Page 58 of Fuse

He takes another drag on his coffee while a frown makes its way across his face. With his gaze still lowered at whatever’s left in his cup, he states, “She told me she could hear your…wavelengths.”

“My what?”

“Not just yours.” His scowl gives way to a more typical Foley expression. His aloofness comes out when our “chats” have to veer toward off-manual curiosities like my light saber fingers and his fondness for wasabi ice cream. Right now, it’s probably helpful. “Yours and Kane’s.”

I crunch a deep glare. “The hell?”

He smooths a hand over the air. “Well, think about it a second. Those crapsticks dicked around with her brain. In her brain. Stands to reason she’d come out of the process just as altered as you were, albeit with an incubation period for her noggin to heal from the trauma and relearn its new electrical pathways. With her, it’s more of a cerebral thing, based in biofeedback and the static force of emotions on the air.”

I shove back to my feet. “And you’re saying that these new—what, powers?—just magically manifested yesterday during my showdown with Kane?”

“Not powers,” Foley counters. “At least not to her. For fuck’s sake”—he glances out the door, as if worried Angie might fly out in a rage any second from the guest-room wing—“don’t say powers around her.”

“Why not?” As if I’m that fond of the term.

“Her longing to be one of the ‘miracle mutants’ was how Faline got her claws into Angie to begin with. It’s the downfall that led her to the Consortium’s dark side.”

“Those fuckers have a light side?”

“You know what I mean,” he rebuts, swinging his posture back around. “Though apparently, she’s been dealing with this shit, as well as how to hide it better, for a few weeks now.” He throws both hands up. “But you didn’t hear that part from me.”

“A few weeks.” That nearly falls out of me as a question too—though as I say the words, the answer already starts to fill itself in. “Which was another reason she played hide-and-seek with the remote check-ins.” And favoring the hide part.

“And the fact that she was attempting to salvage Kane’s sorry ass.”

I can’t help but let a morose silence go by. “A lot of good the effort did her,” I mumble. “Or any of us.”

Another heavy pause, this time of Foley’s choosing. In the second before I get uncomfortably curious about it, the guy speaks up again. “You had to do what you had to do, man.”

And suddenly, uncomfortable is the tip of the fucking iceberg of what I feel. “What…I…”

“It’s all right.” Foley clunks his empty mug on a platform built into the loveseat and rolls easily to his feet at the same time I stumble back, feeling freakishly cold. “Seriously, buddy. He wanted to go. He was begging you for it. Angie sensed that too. She was torn apart by it, but she got it—especially after I told her I’d be doing the same thing in Kane’s place.”

From the new stiffness in his posture to the steady empathy on his face, I see that every word he speaks is real and heartfelt. That doesn’t stop me from wheeling away, lacing my hands at the back of my head as I spit out, “That fucking so?” As rage and remorse sweep in, I squeeze the heels of my hands in, praying I have the power to push every thought out of my skull. “You’d be fucking begging me to zap your neck in half like a toothpick?”

“Or jam a pistol up my mouth and pull the trigger,” Foley answers quietly. “Or stab a dagger through my heart or wrap a noose around my neck.” His tone is so absolute, I almost wonder if he’s pausing just to scroll through his phone for extra morbid images. “Whatever it took to take me out before facing a lifetime of being Faline Garand’s dancing monkey.”

I lean forward until my forehead knocks against the plate-glass window behind the desk. “You don’t fucking say.”

Despite the heat already permeating the glass, a shiver invades my body as well as my voice. Foley doesn’t miss either. “And what the hell are you saying?”

I drop my hands, only to lift one back up and sprawl my fingers against the window. Behind me, Foley is thankfully still. Around us, the air is equally so. Still, I don’t allow myself any easy breaths. The ghost could return any second.

But maybe, if I just say something first…

Especially to a friend who gets it more than most. The only person on the globe who literally might be hiding more violent secrets than me…

“Richards?” he prompts again. It’s not a mandate, but he’s not going to just walk out of here for a refill on his coffee because I’ve chosen to clam up.

So it’s time to haul in a long breath and find my fucking voice again.

“Foley.” All right, it’s a start. Not a great one, but he’ll have to deal. “You really do know what it’s like to be a dancing monkey for someone, don’t you?”

At last he does move, coming around to occupy the same spot on the desk I vacated. “It was more like being a pinned moth, but yeah.”

“Better.” I snort. “Pinned moth. Yeah. That’s it.” I twist my fingers into a tight fist and then turn my whole hand, perfectly positioned to take out the entire window if I have to. “So…did you…do you…ever think about the monster who put the pins in?” A morning wind kicks up across the ridge. I watch it move through the bright wildflowers and grasses, ordering myself to absorb the inherent peace of the swaying plants. “I mean, still?” I stammer. “Not on purpose or anything.”

“Like in nightmares?” Foley probes. “Well, fuck yeah. You can’t help what your subconscious drums up.”