32.
“Sonofabitch,” I muttered as I walked out the front door of the hotel and was hit by the frigid Minnesota air. It was well below freezing and my thin windbreaker was somewhat shredded. Even if it hadn’t been, it was completely inadequate to the task at hand. It was a Florida winter coat, not a Minnesota winter coat, and I felt the difference everywhere. My nostril hairs stood up and froze, goosebumps sprinted down my back and arms, my knees felt like they were going to knock together uncontrollably—all that within two seconds after I walked out the door.
I hurried across the parking lot, shoes crunching in the hard-packed and hard-frozen snow. It looked like it’d been a while since they’d had a fresh powder here, which sorta worked in my favor and sorta didn’t. I didn’t tend to drive much, and that went double for when there was snow on the ground. I probably hadn’t driven in snow for almost two years, given that I’d been driven out of the state and gone on the run before winter had come last year.
Also, I could fly back then, a loss I was keenly feeling as I tried to nonchalantly stalk up to an older-model Ford Explorer. It looked like an early 2000’s edition, which suited me.
I tried the doors, very casually, then looked into windows of the cars next to me, just to see if the doors were unlocked. No dice. I could scour the parking lot and hope to find someone who’d been sloppy about locking theirs, but this was about as good as I was going to get, I figured.
I busted the rear window on the driver’s side and reached up, unlocking the driver’s door and slipping into the Explorer. It was cold in the car, overnight temps having dropped, the chill long seeped in. There was a partially drunk diet cola in the cup holder in the center of the vehicle, and I lifted it, just to see. It was completely frozen through, the cola a hard chunk of ice at the bottom of the can.
“Yep,” I said, leaning down to pull the wires out from under the dashboard, “welcome back to Minnesota.”
It took me a couple minutes to strip the wires I needed and hotwire the car. It would have been easier with longer nails, but meta strength and my enhanced fine motor skills got the job done eventually. The engine purred to life, and I looked back as I shifted the Explorer into reverse and eased out of the parking space. Once out, I threw it in drive and engaged the four-wheel drive which had drawn me to this vehicle.
I pulled out of the parking lot and onto Snelling, gunning it down a side road a few seconds later. In order to get downtown, I’d have to cross the Mississippi River, and most of the easy routes would be jammed with people trying to get the hell away from the scary metahuman who was tearing up Nicollet Mall.
Such a shame. They’d just finished with what felt like a fifty-year reconstruction project down there.
My easiest route would be to approach from the north, Hennepin Avenue bridge. I’d sneak into downtown that way, and if the roads were too logjammed, I’d just ditch the Explorer and head north into the city on foot. I could cover the mile or less between the bridge and the intersection where my adversary was waiting in a matter of minutes.
I took the north route to circle around; Snelling started to turn into a freeway around just before the State Fair grounds; I could see the tower in the distance, and it gave me a little thrill, being this close to home.
The Explorer skidded on the slick roads as I hit the overpass at Larpenteur and slid through the intersection as I hung a left. Larpenteur became Hennepin under the bridge, and suddenly I was racing through a faded industrial area, passing old warehouses and shipping concerns as they slipped past at fifty miles per hour. Trees with no leaves hung over the street, their branches like skeletal bones trying to wave me off from doing what I was hell bent on doing.
Which was racing into a confrontation with a guy who had me so grossly outpowered as to make my fight with the Terminator look completely fair by comparison. But hey, I’d almost beaten the Terminator, so … I had to at least stand a chance with this guy … right?
I tried not to allow myself the luxury of negative thoughts, but reality is a mean mistress, and she came crashing in on me while I tried to accentuate the positive. This was madness, possibly suicide, which was a phase I thought I was past since I’d crawled my way out of Rose’s clutches.
The Explorer shot under a rusted railroad bridge draped with ice stalactites and through an intersection where someone blared their horn at me for failing to acknowledge the rules of the road. Give way, idiots, I’m trying to save lives here! Or possibly kill myself in a blaze of glory and martyrdom.
How had my life gone so far off the rails? A year and a half ago I’d been living in this city, I’d been the most powerful meta in the world, I had a boyfriend, I had friends who were like family, I had half a billion dollars in the bank and was secretly working for myself, lived with my surrogate mom Ariadne, I was a hero who was instrumental in stopping the tide of metahuman attacks, was respected, and was just generally …
Happy.
Shit. I was happy.
Now I was on the run from the law, and Ariadne didn’t even remember me thanks to the machinations of the villain who’d borked my life from the highest office in the land. I had almost no powers. Who even knew what had happened to my boyfriend, my family and friends were beaten down, I’d lost most of my money and couldn’t access the rest, and I was pretty much thought of as a villain throughout the world.
As the Minneapolis skyline appeared in the distance between a couple of leafless trees, I had to ask myself …
Was this really the consequence of some shitty decisions I’d made back when I was eighteen?
Did this really come down to the bad press I’d gotten from killing Clyde Clary, Eve Kappler, Roberto Bastian, and Glen Parks? From my intemperate actions as a metahuman superhero law enforcer, when I’d occasionally lost patience with people like Eric Simmons? From Cassidy’s character assassination campaign against me a few years ago?
I was wanted. Hunted. In spite of my best efforts to save the world, I’d been framed for things I didn’t do, and tarred because of the things I had done years ago.
Was this just the deal? Was I a villain, now and forever? Irredeemable?
I mean, it wasn’t like the law was likely to just forget the Eden Prairie incident, since that was the pretext for my arrest. It was somewhat compounded by the LA nuclear incident (thanks, Greg Vansen) but astute eyes had at least blasted all over the internet the fact that “Sienna Nealon can’t produce a nuclear blast!” which had apparently staved off any charges there, though I was still very much a person of interest in that investigation.
All the things I’d done, both good and bad, seemed totally weighted against me. The good counted for nothing, the bad weighed tons and was pressing down on me with the force of a dumpster filled with plutonium. And on fire, because my life was a nuclear dumpster fire.
I was passing the occasional house now, zipping past stores as I shot over Interstate 35W. I flew through more intersections, got more honks, flipped the occasional bird in response. Traffic was picking up in the opposite direction, and I was passing in the center lane, laying on the horn anytime I caught up with someone who was traveling the speed limit.
After blowing through a whole series of intersections, things started to build up. Condos and apartment buildings began to rise around me. Newer restaurants and stores had sprung up through this part of town. Disused industrial and light commercial sectors gave way to an aging and refurbed cityscape, the kind of neighborhoods where hipsters dwelled with their lumberjack beards and flannel shirts (no, seriously—a guy in a flannel shirt, in a perfect imitation of the Brawny Paper Towel man, was hauling ass down the street in the opposite direction).
I hit the split of Hennepin Avenue and 7th Street and raced on, joining up with 1st Avenue. A few blocks later, downtown Minneapolis was rising above me, just ahead.
Home.
Almost home.
A little farther ahead and I saw the bridge onto Nicollet Island.
And suddenly … I was there.
The bridge ended, and I was in downtown Minneapolis.
I turned left onto Washington Avenue and raced, ignoring the honks as I pushed my way through vehicles that were blocking the intersection, forming a line to escape the carnage on Nicollet Mall. I went straight ahead on Hennepin and hung a left on 6th, fighting through another string of stopped traffic. People were getting out of their cars and fleeing on foot, some wrapped up tight, some dressed completely inadequately for the occasion.
Here I abandoned my car on 6th, pulling it onto the sidewalk and honking to get people to get the hell out of the way. There was definitely not going to be any escaping from this by car, so … I just left it, hitting the cold air as I got out, letting it pour over me, infuse my bones as I stared down to the intersection with Nicollet Mall.
The little dome of rock waited, cracks in it that provided an opportunity to see the big bad guy’s self-constructed oven. Flames were crawling slowly out of the sides, and that shimmering veil of water waited.
“Take my car,” I said to a woman who was struggling under the weight of trying to drag along four kids, two of them very young and the others maybe six or seven, tops. I grabbed her by the arm and got her attention with a sharp shake as I pointed to the Explorer. “Go south. Hit 394.” I pointed to the 394 signs just down the street. “Go the wrong way if you have to, just get out of downtown.”
Her eyes were frightened and yet somehow dull as she stared at me. She blinked, then squinted, almost in recognition. “Aren’t you …?” she asked, like she was trying to put something together.
“Take the car, get out of town,” I said. “Hardly anyone is coming this way, so take advantage of the empty lanes.” I turned my back on her. “The Explorer’s running, just get your kids in, buckle up and go.”
“Thank you!” she called after me as she hurried them into my car. I didn’t stick around to watch the operation. The crowds on the street were thinning already, the buildings around us probably near empty. The city of Minneapolis had seen enough metahuman incidents that no one wanted to be caught at ground zero when one was brewing right outside their door.
I took to the street at a run, passing the big Murray’s sign, passing under the Ike’s awning and then, once I’d gone past a couple garage entrances, past Oceanaire’s windows.
Snow remained in the gutters, frozen in spite of the city’s best efforts to clear it. Piles remained, draped on the edges of the sidewalks, waiting for some sucker to try and step over them.
I didn’t try. I just jumped and landed on a spot on the road that was clear.
Approaching the little sphere of flaming, hovering stone was a daunting business. I kept my stride even and stooped, grabbing up a handful of snow and shaping it as I went. I made a snowball, of course, and walked right on up to the sphere, stopping about ten yards away.
Only one thing to do now.
I threw the snowball with unerring accuracy and it piffed right through one of the cracks, dissolving into steam and boiling water as it passed into the flames. I heard it sizzle, a little cloud bursting out of the crack where it had entered.
“Hey, Captain Planet!” I shouted, voice echoing over the street, “I’m calling you out. I’ve seen your earth, wind, water and fire, so why don’t you shed your geodesic dome of a hidey-hole and show me the power of heart, huh?”
It was pretty classic Sienna Nealon to walk up to someone like this, sitting in an impenetrable (to me) fortress in the middle of the street, roasting flames cooking out the sides, and just toss out a challenge.
At least, it seemed like the sort of thing Sienna Nealon would do. Based on what I could remember. And I remembered … most of it? Maybe.
That was the struggle, though, wasn’t it? Not knowing what I didn’t know, having no clue about what I couldn’t remember. Were the parts Rose removed from my memory things that were critical, core to who I was? I’d been a flippant ass in response to what she’d done to me while it was happening, but with three months of separation since I’d killed her …
That was a lot of time for doubt to sink in. And I had plenty of it, now.
“I don’t have all day, sparky!” I shouted again. Black eyes appeared at the nearest split, Mr. Flames peering out at me. “That’s right, dark-eyed boy. I answered your call, dick. You could have just used the phone, but no—you had to make a big scene. You know what that says to me? You’re one of those dramatic guys whose mommy probably didn’t love him enough. The kind who tried to trip girls to get their attention when you were in grade school, and never really progressed beyond that.” I flipped my hair. “I get it, though, I’m totes smoking enough to get you jonesing, fire bug, but I’ll be honest, I’ve been with hotter guys than you—”
The earthen armor around him shifted, cracking open like an egg as he floated out, staring at me like I was some unknown creature. “Sienna … Nealon?” he asked, staring down at me.
“It’s me,” I said, spreading my arms wide. “You attacked my friends and family, you made an ass of yourself downtown in my city, you called me out—why are you surprised I’m here?”
He blinked a couple times, his eyes disappearing in flames, the black orbs simply vanishing as his fire-covered eyelids covered them. It was a trippy thing, like they just vanished for a quarter second or something, and he was left featureless save for a nose and a thin line where his mouth would be. Like an incomplete, flaming version of the old Dick Tracy villain, the Blank. He leaned closer, staring at me. “You … look so different …”
“Well, if I looked the same, people’d be realizing it was me everywhere I tried to hide, dumbass,” I fired back at him. I looked sideways and saw a local news truck parked a couple blocks down 6th, with one of those giant crane cameras extended up at the four-story level or so. The glint of a lens in the daylight told me that the world was watching. Probably wondering why I wasn’t about the business of smiting this asshole yet.
Because they didn’t know the truth.
That I was as powerless as a freaking kitten against a guy like this.
“You are … too thin,” he said.
“Way to skinny shame me, dickhead,” I said. “You go to all this trouble to arrange a date, and you end up being the worst I’ve had since that Ricardo douche.”
“I … what?” Flamey looked taken aback. “I … do not call you here to … date you.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course he didn’t. Only the sickest and most twisted of admirers would try and approach lust and/or love from this angle. Like Sovereign, which this guy was starting to remind me of. I ignored the tight ball of fear in my stomach. “Fine. Why did you want me to come here? What do you want from me?”
Like I didn’t know the answer to that.
His thin, flame-coated lips smiled wider, then wider still, curving up in a black line across the flames that covered his face. “A fight, of course.” He spread his arms wide. “I come here to you … for the fight.”