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The warehouse always smelled like salt. It made Nice’s nose itch whenever he stopped by. He flew for the coast, watched the water crawl in and away from the ports of X City, and then had to veer left and set his boots down in the brine and grime of Shang De’s warehouse facility.
The storage yards that had once held Shang Chao’s start-up, that had been the home-base for the New E-Soul before he just became…E-Soul.
The one with the gut-sinking purple glow.
Nice rolled the door open enough to duck inside. His boots crunched the salt under every step, and he took a centering breath before straightening his spine and facing his boss.
He hadn’t had a chance to think up some appeasing little remark to throw at Shang De’s feet, groveling for his station, before Nice was hit with, “You’re late.”
“I flew a loop to make sure I hadn’t been spotted. I’d hate to drag too much attention here, all my night patrols ending up in the same warehouse in the same district.”
“If you’re being seen at all, you aren’t being inconspicuous enough,” Shang De shot back.
Nice bit into his smile. He held his breath hostage in his lungs until the nauseating desire to bark back passed. Whose fault was it that Nice was so easy to spot, dressed in bright, flowing white and glittering gold? Whose fault was it that Nice was so perfect, a handsome celebrity, that he glowed? That he sparkled? That he caught the moonlight in his waved hair and long cape, and cast a gold glimmer out of the radiance of his aura?
Nice knew the light faded from him, now. He was always dulled in Shang De’s presence.
And yet, he was still too easy to spot.
He clenched his fists at his sides. “What’s my mission?”
Shang De adjusted a dial at a control panel. He didn’t blink; didn’t nod or react. He moved without heart, or interest, or drive. He ghosted through the warehouse, like every ghost around him, and prepared the tanks of purple bubbling Fear.
Nice, an over-achiever, started cultivating his own.
“It loses its potency once drawn back out,” Shang De started, lifting a syringe and examining the measurements against the light. He twisted off the needle cap and exchanged it for a larger uptake needle, puncturing a rubber seal on one of his Fear containers. “I still don’t understand what’s changing between the vial and the body.”
Perhaps, then, he should consult a scientist. Or a doctor. Or anyone from the TREEMAN Research and Development departments, who all worked for him, and were all under contract not to disclose project details.
Nice smiled. It was tight in his cheeks. Pinched at them, really; a mild discomfort in the face of a greater dread.
Shang De swapped the needles again. He gestured to the examination table, where Nice had typically watched dogs whine and writhe and then promptly waste away.
It was his time.
He was a dog on a leash, puppet to a master. Nice sat down on the edge, tail between his legs, and begged for scraps.
“It changes, in the body,” Shang De noted. “I need to determine when. What about the experience makes a drug become a…a stain.”
Nice knew what he meant; the way Fear twisted from a suspension fluid into a syrup. How it became an amber that could encase, entrap, entomb whatever it seeped inside of. The Fear Shang De injected into those dogs was a liquid, and the Fear that he scraped out of their corpses was a viscous goop that left long tacky strings in its wake, desperate to keep its claws in the thing it used to be. Its host.
Shang De walked closer, syringe in hand.
Raised.
“Roll your sleeve,” Shang De instructed.
Nice flexed his fingers; a tight fist, a wide fan. He repeated it, over and over. It pumped up the veins, and it ground his bones together in his joints, and it offered him a second to consider swinging a punch into Shang De’s jaw.
He closed his eyes and rolled up his sleeve.
Nice didn’t feel the needle bite into his skin.
He rarely did, anymore.
It was ice cold, the Fear, as it entered his bloodstream. The muscles around his veins caught fire as it got swept up, carried through him. He was cold to the touch, and warm in the layer underneath, and ice in his veins again; Nice hated the inconsistency.
He hated explaining how it felt.
He hated Shang De.
He hated that he wasn’t good enough, or brave enough, to try to leave.
He imagined it often. He imagined flying over the district, smelling the salt of the ocean ahead, and not turning left for the warehouse. He imagined flying straight on ahead, never stopping. He imagined flying and flying and flying, until everyone in X City believed he died because Nice simply dropped off of the face of the earth.
He imagined flying away, never stopping, with Wreck in his arms. Running away together.
Nice relaxed.
The Fear took hold.
It felt the same as it always did. It felt awful. Nice wanted to die to make it stop, wished he could die to make it stop, wished he could kill Shang De to make it stop. Nice felt the guilt, the terror, at his own violence; felt the shame over his own thoughts.
He felt like he didn’t deserve Wreck, if he was like this.
And then the Fear felt like sludge inside of his body. It felt like a weight dragging all of his limbs into the core of the planet. Nice felt the heat of the molten center of the world inside of his veins, and he bit back his scream.
And then he felt another prick in his arm, and a pressure, and a tug. It yanked out of him like yarn through his circulatory system. It was gone, or less enough that Nice could breathe.
Shang De lifted the syringe to the light, studied how it moved in the vial, how it reflected the light. There was nothing to bubble. The purple liquid was an inky black glop.
That had been in Nice’s body. That was part of Nice’s body.
That was what Nice was, on the inside.
“Well?” Shang De prompted.
Nice panted. His balance was fucked. He swayed on the table, fingers clenching the cold edge. Dust filtered through the air, dancing in the moonlight that poured in through the warehouse skylights. Nice wanted to leap up through them, make glass shards rain down in the same way, and run for his life.
“It…It hurts,” Nice admitted.
“I know that. I’m not an idiot.”
Nice can’t answer the way Shang De wants. He can’t articulate what felt different, because it all felt the same. He can’t think about the minutiae of how pain settles into his bones or his skin or his nerves, because it felt awful everywhere. Nice can’t give Shang De what he wants.
What Shang De wanted was a clear answer. He wanted to bet, and call, and win.
But Nice’s body was not a deck of cards. He was a creature who could only lose.
“You’re exhausting your usefulness,” Shang De warned.
The salt burned into Nice’s nose again. That was good; he was coming back into his senses, out of the blindness the Fear seared into him. He focused on his breathing. He bit his lip and locked into that sensation; salt in the air, dust drifting in moonbeams, teeth in his lip.
Shang De pressed a droplet of the withdrawn Fear to a clear slide. He set the syringe down and squirted some solution over the slide, sandwiched it in another sliver of material, and then inserted that into an analyzer. It whirred to life. It hummed at the exact frequency Nice’s ears rang at.
“If you can no longer withstand these tests, I’ll have to find another subject,” Shang De suggested. He crossed his arms over his chest, gloves tapping against the folded red material of his suit.
Nice shook his head. “No, I…I can do it,” he insisted. “I can keep up. It’s just taking a little longer, but I can still do it. I can handle it. I’ll get it next time. I’ll be better next time.”
“Perhaps you’re no longer afraid of these encounters,” Shang De thought. “Maybe a new subject is better anyway. You’re tainting the study pool, being the only subject.”
Nice felt hot all over. Hot, and ice cold, and short of breath. He held the table’s edge harder, let the metal cut into his skin. He bent it under his grasp. “There’s no need to get anyone else involved. I’m Perfect. I can be whatever you need.”
“I need something to be a catalyst to Fear,” Shang De snapped. “Someone who can incubate it, bond it. Someone who can turn it from a pathogen to a parasite. It leaves your body as soon as it enters. I need someone who can tell me what it’s like, and make it stick. I don’t need perfect.”
Nice’s eyes snapped open. “Wait. Mr. Shang, wait-?”
He was already flicking through his phone. Nice could see the open app through the clear glass screen; a list of contacts, a flurry of contact photos.
“Mr. Shang, wait, I can do it. I can go again. I can do it again, I’ll get it this time—?”
Shang De pressed a contact. He started the call. He lifted his phone to his ear.
Nice’s fingers curled into his palms, forming fists. The metal table folded out of his way. “Mr. Shang, please-? Just give me—?”
He lifted a finger to silence the hero. “I’m texting an address,” he opened. “Be there within the hour.”
And in the silence, Nice could hear that high, nervous voice from the other side of the line answer obediently, “Yes, sir. Costumed, or-?”
Shang De hung up.
Nice’s stomach dropped.
His heart beat itself into a frenzy, until a chamber burst, and he felt himself bleed into his chest cavity. Nice felt his body tear itself to shreds.
He felt the Fear stitch him back together, make him stronger. He felt it pull his cells apart and make him weak. He felt it take over his frame like a puppet, and he felt it barre his teeth like a dog.
Nice was not a person.
Wreck was a person.
Nice was a test.
“Leave Wreck out of this. My contract-? You promised,” Nice warned. “You said you’d keep him out of it. You made a deal.”
“I made a bet,” Shang De answered. “One that hasn’t panned out. You’ve cost me more than you’ve won. Perhaps, I should change the game.”
Nice’s hands turned black. Ink stained his sleeves. It seeped up the fabric, crawled over the fiber. “Leave. Wreck. Out of it.”
“Is that the tone one should take with their superior? Their boss?” He leaned in close, and Nice could see the death in his eyes. “I own you. And in case you’ve forgotten, it’s thanks to you that I own him, too.”
Nice wakes up in Hero Tower..
He can’t remember how he got there.
His phone is plugged in on the side-table, exactly parallel to the edge in precisely the way he likes. He can hear Moon’s soft breaths from six feet away, where she lays on her side with her back to him.
Nice taps the screen.
He has one missed call, the notification silenced for his Nighttime routine.
When he tries to return it, it rings. Rings.
Nice gets Wreck’s voicemail.
He doesn’t know what to say, so he disconnects before it asks him to leave a message.
There is a black ink stain under his thumb.