Almost Infamous: A Supervillain Novel (27 page)

“The heroes?” I asked. She nodded. “Nah, they’re cool, mostly, when they’re not being dicks I mean, but we’re all friends when they’re not.”

“And where were these friends when you were screaming in withdrawal? They made a good showing of not cleaning you up while attending their premieres and galas and their courtship of the paparazzi, while Showstopper and I made sure you didn’t die!”

I may have still been pissed with Adam some, but I shook the thought off. She didn’t know them like we did. “They’re busy people. You’ll see that once things get back to normal, once you know them like we do.”

She laughed. “I don’t want to know them. Not after what they have made of you.”

“And what did they make us?” I said, defiantly.

“Puppets.”

“Yeah, but we knew that going in. We get to be
their
puppets; they let us live like celebrities, it’s pretty sweet,” I said, proud to have outmaneuvered her.

“Okay, how about we find another word for it: whores.”

That word wasn’t nearly as cool-sounding as puppets. Not that puppets inherently sounds cool, but whores was much worse.

“We’re not whores.”

“You’re paid to do something illegal.”

“Hello, it’s called a job!” I shot back.

“So none of those heroes you fucked ever paid you for sex?”

“No!” I exclaimed, indignant.

“Did they ever give you gifts?”

“Sometimes!”

“Did they ever give you drugs in exchange for sex?”

“No! Wait, yeah, maybe a couple of times. Maybe more, but definitely less than half!” I said. There were some fuzzy memories of some of the older superheroes propositioning me, me considering if I wanted to do anything with them, then them offering me some Montage or pills to get things going.

“Then you’re a whore. So, is being a celebrity whore everything you’d hoped it would be?”

I was trying to raise defiance again, but with her eyes (
human eyes, this time
) boring right through me, I couldn’t do that.

“People liked—
like
me. I mean, they say they like me. I think they mean it, but maybe they don’t. But even if they don’t, it’s a lot more than I got before. I never had people even pretend to like me before. And the sex… so what if it’s meaningless? I never got any before, and now I’m fucking some of the hottest women on the planet.”

“You do know how pitiful that sounds, right?”

“Some, yeah.”

“And that they were only ever fucking Apex Strike, not you, right?”

I shrugged. It sounded right. It didn’t sound as bad as she was making it out to be, but it did sound worse than I’d had it in my head.

“Would you like to hear a story?” she asked.

“Do I have a choice?”

“No.”

“Then go right ahead.”

“I wasn’t always like this…” she said, motioning to her face. A sick sense of anticipation filled my stomach.

Is she finally…?

“I was pretty. I was happy. And I had a family. A mum, a dad, two younger sisters, and the coolest older brother in the world. Justin was into surfing, biking, extreme sports… everybody loved him; it was hard not to, he always had a kind word or a present for me…”

I could see where this was going. I put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “He raped you, didn’t he?”

She looked at me, confused. “Oh, God no! Ewww. What would make you—”

“I’m sorry, it just seemed like—”

More Afrikaans cursing. “—you watch too much telly—”

“—I SAID I WAS SORRY!”

“… Do you want to hear the story or don’t you?”

“YES! Yes, I mean yes, I’m sorry.”

“Good,” she shuddered. “My powers manifested when I was fifteen. They scared me at first, just like everyone’s I’m sure. But once I realized what I could do, I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. I always wanted to help people, and looking into their auras I thought I could really help with that. The only real problem I saw with these new powers was the Black Strings.”

She’d talked about these during training. The way she’d described it, auras appeared as a mass of swirling, multi-colored strings in front of and behind a person. They couldn’t tell you everything about their life, but some things stood out better than others. Events that were really bright and important showed up behind a person in white. Terrible, negative events showed up in darker shades.

The worst things people could do showed up in black.

“I hated seeing people’s deepest, darkest secrets, because in all my sheltered life, I didn’t want to believe they were possible. That was why I didn’t test it on my family, at first, but finally, I was just so excited that I couldn’t help myself and I looked, and I saw Justin’s Black String.

“I didn’t want to know what it was, at first, and for months I tried to ignore it. But when another appeared… I looked deeper, and I saw a vision of he and four of his friends beating a homeless man to death for kicks after a night of drinking. The second string was the same, but worse, because this time they weren’t drinking. They were
hunting
. This was getting worse, and he had no remorse for it. I… I knew I was the only one who could do something, so when we were home alone one day, I confronted him in the kitchen while he was cooking lunch. I thought, coming from me, that he’d see the light, that he’d get just how wrong what he did was.”

“I’m guessing he didn’t?”

“No. He yelled at me like it was my fault for finding out, then he forced my face down in a pot of boiling oil.”

My stomach churned at the thought. The fact that I was just admiring the smell of a fried-food booth a moment before didn’t help.

“I should have died. I wanted to die. Instead, I grabbed a knife from the counter and opened his belly. After he let me go, I was able to scream. Then I opened his throat. The police came. They took me to the hospital. What I’d done was clearly self-defense, so I wasn’t punished. Doctors told me I was lucky to keep my eyes, tongue, and most of my lips, and that they might be able to restore some of my face in time. I told them I didn’t want them to. I wanted the reminder of what happened when I allowed myself to be willfully blind to the world. My parents thought I was mad, and maybe I was,” she said, her voice trailing off.

“I knew his friends were still out there. I knew they still needed to be stopped. So once my face had healed enough, I found my first mask and cloak in a Johannesburg antique store. I became Ghost Girl, and I did things to them that were very much
not
in self-defense. They are Black Strings on my back that I can never lose and they bother me always when I use my powers, but they are also peace of mind.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. The words felt inadequate, but what the hell else are you supposed to say to a story like that?

“Be sorry all you want, but don’t ignore what I’m saying. I didn’t let myself see evil until it was too late because I didn’t want to. I care about all of you too much to see you make the same mistake.”

I could see where she was going. I wanted to tell her how many ways she was wrong, how great the heroes really were once you got to know them, how good and decent and fun they were to be around. I mean, sure, some of what she said felt true, and maybe the heroes were using us more than we thought, which was something we’d need to talk about with them, but it wasn’t as bad as she thought.

It
wasn’t
.

It couldn’t be.

We weren’t
that
stupid.

We were
supervillains
.

I sighed. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I am right.”

“
Maybe
you’re right, but can I say something?”

“Of course.”

The words didn’t come easily. Being honest has never been one of my strongest suits, but with Ghost Girl it was easy, and not just because she could use her power to see through you.

“I’m a supervillain. I’m a son of a bitch—not literally, I mean, since my mom was pretty nice, but I’ve done bad things, and I’ve made a lot of bad decisions. And you know what? If I could go back and fix all my mistakes, I wouldn’t. And it’s not just because of the sweet island lair or the sex and the drugs and the partying and the fame, though those have all been pretty awesome. It’s because of you guys. You… Helen, Felix, Nick, Odigjod… Nevermore?”

“Angelique. Her name is Angelique.”

Now I knew.

“… Anyway, I
think
I love you guys. You’re assholes a lot of the time, but you’re also the best friends I’ve ever had, and I wouldn’t give that up for anything.”

She looked me up and down. “I don’t even need my powers to know that you mean that.”

Now for the really hard part. I quickly closed the distance between us, pulled the scarf down the lower half of her face, and kissed her twisted, mutilated lips. It felt weird, kissing her, and my stomach didn’t entirely appreciate it, but I kept everything down. She resisted some at first, no doubt it’d been a while since she’d been kissed, but she didn’t push me away.

I parted from her.

“You know, you make it really hard to hate you sometimes,” she said, contorting her terrible lips into something resembling a smile.

“What can I say, I’m maybe, almost, kinda cute.”

“Sometimes,” she said, pulling the scarf back up.

It was almost dark. Loudspeakers kicked in, announcing that the Mary Rising was beginning. As if on cue, a glowing green Tri-Hole opened in the distance, spitting out a half-dozen of heroes too dark to see from where we were. Silently, we started toward them. No way were we going to miss the main event.

“Anything interesting happen while I was coming down from all the drugs?” I asked, trying to fill the silence.

“Well, Spongeman died,” Ghost Girl said, offhand.

“Really? What happened?”

“He drowned.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. He fell in a pool while chasing some criminal. He was absorbent. His lungs weren’t.”

“Huh. Did they do one of those National Days of Mourning for him?”

“Not really. The Deputy Mayor was supposed to give a speech at some park, but they couldn’t figure out how to turn off the sprinklers and had to cancel.”

“That sucks. I guess.”

“Not for Sponge Lad.”

“There’s a Sponge Lad?”

“Not anymore. He got promoted to Spongeman.”

“Huh.”

The others had saved us a spot pretty close to the front of the cordon around the mine entrance, so we got a good view of all the heroes who had come out for this Mary Rising as they signed autographs and took pictures with those audience members who had paid for tickets to meet them in advance. Some of them I knew, like Helios, Shooting Star, Photon, and Armada. The other two (
the more famous two
), Arcana and the Golem, were not a part of Project Kayfabe. There’s no way they could have known who we were, but their presence was the only thing that kept me from waving to Helios.

“So much death here,” Ghost Girl muttered. Her eyes were glowing, and her body shuddered.

“Are you all right?” Geode asked her.

“I think so,” she said. “But I can’t stay for this.”

She pushed her way back through the crowd. I wondered if I should follow her, especially now that we seemed almost back on good terms, but then the ground began to rumble beneath me, and all thoughts of Ghost Girl disappeared.

Mary was rising.

The lights all blacked out at that moment, and a voice over the loudspeakers told us to quiet down and be aware of potential side effects. Sometimes, due to the imperfect nature of her curse, the laws of physics didn’t entirely behave when she was rising. Some Risings have reported mass hysteria, gravity fluctuations, and the sudden appearance of a field of sunflowers in front of the mine. I was kind of hoping we’d see something, for the full experience, but that wasn’t to be.

At once after the announcement, a few hundred hands rose into the air, aiming their phones’ cameras at the pitch-black mine entrance. Slowly, faintly, a glowing green mist began to pour from it. Green light soon began to come from the thick cracks in the earth, brighter every second as the ground began to rumble even heavier. A primal roar came from the mine.

A massive shadow stood silhouetted in the green, pulling itself out by the edges of the mine.

Then they turned the lights on her.

We’d all seen pictures of Mary, but it was another thing seeing her in person. With flat, gray skin, patchy, almost non-existent white hair, and a muscular physique that almost made her look to be a giant gorilla, she barely looked female, let alone a former human. Only her tattered black funerary dress gave her any clear identity. Her flat, ugly face contorted on seeing the light, her massive lips and broken teeth curling into a grimace. She raised one giant hand to block the light as she looked around at the audience, confused.

“Have you seen my lamb?” she asked, her voice high and pitiful.

In a flash, the heroes were on her. Photon ran around her at superspeed, creating a disorienting whirlwind that unsteadied Mary on her feet. Helios and Shooting Star flew around her, unleashing energy blasts from their hands, while Armada unleashed everything from his impressive arsenal of experimental artillery on Mary’s head and neck. Mary roared in pain and confusion, falling to her hands and knees as she waved impotently at the attackers.

The crowd was eating it up, cheering the heroes and cursing Mary as they took pictures and high-fived each other.

The four heroes let up on their attack, allowing the Golem to jump in and wrap its arms around Mary’s chest. Slowly, Arcana floated in to meet them, her robe fluttering around her. The air took on a weird charge just by her presence. Dark-skinned, beautiful, and quite possibly immortal, she was supposed to be the strongest magic user on the planet. Her face held a look of utter serenity and ferocity as she pulled the deck of enchanted tarot cards from her belt. They flew around her like a swarm of insects, glowing and showing us brief glimpses of the ornate artwork on each card. The only question was, which would she use to finish Mary?

With a flick of her wrist, she flung one card at the ground near where Mary knelt. From it sprung a ghostly, tall figure in a medieval robe and wielding a massive sword. The crowd went wild when they recognized the card.