by J Bennett
I stand in front of her dresser and look into the mirror, which automatically reshapes my proportions so I look like a skinny, doe-eyed model. A holo-note blinks on in the corner.
Be a hero today, it says.
I sit on the couch and send another apology vid to Lysee. “I will always be your friend,” I say, my voice shaking, “even if you no longer want to be mine.” I even add a little emoji of a squirrel holding a heart at the end of the message so she’ll see how despo I am to make things right.
I don’t really have anywhere to go, so I wander to Iconic Square, wondering if I can deposit the paycheck in my pocket. Thankfully, it seems that Martha took it out before washing my pants and then replaced it again. Even before I get close to the center of the Square, I can see the crowd. There must be tens of thousands of mourners now filling up the entire Square. All of them are here to say goodbye to Beacon.
It hits me then. Beacon was a hero. A real, true hero. She touched lives. She gave people hope.
Biggie LC, my town, my home, doesn’t feel the same without her.
Bob pings my Band with a flagged story. “I thought you might like to see this,” he says.
I play the vid. Ash Anders, now neatly groomed and finally in a new suit, black with scarlet slashes—a clear homage to Beacon—stands at a podium and announces the creation of a new commission in partnership with the mayors of eight major cities to look at PAG’s practices to see if there might be another way to hold them legally accountable for the injuries and deaths their shows promote.
Ash Anders looks into the cam, directly at me, it seems. “We must take back our reality,” he bellows and pounds his fist on the podium.
A new message dings on my Band. The Professor requests my presence for a meeting in three hours. I feel myself smiling grimly. I need to tell him I’m quitting the show. I’ve been delaying all day, but I can’t hold off any longer.
I leave the edge of the Square and start toward our temporary hideout. Time to bow out of the Fame Game once and for all.
Chapter 31
Justice is a beacon shining in the night, banishing the shadows. ~ Beacon, S1, E2
~
That evening I regretfully button up my scarlet lab coat and stick my feet into my boots. I throw my hair into a messy braid tied with a white bow and hook my lasso on my belt. Finally, I slip Lysee’s cracked, smoky goggles over my eyes. This will be my last time in this uniform.
All afternoon, The Professor has been locked away in Sequoia’s master bedroom, his voice rising and falling. From my position standing outside the door waiting for an audience, I could hear his footsteps ceaselessly pacing. And then an hour ago he burst out of the room, waving me away and chanting, “No time! No time!”
A rental car promptly pulled up outside and whisked him away without any further explanation. Even Gold doesn’t seem to know what’s happening, though he’s reported lots of whispers in his network of contacts. The capes and vils are moving, testing the waters, making their plans.
Leo def knows something. His face is a sea of calm while Mermaid and Gold frown and whisper to each other. I have been making plans as well. After whatever this meeting is, I will announce to The Professor that I am leaving the show. I’ll be gracious about it, allowing him and Leo to plan my exit as they see fit. Maybe they’ll have me get captured during our next mission, or I’ll screw something up and The Professor will fire me in some huge blow-up. Maybe they’ll even “kill” me off, though I wonder if that’s wise after Beacon’s real death.
I haven’t figured out how I’ll pay for school, but this paycheck will at least get me through the rest of the semester. One more year and I’ll have my undergraduate degree. I also won’t be able to afford Alby’s expensive therapy program or the extra food rations I buy for my mom. I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe Alby doesn’t need his program if I spend more time with him. That means more than a short message or vid every week. I could go out to the cargo encampment, go on hikes with him, really talk.
Other questions and fears percolate in my mind as I walk down the hall toward the living room. I’ll need to leave Sequoia’s house once I turn in my goggles and glowing bowtie. Lysee hasn’t responded to my last apology even with the squirrel and heart emoji. I can’t possibly afford the apartment by myself, especially since my landlord is about to become my ex-boss.
I’ll figure something out. I always do. I’ve gotten this far on my own.
At the appointed hour of our meeting, I drop onto the couch next to Sequoia and offer him a small smile. He pretends to look out the window. From the loveseat, Gold catches my eye and raises an eyebrow.
Kitty skips into the room.
“Ta,” she sings to us and offers a wide smile. She is no longer the beautiful feline sex bot she once was. The left side of her face is crumpled inward, the ridge of her eye socket weirdly distorted. When she blinks, the left lid comes down more slowly than the right and doesn’t fully cover her eye. At least her interface seems to be back online and cheerful as ever.
“Welcome back, Kitty,” I tell her.
“I’m so glad to see you, too,” she murmurs and flutters her lashes. The movement is more than a little unappealing, but I find myself smiling. Kitty is something unique now. A little dented. A little ugly. I feel like she’s finally part of the team.
The team you’ll be abandoning, a thought whispers in my head. Abandoning? No. Leaving. Just leaving. Something sparks through me. It feels like regret, but it can’t be. We aren’t really a team, a family… are we?
Mermaid walks into the room and stands next to the couch. Gold scoots over on the loveseat and pats the cushion, offering her a spot. She ignores him. Now it’s my turn to catch Gold’s eye and raise an eyebrow.
Hard to get, he mouths with a wily smile.
At last, Leo comes out of the office where he’s been holed up all day. We already know that The Professor is gone.
“Outside,” Leo says. “You’re taking a trip.”
As if on cue, two rental cars pull up outside the house. I look to Leo, a question in my eyes, but his face is a stoic mystery. I wonder if that photographer in Tanzania, Ella-Ann, could crack through his façade and make him smile. I bet she could.
We leave the house and I make a point of slipping in next to Sequoia as soon as he chooses a car. Not that I had any competition. Gold is practically clinging to Mermaid like a magnet. Kitty stands, smiling, looking from car to car.
“That one,” Gold tells her, motioning to our car. Kitty nods and walks to our car, swinging into the seat next to me. One cam drone floats into our car and settles on the dashboard. Another enters the second car. My guess is that the other drones in our fleet are with The Professor on his mysterious mission.
Our car starts, the electric motor almost silent as the seatbelts slide over us and click into place. Seatbelts are practically relics, and most cars don’t even have them anymore. In most of the world, car crashes are almost unheard of, but here in Biggie LC you never know what’s going to come hurtling across the road or screaming from the sky. That means seatbelts are still a requirement within city borders.
As our car begins moving, Sequoia makes a point to stare silently out the window. I have a lot of friendships to repair, so I might as well get started.
“What do you think’s going on?” I ask him.
He shrugs.
I sit back in my seat.
“I think we’re going to a picnic,” Kitty says. “I hope it’s a picnic.”
“It’s not going to be a picnic,” Sequoia retorts. He sounds tired.
I lean over and peer at his hand. “Hmmmmm,” I say. He shifts uncomfortably.
“Hmmmmmmmmmm,” I murmur again.
Kitty leans over and stares at Sequoia’s hand. “Yes, he certainly does have big hands, doesn’t he?” she tries to wink at me with her broken eyelid.
“Uh… sure, but that’s not… that’s not the curious thing,” I say, trying to recover.
“Oh? What is it?”
I smile at her, glad to have an unwitting partner in crime. “Well, you see that freckle on his knuckle?”
“Which one? He has many.”
“On his index finger.”
“Yes. I see it.”
“I’m pretty sure it moved.”
“Oh!” Kitty exclaims and then she frowns. “I don’t believe freckles can move.”
“See, that’s what I thought too,” I tell her, “but I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a freckle on the knuckle of his index finger before.”
“Stop it,” Sequoia grumbles.
“I mean, that’s pretty strange, right?” I ask. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the lens on the cam drone in our car shift out of its auto-recording state.
“I’m reviewing my database of human conditions and illnesses,” Kitty announces, “but I don’t see any indications that freckles can move.”
“Wow! So you’re telling me that this is an all-new condition? Nitrogen, you’re one-of-a-kind,” I tell him.
“It didn’t move,” he grumbles.
“Are you sure?” I ask him. “Do you catalog all your freckles?”
“Yes, is there a database we can access?” Kitty asks. She leans over me and peers at Sequoia.
“Oh. Oh!” I cry and point his neck. “One of his freckles moved. I saw it. I swear!”
“They don’t move!” Sequoia says finally turning to me.
“Of course not. That would be ridic,” I say and smile.
“Then… then… why…” he splutters.
“Because now you’re talking to me,” I say, “and if I have to lie about moving freckles or pretend my appendix burst or that I personally know Bigfoot just to get your attention, I’ll do it.”
“Bigfoot is not real,” Kitty pronounces and then lowers her voice, “unless we want to use our imaginations in a fun, fun way.”
Ok, so robo wing-woman maybe wasn’t such a brills idea.
“You’re mad at me and I think I know why,” I say, plowing ahead before Sequoia can freeze me out again. “And if I’m right, then I’m really sorry if I gave you the wrong idea.”
“You… uh… it doesn’t matter,” Sequoia says as his cheeks flush. He glances at the cam. He’s noticed the movement of the lens, too. Good. His cam instincts are getting better.
I wish I could tell him the truth. That’s he too good for me. That I can’t be trusted to hold his big, beautiful heart in my hands. All my jagged edges would cut it to pieces. But the cam and the world don’t get to know that. Neither does Leo.
“I don’t want to lose our friendship,” I whisper to Sequoia. “It means a lot to me.” I swallow. “But if you’d rather…”
“I’ll be your friend,” Kitty says to him in her sultry voice.
I let out a small laugh. “See, you’ve got a replacement Iron waiting in the wings.”
“I don’t want a replacement Iron,” Sequoia says and sighs. “I was just hoping… but I guess…”
“Friendship is all I can offer, and maybe some help with good lines,” I say.
Sequoia looks at me, all those freckles like a universe of stars mapped on his skin. His brow furrows as if he’s struggling with some inner turmoil. Finally, he says, “A good henchman adapts to every situation, even when things don’t turn out the way they want.”
I recognize the quote from The Henchman’s Survival Guide.
Sequoia continues. “If all you can offer is friendship, then I’d be a fool to turn it down.”
I lean into his shoulder and smile. “I guess you don’t need to work on your lines after all.”
He nods and smiles, but the sadness still clings to him. It will take more time, more effort to get things back to the way they were between us, but I’ll do whatever it takes.
“I accept your friendship as well,” Kitty cries and wraps us both in a hug.
***
Our car brings us to Iconic Square and slows as it millimeters through the churning crowds of mourners. Many of them wear Beacon’s helmet or different versions of her costume. It feels like Beacon is all around us, a thousand ghosts haunting the city she once protected so fiercely.
Eventually, we pull up in front of the Grand Museum behind a line of other cars. I turn in my seat and glance behind. More cars line up in back of us. Sequoia and Kitty open the doors and step out. Sequoia offers me his hand, and I take it gratefully.
Gold, Mermaid, and Leo step out of the second car, and our henchman team, plus producer convene on the sidewalk outside the museum. I immediately spot one of the Glitter Girls, a relatively new girl hero group, walking into the museum, her sequined skirt winking in the sunshine.
Next to me, Sequoia tenses, and I see Gold reach inside his lab coat for his gun.
“This is a parlay,” Leo says. “No fighting.”
We look at each other. A parlay? Yet another rare occurrence in Biggie LC. There hasn’t been a cape-vil parlay in years.
Together, we enter the museum and follow a lighted path through a variety of rooms and displays. We walk past the wing for rare jewels, always good vil bait, then the wing for ancient relics, another vil hotspot. Several people stand in this room, many of them wearing expensive Goggs.
“And this is where I leave you,” Leo says. “No producers in the main shots.”
I look ahead to the next opening. So, something big is about to go down, or at least something worth recording.
“No fighting,” Leo reminds us again. “Stay quiet, be good, and listen.”
“I won’t throw the first punch, that’s all I’m promising,” Gold says. There are clearly too many capes and sidekicks around here for his liking.
I give Leo one last questioning look to see if he’ll reveal any more details, but he just makes a shooing motion with his hands. Our group moves forward into the next room, which is the museum’s main atrium, dedicated to the history of Big Little City. The room is filled with holographic avatars of the sponsored heroes and villains who have prowled and protected our streets since the city’s creation.
Between the vil and cape holograms, cases guard their helmets, weapons, boots, and sigils. There’s the Destroyer’s real bionic arm. A 3D-printed replica of it used to hang over Table One at the Redemption Café where I worked. There’s Evil Santa’s hat and the tattered remains of Rudolph 16. I even see The Professor’s notorious solar furnace sitting in the middle of a display dedicated to him, next to a pair of Energy’s goggles and one of my boss’s many mechanical ray guns. In the center of the room, atop a brand new pedestal, sits Beacon’s glowing golden helmet. The lighthouse insignia on the helmet throbs with light.
People cluster uncomfortably in small groups, giving a wide berth to the pedestal. I recognize many faces and many costumes. Most of the vils from the Dark League are here. So is the youngest elemental, Gust. Two of the three Glitter Girls. I even see DeAngelo standing in the corner, his face still puffy from the recent battle.
All of these people were trying to tear each other to pieces just yesterday, and now we stand in small, tense groups, muttering to each other and casting baleful looks around while a cloud of cam drones hover above. Others walk in behind us, including Socket and Crank in their oil-slicked, jangling outfits and Hummingbird, her translucent mechanical wings folded against her back.
“This is strange,” Gold says.
“It’s been five years since Beacon brokered the second parlay in the history of Big Little City,” Sequoia whispers to me. “That was only because a massive dust storm almost leveled the town and no one could record outside for over a week.”
I nod. That happened a few years before I moved here, but I remember the newscasts and how Beacon stood inside City Hall asking the vils and capes to put down their weapons and pick up shovels. Many of them did, using the filtration systems and extra strength offered by their expensive suits to help dig out the town so the shows could go on. The forecasts are predicting bad dust storms this summer. What’ll happen then wi
th no Beacon to bring the entire city together?
“So who called this parlay?” Mermaid asks. She gazes around the room but doesn’t look perturbed like many of the others. I wonder what opportunities she sees in this gathering.
An elevated stage presides over the front of the room. This is where Mayor Wisenberg and other city officials gleefully unveil new treasures to be added to the museum. It’s also where so many vils have dropped through the skylight, risen up from a trap door in the floor, or sent their minions scurrying on stage to grab the vil bait. Inevitably some cape would magically appear to stop them.
How many fights have taken place in this room? More than I can count. Probably half the vils and capes standing around us have committed or averted a heist here.
I catch movement and watch a brightly clad figure quietly make her way to the front of the room, near the stage.
Lysee.
I recognize her purple hair and the shape of her face beneath Shine’s mask.
Wait… Shine’s mask? Why is Lysee wearing Shine’s mask? In fact, she’s wearing a feminized version of Shine’s costume, complete with a newly revealing neckline.
I take a step forward, intent on elbowing my way through the crowd to her, when spotlights flicker on, brightening the stage. The murmur of voices in the room dies down. Whatever machinations have been happening behind the scenes, we’re about to find out what they are. I glance around, wondering if this is all some elaborate trap, but then why would both vils and capes be here?
A row of figures walks from behind a curtain onto the platform. I recognize Lobo and Titan, the leader of the Dark League. There’s Rain, leader of the Elementals, Paladin from the Glory League with his arm in a sling, and most surprising of all, Evil Santa in his blood-red coat. Evil Santa was supposedly killed last year when he refused to let Beacon save him from falling down that industrial chimney.
