by Matt Carter
Petting Zoo grabs my shoulder. “Dissident’s alive, which is more than can be said for all of the hitters who tried to take her out.”
Looking down at Kaley, she asks, “Is that—”
“Yeah.”.
“Her parents?”
I shake my head.
“Fuck,” Petting Zoo whispers. “What the hell are we gonna do?”
Rain starting to pour down around me, surrounded by misery in all its forms, the entire life I’ve built collapsing, all I can say is “I don’t know.”
CHAPTER 20: THE SUPERHERO
I’d forgotten my body could hurt this much.
Cramps and spasms run the length of my arms, up my neck and down my spine. Something rigid digs into my wrists, and my fingers are numb. Realizing that the way I’m sitting is part of the problem, I coax my head upright and find my senses of motion and direction off-kilter in a way I haven’t felt since the end of lab testing when I was sixteen.
Mom took me out for sorbet the night after the last test was done, to celebrate the fact that the only weakness the doctors had been able to find was a substance that could be patented so that only my own family could ever access it.
To celebrate being safe.
Mom.
Recalling the last few seconds of my consciousness, I blink my sore eyes open to find her.
She’s still sitting next to me, but we’ve been relocated to the dining room, and are no longer alone.
Gathered with us around the table where I learned to play Risk are a jarring juxtaposition of the people who’ve plagued my life for the last month and my city since before I was born.
Mayor Card, with Sergei standing behind him.
Milgram.
Pinnacle.
And across from me, at the table’s head, Uncle Ethan is pouring them all tiny glasses of sherry.
Glowing in the middle of all this, like a gaudy centerpiece, is a chunk of solid Jovium the size of a grapefruit.
“Mom,” I try to keep my voice level over my rising dread, giving her no reason to dismiss me like some tantrum-throwing child. “Mom, please untie me.”
I look at her, and keep on looking at her, hoping she’ll eventually return the courtesy. I stare at her concerned but unyielding face, exactly the way I remember it from whenever I got in trouble sneaking candy or bringing animals into the house as a kid. I trace her familiar nose, which tapers down to a delicate point exactly like mine; not because we share blood, but because we share a surgeon. I inventory her perfectly pressed skirt suit that she found the time to change into and accessorize with matching brooch and earrings somewhere between poisoning me, zip-tying me to a chair, and inviting her friends and associates over for drinks.
“Mom, listen to me. These are not good people.”
“I told you,” Card booms. “I told you I didn’t come here to be insulted!”
“Oh, please. She said you’re not a good person. Considering the … colorful company she keeps these days, you should be thankful she didn’t use far more vulgar terms,” Milgram chides.
Card huffs, “I will not stand for—”
“Give her a moment,” Uncle Ethan tells the guests amiably. “She’s still coming around.”
Mom finally looks at me, but not in the eyes.
“You know I wouldn’t hurt you, right?” I ask her.
She forces a chuckle. “Of course you wouldn’t, sweetheart.”
“Then I need you to pick up that rock, and throw it as far as you can.”
She chuckles again as if this idea is equally ridiculous.
“I don’t know what they’ve told you,” I continue. “I don’t know what you think you have to do here, but you don’t. You’re not like them.”
“I guess I’m supposed to keep my head down and plan charity balls and keep my nose out of where the real decisions are made?” she challenges.
“No, you’re supposed to be better than this!”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my mom!”
“If I might interject?” asks Uncle Ethan.
Mom straightens up, leaning away from me only too readily, and Uncle Ethan raises a scrap of black fabric above the table for everyone to see.
The ski mask from my sweatshirt pouch.
Without moving, I can tell that the rest of my pockets are empty as well.
“Would you mind explaining this, Kimmy?”
No. No way. I am not the person at this table with the most explaining to do.
I nod at the combination of Milgram, Card, and Pinnacle, who are watching me like a reality show panel, except they’ve all designated themselves as the mean judge.
“You first,” I say.
“Combined with your current attire,” says Uncle Ethan, “it looks very much like the disguise worn by two of the gang of unlicensed vigilantes who’ve recently been sabotaging certain business interests in WPC. An employee of Mr. Milgram’s has identified a similarly dressed vigilante as former Glamper's Island inmate, Edgar Enriquez. Would you like me to read you his priors?”
My face is transparent. There’s no point in not asking.
“Where is he?”
Mom pinches the bridge of her nose, deeply embarrassed by my question. “Honey, please, I know you’ve hit a rough patch with Mason, but this isn’t how you handle it.”
Milgram answers me.
“Mr. Enriquez is being offered the same opportunity you are. As soon as we finish here, I’ll be free to check on the results of his interview.”
“What kind of opportunity?”
Milgram’s smile is disconcertingly friendly. “How many kinds are there?”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Lizzie,” Uncle Ethan comforts Mom. “You knew this phase might come eventually. No matter how well you try to raise a girl …”
“You can’t undo the allure of the boy from the wrong side of the tracks,” says Mom.
“Wrong side of the …” I repeat, disbelieving. “Says the woman with a mob boss in her house!”
“What on earth could have made you think this would be okay?” Mom asks me reproachfully. “After what they did to Ethan, what they did to your father, how could you expect me to risk losing you to the supervillains, too?”
“Dad was killed by an incompetent corporate ransom collector in homemade spandex, who couldn’t measure sedative doses!” I shout at her. “Uncle Ethan was stepped on by a giant robot! Eddie worked for some guy who wishes he were that guy,” I jerk my head at Milgram, “and quit after he was busted in high school! There’s no pattern! There is no ‘the supervillains.’ There are just people who do different bad things for different bad reasons, but if you want a secret clubhouse full of powerful, scheming, interconnected evildoers, look around this room!”
Pinnacle watches this overdue family conference in silence, his arms crossed stiffly over his chest.
“I can’t listen to much more of this, Ethan,” says Card, refilling his sherry glass all the way to the rim. It looks perversely comical raised to his wide, jowled face.
Uncle Ethan ignores this and rests his chin on his clasped fingers, observing my face.
“Kimberly, we’ve been very patient, waiting for you to outgrow this … this Girl Scout phase. It’s probably my fault for indulging it for so long, letting you grow up on that Juniors team, building an identity out of simple-mindedness. It seemed like a harmless enough way for you to build your platform, and I was hoping you’d reject it in your own time, but the clock was ticking, you’d already run out more than half of your marketable career, and you were still just as stubborn and oversensitive as you were at eight years old. I thought if I removed you from their influence and put you in Pinnacle’s capable hands, maybe he could ease you into the real work you were supposed to inherit, let you get to know the people who keep Pinnacle City running on a personal level, establish a sense of loyalty.”
He smiles at Card, then back at me.
“You volunteered me for the Card job?” I reali
ze aloud. “Was any of the stuff you said about him real?”
“You been talking shit about me?” Card says, glaring at Uncle Ethan.
“Of course it was real,” says Uncle Ethan, utterly unembarrassed. “I said he can be a pill, but that he’s good at appealing to a certain class of people.”
“You’re a pill!” says Card. “Now break out the spurs and make with the filly-taming. You all promised if I kept her on until the time was right, she’d pay for what they did to my son.”
“Your son dug his own grave,” Pinnacle speaks at last. “And you should be thanking us all for appointing her to you. Until Ace’s indiscretion, your polls were up eighteen percent among women voters.”
“If I’m not mistaken,” says Milgram, “isn’t privacy the reason you still keep a head of security other than Miss Kline?”
Milgram smiles at Sergei, who stares stonily back while Card turns on him.
“There’s blame to share for letting this get out of hand,” he says.
“I apologize,” says Sergei, and I expect him to leave it there, but he continues, with an edge of contempt under his professional deadpan. “I failed to instill a preventative respect for women in the boy, in his father’s unavoidable absence.”
“Don’t you give me that shit!” roars Card. “I’ve been getting ten helpings a day from the liberal media, and I don’t need it from you! You don’t stop people from walking all over you by going around respecting them. Is that the advice you’d give him if you could start over? Huh? What would you tell him?”
“That a woman is like a loaded gun,” says Sergei, looking at me with a twitch at the corner of his mouth like we’re sharing a private joke, though I’m not laughing. “She’s beautiful and powerful and dangerous, and if you can’t treat her with enough care to keep her from blowing your myachi off, you don’t deserve to keep either.”
“So not at all like a person, then,” I say.
If his face can look taken aback, this is it. “My metaphor was—”
“Get me out of this chair, or suck an egg, Sergei!”
My mother looks at her drink and pretends not to notice the discussion taking place.
“If you’re quite convinced of the efficacy of the Jovium …” Uncle Ethan hints at Card.
Card calms down enough to nod. “Yes, fine. Sergei, you can go. We’ll discuss your performance review tomorrow.”
Sergei nods and leaves by the patio door without another word.
I’m waking up enough to start running down my list of possibilities.
No strength, no speed, no energy. Not much I can do but talk.
“So do you all, like, work for my uncle?” I ask.
“Not in this fucking lifetime,” says Card.
“She’s baiting you,” Milgram points out mildly, then turns to me. “I’m sure each one of us believes we’re the one in charge, but none of us are stupid enough to imagine the others don’t feel the same, are we?”
Card backs down grudgingly. “We’ll all see who makes out the best for themselves in the end.”
“Precisely,” says Uncle Ethan. “Nothing to be gained by arguing about it in the meantime, is there? I admire the effort, Kimberly, I really do. That question might be the most Machiavelli I’ve ever seen in you. But you don’t imagine we’re all held together by how much we enjoy each other’s company, do you? We need each other, whether we agree on every little ideological detail or not. That was another lesson I was hoping your assignment might teach you. Possibly, that was another of my misjudgments.”
“Big time,” I mutter.
“I should have been direct with you,” he says. “I’ll accept that. Will you allow me to remedy it now?”
I don’t offer an answer, and he doesn’t wait for one.
“The smear file that was being prepared against the people at this table and our plans for the future has been located. The danger will be neutralized. That’s a good thing—for us and for you. You’re special, Kimberly. Naïve, for now, but special.”
Dizziness from the Jovium makes my answering eye roll particularly dramatic.
“You are,” says Uncle Ethan, sounding saddened by my disbelief. “You were born with a combination of advantages that few others can boast.”
“Yeah, believe me, I know.”
“You have the strength, the looks, the family name, and even if you resist using them most of the time, you have the brains. People like us are the ones who move mountains. We’re the ones who shape the world, and the world owes it shape to us. Without us, mankind would still be grunting to each other in caves. You don’t owe anyone more than that. You do the future a service simply by existing and acting out your will. The only way you could fail would be to destroy the potential you’ve been handed. To waste what you will be handed when your mother and I are gone. I need to know that you’re strong and savvy enough to make the most of your position before that happens.”
Now I’m laughing, because I’m tired, my head hurts, and my family are villains in all but name, and I really, really wish I were still at Eddie’s apartment right now. Not that I could have avoided all this that way, not with thugs being sent for him too, but we might’ve had a better chance of fighting them off together.
“Why do you find it so difficult to believe that you’re special enough to deserve better,” asks Uncle Ethan, “and so easy to believe you’re special enough to deserve worse? You swallow your own press so easily, but you won’t take the word of someone who’s been in the game a lot longer than you have. You are not the ordained savior of Pinnacle City, Kimberly. You’re not the one and only chosen hero, destined to bring peace and perfection at the price of your own life. There’s no rule that says you have to be a better person than anyone else, except in all the ways you already are. You are not condemned to unreasonable selflessness. You do not carry all the world’s problems and trivial little injustices on your shoulders. What cruel, brain-addled force of destiny would choose you for that?”
“I did,” I answer, and Uncle Ethan looks disconcerted to hear anything but rhetorical silence in response.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not the one and only. I don’t want to be the one and only. But for the task of giving two figs about anyone other than myself? I choose me.”
Uncle Ethan sighs with great disappointment, then nods to Milgram.
“Do your work. I believe I’ll adjourn to the kitchen, if anyone would care to join me.”
“Mom, don’t, please,” I try.
Mom gives me a regretful backward glance that changes nothing before hurrying out of the room.
“Mom. Mom! Mom! MOM!”
Pinnacle stands silently and follows.
Uncle Ethan’s floating chair rotates toward the doorway.
Milgram finishes his glass and turns his chair toward me.
Mayor Card moves into my mother’s vacated chair, his eyes locked on me with impatient hunger.
“Uncle Ethan,” I call out, unable to keep the nerves from quavering the anger in my voice. I say it as plainly as I can. “Mayor Card assaulted me. On my first day working in his house, he grabbed me..”
It sounds even lamer out loud than it always did in my head, but I push onward.
“I shoved him away with my powers then, and I’m asking you now, as your niece and protégé, not to leave me defenseless in a room with him.”
I know by the look on Milgram’s face that Card is the least of my worries at this moment, but if my uncle deliberately handed me over to these partners of his when he handed me his mantle, I want him to know exactly what he did. I want him to think about it while he’s doing it again now.
Uncle Ethan turns to Card with a faintly scolding look.
Card looks only mildly embarrassed. “I might’ve made a few off-color remarks that could have given her the wrong idea,” he allows. “But I would never do what she’s describing. Not ever. On my honor, I’d never mix business and pleasure like that.”
Maybe Unc
le Ethan doesn’t believe me, given the convenience of my belated timing, or maybe he doesn’t care, but he gives Card a nod of understanding and his chair floats onward.
“He wasn’t the first!” Any matter-of-fact composure in my tone shatters as I try to explain to the chair’s high leather back why those two revolting seconds even matter now. “But he was the first one who made me feel it.”
I stare at my uncle’s chair and only my uncle’s chair so that I don’t have to watch Card’s face twist that into some kind of compliment.
“He was the first one who ever scared me, because even though I could have squashed him like a bug like any of the others, I thought he could squash me, too. He was my mission, and I thought he could make me fail in front of the Guardians. In front of you.”
I might as well be taking a knife to my clothes, to my skin, spilling my squirming guts onto this table in front of people who have no business in the world watching, just for the chance of making my uncle understand a fraction of what that moment felt like.
But he’s not even looking.
“Please!” I rattle my chair in a frantic underscore. “If we’re still family, you won’t leave me here!”
The kitchen door closes.
And then I’m alone between Milgram and Card, with a Jovium stone on the table and my hands tied behind my back.
Uncle Ethan has taken the mask and its mind control alarm chip with him.
“This won’t hurt,” Milgram tells me, in the gentle tone of a pediatrician.
“It better hurt a little,” says Card, massaging the nearly healed burn I left on his hand.
“At least, not tonight,” continues Milgram. “And you’re of course welcome to stay, Mr. Mayor, but I would appreciate a mood of contemplative quiet. Now, Miss Kline, how much have you been told about my particular ability?”
“You can control minds,” I say, my heart thrumming so violently in my throat that I can barely squeeze the words out past it. “Make people do things.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong,” says Milgram, pleasantly. “I can’t force anyone to do anything. All I can do is selectively remove certain barriers of conscience that might otherwise prevent them from acting.”
