The Loop

I had never been so confused in my entire life. Around me were sounds of physics-defying powers firing, metal squealing against metal, concrete crumbling, and people screaming or shouting incoherently.

Maybe not incoherently. Maybe I just couldn’t understand their words because I’d taken a hit to the head in the first few seconds of fighting. Was that why everything was enveloped in darkness? Was that why half the time the sounds were muffled, like I was hearing everything from under several yards of water?

Were we actually underwater? It would explain why I couldn’t breathe, but no … the darkness was playing tricks on me, the constant barrage of sound was playing tricks on me, my mind was playing tricks on me, my …

Things were playing tricks on me.

A noise cut through the cacophony, a voice. “—N—I—!” it shouted directly in my face. It couldn’t have been more than six inches away but I couldn’t see a thing. Still, the nearness of it, the urgency of it, helped to shake the confusion from my mind a bit.

“Uh?” I might have mumbled. “Huh?” I asked. “Whozat?”

“An—ie!” The voice sounded more familiar. “Angie!” Adam. Adam, I thought, but couldn’t say aloud.

I grasped for his hands in the dark, aware suddenly that he was holding onto my shoulders.

Angie! I felt his voice in my mind now. Better that way.

What’s going on? I thought, more articulate in my mind than I was with words.

You were unconscious for a minute, he said. I was scared, but I pulled you out.

Did you get that stuff out of my head? I asked.

First thing I did when we got to his cell. I pulled it out of your head, pulled the pieces of him out of my head, and shoved it all back in his. Might not have been the greatest idea after all, though.

I was about to ask what he meant, but I felt comprehension and coherence coming back into my mind quickly, like a light switch flicking on. Of course, the actual lights remained off.

His powers, I thought. The pieces of him in our brains were what connected him to his powers.

“There’s more,” he spoke aloud now, but I could follow his words okay. I realized that we’d been walking. It’s strange to have your body acting for minutes without your mind being fully aware of what it’s doing. This was like that; the awareness that my feet were carrying my body and had been doing so during the entire duration of our conversation hit me suddenly. My thoughts were still too muddled to feel anything but a strange amusement at this fact. I’m like a puppet holding my own strings, I thought, but didn’t know what I meant.

“What?” asked Adam.

“Never mind,” I said.

“The others are up ahead,” he said. “Sha— Virtuosa isn’t doing so great.”

A memory flashed through my mind.

“You,” the man in the cell, Peter, Pitch, had said. But he’d been looking past Adam. He’d been looking at Shannon. And he’d been smiling, like he’d been expecting her. Then he'd done something to her. She'd been on her back, screaming, as the blackness enveloped us. Then I'd felt the sudden crack in my head and my mind had gone blank.

I shuddered at the memory.

It didn’t make sense how slowly, almost casually, we were walking, consideringI could hear the sounds of battle not too far away. If our guys weren’t fighting, who was?

“The guards and the Hypes from this place made a strategic exit; they’re planning on calling for reinforcements.” It was uncanny how Adam would sometimes respond to thoughts I hadn’t even really put into words. It still felt like a violation, but I understood the benefit of it in high stress situations like this where every second counted and there wasn’t always time to talk things out slowly.

“They couldn’t contain Pitch,” he continued, “and in their attempts to do so they ended up breaking a few other cells open. There are at least a half dozen Hype villains fighting amongst themselves back there. We’re pretty far out, but as you can see, his power still reaches us. It’s weaker here, though. Just the shadow, not enough to suck us in.”

“Good,” I heard Lincoln’s voice in the dark. “You’re here. We need to keep moving. We need to get her out of here.”

I thought he meant me at first, then I heard Shannon moan weakly somewhere behind him.

What the hell did that monster do to her?

“Where’s Oneiros?” I asked, still slightly confused. “Can’t we just go to the Dreamworld?”

“He took a knock on the head,” said Adam. “Same as you.”

“The difference being,” said Christine, “that when he fell unconscious, his power automatically transported him into the Dreamworld. We either have to get out of here ourselves, or wait around until he wakes up there and works out what’s happening.”

“Then he’d have to get back here,” said Adam. “Which might present its own problems, because powers don’t work the same within Pitch’s shadow. We’re not even sure he’d be able to wake back up into the real world, not unless he moves far enough out that he’s outside of the shadow. For all we know, he’s trying right now.”

“If he got knocked out,” I said slowly, not feeling much confidence that I of all people here could provide any insights the others hadn’t thought of already, “he should have woken up in the Dreamworld immediately, right?”

We stopped moving for a second and I could hear someone—I thought it was Lincoln—unscrewing a bottle of water and taking a swig.

“Because,” I pressed on, “when he falls asleep normally, the transition is instant.”

“That’s true,” said Adam. His voice was quiet and slow, considering what I’d said. “But we have no idea what effect being forcibly rendered unconscious would have on that process. His body within and outside of the Dreamworld is the same body, after all. If something damaged his brain here enough to knock him out, then there’s some reason to assume that he’d still be injured there. But then, is it even possible to be unconscious within the Dreamworld?”

The questions and paradoxes were making my brain hurt and I wished I’d never said anything. I’d had some idea in my mind a few weeks or months ago that Hypes would just automatically understand Hype stuff better than I did, but based on the way Adam was talking, it seemed like all this was as confusing and unintuitive to them as it was to me.

Everything was just best guesses.

“Enough talk,” said an unfamiliar man’s voice, coming up behind Adam and me. “We need to keep moving.”

“Of course,” said Lincoln. “Let’s get to it.”

Ignore that other voice, said Adam in my mind.

Huh? I thought. The voice was right, though; it was time to keep moving.

We started walking again. Adam had a hand on my shoulder, steering me. I wasn’t sure if the others could see somehow, or how we were navigating, but I had to rely on Adam or I’d be completely lost in the dark.

I’m guiding them with my power, he informed me. I can still feel the space around me. Just keeping you close in case we have to make a break for it.

Why would we have to …?

Slowly, the darkness around us dissipated and I felt like the air, which my brain had stopped registering as thick and oppressive at some point while we were within the shadow, had suddenly thinned to the point where it was as hard to breathe outside the blackness as it had been inside. For one terrifying instant, I felt a pull to go back inside the shadow, felt like my lungs were demanding thicker air, air with more substance. It was like suddenly finding myself at a very high altitude and feeling my chest deflate and struggle to reinflate. Like being in the vacuum of space.

Then I gulped down a deep breath of the coolest, freshest air I felt I’d ever encountered, and my head cleared all the way. I looked around and saw the entirety of our group sans Oneiros, and with one additional member. I recognized him from when we’d first arrived here. He was one of the Hypes who’d been with the guards when we arrived. The black guy with the cool ancient looking armor. That armor looked different now, less bulky, easier to move around in.

I was about to ask who he was and what he was doing with us, but Adam interrupted me with a thought.

Don’t even look at him, if you can help it. You got lucky that you were unconscious while he was giving his little speech. I’ve got a natural immunity to his power, and I’ve put a makeshift mental shield around your brain, but if he talks too much or makes too much eye contact with you, I’m not sure I’ll be able to help you.

I had next to no idea what Adam was talking about, but I had no choice but to trust him.

What exactly does he do? I asked, trying to get a clearer picture of the danger we were in, of how scared it was appropriate for me to be.

He convinces people to do what he wants. It’d be like his words keep going through your brain, like an earworm, becoming more and more attractive and persuasive each time. By the time you come around to his way of thinking, you’d have convinced yourself that it was your idea all along. He convinced us to get him and his team clear of the danger to call for reinforcements. At least, he believes he convinced all of us.

Why couldn’t he just use his power to stop Pitch? I asked.

I’m not sure, except that all of our powers work differently when we’re in Pitch’s shadow. I can use my telekinesis in a sensory capacity only; I can’t move things with it. Maybe he’s got something similar? Or maybe his power just doesn’t work on Pitch because Pitch’s mind is so unstable that he can’t be convinced of anything.

And the others? I asked. They’re under his influence?

For now, Adam said. But I think I can help them. I just need enough time to concentrate without him interfering. His team is following a little ways behind us. They’re clear of Pitch, but the villains are still fighting.

The sounds of battle had abated somewhat, but they were still ongoing. A part of me wanted to know how bad things were getting back there. Most of me was just very scared and wanted to be anywhere else. Even at school, facing my living friends and feeling the absence of my dead one. Even at home, feeling ignored and unrecognized. I would, at that moment, gladly have gone back to the way things were between Adam and I a week before, with us barely speaking, with the tension in our house palpable, with me hating him with every fiber of my being, if only to be out of that claustrophobic, dark place with the sounds of inhuman powers destroying things not far enough behind me.

“Here we are,” said the unfamiliar man as we pulled up to a massive sliding steel door set flush against the wall to our right. The door was open a few feet, and a beautiful woman with light brown skin and straight coffee bean brown hair stood just inside it. The man went to her with his arms open, seemingly to embrace her, but she stepped back and out of his reach.

“Is something wrong, Luisa?” he asked her. He’d shifted the material that made up his armor, turning it briefly into a sort of fluid, in order to make it even less bulky. In anticipation of a warmer reunion, I thought.

“Don’t … just don’t speak for a minute,” Luisa said. “I need to think.”

“Well we need to get by you so that we can get to the secure line and call for reinforcements,” he said. “Let us b— ”

The woman drew a gun from a concealed space within her jacket and pointed it at his head.

“I said don’t speak,” she said, her face was flushed and her eyes were darting every which way. Her hand was steady, though. “You know I’m a good shot, Troy. You know you can’t get your armor into position in front of your face before I pull the trigger. So please, for the love of God, shut up and let me think.”

Lincoln and Christine stood tense, watching the scene. Adam mimicked their posture and facial expressions. Shannon merely groaned, bent over, her face pained.

I could hear footsteps coming down the hall behind us. Still a little ways off. Would they reach us in time to interfere with this situation? I didn’t think so.

The man stared at the woman, but she kept her eyes pointed lower, at his chest, avoiding eye contact. He followed her advice and didn’t try to speak again.

“If I may— ” Adam began, but he was interrupted by Christine lunging at the woman, putting herself in front of the gun. I heard the blast and ducked, even though I wasn’t really close enough to be in any danger.

When I looked up again, Christine was standing over Luisa, who was on the ground, the gun knocked fifteen feet into the hallway behind her.

Luisa was sobbing, mascara lines trailing down her perfect face.

“You didn’t just convince me to work for you,” she said, forcing the words out through the pained emotion. “You convinced me to love you. Do you know how sick that is?”

“Get up,” Troy said to her. “You’re better than this.”

The woman struggled on the floor for another few seconds as the rest of Troy’s team caught up to us. The sounds of fighting had quieted completely behind us. The battle had been decided, one way or the other.

Finally, the woman stood, still shaking, still sobbing. The look on her face was one of pure hatred.

“Stop crying, Luisa. We can discuss everything later, but haven’t I always treated you well? Haven’t we accomplished great things together?”

She did as she was told, drying her face with a shirt sleeve, but the anger in her eyes remained.

I thought about what he’d said and had to admit, building this place in the short span between when the orbs had shown up and now was impressive. It was great. Was it that crazy for this man to be at the helm, in charge of how the government handled Hyperhuman crime, considering what he was capable of?

Stop that, said Adam’s voice in my head.

I shook the alien thoughts away. This man was a monster, and the messed up part was that, even confronted with what he'd done, he didn’t seem to realize it.

We were surrounded, I realized. The people I’d thought were our friends and allies were ahead of us, but they had been turned by Troy’s power. His own team was behind us. This woman who was questioning her loyalty to him might have been the closest thing we had to someone on our side in that moment, and even she was still listening to him, albeit reluctantly.

Maybe we should just do what he wants, I thought.

No, replied Adam. In the end, once we were done here, he’d have us all in cells, and the only way out would be to agree to work with him indefinitely. You’re not a Hype, and you’re a kid, so maybe he’d let you go. Or maybe he’d make you disappear, since you’d be no use to him.

I shivered, trying to reconcile this man who my mind was telling me was someone important, someone to be listened to, with what Adam was saying he was capable of.

So what do we do?

I’ve been working on Lincoln, Adam confided. I think his mind is almost free of the influence.

We fell into step behind the man who was now—temporarily, I hoped—leading our group. He led us down a hallway that might’ve been plucked straight out of any corporate office park in America. Off-white walls with a pale blue stripe running horizontally down the middle, cheap brown carpet with next to no pile, fluorescent lighting spaced evenly overhead between white ceiling tiles set in a grid of metal bars, bathing everything in a slightly blue, overly bright, migraine-inducing light. Heavy looking doors led off to other hallways or offices here and there. Some were open, and we could see people within, staring at screens or else conversing in hushed tones, looks of panic and uncertainty on their faces. Some of them looked up in shock at our passing, or in awe of their leader marching along ahead of us, but none of them tried to stop us.

There were round, domed red lights set into the wall every fifty feet or so, and these were flashing with a silent alarm. The base was nearly silent beyond the sound of our footsteps. We didn’t speak amongst ourselves. Adam walked directly behind me, Luisa walked in front of me. I could see her shoulders rise and fall with silent sobs from time to time.

The rest were all behind Adam, and I was glad to have him as a buffer between me and potentially dangerous, potentially disloyal Hypes.

After what must have been five or ten minutes, we arrived at a door that looked no different than any other in the hall, except that it had a small, black card reader next to the handle. Troy opened it with a swipe of a card he produced from a hollow within his armor that he opened with his power.

We walked inside and saw a single computer on a plain desk in the middle of the room. There was also a red, corded telephone on the desk. There was nothing else in the room.

“I have to make a call. Reinforcements can be here within five minutes. Luisa, use the terminal to monitor the situation down there, if you can handle that.” His voice was bitter, as if he knew that whatever had broken between them was beyond mending, regardless of what his power could do.

Was what he did to her any more of a violation than what Adam had done to me? Using a manipulative power on me against my will and without my consent or knowledge. Trying to force my brain to behave in ways that weren’t natural to it. Pushing that thing inside my mind.

I don’t disagree, thought Adam. But in my defense, I didn’t really know what I was doing to you. Trojan has been conscious of the effect his power has on people since the start. He’s convinced himself that it’s fine because they’d go along with him anyway, because he’s so great, but …

I wished he wouldn’t do that, interrupting my thoughts with his own input, but he was right, and I wasn’t being fair to him. What scared me was that I couldn’t be certain how much of that unfairness was being produced by my own thought processes naturally, and how much was a product of Troy’s influence. Based on how Adam had described his power, it didn’t really make sense. Troy hadn’t given me any direct commands or suggestions—he'd hardly acknowledged me—and nothing he had said had anything to do with Adam, but maybe it was a passive effect of his power, that my thoughts would try to paint him in a better light by comparing him to my brother, or by playing up his accomplishments.

After this was over, I really needed to spend some time away from Hypes and their mind-fuckery.

Luisa moved to the computer, but Lincoln interrupted her. “If you don’t mind, sir,” he said, “my power gives me a pretty big hand up when it comes to computers. I could monitor every camera in the base at the same time, lock doors, try to keep the criminals contained or at least slow them down.”

Troy looked at him, considering. He had no reason to believe Linc was anything but loyal to him. I wondered how long it had been since he’d encountered anyone who had intentionally tried to deceive him, or go against his wishes.

Lincoln’s ours again, thought Adam. Working on Christine next.

“I know all too well what your power can do from when you were breaking in here,” said Troy. “I’m just glad you saw the light and we have that power working for us now. Get to it. Just keep talking, let us know what you’re seeing.”

“Of course,” Lincoln replied. Through his mask, I couldn’t see what sort of expression he wore, but I could tell that no part of his face moved besides his mouth. Cool as ever.

He stepped up to the computer and placed his hands on it. A green glow lit up his eyes behind his mask, and images started flickering across the screen, too quickly for me to keep up with.

The rest of Trojan’s team crowded in behind us, the woman with the wings was actually staying out in the hall where her wings wouldn’t get in the way.

“I think I probably have the most powerful offensive capacity,” said Christine suddenly, as if struck by a great idea and unable to resist sharing it. “I could hang back near the steel door, hold Pitch or any of the other villains off if they get close to this hallway.”

“Well, aren’t you all making yourselves useful?” said Troy. He almost—almost—sounded suspicious, but he was too used to getting his way to really doubt anyone’s intentions. “That’s a good idea. Peregrine, Ms. Y, go with her. Cyberspace, keep an eye on the three of them.”

The three Hypes shuffled out, leaving Adam, Lincoln, Shannon, and I with Luisa, the guy Hype in the same outfit as Ms. Y, and Trojan himself. Four on three, although I couldn’t be certain who Shannon was loyal to right then, and besides, she didn't look like she was in any shape to fight. Regardless, I didn’t feel that we were close to being evenly matched, much less at an advantage, even if she was with us, even if she was at her best.

“Sir,” said Linc. His voice had an edge of concern.

“What is it?”

“Pitch appears to have … Well it seems like he, uh, swallowed the other villains. Like, inside the shadow. I’m playing back the footage from the fight.”

Sure enough, an overhead view of the area of the prison where we'd encountered Pitch appeared on the screen.

“Only high up overhead cameras are of any use,” Linc continued. “The ground-level ones in the area show nothing but shadow, even the infrared ones. Anyway, Pitch overpowered the others, sucked them into the shadow, and when the shadow dissipated, they were gone. One of them was part of the group we— er, you guys, brought in from Manhattan. Adversary.”

“How do you know about that?” asked Trojan.

“Uh, had a quick peek at the intake files. Sorry,” said Lincoln, sounding contrite. I hoped the lie would go unnoticed.

“So are they … are they dead?”

Almost have Shannon free, thought Adam. He’d sunk down against the wall opposite the door, and I worried that his lack of participation in what was going on would out him as a traitor, but so far the guy Hype on Trojan’s team hadn’t done anything besides stand around either, and he was presumably loyal to his boss.

Shannon, too, sat on the ground, but I wasn’t surprised that no one was questioning that. She looked like death. Adam still hadn’t told me what had happened to her, why Pitch had looked so pleased to see her. All I had was my patchy memory of those first few moments of the encounter, and that didn't paint a promising picture.

“Not dead, no sir. But, well … I should confess, my team and I were the ones who helped apprehend Pitch in the first place, back in Texas. You probably worked that out by the fact that we came here for him, but I think we made a miscalculation about his powers at the time. Or else, something about them changed since then. We didn’t know what power-altering powers were at the time, so we couldn't have known he might possess them.”

“Are you saying he’s PAP?” asked Trojan, his body going tense.

“If he wasn’t before, he is now,” said Linc. “I think he can steal their powers if he takes them into the shadows. Something like that anyway. There’s a black mass that looks a bit like a person walking next to him. They’re headed this way.”

“How did his powers change like that?” asked Adam. “He definitely couldn’t do that before, I'd have seen it.” He was on his feet now, ready for action.

“The thing that came out of me,” whispered Shannon, her voice ripe with horror. “It was … gestating.”

“What does that mean?” I asked aloud, surprised by the sound of my own voice. I realized in that moment I hadn’t spoken aloud in what felt like hours. I tried to control my voice, but I sounded much louder and more agitated than I intended to. “What came out of you?”

The thing that the piece of Pitch in my mind kept telling me to ignore, every time I felt it inside her, Adam's voice in my head matched the horror in Shannon's. I kept wanting to tell someone, to warn someone. But his voice kept telling me to leave it, that it was better to let it grow, and I listened. His child … and hers. A piece of shadow. A growth of power. Most of Adam’s thoughts toward the end came to me less in words than in disjointed feelings and images. There was an overwhelming sense of shame behind them.

“What the hell is happening?” asked Troy, looking back and forth between Adam and I, unaware that we were communicating without words, but clearly aware that something was passing between us.

The guy Hype jumped to attention, catching his boss’s suspicion like a cough. Adam’s thoughts in my mind were suddenly cut off.

“He’s a telepath, sir,” he said. “I could see something in his powers beyond the telekinesis. Just couldn’t figure out what it was.”

“Shut him down,” said Trojan.

“Already done,” said the man.

“Good work, Mr. X. So, you’ve been working against me this whole time? Well it doesn't matter, Mr. X will fit you with a power dampener until we can figure out what to do about you. The rest of you, keep doing what you’re doing.”

Mr. X pulled something out of his back pocket. It looked like a crumpled up black beanie with wires running across the top of it. He approached Adam, and several things happened in a short span of no more than a minute, throwing the room into chaos.

First, in the hallway outside, a portal opened, and three figures emerged. Two were dressed like detectives from some old-timey, gritty noir film, but with black masks covering their faces. The third was a kid about my age whose costume I didn’t get a good look at because as he came through the portal, all three of them disappeared from sight. Mr. X and Trojan had both seen them, though, and they turned toward them, not sure which way to direct their attention.

At the same time, Adam leapt to his feet and lunged at Troy from behind, using his power, which he must suddenly have regained control of, to draw several of the ceiling tiles down in front of Troy's face, obscuring his vision.

“I got the word out,” said Lincoln, standing and running to Shannon’s side. “Wasn’t sure they’d come, though.”

A moment later, and from the side of the room where Adam had been crouched just before, another figure appeared: Oneiros.

“Pain in the ass finding you guys,” he said. “What’d I miss?”

Then, from down the hallway, we heard a crashing sound and a brief series of shouts. I moved to the corner of the room where I could see a little ways down the hall in the direction we’d come from. In the distance, the fluorescent lights were flickering, and a little farther past that, a pure black mist seemed to be spreading in our direction, blocking any attempt to see beyond it.

Troy and Mr. X stood and looked back and forth between our group and the portal that still stood open in the hallway, the people who had come out of it having disappeared.

“Stand dow— ” Trojan started to say, but Adam smashed him in the back of the head with a metal pipe he’d pulled out of the ceiling and Trojan's voice fell silent as he fell to his knees. He wasn't down for the count yet though, and he kept babbling, his voice going stronger as he attempted to stagger to his feet.

Without thinking, I moved to grab the pipe from the floor to finish the job, but Luisa beat me to it, bashing him over the head and sending him sprawling on his belly on the floor.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” said Mr. X. His voice was something only a little more human than a growl.

“No,” agreed Adam. “Probably not. But he was getting annoying. Now, you can fight us. Or you can help us fight that.” He pointed out the door and down the hall, where the shadow was rapidly approaching.

Mr. X evidently chose to fight us, because he lunged toward Lincoln and Shannon. Linc’s power wasn’t offensive, and Shannon seemed too out of it to be of much use. I expected Adam to intervene again, but Mr. X must have been blocking his power, because he only stood and looked confused. I was scared for them for a moment, wondering how I could help, when there was a sick crunching sound and Mr. X reached a hand around to the back of his head as his body slumped forward, every bit as unconscious as his boss.

“Where’s Mimic?” asked the kid who had come through the portal, reappearing behind Mr. X’s unconscious form and holding the same pipe that had been used on Trojan in his hand. “Not that I, uh … I mean … Where’s the rest of your team?”

“You can ask about your crush later, mi hijo,” said the detective woman, appearing next to the boy. The other detective Hype appeared next to Adam.

“Didn’t think we’d be working together again so soon. Glad to be of assistance, though,” he said.

“No time for small talk either, Cerebro,” said the woman. “I think things are about to get hairy.”