Almost Infamous: A Supervillain Novel (34 page)

Trojan Fox had been busy. The lab was cleaner than I had ever seen it, and she had clearly been working on her projects.

Ghost Girl walked out of the workshop. “She wants to see you, and wants to kill you,” she said.

“She does?”

“For different reasons. The part of her that wants to see you is stronger than the part of her that wants to kill you, so you’ll probably live,” Ghost Girl said, leaving the lab.

“Thanks for the warning.”

Great. Now for the hard part. I steeled myself to enter her workshop, putting a small wall of focus in front of me that would deflect anything thrown or shot my way… unless it was a laser, which her suit had several of.

Then I’d be pretty well fucked.

She wasn’t in her suit (or her legs, for that matter, and her balance on that stool looked damned precarious), but was working on it. The full ashtray next to her told me she’d been at this for a while. Pieces of the Trojan Fox suit were spread across the table, her hands working deftly as she soldered elements in place.

She didn’t even look up to me to say, “He’s a spy, you know.”

“What?”

“Carnivore,” she said, blowing a small bit of smoke away. “I’m not certain, but look at it logically. Why would they bait a trap with real bait unless said bait was intended as a backup plan in case we did find a way to escape the trap? Make him a trap within a trap? I’m not saying they found a way to turn him—he’s far too much of a raging dumbfuck for that—but the real heroes probably have injected him with some nanites, or perhaps interdimensional implants intended to find us or ferret out information. The island’s shield is strong enough to block out any of those transmissions, but we can’t let them recapture him, at least not without letting me do a thorough exam to remove anything dangerous… or of course we could always kill him.”

“Well, that’s great,” I said, “but—”

She pressed a button on one of her suits gauntlets, activating a holographic projector like we had in the War Room. News feeds, financial documents, pictures of us and the heroes flew across one of the walls.

“I looked up Helios and Situs Construction. I thought that rabbit hole might be deep, but I didn’t know just how—”

“Trojan Fox,
Helen
, I want to—”

“—they’re one of the biggest construction firms in the world specializing in cleaning up after superhero-supervillain battles, did you know that? Times have been tough for them the last couple decades, with the recession and the War on Villainy’s end. But, what do you know, business is booming for them these days, and their stockholders couldn’t be happier. Stockholders who operate a slush fund for payoffs to people with codenames like Crystal Skull, Fifty-Fifty… Helios… I could go on, but you know all the names already.”

“Fuck.”

“Fuck doesn’t even begin to explain what’s happened,” she said, swirling the images to show some of our Black Cape Jobs. “I did some, well, a
lot
of digging. Nearly every job either indirectly or directly benefited the sponsors of Kayfabe heroes. Tearing down buildings and tenements they meant to develop the land on. Suppressing dissidence, preventing developing countries under imperial control from gaining traction toward independence. Hell, remember that Sasquatch village we destroyed up near the Alaskan border?”

“No.”

“Really? Some Sasquatch youth swore a blood oath against you, which is pretty impressive since that tribe was entirely pacifistic.”

“I was probably really high at the time.”

“Weren’t we all,” she said, picking a lit cigarette from the ashtray and putting it between her lips. “Well, that village’s destruction made way for a new oil pipeline, and for a public relations coup when the heroes graciously moved the Sasquatches onto a new, modern reservation to better keep them safe from us.”

This was a lot more than I expected. I mean, I didn’t know what I’d expected, but it sure as hell wasn’t this, and I sure as hell didn’t think it was this big.

“So you’re saying that, Helios killed Adriana because she accidentally intercepted a payoff from Situs, and he wanted to cover it up?”

“In a roundabout way, yes. He didn’t have to kill her—there’s no way she was smart enough to figure out what it was—but fill him with enough paranoia and cocaine and you get one dead supermodel.”

“This is huge.”

“Yes, but it’s hardly surprising.”

“It is?”

“Of course! The heroes have grown lazy. Once they saw that their lifestyles were threatened, they did what they thought they had to do to protect themselves. Once they think they’re secure enough, they will get rid of us. It’s the natural order of things.”

I gripped a nearby workbench, dizzy, feeling like I was going to be sick.

“Don’t you dare pass out on me,” she said.

“Why not?”

Finally, she faced me. I’d gotten too used to her with those fake legs—it was kind of unsettling to see her without them—but it gave her a level of honesty that I had to respect.

“Because, insane as it may be, you
are
our leader. I despise much of what you have and have not done, but, somehow, you’re still the center of this group, and if we want to do anything about all of this, anything to strike back at the heroes, to
save our friends in the Tower
, it needs to start with you, and we need you on your feet.”

This was the first time I’d heard her seriously speak of rebellion. Sure, some of the villains back in training joked about it, but nobody ever meant it seriously.

Hearing it now… it scared the shit outta me. I half-expected our Creepers to explode, ripping our ribcages out and melting us down into a steaming puddle of flesh. When they didn’t (and when my heart and bowels settled), I looked at her.

“This is crazy.”

“I know, but what are we going to do about it?”

I wanted to say “I don’t know,” but that wouldn’t fly with her.

Instead, I thought long and hard. I hadn’t done anything against the superheroes without having my back put against the wall since I’d killed Icicle Man. Now she’d told me a horror story that had me feeling used. Combined with what Adam had said when we were alone and I wasn’t a big superhero fan at the moment.

But, given time, maybe I could be again. Maybe if I thought on this, caught Adam on a good day, we could make things like old times again. Maybe he really was my friend, and I just caught him at a bad time.

The Amber City thing was rough on all of us.

I remembered the paper bag on my nightstand. I remembered how good it felt to flush its contents down the toilet.

That got me my answer.

“Escape.”

#Supervillainy101: Rando

In the years following World War II, there was no rougher place to live than the Canadian Remnant. Following their traitorous alliance with Germany, Canada (no matter how much they protested that their alliance was simply to free them of British control) was split between the allies as punishment. Most of the western half was absorbed into the United States, the Northwest Territories were given to the Soviets, and what remained in the east was made into a British penal colony to set an example for the rest of the world. Quebec, having abstained from attacking the states, became its own independent nation of Free Quebec. With the world rebuilding and the Canadian Remnant not a top priority, near-anarchy raged for years within its borders.

It didn’t take long for the supervillains to come in and start carving it up.

One of the most feared villains was the gene-job, Rando. Part man, part buffalo, part badger, all violent, he was used as an enforcer by many villains across Free Quebec. He wasn’t known for his speaking ability (it was said he didn’t know much more than his name, or at least the word everybody assumed to be his name), but he was known for his strength, ruthlessness, and unceasing devotion to his job. It’s been said that he was once sent to break a man’s legs and when the man fled to Mexico City, he followed him (on foot) until he had gotten the job done, before walking home.

Many said that the only thing soft about Rando was his fur, and that may have been true, at least until he was sent to kill a school administrator in Gatineau for ripping off a black market dealer on some textbooks. Seeing the bombed-out school in shambles and the teachers trying to teach their students with pitiful resources must have changed something in Rando, for instead of killing the administrator, he suddenly donated his entire life savings to getting the school back in working order and spent his days repairing the school himself and protecting it from brigands.

Though he remained one of Free Quebec’s most feared villains until the day he died, the school was so grateful for his help that they commissioned a statue in his honor.

#LessonLearned:
Sometimes even supervillains have a soft spot.

22

BIG PLANS

The heroes were true to their word; they gave us a couple weeks off before briefing us on our next mission. We killed time. We talked with grief counselors who tried, and failed, to help us through what had happened in Amber City. We kept an eye on Carnivore after he broke out of his room. He stalked around the house sullenly, but mostly left us alone.

The heroes didn’t.

They were trying to make things up to us, teleporting in and playing games, bringing gifts, hanging out, helping put up Christmas decorations and even bringing a tree nearly the size of the foyer and piling presents beneath it.

Them trying to be nice was an improvement over them threatening to activate our Creepers. It did, however, mean that we didn’t have much time to talk about more important issues, but we still managed.

In the beginning it was just me and Trojan Fox in her workshop. Since I knew there was no way we could hide any of this from Ghost Girl, I brought her in and the others soon after. We’d been through enough together that trust wasn’t an issue.

Of course, we kept Carnivore out. Even if he weren’t a spy, we couldn’t trust him.

We never met up all at once, but in twos and threes we talked out plans for escape, though most of the exact details Trojan Fox and I kept between us. It was a shit thing to do, but it also meant they couldn’t spill too much if something happened in the meantime (like getting kidnapped and tortured).

Trojan Fox said she’d been working on plans for getting the Creepers out for some time, and was confident that she could get them out if we all worked together.

I’d trust her on that (as if I had a choice).

She said that, if she could get access to it, she could rework the shield on Death Island so that only those we wanted on the island could teleport in or out. The island would transform from our prison into our safe haven.

Fine. I’d trust her on that too.

Then she started talking about breaking into the Tower.

This is where I dug in my feet. I missed Odigjod as much as anyone else, but even if we could teleport in (which we couldn’t), and even if we could do it without the heroes catching us (which we couldn’t), it was still too crazy to even consider.

We didn’t have much time to argue, though, because after only a few days of our Tower arguments, we got our newest drummer.

Spasm.

I’d gotten along with him back in training. He may have been a terrorist, but he was good people, and a helluva lot more fun to have around than Carnivore. His body control and healing abilities could come in handy with our plans, but could we trust him on such short notice?

He reintegrated well enough with us for a few days. Ghost Girl agreed to feel him out and see if he would join us, but hadn’t come to a conclusion.

We knew when they dropped him in on us that the heroes were getting ready for a new job. Maybe even the “big plans” they’d been talking about since training.

We just didn’t know how big these plans would be.

With Fifty-Fifty dead, Helios led the mission briefing. You could tell he loved the power that came with the job. Dramatically, he announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Washington, DC!”

The holographic projectors kicked in, filling the room with swirling images of the nation’s (well, my nation’s at least) capitol, mostly focusing on all the monuments and museums.

“Why do these things always have to happen in America?” Trojan Fox muttered.

“Sorry, what was that?” Helios asked.

She changed the subject. “So you’re going to have us steal the Hope Diamond? Isn’t that a little mundane?”

She kept the sarcasm thick, so Helios wouldn’t see anything was off.

It worked. “Not quite, we’ve got something more ambitious in mind.”

He swirled the images around until we reached our destination. “Welcome to the White House. One of the most heavily fortified facilities in America. Home of the executive branch of government, and our
democratically
elected president.”

“You say that word like it’s a bad thing,” Ghost Girl noted.

“It wouldn’t be if the people knew what they were doing,” Helios said, bringing up an image of the president.

“In three days’ time, President Patricia Perez will give a speech in the Rose Garden, thanking the heroes for their years of service, but ultimately arguing for a scaling back of private heroism in favor of government-sponsored superheroics.”

“Well we can’t have that. Lower pay, more oversight, more accountability, what is the world coming to?” Trojan Fox mused.

“Exactly!” Helios exclaimed. “And that is why you will all be crashing the speech.”

“So you want us to wreck the place up. Then you will swoop in, save the day, and demonstrate just why independent superheroes are superior?” Geode proposed.

“No, we want you to kill her. And anyone else who gets in your way, obviously.”

If anyone had any pins in the room and felt like dropping them, the sound would have been deafening.

“Nice,” Carnivore growled, smiling wickedly.

“
Why
?” Trojan Fox asked.

“Isn’t it obvious? Aidan, you know your history, help me out here,” Helios said with a jaunty smile.