Chapter Twenty-Seven: Monet Jaimson-Jackson

Song Selection: Elastic Heart—Cover by Written by Wolves (in the spirit of Chip Hardwell)

Percy's been having a rough day, like a really rough day. Like a, her girlfriend's dying, she's aware of a criminal's identity so someone totally wants her dead, and she'd been taken hostage kind of rough day. And in all honestly, she's tired. So tired, she doesn't really even care that much about trying to find a way out.

Weeks ago, when she walked in on Monet almost dying, the bleeding girl had said "It's okay," a couple of times, which seemed morbid to Percy when she watched it play out. But now?

Percy gets it.

Before losing most of her powers, her mother could rip right through duct tape, could probably rip a steamboat and half with a little huff-n-puff. Same with Monet. But Percy is kept easily bound to her uncomfortable folding chair with tape around her wrists. Her shoulders ache, and she's been staring at the same spot on the steel wall of the warehouse for hours. There are boxes and plastic bottles stacked on pallets in all corners of the room, and the colorful liquids inside the bottles are glowing, pulsing, brilliant blinks. Her captors are playing dice on a faraway folding table. All this she'd taken in many hours ago, and now it's all dull images at the corners of her vision.

She put up a fight at first, the whole "Let me go! You'll never get away with this!" shtick, but after getting ignored, or chuckled at, or patted on the head a few times, she eventually fell asleep. Woke up again, still tired. The emotional kind, less like it was something in her muscle or bone, more like her soul had fallen asleep against her ribcage. And honestly, she couldn't wake it up, even if she tried.

But now Mr. Jackson, Monet's dad, is bowled into the warehouse, fighting against his bonds. Ropes this time. He's tossed against the warehouse wall and Percy wakes up, really wakes up. Because the "I'm okay with this" feeling only applies to herself. Someone else? Her girlfriend's dad? The man who had welcomed her into his home as if she were his second daughter?

"Percy?" He stirs, his shoulders rolled all the way back and his chin held up. Acting dignified. He's doing it for her, she knows, and that makes the brave face he puts on hurt even more. "Did they hurt you?"

She shakes her head. She's about to ask the same question but blood's trickling down his face from a gash along his forehead. He doesn't even look up at it. He's just looking at her, and her heart hurts, because that's the way her own dad looks at her after bruised shins and busted knees. All that fatherly concern in the wide eyes and arched brows. "We're going to be okay," she whispers.

He nods and scoots himself closer, leaving a blood splatter on the floor. The henchmen are still playing dice at their table, only a couple of eyes on them at any given time, shifty and unfocused, because Percy keeps her eyes half-lidded as if she's still asleep, and Mr. Jackson freezes, with his head dropped to the side as if he's fazing out from his head injury. "You have a good head on his shoulders," he whispers, "you're more than capable of getting out of here. It's going to be scary, but you need to try to to make an escape." The alternative....he leaves that unspoken. Even whispering, even feigning being mostly asleep, his eyes are stark and clear. And something about the trust in his face makes her believe him.

They're going to kill us. He wouldn't demand her try making an escape otherwise.

"But, I don't have superpowers."

"You don't need them, Percy."

Her mother hadn't said as much, and just those few words from a man that she isn't related to, hardly knows even, steels her. She forces a meek smile at him and he grimaces back, an attempt at that smile through pain. They whisper back and forth, barely audible over the sound of cussing henchmen, cards being slapped down, and dice being thrown. They come up with a plan. Not a good one, the teenage girl and the expert journalist agree, but better than sitting there, waiting to be thrown into the surf. They sot there for a second, Mr. Jackson still bleeding from his head, Percy's heart slamming against her ribs. Anything, and everything could go wrong. But she has to. For Monet, for her mother, for him, for justice. She's tired, but she can't go to sleep just yet.

He collapses forward and she screams for help.

***

It goes as they expected, at first. A couple of henchmen jump out of their chairs and rush to see what the commotion is about. In those moments, Percy kicks her chair over and hits the ground. She's not used to pain like this, pain she realizes her mother and Monet most constantly be caught in. It sucks. It races through, staunching the breath out of it her.

But she only has minutes to work. And they hadn't really talked this part out that well, more like racing hypotheticals pasted to each other with desperate hope. The henchmen bend down to inspect the man on the floor—the much more intimidating of the two hostages, and Percy eyes the boxcutter dangling from a man's belt.

This is all they really thought through: get the boxcutter, cut the bonds, get the hell out. How? They hadn't figured that out. And Percy, soft soul she is, tries to kill the man with kindness. "Excuse me, sir, can you pick me up? This is, uh, uncomfortable." She blinks up at him, her eyes big with fake desperation. He shifts his eyes off the unconscious man, steps over to her, and squats over the tipped-over chair.

It's just a couple of heartbeats. She rips the boxcutter off his belt with her teeth. He makes a startled sound, but this is the girl that can sew skin with a thin needle, she's no super, but she's quick and nimble-fingered. A turn of the head over her shoulder, a drop of the blade into her waiting hands. She manuevers it swiftly, a simply slash and she's free.

There's no way she should be able to make it, but the other henchmen are still seated at their game, refusing to even look up. Adrenaline races through her. She has to make it. She has to. And she kicks the chair so hard it slams into the man and sends him toppling into the cold concrete floor. Percy races for the big warehouse door—still lifted slightly from when they brought in Mr. Jackson.

And by the time the henchmen lift their lazy heads, she's already slid out under the door and into the moonlight. She doesn't have time to shoot a reassuring glance back at Mr. Jackson, but in the back of her head she can see the prideful smile playing out on his face, the kind she sometimes sees when Monet's going on and on about the virtues of journalism and he's stuck in his armchair, pretending not to listen.

There's a guard. She has a gun, but she makes a kind-of whispered 'huh' sound as Percy whooshes past.

The moon is a white medallion in the sky. She wishes she could share this with Monet and Chip, this feeling of freedom, of power. She kicks up sand and rolls hard onto the boardwalk, the sound of the ocean a roar in her ears, a background rumble that adds to the thrum of her heart, a panicked cadence. She runs and runs in her socks, though she doubts anyone's even chasing her. She's a small shadowy figure, slipping easily into the darkness, but the nails dig into her feet, her wrists are sore, and she sees the big gash on Mr. Jackson's face every time she blinks.

And in the distance, a figure running toward her. "Mom! Mom!"

A burst of super-speed. That's how her mom functions now, all short bursts of power. She never fully recovered from having her powers wrenched out of her. And when Percy looks up at the petite woman, she sees flushed cheeks and driblets of sweat racing down her face, a little too human for the superhero, a little too vulnerable. Perfect to Percy's eyes, her silly, spacey mother.

The superhero squeezes her daughter into a hug, spins her around like a toddler. Gives her a toss in the air for good measure and crushes her against her chest. "Percy, you're okay!" A happy tear springs to the superhero's face, and it makes Percy's heart ache in the good way. "Oh, hon—"

"They still have Mr. Jackson. He told me about the evidence. Give it to me, and I'll run it up to the police station, and you save him." That was the plan. They both survive, her mom does the dangerous bits, and she still does something important. But her mother frowns.

"Percy, maybe that's not a good idea. That's dangerous for you."

And Percy can't hold it in anymore. She's tired, still. Tired of being demure and small and harmless, tired of being made to shut up and shrink, tired of being seen as nothing but a perky damsel needing to be protecting. She doesn't need powers. She doesn't need to be a superhero. "No, I don't care if you think it's dangerous. This is something we have to do. For Monet! She's my girlfriend, and the mayor's not going to get away with what he's done." Sweat springs to her face, and the ridiculousness of arguing with her superhero mother while someone needs rescuing hits her full force, an anvil to her chest. "Mr. Jackson needs you!"

Red Comet doesn't even look like a superhero, not in her sweat-soaked blouse and mom jeans, with her sensible satchel bag she likely bought from an MLM Girl Boss mom hanging against her thigh. "Percy, no. You're not a super."

This wasn't part of the plan. The plan was, her mom would hand her the journal. And she would run. Simple. Not her mother telling her that she wasn't capable, not her mother pretending she was less-than because she didn't have powers.

So Percy does what anyone desperate to get justice for their dying girlfriend would do. She doesn't tell her mother yes, she doesn't slink back home. Percy snatches the journal from her mother's open purse and runs down the dock.

Her mother, the superhero, stands there in shock. Because even though she's fast enough to catch her; she doesn't. Percy knows her mother would never expect that from her, the defiance, the athletic act. Her mother sees her as a thing that needs protecting, not as a teen who knows what the hell has to happen and a teen who's willing to make those things happen herself. So she just kind of stands there for a second, staring at the empty purse, while Percy's already racing down the dock with the evidence pressed against her chest.

Monet, Monet, why didn't you turn this in earlier? What were you trying to do?

Her mother doesn't come after her, she can't. There's a man she needs to save, and Percy can only pray her mother's in time. Her lungs are on fire, her legs are rubber. As a cheerleader, she likes to see herself as pretty fit. She's done enough crunches, lunges, leg-lifts, and squats to kill the weaker of will, but long distance running was never her forte; the pads of her feet split and bleed on the uneven slats in the boardwalk. And, of course, she's only human.

When she finally makes it to the street, she stops. Her eyes burn and she has to stand ramrod stiff, clutching her stomach, to keep from vomitting. The sudden whir of motion after being hungry and tied up most of the day, it takes a toll. The city is still tonight, ghostly quiet. She stumbles to the bus-stop, sits down, and opens the journal.

Names of superheroes, crossed out and marked through. 'Everyman' written over and over, daydreamily, circled. It's a story she has to piece together, the crossed out heroes, the names of cities, Everyman. She comes across a passage written in the middle of the book.

Mutants caused by sin?

Mutant variant causes by paranormal or spiritual possession? Exorcism performed gathers a substantial evidence of the ethereal?

They're not human they can't be, not after what they did to my wife, not a one of them can be, they're either animals with no hope or im healing them, im trying so hard to heal them. they can't know what they want.

PH expenses -15.67 k

PH profit this quarter - 814.92 k

That's all they need, she figures. Those few lines, coupled with the rest of the book, have to be damning. But she keeps skimming anyway. The scribbly handwriting shifts to purple pen and clean, practiced lines.

- no invisible ink

- no extra dna I can detect

- can't find this specific journal online. Ink seal in the back cover. doesn't add up...

And then, in the bottom corner, small and surrounded by hearts:

Monet Jaimson, Persephone Jackson, Monet Jaimson-Jackson

Percy's heart catches in her throat. She has to slam the journal shut to keep from crying. She lifts her head, blinking back the lancing pain at the corner of her eyes.

And good thing, too, the looking up, that is. Because out of the corner of her eye she makes out a lone white van sailing down the city street. She bites back a grin; even in a coma, Monet still manages to save her butt, albeit in the dorkiest way possible.

She ducks behind the bus-stop, the iron bench cover, and she draws a deep breath in, ready to run again, thankful for the first time for how small her little nothing home town is. She slinks in the shadows, clinging to back roads and grassy median strips, which are easier on her cracked, bleeding feet.

White vans patrol the streets. At first, she thinks it has to be a coincidence. The one van on main street, the one van on Elderwood, the other on Green Adder Grail. White vans stick out in the mind, they're immediately suspicious. So she crawls up onto a grassy hill to get a better look.

They're on every road as far as her eye can see. Which is, you know...

Fucking Fantastic.

***

Ahh, I started this book in 2018 and it's FINALLY drawing towards its conclusion. To be honest, up until maybe Febuary of this year I thought I'd ever finish it, but uh, we're almost there, so cheers!