by Matt Carter
Mary roared.
Right on schedule. No other side effects, yet…
“You can do this,” I said.
“I know,” Spasm said, gripping the fence hard. “I’ve never attempted anything this big, but don’t think Liam Long’s not one to try.”
His eyes rolled back into his head as every vein and muscle stood out rigid on his body.
At first, nothing happened. Then everything did.
In a wave around him, people fell to the ground, unconscious. First the people in the audience, then the people working crowd control to keep us back, and finally the heroes. It happened so quickly that nobody would have a clear idea of just what happened and would write this off as just one of the many side effects of a Mary Rising.
Spasm fell to his knees by the fence, his eyes bloodshot.
“I’m fine, I’m fine… just give me a second…”
“Rest all you want, you did awesome,” I said, surveying the hundreds of unconscious people that littered the fairground.
“Ready for Part Two?” Ghost Girl asked.
“No,” I said.
“By which you mean yes?”
“Obviously.”
We both pulled off our backpacks, pulling out my spare Apex Strike helmet and an oxygen tank made to hook into it. I stripped off my disguise and the street clothes covering my costume and put the helmet and tank on, just as Mary began to heavily stomp out from the mine.
Ghost Girl and I hopped over the fence, running to the mine entrance before Mary could climb all the way out.
Giant and stupid-looking, she cocked her massive head and looked down at us confusedly. Her one eyelid blinked heavily as drool and black slime snaked between her cracked, blocky teeth. Nobody knew if she remembered anything from execution to execution, but looking into her eyes, I got the impression that she did. I think she remembered most of the heroes who had killed her, and knew we weren’t them.
“Have you seen my lamb?” she asked.
“No, Mary, we haven’t. I’m so sorry,” Ghost Girl said.
Mary took a step back as if struck, her eyes confused and frightened. I imagined that nobody had talked nicely to her in a very, very long time.
Slowly, Ghost Girl removed her scarf to show Mary her true face. This put Mary more at ease, as she took a slow step forward, her shoulders lowering.
“… seen my lamb?” Mary asked again.
“Your lamb has been dead for a long time,” Ghost Girl said, approaching Mary slowly. She held out her hand.
“I know you have felt more pain than almost any other being on this planet, and I can never apologize enough. If I could promise you relief from this life, I would, but I don’t know how. What I can do, though, is promise you freedom from this cycle of death and rebirth in your pit. Would you like that?” Ghost Girl said, taking another step closer.
Mary looked at her, some of the fear returning, her shoulders raised defensively.
“Touch my hand, Mary. Know I’m telling the truth,” Ghost Girl said.
Mary looked torn. “… you seen my lamb?”
She reached out, touching Ghost Girl’s hand. Mary was the first person I’d seen who hadn’t completely lost it when Ghost Girl shared her power with them. Her body went rigid and her eyes became completely black, but when Ghost Girl parted, Mary smiled crookedly.
“Have you seen my lamb?” she said.
Ghost Girl smiled. “So you will help us?”
Mary nodded. “… my lamb.”
“Good,” Ghost Girl said. “Now this next part won’t be pleasant, but once it is over, I swear to you, everything will get better.”
Mary barely moved when Ghost Girl pulled the hunting knife from her backpack and approached her.
“Oh God, it’s so awful!” I yelled into the radio.
“Oh quit bein’ such a little bitch, it’s dark and your suit’s sealed, you don’t have to see or smell nothin’,” Blackjack said over the radio.
“But it’s so gooey!” I yelled again.
“It may be, but it’s the best way in. Trust me kiddo, this’ll work.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you were one sick bitch, Blackjack?”
“Daily, if I’m lucky.”
“Must be why we get along so well,” Trojan Fox said.
“You’re going to be fine, Aidan. Just relax, breathe,” Geode said.
“You try fucking relaxing and breathing!” I yelled back.
“He is, actually. He’s on a tropical island with a mai tai,” Trojan Fox said.
“I fucking hate all of you!”
“Love you too, asshole,” Trojan Fox said mockingly.
“Just… try remembering why you’re here. What you’re doing. That will make this easier,” Geode said, trying to be calming.
That worked. Some.
But it didn’t change the fact that I was currently curled up in a ball, trapped inside Mary’s stomach, waiting to burst out of her like a goddamn alien the moment we got to the Tower.
It was all Blackjack’s fault.
She was waiting for us back on Death Island after the Battle of Washington, DC. At first I thought she was there to try to take over the team, but she wanted the exact opposite. She offered us her assistance and centuries of experience in supervillainy to help us with our plans, and in exchange she wanted to build a small home on the island to retire.
Trojan Fox agreed to her terms, and said that, once we were all healed up, she wanted to free all our friends from the Tower.
Hiding me inside of Mary like some satanic Jack-in-the-Box was Blackjack’s solution to the problem. According to her, the Tri-Hole hookup to the Tower is more secure than the rest of the network and would have had all its codes changed after DC, making the generators we took off the heroes useless.
With no permanent staff of the Tower, we couldn’t sneak in with a supply shipment or any work crews.
That just left Mary.
After she was killed, her body was carted off to the Tower for cremation. If we could talk Mary onto our side, and if we had a really small group member…
And that’s how I wound up stuffed inside Mary’s stomach cavity, covered in slimy zombie guts and hating my life.
I was glad that Ghost Girl carved a big hole in Mary’s stomach, which made getting in easy. I wasn’t as glad that Spasm had to seal the hole behind me, but we had to sell the illusion.
Mary, thankfully, had no problem playing dead.
“All right,” Spasm said over the radio. “Everyone’s getting back on their feet. They’re all wonderin’ what exactly went down. The heroes’re looking at Mary. It’s good, real good. They’re thinking everyone passing out was a Rising side effect, and that something in it must’ve hit Mary, too. They’re raising their arms, posing for the crowds… and there goes the Tri-Hole. Looks like they’re—”
“You’ve disappeared from GPS,” Trojan Fox said. “You’re there.”
“Great,” I said. “Can I get out now?”
“Not yet. Wait for it…”
There was a devastating blast of distorted energy over the radio. A few seconds later, Mary stopped moving. Then they dropped her.
Trojan Fox was back. “Want to hear what they’re hearing?”
“Why not?” I said.
She connected me to the heroes’ earpieces.
“… IT’S GOING DOWN, DEAR GOD…”
“… EVACUATE!…”
“… CAME OUT OF NOWHERE… LASER…”
“… HIT THE OCEAN, WHAT DO WE—”
“… THE PEARL IS DOWN. REPEAT, THE PEARL IS DOWN!…”
“… WHAT THE FUCK DO WE—”
“Now, Apex Strike!”
Thank God!
I focused upward, blowing a hole in Mary’s stomach and climbing out. So gooey.
The three heroes carrying her were distracted. Hearing their base had been shot out of the sky by a supervillain’s death ray has a way of doing that to you. I never thought that Trojan Fox would ge
t that old, giant gun working, but boy was I glad to be wrong.
Three blasts of focus got me two unconscious superheroes. The third was hardier, but Mary, guts hanging out and dragging on the floor, jumped to her feet and smashed her out against the wall.
“Thanks, Mary.”
She smiled at me, wiping away drool with the back of her hand. “… my lamb?”
I wiped her black goo off my visor, finally letting me see clearly.
The White Knights began to stir. I ripped the garbage bag that Ghost Girl duct-taped to my chest open, pulling out Trojan Fox’s small, centipede-like gizmo and chucking it at the nearest White Knight. It quickly crawled across its chest and latched to the back of its neck.
The White Knight stopped, shuddered, and cocked its head.
Then it spoke in Trojan Fox’s voice, “I’m in.”
It turned, reached to a wall panel, and plugged in. The other White Knights shut down.
“I found him. Maximum Security, VIP Wing, he’ll be so proud,” Trojan Fox said. One of the doors in the wall opened. “I’m opening a path.”
“Do you think The Pearl’s gonna be enough of a distraction?” I asked. “I’d hate to get a bunch of heroes on my ass with just a White Knight and a giant zombie for backup.”
“It should be, but just in case…” Trojan Fox said. I heard a klaxon blaring further down one hall, and another door opened. “I just freed all of the minimum security offenders. That should give you a good head start. There’s some friends, and other interesting ones too, in higher security, but I can’t free them from here. Mary?”
Mary climbed to her feet. “Have you seen…”
“I’m going to light their tubes bright red. Could you break them out?”
“… my lamb!” Mary exclaimed.
“Cool,” Trojan Fox said. “You guys know what to do.”
“Yes, sir!” I said jokingly. I may give her shit, but I didn’t doubt my choice to make her leader.
I ran down the hall of tubes that Trojan Fox opened for me, following her every direction so I wouldn’t get lost in the twisting corridors that made up the Tower’s Maximum Security wing. I could see a lot of scary people in here, and was as impressed as I was scared.
Down a dark, twisting, metal stairway, Trojan Fox opened one final door to the deepest depths of the Tower.
The room was poorly lit by flickering fluorescents, and there were, at most, a dozen tubes. All of them were thicker, stronger, and had a faint ripple of energy to them that I had never seen before. They were all occupied, most of them by people, some of them by large, twisted, monstrous shapes, and one by a tiny little imp wearing a white shirt and a tie.
Odigjod.
I walked over to his tube, put my hands a couple feet away from its surface, and focused.
A blast of crackling purple energy, about as strong as the focus I put out, blasted me back, nearly crushing me against the wall.
Magic. For him, of course.
I tried an even stronger blast of focus, and got blown back even harder. It almost had an effect on the tube, its energy barrier flickering slightly, but it quickly steadied itself.
Now may be a good time to remember the Golem…
I clapped my hands together and tried to remember every bit of anger and fear and surprise I had the day Showstopper died. I could feel the focus grow in front of me. Everything in the room began to rattle. My body shuddered, my feet left the floor. I could feel everything, everyone in the room, even through their tubes.
Focus.
It felt like the whole world exploded. It sounded like the whole world exploded.
I fell on my hands and knees, but this time, knowing what to expect, I could almost get to my feet without a lot of trouble.
My ears ringing, my vision blurring, I tried to get my bearings. I was looking at the shattered tube. Whose it was, I didn’t know, but it was big. Bigger than Odigjod’s.
A large, clawed hand grabbed me by the shoulder and steadied me. “Careful, kid.”
I looked up and stared into the face of Bad Bug.
“You break us out?” he asked.
Us?
I looked around. Multiple tubes were smashed open, their occupants stumbling around, trying to get their bearings.
Dr. Tongue.
The Radiation Queen (the real one).
Otis Shylock. He actually tipped an imaginary hat to me before running from the room.
“Thanks, kid!” Bad Bug said before darting out.
Shit. Trojan Fox isn’t gonna like this.
I hadn’t broken all the tubes, thank God. But I did get the one I’d come for.
“Apex Strike?” Odigjod said, his eyes fluttering wearily as the effects of the paralyzing agent, tech, and magic began to wear off. “Really you, yes?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said, opening my visor so I could smile at him.
“Going home is sounding good to Odigjod.”
“You and me both.”
He couldn’t walk, not yet, but he wasn’t too heavy to fling onto my back.
Of course, walking out of the Tower’s Maximum Security wing was a lot harder than walking in. Whatever power I had unleashed had twisted the metal floor like a piece of taffy. Nearly every one of the hundreds of tubes was shattered open (the ground was littered with broken glass and smiley-face masks), some with occupants still unconscious, others which had already been vacated. Some serious, heavy-hitting villains wandered around, dazed and confused, while others had started to fight each other as they took out old grudges and petty jealousies.
I did my best to go around them.
Unleashing a biblical plague of high-level supervillains on the world? Trojan Fox is really not going to like this.
Back in the lobby, more than a hundred villains were crowded around the various Tri-Hole emitters in the wall, getting the hell out of dodge before the heroes arrived.
“Apex Strike!”
Now there was a voice I hadn’t heard in a long time.
“Circus?”
He ran to me, all clown, and actually threw his arms around me for a huge hug.
“This is the Tower?”
“Yeah.”
“What a shithole. You’re breaking us out?”
Us? No, I just came here for Odigjod and…
… and there was Circus, standing with Artok and most of the other cut Kayfabe villains and a bunch of others in our age range, some wearing clothes and costumes that dated back to the 70s. Most of them didn’t look like supervillains. They just looked like scared, confused kids who didn’t have a place in the world.
You’re a supervillain. You don’t have to sympathize. Just let them go on their way, and… and…
“Trojan Fox? We’re gonna have some houseguests tonight,” I said, waving Circus and the rest of the group over to one of the free Tri-Holes.
Setting in the coordinates to home, I sent each of them through. Odigjod and I followed Mary, the last of our group headed for freedom.
I was worried about what I’d find on the other side. Trojan Fox would yell at me, sure, for fucking up and accidentally freeing the Maximum Security villains, and God only knew what the rest of the villains thought of me (most of the ones from training weren’t exactly my biggest fans), but I guessed… well, I guessed I’d have to deal with that once I got home.
The world exploded in cheers when I landed back in the foyer. Somebody violently pulled my slimy helmet off just to kiss me on the lips (guy or girl, I didn’t know). I was pounded on the back, hugged, and had my hand shaken more times than I could count. Even Trojan Fox didn’t give me shit, hugging and kissing me on the cheek before taking Odigjod from my arms.
Spasm and Geode lifted me onto their shoulders, letting me look down at the cheering crowd as they all chanted my name (well, all of them except Mary, who couldn’t). Looking down at the crowd, I felt bad for the faces I couldn’t see.
Iron Bear.
Showstopper.
Nevermore.
Good people this life had destroyed. People I would never see again.
Even with those losses, I looked down and was glad to see those I still had.
Geode.
Trojan Fox.
Odigjod.
Ghost Girl…
Ghost Girl leaned up against the display case that held her costume, staying out of the party atmosphere all our new arrivals brought. Tipping up her mask for only a moment, she smiled at me and nodded, and I found myself thinking: I can get used to this.
#LessonLearned: Sometimes, friendship and teamwork really are all you need in life.
Yeah, I didn’t see that one coming either.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, I’d like to start off by thanking my wonderful agents at Literary Counsel, Fran Black and Jennifer Mishler, for everything they have done, will do, and are always doing for me. Thank you for taking a chance on both me and Almost Infamous.
Thank you to everyone at Talos Press and Skyhorse Publishing who helped sculpt my fairly raw words into something that could actually be called a book, especially my editor Jason Katzman. Your infinite patience and editing expertise made this book as awesome as it is today.
Dad, thank you for always being there for me; for teaching me the value of character development and making sure I never grew into a half-assed supervillain. Thank you for reading everything I’ve written, no matter how much it didn’t suit your personal tastes, even if the main thing you took away from this book was it being the first time you ever saw your son write the word “cocksucker.” Though you didn’t live to see this book published, I hope wherever you are, whatever you are, you know that I finally pulled this off.
A special thanks to everyone who’s ever put pen and ink to page to bring superheroes, good, bad, and otherwise to life, and for making us believe that people can fly.
And final thanks, of course, to my wife Fiona. You are forever my inspiration and the greatest partner in both writing and life I could ever hope for. Thank you for always believing in me, and Almost Infamous, even when I doubted myself. And thank you for helping correct my grammar and teaching me how to use a comma. I swear, one of these days I’ll get it right!
Table of Contents
Title Page
