cassie? I’d never manage it.

  I opened the lab door for her. Late as it was, most of my fellows had already gone home for the day. Those that hadn’t were kind enough to make themselves scarce when I entered; or maybe they were just afraid of her. I couldn’t imagine it, but hadn’t I stayed away from visitation, too?

  “Your old suit is in storage here, but you’ll find a few adjustments I’ve made to it. Most important is that we get you registered with RAMPAGE, the new identity check system. It’s why you ran into the doors,” I explained.

  “Like the old video game?” Cassie asked.

  She settled herself on the desk next to me, the curve of her hip dangerously close to my hand. I turned my head back toward the screen and clicked the mouse a bit harder than I needed to. Anything to take my mind off of that. It was difficult to approach someone to begin with and the last thing that Cassie needed on her first day back was me asking her out.

  God only knew what she’d faced in prison.

  “What?” I said. “Oh, with the Godzilla thing. No, not exactly. RAMPAGE was put into use by Lamar. He bought it from the Department of Defense, I think. It’s been in use for a few years now. Better than the old ID system. This one works through a chip implanted in your hand.”

  I held my hand up to show her. A single dot tattoo stood out against the pale skin.

  “That’s it?” Cassie asked, pulling my hand closer.

  I clicked through the system prompts to distract myself even as she ran her calloused fingers across my soft, supple palm. Part of me wanted nothing more than to close my hand around hers and draw her to my chest, protect her from the world. But if we were being honest about it, the likelihood of me protecting her was something like trying to calculate PI to the end; utterly impossible.

  Blitzers had a habit of getting themselves out of trouble pretty easily. Cassie, to the best of my knowledge, had never been in a situation she couldn’t deal with. I couldn’t imagine what it would take to bring her down when she was having a full rager.

  “That’s it. Simple, easy to work with. You never feel it after the first couple of days, and somebody as tough as you is unlikely to feel it that long.”

  “Alright, then. Load me up. Shoot me. Do me in,” Cassie ordered, pretending to tie a blindfold behind her eyes. “I’m ready for it.”

  I cleared my throat and stared back at my computer with rapt attention. At least I wasn’t some poor sap that got a nosebleed every time I got too close to a girl I liked, but-

  “C’mon,” Cassie said. “Scribe told me that Melody wanted a conversation before I’m back on the street. I need to get my stuff and get going.”

  “Lamar told you that?” I asked. “Far be it from me to question the boss, but I’d have thought they’d take it easier on you than that.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly what he said. But what else could Melody want? Smash and Crash are still around, right?”

  “Crash got killed last year,” I said. “A building came down on him. There was nothing any of us could do.”

  Cassie’s somewhat playful attitude took a dip. As I typed, I frowned. I hadn’t thought she and Crash were particularly close, but I supposed I could have been wrong.

  “That’s too bad,” Cassie said. “Dan was a good guy. That leaves what, four or five Blitzers like me and Smash, then? That’s it?”

  “Three, including you. We’ve been needing some muscle in reserve.” I clicked through another form. God, the registration process took forever. “Delilah left for green pastures in Wadesville, and Thomas is over in Northport. You, Smash, and Creed.”

  “Creed’s a fly boy, not a Blitzer,” Cassie grumbled. “I don’t care if he can take a punch or not.”

  “He can take one and give one,” I said absently. “He’s on several different lists. Developed a lot in the past few years. You’ve got no idea how much he’s changed.”

  “Yeah, no one saw it fit to keep me up to date.”

  My fingers paused on the keyboard. I sighed. Had it come to this already?

  “Cassie, I wanted to but-“

  “You were busy?” Cassie suggested.

  I chewed the inside of my lower lip and tried to think of a good excuse. Had I been behind bars like that, I would have been livid at the radio silence she’d received, too. Scribe had his own reasons for keeping us away, I guessed, but I didn’t know why I hadn’t bothered to argue with him. He paid my checks, but we were allowed to disagree and debate. It was an alliance, not a dictatorship.

  “I just never made it over there, I guess,” I said, lamely.

  “Thanks, you know. It showed me a lot.”

  “Did it?” I asked.

  “It did.”

  Cassie dropped my hand and placed her own back in my lap, her shoulders stiff and her back quite upright. I looked away, concentrating on my work in the system. Once registered, how would I find a way to apologize to her? Could I find the words? I wouldn’t forgive people for that sort of treatment.

  We sat in silence as the long minutes ticked by. My system shot out a tiny needle pre-filled with her identifier. She held out her hand to me mutely as I injected her and started to pull away. I tightened my grip and took a breath.

  “I know what we did was wrong, Cassie. And in your place, I’d never forgive me. If you’re pissed, and I think you are, you have every right to be. We abandoned you. But I know he had reason for telling us to do so. Maybe he didn’t want to bring attention to the fact that you probably locked up half of your neighbors.”

  “They figured it out anyway and kicked my ass across the mess hall and back every day for a week. Then I broke someone’s face and it stopped.”

  I flinched. When Cassie talked about breaking faces, she usually meant that the p
erson’s nose was concave rather than convex. “I should have gone against orders. We all should have. And Lamar should have never made them. I’m sorry. What do I do to make this right?”

  Cassie drew her hand away and stood up. “I don’t know if you can. I don’t know if anyone can. I just want it to be over but, when I think about it, I can feel myself gearing up. And I never thought I’d feel that way about my own teammates.”

  “I’m not saying you should calm down,” I said, holding my hands up in surrender. “But the training floor is always open if you need to take out some… adrenaline on something. Or someone. It went to 24-hour operation right after Crash got killed. Smash needed a way to work through his grief.”

  Her hands uncurled and, slowly, she sank back down on my desk again. “That’s… good to know. Thank you.”

  I nodded. “Right. Can you put your hand over the scanner just so I can check to make sure that you’re functioning correctly?”

  Cassie shoved her hand over the chip reader. It was a tiny thing, no bigger than a Post-It note. The screen shone a bright, vibrant green and she looked at me for confirmation.

  “That’s it. You should be able to go and come as you please, as much as you’re allowed to. If there’s anything that changes, that is?” I said. “I don’t know what they’re going to do with you. Maybe they’ll inflict some kind of enforcement thing on you, show the public that you’re being kept in a straight line. That prison rehabilitated you. That it really was just a mistake.”

  “They do that and I’m transferring,” Cassie said. “I’ll follow Thomas or run off to Florida. Weren’t they having problems with some guy bombing schools?”

  “About six months back. We were called in and found one of them, but they assume another is at large.” I leaned on the desk and looked up at her, guilt overriding anything else. “But they’re small-time. They’ve never hurt anyone, never managed to actually pull off anything. Thank God. Things have been quiet here. You get the occasional psycho, but Savage or Wreckless have been mopping them up pretty quick.”

  “Nate’s still around?” Cassie asked, color rising in her cheeks.

  It was like a punch in the gut. “Him and Lexi, yeah. Nate stepped up when Creed got hurt last year. A shapeshifter’s not the same as a guy like Creed, but he took care of any issues.”

  She’d stopped listening. “Is Nate’s room still on the 4th floor?”

  “7th floor now. He doesn’t need the reinforced doors at night,” I said, begrudgingly. “He’s managed to get a better handle on the predator animals now.”

  “Does he?” She asked, looking at me through her lashes. The blush darkened.

  “And he’s getting married, last I heard, to Lexi,” I said with fierce pleasure.

  “Fuck you,” Cassie snapped.

  I grinned. “You could always take pity on some of the more eligible bachelors and bachelorettes around here.”

  “What, like you?”

  My heart jumped into my throat. I blinked at her; certain my glasses were fogging up. As I stumbled over my words, Cassie leaned in.

  “Edwin?”

  I leaned back and away, keeping my hands firmly planted on my chair. My fingers dug their way into and, probably, through the leather. “I’m married to my work.”

  “Edwin.”

  “And I’ll always be. Things are too risky to mess something up because I’m worried about matters of the heart or whatever.”

  “Edwin, can I get my suit from you?” Cassie asked.

  She was suddenly back where she had been seconds before. Had I dreamed her leaning in? Was I losing my mind? I stared at her for a moment too long before I cleared my throat, yet again, and turned to access her personal file. “Right, right. Your suit. Sorry about that.”

  Closet 36 was all the way at the other end of the lab from my desk, because of course it was. I motioned for her to follow me and headed past row after row of work stations. Some would be used the next morning by students that were working on projects. Others would be used by those who created the offensive and defensive materials the Alliance needed.

  Sometimes we made weapons for our superheroes or other custom gear. For the most part, we were there for whatever the organization needed.

  I opened the locker and stepped back. Cassie walked forward and ran her fingers over the suit within. White gloves, black bodysuit. The hood came up and over to obscure her facial features, though I supposed that no longer mattered. Strikeout had been revealed for all the world to know her during Ember’s murder trial. It felt like decades ago.

  As it stood, Cassie was still the only superhero out of hiding. The rest of them kept their identities secret, usually coming and going in different clothes to keep the press from catching on. The world would have to change soon. With so much voice recognition software, we were already working toward voice modulators in suits.

  “You’ll probably have to upgrade to something a little heavier than Polyarmor mesh. The stuff is still sound, but it won’t stop you from getting a laser sword through the guts,” I said.

  “Who the hell uses a laser sword?” Cassie’s voice came from within the locker. Her head popped out. “Is that really an issue?”

  “These days?” I asked, shrugging. “People do all sorts of crazy stuff. And it’s our job to make sure you’re protected against anything we can think of. So, yeah, laser sword. You know, like Star Wars.”

  “Why didn’t you just say lightsaber?”

  “Because the safety manual says laser sword. I think it was something to do with copyrights and not being allowed to reference them as lightsabers without a license. Lamar writes them. Ask him when you get a chance,” I said.

  Cassie answered with a grunt as she pulled out her boots. Heelless and topped with black diamonds, the white boots were my favorite part of her costume. They were one of the first pieces I had finished for her. I’d even included roll-proof ankle shocks, a feature I’d continued to use on almost every piece of footwear I designed. A Blitzer couldn’t fight if they couldn’t stand their ground.

  “What I said earlier, about not being able to forgive,” Cassie grumbled as she pulled her suit out. “I know I have to get past it. It’s not like there’s some other organization for supers. I’m nowhere near ready for all of this without Nishelle around. I need some time to adjust.”

  “I know,” I answered. “I mean, I don’t. But I also do, a little bit. I don’t think anyone will rush you. But it’s hard to see you so frustrated and so upset. You know I’m just a few floors away, right?”

  A smile crept across her face, slowly but surely. It was like a sunrise after a storm. Just one, small assurance that something would be normal, that it would be right again. Growing up in tornado alley, that smile meant more than I could put into words.

  “I’ll see you around, Edwin. Probably tonight for dinner in the cafeteria. If you sit in the back, I’ll be there.”

  I nodded, then reached out and pulled her into a careful hug. She didn’t stiffen, didn’t fight. She just put her forehead under my chin and relaxed. It was difficult to control the feelings struggling for dominance in my chest but for her? I managed it. Cassie deserved whatever support I could give her.

  “You two are in here all cuddly and I feel left out.”

  Melody strode into my lab like she owned it. Her short, jet black hair was a recent addition that no one seemed to care for except Lexi. Dressed in a smart, dark blue pant suit, she was the absolute countermeasure to her emerald green and gold workwear. I let go of Cassie immediately and leaned back against the desk behind me. Casual. That was me.

  “I’m sorry to steal her away from you, but she’s got a job to do and plenty of things to see other than the updates you’ve made down here in the lab. If you don’t mind?” Melody asked.

  “No problem, Izzy,” I said.

  Melody gave me a cheerful smile and promptly dove into ignore mode. Her attention centered on Cassie, her pupils constricting. I didn’t quite furrow my
brows, but I’m certain a few wrinkles showed.

  “If you’d be so kind as to follow me, then? I know you’ve been through so much today, and to ask more of you is such a boner killer, right?” Melody beamed.

  “That’s the most professional thing anyone’s said to me all day,” Cassie said. “By all means, let’s go kill this boner together. I’ll see you tonight, Edwin.”

  I watched as the two of them left, Melody allowing Cassie to exit first. Though Melody hadn’t done anything particularly under the table, few of us trusted her the way Lamar did. Of course, she had more stake in the Alliance these days, but I still couldn’t put my finger on it. Something was wrong yet everyone seemed intent on ignoring it.