Part Seven

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"Did you really have to give that man your number? You understand how desperate that makes you look?" Patricia asked me the second we got into her black SUV.

"We were flirting. I thought he was hot. I gave him my number. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing. If you're a slut." She pulled out of her parking spot and stepped down on the gas. Sweat shone around the corners of her eyes. "Don't tell Mom about this. She has enough to worry about."

"About me and a white cop? I don't think she'd care. Great-Aunt Cora might, but—"

"About getting kidnapped! Mom's worked her ass off to make this city a better place. I don't want her to think crime's getting worse."

"Of course I won't tell her!" Did she think I couldn't handle this myself?

I held my tongue and stared out the window as Patricia took the West Street bridge over The Wall. The Civil War relic remained mostly intact in this part of the city. In the summer of 1861, anti-secessionists had taken over the northern half of the city and declared it a satellite state of the Union. They'd build a wall between the two halves and fought across it until the war's end. President Lincoln had exempted the northern half of the city from the penalties of Reconstruction, creating a haven for northern industrialists who wanted to do business in the South without actually living there. Money flowed in. South of The Wall, discrimination and poverty grew together like weeds.  

Patricia merged onto I. 13  and exited five minutes later in Routaille, the neighborhood where we'd grown up. Bright summer flowers bloomed on the lawns of old-fashioned brick houses: yellow daffodils, purple irises, tall pink peonies. Neighbors gossiped from porches, beer cans in hand. Some kids were running a lemonade stand. Patricia's knuckles remained white on the wheel. "Can you chill?" I asked her. "The Centurions handled it. No need to worry."

"About a psychopath in a robot suit? Sure, I won't worry. The lunatics in the costumes will stop him."

I glared at her. Patricia had good reasons to dislike superheroes, but I'd thought she'd forgotten about the time Dark Justice ran her and her friends off the playground.

I hadn't.

I still remembered the woodchips digging into my skin as she shoved me off the swing. She'd laughed as one of her friends threw dirt on my hair. I'd yelped and rolled into a ball.

Then I'd seen the shadow on the roof of the community center. He'd jumped two stories down and landed square on his feet. His cape had been billowing out behind him. Patricia and her friends had squealed and sprinted inside.

"You okay, kid?" he'd growled, offering me his hand. I'd taken it. His glove had felt hard and cool as he'd pulled me up. He'd worn black body armor from head to toe. The only part of his body I'd seen had been his dark blue eyes.

"Thank you," I'd whispered.

He'd fired his grappling gun back at the roof. A second later, he was gone. I hadn't seen enough to solve the great mystery of what his powers had been, but I'd seen enough to be smitten. It had been a time when supervillains nearly killed the mayor once a month . . . and Bayton's greatest hero had taken the time to save just me.

But he hadn't laid a finger on my sister. "You're just prejudiced, Patty."

Patricia ground her teeth together. I'd said the exact wrong thing and the nickname hadn't helped. "I'm a black female Republican veteran, Gloria. You think I don't know what it's like to be in the minority? Psi-positives are more than human. We can't police them. If the Centurions decided to turn against us . . ."

"The Centurions just saved my life!"

"And for every person they save, two more people are killed by psi-positives." She already had crow's feet forming around the edges of her eyes, just like the ones Mom had. Two tours in the Navy and triplets will do that. "The numbers don't lie."

I knew those numbers. I was the biggest psi-nerd in the world, or at least in my graduating class. You couldn't blame the psi-positives for the atomic tests that had released tons of psi-radiation into the atmosphere. It wasn't their fault their genes allowed them to absorb that radiation and release it as psi-energy, a force capable of pretty much anything. You couldn't control what you were. Just what you did. And the Centurions did great things. You couldn't blame them for other people's crimes.

I said as much to Patricia, who didn't appreciate it.

"Why are you so obsessed with psi-positives? None of them would even give you the time of day."

"Darryl Sanderson would." He'd probably also give me herpes. "And I'm not obsessed with all psi-positives. I'm just interested in the Centurions. That's all."

"What's the difference?"

Now there was a topic I couldn't help but sink my teeth into. "Psi-positives are normal people who can release psi-energy. Superheroes wear costumes and use aliases while fighting crime—supervillains do the same thing, but instead of fighting crime, they commit it. The Centurions are an organization of psi-positive superheroes. It's like the difference between being a soldier and being a Marine."

"Please don't compare the Marines to those people."

Annabelle and I had debated for hours if you had to be psi-positive to be labeled a superhero. I'd argued that only the Centurions had a government contract to engage in vigilante acts. Psi-negatives couldn't join the Centurions, so any vigilante acts they performed were illegal. They couldn't be heroes if they deliberately broke the law. But Annabelle had said I'd used a double standard. After all, I categorized mad billionaire Isonomia Isla as a supervillain, and she hadn't had any powers. If you didn't need powers to be a supervillain, why did you need them to be a superhero? Then I had pointed out that without powers, there was no difference between a superhero and a man in a cape.

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