Chapter Text
Aye’s crying, just a little, as the wastepaper basket burns.
The tears aren’t sadness or even anger this time – they’re the same frustration that had the paper sparking into flames in his hands in the first place, the frustration that comes from him not having any fucking clue what he’s looking for or how to find it. He’s got where to look, which felt like a big discovery at the time, but now it just feels like a scavenger hunt.
His old notes aren’t a great loss – everything on them was probably wrong – but he used to be better at not setting things on fire when he didn’t mean to. Aye’s never been great at using his powers but not being able to suppress them is new.
Well, two months old exactly.
Since his uncle was killed so brutally they could only recover part of his leg and a half-recognisable necklace.
It’s bent in half and the pattern can barely be seen, but Aye grabs it and holds it and tries to breathe.
The fire in the basket seems to be dying down when he comes back to himself, and he douses it with his always-to-hand mini extinguisher just to take it the rest of the way there.
Windows open, fans on, and Aye sits back at his table and gets out a new notebook.
Then, with trembling hands, he retrieves his uncle’s old notebook to place beside it. It’s not so useful, really, that he needs it for this at all, but the idea of not having any of Uncle Di at the table when he tries to make this plan feels wrong.
He unfolds the map he keeps stored between the pages of the notebook, crosses off another spot, and starts to write his thoughts.
Uncle Di went to a lot of places with his phone on, but he didn’t take it to his second job; that means it wasn’t destroyed or seized when he was killed, and Aye still has it. He keeps it turned off now he has the map on paper, though, with every path his uncle took in the sixth months before he died traced onto it.
It took Aye a while.
Lucky that nobody wanted to make him go to school, the condition he was in. He wouldn’t have had the time.
He doesn’t have much time now, because he is back in school, but it’s not like he was going to do anything else after school. The only person he wanted to talk to is dead; the only places he would’ve gone feel empty.
So Aye writes his notes, his ideas, his theories, and he only cries a little bit.
Tonight’s plan will take him to another place from Uncle Di’s phone records, another place that doesn’t seem like somewhere he would’ve gone for fun – it’s an old community centre in what used to be a town outside the city but is now basically just a suburb, and the internet tells Aye that the centre hasn’t been in regular use for about ten years.
Uncle Di went there seven times, at random intervals, in the time period Aye has maps for.
He puts on all-black clothing, no mask, and walks out the front door.
Mae isn’t home anyway.
It’s not quite dark when he gets to the town-but-really-a-suburb he’s aiming for, and the bus doesn’t have many people on it.
He might look a little suspicious in the all-black get up, but the only people out seem to be an old couple walking their dog, so he’s not too worried. The walk from the bus stop to the old community centre is brief and it’s over well-paved, oddly silent roads.
When it comes into view, he tries to focus on what he can see with his other senses, and not his eyes. All his eyes can tell him is what the photos online could – old community centre, no windows, probably large enough for an old folks dance class or something.
His powers tell him it’s slightly colder than outside, completely empty of people, and there’s a floor underground that’s even colder.
Infrared vision isn’t the most useful power in a fight; he’s glad he has it, though.
The door is locked, but only with a normal front-door kind of lock, and Aye taught himself to pick those even before Uncle Di died, so he’s in quickly.
But there is a camera.
He ducks back from it, hides his face in his collar, and continues on. It’s risky, yeah, but he hasn’t got a lot he isn’t happy to risk.
It was only one camera, he’s pretty sure, just pointed at the door – quickly scouting around the main hall that makes up most of the building doesn’t reveal any more.
Or anything at all, really.
It’s just a community centre; the only things here are dust and metal chairs.
Laminate flooring, warped near the walls but only in a way that says it wasn’t fitted quite right when first installed.
Quiet except for his footsteps.
Aye shudders – it’s not that much colder than outside, he just doesn’t like it here.
Not getting answers.
He’s nearly getting frustrated enough that he’d have to watch out for sparks when he spots a cold-channel, barely noticeable even if he squints, that can only lead to the path to the floor below.
Crouching down, he feels at the flooring, and there is a seam he hadn’t spotted.
It seems to squeak as he pulls it back, but maybe that’s just his imagination; when it’s up, it reveals a wooden trapdoor.
Paranoia whispers that he shouldn’t go in somewhere he doesn’t know another exit to – the grief that’s been driving him this whole time tells it to fuck off. He pulls it, feels a give, and lets it swing open.
At least there’s a ladder under it.
The rungs shine to him like the metal chairs upstairs; bright in their coolness.
He knows it’s only a single floor deep.
There’s nothing to be afraid of.
Aye descends.
It’s anticlimactic to step off the ladder and onto the ground, and he really can’t see all that much. The ladder being metal gave it a cooler surface temperature than the air around, but there aren’t any heaters down here, or people, and the laminate has squeaked back into its original position even though the trapdoor still hangs down where he’d left it.
There’s a door, though, and he doesn’t think there are more cameras, so there’s nothing to stop him from snooping.
He turns on the flashlight he carries in his pocket – no phone, not with the amount of information he’s already recovered from his uncle’s, but normal plastic flashlights are easy enough to buy – and looks around.
This floor is a little smaller in every dimension than the hall above, but there’s more in it.
At first, the height of the counters and the presence of sinks makes him think he’s in a kitchen, like the centre had needed it to cook for massive groups or something, but then he realises how unlikely that is, and that he’s really standing in a-
“Lab,” he whispers. Why was Uncle Di visiting a lab?
Whatever equipment used to be here – his mind conjures up images of cartoon devices, bubbling and whirring as tubes spiral off in every direction, and then of horror-movie chairs with straps on the arms and his uncle having blood drawn – it’s not here anymore. This place might have more counters and less space, but it’s nearly as empty as the hall.
The ownership of this building was easy enough to find – the local council – but it stretches belief that the legal owners have any idea this is here.
He starts feeling around, looking on hands and knees for something else, checking in the doors under the counters but they all just lead to empty cupboard spaces, and this is too big of a lead to end up with nothing again but there’s nothing here. Rationally, he knows that even if he leaves now, this is a big clue, but he can’t.
Aye keeps searching.
Then he hears voices from the direction of the trapdoor and his mind goes blank.
Fuck, the camera.
He turns off his flashlight and tucks himself into the cupboard he was just feeling blindly into the back of, pulls the door shut, and tries not to breathe loudly.
Lucky – the counters are thin. His heat vision works through them.
Two figures, both tall, moving in creepy-quiet synchronisation, enter the same way he had, and there’s a murmur. One of the figures is much warmer than the other.
He can make out a, “-left in a hurry, after the-“ from the cooler one, interrupted by a motion of the warmer’s hand.
Something’s nagging at him.
The figures get closer, but they bypass the counters entirely, walking past his hiding spot without saying anything else audible.
He finally hears something when they reach the wall – a loud clicking of some kind.
A safe, maybe? Fuck, he wants to be out there.
One voice, deeper than the other, he’s sure from the warmer figure, says, “That’s all of it. The Children of Memory needed to flee.”
Fleeing, he’s not sure what that’s about, but the mention of that organisation makes his insides freeze.
Uncle Di was friends with the person who founded that group.
Nobody’s supposed to know that name.
“They won’t get away with it, Master,” says the other voice, and it finally clicks who these people are.
He should have known; he’d seen them in a fight once, and even though the television doesn’t show heat the way they look to him has always been vivid.
It’s the hero duo, Solis and Shade. Solis has powers kind of like Aye’s own – he can generate heat, but Aye’s pretty damn sure from his position that he can’t sense it like Aye can – and Shade has some kind of darkness powers that must cool him down too, so they look like a big contrast to Aye.
They’re talking about the Children of Memory with real hatred; they’re saying this lab belonged to them.
If Aye manages to escape without being spotted, he knows, he has plans to make.
Solis and Shade are famous heroes, sure, but they must be his enemies – at the very least, they have information he needs. He can follow one lead, look for anything else owned by the Children of Memory and try to track them down; he can also follow the other and try to shake these two down for what they know. What they’ve done.
In that case, black hoodies and jeans aren’t enough anymore.
Aye needs a costume.