Hopefuls (Book 1): The Private Life of Jane Maxwell

by Jenn Gott

  She knew where their command room was.

  “Welcome, Jane.”

  Jane held her breath as she crossed the threshold. The buttery-smooth computer voice, normally typed in a font just a little different from the usual handwritten dialog, filtered down from above. To get inside the command room required a retinal scan, voiceprint, and six-digit PIN. The retinal scan and voiceprint were instantly recognized as this world’s Jane Maxwell, of course, but at the instruction to enter the PIN, Jane had hesitated. She didn’t exist in the comics world, not really. Her character was a minor scientist that occasionally showed up to dispense relevant technobabble, and did not have her own access to the various levels of the headquarters. Jane stared at the screen, blue digits counting down as it awaited input, and punched in the first series of numbers that popped into her head: 091600. The date of her first kiss.

  The doors slid shut behind her, and a soft hiss indicated that they’d successfully resealed. Jane stood just inside of the room for a while, taking the view in.

  Located in the very center of the building, the command room was a perfect circle. One half of it held a crescent-shaped conference table that always had the exact right number of chairs needed. A vibrant, interactive map of the city lit up the curve of the wall to her left, while to her right bloomed a spread of massive screens and computer workstations, far more than they ever had cause to use. The biggest screen was nestled in the middle, and currently it showed, in pieces: a series of police reports; panicked tweets from eyewitnesses; a blurry video on a loop, a Shadow Raptor ripping off the door to Wilson Labs with its bare hands; security footage from outside the Heroes’ headquarters, as the team members sped off on motorbikes or in low-slung sports cars. A satellite image of Grand City was tucked in the corner, tiny blips popping into existence as each of the Heroes linked up to the tracking system.

  A blue blip appeared: Mindsight, and Jane’s strength came back to her. She raced forward, tapping on the audio feed that connected the team.

  “—going to take Corsetto Street and approach from the south,” Devin was saying. His Puerto Rican accent came in thick over the speakers, a sure sign that he was feeling the adrenaline.

  “Fine,” Cal said. “Granite Girl, go with him. Windforce and Pixie Beats, stick with me. We’ll try to punch our way through the front entrance. Mindsight—”

  “Already on it.” Amy’s voice was steady and strong, the way that Clair used to give presentations at the museum.

  Jane watched as Amy’s blip began to pull away from the others. All of them separated and regrouped, heading their various directions. Jane let out a breath—at least they were sticking to a pretty standard Heroes of Hope strategy. In a straight-on fight, Amy’s empathic superpowers weren’t much help, which meant that she often hung back until there was at least one enemy downed. She could swoop in at that point, try to extract information out of the fallen combatant—information on what their plan really was, where their leader was hiding, whatever the plot needed her to find, really. Jane had plenty of reservations about using Mindsight like this, but Clair had always insisted that was just how it had to work. When Jane tried to press her on the subject, when she expressed a specific desire to adjust how Clair’s empathy worked, Clair would get incredibly defensive. “That’s just how it works, Jane,” she’d say, as if it was real.

  A slight chill crept up Jane’s spine now, watching Amy’s blip as it circled around the far way.

  She tried to focus on something else. Cal, Tony, and Keisha were approaching Wilson Labs. Jane leaned in, reading the name off of Cal’s blip: Deltaman. She wondered what he was capable of.

  The squeal of brakes and the familiar SKREEEEE of the Shadow Raptors carried easily across the audio feed. Jane tapped a few places on the screen, and a hacked line to Wilson Labs’ security footage rose out of the depths, displacing several other pieces of data. She saw Tony and Keisha leap from their bikes, but it was Cal that really caught Jane’s attention, because it was Cal that she had no way of knowing what to expect.

  He looked . . . well, kind of like a ripoff Batman, if Jane was being completely honest with herself. She cringed at the visual design of his costume: rubberized body armor sculpted to look like muscles, a sweeping black cape, even a frickin’ utility belt cinching it all together. Though at least he didn’t have the signature cowl, instead obscuring his face with a hood from the cape and dark greasepaint around his eyes. And okay, when he threw his arm straight and flexed his wrist, a variety of darts shot out of what was no doubt a clever deployment system hidden along the length of his sleeve. But still.

  The Shadow Raptors swarmed, and the team kicked and slashed and fired. Jane glanced at the upper corner of her large display, pleased to see that Devin and Marie had reached the back entrance, and were currently working their way up the side of the building. Two or three heat signatures were approaching their position, however, and so Jane tapped a button on her controls without even thinking. “Windforce, Granite Girl, watch the next level—there’s a handful of guards on their way to the windows.”

  “Jane?” Cal asked, incredulous. Their comms were all interconnected, and Jane heard him puff with exertion as he jerked the head of a Shadow Raptor, snapping its long neck. “What are you doing?”

  “What, just because I’m stuck back at base, I can’t help?” Jane pfft’d. “Please, I—behind you, Cal!”

  Cal whirled. He ducked, and the Shadow Raptor that was lunging at him toppled across his back. The Shadow Raptor landed hard, already turning, and Cal whipped a gun from his belt and downed it with two deafening BANGs.

  Jane flinched, though the speakers had muffled the noise somewhat. Even still, her ears rang, and she had to piece together rather than outright hear as Cal asked, “How did you even get into the command room?”

  “Well, I am Jane Maxwell. You think the computer is going to know the difference?”

  If Cal had something clever to say to this, Jane didn’t hear it. She was still trying to clear the ringing of her ears, and by now the sound of glass shattering was filtering through as Devin and Marie broke into one of the upper windows of the lab. Jane pressed her ears shut a few times, swallowing as if maybe they needed to be popped. A faint whisper caught at her attention, and she could have sworn that she heard the computer say “Welcome—” again, so clearly her hearing was still playing tricks on her.

  Or not—searing heat blasted beside her, a crackle of energy raising all of the hairs on Jane’s body. An energy bolt, like purple lightning, struck the display. Sparks flew, the screen shattered like a dropped phone, and Jane screamed as she ducked to the floor. The conversation and noise of the rest of the Heroes of Hope cut out, leaving nothing but a weighted silence and a deep and growing chuckle.

  “Well, well, well,” said a heavily digitized voice. “Captain Lumen. I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting to run into you here.”

  Jane had thought that her heart was already racing as fast as it could, but at the sound of this voice, it summoned another burst of speed, slamming into Jane’s throat. UltraViolet—Jane recognized the sound of her from the video.

  Not that this recognition did Jane much good. Fear had struck her paralyzed, glued to the floor in a useless ball of cowering limbs. This close, the floor tiles smelled strongly of disinfectant, souring Jane’s already roiling stomach. UltraViolet, UltraViolet, UltraViolet. The name kept swirling through Jane’s head, piercing her thoughts like a nasty headache as the clack of UltraViolet’s boots drew closer.

  “Oh, come now,” UltraViolet said. “Don’t tell me that you’re just going to sit there and let me kill you. What would the city say, Captain Lumen? Your reputation would die along with you—and we all know how important that is to heroes, don’t we?”

  This was supposed to goad Jane—goad Captain Lumen—to get to her feet. Jane knew this, but that knowledge did not make strength magically appear in her limbs, nor did it unblock the connection between her brain and her body. She couldn’t
move, even if she wanted to. And really, she didn’t want to. The only movement that Jane was even remotely interested in was run, and that . . . really wasn’t an option here.

  Finally, the boots reached her. Jane had watched their progress, as they came around a table and into the limited view from her spot on the floor. Shifting in and out of visibility, like some kind of projection. Yet Jane knew that this was no projection, that if UltraViolet wanted to plunge a knife into Jane’s back, she was wholly solid and capable of doing so.

  This was how she was going to die, then. The realization struck Jane, funny and tragic and pathetic and horrible all wrapped into one. Curled on the floor, in a parallel world that by all rights shouldn’t exist. Killed by her own imagination. Her father always used to tell Jane that there was no future in comics, and now finally he was right.

  UltraViolet reached down, and Jane screamed—but nothing stabbed at Jane’s vital organs, no blades pierced her skin. Instead, a gloved hand wrapped itself in the fabric of her shirt and hauled her upward, like grabbing a kitten by the scruff. UltraViolet drew Jane to her feet, and slammed her against the broken display.

  The two women stared at each other. They were the same height, roughly (it was hard to tell, with the ridiculously spiked boots that UltraViolet was wearing), and close enough to the same build. Trying to get any more details than that was impossible. Even when UltraViolet wasn’t shifted into transparency, there was something . . . off about her. Like the light kept bouncing from her at the wrong angles, distorting her image. It made Jane’s head hurt to look at her.

  UltraViolet, however, had no such difficulties studying Jane. She leaned in, tipping her head to examine Jane in detail. Jane tried to hold herself against the controls behind her, steady and brave and true, but in reality her knees were about ready to give out.

  “Wait . . . You’re not Captain Lumen,” UltraViolet said after a moment, and never had Jane been more relieved for a supervillain to be right about something.

  Jane made herself shake her head. “No,” she squeaked. “No, I’m not.”

  But in an instant, Jane knew the revelation had not helped her. UltraViolet leaned back, and those wicked purple lips, the only clear thing about her, curled into a terrifying smile.

  “Then there’s no reason to keep you alive.”

  Her hand found Jane’s throat before Jane could react. Jane gasped, though only about half of the air made it down before a crushing grip cut off the supply. Heat from UltraViolet’s fingers stabbed like knives, radiating out from the point of impact until it felt as if Jane’s entire body was on fire. Darkness blotted Jane’s vision. She could not move, could not scream. She tried to claw at UltraViolet, but her attempts were feeble at best. The world shifted in and out of existence. Her lungs burned hotter than the rest of her body, desperate for another breath.

  She didn’t even hear the bullet. All Jane knew was this: that one moment she was on the brink of passing out into an endless sleep, gulping at air that would never come, and that the next moment contained nothing but sweet relief. The pressure on her throat released. Jane collapsed to her knees, sucking in huge lungfuls of air as UltraViolet swore. A blur of motion made Jane look up, in time to see another crackling bolt of purple lightning streak the air—away from Jane.

  Clair was standing in the open doorway. Rather, Amy. Rather, Mindsight, her vintage pearl-handled revolver held level as she fired again in UltraViolet’s direction. UltraViolet veered, and the bullet pinged off a metal support beam and bit deeply into the wall.

  A brief struggle followed. Jane screamed, her throat raw, when UltraViolet lunged for Mindsight, although Mindsight was fully prepared for the move; she darted aside in the perfect dodge, twisting so that her trench coat flared like a cape. A simple black mask obscured her eyes, a fedora tilted forward to cast a shadow across all but her blood-red lipstick. The look that she cast at UltraViolet’s retreating back should have spit daggers, but Mindsight had to make due for firing off another three rounds from her gun as their enemy disappeared into the hallway.

  They let UltraViolet go. Without the rest of the team, their scant numbers were not enough to overpower someone of her skill, and as the door hissed shut in her wake, Jane collapsed against the wall in relief. Tears sprang forth, sobs racking Jane’s chest before she could stop herself.

  “Shh,” Amy said, shedding her persona as easily as the hat and mask that she dropped onto the conference table. She crouched in front of Jane, reaching out to rub her back.

  Jane threw her arms around Amy. Her face buried in Amy’s shoulder, her fingers dug at Amy’s arms. Amy rocked back underneath the force of it. Jane’s sobs of shock and fear continued to rip through her, and after a moment, Amy’s arms folded protectively around Jane.

  “Shh,” she said again. “Shh, it’s okay. I’m here.”

  She was, she was. Amy’s voice, Clair’s voice, one and the same tangling into Jane’s hair. Clair’s hands on Jane’s back, rubbing familiar comforting circles across her spine. Clair’s blunt hairline brushing against Jane’s cheek. Jane cried as hard and as raw as the day of Clair’s funeral, as she leaned against Clair’s sturdy body. Alive, whole. Her heartbeat a steady drum in Jane’s ear, her breath teasing Jane’s hair like a spring breeze.

  Clair. And yet . . . not Clair.

  Jane pulled herself back, as if she’d been jolted with one of UltraViolet’s electrical pulses. Amy looked at her quizzically. Without her mask, there was nothing but Clair’s familiar eyes studying Jane’s movements.

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” Jane said. She pulled off her crooked glasses and wiped at her eyes with the back of her sleeve.

  Amy nodded distractedly. “It’s okay. Are you . . . are you all right? She didn’t hurt you, did she?”

  “No,” Jane said as she put her glasses back on. It helped to have something tangible to focus on, simple questions to answer: are you okay, are you hurt. No, no. It was far better than dwelling on the questions swirling like mist around Amy’s face. Who are you? Are you really Clair, somehow? How different is your heart?

  Thankfully, Amy turned away. She got to her feet, examining the room as if looking for clues. “I wonder how she got in?” Her voice was shaky, but that could easily be from simple fear—their security had just been breached, after all, and in the worst possible way. A chill swept through Jane, wondering, as she was sure that Amy was as well: If UltraViolet could do it once, what was to stop her from doing it again?

  “How did you . . . ?” Jane started, but the words died in her throat.

  Amy turned back. She was standing by the conference table, one hand balanced on the smooth edge. “How did I know?”

  Jane looked away, but nodded.

  “I sensed that you were in danger,” Amy said, the words stabbing at Jane’s heart. “Shortly before you cut into the comm line, I knew that something was wrong. Mine was malfunctioning, but after you cut back out again, I managed to get a message to the rest of the team. They should be here soon. We agreed—the attack on Wilson Labs was likely a ploy to draw us away.”

  Jane stared at her own fingers. They were lined with ink, stained so deeply into the crevices around her nails, the whorls of her fingertips, that no amount of scrubbing ever got them clean anymore. She twisted her wedding ring, braided platinum branches, around her finger. “You could have waited for the rest of them. You didn’t . . . you didn’t have to come back for me.”

  This statement was met with silence. Jane looked up a moment later, afraid of what she might find. Amy had sat in one of the conference chairs, and was now leaning her elbows on her knees and cradling her head in her hands.

  “I waited last time,” Amy told her shoes. “When . . . when our Jane disappeared. It was the exact same feeling, like a panic attack squeezing the air out of my chest. I could have gone after her myself, only I didn’t know what to do without the rest of the team to back me up. But by the time we got there . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” Jane said. �
��Amy. I’m so sorry. This must be so hard on you.”

  Amy forced a brave smile as she sat up. “It’s hard on all of us. Jane’s a valuable member of the team. It’s . . . not the same without her.”

  “Well . . . sure, I’m sure that everyone’s worried about their teammate,” Jane said. “But I mean . . . she’s your wife.”

  The stillness radiating off of Amy was so absolute that it rocked Jane back. Jane stared at Amy, both of their eyes growing wide.

  “Isn’t she?”

  “We’re married?” Amy asked.

  “We’re not?”

  Amy shook her head. One time, all the way left, then all the way right. She left no room for doubt. “We . . . Well, it’s just . . . It’s just that my Jane—our Jane, this Jane, um . . . She doesn’t—”

  Jane held up her hand: stop. She couldn’t listen, couldn’t even imagine. A world in which she didn’t love Clair? It was the most impossible of all the impossible things she’d been told today, the one fiction that she couldn’t get herself to accept. She drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them. Felt the bumps of her wedding ring with her thumb.

  Amy’s eyes caught the motion. The flash of platinum. She made herself look away from it, but Jane had seen.

  “Amy—”

  The door hissed open. “Welcome, Cal. Welcome, Devin. Welcome—”

  The rest of the greetings were cut off as a burst of voices started talking all at once.

  “What happened here?!”—“Are you two all right?”—“I told you that we should have upgraded the system! I told you!”—“Fuck!”—“It was UltraViolet.”

  This last statement was made by Amy, already to her feet, and it cut the rest of them off midstride. Only the computer continued, the last “Welcome, Marie” trailing off into silence.

  “What, here?” Cal said.

  “Fuck!” Marie said again. She ripped her mask off, throwing it dramatically onto the conference table. Tony placed a steady hand on her shoulder. She was so much shorter than him that he barely had to lift his hand at all.