“I’m not the one you should apologize to. You promised to read to Jenny before bed, remember? She was really disappointed.”
“I bet.” Allison’s sure Jenny didn’t mind Mommy filling in for Aunt Ally.
“Ally, please—”
“I’ll try to be there tonight.”
Sally gives her shoulder a squeeze. “What’s wrong, sweetie? Is it about what happened to Major Dalton?”
Allison sighs and then nods. She should have known she couldn’t hide that from Sally. It’s probably all over the news this morning. “It’s not about her,” Allison says. Though she knows she shouldn’t feel this way, she’s glad Dalton is gone. That bitch deserved what she got for betraying the Super Squad and the rest of the world.
She’s more upset about Colonel Storm. She has never really liked the man; even when Allison was a man they didn’t get along that well. Still, she thinks of him lying in her arms, bleeding to death, and then those last words before he passed out. “Maybe if Velocity Man had been there he could have done something. Maybe I am a lousy substitute.”
“Ally, don’t talk like that. You’ve done a great job. You stopped that metal dinosaur—”
Allison snorts. “He wanted us to stop the robot. Or at least he didn’t care much if we did. All I did was walk into a trap.” Again, she adds silently to herself, but Sally doesn’t know that Allison had been Velocity Man since before they were married.
“You couldn’t have known Dalton was a traitor.”
“Midnight Spectre knew and she’s just a kid.”
“Ally, come on—”
“Could I get back to work please?”
“What do you think that’s going to accomplish? You said yourself that it’ll take years to figure this machine of Roboto’s out.”
“I know, but it’ll take even longer if I keep taking time off.”
“What’s this really about? I don’t care that you’re a woman now. You know that. I’m happy with how things are. Jenny’s happy too. There’s no need to push yourself like this.”
“Maybe I’m not happy like this. You ever think that? Maybe I don’t like having to sit to pee and bleeding once a month and not being able to love my wife the way I used to!”
Sally takes a step back as if Allison has slapped her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were so miserable. Maybe you should go back to living on your own. Go look up your boyfriend Raul.”
Sally turns on her heel to stomp away, but Allison can easily catch up to her. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. It’s just…I want to be your husband again. I want things the way they used to be. I want Jenny to call me Daddy again. Do you understand?”
“I know you do, sweetie, but we still love you, even like this. Don’t forget that.” Sally kisses Allison on the cheek. “Be home for dinner tonight.”
“I’ll try.” She gives Allison a kiss of her own and then goes back to work.
***
Elise swims through the door to hear little Ariel crying. Erek has the baby cradled in his arms, but their daughter continues to wail. That is until Elise scoops her up and makes a few shushing sounds. Then Ariel’s face brightens and she giggles. “Oh, I missed you too, sweetheart,” Elise says. “But Mommy’s home now and she’s not going to leave you again for a long, long time.”
With one hand she lifts the hem of her shirt enough so Ariel can suckle from her left breast. Unlike on the surface, babies in Pacifica aren’t weaned onto bottles. There’s no baby formula to put into bottles down here. Elise will have to keep nursing her baby until she can tolerate mushy food. That makes feeding her a little painful now that Ariel has her first teeth.
In theory they could take Ariel to the surface to wean onto formula, but Elise rejected that idea. It’s too risky to take a baby up to the surface; the shock of the transition might kill her. She and Erek have already decided to wait until Ariel is three or possibly even four before they try to take her to the surface to test her lungs.
“How did it go up there?” Erek asks while Elise rocks Ariel to sleep.
“Not so well. Dalton is dead. There was an ambush after the sentencing.”
“That’s terrible.”
“I know.” Elise shakes her head. “I don’t know why I went. There wasn’t anything I could have done.”
“It was your duty to the surface dwellers,” Erek says. He runs a hand through her hair before he kisses her on the cheek. “You couldn’t shirk that even for our daughter.”
“Maybe I should have. I can’t leave Ariel for days at a time. She needs me.”
“She’s fine. She’s cranky from the teething.”
“Well, I don’t care. I’m not going back up there until she’s old enough to come with me.”
“If that’s what you want.”
She smiles at him. He’s the most easygoing man she’s ever met. Probably his artistic temperament as no one who carves coral for a living can be impatient or brash; the delicate work requires Zen-like patience. “You could try to argue with me once in a while. Just to keep me in practice.”
“I’ll try,” he says with a smile. He sits down on a chair across from her. “How were your friends?”
“Fine. Everyone’s really settled in. Even Rob doesn’t seem to mind being a girl now. Though she still dresses like a boy most of the time.”
“Did you get a chance to see Paul while you were up there?”
With another man this might have had a tinge of jealousy to it, but Elise knows Erek isn’t jealous of Elise’s former lover. It probably helps that as a gay man Paul hasn’t had any romantic interest in Elise since she became a woman. “I saw him before I went to Washington. He’s got himself a new boyfriend. Some hairy hipster type.”
“That’s good,” Erek says. “We’ll have to meet at some point.”
“Want to get a few secrets, eh?” she asks with a smile.
“Something like that.”
“You are incorrigible.” She gets up from her seat, still rocking Ariel as she glides down the hallway to the nursery. In lieu of a traditional crib is a giant oyster shell Erek had painted pink while on the surface. Ariel’s eyes open as Elise pulls her away from her breast. Elise runs a hand through the red down on the girl’s head. “It’s all right, baby. Mommy will be right here.”
“Ma-ma,” Ariel chirps.
Tears come to Elise’s eyes. Her baby’s first word! And it was for her. “That’s right, sweetie. I’m your mama and I love you very much.” She hugs little Ariel and then reluctantly puts the girl to bed. Ariel is asleep before Elise lowers the lid of the oyster shell. She bends down to kiss Ariel’s cheek through the hole in the shell to let water in.
She returns to the living room to tell Erek what had happened. “That’s wonderful,” he says.
She nods while tears begin to fill her vision. A year ago she had thought she’d never be able to have children. As a gay man she would have needed to adopt, an unlikely prospect with her Pacifican heritage. Now she has a child of her own, one that sprang from her own womb. In a way she supposes she should thank Dalton, Dr. Roboto, and the Feminazi for what they’d done to her. They gave her a whole new life—a better life.
Then the communicator on her wrist lights up. With a sigh she touches a blinking red button. Robin’s face appears on the screen. “This had better be important,” Elise snaps.
“Starla’s gone missing,” Robin says.
Chapter 4
Starla lands at the doors to the Crystal Lair, Apex Girl’s hidden fortress in the Arctic Circle. She puts one hand to the panel built into the ice. It reads her fingerprints and then opens the enormous doors no regular person could open without a lot of machinery.
A servant robot appears in the entryway. “Welcome, Gor-Bul,” it says, using her alien name. “What do you desire?”
“I need to ask the computer some questions,” she says. “Make sure we aren’t disturbed.”
“As you command.”
A year ago the robots hadn
’t acknowledged her female voice. She had spent a weekend reprogramming the Lair’s systems to recognize her new voice. This includes the advanced computer from her home planet.
She sits down on an orange crystal chair. It begins to glow as it, like the panel at the door, recognizes her. A hologram of her birth father appears before her. “You appear troubled, my daughter.”
“I am troubled,” she says. At times like this she wishes the hologram were real so she might be able to hug it and cry on its shoulder. But it’s only a digital representation of her birth father, a simulation of him.
Despite this, she leans back in the chair to tell him what happened with the sentencing hearing and afterwards. The hologram takes in all the facts. There’s a lengthy pause while the computer’s algorithms determine a response.
He nods sagely to her. “You did your best to protect the humans. No one can expect more of you.”
“But they do.” She tells the computer to access the editorial Kate wrote for the newspaper. There’s another lengthy pause while the computer fetches the information and then digests it. “You see? They expect more from me. They expect me to be like him.”
“You were not omnipotent as a man either, Gor-Bul. This Kate King refuses to see that because she loves your male form. It has blinded her to the truth.”
“But what if she’s right? Maybe I’m not as good as I used to be. Maybe I’m not really a superhero anymore.”
“Your physical attributes have declined marginally since the transition. If there is a problem then it must be psychological.”
Starla nods. It’s not much of a surprise to hear that. Her priorities haven’t been the same since she and Billy became friends. Instead of patrolling Atomic City or the rest of the world or fretting about Kate King, she has been out having fun, like a normal woman her age.
The computer takes this in. When her father speaks again, Starla’s body goes numb. “Perhaps you have a subconscious desire to forsake the guise of Apex Girl and exist as a normal human.”
Starla thinks about this for a moment. She thinks about how different things are when she, Billy, and his friends hang out. At those times she’s a lot more relaxed. She can joke around and forget about all the horrors in the world.
“You might be right, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t stop being Apex Girl. As long as I have these powers, it’s my responsibility to use them to help people.”
“Then perhaps you should divest yourself of your powers.”
“How am I supposed to do that? Carry a gamma ray generator everywhere I go?”
“No. There is an experimental treatment. If it is successful, you would be like any other human woman.”
Her mouth opens, but she can’t think of anything to say. She finally blurts out, “How long have you known about this?”
“Approximately seven-point-three years.”
“And you never told me?”
“You expressed no desire to undergo such a treatment.”
Starla rolls her eyes at this. “How does it work?”
The computer brings up a formula for her to read. By using a number of alien chemicals inside the Lair, she could create a drug that in theory should suppress the effect of Earth’s sun that gives her superpowers. She wishes Allison could see this to verify it, but she can’t ask her friend about this. She needs to decide this on her own.
At last she could be a normal person. She would no longer have to worry about saving the world. She’d be able to find someone and get married and maybe even have a baby. She thinks of how happy Elise and Allison are with their families. She’s never thought she could have that for herself; she has always thought she’d have to be Apex Girl forever.
“But wouldn’t it be selfish to use this?”
“Perhaps.”
“That’s all you can say?”
“It is not my decision, my daughter. You must decide this on your own.”
She nods. Then she thinks again of what Kate had written. She thinks too of those men and women who had died because she hadn’t stopped the attack on the convoy. She thinks of poor Melanie Amis and the rest of the Super Squad who’ve become women because Starla hadn’t been able to stop Dalton, the Feminazi, and Dr. Roboto. Can things really be that much worse without her?
She wipes at her eyes and then nods. “Let’s do it.”
***
Starla doesn’t have to do anything to prepare the shot. The computer and robots handle the assembly of the ingredients. All she has to do is pace the floor of the Crystal Lair.
As she does, she considers again and again if this is the right thing to do. For over thirty years Earth has been her home. She has done everything to defend it and its people from ordinary crime, supervillains, and natural disaster. Yet for all she has done, they aren’t any safer than when she began. If anything the world is a more dangerous place since she first began as Apex Man. Maybe her presence has actually made things more unsafe; maybe if she leaves the humans will figure out how to look after themselves.
At least she hopes this is the case. The alternative is that when she leaves some terrible threat will appear that not even the rest of the Super Squad can handle. But what are the odds of that? She could ask the computer, but she doesn’t want to disturb it in the middle of its preparations.
Eventually she tries to think of the positives. Soon she’ll be an ordinary woman. She can have a chance at a real life, no more hiding or secrets to keep. No more worrying about supervillain weapons that might turn her into a woman or into a puny laughingstock. No more having the world on her shoulders.
A tone like a gong sounds. “It is time,” her birth father announces.
Starla returns to her chair. One of the service robots is there with a syringe filled with silver liquid. For some reason she thought it would be green, like gamma rays. As it is, it looks more like mercury. “Is this safe?” she asks.
“There is a seventy-nine percent chance that there will be no deadly effects.”
“Oh.” That means a twenty-one percent chance she could die. There’s still time for her to back out. All she has to do is tell the robot to stand down and it’ll destroy the syringe. She can fly back to Atomic City and return to work at the Star, at least until the next crisis. She sees Colonel Storm in her mind’s eye again, cursing her for being too slow to save him and the rest of the convoy. “Do it.”
The syringe stabs into her right thigh. She watches with fascination as the silver liquid drains into her. Once it’s empty, the robot pulls the needle from her skin.
Nothing happens. Starla feels the same as before. She manages to turn on her IR vision and even blow a thin stream of fire. “It didn’t work!”
“The treatment will take some time to spread throughout your circulatory system. In the meantime, I suggest you leave this place. There will be no way to extract you from here once your flight capability is gone.”
She nods to her father. He’s right. If she can’t fly out of here, she’ll have to call for someone to fetch her. Robin would be the best choice as her jet could easily get up here in a couple of hours. But then she’ll have to explain to Robin what she has done; she knows Midnight Spectre will not be happy about it.
“Thank you, Father,” she says. She wishes again she could hug him. She turns to the robots. “Turn all systems to standby. Maintain the place until I return.”
“As you command,” the robot says. The lights in the Lair begin to dim. She’ll probably never come back here again, but perhaps some future descendant might, if he or she has her powers.
“Goodbye,” she says and then runs to the entrance of the Lair. She takes off into the air without any difficulty. Then she speeds away for home.
***
Over Lake Ontario she begins to feel the first effects. Though she’s high up in the air, where it’s close to zero degrees, she begins to feel warm. Sweat drips into her eyes. Her stomach begins to churn. She feels like she’s going to throw up. The water seems so far away that h
er head begins to spin. Is she afraid of heights now?
She dips lower, but the sickness only gets worse. She finally throws up when she’s over a lake in New England. She hopes it doesn’t hit anyone below.
Out of curiosity she tries her IR vision. Nothing happens. She tries her flame breath, but only a puff of smoke comes out. She’s losing her powers. It worked!
Now she has to hope she’ll be able to make it back to Atomic City before she loses her ability to fly. Otherwise she’ll have to find some normal clothes and then hitchhike there. Or maybe she could call Billy for some money for a bus. She’d hate to put him out like that, but there’s no one else she could call except the Super Squad.
As the skyscrapers of Atomic City come into view, she notices the way the material of her suit flaps around. She’s losing muscle tone now. She thinks of what Roboto did to her, how scrawny and helpless she’d been as Anorexic Girl, unable to break even a thin piece of ribbon. Is she going to get that weak again? She hopes not.
She’s passing over the rail yards of the city when she starts to lose altitude. Just a little farther, she thinks. Then she’ll be into the city proper. It won’t be too far of a walk back to her apartment then.
But she’s losing altitude too fast for that. She finds herself streaking towards an overpass. A scream escapes her lips as she barrels towards the ground like a meteor. She crashes down into a pile of garbage beneath the overpass. She manages to lift a hand to see blood staining it.
Then she passes out.
Chapter 5
Since what happened with Dr. Roboto, Robin took some precautions the others of the Super Squad—even Melanie—would disapprove of. One of these was to plant a tracking device on each member of the squad. She remembers all too well how much trouble she and Melvin had trying to find Apex Girl and Velocity Gal once Robin figured out who Dalton really was.
As soon as she was able, she designed microchips that would embed themselves in each member of the squad. These chips are nanobots the size of a flake of dandruff and yet the signal is powerful enough to be picked up by satellites in orbit owned by Holloway Corporation.
Girl Power Omnibus (Gender Swap Superhero Fiction) Page 24
