How to Defeat a Hero

by J Bennett

  Gerald stands up and turns away from me. “I thank you for the kind thoughts,” he says in a voice dragged through gravel. “And I thank you for the friendship you show my son.”

  “Always,” I say and I stand up too. When he doesn’t say anything more, I murmur, “I should go.”

  “Alice, you have done me a great favor today.”

  His words burn because I haven’t done him any favors today. I know Shine’s true identity. I could release it in a single utterance and give The Professor one of the greatest ratings gifts of all time. And yet, I stay silent.

  “I shall give you a favor in return, but I beg you to keep it to yourself,” Gerald says. “It is best that your fellow henchmen not know.”

  “Sure,” I manage.

  Gerald folds his hands on the desk and looks down at his knuckles. I look at his hands too, at the knotted veins so blue beneath the thin layer of his skin.

  “The bank robbery is a rudimentary heist, isn’t it?” he says. “So beneath the dignity of The Professor.” I keep my eyes on his hands and gaze at the stretch of pale liver spots. “I want you to know that it was not devised by myself or Leo. We were directed by the City Council.”

  By Tatianna Wentworth, I think. I widen my eyes to force an expression of surprise, hold it for two full secs, and then shift my face into what I really feel, frustration. “It doesn’t matter,” I tell him. “Sure, bank heists have been done before, but we just need to find a way to make it interesting.”

  Gerald is already shaking his head. “You don’t understand, my dear,” he says, all the power and purpose dried up from his voice. “We have received very particular instructions this time. The Elementals, what’s left of them, will make a surprise appearance with two trainees in tow. We have been expressly instructed that we shall knock out Gust and Rain, but alas, the new trainees will capture me.”

  “What?” I gasp. No need to feign shock now.

  Gerald smiles down at his hands. “I have been instructed to lose. To give myself up. It is the proverbial end of the road.”

  “But…but…” I sputter helplessly. “But why?”

  “Politics, my dear. Leo received a tip that the City Council was pulling strings to damage our show. He called a few of his contacts and discovered that one particular sponsor had quite an ambition to spin off Shine. We meddled in that plan and she is not pleased.”

  Tatianna Wentworth! Blight her! I feel flames of rage kindle to life inside the pit of my stomach. I wish a sandstorm would tear the skin right off her body! Then a new thought occurs.

  “This is my fault!” I gasp. “I captured Shine!”

  “You did and it was brilliant.” Gerald finally looks up at me. “To see him trussed up in his own Torch Whip! What a scene that was.”

  “I ruined your show.” My legs don’t feel strong enough to hold me and I drop back into the chair.

  “It was Shine’s intention to capture me, which would have ended the show anyway.” Gerald reaches over and I feel his hand—thin but strong—cover mine. “We were never meant to succeed.”

  My throat closes up as a shower of realizations soak through me. The City Council wants to get rid of Beacon. One way to weaken her is to spin off her popular sidekick. But how? What vil is a big enough catch to propel Shine to his own show? Tatianna Wentworth must have known Gerald was hankering to get back in front of a cam, and he possessed waves of nostalgia to keep him afloat for at least a couple of eps.

  It was all a setup from the very beginning. Our show was over before it ever began.

  “It’s… not fair,” I choke out.

  “No. It isn’t.”

  We stay there, his hand resting over mine, for several secs, and then he pulls his hand away and self-consciously adjusts his bowtie.

  “I just thought you should know,” Gerald says gruffly, “so that you can make plans. Grab as much lens time as you can on this last heist. It may help you if you should ever seek employment on another show in the future.”

  “I don’t want to be on another show,” I bite out bitterly.

  “You have a strong screen presence, my dear,” Gerald says, collecting a little of his old voice back. “Just work on the pith of your lines and I am confident you’ll find work again.”

  But what about you? I think. Gerald fought for seven years for this chance at a comeback. What will he do now? Go back to watching reruns of his show in this forgotten, dusty office while this house slowly falls apart around us? The thought makes my heart ache. I force myself to my feet. My brain pounds with this poisonous news. I turn to go once again.

  “Alice, please keep this to yourself. The others…”

  I nod, understanding immediately what he means. If Gold and Mermaid knew this was our last heist, they would go off script, grab as much lens time as possible, and maybe even switch sides to try and glom onto another storyline. Our last mission would be even more of a raging disaster than it’s already meant to be.

  On shaky legs, I wobble out of The Professor’s office. The door shuts behind me, and I lean against the wall to catch my breath. I close my eyes as flames rage impotently inside of me. I feel so angry, so frustrated, but mostly I feel helpless. A hot tear slips down my cheek. I wipe it away as my ears catch a distinctive hum. I look up and see a cam drone floating across the gym, its lens trained on me. I grimace and turn away, hot waves of shame flooding through me.

  “Don’t you dare put this in the ep,” I hiss, knowing the cam will pick up my voice and that Leo will hear it from his editing station in his apartment.

  ***

  As soon as I walk through the door of my apartment and it slides shut, a wave of weariness crashes over me. My stomach gurgles, but I have no energy to even drag myself to the kitchen. I glance at my Band. It’s almost midnight. My Totem, Bob, has sent me several angry messages demanding to be taken out of sleep mode. I ignore them. My eyelids are like anchors. My brain swirls with all that I have learned, but I push those serrated thoughts away. I can’t think about how our show is doomed. I won’t.

  “Ta,” says a soft voice from the couch.

  I jerk, startled. The living room is dim and quiet. I hadn’t even noticed Lysee curled on the couch. Something feels wrong. It takes me a moment to figure out what it is. Her Pod is off. That never happens. As long as Lysee is awake, the Pod is on, splashing our wall with constant updates on new K-pop songs, Persona Stream updates, and pings from her friends, while cape and vil eps play on a side screen.

  I move into the room and come around to the couch. Lysee wears a simple pair of lacey pink pajamas. Not a zipper or bow in sight. Her hair hangs down her back, like a shining silver waterfall, and only the lightest touches of makeup enhance her pretty, heart-shaped face. I’m not used to seeing her without bright lipsticks and glittering stick-on jewels. She looks ethereal and gorgeous and it scares me a little.

  “Is everything k?” I ask.

  She smiles. “Oh yes. Everything is hallowed. The Professor’s ep was brills. You got great lens.”

  “I haven’t watched it.”

  She laughs and looks toward the wall. Her gaze is far away, like she can see out some invisible window. “It’s funny where the path of the universe takes you, isn’t it?” she says eventually. “You. Me. All the twists and turns.”

  “Yes, definitely,” I lie, not understanding a word. Someone’s obvi been swimming in the deep end of the self-help Streams.

  “I am at peace,” Lysee says.

  “That’s, uh, that’s great,” I manage. “You want a nutra-pack?”

  She shakes her head.

  I sit on the couch, uncertain, while my mind spins with all my own problems. “You sure everything’s hardy?” I ask again.

  Lysee puts a hand on my knee. “Yes. I know my purpose.”

  “Alright then. Good talk.” I stand up.

  Tomorrow.

  Tomorrow I’ll figure out what’s going on with my roomie. It’s probs just a new serenity path or something. I move to m
y room, each step weighed down with a hundred pounds of worry. Lysee twists on the couch.

  “It’s our duty to follow our destiny,” she says. Her wide, green-tinted eyes are heavy with sentiment.

  “Go for your destiny, Lysee,” I tell her, half-heartedly.

  She smiles again. “That means so much, coming from you.”

  I approach my bedroom door and it slides open as it syncs with my Band.

  “Alice,” Lysee’s voice calls behind me. “I love you.”

  “Love you, too,” I reply automatically and then enter my room. I’ve been meaning to decorate this place, I swear, but the only accessory I need right now is the bed in the middle of the room. I don’t so much lie down as crumple onto the soft mattress.

  I close my eyes, but blissful sleep doesn’t come.

  Our show is as good as swiped, I think. There goes my one chance to pay for college. Maybe there’s a job in town. Except I already literally asked at every shop and restaurant just a few weeks ago. No one is hiring, and I don’t have any skills to HaLC–Hustle a Little Currency, or beg for microtips in exchange for showing off some sort of interesting talent or skill on my Stream.

  A new thought hits me, and this one, at least, makes me smile. If we’re going gutter with this doomed bank heist, the least I can do is tip off my roomie. Lysee works as a bank teller specifically for the lens grabbing opps the position offers. She loves nothing more than to be threatened by vils and gallantly rescued by capes, all while the cams roll. Maybe she and I can even come up with a little side story where she strangles me with my own lasso or something. If I’m going the way the glaciers, I might as well give my friend a little of the lens time she craves in the process.

  I’ll throw the offer to her tomorrow when my head isn’t throbbing with exhaustion. For now, I drag myself up into a sitting position. “Unmute,” I say to my Band.

  My glum Totem appears on the holo-screen projected onto my forearm from my Band.

  “Bout time,” Bob says. “You look like you got run over by a herd of elephants, and then they backed up a couple of times.”

  “There are no more elephant herds,” I tell him. “Least not in the wild.”

  “Whatever. I gotta lot of responses pouring in from The Professor’s latest ep.” he says.

  “Not right now.”

  “Fine. Your loss.” He shrugs, and his unshaven jowls quiver. The rainbow-hued butterfly wings on his back flap once. Every day I regret loading him with a sarcastic and cranky personality, and yet I can never quite convince myself to change it. Of all the people in my life, sometimes Bob feels the most refreshing.

  I stare at him and realize that I don’t know what I want. Something easy. Something hopeful.

  Then I know.

  “Show me the Phoenix,” I tell my Totem.

  “Coming up.” Bob burps and the screen on my Band morphs into the endless black blanket of space. A glowing strand of light shows the long arc of the ship’s trajectory as it nears the big red planet where decades of robo-built structures await the brave and fragile 200 humans on the ship. After the first colony ship floundered from a hull breach less than halfway to the planet and the last two ships burned in the Martian atmosphere during failed landings, there was talk of scrapping the entire enterprise. For ten years no new colony ships made the attempt. One of the few things Sage Anders did right when she was elected was to work with a few top Captains of Industry to fund this fourth and likely last try.

  “Enhance,” I say, and the video zooms in so I can see a silver icon of the ship. I lay on my pillows, shoulder throbbing, neck sore, but smiling as I watch the beacon of a ship sail through black space. Two hundred brave, stupid souls are trying to do something meaningful, trying to push the story of humanity farther than it’s ever gone before.

  This is real, I think drowsily as my eyes sink shut and sleep takes me.

  Chapter 10

  I have been known to manage a few surprises when my back is up against the wall. ~ Iron, Interview with J Bennett

  ~

  I dream of the desert.

  The sun hammers me, soaking into my skin, turning my blood into fire. The sand grabs my legs, dragging me down with each step. I hear voices in the wind. My father’s soft murmur, the lullabies my mother used to sing. I will not make it out of the desert. I already know this. My blood will burn away. My bones will dry and splinter.

  But I keep walking. I must.

  Someone walks beside me. It must be Alby. He and I fought the desert together, until I fell. I look over, but it is not Alby.

  Beacon walks at my shoulder, the sun glinting off her metallic gold-and-scarlet costume. The lighthouse icon glows on her chest, and her violet eyes are steady as they meet mine. She doesn’t say anything, but somehow I know we are going to make it. We will cross the desert. The audience will be pleased.

  I wake up to sunlight. It streams through the window of my bedroom, nudging my eyes open. Usually when I dream of the desert, I seize awake with a pounding heart and sweat-soaked PJs. But this morning I feel at peace.

  The dream lingers, and it’s almost as if Beacon is still at my side, confident and protective. Ironic, considering the real Beacon would kick my ass and drag me to jail if she got the chance.

  “Finally,” Bob says, appearing on the holo-screen of my Band. “You’ve got a lot of work to do. Your fans are savage to hear from you. So are your shades.”

  “I thought I put you in sleep mode,” I groan.

  “You took me out last night, but then you got all sappy over watching the Phoenix instead of attending to your fans.” He projects a holo-vid of a weeping panda scooping ice cream into its mouth from a huge container.

  “Fans?” I mumble, wiping the grit out of my eyes.

  “And shades. You’re the top trending Persona on the hate chart in the entire sector right now.”

  Shades? Why would I have anti-fans?

  “Your Iron Stream is at 132,349 followers since The Professor’s ep aired last night. They’re still pouring in. You’ve also got 16 interview requests lined up, and Reena Masterson wants you to call her.”

  “Reena Masterson?” My voice is a squeak. Our town’s most iconic reporter wants to talk to me? I feel adrift in a strange, swirling sea. And then it starts to download. The Professor’s show. The new episode where I captured Shine; where I marched him down to the lair and The Professor formally invited me to become his fourth henchman.

  “Shocking, but it seems like you’ve somehow managed to become a Persona,” Bob says. “And a well and truly hated one at that.”

  I sit up in bed, pushing away the tangle of sheets and blankets.

  A Persona. Capital P.

  A Persona is followed. A Persona is known. A Persona is the thing everyone in this town dreams of being.

  It rocks me. Scares me. Disgusts me.

  For a moment, I feel my life spinning away from me, my fingers too slow to grasp it as it rushes down an unfamiliar path. This is the thing I never wanted. I used to mock the strivers and now I’m one of them. My stomach is fluttery and queasy at the same time.

  “… and you’ve got two new messages on your normie Alice Stream,” Bob is saying.

  My focus snaps to that. Something normal, from my real life. “Show me that,” I tell him.

  The holo-screen on my forearm shifts, glowing white for a moment, and then Alby’s eyes are staring back into mine. My heart squeezes painfully as I look into my brother’s round, pale face, into those brown eyes that match my own but settle deep in puffy pockets of sleep depravation.

  Is something wrong? Did Mom get sick? Has Alby had a mental setback or does he only want more money for some pointless upgrade in his VR game?

  “Heya, Twinly Two,” Alby says. He squints. I realize he’s outside. This, all by itself is a shock. Alby doesn’t go outside. Not unless he absolutely has to. “So, that drooling program you put into Tayla says I can’t play Tears of Doom for another two hours,” he grumbles. I close my eyes
, thankful again that I spent my last Loons on that super expensive therapy program that I interfaced with Tayla, his gorgeous Totem.

  Alby continues, “Tayla says I need to interact with the real world. It’s utter lobotomy, but…” here he shrugs and glances over his shoulder with a clear look of longing. He’s probably gazing at his trailer and the pair of Goggs inside that will let him jump back into the game, Tears of Doom, that he’s currently obsessed with. “But we’ve been doing some conflict resolution work, and it’s actually been helping me advance in the game. You know, strengthening my headspace. I’m so close to going pro, Alice. A few more months, really.” He looks down. “Anyway, since I’m on a break, I thought I’d help Mom with some of her plants or whatever.”

  The cam shifts, and suddenly my mom fills the screen, a gentle smile on her tanned face. “Hello, Alice. I hope peace and generosity find you on this day,” she says. Dirt cakes her hands, and I see several large pots in front of her, each one holding a tangle of delicate green shoots. Mom insists on growing her food the dirt way, despite the heat waves and dust storms and bouts on intense rain. It’d be so much cheaper for her to use her UBI to buy monthly supplies of nutra-packs like me, but she spends it on “real food” like rice and vegetables. Course, “real food” is expensive, especially because it seems like there’s a super drought in some part of the country every year. UBI dollars don’t go very far. It’s one of the reasons I feel the need to give Mom and Alby any extra money I can spare.

  The cam flips back to Alby. I notice that his dark hair, still long and shaggy, looks washed. So does his shirt. He even looks a little thinner. His face and body don’t seem so swollen and unhealthy.

  “Tomatoes are starting to grow,” he says. “See.” The cam flips once again, and now I’m looking at a tiny green nodule sitting on a thick stalk. “Anyway, Tayla says I can spend an extra hour in the game if I reach out to family more. So there you go. I’ve been meaning to start watching the cape and vil shows coming out of Biggie LC to see if I can tell who you are, but you know, with my training, I don’t have much time. I hope it’s going iconic. And…” The screen shifts to my brother. “Stay safe, Twinly Two.”