Saving Her Billionaire Vigilante

Nine: Ransom Tanager

Nine:

Ransom Tanager

            I watched everything.

            There wasn’t a single thing going on in the city that I didn’t know about. I had a room set up that could access any television, smart phone, or laptop. I knew everyone’s secrets. I had to, because that was how I was going to keep the city safe. Another explosion wouldn’t happen like the one that had taken my Mother, or Piper’s family. Since the explosion at Tanager, I didn’t sleep. I stayed awake and watched the live feed, looking for trouble. Because if I didn’t, I’d see everything. Every single, horrible detail. Every night, I dreamed the same horrible dream. It was that New Years Eve party all over again.

            I was fifteen years old. I was there, with my Mother. She’d hosted the event the way that she hosted all of our family events. Dad was the head of the business, and she might as well have been the cruise director. She’d won awards for galas she’d hosted, and everyone who was anyone wanted to come to a Marlene Tanager event.

            The Powell’s had been there too. They were family friends. They’d gone to college with Dad and had been the inventors of some technology that had helped him launch his company. Really, I’d almost in a way grown up with Piper. At one point, we’d even gone on a summer vacation together staying in my family’s cabin.

            But she was younger. I had to pretend that I didn’t care about her. That she was nothing more than the annoying, little girl whose parents worked for my father. I pretended I was indifferent, because I didn’t want my parents getting their hopes up. I had heard them whispering more than once about the possibility of the two of us ending up together.

            “Just think,” I’d heard my Mom say once in the kitchen, “she’s already such a pretty little thing. Imagine how it will be when she gets older. If Piper marries Ransom, we’ll have a grandson with Powell brains and our money. And everything Piper inherits; Ransom will get access to.”

            I remember my father laughing. “Don’t start planning a June wedding yet, Marlene. The girl’s younger than Ransom, remember. Besides, Ransom hasn’t shown any real interest in her yet. Likely won’t, because she’s so young.”

            “Oh…. but it wouldn’t hurt for them to be friends now, would it? Help things along a little.”

            “No, I suppose not,” my father had replied.

            That conversation had happened a few days before the party. It was why, I suspected, I found myself having to dance with a thirteen year-old scowling Piper.

            “But Mom, why?” she said, looking at her mother as though she were going to her own funeral.

            “Just one dance, Pip,” Mrs. Powell had said, “it will be cute. We want some pictures, for the society papers.”

            Piper, I remembered, had rolled her eyes and glared at me as if this was somehow my doing.

I’d put my hands up. “Don’t look at me like I had something to do with this.”

“Yeah right,” she said, giving me the dirtiest of looks.

Mom had them play Mazzy Star’s “Fade into You”. I’d wrapped my arms around Pipers neck and awkwardly swayed with her for the whole thing while our mothers took pictures. I remember thinking that if I died, it was going to be at the hands of a thirteen-year-old. Because I was pretty sure she was plotting murder in her head.

As I awkwardly swayed with her in the least romantic dance of my life, that was when the building started to shake. My Mom had looked at me in horror. Then, the windows had all shattered. I’d still been holding onto Piper, and I crouched down to cover her with my body to keep the glass from getting into her eyes.

She let out a scream. But I couldn’t hear it over the hundreds of other screams. The building was collapsing. I knew we needed to get out of there. I took her by the hand, dragged her from the room even though she was trying to pull away to go back to her parents.

“Let me go! Let me go! I need to get them!” Piper was screaming and sobbing.

I ignored her. All I could think about was getting us out of the building. I didn’t care about anything else. We reached the door, and it was at that moment that the world went black. When I came to, I was in a hospital bed.

Piper was sitting in a chair next to my father, stoically staring out the window. My father, a man who I had never seen cry, had tears in his eyes. When he saw that I had woken up that was when everything had changed.

My Mother was gone.

Piper’s parents were gone.

And so, so many lives had been taken that day.

“Piper,” said my Dad, “sweetie…. would you mind going outside for a minute? I need to talk with my son alone.”

The redheaded pre-teen glanced over at him, then wordlessly went to go wait outside the door of the hospital room. My father stood up, and he closed the door behind her.

“Son, there’s something that I need to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” My voice rasped. Smoke had gotten into my lungs. Smoke from the explosion that had ravaged our lives. He couldn’t even open his mouth to get the words out. But I knew. I knew that my Mother was dead.

“Dad….”

“I’m sorry son,” he said, “I’m so, so sorry. It was my own arrogance that led us here.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

He looked at me, his eyes tired, filled with tears. “I need to tell you something. But this is something that you can’t tell anyone, ever. In fact after this night, we’re not to utter a word about it.”

“Dad, you’re scaring me.”

“You…you were an experiment from Tanager labs.”

I frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“When you were young, the Powell’s had just created the technology that could put weapons into people. We needed someone to test it out on, to see if it would work. Your heart is half bomb, half heart. You’ve been built to be able to explode, then put yourself together.”

“Dad, that’s crazy. That’s not possible.”

“We assumed that it had failed,” my father told me, “because we didn’t see any results. No matter how hard we tried to push you, the bomb never went off. But tonight, something happened that caused it to.”

My eyes widened. “The only thing different that happened tonight was that I danced with Piper.”

He looked at me sadly. “Then, that means Piper probably saw what you did. Which means we have to do everything we can to get her to keep our secret. Her parents died in the explosion, and I know she has an aunt that’s living. But I’m going to adopt her. The better to keep watch on her. We need to keep her controlled.”

“Dad, no. She’s a thirteen year-old girl. What’s the worst that she could do?”

“Destroy everything,” he replied darkly.

After, Dad did everything in his power to keep Piper from getting adopted by her aunt. Or someone else. Dad wanted me to make her fall in love with me so that she’d be loyal to me. But I couldn’t do that, knowing what I had done to her parents. To my mother. I asked him one more time about my powers, about the experiment.

He acknowledged that there were others. At least one hundred trials had been done. That he knew of. Which meant that there were a hundred EVOS---that’s what he called us----out there, running loose, wreaking havoc.

Over the next several years, I forced myself to learn how to control my powers. The heat tended to get worse when I was angry. But I found a way to steady myself, with no one else to help me but Mr. Leech.

Once I figured out how to control my power, I became determined to find the other EVOS. To help them understand their abilities instead of being scared. My powers were also part of the reason I had stayed away from Piper. I was worried that I might be dangerous for her. But I was getting closer to finding my first EVO.

Tracking down Kathleen Kore, the assistant who had helped with the experiment, had been the hardest part. Once I tracked down the other EVO’s, and was able to help them, then I will have made amends. Then, I could finally be with Piper.

For now, I watched. Looking at the spying system that I had set up. Trying to find anything unusual that might lead to me finding an EVO. Evo---the evolved human was the name my Father had come up for when it came to people like me.

If I was to believe Doctor Kore, Piper was like me too. I didn’t want to believe it. Because that would mean that my family had wrecked hers. If she found out the truth, she would hate me forever.

But it also meant that I had to keep watch on her too. I’d always kept watch on her. The Tanager company had enemies, and so did my family. They knew that hurting Piper was the easiest way to get to me.

She’d been kidnapped once when she was sixteen by an enemy corporation. I’d very nearly lost her then. I wouldn’t lose her again. I would keep her safe, by any means. Even if it meant having to tell her the truth about me. Or losing her in the process.

As I sat in my computer chair, I watched the monitors. I didn’t listen to the audio. That was the one kindness I allowed the people of Crescent City. I wouldn’t eavesdrop on their conversations. But I did watch their every move.

On one screen, I saw Piper. She was with, of all people, Oliver Oswin. They’d taken his motorcycle somewhere. I watched as they pulled up to what looked to be a storage locker facility. The two of them went inside, then Piper pulled out a key and unlocked it. That was when she screamed.

            And I knew, whatever she had found in that shed, didn’t bode well for me. Or anyone else.