by Drew Hayes
“Your sarcasm is not appreciated,” Ivan said.
“I bet it’s not.” Tori stopped clapping and shook her head. “Geez, did you put any effort into your name at all?”
“No, in fact, I did not,” Ivan replied. “My goal was specifically to show how little I cared about what they called me here. I am a retired member. I do not wish to strike fear into hearts or be known across the continents. All I want to do is the bare minimum required of someone of my station and be left alone.”
“Then why... why are we here?” Tori shied off at the last moment from her real question— asking Ivan why he’d taken her as an apprentice if that was how he felt. It wasn’t that she feared he’d dodge the question or lie. In fact, she knew Ivan would be completely straight with her, which was part of why she stopped herself from asking. She wasn’t sure she really wanted the answer.
“I mean, you keep saying you don’t like this stuff, but they still call you in for emergency meetings and you show up,” Tori continued. “Is this what retirement means? You don’t do the crime, but you still have to come to all the meetings?”
“My case is special,” Ivan told her. He began walking again; Tori followed, easily keeping pace with her teacher. “I was elected by the other retirees to serve on the council as their representative. That’s why I’m still on a leash, even though I’ve officially quit the game.”
“Hang on, there are elections? I knew there was a council, but I just assumed it was occupied by whoever had the most power.”
Ivan gave a slight nod. “That is a big part of it; no one wants a weakling representing their interests. We still choose our leaders, though, once every six years. Every meta-human gets to vote based on their classification, in order to be sure that each group has an equal voice at the table.”
“Let me take a guess at this: one of the classifications is obviously people who have retired, hence you, and I’ll bet another is people who build stuff, like Doctor Mechaniacal.”
“You’re correct,” Ivan replied. “There are also groups for those who use magic, those with innate abilities, artificially-created beings, nonhuman naturally-occurring beings, and those who achieved their meta-status by having their bodies or genetics fundamentally altered.”
“Which makes seven.” Tori paused for a moment, mulling the information around in her head. “What about me? I’m genetically altered, and I plan to use gadgets like Doctor Mechaniacal, so which group would I get to vote in?”
“You’ll make that decision if and when you ascend to full guild membership status,” Ivan told her. “Around that time, you pick your group. We’re not so concerned with people having a foot in more than one pool; the main issue was making sure that everyone, no matter how unique, has someone looking out for their interests.”
Ahead of them loomed large metal doors. Instinctively, Tori knew that beyond them was the guild, the real one, not the small selection of cells she’d seen before. This time, she felt the heat rise around her as her stomach tightened. Ivan clearly noticed but said nothing, which she was thankful for. They both knew she was working on it—pointing out her slip-ups would do no good for either of them at this point.
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: for an organization of villains, you sure do have some strange policies in place,” Tori quipped, trying to keep her mind off the prospect of what lay beyond the doors.
“And as I’ve said before, there is a reason for that. Many meta-humans become criminals because they see no other path forward. They have power, but are still suppressed by society. Eventually, they see their abilities as their only avenue toward being heard, which leads to acting out. We created a system that emphasized giving everyone a voice because it makes them less likely to try and start an uprising.” Ivan walked over to a small console and pressed his eye up to a small, glowing green spot.
“Welcome, Pseudonym.” As a voice from the console spoke, the doors before them parted. Slowly they moved until the room beyond could be seen. Inside of it were several people milling about.
Tori took a deep breath, gathered her willpower, and took her first steps forward into the guild of villains.
Chapter 9
The large, red-carpeted lobby wasn’t quite as full as Tori had expected. She counted a half-dozen people lounging about in costumes, most either working on laptops or making small talk. Tori was about to ask Ivan for an explanation when she put the pieces together on her own: this was an emergency meeting for the council. There was no reason for a lot of the other guild members to be present. The small group made her feel a bit more at ease as Ivan continued walking forward. His aim seemed to be the large staircase at the edge of the room, though he soon veered off course as they drew closer. It appeared he was going to at least do perfunctory greetings if nothing else.
“Evening,” Ivan said, walking up to a man who was at least ten feet tall and apparently entirely made of muscle and his conversational partner, a small fellow with dark hair dressed in a pinstripe suit.
“Evening to you, Pseudonym,” the man in the suit replied. His beady eyes wandered over to Tori, who met his gaze without wavering. “So the rumors are true; you took one under your wing. Looks like Thuggernaut owes me ten bucks.”
The giant of man—Thuggernaut, it seemed—pulled a crumpled bill from a hidden pocket on his black and purple pants, and then set it down in front of the pinstriped man. “I pay this under protest. I’m pretty sure you had some sort of inside information.”
“Pay it however you want, long as I get the cash.” The man in the suit swept up the bill and gingerly deposited it in his own pocket. That done, he rose and stepped toward Tori, pausing to give a deep bow. “Pleasure to meet you, Apprentice. My muscular companion is Thuggernaut, giant of strength and speed, while my villainous moniker is—”
“Why don’t we just have her call you Johnny,” Ivan interrupted.
“I don’t know,” Johnny replied. “I mean, what if she gets me mixed up with another villain, or worse, one of the heroic lot? Seems best to give her my proper handle.”
“There is no one else whose code name starts with Johnny,” Ivan countered.
“Ah, but there could be. Especially with the confluence nigh; who knows what new names folks will choose after they’ve made it to the appropriate rank.”
Ivan shook his head, but he did it with a sense of resigned annoyance that Tori recognized as him giving up on a pointless fight. “Fine; it’s your guild name, I can’t stop you from using it.”
“Much appreciated.” Johnny turned back to Tori and gave another, though smaller bow. “As I was saying, you can feel free to call me Johnny, though my proper code name is slightly longer. It’s Johnny Three Dicks.”
Tori let out a noise somewhere between a snort and a cough then quickly tried to pass it off as a chuckle. She wasn’t so prudish that the name particularly offended her, but it did open up a whole slew of questions that Tori both dearly wanted to ask and very much hoped Johnny wouldn’t answer. Thankfully, Ivan retook control of the situation.
“I still think you chose that name just to see people’s faces when you said it. At any rate, I need to go greet the others. If you’ll excuse us...”
“Nice to meet you,” Thuggernaut said, giving Tori a wide smile and small wave, which she returned without thinking. Johnny gave her a grin too, though his was sopping with twisted humor.
After parting from Johnny and Thuggernaut, Ivan introduced Tori to a group of three people—Kilo, Meg, and Gig—who were punching away on computers. Kilo was a short man with glasses and an awkward stutter, while Meg and Gig were a pair of brunette women who looked so similar that Tori suspected they might be sisters, or at the minimum cousins. Ivan told her that they were collectively known as “the Bytes” and handled most of the hacking and sinister software services for the guild. While each person was pleasant, they were also clearly busy, so Ivan kept the chitchat short.
The last person Ivan led her to was a young man who
appeared to be in his mid-twenties, sitting in front of a television playing an 8-bit video game that Tori recognized from her childhood. Unlike most of the others, he wore no mask or costume—the only thing slightly obscuring his face were the strands of dirty blond hair that hung down to nearly his shoulders. When Ivan spoke to him, Tori noticed an unusual note of tension in his voice. On impulse, she looked around the room and noticed that everyone else seemed to be looking at them, waiting to see what would happen.
“Good evening, Kristoph,” Ivan said. “How are you doing?”
“Pretty good,” Kristoph replied. He paused his game and stood up from the small chair he’d been resting in. He was tall and broad, though not as large as Ivan. Even so, as Kristoph’s gaze fell upon Tori, she felt a shiver run down her spine. Somewhere in the depths of her mind, she remembered her grandmother saying that those feelings came when a person walked over your grave. Then, as quickly as the feeling had come, it passed, and Kristoph was holding out a hand to her.
“Nice to meet you, new apprentice. I’m Kristoph. You don’t seem like a bad person, so you can come talk to me whenever you like.”
Tori accepted the handshake, noting as she did that the balloon of tension that had filled the room was rapidly deflating. Without another word, Kristoph settled back into his chair and resumed his video game. Ivan took Tori by the arm and headed toward the stairs. She managed to wait until they were out of a regular person’s earshot before her curiosity got the best of her.
“Okay, what the hell was that about?”
To his credit, Ivan made no attempt to pretend that something very strange hadn’t just occurred. Instead, he merely lowered his voice to barely above a whisper while they ascended the carpeted stairs.
“Everyone in the guild has to meet Kristoph during their apprenticeship. It’s a time-saving device, since we don’t want to spend all the effort of training someone only for Kristoph to kill them the first time they meet each other.”
“Wait... you thought that guy might have tried to kill me?” Tori stopped dead on the stairs. Being deemed an irresponsible asset was one thing, she could at least see the argument in that, but putting her in front of some guy who went on random murder binges was a whole other case entirely.
“Not tried, succeeded,” Ivan replied, his tone neutral and unapologetic. “Kristoph is probably amongst the most powerful meta-humans alive, villain or cape. I’ve dealt with a lot of heavy hitters, and he could give a run to even the most legendary of the lot. If he decided to kill you, then no one could have stopped him, and none of us would have tried.”
“Wha—”
“Kristoph doesn’t kill indiscriminately, Apprentice. He searches your soul for a very special type of sin, and if he finds it, then his power manifests. That’s the other reason we bring apprentices in front of Kristoph: this is a guild for villains, not monsters. We don’t want the kind of people Kristoph kills walking around this planet, and we certainly don’t want them in a place that is home to some of our own families. Many of us are parents, after all.”
“What does... shit. You’re talking about people who hurt kids, aren’t you?”
“Merely scraping a knee or delivering a spanking won’t leave the sort of stain Kristoph searches for,” Ivan replied. “But those who kill or do lasting damage to the innocent are marked in a way that no spell or ward can camouflage.”
Tori’s eyes widened and she glanced back at the young man playing video games. “Ohhhhh. Okay, I’m with you now. But why is he here, then? That sort of work seems like it puts him on the side of the capes.”
“No doubt he’d be welcome there, except that Kristoph doesn’t bother with things like due process or proof. Soul-gazing isn’t exactly the sort of thing that’s admissible in court, and even if it were, Kristoph wouldn’t bother submitting it. Even that might be overlooked... if not for the fact that the deaths Kristoph gives are not the quick, merciful sort.”
“Do I want to know?”
Ivan contemplated for a moment before responding. “The tamest way I’ve seen him kill someone was to animate their skeleton so that it clawed its way out from the inside while the person was kept alive to feel every excruciating second. Would you like to hear more than that?”
“Not really,” Tori admitted. “Although, knowing what the skeleton guy must have done, I do sort of want to buy Kristoph a beer.”
“A sentiment we all echoed, which is why he lives here and has his needs provided for. But Kristoph is not our concern tonight, Apprentice. The time for the meeting is almost at hand.”
“Well then, let’s get to hopping,” Tori replied. She and Ivan ascended the stairs, back on course for the clandestine meeting with the other members of the villainous council. Even in the midst of actually doing it, Tori was keenly aware of how ridiculous that all sounded.
* * *
Apollo arrived late for the Alliance of Heroic Champions’ Congress meeting, and he was fuming as he did so. In an effort to get more notoriety and become well-known, he’d made a point of recently helping some of the others with their own PR issues and debacles. That act of generosity had backfired, unfortunately, as it ultimately made him the de facto person to deal with Karl and his impossibly bad Heroic Champion persona. No matter how hard they tried to convince him to change identities, the man was steadfast in sticking to his current one, and his civil case had barred them from booting him just because no one liked his identity. Karl actually had to screw up to get thrown out, which made his boy-scout clean record a point of aggravation instead of something they could laud to the public.
The large doors slid open, revealing a massive conference room that surely must have been built to hold more people than sat on the current Champions’ Congress. Sitting at the vast wooden table was Quorum, who had a pad and pen with him despite the fact that he never really needed to take notes. Technically, there was no one else in the room, though there were two small devices resting a few feet away from Quorum. Each was generating a holographic projection of a different symbol: one featured the two entangled atoms that represented Professor Quantum, and one had the blazing astral design that was the symbol for Lodestar. The room was silent as Apollo entered, a peace broken immediately as Quorum took notice of his entry.
“You’re late.” He didn’t sound particularly perturbed by the tardiness, merely announcing it factually, as though he were saying Apollo’s golden hair was curly.
“My sincerest apologies. Whitest Knight put out some fires downtown earlier today, but then he stopped to pass out more of his ‘informational pamphlets,’ and I’m sure you can guess how the media reacted.”
“You must be kidding me.” The voice was female, strong yet youthful, and emanated from the device projecting Lodestar’s symbol. “That jackass is still registered with us?”
“The court ruled his persona to be constitutionally-protected free speech,” replied an older man’s voice, this one coming from the device with Professor Quantum’s symbol. “So long as he adheres to our rules and does his job well, we cannot expel him from our ranks.”
“Please, friends. Karl is not our concern tonight,” Quorum said. As the only member of the Congress physically present, it fell to him to keep the discussion on topic. Admittedly, this was true even back in the days when his fellow members didn’t telecommute, though that had certainly exacerbated the problem. “Apollo, please take a seat and listen closely. As someone who seeks to sit on this Congress one day, tonight’s meeting will be of the utmost relevance to you. We have many duties as upholders of law and order, but few quite as important as aiding those who suddenly find themselves thrust into a situation beyond their control or understanding.”
“Of course, sir.” Apollo slid into one of the many, many free chairs and took out a small notebook of his own. He’d been with the AHC long enough to have dealt with these situations before, but it was his first time to see the process from the top level of management.
Quorum nodded to the devices,
which Apollo assumed were being fed video as well as audio. “Professor Quantum, if you would start us off.”
“Certainly. I won’t bore you all with the science I used to determine my estimates, but the long and short of it is what we’re all already keenly aware of: a confluence is coming, and it will be here quite soon.”
* * *
Tori was somewhat underwhelmed by the conference room itself. Once upon a time, in her childhood, she’d been brought along with her parents to work and seen more impressive ones. Certainly the table was nice, and she rather enjoyed the decor, but overall it seemed like a room that had been built to accommodate those using it rather than impress others who might see it, which went counter to the purpose of every other conference room Tori had previously observed.
The people, on the other hand, were a whole other matter. As soon as she walked in she recognized Doctor Mechaniacal, clad in his meta-armor for the first time since she’d first met him. He still didn’t wear the helmet, though, which made sense for a meeting, when she thought about it. The copper-haired inventor gave her a small smile as she entered, which she returned as formally as she could manage.
Tori also instantly recognized the metallic woman talking with an eight-foot-tall gray creature as Xelas, who had won a landmark case for the rights of artificially intelligent beings. Every inventor knew the story of how Tech Lord, a member of AHC, had created Xelas as a sex doll, only to accidently construct her so well that she developed free will. When she sued for her freedom, it was the first time a machine was legally seen as anything more than property, and it was why every inventor now had to be sure not to make their machines so smart they could emancipate themselves. Xelas had clearly been given a lot of equipment changes and upgrades, but she still wore the same metal face that Tori had seen in the history books. None of that explained why she was now with a villains’ guild, though Tori could make a few guesses. She’d heard Tech Lord hadn’t taken losing his toy and having his fetishes dragged out in public view very kindly.
