A Beast with a Smile

“Elly? Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey,” Tyler rocked me back and forth.

My eyesight seemed dim like everything was set in the glow of a child’s nightlight and the world rested on the ceiling. My face felt numb and stung whenever I tried to move it. Tyler stood in front of me, his head reversed and his eyes matching the position of my lips. He rocked me back and forth in the rubber net that suspended me from the roof of the dimly lit room.

“We’re home,” he taunted as if talking to a child who fell asleep in the car.

He spun me around the small hospital room, giving me a deranged tour of my cell.

“Here’s your luxury bathroom,” he pointed to a bucket in the corner of the room.

“We ran out of funds for the premium toilet paper you like, but don’t worry, I got you the roughest sandpaper I could find. It can rip the bark off of trees with one swipe. Really an amazing tool,” he laughed, sending me around for another twirl.

“Here we have your king sized pillowtop mattress with silk sheets,” he jumped onto a plastic cot with half of a sleeping bag sewn to it.

“Ah like laying on a bed of nails,” he teased, making a painful squint of his eyes and stretching out his back.

He got back up and spun me to the middle of the room where a peculiar monstrosity that I had never seen before sat and hummed. It was the color of black where it’s too dark to see, a black where no light can enter to the point where it is nothing more than a black hole. It was a ball of eternal darkness that floated gently above the cold steel ground. Being too close to it was making me nauseous and I really needed a nap.

“You’re curious about this, huh? Well, this is my favorite part of your little timeshare. You see this gadget here keeps you from zapping yourself to freedom,” he laughed maniacally while slapping my back through my rubber net.

I didn’t want to believe him; I didn’t want to believe that this was real and not just a bad dream. I wanted to believe that he killed me in Colorado and didn’t drag me back to this hell hole to rot until I withered away to dust. Death would’ve been a better reward for sacrificing myself to save the family that never loved me.

Is this how Scavenger felt? I thought to myself.

Tyler noticed my loss of words and my abandonment of hope and responded with a sickly smile. His robotic hand flipped end over end, revealing the hidden saw blade which he used to lacerate the rubber. I plummeted to the ground unwillingly and was unable to catch myself.

Metal chains bonded my hands crisscross to my chest like a clear straight jacket. The ground was ice and the black hole took my strength. I tried to summon the lightning and got the equivalent of an explosion from a dud piece of TNT.

The screeching of metal scraping on metal pounded on the innards of my skull, making my head a thousand times heavier. The chains snapped together, locked on a hook adhered to a track on the ceiling. I could go ten steps forward or ten steps back. Using what little strength remained, I scrambled to a cross-legged position.

A heavy, super reinforced bunker door was between me and my potential freedom. Lucky for me, Tyler was dumb enough to leave it wide open. The thought reinvigorated my legs slightly, empowering me to leap for the opportunity. A firmly planted boot in my stomach made sure that energy was never refound. I was sent reeling back to the floor, crashing into my cot.

“And where do you think you’re going? Trying to leave me so soon? You just got here, and we haven’t spent any quality family time together in months, sweet sister,” he snapped.

My lip began to twitch, a fist formed under my restraints, and the storm awoke in my eyes. He walked to the doorway, holding his cruel smile.

“Why would you do this to your own family?” I asked with rage, hoping to break through his black heart.

I rested my head against the wall and closed my swollen eyes in the darkness.

When my eyes returned to the light of day, the room looked brighter, which only made the place even more of a dump. One side was a boring gray wall, the other side a boring gray wall. Every wall was a boring gray wall.

“Don’t forget about the splotchy grey ceiling,” corrected a familiar and long-awaited voice.

My eyes watered, and my heart sang; the last time I heard his voice was months before and I never thought I would hear it again.

“Scavenger?” I asked the walls.

“Know anyone else dumb enough to get caught in here?” he responded, sarcastic as usual.

His voice came from one of the walls near me. One of them had a couple bullet holes in it so I assumed he was close enough to that hole.

“Yes, I’m over here,” He answered, reading my mind.

I scooted my chains over to the wall and peered through to the light gray eyes of the Shadow Wolf.

“How do you still have your powers?”

“I don’t or at least not all of them. Just the mind reading and the telecom, which neither work,” he admitted heart broken.

I rested my head against the wall and let the last of my hopes run free.

“So, we are trapped here?”

“Yeah, unfortunately.”

A loud thump from the other side of the wall told me he was sitting up against the wall as well.

“Why did you not escape with us? Why did you just surrender yourself to Atom?” I pondered.

He took a deep breath, “Is that what everyone thinks happened?”

“No one knows what to think. There’s so many different tales and false eye witness reports that no one can agree on if you’re a hero or a myth,” I jibed, feeling the swelling around my lip and eye.

“I’m no hero. I’m a coward. I turned myself in because Atom was going to murder Elizabeth if I didn’t,” he conceded, leaving us in an awkward silence.

“Judging by you being here alone, I’m guessing Scarlett, Clark, and Archy didn’t suffer the same fate?”

“No, your girlfriend jumped out of the ship somewhere over Utah. We were on a power run. Clark, the little brave idiot jumped out after her, and Archy followed soon after. Velicity, Woodrow and I were all incapacitated and Mother wouldn’t let us stop for them. She said the city having power was more important. Sometimes I really hate that woman.”

He laughed a little, thumping his head against the wall

“How is she?” he asked with a longing silence.

Even through all his daring missions and selfless acts he still didn’t know how to talk about girls.

I’m just happy he can’t see my silly smirk through the wall.

“She’s a keeper. Easily the nicest person I have ever met. She even felt bad about ripping the brat’s arm off.”

He let out a childlike giggle, “So she has superpowers?”

“Yeah, somehow. Abby tested her, and she found no trace of Alpha-serum in her blood, so whatever gave her abilities, it wasn’t from Atom. Scavenger, I watched her toss Tyler around like he weighed nothing more than a dollar bill. She’s fallen a thousand feet and walked away without a scratch. She was burned by Archy’s pet firebreather, came away unsinged, and actually beat the damn thing in a fight.”

“Hey, young lady, language,” he pestered.

I rolled my eyes and continued, “Scavenger, Tyler killed me. Slammed me into a coffee table and impaled a nail through the back of my cranium.”

He sat quietly, in shock.

“How-?”

“She can bring people back from the dead with her tears. They also grow trees quite nicely,” I interrupted.

He muttered inaudible words with an unknown tone. Then there was nothing but silence. The sound of the broken air conditioner rang like chirping crickets.

A sudden and abrupt pop broke the silence as Scavenger howled in agony.

“What was that? Are you injured?” I questioned urgently, hopping up and looking through the bullet holes.

He had rolled over on his side while holding one arm. The other relentlessly beat the steel floor with a closed fist. His face had grown a scruffy, uneven beard and long brown hair. He wore a red ragged robe that looked like a yarn quilt lost a battle with a rabid dog.

“Jesus, you look like a homeless dude who got lost in an insane asylum.”

“Elly, not the time to point out my fashion choice,” he muttered out of breath and in undeniable pain.

He shifted back upright and met my eyes through the peep hole. His forehead looked like someone had chased him around with a lighter, poking him whenever they caught up. He had a darkness painted around his left eye and cheek, swollen a nasty shade of purple. A bandage was wrapped around one of his shoulders, stained black from an old wound.

He grabbed a question mark shaped stick and pushed himself back to his feet. Still using the cane, he held his injured arm against his chest, fastening a sling made up of the torn robe. He flinched with pain, then pulled tightly until a second thunderous pop begged him to stop torturing the bone.

“Got to put it back in place or else it won’t heal right,” he answered to my confusion.

“What the hell just happened? Did you just break your arm?” I demanded, still viewing everything through the one-inch hole.

He walked over to his bed and sat down, looking at something near his cell door.

“Your guess is as good as mine. These past few days have been… eventful,” he explained.

“What, like your nurse gave you the wrong looney pills and now you’re off the rails injuring yourself?”

I swear I saw him grin slightly out of the corner of his mouth.

“Funny,” he said humorlessly.

“Seriously, are you getting bullied in there? Because I will totally kick their ass and get your lunch money back,” I teased, hoping to return his joy,

“I’m pretty sure I can handle myself. Wouldn’t be the leader if I couldn’t. And for the wounds, the truth is I have no idea. All I know is that one day I was sitting here, then I got a major headrush followed by a sharp, burning pain in my face that left me reeling. Then it was my shoulder…” he pulled down his discolored white shirt, which had traces of yellow and brown along the sleeves and collar area and revealed a half-healed hole that was imbedded deep within his flesh.

I could see parts of pearly white bone poking through.

“A few minutes later my forehead burned and left these pretty little things behind,” he mimed at the bumps born on top of his head, “Not long after that I felt my stomach drop through the earth to China before I collapsed with an exploded knee cap.”

He lifted up his run-down clothing to show his ghostly pale skin, covered in bruises and scars, and the bottom half of a knee cap.

“My body regenerates and heals a lot faster than any human. Don’t worry, I’ll be all healed by next month, almost as good as new,” he responded in an attempt to calm me down.

“But your arm just snapped like someone squished a tree branch. How is this happening to you?”

The answer slapped me across the cheek for not understanding what was happening to my leader. I couldn’t believe how I didn’t think of it any sooner.

“I know what’s causing this,” I answered to a man who had already read my mind.

“And what is it?” he uttered, messing with the bandages on his shoulder, peeling its gooey sides off that refused to detach from the skin.

“Whatever Scarlett doesn’t feel, you do,” I learned.

He froze for a second, considering the options.

“How does that make any sense?” he finally let out.

“Well you weren’t experiencing any of this until about two days, ago right?”

“Yes, this is the first time my body has destroyed itself,” he answered sarcastically, wrapping his wound with a fresh bandage that he pulled out of a nightstand next to his bed.

“Well, you got that black eye on the same side that Tyler backhanded Scarlett. She didn’t have a single mark on her, but you… you do. It must have transferred somehow,” he paused mid roll with the bandage, then met my eyes again.

They looked red with rage even from my distance.

“If he hurts her, he won’t ever see the light of day again.”

“Well he chased us down and shot her in the shoulder. She didn’t feel it, but you must have. Then the battle with the dragon explains the leg and the forehead. Do you have any nail holes on your hands?” I asked, knowing the detail was the final bit of evidence.

His eyes widened with bewilderment like I had just picked his card right during a magic show. He held up his open palm, where two small dots scared near the middle of his hand.

“I thought they were just a spider bite,” he admitted, wincing from his broken arm.

“She broke Hanzo’s stairs on accident and a couple nails shattered beneath her strength. She was quite proud of the achievement,” I explained.

His smile lit up the room as he looked at all of his agony. He clasped onto the broken arm and wailed in a sudden deep agony.

“It’s cold. It feels like standing in Antarctica during a blizzard after skinny dipping in the Arctic ocean,” he shouted, still in pain.

He looked at me with pure terror, hoping that he was wrong about the feeling. We both knew what that ice shattering cold meant.

We could only pray they could escape the Oscuri before being consumed by their eternal shadow.