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He’d known. Dad had known about all of it. Mom. Nick. The pills. The Concentra made by Burke Pharmaceuticals.
Have you taken your pill, Nick?
Don’t forget your meds, kid.
Did you take your pill, Nicky?
“Iknow,” Dad said. “But I’ll keep it going for as long as I can. I know what happens to people like them. I’ve seen it. And you did too; you saw how much it weighed on Jenny. I won’t let the same thing happened to Nick.” A beat of silence. Then, furiously, “She was targeted. They knew who she was the day they followed her into that bank, even though it’d beenyears. They killed her because of what she meant to the people of this city. If I’d known where that would lead, I would havebeggedher to never put on that suit. The city didn’t need her to be Guardian,weneeded her to be alive and—”
Guardian.
Guardian.
The Extraordinary who’d watched over Nova City.
The hero who’d disappeared before Nick was born.
Nick’s phone rang in his pocket, startlingly loud in the quiet of the park.
Nick panicked, muttering, “Oh my god, no, no,no,” as he stepped away from the pillar, trying to pull his phone out, trying to make it stop. He didn’t even see who was calling as he jerked it from his pocket, hissing as his knuckles popped. He swiped his thumb across the screen, sending the call to voicemail.
“Nicky?”
Nick whirled around. Dad stood there, all the blood having drained from his face. His mouth hung open, the phone falling from his hand and bouncing on the floor of the pavilion.
Dad recovered first. “Nick? Hey, hey. What are you doing here?” He tried to smile, but it crumbled as he took a step toward his son. “Kid, what’s—what’s going on?”
Nick picked up his phone and took an answering step back, his mind viciously blank. He couldn’t form a single coherent thought, and the sound that fell from his open mouth was a high-pitched whine, broken and weak.
“No,” Dad said, hands shaking as he reached for his son. “Oh, Nicky. I didn’t—” His chest heaved, his breath pouring from his mouth in a thick cloud. “Please. Listen to me, okay? I need you to listen. We’re okay. We’re all right, I swear it. Let me explain. Oh my god, please don’t—Nick,no!”
Nick, yes.
He didn’t look back as he ran out of the park, his heart thundering in his chest, head spinning. He slid on a slick patch of ice hidden under the snow but managed to keep his footing with a few hard steps that jolted his knees. A thin tree limb slapped against his cheek, causing it to go numb as he picked up speed. He heard his father shouting his name, begging for him to stop, but he didn’t. He couldn’t.
Nearly blind with panic, he ran.
