String - Fruition Interlude: Lucy

She had seen it coming from a mile away.

When Max hadn’t shown up for homeroom, Lucy knew it was a sign of what was to come. It was just the nature of the world they lived in. Those with superpowers might as well live in a different world than everyone else. She hadn’t even bothered to send him any reminders, because deep down, she knew this assignment wasn’t important. Not to him, not anymore.

Max had more pressing things to worry about than his grades. His life would constantly be in danger now and he’d have to adapt.

The day drifted on by until the final bell rang and Lucy found herself standing in her Social Studies classroom with the teacher. Ms. Elise was calmly tapping away on her laptop as Lucy patiently waited for the go-ahead to begin the presentation. Max might have been forced into a new life but unfortunately, she had to deal with the troubles his absence caused.

“I see that Maxis has been signed out as sick today,” Ms. Elise said, calmly leaning back in her chair. “Convenient timing.”

“He…” Lucy’s words died in her throat. Despite his situation he could’ve at least sent a message, told her what was happening – or even just that he wasn’t going to show. She might have prepared the rest of the assignment expecting this, but it didn’t make him any less of an ass. “...Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry you’ve been placed in this position,” Ms. Elise replied. “It’s unusual though. I wouldn’t have expected this from Maxis. I know you two are close, is he having trouble at home?”

“No,” Lucy shook her head. His relationship with his mother and sister was strong. So much so that she was jealous. “I go over to his house a lot. I’d know if something was going on.”

“Perhaps something more private then,” Ms. Elise mused aloud before shaking her head. “I’ll discuss it with him the next time he turns up to class. I can’t do much else.”

Lucy wanted to say something – to blurt out the whole truth, but she knew that wouldn’t help him. There would be investigations and the ECU would drag him to their headquarters. She was well aware of how Max and his mother felt about the organization. Even Alex disliked them. She couldn’t destroy her friendship like that, not over a grade.

Lucy smiled half-heartedly. “Thanks.”

Ms. Elise returned the gesture. “Regardless of how much is done, I’d like to see your presentation. So, whenever you're ready, you may begin.”

With a deep breath, Lucy began.

She cleared the five-minute minimum mark with ease and concluded a comfortable thirty seconds before the ten-minute maximum. If the look on Ms. Elise’s face was anything to go by, Lucy was confident she had done a phenomenal job.

“Wonderful, thank you,” the teacher applauded lightly. “Very thorough. A lot of thought went into this. An interesting topic, Cyberspace.”

“We wanted to do something different,” Lucy shrugged bashfully. “Something outside the box. All the examples online from previous years just had the same stuff over and over. Sparrow, Lich, Gaea, Foresight… I thought this would spice it up.”

“And spice things up you did. Though, as much as I’d love to award bonus marks for uniqueness, that’s not in the marking criteria.”

“I know,” Lucy said with a weak chuckle. “I just thought that it’d be less boring to grade if you weren’t seeing the same stuff over and over again.”

“How thoughtful,” Ms. Elise chuckled. “How much of this is Maxis’ contribution?”

The question caused her to freeze up. Her mind ran through the presentation and tried to remember what he’s done but nothing came to mind. This whole assignment had been done by her, every step. Max had slacked off because he wasn’t much of a Social Studies kind of guy. He preferred the sciences.

“Um,” she turned and flipped through every page of the PowerPoint, trying to buy herself more time to think. However, it seemed their teacher was aware of what she was trying to do.

“I wasn’t born yesterday, Lucy. I can see what you’re doing.” Ms. Elise said knowingly.

“I’m sorry,” Lucy’s shoulders dropped. “I just… I don’t want him to fail.”

“Then he should have contributed,” Ms. Elise turned to her laptop and typed something out. “For the lateness, I’ll only be knocking you down one grade. B+ for you. Maxis, on the other hand, will receive an F.”

Lucy wanted to protest. She almost did as well. The words were on the tip of her tongue and she was prepared to argue his case but the small side eye from Ms. Elise made her stop. A part of her felt vindicated, she had done all of the work after all. Another felt a little guilty that she hadn’t fought harder for her friend.

“Okay.”

“I will see you tomorrow, Lucy. Take care.”

Gathering her things, she left and numbly made her way home. On the bus, she sat with her phone resting in her hands, Max’s contact details on the screen. She opened their messages and slowly began typing something out. Halfway through, she lost her nerve and deleted everything, resigning to stare at their chat history.

What’re you doing right now?

There was no chance he was sick. Max rarely ever got sick. In fact, Lucy couldn’t even remember the last time he had so much as coughed. She could vaguely recall one time he had gotten so sick that Eleanor had taken him out of school for almost a month. He was bedridden for weeks. Then, he came back to school and she tried to talk to him about it, he said he couldn’t remember a thing. Outside of that, Max had been the picture of health ever since.

After getting off the bus and walking a few blocks to her neighborhood, Lucy found herself standing outside the front gate of her house, her eyes fixated on the car in the driveway. Her father was home early, which was incredibly unusual. Whatever the case, Lucy was already dreading walking through the front door.

“What’s wrong, babe?”

She turned to see her neighbor leaning over the fence. It was a boy, with scruffy hair with a tanned complexion. The mediterranean kid that had moved here a while ago with his family. Unfortunately, his parents were good friends with her father so she wasn’t able to avoid them.

“Your face,” she quipped back easily, causing the boy to scowl. “What, don’t tell me that hurt your feelings, Ross.”

“Just not sure what I did to deserve that babe.”

“I’m not your babe, jackass.”

Ross heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes. “Come on, Lu. Just give it up already. We’d be good if you’d just give us a chance. My parents and your Dad want this to happen. Why fight it?”

“I don’t give a fuck what you, your parents, or my dad want,” Lucy sneered.

Lucy stormed off, passing her gate and walking up the pavement path to her front door, all the while Ross groaned dramatically.

“Babe…”

“Go fuck yourself—” she reached for the door with the intent to open it, but found herself next to the fence with one of her arms gripped tightly by Ross. “Let me go you asshole!”

“I’m trying really hard to be nice here,” he yanked and twisted her arm, electing a yelp of pain to escape her throat. “Lucy, this is in your best interests. Tell me, what’s the alternative? You could end up some whore for one of the lower initiates if you wanted to. But we both know you deserve better than that, at least I’d treat you with some respect!”

“Like you are now!?” Lucy tried to pull away but his grip was too strong. “What’s respectful about this? I don’t want to be touched, so let me go,” she snarled and pulled away harder. “I said let me go Ross!”

Her gaze locked with his and she wanted nothing more than to gouge out his eyes, slit his throat, and leave him to rot in the sun. She’d delight in watching vultures pick apart his corpse until he was nothing but shreds of clothes and bones.

Ross’ eyes narrowed as his grip tightened for a moment. Then, he suddenly let go and Lucy stumbled back, holding her arm. There was a nasty red mark where he had been holding and no doubt it would leave a bruise. Just another one for her to hide. Nothing a jacket wouldn’t solve and it was the middle of Winter. Nobody at school should notice.

“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” Ross muttered. “I’m just trying to help. The other guys? You’re just meat to them, Lu. To me, you're something more. You’re special.”

Lucy wanted to puke.

“If you touch me again. I’ll fucking—” she stopped and shook her head. She knew better than to do this. She knew she couldn’t go that far. “Just leave me alone. If you really cared, you wouldn’t use your fucking powers on me.”

Storming back up to her front door, she didn’t wait to hear an answer from him before going inside and slamming the door. She couldn’t guarantee that just hearing his voice again wouldn’t make her violently ill.

Lucy shuddered, rubbing her arm as she moved toward the kitchen. She needed ice and maybe some cold water. As she entered the kitchen, she froze. Her father stood, staring out the window, directly at the spot where she had encountered Ross. Of course, he had just seen everything.

He turned his head and acknowledged her presence with a low hum.

“You should be nicer to him.”

Lucy’s blood boiled.

“Hard to be nice when he’s so possessive,” she replied through grit teeth. She knew better than to cuss when she was around her father. “I hate it when he touches me like that.”

“He’s protective of you,” her father replied, his tone stern. “He cares.”

Lucy replied with a challenging glare. It was all she could manage without resorting to screaming and she was steadily approaching that edge. After the day she had today, the last thing she wanted to do was get punished for disrespecting her father.

“You’re home early,” she said, changing the subject. It was then she noticed his attire – his costume. His mask was discarded on the table and there was a deep forlorn expression on his face. “What happened? Did something happen today? You…” she paused for a moment. “You didn’t mention anything this morning.”

“It was none of your concern,” her father replied dismissively. “Until now. There was a congregation. Gaea summoned us to her Kingdom,” he muttered the word with venomous disdain. “And I have since discovered a great blasphemy taking place in our city,” Lucy could feel the wave of heat roll off the man and a subtle increase in the temperature of the room. “It angers me. Grim must pay for his insolence.”

“This wouldn’t be the first time Grim’s done something crazy,” Lucy murmured under her breath. “So, what? Why did Gaea want a meeting with us? I thought she’d sooner kill all our supers than have a conversation.”

“She invited more than just Pandora,” her father replied. “Gaea put out a summons for all moon-touched, not just for our brothers and sisters. Grim has crossed a line, one of which there is no return from.”

“...Everyone?” Lucy’s mind raced. Max had told her he had powers and that he was involved with some sort of group. He wasn’t at school today, he was at this meeting. “Who showed up?”

Her father eyed her curiously, a hint of suspicion twinkling in his eyes.

“Awfully curious about this matter, hm?”

Lucy swallowed, her thoughts betraying her. All she could think about was how much danger Max was in. He had to have been at that meeting with her father – with Gaea. What the hell was he thinking getting involved with all these people? Did his powers get rid of his common sense and replace it with a death wish?

Why would he do this!?

“Gaia doesn’t like to deal with her ‘lessers’ so she must have wanted something.”

“An alliance,” her father replied. “But all she got was a truce, I’d sooner allow maggots to consume me before I trust my back to heathens,” for a moment, his anger almost got the better of him but he managed to rein it in. He took a deep breath and relaxed. “The agreement we came to was no fighting between us until Grim is dead.”

“Dead…” Lucy wanted to laugh. One did not simply kill Grim. He had his name for a reason. The guy was fucking death personified. “You’re going to try and finally kill him?”

“There will be no try,” her father retorted coldly. “Too long has his foul stench plagued this city. Liberation shares my sentiment. Grim will die, one way or another, and his soul shall make the journey to judgment,” he balled his hands so tightly she saw his knuckles go white. “Begin packing your things. You and your mother will be moving to a more protected area of the city. This neighborhood will not be safe in the coming conflict. I suspect it will be a target for Grim.”

“He knows where we live!?” Lucy’s heart began racing. If that freak of nature knew, an attack could come at any second. How could her father be so calm? “We—”

Calmly, her father raised a hand to silence her.

“We have made no provocation as of yet,” he said. “Grim has no reason to for now. That will change in the coming days and if you stay here, I cannot guarantee your safety. You and your mother will stay with your grandparents until this situation is resolved.”

“What about school?”

“I will make arrangements with your teachers to have your school work emailed to you. However, I foresee that this conflict will not last long. A week, perhaps, and routine will resume as normal.”

Lucy grimaced. There were only two times she went to stay with her grandparents. The first was when Hurricane Liz had been barreling toward the city. The second was the short-lived coup d'etat that happened within Pandora last year. Her father never divulged the specifics, but there had been a lot of death.

This could only mean that he suspected things were going to get uglier than he was letting on.

“You want me to pack now?”

“Tonight,” her father replied. “You will leave with an escort in the morning,” he moved to the side and snatched his red-patterned mask off the table before donning it. The tuft of lion’s fur hung loosely around his neck, framing the red of his body. “I have business to attend to. Ensure dinner is ready before I get home.”

Lucy bristled as he walked past her.

“When can we expect you?”

“Ten.”

He was out the door and gone without another word. Grumbling, Lucy retreated to her room and collapsed on her bed.

Closing her eyes, she allowed the comfort of her pillow, soft sheets, and silence to calm the chaos inside her head. There was so much going on and all she could do was just sit back. All of this would just be an odd week if Max hadn’t told her he had powers. Now she knew he was right in the thick of it.

“Ugh…” she pinched the bridge of her nose and rolled over onto her side. “The hell do I do?”

Nothing, stupid. You don’t have powers.

It had been made abundantly clear to her from the moment she could comprehend words that she was nothing more than a directionless puppet with a modicum of free will. She danced to the whims of those stronger and more powerful than her. The gifted, the blessed, the moon-touched. They were the leaders of humanity and those like her were the mindless masses in need of protection and direction. Her father had tried so hard to drill that notion into her head but she had resisted. She saw Pandora for what they really were.

Lunatics. All of them.

Power-hungry fools with delusions of grandeur, justifying their heinous crimes behind their religion. Even if the founding of such an organization was long before her time, she could see why so many fell prey to its teachings. It was because it was easy – easy to place your faith in something beyond your understanding. To this day, nobody knew what the second moon was. Nobody knew where it came from or why it was there, but the powers had come with it.

Moon-touched… God’s chosen children.

Now Max was one of them.

“Shit,” she turned over again and hissed into her pillow. “I have to tell him something. Anything.”

She reached over into her bag and pulled out her laptop. Rolling over once more, she sat up and crossed her legs, placing the device on her lap. Opening it, she began scrolling through the various threads on Supers and Meta’s Online, along with a bunch of other online forums. She opened countless tabs in the New Elpis and Bayside subsections to try and find any news pertaining to fresh supers on the scene.

The most recent piece of news was the discovery of a bunker beneath a decommissioned meat processing building. A lot of ECU personnel had died, along with countless civilian hostages. Grim was the prime culprit and there was a complete shitstorm going on inside the thread. A quick flip through the pages told her all she needed to know. People were angry – rightly so – and were letting their frustrations and outrage out online.

She kept that tab open but continued browsing. It didn’t exactly have what she wanted.

There was a thread about a break-in at some department store. One of the employees there posted his experience showing up to work that morning only to find that the ECU had put the entire block into containment. He had taken some pictures of a couple of Cain thugs getting carted off in ambulances.

He then went on to post a clip of the building’s external security footage showing a very familiar black car pulling up outside the building. She never saw who was in it because the footage turned to static before the clip ended, but … she knew that car. It was Maxis’ without a doubt. The very same one that had been stolen from the Mall.

Stolen…

Lucy scoffed. If Max had been lying about everything else, it made sense he lied about that as well.

“What the hell have you been doing?” Lucy muttered, reading the rest of the comments in the thread. It was a fairly short thread, purely because there wasn’t much to talk about. The number plate on the car was obscured by the pixilation, so it wasn’t like any keyboard warriors were able to do anything here.

Still… if this was Max, then she had to know what he was doing.

If Pandora attacked him, I’d know about it. It would’ve gotten back to Dad and he would’ve said something to me about it. Which means it was the Cains who jumped him. I was right about that.

Did he attempt to get back at them? Revenge maybe? She had known him for a long time and Lucy could confidently say Max wasn’t the type to take revenge. He tended to lash out in moments when he was pissed off, but vengeance was never his style. Maybe he was just trying to get back what they took from him. He did say they stole from him.

But still, to go picking fights with a whole gang, especially one led by Grim. Max wasn’t that stupid. It was suicide!

He has been acting out lately though. He’s got powers now, obviously things have changed.

Lucy minimized the browser and booted up Entropy to find their direct messages. As she suspected, his status was set to ‘do not disturb’ just as it had been for the last four years.

She bit her lip and typed out a message.

“No… no,” she muttered, deleting everything she wrote. “What am I even supposed to say here? Do I even say anything?”

‘Hey Max, the assignment went well. Btw, I know you were at that super meeting that Gaea called because my Dad was also there.’ Yeah… that will go over well.

Groaning, she debated her next course of action. Max may have lied to her in the beginning but he eventually came clean, even if she had pressured him into doing it. Lucy wasn’t blind to her hypocrisy. She’s also kept that her family was deeply rooted in Pandora hidden. She had thought to keep him out of it since he hadn’t had powers.

Now that he had powers, he and Pandora would eventually collide and he’d find out the truth. He had to know and now might not be the best time, but for her, the sooner she broke this news, the sooner he’d be able to understand and hopefully refrain from doing anything rash.

Resolving herself, she typed out her first message.

Rabbit_in_da_h4t (Today at 5:13P.M): Hey, can we talk? (Error. Failed to Send)

Lucy frowned at the message. She clicked it and tried to resend it.

Weird… are the servers down?

She threw out a few DMs to other people on her friends list just to check. To her surprise, those messages were sent just fine. For a second, anger coursed through her when the possibility that Max had blocked her surfaced, but she quickly dismissed that. If he had, she would’ve received a completely different message.

She tried to send him another message, only to yield the same result.

With the fuse on her temper lit, she tried to restart Entropy, only for it to crash before it could finish relaunching. When she tried to troubleshoot the problem, her whole laptop froze and she found herself locked out of all controls.

What the fuck is happening?

She tried everything. Control + Alt + Delete. Nothing. She even tried to force power off the damn thing and it wouldn’t work.

Suddenly, a command prompt opened on her screen. The black window was empty, the white underscore blinking ominously as every program in the background shut itself down.

Hello Lucy.

The words appeared and the situation sent shivers down her spine. Her laptop had been taken over.

Lucy stared at the words for what felt like an eternity until she finally managed to snap herself out of her daze. Gathering what courage she could muster, she tried to type back a message, but none of the keys responded to her inputs.

We should talk. Face to face.

The black box closed and another window opened. It covered the entire screen but it was a face – one that Lucy had seen before during her research. It stole her breath away, the androgynous ASCII face moved like a life-like human being but its expression was strangely alien.

“That’s better,” the voice was synthesized, a tinny voice just as neutral as its avatar. “Given how much you already know about me, I doubt there’s much need for introductions.”

Lucy swallowed her fear.

“You’re Cyberspace.”

“Yes.”

Cyberspace, the world’s most notorious Evohuman. The voice was identical to the one Lucy had heard when researching for her assignment. Even the presentation was the same – the same face, made up of thousands of symbols and letters.

There was an urge to slam the laptop shut and throw it out the window but terror kept her from acting on that impulse. There was a reason Cyberspace was the closest thing to a modern-day boogeyman. There were horror stories everywhere about people who tried to fight them, only to disappear off the face of the planet, never to be seen again.

The most infamous case was a famous hero from America, Supernova. He had made a public declaration to hunt down and bring Cyberspace to justice back in 1991. Three days later he vanished from his home in Austin Texas. His remains were discovered at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 1996, inside a lead crate.

“You are sticking your nose in my business,” Cyberspace said with a cold edge to her voice. “I don’t appreciate that.”

“I–I…”

“You will have your chance to talk but for now, I’d like you to listen,” Cyberspace continued. “I would like you to keep what you know to yourself for now. Maxis Troy does not need to know of your affiliation with Pandora yet. It will needlessly distract him from the situation he’s found himself in and will ultimately result in his death. I will not allow an asset with that amount of potential to perish because of the actions of a teenage girl.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Quiet.”

There was a pain in Lucy’s chest and she suddenly started to panic if that was somehow Cyberspace’s doing. However, she quickly realized it was because she had forgotten to breathe.

“I’ve been observing his activities for quite some time now. He shows promise. His Mechakinetic capabilities are extraordinary,” Cyberspace continued. “If you are wondering why I am telling you this, it is because I am aware of the deep friendship you two share. You,” the legendary terrorist said the word with enough emphasis for Lucy to break into a nervous sweat. “...are integral for his prolonged cooperation.”

He’s a Mechankinetic…?

Lucy’s world twisted as her stomach churned.

They were sought after. Badly.

“I won’t help you.”

“By refusing to help me, you will be refusing to help him. It is in your best interests,” Cyberspace stated in a dismissive, matter-of-factly tone. They had probably heard that line a million times before. “If I’m not mistaken, you are a very intelligent girl, so I would think, and pick my next words very carefully, if I were you. I need not be your enemy here.”

Even if she did consider them her enemy, it wasn’t like she could do anything to Cyberspace. The best of the best had tried and clearly failed. What could she do?

Lucy stared at the screen, trying and failing to think of anything to say, but Cyberspace took her silence as acknowledgment.

“All I require of you is your temporary silence.”

Just keep your mouth shut. Don’t say anything. Suffer in silence.

It was all so familiar and every ounce of her being wanted to lash out like a rabid dog.

“I don’t have a choice, do I?”

“No,” Cyberspace stated. “I feel I have been reasonable enough in my request. You can either follow my request willingly, or I will make you. The choice is yours.”