Villainous

by Brand, Kristen

  We made it to the front of the line, and Agent Lagarde flashed her badge in advance of explaining the handgun under her suit jacket. The three of us got pulled aside for a special screening that took even longer, and Agent Lagarde didn’t even try to be subtle about instructing them to pay extra close attention when searching my purse. She needn’t have bothered; I hadn’t tried to smuggle in a gun. I was unarmed and powerless, which was the exact situation that had allowed Dr. Sweet to capture me so easily back in August. Agent Lagarde and Julio might be here to prevent me from doing anything illegal, but I’d be depending on them for protection if anything went wrong. I didn’t like it. Not in the slightest.

  Alcohol didn’t mix well with exatrin, so instead of a Bloody Mary, I got in line at Guava & Java for a coffee. An extremely long line. Julio and Agent Lagarde followed me, seeing as that was officially their job today. If I was really evil, I’d spend the next hour before our flight browsing through every shop the airport had to offer and asking their opinions on duty-free perfume as they were forced to trail behind me.

  “I don’t suppose you could convince everyone in front of me that they’re not thirsty,” I asked Agent Lagarde. “I’d do it myself, but you know…exatrin.”

  She didn’t respond. I was starting to think nothing short of shooting her would antagonize her. Julio, on the other hand, was all too easy.

  “You use mind-control on people to avoid waiting in line?” he asked sharply.

  “Are you asking as a casual acquaintance trying to get to know me better, or as a law enforcement officer? Because my answer will change depending.”

  “And Dave knows that? He lets you do that?”

  “Lets me? I don’t need my husband to let me do anything.”

  Julio stared at me in silence. From his expression, you’d think I’d just admitted to drowning kittens. “This isn’t a joke, you know. This is his best chance of staying out of jail—Dave’s best chance. But if you’re going to do something stupid and ruin it, then let us know now, so we can just cancel the trip.”

  I smiled meanly. “Don’t worry. I plan on cooperating. Honestly, I’d much rather take him to Morocco or someplace else that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the States, but something tells me he’d put up a fuss.”

  “And you wouldn’t make him go?”

  “Make him?” My voice had more of an edge than I’d intended, but that was fine. Let him hear it. “You mean mind-control him.”

  “Yes. Would you? People say that’s the reason he…” Angry or not, Julio couldn’t look me in the eyes. “…you know.”

  The reason he married me.

  “People are stupid,” I said. “I’d never do that. Not to him.”

  Julio looked back at me. “But to everyone else?”

  I grinned. “Everyone else is fair game.”

  Aha. The classic holier-than-thou superhero glare. He must have learned that from Dave.

  “She’s pushing your buttons on purpose,” Agent Lagarde said in a low, calm voice. “You’ve read her file. Just ignore her.”

  “Right…” Julio turned away from me. “Right, yeah.”

  I let it go at that, and we spent the rest of the wait in silence.

  • • •

  The dry heat of Nevada was a stark contrast to Florida’s humidity. I walked from our rental car to a plain, gray building. It didn’t look like much, certainly not enough to warrant the electrified fence, armed guards, and three security checkpoints we’d had to pass on our way in, but the prison itself was underground. Up here, there was only empty desert: flat rock and the occasional scraggly, pathetic bushes. If a prisoner miraculously managed to escape from below, they’d die of thirst before they reached anything on foot. It wasn’t a foolproof safeguard, of course. My plans of escape had always involved arranging for transportation to meet me, but then, I’d never actually escaped, had I?

  The warden waited inside. She was a short woman with graying hair, delicate silver glasses, and completely see-through skin. The overall effect was about as unsettling as you’d think. She looked like an anatomy exhibit in a business suit, red muscles stretching and contracting as she moved.

  “Valentina Belmonte.” It was a good thing the warden’s lungs weren’t visible, because she had the voice of a long-time smoker. “I always knew you’d wind up back here someday.”

  “Warden,” I greeted. “It’s been too long. I brought your favorite.”

  I handed her a box of Swiss chocolates. In a place like this, an inmate needed to know how to get on the warden’s good side, and I’d figured out the most effective bribe during my fourth month here.

  “I’ll try them after I’ve had them tested for poison.” She glanced at my escorts and gave them a nod. “Freezefire. Agent Lagarde.”

  “Ma’am,” they replied.

  She turned back to me, and the muscles of her face were fascinating to watch as they contorted into a frown. “We’ll test your blood for exatrin first.”

  “Agent Lagarde injected her,” Julio said. “I saw it myself.”

  “A memory that Belmonte could have planted inside your mind. And that’s not an aspersion on your abilities, Agent Lagarde. Walter speaks very highly of you. I just need to take every precaution.”

  “Of course,” Agent Lagarde replied.

  A lab attendant pricked my finger and took the sample to a separate location for testing. The security cameras saw the whole thing, of course, and someone outside the range of my telepathic control would be monitoring to make sure I didn’t somehow interfere. We all stood in silence for the longest time, but eventually the results came back positive, and I was allowed to go down to the cell block level.

  Hooray for me.

  “I’ll be monitoring you from my office.” The warden’s round eyeballs gazed over us. “Don’t make me come down there.”

  That last bit was directed at me.

  Nobody wanted the warden to come down there, believe me. The Inferno has had five different wardens since its inception, and it’s not just a management position. Every one has had special abilities. Along with her transparent skin, the current warden could manipulate people’s bodies the way I messed with their minds. It may not sound like much, but it’s hard for prisoners to organize a mass breakout when they’ve all been struck by diarrhea. I’d seen her use her powers only once, and that was more than enough.

  Freezefire, Agent Lagarde, and three guards accompanied me into the elevator. The lead guard swiped a keycard and entered a code before we descended. There were no helpful numbers that lit up to show what floor we were passing, just the vague and ominous feeling that we were slowly moving down. My chest contracted, closing in on my heart like the walls of the cramped elevator around me. I inhaled through my nose until it felt as though my chest would burst, then slowly let the breath out.

  The elevator slowed to a stop, and the doors opened. We stepped into a small holding cell, waited for the elevator door to close behind us, and only then did the mechanized door in front of us open. The sight on the other side was all too familiar: a white concrete corridor, bare except for security cameras and yellow-tinged lights spaced along the ceiling. But I’d forgotten about the sound. It was a barely audible humming, the exact pitch of which I hadn’t heard since I’d been released from this place. Some prisoners said it was the lights, others that it was caused by the security system, still others that the low, constant sound was an intentional means to drive the inmates mad. By the time my two-year sentence had ended, I’d believed the latter.

  Our footsteps were the only other sound, so I tried to focus on that instead. The thumping of Freezefire’s and the guards’ boots overpowered the tapping of my heels and Agent Lagarde’s flats, and the echoes off the walls made it sound as though there was a platoon of us walking, not just five. And we had a lot of walking ahead of us. The Inferno hadn’t been designed to be moved through easily.

  Technically, the name of this hellhole was the Arnold P. Stanek Supermax Pri
son. If you looked at a map of it, you’d see four concentric circles. Like Dante’s Inferno, the inner circles held those who’d committed the worst crimes, and the outer the lesser. What’s more, the hallways connecting the circles weren’t all lined up. If the prison were a clock, the elevator (and only exit) would be at number six in the first circle. The hallway connecting that circle to the second was at twelve, the next hallway back at six, and so on. It meant you had to walk half a circle’s circumference to get to the next one. The intention was to lengthen the distance to the nearest exit, should a prisoner escape from his or her cell, but it just made the lives of everyone who worked here miserable. Dr. Sweet was in the innermost circle, so we’d be at this for a while.

  Eventually, we started passing cells, and men in orange jumpsuits stared out at us between the bars as we walked by. It wasn’t that different from ordinary prisons, but every so often, one of those men would have gills on his neck or look like a werewolf who’d stopped midway through his transformation. Back in the day, our presence might have elicited taunts and wolf-whistles, but when the current warden had taken over, she’d made sure the prisoners (at least the ones in the outer circles) knew their place.

  An observant person would notice that almost every inmate showed some sign of injury. A split lip here, a bandaged finger there, a man easing slowly down onto his cot like every movement hurt. We passed the Human Chameleon, and his face was an abstract painting of gold and shimmering green; beautiful colors, and only someone familiar with his abilities would recognize them as bruises. The guards here weren’t exactly quick to break up fights between prisoners, and that was when they weren’t the ones causing the harm. I’d hate to see what they’d do to White Knight. They had plenty of opportunities to torment supervillains, but it wasn’t often they got a chance to enjoy power over a genuine superhero.

  The low murmur of a crowd of voices alerted me that we were approaching the cafeteria, and God, the smell took me back in time even more than the hum did. If you’ve ever wondered what misery smells like, it’s the stench of unwashed bodies mixed with watery cabbage. I could almost taste the bland, starchy mush they called potatoes. I’d eaten it every week for two years; how could I forget? As soon as I got back to the airport, I was going to their fanciest restaurant and ordering the most overpriced thing on the menu, just to prove to myself that I still had control over what I ate.

  My heart was beating as though I’d run here rather than walked. Crap. I’d known this visit wouldn’t exactly be pleasant but hadn’t anticipated that I’d start to lose it like this. I breathed slowly and tried to sink into a meditative state as though I was using my powers. We were passing the cafeteria now. Soon we’d leave it behind, along with the smell and my memories.

  So of course, that was when we had to get attacked.

  Chapter 6

  Morons.

  There were half a dozen of them, all clad in prison orange. They steamrolled over the guards at the cafeteria door and burst into the corridor, coming straight at me.

  Julio reacted first. He greeted the fastest runner with a fist to the face. The second tried to slip past him, but instead, he went sprawling with a scream—his terrycloth slippers had frozen to the floor. Julio’s actions bought the guards the few seconds they needed to respond, and they dove into the fray. It was a mess of struggling bodies, the meaty thuds of hits audible even over the cheering of the crowd in the cafeteria, who’d noticed a fight had broken out.

  “You planning on doing anything about this?” I asked Agent Lagarde, who stood beside me.

  “Stay calm and let the guards do what they’re trained to do,” she replied.

  You’ll forgive me if I wasn’t overflowing with confidence in their abilities. None of the prisoners in this circle had particularly dangerous superpowers, but the fight still got weird fast. The first man Julio had punched had a concave imprint in his face shaped like the hero’s fist, his flesh like putty. Another prisoner was curled up in a ball on the floor, screaming as he got pepper-sprayed. But he was missing his hands; they were currently wrapped around the neck of another guard, white bone sticking out of the muscle where the wrist ended. The guard was on his knees, blue in the face as he frantically tried to pull the hands off his neck.

  The cafeteria was getting rowdy, too. Prisoners surged forward for a better view of the fight, intoxicated by the excitement and shouting as the guards who hadn’t engaged our attackers tried to hold them back. Depending on how the next half-minute went, I might end up with a front row seat to a prison riot. I led such a charmed life.

  Then again, I might not live that long. One of the prisoners broke free of the melee, shiv in hand. He had horns like a goat and tattoos up and down his arms. He charged me.

  I adjusted my stance, preparing to meet him, but then he shrieked and threw the shiv away. The hand that had been holding it was red and burned. Julio’s handiwork. I looked for him, but he’d already turned his attention back to the main fight. Protecting me even though I’d pissed him off earlier. I shouldn’t be surprised. Dave would have trained him to do nothing less.

  Unfortunately, the man with the burned hand wasn’t giving up. He came at me again, curling his left hand into a fist.

  I drove my pointed heel into his knee, dropping him. Then I slammed my palm into his nose. He hit the floor, and for the moment, at least, didn’t seem to be getting back up.

  “Yeah, the guards are so well-trained,” I said to Agent Lagarde. “You sure you don’t want to jump in there?”

  Agent Lagarde watched the fight for a moment longer and evidently reached the same conclusion I had. She reached up and removed her blue glasses.

  Everyone collapsed. The prisoners, the guards, Freezefire—everyone she was looking at hit the ground as though someone had dropped bricks on their heads. Agent Lagarde’s eyes burned yellow like a distant sun, and I could sense the force behind her gaze even though the exatrin had suppressed my powers. It made my knees tremble, and that was when it wasn’t even directed at me. Being on the receiving end of that gaze must feel like getting hit by a train. It was incredible.

  Agent Lagarde put her glasses back on, and it was like gravity lightened. Freezefire, the guards, and the others took deep breaths and began stirring. Agent Lagarde walked calmly past them to the door to the now-silent cafeteria, clasped her hands behind her back, and let her gaze roll slowly across the room. “Anyone else?”

  The prisoners shuffled back to their tables.

  She offered Julio a hand getting to his feet and a brief apology. Then she turned to the other guards. “You can mop this up? Good. We need to keep moving.”

  We kept walking, and I actually felt better now. Nothing like an attempt on your life to get the blood pumping. I looked at Agent Lagarde’s back with new interest as she led the way. For the past decade, the only telepaths I’d encountered were nowhere close to my power and skill, but Agent Lagarde… Her display back there was almost enough to make me wish for a reason to turn on the DSA and get her to fight me. I wanted to face the awful power of her gaze. I wanted to face it and see if I could remain standing.

  “You were the target.” Agent Lagarde glanced back at me. “Were they friends of yours?”

  “Never seen them before.” I frowned. “Actually, the one with the horns looked vaguely familiar. I think I might have broken both his legs once.”

  “Revenge, then?”

  I shrugged. “A better question would be how they knew I was coming.”

  Agent Lagarde had no answer to that. And while I might not know the how, I had a suspicion about the who.

  My temporary good mood evaporated when we entered the third circle. The cells here didn’t have bars but thick steel doors with small rectangular windows. Dozens of sets of eyes appeared behind them the moment we arrived, the prisoners inside screaming at us, demanding to know what we were doing here. There was no cafeteria in this circle, no rec room. These inmates weren’t let out of their cells for anything short of a med
ical emergency. They ate there, slept there, and took whatever entertainment they could find there, trying anything to ease the passing of each successive, monotonous second. Nothing ever changed. There was nothing but white walls to stare at, a cot with a mattress so thin that the metal bars supporting it dug into your back, and the toilet in the corner with a stink you couldn’t smell anymore because you’d been there so long. Just that, every second of every day, until it got to the point where you’d slit your own wrists—not to kill yourself, but because decorating the walls with your blood would at least be something different.

  The corridor wasn’t warm. Objectively, I knew that, but I felt feverish, sweating beneath my suit. I had to get ahold of myself. I might be able to control my expression, but I couldn’t stop my cheeks from flushing. If someone noticed… You’re not going back there. You did your time. It’s over. Fortunately, the door to the fourth and final circle came into view, and curiosity replaced the other feeling festering in the pit of my stomach. I’d never seen the fourth circle. My crimes hadn’t been severe enough to warrant my placement there. (Well, not the crimes they’d managed to convict me for, anyway.)

  The guard went through the same keycard swipe and access code process to open the door, and we were on our way. The fourth circle looked disappointingly like the rest of the prison: same white walls, same yellowish lights, same armed guards—oh, wait, these guards had machine guns. The guards in the first and second circles certainly hadn’t; too big of a risk that a prisoner could take their weapons from them, so they weren’t allowed any. That was less of a risk here and in the third circle since the prisoners never left their cells, but the guards in the third circle just carried tasers. Machine guns were a serious step up.

  The cell doors here were sunken into the wall, seemingly even thicker than the ones in the third circle. And someone wasn’t too happy to be locked behind one, judging from the deep, dull pounding coming from somewhere, like super-strong fists slamming into reinforced metal.

  “Belmonte!” The muffled roar was more than familiar. “Belmonte! I know you’re here. I can smell you.”