Another Life

Electron could hear people talking about him through the radio waves as he pulled himself out of the river, bystanders making various startled noises as they took their pictures.

He ignored them as he trudged his way to the nearest phone, putting his change in the slot and dialing the familiar number.

“Who is this?” Mandie answered.

“Where’s Cate?”

“She’s busy, who is this?”

For all those enhanced senses, she apparently couldn’t recognize a voice over the phone.

“Mandie, it’s Pete. I’m still in the Electron suit because I’m afraid of taking it off, and I’d like to talk to my wife, please.”

“Like I said, she’s a little busy at the moment. What do you need her to know?”

“I’m alive?” Pete offered, “And that thing that we’ve been talking about because of the baby, yeah, I think it’s a good idea now.”

“What’s a good idea?” Mandie asked.

“None of your business. Is Catherine okay?”

“The doctors seem to think so.”

“What doctors?” Pete asked, “Why is she in the hospital?”

“You know how long it takes for a child to gestate. You knew this was a possibility when you went on your trip.”

“She’s in labor!” Pete asked as the phone call timed out, “Shit!”

He had to get on a flight if possible, not that he expected anything to come out of the airport, but he had to get back home.

“This is a bad sign for my parenting,” he admitted as he ran into an alley to finally take the suit off.

“Alright,” Pete said, “You’re almost home.”

“I know,” Tesla Coil said on the other end of the line.

“But I like saying it, it makes me happy.”

He could practically hear her rolling her eyes.

“Sap,” she finally said.

“I can’t help it.”

“How’s Harold?” she asked.

“Out like a light,” Pete stroked the side of his son’s face. He’d fallen asleep just a few minutes shy of his mother returning. Pete would take him to his bed once Tesla Coil was safe inside.

“Is it bad one of these days I’d like him to stay up long enough to say hi?” Tesla Coil asked.

“Terrible, and exactly what most parents would wish in your situation.”

He kept an internal timer going until he heard the creaking of floorboards just above him.

“That you?” he asked.

The door to the computer room opened and Tesla Coil stepped down, taking off her mask and wig so Pete could see his beautiful wife again.

He closed the gap between them quickly, planting a kiss on her lips just long enough to no longer be chaste.

“I missed you,” he said.

“We’ve been talking this whole time.”

She walked past him, placing the wig and mask on her work table, quickly followed by her gloves and jacket, then she came up to Harold.

“He’s so sweet like this,” she said, pushing his hair back from his face.

Pete came to her side as she picked Harold up. Together they exited the lab and tucked Harold into bed.

“Don’t worry,” Pete whispered, “I had him brush his teeth and get ready for bed before he came to help me.”

“Good plan,” Catherine whispered.

Pete kissed her on the forehead before leaving the room to give her alone time with Harold. He grabbed a book to read on the couch.

Catherine soon joined him, leaning her head on his shoulder as she sat down.

“Maybe I should just go to sleep right now and let you carry me to bed.”

“You don’t have to go to sleep for that,” Pete revealed.

“Really?”

“Just brush your teeth and change first.”

“Ugh.”

They stayed on the couch together for a few more moments, silently soaking in each other’s presence.

“We should talk,” Catherine finally admitted, “Not right now, but soon.”

“About what?”

“I said not right now.”

“Sounds like someone needs to go to bed, cause she’s getting grouchy.”

“Yeah,” Catherine agreed, “Let me get ready.”

“So…” Pete began, “What did you want to talk about?”

They’d been busy most of the morning, and even the afternoon, leaving the only time Pete could talk to his wife to vigilantism. Harold was sleeping over with Pete’s parents for the weekend, so they didn’t have to worry about adult subject matter.

“I’d rather talk about it in person.”

“Fine,” Pete said, “But we’re talking about it tomorrow.”

“Of course,” Tesla Coil said, “I wanted to talk about it today, but life.”

“Life, it interrupts us all,” Pete joked.

“Yeah, yeah. Any pings?”

Pete watched the alert system Catherine had built so Pete could feel useful during her excursions.

“There’s a bank robbery,” he said, disconcerted by how quiet things seemed otherwise.

“Anything else?” Coil asked.

“No,” Pete said, “Do you not want to help the bank?”

“Every time I have fought someone at a bank, they have either been in dire financial straits or trying to trap me. It’s not a great feeling.”

“You forget the joyriders,” Pete said, “It could be joyriders.”

“The joyriders try to trap me.”

He couldn’t really argue out of that one.

“Freakishly quiet actually, keep your guard up.”

“Oh, this is definitely a trap,” Coil said.

“Well, you could always give me a hint about what you need to talk about.”

Coil didn’t talk as Pete saw her marker on the screen zoom toward the bank.

“I think I should take a break,” Coil finally said, just outside the bank, “From heroics.”

Pete had stopped trying to make her quit years ago, and now he was surprised by the instinct to say she shouldn’t stop.

“Should we search for someone to replace you?” he asked instead. They’d discussed several people to ask about taking on some of the burden of their territory, not that there wasn’t plenty overlap already.

Coil didn’t respond, and her tracker disappeared as she entered the bank.

“Shit!”

He stopped himself from immediately panicking. A lot of high security businesses interfered with their signals if they didn’t connect to their wi-fi, which they generally avoided.

Pete activated the dead zone timer and looked anywhere but the screen. Camera would make him aware of anything he needed to know.

His chair swiveled to give him an exact look at his old Electron suit in the case. There was a new one next it that Catherine periodically updated “to keep her skills sharp”.

“You know as well as I do that I can’t go back,” he told it, like he told it most nights.

During “Electron Day” as the public called it, Pete had hurt himself, bad. The doctors and physical therapists didn’t ask too many questions about how it happened, not like how the Xenologists had. He was scarred on his arms, and his power level had permanently reduced from 20 to 18. He wasn’t built like Electron anymore.

Not to mention, he had a son, a wife. He couldn’t put Catherine through his injuries again. She’d blamed herself because the suits fail-safes were what caused the damage.

Pete made some sparks between his fingers, focusing on insuring each spark hit the correct target on the other side.

“If you want to see Tesla Coil again,” a voice suddenly said on the speakers, “You’ll get Nightingale to meet us…”

Pete didn’t even hear the address or time. Nightingale? Nightingale? Mandie lived a whole state away. How did anyone even know she’d be in contact with Tesla Coil?

Because they worked together way too often to just do it for convenience.

“We need more friends,” Pete groaned.

He couldn’t ask Rex because he was at an event with his parents. Jet had a deadline for work, not to mention Ignotus still hadn’t forgiven Pete for last time he asked for Jet’s help. Liz was busy with Sadie.

Pete looked up at the suit.

“Fuck me.”

The new suit had padded arms. Pete obviously wore a long sleeve shirt to keep his arms from being irritated, but the padding made it harder to feel the pain.

The suit also made good and subtle use of the same tech that made Tesla Coil’s hoverdiscs work, making it easier for Pete to fly to his destination with minimal effort.

If he knew his wife less, he’d wonder if she planned on getting kidnapped just so Pete would be forced to test drive the suit, but Catherine was never that indirect.

Luckily Camera had recorded the time and address, so all Electron had to do was wait for them to appear.

He had to get closer to disable a gun now. It would take more time, time where they could shoot him, or Tesla Coil.

If he failed, he’d hurt his wife and never forgive himself, no pressure.

Camera let him know it was the meeting time, but the location stayed dark.

“They were planning to fight Nightingale in the dark?”

His chances looked better now.

He flew over, letting himself fall through a skylight before finding all the guns in the room pointed at him.

“I haven’t been gone long enough for you to think that will work.” Electron said.

They opened fire. Electron stopped the bullets as he sensed them, letting more drop to the floor as it became harder to hold them all.

When he stopped hearing shots, he let them all drop.

“Where is she?”

“Nightingale could figure it out,” one of them said, Pete lifted a pile of bullets and gently tossed it at them, knocking them to the floor.

He heard a car speeding away.

“You’re the distraction, aren’t you?” Electron realized, “Camera, C-1-D”

His vision changed to mostly Green, but now he could see in the dark that Tesla Coil wasn’t there.

“Track that car,” Electron ordered as he flew out one of the windows.

If his powers were what they once were, Pete could have just pulled at the body of the car, but now he had to work just a bit smarter. He focused his efforts on the trunk lid, holding it in place as the car moved forward. initially the car stayed in place, but enough effort pulled the two apart.

He placed the cover carefully as Tesla Coil, in the trunk, flew out.

She fell hard on the ground.

Pete struggled to say any name as he voiced concern, grabbing her from the ground.

“It’s fine,” she said, stripped of her jacket and clearly a little scraped from the road, “Just painful.”

“We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

Coil nodded.

“I’ll just—” she looked around, “They took my hoverdiscs. I have to get Camera to destroy them, and…”

“Shhh,” Electron said, “Emergency room first.”

Of all the new experiences to have in the Electron Suit, the most surprising one was sitting in a waiting room for Tesla Coil to be done.

Luckily the population of these rooms leaned strangely heavy on the vigilante side since their actions had been legalized, so he didn’t get too many looks.

“Why do you have Tesla Coil’s symbol?” a little girl asked. Electron smiled, though she couldn’t see it through the face plate.

“I’m sort of her partner,” Electron explained.

“My parents say partner sometimes means married. Are you married?”

“Well I can’t tell you, because then you may be able to guess our secret identities.”

The little girl groaned dramatically and returned to the grown-up she came with.

“He said he’s her partner,” she told them. They looked at him with a concerned eye.

A few moments later, Tesla Coil came out, bandaged up, but not looking as bad as he was worried she would.

“Let’s go,” she told him as they left the room, offering a wave as they exited the building.

“Yeah, I don’t think retiring is such a bad idea,” Pete said.

Tesla Coil shook her head.

“Take me home, please.”

“Of course.”

It was an early night, but Tesla Coil wasn’t going out again. Catherine and Pete sat on the couch watching through one of their DVD sets of Star Trek.

“We should join Harold at your parents’ this weekend,” Cate said, “We haven’t seen them in a while.”

“Yeah,” Pete said.

“So you’re retiring?” he asked to confirm they were on the same page.

“Yeah, maybe not immediately, but soon.”

“Okay.” he hated himself for the next question, but he needed to ask, “Should Electron come out of retirement?”

Catherine pulled away to look at him.

“What are Electron’s thoughts on that?” she asked.

“That maybe he’s been afraid of not being able to do as much, but that he can actually do something if he puts his mind to it.”

Catherine nodded.

“I’m pregnant.”

“What?”

Catherine gave a shy smile.

“Only a few weeks, but, especially given everything that just happened, I doubt it’s a good idea to keep going out as Tesla Coil.”

Pete couldn’t stop himself from smiling. He grabbed Catherine for a hug.

“I have several ideas for names,” Camera said from above them.

“She knew, didn’t she?” Pete asked.

“No hiding anything from her.”

Pete kissed his wife again, incomparably joyful.