The phone rang again and again. It had been three days since Stomp died. Four days since she first met the men and women that saved her from Doppelganger and the shadow organization that still lurked out there.
Rosa came to River City—to America—with one goal. She didn’t want to be a metahero. She wanted to live a normal life in a normal town. And in a matter of a week, she found herself under attack twice. And now she couldn’t even get a phone call through to the people that helped her through it.
Until today. On the fourth ring, someone picked up the phone.
“Uh, you’ve reached Spirit Cop. Alli’s not here, but can I take a message for you?”
Her immediate surprise was replaced by a sudden revulsion. Of all the people she hoped to hear, Ian Page was not the one. She knew El Sanguijuelo was a killer. He might pretend ignorance of his condition, but she knew it was just a ploy, a way to stay close to other metahumans he could kill. But she didn’t have much choice. She needed to talk to the others.
“Ian, hello.”
“Rosa?”
“Yes. Yes, it’s me. I’ve been trying to talk to Alli, Marilyn, anyone for days.”
“Anyone but me, you mean.”
Rosa’s silence answered his question. She wouldn’t lie to him, even if she thought he was a monster. She didn’t like him, but she would tolerate him until he played his hand.
“No, I’m not going to get mad about it,” Ian said. “You have your reasons. You may very well be right. But we’ve been away for a few days. It’s a long story.”
“I—I have my own story. As you say in English, I have some bad news,” Rosa didn’t know any other way to put it.
“What is it? What’s going on?”
“It’s Garrett. Or Stomp. Whatever. He’s—” She took a deep breath and held back the tears. Even after seventy-two hours, the words felt wrong. “He’s dead. A building exploded and he was inside.”
Ian was silent on the other end of the phone line. She couldn’t blame him. It was not news she wished to share, let alone force another to process. Rosa still couldn’t quite process the news herself. He might truly be a monster, but Ian seemed to truly care about Stomp. Or at least he knew how to fake it. She still wasn’t sure she could trust his story, but that didn’t matter now.
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