Page 62

TREY

“Liz?” I say when she answers my call. I’m lying on the couch with my baby sleeping on my chest. I hope she won’t wake up again.

“Hey, T-Bear.”

“Can you come over?” I ask softly.

“Um, sure. Is everything—Oh my god. Is Ari in labor?”

“No.”

“Damn. I thought for sure that’s why you called. She’s like, what, three days overdue?”

“Liz, she’s not in labor because... well, she’s done.”

“What?” Liz shrieks so loudly, I have to pull the phone away from my ear. “Since when?”

“About two hours ago.”

“Oh my god!” She switches to shouting. “Colton! I’m going to Trey’s! Be back later!”

In the background, Colton shouts back, “Cool. Send me pics!”

A door slams shut, then Liz says, “Okay, T. I’m getting in my car now.”

“Good,” I say, “because I really need you.”

“What for?”

I stare at my daughter, who looks just like her mother. “You know how to change a diaper, right?”

“Yeah, but don’t you?”

“Arella and I took some parenting classes together. I practiced once on one of those fake dolls, but I can’t really remember it right now.

I don’t wanna fuck it up. I’d ask one of the nurses here, but I’m too embarrassed to admit I don’t know how to change my own baby’s diaper.

It’s not urgent because the diaper’s not full yet.

Honestly, I just really need you here. Arella is.

..” I hear Liz’s car engine start up in the background as I work up the courage to tell her what happened.

“Just take a deep breath.”

I do, then let it out. “Arella is currently sedated.”

“What?”

As Liz makes her way here, I tell her everything that happened, from the start of Arella’s contractions to all the chaos during and after the birth.

“They said she’s gonna be okay, so I’m trying my damnedest to believe them.”

“Just hang in there, T. I’ll be there soon.”

When Liz arrives, she uses her key to get in so I don’t have to move.

“In here,” I say from the living room. My voice startles my baby so much, she wakes up with a wail. Fuck.

Liz drops her purse onto the floor as she enters the living room.

“Please help me,” I beg as I sit up, holding my crying baby against my chest. “Tell me you know how to do baby shit.”

“Oh, T. I’m sure you’re doing just fine.”

“I’m not. She keeps waking up and crying every ten minutes. Earlier, when I tried to feed her, one of the nurses had to step in because I couldn’t get her to latch on to the bottle.”

“That’s pretty normal.”

I hold my daughter out. “Just take her, and tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

“Um...” Liz lets out a chuckle. “First off, that’s not how you hold an infant.”

“What? The nurse said I need to keep her neck supported. That’s what I’m doing.”

Liz offers me a gentle smile. “Here. Lemme help.”

Five minutes later, Liz is on the couch with my baby calmly drinking from a bottle.

“I swear, you’re a baby whisperer.”

Liz giggles, never taking her eyes off my daughter. I don’t blame her. It’s been hard for me to look anywhere else too. “Becoming a parent isn’t easy, T. Just be patient with yourself. It’s a big learning curve.”

“I don’t think you realize how big my curve is. Until that nurse handed me my daughter, I’d never even held a baby.”

“Seriously?” She gapes up at me from the couch. “Actually, now that I think about it, that checks out.”

With the lightest plop I can manage, I settle onto the couch too. For a while, neither of us says anything. We just admire my daughter with light smiles on our faces.

Eventually, Liz breaks the silence. “What’s her name?”

“I don’t know. Since Arella did all the work to grow our baby, I wanted her to come up with a name. She told me she had some in mind but wanted to surprise me. The nurses and I have just been calling her baby girl. ”

“That’s cute.”

I bite my lip before asking, “Liz, do you notice anything strange about her?”

“Strange? Like what?”

“Like this.” I head across the room, standing well over an arm’s length away.

At first, Liz crumples her eyebrows together with a what the hell are you doing? face. Then she gasps and stares down at my baby. “Oh my god. She’s one of us!”

“Yep.” I return to the couch.

“But—”

“I know.”

Liz pauses to think, then says, “Do you think the genetic test came back wrong?”

“I dunno, but?—”

Ding-dong!

“Who the hell is here?” I pop up to answer the door.

On my front stoop is Mia Wang wearing another silky blouse tucked into her black skirt. “The test was not wrong, Mr. Grant.”

“Jeez. Remind me to never talk shit about the zovernment. Not even under my breath.”

“We’ve heard it all. Trust me.” She lets out a light chuckle. “May I come in?”

Back in the living room, I offer Mia the recliner. She accepts it with a smile toward Liz. “It’s nice to officially meet you, Miss Hart.”

I’ve told Liz all about how the zovernment watches us through Astral Projectors.

While the smile Liz flashes toward Mia is friendly, it’s not her friendliest. “I’m guessing you’re Mia Wang?”

“Correct.”

“Are you here to tell me that my child is Dormant?” I settle back down next to Liz, who’s still feeding my daughter like a pro. The milk in the bottle is almost gone, and my baby hasn’t gotten fussy once. Seriously, what was I doing wrong earlier?

“Even Dormant Zordis have an elemental chromosome,” Mia says.

“They have the genetics to produce mind and body powers as well. They just have a condition that prevents them from doing so. Most Dormant children will develop their powers later in life. Unfortunately, being Dormant is not the case with your daughter.”

“How long have you known that my daughter is a Zordi?” I ask, because even though the zovernment has been taking amazing care of my wife throughout her pregnancy, I still don’t fully trust them.

“I got a message from your main zoctor about thirty minutes ago.”

From what I can tell, Mia’s speaking the truth. It’s good to know this wasn’t something the zovernment knew about and chose to keep from us. “So if my daughter isn’t Dormant, what is she?”

“Since we’ve only had thirty minutes to theorize, we aren’t a hundred percent sure, but we suspect your daughter might be the Helio.”

“The what?”

“The Helio. It’s a rare Zordi who does not have a mind, body, or elemental power. Instead, they are a power.”

Liz perks up. “Oh! I read about this in Zordi school when we were learning about Zordinary myths and legends. Isn’t the Helio like the sun or something?”

“Correct, Miss Hart. And just like the sun, there is only one. Think of the Helio as the sun in human form with the power to give energy to others. The Helio was once a living, breathing Zordi, just like us. When they died, they turned into an invisible wisp with its own thoughts and feelings. Because it takes its energy from the sun, it never fully dies. It just floats around the world until it finds its next suitable human host to latch onto. Once it does, it gives that host all of its powers, turning that host into the Helio. Once that host dies, the wisp moves on to find their next host.”

I take a moment to process that. “So, um, you’re saying there’s a wispy thing inside my daughter?”

“If our theory is correct, then yes.”

“How can we know for sure?”

“Like our limited knowledge about Immunes, we don’t have much knowledge about this either. The legend says that because the Helio draws its powers directly from the sun, the host’s skin will glow slightly when under sunlight.”

I glance at Liz, then at the bit of sunshine coming through the living room window between the curtains. As if reading my mind, Liz stands and strides across the living room. I wave a hand at the curtains, and they slide apart all the way.

As soon as the sunlight hits my daughter’s face, I gasp. Her skin instantly brightens and gives off a subtle glow.

“That’s enough proof for me,” Liz says.

“During the quick five-minute briefing session I got about the Helio before arriving here,” Mia says, “I was told that the Helio used to be the most powerful Zordi to ever live. They had the power to do things like control the weather and bring people back to life.”

I imagine my daughter growing up, running around gravesites, raising zombies out of the dirt. The scene doesn’t sit right with me.

Mia continues, “However, there haven’t been signs that the Helio has been active for centuries, so it’s most likely that your daughter may never develop any Helio powers at all.”

“Is there a way to get this wispy thing out of my baby?” I ask.

“Not that we know of.”

“What does this mean for her then?”

“That depends entirely on if she develops any Helio powers or not. If she does, we’ll have to make sure she’s safe and under control.

If she doesn’t, she’ll simply live out her life as if she’s Dormant.

Over time, her skin brightening under the sun should lessen, but it won’t ever fully disappear.

It shouldn’t be noticeable unless someone’s really looking for it. ”

None of that sounds ideal. I was thrilled about having an Ordinary child.

This Helio thing sounds like a whole lot of chaos I wasn’t prepared for.

Not only do I have to learn how to be a father who can correctly hold an infant, but now I have to learn how to handle having the one and only sun wisp inside my daughter?

I really need my wife right now. She’d know what to do.

A nurse knocks on the doorframe of my bedroom. “Mr. Grant?”

I finish swaddling my baby girl, then pick her up and support her against my chest. “Yes?”

“Your wife is awake and asking for you.”

Thank fuck! I’ve been sitting at Arella’s bedside for hours upon hours, waiting for her to wake up. Of course it’s when I’m upstairs, changing our baby’s clothes, that she rises.

I race down the steps and into the kitchen to find my wife sitting up in her medical bed. The nurses and our midwife are gone, but they haven’t gone far. Their low murmurs of conversation and light emotions are floating into me from the living room.

When Arella sees me, her face lights up. “Is that our baby?”