I opened the door.
It was early afternoon, too early for kids to be getting out of school or adults to be coming home from work. My neighborhood might as well have been a ghost town, closed doors and curtained windows on every side. I locked the door, shoved my hands into my pockets, and started walking.
House hunting through a proxy had been surprisingly easy once enough money was involved. I said I wanted a quiet residential area, within walking distance of basic shopping—grocery store, bank, pet store, storage unit—and too far away from the trendy parts of town to ever be considered “cool.” My realtor found me six options within the week. We narrowed it down from there, until I ended up in a place where no one knew who I was, or cared to know, as long as I didn’t throw parties after ten.
There are people who say that anonymity lives and dies in the big city. Those people have never tried living in suburbia. Live in New York or Los Angeles and everyone knows who you are. Oh, they may be too “cool” to bother you, but they know, and they’ll tell their friends, until eventually the cameras show up and there you are on the cover of another tabloid, wearing sweatpants and a sports bra, daring to look like a human being who needs to buy stuff like ice cream and tampons and potato chips. Daring to exist outside their spangled spandex fantasies. We’re not supposed to do that. We’re supposed to sit in our high-tech towers waiting for the sounds of danger, and then sweep in to save the day before any real damage can be done.
Saving the day pays the bills, but it doesn’t do the grocery shopping. I had walked almost to my destination, sunk in a deep gray funk, when I tripped over the curb, looked up, and beheld the object of my quest: a Safeway, sign red and white and welcome as any hero signal projected against the clouds. I rushed to grab a cart, remembering—as I always seemed to when it was too late—that my reusable bags were in a heap in my hall closet.
Oh, well. They sell reusable bags on every checkout aisle. Buying new ones every time I go to the store probably defeats the purpose, but I donate an armload to the local women’s shelter every couple of months, and they’re always glad to have them.
Inside, the air was cool and sweet and smelled faintly of the disinfectant that they used every time someone spilled a gallon of milk or dropped a jar of pickles. Best of all, nothing was reflective. Even the newest supermarket will quickly find its chrome and glass surfaces dulled down by contact with the public, and this Safeway had been built sometime in the late seventies. Long enough ago that even the light fixtures were dinged and a little scratched-up, lending a comfortable air of reality to the whole scene. This was a real place. Real things happened here. They sold ramen noodles and navel oranges and pie crusts, and no one would ever expect to find me in the cereal aisle, which meant anyone who saw me there was likely to assume I was just a look-alike and dismiss me out of hand.
This was what heaven felt like. Anonymity, and all the grapes the world had to offer.
I was standing in the frozen foods aisle, considering the array of ice cream flavors on offer, when someone stopped next to me. I saw them moving out of the corner of my eye, a blur on my peripheral vision, and forced myself to keep studying the Ben and Jerry’s. Normal people aren’t so sensitized to motion that they’ll turn at the slightest hint they may not be alone. Normal people go about their days confident that they’re not about to be attacked by supervillains or swarmed by paparazzi. I needed to embrace my inner normal person.
“I know who you are.”
The voice was calm, level, but with a note of gleeful “gotcha” that I had heard way too many times—had been hearing since I turned sixteen and was revealed as one of the trainee heroes for the West Coast Champions. At the time, I’d been too excited by the opportunity to use my powers and too terrified of the chance that I might fail to think about what it meant for me to have a costume with no mask. Only about a third of all heroes go unmasked, and it’s almost always the women, like the people in charge of our costume designs want to be absolutely sure we’re not going to smear our mascara. I’d looked at the bow in my hair and the bright blue “A” on my chest, and I’d thought I was perfect.
Until the men with the long-angle lenses had started staking out my family home, hoping to get a snap when I was visiting. It was always men, too. Right up until I turned nineteen and wasn’t as attractive to the underage market, it was always, always men. The women didn’t show up until I was legal, and while they were just as happy to go for the embarrassing picture, catching me with toilet paper stuck to my shoe or chewing with my mouth open, somehow they made a living without sticking their cameras under my skirt or following me into public restrooms.
Until the message boards found my phone number and posted it far and wide, resulting in a tropical storm of dick pictures descending on me in the night. And until they found the number after that, and the number after that, until I’d disconnected my phone and made do with the one the Champions issued me for official business. That should have been the end of it, but somehow, the tabloids had managed to dig up a few girls I’d gone to high school with and ran an interview where they talked about how I’d changed my number without telling them, who had been my best friends, and wasn’t I out of touch? Wasn’t I letting fame go to my head?
I hadn’t even remembered those girls existed until their pictures had been printed in an article talking about how terrible I was. I still wouldn’t recognize them if I saw them in the street.
“You can drop the act. It’s not working.”
“I’m sorry.” I turned, smiling disarmingly. Our media liaisons had spent almost a year teaching me how to smile like that. It’s a skill I hate and treasure in equal measure. I shouldn’t need it. Since I do, I won’t ever let it go. “You have me at a disadvantage. Have we met?”
The man standing a little too close to me in front of the frozen foods smirked. He was perfectly normal, the kind of person I saw every time I worked up the courage to leave my house for non-essential errands: a little taller than me, with tan skin, shaggy brown hair, and an ironic T-shirt over blue jeans. It was easy to picture him logging on to one of those message boards, or picking up one of those tabloids, and never stopping to consider the damage he was doing.
“You don’t know me, but I know you, Alice,” he said, smirk spreading into a grin, as proud as any Cheshire Cat. “I’d heard rumors that you lived somewhere around here.”
Shit. So much for the anonymity of the suburbs. It had lasted longer than anyone back at headquarters expected—most of them had been betting on six months before I came crawling home, and I’d made it most of a year. That was a cold comfort. Anger coiled in my belly, slow and deliberate.
In the glass across the aisle, my reflection, pale ghost thing that it was, turned toward me, moving against the motion of my actual body. Its eyes were holes carved out of the frost.
Please don’t let him see, I begged, and focused on the stranger. “I’m sorry. You’re mistaking me for someone else.”
“Am I?” Quick as a flash, his phone was out and in his hand—and then there was an actual flash, bright enough to sting my eyes, as he snapped his picture.
I squinted, briefly blinded. When my vision cleared, he was swiping his finger over the screen, choosing his caption with an expert’s speed.
“There,” he said, looking up and smirking again, smile eclipsed. “Let’s see what my followers think, huh, Alice? Pretty sure they’re going to know who you are. They love you, and you never want to give them the time of day.”
Of course he was a fan blogger. Anyone who was willing to take the time to find and stake out my local Safeway was a cape-chaser, no question about it. But even some cape-chasers are harmless. They’re proximity theorists, or people who got saved once and haven’t been able to stop replaying the moment, or parents whose children have started showing signs of superpowers, or just curious. I always try to be kind to them, when I can. They don’t deserve to be treated badly when they only ever wanted to say hello.
T
hey’re also usually not the kind of people who stop me in the frozen foods aisle, because they’re usually looking to connect, not alienate. Bloggers are a different story. Bloggers want fireworks. They want instant friendship, the sort that Valentine can force with a wave of her perfectly manicured hand, or they want somebody to tear down. Those are the things that get them hits, and everything is hits in their world.
“Please,” I said, and hated myself for the whine in my voice. “I’m just trying to do my grocery shopping. Can’t you leave me alone?”
“That explains how you’re dressed,” he said, taking in and rejecting my outfit with a quick up-and-down glance and a sneer. “Don’t they pay you enough to shop at real stores? Old Navy is not a good look on you.”
My cheeks reddened, and I resisted the urge to tug on my—yes, Old Navy—jeans. They fit me well. My little sister, the one who didn’t get the superpowers, but did get the good genes for everything else, used to call me “the buttless wonder,” and finding jeans that actually look good on me is hard enough that when I do, I don’t change brands until something gets discontinued.
“I don’t go in for frivolous spending,” I said.
The blogger grinned. “So you’re saying your fans who enjoy nice things are frivolous? Nice. How do you feel about the ones who bought your fashion line last season? Not that you had anything to do with designing it, but I assume you get part of the profits.”
The Alice’s Tea Party collection had been a huge success, in part because while I didn’t have anything to do with the actual designs, Valentine and Shock Star did, and they would both have gone pro if their superpowers hadn’t gotten in the way. They’re good. Every hero on the main team has had at least one clothing collection, because it’s good marketing and it makes our actual fans feel closer to us.
Not that I actually wanted my fans to feel closer to me. Mostly, I wanted them to feel like I was a person and deserved to be allowed to have a life that was separate from saving the world or doing public appearances. I wanted to wear ratty jeans and buy frozen vegetables and not worry about whether I’d remembered to brush my hair before leaving the house.
Had I remembered to brush my hair before leaving the house? Shit.
The blogger kept grinning as his phone began to vibrate and chirp, shaking so hard that for a moment, I thought he was going to drop it. “Eighty hits and climbing,” he said gleefully. “Want to tell me again how you’re not who I think you are? Because you’re in the minority here.”
Weariness settled over me like a shroud. Even my reflection stopped moving, which was a relief. My powers are less about concentration and focus to activate, and more about concentration and focus to control. This little snake was likely to find himself in a world of hurt if he didn’t stop pushing on me when I was already off-balance.
“What do you want?” I asked. “I’m just trying to shop. Please, can’t you leave me alone?”
“You haven’t done a solo interview in a year. Your last public photo opportunity was almost three months ago. Don’t you think you owe your fans more than you’re giving them?”
We’re all required to appear in public every ninety days, to avoid exactly this sort of incident. The guys on the team—all of whom had been given costume designs that included masks, huh, fancy that— said the girls and gender-nonconforming members were exaggerating when we talked about what it was like to go out in public. Why, they could go to the movies with their girlfriends and not get hassled at all. They could have girlfriends, and not be afraid they’d be raked up one side of the tabloid media and down the other for “slumming it.” There had been some discussion lately of upping the appearances to once every sixty days. I’d been against the idea. Maybe there was something to it after all.
“I do my job,” I said. “I save the world like, weekly. I don’t think I owe anybody anything, as long as I keep on saving the world.”
“Wow,” said the blogger.
I blinked. “Wow?”
“No wonder your popularity is in the toilet. How does the rest of your team feel about the fact that you’re such an entitled bitch?”
My mouth opened and my eyes widened, but that was as far as I got, too stunned by the attack to actually make a sound. I wanted to tell him that gendered slurs are not okay, that people are people and worthy of respect, no matter what. I wanted to ask whether his parents had bothered to teach him any manners. I wanted to do a lot of things, and I couldn’t manage any of them. I couldn’t do anything but stare.
In the freezer window on the other side of the aisle, my frosted reflection grew stronger, becoming a blue and white sketch of me in my full costume, even down to the Vorpal sword I try not to manifest unless I absolutely have to. She was scowling, reflected face painting disapproval in front of the display of frozen waffles. If I didn’t find my voice soon and get this jerk out of here, she was going to step out of the glass, and I was going to have what could charitably be called a serious public relations problem on my hand. Our bosses get pissed when we accidentally kill somebody.
“I—” I began.
The front window of the store exploded.
“Whoa!” The blogger covered his head, instinctively shielding himself from the glass.
It was a good, human response to an unexpected situation. It would have been mine, once. Training can conquer instinct. I let go of my cart and whirled around, plunging my hand into the reflection that had been getting ready to make a blogger kabob. The blogger gaped at me, stunned at the sight of a superhero—a superhero he had pursued into a private location, which just shows that sometimes curiosity outweighs survival sense—actually doing her job.
“What the fuck?” he demanded.
“You posted a picture of me!” The stupid sword was stuck. Glass doors don’t make the best mirrors. If I’d known I was going to wind up fighting, I would have gone to Target or Walmart or someplace with a home goods section and a bunch of good, clear reflections. “You didn’t turn off the location tagging, did you? Did you?”
The blogger gaped more, not saying a word. The color was draining from his cheeks. Oh, great. Now he realized that he’d fucked up. Maybe if we both walked away from this alive, he’d think to take the picture down before I could sic our lawyers on him.
Oh, who was I kidding? I was still going to sic our lawyers on him. Harassment, invasion of privacy, endangerment, whatever they could come up with. Yes, I’m a public figure, and yes, I’ve had to acknowledge the paparazzi as a part of the job, but there’s a big difference between an asshole with a telephoto lens hiding in the bushes and an asshole getting up in my face when I’m trying to buy ice cream. At least one of them has the sense to remember that superheroes are dangerous.
I yanked again. The sword came free. As always, its form had been decided by the environment from which it came: this time, it was a crescent of frost, leaving trails of cold behind it as it whistled through the air. The edge of the blade glowed with the lambent light of the molecules it was cleaving in half. No one knows how that works, myself included, or how I’m not actually the Radioactive Woman. But my sword can cut through anything. Anything.
“Come on!” I yelled, and my reflections poured out of the freezer doors, pale frosted copies of me, as translucent as the ice that shaped them. I ran for the front of the store. They chased after me, my icy army of Alices. In the distance, I heard the camera effect on the blogger’s phone click several times. Good. He could sell these pictures to pay his legal bills.
The rest of the store was in chaos. Clerks and baggers huddled in the checkout stands, trying to take cover behind their registers, while shoppers scattered in all directions, screaming. The front window of the store was gone, replaced by a pulsing wall of slick purple flesh interspersed with smaller tentacles. I wrinkled my nose and kept charging. If I stopped, my reflections would stop too, and this would end very poorly for the people who’d just been trying to do their shopping.
One of the smaller tentacles lashed out
and wrapped itself around the throat and face of a screaming woman. Her screams stopped as she thrashed wildly, and then began to expand into a smaller tentacled horror.
That did bring me to a halt. I needed to do some taunting. Get the attention off the shoppers, and onto myself.
“You asshole!” I shouted. Not a corporate-approved battle cry, but there were no camera crews here; no one was going to care if I was family friendly. Even the parents in the store were unlikely to complain, assuming I could keep their kids from being transformed into Venusian squid-creatures. “This is a grocery store!”
As I had hoped, the sound of my voice was like a signal flare, attracting the attention—and yes, rage—of the attacker. The wall of flesh pulsed and twisted, until the beaked, squidlike face of the Venusian supervillain appeared. He made a terrible screeching sound, causing several of my reflections to clap translucent hands over frosted ears.
“AT LAST!” he boomed. “I HAVE YOU CORNE—WHAT ARE YOU WEARING?”
I scowled, adjusting my grasp on the Vorpal blade. “It’s my day off,” I snarled. “I just wanted some ice cream.”
“YOU’RE A SUPERHERO. SHOULDN’T YOU BE PREPARED FOR THIS SORT OF THING?”
“That’s what I tried to tell her!” shouted a voice.
Swell. My blogger buddy was feeling better. “Agreeing with the supervillain isn’t a good thing,” I muttered.
“I AM NOT A VILLAIN,” objected the Venusian. “YOUR STORIES ARE FILLED WITH MANIFEST DESTINY AND THE BEAUTY OF TERRAFORMING OTHER WORLDS. I AM HERE TO VENUS-FORM YOUR PLANET. I AM A HERO.”
“You turned that woman into a squid.”
“SHE WILL BE A DEVASTATING BEAUTY IN THE WORLD WHICH IS TO COME.”
I swallowed the urge to sigh. The main problem with Venusform as a villain is that he’ll happily spend hours arguing about the rightness and justice of his plan. Sometimes I want to shake every science fiction author born prior to 1975 and ask them what the hell they had been thinking, telling the universe—thanks to the wonder of television and radio broadcasts—that humanity wanted nothing more than to overwrite all life, everywhere, with ourselves. Venusform believes he’s staving off an invasion and giving us a taste of our own medicine at the same time.
Behind the Mask Page 6
