Vs Reality (11 page)

Oahu, Hawaii
August 26, 2011
12:28 am, Hawaii-Aleutian Time Zone

Cole spits up a gob of wet sand and rubs the sting from his eyes. The fall was significant, but at least the landing was somewhat softer this time; the marble tiles on Dia’s rooftop terrace were far less forgiving. As he just discovered, tumbling through a pan-dimensional rift in the middle of a desert has its drawbacks, including – but not limited to – a seemingly endless supply of tiny abrasive grains flooding every orifice on your body. Irritating, but a small price to pay for a daring escape. He just wishes he’d had a chance at Govnida before they’d fallen through the trap door.

He blinks the remaining sand from his eyes as the swirling cone of energy constricts above him, disappearing into the moonlit sky.

He bounces back to his feet (quicker than he should have, though it’s too late now) and sways with nausea. He cups a hand over his mouth, resisting the urge to vomit. Teleporting is going to take a little more getting used to. Glancing down he notices that his tank top fits more loosely, dangling from his wiry frame. The Muse has worn off. Cole has reverted to his normal state; his tattoo is gone, and the rippling muscles have disappeared.

He squints into the distance. A pair of shimmering angel wings carry Dia across the darkened beach strip; they’re fading as she pads along barefoot, her boots in-hand, allowing the surf to wash over her toes. Her platinum-blond hair has already dulled to her natural color.

Cole jogs to catch up, running alongside her. “Who was that guy?” he asks, panting from the effort. Apparently when his muscles disappear, so does any semblance of cardio. “And why didn’t you let me kick his ass?”

Dia laughs caustically under her breath, still padding forward. “You mean the guy who’s so powerful that he’s pretty much captured everyone on Earth with the ability to manifest?” She purses her lips and nods, flashing Cole an exaggerated thumbs up. “
Really
solid plan you had there, cowboy.”

Cole
knows
that he could have taken him, but chooses not to press the issue. “So how do you know Govinda?”

“I
don’t
,” Dia says, blinking hard, bringing a hand to her forehead. “At least…I don’t
think
so.”

“Well he seemed to know a lot about you. And the guy is pretty memorable, so I don’t see how you could have forgotten about meeting…” Cole trails off and cranes his neck in every direction. He can’t help but notice the suspicious lack of skyscrapers. Squat, sun bleached buildings with faded pink balconies line the beach strip, which is dotted with gently swaying palm trees. “Hold up…where
are
we?”

“I took us to Hawaii,” she says with a dreamy, nostalgic smile. “I lived here for a couple years as a kid; my dad was in the military so we moved around a lot. This beach just popped into my head as we were falling through the portal, and here we are.” Dia stops, curling her toes into the wet sand. She tilts her chin skyward, filling her lungs with saltwater air.

As a fragrant, floral breeze blows by, Cole catches himself gazing out towards the Pacific. He’s momentarily transfixed by the enormous crashing waves in the distance. “So…this is nice and everything, and I’m not complaining about the view – but when do we jump back to New York?”

“In a little while,” she says dismissively, her voice growing distant. She resumes her walk without warning, doubling her pace. “I thought I’d hang out here for the weekend, check out some real estate.”

“What?” he calls out, double-stepping to keep up. “Well that sounds like a barrel of laughs, but do you really think this is the best time to go open housing? We have to get back to New York
right
now
and fight these maniacs!”

She stops dead in her tracks, rooting her feet to the sand. “You still don’t get it, do you? If you want to fight maniacs, be my guest. I’m not going to stop you But
I
have to find somewhere that I can live with Paige – far, far away from the epic shit-storm that just dropped on New York City. It’s getting too hot on the mainland.”

“Everywhere you go is going to get hot, Dia. This isn’t a problem that can be fixed with a new penthouse.”

She rolls her eyes. “Well I’ve been doing a pretty good job at avoiding the Collectors so far.”

“
This
is the kind of life you want for you and your sister? You’ve been lucky so far, but this routine of cutting yourself and making a run for it isn’t going to keep working forever.”

“
What
did you just say?” Dia shouts, her words spilling out like poison.

“Your  trigger,” he says coldly, pointing at her arm.

On instinct she claps a hand over her forearm to conceal the scarred, jagged mess of exposed skin.

“It probably started with tiny cuts,” he says. “Didn’t it? Then you needed to slice deeper and deeper before you could manifest. And now you need to get smashed in the face before you can feel anything.”

“How did you…” she stares at him quizzically, eyes narrow. With a hard blink and a shake of her head she re-focuses her anger. “I was saving our
lives
,” she screams, shrill and irate. “What did you
want
me to do? We needed an exit and I was all out of Muse.”

Cole can’t rid himself of the vision he’d experienced when he and Dia first met. Was it a hallucination?  A premonition? The result of brain damage from one too many left hooks? He can’t be sure. But in that moment he knows Dia is lying to him, and that she’s lying to
herself
...a concept he’s all too familiar with. “No, I don’t think so. I think you’ve taken so
much
Muse that the effects have worn off. Between the pills and the self-mutilation, you’re so desensitized that you can barely open a gateway anymore.” He gazes into her moonlit eyes, searching for the truth, for some sense of self-realization.

She bites down hard on her lip, bleary eyes moist with the onset of tears. “What do you want me to say, Cole? Do you want to hear all about how I would sit in my room alone every night, cutting my arms in the dark so I could remember what it was like to feel something? And how I met Brodie a few years back, and that he got me so hooked on Muse I was popping sixty pills a day just so I could tear open a single gateway? He keeps upping the dosage so I can keep myself going. I
hate
this about myself, but I had to go back to cutting – it’s the only trigger that works for me anymore.”

“Then why don’t you just stop this all together?” he pleads. “Just go back to living a normal life.”

“Because I
need
this.” Her voice is tight with emotion, words banded in steel. “When I manifest I become a lightning rod; there’s nothing else like it. For a moment, for one split second, I’m controlling something primal and raw that
can’t
be controlled. For that moment I
belong
. But when I’m not tearing open a gateway…” she trails off, gazing out into the crashing surf. “I’m dead inside.”

“So this is how the story ends,” he says with a dismissive shrug. “Poor little Dia Davenport is too busy feeling sorry for herself to help anyone else. People all over the world who are
just
like you and Paige are being abducted, experimented on, and who knows what else. But hey, that’s cool, because Dia is going on a shopping spree and then out for a snorkeling lesson.”

“Why the
fuck
do you care so much?” she thunders, slamming her palms into Cole’s chest. “What is this bug up your ass that you need to stop the bad guy and save the day? Spoiler alert:
no one
is going to give a shit if you save us all from this big scary super villain. Nobody will even know.”

“I’ll know.”

“Ahh,” she replies with a broad, sardonic smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “So
now
the truth comes out. You’re all high and mighty when it comes to my problems, but under that thick layer of hypocrisy we’re not so different. This kamikaze mission you’re itching to go on is just to feed
your
addiction.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” he scoffs.

“Don’t bullshit me, Cole. You’re not getting warm fuzzies thinking about
helping
people. You’re getting rock-hard because you finally have a taste of power. You want to get that rush of adrenaline when you clench your fists, grit your teeth and destroy something. You just came down thirty seconds ago and I bet you’re already itching for another fix.”

Cole shakes his head, arms folded across his chest. “You’re crazy,” he says as dismissively as possible. He can feel the heat rising in his cheeks.

“Am I?” she fires back. “Don’t even try to deny it: I saw that look in your eyes when you kicked Heinreich. You almost killed someone with a single blow and it gave you a high like you’ve never experienced before. Hell, you were practically
glowing
. And what was that shit in The Backyard? You were like a pit bull frothing at the mouth, ready to be unleashed on Govinda. If I hadn’t dragged you out of there what were you gonna do, fight him to the death?”

“I’m not going to lie,” Cole finally admits. “I love feeling the power coarse through my veins after I take Muse. And the anger, the clarity of it…it gives me a rush that I’ve never experienced before. But the difference is that I
know
this is all temporary. I can stop doing it anytime I want.”

“Oh really?” Dia says, her smile widening, eyebrows raised.

“
Really.
After we take down Govinda and the Collectors, this is it for me. It’s over. No more Muse and no more manifesting.”

“It’s just that easy, right?” She throws her hands apart and paces towards the surf.  “Stop manifesting! The answer has been right here in front of me the entire time. It’s
so
simple. Why didn’t I think of this before?”

Cole follows her into the ankle-deep water and clutches her shoulders, spinning her to face him. “It
can
be that simple.”

“You
really
think you can quit just by snapping your fingers, don’t you?” Her expression darkens, voice leveling off to an eerie stillness. “And
then
what? You get a job as a stock boy at the local Wal-Mart, spend your weekends in some shitty apartment with a case of beer and your Playstation? Maybe
you
can live with ‘normal’, but I’d rather rot in The Basement.”

“Eventually reality will catch up with you, Dia. You can run and you can distract yourself, but you can’t fight it off forever.”

Dia stares back at him with haunted eyes. “Look, I know you’re jonesing to get your superhero membership card, but there’s more to this than saving the day and getting the key to the city. You can’t be this naïve.”

“I just want to help people,” Cole says. “I want to help
you
.”

She reaches out and cups a hand on his cheek. “I know you do, because you’re one of the good ones – you’re Captain fucking America. I saw it in your big blue eyes the second we locked onto each other back in Platinum. If you could put on a red cape and fly around the world saving everyone you would, because you’re
that
guy. And there aren’t many of you out there.”

“Sure there are, Dia.
You’re
one of those people too. You came running after me and chased me through the portal to The Backyard, even when you didn’t have to. That counts for something.”

Dia sighs, her shoulders sagging, head lolling forward as if she’s physically deflating from mental exhaustion. She lets her eyes fall shut. “
You
get a taste of power and your first instinct is to figure out how you can help people – even the jerks who don’t deserve it. You know what
my
first thought was when I realized I could tear open a gateway to another location? I wondered how I could steal a designer purse without getting caught.”

“Maybe you’re not that person anymore. If we all work together we can stop the Collectors, I
know
it. We just need to think about—”

“Look,” she interrupts. “You need to think about
this
, Cole: there’s no reset button here, and the stakes are as real as they get. People get hurt, people die…and it’s not always going to just be the bad guys. If you want to fight this fight you’ll have to do things that change you. Eventually the line blurs and you’ll forget what you started all of this for – maybe even forget who you were.”

Cole feels the weight of her words penetrating his resolve, but he doesn’t flinch. “I get all that. I do. And I know there’s a lot at stake. I’m a warrior, Dia, just like you. I can deal with the consequences.”

“You’re certainly brave, cowboy, I’ll give you that. But you’re
not
like me.” She lets out a weak laugh under her breath. “Which is a good thing,
believe
me. Once you cross this line you won’t be the same person anymore. And I can tell you from experience that when you feel hollowed out inside, like you’re not really ‘you’ anymore, there isn’t a pill in this world that can fix it.”