13. Cameron

Chapter 13

Cameron

The steroids weren’t a long-term fix. I’d always known this, but I’d been feeling better, so I’d let myself believe that it could only get better. And in the face of the alternative, it didn’t seem like I had much of a choice.

Inevitably, though, the steroids started to make things worse instead of better. I was hungry allll the time, which was leading to changes in my body. It wasn’t too noticeable, and as long as I didn’t look in the mirror, I could mostly ignore it. Still worth it, I told myself. Then my ankles began to swell.

And while I appreciated that I wasn’t so tired during the day anymore, now I couldn’t sleep at night either! My mood swings were so volatile that I would snap at Phobos for asking me to pass the milk, and then next I was sobbing uncontrollably.

In short, I was a mess.

And the whole time I just kept thinking of Deimos when he’d said, “ My poor, sweet, breakable mortal. ” I didn’t want to be breakable. I had spent the better part of my childhood being told I was special, that I would grow up to save the world. That I mattered. And then once it was done, I was simply pushed to the side.

Disposable.

Useless.

So when Barney called to tell me Dr. Wells had come up with an experimental treatment for me, I thought what the hell. If being their guinea pig meant getting my life back, then so be it.

Barney and I performed the handoff in the dark of night, like a couple of thugs carrying out a sordid drug deal, and I snuck through the dark hallways to my room, hoping like hell Phobos didn’t wake up and ask what I was doing.

I eased my room door shut behind me with a soft click, holding my breath and listening for footsteps. When everything remained silent, I blew out a relieved breath and brought the bag over to the bed and upended it with a tinkle of glass and plastic.

Sifting through the contents, I saw there were multiple glass ampules, alcohol swabs, and sterile-sealed syringes, along with a slip of paper with instructions on how to inject myself. My knees were quivering so badly I didn’t trust myself to stay upright, so I let gravity do its thing and plonked down on the mattress. My hands were shaking, palms sweating, and when I swallowed, my mouth was dry and pasty.

The instructions might as well be written in cuneiform, it was all Greek to me. The diagrams made no sense. Growling softly, I pulled out my phone. “Fuck this,” I muttered, opening YouTube. It was easy enough to find how-to medical videos on subcutaneous injections.

Twenty minutes later, with a slightly better understanding—and yet somehow, even more anxiety—I was ready to give it a go.

Peeling my shirt off, I tossed it aside, then I filled the syringe carefully. The alcohol swab was cold against my skin. And then, blowing out a breath, I pinched the flesh of my stomach, hesitating with the needle hovering just above the skin. I felt like I was going to be sick.

Now, I was no wimp. I’d gone through years of rigorous training to live up to my full potential as a Chosen One?, and pain tolerance was a significant part of the training, considering we didn’t know exactly what form my destiny would take, barring what my prophecy said.

Born in darkness, live in light,

His full potential will be his plight.

Through fleeting death and numbing pain,

And one more the gods will gain.

Yep. Numbing pain. So Barney had constantly been coming up with new ways to train—aka torture—me. It was all about inducing pain without causing lasting injury. Electric shock, tight bindings for long periods of time, being suspended upside down. I swore he saw it like a game, but he’d insisted it was so when the time came, I would be able to fight through the pain.

What was ironic was that when facing off in a battle to the death with Nefarious, it hadn’t even been painful. It was… almost peaceful as he began to draw my life force from my body. I heard a gentle voice in my head, welcoming me home. It had felt inevitable, and I was fully prepared to hand myself over to them, knowing they would take care of my soul for me.

I hadn’t died, obviously. I guess that was the “fleeting death” part of the prophecy.

The prophecy itself sounded like a bunch of vague bullshit to me, just like all prophecies, with any number of interpretations, but what did I know? The government had an entire department dedicated solely to the reading and deciphering of prophecies. If anyone should know, it was them .

“Okay… okay, you got this. Just do it. Just… fucking do it already!” With a gasp, and before I could stop myself, I jabbed the needle into my skin and pressed the plunger.

The injection itself was a tiny prick, and when I pulled the needle free, a single bead of scarlet blood bloomed, stark against my pale skin. I could feel the liquid, whatever it was, spreading beneath the surface of my skin. It tingled a little, cold and foreign, and I waited, holding my breath. Waited for burning or fever or blisters. Welts or vomiting.

All in all, it was pretty anticlimactic.

“Huh.”

I went to bed that night feeling hopeful. Could it really be so easy?

Spoiler alert: it was not.

I woke up even before the sun was up, the pain clubbing me over the head and dragging me out of sleep. I felt like I’d been trampled over by a stampede of rabid hippos. My entire body ached, right down to the roots of my hair.

It was unlike anything I had ever felt before, but when I tried to relate it to something familiar, it reminded me of the time in third grade, when I fell off the climbing structure and broke my arm. It was like that but multiplied by 206, once for every bone in my body, and it had that hot itchy feeling of being mid healing process. I turned on the bedside lamp and held my arms up, searching for any sign of injury, but there was nothing. Nothing but the tiny red pinprick on my stomach to mark where I’d injected myself with Dr. Wells’s supposed treatment .

The insides of my eyelids were lined with Velcro, as were my eyeballs, and I was pretty sure my tongue had grown fur.

“What the fuuuuck…” I mumbled, rubbing at my eyes as I dragged myself out of bed and over to the window. I wrenched back the curtains, staring out across the moon-drenched yard and pool below. Everything looked a funny color, like I was wearing red-tinted glasses. I blinked, eyelids scraping, but it didn’t make any difference to my vision.

It was the strangest feeling, because I was scared as hell, but my heartbeat was too slow in my chest, the blood sluggish in my veins.

I hobbled, groaning, to where I’d dropped my phone on the floor last night and dropped to the floor beside it. The carpet texture grated against my oversensitive skin, and as I dialed to call Dr. Wells, my fingers felt thick and clumsy. I didn’t give a fuck what time it was, couldn’t give a rat’s ass if I woke him up. He didn’t answer the first time, so I called him again. He picked up on the fifth ring, his voice thick with sleep. “Yeah,” he muttered.

“It’s me. Something’s wrong,” I gasped, dropping my head back to rest on the bed behind me.

“Cameron?” He was instantly alert. I heard the rustling of fabric as he presumably got out of bed. “Tell me everything.”

I listed all the symptoms I was feeling, and all the while, he hummed, the clack of computer keys in the background telling me that he was taking notes. He asked a few questions for clarification, and as I unloaded it all on the doctor, I began to feel a little better. He would know what to do. “So, do I need to go to the hospital?” I asked.

“Hmm? Oh, no. You’re fine,” he said almost offhandedly.

“What? I’m not fine! I’ve never been less fine in my life!” I shouted in a hushed whisper. I was still very aware that Phobos could probably hear me, even from the other side of the house .

Dr. Wells made a soft shushing sound like a parent would give their baby to soothe them when they were upset. “I promise, this is quite expected. It will take you some time to get adjusted to the medication. It will likely improve the longer you take it.” It didn’t escape my notice that he’d said “ likely .”

“And how often will I need to take it?” I asked, already dreading his answer.

“Let’s start with weekly, and we’ll see how it goes. I would like to see you in two weeks for some more blood work, and then we’ll do another MRI in a month to check on the disease progression. How does that sound?”

My eyes stung with frustrated tears. “Fine. Whatever,” I snapped, gritting my teeth. I was a fixer, a doer, someone who saw a problem and did whatever it took to repair what was broken. I’d always been that way. So to be told to just sit back and do nothing made me feel so incredibly helpless.

After a few more meaningless assurances from Dr. Wells that everything was going to be okay, I dropped the phone back to the floor. This sucked, but as much as I wanted to wallow in my own self-pity, it simply wasn’t in my nature to give up. What I really needed was a task, something else to focus on to take my mind off my constant pain and stress.

I needed a problem I could fix.

With that in mind, I forced myself up and into the shower. There was no chance of going back to sleep while my body was on fire, so after getting the doctor’s assurance that I wasn’t dying, I figured it was best to just get on with it. He’d said I could take painkillers, so I took the maximum dose on everything I had and hoped for the best.

I was dressed and headed downstairs to make some breakfast when an alarm tore through the house. Was it the fire alarm? I didn’t smell any smoke, and when I raced into the main part of the house, I found Phobos in his tights, staring down at his phone.

“Only 43 seconds. Great reaction time!” he praised, his violet eyes alight with excitement. “But I was really hoping you’d be dressed properly. Ah well, no time now. Let’s go!”

I frowned, following him toward the garage door. “Go where? What was that alarm?”

“Do you like it?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder but not slowing his quick pace. “I had it installed yesterday. It’s for superhero emergencies.”

“For superhero emer—” I bit back my sigh. Wasn’t this what I’d been hoping for? A problem I could fix? “Okay, so what’s the emergency?”

We stepped through into the garage, and I slid into the passenger seat of his white Porsche. Phobos hopped in the driver’s seat and slid the key into the ignition. His eyes, so bright a second ago, now darkened with shadows. “I’ve had word that Deimos is at the hospital.” A muscle ticked in his jaw, and he stared straight ahead through the windshield as the garage door slid up. “Apparently newborn shifter babies are an easy target to recharge his power.”

My jaw dropped in shock, but whatever I’d been about to say was lost beneath the roar of the engine as Phobos cranked the key and peeled out of the garage and down the driveway. I wasn’t Deimos’s biggest fan or anything, but babies?! That was… unthinkable! It took a special kind of monster to go after children.

I gripped the sides of my seat hard, letting my anger build as we blasted through the city streets toward downtown. If Deimos wanted to mess with me, I had plenty of pent-up rage just looking for an outlet. With each passing block, as the buildings grew taller around us and traffic closed in, I allowed my power to rise to the surface. Every lock I’d put on it, every wall I’d tried to erect around it, they all came crashing down as the surge of energy coursed through me. Every ache I’d been feeling sharpened, and I knew I would be paying the price for it later, but it would be worth it to blast the smug smirk off that asshole’s face.

Valleywood General was a massive hospital, with 50 floors, towering over the city. Phobos headed straight for it, and he didn’t take his foot off the gas until we were in its shadow, stopping just two feet from the doors. He shoved open his door. “Let’s go kick my brother’s ass,” he grumbled, storming into the building.

The automatic doors gave a whoosh to admit us, and a security guard sitting behind a desk shouted, “Hey, you can’t park there!”

“This’ll just take a minute, but feel free to tow it if you feel the need,” Phobos said, waving a hand over his shoulder as we continued to the bank of elevators at the end of the hall.

Heads turned to watch our progress, staff and patients, their curious gazes following us all the way to the elevator. I heard someone say, “Hey, isn’t that the guy from that billboard?”

Unease and confusion pushed aside my anger. “Um… are you sure about this?” I asked Phobos as the elevator gave a ding, its doors opening. “Who did you say gave you that tip?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Phobos said. “The tip came through the new 1-800 number you set up to take calls. Why would they call if something wasn’t going down?”

“Oh, I dunno, maybe because it’s a trap?” I sniped, heavy on the sarcasm.

There was an elderly man ahead of us, shuffling with a walker. I stuck my hand in the door to hold it open while Phobos gave the senior a hand. The man gave a quirk of his brow at Phobos’s flashy attire. “Are you here to cheer up the kids?” he asked once the doors had closed and the elevator whisked us up, on our way to labor and delivery.

“Well, we’re here to save children, so I suppose that’s something for them to be happy about.”

“That’s not what he meant,” I muttered under my breath, but Phobos chose not to acknowledge me. I peeked at him in the reflection of the mirrored doors from where he stood on the other side of the stranger, but he stared straight ahead. The door opened at three more floors on the way up, the elevator slowly filling with people, and we shuffled around to make room. One woman yelped when a spark jumped from my skin, shocking her lightly. “Sorry,” I mumbled, shrugging shyly, but everyone eyed me warily and tried to give me some space. When it was finally our floor, we had to jostle awkwardly through to the front, and Phobos’s cape nearly got caught in the doors.

We emerged on an empty hallway, and the elevator closed behind us, leaving us in relative silence. Phobos huffed out a breath through his nose, smoothing out his cape. “You know, when I imagined being a superhero, there was a lot more glamor. This is all so… mundane.”

“Yes, which is why this feels so wrong.” I looked up and down the hall, unease making my skin crawl. “There were no police outside, no one’s screaming or crying.” I listened for anything out of the ordinary, but it was the silence itself that seemed out of place. “Where is everybody?”

Phobos let his cape drop and tilted his head, listening to something I couldn’t hear. “This way,” he said softly, gesturing down the hall. His boots squeaked a little on the tile, and I was tempted to shush him.

A hunched figure crossed the end of the hall, a swaddled bundle in his arms. He froze when he caught sight of us, and Phobos shouted, “Zeek! You stop right there, you little urchin! ”

The urchin in question did not, in fact, stop. He bolted, and Phobos and I were in fast pursuit. When we reached the end of the hall, though, we heard babies crying in both directions. “Shit. We need to split up. I’ll go this way, you go that way. Call if you find my brother.”

“But what if—” I began to say that this was obviously a trap and we should stick together, but he was already gone, chasing after Zeek, his boots squeaking the whole way.

Grumbling to myself, I did as he’d asked and headed the other direction. I followed the reedy wail of an infant, peeking through the open doors as I went. Every room was empty—no parents, no staff. The beds were made, and the place smelled freshly of hospital-grade cleaning products.

I groaned, rubbing my palms together. My skin was nearly crackling with the charge that had built up, and without a way to expend it, I was worried about the long-term effects it might have on my health. Why was I risking it? “This is so pointless,” I grumbled to myself, peeking around the corner. The crying was getting louder, but I still hadn’t seen anyone. Taking a chance, I called, “Hello? Anyone?”

The crying continued unbroken, the plaintive cry reaching a pitch that tugged at my heart. I closed my eyes and forced myself to slow my breathing. I felt queasy, the world spinning around me, and while my thoughts were murky, one certainty emerged from the turmoil—Deimos wasn’t here to hurt anyone. Phobos seemed so quick to believe the worst of his brother, but from what little I knew of him, I didn’t think he was such a bad guy. Misguided, maybe. Mischievous, absolutely. But evil? No.

The question was, was I willing to bet my life on it?

I opened my eyes, determination clearing my vision. “Fuck this,” I growled through gritted teeth. I pushed off the wall and came stomping around the corner. “Deimos, get your ass out here. ”

No surprise, he didn’t come out, the coward. So instead, I headed straight toward the crying baby. Something had to be making them cry. There was a door toward the end of the hall, cracked open just enough to show the light was on, a sliver of white linoleum and light green wall.

I didn’t even hesitate when I got there, just shoved the door open and stalked in, drawing my power into my left hand in a ball of crackling energy. A cold sweat broke out across my face. It was almost too much for me to maintain, but I gave everything I had to keeping it leashed. I didn’t want to hurt the child.

I thought I’d been prepared for anything. For Deimos and his minions to be holding the newborn hostage, for a sneak attack or an epic battle to the death. But what I hadn’t expected was… nothing.

It was just an empty room. One window, two beds with privacy curtains drawn back, two bedside tables, a couple chairs. No Deimos, and more importantly, no baby.

The crying immediately cut out, leaving a silence that seemed to brush against my skin. My pulse was rushing in my ears, my panting breath sawing in and out of my chest as I looked back and forth. Was I supposed to get down on my knees and check under the beds?

But then the reality hit home like a bucket of ice water dumped over my head. I was right—it was a trap, and I’d just walked straight into it.

“Phob—” I began to shout as I spun toward the door, only to find the doorway blocked by a looming figure.

Deimos’s lips curved in a seductive smirk. “No hard feelings,” he said with a casual shrug, so at odds with the panic tearing through me.

I frowned. “What?” That was all I had to say before he brought his hand out in a sweeping arc, a delicate golden net draping over me. It was so soft and light that it felt like spiderweb silk. When I tried to pull it off, however, it seemed to adhere to my skin, tightening with surprising strength. The surprise had me losing concentration, and the control I’d had over my power slipped. A spark jumped off my skin, and the current coursed through the net’s material, adding to its durability in some way, multiplying my own power and reflecting it back at me. The delicate strands cut into me, searing my flesh.

“Deimos, it burns!” I yelled, dropping to my knees.

He crouched down in front of me, his eyes too kind for his actions. “Don’t worry. It’ll be over soon.”

And true to his word, darkness enveloped me, dragging me down into unconsciousness.