by J Bennett
“And be kind,” my mother’s voice says somewhere out of the shot.
The video ends. I stare at it in shock.
Alby made a video. For me. And he didn’t ask for money. He didn’t babble about some emergency. And he was outside.
This is big. Huge. Supernova. The therapy program must be working. One of the best things about the program is that it’s compatible with Alby’s game, Tears of Doom. Tayla can actually enter the game and put him through therapeutic sessions while he plays. She can also turn off the game even outside of the government’s legally mandated five hours of power down for every 19 hours of play.
“It’s working,” I say out loud, and something wonderful and dangerous blooms in my soul.
Hope.
“Hey, hey!” Bob barks at me. “Back on task here. We’re going to have to seriously elevate your social media game for your Iron Stream after this hot debut. More pics. More vids. Daily vid diaries. That sort of thing. Let’s start with maybe brushing your teeth.”
Then a thought hits me like a sledgehammer and all my hope crumbles to dust. That sledgehammer has a name.
Tatianna Wentworth.
Standing in my bedroom, a drooling smile on my face, I suddenly remember that our show is going to get swiped in three days when we try to rob the bank. All this fame will be gone in an instant, and so will the paychecks I need to cover the hefty subscription fee for Alby’s therapy program. That money also goes toward buying rice, bread, oatmeal, and other staples for my mom while she lovingly grows clusters of tomatoes and carrots that could never hope to feed her.
I blink into the sunlight as my thoughts swirl and congeal into a single word.
No.
I can’t let Alby down, which means I can’t just stand by and let our show go gutter.
No.
No.
NO!
Within the mess of anger, hopelessness, and fear for Alby, something tugs at my brain. My dream hasn’t totally evaporated. I see Beacon again, those red lips smiling at me, that streaming golden hair.
The City Council is trying to swipe Beacon’s show, too, I realize. We actually have something in common. Though not that much in common. Beacon actually has the money to fight back. She can afford to hire her own producer and save her slot on the PAGS programming platform.
I stand up. As I move toward the window, I catch my reflection in the mirror. Tangled brown hair falls around my shoulders and my t-shirt is rumpled from sleep. Not exactly a fierce henchman.
I remember what Adan told me about Beacon’s big breakthrough. Like me, she took a crazy chance. She ignored her sponsors and producers and snuck onto that train to face The Professor. She grabbed such powerful ratings that the City Council fell all over themselves to promote her.
It was risky but it paid off.
I watch myself smile in the mirror. “Thank you, Beacon,” I whisper.
I glance at my Band. Still a little over three hours until my first class starts. Bob has pulled up the second message on my Alice Stream. It’s a ping from Ollie offering to study for the chem midterm. I definitely need to do that, but I’ve got something more important to handle first.
Humming “Mom, Make Me Noodles,” I wash my face, comb my hair, and then twist it into a braid. I tie a white bow at the bottom of the braid and don my henchman costume–red lab coat, flashing white bowtie, and the cracked gray-and-green goggles.
Now I’m glad I never managed the energy or the dollars to actually decorate my room. My blank wall is the perfect background for my first official vid on my Iron Stream.
“Bob, record on my mark,” I tell my Totem.
“Wait, you’re actually recording a vid… voluntarily?” He looks stricken and his rainbow wings flutter in agitation. “Can Totems have heart attacks?”
“Just do it,” I say. I turn my wrist so that the cam embedded in my Band gets my full face. A holo-screen projecting up from the Band shows me what the cam sees—a calm and confident henchman. I count down from five. When I reach one, the recording light brightens.
I smile. “I’m glad so many of you enjoyed my little scuffle with Shine,” I say. “We’re so excited to have him as our special guest. I just wanted to let all my fans know that The Professor is planning something big.” I take a breath and force my smile even wider, almost gloating. “So get ready. School is in session.” I finish with a short laugh and then stop the recording.
Sure, it wasn’t the most shining vid ever, but it was a statement.
“Want to record a few more tries?” Bob asks.
“Nope, post it to my Iron Stream.”
“You’re supposed to get Leo’s permission before you put anything on your henchman Stream,” he says.
“I’ve got admin access.”
“That’s so you can respond to comments.”
“Post it,” I tell him.
“Yes, ma’am.” He salutes, his double chin quivering. I feel exhilarated. True, the vid didn’t say much, but it was my secret pledge that I’m not letting go of our show without a fight. I just promised the world a daring escapade, and now I’ve got to deliver.
I quickly send out private messages to my fellow henchmen.
***
When I get home from my classes, I only have 15 mins to prepare for the special meeting I’ve called. I glance at my Band. My Iron Stream numbers continue to tick up. It seems like half the world wants to buy me a drink and the other half wants to murder me. My Stream is gushing with the tormented rage of tween girls, boys, and nonbinaries. Bob has started filling a folder with all the gossip stories about me and Shine. Separate folders hold fan comments, marriage proposals, and death threats. I don’t know how to process this lobotomy new world I’m in, but fortunately, I don’t have the time to ponder it too deeply.
I notice two messages in my private chat channel from Leo. No doubt he wants to compliment me on the brills teaser vid I posted this morning. Being the humble employee I am, I decide not to indulge my ego by reading his messages.
I swing into my apartment and almost collide with Betty.
“Ay!” she cries, spinning in a slow, jerky circle. “I’m walking here!”
“Jersey accent,” I say.
“I wanted to give her a little ‘tude,” Matthew says from the couch. I immediately look him over. His black hair is a little flat, and the bottom button on his silver jacket is unfastened. Not good. When he’s on the happy mental health train, Matthew is agonizingly fastidious.
“Your dad says hi,” I tell him as I toss my bag in my bedroom.
“I’ll send him a heart emoji.”
Betty turns and clips our couch.
“What’s wrong with Betty?” I ask.
Matthew shrugs. “Drinking problem.”
“Robos don’t drink.” I study Betty. She’s such an old model that she never walked quite normally, but there’s a distinctive jerk in her gait that seems to be pulling her off kilter.
“Her wiring is probs loose again,” I say. “You can bring her into a shop, get her tightened up.” The robo’s over a decade old. Circuits and chips are bound to sputter out.
“I think she’s fine.”
I plop down on the couch next to Matthew, reach over, and push his bangs out of his eyes. Usually, he gels them to the side, but today they fall limply over his forehead.
“She’s not fine, Matthew,” I say softly. “She’s breaking down, but she just needs a little help and then she’ll be good as new.”
Matthew turns his face away. “Maybe I like her a little broken.”
“Just not too broken.”
There’s so much more to say. So much more I need to do for him, but a part of me feels resentful. Why does he have to go crumbling to pieces when I’ve got so much else on my plate?
“I’m having some people over soon,” I say. “It’s kind of a private thing.”
“I saw the ep last night,” he says. “The way you nabbed Shine, that was clever. And low.”
H
is words sting because they’re true.
“I saw an opportunity.”
Matthew stands up. “And you took it.”
“Let’s talk soon,” I tell him. “I’ve got some, um, stuff to do over the next couple of days and then midterms, but after that, we’ll have an all-night dance party.”
All-night dance parties are this thing we made up where one of us chooses a truly terrbs song and the other has to make up a dance to it on the spot. We do this back and forth until we’re both too exhausted to go another round. Then we usually end up talking the rest of the night or watching a rando vil or cape show and adding snarky commentary the whole way through. Lysee is always up to join us for the lobotomy dancing, but she usually huffs to her room when we start mocking her fav shows.
“Yeah, sure,” Matthew says in a way that clearly implies he holds out no hope for me. “Come on, Betts.”
“Coming through, coming through,” Betty says as she saunters to the door on her wobbling steps.
“Your dad really cares about you,” I tell Matthew as he moves through the open doorway. He stops. I can’t see his face, only the hunch of his thin shoulders beneath his flashing silver jacket.
“I know,” he says morosely and then the door slides shut behind him.
I drop back down to the couch and consider the million and a half ways that convo could have gone better. I need to find a way to spend more time with Matthew. I should also let Lysee know that he’s going dark. All her giddy happiness can usually cheer him up. Course, my roommate was cartwheeling across a different universe last night. I should probs check on her too, to figure out what that was all about. I pull up her Stream on my Band and see that she checked in at the bank for work. I open my mouth to vocalize a quick “hope you’re doing okay” message when I get a ping from Sequoia. My Lysee wellness check will have to wait. I give Bob permission to open the door to my apartment.
When Sequoia walks in, he seems to fill up the whole place. He stops uncertainly near the couch and gives me a shy smile.
“Thanks for coming,” I tell him.
“Course.” He looks around. “Cozy,” he says. “So, um, what did you want to talk about?”
“Wait here. I’ll explain soon.” I pop up off the couch rush into my room to quickly throw on my henchman uniform. I grab my goggles, but I perch them on my forehead instead of pulling them over my eyes.
Just as I return to the living room, Mermaid pings me. I take a deep breath and send the signal to the door. As it glides open, Sequoia quickly pulls his goggles over his eyes, but I leave mine alone.
Mermaid slips quickly into the apartment. She wears her goggles, but a long black coat hides her costume. As soon as she sees me, she frowns.
“It’s drooling to unmask, even in front of your teammates,” she says.
“I know, but we’ve got bigger problems,” I say.
“Is Gold coming?” Sequoia asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “He didn’t respond to my message.”
Mermaid stays near the door. She hasn’t unbuttoned her coat. “What are you hatching?”
I hesitate. Can I really trust her? No, but I have no choice. I have to be bold, like Beacon.
“There’s something I need to tell you. Both of you,” I begin. “This bank heist, it’s—" My Band pings. I sigh and give the command.
Gold saunters inside my apartment in full costume. “Stellar ep last night,” he says. “You got the whole country raging. I think they despise you more than Sage Anders.” He shakes his head with reluctant admiration. “All those death threats. I’m big enough to admit I’m jel.”
“I didn’t know if you were coming,” I say.
“I like to be a little unpredictable,” he says and drops onto the couch as if he owned the place. “But I couldn’t have you all scheming without me.” He peers up at me and his eyebrows dance above his goggles in surprise. “Whoa, unmasked. I guess we’ve got to trust you now.”
I ignore him and look around the room.
“Why are we here?” Mermaid demands. She looks like she’s secs from stomping out the door.
“We’re here because our show is about to get swiped,” I say.
That gets their attention.
Chapter 11
Your fellow henchmen are your teammates. They can become like family. That don’t mean you should trust them. They want lens time just as much as you do. ~ Tickles the Elf, The Henchman’s Survival Guide
~
“Blight!” Gold hollers as soon as I finish explaining everything about our perilous situation. He follows this outcry with some of the dirtiest, crassest, and most creative cursing I’ve ever heard. “… should 3D print Tatianna Wentworth’s ovaries into a hat and make her wear it around Iconic Square,” he continues.
“You’re sure of this?” Mermaid asks me. Her expression is grim, but she doesn’t seem too surprised that our show was created to fail. If the rumors are true, she’s been running the semi-reality circuit for a long time. She’s probs seen more than her fair share of dirty tricks. Likely, pulled a few of her own, too.
“We were set up at the mayor’s house. That much is clear,” Sequoia says.
“My info is solid,” I tell them. “I got it directly from The Professor.” I feel guilty betraying his trust but it’s all for a good cause. I’ve got to get the others to believe me if we have any hope of preventing disaster on our next mission.
“I didn’t realize your relationship with him was so cozy,” Mermaid says and lifts an eyebrow.
“Why doesn’t The Professor fight it?” Sequoia asks. My friend’s face is pale. Well, paler than usual, and it’s taken on a slight green tinge. He leans heavily against a wall. He rejected his father’s mandate to step into the family business in order to try out for The Professor’s show. He’s been mum on the exact consequences of this decision, but I imagine he won’t be very welcome at the next family reunion.
“He doesn’t think he has a choice,” I admit.
Gold’s head snaps up. “And you think we do?”
“There’s always a choice,” I say.
Gold smiles and nods. “I hear you. We’ve got to go supernova during the heist. Something that will grab eyes. Enough that we can spin off without The Professor.”
“All of us?” Mermaid asks dubiously.
“Of course. We can make our own group.” Gold bites his lower lip, worrying at his gold lipstick and then snaps his fingers. “What if we made up a team of other outcast henchmen? Who’s that vil that just got swiped? He wore that huge battery pack that shot electric volts.”
“Turbo,” Sequoia says.
“Yeah, Turbo. He had those two henchmen who ran around charging him up. Maybe we reach out to them.”
“We can’t spin off, not after just four eps,” Mermaid snaps.
“We’re not going to spin off,” I say, “because we aren’t getting swiped.”
“You just said—” Sequoia starts, but his words die when he glances at my face.
I take a deep, deep breath and move to the center of my small living room. Courage is for the desperate, Tickles wrote on last night’s blog. Well, desperation has a new name.
“Alice,” I say. “That’s my name. Alice Hannover. This is where I live.”
“You live above The Professor’s lair?” Gold asks at the same time Mermaid says, “Don’t tell us your name, you shigit.”
I glance around the room, trying to meet each of their gazes through their goggles. “Our show is about to go gutter,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “In three days it won’t matter if you know my name or where I live. All of us, we’ll have nothing.”
“Not nothing,” Gold mutters, “but it’ll be a long climb back up.”
“The only way we survive is by doing something big,” I continue, ignoring him. “Something so bold, so lobotomy that the sponsors will have to notice us.” I pause. No cams are rolling, but this is the most important performance of my life. “Leo was right. Our la
st mission was a disaster. Not just because the Dragon Riders surprised us, but because we were trying to grab lens instead of fulfilling the mission. That can’t happen again.” I raise my voice. “If we want to survive. If we want to pull off something iconic, then we’re going to have to work together. We’re going to have to trust each other. We’re going to have to be an actual team!”
I look around the room as my heart skips a beat in my chest. Mermaid crosses her arms over her chest. Gold presses his lips in a skeptical expression.
“Chauncy-Steward-Rine Briggs,” Sequoia says and pulls off his goggles. His eyes are a pale blue, almost gray.
“Aw hell,” Gold says. He fidgets and then yanks his goggles off. “Darius. Not telling you my last name.” His eyes are the color of honey, just a few shades lighter than his skin.
“You’re all lobotomy,” Mermaid says. “We don’t need names to trust each other. We just need the right incentive.”
I knew she would be the most difficult to persuade.
“Are you willing to at least hear me out?” I ask her.
She doesn’t uncross her arms. She still stands close to the door. But she says, “I haven’t left… yet.”
True. But will she agree to help or is she just keeping her options open? Mermaid is the best fighter and the most strategic thinker of all of us. We need her on board to have any chance of success.
“Alright, everyone. Goggles back on,” I tell them. “Henchmen codenames only. I’m going to record the rest of the meeting.”
“This just gets more and more drooling,” Gold laughs, tugging his goggles over his eyes.
“Should we really be recording a scheme against Tatianna Wentworth?” Sequoia asks doubtfully.
“If our new mission is a success, Leo’s going to want these planning vids to splice into the ep,” I explain.
“Could be a trap,” Mermaid says. “Maybe we aren’t getting swiped at all and you just want to show The Professor and Leo that we’re willing to go against their orders.”
No surprise that a schemer expects betrayal at every turn. “I just gave you my name, my face, and my address,” I tell her. “I’m at your mercy. If I double-cross you, just unmask me.”
