Hero

40 Cataline

In a matter of twenty-four hours, my entire life has changed. The world as I know it has changed. There are superpowers, and people who want to steal me again. What’s supposed to be good is actually evil.

Calvin is watching me, patiently waiting for my response. My eyes dart between his as fast as my brain processes information. “I looked up to Hero,” I say quietly.

He steeples his hand over his nose and rubs his eyes. “I never meant for it to happen this way.”

“How could you do this to me while you’re out there saving everyone else?”

“I’ve always kept you safe,” he says, his voice rising. “I kidnapped you to save you. I know everything about you.” He juts his hand toward the door. “Why do you think the kitchen is stocked with your favorite foods? Everything in your closet is your exact size? Books I know you love, I bought for you.”

“I didn’t ask for any of that,” I say, my voice small.

“It was a mistake bringing you here. I thought I could control my urges, but instead I found new ones. I’ve only ever been with prostitutes or desperate women who let me do anything I want to them.”

My throat tingles. “Why are you telling me that?”

“Because you need to understand the kind of person I am. I’m not built for a girl like you. I’ve broken you over and over. And if you stay here, I will continue to.”

The light pouring in is suddenly too bright, and my wrists throb painfully with the speed of my heart. “If I stay here?”

His eyes drift down to my bandaged arms. He stares and stares until I think he’s never going to speak. Finally, he asks without looking up, “Did you mean to do it?”

“At night I’ve prayed for Hero to save me from you. But he’s not coming. Because you are him, and he is you.” I force myself to also look at the wrists I tried to empty. When the knife sliced into my skin, it was a special kind of ecstasy. Watching the blood pour out didn’t scare me. “I don’t even know how I got there. I just remember the feeling.” I blink up to find his eyes back on my face. “It felt more right than anything I’ve done since I arrived.” The look he gives me could almost pass for anguish if I believed he was at all capable of such a thing. “Yes,” I say. “You bent me so hard that I finally broke. But I loved you anyway.”

The stillness that follows is palpable. I understand that I simultaneously love and hate him the way he is simultaneously good and evil. I can’t grasp why that matters, though, because they just feel like words to me now. The only truth I comprehend is that good and bad, love and hate, right and wrong, captor and captive—none cannot exist without its opposite.

“I’m going to give you what you wanted all along,” he says.

My dry eyes blink slowly. Does he know he’s what I wanted all along? Does he know about the crush I had a lifetime ago, when he was something to look forward to each day?

“Your freedom,” he says. “I’ll arrange it.”

My head is light, my body heavy. This is what I wanted. This is what I ran for, what I jumped for. Any concept of love is irrelevant, because I don’t know this man. I know nothing about my hero, and so, I know nothing about myself. He wields that much power over me. Not only did he take my body, my mind, and eventually my heart, but now he’s ripped me of my sanity, of the capability to feel anything.

I don’t know what he expects from me as he watches and waits. Relief? Defiance? Does he think after learning the truth I could love him enough to stay?

“Okay,” I say.

“Okay?”

“Yes. Make the arrangements.”