V Is for Villain

by Peter Moore

  Totally Subversive

  At lunch in the caf next period, I was getting interrogated by Virginia, Shameka, and Travis.

  “So, what? Are they all, like, total freak shows?” Travis asked. He was not known for his sense of tact, which was about as subtle as a sledgehammer.

  “Not really. That’s not the impression I get.”

  “Ah, you’re just being nice,” he said.

  “Well, they were put in the program for some reason,” Shameka said. “They can’t be like us.”

  Us. Something about it hit me funny. “Does that make them worse?” I asked.

  Virginia gave me a harsh look. “She didn’t say they were worse. She just said they’re probably not like us. Which I’m sure is true. What’s up with you?”

  “Right, well, I was put in there, too. So you’re saying I’m not like us, too.” I wasn’t sure if I was being a jerk on purpose. Or if I was being a jerk at all. I just knew I was getting frustrated with the conversation.

  “Hey, take it easy, chief,” Travis said. “No offense meant.”

  I was trying to be patient. “It sounded like there was a little bit of judgment in there. It isn’t a ‘better’ or ‘worse’ thing. It’s not a winning game.”

  Travis shook his head and wiped the crime scene of sauce off his face with a napkin. “Everything is a winning game, son. Are they going to be heroes? I don’t think so. They’re in that program because there’s something not special about them.”

  “Um, how many of them have you actually met?”

  Shameka shook her head. “Come on. Get real. Maybe they’re too weak, no powers. Maybe they have a bad attitude. Maybe all they got is brains or whatnot. But whatever the reason, they’re in the A-program because they didn’t have what it takes to be in the Academy.”

  “Really. Okay. And so why am I in there, then? What’s my big personality failure?”

  Well, that shut the three of them up pretty fast. Looking at each of them, I could see it in their faces.

  Oops.

  Didn’t think of that.

  Better just shut up now.

  Ugh. The voices again. But not one of my friends, or so-called friends, could look me in the eye. “Right,” I said. “I’m in there now.”

  Virginia cut in. “Yeah, but we all know you shouldn’t be. You belong with us, not them.”

  I wasn’t so sure. Especially not after this conversation.

  I turned away, and I noticed Layla talking with a few other kids from the A-program by the wall. I got up from my seat.

  “Where are you going?” Virginia asked.

  “I need to talk to someone.”

  Before I even got within a few yards, Layla turned around and looked right at me while the others kept talking. I suspected that she had enhanced proximity awareness, or maybe remote sight.

  “Look who’s here,” she said. I couldn’t tell if her crooked smile was friendly or mocking. I was hoping it was the former.

  “Hey,” I said. “I have a question for you. That discussion in class today?”

  “Yeah? What about it?”

  “It’s just that I’m not used to hearing that…kind of talk. Not in school, anyway.”

  Layla shrugged. “Wittman’s cool. He just wants us to think for ourselves.”

  “And so how many people in the A-program are, um, antihero?”

  Layla shrugged and shook her head. “Some. The smarter ones.” She looked at me slyly. “You want to go out for lunch?” she asked.

  “What do you mean, go out? We can’t.”

  “We’re gonna ditch and grab something to eat. If you want to come along, we can explain all this, but we’re not going to talk about it in here.”

  Leaving school grounds. Getting caught meant an immediate suspension and a parent conference. Not what I needed at the moment. I nodded toward the sensors by the cafeteria door. “How are you planning to get past them?”

  “Don’t worry about it. We have everything covered. You coming or not?”

  I looked over at Virginia, Shameka, and Travis at our table, all of them laughing about something. No doubt assuming I would be back right away for more conversation about some TV show that was on the night before.

  I turned to Layla and her friends. “Well?” I said. “What are we waiting for?”

  It wasn’t easy to fight the urge to look over my shoulder at the school as we crossed to the parking lot after slipping out a side door. “I don’t get how we can leave without being picked up by the monitors,” I said.

  “You can ask Deirdre, more commonly known as Boots,” she said, nodding to the girl walking to her left. The girl turned our way. Eurasian, she looked, and very beautiful. She had Maori facial tattoos, which were only allowed as cultural exceptions. She was wearing dark brown leather boots, laced up to her knees, with the very top cuffs reaching midthigh. Hence her nickname. I had seen her in the A-wing; she was in the other class section and we passed in the hallway during class changes. She looked me up and down with a smile, and I felt totally naked. Which might as well have been the case if she had intersight.

  She reached into her jacket pocket and held up a device that looked like a small cell phone, but with only a few buttons and two blinking blue lights. “Blocks out our video images, neutralizes our heat signatures, transmits reverse ultrasound and microwave signals, and scrambles the tomographic waves. Easy.”

  “Boots is pretty good with anything electronic,” Layla said to me. “Detectors, computer, video. She’s amazing with all of that. You should see what she can do with an ATM.”

  I stopped walking, not sure I heard her right.

  Layla took my elbow and pulled me along. “I’m kidding, of course,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “No, not really. And you know the other guys, right?”

  She nodded with her chin toward two kids walking ahead of us. I knew them from class, but we had never actually met. “Not by name.”

  “That one is Peanut,” she said, pointing at an enormous guy with dreadlocks. He had to be six-five at least, and he was built like a professional bodybuilder. Obviously he was juicing with Myomegamorpherone.16 Not surprisingly, he was one of the louder ones in class.

  “That one is Javier,” she said, pointing to a second tall guy with a loping stride. He wore pegged jeans and a tight, expensive-looking shirt under his gray A-program jacket. He turned when he heard his name. I thought of that line from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “lean and hungry look.” He gave Layla a smile and a wink that made me think this was a guy who was used to getting his way.

  “Javier is very pleased with himself,” Layla said. “Not only is he from a hero family—his father is Le Grand Épée—but he claims he’s descended from royalty. He has microvision and micromyocontrol.17 He’s really good at designing and building things.”

  “What, like bookshelves?”

  “No, like microexplosive devices, toxin delivery devices, stuff like that,” she said, not breaking her stride.

  I stopped walking. “Seriously?”

  “Well, in theory. You coming with us or what?”

  If I had stopped there, turned around, and gone back into school, maybe things would have turned out to be different.

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  That Kind of Talk

  We went in Peanut’s truck. He was driving and Javier was the only other person in the front, so the rest of us were in the backseat.18 I was between Layla and Boots. The conversation between the boys was dominated by a debate about the relative quality of the bands Fight for Fight’s Sake and Sandwiches There.

  “Sandwiches There,” Boots said. She sang from their latest hit. “Try to call me, babe. I won’t answer. Find yourself another dancer. ’Cause I don’t do that two-step anymor
e.” She had an amazing singing voice. A lot more pleasant-sounding than the argument up front.

  We ended up at Napoli’s Pizza downtown. It was pretty packed with the lunchtime crowd—mostly Regulars, I figured. (Though, of course, you can’t always be sure.) We stood at the counter and ate our slices.

  The music debate from the car expanded and continued. Javier had a weird accent, something I couldn’t place. It sounded like a combination of French, Spanish, and maybe a hint of German. Layla stayed out of the conversation, watching something on the TV mounted above the cash register. I was mainly trying to keep a balance between my eagerness to eat and the repeated blazing-hot cheese burns that were scalding the roof of my mouth. This was one of those times when I really wished I had the power of heat resistance.

  Layla nudged her elbow into my arm. I felt a tiny charge, making me wonder if maybe she had electro-generative powers. “Look at this guy. Think he loves himself at all?” She nodded up at the TV.

  It was a news interview with Meganova. He was wearing his team uniform and even had a cape on. All flash, showboating. The TV volume was off, so we couldn’t hear what he was saying, but there was a crawl running across the bottom of the screen:

  MEGANOVA BACK ON U.S. SOIL AFTER APPREHENDING ARGENTO “NIGHT TERROR” HAMILTON IN BOLIVIA. MEGANOVA UNHURT. NIGHT TERROR TO BE ARRAIGNED BY INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL.

  Meganova smiled as he craned his neck to listen to the interviewer’s question. He laughed and looked into the camera. He smiled and shook his head in the Aw, shucks, just doing my job grin he always used.

  “What an asshole,” Layla said. Her expression looked like she’d just tasted sour milk. “Meganova,” she grunted. “Mega-Blowhard.”

  I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone had heard her. Not that I totally disagreed with her; Meganova was not my favorite. There was something about him that always struck me as kind of fake, or maybe self-promoting. Still, what Layla said, calling one of the premier American heroes names in public, could lead to trouble. Like, riot-type of trouble.

  “They’ve been after NT for a long time,” I said. “Whatever you think of Meganova, this is news.”

  She shook her head, all the while eyeing the screen with disgust. “I don’t have a problem with it being news. I have a problem stomaching this guy’s phony heroics.”

  “Hey, what’s that?” said the guy on the other side of the counter, the one who made the pizza. Napoli, presumably. “Whatta you mean, ‘phony heroics,’ kid?” He wiped his brow with the back of his hand, leaving a smudge of flour on his forehead.

  “He’s all show. If there’s no media covering a battle or so-called rescue or whatever, you don’t see a sign of the guy.”

  “Whoa, hang on there, girlie,” said a brawny construction worker standing to Layla’s left. “You’re talking about Meganova, the guy who dropped into the Battle of Ardelach in Lamazistan with Mr. Mystic? Them and the Vindication Squad helped the army push back the rebel scumbags.”

  “And wiped out a whole bunch of Lamazistani civilians,” Layla said.

  To my right, Peanut, Boots, and Javier started wiping pizza grease off their hands. Javier’s face darkened, like a cloud was passing behind it. Boots shook her head slowly, eyes on the counter. It was obvious; they were getting ready for a fight. I happened to agree with what Layla was saying, but if this turned into a brawl or something and we got arrested, well, I figured Mom wouldn’t exactly be thrilled.

  “Maybe we should get out of here?” I suggested. “We can still get back for seventh period.”

  The construction guy’s buddy chimed in. “Them that you’re calling ‘civilians’ was just a bunch of rebel scumbags who don’t wanna work a real job.”

  “Hold on,” I heard myself saying. “They couldn’t get jobs. The Lamazistani president ordered—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said the first construction worker. “Look, far as I care, all of them people can kill each other. Good riddance.” A bunch of other people standing around the pizza joint cheered the construction worker. He went on: “But once they have their protest marches and start talking crap about the Vindicators, blaming them for protecting the president or whatever, then I say our guys go in there and clean house. A few of them others, the locals, get wiped out, tough luck. Cost of doing business.”

  Now I was getting pissed off. “A few of them? Try a few thousand.” I could feel Layla’s eyes on me.

  “Same difference,” Construction Worker 2 said. “You wanna mess with Meganova and the Vindicators, ya gotta take your lumps. Life’s a bitch.”

  “Yeah, and so is Meganova,” Layla said.

  There was a hushed second or two before people started shouting. Layla, her friends, and I slid off our stools and stood with bent knees, hands up, ready to take on the fifty or so offended Regulars.

  I wondered how long I would stay conscious while being ripped apart by an angry mob.

  There was a loud mechanical crack. “All right, nobody move!” someone shouted. A cop? No. It was Napoli. He was standing on the counter with a Shocker Shotgun leveled down at all of us. “I can’t be having no more fights in my place. I had to put in a whole new front window last week, and I ain’t doing it again today.” He gestured to Layla and the rest of us. “Get the hell out of here. I don’t need that kind of talk in my joint. Beat it. The rest of you, make room and let them out. All I wanna do is just get this lunch crowd fed and go on with my day.”

  With the business end of a Shocker Shotgun aimed at them, you can bet the people moved out of our way nice and fast.

  Out on the sidewalk, I exhaled heavily. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath for a long time.

  We started walking.

  “Last time I go into that shite-hole,” Javier said.19

  Peanut shook his head. “Yeah, it’s too bad. That was an awesome slice.”

  Layla shoulder-checked me. “And look who turned out to be a tough guy. See? To think you could’ve stayed back for an exciting lunch in the caf with your Academy friends.”

  “Well, thanks for inviting me along, but I wasn’t exactly looking to get murdered today.”

  In the truck, to my astonishment, the others returned again to their stupid argument about the bands. I was thinking about how close we had come to getting our asses beaten.

  Back at school, they all stayed in the truck as I got out the left rear door. I looked at my watch. “Seventh period just started. What are you doing?”

  “Getting a little advance on vacation time,” Peanut said out the driver’s window.

  “Wanna ditch the rest of the day? Hang with us?” Boots said. Layla was watching me from the backseat. I did kind of want to go with them, but I figured I’d narrowly escaped getting into trouble and it was better not to push my luck.

  “I think I’ll just finish out the day.”

  “That’s a good boy,” Layla said. I crossed behind the truck and headed for the front door. I wasn’t sure how I was going to sneak back into school.

  “Hey,” Layla called to me. “Tell the truth: how’s it feel to misbehave?”

  “You think you know me,” I said.

  “I think I do, yeah.”

  I said, “Well, think again, Layla.” Cooler than I knew I had in me. I turned away and started up the steps.

  “Hey, you can’t get past the sensors. You should come with us. Friends don’t let friends get scanned and yelled at by dictatorial principals.”

  Hm. “Is that what I am? I’m actually good enough to be your friend?”

  She gave me that grin, the one that made me crazy. “It’s not whether you’re good enough. It’s whether you’re bad enough.”

  “And?”

  “Well, are you?”

  I did my best to duplicate her evil little smile. It came a lot more easily to me th
an I would have imagined. “You just wait and see.”

  “One would think the scientists and policymakers had learned something from the uncontrollable beast called the atomic bomb that their colleagues had created less than a decade prior. Rather, their arrogance caused them to believe they would be able to contain the powers they had unleashed. The potential destruction in terms of loss of human life made the Black Plague seem like seasonal allergies.”

  DAVID MARKS,

  A Deal with the Devil: The Rise of Superhumans and the Fall of Humanity, 1975

  Show-Off

  Blake was holding me prisoner. I sat on one end of the couch, Blake sat in the middle. His size-fourteens were up on the coffee table and he held the remote in his hand. He paused the image when he wanted to, or slowed the video down to point things out.

  “Okay, so this here is when we brought down Troika and got Guillotine as a bonus. Watch this, watch…there!” He froze the image. “Look at Guillotine’s face when we bust in. Is that great or what? He pretended to be trying to negotiate a deal; then he made a run for it. He shouldn’t’ve fought. If he had just surrendered peacefully, he would’ve made it out of the whole thing. Oh, well.”

  Oh, well? It hit me weird when he said that. Yes, Guillotine was a villain. Yes, he had committed a bunch of high-end burglaries. Yes, he had kidnapped the president of France and held her for ransom. But he was a human being. It’s not like he was even a Phaeton. To hear Blake—America’s Favorite Hero—say “Oh, well” about a person whose death he caused—well, it totally rubbed me the wrong way.

  “Oh, hey,” he said. “Don’t forget I want to take you to meet Rotor this week. The work he does may not be as high-profile as what the rest of the Justice Force does, but support staff is still important. It’s the kind of thing you might be able to do. Oh, watch this one. It’s great.”

  On the screen, a green image from a night-vision camera showed a bunch of Justice Force heroes gathered on either side of the wide doorway of what looked like an abandoned tenement. Thunderclap, in a shock-absorbent version of the JF uniform, kicked in the front door and walked in. Either the camera or the building or both shuddered as a pressure pulse traveled throughout the building. A few loose bricks dropped through the video frame and exploded against the sidewalk. The members of the Justice Force descended on the dozen or so Phaetons who came running out the front door, hands covering ears20 with shattered eardrums. The Phaetons fought back viciously, and it got ugly as the JF fought back even more viciously. This wasn’t the part they’d shown on the news a couple of months ago. In fact, it couldn’t even be found on the Internet. This was strictly confidential.