Keaton Plasse
Keaton sipped her tequila as she watched Lynn leave, doing her best to ignore the burn of liquid regret. From the way Lynn was acting, all tipsy and unsteady and in need of a reassuring hug and a good cry, it was clear that she wasn’t leaving to use the bathroom. Following her after she said that, though, didn’t immediately strike Keaton as a good option, so instead she watched Eli follow Lynn into the woods, then watched Amelia head in the opposite direction, disappearing by the time she glanced back. That was two people going after Lynn now—two people too many, perhaps, but maybe she was the one who was wrong. Maybe Lynn did need reassuring, did need a comforting presence and a solid shoulder. Keaton had missed her chance with that, though. Three was a crowd enough, nevermind a fourth.
Taking another sip, Keaton opted to watch the party around her for a second. Archie’s heart monitor was beeping, but that wasn’t new. With Natalie looking pretty and more than enough booze to go around, Keaton was surprised he’d lasted this long. He wasn’t turning yet, though, so she figured Natalie had it handled. Third-wheeling wasn’t on her to-do list, and new guy Nic already volunteered for that role.
Gen the poser was talking to Cara on his own phone now, looking in Archie’s direction. Considering how smooth his Japanese sounded, he was indeed a foreigner—just not one who didn’t speak English. Whether he thought pretending so was a better tactic or just more polite was uncertain, but Keaton didn’t feel like talking to him any more than she already had. She’d come, she’d seen, and she’d judged. Lynn could do better.
The rest of the people at the party melded into the background. Being stuck on the ship for the next few years didn’t seem too important considering what had happened. Salamandra, Arianna, the Faceless and whoever they worked for—all in a month’s work. Keaton would be lucky if she lasted past the year, much less a few. But, even if she couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, she had to pretend she could. Picking up another acquaintance or two could be beneficial to her cover, if not her mental health. Was it the ginger in the flannel, then, or the blonde in the leather skirt?
A trio setting up solo cups on a side table caught her attention, and she joined them after a second, rounding out their teams. Her partner, a bubbly brunette by the name of April who probably couldn’t tell water from beer at this point, missed every throw after her first but cheered Keaton on as if they were winning despite that.
“Go Keaton!” she shouted as Keaton tossed the ping pong ball forwards. When it bounced off the rim of one of the remaining three cups, she groaned, then immediately brightened. “Next turn I’ll get’em, you watch,” she said, cupping her hands around her mouth as she turned back to their opponents. “Jake ‘n Josh, you’re goin’ down!”
As Jake made his toss, Keaton watched, her mind still stuck on the fact that she’d missed. Sober, she was brilliant at beer pong. Something about being able to intuit the force and angle necessary to land a ball in a cup did that. Tipsy, though, she started messing up. Having doubts. And it was scary. Keaton didn’t do doubting about simple stuff like where to throw a ping pong ball in beer pong. The game had always been fun—relaxing in the way not having to think too much about anything but landing a ball and getting some praise tended to be. Now, though, she was too aware of her power to not try and think about it, but thinking about it made her aware of more than just her mediocre beer pong skills. She’d always hated getting drunk, disliked the prospect of going past the sweet spot of tipsy. Why, she’d never stopped to think too hard about, but now, as she missed throws in beer pong, she realized why: Her powers didn’t work well with alcohol. Rather than getting the solid, black-and-white hunches she was used to, she was feeling maybes. Maybe throwing the ball a little harder this time will land it. Maybe underhand would work better than overhand this time. Maybe, but… maybe not.
“Here, I’ll handle this. You focus on throwing,” Keaton said, taking the beer cup from April and pushing the ping pong ball into her hand. No time to experiment like the present, when she was already decently tipsy and in the company of friends. How fuzzy could her power get? And how much did she need to drink to be able to relax despite knowing she was drinking herself into uncertainty?
Downing the beer as April lined up to throw, Keaton watched as April landed her second throw of the night. Her phone buzzed as she whooped, hugging April with a giddy grin on her face as she fumbled for her phone. Rather than it being her dad with a text or Cara with a reminder, though, her phone was flashing an alert notification.
The alert notification.
“Shit. Shit. Sorry guys, I need to bail. Emergency,” she said, pointing to her phone before turning around to search the party. Archie and Natalie were still here, so that left Radvi, Freaky-D, and Eli. Eli?
Her power gave her a non-committal nudge, but that was enough for her at the moment. Breaking into a run, she sped towards the woods Lynn disappeared into, her heart racing. Arianna was here. Now. On the one day Keaton had thought she wouldn't come, thought it’d be okay to relax and go past being just tipsy.
The woods were a mess of shadows and fading sound, and Keaton gradually slowed down, straining her ears to try and catch some indication of where Lynn, Eli, and Amelia were. At the first sound of voices, she jumped, sprinting towards it. Plan. Did she have a plan? She wanted to talk to Arianna, to ask questions and get answers. She wasn’t in the best condition for either right now, but no one had to know that. As far as Arianna was concerned, her powers encouraged some degree of honesty. Whether that was enough remained to be seen.
As she got closer to the voices, she slowed down, her eyes struggling to adapt to the faint moonlight through the trees. Lynn was pretty obvious, glowing as she did, but Eli and Amelia were nowhere in sight. Instead, there was a girl—a scrawny little thing who looked as much like Arianna as anyone else.
Shapeshifter, Keaton reminded herself, creeping forwards carefully. The girl looked as if she was about to cry, and, straining her ears, Keaton made out something about running and hiding. That was what Arianna was doing, had been doing for the better part of a month, but nothing about how scared she was matched the ruthless, calculating image Keaton had conjured for her. Where was the girl who’d evaded the entire Promise staff so she could plot the downfall of the ship? The girl who’d decided that releasing parahuman murderers on kids as a distraction was worth the human cost?
But, as she stared at the girl, willing her powers to give her something to work with, some ledge to grasp other than frazzled emptiness, nothing solid came forward. Keaton had no idea whether Arianna was telling the truth, no idea whether the sniffling girl beside Lynn was Arianna in honest, no idea about
anything. Instead, she sank down into the leaves, not minding the sharp pain as she tore tiny pieces from the edges of her nails. All that mattered was the black void of not knowing.
Footsteps behind her sent her scrambling to the side as Radvi and Freaky D emerged from the woods, a gun—gun?—in Radvi’s hand as he hollered at Lynn. The frail girl beside Lynn bolted, and Radvi and Freaky D gave chase as Keaton sat in the shadows of a bush, watching as they left. That was Arianna—she should have known—in disguise—she should have known—putting Lynn in danger—she
should have known. Had it been obvious? Yes. Yes, it’d been so, so obvious, but somehow she
hadn’t known.The sounds and screams died off within minutes, and Keaton stood from her spot shakily, walking towards where the fight had gone. Arianna was nowhere in sight, and Keaton figured she had to be gone. Hopefully.
Making out where the others were, she walked towards them, lingering a few feet from where Eli and Lynn were gathered around Radvi. Freaky D was a robotic mess on the side, whereas Radvi was a bloody one, his face—
Lynn was there, applying pressure to the wound. Keaton vaguely wondered whether she should do that. She could ask Cara to feed her information on where the blood vessels were, where to focus the pressure, but was that really more effective at the moment? She couldn’t be sure, and the fact that she couldn’t meant it probably wasn’t.
Eli was at Radvi’s side too, likely using her power somehow. To stop the pain? To stop the pain. The certainty of that piece of information was addictive, and Keaton clung to it as Archie and Natalie arrived. Archie’s heart monitor wasn’t going off, wasn’t on him anymore, for some reason. While the knowledge wasn’t comforting, the certainty was, and that was almost enough.
Bolstered by the slow return of her power, Keaton willed herself forward, pulling out her phone and aiming the camera at Radvi’s face. “Cara, is there anything else we can do?” she asked.
“Miss Holmes, keep applying pressure to the wound. I’ll connect us to a line at the hospital so we can relay the damage to them. Miss Wessex, if you could describe to them where the pain is, it’d help them figure out which injuries might need addressing first.”
Cara opened the line to a nurse, whose tone got rapidly more professional as she started asking questions about the injuries and the pain. Keaton listened along, connecting and translating any rough phrasing Eli used to medical terms the nurse provided when her power cooperated. Being helpful helped calm her down, and she gradually managed to still the phone in her trembling hands. It was comforting to be in control again, at least somewhat.
As the questioning went on, Amelia appeared, announcing her plan, and Keaton stared at her, realizing that she’d forgotten how viable an option that was.
“How many people can you teleport with you? Eli should go to help the doctors figure out where and how much brain damage there is, and someone needs to keep applying pressure on the wound,” she said, eyes flicking to Lynn. Just because Amelia was willing to see Gennedy didn’t mean Lynn was.
