by Matt Carter
So loud I’m no longer in the dark pit, but on the floor of a bedroom in Card’s mansion. It’s pink and covered in jewels and posters of pop stars and pro-heroes, and in my madness of coming to it takes me a moment to understand that this room probably belongs to one of Card’s daughters rather than the Conqueror himself.
Milgram and Bystander look down at me, surprised.
They won’t be surprised for long.
The Flesheater’s out of reach, their doing, but Harriet’s still in my coat. Can’t get to her the way I am now. Have to get on my feet.
That won’t be fun.
I do it anyway. Force myself up, ignoring the fire, the glass. Stumble into a wall nearby, which gives me enough balance to stand.
A loud popping sound. Heavy impact to the back, stopped by my coat.
Milgram’s shot me.
The weight of the blast is agonizing, but it’s heavy enough to spin me around against the wall so I’m facing them. My legs feel stronger. Everything hurts, but I know now that this is how it’s supposed to be.
This is what I’m meant to do.
I’m able to reach inside my coat and grab Harriet as Milgram gets off another shot. The side of my neck feels hot, my head ringing.
I charge him. He gets off three more shots—two missing, one hitting me in the shoulder but not penetrating the trench coat. I’m almost within swinging distance. I can end this here and now.
But I can’t. Not when Bystander jumps in my way. She does this because she knows I won’t hurt her.
And she’s right.
Instead of barreling right through her, like I should, I angle my shoulder to push her off to the side. She stumbles, falls on her face, stunned.
I feel bad, but don’t stop, slamming into Milgram with the entirety of my body weight and knocking him to the ground. On the floor in front of me, bloodied and not surrounded by his goons, he doesn’t look like much.
And then he starts laughing. The pain and anger that’s been fueling me is galvanized, given strength with each chuckle.
“That’s a really neat trick you got there. Fighting off my powers. You’re gonna have to tell me how you did that, sometime.”
“Nah, I’m good,” I say, taking a step closer to him.
He holds up both hands. “WAIT!”
“If that was a command, it’s not working.”
“No, not a command, a request, a simple, human request from one man to another asking you not to kill me. You can’t be seduced, you can’t be bought, fine, I won’t ask you to be a part of my team again. But I want you to think about something. If you kill me now, what will that accomplish? Someone, from my gang, or from outside, will fill that void, and you’ll be back to square one. Would you honestly chance having to deal with a devil you don’t know when you can, here and now, spare the devil you do know? I know it’s not ideal, but—”
I don’t let him finish his argument. Nothing he says will undo the evils he has done or bring back the countless lives he’s ended.
Julian.
The Mendozas.
Tragedii.
And so I introduce him to Harriet. I swing her in powerful, overhand arcs, never once missing his head. At first he’s bloody, then he’s broken, then he’s not much of anything anymore but a red, chunky smear with the occasional hard white bit mixed in.
Over and over I swing the bat, and still he tries to scream, to plead even through the destruction of his skull.
Over and over I hit him until he stops making sounds and his body just shudders on the floor. In some faraway place drowned out by rage and pain I hear a woman screaming, and I don’t care, because Milgram has to pay for everything he’s done.
By the time I stop swinging, I’m exhausted, panting like I’ve run a marathon and looking like I’ve just survived an explosion at a slaughterhouse. There’s almost as much of Milgram’s head on me as there is on the floor and the walls, the bright pink room now streaked with dark red and points of white.
I smile, sincerely, for what feels like the first time in years.
Milgram is dead.
The Crescent, WPC, they’ll be better off with him gone. No more terror. No more Milgram Territory. No more having to watch our step—at least, any more than usual.
He’s right that someone’ll come in and try to take his place, vultures are persistent that way, but that’s just something we’ll have to face when we get there.
Dissident and Petting Zoo and Kline and me and …
Bystander.
I’d completely forgotten she was here.
She lets me know that it’s best not to forget her when, tears streaming down her cheeks, she calmly opens my coat and slides a very large knife into my belly.
I thought I’d known pain before. I’d always thought that pain and I were old friends who didn’t keep any secrets from each other, that I knew everything pain had to offer.
But I’d never had a knife jammed so far into my stomach that I could feel it tenting the back of my coat before.
I know now there’s a few secrets pain’s been holding for a rainy day.
I drop Harriet, locking my eyes onto Bystander’s. She’s staring into my soul, silent and unblinking and sadder than I think I’ve ever seen another person before. This allows me a certain peace I wasn’t expecting. I know that by all rights I should be angry, or betrayed, but knowing how bad this wound is, and what it means, I feel almost freed. There’s no more worrying about that far off day, no more wondering how it’s going to happen.
I know what this means, and I’m okay with it.
The pain is so blinding I’m almost numb to it. That can’t last, so I say what needs to be said.
“I get it. I get it. It’s okay.”
“Why?” she demands miserably. “He was my shot.”
“You know why.”
“We could’ve owned this city. You and me.”
“In another life.”
“A better life.”
“You honestly think we’re meant for better lives?”
“No,” she admits.
“That’s where you’re wrong. You can do better. Better than this,” I say, eying the blade in my stomach.
“I’m a killer.”
“You don’t have to be.”
She looks at me long and hard, and I think she softens. I can see a little of the old Bystander in there, the part that hadn’t entirely been destroyed by the awfulness of this world.
She slides up beside me, tries to hitch an arm under my shoulders.
“Come on,” she says.
“No.”
“I can still get you to a hospital.”
“You and I both know I won’t make it that far.”
“Well, we have to try!” She struggles to move me.
“No, we don’t.” I shake her off.
“Do you want me to stay with you? Until you … go?”
I shake my head. “You need to get out of here. The cops and pro-heroes who didn’t attend this party’ll be here any minute. You need to disappear before that happens. And if it isn’t too much trouble?”
“Yeah?”
“Try to live a better life,” I suggest, though the words come out weakly, barely a croak.
She doesn’t say anything to this, but she does close the gap. We kiss for a moment, the fire of our one and only night together returning to me, almost making me think that this battle at the mansion must be some bad dream.
But the fantasy of us living a normal life together, that’s the dream, and one that disappears the moment her lips leave mine.
“Would you believe me if I told you I still love you?” I say, trying to grin, trying to make the joke feel like a joke instead of some pitiful, almost-last words.
She smiles wryly before transforming into one of Card’s security personnel.
“No. But when you get to Hell, save me a seat next to Marco?”
“Of course.”
And with one last lingering look, she turns and r
uns off.
My feet barely hold me up and I’m so tired right now that I want nothing more than to crawl onto this teenage girl’s bed, pull out this knife, pass out and bleed to death all over her pink bedspread.
But with everything going on downstairs, I can’t do that. I still have some fight left, and I mean to use it.
Pulling the pill bottle from my pocket, I pop the top and spill its contents into my mouth. A lot of them hit the floor, but I catch enough to serve my purpose.
I crunch down and swallow what’s left. Even after only a few seconds, I feel the slight swimming sensation of them kicking in.
Achingly, I bend over, pick up Harriet and the Flesheater, and start to make my way back downstairs.
CHAPTER 24: THE SUPERHERO
I’ve lost track of the others.
Dissident’s nearby somewhere. I don’t know how long Eddie’s been out of sight.
The Milgram thugs protecting the south end of the mansion are second-stringers; gunmen with subpar aim and supers with low-level or unrefined combat powers with crippling recharge times, but there are a lot of them.
I’m striking to disable, not to kill, but I can’t even tell if I’m succeeding or not. The moment I drop one, there are two more demanding attention.
Sending a shockwave at the floor in front of me, meant to break a wall of legs, I take shelter for a moment behind one of the fallen columns to check Card’s phone.
Without my app, DistressFinder takes forever to load in the browser, but after six smashes’ and two screams’ worth of waiting, it accepts my login and shows exactly what I was hoping it would.
“Gunfire and probable super conflict at home of Pinnacle City mayor” is currently the top result across three counties.
All the Guardians except for Pinnacle and me are marked as present and in need of additional assistance, due to continuing non-containment of the situation.
I’m both pleased and a little nervous to see that Pinnacle has declared himself en route. He’ll be a serious ringer for the wrong side of the fight right now, but it was always the plan for him to be here, standing in a crater of his own culpability when the dust clears.
Thankfully, he’s not the only one who’s responded to the alert. Heroes from six different surrounding cities are coming to offer backup. We’ll have to hope that they’re from far enough outside Milgram’s network that when they get here, they’ll realize who needs that backup most.
Even the Justice Juniors are on their way, making an exception to their usual policy of giving the official adults a wide professional berth.
If I’m imagining the sounds of news choppers through the chaos, reality will catch up with my imagination soon.
I’m definitely not imagining the sound of another door breaking open with a wooden crack, or Dissident’s computerized yell.
“Kline! Get over here!”
I put the phone away and levitate up from behind the column.
The locked door she’s breached leads down into a half-sunken study. I hear him before I see him, downstairs among the golden lighting and dark hardwoods and velour upholstery.
“This really isn’t necessary,” says Uncle Ethan.
I land at the top of the abbreviated staircase, blocking Milgram’s people from coming to his aid, while Dissident charges on ahead, throwing one of her bolas to pin him to his floating leather chair.
Uncle Ethan looks down at the cable holding him to the chair he never leaves and raises an eyebrow at Dissident.
“Is this how the masked vigilante crowd typically treats crippled old men these days? Because in my day, they had a little more respect.”
Dissident ignores him, shoving him and his floating chair aside and kneeling down to examine the laptop on the desk in front of him. A faded, peeling repair tag on the back identifies it as the former property of Quentin Julian.
“He’s erased the evidence from the local hard drive,” she says.
“It’s gone?”
“No. Julian had off-site backups. Erickson’s been using this to track down all the different accounts. Didn’t get them all yet. Cover me.”
She takes a flash drive from her utility belt, plugs it in, and begins the download.
“Serves me right for being such a perfectionist,” Uncle Ethan sighs, thoroughly put-upon. “I thought we’d all overwrite the files together, share a glass or two of brandy, and possibly one of the more Neanderthal among us might take a heavy object to the remains of the hardware. But what is it that separates the truly evolved individual from the refuse of history? The ability to adapt.”
I know what he’s about to do an instant before he does it, even though it hasn’t happened since before I could form memories.
I fly between him and Dissident, shielding her and the computer while she works, as a golden light radiates from Uncle Ethan, then flashes over into the blinding flame that won him the title he gave me.
His chair burns away in the Solar Flare heat, allowing the unbreakable bola to fall loosely to the floor when he lifts off.
The awkward way his paralyzed lower half hangs, his stated reason for giving up active heroics, is barely visible through the glare of his power.
The heat radiating from him is uncomfortable from this distance, even for me. Everything made of wood in this office begins to char and smoke around him, and Dissident has to retreat back upstairs into the fray with the computer to keep it from melting.
Uncle Ethan starts after her, and I move to block him. He pushes, and I blast him into the nearest wall. He rights himself with a chuckle of exasperation.
“It’s time to move over, Kimberly.”
I hover at his height and fold my arms.
“I’m beginning to lose my patience,” he says calmly.
It hurts to look directly at him, but I do.
“Every hero and news outlet within fifty miles is on their way here,” I tell him. “By morning, everyone in the country will know who was here tonight, and why.”
“You expect me to believe you’d sell out your family for some childish excuse to play the hero? You took an oath, Kimberly.”
“We both did.”
“To family.”
“To protect the people of Pinnacle City.”
“The good people,” Uncle Ethan corrects.
“I know the words.”
“So you side with the bottom feeders over the strong, smart people who keep the city running,” Uncle Ethan proposes. “What then? When you’re formally expelled from the PCG, when your mother and I decide to remove your name from our accounts, assuming you don’t succeed in destroying them completely, where will you go? To join them in the welfare line?”
“I don’t need your money,” I say, trying to keep the doubt from creeping into my voice.
What I do or don’t need won’t change what has to happen tonight, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I haven’t actually thought that far ahead.
“I’m a Solar Flare, too. Once the story breaks, another team will take me in.”
“Maybe,” says Uncle Ethan. “Until you run off on a new crusade that their sponsors don’t like. It’s not different elsewhere than it is here.”
“It has to be!”
Raising my voice doesn’t make this desperate proclamation sound any better, but I can’t keep it down.
“Something, somewhere, someday, has to be better than you!”
Uncle Ethan swallows his first response, then says, “Last chance.”
I hover in place.
With the force of a cannon, he barrels into me, fully surrounded in flames.
My clothes char in an instant, flaking away from the Solar Flare leotard underneath, a precaution I adopted after all the street clothes I’ve burned through, hoping I wouldn’t need it. My skin sends those unfamiliar, intense pain signals to my brain, demanding that I jerk myself away from the flames, so much hotter than even Effigy’s, though no real damage seems to occur.
We tumble out onto the first floo
r. I can’t see Dissident or Eddie, and the Milgram thugs make no move to interfere with us, backing away from the blazing heat.
Uncle Ethan lets me go for the purpose of flying around me, but I block him with the heaviest charge I can summon, taking a chunk out of the wall behind him.
“I put you in that suit!” he accuses, pointing at the swirls of red and gold showing through under my ruined shirt. “I paid for your education! I paid for your room and board, your clothes, your publicists, your training, and your expensive damned cosmetic surgery! Solar Flare is my investment! What right do you think you have to cut me out?”
“I am not an investment!”
There’s a noise signifying a computer error above us, and we both look up. Uncle Ethan zooms toward the corner of the high ceiling where Dissident’s hiding like a spider, protecting the computer with her armor while she works. I catch him by his limp but red-hot ankle and throw him back into the floor.
Words that meant so much to me once, words I thought I’d given up on in the past weeks, resurface as I pick up the fallen column in the middle of the room.
“I am the tooth of the guard dog!” I scream as I swing it at the back of my uncle’s neck.
My armorer was right. Uncle Ethan may burn hotter than I do, but his invulnerability factor isn’t a fraction of mine.
“I am the edge of the ax!”
Crack.
“I am the fulcrum of Justice!”
Crack.
I can’t stop. I can’t listen to another excuse. I can’t be talked into being bought and sold again.
Crack.
He’s not moving anymore, but I keep swinging.
Crack.
“I …” I’m out of breath. I’m never out of breath. “I am a Pinnacle City Guardian.”
“Kimberly.”
The voice behind me is more exhausted than my own.
I turn, and Eddie is standing at the foot of the stairs, a half-dozen Milgram thugs dead or unconscious at his feet. I didn’t even hear the struggle over my own screeching.
“Put down the pillar, okay?”
I don’t know why I’m still holding it, and I drop it next to my uncle’s lifeless body.
