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

by Jenn Gott

  She ducked. The fist went flying over her head, and Jane wasted no time—she swung her own punch sideways, connecting once again with the tender flesh of UltraViolet’s injury.

  UltraViolet cried out, collapsing to her side. Jane stood up, glaring down at the heat signature of her double.

  “I can still see you, you bitch,” Jane said. She kicked at UltraViolet, but UltraViolet rolled out of the way.

  “Shit,” Jane heard UltraViolet mutter. But in an instant the infrared glow was fading, refracting until there was nothing left to see in either range.

  Jane stood in the middle of the factory, surrounded by vats but feeling utterly exposed.

  And yet, that didn’t matter anymore. UltraViolet had been retreating as she cloaked herself, and now Jane knew one thing for certain: there was no way she was letting that monster escape.

  “What’s wrong?” Jane called into the darkness. “Can’t handle a fair fight?”

  There was no answer. Jane strained her ears, and peered all around, but neither footsteps nor the faint shimmer of UltraViolet’s refraction were anywhere to be found.

  “Goddammit,” Jane muttered. She glanced to the side—a ladder rose up along one of the vats, like a rose trellis on a garden wall. Jane scrambled up it, heading for the catwalks. If she could get a higher vantage point, out from the forest of the vats, perhaps she’d have an easier time spotting UltraViolet.

  The grating of the catwalk rattled underneath her. Jane tried not to think about how long it was since the last time this place had undergone a safety inspection, as she toed along the narrow pathway. She told herself not to look down as she walked. Jane gripped the railing. She counted her footsteps, until she felt that she was probably in the middle of the room, and only then did she stop, only then did she allow herself to look out over the sea of bubbling vats.

  Pain shot through Jane’s thigh. Jane cried out, twisting, her fingers colliding with the hilt of a blade as she clutched at her injury. She barely had time to process it, though—pain, blade, blood—before a fist that she couldn’t see connected with the underside of her chin, and sent her sprawling onto her back.

  UltraViolet shimmered back into sight above her. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t like a fair fight.”

  She lunged for the blade in Jane’s leg. Jane kicked up, hooking UltraViolet in the gut as she grabbed UltraViolet’s arms. It was a move that Cal had just taught her, in their last training session. She had never quite gotten the hang of it, but it worked now. Maybe UltraViolet had never mastered it, either. Jane watched in satisfaction as UltraViolet was flipped over Jane, coming to land with a bang and a rattle on the catwalk beyond Jane’s head.

  There was no time to gloat. Jane hauled herself up, grinding her teeth together to keep from screaming in agony. She was maybe halfway to her feet when an arm wrapped around her neck, dragging her backward. Jane elbowed at UltraViolet, but it didn’t work. She tried to pull on UltraViolet’s arm, which was pressing down on Jane’s windpipe, but it didn’t work. Tried shoving them both back, but it didn’t work.

  She reached for the knife in her leg. It was a stretch, pinned back as she was, struggling to keep her footing, struggling to keep from passing out. Jane’s fingers knocked against the hilt, sending a fresh wave of pain and nausea roiling through her.

  The blade felt just as bad ripping out as it had plunging in. Jane gasped, or tried to, her chest burning as her lungs sucked in nothing. She threw her arm up, not even caring at this point what the knife hit.

  It sunk into flesh, not her own. UltraViolet howled as her grip on Jane released, and Jane staggered forward, catching herself on the railing. Jane gulped down air, but she did not have time for the sweet relief it gave her. She spun, just in time to grab UltraViolet’s wrist. The knife was free again, clutched and aimed at Jane. The force of UltraViolet’s rage shoved Jane backward, until the railing dug into her spine. Jane leaned back, the knife and UltraViolet’s face both leering over her. Blood dripped from the blade, splashing against Jane’s cheek.

  Jane had never been great at arm wrestling. Her muscles were screaming at her from the effort of holding back the blade at her face. For one heart-stopping moment they failed, and the blade surged another inch or two closer before Jane was able to catch hold again.

  She was going to lose this struggle if she didn’t do something. Jane jerked to the side—she released the grip with one of her hands, just long enough to reach out and flick a laser beam at the numerous pipes that littered the air above them.

  Sparks flew, and metal screamed and groaned. A pipe swung down, forcing UltraViolet to leap back in order to avoid being clobbered. Jane ran as best as she could, ignoring the pain in her leg. Blood spurted out of the wound with every step, seeping between Jane’s fingers as she tried to hold herself together. The grating hissed underfoot, acid burning into the metal of the catwalk. Just a little farther, and she’d reach another door, above the one she’d spotted earlier. Beneath her, liquid from the pipe was pooling into the vats, which burbled and sent up great belches of steam.

  The shriek of metal burst through the factory. Jane’s stomach lurched as the catwalk disappeared from underfoot. Apparently, she had given UltraViolet an idea: the catwalk swung down, the support cables above flapping like handkerchiefs being waved at a parade. Jane fell, forward and down, her hands scrambling for something to grab on to.

  She managed to hook part of the grating. Her fingers screamed at her, as her weight caught against them. She crashed into the catwalk, both her and the metal swinging ominously.

  UltraViolet’s laugh billowed throughout the room.

  If Jane was stronger, better trained, perhaps she would have been able to hold on longer. Perhaps, even, she would have been able to catch her footing against the grating; scale the hanging catwalk, scramble her way back up to stable ground.

  She wasn’t, though.

  Her fingers slipped, first one and then another in a cascading sequence of doom. Jane screamed as she fell. She landed—hard—on one of the conveyor belts, the whole thing shuddering on impact.

  How long did she lie there? It was impossible to tell. The world compressed and blurred, her head spinning, her whole body aching. On some level she knew that this wasn’t over, that UltraViolet was still loose in the factory, was quite possibly coming for her right now. That she needed to get up, needed to fight back, needed to find the resolve to keep going, but these thoughts were crowded out by another, so large that it overwhelmed the rest:

  Being a superhero sucked.

  The conveyor belt jerked beneath her, jolting Jane out of her self-pity. Gears groaned from lack of use, and the belt stuttered in fits and spurts as it began to trudge forward.

  Jane blinked, trying to clear her head. She dragged herself onto her elbows, her eyes immediately widening in terror. The belt was drawing her forward, toward a giant spigot hanging off one of the vats. When the factory was still in operation, this line must have brought in canisters to be filled, because now great spurts of liquid were shooting at intervals onto the conveyor belt, melting through metal and rubber. Yet still, it soldiered on. Jane was jerked forward, once and then again. She rolled to her side, leaping from the conveyor as a spray of chemicals flew over her head.

  Her leg collapsed as she hit the floor. Jane tried to roll with it, though it wasn’t as graceful as it appeared in her head. She reached beneath the armor of her uniform and ripped off a piece of the base layer, wrapping her thigh in a crude bandage.

  Good enough. She dragged herself back to her feet.

  UltraViolet stood in the middle of the room. She had her hands on her hips, as if nothing in the world could possibly touch her. The vats stood as tall sentries around her, still churning from the mess that Jane had made above.

  “Nice work,” UltraViolet called. “I have to admit, I couldn’t have planned it better myself. The city is going to love it when it comes out that Captain Lumen sabotaged this place.”

  “I
didn’t sab—”

  “Well, maybe you didn’t get the formula quite right, no. But then, you weren’t trying.” UltraViolet grinned. “I, on the other hand . . . well, let’s just say I’ve made sure your hard work won’t go to waste.”

  Jane didn’t have time to ask, even if she’d wanted to. With a lazy flick of UltraViolet’s wrist, a beam shot from her fingertips. It struck a trail of green liquid, oozing across the floor, and instantly ignited the end of it. Fire licked up the line, following it back, until it had completely encircled one of the vats like a brazier. Panic coursed through Jane, as the line crept from one vat to the next to the next, each one lighting up in turn.

  “Enjoy the show!” UltraViolet called. She blew Jane a kiss, then whirled and raced off into the darkness.

  Flame billowed up, perilously close to Jane. She flinched back as she darted between the vats. They were already wheezing and hissing and groaning, and as Jane leaped up the stairs to a lower platform, the pressure gauges of the control panels teetered toward the red.

  “Fuck!” Jane shouted. She ran her hands over her head, grabbing her ponytail. She had absolutely no idea what to do. What could she do? She wasn’t an engineer, or a firefighter, or even a proper superhero. She had no powers to control flame or water or time. Her heart skittered as nervously as the needle on the gauge.

  There was no way that she could handle this on her own, that was for sure. Jane glanced around, not knowing what she was looking for. She needed help, but the only person around to help her was . . .

  Allison. Her heat signature glowed through the wall, shifting as if she was finally beginning to wake.

  Shit, it was better than nothing.

  Jane raced through the door. A glance to the side of the room confirmed that Cal was gone, probably dragged out by UltraViolet while Jane was distracted—but she didn’t have time for that. Jane looked over; sure enough, Allison was just starting to lift her head.

  “What . . . ?” she muttered, as she squinted into the darkness around her. “Hello? Who’s there?”

  “Allison!” Jane ran toward her, this woman that wasn’t her sister.

  Allison took one look in Jane’s direction, and instantly groaned. “Oh, no. Not you.” She glanced down at herself. “Wait a second . . . Why the fuck am I dressed like you?”

  Jane rocked to a halt. She had reached the edge of the pool of light that poured down over Allison—enough for Allison to see the iconic red of her uniform, but still obscuring Jane’s face.

  For now. One more step, and there would be no more secret between them.

  This world’s Jane clearly didn’t want her sister to know. But then, this world’s Jane had also turned into UltraViolet, so maybe it was time for Jane to stop worrying about whether or not she was “messing up” her double’s life.

  “Because,” Jane said, as she stepped forward, “UltraViolet needed a body double.”

  Was it wrong to enjoy this moment, just a tiny bit? Jane had always liked drawing these moments. One panel with Captain Lumen hidden from view, just a few hints of her true identity visible to the readers. A slim diagonal line to divide the panels, and now here she is again, stepping out into the light. Everything behind her is drawn in dark blues and grays, all the color and vibrancy reserved for the hero shot, the moment of truth revealed. Jane would position her panels at the top corner, filling the rest of the page with a reaction shot of Allison. The room in shadow around her, a silhouette of Jane’s own back visible along the side. Allison’s face, brighter and filled with greater detail than the rest of the scene.

  Her face narrowed into a withering stare. “Get me out of this.”

  Jane’s mouth twisted up. Okay, so some things don’t quite live up to expectations. Still: Jane hurried over to Allison. Without a word, she reached out and aimed a laser beam at the ropes, cutting through each layer with caution.

  Allison was only about half-free when she sprang to her feet. Her legs were still tied up, but her arms—her arms swung wide and loose, as she pulled one back and then brought it forward.

  She decked Jane square in the jaw.

  Jane staggered back, clutching her face. “What was that for?!”

  “How many times?” Allison shouted. “Huh? How many times were you out there, putting yourself at risk, and you didn’t even have the decency to let us worry about you? God! I just . . . I can’t believe you. I can’t believe you’d just lie to us like that!”

  “Hey!” Jane said. She held up a finger. “First of all . . . okay, that’s kind of a weird point to get hung up on, but whatever—Listen, I’m not your fucking sister, okay? So whatever it is you’re actually pissy about, can you just stuff it long enough to help me contact the Heroes?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Jane hesitated. Allison was staring at her as if she was crazy, which . . . yeah, Jane couldn’t really blame her for that. She didn’t even know why she’d brought up her real identity, rather than playing along to this world’s Jane. It wasn’t planned. Jane could only begin to rationalize it as not wanting to get caught up in old arguments she didn’t understand. Right now, she needed Allison’s trust and cooperation, and if there was one thing that Jane had learned about the Maxwell girls in her time here, it was that Jane was the last person that Allison would trust in a crisis.

  So there it was.

  “I’m not Jane Maxwell,” Jane said finally. “I mean—I am, but I’m not the Jane Maxwell that you know. I’ve been brought here from a parallel world, because the Heroes needed my help. Your Jane Maxwell, your sister . . . well, she’s UltraViolet.”

  “UltraViolet,” Allison said. Her voice was as level as her stare, as she studied Jane.

  Jane nodded. “I’m afraid so. And as much as I wish I could help you process all this, we really don’t have the time. I need you to go and get the rest of the Heroes for me. Something’s wrong with the factory, I mean”—Jane’s voice pitched up, nervous laughter cracking her words—“I literally think it’s going to explode, and—and I can’t do it on my own. I need help.”

  Allison glanced at the ropes, still caught around her legs. “Cut these.”

  Jane stepped forward, doing as she was told. When she stood back up, she regarded Allison warily. “So . . . you’ll help me? You’ll go find the Heroes?”

  “No, you idiot,” Allison said. She kicked the last of her ropes aside, stepping out of the tangle that had held her in place. “I’m going to stop the explosion.”

  Jane’s mouth gaped several times in rapid succession. Allison was already striding off, her copy of Jane’s ponytail bouncing as if waving goodbye.

  “Right,” Jane said a moment later, after she’d jogged to catch up. “Um, so just to clarify: when you say that you’re going to stop the explosion—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, just—what did you mean by that?”

  “I mean I’m going to find out what’s wrong, and fix it. Save your sorry ass, and the city.”

  “Yeah, okay, I got that, but . . . how, exactly?”

  “Wow, you really don’t know anything about me, do you?” Allison asked.

  “No.” Jane shrugged. “Sorry, but . . . no.”

  “Not that I’m saying I believe your ‘parallel worlds’ story, but what—is the me over there some kind of wet noodle or something?”

  Jane hesitated. There really didn’t seem to be any good way to break this.

  “There, um . . . there is no ‘you’ from my world,” she said finally. “Our mom had a miscarriage before you would have been born.”

  Allison paused—just long enough to cut Jane a sidelong look. Jane was expecting her to take this rather hard. Jane certainly would have taken it rather hard, or at least she assumed so. What must it be like, Jane wondered, to learn that there’s a world out there in which you never existed? Would it cause a crisis of confidence, like maybe you were never “supposed” to have been born? Would it make you doubt yourself? Make you question your place in you
r own universe? Wonder if your family and friends would have been better, worse, different, without you among them?

  But all Allison did was quirk an eyebrow.

  “In that case,” she said, “prepare to be amazed.”

  * * *

  Jane was amazed.

  They raced back in as the pressure gauge was breaching into the red zone. Pipes wheezed with the effort of holding back steam. Canisters bulged ominously. Sweat had built up on a large tank in the corner, like a glass of lemonade on a hot summer day. The water dripped onto the cement floor, pooling outward, and Jane and Allison dodged flames and leaped across snaking puddles as they ran for the control console.

  The metal grating rattled underneath them. They vaulted up the stairs two at a time, and ran across the platform until they were right above a smaller vat. One glance down, and Allison’s face paled. “Okay, not good.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My sister is what’s wrong!” Allison said. She ran over to the vat, ducking down to read a gauge near the lip. “Shit. I never should have tutored her ass in tenth-grade chemistry.”

  Jane jumped as a loud ping! split the room, a valve breaking off of a pipe somewhere far overhead. Hissing followed, loud enough for Jane to have to shout. “Okay, well, I didn’t have a tutor, so can we pretend like I’m a complete idiot here?”

  Allison ran for a control console, on a platform just beside the tanks. “Mixing chemicals bad. Heat worse. Factory about to go kerblooey!” God, she even did the little hand motions, her fingers spreading in a mock explosion.

  “Yeah, maybe don’t need to dumb it down quite that much!”

  “Do you really need the fucking science?” Allison snapped, as she tapped furiously on the console. Light flickered behind the controls, just barely enough power to see by. Her face went still, only the subtle shift of her throat as she swallowed. “Or should I just give you numbers? We have four minutes until this whole factory goes up, and I cannot even begin to predict the contamination if these chemicals hit the river.”

  Jane’s stomach pitched. “Sorry I asked.”