When Andre came out of his cell in the morning, there was already a large group of men gathered in the common area. A single TV was set up, an item he had procured for the cell block, and everyone was gathered around it, like they did on movie night. There was a low murmur of voices, no cheering or catcalling. It piqued his interest, so after doing a few stretches, he made his way downstairs. Vulcão was waiting there for him.
“What's all the excitement?” Andre asked, trying to peer past the mob of heads to see what was on the television screen.
“Royal wedding.”
Andre shook his head. “Another one? How many Zharkovs are there? They have to run out of brides and grooms eventually, right? Who is it this time?”
Vulcão shrugged his shoulders. “One of the sons. The Warhammer.”
Andre laughed. “That meathead put me in this place. So what, he slaughters Malignus, saves the poor American Republic, and they give him a bride? Sounds like a nice gig.”
“Yeah, boss,” Vulcão said with a chuckle. “Do I get a bride if I do a good job for you?”
Andre laughed and walked toward the courtyard with the gym equipment. “Sure, buddy. I mean, as soon as you can fly, nothing hurts you, and you're super strong? I'll see what I can do about getting you access to the women's section of the Pit.”
They both shared a laugh and made their way into the large room with the man-made sunlight pouring in from the ceiling. They nearly had the place to themselves. Only a few stragglers played chess along one of the walls, and a few others huddled up on a pair of bleachers, sharing secrets in hushed tones.
Andre was surprised so many of them would be so fascinated by something as trivial as a royal wedding. He found it kind of sad. The men and women inside the Pit were never going to see the outside world again. Why would they pay such close attention to what's happening out there? They should be focused on their lives inside. Like he was. This was the only world they had.
Vulcão spotted Andre while he did a set of bench presses. Exercise was a necessary evil for Andre inside the Pit. It was the only way to deal with the constant sense of weakness being in close proximity to Negaton produced. Andre thought if he could get his muscles large enough, maybe he'd feel like his old self again.
“Your turn,” Andre said, sitting upright and wiping the sweat from his face.
“Naw, that's okay, boss,” Vulcão said. “I should keep an eye out while you're busy. I'm not going to let some freak sneak up on you while I'm distracted.”
Andre frowned. There was a routine. When the whole group of henchmen got together in the morning, they took turns. Some of them worked security, and some worked out. Everyone stayed safe.
“Where's the rest of the crew?”
Vulcão shrugged. “I haven't seen them all morning. Must be watching the wedding.”
Andre let out a sigh. Those were the moments when being the boss was a pain in his ass. It was great when everyone was doing their job and thankful for their reward, but when people grew complacent and started taking his gifts for granted, then he had to be the kind of boss he hated. The one that cracked the whip.
“Let's go find them,” Andre said, tossing his towel into the laundry basket nearby. “Maybe they can explain why this wedding was more important than our security.”
Back inside the common area, the sound on the television had been turned up louder. Trumpets sounded throughout the room, then a large string orchestra began playing a wedding march. As Vulcão shoved the prisoners aside, making a path for Andre to get through, he heard comments here and there about how hot the bride was. Andre had to laugh. Perhaps that was the real draw of the television. Women were the one thing he couldn't offer his men.
When he tracked down the rest of his henchmen, they were sitting near the front of the group. They may have been prisoners, like everyone else, but everyone else knew who they worked for, which provided them the luxury of choosing their seats during those kinds of events.
“Enjoying yourselves?” Andre said as he folded his arms across his chest, leaned back, and awaited an answer.
All the men stood up at attention, like they had been caught by the police. They exchanged nervous glances between each other and the clock that hung over the common area.
“S-sorry, boss,” Gravitron said, a stout, bald man that used to be able to manipulate gravity's effect on an object. “We must've lost track of time.”
Andre glanced at the TV and saw Maksim Zharkov standing in a throne room wearing his golden armor and black cape, looking like the ultimate, royal tool. But there, on his cheek, was a large, fist-shaped scar. He smiled when he remembered Carmen's super power launching the man across the street, all to defend him. It was a beautiful sight, and left its mark on one of the most powerful beings in the world. A mark he had to bear for the rest of his life. So much for invincibility.
“And this is what has you so excited?” Andre asked with a smirk. “A wedding?”
“Hey, this is a big deal,” Gravitron said. “It's not every day that one of the Zharkovs gets married.”
“It sure feels like it.”
“But they're saying his kid is going to have one of the most powerful Super Powers of Mass Destruction the world has ever seen!”
Andre rolled his eyes. “You need to stop listening to everything you hear on television. This propaganda bullshit is going to tell you whatever it needs to tell you to keep you on your knees.”
Gravitron smirked and nodded his head toward the TV screen. “I'll tell you what... I wouldn't mind keeping her on her knees.”
The men hooted and hollered as Andre glanced over his shoulder at the screen.
Carmen stared back at him.
The world fell away. He stopped breathing. His heart stopped beating. The blood flushed from his face, leaving only a lifeless, white visage. His pupils grew three times their size as he tried to focus through the blur of tears gathering in his eyes. He glanced down at his forearm and the flame tattoo that covered it. He had chosen it in memory of her, a symbol of her power. The power that would always remain with him.
The men standing around him continued to talk, but he couldn't hear them. There was a throbbing sound in his ears that deafened him as he watched Carmen walk up the aisle of the Grand Citadel's throne room, dressed in a pearl-tinted wedding dress. Her hair was done up in a way he had never seen before, braided and wrapped around itself to expose her long neck. She wasn't smiling. The look on her face was one of stoic resolution, like a soldier going to war.
At the bottom of the screen it read: Carmen Kross, daughter of Quentin Kross, aka Plasmax.
His stomach lurched, throwing him back to reality, but as the sounds of the common area came flushing back into his ears, he managed to keep the contents of his stomach down.
“You okay, boss?” Vulcão asked, setting his hand on Andre's shoulder.
Andre didn't respond. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the screen. As the wedding march concluded, Carmen stepped up next to Maksim Zharkov and the Imperator of the Empire rose up from his throne. He began to declare their union, but Andre couldn't watch anymore. He shoved himself past his henchmen and rushed up the stairs to the second floor of cells.
When he sat down on his own bed, he looked around his cell as if it were the first time he had seen it. Before that moment, it felt like his base of operations, his supervillain nerve center. But at that moment, it only felt like cement walls, and they were getting smaller, threatening to crush him with their shrinking enclosure. He gasped for breath, as if the air he needed was far above him, in the open sky.
His mind pounded against his skull with question after question. How could any of that be real? How could Carmen be walking down the aisle of the Grand Citadel's throne room, readying herself for marriage to a Zharkov? How could she go through with it? Is that what she wanted? Had she been waiting for someone as powerful as the Guardian of the West to sweep her off her feet?
And how could Carmen be the daughter of Pl
asmax? They had similar powers, but... Andre shook his head. There was no way that was true. It was more propaganda. The Zharkovs were using the fear of what happened to North America in the Super Power War to try to end whatever conflict was happening between them and Neo-Nippon. It had to be.
Then he remembered the punch again, and what Gravitron had said about their children. Could that be it? Could they just want her super power? He knew she was more powerful than she allowed herself to be, but there had to be a better choice. Unless it was true. Unless Plasmax was her father. That would account for all the money her mother had. That would account for the damage she had done to Maksim's face.
Then he saw the image in his mind of Maksim and Carmen together. Maksim Zharkov and the only girl Andre had ever loved. He saw their bodies, naked, writhing. He saw the giant man forcing her down. He saw the tears in her eyes.
Andre's fist was slamming into the wall of his cell before he knew what was happening. His knuckles smashed to the side in the impact, splitting the skin and causing blood to gush from the opening. The pain was intense, but he barely felt it. He turned on the sink and washed the red puddle down the drain.
“Whoa, what happened?” a voice asked from behind him.
Andre looked over his shoulder and saw a guard wheeling a stack of boxes into his cell on a cart.
When Andre didn't answer, the guard shrugged his shoulders and said, “I got this week's delivery for you,” and parked the cart next to the wall.
Andre stared at the boxes for a moment in silence before the guard shrugged again and left the cell. For Andre, things were beginning to fall into place. He knew Carmen had struck a deal. He figured it was her mother and their money that had pushed the rules aside for all of them. But maybe it was Carmen's power. Maybe it was Carmen who had put herself up as a pawn in whatever political game the Empire was playing. Her life, her child's life, to make sure Andre was safe. Maybe Mickey too.
That was unacceptable. That wasn't an option. And in that moment, the Pit became what it was always meant to be: It was his prison.
He glanced down at the pile of boxes and saw the label on the very first one. It was sent from a pharmaceutical company. Doctor Chem's final ingredients.
There was no second thought. He snatched the cardboard box and stepped out of his cell. Vulcão was walking up to check on him, but Andre shoved past him and said, “Not now!” before jogging down the hall, toward Doctor Chem's cell. When he reached it, the old man perked up from the book he was reading, looking excited by Andre's sudden appearance.
Andre tossed him the box. “Is that it? Is that all you needed?”
Doctor Chem tore open the top of the cardboard and pulled out a bottle of pills. He adjusted his bifocals so he could read the label, and his thin lips pulled back into a smile.
“This is it. The final ingredient. All I need to do is swallow two of these pills with my compound to hold my central nervous system at the perfect balance between life and death.” Doctor Chem looked up at Andre and said, “Thank you, son. By this time tomorrow, I'll be outside these walls. I'll taste freedom for the first time in over thirty-two years.”
“And you're absolutely positive this will work?”
Doctor Chem didn't hesitate to answer, “I'm absolutely positive that I have no other options.”
Andre's fists clenched tight, his right hand flexing blood from his wound that dripped onto the floor. “I know exactly what you mean, doctor.”
Doctor Chem pulled himself from his own glory for a moment and noticed the state that Andre was in. “You don't look well, boy. What's wrong?”
Andre stared at the floor for a moment, trying to stop his thoughts long enough to truly consider the ramifications of his actions, but all that would surface was the same image of Maksim and Carmen. The terror in her eyes forced the words from his lips.
“I'm coming with you.”
Doctor Chem's fuzzy white eyebrows raised on his forehead. “You're what?”
“I'm coming with you, doctor,” he said as he snatched the pills from Doctor Chem's hand. “I need to get out of this place. Now.”
Doctor Chem tried to grab the pills back from Andre, but he wasn't fast enough. “No! No, you can't. There isn't enough. There's only enough for one person. There's only enough for me!”
Doctor Chem's shouting grew louder, and Andre knew it was only a matter of time before it drew the attention of the guards.
Again, he didn't consider his actions. There was no logic or strategy behind what he did. It was only the imagery in his mind that fueled him. He backhanded the old man's face, knocking him to the floor. Doctor Chem's frail body was flung backward, and as he fell, Andre heard a large CLUNK as the old man's head hit the edge of his sink. The body collapsed to the floor, leaving a distinct red mark on the ceramic sink. When Andre looked down, a pool of blood began to grow around the old man's head.
He only had a matter of seconds before someone would notice. He didn't have time to consider what he had done. He stepped over the body and removed the top of the toilet tank. Inside, hung a stretched out condom with a vial of purple liquid inside. He held the liquid up to the light, examining it for a second before he heard voices approaching.
With a twist of his wrist, the bottle of pills were open and he was throwing two into his mouth. With a flick of his thumb, the vial was uncorked and pouring down his throat. It tasted like battery acid, sizzling on his tongue as it mixed with the pills. He coughed and choked for a second before he swallowed them both and felt an electrical current run down his limbs. His arms flung to the sides uncontrollably. The bottle and vial were tossed across the cell right before the rest of his body began convulsing. He fell to the ground, tripping over the body of Doctor Chem. The floor slammed into his cheek, but his body was numb. He heard voices outside the cell begin to yell, but soon they disappeared as well. Blackness clouded in from all sides of his vision, swallowing him whole as death embraced him. His mind fell away, his thoughts a mismatched amalgam of dying neurons firing randomly. But in the center was one thought that held everything together, pushing him forward. Carmen's face smiled back at him as his life evaporated into nothingness. And in his death, he made a single promise to her.
“We will be together.”
15
HECTOR
The low volume murmur of the newscast covering the royal wedding mixed with the hum of the jet engines was lulling Hector to sleep, but the constant questions coming from Miguel kept his eyes from closing. The young man sat across from him, a plate of shrimp and glasses of champagne sitting on the table between them, untouched. He was flipping through a travel guide for the Fatherlands, studying every bit of information he could.
“How many times have you been there?”
Hector readjusted in his seat. “To the Fatherlands? Only a handful. And it has been many years. Much has changed.”
“Like?”
Hector glanced out the window as the sparkling blue ocean gave way to the western border. The extensive body of water always served as a gap between the American Republic and the seat of the Empire, even if only symbolically. He let his thoughts drift to the past, to the adventures of his youth.
“The rebuilding effort after the Super Power War began in the Fatherlands. It was a promise of the new Imperator at the time. When I visited, the cities were still laying in rubble. The people were living in squalor, barely scraping by. It only took two years for the Zharkovs to implement their program to clothe and house and feed the entirety of the domain. After the war, the people of the Fatherlands welcomed it with open arms.”
“But it was a communist work program, right?”
Hector smiled, thinking about how that evil word was so simple and easy. “It had its basis in communism. But the Zharkovs had their own personal twist on the ideals. All fascists do.”
Miguel nodded, running his finger across the page, studying every line of words. “It says here that the Fatherlands enjoy the highest production of goods
and services of any of the domains. It says they export more than anyone else, and their citizens are ranked number one in both health and wealth.”
Hector paid little attention to what his son was saying, still staring out the window, but he had heard enough to ask, “Did you check who the publisher of that book is?”
Miguel flipped to the copyright page. “It says published by Z.I.M.”
“Zharkovian Imperial Media,” Hector said with a smirk. “The propaganda machine is the only thing exporting goods at an exorbitant rate.”
Miguel slapped the book shut and let out a sigh. “Oh well. We'll learn the truth when we land, I suppose. Seeing it with my own eyes is the only thing I can trust now days.”
“Don't be so sure,” Hector said, tapping his finger on the table. “We are guests of the Zharkovs. More than that, we are about to become business partners. They'll do whatever it takes to keep up the appearance of a thriving empire. Don't be fooled by what you see. It will all be for show.”
Miguel looked confused. “Certainly, if the citizens of the domain are as downtrodden as you say they are, there's no way they could hide something like that.”
“These are the Zharkovs, son. Don't put anything past them. Our hotel will be the fanciest building in the Fatherlands. Our food will be imported from Gaia, but we'll be told it was grown along the southern border. Every servant that attends to us will be trained models, but they will act like they are just another member of society. We will be offered anything we desire, absolutely free, but remember this: everything has a price. Every item you use, every piece of food you ingest, someone put their sweat and blood into making it.”
Miguel nodded solemnly. “I won't forget, father.”
“But please don't be rude,” Esmeralda said from a few seats in front of them. “Remember, if this goes according to plan, we will change everything. Not only will the Zharkovs fall, but MajesTech will be in line to take over the military. Think about what we could do with that kind of power.”
“We would have a war to win, first,” Hector said, bringing down the excitement. “The Zharkovs are only step one. The Oshiros would be ready to take over at a moment's notice.”
The Super Power Saga (Book 2): Rise of the Supervillains Page 11
