Here we go - The Soulmate Programme part 5!
This will make no sense with prior parts 1, 2, 3, and 4
They were halfway over the city when the protagonist started shivering uncontrollably in the pre-dawn cold. The hero slowed, started to float down towards a rooftop.
“No,” the protagonist said through chattering teeth. “No, don’t stop. We can’t stop now or...”
...or else I’m not getting back up, the protagonist didn’t say.
The hero’s grip tightened around them. But silently, they sped up just slightly.
They were both avoiding eye contact.
“You knew?” the protagonist asked quietly. “Who [Villain] was?”
The hero swallowed. “Yes,” they confessed just as softly, their eyes on the horizon as the wind ruffled their hair gently. “I mean, I knew what happened to me - to us. I didn’t know...”
The protagonist squinted up at them. “You didn’t know the government put them up to it?”
Hero pressed their lips together, so tight the protagonist expected to see blood. “[Villain] has every right to hate me. So do you, I guess.”
The protagonist leaned their face against the hero’s shoulder, inhaled that same smell of sweat and singe and fear. It was really a thing, flying over the city as the last stars twinkled overhead, shedding their kind and forgiving light over them all.
“I don’t hate you,” the protagonist whispered, and realized a moment later they meant ‘you’ in the plural.
“I still think it’s real,” the hero said, with a sniff and a faint smile. “The soulmate match. I hope it’s real. You’re incredible.”
The protagonist swallowed. “I guess we’re about to find out.”
...
They touched down on the balcony of a squat office tower on the south edge of the city, overlooking a grim expanse of freight yards and train tracks. The hero carefully set the protagonist on their feet and, after an assessing look at the door, gave the floor-to-ceiling window beside it a swift jab that shattered the glass into a puddle of smooth-edged fragments.
“Safety glass?” the protagonist asked hoarsely. They’d gone beyond tired and cold into some other numb place, feeling like they were still floating on air somehow.
“Standard for any government building now,” the hero said, stepping over the threshold and offering the protagonist their hand.
For a moment, the protagonist hesitated. But they were too far along now to be petty. They took the hero’s hand and did not let go as the hero led the way through the silent cubicles, punching in codes to take them through locked hallways and past red blinking security cameras that never turned to follow them. Up an odd half stairwell in an old fashioned style that didn’t fit the modern building, and then a final steel lined door that the hero grabbed and simply yanked from its hinges.
Within was a cave of a room, lit by the light of dozens of monitors mounted in a haphazard pattern around a small workstation cluttered with crumpled papers and a clutch of novelty mugs. Staring up at the screens in a cheap office chair sat a figure in a dark hoodie. As the door crashed open, she swiveled around.
“Ah. Hi, [Hero], [Protagonist],” the soulmate super said with a tired smirk. “I was wondering when you’d get here.”
“You-” The protagonist felt hands on their arms and realized the hero was holding them back. “I knew it. This was a set up. You set me the fuck up! You lied to [Hero] - got their hopes up and broke their heart! You knew this would happen, that this would all blow up when you dropped me in the middle of this clusterfuck of government malfeasance and abuse and- and-”
They had to stop and catch their breath.
“Um.” The hero looked back and forth between the protagonist and the super. “Sorry, you were expecting us?”
“Of course she was!” The protagonist wrenched free - or rather the hero let go - to jab an accusing finger. “What does the soulmate programme really rely on? Behavioral prediction. That’s your superpower, isn’t it?”
“Eh. Close enough,” the super said with a little shrug. The smirk faded as she got a closer look at the protagonist. “Oh, wow. I think, ah, tea. You definitely need a tea.” She stood and took herself over to a makeshift kitchenette set up on a folding table, waved to a camp cot set in the corner. “You lot will have to sit on the bed. Sorry, I don’t do much entertaining.”
The protagonist did not move. Behind them, they felt the hero straighten. Squaring up, following their lead. The soulmate super swallowed. “Please?”
The protagonist gritted their teeth. Sitting also felt dangerously comfortable, threateningly normal behavior that might lead to things like understanding or naps. But the gurgle of the electric kettle made up their mind. Dammit, they did want tea. Tea sounded incredible. They stomped over to the cot and sat. The hero trailed after them and to the protagonist's surprise, they were grateful for the silent support
“Thank you,” the super said, letting out her breath. “Yes. You’re right. That’s my power - I’m not a telepath, or clairvoyant but with just a little bit of interaction or information, I can kind of intuit a person’s whole psychological profile. Including, yes, some behavioral prediction.”
“And you knew our profiles together would end in me finding out the truth,” the protagonist snapped. “About [Hero], about [Villain], about the government’s role in setting all of this up. And now you expect me to splash that truth everywhere, blow the whole thing sky-high, because that’s who I am! Am I wrong?”
“Wait.” The hero’s eyes had gone wide in alarm. “[Protagonist], please, you can’t tell anyone...”
The super rubbed at her neck, watching the water in the kettle bubble up to a froth. “You got a couple things wrong, but that’s the gist of it.” She looked up from under her hood with a tired smile. “So. After [Hero] saved you from [Villain], why didn’t you start splashing? Why did you come here?”
The protagonist jerked away from the hero. “Because I don’t like being controlled. I don’t like being manipulated.” Distantly they noticed there were tears streaming down the face that felt like it belonged to somebody else. “You think you can just treat people like pawns, because you have powers and I don’t? Where do you think you get off? You want to expose the truth, why the hell don’t you go out there and take the heat yourself?!”
There was an awkward pause. The soulmate super had her arms wrapped around herself, slid a pleading gaze over to hero. The hero closed their eyes, but cleared their throat. “Um. [Protagonist],” they said gently, and gestured back to the broken steel door. “That was locked from the outside.”
The kettle whistled into the silence. The protagonist felt themselves crash hard back into their body, the crazy adrenaline rush sharply and suddenly over. The world spun and suddenly they were sitting on that army cot, the hero and the soulmate super on either side, holding them up.
“Stop,” the protagonist said thickly, trying to shrug them off. “Stop, I’m sorry. I get it. I’m not the one that needs saving...”
Over their head, the two supers shared a look the protagonist couldn’t put a name to.
“Maybe,” the soulmate super said, “We should drink that tea and I can start from the beginning.”
...
“So, there’s not actually that many of us that are that powerful. And of that group, there’s even less like [Hero], with that sort of classic flight/strength combo that makes for good television. So, there was a lot of pressure to find ways to make yourself useful.” The soulmate super sipped from a cup covered in kitten pictures and shrugged. “One of the counselors had called my power ‘reading souls.’ That’s what gave me the idea for all this. It was the least harmful thing I could think of to do with my powers.”
The protagonist crammed another biscuit in their mouth. They were the cheap kind, and only digestives, but in this moment they tasted like manna from heaven. “But if this was all your idea,” they said around a mouthful of crumbs, “why are you a prisoner?”
The super snorted. “Officially? I’m here for my own protection. From [Villain], or anyone else looking to take down such an invaluable government asset. In reality? Same reason they took [Hero] and split them into two. The government lusts to maximize our superpowers and is absolutely terrified of losing control of us.”
“That’s not - that’s not true,” the hero blurted out. They looked absurdly large on the end of the soulmate super’s cheap little cot, the thin metal legs visibly bending under their hunched over weight. “They had to do it. To me! My - our powers were dangerous and we were out of control-”
The protagonist opened their mouth to sooth, but to their surprise, the soulmate super got there first. “There was nothing wrong with you,” she snapped at hero, with the first flash of real anger the protagonist had seen. “I was there. There was... Fuck.” She rubbed at her neck again. “There was nothing wrong with you other than being the same scared kid we all were. You didn’t deserve what happened to you. Neither of you did.”
Belatedly, the protagonist startled up off the cot. “Shit. Do we... should we be running?”
“Nah,” the soulmate super said, leaning over to tap something on her computer workstation. “At this point the locked door is almost more of a formality. It’s when I stop working that all the bells and whistles go off.”
“Good.” The protagonist put down their tea mug with a thud. “Because now’s the part where you tell me exactly what is going to happen next. What was the point of all this? What’s your end game here?”
The super blinked again, took a long and slow sip of tea out of her kitten mug. “Ah. And here is the first place your summary of the situation was a teeny bit off. You... seem to be under the impression that I have some kind of master plan going on here.”
The protagonist felt their stomach drop. “What.”
The super spread her hands. “I had a split second. When your profile flashed into the system in the middle of the night. I could guess what would happen, I could see it was the perfect opportunity to throw a great honking monkey wrench into the works and...” She shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry if you came to me because you thought I had the solution to this, to [Hero] and [Villain]’s situation, to the whole government and supers and everything.” She glanced shyly over to the protagonist. “I was kinda hoping you would tell me.”
Heavily, the protagonist sat back down. They had wanted to believe there was a plan somewhere. A plan behind why the government seemed to both love and fear their supers, a plan behind why they specifically had been tossed into this mess to be manipulated, kidnapped, attacked, and more. The soulmate super looked genuinely distressed and somehow that made it worse. Because no one was coming in to save the day except the protagonist, and they had precisely zero god damned idea how to fix a person who’d been broken in two. Let alone, you know, everything else.
“Okay,” the protagonist said, holding their head in their hands. “Okay.” They reached out and grabbed the hero’s hand. The hero looked startled, but before they could say anything, the protagonist grabbed the soulmate super’s hand too. “We’ve got a superhero, a psychological genius, and, uh. Me. We can figure this out. Together.”
The soulmate super beamed. The hero nodded, their eyes fixed on the protagonist’s hand, dwarfed in their meaty fingers. The protagonist turned to the other super. “Anything else we need to know? Anything else I got wrong?”
“Oh!. Yes!” The soulmate super snapped her fingers. “I did set you up, but it wasn’t a lie. You are [Hero]’s soulmate. One of them, at least.”
“I’m what?” the protagonist shrieked, the same moment the hero gasped, “One of them?”
“Well, here you all are,” said a new voice from the darkness of the hallway. “How cozy.”
The protagonist and the two supers sprang to their feet, the hero shoving their way in front of the others.
Stepping awkwardly over the broken door was the governor’s chief of staff. She had a cast on her forearm, a nasty purplish bruise down the side of her face, and had replaced her usual spike heels with flats. But her hair was as shiny and her smile as vicious as always, as guards rushed into the room behind her, carelessly trampling the meager food and furnishings beneath their boots.
The soulmate super’s breath was short with terror. The protagonist grabbed her, squeezed her closer.
“You can’t think you can take me-” the hero started.
“[Villain] is decimating the city,” the chief said flatly. “They’re on a rampage of destruction and manslaughter, and have announced that they will not stop until [Protagonist] is delivered to them. Alive.” She looked to the soulmate super. “Cute little stunt you pulled here. I hope you’re happy with how it turned out this time.”
The soulmate super shrank, pulling back from protagonist’s arms. The hero’s gaze went hazy as their focus shifted somewhere else. Then it snapped back to the protagonist, their wide eyes a confirmation.
“Don’t,” the protagonist said, to both supers. “It’s what she wants. Dammit, don’t listen-”
“They’re right, you don’t have to listen,” the chief said with the cold inevitability of taxes and death. “But if you don’t want a lot more people to die, [Hero], starting with [Protagonist], I suggest you take your precious soulmate into protective custody and then get out there and do what you were made to do.” She smiled sourly. “Save us.”
Final part coming soon!