That left Marquis to duel with Manpower, striking the hero over and over with a massive scythe of bone that extended out from his wrist. Manpower was strong, and he was durable thanks to his electromagnetic shield – sparks flew as the scythe hit home over and over. Even so, the hero didn’t try to fight back.
It took her only a moment to realize why. Each swing of the scythe was calculated so that if the movement followed through, it would strike either the crippled Flashbang or Lightstar.
And Flashbang can’t shoot because Marquis will just armor himself before the sphere detonates. Lightstar is injured, Fleur needs her hands free to strike, and Lady Photon’s incapacitated.
“Brandish!” Manpower shouted. “Same plan, just the two of us!”
Right. Their battle plan wasn’t useless, now. Just harder to pull off.
This would take some courage.
She charged forward, manifesting energy in the shape of a lance, driving it toward Marquis.
He cast a glance her way and stuck one foot out in her direction. His toes mutated into a jagged, uneven ripple of bone that stretched out beneath her. Unable to maintain her footing, she had to cancel out the lance, using her hands to brace her fall.
Spikes of bone poked out of the ground in a circle around her, rising to form a cage.
She created twin knives out of energy, slashing out to cut through the bars.
The hardest part would be what came next. Brandish threw herself in the way of the scythe’s swing.
Marquis’ weapon virtually exploded into its component pieces, blade, join and shaft flying past her.
“Careful now,” Marquis chided her. “Don’t want to get decapitated now, do we?”
No longer on the defensive, Manpower charged the villain.
Marquis surrounded himself in plates of bone that resembled the petals of a flower blooming in reverse, and sank into the ground.
Any other day, Brandish would have followed him into the room below. A wine cellar, it seemed.
Instead, she turned and charged for the closet, creating a sword out of the crackling energy her power provided, slashing through the plates of bone that had surrounded it, then drawing the blade back to thrust through the wooden door-
Marquis emerged between her and the closet door. She plunged the sword into his shoulder without hesitation. She could smell his flesh burn, the wound cauterized by the same energy that formed the blade.
“Damnation,” Marquis muttered the word, sagging.
She let him fall, and then pressed the sword to his throat. If he gave her an excuse, she would finish him.
She stared down at him. That long hair, it was such a minor thing, but there was something else about him that stirred that distant, dark memory of the lightless room and the failed attempt at ransom. Her skin crawled, and she felt anger boiling in her gut.
It took some time for the others to recover, getting their bearings and ensuring their wounds weren’t too serious.
“What were you so intent on protecting?” Manpower asked. “This where you stash your illegitimate gains?”
Marquis chuckled. “You could say that. The most precious treasure in the world.”
“Somehow I missed the news report where you stole that,” Lady Photon replied.
“Stole? No. It would be better to say a devoted fan and follower gave her to me.”
“Her?” Brandish asked. But Lady Photon was already reaching for the door, pulling it open.
A girl. A toddler, not much younger than Vicky. The girl was brown hair, freckle-faced, and clutched a silk pillow to her chest. She wore a silk nightgown with lace at the collar and sleeves. It looked expensive for something a child would wear.
“Daddy,” the girl’s eyes were wide with alarm. She clutched the pillow tighter.
“Brigade, meet Amelia. Amelia, these are the people who are going to take care of you now.”
Brandish was among the many faces to turned to stare at him.
He chuckled lightly, “I expect I won’t last long without medical care, so I’ll hardly be turning the tables on you and making a break for it. You’ve won, I suppose.”
“What do you mean by taking care of her?” Lady Photon asked.
“I have enemies. Would you like to see her fall into their hands? It wouldn’t be pretty.”
“They don’t have to know,” Manpower spoke.
“Manpower… do try to keep up. The dumb brute stereotype persists only because people like you insist on keeping it alive. They’ll always know, they’ll always find out. You put that girl in foster care and interested parties are going to find out.”
“So you want us to take her?” Brandish asked. She couldn’t keep the incredulity off her face.
“No,” the girl said, plaintive. “I want you!”
“Yes,” Marquis said.
“The motherfucker has a kid?” Lightstar muttered the question, as if to himself. “And she’s, what, five?”
“Six,” Marquis answered.
Six. Vicky’s age, then. She looks younger.
“She’ll go to her mother,” Lady Photon decided.
“Her mother’s gone, I’m afraid. The big C. Amelia and I were introduced shortly after that. About a year ago, now that I think on it. I must admit, I’ve enjoyed our time together more than I’ve enjoyed all my crimes combined. Quite surprising.”
His daughter, Brandish thought. The resemblance was uncanny. The nose was different, the brow, but she was her father’s daughter.
The idea disturbed her.
She couldn’t shake that dim memory of the nameless man she’d killed on the night she got her powers. She hated Marquis in a way she couldn’t articulate, and if the memories that recurred every time she crossed paths with him were any clue, it was somehow tied to that.
She wondered if it was because she liked him on a level. Was her psyche trying to protect her from repeating her earlier mistake?
“Little close for comfort, Brandish dear,” Marquis spoke.
She looked down. She’d unconsciously pressed the blade closer. When she lifted it, she could see the burn at the base of his throat.
“Thank you kindly,” he spoke. There was a trace of irony there.
That cultured act, the civility that was real. Marquis was fair, he played by the rules. His rules, but he stuck to them without fail. It didn’t match her vision of what a criminal should be. It was jarring, creating a kind of dissonance.
That dissonance was redoubled as she looked at the forlorn little girl. Layers upon layers, distilled in one expression. Criminal, civilized man, child.
“You can’t take him away,” the girl told them.
“He’s a criminal,” Brandish responded. “He’s done bad things, he needs to go to jail.”
“No. He’s just my daddy. Reads me bedtime stories, makes me dinner, and tells me jokes. I love him more than anything else in the world. You can’t take him away from me. You can’t!”
“We have to,” Brandish told the girl. “It’s the law.”
“No!” the girl shouted. “I hate you! I hate you! I’ll never forgive you!”
Brandish reached out, as if she could calm the girl by touching her.
The girl shrank back into the closet.
Into the dark. She felt as if she was separated from the child by a chasm.
“Let’s call the PRT,” Manpower said. “We should get Marquis into custody stat.”
“Wouldn’t mind some medical treatment, if you could rush that?” Marquis asked.
“…And medical treatment,” Manpower amended his statement.
Brandish walked away. The others would handle this. She would wait outside to guide the responders into the manor, past the traps Marquis had set in place.
She was still waiting when Lady Photon came outside, holding the little girl’s hand. Lady Photon seated the girl in the car and shut the door.
Lady Photon joined Brandish on the stone stairs. “We can’t let her go into foster care. It�
��s not just the danger his enemies pose. Once people found out she was Marquis’ child, they’d start fighting over who could get their hands on her.”
“Sarah-” Brandish started.
“Then they’ll kidnap her. They’ll do it to exploit her powers, and she’s bound to be pretty powerful if she inherits anything like her father’s abilities”
“Then you take care of her,” Brandish replied, even as she mentally prayed her sister would refuse. There was something about the idea of being around Marquis’ child, that uncanny resemblance, having those memories stirred even once in a while, even if it was just at family reunions… it made her feel uneasy.
“You know Neil and I don’t have that much money. Neil isn’t having luck finding work, and all our funding from the team is going into the New Wave plan, which won’t happen for a few months, and we have two hungry mouths to feed…”
Brandish grasped her sister’s meaning. With a sick feeling in her gut, she spoke the idea aloud. “You want Mark and I to take her.”
“You should. Amelia’s Vicky’s age, I think they would be close.”
“It’s not a good idea.”
“Why are you so reluctant?”
Brandish shook her head. “I… you know I never planned to have kids?”
“I remember you saying something like that. But then you had Vicky.”
“I only caved to having Vicky because Mark was there, and I had to think about it for a while.”
“Mark will be there for Amelia too.”
Brandish could have mentioned how Mark was tired all the time, how his promise had proved empty. She might have mentioned how he was seeing a psychiatrist now, the tentative possibility of clinical depression. She stayed silent.
“It’s not just that,” she said. “You know I have trouble trusting people. You know why.”
The change on Lady Photon’s face was so subtle she almost missed it.
“I’m sorry to bring it up,” Brandish said. “But it’s relevant. I decided I could have Vicky because I’d know her from day one. She’d grow inside me, I’d nurture her from childhood… she’d be safe.”
“I didn’t know you were dwelling on it to that degree.”
Brandish shrugged and shook her head, as if she could shake off this conversation, this situation. “That child deserves better than I can offer. I know I don’t have it in me to form any kind of bond with another child if there’s no blood relation.”
Especially if she’s Marquis’.
“She needs you. You’re her only option. I can’t, and Fleur and Lightstar aren’t old enough or in the right place in their lives for kids, and if she goes anywhere else, it’ll be disastrous.”
Brandish decided on the most direct, clear line of argument she could muster, “I don’t want her. I can’t take her.”
Brandish glanced at the kid that they’d stowed in the team’s car. The toddler was standing on the car seat, hands pressed against the window. Her stare bored into Brandish as though little girl had laser vision.
The window was open a crack, Brandish noted. The girl could probably hear everything they’d been saying. Brandish looked away.
Lady Photon did as she’d so often done, ignoring reason in favor of the emotional appeal. “You grew to love and trust Mark. You could grow to love and trust that little girl, too.”
■
Liar.
Brandish stared at the teenaged girl. Amy couldn’t even look her in the eye. Tears were streaming down the girl’s face.
“Where’s Victoria?” Brandish made the question a demand.
“I’m so sorry,” Amy responded, her voice hoarse. She’d been crying long before anyone had showed up.
Brandish felt choked up as well, but she suppressed the emotion. “Is my daughter dead?”
“No.“
“Explain.”
“I- I don’t- No-” Amy stuttered.
She could have slapped the girl.
“What happened to my daughter!?”
Amy flinched as though she’d been struck.
“Carol-” Lady Photon spoke, her voice gentle. “Take it easy.”
They stood in the mist of a ruined neighborhood. Amy had stepped outside within a minute of their arrival, blocking the door with her body. There was no resistance in the girl, though. It was more like the obstruction was a way of running, of forestalling the inevitable.
The girl hugged her arms against her body, her hands trembling even as they clutched her upper arms. Her teeth chattered, as if she were cold, but it was a warm evening.
Was the girl in shock? Carol couldn’t muster any sympathy. Amy was stopping her from getting to Victoria. Victoria, who she’d almost believed was dead.
“Amy,” Lady Photon spoke, “What’s going on? You won’t let us inside, but you won’t explain. Just talk.”
Amy shivered. “I… she wouldn’t let me help her, she was so angry, so I calmed her down with my power. She’d been hurt badly, so I wrapped her up. A cocoon, so she could heal.”
“That’s good. So Victoria’s okay?” Lady Photon coaxed responses from Amy.
Of course she’s not okay, Brandish thought. What about this situation makes you think she could be okay?
“I… I had to wait a while before I could let her out, so I could be sure she had healed completely. I-”
Amy stopped as her voice cracked.
“Keep going,” Lady Photon urged.
Amy glanced at Brandish, who stood with her arms folded, stone-faced.
If I change my expression now, if I say or do anything, I’ll lose it, I’ll break, Brandish thought. Her heart thudded in her chest.
“I didn’t want her to fight. And I didn’t want her to follow, or to hate me because I used my power on her again.”
Again?
“So I thought I’d put her in a trance, and make it so she’d forget everything that happened. Everything that I did, and the things that the Slaughterhouse Nine said, and everything that I said to try to make them go away. Empty promises and-”
Her voice hitched.
“What happened?” Brandish asked, for the Nth time.
“She was lying there, and I wanted to say goodbye. I- I-”
Something in Amy’s voice, her tone, her posture, it provided the final piece, clicking into place, making so many things suddenly come together.
Brandish marched forward, fully intending to walk right past Amy. Amelia. His daughter. She could never be my daughter because she’d never stopped being his.
A cornered rat will bite. Amy realized what Brandish intended and reached out, a reflex.
A weapon sprung into Brandish’s hand. Not so dissimilar from the first weapon she’d made, an unrefined bludgeon of raw lightstuff. She moved as if to parry the reaching hand and Amy scrambled back out of the way, eyes wide.
Where to go? Brandish glanced to the rooms to the left, then down the hall in front of her. She looked back and saw Amy with her back to the wall. She moved toward the staircase, glanced back at Amy, and saw a reaction. Fear. Trepidation.
Before Amy could protest, Brandish was heading up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
“Carol!” Amy shouted, scrambling up the stairs. There was the sound of her falling on the stairs in her haste to follow, “Stop! Carol! Mom!“
Only one door was still open. Brandish entered the room and stopped.
She didn’t move as Amy’s spoke from behind her. “Please, let me explain.”
Brandish couldn’t bring herself to move or speak. Amy seemed to take that silence as assent.
“I wanted to see her smile again. To have someone hug me before I left forever. So you wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore. I- I told myself I’d leave after. Victoria wouldn’t remember. It would be a way for me to get closure. Then I’d go and spend the rest of my life healing people. Sacrifice my life. I don’t know. As payment.”
Lady Photon had made her way upstairs. She entered the room and stopped just in fron
t of Brandish. Her hands went to her mouth. Her words were a whispered, “Oh God.”
Amy kept talking, her voice strangely monotone after her earlier emotion, as if she were a recording. Maybe she was, after a fashion, all of the excuses and arguments she’d planned spilling from her mouth. “I wanted her to be happy. I could adjust. Tweak, expand, change things to serve more than one purpose. I had the extra material from the cocoon. When I was done, I started undoing everything, all the mental and physical changes. I got so tired, and so scared, so lonely, so I thought we’d take another break, before I was completely finished. I changed more things. More stuff I had to fix. And days passed. I-”
Brandish clenched her fists.
“I lost track. I forgot how to change her back.”
A caricature. A twisted reflection of how Amy saw Victoria, the swan curve of the nape of the neck, the delicate hands, and countless other features, repeated over and over again throughout. It might even have been something objectively beautiful, had it not been warped by desperation and loneliness and panic. As overwhelming as the image and the situation had been in Amy’s mind, Victoria was now equally imposing, in a sense. No longer able to move under her own power, her flesh spilled over from the edge of the mattress and onto the floor.
“I don’t know what to do.”
Betrayal. Brandish had known this would happen the moment Sarah had talked about her taking the girl. Not this, but something like it. Brandish felt a weapon form in her hand.
“Please tell me what to do,” Amy pleaded.
Brandish turned, arm drawn back to strike, to retaliate. She stopped.
The girl was so weak, so powerless, a victim. A victim of herself, her own nature, but a victim nonetheless. A person sundered.
And with everything laid bare, there was not a single resemblance to Marquis. There was no faint reminder of Brandish’s time in the dark cell, nor of her captor. If anything, Amy looked how Sarah had, as they’d stumbled from the house where they’d been kept, lost, helpless and scared.
She looked like Carol had, all those years ago.
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