New Stone Holder
(HN: TGS AU(My take). Chapter 19)
The teenagers walked along the cracked concrete sidewalks of the night town, which was shrouded in a suffocating chill. Raven Brooks was asleep, its darkness diluted only by the occasional flicker of dim, humming streetlights. The heavy, electrified atmosphere that followed the slaughter at the factory and the furious finale in Torres' basement was gradually giving way to an oppressive silence. After Nicky, barely containing his tremors, managed to force out an apology to Maritza, the group finally decided to part ways. Ivan stayed behind to monitor the laboratory systems, Maritza left to lick her mental wounds, and Nicky and Finch found themselves alone on the street.
Roth volunteered to walk her home. It wasn't a gentlemanly gesture—life was barely flickering in his exhausted body, and paranoia kept his brown eyes frantically scanning every dark alleyway. But it was his sullen, honest way of saying "thank you." If Finch hadn't swallowed her pride and called Ivan and Maritza for help, he would have died.
Finch walked beside him, deliberately matching his ragged pace. Wrapping herself tightly in her teal-green scout vest, she held her breath, terrified of breaking the fragile truce. The silence rang in her ears, while Aaron’s ink monster and Roth’s azure flashes of lightning still flickered behind her eyelids.
"That was awful..." she said softly, almost in a whisper, unable to withstand the crushing weight of her memories.
"Yeah, I know," Nicky replied hollowly. He walked with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his oversized blue hoodie, his head hung low so that the night-vision goggles on his forehead glinted dimly in the moonlight.
Finch glanced at his pale face, where a fresh, crimson bruise from Peterson’s boxing hook was darkening. The guy's lips were dry, covered in tiny cracks from severe thermal dehydration.
"...I mean... how are you?" For the first time since they had known each other, a note of genuine, unfeigned care sounded in her voice.
Nicky remained silent for a couple of seconds. Hundreds of thoughts were racing through his mind, but he simply had no energy left for sarcasm. He let out a heavy sigh, stopped for a moment, and looked at her with his brown eyes:
"I've seen better days..." He offered a bitter smile, remembering the icy confinement of Theodore's basement.
"...but I've seen worse, too."
Finch nodded silently and turned back toward the road, feeling awkwardness stir inside her. She had absolutely no idea what to say to someone who had just walked through a personal hell. Used to destroying people with articles in the school newspaper and tossing around sharp nicknames like "Sick Nick," she now felt insignificantly small.
"...Everything will get better," she drawled with forced optimism, trying to cheer him up somehow.
"...I hope so. Though I still need to fix the problem with Aaron..." Roth replied with absolute seriousness. Azure sparks flashed in his pupils for a split second, and his voice turned so icy and fanatical that Finch shuddered slightly, feeling a real chill run down her spine. This obsession of his was terrifying.
"I don't mean to blame you, Nicky, but... why?" She stopped.
"What?" Roth asked, turning around, not quite understanding. Genuine confusion was written all over his face.
"Why do you... want to bring him back so badly?" Finch began fidgeting with the hem of her skirt.
"I mean... sure, you two were best friends about four years ago, before all this crap started. But he disappeared back then. He changed. And... is he really worth it, Nicky? Of course, your loyalty... it deserves respect, I mean it. But why Aaron of all people? He almost killed you today!"
Nicky took a deep breath. A strange sense of relief washed over him—at least Finch hadn't called him crazy or "sick," the way the rest of the school usually did. She was just trying to understand. Roth looked up at the starry sky, his fingers fumbling with an empty, crumpled pack of cigarettes in his pocket.
"Aaron was my first friend," Nicky said firmly, a steely willpower ringing in his voice—the same will that drove him forward in defiance of all his fears.
"And I'm not going to abandon someone who has helped me countless times. When I was afraid of every single move I made, Aaron believed in me and supported me. Right now, he's trapped in his own darkness and fear, just like I used to be in his father's basement. And I am going to pull him out of there. No matter what it costs me."
Finch stared at him, struck by the sheer scale of this broken yet absolute loyalty. She felt an unbearable wave of shame for her past newspaper article. Nicky wasn't a psycho. He was the most loyal person she had ever known.
"Oh... um, I'm glad you're so loyal," she mumbled awkwardly, hiding her face in her dark blue strands of hair.
"Don't overthink it," Nicky shrugged, slipping back into his usual defensive, closed-off teenager mode.
"I still have a lot to do. For instance, I need to replenish the electrolytes and salts in my system to use my lightning again. My body is boiling from the inside out, my muscles are cramping. I need isotone drinks, calcium, magnesium... basically, I'm starving."
A strange, glitchy sound of static interference echoed behind them. Andrew quickly opened his ugly, shapeless maw and began demonstratively stuffing his own ghostly hand inside, simulating extreme hunger and devouring himself.
"Thanks for the demonstration, Andrew," Nicky muttered, not even turning around. The shadow let out a silent "giggle," shaking as it bent joints it didn't possess, before shrinking back down into a flat smudge on the asphalt. Finch shuddered at the sight but kept quiet.
They quickly reached the Allen house—a neat but somehow lifeless building. Nicky stopped by the fence and had already turned around, intending to head toward his own house, when Finch suddenly made a rash step forward and grabbed his arm. Her fingers touched his hand.
Nicky froze. The last time he had touched her, he was channeling a Nightmare Broadcast through her, making her howl in terror. But now, her hand was warm, soft, and... trembling.
"Maybe you could have dinn—... I mean, grab a bite at my place?" she corrected herself quickly, blushing in embarrassment.
"I doubt you have any ready-made food at your house. Especially now, when you need food to regain your strength. My dad isn't home anyway, he's at work."
Nicky remained silent for a few seconds, assessing his internal resources. His stomach gave a lonely growl, and his leg muscles were turning to stone by the minute after the Ionized Sprint. Realizing he might not even make it home and could pass out on the lawn from ionic starvation, he shrugged listlessly:
"Fine. Physics requires fuel."
And he followed Finch into the house.
...
A couple of minutes later, they were sitting in the spacious but uncomfortable kitchen. Finch was bustling about the cabinets, trying to cope with her internal panic. Nicky sat at the table, leaning his elbows on his knees, his gaze sluggish—the toll of the Neural Overclock, which had burned all the sugar out of his blood.
"Let me bake us some cookies to... you know, clear our heads?" she suggested, turning around. A habit from her scout past—the best thing she knew how to do when everything went to hell.
Nicky slowly raised his head and looked at her with his exhausted brown eyes through the lenses of his goggles:
"Can you do that? The actual baking process? At this hour?"
"Yes," Finch smiled faintly, pulling out the flour and a baking sheet.
"I miss the days when I was a Girl Scout. But instead of selling cookies to the neighbors, I started baking them. Baking became my hobby, along with cheerleading and photography... until my camera got broken." She faltered for a moment but immediately continued:
"It’s calming."
Nicky lowered his head again and simply shrugged. Finch took it as a sign of agreement. The familiar magic began to swirl in the kitchen: the clinking of dishes, the scent of vanilla, and the steady hum of the preheating oven. Roth sat motionless; his shadow on the wall lazily twirled a finger near its temple, but the boy ignored it.
After a while, when a mouth-watering, sweet aroma had already spread through the house, Finch wiped her hands with a towel and sat down across from him at the table.
"I just put them in the oven," she said, trying to strike up a conversation.
"About ten minutes."
Nicky didn't answer. He was staring fixedly at his hands. Finch noticed that his fingers, thin and smudged with soot, were trembling slightly, and there was dried blood on his knuckles.
"What happened?" she asked softly.
Nicky looked down at his knees, fighting off a wave of approaching shame, and then raised his eyes to meet hers.
"I'm sorry, Finch," he said hollowly.
"I put you in danger when I fought Aaron. I dragged you into that fight; I shouldn't have been so reckless."
The girl looked at him, and her arrogant school mask finally slipped away entirely, revealing a sympathetic, soft smile.
"But you couldn't have known I'd be right by the factory, Nicky. And there's no way you knew your fight with Aaron would go that far, either... Besides... if it wasn't for you and your shadow, that creepy ink octopus of Aaron’s might have just ripped me apart. You saved me."
Silence fell for a moment. Only the ticking of the wall clock could be heard. Nicky twirled an empty lighter in his hands.
"...You want to ask where I got my powers, don't you?" Roth shot her a quick, perceptive glance.
Finch instantly animated, leaning forward:
"Um... yeah. To be honest, I'm incredibly curious."
Though deep within her mind, an instinctive fear was still thumping. Being locked in the same room with a guy who, just a couple of hours ago, was controlling living darkness, striking with lightning, and causing a localized apocalypse at the factory... It was stressful. What if she said the wrong thing and set him off? What if "Sick Nick" came back?
Nicky noticed her momentary tension and gave a crooked smirk, beginning to explain:
"A couple of weeks ago, my friends and I threw a party at the Club. Well, not really a party... we were drinking soda and eating cookies. Trinity accidentally ate someone else's sugar cookie and threw a tantrum. Something fell out of her pocket—it was a strange artifact, a golden, faceted stone. I ran to grab it so she wouldn't lose it, but the moment my fingers touched the facet... I instantly felt strange. I didn't feel like myself, as if my body didn't belong to me anymore. Kinetic energy, statics—everything got tangled up."
Finch listened, holding her breath.
"And then I discovered I could make people see their greatest fears, their worst nightmares, and past traumas." Nicky looked away, finding it unpleasant to remember how he had tormented his classmates.
"Just by touching them while covering myself in a shadow shroud. I can control shadows in general, deform them, mold them into different shapes... And I unlocked lightning, too. Limited electrokinesis. My body can handle the voltage, but the heat burns up the water. Something like that."
While Nicky continued to monotonically explain the mechanics of his abilities, mentioning Neural Overclock and Ionized Sprint, Finch just... tuned out. Her gaze became glued to his face, and her thoughts drifted far away.
She was thinking about how Nicky didn't actually mean any harm. After all, he had risked his life for Aaron, and he had saved her from perishing at the hands of the ink monster. Furthermore, his words made it clear: he wasn't a monster. He was just a... deeply traumatized, lonely, and misunderstood guy. Someone whom the entire school, including herself, had been systematically destroying.
Maybe he wasn't a bad guy after all.
The only ugly thing he had ever done was making bullies see their fears (and even then, he stopped doing it after talking to Mr. Murtaugh). Other than that, Nicky was just... a human being. Broken, paranoid, smoking, but a human being.
And as he had mentioned in passing, the same went for the rest of his friends. The entire Inventors Club—Ivan, Maritza, Enzo, Trinity—and Delroy, they had all fallen victim to a single terrifying creature nicknamed Crowface. And misfortune had struck all their lives.
Finch didn't even realize she had been openly staring at Nicky for several minutes until the boy fell silent, staring back at her. He cleared his throat awkwardly, pointed a finger at her head, and said:
"You've got... one of your pigtails broke. The hair tie snapped."
Finch blinked, snapping out of her trance. She glanced at her vague reflection in the dark kitchen window and realized Nicky was right. One of her signature high pigtails had fallen apart, her dark blue hair cascading untidily over her shoulder.
"It must have snapped when Maritza was dragging me along with Ivan, catching us under our arms to carry Nicky to the basement faster," she guessed.
"Um..." Finch awkwardly adjusted a strand of hair.
"My spare hair ties are by the entrance, on the nightstand to the left. Could you bring them, please? I need to keep an eye on the oven."
Nicky looked at her for a couple of seconds, as if weighing whether this fell under the duties of an escort, and then silently stood up and walked out into the hallway.
Finch stepped closer to the oven. The timer beeped right on cue. She slipped on some oven mitts and carefully pulled out the baking sheet with hot, golden cookies, which were emitting a divine scent of vanilla and chocolate chips. Setting it on the wooden table, she caught herself thinking a strange, foolish thought:
"I hope he likes them. I hope Nicky approves."
She froze instantly, her cheeks flushing with heat.
"Wait. Why did I even think that? Why the fuck do I care whether Nicky Roth likes my cookies or not?! We're enemies! Were enemies... probably."
At that moment, Nicky returned to the kitchen, holding a yellow hair tie in his thin fingers. Hiding her embarrassment, Finch quickly turned her back to him, gathering her hair with her hands:
"Can you tie it? Please, my hands are covered in flour."
Nicky hesitated but stepped forward. His fingers were surprisingly gentle. He gathered Finch’s thick, dark blue hair and quickly, deftly secured the yellow hair tie, barely grazing her neck.
When he was done, Nicky took a step back and automatically wiped his hands on his gray trousers. He looked up and saw that Finch had turned around and was looking straight at him. The moment their eyes met, a deep, bright blush rushed to the girl's face. She looked so vulnerable in this domestic setting, stripped of her pom-poms and arrogant gaze.
She let out a nervous, stifled giggle, trying to diffuse the tension:
"Well... the cookies are ready. Be careful, though, they're hot."
Nicky looked at the steaming pastries, remembered how his body was literally boiling from electrokinesis, and murmured softly, turning toward the exit:
"I can get pretty hot myself... Thermal damage and all that."
He grabbed a cookie, quickly chewed it down, feeling the glucose restore clarity to his thoughts, bid a sullen goodbye, and stepped out into the night darkness.
...
A couple of hours later:
The house had plunged back into a dead silence. Finch had jumped straight into the shower the moment the front door clicked shut behind Nicky. She desperately needed to wash this day off herself—the smell of burning, gunpowder, basement dampness, and someone else's fear.
As the hot streams of water cascaded down her body, she had entirely too much time to think.
About what had happened near the abandoned factory. About the terrifying forces hidden within this town. About the frantic, deadly clash between Aaron and Nicky...
...And about Nicky himself.
She found herself completely unable to stop thinking about him. Roth was exceptionally, frighteningly loyal to Aaron. To a fault, to be absolutely honest. The physical and mental state he was in had been horrific. Yet he kept fighting, breaking his own bones from the recoil of his lightning, as long as his body could manage to stand on its feet.
And then... after that heavy reconciliation with Maritza in the basement, he had actually volunteered to walk her home. He said it was his way of saying "thank you." Finch could feel that Roth had softened toward her a little, even though his prickly gaze made it clear that he still, to put it mildly, disliked her. But he kept his word. He walked beside her through the gloom of Raven Brooks, keeping a vigilant watch around them, as if ready to protect her from any shadow. And he had held her hand.
The last time his hand had touched her skin, he was broadcasting suffocating nightmares into her brain. But tonight... tonight she felt only the dry, calloused hand of a guy who was confidently leading her to her house. And that hand... felt incredibly nice to the touch.
"Why did I feel that way? What is happening to me?" Finch shook her head in annoyance, turning off the water. She tried to banish this nonsense from her mind. Nicky was a freak, a paranoid guy; he had nothing but Aaron and conspiracies on his mind. She shouldn't be thinking about this.
She stepped out of the shower, wrapped her wet, dark blue hair in a towel, and went to her bedroom. But the moment she crossed the threshold, her heart skipped a beat.
There was a note lying on her neatly made bed. And that was bizarre, considering the windows were closed and her dad was still stuck at his shift.
Feeling a slimy fear take root inside her, Finch stepped closer. She picked up the piece of paper. The text was written in an angular, unfamiliar handwriting. As she read the lines, she felt a wild confusion mixed with panic:
"You've become a part of this. You shouldn't have followed Nicholas, let alone helped him. Good luck. You're going to need it."
"What kind of joke is this..." Finch whispered, feeling the hairs on her arms stand on end.
Crumpling the note in her fist, she noticed that the piece of paper wasn't the only offering. There was something else lying on the bedspread. Something small and shining brightly under the light of the chandelier.
She looked closer. It was a small, perfectly faceted, golden stone. A barely perceptible warmth radiated from it.
"Who left it there? Dad? Pff, as if!" Finch let out a nervous scoff.
"Dad is at work right now, and I know he'd sooner yell at me than gift me some shiny piece of jewelry without explaining what it is first."
She quickly brushed the thought aside, trying not to think of the worst. She just needed to get this creepy thing out of her sight.
Changing into her pajamas, Finch hesitantly extended her hand, intending to pick up the stone and move it to the nightstand beside her bed. But the moment her fingers made contact with the golden stone...
BANG!
The world around her exploded in an invisible kinetic wave. Finch felt a massive electrical or mental shock that knocked the air right out of her lungs. She was thrown backward, collapsing onto the floor with a dull thud, landing painfully on her side.
"Damn it..." she groaned. Her head spun so violently it felt like she was riding a runaway carousel.
She slowly pushed herself up onto all fours, rubbing her temples, and tried to focus her vision. But when she opened her eyes a fraction wider, a muffled squeak escaped her chest.
She couldn't see her body.
At all. Finch looked down, but there were no hands, no pajamas, no socks, no legs—nothing. Absolute emptiness. She raised her hand to her face, but she couldn't see her fingers, even though she could physically feel them touching her own cheeks.
"I just vanished! But I'm still in the room, I can feel the floor! So where is my body?! Where am I?!" Panic-stricken thoughts began to spiral wildly. Her breathing quickened, transitioning into hyperventilation.
She stood up, swaying, trying to hold back the approaching tears. But in a situation like this, maintaining self-control was impossible. When you literally turn invisible, erased from reality, you have no choice but to give in to wild panic.
In terror, Finch fell back onto the bed, squeezed her eyes shut, and took a few deep, ragged breaths through her nose, trying to remember her scout lessons on suppressing panic attacks.
"Calm down. Breathe. One... two... three..."
She opened her eyes. And suddenly, she could see her hands, her legs, and the familiar fabric of her pajamas again. The invisibility had worn off.
"What the hell just happened?!" she screamed in frustration to the entire empty room. Fortunately, her father wasn't home, and nobody came running to her cries to brand her a lunatic.
Finch stared with wild eyes at the small golden stone lying isolated on the blanket. In her brain, which was rapidly constructing logical chains, realization flashed instantly. The pieces of the puzzle clicked together. She remembered that therapy session of Nicky's with Murtaugh that she had secretly listened to.
"Trinity got a golden stone—and got powers. Nicky touched her stone—and also got abilities, but different ones. From tonight's conversation in the kitchen, he said himself that Ivan, Delroy, Maritza, and Enzo... they all found stones like this. And each of them has two abilities now... But a catastrophe immediately happened to them or their loved ones! Ivan was suspended, Esposito's parents were attacked by wild squirrels, Delroy's dog died..."
An icy dread gripped her heart. Finch was terrified to the point of trembling. If the stone had chosen her, it meant that right now, something terrible could happen to her... or to her dad!
Without wasting a single second, her hands shaking, she grabbed the house phone and quickly dialed Jack's number. The dial tones stretched on for an eternity.
"Yeah, Finch, what do you need? I'm busy," her father's tired, annoyed voice echoed through the receiver.
"Dad! How are you? Are you okay?!" she almost screamed, gripping the plastic casing until her knuckles turned white.
"I'm fine. What's with the hysterics? I'm staying late for my shift, I'll be home late. Order some delivery if you want to eat. That's it, I gotta go." And the line went dead with short beeps.
Finch slowly lowered the receiver, letting out a loud, raspy exhale. Thank God. Dad was fine. He was alive, he was okay.
...But her pragmatic, scout-trained mind immediately produced the next, far more terrifying thought:
"If the catastrophe didn't touch Dad... does that mean it's going to happen to me? Is this the price for power?"
She wasn't going to take any more chances. Grabbing a thick napkin so she wouldn't touch the stone with bare skin, Finch threw the artifact to the very bottom of her old scout backpack and zipped it shut with force.
She took a step back, covering her mouth with her hand and hugging her stomach tightly, trying to suppress the oncoming wave of fear. Everything inside her was churning. Or... was it more than just fear?
Suddenly, a familiar, burning sensation rose in her throat. Her insides tightened into a knots. It felt like the very chocolate chip cookie she had so proudly pulled from the oven and eaten with Nicky had decided to immediately force its way back out. The spasm was so intense that Finch bent double.
"Great... just awesome," she muttered through her teeth, covering her mouth with her palm, her head spinning.
"Nicky gets a superpower to blast everything around him with lightning and control shadows, and my grand ability is to epically puke on my bedroom floor..."
The nausea surged right up to her throat. Finch squeezed her eyes shut, ready to humiliate herself right in front of the bed, when something suddenly clicked sharply in her mind. Her scout reflexes kicked in automatically. An image of a camping bag flashed in her imagination down to the smallest detail. A simple, canvas, greenish drawstring bag that their troop used for trash. She clearly remembered the texture of the coarse fabric, the density of the seams, even the smell of cheap canvas...
And in that exact second, the air right in front of her face vibrated. Space cracked open with a loud pop, exploding into vibrant, bright lime-green sparks. Finch winced from the flash, and when she opened her eyes, a real, tangible canvas bag dropped onto the carpet right before her with a soft thud.
"W-what the..." Finch didn't even have time to finish. Her body demanded action. She grabbed the bag, pulled it open, and... the problem resolved itself.
A minute later, she was sitting on the floor, breathing heavily and wiping away tears. The nausea had receded instantly, leaving behind nothing but wild bewilderment. Finch stared wide-eyed at the bag. The seams on the canvas glowed faintly with green residual energy, but the item itself was completely material.
She let out a stifled, hysterical chuckle:
"I just... created out of thin air... a trash bag? Seriously? Great. What a fucking phenomenal superhero power, thanks, stone! Other people get lightning, fire, telepathy, and I'm a walking plastic bag factory!"
She kicked the bag irritably with the toe of her shoe. It felt dense, heavy. A crazy deduction suddenly flashed through Finch’s mind. Her crystal-clear memory for material structures latched onto this phenomenon.
"Wait... If I was able to recreate this bag simply because I remembered its blueprint and fabric composition down to the smallest detail... Does that mean... I can create absolutely anything I understand?"
Her heart began to hammer in a state of panicked ecstasy. She looked at her hand, clenching her fingers into a fist. Her chest turned cold at her own audacity.
"What if... a gun?" Finch whispered, holding her breath.
She closed her eyes, recalling the structure of her father's old revolver that she had seen in the safe. The steel cylinder, the firing pin, the grip...
FLASH!
The air exploded with lime sparks once again. And right onto the bedspread, a small silvery pistol fell with a heavy metallic clunk. A real one. Cold.
Finch shuddered and recoiled, covering her mouth with her palm—this time not from nausea, but from primal terror and a wild, intoxicating thrill.
"Holy shit..." she breathed into the silence of the room. Her heart was thumping as if she had just finished a grueling routine at a cheerleading championship.
She stepped forward hesitantly, reached out, and touched the weapon. And at that exact moment, by her mental command, the pistol dissolved into a cloud of green sparks, vanishing into thin air without a trace.
"Wow. So I can clean up after myself too. Not bad," Finch snorted in surprise. The fear had completely given way to scout-like curiosity and excitement.
She wanted to test the limits. She closed her eyes, focused, and imagined her father's heavy flashlight from the basement. Black plastic, the lens, the button, the batteries inside...
Click!—and the grip of the flashlight fit perfectly into her palm. She pressed the button, and a bright white beam cut through the darkness of her bedroom, hitting the wall.
"Oh my god! This is just like a 3D printer, except it's built right into my head!" Finch laughed with delight, shining the flashlight into the mirror.
She was on a roll. Utilizing her perfect memory for blueprints and materials, she began stamping out objects one after another, filling the room with vibrant green flashes.
Pop!—and a sturdy, twisted climbing rope with perfect scout knots uncoiled across the floor like a snake.
Pop!—and a heavy wooden crossbow with a taut, drawn string materialized in her hands. Finch nearly dropped it out of surprise, but immediately banished it with a touch.
"My god... I'm literally playing Minecraft on maximum settings right now!" she laughed, feeling the power surging through her.
She looked around her boring, gloomy room with its white walls, a constant reminder of her parents' eternal fights. Finch frowned. She visualized a bright, glossy magazine poster featuring her favorite cheerleader dance tour.
A flash!—and the poster occupied half the wall. Another flash!—and a second one appeared right next to it. She visualized a Christmas garland with hundreds of multicolored bulbs. The air sparked, and suddenly, real, glowing lights ignited along the perimeter of the ceiling. Within five minutes, her room was shining as if a holiday celebration was underway inside.
"Okay... what about a dress?" Finch muttered shifting her gaze to her reflection in the mirror.
She closed her eyes, conjuring from her memory the image of a luxurious evening gown from an expensive boutique in the mall. She had always tried it on just for fun but could never afford to buy it. Black velvet, sequins, a full, flowing skirt, perfect stitching...
Green sparks wrapped around her body in a dense vortex. The fabric wove itself right onto her in a fraction of a second. Finch opened her eyes and gasped: the dress fit her figure perfectly, as if it had been crafted by the world's finest couturier.
She turned slowly in front of the mirror, running her palm over the soft velvet.
"...Well, holy shit. Just holy shit."
With a laugh, she collapsed onto her back onto the bed, spreading her arms. The dress rustled. Just yesterday, she was nothing more than an arrogant cheerleader bitch with a broken camera and a mountain of domestic problems; now... she possessed the power of creation.
"Wow..." Finch smiled, looking up at the glowing garlands on the ceiling, her gaze turning serious and deep. For the first time in a very long time, she felt no fear of the future, only a wild, stubborn excitement.
She remembered Nicky—his wounded face, his steely will, and how he was ready to die for his friend. She remembered Ivan, whom she considered a younger brother. She remembered all the ugly things she had done in the past.
Finch clenched her fist, and the dress dissolved off her in green sparks, returning her to her familiar pajamas. She sat up on the bed, looking out the window, past which Raven Brooks hid its darkest secrets. Her immense, previously hidden willpower had finally awakened. She would fix her mistakes. She would protect Ivan. She would earn Nicky's forgiveness and become a part of this crazy team.
"Ha. Watch out, Raven Brooks. Finch just got a serious upgrade."