the best city planning for getting drunkards home, but in the planners' defense, this club could have been a factory when the parking tower was built, and no doubt had been a dozen other businesses in the years since.
Still, the drunken downhillers were no more danger to the world in their cars than in taxis, unless they were savvy enough to bypass the BAC readers in their rides. From the look of Captain Stumbly, he wouldn't be pulling off that feat tonight even if he did have the know-how and trouser weights to give it a shot. He'd be lucky to make it to the tower before he passed out.
Yep. He was a wash all right. Back to the waiting.
Let's call it, Nikki . Michael's voice was quieter than before. He was starting to fade out again, to slip back to wherever it was he went inside her head when she couldn't hear him. I think the universe is telling you this was a bad idea.
"The universe or you?" she mumbled. "Sounds a lot like you."
I feel like I've made my opinion pretty clear.
"Yep."
But if you need a rehash— His voice was barely a whisper.
"Nope, I got it. Plan bad." What she didn't get was why he was so set against it. After all, she was trying to do something right here. She was trying to play hero.
Well, play hero and get her powers back. But the good for her shouldn't cancel out the good for the lucky putz she helped in the process. In fact, waiting on a rooftop for an hour and a half to spot someone in trouble surely put her well into the positive in her karma pool.
She didn't feel in the positive though. If anything she felt worse now that she was thinking about why she was up here, but living without her brother and her power was no kind of living. If that was selfish thinking, so be it. She had to get some part of her old life back or she was going to lose her mind. No amount of wishing could bring Michael back, but maybe, just maybe she could kickstart her ability back into action. If she could feel that strength surging through her again, feel the rush of the power tingling through every muscle and nerve, she'd feel at least halfway alive again. And halfway living was better than what she was doing now.
Her plan was simple. She was going back to the beginning, sort of. She was going to recreate the scene from the day she and Michael first felt their ability and realized how it worked. Again, sort of.
They'd been in foster home number three at the time, possibly. Nikki remembered only foggy images and snippets of voices and feelings from the earliest years of their life, memories that felt more like pieces of dreams than anything else. That particular foster home, with Miss Sayi, was the first one she could really remember with any clarity. She and Michael had been almost five years old.
Miss Sayi had been like a dream herself, in a way. She'd made them feel like they belonged. She showed them what it felt like to be cared for, to be wanted. She would hold them both in her lap for what felt like hours and talk to them about things Nikki barely understood at the time, or now for that matter, and tell stories that would make them giggle uncontrollably or get completely lost in their imaginations as they put pictures to her warm words. Then she'd rock them and hum in a way that would put them out like lights. Just thinking about her soothing deep voice made Nikki yawn now as she watched a laughing couple leave the club below her.
Those weeks, or months maybe, with Miss Sayi made up one of the few bright spots in Nikki's childhood.
Miss Sayi had made the world seem beautiful, magical, and far safer than it really was at the time. But she'd been sick. Her colorful head wraps that had given Nikki so much amusement had been hiding the side effects of black market cancer drugs, the kind as likely to kill as save—roulettes, the dealers called them.
When Miss Sayi's luck ran out, Nikki and Michael were lost. They were too young to know what to do, to know how to get help when they couldn't wake
Still, the drunken downhillers were no more danger to the world in their cars than in taxis, unless they were savvy enough to bypass the BAC readers in their rides. From the look of Captain Stumbly, he wouldn't be pulling off that feat tonight even if he did have the know-how and trouser weights to give it a shot. He'd be lucky to make it to the tower before he passed out.
Yep. He was a wash all right. Back to the waiting.
Let's call it, Nikki . Michael's voice was quieter than before. He was starting to fade out again, to slip back to wherever it was he went inside her head when she couldn't hear him. I think the universe is telling you this was a bad idea.
"The universe or you?" she mumbled. "Sounds a lot like you."
I feel like I've made my opinion pretty clear.
"Yep."
But if you need a rehash— His voice was barely a whisper.
"Nope, I got it. Plan bad." What she didn't get was why he was so set against it. After all, she was trying to do something right here. She was trying to play hero.
Well, play hero and get her powers back. But the good for her shouldn't cancel out the good for the lucky putz she helped in the process. In fact, waiting on a rooftop for an hour and a half to spot someone in trouble surely put her well into the positive in her karma pool.
She didn't feel in the positive though. If anything she felt worse now that she was thinking about why she was up here, but living without her brother and her power was no kind of living. If that was selfish thinking, so be it. She had to get some part of her old life back or she was going to lose her mind. No amount of wishing could bring Michael back, but maybe, just maybe she could kickstart her ability back into action. If she could feel that strength surging through her again, feel the rush of the power tingling through every muscle and nerve, she'd feel at least halfway alive again. And halfway living was better than what she was doing now.
Her plan was simple. She was going back to the beginning, sort of. She was going to recreate the scene from the day she and Michael first felt their ability and realized how it worked. Again, sort of.
They'd been in foster home number three at the time, possibly. Nikki remembered only foggy images and snippets of voices and feelings from the earliest years of their life, memories that felt more like pieces of dreams than anything else. That particular foster home, with Miss Sayi, was the first one she could really remember with any clarity. She and Michael had been almost five years old.
Miss Sayi had been like a dream herself, in a way. She'd made them feel like they belonged. She showed them what it felt like to be cared for, to be wanted. She would hold them both in her lap for what felt like hours and talk to them about things Nikki barely understood at the time, or now for that matter, and tell stories that would make them giggle uncontrollably or get completely lost in their imaginations as they put pictures to her warm words. Then she'd rock them and hum in a way that would put them out like lights. Just thinking about her soothing deep voice made Nikki yawn now as she watched a laughing couple leave the club below her.
Those weeks, or months maybe, with Miss Sayi made up one of the few bright spots in Nikki's childhood.
Miss Sayi had made the world seem beautiful, magical, and far safer than it really was at the time. But she'd been sick. Her colorful head wraps that had given Nikki so much amusement had been hiding the side effects of black market cancer drugs, the kind as likely to kill as save—roulettes, the dealers called them.
When Miss Sayi's luck ran out, Nikki and Michael were lost. They were too young to know what to do, to know how to get help when they couldn't wake
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