Sovereign

by April Daniels

  “Oh, come on!” I shout. “That’s not even close to fair!”

  Even as I’m trying to scramble away, the golem reaches down with a blade-fingered paw and grabs me by the calf. The hot knives slice through my suit and into my flesh. Graywytch’s little helper whips me through the air along the whole length of the conference room and into a pillar, smashing off the stone cladding in a shower of marble gravel. I cough, salt and copper on my lips. My leg screams with pain from deep, urgent burns that feel like they go all the way down to the bone. At least it’s not numb—numb is even worse. When I fight up to my feet, I find it can’t support my weight anymore. Taking to the air is barely any better; my mind is so frayed by pain and poison that I can barely keep off the ground.

  The golem begins trudging across the room towards me.

  “Codex.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She’s got some kind of cement monster. I…do you know how to kill this thing?”

  “Try punching it.”

  “Not really…shit.” Every word is a battle now. “Not really an option, to be honest.” And then I have to take a deep breath. “I think I’m in trouble.”

  “Seawater,” says Doc.

  “What?”

  “Seawater always blocked her. Abort the mission, get out of there.” Doctor Impossible sounds like she hates herself right now. “Once you’re under the ocean, her magic should have trouble reaching you. You’ll be safe.”

  “No.”

  “You just need to hold your breath for twelve hours, I can get to you!” She’s at the edge of pleading.

  “Can’t do that, Doc. All those people will die.”

  “We can clone more sperm, and the species will go on. There’s no reason to throw your life away!”

  Does it make me a bad person that I like hearing her say these things? I don’t know. I don’t care. If I’m going to die, I’m happy to die listening to someone trying to trade half of humanity for me. But quitting isn’t an option, and she knows it.

  My body hurts. My organs squirm. The golem is just a few yards away now, and I can’t beat it in a fight. Not like this. But I’ve got to try. With that knowledge, all my pain seems to evaporate. It’s just information now. Information that’s barely relevant.

  “Sarah, are you there?” I ask.

  “I am,” she says.

  I close my eyes and savor the sound of her voice. “I’m sorry I waited so long.”

  “It’s okay. I should have said something.” Her voice is wavering, but she’s holding it together. It makes me happy to know she’ll be okay. “I love you. Die proud.”

  “I love you too.”

  “Danny, I’m so sorry,” says Doc. “I should have—I’m so sorry.”

  My fist tightens. One way or the other, this will be quick. Take a deep breath—

  The tip of a sword bursts from the creature’s forehead with a screech of steel on stone. With a screaming shower of sparks, the sword forces its way through the golem from forehead to groin. The golem crashes to the ground in two twitching halves.

  Karen stands behind it, dressed in steel armor, her wings unfurled. No, wait. That’s not Karen. She’s wearing Valkyrja’s armor, holding Valkyrja’s sword. She carries herself with Valkyrja’s posture, and when I look into her eyes there is no mistaking the ancient intelligence gazing back at me.

  But Karen?

  Karen is gone.

  “You killed her.” I’m dimly surprised at myself. Karen betrayed me, abandoned me to be tortured to death, and still, I am outraged. Nobody deserves to be eaten from the inside out like that. Nobody.

  Valkyrja shakes Karen’s head. “No. I embraced my nature. It is the way of things.”

  “You going to kill me too, now?”

  A troubled look passes over her stolen face. “I have much to atone for. Please, let me begin.”

  “This is another trick.”

  “You are too weak to fight me. Graywytch has nearly won, and I could kill you without effort. Were I working with her, there would be no possible motive for deception,” says Valkyrja. She steps to a clear place on the floor and begins cutting a pattern in the carpet with the tip of her sword. “She has secreted her ritual away in another realm. It is a strategy I have seen her use before. I must open the way for you.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t have the skill—”

  “Why did you kill her?”

  Valkyrja looks up, eyes flashing. “I’m not dead, Danielle! This was my choice! Now is not the time to speak of it.” She steps back from the design, and with a hard thrust she stabs her sword through the barrier between worlds—the blade disappears into thin air, a silver mist billowing from the wound. Gripping her sword with both hands, she pulls the blade up and around until she has cut a rough oval in midair. Beyond it lies grass and trees and a night sky that is lit by a brilliant purple nebula.

  “Win your battle,” says Valkyrja. “We will speak later.”

  “I’m in no shape to fight. You want to atone? Go do it yourself.”

  “I cannot open the way from the other side, nor keep the door clear once I leave it. I must stay here.”

  “You could seal me in there.”

  She nods. “I could. I won’t.”

  I don’t trust her. I don’t trust this. But what choice do I have? Half-limping, half-floating, I cross into another world, and hope I’m not too late.

  The wind on the other side is cool, crisp. The stars spill across a dark sky, and a luminous purple ribbon of nebular gases reaches from horizon to horizon. A glowing fog hugs the landscape in the distance. Flecks of light like campfire embers rise in swirling funnel clouds from the center of the fog bank. That had better be Graywytch’s ritual. The silver-edged portal dwindles rapidly behind me.

  A strange, dark forest where the trees are clad in glowing blue moss passes beneath me. Foreign animal sounds—and until now I had not realized an animal could ever sound foreign, but believe me, it is possible—ripple through the night as I pass. A flock of four-winged night-sparrows snaps out of the trees, surrounds me, and disappears into the night. There’s no road to follow, no path to track. I can only hope that she didn’t think I’d follow her here, that the beacon I’m closing on isn’t a decoy.

  The forest rises and dips in gentle hills. There’s a crashing stream that jumps with fish, their scales winking ruby in the moonlight. Bent down at the edge, a creature that’s not quite a deer, not quite a wolf.

  I’m nearly at the end of my endurance, and another swell hits. This close, the magic is like a physical slap in the face. I go down in the forest amid an explosion of twigs and splinters. It’s not pain—it’s worse than pain. It’s something foul and invasive that saturates every tissue. I choke on bile and begin to shiver with a sudden chill. The wave passes, and I’m back into the air again as quick as I can manage.

  There, the ritual site is just ahead, in a clearing under a full, red moon. There’s no time for subtlety, no time to check for traps or defenses. No time to find Graywytch and take her out first. I put everything I’ve got left into one headlong dive. It’s another Stonehenge wannabe. I aim myself at the biggest arch of stones in the center and get my good arm up to shield myself. In the instant before I hit, I see Graywytch lying in the grass, her robes stained with drying vomit.

  Impact. I hit the standing granite as hard as I can. With a grinding twist it begins to tip and fall, and I stay with it to help it go down. The crosspiece of the arch slips and comes to ground with a thud that shakes trees hundreds of yards away. The eerie glow centered on the stone circle fades away. Red moonlight from an alien sky shines down in its place; dimmer than day, brighter than night. Soothing relief rushes through my veins. The very last reserves of my strength fold, and I collapse in a heap onto the grass. My chest pumps in cool air, and with every breath I feel myself come back. A tremor I’m powerless to stop passes from my head to my boots and fades away. When I push myself to my feet, I feel that shaky weakness you get a
fter a bad flu sometimes, but not worse than that. The grass is soft beneath my boots as I walk over to where Graywytch still lies crumpled on the ground.

  When I come to stand over her, she gets a look on her face. A look I’ll never forget. I can tell the exact moment she comes to the same realization that I have. That we’re alone. Truly alone in a way most people never experience.

  It’s just her.

  And me.

  And no witnesses.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  So we come back to that tired old cliché: who you are in the dark is who you really are. If I go home, they will believe anything I tell them. I could say it was self-defense. I could say there was no other way. Nobody would know.

  Nobody except me.

  My boots creak as I kneel down near her head.

  Graywytch stares up at me, eyes wide and white. She doesn’t move. She barely breathes.

  “I don’t remember when my father started screaming at me,” I tell her, and I’m as surprised as she is that this is coming out now. “But I know that by the time I was in kindergarten I was already afraid of him.”

  Graywytch licks her lips. “What are—”

  “Shut up, or I will kill you.” She closes her mouth, and I keep going. “He used to sit me on the couch and scream himself hoarse at me. Over any little thing. Not always the same things. Sometimes, forgetting to clean my room wasn’t a big deal. Sometimes it was a huge deal. It hurt. A lot. But nobody would help me. My mom abandoned me every time it happened. Grandma and Grandpa refused to get involved before they died. I think Mom was telling them I was exaggerating. I told a cop once, and he said to buzz off. So I grew up scared. I didn’t talk to people at school, more or less, because I didn’t know if I’d say something that would make them angry at me. And it got worse when I realized I wasn’t like the other boys. It got so much worse because this was something that I knew I couldn’t show. And I was terrified, all the time, every day, that I’d be found out. So I hid myself. All the time, on reflex. I would disappear, and when I couldn’t disappear I would try to be forgotten.

  “Dreadnought died. He gave me his powers. The Legion came to collect me. And for a few minutes there, you know, I thought I’d finally be safe. But then I met you.”

  My jaw clenches. I have to force the words out, wet and raw. “And you took that from me. You did everything you could to make sure I wouldn’t have any place to be safe. For no reason. Why?”

  She’s silent for a long moment. “Because—”

  “I never cared that you don’t think I’m a girl, Myra!” I shout, and she flinches. If possible, she goes even paler than she normally is. “And I never wanted to be in your club. I just wanted there to be one place in the world where I wasn’t scared anymore. Where I didn’t have to hide myself. Would it have killed you to just keep your mouth shut?”

  Graywytch stays silent. She’s petrified, and maybe I should feel bad or good or something about that, but I don’t. I rock back on my heels and land heavily on my butt, my knees drawn up protectively in front of me. All those years of pain, all those memories of tight fear and blaring terror, they’re all coming back. It’s like he’s here again, screaming at me until I want to die just so it can be over. Other kids’ dads teach them to fish or to play catch. Mine taught me I was too weak to defend myself. That it was always my fault. That nobody would ever love me.

  I tremble and my throat clenches up. I’ll never be free of it. What he did will haunt me for the rest of my life.

  And I hated Graywytch for letting me know that so soon.

  But I don’t cry. Not because I’m ashamed or anything—with Graywytch half-dead from her own magic, I finally realize I have no reason whatsoever to give a shit what she thinks about me. I don’t cry because I realize I don’t need to. Because they gave me their worst, and I’m still here. Dad doesn’t get to choose if I’m happy, and neither does Graywytch. I sniff and wipe my eyes. The pain seems to slide off me and melt into the ground.

  Graywytch lies there, statue-still. Eyes locked to me. We stare at each other for a long time. She’s got dried vomit all over her chest. I make a sweeping gesture toward the mess. “Let me guess: your spell was targeted to the Y chromosome, but you’ve never had a karyotype test.”

  It’s such a left-field question that it startles an answer from her. “What?”

  “Your chromosomes. You never had them tested, did you?”

  Her brow furrows, and the first emotion that isn’t fear works its way onto her face. Disgust. “Don’t lump me in with you. I’m a woman. I menstruate.”

  “So? Sex is just as fuzzy as gender is. You might not be trans, but you could be intersex. If you’d just looked it up you’d see there are women with Y chromosomes who can give birth. It’s not common, but it happens.”

  She huffs. Graywytch seems so much less impressive now. “No. Magic is dangerous. I miscalculated, is all. Standing this close to the center, it could have gotten anyone.”

  I get to my feet. “Maybe. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to think about it in prison. I bet they’d even run a blood test for you, if you asked.” I hold out my hand for her. “Get up. I don’t think I’m strong enough to carry you safely yet, so we’ve got to hike out of here.”

  She looks at my hand, wary for a trick.

  “For fuck’s sake, Graywytch, I’d just kill you if I was going to.”

  She takes my hand and lets me pull her to her feet. With her arm still in a sling, and her ribs bandaged, she grunts with genuine pain on the way up and even leans on me for a moment before pushing away and standing with as much dignity as she can muster. From somewhere out of the darkness, her raven flaps down to alight on her shoulder.

  “If you’re looking to prolong the pain, I can tell you I won’t give you the satisfaction. I’ll die fighting first.”

  “We’re going to hike back to New Port so you can get arrested.That’s all that’s going to happen, I promise.”

  She still doesn’t believe me; it’s etched in her face. “Why? Why spare me?”

  I smile. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m better than you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I don’t end up retiring after all. Things can’t keep going on this way, but if I’m honest with myself, I don’t have it in me to quit. I like the power. I like the action. I love the look on people’s faces when they realize I’m there to save them. But I’ve got anger issues, and those are going to get somebody killed if I can’t figure out how to control them. That moment under the water with Sovereign, when he stopped fighting—I was so proud. Now it makes me feel uneasy to think about it. It’s just luck that Panzer was there to save him. So I’m taking a break. I’ll keep patrolling long enough for Kinetiq to get out of the hospital and take over my contract, and then I’m putting away the cape for at least six months.

  Doc knows a therapist who specializes in the treatment of superheroes. We’re going to have appointments twice a week at first. Hopefully I’ll get better.

  The break isn’t only for my health. Cecilia says I need to get out of the public eye for a while until the dust settles. My arrest and arraignment did a lot of damage to my reputation, and that will take time to fix. And, to be honest, she just doesn’t have enough hours in the day to be my publicist and my lawyer right now. Whatever remaining anger she had at me for breaking into Graywytch’s apartment evaporated when she got a look at just how much money we seized from Garrison. Uncle Sam took the lion’s share of it, of course, but Cecilia managed to snag ownership of Cynosure and what looks like enough money to cover the repairs as well. The rest of Sovereign Industries will be parceled out in court to Garrison’s business partners, and likely will be subject to ongoing legal disputes for years, if not decades. Cecilia says we can’t take it all for ourselves, but we can be damn sure that Garrison won’t get any of it back, either.

  Speaking of lawyers, when Doc cracked Garrison’s hard drive (his password was password2), she unleashed a legal apocalypse. It turn
s out he had more than fifty judges and prosecutors on his payroll in one of the largest law enforcement corruption scandals in American history. That’s how he arranged to have me arrested for murder, among other things. He figured that Cynosure was safely under his control, and so he kept meticulous records of a whole range of illegal financial maneuvers, political bribery, and the occasional murder for hire. There’s so much here that it’s impossible to believe his lawyers didn’t know he was a criminal, and so they’ve dropped him as a client and are in full damage control mode to save themselves. His new lawyers are very much the B-team, and Cecilia thinks they’re out of their depth.

  He’s going to die in prison, it looks like. I think I’m going to visit him, and show him some of the money I took from him. You know, in case he misses it and wants to say hi.

  • • •

  Graywytch is dead. I didn’t kill her, but she’s dead. They found her in her cell the morning after her arrest, without even a mark on her body. People are outraged. They wanted justice, and it’s been stolen from them. I’m frustrated too. I wanted her to see the world turn its back on her. I wanted my choice to spare her to mean something.

  For more than fifty years, Mistress Malice was the heavyweight champion of supervillains, with over a quarter-million confirmed deaths during a six-month rampage. Graywytch made Malice’s crimes look like a liquor store robbery. They’re still counting the dead, but it’s easily the worst supervillain attack in history. The global death toll might top three million, mostly men, but hundreds of thousands of women died as well. Not just trans women and intersex women, but cisgender women too; nearly ten thousand airliners crashed when their (overwhelmingly male) flight crews were disabled by her spell. Not to mention women who were on the operating table with male surgeons who collapsed, who were killed in traffic accidents and building fires, or any number of collisions caused by half the human species falling over all at once. Graywytch killed some of every kind of person that exists.