inFAMOUS: Legacy of the Beast

Chapter 6

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."

~Anatole France

Half-way across town, Torin followed Julia to her home on the south end of New Marais. It was a standard home meant to fit a family of three. The yard was small, but it was evident by the cleanliness of the grass and surrounding planters that someone had been a gardener.

Coming up to the front door, Julia tried to turn the knob but found it unwilling to budge. "It's locked," she told the officer. "Mom had the only set of keys."

"She never thought of leaving a spare one under the mat or in the garden?"

"No. She didn't feel safe leaving them where anybody could find them if they looked hard enough."

Torin stepped up to the door and tried the lock himself, finding it secure.

He instructed the girl to step back, then rammed his shoulder into the wood several times. His newfound strength came to be invaluable, allowing him to loosen the latch enough to kick it in without much effort.

Inside, the house had been reduced to shambles. Lamps and hanging light fixtures had crashed to the floor as well as any decorations such as fake plants or pictures that had been set on wooden cabinets. For the most part, the heavier furniture hadn't been disturbed except for a large chunk of ceiling that had fallen on the kitchen table and essentially smashed it in half.

The officer's eyes were attracted to a cracked frame on the floor housing what looked like a statutory medal of achievement.

Julia gasped, on the verge of tears as she spotted something lying motionless on the red rug in the living room. She moved towards it slowly, stopping just inside the room. It appeared to be the body of a cat with its fur burnt to the roots.

"...Juniper," whimpered the girl.

Worrying that the sight may invoke her powers, Torin took a blanket from the back of the couch and tossed it onto the feline.

He placed a hand on her shoulder and said, "Get what you need so we can leave. The less your powers act up, the better. At least until you learn to control it."

She nodded and led him upstairs. The wooden steps creaked under the weight of their feet.

On the seventh step up, Julia's foot fell through the board. Torin took her by the underarms and lifted her to the next step, taking one large bound to skip two boards.

On the second floor, she brought him to the white door at the end of the hall to her room.

Inside was a twin-sized bed against the far wall. It had once been clean and properly made before being blanketed in insulation and drywall from the hole in the ceiling. The window above it had also been smashed, leaving shattered glass all over the beige carpet.

This room, much like the living room, had been decorated with real and fake flowers on the walls and on the dressers.

"I take it you have a thing for flowers," said Torin as the girl opened a closet door and retrieved a light blue backpack and dumped all its contents of books and pencils onto the floor. Obviously, it had been her school bag before today.

"Not me; it was my mom. She was the florist at the flower shop down by the clocktower. She always used to tell me that flowers could spread life to everything they touched, so she decorated my room the way she liked it."