Superhero Effects

8. WHERE DID ALL THE NORMAL GO

Cooper was sitting in front of a computer, seeming completely at ease as he typed.

He didn't take a second glance at me when I marched in. He didn't even look up from his work when I stopped before him. He squinted at the screen in concentration and only blinked when I slapped the folder down on his typing hands.

"Who made it?"

His hands went still as brown eyes flickered up to me. "I get you don't care about protecting the human race," he said coldly, "but if you threaten or try to ruin my cover, answers about your family will disappear with me."

I leaned towards him, crossing my arms. "And so will your girlfriend. Who put the folder together? Who wrote that thing about Aaron Fletcher's book?"

He moved his hands, grabbing the object in question. "Lucy did. She put that together because..." he hesitated and then gave a firm shake of his head. "Lucy did. At first, we thought Aaron was someone in Lucy's family confessing in a storybook form because it helped us; it helped us identify who we needed to be stopping and who kept making the Colors." He was referring to the purple guy, and the people changed into things like him. "But then, when Dr. Mack found it...he realized who Lucy was, and the real trouble started. Now with the second book coming out...what? What's wrong?"

Cooper looked over at me as I sunk into the chair next to his. "It's just," I found myself saying with a distant stare at the folder, "that's one of my favorite books."

"Good," he said, surprising me out of my stare. "That means you're up to speed on more than I could explain in the short time we have."

"So," I said as my eyes began to water without my permission, "that part about the Supers birth mothers. How all of them were drug addicts and just signed right on up for those experiments because they thought it was some new hip drug—that's all true?"

His expression softened, and his green eyes lightened almost to a blue color. He nodded, and I brushed away a tear as it fell.

That's what I had written, and I had just made it up—well, I thought I had made it up to make myself feel better. To make myself feel that I wasn't the only person in the world that was a miracle baby in the worse way. All the drugs my birth mom had pumping through her system while she was pregnant with me—we, I mean—scientifically, we should have been mentally damaged and physically with something like stunted growth, but I had always been a healthy person. I knew; my mom was a pediatrician.

And the people he called the Colors; their back-story was the worst because they weren't druggies off the street. They were people, war heroes, and hard-working Americans who thought they would be cured of all their ailments. Chronic back pain, COPD, missing limbs, PTSD...you name it, and, instead, the stuff only turned them into monsters.

"But-but," I stammered after a moment of silence, "we can't really..." I shut my mouth.

"The magic thing is a lot to swallow, huh?"

I couldn't meet his understanding gaze.

That's who I wrote the blood belonged to, a discovered magical man who had taken it upon himself to rescue poor mortals from themselves, yet it was too much for him.

"This can't be real," I whispered, overwhelmed.

"Yeah," he said softly, "neither can teenagers that can fly and people that have to survive by draining others of cerebral spinal fluid."

I could at least admit I wrote the book. I put my head into my hands with a deep breath. "I have to tell you something."

The door of the Spotlight opened, and I lifted my head to see Archer assessing the scene of me sitting near Cooper, with my legs pressing into the side of his.