Unmasked

“It’s Saturday. She’s not at work.”

Matt stared at his phone screen and the four texts he had sent to Audrey, which were left unanswered. She normally responded right away, even if she was working, but these had been sent at least an hour apart. Matt glanced over at Cyrus, who was also not answering as he screwed a new lightbulb into the ceiling light. He’d come over to help Matt out with fixing the electricity and installing the internet and tv, but so far he’d been the one doing all the work while Matt tried to get a hold of Audrey. Cyrus tightly screwed the lightbulb in before climbing down the ladder and sitting on the bottom rung.

“Did you call her?” he asked.

“It rang once or twice and went to voicemail,” Matt told him.

“But it rang?” Cyrus asked, raising a brow.

“Yeah.”

“She hung up on you.”

Matt frowned, staring at him blankly. Cyrus just shrugged.

“If it goes straight to voicemail, it means the phone is probably off or not getting a signal,” he explained. “If it rings several times and then goes to voicemail, then she didn’t make it to the phone in time. If it rings once or twice and then goes to voicemail, she purposefully cut the call.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Matt said. “Maybe she lost signal in the middle of the call.”

“I don’t know,” Cyrus said. “It kind of looks like she’s mad at you.”

“Why the hell would she be mad at me?” Matt argued. “She even made me breakfast this morning. I figured that meant she maybe kind of liked me.”

Cyrus just shrugged again. Matt chewed on his lip pensively, then looked back up at him.

“What happened with Nichelle last night?” he asked.

“It was weird,” Cyrus admitted. “She seemed off the entire ride home, and was ranting to me about nothing in particular. I thought I made a bad impression on her at first, but then she invited me up for drinks. Well, she told me to come up for drinks. She seems nice, and she’s hot as hell, but she was just weird. She was asking a lot of questions about you.”

“About me?” Matt said, surprised. “That’s weird. She’s always been kind of blunt and bold around me, but never in a bad way. It’s as if she didn’t even know me last night. What did she ask you?”

“Kind of obscure questions,” Cyrus said. “She was asking where you grew up and where you went to school. Stuff like that. She wanted to know what sorts of things you did when you weren’t working or with Audrey. Eventually I told her that talking about you wasn’t my favorite date conversation. It was probably the first complete sentence I was able to say to her all night. She seemed impressed.”

Matt thought about it for a minute, then stood up and grabbed his jacket. “I’m going to borrow your car. I just want to see if Audrey is okay.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do here?”

“Well, if you set up my internet, you get to use it.”

Cyrus was not impressed, but Matt just ignored him and headed out. It took a bit of effort to get past the doorman of Audrey’s building without her explicit permission to let him up, but it seemed that they’d seen him enough times to know he knew someone there. Audrey didn’t answer the door when he knocked, but he could hear her shuffling around in there.

“Audrey?” he called through the door. “Are you okay? I’m kind of worried about-”

The door opened and cut him off, and Audrey was standing there looking sick and hollow. Her eyes were puffy from crying, and Matt felt his worries increase.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Audrey just narrowed her eyes at him, nearly slamming the door in his face had he not caught it.

“Tell me what I did,” Matt told her, letting himself inside when she stopped pushing against the door and walked away.

She didn’t answer, sitting down on the couch and looking at her feet. Matt sat down next to her, reaching out to touch her and feeling a pain in his chest when she flinched away from him. He dropped his hand back in his lap, just looking at her in silence. Suddenly she looked back up, grabbing his face so he was looking at her.

“Look me straight in the eyes, Matt,” she said. “Don’t blink, don’t say anything.”

He did as she asked and she searched his eyes for a moment before making sort of a choking sound and shoving him away angrily.

“What is it?” Matt asked again. “Why are you so mad at me? Is it because I looked so sloppy in public yesterday? I had to wear that shirt, I haven’t done laundry-”

“This isn’t about your fucking laundry!” she snapped at him, standing up. “This is because you’ve been lying to me this whole fucking time!”

“Lying?” Matt repeated, also standing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never lied to you.”

“Oh, excuse me,” she said. “You weren’t lying, you just weren’t telling me the entire truth.”

“What truth?!”

“When did you intend to tell me that you’re Cryogen?” she yelled.

Matt froze, eyes widening. Now things made sense. He wasn’t sure how she figured him out, but he didn’t get a chance to explain before she slapped him hard across the face. When he snapped back into reality and tried to speak, she hit him again.

“Will you stop for five seconds?!” Matt begged, grabbing her wrist. “Look, I don’t know how you figured it out, but I’m the same person today that I was yesterday. Yeah, I’m Cryogen. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that. But this doesn’t change anything, Audrey.”

“It changes everything!” she said with a disbelieving tone in her voice. “You’re one of them. You’re IHC.”

“IHC doesn’t even like me,” Matt sighed. “They think I’m- Wait, how do you know about IHC? It’s a secret organization.”

Audrey went silent, crossing her arms over her chest and turning away from him. This time, Matt was the suspicious one, taking a few steps closer to her and trying to look around at her face.

“Audrey,” he said quietly. “Do you have a secret, too?”

“Oh please, Matt. Don’t try to turn this on me.”

“Audrey.”

“I fucking hate you, Matt,” she spat. “I’ve hated you for over four years now. You’ve been one of the pains in my ass since the first time I saw you.”

Matt paused, taking it all in.

“Are you Phantasma?” he asked slowly.

“You catch on quick, Elsa.”

Matt wasn’t sure what to make of it. He’d seen the hatred in those eyes many times before, but it always came from Phantasma and he had never put two and two together. Seeing the hatred coming from Audrey just shattered his heart completely.

“That’s a lot to take in,” Matt said.

“Get out,” Audrey told him.

“Hold on, we should talk about it,” Matt said. “Leaving it there is just going to make things even worse. Maybe we could-”

“Matt, how fucking dense are you?” Audrey said. “I asked you to leave. That means forever. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I mean, not forever,” Matt stammered. “Maybe in a couple of days-”

“Enough with the maybes,” she interrupted harshly. “There is no maybe. I don’t want anything to do with you. It’s over. We’re done.”

“Done?”

“I’m breaking up with you, you fucking moron.”

Matt had never felt so broken in his life. He just stared at her, but she was avoiding looking at him, especially making eye contact. It was clear that her decision had been made, even if Matt hadn’t been prepared for it in the least. He slowly picked up his keys and backed up towards the door.

“Don’t even think about calling the police, either,” Audrey added. “I’ll make you regret it.”

Matt finally managed to catch her eyes, not once breaking eye contact as he answered in a soft voice.

“I’d never tell anyone,” he said. “And if I did, there is nothing that could possibly hurt more.”

There was a flash of a different look in her eyes, but Matt couldn’t tell what it was before they hardened to anger again. She broke contact and walked off to the other room, and Matt let himself out.

He nearly ran four red lights from how distracted he was on his way home, and from the moment saw him, Cyrus knew that things had gone terribly wrong. He didn’t ask, and Matt was grateful for that. He really couldn’t function well enough to explain himself. The day had taken a turn for the worst, and he still found himself unable to process that Phantasma and Audrey were the same person. The truth was staring him right in the face, and yet, he couldn’t believe any of it.

He wasn’t sure when night fell and the sun came back up, but he hadn’t moved from his spot on the couch since he came home. He was staring at the tv, but it wasn’t even on. Eventually he made a slight movement to pick up the remote and turn it on, flipping through channels until something caught his eye. They were playing Frozen. Go figure. He was only a little bit ashamed that he already had the movie recorded. In fact, it even made him feel slightly less dead inside.

He ended up watching the movie three times in a row, by the end of the third time, he was pretty much a blubbering mess that threw handful of cheetos at the tv every time Hans showed up on the screen and pretended to be a good person. And every time the troll came up. The trolls were awful. Just awful.

He didn’t notice his phone going off until he was rewinding the movie for round four, seeing that he had twelve missed calls. All of them from Melanie. That was weird. As a thirteenth call came in, his finger hovered over “decline”, but he ultimately accepted it.

“Thank you for calling Arendelle. Queen Elsa, speaking.”

“Matt? You picked up,” Melanie said, sounding a little bit frazzled on the other end.

“You have about 15 seconds to give me a pitch before I hang up,” he mumbled. “I’m busy.”

“You’re going to get a page from IHC,” she told him. “We’ve gotten a tip about an attack on the festival.”

“I’m not going to-”

“Don’t answer the page. Stay home.”

Matt frowned. He heard someone in the background speak to Melanie, and though he wasn’t completely sure what they were saying, it sounded like they were telling Melanie it was time to go.

“Is everything okay?” Matt asked.

“Just don’t go,” she said. “I have to go. Stay at home.”

And then she hung up. Soon after, Matt got the IHC message in question. Not that he was going to go anyways. IHC already ruined his life, and he didn’t want anything to do with them at this point.

At some point, Matt fell asleep, only to be roughly shaken awake. He groaned and swatted the hands away, blinking a few times. When his vision adjusted, he saw Nichelle standing over him. Startled, he scooted back suddenly to get away, eyes widening.

“How the hell did you get in here?” He asked.

“Through the window,” she said simply. “Are you watching Frozen?”

“I’ve been watching Frozen for two days now.”

“Matt.”

“What do you even want?” He sighed. “Are you here to give me that bullshit bff speech? ‘You hurt my best friend and I hurt you’, kind of bullshit? Because you can go ahead. I’m just going to ignore you.”

“Matt.”

“You’re Madame Mystic, aren’t you? You know, I’m really starting to put a lot of things together.”

“Matt.”

“I don’t want to deal with you-”

“Audrey needs you right now.”

Now Matt was paying attention. He sat up straight, paying attention now.

“What happened?” He asked her.

“Fade had a group of his own attacking the festival yesterday,” she explained. “Audrey was part of that group. I’m not sure what happened, but she was way off her usual game. IHC got her, but I’m not sure it’s IHC. They didn’t take her to prison like they usually would. Someone there is taking matters into their own hands.”

“What are they doing to her?”

“I don’t know. You’re the only one who can get in there without being questioned. I know she said a lot of nasty things to you, but you need to go see what they’re doing there. For her sake. Will you?”

“Of course I will.”