When Villains Rise

by Rebecca Schaeffer

  She expected to feel relief, to feel satisfied at this proof that she’d killed the right person, that her father had been avenged. But it only made her feel more empty and hollow inside.

  Through it all, Kovit slept. He had a breathing machine, and his chest rose and fell as it dictated. His chest was a mess of bandages. At one point, his pulse skyrocketed, and the nurses dragged him away for another emergency surgery.

  When he came back, he looked even more waxy and still, his hair losing its gloss and his eyes becoming sunken. Sometimes, in the dead of night, Nita would enlist the help of her police supervisors to help her drag Kovit’s bed through the hospital to the emergency room to let his body absorb some of the pain. His color always looked better after that, though the police escort always looked unnerved.

  On the third day, she had a new visitor.

  Agent Quispe walked through the door wearing a crisp business suit and a cold expression. Her brown skin looked taut and a bit waxen, and her buzzcut had grown out a little. The officers at the door had relieved her of her gun, and she crossed her arms when she entered the room.

  Nita rose from her seat beside Kovit, eyes wide. “Agent Quispe.”

  “Nita.” Nita had never heard Agent Quispe’s voice so cold. Usually it was firm and commanding, occasionally gentle, but never angry, especially not this stony calm sort of anger.

  Nita gave her a patently fake smile. “What brings you here?”

  The INHUP agent’s face remained still with rage. “I’m here to confirm the identity of the man who participated in the kidnapping of two INHUP agents and a minor under our protection.” Quispe’s eyes met Nita’s. “And why are you here?”

  Nita’s smile fell under Quispe’s expression. She could see the agent had put the disparate pieces together, had puzzled it all out well before she came to Buenos Aires. She’d realized Nita and Kovit had been working together from the start, and she wasn’t surprised to find Nita hovering over his bedside. She’d come to prove her suspicions, and there was nothing Nita could do or say to allay them.

  It made Nita a little sad, she realized, to burn her bridge with Agent Quispe. She actually liked the INHUP agent. Quispe had seemed to honestly care about Nita. Her promise to expose the corruption in INHUP had seemed genuine.

  Nita just shrugged softly. “Why ask questions you already know the answer to?”

  Quispe’s expression darkened.

  They stood there staring at each other for long moments, before Quispe finally said, “You’ve made a fool of me.”

  “Not intentionally.” Nita’s voice was soft.

  “You had me searching for corruption in INHUP when it was you all along.”

  Nita snorted. “When it was me all along? Give me a break. Did I sell my own location on the black market? Not a chance. No, INHUP is exactly as corrupt as the news says, and you know it. You knew it before you met me.”

  Quispe didn’t flinch, but her mouth turned down, and that was as close as Nita was going to get to an acknowledgment. “You led me to believe that an INHUP leak exposed Fabricio’s travel information.”

  “Ah, you mean Fabricio Tácunan?”

  Quispe’s eyes widened slightly, and Nita smiled at her small victory.

  “You hadn’t figured that part out yet, had you?” Nita crossed her arms. “In fact, despite what you seem to think, there’s a lot you haven’t figured out.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me?”

  For a moment, Nita was tempted, but then she shook her head. “Whatever confession you’re hoping to tape here and use as evidence, it won’t work.”

  “This isn’t being taped.”

  But Nita knew she’d guessed right by the way Quispe’s hand shifted ever so slightly to her left pocket, where no doubt something was recording this conversation.

  “Sure.” Nita sat down again and turned her face to Kovit. “But I’ve nothing more to say.”

  Quispe was silent a long time, long enough that Nita wondered if she’d left and Nita hadn’t noticed, when the click of her shoes approached. She looked down on Kovit, eyes traveling over all the tubes he was hooked up to and settling on his face.

  “Why?” Quispe finally asked. “He’s a monster.”

  Nita shrugged. “Aren’t we all?”

  “Not like that. Not like him.”

  It was a fair point, and Nita didn’t have a counter to it. Finally, after a moment, Nita whispered softly, “He was on my side. He was the only one on my side. The only one I could trust in an ocean of lies and betrayal. INHUP, Fabricio, my family. Everyone was lying to me. Except Kovit.” She raised her eyes to Quispe. “I think you underestimate the power of trust.”

  Quispe’s jaw tightened, and her voice was full of hurt as she whispered, “I was on your side. You could have trusted me.”

  Nita looked down. “I did. But I didn’t trust INHUP, and I didn’t trust that you were as wary of them as I was.” And I didn’t think you’d be on my side if you knew the truth about who I was and what I’d done.

  They were silent a time, watching Kovit’s chest rise and fall before Quispe finally said, “If he survives and the DUL doesn’t go back up, I’ll testify against him at his trial. I’m not letting him get away with murdering that agent.”

  Nita nodded. “I’d expect nothing less. May justice prevail.”

  Quispe’s mouth curved in a warped smile that said she knew exactly how different their ideas of justice were. “I hope it does.”

  Quispe didn’t say anything else, just sat for a few minutes with Nita as they watched a monster sleep, the beep of the heart monitor counting his victims and the hiss of the respirators chronicling their screams.

  Forty-Two

  KOVIT WOKE THE NEXT DAY.

  Nita was dozing beside his bed. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been awake, only that at some point, she glanced at him and saw he was watching her with those dark, long-lashed eyes she was so familiar with.

  He tried to say something, but he still had a tube down his throat, so all that came out was a choking noise. Trembling, Nita reached over, touched his hair softly, reverently, as though she couldn’t quite believe it, and called for a doctor.

  Kovit was surrounded in a flurry of activity as the medical staff swarmed him. Machines were unhooked. Different machines were hooked. The tube was taken out of his throat, which sounded like a very painful process if Kovit’s yelps and groans were anything to go by.

  The doctor spoke to him in stilted English, and Kovit responded blearily. He asked for water, and they gave it to him. After a few minutes, the hubbub died down, and Nita returned to her seat next to him.

  “Hey,” he croaked.

  “Hey.” Her chest was so tight she barely got the word out.

  He gave her a cracked smile. “You look terrible.”

  She laughed hoarsely. “You should see yourself.”

  “Who, me?” He attempted a charming smile. “I’m sure I’m the most handsome patient in the hospital.”

  She laughed a little. “Sure, you’ll win the hospital beauty pageant crown.”

  He took another sip of water, and his smile fell, his expression turning pensive. His eyes strayed to the policeman at the door and then back to Nita. “I get the feeling I missed a lot.”

  She spent the next hour updating him, careful of what she said in case the policeman was listening. She managed to unobtrusively tell him the story she’d given the police about how they’d met and his relationship in INHUP, worried that the police would come any minute to take his statement and he’d accidentally contradict Nita and put them both in a bad situation.

  Kovit listened as she explained, his eyes hooded, and she couldn’t tell what he thought of their cover story. Once she was finished, he was silent for a long time before he asked softly, “My sister?”

  “Gone. I don’t know where.”

  He nodded slowly, eyes sad, and didn’t say anything more about it.

  The police arrived shortly after, and Nita w
as asked to leave the room while they took Kovit’s statement. Most of the officers shifted uncomfortably and avoided eye contact with Kovit, and Nita found it a marvel. Kovit was bedridden, near death, and these armed adult men were still terrified of him.

  She waited for the police to be done in the small room down the hall. It had a row of black chairs and a small end table, but there were no magazines here to view. Just an old TV that didn’t seem to work anymore.

  Nita closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall as she slid into a seat, just breathing, letting relief swamp her. Kovit was alive. It wasn’t going to be easy, and his recovery would take time, but he was alive. And as long as he was alive, she could fix things. As long as he was alive, her mother hadn’t won.

  Something sharp and jagged and terrible that had been clinging like a poison leech to the inside of her chest the past few days finally released, and her shoulders slumped, all the tension suddenly going out of them. She let out a heavy breath, tension whispering out of her body and bone-deep exhaustion taking its place. She’d been powering through the last few days on caffeine and desperation, and now that he’d woken, she just wanted to curl up beside him and sleep for the next year.

  Not that she could. There was still a lot to do, even more now. Plans to weave, people to bribe, decisions to make. Agent Quispe was going to make life difficult.

  “I heard Kovit woke up.”

  Nita opened her eyes at the sound of the familiar voice, stunned to find Fabricio standing in front of her. He looked different, more mature now, in a button-up white shirt and slacks. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, and his hair had been combed and parted on the side. It floofed a little, but it no longer had that I-was-just-kidnapped-and-tortured mussed look, which was more what she was used to.

  “Fabricio.” Wariness crept into her voice. “Why are you here?”

  He sat down beside her, a slight smile on his face, and folded his bandaged hand in his lap. “I’m here to make you an offer.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What kind of offer?”

  Fabricio sighed softly. “Look, Nita. I’m tired. I don’t want to fight you. And I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, wondering if you’re hunting me down and trying to kill me.” He gave her an ironic smile. “I think you know what that’s like.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “We’ve done a lot of damage to each other. We’ve lied and hurt and destroyed. I don’t want to anymore. I want it to end.” He met her eyes. “So I’m offering you an olive branch.”

  “What kind of olive branch?”

  “Legal representation for Kovit.”

  Nita stared. “Pardon?”

  Fabricio’s gaze was steady. “Tácunan Law’s main purpose was to protect monsters from jail. I personally know all the lawyers who practice that kind of law. I’ve come into a lot of money from my father’s offshore accounts now that I’m eighteen. I can hire you the best lawyer in the world for crimes against humanity.”

  Nita was silent.

  Fabricio’s eyes flicked nervously, as though worried her silence was a rejection. “You’ve won the publicity battle against INHUP, but there’s still video evidence of Kovit torturing people online. Yes, he’s young in the videos. But it still exists. He’s still a zannie who worked for the mafia. I can get you a lawyer that will win any trial Kovit goes to. Hell, I can get someone who can make sure charges never get filed.”

  Nita bowed her head. Fabricio was right, Kovit did need a lawyer. For the videos, for the DUL, for Mirella if she chose to press charges. For the charges Agent Quispe had threatened her with.

  “And what? I’m just supposed to forgive you?” she asked, voice tight.

  “No. I don’t particularly care if you forgive me.” He smiled slightly. “You don’t have to like me. Just stop trying to kill me.”

  Nita was silent, thinking of everything that had happened to this point. The different faces of Fabricio she’d seen, all carefully created to get himself what he wanted. “You’re a serial liar. How can I trust that you won’t come after me?”

  “I’m a liar, it’s true.” Fabricio gave her a bitter smile. “I had to be, to survive. I lied and lied and lied to stay alive. I lied so much that sometimes even I don’t know what’s true anymore.” He closed his eyes for a moment and his smile fell as he confessed, “Sometimes, when I’m alone, I think I could have been a good person. In another life. When I didn’t need to fight to survive. But that’s just another lie. Because no one knows who they really are until they’re tested the way we’ve been—and you and I, we both chose to survive, no matter what the cost. We gave up being good people to be living people.”

  She stared at him a beat, then snorted. “I don’t think I’ve ever been a very good person.”

  He laughed softly. “Given your upbringing, that doesn’t surprise me.”

  Nita’s face fell at the reminder of her mother. The reminder of what she’d done to her mother.

  “Sometimes I wonder,” Nita whispered, “if we aren’t all destined to become certain types of people, no matter our upbringing. The girl I was trapped in a cage with, Mirella, is an activist now, working against unnatural trafficking. If she hadn’t been kidnapped, she wouldn’t have that cause. But she always had fire, she was always passionate. So would she have just found another cause?”

  Fabricio blinked. “I don’t know.”

  “If I hadn’t been kidnapped, I’d still be trapped with my mother. I wouldn’t be a killer.” Nita met Fabricio’s eyes. “But I wonder if it was only a matter of time and opportunity before I rose up against her.”

  “Perhaps.” His voice was soft.

  “And I wonder if it’s only a matter of time before you betray me again.”

  He winced. “I lie to survive—there’s no survival benefit to keeping up this cycle of vengeance with you.” His gaze was steady. “Don’t trust me, that’s fine. But trust my desire to live. I don’t care about you, Nita. I don’t care what you do, or if you live or die. I don’t want or need vengeance. All I want is to be left alone. And if you agree to do that, you’ll never have to see me again.”

  Nita watched the police file out of Kovit’s room and down the hall. They were hunched together in a group, whispering, but they didn’t look angry or violent, and there was still a guard posted at Kovit’s door, so Nita imagined the meeting couldn’t have gone too disastrously.

  But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t in the future.

  Nita’s eyes went back to Fabricio. For so long, he’d been the focal point of her rage. He’d betrayed her over and over and over. She’d done so much to capture him, to kill him, to get her vengeance. Leaving him alive was like leaving a loose end, one more thing that could come back to haunt her in the future. Letting him go went against everything she was.

  But Kovit needed what Fabricio was offering. Kovit had so many legal battles to face, so many enemies. The truth was, he wouldn’t survive without a lawyer. If Nita truly wanted Kovit to get through this, she had to accept Fabricio’s offer.

  Could she do that? Put her vengeance aside to save him? Could she betray the past version of herself, the desperate frightened girl in the cage who promised herself she’d destroy the one who put her there, to save the person who meant the most to her present self?

  She was shocked to find, when she thought about it, that she could.

  It wasn’t that she forgave Fabricio—she didn’t think she was truly capable of forgiveness. But the rage that had burned so bright and vicious when she’d discovered his betrayal was only a dull flame, a slowly burning anger she suspected would never fully leave, even if Fabricio was dead and buried.

  So, no, she couldn’t forgive Fabricio. But then again, she didn’t need to. She just needed to cooperate with him, to make a deal. Like she’d done with Adair, and like she imagined she’d have to do again in the future. She could be practical.

  The Nita who first met Fabricio would have hesitated to hurt him. The
Nita who found out he betrayed her would have made him scream until he died. But this Nita, here and now, understood that the world was give and take, that sometimes you had to let things go, not hold on, because justice for your past wasn’t as important as safety and security for your present and future.

  And though she’d never voice it aloud, she’d come to understand Fabricio. She didn’t forgive, but she could understand. And with that understanding came the belief that this deal was probably genuine.

  So quietly, and without much fanfare, she let her quest for vengeance slip away, into the dark currents of her memory.

  “Yes,” Nita said finally, her voice gentler than she expected. “I want the lawyer.”

  Fabricio smiled slightly and rose. “Then it’s a deal?”

  Nita nodded. “It’s a deal.”

  Forty-Three

  FABRICIO INSISTED ON telling Kovit himself, and the two of them returned to Kovit’s room together.

  As the guard checked Fabricio for weapons at the door, Nita watched him carefully. “Fabricio?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I always wondered. What kind of unnatural are you?” She raised her eyebrows. “You claimed to be valuable for so long. I’m reasonably sure that was a lie.”

  “Oh.” He flushed a little. The guard gestured that he was free to enter, and Fabricio smiled at him, then turned back to Nita awkwardly. “I’m an aur.”

  He began to glow, flickering like there was a lightbulb just beneath the surface of his skin. On and off.

  Nita stared at him, her mouth open slightly. “That’s it? You’re an aur?”

  Dime-a-dozen aurs were essentially bioluminescent people. Pieces of them did make money on the black market, but no one would ever consider them rare or hard to find. Back in Death Market, one of the dealers had been an aur.

  “Yep.” He grinned. “The most boring unnatural in existence. I can glow so bright you might decide to put on sunglasses. Witness my superpowers.”