Blog of a Teenage Superhero

Chapter Twenty-Five: Fangirl

Drafted in broken pen on a strip of white cloth:

Ive found them. I dont know where I am or how i got here but there are traces of them and if youve found this or ive typed this up someway, help. Bleeding. Internal damage. If only someone cou

The words are buried in the watery shadows and the girl is found slung against the beams of a broken door, her cape dripping blood and ink, a black puddle oozing from her torn side. And so she seeps on the cold, concrete floor alone in enemy territory. 

Max rubs his aching neck and pops his jaw back into place, the bruises already faded, the cracks in his skull fused neatly back together.

She didn't have to do what she did. He could've saved her, loved her.

Max sighs as the red creeps over the ruts in the floor, a dark velvet sheen. The girl's breath is shallow. He leans over her. Her pulse is faint. 

The room is cold and dark and damp, the type that seeps under the skin and gnaws at the marrow. Max crouches, picks up her limp, dusky body. Her eyes flicker under shut lids.

To save himself, to save his family legacy, to save everything he has calculated and plotted and arranged for so meticulously, so diabolically, she has to die.

"But I'm glad it was you," he mutters. "Of all people who could've unmasked me, I'm glad you were the one."

Her thick lashes flutter, her warm eyes glazed with sleep. Bloodied and braced in his arms, she stirs, mumbling strains of twisted, incoherent words. They're muddied with delirium, adrift in the quiet and cutting antiseptic smell of the air. The closest Max can figure is "Crap."

He cups her face in his hands, her chin resting neatly in the curve of his thumb and index finger. Monet reels back, falling hard in a puddle of her own blood. Red drips from the button of his nose. She wriggles back, breathing heavy.

"That's it?" she groans. "You're just going to kill me? No ingenious death traps? Nothing?"

Her eyes are dark and hooded, the fear hidden in the shadow, enough to give her a look of casual resistance. Like she doesn't care. But her hands are shaking, drenched in dribbling red and black.

Max hesitates. Maybe it's because he knows she'll die anyway, maybe this is his show of mercy. The line he won't cross. Heck, maybe he doesn't want to crush the skull of the girl he still likes. Maybe he wants her to win. Even though she has to die, some sliver of him wants her to be okay, to beat the odds.

Or could it be the thrill of the chase?

Is there some excitement in giving his prey a sporting chance? Some thrill at chasing down the girl he cares about so much, the girl that bangs on his window and asks him out on dates, the stupid, obsessive, kind of cute girl who thinks she's a hero? Keeping her alive just for someone to connect with, someone to fight, a super. A challenge.

Is this what Max is? A criminal? A villain? A monster?

The questions whip up inside him, his stomach knotted. "I'll give you three minutes," he says, but she's already gone, a screen of black stumbling through the darkened halls, leaving streaks of blood on the dusty concrete floor.

But she'll never find what she's looking for. Not before she dies.

The lights flicker in the hall, casting shadows in spindly branches. He hears a thud, and a slow smile creeps over his jaw. Not much longer now. Not at all. 

***

So, it turns out I'm dying.

I don't know how long it takes me to come to the brilliant conclusion, what with the fainting, the dizzy spells, and maybe the gouges in my side dumping blood all over the floor. Even my cape can't plug up the holes for long, and so I stumble, looking over my shoulder in a vague hope of finding Percy in the darkness.